The Black Prince: Part II (55 page)

“Which leaves me no choice but to take matters into my own hands.”

“And that’s why you….”

“I need a child of a certain age, fitting certain requirements. I tried to steal her but the inn put up a bit of a fuss. Guest and owner alike. Unfortunate, really. So I sacrificed them all to build my power. For the ritual. The ritual that will, at long last, give me the life I crave.”

Cariad was going to steal this child’s life, somehow. As, long ago, Tristan had stolen his host’s. Isla had read of such things, or rather the rumors of such things. Of the vilest of vile practitioners ensorceling children and stealing their minds. Raising them as vessels, incapable of more than the very basest of functions. Until such time as they could be inhabited.

“You’re sick.”

“No,” Cariad snapped. “I’m smarter and more capable than you—than all of you—and I deserve more. But for you,” she added, “I would have had what you have. Eventually. But you stole it from me.”

“I can’t help that Tristan loves me.” Isla’s voice was shaking.

“He doesn’t love you. He wants your power.”

Isla felt her heart skip. “My what?”

“You and your siblings are the sole inheritors of Simon’s magic.”

Simon the Ghoul.

Simon the Dead.

Tristan’s long ago mentor.

Seeing the recognition bloom in Isla’s eyes, Cariad smiled. “Yes. Yes. Through you, he can be reunited with Simon’s power. For it flows in your veins.”

Isla remembered back to her walks with Tristan. To their trip to the tomb, to her sense that something wasn’t quite right. To his sudden and acute interest, when she explained.

Not in the tomb, but in her.

“Before you came along,
I
was the most powerful woman in Morven.”

Isla spread her hands. “But I don’t….”

“But,” Hart cut in, “you have the potential to learn.”

“Yes.” Cariad’s smile deepened. “And should you learn, you would rival Tristan himself.”

“No.”

“Why do you think he feeds on you so, child?”

Isla had no answer.

“Don’t listen to her.” This from Hart. Warning her to guard herself against the seductive power of Cariad’s words. Against the web they were weaving about her, while holding her immobile. With fear for Amelie. With indecision. Over her own choices, and what they meant. Over her very self. But Hart’s words were enough, on their own. To cut her free. To restore her to, if not completely solid ground, then something.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “What I have, it’s a curse. I’ll outlive everyone I love.” She realized, for the first time, that she was telling Hart something he hadn’t known. That she was no longer entirely human. “My friends. My brother. My own son.” As she spoke, as she fought back against what Cariad would instill, she felt her own power returning.

Building.

“There isn’t anything wrong with being sick, or with dying, Cariad. Or Ariadne. Or whatever your name is.” She shook her head. “Who taught you that you were supposed to survive? Even this long? Who taught you, either, that surviving would be fun? What is it you think you’re going to do, with immortality? How on earth will it serve you, outlasting us all, when we’ve all been outlasted? The world will change, Cariad, and without you. And it will no longer care.”

“No,” the witch hissed.

“Dying is making room for others, honoring the cycle of life.”

“Which is easy for a child to say, a child who’s never felt pains in her heart or watched herself grow old. This body is
dying!
Even as I’m trapped within it! I can feel it, this minute I can feel it.”

“We’re meant to survive through our children. Through the memories we leave them.”

Not through endlessly pursuing their own wants and needs. As Cariad had done. As Maeve had done. As so many had done, because they saw nothing—wanted nothing—above their own immediate needs. This land, that castle. That purse, heavy with coin. But no amount of land or castles or purses would never be enough—or ever had been. Maeve and her cronies, they were none of them bereft of resources. The injustice they sought to right was that others had more. At least in their minds. Because all that they’d amassed hadn’t brought happiness, they’d determined that they needed more. And more. And more, and more, and more. Until they forgot why they’d even wanted more in the first place and
more
simply became the focus.

An end in an of itself.

And end that never reached an end.

And so of course Cariad had to keep living, so she could keep filling the void that could never be filled.

She, Maeve, and everyone like them, their inability to make a contribution other than to their own selves was what had withered them into so many husks. And what had left their kingdom a wasteland. But they didn’t care, because they didn’t see others’ misfortunes as relevant—even to their own continued livelihoods. Let them rule over a silent stretch of bones; at least then they’d have an easier time tallying the riches. If they could any of them do so, before falling on each other.

“The world is reborn in each child’s eyes upon it, each morn.” Isla shook her head. “It’s for them. For their children. Not for such as us.”

“Then just kill yourself now, if you’re so eager.”

“I would, if it would save this kingdom.”

“Cariad,” Hart asked, “did you ensorcel Rowena?”

“No.” That laugh again. That horrible laugh. “She was biddable enough without the least intervention on my part. Proposed the idea to me, indeed. Of helping me—of helping Maeve—infiltrate the castle. To get revenge on her sister, for having the audacity to be happy.”

“Over the winter.”

“Yes. She never saw further than that, you know.”

“I know.”

“But,” Cariad said, “enough of this.”

Hart moved to stand in front of Isla.

“Do you really think you can save her, Chosen?”

“A witch’s head parts from her body as easily as any woman’s.”

In an instant, forcing the baby into the crook of her arm, she produced a knife. She held it aloft while Amelie, startled out of the terror that had kept her all but silent, once again began to wail. “Come closer, Chosen, and she dies.”

“But you need her.”

“There are other babies.”

“No!” Isla lunged toward Cariad but Hart turned, his arms outstretched, blocking her.

“You can’t win,” Cariad shrieked. “You can’t win!”

“Let me go!” Isla shrieked.

Amelie’s cries became screams.

And then someone else screamed.

Cariad turned, they all turned, just in time to see an apparition rise from the shadows.

