The mossy walls of the city were well defended. Stoic bowmen stood the length of the ramparts, near indistinguishable in their forest greens. They knew him on sight, their vision perfect even at a distance.
A prince of Iona returned, bloody and alone.
The mare carried him up the ridge and through the gates, galloping as far as the Monarch’s palace. Dom leapt from her back when she fell to the ground. Her breath came heavy and slow, and then not at all. He flinched as her heart beat its last.
The guards flanked their prince without a word. Most were golden-haired and green-eyed, their faces stark white in the mist, their leather armor embossed with the crest of Iona. The great stag was everywhere—in wall carvings, in statues, on the tunics and armor of his fellow Ionians. It loomed over all things, proud and distant, eyes all-seeing.
My failure laid bare before it, he thought.
Ashamed, Dom entered the palace of Tíarma, passing beneath the yawning oak doors. Someone pressed a cloth into his hand, and he took it, wiping at the dried blood on his face. His wounds bit and stung, some splitting open again. He ignored the pain in the immortal way.
But he could not ignore the feel of his own torn flesh.
I must look like a monster.
After five hundred years living within Tíarma, Dom knew it well. He strode rapidly past halls and archways branching off to different wings of the palace and fortress. The feasting hall, the rose garden at the center of the palace, the battlements, and living quarters. They all blurred in his mind’s eye.
Only once had he wept upon these stones. The day he became an orphan and ward to the Monarch.
He did his best not to weep a second time.
Cortael, my friend, I have failed you. I have failed Allward, failed Iona. And failed Glorian too. Failed all things I hold dear.
He reached the throne room too soon. The doors were twice his height, carved from ash and oak, intricately made by immortal hands. The sigils of the many enclaves intertwined through the wood, fluid as water. There was Ghishan’s stoic tiger; the black panther of Barasa; a wheeling hawk for Tarima; Hizir’s lithe stallion with Sirandel’s clever fox underfoot; a Syrene ram crowned in spiral horns; Kovalinn’s great bear on its hind legs, the sand wolf of Salahae, and Tirakrion’s shark bearing rows of daggered teeth. Twin stags reared over them all, chests thrust forward, their antlers impossibly large. Dom had left these doors weeks ago, Cortael at his side, his stern face pulled in resolve, his heart still beating.
I wish I could go back. I wish I could warn them. His teeth ground, bone on bone. I wish I believed as mortals do and felt their spirits here with me.
But the immortal Vedera did not believe in ghosts, and Dom was no exception. When the guards pushed open the doors, he entered the great hall alone, with nothing and no one but his grief.
It was a long walk to the throne, over green marble polished to a mirror shine. Columns rose on either side of the floor, framing alcoves and statues to the gods of Glorian. But their deities were far away, beyond the reach of any immortal left on the Ward. Any prayers whispered in this realm went unanswered, as they had for a thousand years.
And still Dom prayed.
His aunt and her council waited at the far end of the hall, seated on a raised platform. The two men, Cieran and Toracal, served as the Monarch’s voice and the Monarch’s fist. Scholar and warrior. While Cieran’s hair was long and ashen silver, Toracal kept his own short, braided at the temples in twists of bronze and gray. They wore robes of dark green and silver over fine silk clothing. Not even Toracal bothered with armor.
The last councillor was Dom’s own blood: his cousin, Princess Ridha, who was to be the Monarch’s successor. She was her mother’s opposite, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with broad shoulders and strong bones. Like always, she kept a sword at her side.
The Monarch herself sat quietly, clad in a loose gray gown, the edges embroidered with jeweled flowers. Despite the chill of the throne room, she didn’t bother with furs or a mantle. Most monarchs of the enclaves favored crowns, and her own was simple, little more than quartz pins set in her blond hair. Her eyes were luminous, near to pearl, and so far away. She had seen the light of strange stars and remembered Glorian Lost.
The living branch of an ash tree lay across her knees, its green leaves washed silver by the white light of morning. Such was tradition.
Her inscrutable gaze followed Dom as he approached, his head bowed, unable to look at her fully. She sees through me, he thought, as she has done my entire life.
He knelt before her throne though his muscles ached in protest. Even a Veder was not immune to pain, in the body or the heart.