Page 98 of The Court of Venus

His ghost walked along the undertow. His hair was shorn—he must have cut it before his death—but he still had his stubble. He watched me stumble toward him, laughing and crying, but he was so removed, so cold. It was not truly him, only a pale imitation.

I moved closer. He looked solid to touch, but my hand passed through him. Another step and my body overlapped with his transparent one.

“You didn’t call for me,” he whispered.

“Because I cannot bear this.”

Slowly he shook his head. “You can bear anything.”

The ocean now swayed against my shins, the only timekeeper in the otherrealm. “Are you safe? Tell me, what is it like where you are?”

“Only Saturns can tell the living about death.”

“Are you not a prince down there?”

A moment of hesitation, before he evaded my question entirely. “Are you safe? Are you happy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bianca,” he said. “Listen. I know you, and you believe loss is proof you should not love. Do you know how long it took me to unfurl your tight little fist? An age.” He rolled his eyes to make me laugh, but I couldn’t. He eyed my hand until I knew what he wanted; I opened it, so he could see my palm. “Stay like that. Promise me.” He ducked, meeting my gaze. “Promise. Do not close yourself.”

He knew there was a sharp glint in me. I’d tried to pull the knife out, but it had been lodged too deep from the very beginning. My father’s disdain. My mother, bleeding out. His death had pushed it deeper still.

“Show me how you died,” I said. “Once I understand, perhaps I’ll finally be able to breathe again. Someone stole you from me, stole you from all of us. From your own future as it was written.”

He stared at me, his eyes the color of the mist surrounding us. “Can you enter my mind when I’m like this?”

I nodded. “Yes. I can sense it, just as before.”

He smiled sadly. “Good.”

And so I began my walk along the path that ended in his death.

I was in Alvion again. Alvion, as it once was. Hal knelt before his father on the dais. Prospero stood behind the king, watching as Richard kissed his son’s right cheek, then the left.

A signet ring was lowered onto his finger. “You must say the oath in a holy place,” the king instructed. “The most sacred place you can think of. I chose the beach where your mother first stepped onto the shores of Alvion. Then it will be done.”

“The meadow in the woods. Beyond the stream.”

The holiest place, for Hal, was where we had first kissed.

The king smiled down at him—his son. Anticipation and pride swelled in them both. Hal strode through the audience chamber, councilors bowing as he passed. Prospero, Charles Guildford, Fulke Roet. All of my suspects knew precisely where Hal planned to be. All of them had heard him say it from the dais.

Hal wound through the halls, nodding to the guards who clicked their heels and raised their swords, saying hello to each of them by name. At the stables, his horse was being shoed, so he took another. “Don’t worry, John,” he called to the stable hand. “Just take him out later for me, won’t you? You know how restless he gets.”

He rode to the edge of the wood, then tied the mare up to a branch and traveled the rest of the way on foot. The council had said he had to be alone for the oath, as it had been done since Oberon swore himself to King Armel, and so he strode into the wilds. He leapt over streams and his boots squelched from recent rains.

In the middle of the meadow, he unsheathed his sword and laid it on his knee. In the distance, he heard panting, the shifting of undergrowth, the crack of twigs. A hoof? A boot?

He removed a vial from his pocket. Oil, to shine his sword. There was something else in his hand, too. A small tin. Inside was a portrait of a girl with white hair. He laid this in the grass, so he might look at it.

He recited the same oath I myself had spoken only days ago: to honor and serve his father. “For Alvion, I take up my sword.” He did. “For love of King, I become his armor.” He brushed his lips over his ring. “For his Magician, I give my future. For his issue, I take my axe and clear a path. For Alvion, for love of King, for his Magician, for his issue, I bind myself.”

He breathed in deep. I wondered if he felt as changed as I had when I spoke those words. If he too had felt the glory in them.

Returning his sword to his knee, he cleaned his blade with oil and the sleeve of his doublet. Then his head shot up, his eyes narrowed. A flutter of bird’s wings through the trees. Something even closer.

He took up his sword. And then he stumbled, clutching his heart. When he blinked, tears of blood fell. I watched as he reached out a hand to whoever he thought might be in the distance. A savior. But if there was someone, they had fled, or they crouched to watch the deed finished from the shadows.