Isla had no idea how she’d gotten past them or, indeed, if she’d been there all along. Or how, or why. But, garbed in the mourning weeds she’d adopted, was Apple. She threw herself on Cariad with no regard for her own safety, her arm upraised. The knife came down again, and again.

Isla dashed forward, snatching Amelie from danger and holding her close.

“Die!” Apple sobbed. “Die!”

I
t was Hart, finally, who had to pull her off of Cariad’s corpse.

He did so gently. As gently as Isla had ever seen him do anything. “Enough, sweetheart,” she heard him say, his hands on her shoulders. “She’s gone.”

“She’s not. They’re never gone.”

“Come with me.”

“No! She’ll just…she’ll come back.”

The mess on the floor was not coming back, Isla knew. In any form. Where her face and chest had been, there was nothing. Only red. But Amelie, who’d quieted in her arms, was snuffling around looking for something to eat. And Isla had nothing to give her.

“There are goats behind the stables,” Apple said, still on her knees. As if she’d read Isla’s mind. She’d refused to give up her knife, but at least she no longer seemed interested in using it. “Babies can drink goats’ milk, if their mothers pass. At least until a wet nurse can be found.”

“Thank you.” Isla didn’t know how else to respond.

“I don’t want to be a grandmother.”

A footstep in the door behind her. “Isla!”

She turned. Tristan. “This is Amelie,” she said stupidly.

He took them both in his arms. Isla leaned against him. Amelie, curious, reached up and began tugging on the collar of his cloak. She gurgled a little, and cooed.

The tears flowed unbidden, scalding against her skin.

“I followed you,” Tristan said. “I had to.”

“I know.” Isla spoke into the wool covering his chest.

Hart, somehow, convinced Apple to stand up. And to give him the knife, which he quickly made disappear. He led her to a chair. She, the fight having gone out of her, let herself be led. He sat her down. She gazed at nothing while he wiped the worst of the blood from her face and hands.

“I followed Rowena to the inn,” she said suddenly.

It was surprising to hear her voice. Or, at least, it had become so. Because Apple herself had become something of a revenant in training, waiting out her time until she could truly join the ranks of her companions. This was only the second time she’d spoken to anyone, directly, in a moon or more.

“A week ago. I thought…I thought it might be she going to the barrows.”

Isla’s brow knitted. So much had happened and she was so, so confused. She’d spoken to Cariad of change but she needed, just for a week at least, for the world to stop changing.

“But she didn’t. She went into town.”

“But how did you….”

“I took a room at the inn this afternoon. I wanted to confront her, you see. I…she says she didn’t ensorcel Rowena, but she did.” A flicker of—something—crossed Apple’s blank gaze. “I loved her but she was weak. Always so weak. If Cariad hadn’t poisoned her mind against you, against even her own husband, then none of this would have happened. She would have been alive.”

In that moment, Isla understood.

So much that, until then, she hadn’t.

“My baby.” Apple burst into tears. “She took my baby.”

Isla and Hart exchanged a look.

Isla didn’t want to make things worse, but she had to know. “How, though—how did you survive?”

Apple wiped her eyes, smearing blood across her eyelids, and blew her nose on the kerchief Hart handed her. “I was sitting on my bed, wondering what I was going to do, when I heard the screams. From downstairs. So I hid. In the only place I could find large enough to hold me.”

“The linen cabinet.”

Apple shrugged.

“She had to see her victims,” Tristan said, “for the spell to work.”

“She poisoned my baby’s mind with lies,” Apple repeated. “And I wasn’t there to help. I was too busy
chasing after things that didn’t matter
. Because I was a fool. A whore and a liar and a fool.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She raised her eyes to Isla’s. “I don’t blame you. I don’t even truly blame Cariad. She is—was—too much like me. She took advantage of my baby just like I took advantage of Hart. This was the Gods’ punishment, you see. Just like it says in the scriptures:
whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling
. If I…if I had been a better person….” She dissolved into tears. Tears that, like the rain outside, would not stop until morning.

“Come,” Tristan said.

Isla let herself be led from the room.

They were no longer alone at the inn; guardsmen swarmed the place, searching for answers. A perimeter had been set up, torches sputtering and flaring in the wet. Isla barely paid attention to where her feet were going, only rocked Amelie as she drew from her husband’s strength. She had never needed anyone, or anything, as badly as she needed him. Not water, not air.

Eventually she found herself in the stables.

The body of the groom had been removed and sand sprinkled, to soak up the worst of the blood. Sand that was usually reserved for spilled oil, or to lend traction to ice. She’d have to feed Amelie soon, but in the meantime she gave her a knuckle to mouth. Amelie seemed contented with that, and Isla sat down on a hay bale. She could have sat down on the groom’s body, she was so tired.

She could only, instead, bless whoever had removed it.

Tristan sat down beside her. “Yes,” he said. “I knew. And yes, I came to Ewesdale initially for that reason. Not because I had any particular plan but because I was curious.”

Amelie’s eyes were green, like Isla’s.

“But once I met you…nothing else mattered.”

Silence, for a long moment.

And then, “I didn’t tell you, because I wanted it to be your choice. To develop your powers or no. Because I wanted to give you what I, myself, was never given.”

Freedom.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to, you know.” She leaned against his shoulder, and felt his arm encircling her. “I want to just be me. And to be with you.” She considered her next words. “Even if I’d had some interest, or could have, at some future date…I’ve seen the hunger that power awakens.”

And seen, too, what it had done to her father. To her sister. To Cariad.

“I just want to be me.”

“Isla, there could never be anything more beautiful. Please always be you.”

Through the open door, she watched the rest of the bodies being carried out.