The Midnight Queen: A Grimm Blood Tale (The Shadow Palace Book 3)
Date: 2017-07-10T22:00:00+00:00

The Midnight Queen

A Grimm Blood Tale

Kat Parrish

Dark Valentine Press

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE MIDNIGHT QUEEN

Copyright © 2017 by Kat Parrish

Cover design and formatting by Indie Author Services

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from the author.

Please contact the author at kattparrish@gmail.com if you experience any formatting or readability issues with this book.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Interlude

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About the Author

Also by Kat Parrish

Prologue

There is a saying in the Twelve Realms: The wheels of change roll slowly. But when change came to Eindar, it came with the swiftness of a summer wildfire and burned through every foot-length of land, from its southern borders to its northern tip.

After centuries of vampire rule, a form of government that had sown resentment among the human inhabitants of the land, King Idrax ix Melix had abolished the separate human and vampire councils to create one combined legislative body endowed with powers equal to his own.

Traditionalists among both camps had been skeptical of the Twilight Council and the new form of shared government, patterned after the desert monarchy of Seethe, but the complex web of alliances and the shaky coalitions Idrax had forged had held for nearly two decades, and the land that had once been known as “the divided kingdom” was now merely Eindar, one of the countries that made up the Twelve Realms, and not a terribly remarkable place.

Eindar was not small, but it was not large, either. It was prosperous, but not so rich that it invited envy from its neighbors. Despite a recent influx of refugees fleeing the unrest in Idrissa and the economic problems of Daire, the country’s borders had held, and there had been peace in the land since the Stranger and his magic-born vampires had been vanquished in an epic battle that came to be known as the “Night of the Three Shadows.”

All should have been well, but an ill wind was blowing south from Lyraa, Eindar’s neighbor to the north.

Whispers carried by the wind brought rumors that the Witch King had cast his covetous eyes toward the land, even as he expanded his borders east and west.

Idrax was troubled by these rumors. He’d enjoyed a warm friendship with the current king’s father and grandfather, but since Jorant IV had taken the throne, Lyraa had become known as the “secret kingdom.”

Jorant had closed trade routes used for centuries, barricaded his borders, and expelled foreigners, including some who’d lived there for decades. He was believed to have taken a wife, and there was talk of heirs, but no one knew for certain.

The king’s cousin, Lord Thyr, had sent spies north to learn more, but the information they’d brought back had been almost useless.

“His subjects are terrified,” Thyr informed the king. “They are convinced his magic allows him to read their minds.”

“Can he?” Idrax asked.

“For all we know, yes,” his cousin said, and volunteered to go to Lyraa himself. The king refused his offer.

“If Jorant has bad intentions toward Eindar, you’d make much too valuable as a hostage. We cannot ignore him but neither can we play into his hands.”

So for years the uncertainty remained, like the hum of insects on a summer’s day, a constant noise but not an ever-present distraction.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Eindar went about their business, and their young princess grew up.

Chapter 1

The birth of Eindar’s vampire princess had been a surprise—not the birth itself, but that the child was born a vampire, something that had not happened in ten times ten generations.

Named Judit Joie, the child was healthy and happy and much beloved by her family. Indeed, despite lingering resentments between the vampires and humans who shared the realm, nearly all agreed that it was time a child lived in the Shadow Palace again, and she was looked upon fondly by most, as though a pretty little distant cousin.

The child was also the object of much curiosity to the healers and physicians who came from the twelve corners of the Twelve Realms to study her, attempting to discover the secrets of her double vampire heritage.

They all came away puzzled. For though Joie had the fiery eyes of her parents and their sensitivity to the sun, and although she was immune to the myriad ailments children suffer—milk spurge and threstle, and cold fever—she otherwise seemed a normal human child.

Her mother had been worried that because vampires did not age as humans do, her daughter would stay forever a baby or eternally a child, but as each year passed and Joie seemed to thrive, Yalira relaxed a little more. The only wasp in the honey was the dire prediction of a seer who’d passed through Eindar not long after Joie was born.

“No child of vampire blood has ever survived without the blood of another,” she’d told the Queen in cryptic warning, offering no particulars. Unnerved, Yalira had sent the seer away with a purse full of gold for her troubles but little thanks for her message. She had not shared the seer’s words with anyone, not even her husband. Yalira was not superstitious—her stepmother had owned a gambling house—but she did not believe in giving voice to her fears.

