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She broke then, a low gasp escaping her lips. Then her teeth flashed, catching her lip, as if to cage all her sorrow.
Corayne could only watch, sick at heart. Corayne had not been there to see Taristan raise the dead of Gidastern. She could barely imagine what horrors befell his victims. No one was safe from him, even in death. Her own eyes stung and she brushed away a hot tear, scrubbing at her face.
She could not think of the others beneath Taristan’s sway. Dom, Sorasa. Andry. It would break her heart too deeply.
“I did not know I could wish my own daughter dead, but the alternative—” Isibel cut herself off, her eyes welling again. It felt like watching an old tree battle a storm and refuse to bend. “It is a curse beyond all else.”
A curse you could have avoided, Corayne thought bitterly. But for all her frustration, she could not twist the knife.
“I grieve for them too,” she said, her own voice echoing to the stone.
The truth of it sobered them both, and they settled into uneasy silence as they walked. Isibel was blank-faced again by the time they reached her destination, a door of polished ebony on iron hinges. When Isibel put a hand to it, it swung open easily.
“I am two thousand years old, and have known few mortals in my later days,” Isibel said, stepping into the vault. “I knew your father best of them.”
Corayne’s mouth fell open, her eyes flying in every direction, trying to hold more than she could ever carry.
The vault was perfectly round, with an arched ceiling. Tables and shelves lined the exterior, each laden with some artifact, relic, or book. Only the stone slab at the center of the room was empty, bare but for a red velvet cloth. An iron hoop of new candles hung overhead, already burning. One of Isibel’s attendants had clearly prepared the vault for them, lighting the torches as well as laying out a side table of provisions. Hungry as she was, Corayne ignored the plates of dried fruit and bottles of wine.In this moment, she cared only for the vault, and its treasures.
It was not gold, silver, or jewels that entranced her, though there were many.
Her fingers trembled as she reached out to the closest shelf, her vision tunneling to a painstakingly piled stack of scrolls. She hesitated, reluctant to touch something so ancient and fragile. Instead, she tipped her head sideways, to read the lettering on the parchment.
“This is the language of Old Cor,” she breathed.
Without thought, she slid the Spindleblade from her shoulder and drew the sword a few inches, revealing the steel beneath.
“A thread of gold against hammer and anvil, and steel between all three. A crossing made, in blood and blade, and both become the key,” she quoted from memory, remembering Valnir’s translation.
The letters etched into the blade matched the ones on the scrolls, the piled parchments, the books, and the many inscriptions scrawled across the relics. They called out to her, with voices she could not understand, singing a song at the edge of memory.
Corayne whirled again, going from table to table, running her hands over gilded cups and silver tablets. Old coins stamped with roses. Ink pots. Arrowheads still sharp and gleaming. Gold, silver, gemstones of every color. A magnificent helmet of bronze and gold stared out from a table all its own, the faceplate inscribed with more words Corayne could not read. Real rubies glittered along the helm, dotted with pear-shaped emeralds.Roses, Corayne knew, tracing the symbol of Old Cor.
The same flowers bloomed over the velvet draped across the empty slab, painstakingly picked out in shining thread. Slowly, Corayne drew the rest of the Spindleblade, revealing the rippling steel of another realm. It seemed to hum to her, joining the song haunting her mind.
Her throat tightened when she laid it down on the cloth, a little to theside, careful to leave room for the sword that would never return. It lay shattered in a burning city, the steel of it returned to the Spindles from whence it came.
“You are of these people, Old Cor,” Isibel murmured, taking the opposite side of the slab. The steel reflected the candlelight up at her, making her features dance.
Corayne could only stare, every breath harder than the last.
“I knew them once,” Isibel said. “I remember when they first crossed into Allward, from another realm that was not their own. We welcomed them, and they welcomed us.” A small smile spread across her face. “The kings and queens of Old Cor were the best of mortal blood. Brave, intelligent, noble, curious. Always reaching for the stars. Searching for another Spindle, tracing the lines of the realms as they shifted and moved. Never satisfied with the world beneath their own two feet.”
In the old cottage in Lemarta, Corayne had spent most of her time reading maps, charting the next course of her mother’s ship, or arranging a trade. She saw little of the world, the boundaries of her life reduced to the Siscarian cliffs. She remembered the longing in her own heart, though she could not name it, or explain how deeply it pulled.
Back then, Corayne spent most of her time looking at the sea, pondering the horizon. Hoping for a little glimpse past the walls she knew.
“Growing up I felt wrong in my skin, unmoored,” Corayne bit out. Her vision swam, her eyes stinging. “Neversatisfied. And I never knew why.”
Isibel kindly dropped her gaze.
“It is a trait you share with us, the Veder. We feel closer to your kind, your people. Dwindling as you are,” she said. “You are lost too. But we still remember our home. And that is far more painful. Our years are long, our memories longer still. Every day we hope for the road home, another Spindle born, another Spindle shifting back into existence.”
Again, Corayne scrubbed at her raw eyes, her cheeks flaming hot. She allowed herself a single undignified sniff.
Another Spindle born.Her ears rang with the implication.
“And so you raised my father to be a king. To claim the empire of our ancestors,” she said sharply. “Why?”
