The Half King

6

Cerise didn’t know where she had expected Daerick to take her, but an underground hovel on the fringe of the city’s pleasure district was the last place she’d had in mind. She frowned at a set of uneven clay steps descending steeply into the ground. Beyond the packed dirt at the bottom, she could see nothing but shadow. Her only clue as to what she might find down there was the occasional sound of violent retching.

“Delightful,” she whispered, gathering the fabric of her neckline around her face. “I won’t ask how you know about this place.”

“Best that you don’t,” Daerick agreed. “I’ve never met this particular soothsayer before, but I’ve had many dealings here, and I doubt you would approve of any of them.”

“I thought you were a gentleman.”

“Well, sometimes the pursuit of knowledge comes before propriety.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Do I have to come in? I would rather wait here while you…” She trailed off when a man from the other side of the street whistled to her and offered her a copper bit for five minutes of her company.

“You were saying?” Daerick asked.

“Never mind. Lead the way.”

She kept her nose covered and her eyes fixed on the back of Daerick’s head as she followed him into the bowels of the den. They crossed through a dim, open room littered with bodies, some of them unconscious, others engaged in activities that she blocked from her peripheral vision by adjusting her cap.

Soon they reached a door, and Daerick knocked on it in a code of three slow raps followed by two quick ones. Someone from the other side spoke in a language she didn’t understand. Daerick answered in the same language, and the door opened.

Musky incense enveloped her. She entered a tiny room, clean and brightly lit by an assortment of candles resting on the polished floor. It seemed like the perfect meeting place, cleverly concealed as it was in a hovel where no one would think to look. Plush seating cushions were scattered about. Two of the cushions were occupied, one by a young man the approximate size of an ox, and the other by a withered elder who was clearly the “perceptive” man that Daerick had brought her to see. As she approached the pair, she noticed with a start that the elderly man had no eyes. His sockets were covered by skin and sunken with age, as though he had been born that way.

The younger man stiffened protectively and glared at Cerise. “Who is this? She’s new.”

“She’s my cousin,” Daerick said. He indicated the difference between his pale skin and her olive tone and clarified, “Twice removed.”

The old man wheezed a laugh. “No, she’s not. I can smell the difference in your blood.”

Cerise glanced at Daerick, who nudged her a step closer toward the man.

“Come,” the elder said and patted the spot in front of him.

With some reluctance, she sat beside Daerick on a floor cushion, leaving an arm’s length of distance between herself and the two men facing her. As soon as she and Daerick were situated, the elderly man leaned forward and inhaled deeply through his nose.

“You’re a Calatris,” he said to Daerick. “A firstborn. I can smell the curse on you.”

That didn’t necessarily impress Cerise. Daerick was a member of court, a public figure of sorts. Maybe the elderly man had recognized his voice or his cologne.

“But the girl,” the man said and then inhaled again. “She is something else.”

She waited for him to go on.

The elder drew another deep breath through his nose. “I detect a hint of Solon in your veins.”

“My father is a Solon,” she said.

“Do you mean your mother?” he asked.

“No, my father,” she told him.

The man made a noise of contemplation. “There’s something stronger in your blood than your Solon roots. But I don’t recognize it. The scent is…confusing.”

“ That could be my mother,” Cerise said. She and Mama bore such a strong resemblance to each other that they could easily pass for twins born in different generations. “My mother is common-born. She was adopted by a merchant when she was a baby, so we know nothing about her lineage.”

The old man waved her off. He didn’t seem to care about her story.

His enormous young companion, however, did seem to care. His eyebrows flattened into a slash, and he told Daerick, “You shouldn’t have brought her here.”

“Does it matter?” Daerick asked. He pulled a coin pouch from his pocket and jangled it in his palm. “I can vouch for her.”

“It matters,” the young man growled.

Suddenly, the elder man lunged toward Cerise and snatched her hand with a quickness and strength that surprised her. Before she could object, he reached beneath his cushion and retrieved a short, double-edged blade. She tried to pull away, but he held firm and pricked the pad of her index finger.

