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.
“His Majesty, King Tiras of Jeru and Lord of Degn, has claimed the honorable Kjell of Jeru, Captain of the King’s Guard and son of the late King Zoltev of Degn and Miriam of Jeru, as his brother in blood as well as in arms, from this day forward, henceforth and forever. What the king has sworn let no man dispute. What blood has joined let no man destroy.”
I watched as Kjell assembled the king’s guard—a thousand men—leaving two hundred behind to guard the castle and the city wall in his absence. Tiras was not with them, though Kjell had saddled Shindoh and kept her tethered to his own mount. I hadn’t seen him since I’d left him in the hall. I hadn’t said goodbye, he hadn’t found me in the dark to press sorrowful kisses into my skin, and we hadn’t bridged the gulf between what we wanted and what we had.
Lady Firi and I watched, side by side, until the gates were lifted, and we were the only two left in the courtyard.
“The king was not with them,” she remarked curiously. Carefully. And I answered without hesitation.