I bite back tears. ‘And what ifourson is like me?’
Bile rises up my throat, hot and bitter. A monster in my own image.
His lip curls. ‘A risk we’ll have to take. You saw to it I have no other choice.’ He tilts my chin. The clamp of his long fingers is punishing. ‘Mark me well, Leilani. You say you want to make amends? Then provide me an heir to assure the succession. Refuse this binding, and you’re of no further use to me. You’ll be shipped to the Veiled Sisters in Galtair. Locked in a cell, forced to take a vow of silence and endure nightly mortification of your flesh, in expiation for your sins. You’ll never see your mother again. Do you understand? There’s strife brewing, and I would have the Stellarion line secure.’
His aura flickers black. Fear. Not an emotion I associate with my father. What in the Stars is he afraid of? Rumours of unrest beyond the wall? Invasion by the Outrealmers? For a moment I allow myself to believe that fear is what makes him cruel. That his need for dominance, his cruelty, is a twisted form of love, that the losses he’s endured have bred a warped desire to protect me. That this is why he is the way he is. For a moment, I consider telling him of the whispered warnings, my concerns about the Elemagi’s defensive charms, that he’s worrying over a future we might never live to see.
Then his eyes turn back to me, cold as flint, and the words decay on my tongue.
‘When the Queen learnt of your disobedience.’ He spits the word out. ‘When she learnt of your capture, she collapsed. Healers had to revive her.’ His voice softens. I catch a glimpse of the gentler man he once was, before my powers manifested, before my mother’s illness. Before… ‘You know how weak your mother is – how delicate her condition remains. I would have thought you’ve blood enough on your hands already…’ Never before have my father’s eyes – those pale-grey markers of coterie inheritance and privilege – looked at me with such hatred. Except, perhaps, the night my brother died.
Guilt slithers my belly. I’m glad he hasn’t guessed at my mother’s involvement in my escape. After the horrors I witnessed growing up, the Queen blames herself for my terror of childbed. That’s why she agreed to help me run away to the Asteum, despite the love and duty she bears my father and her own warm feelings towards Astrophel – the boy she tended as a son during his time at the palace. She’s aware my magic is growing stronger, how I’ve barely been able to keep food down for dread of the binding my father is insisting upon, and what that binding might result in. That’s why she gave me her blessing to go in pursuit of the Book of Mysteries, to seek the answers she herself sought all those sunrings ago, when Flamefever caught her in its merciless grip. She knew it was that, or I’d wither away.
‘Guards will escort you back to your chambers. You’re to remain there till the night you come of age, when the binding will go ahead as planned.’
I try to protest, but he raises a spindle-fingered hand, the one bearing the starred-sapphire Regent’s Ring, silencing me.
‘Must I remind you what happened the last time a member of the Stellarion bloodline refused their appointed match and let their heart overrule their head?’
I stiffen. He almost never mentions Noelani, the ancestor whose silver blood I inherited.
His question is purely rhetorical and brings our exchange skidding to an abrupt halt. This is an argument I can’t win.
Noelani’s decision to bind herself to Zale Aguado – an Outrealmer – serves as the ultimate cautionary tale. It was soon after the ceremony that Arden Incenzo, a powerful Elemagus from the eastern realm of Oralia, unleashed the Sickening. Their ill-fated union a starbinger of all the evils that came later.
My father rises. ‘You understand what I expect from you?’
I want to fight. I want to beg. But I only nod, my throat so tight it’s hard to breathe.
‘Don’t disappoint me again.’
My father stalks away, taking his lantern with him, plunging me back into darkness.
I hug my knees tighter, ignoring the sharp pain flaring in my wrists as the manacles dig deeper into bruised flesh.
The door slams. My father’s footsteps fade to silence.
I tried. I failed.
Condemned to a loveless union with a man I can’t even respect, forced to wait as my cursed powers ripen, living under constant threat that Shadow Lore will lure me to its dark embrace. That way madness lies. Madness and untold danger.
Spoken for. Done for. It’s one and the same.
My life over, before it even had a chance to begin.
A NOBLE BRUTE
ASTROPHEL
‘TRYTOKEEPUP, Astrophel. It’s ill-luck for the chase to start without the leader of the hunt.’ Graylen Oberion kicks at his mount, a glint sharpening his deep-set eyes. ‘We wouldn’t want further misfortunes hampering this binding of yours, now would we?’
I clench my jaw. Peak’s sake! Does every courtier and their liegeman know about Leilani’s efforts to abscond from tonight’s ceremonies?
A mist of powdered ice churns behind Graylen as he charges across the hills that range beyond the city wall, headed south for the Thronewood. He glances back, shooting me an oily smile, a smile which speaks to his privilege as one of The Nine, and leaves me feeling as unworthy and small as when I first entered Meissa, an illegitimate fatherless nobody.
Blood rising, I pat Silvermist on the neck and urge my gelding forwards. As I press my heels into his sides, he eases into a gallop, his movements swift and sleek, cutting through the air like whetted steel.
The tightness in my chest abates as the wind pinches my cheeks, tugging icy fingers through my hair. For the first time since dawnrise, I’m breathing freely. A calm descends as Silvermist and I move over the hills. I forget any anxiety over tonight’s ceremonies, whether I’ll take first blood at this hunt held to honour my forthcoming nuptials, or how Leilani will receive my binding gifts. Instead, I focus on the rhythmic movements beneath me, the pulsing clatter of hooves. Since boyhood, I’m never so free, so fully myself, as when on horseback.
