Page 32 of Rhapsody of Ruin
His gaze stayed on my face a heartbeat too long. “You want to see where he stood,” he said, and it was not a question.
“I want to show you what the archives weren’t written to hide because no one believed anyone would know where to look.” I angled my head toward the northern wing where servants’ corridors stacked like ribs against the outer wall. “Varcoran Hold keeps too much in the dark because it has grown used to this light. The Vale doesn’t lie, not where the ground has a memory for bones.”
For a fraction his mouth softened, not toward pity, but toward something like… respect. “Tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow,” I echoed, and the agreement hung between us like a string tautening over a canyon, thin, gold, stronger than it had any right to be.
We did not touch. We did not move closer. The court would have loved that too easily; it would have swarmed like wasps on sugar, and the memory we were building needed to be free of their tongues.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked, so perfectly polite I understood he was offering me a way to refuse that would cost neither of us a bruise.
“No,” I said, lightly. “You step on too many feet when you’re waiting for the hunt horn.”
“Fair,” he said, and the smile that flickered then wasn’t for the court. It wasn’t even for me. It was for the tiny, rough stone of humor he had carried in his pocket all day that had finally found a palm to warm it.
“Two hours,” I said, glancing toward the clock that had been disguised as a wreath of ivy in the far corner. “Smile when the Master tells the story about the stag that let the hunter climb to its back and carried him across the river. It keeps him from crying. He does that at home later no matter how it goes, but this way the servants bring him the blue wine instead of the red.” I paused. “You’ll be approached by a Rell with a mask of willow leaves. She wants to talk in whispers about trade. She means dowries. Don’t let her trick you into accepting one you can’t refuse, and don’t let her see how annoyed you are.”
He looked at me steadily. “You are very good at building bridges I did not ask for.”
“I am very good at pretending to be a bridge while I lay foundations,” I said. “Survive the rest of this and meet me at dawn where the kitchens smoke.” I let my voice soften a fraction. “Bring boots you don’t mind ruining.”
“Everything I brought here is already ruined,” he said.
“Good,” I answered. “Nothing breaks twice the same way.” I turned before the court could stage our departure for us. He let me. It pleased me too much that he let me.
By the time the chandeliers lowered a single chain-link, that polite signal the Master of Veythiel preferred to the Queen’ssharper chimes, I had given six more pieces of advice dressed as jokes, stolen three more glances at the boy whose father had died on a night that had taught me the shape of silence, and collected the names of four people who would try to hurt me more quietly tomorrow. I had also watched Kyssa color when Draven returned a strand of hair to its pin with a sweetness I had thought he had lost, and watched him watch her leaving as if he had just realized her collar was not a necklace but a crest and did not know whether to kneel or run.
The court wanted blood again before it left. It tried for mine as always; I gave it flowers with thorns and saw it pretend not to prick. When I made my way to the door at last, Veythiel Hall smelled of sugared fruit and stale triumph; the lanterns’ moons had lowered enough to make every mask’s eyes look hollower than laughter could cure.
I stood in the narrow throat of the columned arch and let the last draft of music wash over me. Somewhere near the center of the room, Sylara lifted her goblet toward me, a little forgiveness, a little threat. I lifted mine back like a nod to a storm I would not hide from.
The night air outside had the clean bite the hall never let in. The stars were absent; the twilight had eaten them long ago over Shadowspire, but the dark felt less false here at the threshold. Footsteps fell softly behind me. I did not turn; I didn’t need to. I knew the sound of his stride now. I could feel the way heat warps air when it moves.
“You don’t love me,” Rhydor said, voice low enough the ivy at the arch might not have heard him. It was not a plea. It was not a wound. It was a statement of a thing that would not be forced to bloom. “I don’t love you.”
“No,” I said, and exhaled the truth as if it were a coin turning. “Not today.”
“But tomorrow,” he said, and there was neither promise nor threat in it. Only recognition of a new road cut through old rock.
“Tomorrow,” I agreed.
We did not touch. We did not look.
I walked down the steps where the marble gave way to dark earth and smelled dew and ash. The kitchen smoke wafted from the far wing, baker, hearth, a human hour tucked under the palace’s throat. I thought of boots and maps and a ledge in the Vale where the wind sings if you stand still enough to let it pass through you.
Behind me, in the hall, the singer began the ballad again at someone’s request. The notes carried like a rumor.
Let them sing their old songs. Tomorrow, I would write a new verse with my feet.
And if I led a dragon into the places the court had forgotten how to look, and he followed me without chains, and the ground remembered the weight of a man who once broke a queen, then perhaps the story would remember it could still change.
Chapter 17
Rhydor
Varcoran stone didn’t pretend. Shadowspire’s halls breathed glamour with every step; Varcoran Hold breathed only the cliff and the wind. We rode into the north beneath the same silver sky that never lifted, but the air here bit through cloak and leather with a clean, saltless cold that tasted almost honest. The cliff fortress rose out of the granite the way a fist rises from a jaw, no curve, no apology, its battlements black where the obsidian veining met the native rock and hardened into lines that had never learned to bend.
We came with as little ceremony as the court would allow: no pennants, no gonging heralds, only a pair of palace outriders far enough back to satisfy protocol and close enough to make my teeth itch. Torian argued to bring ten; I insisted on two. Elowyn agreed with me without saying why, which was either good strategy or something more dangerous. Between us rode a single Varcoran escort, an old steward whose mask was a band of plain silver that left his mouth uncovered and his eyes to the wind. He never looked behind. He never spoke unless she did.