“Ow,” she cried. “Let go of me!”

Ignoring her, the man squeezed a fat bead of blood to the surface of her skin and sniffed at it. When that didn’t satisfy him, he took her finger inside his mouth and sucked it clean.

Disgusting! This was not her idea of keeping an open mind!

He released her, and she yanked back her hand. She was so busy trying to wipe off the wetness from the old man’s mouth that she missed his initial reaction. When she glanced up at him, she found his gray eyebrows poised high above his sunken, skin-covered sockets.

“Umbra sangi,” he whispered to the younger man, who jerked his gaze to Cerise and stared at her as though she had sprouted horns and a tail.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

The old man spat her blood onto the floor and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. She looked to Daerick, who stared blankly ahead, his forehead wrinkled in confusion. It was the first time she had seen him perplexed.

Daerick asked the men, “Hara ‘umbra sangi’?” but they ignored him and began whispering urgently to each other.

Cerise felt a sense of foreboding, a sickening twist low in her stomach. She didn’t understand what was happening, but her instincts warned her to leave. Despite that, she remained pinned to the ground by her own curiosity.

“What does that mean?” she repeated. “What’s wrong with my blood? What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

“Nothing,” the old man blurted. “That’s the problem. Your blood has revealed nothing to me.”

“Why would that be a problem?”

“Because of his gift,” Daerick murmured to her. “He can sense the living history in blood the same way an oracle can See paths to the future.”

“And no blood has ever refused me.” The elder man wiped his lips again. “Not once in all of my many years. All veins have revealed their secrets to me, except for yours. I don’t know what exists beyond your Solon roots. You have confounded me.”

The flesh on Cerise’s arms prickled into bumps. You have confounded me. How many times had the Reverend Mother spoken those same words? How many Seers had complained that they couldn’t See the path in front of her? She had confounded them all, and now this man, too. What if she was so far removed from possessing the Sight that she blinded the inner eye of others? What if there was something truly wrong with her?

The large young man pointed at the door. “Leave,” he ordered, but in a softer voice than he had used before. “You’re not welcome here.”

The young giant knew something. She could tell from the change in his demeanor. He was still unfriendly toward her but no longer hostile. It seemed he either feared or respected her now, and she wanted to know why.

She locked eyes with the young man. “Tell me what you’re hiding.”

“Leave,” he repeated.

Daerick held up an index finger. “Please. Just answer one question for me, and then we’ll go.” He jangled his satchel of coin. “I promise to compensate you for your time.”

The elder man turned his face to Daerick. “I know your question, young Calatris. I’ve heard it on the lips of half of the nobles in the market. You want to know if the rumors about the king’s emissary are true.”

“Yes,” Daerick said. “Can the noble curses be undone?”

“Any curse can be undone,” the old man told him. “In one of two ways. The first is to end the life of the individual who cast it. I don’t recommend that for you. The goddess has proven herself difficult to kill.”

The younger man raised an eyebrow in agreement.

“Your other option,” the elder continued, “is to reverse the offense committed against the spell caster.”

“But he committed no wrong,” Cerise argued.

“The offenses of his ancestors, then,” the man said. “The solution for generational curses is the same as any other. You must appease the spell caster by reversing the injury that was done to them.”

Cerise tried to imagine reversing the Great Betrayal. She couldn’t picture such a thing. “Are you suggesting that we find the Petros Blade, lure the goddess down from the heavens, seduce her into taking mortal form, and then… un stab her?”

“Of course not,” the old man said. “The penance is different for each wrongdoing. You’ll have to discover this one for yourself. But I can tell you the reversal of blood spilled is almost always blood sacrificed.”

“Blood for blood,” Daerick mused. “But how? What would that look like?”

“I wish I knew,” the old man said.

The elder’s young companion extended a hand for payment. “Your question has been answered. Now honor your deal and go.”

Daerick didn’t argue. He tossed his pouch of coin to the large man and then escorted Cerise out of the room. The two of them left the den the same way they had entered it, saying nothing until they had climbed the steep clay steps that led out of the hovel and into the street.

