Page 12 of A Chill in the Flame
The servants murmured about the loss of their kind, gentle royal. The advisors needed the world to remember that not only had Farehold lost its saintliest monarch, but Raascot had been robbed of its future queen. Ophir clutched her pain, knowing it was her final tie to her sister. Anguish was not an emotion she wanted to share. She resented KingCeneth and his suffering as the world looked only at his loss, rather than hers. The King of Raascot and his people had attended the burial ceremony with his armed guard, grieving the loss of his betrothed. They’d planned for peace and unity for the continent’s humans and fae. Together, he and Caris were going to usher in a new era of prosperity. When she died, all hope had perished with her.
Ophir took a small solace in the vengeance enacted by the royal family.
Berinth’s manor had been brought to rubble. Nothing remained of his estate, and his grounds had been salted and cursed. The lord had not been recovered, but any man affiliated with their fateful soirée had been burned without ceremony and left in the unmarked graves of the manor’s ruins. Investigations into the nature of his profane and terrible gatherings had met a number of dead ends, as no one seemed to know much about the mysterious lord, nor the other men Ophir had found in the room that night. From the little they’d learned of the man, he’d arrived in the lands beyond Aubade only one decade prior, after inheriting the lands and title from his wealthy, established uncle.
If Ophir had to be awake, she’d spend the time in prayer. Dwyn had suggested vengeance, and goddess almighty, how Ophir longed for a world with justice. She’d never been religious, but if there was an All Mother, perhaps the goddess would do what she could not and smite Lord Berinth where he stood.
And so the days had gone on, with Ophir praying to a goddess she didn’t believe in, drowning her sorrows in red wine, shriveling and pruning in the bath, and dozing in and out of sleep for weeks.
Night after night, Ophir woke to Harland’s frantic attempts to help, just like he had the night of the party. Somehow, Ophir’s ever-vigilant guard had awoken that morning knowing some horror had befallen. He hadn’t knocked in those first lights of dawn.
Harland had burst into Ophir’s room with the ferocity of someone who knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. He’d startled the night guard who had fallen asleep on watch and tumbled from his chair. After yelling at the negligence of the overnight guard and flinging open the door, he’d found her bed empty. A servant had discovered a despondent Ophir hours later.
They hadn’t anticipated that a grieving member of the royal family would need increased security detail to ensure she stayed in her room while Aubade planned a funeral, but a mere forty-eight hours after Caris’s death, Harland had been shocked to find a naked stranger with a towel in her hair and a soapy princess surrounded by the sandy evidence of her trip to the beach. Dwyn had been all too happy to tell Harland that his charge had attempted to kill herself. She patted him on the shoulder and told him to do a better job before slipping into the shimmery, salty starlit gown that she had worn when she’d carried Ophir in from the sea. Dwyn had disappeared from the castle without another word.
The weeks had stretched into more than a month, and the young princess had not seen the siren again. Memories of Dwyn and wishful thoughts of vengeance were fleeting. Ophir supposed she’d never know if the All Mother answered her prayers for justice, which was just another helpless thing worth mourning.
She hadn’t answered questions about Dwyn. She hadn’t answered questions about Caris. She hadn’t answered questions about anything. Ophir had disappeared into herself, growing quieter and smaller with every day that passed. She was slipping away while the fire ate her.
“It won’t hurt me.” Ophir frowned at Harland’s blistered, bandaged hands.
“It’s already hurting you,” he replied.
Once she was fully awake and knew she was safe, he would leave her room once more, and she would go back to being completely and utterly alone.
Ophir had been strong once. She had been wild and charming and powerful. She hadn’t needed protection from anyone or anything.
Until she did.
One month became three. Early summer had grown unbearably hot, its sweltering air boiling the residents of Castle Aubade no matter how many charmed fans or spelled objects they used to keep themselves cool. The sweltering weather was the only thing that pushed Ophir from her room, chasing her beyond the cliffs to sit on the edge of the waters, allowing her to dissociate into the horizon where sky met sea and the waters could lap against her feet. The hottest summer on record slowly faded into the early, cooling days of autumn. No matter how many suns set or moons passed, her heart would not heal.