* * *

Joie had been conceived under the sea of stars, and it seemed from the moment she was born, her eyes were turned towards the heavens.

She spent long hours with her doting grandfather, Lord Melix, who had traveled throughout the Twelve Realms, and knew the names and stories of many stars. The old king taught her these names and stories, and her interest in them was a delight to him.

Then one night Joie pointed to a section of the sky between the Cup and the Tower constellations, and asked Melix to tell her about a triangle of stars only she could see. To him, that patch of sky looked perfectly empty.

He encouraged her to draw the sky pictures she saw and make up stories about them.

Joie’s Aunt Rilla, who was married to the court artist and a painter in her own right, created a book of illustrations based on the princess’ stories that was soon one of the most popular gifts offered at baby name-day parties. A silver bec of every solbec earned from sales of the book went to help orphaned children, and the rest was donated to a scholarship fund for astronomers who wished to study in Eindar and share their knowledge.

When Joie was nine, she consulted with artisans from Rathe, the land of the rainbow lights, and, following her instructions, the famed glassmakers created a device that would allow anyone to see the distant lights she could see with her naked eyes.

Eindar’s Lord Astronomer, a human who’d been trained at three of the finest academies in the Twelve Reams, was jealous of the royal vampire prodigy, and when she discovered a new comet in the heavens, he quit his post in a fit of pique.

For her fifteenth birthday, a magic worker built the princess an observation tower of spell-cast glass that would darken during the day and grow clear again at night.

Her Aunt Rilla’s painting of her at work in the glass tower became an iconic symbol of Eindar, and reproductions of the work were sold throughout the capital to travelers who wished a souvenir of their journey.

* * *

As Joie’s twenty-first birthday approached, young men and women from royal households traveled to Eindar to study with the princess. They’d heard she was lovely, and had been delighted to learn that the description was not mere flattery.

Joie had her father’s midnight-black hair and clear gray eyes. Many a royal swain swore that when she turned her gray gaze upon them, she could see into their souls.

That was truer than they knew.

* * *

Joie was working in her tower, ignoring the plate of cheese and fruit at her elbow, when her mother appeared in the east doorway of the round room.

The queen frowned slightly at the sight of the untouched breakfast, but instead of scolding her daughter, she simply reached for a slice of ripe melon and ate it herself. “Delicious,” she said.

Joie laughed. “Did that work when I was a child?” she asked.

“No,” her mother said. “I think you ate nothing but mashed cowpeas and honey for an entire year.”

“I loved mashed cowpeas and honey,” Joie said.

She didn’t want to be rude and ask her mother to leave, but she was in the middle of a difficult calculation and was afraid she’d lose the thread of it if distracted for too long.

“It’s nearly morning, my star child,” Yalira said fondly, “and your father wants to speak with you.”

Joie felt a frisson of unease. Her father rarely summoned her to his presence during the night when his duties occupied his time.

“Did that baronet from West Themis propose?” she asked, repressing a shudder.

“No,” Yalira said. “He left days ago. Didn’t he say farewell?”

Joie couldn’t honestly remember. Everything about the baronet had been forgettable, from his monotone voice droning on about his perceived accomplishments to his thinning blond hair, which always seemed in need of washing.

“I fear I hurt his feelings when he told me that the flower time in West Themis is the most beautiful time of the year, and I suggested that he should return home directly so as not to miss it.”

“Poor boy,” Yalira said, but she couldn’t conceal a smile. “He always smelled of roasted parsnips.”

“Roasted parsnips that were left to dry in the sun,” Joie said, which made her mother laugh out loud.

It always surprised Joie how girlish her mother sounded when she laughed. She was so used to her mother’s youthful appearance that it no longer surprised her to see she had caught up with her mother in outward age. Yalira still looked like the honey-eyed girl of nineteen she’d been when she became the queen of Eindar, even though her daughter was now nearly twenty-one.

How strange it will be if one day I look like my own mother’s mother, Joie thought, and then dismissed the fancy as her mother surveyed the untidy piles of paper that covered every surface in the tower room. She might have looked young, but Yalira was every inch a mother as her eyebrow lifted in distaste at the clutter.

“It will soon be light,” Yalira said. She glanced up at the star field filling the tower’s dome. “The stars will still be there tonight. Come and have breakfast with your father. He’s been grumpy of late, and it always cheers him to see you.”

