A Dirge for Princes

She looked straight at Sophia while she held Sebastian, and Sophia could see the look of triumph there. Sophia started forward in anger, wanting to pull Angelica away from him, but her hand couldn’t even touch them. It passed through without making contact, leaving her staring at them, no more than a ghost.

“No,” Sophia said. “No, this isn’t real.”

They didn’t react. She might as well not have been there. The image shifted, and now Sophia was standing in the middle of the kind of wedding that she could never have dared to imagine for herself. It was in a hall whose roof seemed to reach to the sky, nobles gathered in such numbers that they made even that seem small.

Sebastian was waiting by an altar along with a priestess of the Masked Goddess whose robes proclaimed her rank above the others of her order. The Dowager was there, seated on a throne of gold as she watched her son. The bride came forward, veiled and dressed in pure white. When the priestess threw back the veil to reveal Angelica’s face, Sophia screamed…

She found herself in chambers she knew from memory, the layout of Sebastian’s things unchanged from the nights she’d spent there with him, the fall of moonlight on the sheets straight from her memories of their time together. There were bodies tangled in those sheets, and in one another. Sophia could hear their laughter and their joy.

She saw moonlight fall on Sebastian’s face, caught in an expression of pure need, and Angelica’s, which held nothing but triumph.

Sophia turned and ran. She ran through the mist blindly, not wanting to see any more. She didn’t want to stay in this place. She had to escape it, but she couldn’t find a way out. Worse, it seemed that every direction she turned led back in the direction of more images, and even the images of her daughter hurt, because Sophia had no way of knowing which ones might be real and which were just there to hurt her.

She had to find a way out, but couldn’t see well enough to find one. Sophia stood there, feeling the panic building in her. Somehow, she knew that Angelica would be following her again, stalking her through the mist, ready to thrust her blade home in her once more.

Then Sophia saw the light, glowing through the fog.

It built slowly, starting as a thing that barely pushed its way through the murk, then slowly becoming something bigger, something that burned the fog away the same way the morning sun might burn off morning dew. The light brought warmth with it, feeding life into limbs that had felt leaden before.

It flowed over Sophia, and she let the power of it pour into her, carrying with it images of fields and rivers, mountains and forests, a whole kingdom contained in that touch of light. Even the remembered pain of the wound in her side seemed to fade before that power. On instinct, Sophia put her hand to her side, feeling it come away wet with blood. She could see the wound there now, but it was closing, the flesh knitting together under the touch of the energy.

As the mist lifted, Sophia could see something in the distance. It took a few more seconds before enough burned away to reveal a spiral staircase leading up toward a patch of light, so far above that it seemed impossible to reach. Somehow, Sophia knew that the only way to leave this seemingly never-ending nightmare was to reach that light. She set off in the direction of the staircase.

“You think you get to leave?” Angelica demanded from behind Sophia. She spun, and barely managed to get her hands down in time as Angelica struck at her with the knife. Sophia pushed her back on instinct, then turned and ran for the stairs.

“You’ll never leave here!” Angelica called out, and Sophia heard her footsteps following behind.

Sophia sped up. She didn’t want to be stabbed again, and not just to avoid the pain of it. She didn’t know what would happen if this place shifted again, or how long the opening above would last. She couldn’t afford to take the risk either way, so she ran for the stairs, spinning as she reached them to kick out at Angelica and knock her back mid-thrust.

Sophia didn’t stay to fight her, but instead sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She could hear Angelica following, but that didn’t matter then. All that mattered was escaping. She continued up the stairs as they climbed, and climbed.

The stairs kept going, seeming to climb forever. Sophia continued to clamber up them, but she could feel herself starting to tire. She was no longer taking the steps two at a time now, and a glance over her shoulder showed her that the version of Angelica in whatever nightmare this was still followed her, stalking forward with a grim sense of inevitability.

Sophia’s instinct was to keep climbing, but a deeper part of her was starting to think that was stupid. This wasn’t the normal world; it didn’t have the same rules, or the same logic. This was a place where thought and magic counted for more than the purely physical ability to keep going.

That thought was enough to make Sophia stop and delve deeper into herself, reaching for the thread of power that had seemed to connect her to an entire country. She turned to face the image of Angelica, understanding now.

“You aren’t real,” she said. “You aren’t here.”

