Lady Addison Tarth
High in the Weeping Tower, Addison sat by the small window in her room as night slowly gathered itself. She could see little of the castle below through the narrow slit, only a smear of torchlight as they were first lit far beneath.
The town was only a dark mass beyond it, pressing close to the walls, the sea somewhere past that. Back in Tarth, she could hear its song in their quarters in the Sea Tower, waves lapping at the rocks, seagulls swooping by on a clear day like white stars.
Her left hand rested in her lap, wrapped in clean linen that was already stained through. It still ached. A deep, throbbing pain that came and went in slow pulses, as though her body had not yet understood that something was missing and kept trying to summon it back.
Her little finger was gone. She moved her hand slowly, trying to close it into a fist, and somehow she could still feel it there, the flesh remaining as a memory even if the flesh was gone.
Sometimes the pain sharpened suddenly, bright enough to make her gasp; sometimes it dulled to a distant pressure she could almost ignore.
At that moment, she could barely feel it. Something frightened her worse than the pain.
She drew her maimed hand closer and folded it against her other one, both settling instinctively over her stomach. When her fingers brushed the swell there, her breath caught. I was still slight. Still easy to deny, to hide.
Her throat tightened. She felt sick again, a slow, rolling nausea that climbed from her belly into her chest. She started to weep again.
For days she had blamed the sea, the long days aboard the Dear Addison where she had been more seasick than usual, her head swimming with every shift of the waves, her mouth sour and acidic.
Then she told herself it was the usua; fretfulness of visiting Rain House and the Wyldes. Or this, coming back to the castle where she had fostered.
The truth had come to her only yesterday as she lay in bed. She was pregnant. She knew it with the same certainty she had known it before, with Galladon, and then the girls. There was no mistaking the feeling once it settled into place.
All her pregnancies had been easy. Joyful. She had loved them. Loved the knowledge that she carried life, that she and Selwyn together had made something new. Each time it had felt like a promise of a bright future.
Now it felt like a sentence. To her and the new life inside of her.
Her stomach lurched again, but this time it had nothing to do with her body. She pressed her lips together and breathed through it. The sickness rose from a different place altogether, thick with fear and guilt.
She had doomed another child. Doomed them all, most likely.
Lenora had boasted enough about it. Once the bargain was struck, Addison's family would not outlive its usefulness. Galladon and Selwyn to be quietly disposed of. One daughter bound into a marriage Lenora would control like a leash. The other… put aside and forgotten. Or worse. Lenora had once spoken lightly of the Silent Sisters, as if it were no great cruelty to bury such a bright girl like Alysanne into such life.
And the one in her belly? What future would this child have? She knew Lenora too well to believe she would simply hand Addison over. No matter what Selwyn signed, no matter what promises were made, Lenora Whitehead did not give away what she considered hers. She never had. Was never one to share her toys and dolls.
Her breath shuddered. She bowed her head, and a tear slipped free despite her effort to stop it. She had believed, once, that Lenora was her friend. The only one she had ever had.
The thought twisted like a knife.
The locks on her door rattled suddenly, iron scraping against iron. Addison flinched, her hands tightening together, then quickly moved away from her stomach. She didn't know what to do if they found out.
The door opened and Lenora stepped inside as if she owned the room and the woman inside it. A silver-haired man followed her in. He was tall and lean, and he walked with a sure strut like a stalking shadowcat.
The pirate, Addison thought. She had not been told his name, but she was not so stupid to not make the connection after Galladon's telling of the story so many moons ago.
Lenora smiled at her. It was the fakest smile Addison had ever seen. "How are you feeling, dear?" she asked. "I hope they were not too rough with you. I did ask them to do it gently."
Addison's teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached. The surge of anger sent a fresh lance of pain through her hand, sharp enough to make her hiss.
"What do you want, Lenora?" she said, the words bitten off.
Lenora clasped her hands together, tilting her head. "Just visiting a dear friend. As you are here, visiting your beloved friend."
More than once the woman had come only to gloat or threaten, nothing more. Addison could not make sense of it, but she had certainly gotten used to it.
"You are sick," she said.