Joie sighed inwardly. She had her own apartments in the Shadow Palace, but they were in the same wing as her parents’ quarters, and it would be a journey of only some dozen steps to go from one to the other. She loved her father, but of late he had been troubled and it was hard to see the father beneath the king. And, truth be told, she found the king a little intimidating.

* * *

Idrax had already changed out of his royal attire and into his sleeping robes by the time his wife and daughter joined him.

He rose to embrace his daughter, who was nearly as tall as he, and kissed his wife as if he had not just seen her earlier in the night.

Joie loved watching her parents together. She knew that as a princess of the blood, her marriage would be a diplomatic bargaining chip, but she hoped to have a love match like theirs.

It had been disheartening to meet the hopefuls who’d made their pilgrimages to her glass tower in hopes of making a match. The most interesting person who’d appeared was a young princeling from Zoorea, but he’d confessed that his heart belonged to another.

“I’m sure we could be content,” he’d said to her. “You have an excellent mind.”

She’d bristled at that remark, even though she knew he’d meant it as a compliment.

“We could be content,” she agreed, “but never truly happy.”

“No,” he said, “and I would want my love near me, which could be awkward for you.”

More than awkward, Joie thought, but all she said was, “Yes, I suspect it would be.”

Still, she had been sorry when the princeling left Eindar to return to his love. He’d been a merry sort, and his company had been lively.

“Joie?” her father said, and she started, realizing she had not heard a word he’d said.

“Are you ill?” he asked.

“No, just wool-gathering,” she said.

Idrax gave her a worried look but let it go. “I wanted to discuss your birthday party.”

Joie’s heart sank. Normally her birthday was marked by just a family meal and a few presents, but she knew that her official coming-of-age rites were going to be celebrated as a national holiday, with festivals and fetes in her honor all across the country. That meant dealing with delegations and diplomats.

Ever the dutiful daughter, however, she said brightly, “Will it be an enormous party?”

“The biggest in Eindar since the Consort’s Ball,” he said, naming the event where he had met Yalira.

“I look forward to it,” she said, and both her parents looked relieved.

Chapter 2

Joie liked it when the children visited the tower. For them, simply being up past dark was treat enough, but being allowed to fiddle with her devices and look through her special lenses was a special kind of play. They were never particularly in awe of her, even though their teachers were deferential and kept reminding them to be on their “best behavior for Princess Joie.”

They came into her tower like a noisy rising tide, filling her space with their excited chatter and tumbling all over themselves. The glass in the dome of the tower was treated to enlarge the view, so that even a human could see the wonders of the colored clouds that wreathed the stars and the great ringed planets that lay at the back of the sky.

She hadn’t really noticed the young man with the bushy beard at first, assuming he was a teacher, one of a group of adults circling the children like watchful herd dogs. But when the children and their minders left, lured away by a promise of blackberry cider and cookies in the palace kitchen, the bearded boy remained.

Joie was somewhat taken aback.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Your servant,” he said, with a bow that would have seemed gallant if he had not stumbled because he was a bit off-balance. “My name is Zale.”

“Why are you still here?” she asked, even as she noticed his eyes, which were the clear dark green of the Southern Sea. He has beautiful eyes, she thought, and realized she was staring.

“I came to meet you,” he said, and bowed again, lowering his gaze for a moment Joie used to gather her composure.

When he straightened, she realized he was taller than she had thought at first. She had to look up to meet those intense green eyes. That
was unusual. The human men in Eindar tended toward middle height.

He stood quietly as she studied him, intrigued. His hair was too long and shaggy, but it was clean, and shone like polished wood in the silvery light pouring in through the magnified dome.

His posture was confident, but not arrogant.

He wore sturdy traveling clothes that had been finely made but were now threadbare and road-worn. His boots looked like they’d never been polished, and the scuffs and scrapes on the leather bespoke a hard journey.

As her gaze returned once again to his face, and those green eyes, Joie realized the stranger was examining her as well.

His gaze made her suddenly shy, and she felt a warm flush blooming in her chest.

“You study me as if you have never seen a princess before,” she said.

“I’m from Ryland, my lady. We elect our leaders there.”

“That explains why your bow was so…graceful,” she said with a hint of a smile, to let him know she was teasing him but not mocking. “You have had much practice.”

He laughed. “I came to Eindar to learn,” he said. “I expect I’ll get better with practice.”

A silence fell, but neither Zale nor Joie seemed inclined to break it. Finally, Joie said, “You’re a scholar?”

