Post by grimoire on May 21, 2018 10:08:22 GMT -5
UNDER THE HALF MOON
Erkau is in mourning. The regal King and Queen were just assassinated in their very bedchambers, and with their death also comes the death of hope in a struggling nation. Princess Loreley is next in line for the throne, and after her, Princess Ilse, but Loreley knows that this assassination was not an isolated event. Someone had been assassinating every Erkau monarch, and Lorelay did not want to be the next victim in a long strain of calculated regicide.
Faced with the entire nation of Erkau on her back and shocked and scared by this revelation, Princess Loreley leaves the future of her nation in the hands of her younger sister, Ilse. Loreley cuts her hair, burns her gowns, and disappears into the deep night under the glittering light of a half moon.
PROLOGUE
A half moon shone over the rugged stone bricks of the Royal Palace in Zierenland, Erkau. Below the seat of the nobility, the people of Erkau laid their heads to rest on soft feather pillows and dried their eyes. The gravestones of King Germut and Queen Bruna burned heavy holes in their dreams. The mountains surrounding Zierenland bowed their heads and the lonely wind keened mournfully as it brushed through the windows of the palace.
The door croaked as it was pushed open, and a woman with cropped brown hair peered through the slit she had procured. Her left eye, rendered dark pools of ink from the night, were encircled with glowing markings, imitating fire. The elven servant stepped further into the room, and her palm opened. Flickering flames sprouted up from the creases in the pale skin of her right hand and washed the skin on her pointy ears a muted orange.
A warm glow emanated from her as she stepped forward and peered about the room. “Princess Loreley,” cooed the servant into the silence. The wind beat against the open windowpanes in the far north corner of the room and ruffled the long, satin drapes of the large bed. The telescope had disappeared from its place in the ribbons of pale moonlight near the outside world.
“Princess Loreley,” tried the elven servant once more, and she moved the palm of her hand to illuminate the lavish bedside. “Princess Loreley, Princess Ilse has already woken up. It is time for you to get ready for the coronation.”
The room, so massive and absurd, was filled with crushing silence once more. The wind howled louder. The servant narrowed her eyes and reached her unoccupied hand forwards to press against a suspicious lump of bedding, only to find it empty beneath her touch. A deep frown made lines appear against her mouth and she turned away from the bedside to scan her eyes across the vast expanse of a bedchamber. She pursed her lips upon spotting the vanity.
The servant strode forwards and placed her left hand over the lacquered bloodwood vanity, and her fingertips dipped into scratches from years of use. With a small flourish, she drew up a small piece of hastily torn parchment with ink blots scattered all across it’s coarse surface, which rested easily on the surface of the vanity. A solemn air tugged at her shoulders upon bringing to closer to the flame and roving her eyes across the fluttering cursive.
Miriam, with a spluttering cough, stumbled back and let her thin fingertips dig deep into the paper. She gripped with such ferocity that her knuckles turned white and the controlled flame in her right hand nearly rose to the point of overtaking her entire body. Miriam immediately closed her hand over the flame to extinguish it and turned away from the vanity. Her slippers slapping against the smooth wood floors broke the silence as she ran from Princess Loreley’s bedroom.
CHAPTER 1
The thick, firm boughs of the bloodwoods blocked any faint moonlight from reaching the profuse undergrowth underfoot. Far behind Loreley, towering and ubiquitous stone barriers separated the rest of Gaiea from the royal city, Zierenland, and further put a border between Loreley and her old home. Her hair, once long and like gold spun from a spinster’s old, cracking wheel, was now cropped to her neck and hidden beneath a soft, untorn cloak. Her eyes shifted from side to side, roving across the endless white expanse. Snow crunched beneath her feet with every laborious step. Lorelay peered at a small trail marker, dusted with white, as it informed her of her exit of Erkau. Loreley let out a laborious sigh and pressed onwards.
Her stomach growled, and the musty aroma of leaf litter and dead foliage and bloodwoods filled her nose. Loreley pulled the cloak taut over her shoulders as it began to slip from her mantle and she shivered, although she never cautioned a glance backwards. Her left hand held the cloak in a firm ball at her chest, while her other gloved hand ran over and over again the inscribed words on her dagger’s hilt. Her eyes watched the snow intently, only until she spotted the flash of movement in the deep winter night.
She glanced up. Loreley looked closely at the fields of blanketed white, and her eyes widened as she saw two quivering ears break away from the endless color. A snow hare quivered it’s nose and flicked it’s whiskers about as it searched among the roots of an aspen. Loreley licked her lips, dry from the howling winter wind, and stilled her movement.
Loreley lowered herself into a crouch and unsheathed her dagger from her belt. The hare nibbled at dry bark in the darkness only a few paces from her. Loreley sucked in a shaky breath and held the air in her lungs, silent as the tall mountain range behind her. She rocked from side to side briefly.
A bloodwood branch, sanguine in color, crackled and fell to the forest floor, and the snow hare startled and darted from the roots of the aspen. Loreley cursed beneath her breath and let her shoulders sag, the poised rigidity of her body melting away. Her stomach growled again, even louder this time.
How could I have forgotten to bring food? Loreley grumbled silently, desperately watching the thicket of brambles in which the snow hare had retreated. Just beyond that, a deep red plumage of feathers trailed among the brittle ferns ahead, lost in tangles of underbrush and snow-dusted thistles. Loreley narrowed her eyes and watched as it shifted and bobbed among the dead foliage, her lost catch forgotten. Slowly, she prowled forwards, legs lifting high to wade through the thick snowfall but eyes wide and alert to watch the feathers. Her left thumb ran across the hilt of her dagger once more. There was a faint rustling behind her, and a fast approaching beat of wings made Loreley realise the ploy.
“Harpies!” Loreley breathed, and an animalistic woman with deep brown feathers and hawk legs making up her lower half shot from the underbrush. She beat her large wings and barrelled into Loreley’s side, sending her sprawling into the snow and nettles lining the sides of the trail. The woman’s deep yellow eyes shone treacherously in the darkness as she held Loreley down into the cold.Talons, dark and glittering in the moonlight, clawed desperately at her fennec lined cloak and scratched wildly at the skin beneath while Loreley moved her head left and right to avoid her assailant’s snapping beak. They struggled in the snow frantically.
Loreley grit her teeth and shifted her body. Using every muscle at her disposal, she overpowered the bird woman and rolled. Loreley shoved the harpy unceremoniously into the deep snowdrifts , gathered her cloak long about her body, and kicked her foot hard into the ground to stumble up to her feet. The harpy thrashed furiously against the thick snowfall behind her.
Loreley took off through the woods, her clumsy footfalls muffled by the thick blanket of white which she waded through frantically. Behind her, she heard a powerful beat of wings. The cold winter wind bit at her exposed face and the scratches let tiny prickles of hot pain run against her skin. Loreley cautioned a glance behind her to see her assaulter flapping her wings in close pursuit. Loreley wrinkled her nose in fury.
Loreley skidded to a stop and turned on her heel, kicking up sprays of snow in the process. She spread her legs and grounded herself.
The harpy was young, Loreley suspected her to be around her age. Her hair was long and uncut but ruffled by wind and dishevelled from lashing twigs and branches on her flight. Her eyes glowed yellow like that of a keen falcon, and while her top-half was relatively human, her arms turned into massive wings and her lower half was replaced with the legs of a bird. Her chest, just barely covered by rabbit skin, heaved with the effort.
Loreley and the harpy hit the snow with a muffled thump, and Loreley went limp in the auspicious grip of her assailant. Although her eyes were open, Loreley looked through the harpy and into the supple boughs of the bloodwood overhead. Loreley inhaled sharply and prepared for the inevitable loss of life.
Loreley felt the harpy’s breath against her neck, and she felt the puffs of hot air grow in frequency as the underbrush crackled behind her. The harpy looked up from her prey and jumped back immediately. She crouched low to the ground and beat her wings powerfully so that she lifted into the air. With a shrill cry, the harpy disappeared into the darkness of the thick wood. Loreley stared after her. She narrowed her eyes and her mouth gaped.
“Hey, you okay?” came a quiet voice behind her. Loreley’s cloak was dusted with a thick white powder as she rose from her depression in the flurry. She whipped her head around to stare at her saviour.
He was small, and although his legs were long and willowy as was common of his race, he hardly came up to Loreley’s chest. His skin was dark as a dusting of coal over skin and his eyes, wide, yellow pools full of fervor, cut through the malignant darkness while his inky black hair betrayed them. His ears, sharp and pointed, cut through the cropped waves in his well-groomed tresses. Although he dressed for the road, there was not a hair out of place on his body. Looking closer, Loreley realised that there were smile-like purple markings etched around his mouth. Despite her curiosity having drawn her closer, Loreley immediately recoiled upon this revelation. She looked from left to right and darted behind a towering bloodwood, kicking up snow and cold in her wake.
“Really?” asked the elf, incredulous. “I just saved you and that’s your reaction?”
“It’s with reason!” Loreley shouted back, and she pointed a shaky finger from behind her wooded cover. “You’re a patron of Pinodufini! The shadow one!”
The elf laughed instinctively, and he crossed his arms and shook his head. “Didn’t expect you to be educated in elven gods. Even the name! Wow.”
“This isn’t funny!” Loreley cried back, curling the bark of the bloodwood beneath her nails and clutching her cloak closer to her body. “I’ve heard what patrons of Pinodufini can do; you could get in my mind, control me, and I would be none the wiser.”
“But why would I do that?” asked the elf, and his weight shifted. He stepped forwards, across the cold snowbanks and buried yewberries so that he could clear a path towards the bloodwood. The must of dead leaf litter and sanguine sap filled the air between them, and Loreley shifted from her spot on the ground. The cold dug past her cloak and thick clothing to chill across her skin, leaving her shivering and sopping wet. The elf extended his hand in a greeting and Loreley stared at it blankly. She stepped from behind the tree and shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m Tzuriel,” he said. “What’s your name?”
His words hung stagnant in the frigid wind for a few moments. Loreley finally extended her hand and grasped his, and she shook it up and down. His skin was rough but his hands bony and thin. She could feel small scrapes and cuts across his palm.
“I’m Leya,” came Loreley’s reply, flustered and quick. She had not thought to make a new name until this moment. Tzuriel retracted his hand and beamed at her, although his face was obscured by fattening flakes of plush snow.
“You know these woods are harpy territory, right?” Tzuriel wondered, looking over her clothes and their handiwork. “That cloak looks well-made. You must be well off; what business do you have here?”
“I couldn’t tell harpies owned this, not after one attacked me!” she snapped, although Leya instinctively balled her black, fennec-lined cloak up under her fingers and obscured the rest of her body. She shifted in her leather boots, and asked respite within her expensive tunic. She turned her head away from Tzuriel. “Just running away from something. Guess it isn’t going too well.”
Tzuriel peered closer and Leya shrunk further into herself. “You don’t come from Vokoia, do you?” he urged her, leaning in further.
Leya paled. “Do you?”
Tzuriel shifted back and dropped his hands to rest firmly on his hips. He puffed his chest out and huffed. “Of course! I’m just hoping you aren’t from Nekkha, Navskoy, or Mudanzou.”
Leya suppressed a sigh of relief upon not hearing her former nation, Erkau, leave Tzuriel’s lips. She quirked a brow and shifted in the snow. The stars twinkled cheerily against a black backdrop behind Tzuriel’s head.
“Why?” Leya asked.
Tzuriel erupted in a series of vague and confusing hand gestures and his whole body leaned into his explanation. “Well, Nekkha runs every trade route ever, Navskoy hates outsiders, and Mudanzou won’t trade anything with us! Vokoia doesn’t take kindly to any of them.”
Leya’s eyes, once bright and whimsical, shifted to the left and locked on scraggly weeds nearly buried in mounds of fresh white powder. “Understandable,” she breathed, and her heart hammered against her chest.
Tzuriel propped his hand against his chest and raised his chin high. Leya’s words fell on deaf ears. “Nekkha’s handiwork may be fine, but once I finish my training, they’ll be the ones scrambling to me to buy my clothes!”
Leya perked up at his proud and distant fantasies. She turned her head once more, and a heated turquoise fire had ignited again within her deep blue eyes. “You’re an apprentice?” she queried.
“What, did I seem too noble to be one?” Tzuriel cooed, a crow forever squabbling to brag of his own achievements, but he soon shook his narrow head after he had gotten over himself. “No, I won’t be the real royal tailor for a while. I have to finish my training and furthermore wait for Royal Tailor Ariella to die first. She’s not that old, but I probably won’t be the real tailor until I’m 200.”
Leya’s eyes widened briefly, the sheer scale of elven lifespan having escaped her mind for a few valuable moments. She did little to hide the look of bewilderment on her face as she went on.
“Why don’t you open your own shop in the Royal City?” Leya suggested. “You can be a fully-fledged tailor and not have to work under anybody.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Tzuriel’s jaw dropped nearly to his collarbone and he wheezed, as if searching for breath. His mouth gaped wide and his eyes flew open, so that Loreley could see the egg-shell white sclera surround dancing orbs of deep sanguine. He grasped his mind wildly for words to say to her, and for just a few moments, he only came up with brief, frenzied stammering.
“Set up shop in Charciennes, the Royal City?” Tzuriel pleaded for clarification, and Leya paused before giving a slow nod. “You must really not be from around here, or else you would know that elves can’t set up shops under their own name. No way would I find any human willing to get land for me anyways.”
Leya’s expression now mimicked Tzuriel’s and she leaned closer, staring up and into his eyes in shock. “You can’t own property in Vokoia?” she echoed.
Tzuriel shook his head now and his fluffy white hair bounded with him, ruffled by the icy night wind. “Not if you’re an elf. You’d have no problem finding something to buy.”
Leya breathed heavily and crossed her arms, leaning back on her heels and into the deep snow. She shook her head and raised her left hand so her teeth could dig into the soft skin of her knuckles. “That isn’t right,” she murmured.
Tzuriel shrugged jovially. “Maybe not, but I am offered shelter and food in the palace,” he chirped. “Who knows if anyone would even buy from me if I did open my own shop. That’s what Royal Tailor Ariella told me.”
Leya opened her mouth and her tongue curled to say something, but Tzuriel stiffened suddenly and whipped his head to peer over his shoulder. Only darkness crowding among clumps of elderberries and bloodwood greeted him, and a black bird with vibrant red tail feathers peered curiously at the texture of his hair. Tzuriel turned back to her and raised his hands. “My owner, I hear her,” he hissed. “She won’t be pleased to find me talking to you.”
The hairs rose on the back of Leya’s neck at the time of urgency in Tzuriel’s voice. She looked from side to side for escape routes, but all she saw was endless snowdrifts and walls of firm, thick foliage and shrubbery. Tzuriel nudged her arm desperately, but her boots stayed rooted in the thick snow.
“Go, Leya,” Tzuriel urged her. “Please.”
Too late. Just as Leya unearthed her boots from the thick, fluffy white, the elder berries rustled and the black bird with the carmine plumage took to the air with a startled squall. The black was parted like a sword with burning light from a caged lantern, made of wrought iron and swirling patterns to conceal a flickering candlelight. Gnarled fingers clung tight to the cold handle, and skin like drizzled caramel only barely clung to the bones there. Leading up the arm, shoulder, and neck, a head sat unevenly, and a woman with white hair long enough to stretch down and blend into the snow stared from above exaggerated glasses. She looked down from her nose, hooked and massive, and supported herself on a thin, broken branch snapped from an ash. She pushed her dark cloak fully from her head and shifted her royal purple, silken robes. Her shoulder, bare against the wind, was marked with curving green lines of flowers, her religious markings.
She must have wings on her back instead, then, mused Leya.
“What’s going on here?” she asked coldly, and her narrow, bird-like eyes stared pointedly at Tzuriel. Behind her, a tall man with strong, broad shoulders and a sword fastened firmly to his hip strolled to her side. Her crossed his arms and lolled his head from side to side, and his pale skin contrasted greatly with his short, cropped red hair.
“We gave you only a few minutes to rest,” said the tall man, tightening his lips.”Yet you wander away for ten.”
Tzuriel bowed deep from his waist and buried his chin deep in his scarf. His fist balled up behind his back. “I know, Sir Montgomery, I’m sorry,” murmured Tzuriel, and he straightened his back from where he bowed.
Leya immediately copied Tzuriel’s submissive posture, but she could feel the old elf’s keen blue eyes bore into her fennec-lined cloak.
“Who’s this?” asked the old elf, and her voice grated over their ears.
Tzuriel did not rise from his bow, but his voice was loud, firm, and polite nonetheless. “I was just saving her from a harpy attack; she’s no threat, I swear. Her name is Leya.”
Leya bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and her nails dug into her palm. She could feel the old elf’s gaze harden over her body.
Tzuriel turned her head very slightly so his voice, muffled and low, could reach Leya. “This is Royal Tailor Ariella, and her guard Sir Montgomery,” hissed Tzuriel. “We were trading cloth with Nekkhites, so we needed protection.”
“Not necessary, Tzuriel,” Sir Montgomery murmured coldly. “Up.”
Obediently, Tzuriel and Leya straightened. Leya stared into Ariella’s eyes, although Tzuriel kept his head bowed towards the snow. “You are lost?” wondered Ariella, rolling her knobby fingers around the blunt end of her walking stick.
Leya and Tzuriel exchanged glances from their respective positions, and Leya dipped her head carefully.
“We have been watching you,” Ariella went further. “You are fierce for a wanderer. No one who values their life walks through this forest alone, not with the harpy occupation.”
Leya is compelled to turn her eyes from Ariella’s probing gaze, but she is locked into the eye-contact.
