“You don’t have to atone for your father’s sins,” Kjell said, pointing a shaking finger at his brother.
“Yes, I do!” Tiras answered. “Since I was thirteen years old my life has been about nothing but atonement.”
“So you married a Teller. Put a child in her belly. Outmaneuvered Corvyn. And now you want to position me in the wings?” Kjell raged. His eyes shot to mine, and I read the apology even as I flinched, scalded by his fury.
“I don’t want you in the wings. I want you at the helm. You and I will go to Firi to fight the Volgar. And I will meet my end,” Tiras said evenly. “It is time.”
Kjell and I both stared back at him in horror.
“What are you planning, brother?” Kjell gasped.
“I can’t continue to disappear and reappear. You’ve said it yourself. The people will lose faith in me, and eventually—sooner rather than later if my hands are any indication—I am going to change and never come back again. What then?”
“Your queen will rule, just as you intended. And when your child is of age, he or she will rule,” Kjell retorted.
“I have left Lark unprotected. I have left her vulnerable,” Tiras said.
I began to shake my head. No. No. No. This is not what I’d intended at all.
“She can protect herself, Tiras. She brought down the Volgar with mere words,” Kjell argued.
“She has no voice. You will give her one. And you will give her the protection of your presence. You will give my child a father.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You will be king. And she will be queen.” Tiras didn’t even look at me. My legs became liquid and my belly floated away. I wrapped my arms around the small mound of my abdomen, sheltering the life that grew in me, even as Tiras was being ripped from me.
“No. I won’t,” Kjell whispered, incredulous. “You can’t do this, Tiras. You can’t manipulate and maneuver and will me to comply.”
My voice felt heavy and black, and it pulsed behind my eyes. I have bowed to your will over and over again, Tiras. But I will not be passed to your brother like an inheritance. I am going to Firi.
“No Lark. You aren’t. Kjell and I will go.”
We will all go! I’ve faced the Volgar. I will do it again.
“That was before.”
Before what? Before you accomplished all your designs? The words sparked furiously in my head. You need me.
“Jeru needs you more. Our child needs you more! And it is not safe. You aren’t a sword. You aren’t a weapon. Remember? What if something happens to Kjell, and I’m a bloody bird? Will you lead the men into battle alone? You will stay here, and you will do as I say!” He was so adamant. So sure. So cold and hard. Telling me what to do. But I was a Teller. And I would not be told.
I flung out my arms angrily, splaying my fingers in time with the words that shrieked through my head.
Winds outside this castle come,
Sweep away the king’s own throne.
The windows suddenly shrieked and shattered in the Great Hall, and wailing gusts filled the space, whipping my skirts and tangling in my hair. Tiras’s throne toppled and crashed against the gleaming, black floor before flying across the space and smashing into the far wall, burying its two rear legs in the colorful fresco of Jeru’s history.
“Lark! Enough!” Tiras bellowed, but I was far from finished. My agony howled in my chest like the winds I’d summoned, and the tears I rarely released flooded my throat and filled my head. I called down the water from the skies to wash them away.
Rain that gathers in the clouds,
Wrap me in your velvet shroud.
I was caught in a torrent, spun up like a sea God, and the tears from my eyes merged with the rain soaking my skin and drenching my robes. I was floating without sinking, without drowning, without being submerged at all. Even the walls wept, paint dripping in long sorrowful streaks, destroying what once was.
“Lark!” I heard Tiras again, only this time his arms coiled around me, anchors in the storm, and his lips were on mine, warm and insistent, coaxing the war from my words.
“Be still,” he urged, and the shape of the plea made his mouth a weapon.
You cannot give me away!
“Forgive me,” he entreated.
“By the gods, Lark!” Kjell shouted, his voice whipping in the gale. “Stop!”
I’d forgotten where I was. I’d forgotten who I was.
Wind and water, glass and tears
Leave us now, disappear.
All at once the room was still. Tranquil. Almost remorseful.
But I was not.
The only sound in my head was my own ragged inhalations. My breath burned in my chest as if I’d run a great distance, chasing what I could never quite reach. I didn’t raise my head. I didn’t need to see my handiwork or survey the damage. Tiras was as silent and motionless as the air around us, his hands cradling my head, his mouth still pressed to the whorl of my ear. His clothing clung to his chest, and I could see the warmth of his skin through the fabric made sheer by water.
“For once I agree with the queen,” Kjell muttered, and without another word he strode from the hall, his boots squelching with every step. The great oak doors moaned, opening then closing behind him, and I heard him reassuring a servant—or many—in the corridors beyond.
You cannot give me away, Tiras.
“I cannot keep you,” he whispered, his voice as tortured as my breaths. “And I can’t continue doing this to you.”
My hands rose and fisted in his shirt, wanting to hurt him and heal him simultaneously. My nails scored his skin but he held me fiercely, his arms almost constricting, for the space of several heartbeats, pressing his mouth into my hair, and I beat my hands against his back, furious and heartbroken, even as I burrowed my face in his throat.
If you cannot keep me, let me go.
I felt his heart pounding against my cheek, but his arms fell to his sides, and he stepped back, as if he were truly mine to command.
“Where? Where do you want to go?” he asked, his voice so heavy I longed to call the wind again to lift us up and carry us away.
Wherever you are.
“I can’t do that either,” he whispered. “Where I’m going, you cannot follow.”
I wanted to rage, to compel, to call down heaven and summon hell. But though the words trembled on my lips, I could not release them. I couldn’t weave the spell that would give us a future or change the past.
Promise me you will remember and obey, my mother had whispered so long ago. Promise me you will remember.
I remembered.
I remembered the way the king’s sword sliced the air. I remembered the heat of my mother’s blood seeping through my dress. I remembered the words she pressed into my ear. I had never forgotten.
Swallow daughter, pull them in. Silence daughter, stay alive.
I took a step back from Tiras, then another, making myself let him go. He was right. He could not keep me. I could not keep him. My sopping dress wrapped around my limbs, slowing me, but I gathered it up in shaking hands and turned away from the king. I left him there, standing in the center of the Great Hall, the history of his kingdom streaming from the walls and puddling around him. It was a history I would do anything to forget.
At sundown, trumpets pierced the air, and the people stepped out of their homes and leaned out of upstairs windows, listening as the castle crier began to wail from atop the tower beside the castle gates.