Cerise squinted against the sunlight while her nose acclimated to the strong scents of the city. “I don’t feel like we learned much,” she told Daerick. “I hope that satchel was full of copper and not silver.”

“Oh, I paid him a fortune,” Daerick said, scratching the bean sprout beard on his chin. “And he earned every coin.”

“Do you really think so?”

Daerick began walking in a different direction than the route they had taken to get there. Cerise followed him, though not before casting a wistful glance over her shoulder. She had hoped to take the same route back to the palace so she could inspect the tiny winged creatures she had seen earlier in the market.

“I do,” Daerick answered. “He gave us three valuable bits of information for me to research. First, he told us how curses can be broken, and second, he told us that you’re an anomaly.”

Cerise didn’t appreciate being called an anomaly, but she couldn’t think of a more fitting label to replace it. “What’s the third?”

“The term umbra sangi ,” he said. “I don’t know what it means, but I intend to find out. I think it will explain the soothsayer’s reaction to you.”

“The younger man’s, too,” Cerise added. “Did you see the way he looked at me?”

“Like a demon had sprung from your chest?” Daerick asked with a twitch of a grin. “Yes, I noticed. He didn’t hide his shock very well.”

Daerick quickened his pace and lengthened his stride, forcing Cerise to hasten her steps in an unladylike manner. She thought of asking him to slow down when they reached an open-air farmer’s market, but he seemed fueled by excitement and nervous energy. The prospect of breaking the curse had clearly given him a renewed sense of purpose, so she couldn’t bring herself to complain.

They made their way out of the city and returned to the royal grounds. When they reached the entrance to the palace, Daerick paused at the bottom step and faced Cerise like a proper gentleman.

“My lady.” He took her hand and bowed low, placing a kiss on her knuckles. “Thank you for the pleasure of your company. I hate to leave you without an escort to dinner, but I want to do some research before we begin our emissary lessons tomorrow.”

“Of course,” she told him, grateful to hear that he had remembered his promise to teach her about her duties. She glanced at her freshly kissed knuckles and smiled. No one had ever kissed her hand before. She rather enjoyed it. The act made her feel older somehow. “I’ll see you in the morning, Lord Calatris.”

“Daerick,” he corrected.

“Only if you call me Cerise.”

“Happily, Cerise .” He climbed the stairs and paused before entering the foyer. “It’s still early in the day. I suggest you ask Father Padron for a tour of the archives.”

“What archives?”

“In the catacombs beneath the sanctuary. There’s a collection of relics and texts down there. I wouldn’t know exactly what the archives contain because laymen aren’t allowed inside the sanctuary.” He lifted a shoulder. “Couldn’t hurt to have a look around and see if you can find any useful lore to help us.”

She smiled. “I’ll look for the volume titled Reversing the Great Betrayal: A Guidebook for Novices .”

Though she teased, inwardly she felt dark and heavy, a sensation that could only be described as the pain of broken trust. Father Padron could have mentioned the archives to her at any time during the hours she had spent with him in the sanctuary. She hated to think that he’d deliberately concealed the archives from her, but the interaction with the priests in the city weighed heavily on her mind. Perhaps the Mortaran priests had a taste for deception. Even though they toiled in the service of the goddess, they were still human.

She followed Daerick inside the palace and continued up the sweeping staircase to her suite, where she changed out of her peasant garb and into a fresh temple gown. She washed her face and hands and then tidied her hair. When she had made herself presentable, she returned to the first floor, crossed the open-air corridor, and pushed open the sanctuary doors.

The prayer room was empty, the priests having been dispatched to the dining hall for lunch or into the city to perform their duties. When she peered down the adjoining hallway to Father Padron’s private chamber, she noticed his door was slightly ajar, indicating he was inside. She could ask him for a tour of the archives, but what if the catacombs were forbidden to novices? If so, then she would have no choice but to accept his rule. But if she discovered the catacombs on her own—before learning they were forbidden—she could claim ignorance if anyone caught her.

