As he returned, he overheard Gelens tell Wystan, ‘Not to worry, I am now far less inclined to believe our dear prince consort responsible for the killings. But I do have every belief he rather wishes hecouldkill me. It truly was something, that resolve. Our little Denelands rose has some thorns.’
The chamber at the top of the castle’s easternmost tower wasnine-sided, with the tight vastness of a chapel. Each of its tallwindows was patterned with tinted glass of gold and cream and palestyellow. The conical ceiling was painted with motifs of kings past,swearing allegiance to a great white dragon, its claws red withblood.
The air was mottled with dust, catching the sallow light.
At the exact centre of the room was an inlaid pool of shallow water. Its low rim had been intricately carved from stone, ash wood and bone: further dragons, coiling about trees and birds and men, reaching skyward.
The water would never dirty, refracting the world with a mirror-sheen.
Osian moved to the edge of the pool. Unease filled his reflection.
There was no place in Eascild, in all of Cyngalon, that he hated more than this room.
Unable to stomach the face in the water, he applied gentle pressure to the central band of the thick ring on his thumb, turning the innermost third of it. It snapped loose a tiny, needle-sharp barb. He pricked it into his other hand and squeezed off a drop of his blood into the water.
The lower part of the ring, with another small twist, opened a minute compartment glistening like garnet: less than half a thimble-full of more blood.
His father’s blood. The king’s blood.
There was not much left. Aldreda had not been far off when she had suggested he pretend to have run out, though he had another vial kept locked in his desk.
He hated every part of this.
Angling his hand, the mechanism in the ring allowed a single droplet of that blood to join his own. It clouded just as his had done, before the water caught its purpose and began to churn.
In the drained, fractured white light before the pool, Osian took a knee like a knight swearing his life, and waited.
THIRTY-SEVEN
To be born of Cyngalon is to feel home in all things.
To feel it as a grief, too vast for the body.
Too painful for words.
Blood in the Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year Slaughter,
H. M
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘Pedr.’ Meilyr gripped their arm tighter than he meant to. ‘Wait, I need some air, please.’
The edges of his vision trembled, his pulse so thick it hurt.
Pedr slowed but did not stop. ‘I am taking you to His Majesty’s rooms, you can rest there.’
‘The gardens.’ They were close. Down the stairs that led off from the entrance to the Eagle Tower. ‘Just for a moment, please.’ If he had to be shut inside, he would scream. His blood would swallow him whole.
Pedr struggled. Finally, they veered him sideways, almost lifting him down each step. ‘For one moment,’ they said.
Light rain misted the all but deserted gardens, settling on Meilyr’s lashes, his hair.
He allowed Pedr to walk him through the damp, the bowing of flowers, the still-working loudness of bees. The scent of summer filled him, left him light-headed.
Celyn had been captured. Lord Gelens and Wystan, probably Captain Radnor – they all knew he had killed a crownsworn. As a law-member of the royal family, he waslegallyexempt from punishment. But not for attempting to take Osian’s life. If they framed him for that, nothing could save him.
The fury he had drowned himself in, that he had aimed so fiercely at Lord Gelens, still brimmed in his flesh. It thumped and pounded in his veins for release. They had wanted to read him so desperately – desperately enough to use Celyn as bait. So Meilyr had given them what they wanted. A glimpse into his surface thoughts. Thoughts he had never, in all his years, shaped into being. Thoughts that had crystalised in that awful, terrifying instant.