She sent a whisper of power out, and the image of her would-be killer dissolved. She concentrated, and the spiral staircase disappeared, leaving Sophia standing on flat ground. The light wasn’t high above now, but was instead just a step or two away, forming a doorway that seemed to open onto a ship’s cabin. The same ship’s cabin where Sophia had been stabbed.

Taking a deep breath, Sophia stepped through, and woke.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kate sat on the deck of the ship as it scythed through the water, exhaustion preventing her from doing much more. Even with the time that had passed since she’d healed Sophia’s wound, it felt as though she hadn’t fully recovered from the effort.

From time to time, the sailors checked on her as they passed. The captain, Borkar, was especially attentive, running by with a frequency and deference that would have seemed amusing if he hadn’t been so completely sincere about it.

“Are you all right, my lady?” he asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Do you require anything?”

“I’m fine,” Kate assured him. “And I’m not anyone’s lady. I’m just Kate. Why do you keep calling me that?”

“It’s not my place to say, my… Kate,” the captain insisted.

It wasn’t just him. All the sailors seemed to be walking around Kate with a level of deference that verged on the obsequious. She wasn’t used to it. Her life had consisted of the brutality of the House of the Unclaimed, followed by the camaraderie of Lord Cranston’s men. And there had been Will, of course…

She hoped that Will was safe. When she’d left, she hadn’t been able to say goodbye, because Lord Cranston would never have let her go if she had. She would have given anything to be able to say it properly, or better yet, to bring Will with her. He would probably have laughed at the men who bowed to her, knowing how much that unwarranted politeness would annoy her.

Maybe it was something Sophia had done. After all, she’d played the part of a noble girl before. Maybe she would explain it all once she woke up. If she woke up. No, Kate couldn’t think like that. She had to hope, even if it had been more than two days now since she’d closed the wound in Sophia’s side.

Kate went through to the cabin. Sophia’s forest cat raised its head as Kate entered, looking up protectively from where it lay across Sophia’s feet like some furry blanket. To Kate’s surprise, the cat had barely moved from Sophia’s side in all the time the ship had been traveling. It let Kate ruffle its ears as she moved to her sister’s bedside.

“We’re both just hoping that she’ll wake up, aren’t we?” she said.

She sat beside her sister, watching her sleep. Sophia looked so peaceful now, no longer marred by the stiletto wound in her side, no longer gray with the pallor of death. She could have been asleep, except that she’d been asleep like this for so long that Kate was starting to worry she might die of thirst or hunger before she woke.

Then Kate saw the faint flicker of Sophia’s eyelids, the barest movement of her hands against the bedclothes. She stared at her sister, daring to hope.

Sophia’s eyes opened, staring straight at her, and Kate couldn’t help herself. She threw herself forward, hugging her sister, holding her close.

“You’re alive. Sophia, you’re alive.”

“I’m alive,” Sophia reassured her, holding on as Kate helped her to sit up. Even the forest cat seemed happy about it, moving forward to lick both of their faces with a tongue like a blacksmith’s rasp.

“Easy, Sienne,” Sophia said. “I’m all right.”

“Sienne?” Kate asked. “That’s her name?”

She saw Sophia nod. “I found her on the road to Monthys. It’s a long story.”

Kate suspected that there were a lot of stories to be told. She moved back from Sophia, wanting to hear all of it, and Sophia all but fell back to the bed.

“Sophia!”

“It’s all right,” Sophia said. “I’m all right. At least, I think I am. I’m just tired. I could do with a drink too.”

Kate passed her a water skin, watching Sophia drink deeply. She called out for the sailors, and to her surprise, Captain Borkar himself came running.

“What do you need, my lady?” he asked, then stared at Sophia. To Kate’s shock, he fell to one knee. “Your highness, you’re awake. We were all so worried about you. You must be starving. I’ll fetch food at once!”

He hurried off, and Kate could feel the joy coming off him like smoke. She had at least one other concern, though.

“Your highness?” she said, staring over at Sophia. “The sailors have been treating me oddly ever since they realized I was your sister, but this? You’re telling them that you’re royalty?”

It sounded like a dangerous game to play, pretending to be royal. Was Sophia playing on her engagement to Sebastian, or pretending to be some foreign royal, or was it something else?

“It’s nothing like that,” Sophia said. “I’m not pretending anything.” She took hold of Kate’s arm. “Kate, I found out who our parents are!”