Yes , she decided. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

As she crossed the prayer room, her shoes clicked against the floor tiles with an echo that loosed a chill down her spine. A sudden urge compelled her to stop and look over her shoulder. She turned slowly and checked behind her.

No one was there.

Releasing a breath, she continued to the altar and walked in a circle around it. As she studied its marble construction, she ran her fingers along the sides to check for any hidden hinges or cracks. When that yielded no results, she hitched up her dress and knelt on the floor, using both hands to probe the tile for irregularities.

“What are you doing?”

She gasped so hard she nearly collapsed her lungs. Craning her neck, she discovered a priest standing a few paces away from her—a middle-age redheaded man who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Though he stood poised and tranquil with both hands folded in front of him, his eyes betrayed a cold edge that prompted her to crawl backward an inch. This was exactly the kind of man she had avoided at the temple.

“You startled me, Father.” She brought a palm to her sternum and attempted a smile. “You must have silent feet. I envy you. It’s a skill I never mastered.”

“I said,” he gritted out, “what are you doing?”

She licked her lips. She couldn’t lie and risk him using magic to extract the truth from her, so she chose her next words carefully. “I was looking for something, but it’s not here.” Before he could press the issue, she stood up from the floor and curtsied. “We haven’t met. I’m Cerise Solon, emissary to the king.”

The man picked a bit of lint from his robe. “Yes, I know. I’m Father Bishop.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve heard of you,” she said. “You’re the priest who rescued Lady Champlain from the desert panther in her chambers. I’m glad to see you recovered from the ordeal. Did the sweet cakes help?”

He lowered one brow. “How did you know…”

“Father Padron told me you have a weakness for them.”

“I do,” he said. But the way he raked his gaze over her face made it clear that he considered her unworthy of the information.

“Yes, well”—she inched toward Father Padron’s office—“I should go and find His Grace. It was an honor to meet you, Father Bishop. Shiera’s light upon you.”

“And may her wrathful eye look away,” he replied, but probably only because decorum compelled him to.

As she strode briskly out of the room, she blotted her dewy palms on her skirts. She hadn’t decided whether or not to mention the encounter to Father Padron when she knocked twice on his door, and the motion pushed it farther open. But as soon as she saw him standing behind his desk with his back to her, her mind emptied of everything other than the patches of blood seeping through his gilded robes. He turned and met her gaze with a grin that instantly fell when she rushed forward, calling, “Father, you’re hurt!”

His sea blue eyes blinked.

“Your back is bleeding,” she said.

“Oh, is that all?” He smiled again and settled in his chair. “It’s nothing but a little atonement. We are all sinners in our own way.”

A little atonement? Cerise shook her head. He clearly didn’t know how badly he was wounded. “Let me call for a healer. The temple isn’t far. It won’t take long to—”

“If I require a healer,” he interrupted, “I’m fully capable of summoning one. Or healing myself. I possess many gifts.”

“But—”

“Cerise.” In the single utterance of her name, he warned her to remember her place.

She held her tongue, feeling like a scolded child and hating it.

“Now tell me.” He folded both hands atop his desk as if their quibble had never happened. “What brings you here?”

Seeing no other option, she decided to be direct with him. “Lord Calatris told me there are catacombs and archives below the sanctuary. If that’s true, I would love to see them.”

If her words surprised the high priest, he didn’t let it show. “That’s true. But I’m afraid the catacombs aren’t as intriguing as they sound. There’s not much down there except urns and dust and a few scrolls of parchment too ancient to read.”

“That sounds intriguing to me …”

“Would you like me to give you a tour?”

“I would, Father. If you please.”

“Well, then,” he said and strode around his desk to present a gentlemanly arm to her. “We will go and see them at once.”

He escorted her into the sanctuary, which was beginning to stir with activity as the priests returned from lunch for their afternoon prayers. The men gathered kneeling cushions and dropped them onto the floor. Very few of the priests took note of Cerise, not even Father Bishop, whose eyes were closed in worship. But when she and Father Padron passed the altar and continued to the great stone wall on the other side of it, she felt the sensation of being watched and turned to find every gaze in the room fixed on her.

Not on her. On Father Padron.

