Chapter
Ten
Galantia Present day, Deepmarsh Castle, Galantia’s chamber
lay in my bed, staring at the strangest square cutout in the stone where wall met ceiling. A peculiarity not easily noticed since dark strings of presumably leather hung over it like a curtain,I heavy enough the wind outside barely shifted it. Why was that there?
When my eyes burned from the strain, I squeezed them shut for just a moment. Finding sleep turned out to be a near impossible task, with no Risa to tell me that the howls wailing through the night were nothing but the wind cutting itself on the corners of the castle. No Risa to stroke through
my hair. No Risa to comfort me.
No Risa…
I was… alone.
Always so alone.
My vision blurred as something thick and dense rose in my chest, aching behind my sternum.
Caused me such pain, I wanted to cry so badly. Wanted to drain this heavy feeling from my chest the way it had done when I was a child.
I slapped my cheek. Cry!
And again. Cry!
When no tear came, I whacked myself with both palms, again and again, but… nothing. I couldn’t cry, and I couldn’t cry, and I couldn’t fucking cry! Why not? What was wrong with me?
When the hinges of my door shifted ever so quietly, I thrust myself up, my heart pounding wildly in my chest. It wasn’t dark enough for supper yet, so this couldn’t be the mute girl who brought me
meals. Who then? Sebian? Captain Asker?
My throat narrowed.
Malyr?
I squinted at the short, twiggy figure who shuffled out from the shadows. Just another Raven girl.
I commanded my muscles to relax and paced my breathing, easing my heart back into an even rhythm. It lasted until the girl lifted her head, letting the orange flames of the fire flicker across her ruined visage. Gods be merciful… Burn marks covered the right half of her face, distorting its shape into something almost angular looking. They reached into her hairline, where nothing but a few black wisps remained, tangling around the remaining shell of her ear, the lobe gone.
It’s a common sight in this castle, Sebian’s voice resonated in my head. Your father has quite the fondness for setting us ablaze.
My throat wanted to narrow, but I cleared it away, reminding myself of the dead boy at the village. For every Raven child marked by a war they had started, there was a human child out there who’d suffered as well. Simple as that.
With a brush in one hand and a blue velvet pouch in the other, the skinny thing inched toward me, her eyes never quite lifting to meet mine. “If you please, they… they sent m-me to—” A gulp cut through her words. “To brush your hair and pin it up so you’ll be presentable.”
Presentable… for court.
My heart tumbled in my chest at the mere thought of feasting among Ravens. Not that I could escape this dreadful fate, so there was no point in making a fuss. A fuss was exactly what would get Malyr’s attention.
I rose and sat on the chair beside the table instead, pretending I didn’t likely have red finger marks all over my face from how I’d slapped myself like an insane person. “Very well.”
The girl held her head strangely sideways as she placed the pouch on the table, focusing her good eye on the black pins she retrieved from it, which she lined up for later use. The lids of her burned eye had melted together on the outside corner, the iris behind it nearly white. She was half blind, wasn’t she?
Of course, I knew suffering among the innocent existed in war. Never had I seen it up close in all its ugliness. Somehow, it made my insides convulse. I didn’t know what to do with that.
Ignore it, probably.
Once positioned behind me, the girl carefully ran the brush through my hair. The bristles trembled against my skull as though I could easily kill her with, oh, I wouldn’t know… tendrils of shadows, perhaps. Ridiculous.
When the familiar silence of my chamber grew too suffocating, I cleared my throat. “What is your gift?”
“I have no gift.” Her voice carried a tone of somberness that weighed down even my chest.
“Not… not anymore. My anoa is dead.”
“Your… what?”
“The raven that carries our gift is called anoa.” Brush put aside, she clasped one of the pins and skillfully twirled a strand of my hair around her finger. “It is said that, at our birth, our anoa flies down from the moon carrying our gift. A heavy burden for a raven, so it can take many years until we receive it… unless it’s the gift of void.” A shrug. “It’s empty, so it weights nothing.”
Yet another thing that no book at Tidestone had ever mentioned, making it hard for me to make sense of this magic and how it seemed to have different classes. “And it saddens you that you have no gift.”
“No. My gift wasn’t very strong.” Once the first strand was pinned up, she set to work on the next.
“But without my anoa, I will never find my mate. The goddess makes one gift call for the other.”
One’s mate seemed to be a treasured thing among Ravens indeed, which somehow caused a pinch in my chest. “And you can’t make do with another Raven?”
“I guess,” she said with another shrug. “But nobody could ever want and love me the way my fated mate would have. Not the way I… the way I look.”
Irrational guilt tried to surface at the sadness in her voice, the undertone of resignation of a girl who likely hadn’t even bled yet. Why? For all I knew, she might have used her gift against Father’s soldiers one day. But her fear of forever being unwanted? Unloved?
That resonated.
Deeply. Urgently.
The door squeaked, followed by an excited, “At last, a confidante.”