Lenora's smile only grew. "And you are weak, Addison. You always were. I almost didn't come in when I heard you weeping outside. You were always a weepy thing. Always running off to Selira or Elmar when something went wrong, didn't you?" She stepped closer. "Well, there's nowhere to run now. Your husband is a done man. I could see it in his eyes. Finished. And I was the one to do it." Her voice sounded thrilled with triumph.
Again, she had come only to torment her. Addison shook her head. "When did you become this… this monster that stands before me now?"
Lenora did not answer. Her gaze drifted instead to Addison's left hand, to the careful wrapping and the absence beneath it. Her lips curved.
"How long has it been?" she asked lightly. "My man should've made it to the shore with the gift box by now. I wonder if Selwyn will weep over your little finger." She leaned in, voice lowering. "I offered to marry him, you know. To end all this. To unite our houses."
Her smile shifted into a wicked smirk. "I think he nearly went through with it. Just his pride won't let him. You know how men are. He couldn't fathom admitting a woman got the better of him, but he will turn around, I believe. There is still time. You should have seen the way he looked at me with such… heat."
Something ugly and hot flared in Addison's chest. Despite herself, a laugh broke free, short and incredulous.
"Selwyn marry you?" she said. It was the worst joke Lenora had ever spoken. "Oh, Lenora, I'd love to say my husband despises you. That he remembers the time of your betrothal with loathing and disgust. But you want the truth?" She leaned forward, meeting Lenora's eyes. "In the nearly eighteen years we have been married, not once, never, has he even spoken your name. He hardly remembers who you are the few times I mention you. You might have fantasized about this like a freak for all these years, but to us, to him, you were nothing."
Lenora's eyes widened and she made as if to strike her again. She stopped herself, reins pulled tight on her own temper. Addison could see the muscles in her jaw work.
"Careful," the woman said. "You still have nine left to give. Ten more beneath, if needs must."
The pirate watched it all from the doorway, eyes bright with amusement, as if the exchange were nothing more than a play put on for his benefit. The mockery of it, of her pain, her fears, her family, made Addison's stomach churn. The sudden fury that coursed through her ebbed out. She only felt tired of it all.
Lenora drew in a breath, smoothed her expression, and began, "If you must know—"
Hurried footsteps cut her off. A voice called from the corridor, breathless. "Milady, milady."
A guard burst into the room, followed by two more. The latter looked as though they had crawled out of the earth itself, clothes torn and dirt-streaked, faces smeared with blood and sweat. One of them clutched his arm, an ugly wound bound hastily.
"News, milady," the first guard said, then looked behind him.
The taller of the two stepped forward. "An attack, m'lady, in the quarry. A dozen or more men came down upon us. We're the only two who managed to escape."
Lenora frowned. "Bandits so close to town?"
"So I thought," the man said. He nudged the younger guard beside him. "Tell her what you saw."
The younger man swallowed hard. "I travelled with you and Lord Elmar to the tourney, milady. The one in Lannisport." His eyes flicked, briefly, to Addison. "The boy. The one who won the tourney. Galladon Tarth."
Addison froze. The name struck her worse than one of Lenora's slaps.
"T'was him in the woods," the guard went on. "I know it. His hair was different, aye, but I remember his face when he took off his helm in the tiltlane. I'll never forget it."
Lenora's gaze snapped to Addison, a terrible thing that promised pain yet to come. Then she turned on her heel and swept out of the room, skirts snapping like banners marching to war behind her. The guards followed in a rush, while the silver-haired pirate lingered just long enough to flash Addison a delighted grin before skipping after Lenora, light as a boy let loose.
The door slammed shut. Addison sagged back against the bed. Something twisted in her chest. Her son was here. Selwyn and Galladon had come for her, of course they had. They had not given up. They never would.
Her heart felt too full, swollen with too many things at once. A paralyzing fear that something might happen to her boy. Love. A love so deep it ached worse than her missing finger. And hope. Gods, but she could feel it washing through her like a crashing wave despite it all.
If they were here, risking everything for her, then she could not give up. She would not let herself be broken into another of Lenora's toys. She lifted her hand and wiped at her tears, squaring her shoulders despite the pain.