“I had imagined you would have run, with how scrawny you are, but you instead fought back,” Ariella continued. “Brave, stupidly so, but a valuable character flaw.”
Leya only barely nodded her thanks before Ariella continued, and her haughty breath billowed in the cold. “You are looking for a home, yes? Charciennes is not far from here, and we would be willing to let you ride in our caravan.”
Sir Montgomery spoke now, and his voice booms and vibrates to run through Leya’s bones. “Lady Ariella, we have no more room in the caravan with how much linen we bought,” he protested.
“Stand down Montgomery,” ordered Ariella sharply, and Montgomery immediately stepped back in line slightly behind the derelict elf. “I see worth in you, Leya. What skills do you have?”
Leya kept her gaze even despite her wavering, remembering the many classes her mother put her through for direct eye contact towards nobles. “I am skilled in divination and astrology, if that is what you seek,” Leya answered, a clear, tinkling sound to her voice.
There was a deep glitter in Ariella’s striking silver eyes but Leya could not decipher their origin, and they briefly ran over the short golden locks beneath Leya’s cloak. Sir Montgomery stared after Ariella despairingly. “Interesting,” rumbled Ariella. “Queen Élodie would be willing to offer a position in her royal court, I can imagine.”
Leya’s mouth dropped and all inhibitions left.
“Her Diviner is growing mad from age,” Ariella elaborated. “Your skills would grow innumerably.”
Tzuriel raised his head sharply and looked from Ariella to Leya, a stark frown casting shadow over his taut face. “My Lady, with all respect, she is a stranger.”
Ariella’s hands held her walking stick tighter, and Leya squeezed her eyes shut in case Ariella was tempted to strike her apprentice. Upon hearing no fortuitous smack splitting the cold night’s silence, Leya peeked out from beneath her eyelids to see a sad look cloud Ariella’s gaze. Ariella shook her head from side to side.
“The situation is bad Tzuriel,” Ariella murmured sagely. “Queen Èlodie needs someone who is able to read the stars.”
Ariella fell silent and the possibilities weighed heavily on Leya’s heart. Her chest pounded hard, but her mind was clear. Before she could bite down on her lips, Leya responded to Ariella.
“I’d be honored,” Leya blurted out, surprising even herself with the sheer volume and enthusiasm of her voice. She folded her hands and bowed her head before Ariella. “Please, I have nowhere else to go.”
Montgomery and Ariella shared a look, dipped their heads to eachother briefly, then returned their gaze to Leya. Ariella smiled, and her mouth made the loose skin on her cheeks fall across the corners of her lips. She adjusted her large half-moon glasses across her roaming nose. “Then come,” she croaked, and she beckoned Tzuriel towards her with a vague hand motion. “Charciennes is only a day’s travel.”
Montgomery cast a smothering glance to Leya and turned on his heel to stomp through the snow-dusted underbrush. Ariella followed soon after him, and Tzuriel was swallowed wholly by the darkness after a few moments had passed. The clump of elderberries swallowed the group, and Leya trudged after them, her steps tall and wide to conquer the momentous amount of snow. Just as she was about to be devoured by the foliage, a shrill call sounded behind her. Leya shifted and tossed her deep golden eyes across the forest clearing, where frenzied footsteps meandered through the snow and scattered parts of broken white from her scuffle with the harpy. Above, in the broad bloodwood she had concealed herself behind upon encountering Tzuriel, the black cockatoo sat, and it’s bright red plumage fanned elegantly out behind it. It’s beady black eyes stared emotionlessly out to her and bore deep into her soul, burrowing and searching for something beyond it’s grasp. Her heart beat furiously, and a few seconds later, another pair of narrowed eyes appeared beside the bird. Feeling fright shoot up through her bones, Leya turned, tugged her cloak so that it obscured her eyes, and stumbled past the barrier of sweet-smelling shrubbery.
CHAPTER 2
The caravan, made of soft and flexible chestnut, whined and wobbled as it passed over abandoned rocks and rough terrain on the path to Charciennes. It was old, a clear heirloom but well-groomed and taken care of, and the surface teemed with magical sealing energy. The leather whip, made from the hides of eventide deer, cracked against the rump of a mottled stallion every so often. He whinnied and whined, chuffing and chirruping in feeble protest against the iron in his mouth and the yoke against his chest. Fine blue cloth with tacky magenta threads dangled at the ends made up curtains for the backs and fronts of the wagon, and weak sunlight danced along the interior as the wind ruffled them.
Four travelers jostled about within the caravan. Tzuriel sat on the floor, and the splintering chestnut grains dug into his clothing while Ariella reclined on a seat carved from the wood to the right. Closest to the exit of the caravan, Sir Montgomery’s eyes peered past the dancing flaps of blue cotton and onto the slowly passing winter wonderland. Leya sat silently in between. To her left, smoke peeled away from a small bowl of burning stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense and filled the space with a thick, suffocating aroma. Long rolls of silver, black, and deep purple silk took up any other sitting space within the caravan, and some rolls poked out of the caravan and bounced dangerously with every rough patch of road. The incense burned away the scent of vinegar, urine, and death clinging to the fabric, but hints of the musk could still be detected beneath.
Ariella drained the last bits of hibiscus tea from her small porcelain teacup and she turned her head to stare at Leya. She jostled the teacup once and cleared her throat. “Leya,” Ariella broke the silence. “You say you are skilled in divination. Please then, read my fortune.”
Leya shifted uncomfortably in the seat, and she became suddenly aware of every splinter from the old wood digging into her. With no words, she slowly shifted closer to Ariella and took the cup from her hands upon the offer.
Little bits of leaf residue sat along the bottom and lined the sides, a stark black color against the pure alabaster. A long, thin line of sodden hibiscus lined the edges, and the end of the line stopped in an auspicious point near the bottom of the cup. Leya’s eyes narrowed and shifted from one end of the tea grain line to another, before glancing up to Ariella.
“There is enmity in your near future, a snake,” murmured Leya, peering closer at the individual parts of each dark hibiscus leaf. “It’s eating a house at the bottom. The snake will come from within, from someone you thought you could trust. That’s further in the future.”
As Leya’s voice petered off, silence once again clung to the interior of the caravan beyond the whine of wood stretching beyond its capabilities. Ariella stared her deep in the eye, and moments passed with only this searching stare between them, before Ariella leaned back and nodded sagely.
“Interesting,” she murmured, gingerly taking the fragile teacup from Leya’s gloved hands. “I will keep this in mind.”
Leya nodded once and turned away from Ariella, suddenly feeling as if she were in unwelcome presence in the caravan. She looked to Tzuriel and his eyes flashed in the crepuscular half-light, forcing a polite smile to her face. She turned away abruptly, tugged her cloak closer to her, and folded her leather-wrapped hands in her lap. She trained her eyes steadily on the opposite wall of the caravan, nearly obscured by the numerous rolls of colourful, silken fabric. The wagon rocked and bounced about the trail, and Leya felt the air grow warm, a stark contrast from the bitter Winter in Erkau.
The wagon stopped abruptly and Leya engaged herself so that she did not fall to her right and barrel into Ariella. The driver’s voice rose above the deafening silence, and gruff guard voices responded to her eagerly. There was little argument before the rumbling of gates moving encapsulated the party.
“We’re here,” Montgomery grumbled. He stuck his head out beyond the gently glittering flaps of fabric over the exit of the caravan.
“Charciennes,” Leya echoed. She could scarcely believe herself; it seemed only minutes ago that she had been wandering the outskirts of Vokoia in her escape from Erkau, a vagrant with no home and no evidence to begin her search for the assassin of her parents. Her hands began to tremble upon remembering the incredible burden she had put upon Ilse so selfishly. Leya pushed away thoughts of her sister getting murdered in the same way every ruler of her last name had before her.
“Yes,” Ariella nodded. She whipped her head around to the back of the caravan and nodded to Montgomery. The knight, clad in noisy sheets of armor, leapt out the back of the wagon and into the streets. Not long after, the caravan shuddered to a stop and Ariella beckoned Tzuriel to his feet with a gesture. They passed by and leapt from the back of the cart, and the wood shifted and groaned from the releasing of weight. Leya followed soon after.
The sun, although weak from Winter, bore down into the cobblestone street pulsing with a mass of people and swaying horse-drawn wagons. Leya is only made aware now that the night has passed and that morning now dawned upon Gaiea. Old houses, made from splintering wormwood, lined each side of the avenue and blocked the crowd from harsh winds rolling from the mountains in Erkau. Charciennes teemed with foreign stories, and each pliable face that passed by Leya and her companions burned bright with untold tales and history. The houses closest to her were prim and proper, but rooftops with gaping black holes in them stretched just beyond them, hiding behind the perfect front of the more updated abodes. The caravan, bouncing with rolls of silk, takes off down the street again, running past shouting merchants and leaving Leya, Ariella, Tzuriel, and Montgomery behind.
Leya’s trance is broken by Tzuriel’s hand on hers as she is tugged unceremoniously through the throngs of chattering early morning travelers. Ariella set up a breakneck pace, weaving through gaps in the crowd expertly and leaving her companions stumbling in her wake. Leya looked desperately to Tzuriel.
“Couldn’t we have just stayed in the caravan?” she asked him just as a man’s broad shoulder nearly hits her jaw.
“I think Ariella just wants you to experience the city,” Tzuriel told her with hardly a backwards glance, his hand still firmly lodged on her wrist. A man’s voice shouted over the bedlam, advertising freshly baked bread.
Leya looked on desperately as Tzuriel’s slim back was lost in front of the back of a hulking blacksmith and his hand was wrenched from her wrist. She heard him calling her name above the uproar of the crowd, but his face was gone and his presence intangible. Leya was tossed and shoved by the current of Charciennes’ market-goers and panic fluttered poignantly in her heart.
A group of gossiping women bumped into her sharply and an eddy of children knocked into her knees, sending her stumbling to the side of the mob. She braced herself on the edge of a wooden stand, and her cloak fluttered across it, where parts of it’s tattered remains caught on various protrusions there. Leya silently cursed the harpy who had torn through her favourite fennec-lined cloak as she began to silently untangle it from the shop-keep’s wares. Jewellery made of jade and angelstone glittered in the gaps of her dark cloak, twinkling in the weak sunlight.
“Ahem,” said a gruff voice. Leya glanced up sharply and into the face of a hard-skinned, light man with a sneer on his mouth. His fingers, nimble and calloused, dug into the wood of his wagon and he leaned in closer. Leya leaned back further in retaliation, although limited by the tangled remains of her cloak.
“I’m terribly sorry sir,” Leya blubbered, tugging at her cloak harder and leaning back on her heels. “I don’t mean any trouble, it’s just my first time in the city and I wasn’t prepared for the liveliness of the marketplace.”
“Hah,” the man breathed, puffing in mocking laughter. “If you really weren’t looking for trouble, you’d be gone by now.”
Leya glanced about herself, suddenly realising that a gap had formed in the teeming crowd to make room for the altercation. Townspeople looked on curiously, some whispering in the ears of their companions and others leaning forwards in preparation for a fight. Leya felt the blood rush to her face in an instant upon realising her audience. She turned back to the man, finally seeing the edges of her cloak begin to rip away from the cart’s jagged edges.
“Please sir,” she pleaded, tugging harder. “I’m just caught on your stand. Give me a second, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Likely story,” the man sneered, finally winding around his stand to arrive at the front and leer down at her. “How do I know you’re not just a distraction? Just getting me wound up for some bigger thievery?”
“I swear I would never—“
“Quiet!” The man roared, and Leya flinched and stumbled back, only now freeing herself from the stand with a satisfying rip of her cloak. “This jewellery is my life! It feeds my family, my children, it funds our lives, and I won’t have some pitiful street rat making a fool of it!”
Leya glanced down at her hands, balled up in her freshly torn cloak and white at the knuckles, and realised her prompt freedom. She stumbled back, tripping over her own feet, and bumped into a wall of people, all making a half-moon circle around her and the man. She looked pleadingly into their eyes, silently begging to be let out, but their attention was just over her shoulder. She spared a cautionary glance behind her.
Rough knuckles slammed heavily into her cheek and the ripped cloak fell haphazardly from the top of her head, letting blonde, cropped curls bounce from beneath. Leya recoiled from the punch and rubbed her hands at the place of impact. It stung and burned, searing hot agony fluttering through her head and cluttering her mind. She could hardly make up a new action before she felt hands clutch at the crutch between her shoulders and her arms and pull her to her feet. From beneath a swollen cheek and messy eyelashes, Leya saw the aggressive shopkeeper rub gently at his knuckles and shake them out.
“Hey!” called a voice above her, and Leya recognised it to be Tzuriel. She followed his ashen gray skin up to his face, where he glared down the shopkeeper.
“Real courageous, pal,” Tzuriel mocked her assailant. “Punching a harmless girl to defend your honor, real courageous.”
Tzuriel’s grip tightened on her shoulders and Leya leaned heavily against him. Her mind clouded with thick fog, obscuring every thought and making every goal she had upon coming into the city vanish in thin air. The shopkeeper merely paced, grinning in victory.
“Maybe you should have watched her then,” the shopkeeper sneered back, contempt and venom dripping from his words.
“I don’t need any keeper,” Leya slurred in response, just as Tzuriel began to drag her back through the crowd. “I could have taken you on.”
The shopkeeper opened his mouth to shout something back, but just as his lips formed words, the circle dispelled and he was lost in the crowd. Leya stumbled through the sea of passing faces once more, guided by Tzuriel through the bedlam before they abruptly turned into an alley. Tzuriel released her shoulder and rounded on her.
“Are you okay?” he demanded, searching her face for pain.
“Yeah,” Leya murmured back before she could even think about the question. She could still hear her heartbeat frantically beating in her ears, seeming even louder than the absent-minded chatter of the crowd beyond the alleyway.
“You don’t look okay,” Tzuriel retorted sharply, although his face quickly softened. “Your lip is bleeding you know. I can already see a bruise.”
Leya absentmindedly reached her hand up towards her lip and rubbed against it with her fingers. Sticky globs of crimson clung to the skin, gleaming in the dim half-light of the alleyway. She looked back up to Tzuriel, his ashen skin blending into the darkness and making him nigh invisible, even his pointed ears. She frowned deeply at him.
“I’m sorry,” she finally apologized , her stomach doing flips within herself. “It was dumb, I shouldn’t have gotten separated, I shouldn’t have provoked him. It was my fault.”
Tzuriel stared at her silently, and Leya’s mind raced, wondering what he could possibly be thinking. Relief flooded through her as she saw his mouth crinkle into a laugh.
“Seriously? You’re apologising for getting punched?” Tzuriel breathed between laughter.
Leya wrinkled her nose in vague annoyance, although she laughed with him. She gently pushed at his arm, remarkably skinny due to his elven heritage compared to her own chubby arms. “Hey, it’s just the polite thing to do!” she protested quietly.
“You certainly have a weird sense of good manners,” Tzuriel said finally, rubbing at the corners of his eyes to remove any tears remaining from his laughter. “But seriously, it’s no problem. I wish it didn’t happen, but some things are inevitable, I guess.”
Leya regarded him with a calculating glimmer in her eyes, and although she tried to smile, the soreness in her face prevented it. It seemed odd of him to say that, but Leya supposed she simply had not read him well.
“Very introspective,” she remarked, leaning back into the brick wall lining the grimy alleyway.
“I can be deep sometimes,” Tzuriel murmured, rubbing at the back of his neck, and Leya swore she saw pink tinge his pointed ears. “But, we should get you back to the castle. Lady Ivanna can patch you up.”
“Lady Ivanna?”
Tzuriel returned his gaze to Leya in order to explain, and he rose his hands in such a way that Leya sensed his moving palms could tell a story all in their own. “She’s going to be your mentor, the royal Diviner. Queen Èlodie uses her all the time to tell the future and advise her, but her head is not in the right place anymore, I don’t think.”
Leya’s face shifted and her stomach dropped heavily like a stone. “I don’t want to replace anybody like that,” she protested quietly.
“Well, you’re not!” Tzuriel reassured her, although the shift of his eyes made her think he wasn’t too sure about the arrangement himself. “At least, I don’t think so. Not until she dies, I should presume.”
Leya shuddered. The image of her parents lying dead in a shared casket flickered briefly in her mind; their faces had been peaceful but the effect on her life had been anything but. “That’s awful to think about,” she muttered.
“Then don’t think about it,” Tzuriel retorted, and he shrugged with a non-committal twinkle in his eyes. “But seriously, we should go, or Ariella will get mad at me and not let me have dinner.”
Finally convinced by this piece of evidence provided, Leya nodded gravely and motioned for Tzuriel to take the lead silently. She trailed after him through alleyway after alleyway blindly, their twin boots hitting the grimy cobblestone and splashing in puddles of unidentifiable liquid. Leya cradled her tattered black cloak in her hands as she walked, wordlessly wondering if Tzuriel could ever find the time to make her a new one.
Chapter 3
The Royal Palace in Charciennes, Vokoia was large, tall, and towering, a stone monolith among tiny buildings and dilapidated alleyways. There was a sharp pang in Leya’s heart as she stared at the battered stone bricks held together by mortar and paste, remembering only her own palace in Erkau and the many days she spent in the hallways. For a few fleeting seconds, she saw her parent’s kind, smiling faces in the frosted windows lining the sides of the palace, before they disappeared with a blink. It seemed many months ago that her parents were assassinated, when Leya had only just found them dismembered in a casket a few days ago.
I know Ilse will be a good Queen, Leya thought venomously. She was always the better child.
