Crown of Gold and Ruin, page 16
Looking back on the strange incidents of that night later, Di could only explain it one way. She had been fearful since her mother died. Fearful of the spirits inside her own body, spirits that she could use to shatter and tear, even make those close to her bleed. It ripped out of her when she could not control it, when she did not expect it. It didn’t always surface when she needed it most, true, such as the Briar Road. It had lain dormant for most of her sixteenth year, so dormant she had almost forgotten it existed, and had wanted to forget. Erratic, unnameable, unidentifiable, but so intense sometimes that after an episode her body would not stop shaking, like that night she had shattered an ancient stone gargoyle apart on the Lionskeep roof, which had been the confirmation to herself of her power. She had then shivered under the bedclothes all night, gasping at every shadow that tremored.
But she had never encountered others who had the same strange entity inside them. Not when Drast used his magic that smelled of incense and burning sage, not when traveling magicians came to court to entertain with leaping fires and lusty incantations. She had never known that you could feel another’s inner entity in the way that Taliesin, Prince of Teralen, showed her.
In her was a dark tree, fractious, luring, arching out of her when it wanted to, hiding when it desired—but when Taliesin raised his arm, it felt instead like an armada of skeletal horses were galloping at her, foaming across the space between them like waves slipping across sand, colliding into her with such brutal force it sent her skittering over the marble with a cry, right into her brother’s arms.
* * *
Jaden had dashed down the marble stairways, rushing to his sister who was in the arms of one of the most vicious Frenalin royals on the continent and yet didn’t seem in any urgency to get out of said arms. What is she doing?
He skidded down the last few steps, almost losing his footing on the red silken runners, and cut a path through preening socialites of Elenon, summoning three lurking footguards to his side.
Vralen Rowanshield stepped into his path just as Di’s cascade of flaming locks swam at Jaden through the crowd. Vralen’s own auburn hair was all aflutter, his high cheekbones flushed.
“My Prince,” Vralen started, as Jaden impatiently began to push past him. The guard captain placed a strong freckled hand on Jaden’s shoulder, holding him back. “The king has declared the Frenalin prince a very special guest of Eria tonight. He orders that the princess be left to entertain the Frenalin in a private conversation, and no one else is to interfere,” the captain finished.
Despite the monotonous drone of someone repeating strict orders, there was wavering dark suspicion in Vralen’s hazel eyes, a suspicion trained on this Taliesin that spurred into furor Jaden’s own worries, just as there was a loud, surprised cry from behind them. He glanced back to find Di had lunged away from the Frenalin, skidding over the marble, past the staring throng—she collided right into Jaden’s surprised arms.
Jaden drew his dagger in one fluid motion whilst quickly shoving Diana behind the protection of his own body, feeling a flash of heat as her skin touched his, as if a scorching fever had embalmed her flesh. The prince swallowed and gazed defiantly up at the Frenalin, taking in this otherworldly being—so tall that Jaden, who stood a foot above most men in the court with Trystan, had to tilt his head to study those crystalline silver eyes and wonder what vicious arcane motive lurked in them that wished to devour his sister. For he knew from Hrothren’s stories that Frenalin did indeed devour humans who trespassed their halls, humans who broke the intricate laws of their ethereal citadels. Seeing Taliesin’s arching saber canines, Jaden could not doubt the truth of this.
“Jaden,” Vralen had come up behind him. “His Majesty has ordered the Frenalin prince and Diana be allowed to speak in private.”
“I am her brother,” Jaden retorted, glancing back at Di, whose fever-bright eyes were trained on Taliesin, the darkness of fear in the blue irises fading away to be replaced with—Jaden blinked, perhaps he was only imagining it—with intrigue that bordered on fascination. “I can be part of whatever private discussion my sister is bound to with someone whom we cannot deem a definite ally,” he continued, staring again at Taliesin, who was watching him with a slashed smirk. He seemed completely unaware of the state of disarray and confusion his arrival had caused at Di’s ball—half the courtiers had fled in fear at seeing a full-blood male Frenalin with teeth like that of the wildcat Minerva dancing around the hall, whilst the other half had grouped into a corner and were drinking in the situation with eyes famished for gossip.
