12
Runa
“ALIA,” IWHISPER-BEG INTO HER EAR.“WAKE UP.YOUcan’t do this. Hysterical woman, remember? Fainting is most definitely high on the list of hysteria symptoms. Please.”
Her head knocks heavily on my shoulder. She doesn’t hear me. She doesn’t move. Everything about her has given out; that moment of hope made everything worse.
The audience is standing, clapping—another dagger.
The king and his bride turn, newly ringed fingers pressed together and raised aloft, as they present their union to the masses. I’m partially pleased Alia won’t see it and be completely horrified. Around us, everyone shoots to their feet. We can’t be seated.
If someone hasn’t noticed her out cold by now, they soon will. I yank her up, wrapping an arm around hershoulder blades. Her head lolls into the crook of my neck. Niklas’s attention is shifting from Sofie to the crowd, and I know he’ll look for her first. He can’t help himself.
He can’t see her like this. No one can see her like this—if a physician is called, Alia will be under observation all night. The king will see to it.
I lean into her ear.“Vaka.”I whisper the spell softly, but deliberately. Wake.
Alia’s eyes flutter open with a start. Her head jerks off my shoulder, and I plaster a smile on my face as an order to her. A veteran of moon plays, she knows exactly when to take a hint and improvise, quick wits and all.
Her face mirrors mine just as Niklas’s eyes find hers.
Yes, your foundling is still here. Still looking at you like that. Still wanting you.
The boy king smiles, and next to him Sofie does too.
They head down the aisle, and when they hit the last row, so close that Alia could reach out and touch the fine cut of Niklas’s suit, her body grows light again. Liquid next to me, as if she might dissolve right there, taken by the sand into the other world.
Yet my sister holds fast. Strong thing that she is. Brave thing. She meets his eyes with all her beauty and love and promise, and for a moment, he can’t look away. He watches long enough that Sofie’s gaze follows his. As they pass us, they’re both looking at my sister, holding her ground.
Still here. Still in love.
Per tradition, the bride and groom lead their wedding guests—the seated attendees only—up to the castle. The common people line the sea lane, pressing in thick layers against the progression. Even at a distance, the mass joy among them rattles my teeth as they sing old sailors’ songs that we know even under the surface.
All the smartly dressed guests flow up the brick-lined paths and into the castle under the indigo of a new night, torches as old as the castle itself ringing the great stone walls of the place.
But we wait them out. Though revived, Alia is still wobbly on her feet. When we’re finally ushered out of our seats, we split off through the masses and cut onto a lonely corner of the beach to sit for a moment under the stars.
We face the sea. How I wish to be back there. Up here everything is too bright, too loud, too much. Even in the new night. Alia won’t look at the blue waters, shimmering against the falling night. She watches her hands instead. But I know she smells the brine and life. She makes a sign:Can’t.
And then she’s to her feet.Can’t.
I scramble up after her. I’d like to convince myself it’s the sea, our home, that she can’t handle, but I know it’s what we must do tonight.
“We can,” I say. I grab her hand as we turn for the castle.
She takes a deep breath.I know.
We make slow progress up the now-empty sea lane, through the rose garden, and into the castle. I hold fast to Alia’s hand as we climb the steps to the ballroom I first saw her in that day, the one with the marble balcony. Music streams out into the hallway, the thrum-and-thump of dance testing the ancient castle’s foundations.
“There you are,” Will says, appearing in the hall. “Niklas said you seemed ill. Are you all right, Alia? He’s been so worried about you.”
Alia is gripping my hand so tightly that I can’t even pretend to be affable. “So nice of the king to spare a thought about how Alia is feeling.”
I expect Will to snap back. To stand up for his friend. His cousin. But instead of flat platitudes, he takes my sister’s hand. “A broken heart is a burden unlike any other.” I’m so shocked my lips drop open—meaningful balm for her pain is the last thing I was expecting from one of Niklas’s cronies. “I’m sorry, Alia. If you’d like, just give me a nod and I will help you to your room. I’ll see to it that dinner is brought to you, too.” He smiles. “I can throw in two slices of that ridiculous cake as well.”
I wait for Alia to respond. Though I’m the one who made her attend the wedding, somehow after surviving that, this justification suddenly feels okay. She sat and smiled through that broken heart of hers, and the weight of what we must do, and suffering through one final partyisn’t necessary. We can retire with this alibi and prepare, completely excused by one of the king’s closest confidants.
Maybe her illness, the heartbreak that even the bride herself has noticed, coupled with a note from me, the girl who arrived to fetch her home, will be enough that we can leave the palace with no good-bye more than a simple note of thanks. No one thinking twice about us in the chaos that is sure to happen in the minutes and hours after the king is found dead.
