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She is spread out in front of me, dying, like a spider crushed by a slamming window in the process of creeping indoors.
Yet she is weathered in a way I have not seen this woman before, and this seems even more shocking than the pain laced through her expression. Her hair has always been kept in a bun, where it cannot bother her eyes or be grabbed by the tiniest children—(though their fists do not close on anything, now). Now, it is becoming undone, hair spilling to frame her face, gaunt from age and exhaustion. She has always been sniffy, uppity, and smooth to me, like a porcelain vase on the mantle; rapping my knuckles when I do not sit properly, her voice curt and impersonal as she teaches me how to submit. I have always loathed our etiquette lessons, but that is where I thought the relationship would end.
I did not expect this.
Acantha Spicula is lying on the harsh dirt in front of me, dirt that smudges her face in a way she would never allow, and there is a harsh piece of metal—wrenched from a window frame, a balcony, perhaps—that has impaled her in the stomach. Her breathing is wheezy as aged hands scramble to fit around the jagged metal unspooling her perfect thread.
But she does not see me—she has not noticed. So invested in her own injury—as anyone would be, I am sure—that she has not noticed the woman standing only feet from her, watching as her blood sinks into the ground around her, old earth hungry as the gaping mouths of wheedling children.
Her hands are splattered with blood.
I take one shuddering breath, then another. She cannot hear me over the sound of the island collapsing into the ocean. It is; I can feel the earth trembling beneath our feet, and I know it cannot sustain us or the weight of this palace any longer. I should leave. I can leave now—it is no longer necessary to uphold the lies I was spinning for Peris—for myself and my own safety.
I could leave.
I could save myself.
I could let all this blood wash away into the salty sea.
And yet.
In her voice still is the sound of a dispassionate but patient mentor, coaching children into the habits of royalty, even as she whimpers and moans in pain now. The sound of a woman who is so firmly crushed into traditional roles that they mummify her—teaching me how to wear the perfect veil. The sound of her voice… as it bids farewell to the woman who gave her a home, as the late queen of Mariora’s body returns to the sea.
My voice is so much more thunderous than these corporeal hills.
At last, Acantha looks up.
Her eyes lock onto me and they are as wild and crazed as a predator caught in a steel trap. A thin, shining bead of saliva is running down her jaw, tinted red with the blood pouring from her body. She presses her thin lips together and almost becomes the woman I knew for a moment before her mouth gapes again and she is this monster who murders babies.
My fist clenches.
“I…do…nea…” she rasps. It almost sounds like she is trying to form a sentence—’I don’t need’ , though it never goes complete, because it never was more than my name. One of her hands drums, as if to summon me, like I am a pet. I am not a pet, but I go anyway; walking over to her and crouching down. I am not afraid that she may attempt to hurt me. That wretched book is gone now; swallowed by the ocean, for once an ally. And when she fled me before, she was the prey animal, not me, and I cannot help but wonder if the visceral twist to my stomach is not pleasure as I watch her die.
She killed all of them.
And the whole time, as a friend.
I look deeply into her face.
“Idonea,” she says again. Her voice is anything but smooth.
I tilt my chin up slightly, though my eyes remain fixed on hers; Violet, I think, Violet taught me well. How could this woman ever have caged Violet, that bird that bloodied itself on every cage until the wire and glass shattered? “Lady Spicula,” I say, and the harshness in my voice, from dust and tears and pain, must read so differently from the sweet and supple-minded voice Peris must have heard when he first took my hands, even if the water was in my lungs all the while.
Her eyes squint. “So you have… caught up to me,” she whispers. Her white hands are still tight around the metal, almost as if she is anchoring herself to it, rather than weakly trying to pull it out.
I do not respond. It makes me feel ill to engage in her villainous rapport, so instead I look down at her injury. The blood is clotting, but it is still so much, too much, and the injury, so full of gore and darkness, reminds me of the deer the wolves would kill back in my homeland.
The wolves were just as hungry as we were, so it was rare when they would not skin a kill to the bone—but when they didn’t, often the poorer men were so desperate for full stomachs that they tore the remaining flesh from the bones then and there. Another injury to our kingdom as a whole, because the rotted meat seeped into their bloodstream as toxin, and from there, into our waters—and from there, into the children of the village and the castle.
The rich would never be so crude. Instead, they gorge themselves on the remaining supplies in the middle of the night, and flee when their daughter finds them there.
They would never tear apart a deer—they tear apart men.
I swallow.
She is not a deer. And I, standing here, am not a huntress—
And I will not let my heart starve as my stomach grew familiar with, back in Isbrene.
If anything—if everything combined—I refuse to feel hungry like that. Let me feel hollow in my body, but never in my soul.
Yet you are a huntress, whispers the voice in my mind, for this moment, and what is this moment if not the apex of your existence, the truth of your being— you followed her through the ruins.