Her family had come.
xxx
Arianne of Tarth
She could still feel her heart thundering inside her chest as she walked out of camp. At her side, her hands trembled no matter how tightly she curled them into her sleeves, her fingers stiff and cold as if the chill came from inside her bones rather than the evening air.
Boots crunched on leaf litter behind her. Pate followed close behind. On her brother's orders, he had been her constant shadow since they came here. She was so frazzled she couldn't even find it in herself to be annoyed at him, which only made her shiver again.
She stopped on a stretch of dense forest not too far out of camp. They wouldn't let her go further even if she tried. The sun had not yet set, though it was sinking fast. Light slanted through the trees at a low angle, catching on leaves and turning them copper and gold. Her shadow stretched long and thin across the undergrowth, her boot squishing against the moist soil. Somewhere a bird cried out, sharp and lonely, and fell silent again.
Her parents had shouted plenty at her when she pushed it too far, and yelling at each other with Alysanne was always one of her things to do at home. But Galladon had never yelled at her. Not like that.
She had given him plenty of reasons over the years, to be sure, but he always found a way to disarm her without screaming, even when he got angry. His aura, the only one she could see for a long time, never shifted from the bright, golden glow she had grown used to.
Or maybe that's what helped make her less of a pain to him too. Being near him felt like standing under sunlight, like a warm embrace that eased your aches and promised to protect you from anyone and anything else.
But she had also always known there was something beneath it. A darker thing. A coil of grey and steel, storm-colored and sharp, wound tight at his core. Held in careful check like a dagger still in its sheath.
She had feared, sometimes, that if he were to learn what she was, if he saw her powers as unnatural and wrong and freakings, that one day that storm would turn on her.
Looking back, it was a foolish thought. She should have known he would never shun her for such a thing. Her brother's mind was as sharp as his swordarm. Always curious. Always hungry to understand new things. If anything, she wished she would've told him everything sooner.
If she had, they certainly wouldn't be here, their mother taken by that crazy Whitehead lady.
But something had happened just now. Galladon's aura… it had changed. Really changed, not flickered, flared brightly with anger or dimmed with sorrow the way others' did.
The gold had dulled, as if a cloud had passed before the sun. And the stormy grey beneath it had begun to spread, seeping outward from the core like the dark veins streaking through the pale marble of Evenfall Hall.
She saw it happening. As the veins spread, they darkened the aura around it and bled into her brother, setting anchors like sharp hooks on his skin.
Arianne swallowed, her throat aching. Yes. She should have known her gentle brother would never spurn her. And she should have known just as well that her gentle brother was not made for this. Even the knowledge that he would be torturing a man shifted something fundamental in him.
He was not born for cruelty like this, but he would go through with it. She knew how serious Galladon took his duties, and she feared what she would find when she returned. Feared what Galladon would look like after he had done what he believed he must.
Who would come away more wounded after it was all done: the prisoner, broken for answers, or her brother, who would carry the weight of it long after the man's screams faded?
Her steps slowed. Her breathing steadied. Her mind, racing moments before, settled with a sudden, terrible clarity.
She wished he would let her help him with that. She was not lying when she told him she wasn't squeamish. The idea of torturing a man to save her mother did not bother her at all. If anything, it made her curious as to how to go about it.
But she knew he would never agree. Not when she was so young still and a girl besides.
Still, she had other ways to help him.
She had promised Galladon she would not touch the candle. She had sworn it, looking him in the eye, knowing how afraid he was of what she could do when she gave herself fully to it.
But if he felt so strongly that it was his duty to help their family, how could Arianne not feel the same?
She could not stand idle and let that darkness take hold of her brother when she had the means to help. He would not need to torture anyone again if she could always give him the answers he sought.
She turned abruptly, and faced Pate with a practiced scowl.
"I will be… seeing to my womanly needs now," she said, lifting her chin. "By those boulders." She pointed toward a cluster of moss-covered stone half-hidden among the trees. "If any of you interrupt me, I swear to all the gods, old and new, you will wish Galladon gets to you first, for I will geld you myself. Understood?"
