Page 60 of The Sun King's Noon

Dianara opened the sketchbook towards the beginning. On the left page were Haldric and Aralynn’s bodies—broken, bloodied corpses wrapped in an eternal embrace. On the right was Richard—younger, wearing a prince’s crown, his eyes open, unseeing and his chest clobbered inward by a troll’s club.

Kaelen and Corwin yelped curses in unison.

“There are more.” Dianara turned a few more pages.

On the left, Elara lay in a spreading pool of crimson. On the right, Elara was on her knees, weeping, clutching at another’s hands.

More pages in. On the left was Kaelen, hollow-eyed, canines protruding as fangs—a Velari’s thrall. On the right was Richard’s unconscious form, crumpled on a glass-like floor.

Another. On the left, Briony’s corpse with her throat slit. On the right, Richard pinned to the sandy floor, drenched in blood.

“What in the gods’ names?” Corwin leapt to his feet, the horror in his eyes reflecting the same Richard felt. “What does this mean? Is she—Dianara, has she the gift of prophecy like Mother? Can she see the future?”

“Not precisely.” Dianara turned from the sketchbook and regarded Briony with a sad smile. “What the princess possesses is called the Wyrd Hinge, and is a gift far rarer and far crueller. It explains why the Sanguis Order sought the blood of Her Highness, for such blood would enhance spells and rituals to an extreme power.”

Elara hurried to hug Briony. “Look at me, little one. What is this?”

Briony hiccupped, her forefingers in her mouth as if she were a toddler again, and shook her head with a whimper.

“Briony,please. Tell us.”

“It—it started t-two years ago.” Briony sobbed. “Before Mother and Father d-died. I started getting d-dreams…I’m—I’m in a forest. But it’s not—it’s not right. Everything is underwater, b-but I can breathe, and the trees are so—so twisted, and the light comes from nowhere.” She shuddered. “And there is a deer. But it has four antlers and s-six eyes, and they’re all different colours, and it speaks without moving its mouth. It said?—”

She leaned into Elara’s hug. “It said, ‘Little weaver, the loom presents two threads. Pull the first, don your red shoes and dance upon the road where the old oak bows its crown to the earth. Pull the second, don your blue shoes and dance upon the road where the young oak’s roots are felled by the storm.’”

She pressed her palms to her eyes as if trying to squeeze the memory out.

“I didn’t—I didn’tknow.” Her voice crumbled. “I didn’t understand what it meant. It was just a dream, and the deer was waiting, and I was scared, and I thought it a better thing for the younger oak to be saved, so when I woke, I wore my redshoes.” Her face crumpled. “And then Mother and Father rode to Maranbog, and they d-didn’t come home.”

Councillors murmured, some gazing at Briony with pity and others confused and worried.

“I didn’t realise what I’d done,” Briony whispered. “Not until it came to me again a month later. It is not always a deer. Sometimes it is a crow with t-too many wings. Or a badger with h-human hands. But it always—it always gives me a choice, and both choices are so vague—” She wiped her nose with her gown sleeve. “If I do not choose, one of the two happens anyway.”

She sucked in a wet, ragged breath. “When the blood-troll attacked, the night before, a rabbit with no eyes came. It told me, ‘Little weaver, the loom presents two threads. Pull the first, wear your pink dress and dance upon the road where the troll of blood strikes down the younger wolf, bold-hearted and full of storm. Pull the second, wear your red dress and dance upon the road where the troll of blood leaves the elder wolf bleeding, the weight of his pack burying him too deep.’ I managed to riddle out that it meant Brother and Corwin. I thought it better for Brother to be left unwounded so he could save Corwin and stop the troll. So I wore pink?—”

“You chose right,” Elara said fiercely, lifting Briony’s chin to look at her. “It was Brother who slew the troll.” She glanced at Dianara. “Do you mean to say one of the two will happen depending on Briony’s actions?”

“Such is the nature of the Wyrd Hinge,” Dianara said. “It manifests through the Threads themselves, coalescing into ancient beings who present binary choices between paths already forming—between actions to raise the chance of one path coming true.” Dianara sighed tiredly. “In truth, there is little control given to the gift-mage. The outcomes are often obscured behind metaphor, and the mage has no control overwhen the dreams arrive or what alternatives are offered. It is, in every sense, an unbearable gift.”

Richard’s heart ached. He wanted to pull Briony into his arms and tell her that none of it was her fault. That she was brave, that she was good, that no child should ever have been asked to carry such a thing.

But before he could move, Briony wriggled out of Elara’s embrace and rounded on Richard, fists balled. “Why did you look? You had no right! That was mine, and now everyone knows, and now they’ll all look at me like—” She keened. “Now everyone knows that I k-killed them! I killed Mother and Father! I made them die!”

Richard flinched. As he hesitated, Dain’s chair scraped back. He beckoned Briony towards him, and she obeyed, weeping as she crossed to bury her face in his shoulder. With a hum, he wrapped a burly arm around her

“No, lassie,” Dain said, patting her back. “You listen to me now. Your mother—” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and pressed on. “Your mother had a prophecy of her own. Barely told us anything, mind, but she knew if your brother had gone, he would have died there—told us as much, told Haldric not to send him on the trip to Prince Calentris’s funeral. Saw something, she did, and she made the decision—herdecision, not yours—for herself and your father to ride in his place.”

A hush fell over the chamber, and Richard remembered the morning his parents had left. Haldric, in his riding leathers, laughing at some joke Corwin had made, throwing Briony into the air until she shrieked and trying to do the same with a giggling Elara. And Aralynn?—

Aralynn had held each of them. Corwin first, squeezing his cheeks and telling him to never stop laughing. Then Elara, placing her own chain of snowdrop gems around the girl’s neck. Then Briony, whom she’d hugged a long while.

And then Richard.

She’d gripped him by the shoulders, her eyes glittering.“My son. Watch over the little ones. Keep them safe.”

He’d frowned.“You know I will, Mother.”

“I do.”She’d pulled him close and held him so tightly he’d felt her heartbeat.“And I also ask you—no, I beg you—to look after my eldest. Grant him the same softness he affords others.”