Page 93 of The Court of Venus

I pressed my palms to his chest, felt his heart drum. “Come with me. Please.” Some resistance in him, in both of us, slid away.

He rested his cheek against my brow, breathing in deep. “I must return for the coronation. For the final round of the tournament, to claim my prize.” His laugh was low. Rough with spite. “My ghost will be with Balthasar soon enough.”

A wave of my panic broke. “Cecily must have a son, then, if that will appease the king.”

“And then the Guildfords would have their heir. Even if I could manage to become regent, when the king dies, the Guildfords would toss me out. I lose. Every way you look at it, I lose. It is over.”

“Roland—”

“Go, Mouse.” But his voice wavered. “I’ll call the council together and prepare for the inevitability that Fulke Roet will inherit. Perhaps if I cooperate, I can keep one of my houses and live forgotten in the country.”

“I am going to Bastian to try and save you,” I pleaded. “It is not like you to concede.”

“I’ll concede to the fate the stars have laid out for me.”

“Cheat them, then.” I reached up, brushing hair from his eyes. “As you always do.”

“I studied your birth chart, you know. I drew it, at first, to understand who you had become after so many years away.” He released a heavy sigh, the air cupped in my palm. “May as well say it.” His eyes bored into mine. I nearly sank to my knees, dragging him with me. “You will love someone passionately, for your entire life. I hoped it was me.” A jut of his chin. “So, go, won’t you? Go to Bastian. Call for Prospero.”

He stiffened suddenly. Something else had occurred to him. “Will you ask for Hal?”

I shook my head.

“Because you cannot stand it?”

“Yes.” The truth. “And because I’ve lived only in the past since his death. It’s been years since I loved him. I’ve changed. I’m someone else.”

He searched my gaze. Then stepped around me, striding down the path, his broad shoulders brushing both sides of the hedge. “Take a message from me.”

“For Prospero?”

He laughed and tore a leaf away, twirling the stem between his fingers. “I have nothing to say to Prospero. For Balthasar. He will treat you well, as an honored guest, and see you returned safely to Alvion, or, alliances and trade routes be damned, I’ll slit his ambassador’s throat.”

Twenty-Two

Even death may be sieged.

—BALTHASAR’S MOTTO

There was another secret gateway, another tear in the world, linking Lionesse to Bastian. It was beneath a cracked ledger stone laid into the floor of a chapel. Sunlight cast the symbol of Venus into the nave. In a stained glass window, a pink-haired angel stretched—futilely, tragically—for the hand of his lover.

Lowering myself through the wide crack in the stone and into a dark crypt, I crept along a passage littered with old rat bones. The Saturn boundary shimmered halfway through, a thin, undulating vapor. As I passed through it, the temperature shifted, just as it had on the sea when we entered Lionesse territory. The air so chill and piercing, I knew it had stirred in the high mountains.

No army could fit through here. An assassin might, though all of these boundaries were carefully spelled. Most likely, these were only used by ambassadors or messengers who needed to travel quickly. If there was any intent to cause harm to Balthasar or the emperor, I wouldn’t be able to pass through. The boundary knew what I sought: to ask questions of ghosts.

I pulled the cloak I’d borrowed from Roland’s wardrobe tighter around myself. As I walked on and on through the damp, cold tunnel, I thought of all the places I could have told him of Hal. In the gardens, as he brightened blades of grass until they shone like emeralds again. In bed, before I drifted off with my head against his chest.

I’d learned my lesson long ago: To want someone did not mean you deserved them.

The mouth of the passage opened. Above, a crack, a shaft of light. I hoisted myself up through another ledger stone, grasping at the smooth floor for purchase. On hands and knees, I crawled to an altar. Jade marbles were collected in a bowl for prayers to Saturn, balanced on each other like apples. Windows depicted grotesque scenes of plague and suffering. A Saturn priest and an altar boy watched me from the shadows, faces shrouded. Both carried scythes.

The priest said: “Are you here to see your dead?”

I nodded.

He extended a hand. “Come.”

Balthasar’s granite palace was sharp and angular, cut directly into the cliff face. Spires pierced the sky; gargoyles clung to the rafters. The grounds were silent and empty, mist creeping along every pathway, but it was not silver mist like Alvion’s—it was the color of rot. The gardens were overgrown, the hedges untrimmed and wild, left to invade every pathway.