“But, my prince …” Vralen trailed off uncertainly as Jaden wrapped a protective hand around Di’s arm, ready to usher her to the Healing Hall to get medicine for the fever he was certain coursed through her.
He turned to Vralen, dagger still pointed at the Frenalin. “Besides,” he asked quizzically, “what can my sister possibly have to discuss in private with a Frenalin nobleman come randomly a-wandering?” He had to struggle to strip his voice both of derision at the notion and unease at Taliesin’s presence.
“Jaden, I must confess, I am intrigued to speak with Lord Taliesin.” Di’s voice was brittle but assured, and when she stepped around the protective barrier of Jaden’s shoulder to curtsey gracefully before Taliesin, the swan curve of her neck and the scent of her sandalwood perfume recalled their mother, Celine, in such a dizzying wave of melancholy that Jaden’s dagger slipped from his fingers to clang to the veined marble below with a tinny squeak.
“Why?” he asked, gazing at her oddly, though now he pondered it further, what harm could her simply talking to Taliesin render? His own agitation suddenly seemed absurd. How foolish I am to entertain such a simpleminded idea that a Frenalin would attempt murdering the royal princess in her own court.
Diana placed a hand warily in Taliesin’s slim white fingers. It seemed to Jaden that the stare that rippled between them was freighted with a meaning he could not fathom and had no place in.
As Taliesin led her away, his sister murmured in his ear, “Brother, he and I possess a lot in common.” When Jaden raised his brows in confusion, she added, “I did tell you, there is much you do not know.”
* * *
“Did you sense the spell I just wove over your brother’s thoughts?” Taliesin asked her as they passed through an archway. They emerged onto a small vine-shrouded balcony that overlooked the palatial sprawl of the royal quarters, ancient towers and prettily painted spires cascading and weaving together to form a sheer forest of marble stalagmites spreading before them.
“I did,” she replied, pressing her still fluttering fingers into the cool white stone of the balcony, trying to level herself. “He was hellbent on protecting me from you, and then suddenly he was not; he became complacent, uncertain.”
“That technique is called Repression. Subduing another’s thoughts, manipulating them to your own desires.” He slunk closer to her from behind, and in the chilly moonlit air, her nostrils flared to the lucid and exotic scent emanating from his skin—like bright fruits, green grass, sacrificial blood. “I did it to you as well in the ballroom. Why do you think your mind has stabilized, why the world is no longer careening, Princess Diana?”
“I sensed that as well,” she answered, eyes still trained on the forest of towers before her. “That is why I wished to come with you, for if you are so skilled a spell-weaver, then surely you know what this thing is inside me. I sensed your inner entity before as well,” she added shyly, turning to him, her neck craning from peering up at his unhuman, beautiful face.
He laughed, slightly derisively, the sound like grating icicles. “Inner entity,” he repeated, as if mulling over the stumbling vocabulary of a child. “How quaint. But yes, I share a similar gift, though perhaps not as powerful as some, as do all my many brothers. All of us are the sons of the Frenalin King, the alleged most powerful spell-weaver on the continent.” He shrugged nonchalantly, the sharp ridges of shoulders rising and falling jerkily under the shiny velvet of his doublet. “Thus, our magic is hereditary. But you, princess, where does your mage-gift emanate from?” he pondered, rubbing one long finger over his lips, the tip of it a lethal black claw. “There is no magic recorded in the Avareth bloodlines, and neither does your father, a peasant by birth, possess it.”
Di winced at this description of her father, who had indeed been a peasant orphan until adopted into nobility by the famed Lord Cedric Rowanshield, Vralen’s long-dead father. Years after he had met Princess Celine, heiress to Eria, none would dare, even behind his back, to call Flavian a peasant now.
“So where does your magic come from, hmm?” Taliesin repeated.
When she was silent, he continued, “But that we can research another time. Now, your father wanted me to bear witness to your magic, to chart its contours and limits and—”
“Flavian knows I have the … inner entity?” she stuttered, feeling faint. “My father has known all this time?”