No, it was not hunting—it was not hunting, Acantha is the only one who knows the truth of what happened to the royal siblings.
And it is almost too late.
I know what I must do. I must not care about the dying. I must not watch the way the blood stains. My hardest challenge yet.
She lets out a shuddering breath as I take off the cloak—still thrown around my shoulders from Peris, his limp shield to protect me from the earthquake he created—and press it to her stomach. “When they would have accidents,” I told her, “hunting. Back in my home kingdom. When they threw a spear for a caribou and by some strange twist of fate the wind drove it into a man. They created their own religion for fixing injury and the saving of lives. I read their books—they wrote them for each other, but I read them.” I press the cloak to the stream of blood, and she gasps and winces, and I try not to hear. “I could save your life,” I told her.
The thread of saliva dribbles from her chin down to her neck. She watches me like an infant.
I lower my voice as I stem the flow of blood, forcing it to pass on through her body and keep that heart beating. “You are going to tell me,” I murmur to her, “exactly what happened to the royal children. I saw what happened to Peris. And I want to understand it.”
She fights through the gurgle of blood in her throat. “You will never,” she spits. “You will never understand.”
I wield the sharpest weapon I have ever witnessed, indifference, and start to relieve the pressure.
“No!” Her bony hand closes around my wrist.
“What are you protecting?” I hiss through my teeth. “You are dying here, alone on top of a palace reduced to rubble. And it isn’t the first time— is it.”
She sucks in a deep breath and slowly lets me go. I return to my haphazard pursuit of medicine, but I know I am only buying time. That’s all I need—enough time for her to finish talking. “I am no traitor… Lady Idonea,” she says. Her eyes glint. “You would not know how that feels.”
My teeth grit.
They are the traitors, they let the kingdom die. All of them, in every palace I have walked through, ink spilled through every family tree.
“What you did to Peris,” I say, “that is nothing like I have ever seen. You tore his soul from his body, so it seemed. I know how miracles work—Acantha. I saw th—I saw what you did to Rose.”
“So hungry for information,” she whispers.
My jaw tightens. “Chartesia,” I insist. And I dig the cloak in deeper to the cavity of her stomach.
She cries out, and I press my eyelids tightly closed as if that would also make me deaf. She shivers and shakes and so do I. We need to hurry, I think, there is so little time. I press harder. She spits up the confessions mixed with blood. It stains us both, covers us, I could not imagine ever washing this out.
My insatiable mind slightly more saturated with truth now, she lets me fumble the beaded necklace from her throat—lets me, or is too weak to stop me. I hold it up to look at with shaking hands. I am coloring the beads with red; I try to rub it off. It is warm in my hands and it feels like a pulse.
I fix it clumsily over my own neck. The corpse I am robbing stares me down, as if waiting for something. I have nothing left to give her.
“Awk?”
I turn over my shoulder.
The monkey is there, eyes wide and observant and thoughtful. I almost want to nudge her away, her fur is white and would stain easily and she is the most innocent thing I have left to save other than the jewelry around my neck—but while she has always looked at me knowledgably, and her antics have saved me grief, I am not the person that she was created to rest alongside.
Acantha’s expression is hardening over like cooling wax as she dies but it cracks ever so slightly at the sight of the animal. Jaabu lets out a soft hoot and ambles closer, her head tilting. She coos slightly, under her breath. I want to hold out an arm to stop her. But I am using both hands just to keep Acantha alive.
“Jaabu,” Acantha whispers. Unexpectedly affectionate. Eyes not looking at me, but tone similar to pride, she says, “How fascinating, to form a friend from stone.”
“My husband tried to,” I say under my breath.
At the sound of my voice—or maybe the mention of Jaabu’s sworn enemy—the monkey looks up. “...Awk?” she coos, her eyes wide. I dip my chin onto my chest for the slightest second and then look back up, swallowing.
Acantha reaches up and touches the forehead of her one confidante.
“When she returns to her breathing form,” she whispers, “there will be no blood.”
But Jaabu does not turn into stone now, though that is the implication. She curls against Spicula’s neck and closes her eyes to sleep.
Spicula’s mouth leers into a smile, maybe something softer if she were not so torn apart by the grief she has created. She cannot seem to work her face back into a neutral expression, because her eyelashes flutter, and the island murmurs in time. Faint panic shoots down my spine. No. I don’t have enough yet.
I lean closer in. “Tell me how to bring them back.”
“Can’t.”
“There must be a way. I will spend my whole life trying if I must— undo this. Tell me how to save them.”
Her eyes crack open. “You think one life's work can undo another’s?”
Hatred, it is as visceral as the tide. “You…” I stumble over the words. “Is there no pity… for what you have done?”
“There is always pity,” she wheezes. “There is always something stronger. Metal is stronger than anything else.” She shifts weakly around the barbed tangle embedded in her torso. “But if you are so determined to… bleed… my essence from me… yes, Lady Idonea… of course I feel guilt.” She shrugs. “O-of course I feel pain.”