The pain, once small and hardly noticeable, grew and metastasized into a tumor within her heart as she, Tzuriel, Ariella, and Montgomery stride towards the gates of the palace. Despair settled heavily over Leya’s shoulders and sunk deep into the drab cobblestone staircase so that even the grandiose steps seemed dull and gray when she stepped over them. Although Leya wished to turn back and flee back into the familiar mountains, she wisely kept her gaze trained forwards. She knew her duty and she knew that she must find the assassin of her parents, lest her sister, Ilse, face the same gruesome fate.
Ariella looked to the guards with falcon-like eyes, contempt glittering in her gaze from above quirked half-moon glasses. Immediately, the two men grasped levers and pulled them down so that a wrought iron gate swung open with a prolonged whine. The two soldiers immediately straightened their posture as Ariella stepped by them with an air of murder following her. Leya fluttered in soon after, and her eyes locked on Tzuriel as he bounded past the gates with Montgomery close on his heels.
Tzuriel moved in an odd way, as if he were dancing to music that no one else could hear. His body was always fluid and his legs languid in nature, so that his body seemed to have the viscosity of a thick gel when poked. Leya quickly averted her eyes upon seeing the castle doors loom before her.
Silently, Leya rubbed her palm against the smooth wormwood and relished in the feeling of individual wood grains scrape against her fingertips. Elaborate embroidery made of pure gold was cool and hard under her touch, curling along the exterior of the massive doors and decorating them with a lavish flourish. They reminded her bitterly of home, with the unforgettable displays of wealth and affluence to remind all the common folk of their rigid place in society. Wonderstruck by the similarities of the two kingdoms, Ariella was forced to push the door open herself.
A gust of air was exhaled from the courtyard, now revealed and bustling under Leya’s searching gaze. She winced as aching pain shot through her face with every soft breeze, touching against the cut on her lip and weighing heavily upon the slowly forming bruises along her cheek. Ariella stepped into the courtyard with Montgomery close beside her and Tzuriel trailing after them.
The castle courtyard was large and filled to the brim with servants, gardeners, and cooks, all preparing for dinner and assuring that every flower was prim and proper. Dust gathered along the aged cobblestone walkways, and large brick flowerbeds took up most of the space. At the far end of the courtyard, Leya saw a massive stone staircase lead up to a landing, and further up to more elaborate wooden doors that led into the main hall of the castle. At the base of the staircase, a massive phoenix fountain was embedded into the stone. Leya easily recognised it as Corona, the only God of Vokoia’s religion, and also the God Leya had pledged herself to. Leya appraised it with searching eyes, noting the chips in the stone but silently complimenting the masterful handiwork of every individual feather and bead.
Tzuriel tugged insistently at Leya’s shredded coat and she stumbled after him, broken from her stupor. She fell into step beside him, and walked close behind Ariella and Montgomery. Ariella’s walking stick became subtle white noise in the roar of the courtyard.
“It can be overwhelming at first,” Tzuriel whispered to her below the bedlam in the courtyard, dodging the shoulder of a bustling maid as she brought clothes from one end of the castle to the other.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Leya responded quickly, truly meaning to say it was familiar and kind, but catching herself just before she could give herself away.
“Lots of commoners do,” Tzuriel waved his hand, and Leya bit her tongue to prevent herself from defending her hidden royal status. “But the wonder will fade away the longer you stay here.”
Leya nodded, but a deadly silence had fallen over her. She ran her hands through her messily cropped golden curls and trailed helplessly after Tzuriel, Ariella, and Montgomery as they led her through the chaos of the courtyard. With a few quick strides, the four had arrived at the base of the stairs and stood before the fountain depicting the phoenix god, Corona. Leya looked up to it reverently, relishing in the spray of fountain water against her face and the calming, almost melancholy sound of direct streams of water slapped against eachother. She ran her fingertips across the base of the fountain as she walked by, years of rough handling catching in the grooves of skin. Reverence flooded through her and she smiled secretly. She was sure to return later for her nightly prayers.
Her fingers left the fountain and balled up instead in the torn remnants of her fennec cloak, where vague tendrils of warmth curled about her. The stairs looked before Leya and the group of court members, seeming to be an insurmountable obstacle. Ariella, even with her knobby hands and rickety joints, began to scale the crumbling stone steps with only minimal help from her walking stick, and Montgomery and Tzuriel followed close behind her with little effort exerted. Leya gulped in cool Winter air and stepped onto the first step, then to the second. She ascended the staircase with slowly dwindling gusto, and by the time she had reached the landing where two opposite stairs met, she was huffing and puffing at the peak.
Ariella looked over her shoulder and fixed Leya with her deep brown eagle eyes, glittering with sprightly energy and liveliness despite her geriatric state. Miraculously, she had not tripped on her long white hair, even as it grazed the stone stair steps. She scoffed at Leya’s state. “Have you never climbed stairs before, girl?”
Montgomery chuckled beside her and his broad shoulders heaved with the effort. Tzuriel stifled his laugh in the crook of his arm and disguised it as a laugh.
Leya gripped the stone railing hard enough to make her knuckles white, bracing herself on the packed rock. “No, I’m just not used to really big stairs,” Leya breathed, curly blonde locks drifting in front of her face. “Are all staircases here like this?”
Tzuriel found it harder to stifle his laugh, although Leya could only tell he was chuckling from the controlled shake of his thin shoulders. Ariella’s laugh was louder and more vocalised, like nails grating against stone. Leya cringed at the sound.
“Yes, Vokoia is known for grandiose displays of wealth,” Ariella responded curtly and her white hair swung dangerously as she turned on her heel. “The bigger the staircase, the higher your status.”
Ariella, Montgomery, and Tzuriel began to tackle the final staircase leading up to the large door into the castle. Leya stood at the bottom, fingers poking through holes in her cloak as she titled her head to take in every stair step with her wide blue eyes. The stone door, although drab and unexciting, held a certain air of great importance and change in her life. Slowly, Leya ascended the staircase to stand at the sides of her companions and run her hands, smooth from an easy life, across the surface of the door. With little prompting or force, the door swung open and Leya was ushered inside with a quick push to her back from Ariella.
The opening hallway, long and narrow, stretched out in front of them with red velvet rugs lining the pristine floor tiles. At the very end of the hallway, another door, wooden in nature, sat looking before them, and two more hallways just to the right. A great, exuberant diamond chandelier hung far above their heads, swaying ominously and creaking with every scuffle of their feet. It was gaudy, sparkly, and eye-catching, but beautiful nonetheless and certainly deserving of praise and recognition. The walls and their supports were lined with great paintings and murals of all kinds, rah and every one depicting an animal; a wary white rabbit, an excitable brown frog, a wise, watchful hawk, and a fierce red wolf. Above the door on the opposite side of the hallway, a final painting sat, even more so elaborate than the former artworks. It depicted a stone-cold, grizzled blue cat with starlight and stardust glittering upon her whiskers and flicking across the ground and over her paws. Her eyes, blue as the clear sky on a Summer day, glittered curiously and watched over the entrance hall with rigid reform.
Leya grew closer to it by only a few steps. “What a lovely painting,” Leya murmured reverently, almost tempted to run to the painting and run her fingertips over every brushstroke.
Tzuriel scoffed in front of her her but remained silent. With one tap of her wormwood walking stick on the floor, Ariella swiftly turned and careened down the corridor to the left with Montgomery hot on her heels. Even despite her rickety joints and wrinkled face, she moved with all the bright energy of a young child. Tzuriel took off after them, and upon realising she was being left behind, Leya’s legs kicked into gear and she bolted off after them.
Ariella’s pace was breakneck and relentless, with long strides and quick movements. Doors and windows passed by them wildly, set into pristine stone brick, with blurs of black bloodwood and weeping birch passing by in the mosaic windowpanes. Delectable, savory scents drifted past Leya with every quick step, temptation beginning to fog her mind with every subsequent leap into the lion’s den. The overwhelming silence of the grand hallway was broken by the sound of Ariella’s stick against hard floor and the tip-tap of shoes padding against stone. Soon, Leya’s breath, growing hard, joined the myriad of noise as the severe walking caught up to her. Leya silently cursed her early decisions to stay away from physical training in her childhood, even when the lessons had been prompted by her mother and father when they decided to train her to rule the kingdom once they died.
Ariella abruptly paused before another normal, however lonely door, nearly causing both Montgomery and Tzuriel to slam into her sprightly body. Leya skidded to a stop beside her, soon enough to see her finger extend to point at the door, decorated with golden hinges and swirling designs.
“That is Lady Ivanna’s chambers, who you will be training under,” Ariella said. “She is the grand diviner, and the advisor to the Queen. She will instruct you further.”
Leya nodded and took a step forwards, before glancing back. “Where will you be going?”
Ariella laughed heartily, her skin contorting to fall across her mocking smile in waves. “What do you think I am, your overseer?” Ariella croaked. “I have work to do, Tzuriel too. Montgomery will simply go back to the barracks.”
“Oh,” Leya murmured, trailing off with a glance from side to side. Silently, she turned around.
“Wait!” Tzuriel called after her, prompting Leya to turn around on the fulcrum of her heels. Tzuriel was standing now, with his hands outstretched and ashen fingers wiggling. “I can repair your cloak if you want. Good cloaks shouldn’t go to waste.”
Leya hesitated briefly, before the death hold on her cloak was released and she plopped it into Tzuriel’s waiting hands. He flashed a smile, brought the ripped cloak closer to his chest and stepped back into formation behind Ariella and Montgomery. Leya watched him fade into the ranks and shifted her eyes to Ariella’s geriatric face. She smiled coldly and waved her hand. With a quick turn, she was careening further down the hall once more with Montgomery at her side and Tzuriel bustling after them. Leya watched their backs disappear around a corner and turned her eyes in front of her. With a hand against her chest, she let out a breath she wasn’t aware she had been holding.
Leya strode forwards to stand at the windowsill settled into the crumbling stone bricks, damaged from age, overuse, and the passing of generations. Leya looked out across the courtyard; bloodwoods, weeping birch, and common yew stood with skeletal branches at the edges of the grand garden, keeping watch over the frazzled castle servants and the distracted gardeners. A great melancholy settled deep in her chest, crowding the gargantuan cavity that her escape from Erkau had left. Once upon a time, her mother and father had held a place there, in that spot in her heart, but such love faded and disappeared when she saw their peaceful faces, bloodied and cannibalized, laid into the ground. Love for her sister, Princess Ilse, has begun to fade as well, as she forgot her face and the only thing she could remember was her golden hair spun from the wings of eagles. The courtyard yawned before the window and the only connection she could make was the parallel to her own garden in the royal palace at Zierenland, where she spent most of her time admiring the Angel’s Breath and Bashful Azealias.
Leya turned away from the window and towards the door she had been directed to. Her shoulders felt cold without her familiar fennec cloak, and although she was still dressed in a long-sleeved white tunic and dark pants, a chill still passed up her back. She gulped in a breath of musty castle air, stepped forward with leather boots clicking against stone brick, and rapped her gloved knuckles against the elaborate wood and gold designs. The knock echoed hollow in the long stone corridor.
Moments, feeling like hours, passed by, before the door creaked open and a woman stood in the entrance. Her skin was dark and her hair long and curly, with many ringlets and tresses falling like a waterfall down her back. Her hair, unruly and rebellious, was just barely held back with a well-made headband decorated with psychedelic, colourful swirls, a mark of Nekkhite heritage. Her eyes were large and glittering with curiosity, and filled with the green of tree leaves. A white tunic was draped over her shoulders, and many elegant folds fell over her body all the way down to the floor. The woman gave a kind, jovial smile, and Leya felt compelled to return the gentle quirk of lips.
“Hello,” the woman said. “Are you okay? Your face is swelling and your lip is cut.”
Leya winced at the reminder and moved her fingertips to ghost across the sore part of her cheekbone and the cavern of her eye. “Yes,” Leya reassured her. “I got punched out on the streets. I’m actually here as an apprentice for you. Are you Lady Ivanna?”
Lady Ivanna nodded with a kind smile and stepped back from the mouth of the door, allowing space for Leya to enter. “Come in then, I’ll get you fixed up.”
Leya nodded her thanks and stepped forward, her boots connecting with old, creaking wooden floor panels. The room was small, although lavish, and was flooded with weak natural light from open windows to the right of Leya. Cold winter wind caressed her and nipped at her face as she stepped fully into Ivanna’s chambers. A large bed’s headboard was fit snugly against a stone brick and wood wall, and lavish red curtains hung from a sinuous golden frame. They ran from the top of the frame like a river of scarlet blood, trickling and plummeting to nearly reach the floor but not quite, in an eternal reach for solid ground. To the left of Leya and closer to her in distance, a plaintive, weakly flickering fire sat well within its boundaries. Embers licked at the top of a singed stone fireplace, and tepid heat rolled from the hearth in waves to caress the unfortunately wooden desk close to it. Although Ivanna seemed to be tidy, her desk was cluttered and messy; medical documents made of papyrus and empty inkwells were scattered haphazardly across the surface of her workspace, and they seemed to have been lying there for quite some time. Empty porcelain teacups with small victuals of leaves remaining at the bottom made up the majority of the clutter, and beneath those, trusty, well-loved cards depicting animals and scenes of nature. Further into the room, an unassuming telescope held its glass eye out into the deep, unforgiving wilderness beyond the palace. It loomed long into the skeletal weeping birch, a signature tree of Vokoia.
Aside from such messiness, Ivanna’s chambers were bare and strikingly boring and ordinary. Although she did have a stove and a broad collection of brass tea kettles, very little indicated any other interests, hobbies, or obsessions. No paintings, no books, no personal effects; Ivanna merely seemed to be living up to her stated role within Vokoia’s royal palace and doing little else. Where this did strike Leya as odd, Ivanna’s kind, smiling face with deep dimples and crinkles in the corner of her eyes erased most of the doubts still lingering in the back of her mind.
“I’ll get some ice,” Ivanna assured Leya. “So we can patch you up.”
Ivanna disappeared into a back room behind a large wooden door, and Leya was left alone in the great silence of her private quarters. The air was filled with the crackling of the fire to the left of Leya, and the deep cold that infringed on the security of the royal palace was chased away by the hearth. With a great start, Leya realized that aside from the rickety chair sitting beside Ivanna’s messy desk, there was no place to settle down. The room was painfully bare and plain, and in the process of wondering why, Ivanna had returned to her presence with cloth-wrapped ice in hand. She has deftly tied stark white scraps of linen about a clump of snow and ice, and she now strode powerfully across the room to reach Leya and reach her hand up.
“You can ice your bruise, now,” Ivanna told Leya, and the ice pack changed hands. “So that it has a chance of looking less unsightly tomorrow morning.”
It was clear by the sparkle in Ivanna’s eyes that the sentence was meant to have been a joke, but the space afterwards was filled with silence. With a swift nod of thanks, Leya rose the wrapped ice to the cavern of her eye and held it upon the aching. Sweet relief rode across her face in gentle waves, and Leya basked in the immediate comfort the treatment had offered her. The smell of lavender that accompanied the linen slowly began to wash away all traces of adrenaline still left from her time on the streets of Vokoia. As the waters whisked away the restless energy, exhaustion soon settled deep in her bones and tied rocks about her ankles. Leya’s often upright and proper posture was reduced to a fatigued slouch.
“You’ve been through a lot today,” Ivanna mused, leaving Leya’s side and traipsing over to her well-worn desk. “It sounds to have been an eventful afternoon.”
Leya nodded in agreeance, and shifted the cold touch of the ice to settle more comfortable against the soft tissue of her eye. “That is an understatement,” she uttered in response, as she too slowly gravitated towards the delightful chaos of Ivanna’s workspace. The desk, made of fine birch, was broken down from the ages and had many scratches and nicks along it’s recently polished surface. As Leya ran her fingertips along the smooth, shiny surface that was not covered by scattered papers and inkwells, she felt history and long lost memories teeming just below the grain.
A teacup, once forgotten, was retrieved safely in Ivanna’s dark, soft fingers. She took a contemplative sip from it, and quickly called upon the services of a nearby sugar-pot to make the brew more bearable. With a small, delicate spoon of fine handiwork, she stirred in a precise amount and smiled with great satisfaction upon seeing the sugar mix well with the dark depths of the slowly cooling tea. Leya watched her quirky actions with unmistakable curiosity, finding the woman odd and strange in behaviour, but much too charming to turn away from.
“Can you read cards?” Ivanna asked suddenly, with that signature bird-like trill to her voice. “Tarot cards specifically. I use them often in my readings.”
Leya shuffled her feet along the pristine wood floor and took up a place just to the right of Ivanna’s workspace. With one grand motion, she cleared away clutter on her desk and laid the face-down deck of tarot cards in front of Leya. Leya shook her head. “I am used to more traditional methods,” Leya responded, although her eyes, teeming with oceanic pulses, wandered to rake across the ornate designs on the back of the cards.
Ivanna laughed, and while Leya might have thought of such a trill to be in cruel mockery, she instead found the giggle to be personable and indulging. Ivanna pointed a long, crow-like finger at the cards and then steeped it below her chin. “Pick three,” Ivanna purred, her dark eyes rolling to bob at where the deck was spread.
With little forethought, Leya mindlessly grabbed three cards from the deck, all of them near the middle of the spread. With a look of pleasant, but taciturn focus, Ivanna swiped the cards from Leya’s hands and laid them facedown just below the fully spread deck. Leya’s destiny spread out before her. Her present, past, and future became an endless river with ferocious riptides and a relentless current. Leya rapped her thumb against her middle finger just below the well-worn desk.
Ivanna turned over one card, and the piercing eyes of death stared directly into Leya. A white horse with ghastly sunken eyes was depicted on the overturned face of the card, and with it came the skeleton pointing in a direction Leya could not see. The atmosphere, once calm and relaxed, was dampened by a tidal pool of vicious energy.