Beside him, Pate went beet red. Redder than she had thought possible, given the angry constellation of pimples already scattered across his face.
He stared at the ground as if it might swallow him whole. "Yes, my lady," he mumbled, stepping a bit further away to give her more space.
Arianne did not wait for him to move farther. She stepped over a tangle of exposed roots and slipped behind the thick trunk of an old oak, flanked by half a dozen cart-sized boulders carpeted in moss.
Her heart hammered as she reached inside her trousers and pulled the familiar shape she had kept at her side like a hidden dagger. In a way, it was much more dangerous than mere sharp steel.
The black candle was cold and smooth as polished crystal in her hand, heavier than it had any right to be. It felt alive, even unlit, thrumming faintly against her skin. Eager to be used.
She had learned back in the ship that while her touch was enough to light the wicker, she could will it to remain unlit, and she had been practicing it the whole time she had the candle on her side.
She stared at it for a heartbeat longer, then, with a thought, she lit it. The flame sprang to life, and when she looked into it, she suddenly wasn't kneeling down over the mossy grounds of the Rainwood.
Arianne blinked. She was standing in her room in Evenfall Hall, and for a moment she felt as if she'd just woken up from a strange dream.
Her bed stood against the far wall, just as it always had, the heavy posts carved with waves and twisting ropes. The narrow window let in a pale wash of light. Her chest, her small table, even the crack in the stone near the door where she had once stubbed her toe, all of it was exactly as she remembered.
Had it all even happened? The nightmare, her mother's kidnapping, sneaking into the ship on her brother's trunk. She felt dizzy, somehow, as if her eyes were not quite used to being open.
She looked around her, really looked, and she knew everything felt wrong.
The world looked washed out, as if the color had been leeched away. The stone was grey instead of white, the tapestries dull as old cloth left too long in the sun.
She took a step forward and nearly laughed in surprise. She felt… light, as though her feet barely touched the floor. The last time she had looked into the candle, the world had torn itself open around her. She had been dragged through it, tumbling and gasping. Now there was nothing like that. She felt steady. Almost normal.
That, more than anything, unsettled her.
She crossed the room and placed her hand on the door. The wood felt solid beneath her fingers, though even that sensation seemed faint, as if a thin layer of cloth lay between her skin and the world. She hesitated only a moment before opening it and stepping into the corridor beyond.
At first glance it looked no different from the halls she had walked since she was old enough to run without tripping over her own feet. The stone arches were familiar, the torch brackets placed where they had always been.
Yet as she began to walk, she noticed that the corridor did not seem to end where it should have. It went on and on, longer than it had any right to be. She frowned, but kept walking. Her steps made no sound.
A servant crossed at the far end of the passage.
"Wait!" Arianne called, breaking into a run.
When she turned a corner, there was no one there, the corridor empty from wall to wall.
Arianne skidded to a stop, her breath catching painfully in her chest. Something tightened there, a sharp, instinctive fear, but she swallowed it down.
This was a vision, she told herself. None of it was real. Not in the way the waking world was real. The candle had its own rules, its own ways of bending things.
Still, knowing that did little to calm her, but she continued on, walking now instead of running, forcing her steps to remain steady.
Minutes passed. Too many minutes. The hall did not end. It did not narrow or bend, did not open into any chamber she recognized, and she could not have said how long she wandered before something else drew her attention.
A flicker of gold appeared at the edge of her vision.
Arianne spun. For the briefest instant, she saw her sister Alysanne ahead of her, hair pale as sunlight. Before she could speak, Alysanne turned and disappeared around a corner.
"Alysanne!" Arianne took off after her.
The ache in her chest returned, stronger now, but the sight of her sister drove it aside. Don't go, she wanted to yell. Don't leave me.
She ran and ran, her steps soundless on the stone, yet the distance between them never closed.
At last, Alysanne arrived at the end of a hallway and slipped into a room that was not there a moment before. The door shut behind her with a dull, heavy sound.
Arianne reached it, breathless. Her fingers closed around the handle.
"Stop!" The voice rang out behind her.
Too late. White, searing pain lanced through Arianne's hand. She cried out and stumbled back, clutching her fingers to her chest.
