Oh.
Oh.
So he did kill her.
And Mother knew.
She did not know how to feel. It was too huge, too strange. She did not know if she wanted to weep or rage or throw herself from the castle wall. There was nothing in her heart or her history that told her what to do with this new knowledge. It was too big. She had to shove it aside and focus on Kania or else she would be lost completely.
“We could get her away,” said Marra hopelessly. “She could come and stay with me. Take orders with the sisters. He couldn’t get her, then.”
“Marra,” said the queen, her voice softening. “Marra, love, do you think a man who tortures his wife and would wipe out a kingdom on a whim would be stopped by an abbey’s walls?”
She was still standing too far back from herself, trapped in amber. She watched herself bow her head and say, “No. Of course not.”
The fury rising inside her was doused at once. Her mother had known, and she had also known that there was nothing she could do. It was too late. Perhaps it had been too late since Vorling came courting Damia, many years before.
Don’t let her drag you into this hell along with us, Kania had said, her eyes dull with agony, clutching at her sister’s robes. Run away.
The knowledge bloomed inside her like blood soaking through a bandage. Prince Vorling had picked a tiny, vulnerable kingdom who could not fight back. He had done it deliberately. He had married their daughters, knowing that he could torment them at a whim, and they would have to take whatever he gave, to keep their people safe.
… Oh.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” said the queen. “Don’t talk to anyone about this. If word gets back to the prince, it will go badly for your sister.” She set her embroidery aside. “I don’t talk about it, either, for the same reason.”
“Will she be all right?” asked Marra. She knew that the answer was no, but she wanted the queen to comfort her, to tell her that everything would come out for the best, the way that she had when Marra was very young.
“She’s managed this long,” said the queen. “She is riding a dragon, and all of us in the kingdom are riding along with her.”
Chapter 6
Marra had spent fifteen years in the convent all told. Half her life, barring a few months. She could embroider and sew and knit, and she knew, perhaps, a little more of politics than an ordinary nun might. But she could do nothing to save her sister.
She had thought that returning to the familiar routine of the convent would soothe her, but it did not. Days after her return from the Northern Kingdom, Marra still could not settle. She went back and forth, her fingers itching with inactivity, unable to bear the stillness of the convent. What could she do? She had to help Kania, but she could not, but she had to but she could not but …
“Are you in love or pregnant?” asked the Sister Apothecary.
“Neither,” said Marra, somewhat horrified.
“Don’t look so appalled. You’re as jittery as a grasshopper, and those are the two ailments I know of that start that way.”
“No,” said Marra. She trusted the Sister Apothecary a great deal, but she remembered what the queen had said about word getting back to the prince … “No. I’m worried about my sister. She’s … she’s had a lot of pregnancies. Very quickly. And she lost a few and … you know.”
“I know,” said the Sister Apothecary heavily. “I see it all the time. ‘One child, one tooth,’ as the peasant women say, and half these poor women have no teeth left to spare. They wear themselves out bearing. But your sister is a princess, and princesses get better care than the rest of us. She is in good hands.”
It’s the prince’s hands I worry about. Pinching and grabbing and bruising … She remembered the line of violet fingerprints on Kania’s wrist.
“I have to do something,” she muttered, pacing back and forth, worrying at her own wrists with her fingers.
“It’s not yours to fix,” said the Sister Apothecary. “You think I wouldn’t stop women from catching pregnant until they die? But you don’t get that choice. You can’t go around kicking their husbands out of bed. I can mix up bushels of special tea, but I can’t force them to drink it.”
Marra stared down at her hands. “I have to do something,” she said.
“Good luck,” said the Sister Apothecary, saluting her with a glass of cordial. “If you find a way, let me know.”
* * *