Others seemed to be moving on with their lives. Caris’s bedroom had been sealed shut, never to be used again. Portraits and statues were commissioned to honor her. Commemorative charities were started in her name. A holiday of cherry blossoms was named for the late princess, to be honored every year on the anniversary of her death. The days went on and clocks continued to tick away their time as if nothing had changed; people resumed their duties and their laughter and their visions for the future. Yet Ophir grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
She’d wasted into such a gaunt, sallow state that healers had been called and servants were ordered to sit with her and monitor her nutrition, reporting back on her daily intake of food. Spiritual advisors from the All Mother and even from the temples of the lesser-known deities were called to her bedside to beseech anyone who would listen on behalf of their youngest daughter. Holy priestesses from temples across the continent were summoned, though they had no answer for how to heal that which had broken within her.
The king and queen had already lost one daughter, Ophir supposed. They couldn’t risk another.
Ophir had abandoned her life of parties, preferring to drink herself to sleep most nights and wake up with a pounding headache and a sick stomach with every passing morning. As she had done in the summer’s blistering heat, she continued to wander down to the beach and allow the shells to cut into her bare feet. She’d walk into the ocean up to her calves while Harland, her ever-present shadow, stayed at a careful distance. She wandered the shores and cliffs a few times per week whenever the weather allowed, but never again did she see the strange woman who’d brought sand and salt into her bedroom and crawled into the tub’s soapy waters with her. The fae hadn’t only saved her from the ocean that day. Dwyn’s bizarre levity in the moments following the incident had kept Ophir from breaking. The treacherous way in which Dwyn had informed Harland of her attempt had been an act of kindness, even if it hadn’t felt that way.
She knew it wouldn’t bring her sister back, but Ophir would search for the siren’s shape along the dots of the horizon as a final, strange tether to the most awful night of her life.
Once again, she had left her room half-drunk and begun to wander toward the sea. Her guard followed several paces behind, unwilling to let her leave his sight. Through the corridors and toward the back wall of the castle, she exited where Castle Aubade’s vertical, cream walls met the sheer cliffs that dropped into the sea below.
Fourteen weeks had come and gone, forcing her to live with a reality worse than death. Fourteen weeks with the familiar empty space stretched out before her. In the nearly four months that had spread from early summer to the chill of late autumn, there had been no sign of life beyond the fish and crabs that washed up on the shore. She would continue her cycle of waking, drinking, vomiting, burning, screaming, walking into the water, and wishing she had been taken instead of her sister. No relief was coming for her. Ophir was all alone.
Until one day, she wasn’t.
A slim silhouette was relaxing on the cliff, dangling her feet over the edge without a care in the world in the hour before sunset. Ophir stilled at the exit to the castle, clutching at the door when she saw the shape. Her guard doubtlessly recognized the woman from the naked figure that had greeted him all those mornings ago. His hand flew instinctively to the hilt of his sword, but Ophir placed a hand on his wrist, pausing him.
“I’d like to talk to her” was all she said.
Harland promised he’d be nearby if she needed anything. He leaned against the door to the castle’s outer walls and eyed them warily as the shapes of the two women stood out against the horizon.
Ophir had the strange déjà vu that she might be dreaming once again as she felt the sea spray hit her face. The calming sound of waves breaking on the rocks below intermingled with seagulls that bobbed and dove through the pinks and reds of the evening sunset. Dwyn was lounging on the cliff as if it were the most natural thing in the goddess’s lighted kingdom.
“Dwyn?” Ophir closed the space halfway between the custard-colored wall and the spot where the strange, dark fae sat. She meant to speak the name with a sense of authority or recognition, but her rasp had almost no volume at all. The name was stolen on the breeze, lost to the caws of the seagulls that dove and flapped overhead.
Over the gentle, distant sound of the waves, a lilting voice called, “It’s been a while, Firi. How’s the vengeance coming along?”