“Wait,” Ivanna murmured, palming the card of Death. “There’s something wrong. I feel it.”
“What do you mean?” Leya blurted out, bracing her hands against the edges of the desk and leaning far over to peer desperately at the single tarot card. Ivanna tipped it from her prying eyes, fumbling for an answer she could not give.
“I don’t know,” Ivanna stammered, stumbling from her chair and tripping across the room to reach her door. “There’s just something wrong.”
“Wait,” Leya called after her, whipping around to see Ivanna fumble with the doorknob and fling the heavy door open to slam against her wall. “Lady Ivanna, please, I don’t understand!”
Ivanna’s silence was deafening, and Leya’s very lurched up into her throat as Ivanna disappeared in the ajar doorway. There was a moment of poignant hesitation before Leya kicked up her feet and raced after her new mentor. Leya’s boning blonde hair raced to catch up with her as she left the curling warmth of Ivanna’s room and tumbled into the deathly cold of the hallways.
Leya followed the sound of Ivanna’s frantic footsteps echoing against the clean marble floors of the palace. Her chest stuttered with every long gulp of breath. Her lips were dry and chapped from the chase. Door after door blurred together into one long color as she raced down the hallway and skidded into the main chamber she had entered from. Leya came to a stuttering stop at Lady Ivanna’s side, who watched the main, massive, double doors with morbid curiosity.
They slammed open, and behind their swinging gait, a squirrely boy with raven black hair and young, youthful eyes stumbled in. His eyes, black enough to the point where Leya could not even see the pupil, darted back and forth, back and forth, until they careened to land on Lady Ivanna.
“Get help,” he called out to her desperately. “Prince Lionel has just been murdered.”
Chapter 4
Beside Leya, all breath left Ivanna’s lungs and mingled with the stale, musty air of the grand foyer. The animalistic paintings lining the hall, once so grand, seemed bleak and dark. Electricity stumbled about the two of them, and the hair on the nape of Leya’s neck rose on its own.
The squirrely boy with hair as black as downy crow feathers gasped and heaved, taking in gulps of breath with a wide mouth. His shoulder, bare from a tear in his tunic, glistened, wet with hot, pulsing blood. “We were patrolling the coast,” he went on shakily. “And we met five merpeople on the beach.”
“Merpeople?” Ivanna exhaled, and Leya placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Why, Xavier? Why have they tormented us for so long?”
Leya turned her attention back to Xavier.
“Prince Lionel said that the coast belonged to Vokoia, and that the next merperson he saw on the beach again would be killed,” Xavier breathed. “But the merpeople were adamant. They said that Prince Lionel had no jurisdiction over them,” Xavier croaked, and paused to catch his breath. He clutched his wounded shoulder with a sharp inhale, and globs of sticky, seeping scarlet clung to his palms.
“So they attacked,” Xavier continued. “Some soldiers were too close to the shore and got dragged in, but others got hit by stray arrows. And Lionel… Lionel…” Xavier trailed off, but was unable to continue his sentence. The thick globs of saccharine blood danced in his eyes and stained the rough skin of his hands. He lurched to the side and braced himself on a long golden bannister. The gold was stained with an infernal red.
The red, deep and crimson, burned a dark hole through Leya’s heart. Her eyebrows knitted as she watched Xavier writhe against the bannister in pain. Although Leya wished to rush forwards and support him against her shoulders, her feet were stuck to the lavish rug below her. Ivanna rushed forwards instead.
“We must get him to the nurses,” Ivanna begged Leya, pulling Xavier’s injured arm around her shoulder. “Please help me.”
Leya struggled to nod, her neck weighed down by long figurative boulders attached to chains. Although she lurched forward in an attempt to help, the gaudy door to her right slammed open. Tzuriel’s buoyant face appeared in the opening, and he immediately rushed to Xavier’s side, his shiny black hair bobbing with the movement. The elf crouched to lift Xavier’s other arm up onto his shoulder. In the door where Tzuriel had come from, Leya also saw Ariella lumbering to the gaping doorway with many palace laborers forming a pool around her. Tzuriel, Ivanna, and Xavier sprinted out the opposite door.
The relative silence of the opening chamber was interrupted by the hefty wooden doors leading out into the public gardens being opened once more. A gust of frigid Winter wind followed the entrance of another stranger. He was large and gruff with shoulders wide enough to house the feet of giants, and snow-frosted iron armor lying heftily across his chest. His hair, deep brown like a chestnut, looked to have been cut in a neat, military-grade shave, but had now grown out beyond its constraints and crawled across his head haphazardly. Where he might have once been clean-shaven, his chin and jaws were covered in grizzly brown hairs tinged with grey. A body rendered unidentifiable by patches of deep crimson laid within the knight’s arms. The knight’s face, one with a prominent nose and deeply set eyes, was not only marred by splashes of infernal red, but also a long, diagonal scar cutting deep into his nose. A potent gasp is disbelief rose from the mouths of every palace laborer who had arrived to observe the commotion.
Leya watched as globs of thick, sticky blood fell from the cold hand of the corpse, making long rivulets from the deep, bubbling slash in his chest. A sense of dread fell over her like a cold wave as she recalled what Xavier had said.
“Prince… Lionel?” Leya whispered.
“Yes,” answered the knight, his voice hoarse. “He died while we were travelling back here. I killed the merman who slaughtered Prince Lionel.”
Leya’s eyes trailed to the sword fastened tightly in the knight’s scabbard, and then to the patches of wet, sticky blood soaking into his underclothes. Leya felt her stomach toss and turn within her stomach as if a child unable to sleep.
Stop being a coward, she told herself. It’s just some blood… Just a corpse…
“Sir Julien,” Ariella called to him in a shaky, rough voice. “You know Queen Élodie is not in a good headspace right now. This will not be good news.”
Sir Julien shifted his weight in a way that made Leya think that before such a tragedy, he had been trenchant in his daily life and attacked all given tasks with a fire in his belly. However, Leya could see that life had abraded this fire in the deep lines in his face, and rubbed away all pretense to reveal poignant hubris just below. He puffed his chest out as laborers grew closer in a pitiful attempt to inject life back into Prince Lionel’s cold arms. Cold blood clung to their fingertips as they mourned the fallen Prince.
“Queen Élodie can handle it,” Sir Julien responded. Leya swayed uncomfortably as the air shifted.
Ariella lurched forwards and gripped her walking stick so tight that her knobby knuckles began to turn white. “Alright everyone, you’ve had your moments,” she grumbled and dismissed the gathered palace laborers with a wave of her wrinkled hand. “We must deliver a message.”
“What shall we do with the body?” asked a red-haired elf girl from the throng of gathered laborers.
“Place Prince Lionel in the Palace Infirmary for embalming. Queen Élodie will visit soon,” Ariella snapped, her keen, bird-like eyes crushed under the weight of her furrowed eyebrows. “Sir Julien, come with me. We will inform the Queen.”
The body of Prince Lionel passed from Sir Julien’s rough hands to the laborer’s many palms. Some of their eyes were glassy and others wept openly with tears brushing the cold face of the deceased. A trail of blood, so red that it was almost ebony, made a path out of the left doorway as the laborers and Prince Lionel exited the grand foyer.
“Come, Sir Julien,” Ariella croaked, and Leya shivered as she felt Ariella’s keen eyes on her back. “And you, Leya, may return to the room Lady Ivanna has designated for you.”
Leya’s eyes did not move from the trail of blood but she nodded anyways. Ariella let out a long sigh. Two sets of footsteps left the grand foyer and Leya was left alone. A potent silence filled the large room, which seemed odd considering the bedlam that had filled the empty space before. Leya turned on her heels to stare beyond the massive staircase in the foyer and up at the landing.
The cobalt cat painting with piercing eyes stared back at her. Leya withered under the sight.
I’m sorry Ariella, Leya thought to herself as she turned and began to follow of the spots of blood on carpet and marble. I can’t go back to the room with all this happening.
—-
The palace infirmary in Charciennes was a pristine room located on the far west wing and overlooking the royal gardens at the front of the palace. Day by day, old and young, women and elves alike milled around in clean white cowls and deep black tunics. Glittering white light filtered in from delicate glass panes on the south and west side of the room. With every separate patient that came through the palace’s personal infirmary, the nursemaids stripped the used bed of its wrinkled white sheets and replaced them with increasingly well-worn linen. Now, Leya could only see six beds along the walls, with only two being occupied. The room reeked heavily of death, and the air was stale and humid, as if no one had stepped into the confines of the infirmary in many years and they were now encroaching on forbidden territory. Nursemaids mumbled to eachother in low voices and discussed treatments for the two patients occupying the room.
Xavier slept fitfully in the closest bed, his shoulder wrapped tight in blood-stained bandages and his eyes fluttering with every night tremor. Leya’s eyes caved under the weight of her eyebrows.
“Is he going to be all right?” Leya wondered habitually, raising her eyes to survey the plethora of bumbling nurses. One particularly old woman with long creases in her skin looked up and nodded vigorously.
“Just a gash, not too deep,” responded the nurse, running her hands along a wooden cabinet and flinging it open to retrieve medical supplies. “He’ll be back into knight training in no time.”
Leya let out a breath she was unaware she had been holding. Looking upon the calm face of Xavier, so different from the horrified expression nodded into his face earlier, Leya couldn’t help but be reminded of the serenity in Princess Ilse’s sleeping face. A sharp pant of homesickness shot through Leya’s heart as she recalled the many nights Princess Ilse and her had spent together, before the evil machinations of the world had taken their parents from them. Leya felt her throat tighten and she forced her head away from Xavier’s face.
On the other side of the room, an eddy of nurses surrounded a bed like a tidepool. They moved as one singular unit, shifting and swirling around the bedside of a long gone patient with a shuffle of feet against pristine marble. Lady Ivanna stood in the center of the nurses, her long white dress stained red in some places. Stark crimson stuck out like a sore thumb in a sea of ivory. Leya felt wrong, seeing something once as pure white as freshly-fallen snow reduced to bloodshed.
“Lady Ivanna,” Leya murmured. She lurched towards the group of nurses, and they separated gingerly to allow her to pass.
Lady Ivanna turned to spot Leya and she smiled, but Leya could see the smile was taut and straining against the woman’s terse sorrow. “Hello Leya,” Lady Ivanna breathed. “I’m sorry you had to see this on your first day in the palace. Fate is a cruel mistress, is she not?”
Leya nodded, more out of habit than agreeance. Her eyes slowly fell upon the corpse laying in the bed.
Perhaps in a different timeline, Prince Lionel would have been a perfect king. His face was symmetrical and angular, fair and soft with eyes that might have once been kind and easy-going. However, Leya could see that strife was no stranger to him and hardships had followed him even to death. Where Leya had seen her parent’s as calm and collected while in their coffins, she could only see the weight of the world resting heavily upon Prince Lionel’s features. His lips were parted slightly, as if he wished to tell her something. Leya felt inclined to lean closer in hopes to hear some unimaginable truth of the universe.
“He had been quite handsome,” Lady Ivanna commented. “Queen Élodie had many suitors lined up for him. Women and men alike scrambled for a chance to be in the same room as him.”
“Lady Ivanna,” Leya murmured, and paled as she felt Lady Ivanna’s gaze fall upon her. “Do you think that the future is decided for people when they are born? Do you think fate is always set in stone?”
Lady Ivanna paused for a moment and thought about her answer. Leya desperately wished Ivanna could put her mind at ease about Princess Ilse’s safety.
“Well,” Lady Ivanna began carefully. “Sometimes it is, but the best thing about being intelligent beings is that we are not powerless to change fate. We always have the choice to choose a new, unpredictable path.”
“Do you think that someone could have changed my pa—“ Leya paused quickly upon realising her train of thought and redirected her words with a shake of her hands. “Prince Lionel’s fate?”
Lady Ivanna nodded sagely, a sense of deep grief falling across her dark features. “I’m sure there was a way.”
The doors to the infirmary slammed open and collided with the stone brick wall it was hinged to. The nurses scattered like bees from a hive and immediately went about making themselves seem busy with writing down records and restoring bits and pieces of plants and herbs. Lady Ivanna’s features became a glower. Steadying herself, Leya turned from her spot at Prince Lionel’s bedside to gaze upon the doorway.
A tall woman stood there, weighed down by skirt after skirt after skirt and many beads in her high, black hair. Her eyes were narrow and her lips thin, but her skin clear and her facial structure plump. Leya could just barely make out spots of gray infecting her hairline and disrupting her sleek ebony tresses. She wore a gothic, gray gown, elaborately decorated with black ribbons, embroidery, and lace, and supplemented with faux pink roses lining each side of her body. In the depths of her hair, piled high upon her head and masterfully styled, Leya now saw a jewel-encrusted crown. All the breath left Leya’s lungs.
Leya immediately dropped into a painfully low curtsy that jolted her elbow against the edge of Prince Lionel’s bed. Lady Ivanna curtsied as well, her long, curly hair falling across her shoulders. All the nurses in the infirmary dropped into a low curtsy immediately, and their heavy breaths began to fill the room. “Your Highness,” Lady Ivanna murmured.
Queen Élodie, Leya realized in the silence of her own mind.
Queen Élodie ignored their supplication and crossed from the doorway to Prince Lionel’s bedside. Leya felt Queen Élodie’s presence grow near and leapt out of harm’s way, now standing side-by-side with Lady Ivanna. The only sound now was the heavy breathing of the infirmary’s inhabitants and Queen Élodie’s staccato steps in pointed leather shoes. Everyone in the infirmary straightened as the Queen passed, like a harbinger of death.
“My son,” Queen Élodie murmured. “My son, why is he here? Why are his eyes closed?”
Queen Élodie’s voice seemed calm, but teeming just below the surface, Leya heard something breaking. It seemed as if she was trying to cover a broken window pane with bits and scraps of well-worn cloth. Leya likened the analogy to the substantial grief she had to tuck away during her parent’s funeral and she felt her throat tighten habitually.
“Your Highness,” Lady Ivanna began, a ginger, soft tone to her voice. “I presume you have already face the news from Sir Julien and Lady Ariella.”
“They have told me,” Queen Élodie responded, and her face began to contort, her frown growing too big for her face. “But it seems hard to comprehend.”
Leya watched as Queen Élodie’s perfectly constructed facade began to crack and then shatter completely. Beneath the thin glass walls surrounding her heart, Queen Élodie now began to grieve openly. Whimpers became sobs and tears mixed with dried blood seeping into pure white sheets. Queen Élodie bowed her head and rested her hand upon Prince Lionel’s cheek, where splatters of red had yet to be washed away. The infirmary has grown silent, except for Queen Élodie’s gut-wrenching weeping. Leya tore her eyes away and stared at the floor, running her gaze along the gentle swirls of the marble floor.
A gentle hand touched Leya’s back and she turned to face Lady Ivanna. Lady Ivanna smiled, but Leya could see it was perfunctory, a habit that Lady Ivanna could not shake. Lady Ivanna tipped her head and bobbed it towards the door, hanging ajar. Leya jolted into action and began to stride towards the door with Lady Ivanna close behind. Queen Élodie’s sobs grew quieter and quieter, until Leya and Lady Ivanna had finally reached the doorway and had shut the Infirmary out of their lives. The heavy wood door came to a close behind them, and the fresh Winter air faced them from open windows on the adjacent wall.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Leya,” Lady Ivanna apologised, her tone quiet and her eyes dull and haunted. Leya’s brows knit as she looked at Lady Ivanna’s face.
“It’s okay,” Leya reassured her. “I think I’m used to it by now.”
Lady Ivanna barely even spared her a strange look before she turned and began to lumber down the hallway with heavy steps and a dampened spirit. “Then, if you don’t mind, I will be retiring to my room for the night. Your room is right next to mine, to the right, so if your cheek is bothering you, you can just knock on my door.”
The pain of the developing bruise on the side of Leya’s face returned with a vengeance. Leya hissed softly as the soreness permeated her head now that the adrenaline of the moment was wearing down and her hands had stopped shaking.
As the pain began to recede into a dull ache, Leya glances up and caught Lady Ivanna’s back just before she was to round a corner at the end of the walkway. “Wait!” Leya cried out. Lady Ivanna paused and framed her neck to look over her shoulder.
Leya paused. She had to think of something to say.
I might as well try to figure out who is killing off my family, she mused.
“Does the palace have a royal library?” Leya asked, suddenly bashful. “I’m trying to figure something out.”
Lady Ivanna tipped her neck to the side and Leya was half convinced she would refuse. However, Lady Ivanna only let out a sigh and nodded, waving her hand hurriedly. “Yes,” Lady Ivanna responded, her voice weighed down by boulder after boulder of baggage. “Come with me.”
Leya’s eyes lit up, and she paused, unsure if she had heard Lady Ivanna correctly. She took a few seconds to process the affirmation before the stupor lifted and Leya bounded frantically to reach Lady Ivanna’s side. There, the two have each other terse smiles and walked the palace hallways in silence, neither one sure of what to say to each other. They supposed there was nothing to say, for it seemed that they had already exhausted all conversation topics even despite knowing eachother for only an hour. The silence stretched on between them, until they said quick goodbyes at the grandiose entrance to the Palace’s Royal Library.
Erkau is in mourning. The regal King and Queen were just assassinated in their very bedchambers, and with their death also comes the death of hope in a struggling nation. Princess Loreley is next in line for the throne, and after her, Princess Ilse, but Loreley knows that this assassination was not an isolated event. Someone had been assassinating every Erkau monarch, and Lorelay did not want to be the next victim in a long strain of calculated regicide.
