Page 37 of The Bone King and the Starling

I bite my tongue to cage my moan. The low pitch of his voice, that rumbling brogue, moves through me. “Likewise,” I respond.

He finishes my hair, leaving me with a crown of braids atop my head while the rest of my curls flow down my spine. “Are you ready, my queen?” he asks me. And I’m so surprised and touched by the style he’s given me, and the grace with which he gave it, that I have tears burning the backs of my eyes.

I nod and smile.

“I have a dress for you. It was difficult to find one suitable, but I believe this one is close to your size.” He goes to the outer room and what he returns with makes the breath in my lungs seize. The tears that I’d successfully stoppered well once more and several roll down my cheeks. He looks distraught as his gaze snaps between the dark green fabric and my face. “Starling…”

“That was my mother’s.”

He stills. “Why is it not in your possession if it belonged to her?”

“Rosalind took everything of value from my parents’ house when they…died.” When my father killed my mother and himself on the same night. “I thought Rosalind would have sold these off. I didn’t know she still had them.” I approach the dress and drag my fingers over the intricate darker green embroidery stitched onto the front bodice. I stifle my tears and glance up at the king, happy. “Thank you.”

The king’s lips, however, are hard. His eye tics. There are muscles standing out in his neck. He mumbles something under his breath as he helps me dress, first in the softest shift I’ve ever worn, and then in my mother’s dress. It was one I last saw her wear the day Viccra and the other warriors returned from their year in Ithanuir.

Three warriors had gone that time and only two returned. The third, the spice-maker’s son, had stayed and married a merchant’s daughter he met there. They were with child lasttime they came to visit. And I remember hating myself a little at the sight of her rounded belly and happy husband. I’d been so envious. Not only because of her family, but also because after she came to Winterbren for a few days, she’d gotten onto the back of a wagon and left. She’d been able to leave, to go back to a better life than this.

The king’s mood still does not improve as we take first meal in private, and then leave for the great hall. Most who took their meals here have already left their tables, likely vying to get a good spot to witness the games, which will be held on the barren wheat fields, freshly harvested, just south of Winterbren. The king surprises me by declining to ride a horse, but asks if I’m well enough to walk there.

In my new fur-lined boots, I’ve never felt more up for walking in my life. And my good mood will not be anchored by his displeasure, not when walking through Winterbren now, today, with the king holding my hand, everything feels so different. I see the world so differently — I’m able to see the world so differently unburdened by status or station.

People wave at me when they see me now — the same people who may have wanted to wave at me before, but couldn’t. The thralls are smiling at the king as they pass him and I notice that not one of them walks with their face pointed at the ground. They walk with their chins tipped up. They aren’t scrambling to serve and to clean.

I peek into the open curtains of the kitchens and see that it’s, surprisingly, in perfect order, even without the threats of punishments guiding the cooks within. Instead, cooks and helpers and workers of all kinds are crowded in the streets around us as we all walk together to the impromptu practice field south of Winterbren, where the hopeful warriors — a dozen this time — await the king and his verdict on whether or not they are fit to fight alongside him.

My good mood is improved by the weather. It’s beautiful today and I’m the perfect temperature in my mother’s dress, swaddled by the king’s fur. The sun is shining. The raised platform where the king and I will sit is already erected and, from this distance, I can already see the silhouettes of Olec and Rosalind occupying their places upon it.

My mood is elated even though I’m nervous to see Lady Rosalind, in particular, as I know her anger with me will be of catastrophic proportions. Still, I refuse to bow my head as King Calai grips my hand tight and leads me up the platform. He has to help boost me onto the ledge before he follows me onto it with a single sweeping leap of his own. I take my seat and it’s only as he takes his place between Olec and me that I finally look up and boldly meet Lady Rosalind’s eyes.

My good mood dies like the leaves of a sunflower at winter’s first frost. My eyes may see, but my brain does not process. I can…cannot believe… What am…I seeing? What…

Lady Rosalind, pale of skin and fair of hair, is known to be one of the most beautifully adorned women in Winterbren. Always put together. Always composed. As smart as she is mean, as shrewd as she is vicious, she is untouchable. She is the chief’s wife. His favored woman. Any who’d dare cross her knew already that the consequences would be as long as they were terrible…

But now, under the puffy white clouds, drifting so lazily over a baby blue sky, Rosalind sits in a position of honor at the high platform overlooking the games, her gold-crusted lips hang open, just like her eyes. Rolled back, she stares unseeing at the gods.

Rosalind’s limbs are all twisted, caught in terrible positions, like she’s been frozen mid-seizure. What looks like gold and silver paint crusts her mouth, her chin… Droplets stain the frontof her dress. Her throat is…it’s missing. Part of it has been…melted…and the hole merely sits there open to the wind.

Her immaculately coiffed updo has fallen to the side and her dress is tattered, stained in blood. Her collar is split open wide, like the back of her dress has been torn, and there is blood seeping through her seat, swirling around her hem, coating her hands, which are reaching for her neck like she died trying to stop whatever happened to her from happening.

The contents of my stomach pitch and I taste bile. A weak grunt and a shifting blur drag my attention to the seat beside Rosalind where I meet Olec’s gaze directly. I stutter something unintelligible. His normally bloodshot eyes are bright red and the bags beneath them are pink and puffy. He has blood on his cheeks, some smears that I don’t believe are his and other lash marks that certainly are.

Aside from those few marks — marks I recognize, as they match the wounds on my back — he looks otherwise uninjured. A surprise, considering I would have thought that, if Rosalind were truly under threat, he would have tried to fight. Then again, on closer inspection, I can see that his forearms and ankles are bound to the seat beneath him. Perhaps, he couldn’t.

Holding my gaze from the other side of King Calai’s seat, Olec starts to thrash against his bindings. “You stupid, evil whore!” He roars. “You brought doom upon us! You did this! You filthy, ungrateful little girl, spreading your legs for…”

But Puhyo bounds up onto the platform behind Olec and shoves something into his mouth. It isn’t a cloth, but appears hard and painful, judging by the way the chief wails when a tie affixes it between his teeth.

The king, all the while, stares forward. He doesn’t acknowledge Rosalind or Chief Olec in the slightest. He simply continues to hold my hand and, at Olec’s outburst, brings it to his mouth. He kisses the back of my hand, rolls his lips aroundon my skin in a way that, this morning, might have made me pant. Now, it makes my skin shrivel.

“Why, my dear Chief Olec, that isn’t any way to speak to your future queen, now is it?” He speaks calmly, but loudly enough for all nearby to hear. And they are listening. The field is quiet, I realize, and though many are pointing and staring, none are objecting to this. It makes me wonder…if this was not a surprise to them, as it was for me.

In between tender touches and words that were saccharine sweet, did King Calai torture and murder Lady Rosalind, mere feet from where I was sleeping?

The king of bones…is a madman.

Chief Olec starts to weep openly and the king makes a condescending, pitying sound that elicits laughter from many of his warriors standing near the base of the platform. The king pats Chief Olec on the cheek with the same hand he used to braid my hair so deftly and tenderly. Then he gives my hand a little squeeze. “Do not trouble yourself with Olgar, my queen. As I told you before, repercussions from the two of them won’t be delivered to you. They are simply paying their penance now for what they have done to you and the others in this village for decades. I am simply acting as the hand of the gods.”

King Calai’s mask is impenetrable. He is not the same male that he was in the privacy of our chambers. This is the king. Calai is nowhere to be found here.

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