Mhera smoothed the blanket over Kaori's chest. On the other side of the prince's room, Emperor Korvan paced. Mhera had never seen him like this; he was driven to distraction with his worry over his son.
Physicker Naelis fluttered about, the long sleeves of her green robe billowing. She had already changed Kaori's dressings and examined the wounds. Now she was, predictably, mixing a tea.
Korvan paused to look at the physician. "Physicker, will he live?"
"I think so, Your Grace, although there are few promises in cases such as these," said the woman. She cast a worried look toward the bed where Kaori lay.
"I will live, Father," said Kaori. His eyes opened a fraction.
Letting out her breath in a sigh and sending up a prayer of thanks, Mhera reached for his hand. "Kaori."
Korvan crossed the room in a few quick strides. He leaned over Kaori, brushing the prince's golden hair back from his fevered brow. There was such an expression of tender joy on his features that Mhera had to look away. It felt intrusive to witness the emperor's relief. "Kaori, my son."
Kaori looked up at his father. The smile that crossed his face was tired and bewildered. "Father ...?"
"Shh, my son. Take your rest. You are safe now. Naelis, you will stay with him until he can move about on his own. I do not want him to be alone. He must have every comfort."
"Of course, Your Grace," said the physician. She turned with a cup of tea in her hands and approached the bed. Helping Kaori to sit up, she placed the cup in his hand and watched him while he struggled to take a few sips. "Good, Your Highness. Here; I shall set it on the side table. Try to drink what you can."
Kaori leaned back with a wheeze of discomfort, resting his head on the pillow. He drew a breath and let it out slowly, shifting underneath the heavy blanket. Then he said, quite unexpectedly, "Father ... how did Mother die?"
The emperor had stepped back to allow Naelis to tend to the prince, but had remained close at hand, watchful. Now, surprise crossed his features, touching them for a moment and fading away as he searched Kaori's face.
Then, the emperor looked at Mhera across the wounded prince's bed. There was something gathering in his eyes, something terrible. Without knowing why, Mhera felt fear tickle her heart.
"Father?" Kaori repeated.
Naelis had paused in her work. She looked from Korvan to Kaori and back again. A sudden tension had shattered the affectionate reunion between the emperor and his son. Cautiously, as if afraid to speak when she had not been called upon, Naelis said, "It was very sudden, Your Highness ... but Her Grace had been ill for quite some time. Her passing was not entirely unexpected, may Zanara grant rest to her blessed soul."
Korvan ignored Naelis. He did not look away from Mhera. "Why do you ask me this, Kaori?"
Kaori seemed to judge what to say very carefully. It took him a moment. Then he said, "I know Koreti was not your son."
There was a tense silence. Then, the emperor spoke lowly. Softly. "You told him," he said. He fixed Mhera with a penetrating gaze so intense that she quailed.
She shook her head, confused that he had so readily targeted her. "What? Uncle ... I didn't. I didn't know."
"You Saw it, didn't you?" Korvan backed up several steps from the bed. "I knew you would. You should never have left that island."
Mhera struggled to keep up. He thought she had Seen Koreti's parentage. He had feared that she would. A realization dawned, painful in its clarity. "You sent me there because you were afraid. You were afraid of my gift."
"You were safe there."
"Yes—but that isn't the reason, is it? Not all of the reason. You were safe, too. That's it, isn't it? You were afraid I would See the truth!"
"I wanted to keep you out of their reach—and I was right, wasn't I? The moment you came back, you were torn from us!"
"You wanted me to be there, all alone, where no one who mattered would know what I Saw. You wanted to hide the truth about Koreti! All of my visions came to you ..." And he could have kept her there, isolated, with no one to hear her if she uncovered the truth.
Did he know? Did he know that Koreti was alive? Had he deliberately put some other child's body in the Tomb of the Sovereigns to keep his secret safe?
The emperor was coiled like a snake, quivering with anger. He said, "Both of them deserved the fate they received. They could have hoped for nothing better—she for the crime she committed, he for the crime that he was. They deserved to die."
Kaori's face was pale and sick. Mhera thought he was thinking of his brother, but when he spoke again, the prince's words were darker still. "You killed her."
Korvan looked at Kaori, and Mhera thought she could see the light of the fire burning again in his eyes. She saw the fire even before the horror of what the emperor said next dawned on her. Over his shoulder, Mhera saw Naelis creeping toward the door, a stricken look on her face. But the emperor seemed not to notice.
"For her treachery," he said. "For her deceit! You are not a boy any longer, my son. Think of what she did to me—to us—to the realm! She raised another man's son. I raised another man's son! He might have worn the crown—a bastard child!"
"You sent him to his death, and you—you killed the empress." Mhera felt Kaori's hand closing over hers, tightening. She looked down at him. There was something in his eyes she could not read, something he seemed to want to say to her. She could not try to make sense of it; her mind was working too hard to understand what had been revealed.
"Neither of them deserved to live," snarled Korvan. "For Koreti, the rebels did the work I would have done, had I had the chance. It is the one thing I can thank them for. And tomorrow, this war will end."