“They’re staring at you,” she whispered to him.

He stopped in front of the wall and lifted a haughty chin. His pride took her by surprise because she had considered him above it. He was the high priest of Shiera, the most powerful man alive. Why would he crave validation from ordinary priests?

“They love to watch me open the catacombs,” he murmured. “I’m the only one who can do it alone. The others have to pool their energy.”

A charge thickened the air and raised the tiny hairs along the back of her neck. She had never felt magic so strong. It covered her in chills and sent a pleasurable shiver down her spine. The wide section of stone in front of her made a grinding noise as it separated from the wall. It inched forward and then slid aside to reveal a dark entrance that smelled of damp air.

So this was the entrance to the archives. She never would have found it on her own.

She peered into the shadows and saw that the slate floor sloped on a gradual decline, leading deep belowground. With one last flicker of energy from him, dozens of wall sconces caught flame and illuminated the passage. She drifted forward, her hand still resting on Father Padron’s forearm, which hadn’t so much as tensed during the ordeal of moving the wall.

“May I ask you something, Father?”

He patted her hand. “I have told you, Cerise—you may ask me anything.”

“It’s about your gift,” she said over the crunch of dust and light debris beneath her shoes. “Was it always this powerful, or did it grow with training?”

“In a way, it was both,” he said. “When a priest receives his gift, it manifests at full strength from the onset. Each of us is born with a finite amount of transformable energy. My supply happens to be larger than most. Training helped me use my gift to my fullest ability, but it only increased my skill and my efficiency, not my power.”

She nodded. It was the same for Seers. An oracle’s gift of foresight, however weak or strong it was, remained consistent for life. “Did your gift manifest early?”

“Actually, no, it arrived the morning of my Claiming Day. I suppose you could say I was late to bloom.” He slid her an amused glance. “Much like someone else I know.”

An unexpected jolt of hope lightened her step. Maybe she was a late bloomer instead of a weed?

The corridor led to a stone archway constructed from alternating black and white blocks of polished marble. They passed beneath it and emerged into what appeared to be a mausoleum. Hundreds of silver plaques were affixed to the marble walls in many rows from floor to ceiling. Each plaque bore an engraved name.

“This is the Arch Sanctum,” Father Padron said, his voice echoing in the chamber. “Every high priest who has served the Mortara dynasty rests in this room. One day, my ashes will join my brethren who came before me. To be interred here is the greatest honor the Order can bestow upon a man.” He teasingly added, “Though I’m in no hurry to accept it.”

Cerise glanced around by the light of a flickering torch, searching for relics or scrolls but seeing only cobwebs and dust. For the Order’s highest honor, the priests didn’t keep the mausoleum very clean. Perhaps they thought the dead didn’t care about cobwebs. “You mentioned ancient scrolls?”

“Yes, over here.”

He released her hand and strode to the rear left corner of the crypt, where he used his energy to create a slim doorway to another room. She joined him in the antechamber, which bore a slight resemblance to the tomb, only in miniature. Its marble walls, also dulled by neglect, had been hollowed out to create shelves, some of which were lined with leather-bound books. Others were heaped high with scrolls of parchment lying haphazardly on top of one another. She didn’t know what the scrolls contained, but the Order must not have considered them important. She could tell by the thick, undisturbed carpet of dirt on the floor that no one visited the room. Still, she took the time to peruse the volumes and found that most of them were a compilation of names and dates.

“These aren’t the original sacred scrolls, are they?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” Father Padron said, laughing. “Those are kept in Calatris, under so many protective enchantments that not even I could read them.” He jutted his bearded chin at the shelves. “These are mundane records that have long since been transcribed—births and deaths and such. We only keep them because it seems a shame to destroy anything so ancient.”

Another failure. Another dead end. If the answers weren’t down there, she couldn’t imagine where else they would be.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“I’m afraid this is all we have.” Father Padron backed up, grinning apologetically before he turned and strode out of the antechamber. “I did warn you it wasn’t intriguing.”