Faced with the entire nation of Erkau on her back and shocked and scared by this revelation, Princess Loreley leaves the future of her nation in the hands of her younger sister, Ilse. Loreley cuts her hair, burns her gowns, and disappears into the deep night under the glittering light of a half moon.
PROLOGUE
A half moon shone over the rugged stone bricks of the Royal Palace in Zierenland, Erkau. Below the seat of the nobility, the people of Erkau laid their heads to rest on soft feather pillows and dried their eyes. The gravestones of King Germut and Queen Bruna burned heavy holes in their dreams. The mountains surrounding Zierenland bowed their heads and the lonely wind keened mournfully as it brushed through the windows of the palace.
The door croaked as it was pushed open, and a woman with cropped brown hair peered through the slit she had procured. Her left eye, rendered dark pools of ink from the night, were encircled with glowing markings, imitating fire. The elven servant stepped further into the room, and her palm opened. Flickering flames sprouted up from the creases in the pale skin of her right hand and washed the skin on her pointy ears a muted orange.
A warm glow emanated from her as she stepped forward and peered about the room. “Princess Loreley,” cooed the servant into the silence. The wind beat against the open windowpanes in the far north corner of the room and ruffled the long, satin drapes of the large bed. The telescope had disappeared from its place in the ribbons of pale moonlight near the outside world.
“Princess Loreley,” tried the elven servant once more, and she moved the palm of her hand to illuminate the lavish bedside. “Princess Loreley, Princess Ilse has already woken up. It is time for you to get ready for the coronation.”
The room, so massive and absurd, was filled with crushing silence once more. The wind howled louder. The servant narrowed her eyes and reached her unoccupied hand forwards to press against a suspicious lump of bedding, only to find it empty beneath her touch. A deep frown made lines appear against her mouth and she turned away from the bedside to scan her eyes across the vast expanse of a bedchamber. She pursed her lips upon spotting the vanity.
The servant strode forwards and placed her left hand over the lacquered bloodwood vanity, and her fingertips dipped into scratches from years of use. With a small flourish, she drew up a small piece of hastily torn parchment with ink blots scattered all across it’s coarse surface, which rested easily on the surface of the vanity. A solemn air tugged at her shoulders upon bringing to closer to the flame and roving her eyes across the fluttering cursive.
“Dear Miriam, I apologize for my actions. You have been a mother to me when my mother was not, and I appreciate it all. The palace will not treat you or other elves well in my absence, and I sincerely hope that your gods may watch over you without my presence.
Please, tell my sister that her time has come and that she must become Queen instead. I cannot become Queen knowing that our family has a history of gruesome assassinations, and I regret leaving my own sister to the dogs. Please, keep Ilse safe. Please.
I have gone to find who killed our parents. Miriam, do not look for me. That is the last order I will ever give you. Thank you.
May Corona light Erkau’s path.”
Please, tell my sister that her time has come and that she must become Queen instead. I cannot become Queen knowing that our family has a history of gruesome assassinations, and I regret leaving my own sister to the dogs. Please, keep Ilse safe. Please.
I have gone to find who killed our parents. Miriam, do not look for me. That is the last order I will ever give you. Thank you.
May Corona light Erkau’s path.”
Miriam, with a spluttering cough, stumbled back and let her thin fingertips dig deep into the paper. She gripped with such ferocity that her knuckles turned white and the controlled flame in her right hand nearly rose to the point of overtaking her entire body. Miriam immediately closed her hand over the flame to extinguish it and turned away from the vanity. Her slippers slapping against the smooth wood floors broke the silence as she ran from Princess Loreley’s bedroom.
CHAPTER 1
The thick, firm boughs of the bloodwoods blocked any faint moonlight from reaching the profuse undergrowth underfoot. Far behind Loreley, towering and ubiquitous stone barriers separated the rest of Gaiea from the royal city, Zierenland, and further put a border between Loreley and her old home. Her hair, once long and like gold spun from a spinster’s old, cracking wheel, was now cropped to her neck and hidden beneath a soft, untorn cloak. Her eyes shifted from side to side, roving across the endless white expanse. Snow crunched beneath her feet with every laborious step. Lorelay peered at a small trail marker, dusted with white, as it informed her of her exit of Erkau. Loreley let out a laborious sigh and pressed onwards.
Her stomach growled, and the musty aroma of leaf litter and dead foliage and bloodwoods filled her nose. Loreley pulled the cloak taut over her shoulders as it began to slip from her mantle and she shivered, although she never cautioned a glance backwards. Her left hand held the cloak in a firm ball at her chest, while her other gloved hand ran over and over again the inscribed words on her dagger’s hilt. Her eyes watched the snow intently, only until she spotted the flash of movement in the deep winter night.
She glanced up. Loreley looked closely at the fields of blanketed white, and her eyes widened as she saw two quivering ears break away from the endless color. A snow hare quivered it’s nose and flicked it’s whiskers about as it searched among the roots of an aspen. Loreley licked her lips, dry from the howling winter wind, and stilled her movement.
Loreley lowered herself into a crouch and unsheathed her dagger from her belt. The hare nibbled at dry bark in the darkness only a few paces from her. Loreley sucked in a shaky breath and held the air in her lungs, silent as the tall mountain range behind her. She rocked from side to side briefly.
A bloodwood branch, sanguine in color, crackled and fell to the forest floor, and the snow hare startled and darted from the roots of the aspen. Loreley cursed beneath her breath and let her shoulders sag, the poised rigidity of her body melting away. Her stomach growled again, even louder this time.
How could I have forgotten to bring food? Loreley grumbled silently, desperately watching the thicket of brambles in which the snow hare had retreated. Just beyond that, a deep red plumage of feathers trailed among the brittle ferns ahead, lost in tangles of underbrush and snow-dusted thistles. Loreley narrowed her eyes and watched as it shifted and bobbed among the dead foliage, her lost catch forgotten. Slowly, she prowled forwards, legs lifting high to wade through the thick snowfall but eyes wide and alert to watch the feathers. Her left thumb ran across the hilt of her dagger once more. There was a faint rustling behind her, and a fast approaching beat of wings made Loreley realise the ploy.
“Harpies!” Loreley breathed, and an animalistic woman with deep brown feathers and hawk legs making up her lower half shot from the underbrush. She beat her large wings and barrelled into Loreley’s side, sending her sprawling into the snow and nettles lining the sides of the trail. The woman’s deep yellow eyes shone treacherously in the darkness as she held Loreley down into the cold.Talons, dark and glittering in the moonlight, clawed desperately at her fennec lined cloak and scratched wildly at the skin beneath while Loreley moved her head left and right to avoid her assailant’s snapping beak. They struggled in the snow frantically.
Loreley grit her teeth and shifted her body. Using every muscle at her disposal, she overpowered the bird woman and rolled. Loreley shoved the harpy unceremoniously into the deep snowdrifts , gathered her cloak long about her body, and kicked her foot hard into the ground to stumble up to her feet. The harpy thrashed furiously against the thick snowfall behind her.
Loreley took off through the woods, her clumsy footfalls muffled by the thick blanket of white which she waded through frantically. Behind her, she heard a powerful beat of wings. The cold winter wind bit at her exposed face and the scratches let tiny prickles of hot pain run against her skin. Loreley cautioned a glance behind her to see her assaulter flapping her wings in close pursuit. Loreley wrinkled her nose in fury.
Loreley skidded to a stop and turned on her heel, kicking up sprays of snow in the process. She spread her legs and grounded herself.
The harpy was young, Loreley suspected her to be around her age. Her hair was long and uncut but ruffled by wind and dishevelled from lashing twigs and branches on her flight. Her eyes glowed yellow like that of a keen falcon, and while her top-half was relatively human, her arms turned into massive wings and her lower half was replaced with the legs of a bird. Her chest, just barely covered by rabbit skin, heaved with the effort.
Loreley and the harpy hit the snow with a muffled thump, and Loreley went limp in the auspicious grip of her assailant. Although her eyes were open, Loreley looked through the harpy and into the supple boughs of the bloodwood overhead. Loreley inhaled sharply and prepared for the inevitable loss of life.
Loreley felt the harpy’s breath against her neck, and she felt the puffs of hot air grow in frequency as the underbrush crackled behind her. The harpy looked up from her prey and jumped back immediately. She crouched low to the ground and beat her wings powerfully so that she lifted into the air. With a shrill cry, the harpy disappeared into the darkness of the thick wood. Loreley stared after her. She narrowed her eyes and her mouth gaped.
“Hey, you okay?” came a quiet voice behind her. Loreley’s cloak was dusted with a thick white powder as she rose from her depression in the flurry. She whipped her head around to stare at her saviour.
He was small, and although his legs were long and willowy as was common of his race, he hardly came up to Loreley’s chest. His skin was dark as a dusting of coal over skin and his eyes, wide, yellow pools full of fervor, cut through the malignant darkness while his inky black hair betrayed them. His ears, sharp and pointed, cut through the cropped waves in his well-groomed tresses. Although he dressed for the road, there was not a hair out of place on his body. Looking closer, Loreley realised that there were smile-like purple markings etched around his mouth. Despite her curiosity having drawn her closer, Loreley immediately recoiled upon this revelation. She looked from left to right and darted behind a towering bloodwood, kicking up snow and cold in her wake.
“Really?” asked the elf, incredulous. “I just saved you and that’s your reaction?”
“It’s with reason!” Loreley shouted back, and she pointed a shaky finger from behind her wooded cover. “You’re a patron of Pinodufini! The shadow one!”
The elf laughed instinctively, and he crossed his arms and shook his head. “Didn’t expect you to be educated in elven gods. Even the name! Wow.”
“This isn’t funny!” Loreley cried back, curling the bark of the bloodwood beneath her nails and clutching her cloak closer to her body. “I’ve heard what patrons of Pinodufini can do; you could get in my mind, control me, and I would be none the wiser.”
“But why would I do that?” asked the elf, and his weight shifted. He stepped forwards, across the cold snowbanks and buried yewberries so that he could clear a path towards the bloodwood. The must of dead leaf litter and sanguine sap filled the air between them, and Loreley shifted from her spot on the ground. The cold dug past her cloak and thick clothing to chill across her skin, leaving her shivering and sopping wet. The elf extended his hand in a greeting and Loreley stared at it blankly. She stepped from behind the tree and shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m Tzuriel,” he said. “What’s your name?”
His words hung stagnant in the frigid wind for a few moments. Loreley finally extended her hand and grasped his, and she shook it up and down. His skin was rough but his hands bony and thin. She could feel small scrapes and cuts across his palm.
“I’m Leya,” came Loreley’s reply, flustered and quick. She had not thought to make a new name until this moment. Tzuriel retracted his hand and beamed at her, although his face was obscured by fattening flakes of plush snow.
“You know these woods are harpy territory, right?” Tzuriel wondered, looking over her clothes and their handiwork. “That cloak looks well-made. You must be well off; what business do you have here?”
“I couldn’t tell harpies owned this, not after one attacked me!” she snapped, although Leya instinctively balled her black, fennec-lined cloak up under her fingers and obscured the rest of her body. She shifted in her leather boots, and asked respite within her expensive tunic. She turned her head away from Tzuriel. “Just running away from something. Guess it isn’t going too well.”
Tzuriel peered closer and Leya shrunk further into herself. “You don’t come from Vokoia, do you?” he urged her, leaning in further.
Leya paled. “Do you?”
Tzuriel shifted back and dropped his hands to rest firmly on his hips. He puffed his chest out and huffed. “Of course! I’m just hoping you aren’t from Nekkha, Navskoy, or Mudanzou.”
Leya suppressed a sigh of relief upon not hearing her former nation, Erkau, leave Tzuriel’s lips. She quirked a brow and shifted in the snow. The stars twinkled cheerily against a black backdrop behind Tzuriel’s head.
“Why?” Leya asked.
Tzuriel erupted in a series of vague and confusing hand gestures and his whole body leaned into his explanation. “Well, Nekkha runs every trade route ever, Navskoy hates outsiders, and Mudanzou won’t trade anything with us! Vokoia doesn’t take kindly to any of them.”
Leya’s eyes, once bright and whimsical, shifted to the left and locked on scraggly weeds nearly buried in mounds of fresh white powder. “Understandable,” she breathed, and her heart hammered against her chest.
Tzuriel propped his hand against his chest and raised his chin high. Leya’s words fell on deaf ears. “Nekkha’s handiwork may be fine, but once I finish my training, they’ll be the ones scrambling to me to buy my clothes!”
Leya perked up at his proud and distant fantasies. She turned her head once more, and a heated turquoise fire had ignited again within her deep blue eyes. “You’re an apprentice?” she queried.
“What, did I seem too noble to be one?” Tzuriel cooed, a crow forever squabbling to brag of his own achievements, but he soon shook his narrow head after he had gotten over himself. “No, I won’t be the real royal tailor for a while. I have to finish my training and furthermore wait for Royal Tailor Ariella to die first. She’s not that old, but I probably won’t be the real tailor until I’m 200.”
Leya’s eyes widened briefly, the sheer scale of elven lifespan having escaped her mind for a few valuable moments. She did little to hide the look of bewilderment on her face as she went on.
“Why don’t you open your own shop in the Royal City?” Leya suggested. “You can be a fully-fledged tailor and not have to work under anybody.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Tzuriel’s jaw dropped nearly to his collarbone and he wheezed, as if searching for breath. His mouth gaped wide and his eyes flew open, so that Loreley could see the egg-shell white sclera surround dancing orbs of deep sanguine. He grasped his mind wildly for words to say to her, and for just a few moments, he only came up with brief, frenzied stammering.
“Set up shop in Charciennes, the Royal City?” Tzuriel pleaded for clarification, and Leya paused before giving a slow nod. “You must really not be from around here, or else you would know that elves can’t set up shops under their own name. No way would I find any human willing to get land for me anyways.”
Leya’s expression now mimicked Tzuriel’s and she leaned closer, staring up and into his eyes in shock. “You can’t own property in Vokoia?” she echoed.
Tzuriel shook his head now and his fluffy white hair bounded with him, ruffled by the icy night wind. “Not if you’re an elf. You’d have no problem finding something to buy.”
Leya breathed heavily and crossed her arms, leaning back on her heels and into the deep snow. She shook her head and raised her left hand so her teeth could dig into the soft skin of her knuckles. “That isn’t right,” she murmured.
Tzuriel shrugged jovially. “Maybe not, but I am offered shelter and food in the palace,” he chirped. “Who knows if anyone would even buy from me if I did open my own shop. That’s what Royal Tailor Ariella told me.”
Leya opened her mouth and her tongue curled to say something, but Tzuriel stiffened suddenly and whipped his head to peer over his shoulder. Only darkness crowding among clumps of elderberries and bloodwood greeted him, and a black bird with vibrant red tail feathers peered curiously at the texture of his hair. Tzuriel turned back to her and raised his hands. “My owner, I hear her,” he hissed. “She won’t be pleased to find me talking to you.”
The hairs rose on the back of Leya’s neck at the time of urgency in Tzuriel’s voice. She looked from side to side for escape routes, but all she saw was endless snowdrifts and walls of firm, thick foliage and shrubbery. Tzuriel nudged her arm desperately, but her boots stayed rooted in the thick snow.
“Go, Leya,” Tzuriel urged her. “Please.”
Too late. Just as Leya unearthed her boots from the thick, fluffy white, the elder berries rustled and the black bird with the carmine plumage took to the air with a startled squall. The black was parted like a sword with burning light from a caged lantern, made of wrought iron and swirling patterns to conceal a flickering candlelight. Gnarled fingers clung tight to the cold handle, and skin like drizzled caramel only barely clung to the bones there. Leading up the arm, shoulder, and neck, a head sat unevenly, and a woman with white hair long enough to stretch down and blend into the snow stared from above exaggerated glasses. She looked down from her nose, hooked and massive, and supported herself on a thin, broken branch snapped from an ash. She pushed her dark cloak fully from her head and shifted her royal purple, silken robes. Her shoulder, bare against the wind, was marked with curving green lines of flowers, her religious markings.
She must have wings on her back instead, then, mused Leya.
“What’s going on here?” she asked coldly, and her narrow, bird-like eyes stared pointedly at Tzuriel. Behind her, a tall man with strong, broad shoulders and a sword fastened firmly to his hip strolled to her side. Her crossed his arms and lolled his head from side to side, and his pale skin contrasted greatly with his short, cropped red hair.
“We gave you only a few minutes to rest,” said the tall man, tightening his lips.”Yet you wander away for ten.”
Tzuriel bowed deep from his waist and buried his chin deep in his scarf. His fist balled up behind his back. “I know, Sir Montgomery, I’m sorry,” murmured Tzuriel, and he straightened his back from where he bowed.
Leya immediately copied Tzuriel’s submissive posture, but she could feel the old elf’s keen blue eyes bore into her fennec-lined cloak.
“Who’s this?” asked the old elf, and her voice grated over their ears.
Tzuriel did not rise from his bow, but his voice was loud, firm, and polite nonetheless. “I was just saving her from a harpy attack; she’s no threat, I swear. Her name is Leya.”
Leya bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and her nails dug into her palm. She could feel the old elf’s gaze harden over her body.
Tzuriel turned her head very slightly so his voice, muffled and low, could reach Leya. “This is Royal Tailor Ariella, and her guard Sir Montgomery,” hissed Tzuriel. “We were trading cloth with Nekkhites, so we needed protection.”
“Not necessary, Tzuriel,” Sir Montgomery murmured coldly. “Up.”
Obediently, Tzuriel and Leya straightened. Leya stared into Ariella’s eyes, although Tzuriel kept his head bowed towards the snow. “You are lost?” wondered Ariella, rolling her knobby fingers around the blunt end of her walking stick.
