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With a groan reserved for the dead rising from their graves, I sit up and drag my legs out of the blanket.
My shoes are gone, too, I realize, as I set my feet on the soft rug in front of the bed. Hues of night blue and gold weave in intricate patterns beneath my toes as I slide them back and forth, digging into the plush material. It’s not what I expected. Nothing is. Not the rich colors in a palace that seems otherwise dead, or the wall of books I didn’t notice behind the couch last night. I most certainly didn’t expect the stationary folded in half with my name scrawled on it in slender, not-so-elegant letters.
Heart pounding, I pick it up and open it, already wondering what the man who told me not a day ago that he doesn’t have a choice in this either would have to say this early in the day.
Don’t leave the room. Not even with Royad. He will bring you food later. There are plenty of books in here, I’m sure you’ll pass your time well until my return.
His words are so hard to decipher I suspect he hasn’t written a note to anyone in a while. A year, perhaps, if he treats all his wives the same way.
Much as I hadn’t expected a lot of the other things, this doesn’t really come as a surprise. It would have been the first time I’d be free to go anywhere in this Godsforsaken palace. Yet, a small voice at the back of my head reminds me of the bloodlust in the Crow’s eyes when he’d tried to murder me by the pool. I don’t trust the Crow King’s words that his people will stop trying to kill me just because the marriage has been sealed. From the way the Crows peeked at me through the door last night, the threat is as real as it was yesterday.
So, I drop the paper on the bedside table and stretch my arms over my head, wincing slightly as I angle my bad hand to the side, swallowing the dryness in my throat. The night before, I didn’t touch the wine, and now that I could use it, the tray is gone. Driven by my thirst, I search my way around the room, scanning the walls for a bathing room door. I find it on the wall opposite the bookshelf, almost unnoticeable between a sideboard and a dresser. A simple, narrow door that doesn’t seem fit for royal chambers but leads to a bathing room large enough to fit Ludelle’s cabin from the Wild Ray. Larger than that. It’s enough to fit a lake. And that’s exactly what I find there. No toilet, no basin. Instead, the floor is slanted toward the opposite end of the large stone chamber, and from halfway into the room, water laps back and forth like a mockery of the tides at the ocean shore. I can taste the salt in the air, not brine but a cleaner scent than that. Darkness reflects from the surface of the water together with rippling dots of light falling in through the door behind me.
Whether it’s the magic of this palace or something unholy, I don’t ever want to find out. I approach the water, drawn as if by an invisible rope, bare feet gliding along the slick stone beneath while my heart picks up pace. I inhale the air, inhale the darkness and the silence.
A few more steps and my toes will touch the water. My skin aches for the loving caress of the waves, for the gentle touch that only water can give. The feathers of my dress swish around my feet like a black melody, farther and farther into the room, until they are carried away by the slosh of the next wave. Cool bliss kisses my toes as an endless sadness grasps my chest in a vise.
For a moment, all I can do is stand there and heave one labored breath after the other while the weight of the world settles on my bare shoulders—settles and digs into my skin, into my bones, until the pain is unbearable, until every breath hurts like shards of glass down my throat. Until my chest threatens to implode.
I take another step into the water, eager to ease the sense of hopelessness, the need to lose myself in the waves. This room has seen pain, knows what it means to suffer. It holds myriads of tears. And now, it holds mine, too.
Like rain, they drip from my lashes as I blink and blink and blink them away. But there is no end to them. So, I march farther in, the water up to my calves, and sink to my knees so the water hugs me around the waist. My fingers rake through the ink-dark liquid, coming back guilty of the sorrows spilled into this room. And the pain seems unending. It’s eating me up. It’s wrapping around me as it soaks my dress, pulls on it, leaden and unyielding.
I cry—I cry the unending tears I thought I no longer had in me. Tears for my father whom I betrayed. Tears for Ludelle, for the family I made on the Wild Ray and lost in a heartbeat. Tears for my own guilt.
And the lake takes and takes and takes. It takes until I’m cold and shivering, until I can barely keep myself upright.
It is then that I dive out of my despair for a deep breath and realize something is very wrong. I remember that I was searching for a bathing room, for a pitcher of water to drink. My heart kicks into a gallop as I feel—really feel—the water around me, not the loving embrace but clawing fingers that are trying to drag me under. I brace my hands on the ground, waves lashing up to my elbows, grasping and reaching higher while I push myself to turn and get out. Crawl if I have to. It doesn’t matter as long as I get out of here before the lake drags me under.
The water has other ideas though. Just as I scramble to a half-upright position, a wave lashes against my legs, ripping them out from under me, and my knees hit the stone. Pain explodes in my legs, so powerful it takes my breath away as I strain to keep myself from falling face-first into the water.
I can’t breathe. Can’t breathe. Can’t think.
From a distance, faint voices are calling.Wolayna.My name carries on the waves fighting to climb into my lungs.Wolayna.Water whips my face, hard and fast and uncompromising.
“Wolayna!”
Hands grab me by the shoulders, yanking me out of the water, and I’m being lifted from the wet trap clutching at me.
“Breathe, Wolayna.” His voice is a command surging through me, a calm of thunder tearing the water from my throat as I battle for air. “Breathe.”
Only when I’m coughing and panting, water tumbling from my mouth, do I realize I am standing on solid ground once more and the male holding me at feathered-arm’s length is the very same who left the note on the bedside table.
“Come on.” He gestures to the door and guides me toward the daylight of the bedroom where the nightmarish water can’t reach me, and I suck in a deep breath that stings in my raw lungs.
The sunlight hurts my watering eyes, and in my chest, my heart hasn’t calmed one bit. When I finally manage to focus on his dark shape, King Myron is fumbling with the handle of the door behind which the dangerous lake is hidden.
“This door isn’t supposed to open for you.” He doesn’t face me, merely continues with whatever he’s doing to the wooden rectangle that should be exchanged for a wall of solid rock.
“What … is that?” My throat hurts as if I swallowed gravel, and my voice doesn’t sound any better.
I hold onto the backrest of a nearby chair as I sway on my feet while taking in the frantic movements of the Crow King’s hands. His fingertips are black talons again, and I’m beginning to see a pattern. He is losing control over whatever magic is supposed to be at work by that door, or over himself, I’m not certain, but he is losing control.
“This is the dark history of my ancestors. And that is all you need to know about it.” He halts, lays both palms against the door, fingers spread and talons digging into the wood. His feathers spread to the sides in half-circles, lean muscles flexing left and right of his spine where he chose to leave out his usual vest. Maybe it’s the shock of nearly drowning in what seems to be a conscious lake—inside a room—that makes him appear less frightening even with those wings and talons on full display, but as I watch him, still catching my breath, I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to run my fingers along those feathers.
Before I can become tempted to test it out and face the Crow King’s wrath, I sit down in the wooden chair and lean back, ignoring the steady drip of water from my dress. “That lake in there tried to drown me.” It’s not a gentle conversation starter, but it sure gets a reaction out of him. One that makes me question how I could have believed he didn’t appear all that frightening a minute ago.
His black eyes flash as he whirls on me, hands balled into fists at his side as if he is restraining himself from lunging for me. But he doesn’t move. “The door shouldn’t have opened.”
