Page 42 of The Castle & the Cloister

“It’s only me,” a terse voice said from the dim recesses of Ariana’s quarters. “Does the baby want feeding?”

“Fia. You’re here.” Ariana sat up at once, and she could not keep the unruly hope she felt from singing through her words. “You came back.”

“I’m back because you have a problem.” Fia materialized from among the shadows and began to speak, low and tense, careful not to wake the prince despite the fraught nature of her news. She settled herself on the bed at Ariana’s side and recounted everything she’d heard on the road home, sparing no detail.

Ariana listened and felt as if her heart was a cold stone inside her chest. She was so tired and could not help but wonder if Afon’s seeming invulnerability was a judgment of the Beloved Three handed down to her, a punishment for using Orden as a shield against the will of her Matria. When she thought of the difficulty at hand, her mind and will faltered and ceased their constant working. There was no one within her sphere of influence who could forestall what was coming. Afon would meet Orden’s failed assassination attempt with aggression. Gileta would be told of it, and steel her resolve to cut off the alliance and trade Honoria so badly needed. Ariana could not go to Orden—it was his plan, after all. She knew his stubbornness. If she spoke of Afon having discovered the men he’d sent, Orden would only move them and try again with the same result. The Priest’s influence did not extend beyond Inverlyn and its inhabitants. Serafine was not the sort to dirty her hands with such an affair, even if she was inclined to help a soria who had so grossly flouted her order.

Ariana was powerless.

When Fia had finished speaking, she turned to the queen with an expectant look.

“Well?” she asked. “What will you do?”

Ariana shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Fia frowned. “You can’t not know. I saw you, when you bled in that audience hall. You were the one moving everybody. They were just pieces that you shifted from here to there. Even in my village, we all thought it odd that Caervallion and Honoria never finished what they started seven years back. But seeing you, I knew why. It’s because you’re here.You’vebeen the one stopping it.”

Ariana nodded wordlessly.

“Then stop this too,” Fia said, mulish in her insistence. “I only came back because I thought you could. You told me once you’d die for peace if you had to.”

Ariana had never been able to bear chastisement. It felt especially harsh to be chided in light of all she’d done to maintain peace in Honoria, and everything she was still attempting.

“Ihavebeen dying for peace, Fia,” Ariana said, the words low and trembling with passion. “I was a foolish child when I made that claim, and I believed death was a thing that came in an instant. But I’ve been dying for peace, day after day, year after year. Giving up bits of myself along the way. Doing things I’d thought myself incapable of, and placating people that in any other life I’d have found abhorrent. I have kept peace on the Hand, but I despise myself for it. I was raised to believe no outcome can ever justify compromising Lyria’s strictures and expectations. Well, there is precious little I have not compromised. I’ve broken every last requirement of hers, save the final and greatest one.”

For a moment Fia sat motionless, every inch as fierce and strong and righteous as she’d always seemed to Ariana. She’d been a revelation, years ago on the Corrinian plains, appearing from the goddesses only knew where to do the work of a full-fledged soria. Ariana wanted her help and support so badly it hurt, but she would not shackle Fia as she herself had been shackled.

“If you’re dying, then I mean to save you,” Fia said at last, defiantly. “I’ll stand by you, and maybe that will be enough. Maybe the stars and the sun together can do what the stars alone could not.”

“I’m not asking you to stay,” Ariana protested. “I never would. You have your daughter and—”

“Whether you ask or not, here I am. I don’t make any promises as to how long I’ll last, but for now, I’m staying. Surely you don’t think you can change my mind once I’ve made it up?” Fia finished on a near-scornful note, crushing any potential for guilt in Ariana, or pity toward Fia herself for her choice. “Anyway, Miriel’s safe, which is more than I can say for anyone in this wretched castle.”

The postulant shifted, reaching out an arm and gathering Ariana closer so that her firm, upright posture supported the weakened queen. For a time they stayed just so, side by side, pressed together as if courage and strength could be gained through proximity, and it was the closest Ariana Inver had come to feeling at home in seven long years.

Eventually, she let out a breath and dropped her head to rest on Fia’s indomitable shoulder.

“I still don’t know what to do about Orden’s men in Caervallion,” Ariana confessed. “It’s not just that I’m tired—when I think about it, there’s nothing. Not even a way to begin.”

“I know what can be done,” Fia said. “But I wanted to pass it off to you. I wanted it to be your problem, when the trouble is, it’s mine. I don’t like getting tangled up in things, but from the moment I heard Gwylen lay it all out, I’ve known exactly what to do.”

XII

Flame burns timber

And fire shatters stone

But water drowns flame

Even one wave alone

—AN HONORIAN DESERTER’S PASSCODE

As the morning light grew thick and golden the following day, the castle came alive with servants and courtiers and guards, all preparing for the prince’s naming ceremony at the heart of the mountain. Fia fed the child, laid him in Ariana’s arms, and stood looking down at the two of them. Worry gnawed at her—although the queen’s bleeding had slowed somewhat, it still seemed far too much to Fia. Ari was pale as glass, with a persistent grayish cast around her mouth and nail beds. Though Fia had once again begun to work the queen’s middle as she’d been taught, she wished desperately that there was more she could do and cursed her lack of learning.

They sat out on the balcony, for Ariana’s dressers hadn’t arrived yet. The air was warm and still, but not hot or oppressive as it would surely be farther down the mountain, and out on the plains.

“Are you certain you don’t want me to stay for the ceremony?” Fia asked. Since she’d allowed it to take root, the protectiveness she felt toward Ariana had grown into an aggressive thing—a strong-limbed vine,twining around her heart. “I can manage my errand tomorrow just as easily as today.”