A Throne for Sisters

The fountain stood at the heart of it, and one glance at it made Kate’s heart fall.

In another time, it might have been impressive. It was broad and dark, cut from local stone so finely that it seemed to be a natural extrusion from the landscape rather than a man-made structure. It was a broad shell shape, curling up with a statue standing at the center that might have been a woman once, but was now so covered in moss that it was hard to tell.

The fountain wasn’t flowing anymore.

That fact, more that the rest of it, told Kate just how useless her journey now was. Crumbling stonework wasn’t promising, but ultimately, it meant nothing. She’d come for a fountain, though. She’d assumed that there might be something special about the water there, something magical. Now that there was no water, it felt as though she’d let herself get carried away by what Geoffrey had told her. It felt stupid, to spend her time here rather than at the forge, crafting the sword that was currently only wooden.

Kate sat back against the fountain, closing her eyes to push back tears. She’d been so stupid to come here. Stupid to think that she could ever be as strong as the boys from Will’s regiment. It had been an empty dream.

“Why would a fountain make someone strong?” Kate demanded of the forest around her.

“Fountains can’t,” a woman’s voice said. “But if people are looking for a fountain, it makes it easier for me to find them.”

Kate’s eyes snapped open, and she stood, holding her wooden practice sword out in front of her. A woman stood there, wearing a hooded robe of deep, forest green. She had dark hair that appeared to be tangled with ivy, and eyes of a leaf green that seemed to match the plants around her. She was older than Kate, perhaps thirty, but with a look to her that said she might be even older than that.

“I’ve been threatened with many things before,” the woman said. She pushed aside Kate’s practice blade gently. “Never with a stick.”

“I – ” Kate lowered the weapon. “I’m sorry, you caught me by surprise.”

“But you came to this place,” she said. “You came looking for help, or you would not be here.”

“I just didn’t expect…” Kate began. She realized that she must sound like an idiot. “Who are you?”

Instinctively, Kate reached out to read the other woman’s mind, but all that met her was something that felt as solid as a wall. Her attempt to get through just slid off it, and Kate stared at the other woman in shock.

“I am someone who is not so easily read by a gift such as yours,” she replied, although she didn’t seem angry at the intrusion. If anything, she seemed happy about it, which was the one reaction Kate hadn’t expected. “And now you are wondering if we are the same. We are not the same, girl. Mine is a much darker version of your powers. And much more twisted. One you should beware to pry too deeply into.”

Kate suddenly felt a flash of this woman’s mind, as if sent to her, and she involuntarily raised her hands to her ears and shrieked. It was so dark, so awful, a blur of horrific images, all moving too fast to make out, but leaving an impression of incredible horror.

Finally, it stopped.

Kate removed her hands from her ears, breathing hard, staring wide-eyed. Never in her life had someone invaded her mind like that. She had all this time assumed she was impervious. That no one else’s mind was more powerful than hers.

She looked this woman – if that’s what she was – up and down with a new fear, and a new respect. Perhaps she shouldn’t have come here after all.

The woman grinned in return, an ugly, invasive grin.

“Who are you?” Kate asked again.

The woman was silent for a long time. Finally, she spoke.

“Some call me Siobhan,” she said. “But names are merely labels for the weak. You have come here for a reason. Ask for what it is you want, and I will tell you the price.”

Kate blinked.

“I don’t understand,” Kate said.

The woman frowned, and Kate could guess at the disapproval there.

“Don’t waste my time, girl. You came here for a reason. You were looking for something. What is it?”

Kate swallowed, but refused to allow herself to be cowed by Siobhan’s tone. She would be strong.

“I want to be able to fight,” she said. “I want to have enough power that I’m never helpless again.”

The other woman stood there in silence for a few heartbeats. Kate could feel each one thudding against the inside of her chest. What would she do when the other woman said no? What would she do when Siobhan told her that it was impossible, and Kate was wasting her time?

“You have a talent, and I could teach you to build on it. I could teach you to fight in ways that have nothing to do with the crude strength of men. I could teach you to harness powers beyond anything you’ve seen.”