Leya and Tzuriel exchanged glances from their respective positions, and Leya dipped her head carefully.
“We have been watching you,” Ariella went further. “You are fierce for a wanderer. No one who values their life walks through this forest alone, not with the harpy occupation.”
Leya is compelled to turn her eyes from Ariella’s probing gaze, but she is locked into the eye-contact.
“I had imagined you would have run, with how scrawny you are, but you instead fought back,” Ariella continued. “Brave, stupidly so, but a valuable character flaw.”
Leya only barely nodded her thanks before Ariella continued, and her haughty breath billowed in the cold. “You are looking for a home, yes? Charciennes is not far from here, and we would be willing to let you ride in our caravan.”
Sir Montgomery spoke now, and his voice booms and vibrates to run through Leya’s bones. “Lady Ariella, we have no more room in the caravan with how much linen we bought,” he protested.
“Stand down Montgomery,” ordered Ariella sharply, and Montgomery immediately stepped back in line slightly behind the derelict elf. “I see worth in you, Leya. What skills do you have?”
Leya kept her gaze even despite her wavering, remembering the many classes her mother put her through for direct eye contact towards nobles. “I am skilled in divination and astrology, if that is what you seek,” Leya answered, a clear, tinkling sound to her voice.
There was a deep glitter in Ariella’s striking silver eyes but Leya could not decipher their origin, and they briefly ran over the short golden locks beneath Leya’s cloak. Sir Montgomery stared after Ariella despairingly. “Interesting,” rumbled Ariella. “Queen Élodie would be willing to offer a position in her royal court, I can imagine.”
Leya’s mouth dropped and all inhibitions left.
“Her Diviner is growing mad from age,” Ariella elaborated. “Your skills would grow innumerably.”
Tzuriel raised his head sharply and looked from Ariella to Leya, a stark frown casting shadow over his taut face. “My Lady, with all respect, she is a stranger.”
Ariella’s hands held her walking stick tighter, and Leya squeezed her eyes shut in case Ariella was tempted to strike her apprentice. Upon hearing no fortuitous smack splitting the cold night’s silence, Leya peeked out from beneath her eyelids to see a sad look cloud Ariella’s gaze. Ariella shook her head from side to side.
“The situation is bad Tzuriel,” Ariella murmured sagely. “Queen Èlodie needs someone who is able to read the stars.”
Ariella fell silent and the possibilities weighed heavily on Leya’s heart. Her chest pounded hard, but her mind was clear. Before she could bite down on her lips, Leya responded to Ariella.
“I’d be honored,” Leya blurted out, surprising even herself with the sheer volume and enthusiasm of her voice. She folded her hands and bowed her head before Ariella. “Please, I have nowhere else to go.”
Montgomery and Ariella shared a look, dipped their heads to eachother briefly, then returned their gaze to Leya. Ariella smiled, and her mouth made the loose skin on her cheeks fall across the corners of her lips. She adjusted her large half-moon glasses across her roaming nose. “Then come,” she croaked, and she beckoned Tzuriel towards her with a vague hand motion. “Charciennes is only a day’s travel.”
Montgomery cast a smothering glance to Leya and turned on his heel to stomp through the snow-dusted underbrush. Ariella followed soon after him, and Tzuriel was swallowed wholly by the darkness after a few moments had passed. The clump of elderberries swallowed the group, and Leya trudged after them, her steps tall and wide to conquer the momentous amount of snow. Just as she was about to be devoured by the foliage, a shrill call sounded behind her. Leya shifted and tossed her deep golden eyes across the forest clearing, where frenzied footsteps meandered through the snow and scattered parts of broken white from her scuffle with the harpy. Above, in the broad bloodwood she had concealed herself behind upon encountering Tzuriel, the black cockatoo sat, and it’s bright red plumage fanned elegantly out behind it. It’s beady black eyes stared emotionlessly out to her and bore deep into her soul, burrowing and searching for something beyond it’s grasp. Her heart beat furiously, and a few seconds later, another pair of narrowed eyes appeared beside the bird. Feeling fright shoot up through her bones, Leya turned, tugged her cloak so that it obscured her eyes, and stumbled past the barrier of sweet-smelling shrubbery.
CHAPTER 2
The caravan, made of soft and flexible chestnut, whined and wobbled as it passed over abandoned rocks and rough terrain on the path to Charciennes. It was old, a clear heirloom but well-groomed and taken care of, and the surface teemed with magical sealing energy. The leather whip, made from the hides of eventide deer, cracked against the rump of a mottled stallion every so often. He whinnied and whined, chuffing and chirruping in feeble protest against the iron in his mouth and the yoke against his chest. Fine blue cloth with tacky magenta threads dangled at the ends made up curtains for the backs and fronts of the wagon, and weak sunlight danced along the interior as the wind ruffled them.
Four travelers jostled about within the caravan. Tzuriel sat on the floor, and the splintering chestnut grains dug into his clothing while Ariella reclined on a seat carved from the wood to the right. Closest to the exit of the caravan, Sir Montgomery’s eyes peered past the dancing flaps of blue cotton and onto the slowly passing winter wonderland. Leya sat silently in between. To her left, smoke peeled away from a small bowl of burning stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense and filled the space with a thick, suffocating aroma. Long rolls of silver, black, and deep purple silk took up any other sitting space within the caravan, and some rolls poked out of the caravan and bounced dangerously with every rough patch of road. The incense burned away the scent of vinegar, urine, and death clinging to the fabric, but hints of the musk could still be detected beneath.
Ariella drained the last bits of hibiscus tea from her small porcelain teacup and she turned her head to stare at Leya. She jostled the teacup once and cleared her throat. “Leya,” Ariella broke the silence. “You say you are skilled in divination. Please then, read my fortune.”
Leya shifted uncomfortably in the seat, and she became suddenly aware of every splinter from the old wood digging into her. With no words, she slowly shifted closer to Ariella and took the cup from her hands upon the offer.
Little bits of leaf residue sat along the bottom and lined the sides, a stark black color against the pure alabaster. A long, thin line of sodden hibiscus lined the edges, and the end of the line stopped in an auspicious point near the bottom of the cup. Leya’s eyes narrowed and shifted from one end of the tea grain line to another, before glancing up to Ariella.
“There is enmity in your near future, a snake,” murmured Leya, peering closer at the individual parts of each dark hibiscus leaf. “It’s eating a house at the bottom. The snake will come from within, from someone you thought you could trust. That’s further in the future.”
As Leya’s voice petered off, silence once again clung to the interior of the caravan beyond the whine of wood stretching beyond its capabilities. Ariella stared her deep in the eye, and moments passed with only this searching stare between them, before Ariella leaned back and nodded sagely.
“Interesting,” she murmured, gingerly taking the fragile teacup from Leya’s gloved hands. “I will keep this in mind.”
Leya nodded once and turned away from Ariella, suddenly feeling as if she were in unwelcome presence in the caravan. She looked to Tzuriel and his eyes flashed in the crepuscular half-light, forcing a polite smile to her face. She turned away abruptly, tugged her cloak closer to her, and folded her leather-wrapped hands in her lap. She trained her eyes steadily on the opposite wall of the caravan, nearly obscured by the numerous rolls of colourful, silken fabric. The wagon rocked and bounced about the trail, and Leya felt the air grow warm, a stark contrast from the bitter Winter in Erkau.
The wagon stopped abruptly and Leya engaged herself so that she did not fall to her right and barrel into Ariella. The driver’s voice rose above the deafening silence, and gruff guard voices responded to her eagerly. There was little argument before the rumbling of gates moving encapsulated the party.
“We’re here,” Montgomery grumbled. He stuck his head out beyond the gently glittering flaps of fabric over the exit of the caravan.
“Charciennes,” Leya echoed. She could scarcely believe herself; it seemed only minutes ago that she had been wandering the outskirts of Vokoia in her escape from Erkau, a vagrant with no home and no evidence to begin her search for the assassin of her parents. Her hands began to tremble upon remembering the incredible burden she had put upon Ilse so selfishly. Leya pushed away thoughts of her sister getting murdered in the same way every ruler of her last name had before her.
“Yes,” Ariella nodded. She whipped her head around to the back of the caravan and nodded to Montgomery. The knight, clad in noisy sheets of armor, leapt out the back of the wagon and into the streets. Not long after, the caravan shuddered to a stop and Ariella beckoned Tzuriel to his feet with a gesture. They passed by and leapt from the back of the cart, and the wood shifted and groaned from the releasing of weight. Leya followed soon after.
The sun, although weak from Winter, bore down into the cobblestone street pulsing with a mass of people and swaying horse-drawn wagons. Leya is only made aware now that the night has passed and that morning now dawned upon Gaiea. Old houses, made from splintering wormwood, lined each side of the avenue and blocked the crowd from harsh winds rolling from the mountains in Erkau. Charciennes teemed with foreign stories, and each pliable face that passed by Leya and her companions burned bright with untold tales and history. The houses closest to her were prim and proper, but rooftops with gaping black holes in them stretched just beyond them, hiding behind the perfect front of the more updated abodes. The caravan, bouncing with rolls of silk, takes off down the street again, running past shouting merchants and leaving Leya, Ariella, Tzuriel, and Montgomery behind.
Leya’s trance is broken by Tzuriel’s hand on hers as she is tugged unceremoniously through the throngs of chattering early morning travelers. Ariella set up a breakneck pace, weaving through gaps in the crowd expertly and leaving her companions stumbling in her wake. Leya looked desperately to Tzuriel.
“Couldn’t we have just stayed in the caravan?” she asked him just as a man’s broad shoulder nearly hits her jaw.
“I think Ariella just wants you to experience the city,” Tzuriel told her with hardly a backwards glance, his hand still firmly lodged on her wrist. A man’s voice shouted over the bedlam, advertising freshly baked bread.
Leya looked on desperately as Tzuriel’s slim back was lost in front of the back of a hulking blacksmith and his hand was wrenched from her wrist. She heard him calling her name above the uproar of the crowd, but his face was gone and his presence intangible. Leya was tossed and shoved by the current of Charciennes’ market-goers and panic fluttered poignantly in her heart.
A group of gossiping women bumped into her sharply and an eddy of children knocked into her knees, sending her stumbling to the side of the mob. She braced herself on the edge of a wooden stand, and her cloak fluttered across it, where parts of it’s tattered remains caught on various protrusions there. Leya silently cursed the harpy who had torn through her favourite fennec-lined cloak as she began to silently untangle it from the shop-keep’s wares. Jewellery made of jade and angelstone glittered in the gaps of her dark cloak, twinkling in the weak sunlight.
“Ahem,” said a gruff voice. Leya glanced up sharply and into the face of a hard-skinned, light man with a sneer on his mouth. His fingers, nimble and calloused, dug into the wood of his wagon and he leaned in closer. Leya leaned back further in retaliation, although limited by the tangled remains of her cloak.
“I’m terribly sorry sir,” Leya blubbered, tugging at her cloak harder and leaning back on her heels. “I don’t mean any trouble, it’s just my first time in the city and I wasn’t prepared for the liveliness of the marketplace.”
“Hah,” the man breathed, puffing in mocking laughter. “If you really weren’t looking for trouble, you’d be gone by now.”
Leya glanced about herself, suddenly realising that a gap had formed in the teeming crowd to make room for the altercation. Townspeople looked on curiously, some whispering in the ears of their companions and others leaning forwards in preparation for a fight. Leya felt the blood rush to her face in an instant upon realising her audience. She turned back to the man, finally seeing the edges of her cloak begin to rip away from the cart’s jagged edges.
“Please sir,” she pleaded, tugging harder. “I’m just caught on your stand. Give me a second, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Likely story,” the man sneered, finally winding around his stand to arrive at the front and leer down at her. “How do I know you’re not just a distraction? Just getting me wound up for some bigger thievery?”
“I swear I would never—“
“Quiet!” The man roared, and Leya flinched and stumbled back, only now freeing herself from the stand with a satisfying rip of her cloak. “This jewellery is my life! It feeds my family, my children, it funds our lives, and I won’t have some pitiful street rat making a fool of it!”
Leya glanced down at her hands, balled up in her freshly torn cloak and white at the knuckles, and realised her prompt freedom. She stumbled back, tripping over her own feet, and bumped into a wall of people, all making a half-moon circle around her and the man. She looked pleadingly into their eyes, silently begging to be let out, but their attention was just over her shoulder. She spared a cautionary glance behind her.
Rough knuckles slammed heavily into her cheek and the ripped cloak fell haphazardly from the top of her head, letting blonde, cropped curls bounce from beneath. Leya recoiled from the punch and rubbed her hands at the place of impact. It stung and burned, searing hot agony fluttering through her head and cluttering her mind. She could hardly make up a new action before she felt hands clutch at the crutch between her shoulders and her arms and pull her to her feet. From beneath a swollen cheek and messy eyelashes, Leya saw the aggressive shopkeeper rub gently at his knuckles and shake them out.
“Hey!” called a voice above her, and Leya recognised it to be Tzuriel. She followed his ashen gray skin up to his face, where he glared down the shopkeeper.
“Real courageous, pal,” Tzuriel mocked her assailant. “Punching a harmless girl to defend your honor, real courageous.”
Tzuriel’s grip tightened on her shoulders and Leya leaned heavily against him. Her mind clouded with thick fog, obscuring every thought and making every goal she had upon coming into the city vanish in thin air. The shopkeeper merely paced, grinning in victory.
“Maybe you should have watched her then,” the shopkeeper sneered back, contempt and venom dripping from his words.
“I don’t need any keeper,” Leya slurred in response, just as Tzuriel began to drag her back through the crowd. “I could have taken you on.”
The shopkeeper opened his mouth to shout something back, but just as his lips formed words, the circle dispelled and he was lost in the crowd. Leya stumbled through the sea of passing faces once more, guided by Tzuriel through the bedlam before they abruptly turned into an alley. Tzuriel released her shoulder and rounded on her.
“Are you okay?” he demanded, searching her face for pain.
“Yeah,” Leya murmured back before she could even think about the question. She could still hear her heartbeat frantically beating in her ears, seeming even louder than the absent-minded chatter of the crowd beyond the alleyway.
“You don’t look okay,” Tzuriel retorted sharply, although his face quickly softened. “Your lip is bleeding you know. I can already see a bruise.”
Leya absentmindedly reached her hand up towards her lip and rubbed against it with her fingers. Sticky globs of crimson clung to the skin, gleaming in the dim half-light of the alleyway. She looked back up to Tzuriel, his ashen skin blending into the darkness and making him nigh invisible, even his pointed ears. She frowned deeply at him.
“I’m sorry,” she finally apologized , her stomach doing flips within herself. “It was dumb, I shouldn’t have gotten separated, I shouldn’t have provoked him. It was my fault.”
Tzuriel stared at her silently, and Leya’s mind raced, wondering what he could possibly be thinking. Relief flooded through her as she saw his mouth crinkle into a laugh.
“Seriously? You’re apologising for getting punched?” Tzuriel breathed between laughter.
Leya wrinkled her nose in vague annoyance, although she laughed with him. She gently pushed at his arm, remarkably skinny due to his elven heritage compared to her own chubby arms. “Hey, it’s just the polite thing to do!” she protested quietly.
“You certainly have a weird sense of good manners,” Tzuriel said finally, rubbing at the corners of his eyes to remove any tears remaining from his laughter. “But seriously, it’s no problem. I wish it didn’t happen, but some things are inevitable, I guess.”
Leya regarded him with a calculating glimmer in her eyes, and although she tried to smile, the soreness in her face prevented it. It seemed odd of him to say that, but Leya supposed she simply had not read him well.
“Very introspective,” she remarked, leaning back into the brick wall lining the grimy alleyway.
“I can be deep sometimes,” Tzuriel murmured, rubbing at the back of his neck, and Leya swore she saw pink tinge his pointed ears. “But, we should get you back to the castle. Lady Ivanna can patch you up.”
“Lady Ivanna?”
Tzuriel returned his gaze to Leya in order to explain, and he rose his hands in such a way that Leya sensed his moving palms could tell a story all in their own. “She’s going to be your mentor, the royal Diviner. Queen Èlodie uses her all the time to tell the future and advise her, but her head is not in the right place anymore, I don’t think.”
Leya’s face shifted and her stomach dropped heavily like a stone. “I don’t want to replace anybody like that,” she protested quietly.
“Well, you’re not!” Tzuriel reassured her, although the shift of his eyes made her think he wasn’t too sure about the arrangement himself. “At least, I don’t think so. Not until she dies, I should presume.”
Leya shuddered. The image of her parents lying dead in a shared casket flickered briefly in her mind; their faces had been peaceful but the effect on her life had been anything but. “That’s awful to think about,” she muttered.
“Then don’t think about it,” Tzuriel retorted, and he shrugged with a non-committal twinkle in his eyes. “But seriously, we should go, or Ariella will get mad at me and not let me have dinner.”
Finally convinced by this piece of evidence provided, Leya nodded gravely and motioned for Tzuriel to take the lead silently. She trailed after him through alleyway after alleyway blindly, their twin boots hitting the grimy cobblestone and splashing in puddles of unidentifiable liquid. Leya cradled her tattered black cloak in her hands as she walked, wordlessly wondering if Tzuriel could ever find the time to make her a new one.
Chapter 3
The Royal Palace in Charciennes, Vokoia was large, tall, and towering, a stone monolith among tiny buildings and dilapidated alleyways. There was a sharp pang in Leya’s heart as she stared at the battered stone bricks held together by mortar and paste, remembering only her own palace in Erkau and the many days she spent in the hallways. For a few fleeting seconds, she saw her parent’s kind, smiling faces in the frosted windows lining the sides of the palace, before they disappeared with a blink. It seemed many months ago that her parents were assassinated, when Leya had only just found them dismembered in a casket a few days ago.
