State of Sorrow (Sorrow #1)(19)
They had no future – they’d known that all along. Laws had been passed centuries ago forbidding Rhyllian and Rhannish relationships, the price death in both countries. But it wasn’t enough to stop them. The fact it was forbidden made it sweeter, another secret, another rebellion, along with laughter, and games, and open windows.
As their relationship deepened, as kisses became much more, Sorrow wanted to know what happened when Adavere Starwhisperer crossed the bridge to Rhannon.
“He married her? The woman he built the bridge for? So Rhannish and Rhyllians could marry once?” Sorrow was shocked when her grandmother told her.
“Well, yes,” her grandmother said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Quite literally once. Before Adavere built the bridge there were no relations between our people and theirs. It was impossible because of the river. So Adavere and Namyra – the Rhannish woman – were the first. And also the last.”
“Why?”
“Adavere had a gift,” the dowager continued. “An ability. He claimed it must have come with the stars when he charmed them down. Because after that, his very presence would soothe and calm. Just to be near him would bring a feeling of bliss. But the gift was a double-edged blade, and while it eased away the bad, it also numbed the good. Adavere’s gift was especially strong, and it drove Namyra mad in the end. Every emotion she had was taken from her by him, leaving her a shell. She stopped sleeping in their rooms, stopped dining with him, even began hurting herself – anything to feel something. It broke her heart to withdraw from him, but it was the only way she could feel at all. Eventually she packed her things and fled in the night.
“She came back here, to Rhannon, and of course, Adavere came after her. It almost caused a war – in fact, some believe it was this that first created the bad blood between our countries – the abilities, and the power it might give them over us. Finally, after realizing the misery he’d left his bride in, Adavere returned to Rhylla, and passed a law saying relationships between his people and the Rhannish were forbidden, on pain of death. And the then-king of Rhannon made it law here too.”
All Sorrow knew of what the Rhyllians called their “abilities”, she’d learned from Rasmus. Neither Charon nor her grandmother had ever mentioned that the Rhyllian ambassador and his son could do things she couldn’t. He, of course, was able to soothe away pain – a skill she later took advantage of when her monthly courses harassed her. And his father was gifted with plants, able to coax them into growing faster than they might, in places they might not naturally, or to yield more fruit than they would normally.
But this gift of Adavere’s sounded different to what Rasmus had told her about his own ability. Dangerous, even. The law made sense to her, in light of that.
Just not sense enough for her to stop kissing Rasmus Corrigan when he lowered his mouth to hers.
Sorrow remembered the story of Adavere and Namyra as she climbed back into her own bed. She’d meant to talk to him after they’d finally sated themselves, to tell him that she was stepping up as chancellor presumpt, and that night had to be the last between them. That from tomorrow she could be his friend, but nothing more.
She tossed and turned for the rest of the night, too many thoughts in her mind to allow her rest. The tentative knocks of her maids at her door were a relief, when they finally came.
“Pardon, Miss Ventaxis, but it’ll be dawn in an hour. Your bath is ready.”
Sorrow shed the skin of her night-time self and became Miss Ventaxis, daughter of a drug addict and a dead woman, sister to a ghost that would not stop haunting her. And soon, the leader of the land.
Sorrow was bathed and dressed within half an hour, refusing breakfast, her stomach churning too much to contemplate food. Unable to settle to anything, she paced her room, marking the minutes in circuits, until word came from the Round Chamber at precisely seven bells, summoning her to them.
When Sorrow entered the Round Chamber on shaking legs, the Jedenvat were seated at the table in the centre of the room. Someone had brought wine, despite the hour, and they replenished their glasses now, pouring one for her. No servants were permitted inside the Round Chamber, no ambassadors or visitors.
Named for its shape, the Round Chamber had once been a jewel in the Rhannish crown, the walls painted with painstakingly detailed maps of every country on Laethea: Rhannon, Rhylla, Astria, Meridea, Svarta, Nyrssea. The Skae Isles to the north of Nyrssea were rendered so finely that even the fierce water women could be seen frolicking in the grey seas that surrounded them. Whales and sea beasts were painted into the oceans; albino bears dotted the Svartan landscape. Once, a team of five painters had been retained by Sorrow’s grandfather, endlessly painting, erasing, then repainting borders as his battles played tug o’war across the lands, claiming then losing ground so fast the landscape of Rhannon changed almost daily.
The paint hadn’t dimmed, thanks to the curtained windows. The sea-maids’ teeth still glittered in the candlelight; the desert of Astria was still gleaming gold. The only thing that had changed was the scar where the bridge between Rhannon and Rhylla was. Sorrow didn’t know who’d done it, but someone had come into the room and hacked at the wall until the bridge was gone, leaving flaking plaster and paint chips in its place. A lifetime of seeing it never dampened the shock whenever she looked at it. Though she knew the reason for the bridge’s scouring away, and even understood it, it seemed to her to bode ill – that the only land link between their lands had been destroyed on the map, and no one had thought to repair it. Not even her.