She made it sound so simple, when her whole life, Kate had been told that there were some things that were too evil even to talk about. There was a reason Kate and Sophia had hidden what they could do.

“You wouldn’t have to be afraid of what you are any longer,” Siobhan said. “You could be strong. You could be free. My kind can help yours, if you let us.”

A part of Kate wanted to say yes, but she knew better than to do that. People were rarely so generous.

“And what would you want?” Kate asked.

Siobhan seemed pleased. “In return, two things.”

“Two things?” Kate retorted.

“You ask a great deal of me,” the woman replied. “Two things does not seem unreasonable.”

She made it sound almost playful, as though the whole thing was a game. There was something about the laugh that followed that almost didn’t seem human. It seemed as though the forest itself was laughing.

“What things?” Kate asked, in spite of it.

“Apprentice to me and learn all I wish to teach you.”

That didn’t sound so different from the arrangement she had with Thomas. It didn’t sound so different, in a lot of ways, to the best kind of arrangement that might have resulted from her indenture.

“And the second thing?” Kate asked.

The other woman stepped into the fountain, and for a moment, shimmered. Kate saw an image of it bright and new, filled with water. The statue above shone, and it looked far too similar to the witch there for Kate’s taste.

There came a long silence. Then:

“A favor.”

Kate cocked her head to one side. “What favor?”

Siobhan laughed that worrying laugh again. She seemed to be enjoying this whole thing far too much. “I haven’t decided. But you would do it, whatever it was.”

That was a much bigger thing to ask. Kate wasn’t sure that she could stomach that.

She shook her head. It was too much. It was far too much. She sensed this woman’s darkness, and she sensed that, whatever favor it was, it would be horrific. It would be like selling her soul.

She backed away from the fountain, one step at a time.

“No,” she said, surprised to hear her own words, surprised to hear herself turn down the only thing she’d ever wanted.

The woman merely grinned in return, as if knowing Kate had no choice.

Kate backed away, and as soon as she reached the steps, she ran, stumbling as she went. Siobhan’s mad laughter followed her.

“I’ll be here when you change your mind.”

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Sophia still couldn’t believe that Sebastian had proposed to her. She’d barely been able to get used to the fact that she’d found a place in the palace as his lover, and now, suddenly, his ring sat on her finger. She couldn’t believe that things had swept forward so quickly, and that she was now getting married. It felt like being carried along by a stream, so fast that there was no way to know what was happening half the time.

Sophia hadn’t known that planning a wedding could involve so much. She had known that it wouldn’t just be a question of finding a priest, when it came to royalty, but there were complexities that she had never considered. There were feasts to be organized, announcements to be made. There were even permissions to be sought, because the dowager and the Assembly of Nobles would have to give their blessing before a prince’s marriage could go ahead. The latter, according to those officials she asked, would be a formality. This was one matter where the nobles would go along with whatever their ruler said.

Getting Sebastian’s mother to agree sounded like anything but a formality. She had been kind enough during the dinner where Sophia had met her, but Sophia wasn’t stupid enough to believe that a ruler would be happy about one of her sons marrying someone who couldn’t cement an alliance or bring in new lands. Currently, Sophia found herself surrounded by a small coterie of helpers, with a clerk going through all the etiquette of asking permission, a dressmaker working on designs for a wedding gown, and the palace cook talking about whether they should have swan or goose.

“Obviously, it’s the tradition here, but I thought that perhaps I could do a selection of delicacies from your home.”

Their names flickered through the cook’s mind, so Sophia picked a couple, then waved the issue away.

“I’m sure you’ll make it wonderful, whichever you choose,” Sophia said. She wished that Cora were there to help her navigate a route through it all.

She wished that Sebastian were there, rather than caught up in preparations for the army and the role he would have within it. Sophia felt as though there was only so much she could do alone and being with him… well, that was kind of the point of all this, wasn’t it? What was the point of getting married if her husband-to-be wasn’t even there?

If she were just doing this to have a good life, that might not have mattered. She could have designed the dream wedding, without the almost unnecessary presence of a husband. Sophia could imagine Angelica sitting quite happily in one of Sebastian’s rooms, ordering around servants as she planned for her position as his wife.

