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Dom raised his eyes with a flick, expecting pity. He saw pride instead.
“You knew I would,” he muttered.
It was the closest thing to a thank-you he could muster.
I would be dead in the palace, my body burned to ashes, if not for you.
“You are painfully easy to predict, Elder,” Sorasa scoffed, fluffing the pillow behind her head. With a satisfied sigh, her lids fell shut.
Dom did not move from his place against the wall, as much as he wanted to lie down on the floor to sleep.
“Is that a compliment, Amhara?” he muttered, if only to himself.
Without opening her eyes, she grinned.
“No.”
22
The Blood of Old Cor
Corayne
Cold as the throne room was, the vaults below the castle were even colder. Isibel led them down a spiraling passage, into the ridge itself, the smooth walls turning to black volcanic rock. The air was stale, undisturbed this deep underground. Doorways and alcoves opened on either side, holding statues or chests of gods knew what. Corayne imagined rooms piled high with Elder gold, artifacts of Glorian, or even tombs. The last made her shiver again, as much as it intrigued her.
Isibel required no guards and carried no weapons Corayne could see. There was only the ash branch, still in hand.
They walked in bitter silence, Corayne’s footsteps echoing like the thump of her heart.
She wondered if this was punishment for her disrespect in the throne room, and hoped Isibel did not mean to abandon her deep beneath the castle. Some part of her knew the Monarch could not.For I am the Realm’s Hope, she thought, sneering to herself.
“I don’t believe you,” Corayne said suddenly. Like her footsteps, her voice echoed down the curving passage.
Isibel halted, perplexed, and turned her piercing eyes on Corayne.
“You do grieve for them,” Corayne explained. “For Ridha and Dom.”
A shadow crossed the Monarch’s pale face. She held Corayne’s stare for a long, seemingly endless minute. Time passed differently to Elders.
“Of course I do,” the Monarch finally said, her voice heavy.
Then she returned to walking, moving faster through the cold stone passages. After so many days of travel and endless worry, Corayne wanted to curl up on the floor. But she trudged along, stubborn. Her resentment was fuel enough.
“I saw what you overcame. How you escaped. What you left behind.” Isibel’s voice echoed down the passage. “And what I lost.”
It was Corayne’s turn for confusion. She eyed the Monarch, from her slippered feet to her long, white fingers. All of her glowed, power trembled in the air, as if stirred up by her presence.
“Dom said you had some magic,” she muttered, trying to remember. “Rare even for your kind.Sendings.”
“Yes, that is what it is called,” Isibel said. “I can send a shadow of myself some distances, to see what I wish. And speak if I can.”
Corayne saw Domacridhan in his aunt’s face, in her inability to understand such terrible pain.
“I was in Gidastern,” she explained, her voice catching. Her eyes shone. “With my daughter, in her last moments. As much as I could have been.”
It was impossible not to feel for Isibel, as much as Corayne disliked her. Corayne saw her own mother, desperate on the deck of a ship, trying to save her child from the end of the world. Isibel was the same once. And she failed.
“I watched Taristan end her life,” Isibel continued. “And I watched him began it anew.”
