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Even von Uster had not been able to find his bones. At my request, the priestesses had anyway chanted the Goddess’s blessing. I had yet to even go to the temples to pray for his Spirit yet. That was another part of my own city where I could not step foot before I found all the answers. Morovara would bless my father’s Spirit as his bones were separated from his flesh. Would she, like all others, offeronly lies?
That evening, as Helia and I rode through Tal, people lined Palace Road, climbed the houses, and hung out of windows. Some cheered. Some cursed. Too many silently watched their future king and queen.
A skeletal figure of blood covered the palace sigils as I returned.
Death was everywhere and too soon I would wear the glass crown, tying myself to Tal.
Chapter eighteen
Vanya
The dregs of defiance still inside kept my face impassive as von Lemerch stared down on me. While other counselors watched the court crier, she focused on me. Even if I had wanted to speak out in my defense, under her eyes, I could feel the curse’s hands on my throat.
Here, in daylight among the nobility, it was near impossible to think of her as the undead divine ruler who once married Herebov. I understood why Lumi had laughed in my face when I told her of my suspicion. Would Ealhswip, after defying death, spend her time on the Talian Council? But the part of me that refused to bend, argued it was the perfect cover if she wanted to take over without killing everyone. Lacking a king and with the Temple’s support, many nobles might have followed her—not to mention the commoners. And for those who did not, she had the undead. Why did she even wait for the Day of the Dead?
Her menacing eyes traveled up and to the side. I could not help but follow. Since being led into the courthouse from the windowless prison coach, I had avoided the black chair of bones and roses, and the man who sat upon it.
Dimitri’s face was as cold as the first time I saw him when he rode into Tal on Cherny. Always at court, his black hair had been braided back. Today, it stood disheveled as if he no longer cared to follow the current fashion. Like how it had been when he abandoned me on the steppe. When he dropped me after seeing my sister’s corpse.
Our eyes met.
Deep inside me an ember became a flame, struggling to pierce the emptiness of death. Once, I likened his grief to a sea—now my own river of tears flowed invisibly, drowning what had been between us.
Death.
The word, echoing in the nearly empty courtroom, was a slap against my numb mind. Not that I had not repeated it often enough in my mind since I saw Lumi’s face.
Dimitri responded with only a nod before marching from the room without another look in my direction.
Someone moved in the gallery above.
Helia von Heskin, alive and well. From this distance she could have been my sister. I hoped Ealhswip secretly seethed at the prince and princess together.
Helia left after Dimitri. Had they been here to ensure themselves that I would be killed? To hear the charges leveled against me?
The Council continued talking for a while longer, signing my sentence onto innumerable papers to make it legal.
Ealhswip ignored them and when my jailer led me off the dais, through the back, and into cells below the courthouse, she followed.
I sank onto the hard bed bolted to the wall. At least this place was warm and not underground. A place for those who would die too soon to justify the effort to bring the condemned back to the city prison in Gateways.
Shimmering sigils ran the length of the bars stretching from ceiling to floor, blocking the powers I had never desired.
In the prison, it had been as if I never had magic, here it shifted under the surface, limited but not gone. People moved on the floor above us, the guards who brought me settled further down the hall. Ealhswip’s dead presence approached.
Expressionless, I watched her as she glided across the floor, the cane a useless prop in her hand. She had hired me to steal the crown, then seized the opportunity when the prince mistook me for his bride—though that might have been the plan from the start. She had used me to kill the king. Had poisoned hundreds, perhaps thousands.
She stopped, stretching tall above me, every inch the noble woman, but now that I knew what hid under her skin, I could see the cracks. Her movements were too smooth, the skin so thin I could see bones and veins.
“The crown isn’t where you said you left it,” she said, regarding me. Her gray eyes flashed blue.
Ah, they still needed something from me. Too damn bad they had nothing else to threaten me with. I was already dead.
I laughed, a broken sound too like my mother’s final rattlings.
Ealhswip’s presence pressed against me, and my suppressed magic rose in response until each breath was a struggle.
The blue flames in her eyes expanded to cover the whites.
