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She fought with her mother. Why could she break all the rules she insisted on for her daughter?
I tried to imagine von Lemerch as I read. A younger version, equally imperial and proud. Or perhaps she had been like me, playing a role all her life and looking for more. Perhaps she had resented the rules as much as her daughter and thought she had found something better.
The only thing that could conquer death is love;that was the explanation she gave Eydis.
This was not the woman with the burning blue eyes who watched me hang. This was someone long dead.
They agreed for Eydis to succeed her mother early, like our old king had to Dimitri. It was our story in inverse. Our families locked in the past.
I had not believed in fate until now.
The wedding was barely mentioned, Eydis’s disapproval clear on the page. She commented on Yelena, the mother of Herebov’s sons, getting a seat of honor. Eydis’s own father was never mentioned.
I skimmed the following entries of how she was prepared to ascend as the divine ruler. There were words I did not know, rituals that meant nothing to me—blessing flowers, stretches, meditation, and what sounded like an almost-death state to commune with the Spirits.
She wrote of a Gate, watching it with fear. It would change her, take something and earn her the Goddess’s blessing.
The Day of the Dead—Eydis’s final words.
The hairs onmy arm stood. Sounds of the temple, magic whispers of living beings, reached my muddled mind.
The sun had risen outside my window. One three-day left until the wedding. Until Ealhswip acted.
I stared at the blank pages.
Another book lay next to me, newer but more worn. The journal of Herebov’s last descendant, who killed me and brought me back to life. Again, the parallels twisted inside me like jarring notes finally coming together in harmony.
Herebov killed Ealhswip and took the crown before Eydis could ascend.
Ealhswip, a necromancer blessed by the Death Goddess, somehow returned.
The undead servants Eydis mentioned in passing possibly gathering to continue serving their mistress.
Herebov died. The three children, perhaps my age, came together.
For…what? What did they do?
I drank the cold tea, letting the words I’d read become music inside me as I turned them over.
I needed to talk to Morovara. Really talk instead of crying over my lot.
How much of this did Dimitri know?
Unable to hold back, I thumbed through his journal, hoping for clues hidden among the dark thoughts.
My fingers froze as narrowed dark eyes met my own. A portrait, hair disheveled and lips slightly parted in fear or excitement. It was me and not me. A version I had never seen, not even in the perfectmirror in the princess’s chambers.
Me from that first night when he caught me, and I thought I would never see him again. I had treated it like a game, the kiss a prize. Being in a lorist’s tale had seemed exciting.
If I had known—
I lifted the book into the light to read the squished text at the bottom.A truer picture. For the Oberwaldian court painter. Better she’s on the page than in my mind.
I slammed the book closed. My heart ached. Everything hurt. My neck remembered the noose. My wrists the chains. My hands the hilt of the knife, the thud as it struck bones which mirrored mine.
My cheeks remembered caresses. My lips kisses.
Gasping breaths and happiness.