I turned toward the copper-haired beauty who now stood in my chamber, her strands put into an elegant coiffeur and pinned back with green gemstones. “And you are?”
Her hand lifted the ruffled skirts on her green silk gown ever so slightly as she curtsied. “Lady Cecililia of the House Taradur. Cici will do. Galantia, correct?”
Taken aback by the unexpected presence of another human, I only nodded.
“Prince Malyr had this gown made for you. And while he seemed eager to assist you in dressing, Captain Asker hurriedly sent me ahead with it instead.” With a gentle smile on her lips, she walked over, and I only now noticed the heavy black fabric hanging over her arm. “Girl.” A snap of her fingers. “Out with you!”
The girl ducked her head like a beaten puppy and hurried out the door. What a strange creature… I rose with the intention to curtsy, but found myself taking a precautionary step away from this woman instead. “Your father is Lord Taradur? Of Hanneling Hold?”
Something soft came around her blue eyes. “There are a great many things you should fear in this place, Galantia, but I am not one of them.”
“You are no Raven.” Which meant she was a traitor to the crown. Or at the very least, the daughter of a traitor. “Why would your lord father bring you here? To a place like this?”
“Same thing that brings many a lord to flock around the Ravens these days.” She gave a wink that seemed to come as easily to her as her smiles. “Ambition.”
“Your father abandoned his oath to King Barat.”
“Oaths don’t keep you alive these days, Galantia, lest they’re sworn on your knees at Prince Malyr’s feet. Not every stronghold lies safely nestled between harsh winds and Ammarett, let me tell you. Now…” Fabric clasped between her fingers, she held out the dress. “I daresay I’ve never seen anything so fine.”
I stepped closer to the dress, its fabric so black, it seemed to swallow all light, betraying not a single crease, not one speck of glow. Only the bodice reflected the occasional red flicker from the hearth, where hundreds—if not thousands—of black pearls were sewn onto the fabric. No, not pearls.
“Aerymel.” A metal so hard and ungiving, weapons made of it never broke, never dulled, yet light as a feather. “Father has an amulet set into aerymel, but I’ve never seen so much of it.”
“More precious than diamonds and gold,” she said. “Not such a surprise, considering it can no longer be mined.”
I ran my finger down the train, feeling the strange fabric and how its threads seemed to shift in its weave, though it had to be a trick of the light. “Why not?”
“Because of the shadows?” When I only stared at her, she lifted a perfectly arched brow the way Sebian had. “Do you truly not know that the city of Valtaris, almost the entirety of the kingdom of Vhaerya, really, is sitting beneath a veil of shadows? Has for many years, ever since the city fell. I’ve never seen it, of course, but my brother has. Lost his horse when that stupid beast reared and stepped into the offshoot tendrils that creep across the meadows there. Good thing it threw him off. Those shadows kill everything—beasts, humans, Ravens. Everything.”
I looked back at the dress, pretending to inspect it closer when I just wanted to hide whatever ignorant shock might show on my face. No, I hadn’t known. Not that I would confess my lack of knowledge in worldly things that seemed to grow bigger with each additional conversation in this damn place. Why had Risa never mentioned it?
Against the risk of making myself sound even more naïve, I gave into that curiosity poking at my guts. “Where did the shadows come from?”
“Nobody knows. My mother once told me the blast killed everyone in the city, humans and Ravens alike, leaving no witnesses behind. Only darkness and quiet mines.” She gathered the dress on her arms, then jutted her chin at the one I was wearing. “Now get out of that hideous cotton thing. No lady should be late for a feast held in her honor.”
I stripped down to my underdress, then held my arms up for Cici to let the dress fall over my
form, and— Oh, that fucking bastard… Fury pounded beneath the reddish-brown scabs on my chest that now lay exposed, barely a shred of cloth covering it. Perhaps I was ignorant to many things, but stupid, I was not. No, this was
definitely no feast of honor.
It was a feast of mockery.
Mockery, insult, and humiliation, sewn onto this dress in the shape of black feathers. They bobbed on my shoulders with each inhale, tickled at the nape of my neck where a tight row of them created a collar, and shifted where they peeked out from the flowing creases of the train.
“So, the rumors are true…” Cici stared at the spread-winged raven that seemed to take flight from between my breasts, the swelling long receded, the pain negligible thanks to the paste Sebian had given me. “He carved the Khysal sigil into you.”
Shame had me sink my head. “He did.”
“Prince Malyr has no fondness for humans—everyone at court knows that—but scarring you up like this? A human, yes, but a lady of the kingdom just the same? It is… barbaric.” Once Cici tightened the bodice in the back, she shifted one of the pins in my hair, only to give me a final nod of approval. “The dress, however, is magnificent.”
Oh yes, I would be the envy of every widow. “If one plans on attending a funeral.”
“And it’ll be mine if I don’t get you to the great hall this hour.” Without warning, Cici spun me around and ushered me out the door. “The prince is waiting, and so is his court.”
