Brightly Woven(69)

“Time to eat, love,” she said. She padded quietly across the room to retrieve a plate. I shook my head when she brought it back. I felt sick to my stomach.

I touched the fabric against my skin. Someone had dressed me in a sleeping gown of red silk. And there was more silk strung up around the room, from wall to wall, the different colors and shapes running together. My eyelids stayed open only long enough to see the little woman’s kind face.

“Where…?” I breathed out, unable to finish.

“You are finally home,” she whispered into my ear. “We’ve been waiting so long for you to come.”

The old woman woke me from my nightmares. She held my head in her lap, brushing and combing my hair away from my face. Mostly, she told me nonsensical things, hushed me when I tried to speak.

In the early light of one morning, I heard her voice across the room, whispering urgently.

“—must make that demon lift his magic. She hasn’t eaten in days, and I fear—”

“He said that she would wake long enough to eat. Are you telling me you can’t get her to, Beatrice?” The man’s voice was deep and strong. I saw him through a thin veil of lashes; he was dressed in deep red robes, with a head of graying black hair. The silver crown was worn low on his head. He looked like a god of war.

“She won’t stay awake long enough!” the woman said. “I’m afraid she’ll die if you don’t right this.”

I tried pushing myself away from them, toward the wall. My arms felt as though they were full of sand. They flopped about helplessly, twisting in ways that would have hurt had I not been so numbed by sleep. Poison, I thought. I’ve been poisoned….

I made a distressed noise, squeezing my eyes shut. Beatrice was at my side, pressing her warm hands against my face.

“Please, Your Majesty!” she cried. “Please.”

I saw his face as he knelt beside me, studying me closely. I blinked, fighting desperately to keep my eyes open.

“Salvala,” he said, the name of the goddess falling from his lips like a prayer. “This humble and obedient king welcomes you to your kingdom.”

I found North in the small garden. The flowers and green sinews of life that he had brought back with his magic lay scattered around him, burning.

“I did it,” he said. His back was to me, but he always could find me. “I ruined it all.”

“North,” I cried, wrapping my arms around him from behind. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

“Syd,” he whispered. “You need to wake up.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t leave you.”

“Sydelle.” His voice was louder, suddenly not his own. “I said wake up!”

I glanced up, feeling his form shift and change in my arms. He glanced back over his shoulder at me, a low laugh rising in his chest.

I was looking not at North, but at the mutilated face of Reuel Dorwan.

I sat up with a scream, kicking and thrashing at the sheets. My sleeping gown was wet with sweat. A nightmare. Please, Astraea, I thought, pressing my face into my hands. Just let it be a nightmare.

“It’s lovely to see you again, too, Sydelle.”

Dorwan sat across from the bed, in the chair usually occupied by Beatrice. If he hadn’t been wearing that rotting pale coat, I might have taken him for a stranger. As the burns from his duel with North healed, the skin of his face had been pulled back, giving him a perpetual sneer.

Beatrice was nowhere in sight. I tried to pull myself off the bed to escape him, but I got no farther than the edge. I didn’t have the strength.

“I don’t advise that,” he said. “You’ve been asleep for nearly a week. Your body needs to wake itself up.

“I had to keep you asleep,” he continued. “We couldn’t have you getting upset enough to cause another quake, could we?”

“What…are…?” The words scratched my throat. The wizard handed me a glass of water from the nightstand, but I turned away from it.

“Come now, Sydelle,” he said. “No poison this time. Wizard’s honor.”

I accepted the glass and downed its contents in one large gulp, though a part of me wished it were poison.

“That’s better,” he said.

I turned my head away again, looking around the small room. The fire crackled and hissed, but I could still feel the coldness radiating from Dorwan.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

“In hell?”

Dorwan let out a burst of laughter. “Close. You’re in Auster. The king’s summer palace on the coast.”

“If I’m in Auster, what are you doing here?”

“I’m just a messenger,” he said, “who brought wonderful news to the king.” Dorwan inched closer to me, and I drew my knees up to my chest for protection. “Tell me, Sydelle, do you know anything about Auster’s faith?”

I took a deep breath, humoring him. “They believe that Salvala’s gift of the sword to man was better than Astraea’s gift of magic.”

“And they expect their goddess to return and reclaim the throne of the heavens,” Dorwan finished.

“What does this have to do with me?” I asked.

“It has everything to do with you, and that’s why finding you was so delightful,” he said. “When poison and duels didn’t work, I had to figure out a different way to take you from Wayland. He wasn’t ever going to let you go unless I put a sea—or a lake—between the two of you. Luckily for me, I caught the king’s ear, and he was willing to listen to the word of a wizard.”