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“It was my honor,” he whispered, patting her face.
“I don’t know how this is possible, or why it was done.”
“Remember.” He gripped her hand. “One final truth, and it will be clearer. The curse of House Revna fell, and you were meant to find each other again.”
Saga looked to me, but I wasn’t certain Annon was speaking of us. I took one knee beside him.
His eyes were glassy and fading, but he gave me a bloody smile. “He showed me to you, yes?”
I nodded. “I saw it all.”
“Good. P-Protect them, and I’ll be sure . . . to tell the king to save you a place . . . beside us.”
“Always.”
“Find the first bond,” Annon told me, “and you all will have the strength to finally . . . end this tale.”
Annon found Calista’s teary eyes and smiled before a long, soft breath escaped his lungs as his eyes closed, and he didn’t wake again.
We gathered the fallen, tended to the wounded, and when the moon rose, a pale pink hue, we slept on the shore. Guards marked watch points along the edges of the star court, and a heady fear still lived like a bad taste we couldn’t shake.
Saga slept atop a roll of furs, the empty space beside her was left for me to claim. On the other side, the other kings and queens claimed mats beside warriors and a few thieves.
We all slept the same, as though no rank was between us tonight. My body ached from battle, and I craved the sensation of curling around Saga’s body, but my focus was near the edge of the water.
Calista hugged her knees against her chest, staring at the distant horizon. I dragged my fingers through my hair, then sat beside her. Knees bent, I circled them with my arms and stared ahead like her.
“You are not the descendant of House Ode,” I said. “You’re the heir.”
Calista didn’t look away from the horizon. “Then why can’t I remember, Golden King?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know why Saga can’t either. You saw it in my sleep, Calista. Annon left Riot Ode to save the king’s child. He has protected you as you’ve grown through the turns.”
“Grown? If what you say is true, I’m older than you.” She narrowed her eyes. “When we met I was a girl.”
“I remember.” The days of Ruskig when Elise appeared with a skinny, dirty storyteller she’d wrenched away from Castle Ravenspire. “Through all this I’ve come to learn, Riot Ode had a power I do not fully understand.”
Calista hung her head. “Nor do I. Because, as we speak, those memories of my young turns are fading. The earliest memory I have now, is when I was boarded on a ship and taken to the North. I already told Saga about it. The strange thoughts I had, like going there was something I’d been waiting for. I was so young, why should I have been thinking that?”
“I don’t know, Calista,” I admitted. “But I’m certain it has something to do with your father’s curse.”
She scoffed. “My father. We don’t know if your theory is anything more than that.”
“Calista, the man you knew as your brother died with the face of an ancient fate king’s captain.”
“I think I’m going mad.” She sighed and reclined onto her palms. “When I met Lump—the Sun Prince—I was certain I’d been maybe seven. We were down there for turns. Now, I can’t even recall my true age. I think one thing, then it fades like I don’t truly know. I had memories of a mother who was slaughtered for being a fate worker. Now, I don’t know why I even thought that. Those memories are gone.”
“Is it possible it is because you were given a false history until you grew your power?”
“Ah, Golden King, at this point anything is possible.”
“You said you used fate to twist a tale in the North by taking from the storyteller who cursed Valen, right?”
Calista nodded but didn’t look at me. “That’s what I said.”
“That could be your growth, Calista. You learned from those with seidr without even knowing it. You might’ve grown slower from a curse, I don’t know, but those tales you built upon helped you become who you are today. You tossed us on our asses tonight, and I don’t even understand what you did.”
“Me neither.”
