The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(5)
“I must go,” he said, his face pale, like blood had drained from him. “I didn’t know. Truly. I didn’t. I thought you were someone else.”
I stared at him. What did he mean? How could he not know who I was? Someone must have told him that I was the princess he would be tutoring this afternoon. But I was wasting time. He was just another tutor scared by a reputation pronounced by faraway lights in the sky. Curse the stars.
“Leave,” I said. “Inform the court that we completed a full session, but that other commitments prevent you from teaching me again. Do you understand?”
He nodded, his hands still raised to his face like he thought I would hit him at any moment. Then, he bowed, stumbling backward. He stood in the arch of the doorway, body cast in shadow, face an inscrutable inkblot. He bowed once more before I blinked and realized he was gone. Nothing. Not even that telltale seep of cold that invaded a room when another body had just left.
I kneaded my hands against my forehead, rubbing out the shadows of horned silhouettes and flashing eyes. I couldn’t shake the sense that the world had split for a moment, separating like oil and water.
A moment passed before I shook myself of that strange grogginess with a horrifying jolt.
The announcement.
My heart lurched. How much had I missed? I spared one last glance at the arch of light where the tutor had disappeared. Perhaps he was just more superstitious than normal. There had been a funeral, after all. That was all. That was all. I repeated the words in my head, bright as talismans, until I had all but forgotten the feeling of two worlds converging across my eyes—dazzling and prismatic.
I pulled myself up the ladder propped against the shelves that led directly to the hollowed roof and rafters of my father’s inner sanctum.
The wood beneath my palms was rough and scratchy. I gripped the rungs tighter, smiling when splinters slid into my hands. I am here. I am no ghost. Ghosts don’t get splinters. Heart calm, hands still, I slid through the loose space in the rafters, kicked my feet behind me and disappeared into the ceiling.
The first time I had snuck up the rafters, my heart raced so fast, I almost didn’t hear all the debates between the courtiers, the advisers and my father. Women weren’t allowed in the inner court sanctum and getting caught would mean severe punishment.
Over time, sneaking above the sanctum became easy. Now, I could wriggle my way through the empty space like a blind lizard. Safely perched in the rafters, I curled my knees beneath me and snuggled into my hiding spot. I didn’t know how many hours I had spent perched in this corner, listening to them. Up here, I could pretend that I ruled over them all, silent and mythic. From here, I could learn what no tutor could teach—the way power settles over people in a room, the way language curls around ankles like a sated cat or flicks a forked tongue in caution, the way to enthrall an audience. And I could understand, almost, the lives and histories scrawled into the lines and lines of the records stowed away in the archival building. The inner sanctum was where my father met foreign dignitaries, it was where the war meetings were held, where crops were discussed and decisions were made. It was the heart of the kingdom and at its throne, my father. According to the archives, he had ruled since the age of ten. If he had siblings, the records never mentioned them.
I flattened myself against the wall and settled in to listen. Whatever I had missed from the beginning had taken its toll on the courtiers. Even from my hiding spot, some faces gleamed white and the air was thick and sour with anxiety.
The inner sanctum held every reminder of the war that had raged on for at least six years. Dented helmets lined the walls like iron skulls. It unnerved the courtiers. Some of them refused to sit beside the armor of the dead, but father had insisted. “We must never forget those who served us.”
Each time I clambered into the rafters, the helmets seemed to grow in size and number. Now, they covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Even though they had been cleaned and scraped of blood, their presence haunted the sanctum. Sunlight glinted off the metal, haloing the helmets so that it looked like my father held court before ghosts.
“Sire, we cannot abide by this decision. There must be a different way to end the war,” said Ajeet, a baby-faced councilor with a receding hairline he hid beneath a massive pagri. He trembled where he stood, small hands knotted at the base of his ribs like he’d sunk a dagger to its hilt far into his belly. Given the flash of anger on the Raja’s face, he might as well have.
“We still have enough soldiers,” he cried. “The medics have become more skilled. We might even win this war and sacrifice only a few hundred more.”
I frowned. Couldn’t Ajeet see the helmets on the walls? People had filled that armor. Heads, once brimming with their own hopes and joys and miseries, had worn those helmets. What was only a “few hundred more” to the kingdom could be someone else’s lover, brother or son. It wasn’t right to honor the dead with inaction.
“You can and you will abide by my decision,” said the Raja, his voice hard. He looked careworn, dark eyes sunken so that for a moment they looked like the depthless hollows of a skull.
“But the rebel kingdoms—”
“The rebel kingdoms want the same thing that we do,” said my father harshly. “They want food in their bellies. Warmth in their hearths. They want their children to live long enough to possess a name. They fight us out of desperation. Who else will hear their pleas? A decade-long drought? Failing crops? Sweating sicknesses?”