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He wasn’t king yet.
Seconds later, the real king of the time swept ino the atrium, his crown of beads and gems glinting in the golden sunlight that gushed through the glass-paneled ceiling overhead. Jagaros and Kanuk’s father, I knew instantly. The shape of his nose and mouth matched that of his son’s, his skin held that same ochre hue, and his hair was just as long and vibrantly white.
The only difference was his smile as he spread his arms wide beside an elaborate throne carved of stone: large, open, beaming. Full of hearty life.
“Folks of Ranuq!” he cried in that language so similar to Sorronian. In here, within Jagaros’s mind, I could finally understand every word. “It is my absolute pleasure to finally introduce one of our very own’s daughter. A princess from Sorronia, but also a welcome part of our island for as long as she wishes…” He turned and gestured for someone to step into the atrium. “Lady Chrysanthia!”
My breath whooshed out of me as I finally, finally, finally got to see my mother.
A female faerie wafted up to Jagaros’s father, her steps so light and quiet that it looked as if she might float away any second. Beneath a delicate tiara, her hair tumbled in dark waves past her waist, and her skin glowed honey-warm beneath the flowing azure dress she wore like wings. Her eyes were just as blue—not the icy color of Dyonisia’s, but the shade of a wild sea beneath a crystal sky.
Not the same as my jade-green, but the shape of them…
Identical to my own. As were the slope of her eyebrows and the angle of her nose and chin. If Fabian and I shared the same hair and eye color, my mother and I shared the same outline. As if the God of the Cosmos had sculpted us using the same mold.
I stared at her for so long that I almost missed the way young Jagaros had shifted beside me.
His entire body straightened, his gaze drinking her in as if he’d never known how to quench a lifetime of thirst until this moment. And now I stared at him, whispers of understanding drifting to me in specks of mist.
Since Sorronian custom held female bloodlines to higher statutes, Princess Chrysanthia had grown up in her mother’s queendom rather than her father’s realm. Jagaros had heard of her his entire life, the half-Ranuqian royal who’d never even stepped foot on this soil he loved so much, but he’d never given her a second thought.
Until now.
Now, I couldn’t deny the longing entrenched in his gaze as Chrysanthia curtsied before the king and his people.
“It is my honor to finally be able to visit my second homeland.”
Her voice rang out like bells, slightly accented with a Sorronian cadence even though she obviously knew how to speak Ranuqian as well. The words themselves might have sounded rehearsed and disingenuous if it weren’t for the way she brushed her attention across the devil’s ivy drooping from the balconies above the atrium and the palm trees sprouting from openings in the limestone floors: awed, curious, eager to see more.
And Jagaros was still looking at her the same way.
My blood chilled. Had he fallen in love with my mother? Had his feelings gone unrequited? Perhaps he resented that she’d ended up having a child with someone else. Had he ended up doing something horrible to her in retaliation?
Why else would he have kept this from me for so long?
The mist dissipated. My heart thudding up into my throat, I pushed forward, down the center row of Jagaros’s maze until more burst into shape before me.
Now he was dancing with my mother, a waltz that would be graceful if he didn’t keep stumbling over his own feet. Chrysanthia only giggled, and then they were sneaking out onto an open plaza where moonlight seeped from the sky overhead and Jagaros swung her round and round to a wilder beat, and she tipped her head back with a laugh that sounded like wind chimes.
I… I didn’t understand. How could Jagaros’s love have gone unrequited when my mother seemed to be just as enamored with him? Or was the joy splayed across her face merely a carefully-woven mask?
No. The next memory confirmed it for me when the mist swirled into the two of them sitting on a clifftop ledge overlooking Ranuq, her head resting on his shoulder. This time, Jagaros wore his father’s crown.
The king must have passed. He was king now.
“What are you afraid of?” he muttered to Chrysanthia, stroking her waves of shadow-dark hair. The way they were so comfortably wrapped around each other told me years—maybe even decades—must have passed since their first meeting.
“I think…” Her voice came out delicate, feeble. Jagaros remained patient, simply stroking her hair until she was brave enough to say the rest. “I think my sister has something horrible in store for me.”
His head whipped her way, eyes slitting immediately. He must have already began taking the form of a tiger every so often because the predatory stillness radiating across his features was all too familiar.
“What do you mean?”
Chrysanthia swallowed, gaze fixed on the spread of Ranuq below. Not with the same awe and eagerness as before, but with a few heavy blinks of homesickness.
“You know how Mydusia has me infuse her special ink with my magic?”
Jagaros’s expression hardened. From the flecks of mist swirling around me, I absorbed the pieces of knowledge he’d gathered over the years. How people compared Chrysanthia’s innate power to a chameleon. How he believed it to be so much more. She could reflect others faeries’ magic in a way that turned her invisible to all types of magically-induced barricades, shields… or antipower.