Sophia wanted Sebastian. More than that, she loved him. She felt the ache of need whenever he wasn’t there, and the world seemed to brighten whenever he was. Now, it seemed that she was trapped in the middle of preparations for a wedding, without the chance to actually see her husband-to-be.

Then he was there, and Sophia stood to throw her arms around him. She was shocked when he took a step back.

“Sebastian?”

“Come with me, Sophia,” he said.

“What is this about?” Sophia asked. She tried to pick the answer from Sebastian’s thoughts, but right then, those were a tangled mess, filled with hurt and confusion. There was too much in there at once to focus on any one strand. “Did something happen? Sebastian, what’s going on?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that,” Sebastian said, in a tone that made Sophia’s blood seem to turn to ice. Something had gone wrong. The girls in the castle had invented a rumor about her, or his mother had refused the marriage. Maybe the shop to which she had sold the dress had come to tell Sebastian about his new bride. There were so many things that could have gone wrong with her plan that it always seemed as though it was held together only through gossamer strands.

Sophia didn’t know which thing had gone wrong, so she followed Sebastian through the palace, moving from the main quarters to the guest rooms, going to one where everything seemed ordinary, except that a guard stood outside the door.

“Thank you,” Sebastian said to the man. “You can go now.”

“Yes, your highness,” the man said. He walked off, but just his presence made Sophia wonder what was going on there.

When Sebastian pushed open the door, she had an answer of sorts. The room had been repurposed as an artist’s studio, most of the furniture stripped away to make way for canvasses stretched out, ready for work. Sophia didn’t have to ask whose quarters these were: they were obviously for Laurette van Klet, the artist Sebastian had brought in to create a portrait of Sophia. The sketches of Sophia said as much. Even the beginnings of a painting sat at the heart of it all, worked in oil. It wasn’t anywhere near complete yet, and Sophia suspected that it was itself a preparatory piece for a bigger work, but it was still further along than she’d thought, showing her as she’d been in the garden, informal and more beautiful than she suspected she was in real life.

“Well?” Sebastian asked.

“Well, it’s beautiful,” Sophia said. “But I don’t understand – ”

“Here,” Sebastian said, pointing to a spot on the painting. A spot where Sophia’s dress had ridden up in the casual joy of the day, revealing a stretch of her calf, and the mark that sat there like an accusation.

She’d covered it up with makeup for the ball. She’d done it intermittently since, but she hadn’t today. She’d forgotten. Had she forgotten for their trip along the river too? The truth was that she didn’t know, but the evidence was right there in front of her. The only question was what she was going to do with it now.

“I don’t understand,” was all she could think to say.

Sebastian shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Sophia. Laurette paints what she sees. Only what she sees.” He reached for her then, and although Sophia started to pull back, he caught her by the shoulders. “Some of the women around the palace have been talking too, saying that something seems wrong about you. I thought they were just being jealous, but what if they aren’t?”

Sophia tried to stop him as he lifted the hem of her dress, knowing that once he did this was over. There was nothing she could do though, and in moments, the symbol of indenture tattooed onto her calf was plain to see.

Sebastian stared at it for several seconds, and then stepped back. Sophia could feel the shock rising from him, his thoughts coming in such a rush that it was hard to keep up with them all. She watched as he sank to the floor in the midst of the arranged easels, looking as though he were trying to shut out the world.

“Sebastian,” Sophia began, wanting to go to him to comfort him, but that wouldn’t work, would it? Not when she was the one hurting him.

He looked up, and Sophia could see the glimmer of tears in his eyes. It was something she hadn’t expected, and something she had definitely never wanted to be the cause of.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why lie to me, Sophia? Is that even your real name?”

“Yes,” Sophia assured him. For the first time since she’d met him, she let the accent she’d assumed fall. “Just not of Meinhalt.”

“Even your voice isn’t real?” Sebastian said, and now he sounded distraught. “We’ve known each other… what? Days, at best. We don’t know anything about one another, do we? Who are you?”