He shook his head, and she could catch a glimpse of a jewel glittering darkly in the lobe of one ear. She had heard the men of Ryland adorned themselves so, and thought it a pretty fashion.

“A bard. I have heard the stories of the beauty in her glass tower, and I crossed the world to see her for myself.”

The heat in Joie’s breast spread through the rest of her body. People had given her compliments all her life, and she’d never thought very much about them.

“You’re a pretty child,” Thyr had said to her once, “but keep in mind that if flatterers are to be believed, there are no ugly princesses.”

Zale’s open admiration felt different somehow, and it unsettled her as much as it pleased her.

As she cast about for something to say, her gaze fell on a small metal cylinder set upon a wooden table. The children had been handling it, leaving sticky smudges behind on the polished surface.

“Would you like to see a wonder?” she asked, completely ignoring royal protocol, which dictated she was not to be alone in the tower unless the Guard was outside the door.

“You mean another wonder?” he asked with a smile in his voice.

Joie turned away to hide her own smile. She didn’t know why she felt so at ease in his company. Perhaps it was because he seemed so young, despite his poise.

I wish I could see more of his face, Joie thought, suppressing a wild urge to reach out and stroke the beard that masked his features, it looked so soft.

With the device in one hand, Joie reached out with the other and touched a panel on the wall. Immediately the glass darkened until she and Zale were alone beneath a dome of night.

“Watch,” Joie said, and squeezed the cylinder.

Dancing lights appeared in the air above them, a perfect counterfeit of the sky beyond the glass.

The effect never failed to enchant Joie, and she could see Zale was impressed as well.

“Is it magic?” he asked, and his voice was hushed.

“No,” she said. “It’s a kind of science that was developed in Seethe, where the nights are so clear that you feel like you can pluck the stars right out of the sky and gather them in a silver basket.

“A basket of stars,” he said. “That would be something to see.”

* * *

“Step back from the princess,” a stern voice broke in.

Joie looked toward the door, startled. It was Essa, the silver-haired guardian who was posted at the tower door. She held a scroll of names in her left hand; the other rested lightly on her sword.

Zale stepped back, his open hands raised slightly to show he was no threat.

Essa consulted the list in her hand. All but one of the names was struck through. “Zailian Ey Vanosi?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You are not supposed to be here.”

“I asked him to stay,” Joie said quickly, “to tell me a Rylandu star legend.”

Essa looked skeptical.

“He’s a bard,” Joie added, and Essa openly scoffed at that.

“The only bard from Ryland worth talking about is Oldo the Ugly, and he’s been dead these many years.”

“I aspire to be his equal,” Zale said.

Essa looked him over from head to toe, her gaze lingering—as Joie’s had done—on his fine green eyes.

“Nevertheless,” she said, “you must leave now.”

Zale nodded, then turned back to Joie. “If I may attend you tomorrow night, Princess?”

Oh, yes, Joie thought, please do. “I am always in the tower,” she said, as if indifferent. “I always welcome company.”

That last statement earned her a surprised look from Essa, but Zale did not see it.

“Until tonight,” he said, and with another clumsy bow he was gone, sauntering casually as if there was not an armed guard at his back.

* * *

By the next night, Zale had announced himself to the Guard, and Thyr and Erit had questioned him at length about his motives for coming to the Shadow Palace. “He’s the son of a sculptress in Ryland,” Thyr told the king. “She’s famous for working in blue marble.

“In fact,” he added, “the shaping of the pillars of Judit’s memorial was done in her atelier.”

Idrax looked pensive at the mention of his former consort, a human who had died more than two decades earlier. ‘What of his father?”

“No one seems to know. The lady herself claims to have found him under a squash plant in her garden.”

“Who’s watching him?”

“He’s boarding at the House of Chaos and Chance, so Lero has eyes on him there. Essa is guarding the tower.”

“Essa?” Idrax asked, not familiar with the guard’s name.

“She’s one of Erit’s cousins,” Thyr said. “Grew up with six brothers. Erit trained her himself. If this boy so much as gives Joie a wayward glance, Essa will pluck out his eyes and make him eat them.”

“I hope that won’t be necessary,” Idrax said, and turned back to his papers as his cousin left the room.