I know Ilse will be a good Queen, Leya thought venomously. She was always the better child.
The pain, once small and hardly noticeable, grew and metastasized into a tumor within her heart as she, Tzuriel, Ariella, and Montgomery stride towards the gates of the palace. Despair settled heavily over Leya’s shoulders and sunk deep into the drab cobblestone staircase so that even the grandiose steps seemed dull and gray when she stepped over them. Although Leya wished to turn back and flee back into the familiar mountains, she wisely kept her gaze trained forwards. She knew her duty and she knew that she must find the assassin of her parents, lest her sister, Ilse, face the same gruesome fate.
Ariella looked to the guards with falcon-like eyes, contempt glittering in her gaze from above quirked half-moon glasses. Immediately, the two men grasped levers and pulled them down so that a wrought iron gate swung open with a prolonged whine. The two soldiers immediately straightened their posture as Ariella stepped by them with an air of murder following her. Leya fluttered in soon after, and her eyes locked on Tzuriel as he bounded past the gates with Montgomery close on his heels.
Tzuriel moved in an odd way, as if he were dancing to music that no one else could hear. His body was always fluid and his legs languid in nature, so that his body seemed to have the viscosity of a thick gel when poked. Leya quickly averted her eyes upon seeing the castle doors loom before her.
Silently, Leya rubbed her palm against the smooth wormwood and relished in the feeling of individual wood grains scrape against her fingertips. Elaborate embroidery made of pure gold was cool and hard under her touch, curling along the exterior of the massive doors and decorating them with a lavish flourish. They reminded her bitterly of home, with the unforgettable displays of wealth and affluence to remind all the common folk of their rigid place in society. Wonderstruck by the similarities of the two kingdoms, Ariella was forced to push the door open herself.
A gust of air was exhaled from the courtyard, now revealed and bustling under Leya’s searching gaze. She winced as aching pain shot through her face with every soft breeze, touching against the cut on her lip and weighing heavily upon the slowly forming bruises along her cheek. Ariella stepped into the courtyard with Montgomery close beside her and Tzuriel trailing after them.
The castle courtyard was large and filled to the brim with servants, gardeners, and cooks, all preparing for dinner and assuring that every flower was prim and proper. Dust gathered along the aged cobblestone walkways, and large brick flowerbeds took up most of the space. At the far end of the courtyard, Leya saw a massive stone staircase lead up to a landing, and further up to more elaborate wooden doors that led into the main hall of the castle. At the base of the staircase, a massive phoenix fountain was embedded into the stone. Leya easily recognised it as Corona, the only God of Vokoia’s religion, and also the God Leya had pledged herself to. Leya appraised it with searching eyes, noting the chips in the stone but silently complimenting the masterful handiwork of every individual feather and bead.
Tzuriel tugged insistently at Leya’s shredded coat and she stumbled after him, broken from her stupor. She fell into step beside him, and walked close behind Ariella and Montgomery. Ariella’s walking stick became subtle white noise in the roar of the courtyard.
“It can be overwhelming at first,” Tzuriel whispered to her below the bedlam in the courtyard, dodging the shoulder of a bustling maid as she brought clothes from one end of the castle to the other.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Leya responded quickly, truly meaning to say it was familiar and kind, but catching herself just before she could give herself away.
“Lots of commoners do,” Tzuriel waved his hand, and Leya bit her tongue to prevent herself from defending her hidden royal status. “But the wonder will fade away the longer you stay here.”
Leya nodded, but a deadly silence had fallen over her. She ran her hands through her messily cropped golden curls and trailed helplessly after Tzuriel, Ariella, and Montgomery as they led her through the chaos of the courtyard. With a few quick strides, the four had arrived at the base of the stairs and stood before the fountain depicting the phoenix god, Corona. Leya looked up to it reverently, relishing in the spray of fountain water against her face and the calming, almost melancholy sound of direct streams of water slapped against eachother. She ran her fingertips across the base of the fountain as she walked by, years of rough handling catching in the grooves of skin. Reverence flooded through her and she smiled secretly. She was sure to return later for her nightly prayers.
Her fingers left the fountain and balled up instead in the torn remnants of her fennec cloak, where vague tendrils of warmth curled about her. The stairs looked before Leya and the group of court members, seeming to be an insurmountable obstacle. Ariella, even with her knobby hands and rickety joints, began to scale the crumbling stone steps with only minimal help from her walking stick, and Montgomery and Tzuriel followed close behind her with little effort exerted. Leya gulped in cool Winter air and stepped onto the first step, then to the second. She ascended the staircase with slowly dwindling gusto, and by the time she had reached the landing where two opposite stairs met, she was huffing and puffing at the peak.
Ariella looked over her shoulder and fixed Leya with her deep brown eagle eyes, glittering with sprightly energy and liveliness despite her geriatric state. Miraculously, she had not tripped on her long white hair, even as it grazed the stone stair steps. She scoffed at Leya’s state. “Have you never climbed stairs before, girl?”
Montgomery chuckled beside her and his broad shoulders heaved with the effort. Tzuriel stifled his laugh in the crook of his arm and disguised it as a laugh.
Leya gripped the stone railing hard enough to make her knuckles white, bracing herself on the packed rock. “No, I’m just not used to really big stairs,” Leya breathed, curly blonde locks drifting in front of her face. “Are all staircases here like this?”
Tzuriel found it harder to stifle his laugh, although Leya could only tell he was chuckling from the controlled shake of his thin shoulders. Ariella’s laugh was louder and more vocalised, like nails grating against stone. Leya cringed at the sound.
“Yes, Vokoia is known for grandiose displays of wealth,” Ariella responded curtly and her white hair swung dangerously as she turned on her heel. “The bigger the staircase, the higher your status.”
Ariella, Montgomery, and Tzuriel began to tackle the final staircase leading up to the large door into the castle. Leya stood at the bottom, fingers poking through holes in her cloak as she titled her head to take in every stair step with her wide blue eyes. The stone door, although drab and unexciting, held a certain air of great importance and change in her life. Slowly, Leya ascended the staircase to stand at the sides of her companions and run her hands, smooth from an easy life, across the surface of the door. With little prompting or force, the door swung open and Leya was ushered inside with a quick push to her back from Ariella.
The opening hallway, long and narrow, stretched out in front of them with red velvet rugs lining the pristine floor tiles. At the very end of the hallway, another door, wooden in nature, sat looking before them, and two more hallways just to the right. A great, exuberant diamond chandelier hung far above their heads, swaying ominously and creaking with every scuffle of their feet. It was gaudy, sparkly, and eye-catching, but beautiful nonetheless and certainly deserving of praise and recognition. The walls and their supports were lined with great paintings and murals of all kinds, rah and every one depicting an animal; a wary white rabbit, an excitable brown frog, a wise, watchful hawk, and a fierce red wolf. Above the door on the opposite side of the hallway, a final painting sat, even more so elaborate than the former artworks. It depicted a stone-cold, grizzled blue cat with starlight and stardust glittering upon her whiskers and flicking across the ground and over her paws. Her eyes, blue as the clear sky on a Summer day, glittered curiously and watched over the entrance hall with rigid reform.
Leya grew closer to it by only a few steps. “What a lovely painting,” Leya murmured reverently, almost tempted to run to the painting and run her fingertips over every brushstroke.
Tzuriel scoffed in front of her her but remained silent. With one tap of her wormwood walking stick on the floor, Ariella swiftly turned and careened down the corridor to the left with Montgomery hot on her heels. Even despite her rickety joints and wrinkled face, she moved with all the bright energy of a young child. Tzuriel took off after them, and upon realising she was being left behind, Leya’s legs kicked into gear and she bolted off after them.
Ariella’s pace was breakneck and relentless, with long strides and quick movements. Doors and windows passed by them wildly, set into pristine stone brick, with blurs of black bloodwood and weeping birch passing by in the mosaic windowpanes. Delectable, savory scents drifted past Leya with every quick step, temptation beginning to fog her mind with every subsequent leap into the lion’s den. The overwhelming silence of the grand hallway was broken by the sound of Ariella’s stick against hard floor and the tip-tap of shoes padding against stone. Soon, Leya’s breath, growing hard, joined the myriad of noise as the severe walking caught up to her. Leya silently cursed her early decisions to stay away from physical training in her childhood, even when the lessons had been prompted by her mother and father when they decided to train her to rule the kingdom once they died.
Ariella abruptly paused before another normal, however lonely door, nearly causing both Montgomery and Tzuriel to slam into her sprightly body. Leya skidded to a stop beside her, soon enough to see her finger extend to point at the door, decorated with golden hinges and swirling designs.
“That is Lady Ivanna’s chambers, who you will be training under,” Ariella said. “She is the grand diviner, and the advisor to the Queen. She will instruct you further.”
Leya nodded and took a step forwards, before glancing back. “Where will you be going?”
Ariella laughed heartily, her skin contorting to fall across her mocking smile in waves. “What do you think I am, your overseer?” Ariella croaked. “I have work to do, Tzuriel too. Montgomery will simply go back to the barracks.”
“Oh,” Leya murmured, trailing off with a glance from side to side. Silently, she turned around.
“Wait!” Tzuriel called after her, prompting Leya to turn around on the fulcrum of her heels. Tzuriel was standing now, with his hands outstretched and ashen fingers wiggling. “I can repair your cloak if you want. Good cloaks shouldn’t go to waste.”
Leya hesitated briefly, before the death hold on her cloak was released and she plopped it into Tzuriel’s waiting hands. He flashed a smile, brought the ripped cloak closer to his chest and stepped back into formation behind Ariella and Montgomery. Leya watched him fade into the ranks and shifted her eyes to Ariella’s geriatric face. She smiled coldly and waved her hand. With a quick turn, she was careening further down the hall once more with Montgomery at her side and Tzuriel bustling after them. Leya watched their backs disappear around a corner and turned her eyes in front of her. With a hand against her chest, she let out a breath she wasn’t aware she had been holding.
Leya strode forwards to stand at the windowsill settled into the crumbling stone bricks, damaged from age, overuse, and the passing of generations. Leya looked out across the courtyard; bloodwoods, weeping birch, and common yew stood with skeletal branches at the edges of the grand garden, keeping watch over the frazzled castle servants and the distracted gardeners. A great melancholy settled deep in her chest, crowding the gargantuan cavity that her escape from Erkau had left. Once upon a time, her mother and father had held a place there, in that spot in her heart, but such love faded and disappeared when she saw their peaceful faces, bloodied and cannibalized, laid into the ground. Love for her sister, Princess Ilse, has begun to fade as well, as she forgot her face and the only thing she could remember was her golden hair spun from the wings of eagles. The courtyard yawned before the window and the only connection she could make was the parallel to her own garden in the royal palace at Zierenland, where she spent most of her time admiring the Angel’s Breath and Bashful Azealias.
Leya turned away from the window and towards the door she had been directed to. Her shoulders felt cold without her familiar fennec cloak, and although she was still dressed in a long-sleeved white tunic and dark pants, a chill still passed up her back. She gulped in a breath of musty castle air, stepped forward with leather boots clicking against stone brick, and rapped her gloved knuckles against the elaborate wood and gold designs. The knock echoed hollow in the long stone corridor.
Moments, feeling like hours, passed by, before the door creaked open and a woman stood in the entrance. Her skin was dark and her hair long and curly, with many ringlets and tresses falling like a waterfall down her back. Her hair, unruly and rebellious, was just barely held back with a well-made headband decorated with psychedelic, colourful swirls, a mark of Nekkhite heritage. Her eyes were large and glittering with curiosity, and filled with the green of tree leaves. A white tunic was draped over her shoulders, and many elegant folds fell over her body all the way down to the floor. The woman gave a kind, jovial smile, and Leya felt compelled to return the gentle quirk of lips.
“Hello,” the woman said. “Are you okay? Your face is swelling and your lip is cut.”
Leya winced at the reminder and moved her fingertips to ghost across the sore part of her cheekbone and the cavern of her eye. “Yes,” Leya reassured her. “I got punched out on the streets. I’m actually here as an apprentice for you. Are you Lady Ivanna?”
Lady Ivanna nodded with a kind smile and stepped back from the mouth of the door, allowing space for Leya to enter. “Come in then, I’ll get you fixed up.”
Leya nodded her thanks and stepped forward, her boots connecting with old, creaking wooden floor panels. The room was small, although lavish, and was flooded with weak natural light from open windows to the right of Leya. Cold winter wind caressed her and nipped at her face as she stepped fully into Ivanna’s chambers. A large bed’s headboard was fit snugly against a stone brick and wood wall, and lavish red curtains hung from a sinuous golden frame. They ran from the top of the frame like a river of scarlet blood, trickling and plummeting to nearly reach the floor but not quite, in an eternal reach for solid ground. To the left of Leya and closer to her in distance, a plaintive, weakly flickering fire sat well within its boundaries. Embers licked at the top of a singed stone fireplace, and tepid heat rolled from the hearth in waves to caress the unfortunately wooden desk close to it. Although Ivanna seemed to be tidy, her desk was cluttered and messy; medical documents made of papyrus and empty inkwells were scattered haphazardly across the surface of her workspace, and they seemed to have been lying there for quite some time. Empty porcelain teacups with small victuals of leaves remaining at the bottom made up the majority of the clutter, and beneath those, trusty, well-loved cards depicting animals and scenes of nature. Further into the room, an unassuming telescope held its glass eye out into the deep, unforgiving wilderness beyond the palace. It loomed long into the skeletal weeping birch, a signature tree of Vokoia.
Aside from such messiness, Ivanna’s chambers were bare and strikingly boring and ordinary. Although she did have a stove and a broad collection of brass tea kettles, very little indicated any other interests, hobbies, or obsessions. No paintings, no books, no personal effects; Ivanna merely seemed to be living up to her stated role within Vokoia’s royal palace and doing little else. Where this did strike Leya as odd, Ivanna’s kind, smiling face with deep dimples and crinkles in the corner of her eyes erased most of the doubts still lingering in the back of her mind.
“I’ll get some ice,” Ivanna assured Leya. “So we can patch you up.”
Ivanna disappeared into a back room behind a large wooden door, and Leya was left alone in the great silence of her private quarters. The air was filled with the crackling of the fire to the left of Leya, and the deep cold that infringed on the security of the royal palace was chased away by the hearth. With a great start, Leya realized that aside from the rickety chair sitting beside Ivanna’s messy desk, there was no place to settle down. The room was painfully bare and plain, and in the process of wondering why, Ivanna had returned to her presence with cloth-wrapped ice in hand. She has deftly tied stark white scraps of linen about a clump of snow and ice, and she now strode powerfully across the room to reach Leya and reach her hand up.
“You can ice your bruise, now,” Ivanna told Leya, and the ice pack changed hands. “So that it has a chance of looking less unsightly tomorrow morning.”
It was clear by the sparkle in Ivanna’s eyes that the sentence was meant to have been a joke, but the space afterwards was filled with silence. With a swift nod of thanks, Leya rose the wrapped ice to the cavern of her eye and held it upon the aching. Sweet relief rode across her face in gentle waves, and Leya basked in the immediate comfort the treatment had offered her. The smell of lavender that accompanied the linen slowly began to wash away all traces of adrenaline still left from her time on the streets of Vokoia. As the waters whisked away the restless energy, exhaustion soon settled deep in her bones and tied rocks about her ankles. Leya’s often upright and proper posture was reduced to a fatigued slouch.
“You’ve been through a lot today,” Ivanna mused, leaving Leya’s side and traipsing over to her well-worn desk. “It sounds to have been an eventful afternoon.”
Leya nodded in agreeance, and shifted the cold touch of the ice to settle more comfortable against the soft tissue of her eye. “That is an understatement,” she uttered in response, as she too slowly gravitated towards the delightful chaos of Ivanna’s workspace. The desk, made of fine birch, was broken down from the ages and had many scratches and nicks along it’s recently polished surface. As Leya ran her fingertips along the smooth, shiny surface that was not covered by scattered papers and inkwells, she felt history and long lost memories teeming just below the grain.
A teacup, once forgotten, was retrieved safely in Ivanna’s dark, soft fingers. She took a contemplative sip from it, and quickly called upon the services of a nearby sugar-pot to make the brew more bearable. With a small, delicate spoon of fine handiwork, she stirred in a precise amount and smiled with great satisfaction upon seeing the sugar mix well with the dark depths of the slowly cooling tea. Leya watched her quirky actions with unmistakable curiosity, finding the woman odd and strange in behaviour, but much too charming to turn away from.
“Can you read cards?” Ivanna asked suddenly, with that signature bird-like trill to her voice. “Tarot cards specifically. I use them often in my readings.”
Leya shuffled her feet along the pristine wood floor and took up a place just to the right of Ivanna’s workspace. With one grand motion, she cleared away clutter on her desk and laid the face-down deck of tarot cards in front of Leya. Leya shook her head. “I am used to more traditional methods,” Leya responded, although her eyes, teeming with oceanic pulses, wandered to rake across the ornate designs on the back of the cards.
Ivanna laughed, and while Leya might have thought of such a trill to be in cruel mockery, she instead found the giggle to be personable and indulging. Ivanna pointed a long, crow-like finger at the cards and then steeped it below her chin. “Pick three,” Ivanna purred, her dark eyes rolling to bob at where the deck was spread.
With little forethought, Leya mindlessly grabbed three cards from the deck, all of them near the middle of the spread. With a look of pleasant, but taciturn focus, Ivanna swiped the cards from Leya’s hands and laid them facedown just below the fully spread deck. Leya’s destiny spread out before her. Her present, past, and future became an endless river with ferocious riptides and a relentless current. Leya rapped her thumb against her middle finger just below the well-worn desk.
