But not tonight. Tonight—while my husband is away—I will see if I can work magic, too.
I slip to the very end of the dock where the water-soaked wood is dark against a darker sea. Oke is not here. I am alone.
The moon is veiled by lacy threads of clouds and the surf pounds its familiar rhythm, but my heart races too quickly to fall in time. I put my toes on the edge of the dock just as Oke’s cousin did, but then I think better of it and I swirl onefoot in the water instead. I bring to mind an image of the Crocus Isles, of my people, of my home. And—laughing at myself for being such a gullible fool—I lift my hand like I’m holding a bowl, and I twist my wrist.
I must have expected to fail, for success leaves me breathless.
The world spins so suddenly that I have to clap a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting. I blink, lose my balance as my vision goes first black and then white. I glance off some hard surface, hit my head, see stars, and slump to my knees… in water.
Blinking hard, I wrench myself to my wobbling feet, splashing embarrassingly, and gasp, clutching at my head.
It has worked. Or at least, something has happened and I am no longer on Oke’s island.
I am on the terrace of my old Winter Palace on the island of Calypsala, standing in one of the mosaic tide pools. My fingers find the marble banister and trace the carving I’d commissioned last year—ships setting out to sail.
I’m home. Really, home. It feels incrediblyright.
I’m choked up for a moment. In my mind’s eye I see my parents in this very place, speaking together in low voices as they often did so as not to disturb the peace as they breakfasted. I’m seeing it when I would drift out to the balcony to catch my breath during parties, tired from too many smiles and too many nuanced conversations. I’m seeing it as the terrace where Lieve would kiss my neck and draw me out into the sea to bathe.
I blink back tears and try not to indulge in too muchhope. I may be home, but I am not queen and this terrace is no longer mine. My place—if I have one here—will be helping somewhere else.
Even so, it is good to see it again.
I’m not in a hurry to leave. I linger a little, wanting to soak back into my world. A tiny pang of regret reminds me that Oke will return home and find me gone, but he was well enough before I came to his home and he will be well enough again without me. I will return to him once I have established that all is well here. If four weeks with that wound hasn’t killed him, then I doubt he is going to die of it.
It’s only when I reach my former bedroom that I frown.
Where are the guards? They ought to have been standing watch on that door. Why is this room in such disarray?
I’m frowning as I pick up my pace, leaving the room and entering the halls beyond, noticing how they echo, how they stand silent as the crypts filled with our ancestors. Why is that vase broken and the shards not gathered up? Why is that table overturned?
All the elation I felt on my arrival is leaking out of me. Something is terribly wrong here.
The smell of smoke hangs heavy in the air. I open doors as I race down the hall, looking in each one.
No one is in the library. No one in the studies set across from it. No one in the Green Room, where I used to receive scholarly guests. And every room is in chaos.
A book lies on its face in the hall. There’s a blank spot on the wall where a tapestry of Queen Lyseries and the GreatFish used to hang—a gaping spot like a lost tooth from an otherwise tidy row. Someone has smashed one of the ornamental tables. Fragments are thrown about as if a great wind has blown through the hall, picking up bits of wood and parchment in equal measure and settling them like fallen leaves across the floor.
It is just as the coin in the fish’s mouth predicted. Turmoil has struck my people and I was not here to prevent it. The floor seems to sway under my feet, but I know it is only my guilt making the world tilt and roll.
I clench my jaw, furious at myself for not trying to work the magic I saw sooner. Four weeks I lingered, mending nets, watching birds, and playing the good fisherman’s wife… and what has happened here while I was flitting those weeks away?
I wonder for a moment if I am dreaming, but just as I start to fear I’ve somehow shifted my reality into some plane empty of human life, I stumble into the map room and there is someone here I know.
Turbote stands with a sack in his hands—a common grain sack—and he’s stuffing priceless maps into it one after another.
“What are you doing?” I gasp, still not sure if I’m dreaming or if this is real. Somewhere in the distance is a rumbling that could be thunder or could be the feet of many people.
Turbote startles and turns. His hand flutters birdlike to his open mouth and he presses the back of it to his gasping lips as if he’s afraid this is a dream.
“It cannot be,” he whispers. “I have lost my mind.”
“Turbote?” I ask in a wavering voice as he gathers me into his arms sobbing soundlessly.
“Coralys. My queen. Gods have mercy, it’s you.”
He’s blinking back tears and I feel like someone has dropped heated lead through my chest. I push myself out of his clinging embrace.
