Kosika stayed in the bath until the water went cold.
Then she climbed out, leaving wet footprints on the floor as she fetched a robe, and pulled it tight around her. The window was latched, but she could tell that it was night. The air always felt different in the dark. She dressed herself again, and took up the shards Nasi had stacked on the table, and then she slipped out, down one tower, and up another, back to the alcove at the top of those stairs, and the door beyond. She took a burning candle from the altar, and slipped behind the statue. She would not linger in the old king’s room, would go straight to the desk, return the pieces of the token to the box.
But when the door opened beneath her touch, Kosika gasped.
The room was neither dark nor empty. The candelabra burned, and Holland Vosijk sat at his desk, the box open in his hands. Kosika froze, but his head jerked up as if she’d moved, his white hair rising in a crown, and he looked at her with those eyes, one green, one black, and his face, which she had only seen in death or stone, which had always been a mask of quiet pain, was now contorted into rage, his voice a roll of thunder when his mouth opened.
“What have you done?”
Kosika lurched back, felt herself stumble and fall, and—
She landed with a splash in the tub.
Chest heaving, water spilling over the sides of the stone bath with the force of her waking. The water was tepid, not yet cold, but she shivered as she climbed out, and fetched her robe, each step like an eerie echo of the ones she’d already made, so that by the time she dressed and climbed the stairs to Holland’s tower, by the time she ducked past the altar and into the chamber beyond, she was sure he would be there, waiting at the desk.
But the room was empty, the candles unlit.
The wooden box sat open on the table, just as she’d left it.
Kosika hurried forward, and dumped the broken shards of the third token back inside before closing the lid. But she didn’t seal it. She told herself it was because the wounds on her hand had finally stopped weeping. She told herself she simply didn’t want to bleed again. She told herself there was no point, when she was the only one who could use the tokens. Whether the things she told herself were true, she left the box unlocked and fled, past the altar and down the stairs and up to the safety of her room.
Nasi had returned, and was laying out the pieces on the kol-kot board, dinner steaming on a nearby tray. If she noticed that the shards were gone, or that Kosika’s hair was still wet, she said nothing, only asked if she wanted to play. Kosika tried, but her heart and mind kept skittering away, until she flung her pieces down in a fit of pique, and went to bed.
As she lay there, in the dark, she waited, sure that Holland was waiting for her, just beyond the door of sleep. All night, she tossed and turned, trapped in her tangled sheets, until Nasi abandoned her bed, muttering about the need for peace. Sometime before dawn, sleep finally came for Kosika, but it was shallow and empty, shadows that refused to coalesce into shapes, and she was about to give up and fling herself out of bed, irritable and achy, when she turned over one last time, and sank through the sheets, and dreamed.
This time, the alcove was dark, the altar candles all snuffed out.
Behind the statue, the door stood open, and Kosika’s bare feet carried her silently across the stones, and into the room beyond, no longer pitch black, but bathed in morning light. She knew he would be there, but something inside her still lurched at the sight of the Someday King, the Summer Saint, standing by the desk, one hand resting thoughtfully on the now-closed box.
This time, as Holland’s gaze flicked toward her, Kosika dropped into a bow, one knee touching the cold stone and her eyes on the floor.
“My king.”
At first, nothing. Then, the slow tread of boots crossing the floor, a shadow falling over her. She did not look up, but she could see the toe of his boot, the edge of his half-cloak skimming the stones as he knelt before her. She felt the weight of his hand as it came to rest beneath her chin, and guided her face up to meet his.
Kosika caught her breath.
She had dreamt of Holland Vosijk before, of course, but in those dreams, he was either the body in the woods, or the altar come to life, a shape more than a man.
This Holland was different. This Holland had a flush of color in his cheeks, blood running beneath his skin, a chest that rose and fell with his breath. Up close, his white hair—for years she thought it had always been white, until Serak showed her a portrait, and she learned it had in fact been black until the day he died—rose off his cheeks, as if caught in a breeze.