So he did not know. He truly thought Koreti dead. Mhera was not sure what to feel. Relief—surely it should be relief. But perhaps some part of her had hoped that he might have mercy if he knew Matei was his lost son.
She looked up at Korvan, pulling her hand out of Kaori's grasp. "No," she said. "You will broker your peace, and for the moment, you may triumph. But I know something you do not know, Uncle, and it will one day be your undoing."
Korvan had never looked like this before. His hair was disheveled, his face a furious mask. Whatever love he had felt for her was nowhere in evidence now. He saw her now as what he had feared she would be: his enemy, the girl who had unraveled all of his secrets. That she had not did not matter; he had confessed what he had done. The last scrap of loyalty Mhera had left for him was devoured by the fire burning in the emperor's glittering eyes.
Again, she felt eerily calm. "Perhaps it will not be tomorrow, Your Grace. Perhaps not for a generation. But one day, a son of your sons will contend with it. We are not the blessed ones—we are all three of us descended from traitors. We are not the children of the Blessed Sovereigns at all. The legacy you defend has been ruined from the start."
Mhera saw in his face that he almost believed her. She, nothing more than a castaway lady, was to him a prophetess. But he considered her words only for an instant before he made a sharp gesture to push them away. "Am I surrounded by enemies, then?" Korvan said in a whisper. He glanced from Mhera to Kaori, his eyes as wild and dangerous as a cornered animal's. "My son—Kaori—tell me you have not turned from me."
"Father, how can I? You have carried an impossible burden. You were betrayed."
Mhera's heart sank when she heard Kaori's words. The ache of being parted from Koreti was painful enough, but this? "Kaori, he killed your mother! How can you defend him now?"
Kaori looked at her, and she saw the fear in his face. He looked like a man with a knife at his throat. "You cannot know the pain he felt," he said. "And now you betray him, too."
Triumph gleamed in Korvan's face. "You will wear the crown, my son," he said. "And you, girl ... Guards!"
It had seemed, while the drama unfolded, that they were in a world apart. But Korvan's sharp command brought two men from the hallway within the space of a breath. They bowed, and one of them said, "Your Grace?"
"This woman is a traitor to the Crown. Take her."
"Father, please—" Kaori said. "Please, have mercy on her. She's confused—"
"No," Mhera said, looking past the prince at the uncle who once had loved her, the uncle who had been a father to her. She saw him now with clear eyes, and that clarity made her calm. "I am many things, Kaori. But I am not confused."
She did not wait for them to come to her. She walked around the bed, and as she moved, she did not spare the emperor another glance. But as the guards took her arms and turned her away, she looked back at the prince where he lay in his bed, meeting his terrified gaze for an instant, and she knew he was as helpless as she.
...
Although dawn must have broken outside, in the dungeon it was eternal dusk. The reddish light of the lanterns cast dark shadows that wavered and danced.
Mhera could hear him now and then in the cell beside hers by the slow drag and clank of the chains they'd locked round his wrists and ankles. She could not see him, but she knew he was there.
He had not spoken since the guards had brought her down. She had not fought them. Matei, from his cell, had demanded to know how they dared to imprison a lady, but no one—not even she—had made a response, and when the guards had gone, silence had descended.
The filth of her cell did not bother her now. The iron bars did not frighten her.
She had thought she'd known what being in a cage was like. First she had lived at the Haven with gray-clad strangers, rising each day to the bitter morning and allowing the empire to use her Sight. Then, she had followed her captor into worlds unknown, powerless to break the chains that bound her to him. But this was true captivity: knowing in her heart that something was wrong, that evil flourished in the heart of the realm, and being unable to change it.
They had been given nothing to eat, no water to drink. Mhera was terribly thirsty. She ran her dry tongue over her lips, wondering what it would be like to go to her death. She hoped the end would be quick. Somehow, she was not afraid, but she prayed that there would be little pain.
"Mhera?"
She turned her head at the sound of his voice. She tried to speak lightly. "Still here."
He did not say anything. She could hear him breathing.
"Koreti, I am not afraid."
"This isn't right. You should not be here—I never wanted this. I never wanted to break your family apart."
Mhera looked down into her lap. She turned up her right hand and traced the faint line of the scar on her palm. "You broke nothing. You simply revealed what was always there. We could have lived our lives never knowing ... but I would rather swallow a thousand bitter truths."
"Tell me you will not go with me to the sword. Tell me he has at least that much mercy in him."
Mhera closed her eyes and leaned back against the dank wall of her cell. "Koreti ... I have something to tell you." How she wished she could look into his face, that she could hold him as he heard this last terrible truth.
After a moment, he asked, "What is it?"
"Your mother ... Korvan—he—"
She found she could not make the words come. But as the stillness stretched out between them, perfect in its silence except for the sound of water dripping somewhere in the cavernous chamber, she found she did not need to. She heard the shudder of his indrawn breath. He was crying.
"I'm sorry." She knew she should cry, too, but she was beyond tears; besides, she felt no sorrow for herself. She grieved only for him.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. It was he who broke the silence at last. "It won't end with us, Mhera. When the time is right, they will rise again."