Ivanna turned over one card, and the piercing eyes of death stared directly into Leya. A white horse with ghastly sunken eyes was depicted on the overturned face of the card, and with it came the skeleton pointing in a direction Leya could not see. The atmosphere, once calm and relaxed, was dampened by a tidal pool of vicious energy.
“Wait,” Ivanna murmured, palming the card of Death. “There’s something wrong. I feel it.”
“What do you mean?” Leya blurted out, bracing her hands against the edges of the desk and leaning far over to peer desperately at the single tarot card. Ivanna tipped it from her prying eyes, fumbling for an answer she could not give.
“I don’t know,” Ivanna stammered, stumbling from her chair and tripping across the room to reach her door. “There’s just something wrong.”
“Wait,” Leya called after her, whipping around to see Ivanna fumble with the doorknob and fling the heavy door open to slam against her wall. “Lady Ivanna, please, I don’t understand!”
Ivanna’s silence was deafening, and Leya’s very lurched up into her throat as Ivanna disappeared in the ajar doorway. There was a moment of poignant hesitation before Leya kicked up her feet and raced after her new mentor. Leya’s boning blonde hair raced to catch up with her as she left the curling warmth of Ivanna’s room and tumbled into the deathly cold of the hallways.
Leya followed the sound of Ivanna’s frantic footsteps echoing against the clean marble floors of the palace. Her chest stuttered with every long gulp of breath. Her lips were dry and chapped from the chase. Door after door blurred together into one long color as she raced down the hallway and skidded into the main chamber she had entered from. Leya came to a stuttering stop at Lady Ivanna’s side, who watched the main, massive, double doors with morbid curiosity.
They slammed open, and behind their swinging gait, a squirrely boy with raven black hair and young, youthful eyes stumbled in. His eyes, black enough to the point where Leya could not even see the pupil, darted back and forth, back and forth, until they careened to land on Lady Ivanna.
“Get help,” he called out to her desperately. “Prince Lionel has just been murdered.”
Chapter 4
Beside Leya, all breath left Ivanna’s lungs and mingled with the stale, musty air of the grand foyer. The animalistic paintings lining the hall, once so grand, seemed bleak and dark. Electricity stumbled about the two of them, and the hair on the nape of Leya’s neck rose on its own.
The squirrely boy with hair as black as downy crow feathers gasped and heaved, taking in gulps of breath with a wide mouth. His shoulder, bare from a tear in his tunic, glistened, wet with hot, pulsing blood. “We were patrolling the coast,” he went on shakily. “And we met five merpeople on the beach.”
“Merpeople?” Ivanna exhaled, and Leya placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Why, Xavier? Why have they tormented us for so long?”
Leya turned her attention back to Xavier.
“Prince Lionel said that the coast belonged to Vokoia, and that the next merperson he saw on the beach again would be killed,” Xavier breathed. “But the merpeople were adamant. They said that Prince Lionel had no jurisdiction over them,” Xavier croaked, and paused to catch his breath. He clutched his wounded shoulder with a sharp inhale, and globs of sticky, seeping scarlet clung to his palms.
“So they attacked,” Xavier continued. “Some soldiers were too close to the shore and got dragged in, but others got hit by stray arrows. And Lionel… Lionel…” Xavier trailed off, but was unable to continue his sentence. The thick globs of saccharine blood danced in his eyes and stained the rough skin of his hands. He lurched to the side and braced himself on a long golden bannister. The gold was stained with an infernal red.
The red, deep and crimson, burned a dark hole through Leya’s heart. Her eyebrows knitted as she watched Xavier writhe against the bannister in pain. Although Leya wished to rush forwards and support him against her shoulders, her feet were stuck to the lavish rug below her. Ivanna rushed forwards instead.
“We must get him to the nurses,” Ivanna begged Leya, pulling Xavier’s injured arm around her shoulder. “Please help me.”
Leya struggled to nod, her neck weighed down by long figurative boulders attached to chains. Although she lurched forward in an attempt to help, the gaudy door to her right slammed open. Tzuriel’s buoyant face appeared in the opening, and he immediately rushed to Xavier’s side, his shiny black hair bobbing with the movement. The elf crouched to lift Xavier’s other arm up onto his shoulder. In the door where Tzuriel had come from, Leya also saw Ariella lumbering to the gaping doorway with many palace laborers forming a pool around her. Tzuriel, Ivanna, and Xavier sprinted out the opposite door.
The relative silence of the opening chamber was interrupted by the hefty wooden doors leading out into the public gardens being opened once more. A gust of frigid Winter wind followed the entrance of another stranger. He was large and gruff with shoulders wide enough to house the feet of giants, and snow-frosted iron armor lying heftily across his chest. His hair, deep brown like a chestnut, looked to have been cut in a neat, military-grade shave, but had now grown out beyond its constraints and crawled across his head haphazardly. Where he might have once been clean-shaven, his chin and jaws were covered in grizzly brown hairs tinged with grey. A body rendered unidentifiable by patches of deep crimson laid within the knight’s arms. The knight’s face, one with a prominent nose and deeply set eyes, was not only marred by splashes of infernal red, but also a long, diagonal scar cutting deep into his nose. A potent gasp is disbelief rose from the mouths of every palace laborer who had arrived to observe the commotion.
Leya watched as globs of thick, sticky blood fell from the cold hand of the corpse, making long rivulets from the deep, bubbling slash in his chest. A sense of dread fell over her like a cold wave as she recalled what Xavier had said.
“Prince… Lionel?” Leya whispered.
“Yes,” answered the knight, his voice hoarse. “He died while we were travelling back here. I killed the merman who slaughtered Prince Lionel.”
Leya’s eyes trailed to the sword fastened tightly in the knight’s scabbard, and then to the patches of wet, sticky blood soaking into his underclothes. Leya felt her stomach toss and turn within her stomach as if a child unable to sleep.
Stop being a coward, she told herself. It’s just some blood… Just a corpse…
“Sir Julien,” Ariella called to him in a shaky, rough voice. “You know Queen Élodie is not in a good headspace right now. This will not be good news.”
Sir Julien shifted his weight in a way that made Leya think that before such a tragedy, he had been trenchant in his daily life and attacked all given tasks with a fire in his belly. However, Leya could see that life had abraded this fire in the deep lines in his face, and rubbed away all pretense to reveal poignant hubris just below. He puffed his chest out as laborers grew closer in a pitiful attempt to inject life back into Prince Lionel’s cold arms. Cold blood clung to their fingertips as they mourned the fallen Prince.
“Queen Élodie can handle it,” Sir Julien responded. Leya swayed uncomfortably as the air shifted.
Ariella lurched forwards and gripped her walking stick so tight that her knobby knuckles began to turn white. “Alright everyone, you’ve had your moments,” she grumbled and dismissed the gathered palace laborers with a wave of her wrinkled hand. “We must deliver a message.”
“What shall we do with the body?” asked a red-haired elf girl from the throng of gathered laborers.
“Place Prince Lionel in the Palace Infirmary for embalming. Queen Élodie will visit soon,” Ariella snapped, her keen, bird-like eyes crushed under the weight of her furrowed eyebrows. “Sir Julien, come with me. We will inform the Queen.”
The body of Prince Lionel passed from Sir Julien’s rough hands to the laborer’s many palms. Some of their eyes were glassy and others wept openly with tears brushing the cold face of the deceased. A trail of blood, so red that it was almost ebony, made a path out of the left doorway as the laborers and Prince Lionel exited the grand foyer.
“Come, Sir Julien,” Ariella croaked, and Leya shivered as she felt Ariella’s keen eyes on her back. “And you, Leya, may return to the room Lady Ivanna has designated for you.”
Leya’s eyes did not move from the trail of blood but she nodded anyways. Ariella let out a long sigh. Two sets of footsteps left the grand foyer and Leya was left alone. A potent silence filled the large room, which seemed odd considering the bedlam that had filled the empty space before. Leya turned on her heels to stare beyond the massive staircase in the foyer and up at the landing.
The cobalt cat painting with piercing eyes stared back at her. Leya withered under the sight.
I’m sorry Ariella, Leya thought to herself as she turned and began to follow of the spots of blood on carpet and marble. I can’t go back to the room with all this happening.
—-
The palace infirmary in Charciennes was a pristine room located on the far west wing and overlooking the royal gardens at the front of the palace. Day by day, old and young, women and elves alike milled around in clean white cowls and deep black tunics. Glittering white light filtered in from delicate glass panes on the south and west side of the room. With every separate patient that came through the palace’s personal infirmary, the nursemaids stripped the used bed of its wrinkled white sheets and replaced them with increasingly well-worn linen. Now, Leya could only see six beds along the walls, with only two being occupied. The room reeked heavily of death, and the air was stale and humid, as if no one had stepped into the confines of the infirmary in many years and they were now encroaching on forbidden territory. Nursemaids mumbled to eachother in low voices and discussed treatments for the two patients occupying the room.
Xavier slept fitfully in the closest bed, his shoulder wrapped tight in blood-stained bandages and his eyes fluttering with every night tremor. Leya’s eyes caved under the weight of her eyebrows.
“Is he going to be all right?” Leya wondered habitually, raising her eyes to survey the plethora of bumbling nurses. One particularly old woman with long creases in her skin looked up and nodded vigorously.
“Just a gash, not too deep,” responded the nurse, running her hands along a wooden cabinet and flinging it open to retrieve medical supplies. “He’ll be back into knight training in no time.”
Leya let out a breath she was unaware she had been holding. Looking upon the calm face of Xavier, so different from the horrified expression nodded into his face earlier, Leya couldn’t help but be reminded of the serenity in Princess Ilse’s sleeping face. A sharp pant of homesickness shot through Leya’s heart as she recalled the many nights Princess Ilse and her had spent together, before the evil machinations of the world had taken their parents from them. Leya felt her throat tighten and she forced her head away from Xavier’s face.
On the other side of the room, an eddy of nurses surrounded a bed like a tidepool. They moved as one singular unit, shifting and swirling around the bedside of a long gone patient with a shuffle of feet against pristine marble. Lady Ivanna stood in the center of the nurses, her long white dress stained red in some places. Stark crimson stuck out like a sore thumb in a sea of ivory. Leya felt wrong, seeing something once as pure white as freshly-fallen snow reduced to bloodshed.
“Lady Ivanna,” Leya murmured. She lurched towards the group of nurses, and they separated gingerly to allow her to pass.
Lady Ivanna turned to spot Leya and she smiled, but Leya could see the smile was taut and straining against the woman’s terse sorrow. “Hello Leya,” Lady Ivanna breathed. “I’m sorry you had to see this on your first day in the palace. Fate is a cruel mistress, is she not?”
Leya nodded, more out of habit than agreeance. Her eyes slowly fell upon the corpse laying in the bed.
Perhaps in a different timeline, Prince Lionel would have been a perfect king. His face was symmetrical and angular, fair and soft with eyes that might have once been kind and easy-going. However, Leya could see that strife was no stranger to him and hardships had followed him even to death. Where Leya had seen her parent’s as calm and collected while in their coffins, she could only see the weight of the world resting heavily upon Prince Lionel’s features. His lips were parted slightly, as if he wished to tell her something. Leya felt inclined to lean closer in hopes to hear some unimaginable truth of the universe.
“He had been quite handsome,” Lady Ivanna commented. “Queen Élodie had many suitors lined up for him. Women and men alike scrambled for a chance to be in the same room as him.”
“Lady Ivanna,” Leya murmured, and paled as she felt Lady Ivanna’s gaze fall upon her. “Do you think that the future is decided for people when they are born? Do you think fate is always set in stone?”
Lady Ivanna paused for a moment and thought about her answer. Leya desperately wished Ivanna could put her mind at ease about Princess Ilse’s safety.
“Well,” Lady Ivanna began carefully. “Sometimes it is, but the best thing about being intelligent beings is that we are not powerless to change fate. We always have the choice to choose a new, unpredictable path.”
“Do you think that someone could have changed my pa—“ Leya paused quickly upon realising her train of thought and redirected her words with a shake of her hands. “Prince Lionel’s fate?”
Lady Ivanna nodded sagely, a sense of deep grief falling across her dark features. “I’m sure there was a way.”
The doors to the infirmary slammed open and collided with the stone brick wall it was hinged to. The nurses scattered like bees from a hive and immediately went about making themselves seem busy with writing down records and restoring bits and pieces of plants and herbs. Lady Ivanna’s features became a glower. Steadying herself, Leya turned from her spot at Prince Lionel’s bedside to gaze upon the doorway.
A tall woman stood there, weighed down by skirt after skirt after skirt and many beads in her high, black hair. Her eyes were narrow and her lips thin, but her skin clear and her facial structure plump. Leya could just barely make out spots of gray infecting her hairline and disrupting her sleek ebony tresses. She wore a gothic, gray gown, elaborately decorated with black ribbons, embroidery, and lace, and supplemented with faux pink roses lining each side of her body. In the depths of her hair, piled high upon her head and masterfully styled, Leya now saw a jewel-encrusted crown. All the breath left Leya’s lungs.
Leya immediately dropped into a painfully low curtsy that jolted her elbow against the edge of Prince Lionel’s bed. Lady Ivanna curtsied as well, her long, curly hair falling across her shoulders. All the nurses in the infirmary dropped into a low curtsy immediately, and their heavy breaths began to fill the room. “Your Highness,” Lady Ivanna murmured.
Queen Élodie, Leya realized in the silence of her own mind.
Queen Élodie ignored their supplication and crossed from the doorway to Prince Lionel’s bedside. Leya felt Queen Élodie’s presence grow near and leapt out of harm’s way, now standing side-by-side with Lady Ivanna. The only sound now was the heavy breathing of the infirmary’s inhabitants and Queen Élodie’s staccato steps in pointed leather shoes. Everyone in the infirmary straightened as the Queen passed, like a harbinger of death.
“My son,” Queen Élodie murmured. “My son, why is he here? Why are his eyes closed?”
Queen Élodie’s voice seemed calm, but teeming just below the surface, Leya heard something breaking. It seemed as if she was trying to cover a broken window pane with bits and scraps of well-worn cloth. Leya likened the analogy to the substantial grief she had to tuck away during her parent’s funeral and she felt her throat tighten habitually.
“Your Highness,” Lady Ivanna began, a ginger, soft tone to her voice. “I presume you have already face the news from Sir Julien and Lady Ariella.”
“They have told me,” Queen Élodie responded, and her face began to contort, her frown growing too big for her face. “But it seems hard to comprehend.”
Leya watched as Queen Élodie’s perfectly constructed facade began to crack and then shatter completely. Beneath the thin glass walls surrounding her heart, Queen Élodie now began to grieve openly. Whimpers became sobs and tears mixed with dried blood seeping into pure white sheets. Queen Élodie bowed her head and rested her hand upon Prince Lionel’s cheek, where splatters of red had yet to be washed away. The infirmary has grown silent, except for Queen Élodie’s gut-wrenching weeping. Leya tore her eyes away and stared at the floor, running her gaze along the gentle swirls of the marble floor.
A gentle hand touched Leya’s back and she turned to face Lady Ivanna. Lady Ivanna smiled, but Leya could see it was perfunctory, a habit that Lady Ivanna could not shake. Lady Ivanna tipped her head and bobbed it towards the door, hanging ajar. Leya jolted into action and began to stride towards the door with Lady Ivanna close behind. Queen Élodie’s sobs grew quieter and quieter, until Leya and Lady Ivanna had finally reached the doorway and had shut the Infirmary out of their lives. The heavy wood door came to a close behind them, and the fresh Winter air faced them from open windows on the adjacent wall.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Leya,” Lady Ivanna apologised, her tone quiet and her eyes dull and haunted. Leya’s brows knit as she looked at Lady Ivanna’s face.
“It’s okay,” Leya reassured her. “I think I’m used to it by now.”
Lady Ivanna barely even spared her a strange look before she turned and began to lumber down the hallway with heavy steps and a dampened spirit. “Then, if you don’t mind, I will be retiring to my room for the night. Your room is right next to mine, to the right, so if your cheek is bothering you, you can just knock on my door.”
The pain of the developing bruise on the side of Leya’s face returned with a vengeance. Leya hissed softly as the soreness permeated her head now that the adrenaline of the moment was wearing down and her hands had stopped shaking.
As the pain began to recede into a dull ache, Leya glances up and caught Lady Ivanna’s back just before she was to round a corner at the end of the walkway. “Wait!” Leya cried out. Lady Ivanna paused and framed her neck to look over her shoulder.
Leya paused. She had to think of something to say.
I might as well try to figure out who is killing off my family, she mused.
“Does the palace have a royal library?” Leya asked, suddenly bashful. “I’m trying to figure something out.”
Lady Ivanna tipped her neck to the side and Leya was half convinced she would refuse. However, Lady Ivanna only let out a sigh and nodded, waving her hand hurriedly. “Yes,” Lady Ivanna responded, her voice weighed down by boulder after boulder of baggage. “Come with me.”
Leya’s eyes lit up, and she paused, unsure if she had heard Lady Ivanna correctly. She took a few seconds to process the affirmation before the stupor lifted and Leya bounded frantically to reach Lady Ivanna’s side. There, the two have each other terse smiles and walked the palace hallways in silence, neither one sure of what to say to each other. They supposed there was nothing to say, for it seemed that they had already exhausted all conversation topics even despite knowing eachother for only an hour. The silence stretched on between them, until they said quick goodbyes at the grandiose entrance to the Palace’s Royal Library.