With sagging shoulders, she followed him. “I’m still grateful for…”

She trailed off as a flame leaped in her peripheral vision. One of the wall sconces was burning more brightly than the others. She didn’t think much of it until she glanced down and noticed an imprint of a shoe in the dirt. But only half of a shoe print: the small, square-heeled portion of a boot or a dress loafer. The rest of the imprint disappeared beneath the marble—as though someone had parted the wall and stepped through it.

There was another antechamber. One Father Padron had hidden from her.

She felt a pinch in her chest. She tried telling herself that perhaps he was unaware of the room’s existence, but that was a lie, and she knew it in her bones. Her instincts had been right. He had deliberately chosen not to tell her about the archives because there was something in the hidden room that he didn’t want her to find.

Maybe some ends weren’t so dead after all.

…

Hours later, she paced the garden, seeing nothing, feeling nothing.

She wished Daerick were there. With him holed up in the palace doing research, she had no one to talk to about the archives. She wanted so desperately to give Father Padron the benefit of the doubt, but the truth was that he had deceived her, and it stung. And then there was his embrace of suffering as atonement. Exactly what the Reverend Mother had warned her about. What else had been a lie? Had she been mistaken about his kindness? Did he secretly view her with the same contempt that Father Bishop displayed so openly?

She didn’t know, and that was maddening.

Distracted, she reached out to skim a rosebush and pricked her little finger. She hissed and brought the finger to her mouth. The pain turned her focus outward, making her aware of her surroundings once more. She heard a noise coming from a maze of hedges at the back of the garden: a muffled grunting, the sound of someone in pain.

She followed the noise to the center of the maze and discovered she was right. There on the grass knelt the king, pale in the face, more drunk than ever, clutching his stomach and trying not to lose its contents. Oddly enough, she empathized with his pain, having once enjoyed too much sacramental cider at the temple. She lifted her skirts and sat far enough away from him to avoid any unpleasantness.

“Your Majesty,” she greeted. “I would say you’re going to feel worse in the morning, but I don’t know if you will.” Perhaps the alcohol in his blood would disappear at sunset, along with the rest of him. “Your body is different than mine.”

The king sniffed a laugh and darted a glance at her chest. “Maybe you’re not as ignorant as I thought.”

“I know why you’re doing that,” she told him.

“Doing what? Defiling the garden with half-digested ale?”

“Belittling me,” she said. “The rumors you heard about me raised your hopes, and it hurt to learn that I’m ordinary. Your insults are a way of retaliating against me and also against yourself for believing the rumors in the first place.” When he opened his mouth to deny it, she added, “Daerick told me so.”

“Daerick,” the king grumbled. “One of these days he’s going to talk himself into a broken nose.”

“He told me more than just that,” she said. “He told me you remember your nights in the shadows. Is that true?”

For a sliver of a second, fear widened Kian’s gaze. If she had blinked, she would have missed it. But she didn’t miss it, and in that moment, she saw the king for who he truly was—a wounded young man who dreaded the night. Sympathy prickled behind her ribs, but she hid the emotion, afraid that he would mistake it for weakness and lose whatever respect he had for her.

“Daerick is mistaken,” Kian said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“So you’re an oracle now?”

“I only need eyes to see that you’re afraid.”

Kian spat into the grass and then shamelessly changed the subject. “You were wrong when you said I would feel worse in the morning. No matter what I do to myself—even if I lose a finger, which has actually happened—I wake up whole.” He tapped the visible patch of skin on his upper chest. “You can pierce my heart if you want to. As long as it’s beating when the sun goes down, I’ll have a new one at sunrise.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him. “If you can be polite and stop insulting me, I’ll wait until twilight to stab you.”

He released a soft, breathy chuckle that made his eyes crinkle at the edges. This time his laughter was genuine, and she found herself searching for another funny remark so she could hear it again.

“No one prepared me for my curse,” Kian said. “After my Claiming Day, it took me a fortnight to learn that my body restores itself at dawn. I found out the hard way when I fractured my elbow.” Absently, he rubbed the crook of his left arm. “That was the day I lost a finger, too.”