Sophia swallowed at that question. It was one she wasn’t sure she knew the answer to herself. She’d tried to create an answer, but it wasn’t the real one. She asked herself the question over and over without an answer. It still hurt to hear it from Sebastian, though.

She wanted desperately to tell him everything. About herself, her past, and above all, about how much she genuinely loved him. About how, even if all else was fake, her love for him was real. About how she never meant to hurt him. How her lying, her behaving like this, wasn’t even her.

But in her frenzy of emotions, the words caught in her throat. All she could manage was:

“I didn’t want it to be like this.”

Sebastian stood, going over to one of the canvasses. As sudden as a storm, he picked it up and smashed it, tearing through it.

“You tricked me!” he cried out. “You took advantage of me! All you were after was my wealth! My position! You never cared for me at all!”

She felt a pain in her chest at his words, at the sudden violence of it all, of seeing her image being torn to bits. It was a fitting image for how she felt about herself, her life, all being torn to bits about her.

Despite her best efforts, she started to cry. She stood there and cried like a little girl with no one to comfort her.

It seemed to surprise Sebastian. He stopped what he was doing, and his rage abated. He stared back at her, as if sorry, as if realizing he’d gone too far.

And yet he did not come to comfort her.

She wanted so badly to read his thoughts, and yet they were such a jumble of heightened emotions, of contradictory feelings, she could not read them at all.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Sophia involuntarily blurted out.

She immediately regretted it. She didn’t want his sympathy anymore, or his help.

And yet still, he stood there, silent. His rage and shock seemed to be calming, his face seemed to be conforming to something like compassion, or pity.

She didn’t want pity. And least of all from him.

She wanted love. True love. And she realized in that instant that, even if she’d found it with Sebastian, she’d lost it forever.

Sophia stepped back.

Wiping her flowing tears, she pulled off the ring that he’d given her. She let it fall to the carpet, because she didn’t dare to touch Sebastian again and she couldn’t take it with her.

She wanted so desperately to say: I want you to know that, whatever else was a lie, my love was not.

But at that moment, a sob rose in her throat, so great, it drowned out all speech.

All she could do was turn around and flee. Flee from this castle, this man she loved, and this life that lay just beyond the reach of her fingertips.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Kate returned to Ashton in frustration, but also with a kind of peace. Frustration, because she hadn’t gained the strength that she was looking for. Peace, because it made things simpler in a lot of ways. She couldn’t take the witch’s offer, and so her life would go back to straightforward days of being Thomas’s apprentice at the forge, trying to learn about blades by swinging them at the air.

It wasn’t what she’d wanted when she’d set off into the city, but it had the potential to be a good life, particularly with Will there. Maybe you didn’t get what you wanted in life, but maybe the alternatives could still be good. The thought of Will waiting back at the forge made Kate smile as she came up to the outskirts of the city. It wouldn’t be long before she was back now.

Kate dismounted, walking her horse on the last stretch toward the smithy. She’d ridden long enough for one day, her legs aching with the effort of it.

“When we get back,” she told the horse, “you can have a quiet life again, and I’ll be the best apprentice Thomas could ask for.”

He was definitely a better teacher than the alternative. He was kind, and patient, and crucially, being a smith’s apprentice presented no risk to owing a witch an unnamed favor. There were some things she couldn’t do, even for the strength to be able to take revenge. Realizing that brought a kind of peace with it, as if a flame that had threatened to consume everything in Kate had dimmed.

Maybe that was a good thing, though. Maybe all of this was a sign that she should put aside violence. Maybe —

“There you are!” a voice called. “I know you!”

And Kate knew that voice. The last time she’d heard it, its owner had been chasing her to the edge of the river, determined to beat her to a pulp before dragging her back to the orphanage.

Sure enough, when she looked, the biggest of the boys from the docks was there, swaggering toward her with the certainty of someone who knew that there was nowhere for Kate to go. He took his time, and Kate knew enough about the tactics of bullies to know that he was just giving her time in which to be scared.

She could read from his thoughts that he could barely believe his luck at having found her at last after looking for so long.

