Midday, there is a knock at my door. When I open it, I’m not surprised to find Vakesh standing outside with a sly smile on his face, a tray of cured meats and cheese in hand. He said he would join me for my meals, and in all the years I have known the man he’s never once gone back on his word.
He shoulders the door open and saunters into the room, dragging a small wooden chair behind him. Most of the space is already taken up in my cramped quarters, but I don’t complain when he sets the chair across from the bed before moving the small table in between the two. I smile, glad for his company, and settle myself on the cot, his chair directly across from me, the small tray of food between us.
“Do we know how many ladies have traveled from La’tari to A’kori for the season?” I ask around a mouth full of cheese.
“The last report we received said no more than thirty-five,” he says, taking a seat.
“Thirty-five,” I repeat under my breath. “So many.”
He laughs and when I look up, he is examining me incredulously.
“You have absolutely nothing to worry about, Vari. Despite what Leanna drilled into you; the king would be out of his mind not to notice you.”
I snort my disbelief and Vakesh rolls his eyes with a shake of his head. I don’t need the king to notice me in that way, not really, but it could make it easier to get close. Leanna’s beauties are known for nothing if not for completing their missions by less obvious means.
My stomach knots as I wonder how so many women can think themselves tempting enough to entice such a male. It pits further when I imagine the quality of women I will be surrounded by. Each of them competing for those attentions.
I’ve never been confident in my beauty, not growing up alongside the Fea Dien, boasting the golden honey toned hair that claims purity of blood in La’tari. Though I can’t help but wonder if a feyn king might be more partial to the black locks that spiral down my back.
“I’ve never understood why any woman would throw herself at someone who could bend her will,” I admit.
Vakesh leans his chair against the wall and laces his fingers behind his head, popping his elbows out on either side, and he shrugs. “Power, money, security, family influence, desperation. I suppose they do it for all the same reasons anyone has for doing anything dangerous.”
No matter their reasons, I am surprised any of them still try. It’s no secret that despite the growing number of ladies willing to sacrifice their maidenhead to the king he hasn’t had a consort since long before the war. A fact I argued when Leanna first suggested his assassination would be simplest by means of seduction.
I was born into that war, four years old by the time the treaty was signed, far too young to remember it myself. My only memories from then, the brutal visions that haunt my sleep. A woman falling to the floor in a bloody heap, tears streaming down her face as she reaches toward me. A man’s voice screaming in anguish and the gurgling sputter of that voice as he drowns in a torrent of his own blood.
These were the atrocities of the A’kori kingdom, of the feyn, and theviolence they rained down on my people had been for nothing more than greed.
“It only takes one death to change a course set by the fates, Vari,” Vakesh says softly, as if he too is witnessing the histories that play in my mind.
I smile grimly. “Have you forgotten one of the first lessons you ever taught me?”
“Remind me.”
“Death is never sated.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up at the edge and he stands, grabbing his sack from the ground and slinging it over his shoulder.
“Then make sure the souls you send to haliel are souls upon which he can feast.”
With a promise to join me for dinner he leaves me alone with only my thoughts for company. Thoughts that shift from the bloody woman reaching for me to Leanna. She was traveling with an armed force the night she pulled me from the burning wreckage of my home. The luckiest families were slaughtered in their sleep, before the fires had been set. But not everyone was so lucky, and many perished by flame, or worse.
A single line of gifted males has ruled the feyn, far longer than our written history, and always favoring those born gifted. Those who draw power from our world, the power of Terr. To the feyn those of us born without that connection have no value aside from what we can produce by labor.Durah,they call us, and though I have never taken the time I should to learn their tongue, every La’tari child born understands the meaning of the word.Worthless.
Leanna took me in the night the war ended. She pulled me from the blood-soaked floor of my home and brought me back to the keep, raising me the only way she knew.
Per the treaty, the southern territory across the sea was cleaved off and given to the La’tari to be ruled by the mortals of our world. Now a safe haven for those who would otherwise be oppressed, our laws keep La’tari safe for all who choose to seek refuge here—or so it was intended.
With the end of the war, and the departure of the feyn across the sea, an ever-growing blight began to spread across our land. First, the forestsbegan to die, followed by the fields. Vast rivers became trickling streams, and even well-tended soil will never yield enough harvest to feed the families that labor over it.
While the rest of Terr remains free of the blight, our people continue to starve, with no question as to why. It was agreed that if the La’tari ever left their homeland, it would once again fall under feyn rule. What might have seemed a small requirement of the treaty at the time had surely been the excuse they needed to finally end every mortal life on the continent. Now our only hope of survival, a small caveat written by our leaders. Should the ruling line end, the treaty installs the La’tari king to rule over A’kori. The one man alive who will set the continents on a path toward true peace.
Through the years tensions continue to lessen. Trade is reestablished, and though rare, I’ve even heard of unions and children born of them. Of course, my own life is evidence that such unions existed throughout our history. The tell-tale black or white hair paired with the brightest of blue eyes being a clear marker of feyn blood.
While peace seems tenuous at times, it works, for the most part. Though in the years leading up to this moment it has become clear to us all that we can’t afford to wait to end the line of their succession. One life to save thousands.
I lay back on my cot and sigh, trying to imagine a world in which being born powerless does not mean you spend your life fighting off starvation. My day is consumed by a maddening spiral of dark thoughts of the life I am soon to end, until Vakesh arrives with two small bowls of bland soup and fresh bread for supper.