“Well, yes, but that is hardly pressing, my dear,” the Frenalin continued, drawing a tiny silver dagger from his pocket, so tiny his hand swallowed it, yet she shrank away, startled.
Di pressed herself into the rustling green vines in sudden horror, as Taliesin prowled even closer to her, his grass-blood-fruit smell transmuting to something darker, more primal and tossing. It dawned on her, too late, that it was the smell of his magic rearing itself, gathering at the surface of his skin, bracing to be unleashed.
It enveloped her like a cloud. And suddenly, the world was spinning again.
A tiny elven knife was tracing its way gingerly down the vulnerable inside of her arm, Taliesin’s eyes trained in concentration, as if the ancient, erratic Frenalin were afraid of hurting this fragile human girl with chaos in her veins. A single drop of blood trickled slowly down Di’s arm, teetering to splash on the ground.
Slowly, so gentle it seemed he was handling a spooked mare, Taliesin swiveled her around to face the maze of towers. His hand arched out. Towers rose like clawing fingers in the night. Taliesin pointed at a single tower that arose perhaps a hundred yards away. Its windows were unlit, its walls stained with splattered with bird waste, its battlements ruined—clearly empty and abandoned, though thinking on it later, Di thought Taliesin probably didn’t really care whether people had been inside the tower. It was just convenient and avoided a mess if the tower she was about to shatter to bits was barren.
“Do it, Diana. Unleash what you have been hiding and curbing all your life,” Taliesin whispered in her ear. His clawed fingers pushed her hair back, and he was whispering some sort of incantation under his breath. “Do what you have been born to do.”
“To destroy things?” she asked shakily.
“To be a conduit to true, wild magic. You are a weapon, Princess. A mage,” he murmured, breath hot against her ear. “Unleash what you have been hiding,” he repeated. “Such a gift, such a talent, should not be hidden and tucked away.”
I want to be free, something in her whispered. It was the same yearning that had her climbing dangerous heights to taste the tongue of an incoming sea storm, the same yearning that made her gallop her horse so fast the world rushed by in a blur. All her life, it seemed like she had been trying to escape something. But also running towards it.
I want to be free.
Diana flared her gaze wide and twisted her fingers.
The abandoned tower began to crumble.
First, the battlements shuddered. A gargoyle was ripped out of its stone sconce and plummeted to the courtyard below. An arrow-slit window closed in on itself in a puff of dust. The walls began convulsing, stones spraying out like spitting rain.
Screams started ricocheting around the palace, screams of courtiers and servants as they ran to escape being crushed by the falling rubble. A crack like thunder, like the world splitting asunder, rent the palace.
Drops of dark blood ran down Diana’s arm as her power raced out into the beckoning night.
Diana came to herself in levels of orientation re-knitting itself together, walls rising over the skittish madness in her mind.
Before her, in the forest of towers, there was an empty space, as if a tooth had been plucked out, greedy night air diving in to explore the new, revealed space as the ancient tower stood a pile of haphazard charcoal rubble in the middle of a now ruined herb garden. Screams and cries of fear and shock resounded, scraping Di’s very skin with their meaning, their threat that she had fought for years in a silent inward battle to keep far from her.
Do they know it was me?
Taliesin’s body behind her radiated heat, and she smelled blood on his breath when he spoke, as if he had feasted not too long ago. “You are a crack in the world, little princess. The very essence of mage-ether seethes in you like flames, and when that essence breathes, the crack fissures out a bit more, crumbling apart a bit more. But I will teach you, my dear. My brothers and I will teach you all about it, all you need to know to control it. So you needn’t worry, sweet human.”
12
Goodnight
Jaden was stumbling back to his quarters, scratchy tobacco smoke from Cassia’s pipe clotting his throat. He was confused and dizzy, too entrenched in his pondering of Diana disappearing with a Frenalin royal who looked like the gleaming edge of a carving knife that he realized he had taken the longer path to his bedchamber through the palace. It was a labyrinthine walkway, one of the older sections of the castle that had stood in the time of Fearnorn Crownbreaker before his grandsons had built the marble elegance that now weaved artfully around the original structure. Jaden sighed and began to trudge through the echoing stone caverns. They were segmented into sections with hanging tapestries which whispered and swayed in the wind.
