But she was agitated, hiding it expertly. Her eyes went to Meilyr, then Osian, asking. Doubting.
A younger noble rose, recognisable at once: one of Wystan’s circle, from Leighton’s March. ‘Majesty, Majesties, surely this has gone on long enough? Prince Osian, forgive me, but we all know the truth of your blood. The late Queen Ena—’
‘One more word,’ Aldreda growled, ‘and it will be your very last.’
No one dared speak against her.
Except her own brother.
Wystan stood. He reached with trembling fingers towards the patch of hair visible in the state of Gelens’ skull, tears in his eyes.
Osian’s chest tightened. He had never liked Gelens, but it was for the older lord’s treatment of Wystan that he had come to despise them. Always smiling with a honeyed word, a hand on a shoulder. A whispered secret, a promised reward.
Something in Wystan broke, cracks spreading through the ice. Osian was surprised how much it hurt when his brother’s pain spilled into desolated anger and fixed onhim.
‘You let this happen…’
‘Wystan,’ Aldreda warned.
‘You let this happen. You – you want to be good, and loved… You love, and you love, and you love them so much you’re willing to let us die for them.’
‘Wystan, enough!’
‘I told Father you didn’t have the stomach to rule this place, but of course he wouldn’t listen. Of course he loves you, as everyone does – cannot bear to look at you for the memory of your damn whore of a mother—’
Aldreda grabbed him, but he pulled out of her grasp and around the royal table. He stumbled from the dais, into the aisle, opposite Osian.
‘I told them. I told them there were better ways to deal with you than having you killed, but perhaps they were right.’
‘Majesty!’ the young lord hissed as the secret spilled.
‘Perhaps then Gelens would still be alive,’ Wystan said. ‘Perhaps all this would have ended…’ Tears spilled down his face, twisted in grief. ‘And Istillcannot hate you – why can’t I hate you and be done with it?’
‘Wystan, sit down,’ Aldreda said, ‘or I swear to the gods—’
‘The gods do not give a shit about us. Not here.’ He stepped back from Osian as if drunk and drew the gwaed-steel dagger from his hip. The one their father had given him on his thirteenth birthday.
The air in the hall tensed.
‘Wystan,’ Aldreda warned, very different to before. Her eyes flashed between her brothers. One hand subtly signalled her crownsblood. ‘Do not do anything stupid.’
‘I want to believe you, that it’s not him.’ Wystan’s gaze flickered to Meilyr – Meilyr, who had started forward at the appearance of the knife, only for Demelza to grasp his wrist. ‘I really, truly do. But perhaps I’m as blind as you,’ Wystan said. ‘Perhaps even after everything, I still want… I still cannot…’
Osian stood more firmly between him and Meilyr. ‘Wystan, this does not have to happen.’
‘It was always going to happen.’ Wystan sounded hopeless. Lost. ‘That was what they raised me for, all they wanted from me. A puppet. Only a puppet. In my blood, as in yours. If I do this – if I tear out the thing that blinds you – maybe we can finally…’
He raised the dagger towards Meilyr, and listed sideways as though he had had too much wine.
Osian moved, part to stop him, part to steady him.
But Wystan stared at his own hand where it clutched the knife. It slid from his fingers and clattered on the stone.
‘Oh,’ he said, and staggered slightly, looking at his hand as though discovering a cut. ‘Yes, I suppose that…’
The colour drained from his face, just as the bindweed bloomed a beautiful bell-shaped white flower through his palm for all to see.
Screams. Terror.