Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

30. Told by Ashanti

"Whatever it is, it's not a ploy to kill me, Phedoxia. I sense it in my bones."

I imagined scorpias assassins everywhere lately, except for here at this very moment. Ondrey had just done what I would have done, had I been desperate for someone to listen to me.

Hence, I intended to listen.

Alas, I couldn't explain to Phedoxia that I recognized the same nature, the same ambition in him that also drove me all my life. It didn't take long for a woman to recognize her reflection in the mirror. Alas, I couldn't explain it all well enough before Ondrey had bleed out.

"I appreciate the offer, Phedoxia. But go. Bring the medicine. Also, bring Miccola and the Haida's elder, whoever she is today."

I seized the lantern from her and lifted the dagger blade over it. Three red drops clung to the steel of my dagger for a long moment before falling onto the flames.

A drop...a pause...a drop.

Each blood drop sizzled on the smoldering sticks coated with Ashanti, giving out a puff. I expected the smoke to turn scarlet—and it didn't. Ashanti overpowered everything with its purple haze, even the blood.

I leaned over the contraption, my hair—a curtain around the lantern, and inhaled as deeply as I dared.

With the last effort of consciousness, I slurred to Phedoxia, "If he is guilty, he'll die. It's not a merciful death, trust me on that! But if he's innocent and I want him to live, and you're not here when I need you--"

She turned and left into the night with shuffling steps and bent back. It was like all the years of her long life had caught up with her at once.

I could no longer worry about Phedoxia. Ondrey's tent blurred around me. My heartbeat became the cymbals' banging.

***

The windows admitted plenty of light into the giant echoing room I saw in Ashati's fumes. A tapestry covered up a whitestone wall... A palace of some sort, despite the sparse ornaments. I had no interest in studying the decor. My eyes went straight to Ondrey. He stood to the side, next to a circle of crones.

...Three women and iron manacles restrained him. In the vision, he was much younger, on the cusp of his twentieth spring or thereabout, judging by a rose-petal texture and color of his undamaged cheek. And my heart! He was achingly beautiful back then. Or must have been, before the bruises closed one eye and blood from the broken nose crusted everything it had splattered upon, skin or clothes. Despite the appalling evidence of the beating he had received, the brunt of hatred wasn't directed against Ondrey. The pain inflicted upon him was an afterthought.

Inside the circle of crones knelt a young woman. She was about my present age back then, but softer. Heavily pregnant.

In my dream, Ondrey started to scream and it nudged the pieces together for me. This was his wife carrying their unborn child.

My gut tightened.

Ashanti was showing me the past, but I didn't need to be a seer to guess what was coming. He was single now. He'd made a vow to sacrifice everything to get something important to him. It could only have been vengeance. I knew what was going to happen to the woman and the child. Just not how. Or how bad it was going to be.

The statuesque woman who incited the gathering could have only been the Princess Granda. If someone told me she had to devour babies to preserve her youth and beauty, I would have believed it. She had a perfect cast to her oval face, yet unnatural pallor, relieved only by the angry splotches of red on the cheekbones. The blue of her eyes belonged in a flowerbed. The glossy braid tossed over one shoulder had the faintest hint of gold over silver, shot through with the threads of those noble metals to put them to shame.