He staggered, leaning against a pillar to catch breath. After Di had disappeared, Jaden had gulped at least six glasses of rich southern summer wine. He was drunker than he’d been in a while. He blinked, shook himself, and continued.
This had, over the years, become a more hedonistic section of the palace, where cagy courtiers brought their absinthe and rum, and adventurous married ladies brought their secret lovers. Jaden too had brought girls here over the years, the furtive pretty servants eventually giving way to the assertive, kohl-eyed Cassia. Even tonight, Jaden heard muffled whispers and groans behind a tapestry as he hurried past—Saturnalia eve, being celebrated in all its Dionysian glory. Too bad Cassia had left for her father’s mansion in the city, leaving Jaden unable to snare her away from Lord Pergeus’ stern gaze. It was also too bad Jaden’s side, from the Briar Road battle, was still clawing talons of pain into him when he turned at particular angles, drawing out irritatingly painful winces.
The antique passageway spilled Jaden into a small courtyard that led directly to the city, an iron-wrought gate barricading the citizens of Elenon from their royal family. Bordered by magnolia trees, the gate was manned only by two guards, and Jaden imagined it did not open frequently at all, so rust-eaten did the hinges look. Yet, just as he was about to turn into the east gardens that he could cut across to his chambers in the Lionskeep, the gate behind him began to creak open. Whining noisily, the iron gave way as Jaden watched, and from it emerged a tousle-haired Trystan, his hood down as if blown back by wind. He slipped copper ides into the hand of one of the posted guardsmen.
Trystan strode across the courtyard, and there was tension in his gait. His eyes flickered, inevitably, to Jaden, now lounging against a wall, practicing his easiest, most irritating smirk—the False-blood froze. The rooftops of Elenon sketched in black and brick and starlight formed something akin to a theater background behind Jaden’s fractious adopted brother as the older man stared him down for a few slow, wired moments.
Yet, taken aback as he was, Trystan recovered quickly. “What are you doing here, little brother?”
“Finding my way to my chamber after the ball,” Jaden replied, noting that his brother’s boots were stained with filth, and he had removed all his rings, his clothes old and worn and ugly, something Trystan would never wear to court. There was even a smudge of dirt across one cheekbone. “The ball at which your absence was notable. And, where did you venture off to, if I may ask, that was so much more interesting than our dearest Diana’s Choosing?”
Trystan’s eyes narrowed, sniffing the air. “Have you been smoking a pipe?” His gloved hand was poised on the hilt of his sword.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t see any pressing reason to.” This came with the usual metallic edge of rancor, reminiscent of the last time the royal siblings spoke when they had argued bitterly, and in front of the king. Yet, as Trystan continued, Jaden noticed his voice was also marked by something more feeble than total hostility, but much darker than mere derision. “Why do you prod your sticky fingers into my private business, brother?” he then glanced behind them, and the fingers gripping the sword were tight and white.
Through the smoke-induced murk, it swam at Jaden. He himself had only an ornamental dagger strapped to his belt, which he fingered now as Trystan edged closer, smelling sharply of canal mud and cheap ale and blood.
Jaden swallowed. The air around them settled like claws, grew cold and deep as clouds glided before the moon. He was about to turn to leave, to stumble back to his rooms and leave Trystan to his midnight escapades for he knew he would not receive the answers he craved from his brother, but Trystan’s hand clenched like a vise upon his shoulder stopped him.
Jaden growled in his throat, a warning. He was in no mood for this. When he turned back to face Trystan, the other man’s eyes were narrowed so tiny they were green slits, wrinkles striping his aquiline nose; yet those eyes were not trained on Jaden. Instead, they roved the shadows around them.
“Don’t go alone,” he said as Jaden’s eyebrows threatened to rise into his hairline. “I saw something when I was returning—”