"What do you think you're doing, foolish girl!" the voice snapped, closer now.
Arianne backed away until stone pressed against her shoulders. She stood trapped between the burning door and the voice.
When she turned, her eyes stung as though she had looked into something that did not wish to be seen.
The figure before her was wrong. It was a distortion, a rip in the world shaped vaguely like a person, its edges flickering and unstable. Shadows crawled along its edges, as if reality itself refused to settle around it. It hurt to look at, like staring at a wound that refused to close.
Terror washed over her. A demon, her mind supplied wildly.
"Stay away!" Arianne shouted, pressing herself flatter against the wall.
The specter scoffed. "Oh, settle yourself. If I meant to hurt you, I would have let you walk through that door."
Her heart did not slow. "Who are you?"
"I am the one who gave your brother the glass candle." The thing tilted its head, the motion oddly human despite everything else. "Has he not told you of me?"
Arianne shook her head. "He would not tell me how he came by it. He said it was not a story for me."
Something like a raised eyebrow flickered across the specter's face. "I suppose even painted fools can be trusted sometimes."
Anger flared through her fear. No one could call Galladon a fool but herself. And maybe Alysanne, sometimes. She thought to curse the demon, but that seemed like a sure way to die in a nightmareish world.
"What…" She wet her suddenly dry lips. "What do you want from me? And why are you in my home?"
"Your home?" The specter laughed, a jagged, unpleasant sound. "This is not your home, little girl."
It raised an arm, and the stone beside Arianne rippled as though it were water. A window formed where none had been before. Against her better judgment, she looked.
The world beyond bore no resemblance to Tarth. Pale grass stretched to the horizon, its stalks as tall as horses, bending beneath a bruised sky the color of an old wound. Shadows moved through the field, long and sinuous and carving paths through the stalks like enormous, writhing snakes.
Arianne turned away, heart hammering. She looked at the door again, then back at the specter. "What's behind it?"
The specter shrugged. "I do not know. Nor do I wish to find out. This place is old and empty, but dangerous still. It shows you what you wish to see, or what you expect to find."
She swallowed hard. "Did my brother—are you a demon?" she asked. "Did he make some bargain with you for the candle? Is that why you know so much? Is that why you're helping me?"
The specter snorted. "I know what I know because I read, girl. We are somewhere in the Shadow Lands, as far east as east goes, near Asshai. Whoever built this place is long gone, but it remains, like a scar that never healed."
"But how—"
"Yes, yes, questions." The specter held out a hand. "Come with me. As thanks, I will answer some of them."
"A thanks for what?"
"For lighting the candle the first time. And again now," it said. "I have been trapped here nearly a week. You are my only door in or out. So I will help you. I will teach you how to move through this world as fast as the blink of an eye. How to veil yourself as I do, so none you might stumble upon here will know your real face. How to avoid traps like that door." It gestured. "I will even show you what you truly seek. I have seen what is happening to your family."
Hope surged in Arianne, but she knew well what such favors might mean. "And what… what do you want in return?" she asked.
The specter stepped closer. "You, girl. I want you."
The blood drained from Arianne's face—then rushed back all at once. "What? I—I'm twelve and—"
The specter made a strangled sound. "What? No—gods, no. Absolutely not. I am a woman, for one thing, and not—" It trailed off with a heavy sigh. "Why must I be surrounded by idiots? I mean your help. Your access. Nothing more."
Arianne let out a shaky breath. She found, to her surprise, that she was smiling a little. A creature that could be embarrassed could not be all evil.
"I have heard people have different tastes," she said cautiously. "I will not judge you if you had your own preferences.."
"I just said—never mind. And I like men. Understand?"
Arianne nodded. "Very well." Then, curiosity getting the better of her, she stepped closer. "You like men, you say. Is that why you gave my brother the candle?"
The specter stared at her.
Arianne shrugged. "Do you wish to marry him? How old are you? You sound like an old crone. It would be funny if Galladon married a bent old woman."
The specter lifted a hand to its head. "Just… just come along."
Smiling now, Arianne took its hand, and the false castle vanished around them.
xxx
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