I looked up at him, his glowing, wolfish eyes.He was daring me to continue with his expression, offering approval—admiration even—with just a glance.My stomach flipped.“So you will do what no one before you has thought to do.”
“Add one more stone,” he said.“I will not tell you my question, but want to hear your thoughts on it anyway.”
I slid my fingers into the pouch and waited until a stone felt like it wanted to come out.I set it on the dais and frowned.It had a diamond shape on it, with a line cutting through the diamond.“I always have trouble with this one.”
“That is actually enough for me to know, then.”
I furrowed my brow in playful suspicion.
The corners of his mouth lifted.“I assume this one is you.People often have trouble reading themselves, even if they are brilliant at reading others.That is why I seek readers so often.I wish to know what it is I am not seeing about myself and my choices.”
If that is me in the centre…
“Cast again.Fresh.Ask about my life as a whole.”
I started to shake my head, but caught myself.“I have never tried a big song like that…”
“On the new moon, I have been casting for you, Gentlewoman.I cast that I can lend some of my daring to you.You have my protection here in the court, yet you do not fully use it.Try things, ask questions, seek what you desire… I know when you return home, you will not have as many choices as you do here.Your movements alone will be restricted…”
There was a twinge in my heart when he said that.A twinge that agreed with him, but also a twinge that felt… supported by him.Encouraged.Loved even.How low my standards were for love.
I gathered up the stones on the table, dropped them back into the bag, shook it, and then scooped out a small handful, letting them fall on the dais wherever they willed, thinkingKing Arik’s life.His entire life.
I let out a long breath as I studied the outcome, and then I laughed.“It makes no sense.”
“Maybe not to you, but maybe to me it will.Read.”
The stones were gathered in bundles—five separate clusters.“Your life is really five lives.There was the first life… that one was over when you became king.A new life began shortly after that… something happened… something you didn’t expect.This is the life you are in now, your second life as king.It will be your second favourite of your lives…” I looked up, feeling entirely confused, but when I saw his face… he was stilled by emotion.
“I know the meaning of this,” he said.
“This life will end soon.You will lose something, but part of it is a… how do you say… A trick!You will be looking for the wrong thing.”My eyes darted back up to him.Had I just implied to a king he was to make a mistake?I had.
His brow furrowed.“Continue.”
“Your fourth life—the searching one—lasts… I don’t know how long it lasts, but it ends when you find what you seek.Not what was actually lost, but what you were searching for.This will be your least favourite life.The fifth life is one of the shortest; here you will know what was truly gone, and there will be regret, but also… I do not know if Norsern has a word for this… how do you say when you repair something?Not a building or a piece of furniture, but when you have done wrong to a person and find a way to repair it?”
“I know your meaning,” King Arik said.“Some say medicine, but some say repair in the same way they speak of repairing ships.”
“There will be a way for you to have this.”
“And my death?”
The song I imagined contained that, too, only it seemed frightful to speak to anyone—let alone a king—about their own death.
“Tell me.”
“It will be small in the ways you wanted it to be big.But it will be grand in a way you had not thought to want.You will be pleased with it.”I’d saved the sweetest part for the end.“The last life will be your favourite.”
He was quiet for a long time, so long I worried I had offended him or insulted him by making up a story he knew to be false.
“Do you see any children?”he said.
I shook my head.“But I had not been asking?—”
“Do you see children for Fell?”
“Uhh… he is not… Fell is not in the reading.”
