“She’s waiting for you.”
A guard steps out from the shadows. He is covered head to toe in red armor, not a single slice of skin on show. His eyes float aimlessly in a sea of red fabric. This is what it’s like for most of the guards and household staff. Never any chance of being touched directly.
I eye him cautiously. “I was waiting for you,” I tell him. “The door looks too heavy to open all by myself.”
I can’t tell if he smiles or glares, but he definitely doesn’t blink. After considering me for a mere second, he steps forward and brings his hand to the door.
The room is different. Not just from the rest of the palace, but from how it was the last time I was here. The marble walls have turned charcoal and are thick with stale ash and the smell of burning. The ceiling sprawls to endless heights, ribbed by grand wooden beams, and the color is gone from everywhere but the floor. It’s the only red thing, polished to shine.
And in the far corner, on a throne shaped like a bleeding heart, the Queen of Eidyllio smiles.
“Hello, Elian.”
The guard closes the door, and Queen Galina beckons me forward. Her black hair glides down her waist and onto the floor in tight coils. It’s woven with rose petals that shed from her like tiny feathers. Her deep brown skin blends into the satin dress that begins at her chin and ends far past her toes.
She holds out her hand for mine, fingers spread like a spiderweb.
I consider her for a moment and then raise an eyebrow, because she should know better. Or at least, be aware that I know better.
The legend of Eidyllio says that anyone who touches a member of the royal family will instantly find their soul mate. The secret of Eidyllio, which only the royal families of the hundred kingdoms – and Kye’s family, apparently – are privy to, is a little different. Because the gift, passed down through the women of the family, does not help men find love, but lose their will completely. Overtaken by endless devotion and lust until they become mindless puppets.
I take a seat on the plush sofa opposite the thrones, and Galina drops her hand with a smirk. She leans back and stretches her legs out onto the tiles.
“You came to visit,” Galina says. “Which must mean that you want something.”
“The pleasure of your company.”
Galina laughs. “Neither of us has pleasurable company.”
“The pleasure of your company and a mutually beneficial bargain.”
Galina sits up a little straighter. “A bargain, or a favor? I much prefer favors,” she says. “Especially when they place princes in my debt.”
Sakura’s face flashes across my mind, and I think back to the bargain I made with her. My kingdom, for an end to the siren plague. “I’m in enough debt with royalty,” I say.
“Spoilsport,” Galina teases. “I won’t ask for much. Just a region or two. Perhaps a kiss.”
Usually I entertain this game of cat and mouse for a little longer. Let her toy with me through thinly veiled threats of skin on skin, as though she would ever dare turn me into one of her playthings. On a normal day, we would pretend. I, to be scared she would touch me. And Galina, to be brave enough to consider it. But the truth is, that for all of her faults – and the last I counted, there were many – Galina takes little joy in her abilities. It even caused the king to turn against her when he grew tired of protecting her secret for a marriage that offered no intimacy.
Galina didn’t hold his hand or stand close enough for their skin to touch, nor did she share a bed with him on their wedding night or any other night that followed. They slept at distant ends of the palace, in separate wings with separate servants and ate very much the same way: at opposite edges of a table large enough to seat twenty. It was information we shouldn’t have known, but once the king had a drink, he was more than vocal about such matters.
Unlike her predecessors, Galina has no desire to force love to secure heirs. She didn’t want her husband to slowly lose his mind with devotion, and so instead he slowly lost it to greed. He wanted more than she could offer – her kingdom, if he could – and it resulted in a coup bloodier than most wars.
Since his betrayal, she seems to have chosen a life of even more solitude. There is to be no second husband, she told the other ruling families. I have no interest in being betrayed again or passing my curse on to any children. And so instead she takes in wards from Orfaná, which houses all of the world’s unwanted children.
Not continuing her bloodline is bad enough, but choosing to rule alone has left her country suffering. With Kardiá gaining power, Galina needs someone by her side to do the things her gift prevents her from, like liaise with the people and offer the warmth she has grown too frightened to give. And I need someone who can get me out of my deal with Sakura.