“Sounds like an eventful day,” she said. “What happened?”

“Daerick and I might have liberated a bottle of my father’s finest and then consumed it in the stables.” Kian grinned. “Did you know that horses dislike being dressed in men’s breeches?”

She laughed. “I can’t say I’ve ever given it a thought.”

“Well, now you know,” he said. “And the only thing worse than a mare’s bite is having to face your father’s physician while drunk, bloodied, and naked.”

Still smiling, the king stared off into the hedges as if replaying the memory. Cerise enjoyed this version of him, of Kian the mischievous young man with an easy grin and a story to tell.

But as the wind shifted, the king turned his gaze skyward, where streaks of orange and purple tinted the last rays of sunlight. The corners of his lips turned down. All of the cheer left his face, peeling away until only dread remained.

“Your Majesty, please listen to me.” Cerise moved closer to him and reached for his hand. At first, he hesitated, but he allowed her to hold one of his hands in between both of hers. She took a moment to savor the pleasant heat of it, the feel of it, rough and callused and large. “I don’t have the Sight, and I don’t know if I ever will. But today Daerick and I learned something about the noble curses, and he came back from the city so full of hope that he was practically glowing. You know Daerick, his standards and his brilliance. He wouldn’t be excited about an idea unless it had merit.”

“What did you learn?” Kian asked.

“That the curse can be broken through atonement.”

“And how would we do that?” He looked into her face, hope and despair warring in those smoky gray eyes.

Cerise bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know yet.”

The king dropped his gaze, though not before a wall went up behind it. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to protect himself. She hadn’t earned his trust yet.

“I do know this,” she told him. “The goddess sent me here for a reason. I’m certain of it. She has a plan that’s bigger than all of us.”

Kian peeked up through a fringe of dark lashes, his gray eyes latching onto hers. Again she noticed a subtle hint of emotion, a need for hope and an even greater fear of it.

She squeezed his hand. “Shiera doesn’t make mistakes.”

“No,” he agreed. “The suffering she inflicts on me is deliberate.”

“The goddess can be vengeful; that’s true. But I’ve seen her merciful side.”

Kian scoffed.

“I have,” she promised. “There was a girl who came to the temple with hells bane—horrible red scales all over her face and a fever out of control. None of the healers could help her. But then the girl put her favorite doll on the burning altar, and just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“she was cured.”

“A miracle,” Kian droned with an eye roll.

“It was a miracle,” Cerise insisted. “They don’t happen often, but by definition, miracles are supposed to be rare. Shiera answers prayers. Even when the answer is no, I’ve felt her presence inside me like a second heart.”

“When has she ever answered my prayers?” An undercurrent of bitterness flowed heavily in those words.

“Maybe when she sent me here to serve you. Or again today, when she guided my path into the city so Daerick and I could learn how to break her curse. I think she’s decided that the noble houses have suffered long enough.”

“Or maybe she’s twisting the knife.”

Cerise huffed a dry laugh. “Do you think she sent me here to give you hope and then take it away? That’s arrogant, even for a king. Of all the men who ever lived, what makes you so special that our creator would go through the trouble of toying with you?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“This is bigger than both of us,” she said. “It has to be. But I need you to have a little faith, or at least pretend to. Breaking the curse will be hard enough without you fighting me and making me feel small.”

The king opened his mouth to speak but faltered.

“Promise you won’t quit,” she added. “Promise that when you wake up at dawn, you’ll rule like you mean it, like a king with a hundred years to live. Your people need you more than you know. Think of how your subjects will suffer if you continue to neglect them.”

His throat shifted as he swallowed.

“I need to hear you say it.”

With a slow nod, Kian murmured, “I’ll try.”

She wanted to press for more than a halfhearted try, but his hand dissolved into shadow, and he slipped like an onyx breeze through her fingers. The last parts of him to vanish were his eyes, round and unblinking and filled with a hundred silent pleas that rang louder than a thunderclap inside her head.

Don’t leave me stranded and alone. Don’t give up on me. Don’t fail .

Those eyes imprinted on hers and lingered long after they were gone.