“Do you,” I breathe. “Your first truth—lying here, dying and obedient to a cause you abandoned.”
Her brow knits. “I did not—I, of anyone—!”
“They’re choking down there, aren’t they,” I whisper. Suddenly it makes sense; the flurries of movement in the ashes of the Chartesian basin, aligned with her story, of hidden rebels still alive. “Choking on the ash. Breathing it in, all the while. The fire’s not raging anymore but the ash and the smoke are thick in the air and few of them go outside at all, they don’t want to see that even if they caused it, and Jaime and the Mariorans could find them still. You are their puppet, their extension—and maybe you are obedient.” I swallowed. “But you’re here in a kingdom that smelled like ocean salt and fresh air, drinking wine and sleeping in bedsheets soft as silk, and you can pretend you’re here for your duty all you want but you’re here to breathe.” I press harder against the wound. I am not sure if I am trying to help or harm, anymore. My arms feel taught. “Gorging yourself on duty while they choke on desperation,” I whisper.
The same sorry tune.
Every time.
A song alone in a kingdom that is dead.
The island beneath us shudders again.
The movement upsets Jaabu, who shifts fitfully and opens her eyes. They slide from Acantha to myself, uncertain. Acantha lets out a weak, sputtering chuckle. Her blood has seeped through the cloak, warm and sticky on my hands—I hardly notice when I let it fall to the ground.
“I am going to leave you here,” I say finally.
Her brow creases. A bead of sweat—most unladylike—runs between the crease in her brows “No,” she gulps. “No. Chartesia—you must go to Chartesia. My homeland will have the answers you seek… or at least the beginning to a long story.” ‘ You will always have allies here,’ I think. There is a friend waiting in the Chartesian basin. An ally waiting for me. Who knows how to turn hunger into fullness.
She wants me to stay.
I am getting to my feet.
“No,” she wheezes again. Her hand reaches out like I am going to drop that beaded necklace back into it. “No… no…” Her upset bothers the monkey, who shifts again, hooting and cooing, stressed and concerned. “Lady Idonea—”
“You will stay here,” I say, trying to find the conviction in my voice, taking it from the pulse thrumming against my neck, “and you will go down—down—down to the bottom of the ocean with this family that you have slaughtered like a lamb.”
I turn and walk away, slipping on rubble that bounces and shakes with the island.
Her voice is raw and sobbing behind me.
When I was still a princess, starving beggars would cling to my shoes.
We learned how to kick them away early on.
It was a sort of etiquette.
There was no mercy for those lying upon the ground.
I stop.
Spicula lies still and waiting as I drive Reuben’s sword deep inside her heart.
The rumbling of the island only gets worse as I walk away from the ruined courtyard, like the island itself is easier to get to the end. Jaabu clings tightly to my shirt, silent. I am terrified that I have tarnished her perception of me forever, that she is only clinging to me so that she may not drown—I can only hope her enchanted perception may lead her to understand the weight of what I have done and how injurious it is to me. I fumble with my clothing as I walk. The necklace is tight against my neck where it is safe. I am carrying paper with me, paper I have been holding onto for a while—Rose’s drawings as keepsakes, but now they are much more, they are proof, and history. I have other history back on the mainland, in that curtained room gifted to me upon arrival. The mainland should not fall immediately, though I expect the storm will cause damage before long, and the collapse of the royal family will drive the citizens out. Still, I have time to get back—to retrieve the diaries, the papers, that which I need for the journey ahead.
Despite the warm body clinging to my chest, I feel alone—and it is not an unfamiliar feeling, my whole life there has been gaping space around me even as others surround me—but I am so much more alone now in that I have lost so greatly, and so individually. It has not only reset me to empty; it has gouged something from me like Acantha’s own wound. It is heavy and it is a vacuum and it hurts. The blood is still splattered against my hands. Somehow Jaabu is mostly pristine; if not desperation, then there may be trust, or something close, in her grip.
I hope so. I hope that she is not only trusting me as a ride out of this collapsing island.
But even as I walk I am not sure I am even that, because even as I dodge wreckage and leap from stone to stone, the damage seems to catch up with me. The ground is shaking terribly, and a few times I almost fall—I can see the boathouse from here, housing that suitable sailboat which Peris fixed before he died, ironically his last gift to me, my freedom. But will I ever get there in time?
I must. I must.
From my chest, Jaabu unloops her slender body.
“No,” I whisper. “No, wait—I promise I can help you—” But she is already on the ground, and of course she is, her loyalty was to the woman who I put out of misery…
There is a flash.
For a split second I think it is lightning, but I am wrong.
The pale white horse in front of me bows her noble head.
And as we race down to the shore, and my hair streams behind me, all I can think is—I am wind, I am purpose, the air around me is full—I can feel the sunlight through the clouds.