Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(40)
The queen relied on Oshannah for everything. And that was why she finally placed the faerie curse on her—not out of anger but out of love. The curse said that Wren’s great-great-great-aunt would never be able to leave her side—would never be able to leave Sommeil. That if Oshannah ever tried to fly away from the queen, ever tried to sever her blood from her home, she’d turn to stone.
It was a warning shared by all the women in her family since before Wren could remember—a caution never to question the sanctity or the bounds of Sommeil. Never to disobey the queen’s wishes and whims. Though Wren was never sure whether she should believe it or not, it was what made her wary when Heath tried to push on the truth, tried to seek escape. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to discover other worlds, didn’t want to leave their dying one, but that she feared she couldn’t.
And she was right.
Now it may be hopeless. It may be too late for her. Aurora’s curse wasn’t ever lifted—only amended. She explained it all to Wren during their journey to LaMorte, and despite Wren’s attempts to keep her distance from the princess, she listened carefully.
She recalls that one faerie—a duchess in Deluce—had been able, if not to fix things, at least to help. She had altered the curse from one of death to one of gentle sleep.
And that faerie’s name was Violette.
17
Isabelle
Against his better judgment, the messenger allowed Isbe to ride with him through the afternoon and into the night toward the war camp outside of La Faim. The rhythm of the horse is rough between her legs; her knees ache, her whole body is sore. She clings to the messenger’s cloak—he rides faster than she has ever ridden on her own.
The density of the forest has given way to open fields loud with crickets on either side of the road. Urgency courses through Isbe’s veins; her skin prickles with it. Rain has left the air cold, and she feels naked and exposed—even in the dark.
Isbe expects the camp to be quiet with sleep by the time they arrive, but a disturbing chorus of sounds greets her as they dismount at the edge of camp and move forward on foot: the injured whimpering, wives weeping over the dead, oxen shuffling, men awake all night digging fire pits, or latrines. Or maybe graves.
The smells too assault her: the swampy blend of sweat and stale meat, cattle and wet canvas, rust and waste. She’s overwhelmed with a sense of ordered chaos, of death as an industry, as an art. The messenger helps her weave through the disarray, avoiding the makeshift shelters, wagons heaped with tentpoles and spare arms, cooking kettles and stores of supplies, narrating the terrain in his hoarse but practiced manner.
Finally they move toward higher ground; the muscles in her thighs twinge as they march uphill, to where the knights’ tents are slightly wider spread. When the royal guards hold open the flaps of the royal tent, something lurches in Isabelle’s chest.
She hears rustling movement, the quick intake of breath, the hiss of a flame consuming a lantern’s wick, and she knows that William has not been sleeping.
“You shouldn’t be here.” His whispered voice reaches out to her, and suddenly she’s in his arms, his lips urgent against her bare neck.
“I had to be sure. I heard the worst had happened,” she says, emotion pushing up into her throat, tempting her to burst into tears of relief, even as her cloak falls back from her shoulders. She buries her face in his chest, feeling as he tenses his muscles, then relaxes into her.
It isn’t until this moment, holding William hard against her, that she realizes how deeply she feared losing him. Some part of her was convinced that he might die or even disappear, smokelike. She has lost everyone she loves. Sometimes it seems inevitable that she will lose him too.
After a minute, he pulls back. “But really, you shouldn’t have come. It’s so unsafe.” He touches her face. “And in the middle of the night?”
No matter that she’s been riding for hours—she can’t sleep now. “Tell me everything that happened.”
And so he does, the terrible words muttered across her skin, even as he peels back her layers, his fingers fumbling with the strings on her muslin tunic. He tells her he would rather be dead than face his men now. She tries to kiss him, tries to take away what he is saying. His face is wet beneath her fingertips, from tears.
The new cannons—his special design—backfired. Literally. He tells her of the screams as men were devoured alive by the flames of their own weapon, how horses reared, throwing their riders. The mayhem; the bitter, choking black ash that clouded the air, causing confusion.
“William, you couldn’t have known.” She hesitates, almost afraid of him now, fearing that he too will somehow explode at her fingertips. She thinks of the model cannon he showed her back in the royal palace of Aubin—how she’d felt the crack in the marble and wondered at the beauty of his imagination, and the violence he’d been submitted to. Ever so gently, she touches her lips to the scar on his jaw. She tastes him, tastes ash.
“I could have—and I should have.” The pain in his voice is so intense it makes her feel out of control, untethered. Stray tears streak salt into her lips. He kisses them.
“I’ll never forget these horrors as long as I live.” His voice shakes, comes at her low and powerful, like thunder. “I’ll never forgive myself.”