Page 14 of Winter Gods & Serpents

We managed to make our way down the back gardens, the dark evening and new vegetation had sprouted everywhere, dangling my memory and my navigation difficult. Several lost turns later and a green maze grew more than ten feet tall, higher than I remembered but I knew where I was.

“I will wait here,” Cai said offering a smile of support. His eyes flashed with worry despite his strong fort.

The maze was devouring and confusing, a few corridors past I found myself at its centre. My eyes fell upon three graves bearing the names of my mother, brother, and sister. They were buried in my mother’s favourite place in the kingdom, a garden bearing her name, Serene. I had left with no last farewell; they had not allowed me. After twelve years this was how I would see them again. Being away, I dared bare hope— hope that everything was a lie. The thought kept me alive of a sort, thinking that they would be here, roaming corridors, filling them with their laughter and sounds. My throat swallowed a cry, but my eyes welled up and a hot tear rolled down my cheek. Longing, pain, and anger burned my chest.

I fell to my knees, the thorns from the roses picked from the garden dug on my skin and drew blood that pooled tainting the white snow crimson. Grief coated my senses. The sound of the blood dripping heightened, each drop reminded me of the heavy marching steps of the Adriatian soldiers who attacked that night. The sharp wind mimicked the hiss of the swords drawn and each drop of snow made me relive those memories once again. In this very garden my mother had been killed, on the very walls of this castle my siblings had burnt while I ran—while I left everyone to die.

Barely managing to stand, I approached their resting places to remove the snow that coated them. My chest hurt, it felt wanting to burst. Heartache, my snowflake, my mother had once said. When you long so dearly for someone you love that it becomes painful, you learn that the worst emotion you could feel is yearning, that is called heartache.

I wore a terrible heartache.

Placing each rose in them I sent a prayer, “Gods and heavens bear my witness I will kill them all and in with their blood I will paint the sky red.” Not a prayer, a promise—a vow.

Chapter 6

Thorns and Roses

Penelope had fluffed perpetually relentless about my room for the past hour trying to sort my attire. Father had ordered I eat with them. Ordered not suggested, she had repeated several times. She was young and bubbling with energy and did not stop repeating my name as if it was the only one she knew. Tired from all her clattering and pacing, I hopped out of bed.

“What—who—on Krig’s heaven did that to you?” she exclaimed in disbelief, her viridian eyes livid at my wounded hands.

“You surely do not think me weak enough to let someone hurt me.” I smiled and fluffed her red hair before sliding towards the bathing chambers.

“I’ve heard stories,” she shyly murmured, pulling my nightgown down before I made to slip through the burning hot water in the tub. “From my father.”

“Such as?”

She stood silent for too long, so I turned to her. She’d gone still, gaze fixed in silent shock at me. “Those ones,” she said warily pointing to my back.

I reached a hand over my shoulder, feeling the dents of raised flesh. “They are signs that show just how long it took them to realize they could not break me.” Maybe at a point I thought they had, maybe if they had kept going they might have, but now each slash and welt reminded me of a head that was to be parted from their body—my revenge. “They are never a weakness.”

The hot water enveloped my body in warmth, completely relaxing onto the lavender mist. Penelope on my toes, grabbing soap and a cloth approached me, sat on a stool starting to leather my arms. I had not been given a bath since I was a child and was certainly not one now. I grabbed the soap from her hand, startling her.

I noted her stiff pose and awkward mannerisms. “Are you afraid of me?”

She stood abruptly somewhat offended. “I am not, it’s just…I’ve never served a royal before.”

“Did the other servants beg not to serve me? Did they bully you to becoming my servant?”

She shook her head. “Some did, others were already on the consorts service and few gave up after they heard what you said to your uncle. They say you eat hearts to keep your magic satiated.”

I laughed sinking in further in the bath. “And you?”

“I volunteered.” She shyly revealed. “I actually begged the head mistress to let me tend you. Claire, a friend of mine from school, she said our hearts would be too small for your liking we would be safe, it worried me not.”

“Why? You must have been merely a toddler when I left Isjord, you do not know me. Do not think many perks will come from serving me. I am not the most popular around here.”

She fiddled with the towel she held, her attention lost absently. “My father,” she answered in a half voice. “He died two years ago, he was one of Queen Serene’s guards, actually your guard. The night of the attack he said you saved his life, but he wouldn’t say how.”

Remembrance hit me, I could see it now in her green eyes, the same eyes that had pulled me away from the attack when we were running for shelter, the same ones that had held soldiers back while I made my run away from the castle. Lysander, one of my mother’s trusted guard who had been with us since I was an infant.

“Lysander,” I said quietly, memory surging through me.

A smile grew wide in her face and she jumped up from her seat. “You remember him? I did not think—” interrupting herself from the excitement she sat down quietly.

“Whatever you think you owe me, you don’t.” I truly meant it. He had done more for me and my mother than I had done for him that night. “Your father was more than a guard to me, if anything I owe you.”

She smiled and took the soap from my hand once more, washing my back. “I just want to, please let me.”