Page 99 of Heart’s Rescue

I turn to him. He looks away. There’s a tear caught on his lashes, sparkling in the blue-green light of the glowsoft orbs dancing through the windows.

“Lady Arryn,” King Galan says, turning to me. “It’s time to go home.”

I’m only dimly aware of hands pulling me to my feet, smoothing down the yellow silk dress Lythienne gave me this morning, pulling the blanket off my shoulders. Rowan stumbles to his feet and lurches away from me, his eyes fixed on some distant point out the windows. Lythienne leads me toward the shimmering mirage. Magic pours off it in waves, hot and crackly, like standing too close to a fire.

The connection, I think. This is the connection to the Worlds Above. I remember what Rowan said about the thin place, the hole in the barrier between our worlds. I stare at the shifting, restless air and, for just a heartbeat, I can see something else on the other side. Another room. Another world.

“It’s big enough for two,” Lythienne says.

Rowan looks up just long enough to catch my eyes, and my heart trembles. I feel his struggle, the agony of being pulled between worlds. His desperate desire to see the Worlds Above, his love for me, and the agony of knowing that his injured brother would be trapped below without him.

I turn back to the connection, to the shimmering heat mirage trapped inside this tower. It almost hurts to look at, as though this hole in the barrier between our worlds is leaking wrongness into the Lands Below. Something inside the shimmering air catches my eye, a straight line and a hard edge. And golden light.

Sunlight. It’s daytime in the Worlds Above, and light is falling through a window in a room where, impossibly, a portal to the Lands Below has just opened. I wonder if it’s the crystal-capped tower where Princess Elanerill waits in her enchanted sleep in the very heart of the palace of the Kingdom of the Summer.

The palace. Memories rush back to me, unbidden and not entirely welcome. Gowns of silk and velvet. Dances and feasts, both replete with delicate, intricately mapped steps to follow. Eyes on me, everywhere, no matter where I go. The only daughter of the merchant Damoira. Every move I make planned by others, every day another series of steps in a complex, ever-shifting strategy that was mapped out before I was even born. A strategy that would have been forced upon anyone, any girl child placed into the cradle of the family Damoira. I was never given a choice in any of it, not the dresses I wore nor the meals I ate, not the dances I joined nor the men I was pledged to love and honor and obey.

A shiver traces my spine, although waves of heat pour off the shimmering air in front of me. I’d never once been offered a choice. I wasn’t being offered one now either. It’s time to go home, King Galan had said. Lythienne had taken my arm and guided me to the portal without hesitation, and without a word.

This is what everyone expects of me. Even Rowan, as the churning turmoil seeping out of his heart reveals. I was born a lady of the Kingdom of the Summer. Wealth and luxury and prestige await me on the other side of that portal, where no one will ever know I’d once battled a void beast. Or fallen through the ice of a frozen river. Or kissed a man named Rowan.

I will never be given a choice about any of this.

I’ll have to take one.

“No,” I say.

The room is suddenly very quiet. I turn to see Rowan fixated on something outside the window, his body perfectly still, the tear caught in his eyelashes still shimmering in the blue-green light of the glowsoft orbs. King Galan watches me with wide eyes. Lythienne is frowning, and only Orryen, the man who just woke from his decades-long enchanted sleep, is looking at me like my words made sense.

“Your Highness,” I say, finally remembering some small shred of the manners that had been beaten into me for my entire life. “There’s nothing on the other side of that portal that I want.”

The king blinks once, then regains his bearings. “Ah,” he says. “I see. Of course.”

“Send Prince Folwynn instead,” I say, giving voice to the idea as soon as it flares to life inside me.

The king frowns. “Your Prince Folwynn murdered three people.”

He’s not my prince, I think. Not any more.

“Well, don’t send him alone,” I say. “Send one of your people with him, and include a letter detailing his crimes. Say he needs to stand judgment in his own world.”

“As a sign of the mercy of the Kingdom of the Fall,” Rowan adds. His voice sounds ragged, like he’s been running, but his words are clear.

The king cups his chin in his hand.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Orryen says, from the bed.

“The Kingdom of the Summer,” I say, trying to find the words. “They’re going to be scared. They don’t know what’s on the other side of the barrier. They think— They think you’re monsters.”

“The land of monsters,” King Galan says, thoughtfully.

“So, show you’re not a monster,” I say. “Show mercy to Folwynn, and send someone you trust to share your side of the story.”

“Send me,” Orryen says.

The king’s frown deepens.

“Send Aloserin,” Rowan suggests.