He didn’t look good. He still had bruises from the scuffle down on the docks, but they were matched by fresh marks that had clearly come from a beating. If it had been anyone else, Kate might have felt some sympathy for him. As it was, she edged away from him, wondering if she could get on the horse and ride clear.

“There’s no point running,” he said. “I’ve spent days looking for you, you little bitch! The others crawled back to the orphanage, said they’d rather be sold to a mine than keep looking. I kept going, though.”

“Good for you,” Kate shot back. She was still working her way toward the horse. If she could mount it, she could be away from this idiot as quickly as she had been on the river.

“Good for me, bad for you,” the boy said. “Don’t try to run. You think I don’t know you’re working for the smith? I looked for you. I asked about you. And now…”

Kate gave up edging toward the horse, holding her ground as the boy came forward.

“And now what?” Kate asked. “You don’t have two friends to help you this time.”

“You think I need them? To deal with one girl? I’ve hunted you, I’ve avoided the hunters myself, and now I’m going to make you beg me to drag you back.”

Kate took the practice blade out of her belt. It was only wooden, but it was still long enough to threaten with.

“You need to think about this,” Kate said.

“I am thinking,” the boy said. “I’m thinking that when I bring you back, they’ll let me join one of the hunting gangs. I’ll pay my indenture with my first catch. I’ll be able to do what I want, then.”

Kate sighed at the stupidity of it all. She knew all about the way plans worked out in the real world. “You can already do what you want. Look, what’s your name?”

“Zachariah,” the boy said defensively, as if expecting some trick.

“Well, Zachariah, look at where you are. You aren’t in the orphanage, are you? You aren’t in the middle of being indentured. You can walk away and do what you want. You’ve avoided the hunters for a day or two, so why not forever? There aren’t as many in the country, are there? You can just turn around and walk away.”

It seemed so obvious to her. Neither one of them was indentured or in danger. The boy would go his way, she would go hers, and the House of the Unclaimed wouldn’t have any hold over them. He might be able to forge a life out there, whether it was finding a farm to work on or, more likely, taking to a life of robbery. Wasn’t that enough?

“I could,” he said. “I don’t want to. What I want to do is beat you bloody, yell for the watch, and then laugh while they drag you back. Guards!”

He shouted it loud enough that Kate winced.

“Guards! There’s a runaway!” He looked at Kate with a sneer on his face. “And when they catch you, they’ll make you give up that sister of yours. Maybe I’ll get to – ”

“Don’t you talk about my sister!” Kate yelled, swinging the practice blade at his head. He flinched and it hit his shoulder, bouncing off.

“I’m going to beat you to a pulp,” he promised, charging forward. He slammed into Kate, and in an instant the two of them were tumbling to the ground, the momentum of the rush carrying them both down together.

Kate hit at him with her wooden blade, but the boy caught it, twisting it from her hand. He hit her hard, and in that instant, Kate might have been back on the training ground, or by the dock. She tasted blood the same way, felt her head ringing. She felt the same sense of utter helplessness, and she hated it.

“I’m going to leave you looking as though you’ve been kicked by that horse of yours,” he said. “Then I’m going to find your sister, and I’m going to drag you both back together.”

Kate reached out for the wooden sword he’d knocked from her hand. He hit her again, then grabbed it himself, lifting it up.

“Oh, do you want this?” he demanded.

“No,” she replied, and her voice sounded strange even to herself. “I just want your hands full.”

She pulled her eating knife from its sheath and buried it in his chest in one movement.

It was easier than she’d thought it would be. The knife was sharp, and the boy’s flesh was soft, but even so, it didn’t feel as though it should be that easy to kill someone. It shouldn’t be that simple to just slide a knife up under someone’s ribs, listening to them gasp as it reached their heart.

Zachariah looked shocked by the sudden pain of it. He looked as though he was going to try to say something, maybe call for the watch again, but the words didn’t come. Instead, blood trickled at the side of his mouth, and he slumped, his weight collapsing onto Kate.

The worst part was that her power let her see the moment when he died, his thoughts going from pain and panic to a kind of total emptiness as his spirit fled him. She sensed the instant when he died, and she felt…