In the Veins of the Drowning(83)
She rushed to my side and took my hand, tugging me closer to the water. A small group of robed Obelian women huddled off to the side, preparing for their ceremony. “I’m so sorry.” Agatha held my hand tight. “I tore into Lachlan for barging in on you two like that. I’ll never forgive him for suggesting the council vote on your severance.” She stared out at the cresting waves, her look sober and dark. “You can’t let Lachlan decide for you. You have to make your own choice.”
I watched the water too. I could feel it breathe and pulse, a mirror of my own body’s rhythms. I guessed it was a mirror to Eusia’s too, wherever her split, decrepit carcass might be. “I understand Lachlan’s frustrations,” I said. “And the weight all this has put on him. Please, don’t let it topple what you two are trying to rebuild.”
She let go of my hand and scoffed. “It’s already toppled.” Her gaze was vacuous as she peered at him across the sand. “No. That gives the impression that it can be rebuilt yet again. It’s a heap of ash that sits between us, I think.” A gust tousled her curls, and she brushed them back with a sad smile on her lips. “We were a long time apart. We used to be complementary shapes, but now we don’t quite fit.”
An indescribable sorrow overtook me. “But you still love him?”
“Yes. I love him.” She swiped quickly at her cheek, at the tear she’d let slip her guard. She looped her arm through mine and squeezed. “That’s the worst of it.”
“Then keep trying.” I wasn’t sure if it was sound advice or not, but I wanted her to have what I couldn’t. “Perhaps you’re trying to make things look the way they used to, but you are different people now. You need time to relearn, to explore what you have each become.”
Agatha looked at me with teary, blinking eyes. “All right.” She gave me a grateful half smile and I could see a prickling of hope in her look. “That’s enough of that.”
I peeked over my shoulder to see if the ceremony was to begin, but the Obelians still rifled through an array of small wooden boxes.
My breath hitched when I realized one of the women among them was Princess Halla. She and the two others, her ladies-in-waiting, wore identical robes in a light, fleshy pink. Halla’s pale hair hung straight and unadorned, slipping around her shoulders in the breeze. Her angular cheeks were without any rouge, and her lips lacked their usual petal-pink coloring too. When she turned, I stifled a jolt. From her neck to her hem hung a deep red sash the precise color of blood.
The effect was so stark, so jarring, that I had to fight to smooth my features. I could only think of the empress’s story of the night the Nels had been slain. Sliced open from nape to groin, bowels spilling to the rug, no doubt by one of King Nemea’s men. All so that he might snatch some jewels. It had the mark of him—of his contemptible, craven scheming.
I leaned toward Agatha. “Where is the empress?”
She gave me a troubled look. “She told Lachlan she refused to speak to or be around the king until he apologized for slighting her daughter last night.”
“Fucking Gods.”
One of the ladies took a tapered crystal stake from a wooden box. It was smooth, flawlessly clear, and its point was terrifyingly sharp. Upon inspecting it, Princess Halla turned to face the small group of us that had gathered on the beach. When her eyes landed on me, they went wide. “Lady Imogen, what a surprise to see you here.”
I dipped into a curtsy as her blue gaze darted over my rumpled dress, then up to my unsecured, waving hair. I wore no jewels save the spinel on my finger, no color on my face. I looked like I’d risen directly from a fitful sleep.
Halla sent her attention over the beach once more and said, quietly, sternly, “I’d like a word.”
I squeezed Agatha’s hand from nerves. “Of course, Your Highness.”
The princess started down the beach in a stroll, her arms clasped before her, head bowed. The sand and the water and the sky were all a melding shade of cloudy gray. I couldn’t walk much farther, and stopped just as the bond in my stomach began to twist with discomfort. “Your Highness, what would you like to speak of?”
She stopped and spun. “Do you know what the ritual I’m about to perform is for?”
“I was told it was for a blessing.” I kept my voice even. My face still. “For your forthcoming wedding. And the war.”
“Yes, that’s correct,” she said, in her lilting way. “I expect you can understand why I would want such a thing.”
My brow creased. “Of course.”
Halla stepped closer, her white hair pulled back from the breeze, her death-pale face pinched. “Then you will not interfere. I have been tasked with a job here, and I believe that your presence, and the… ample time you spend with the king, will prevent me from accomplishing it.”
I held her stare, unable to determine if that job was simply to make an heir, or if it was something more sinister, but both prospects made my insides churn. “What is the job you are here to do?”
Her brows lowered. Her soft words came clipped. “That question is out of line—”
I spoke on undeterred. “I know you have lost favor with your mother, Halla. You have done something to make her pass you over as her heir. I expect you want desperately to find her favor again, but I do not trust her, and by proxy I do not trust you. I need to know if you intend to hurt Theodore or his kingdom to get back in her good graces.”