Chapter 13 Part 12 | Lovers and Beloveds | IHGK Book 1
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Teacher was at Hildin's side then, ineffectually trying to stanch the bleeding, pale white fingers dyed red and shaking. "I cannot stop it. I was not fast enough to stop her. Your Majesty, I cannot stop it!"
"Let him finish dying, Teacher," said Warin, running up the altar stairs. "You can't save him, and I don't want you to."
"I do not want to either, but I must!" A moment longer, and Teacher's trembling increased as the river of blood subsided. "He's dead. Your Majesty, you must forgive me now, or--" A spasm, and Teacher folded inward, crooning with pain.
"You're forgiven, Teacher, with all my heart!" said Warin. Teacher uttered a deep, relieved sigh, and the pale face relaxed.
"He's dead?" murmured Emmae into the shocked silence. "He's dead." She stood up. Hildin's blood covered her head to foot, soaking through her heavy clothes, thick and clotting in her hair, coating her hands, trickling into her face, warm blood that seemed to grow hotter.
Warin didn't care about the blood. He took her as best he could in his uninjured arm, but the blood grew hotter still and forced him back. "Emmae! Teacher, what's happening to her?"
"The spell is ending."
It seemed so long since the silver smoke had entered her--silver smoke? When had there been silver smoke, she wondered. It seeped out of her bones, trickling up through her flesh, to seep from her skin in long tendrils rising toward the high stone arches above the altar. As the smoke left her, air rushed in; she gulped great breaths. With each one came a rush of memory: her mother's beautiful, loving face; oh, her mother's death, and the tears she wept, tears that never completely ended; her distracted father; the long, lonely days with stupid Olka and the rest of the simpering servants; her horrible stepmother; the carriage--the Travelers. Their Queen. The cards. The spell. Connin.
"I remember," she said. "I remember everything." She looked past Hildin to Fredrik's body, and ran to kneel at its side. "My father--oh, no, oh, Father!" she sobbed in Leutish. "And I didn't know you! Why did you send me away? How could you marry me to that horrible man? How can you be dead!" She cradled his cooling hand against her cheek.
Warin moved toward her, but Teacher stayed him. "Let her grieve."
Wincing, Warin shook the pale hand off his shoulder, and crouched beside Emmae. "Emmae, my love, are you all right?" he said, his voice breaking. "Oh, how I've worried! When I discovered you'd been taken... You--you remember who you are now?" She nodded and cried into her father's hand. "I'm so sorry for your father's death, truly. We will wait as long as you wish to be married, even the year and a day for full mourning."
The spokes of fear, loneliness and horror spun before her eyes, spokes not knowing who she was, or why her body answered anyone's call. Her throat constricted with anger, and she snarled it open. "Married?" she cried in Tremontine. "And who am I marrying?"
"Why...Emmae, we're promised to one another!"
She sprang to her feet. "I was promised to a woodsman, not a king, and as it turns out, both are false men!"
"How have I been false to you?" he said, staring up at her. He rose to his feet, face an appalled red until he jostled his broken collarbone and paled again. "Emmae, I have given up everything to come for you."
"Giving up a tiny cottage and a hard life for a throne--what misery!" she jeered.
"We were happy there," he said, his voice dark with yearning and anger. "You were happy there!"
"Who was I then?" she shouted. "I didn't know, but you did!"
"No, I didn't!" he shouted back. "I knew you were Leutish, and likely from a wealthy family but I never guessed you were the princess!"
"Harla take you, you knew about my enchantment!" she said, breaking into sobs again. "You knew, and you didn't tell me, and you--you used it!" His face crumpled; a bitter triumph rose in her throat.
"I should have told you, but I didn't know how. I didn't want to frighten you, and I couldn't lift it--"
"Only the blood of a king, the Traveler Queen said."
"--And I would have been that king for you!" he shouted. "If the only way to save you from that spell was to bathe you in my own blood, I swear by Pagg right here in His Temple that I would have come back, taken the throne and died for you! Emmae, I love you!"
The bitterness clawed at her heart. "My name is Edmerka, Princess Royal of Leute, Dowager Queen of Tremont, and I will not marry you or anyone else, ever! I hate men!" She ripped at her dress. "I want that bastard's blood off my body, now!"
Warin's hooded, dark eyes glittered with a rage so like his dead brother's that she instinctively stepped back. "My lady, as my brother's widow, you will always have an honored place in my court unless you decide to make your home elsewhere," he said. "Little Father, may we beg the use of your baths? The Dowager Queen wishes to use them." The astonished cleric agreed, and Edmerka, Dowager Queen of Tremont, let the servants lead her off.
Her temper had gotten the better of her. She was angry with him, yes, and she had every right to be, she told herself as the serving women poured bucket after bucket of hot water over her until the red stream eddying down the drain ran clear. She had every right to cry, she told herself as a Sister bound up the wound above her heart: her father had died, right in front of her; she'd discovered the depth of her enchantment; she'd faced Warin's outright treachery. Then why did his hurt and anger stay so fresh in her mind, why did his suddenly hard eyes make her wilt with remorse, why were her tears more for her lost love than her lost father?
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