* * *

Zale came to the glass tower every night after that. He was always scrupulously polite, but he was not above playfully mocking her to make her laugh. Only her grandfather had ever teased her that way, and Joie found she enjoyed Zale’s gentle gibes enormously. She took great pleasure simply being in his company. She knew everyone around her was baffled by her preference for his company over the young aristocrats who continued to seek her favor, and her Aunt Rilla even took her aside to have a word. “Don’t encourage him,” she said. “Not everyone is suited to the life of a royal.”

“You’re a snob, Aunt Rilla.”

“I am,” Rilla admitted, “but I’m also practical. He’s a bard, Joie, and they were born to wander.”

“Perhaps I’ll wander with him,” Joie said.

“Then you’ll starve,” Rilla said.

Joie was taken aback.

“My dear,” Rilla said, “have you listened to the songs you’ve inspired him to write?”

“He has not played them for me,” Joie said, and suddenly wondered why that was.

“‘The heavens ring with joy and silver laughter,’” Rilla said in an approximation of a bard’s falsetto. “I haven’t seen the lyrics written down,” she added in her normal speaking voice, “so I don’t know if he spelled ‘joy’ as if it were your name.”

“Ah,” Joie said, trying to sound embarrassed, even though she was secretly pleased. “He has shown surprising aptitude for astronomy, though he has no training.”

Rilla looked at her niece with compassion. “You’ve lived your whole life at court. Haven’t you learned that men can mimic enthusiasm in order to gain access to power?”

“It’s already been decreed that Father will be the last vampire to hold the throne in Eindar,” she said. “It would be a foolish man who went to such trouble, only to find himself the spouse of a princess who’ll never be a queen.”

“You like this boy,” Rilla said, sounding surprised.

“He is not a boy,” Joie said, even though Zale was, in fact, younger than she.

“Enjoy him, then,” Rilla said, “but do not lose your heart.”

Too late, Joie thought.

Chapter 3

Joie was excited. The western showers were due to begin at any moment, and she had a special new viewing glass that would bring the individual meteors into such sharp focus, they would be able to count them as they fell.

“This happens twice a year,” she told Zale, who was standing by with pen and paper to record the number of falling stars. She couldn’t believe he’d never seen the showers, but he pointed out the best time to view them was just before dawn. “If I’m still awake at dawn,” he said, “I’ve probably had much too much to drink and wouldn’t even notice them anyway.”

Joie looked at him with mock disapproval and continued her lecture. “Last season there was a gibbous moon that dimmed their brightness somewhat, but tonight is a dark moon, so the display should be lovely.”

Joie trailed off when she realized Zale wasn’t really listening to her.

“Am I boring you?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “I just suddenly had the inspiration for a poem.”

He started scribbling in the margins of the journal meant for keeping track of the stars, and Joie impulsively tried to snatch the pen away.

Their fingers touched, and it was if she’d been scalded.

For a moment Joie was unsettled. Then she saw another falling star.

“Make a wish,” she said, pointing to the streak of light.

“You too,” he said.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “The magic doesn’t work if you don’t close your eyes.” Zale obediently closed his eyes and she followed suit.

I wish for this night to never end, Joie thought, and opened her eyes to find Zale looking at her, puzzled.

“What happens now?” he asked. “Do I tell you what I wished?”

“Did you never wish upon a star as a child?”

“No,” he said, and in that one syllable, she heard so much pain it nearly broke her heart. She thought he might say more, but just then, another star danced across the sky and Zale looked away to mark its passage in Joie’s journal.

“Those ae just harbingers,” she said. “In an hour or so, they’ll be falling thick as raindrops.”

“That will be something to see,” he said. “Shall we sit? My neck is cramping from looking up.”

Suggesting they sit down was a breach of protocol, but Joie didn’t mind.

“There is only the one chair,” she pointed out.

“You can sit on my lap,” he said, and, without waiting for permission, he flung himself into the velvet-cushioned depths of the chair and opened his legs to make room for her between them.

Breath caught in her throat as heat rose from her belly.

No, not my belly, Joie thought, but after a moment’s hesitation, she sat, feeling the soft edges of his beard tickle her neck.

Self-conscious, she held herself rigid, and she felt, rather than heard, his soft chuckle. His arm tensed and she wondered if he was uncomfortable and trying to move away from her, but then he pointed to a constellation in the corner of the sky and say, “Tell me about that one.”

“The Two Fishes?”

Joie forced herself to relax, settling back against Zale as if he were a cushion.

Even through their clothes she could feel the heat of his body. She could feel the cords of muscle beneath his skin, and the sharp blades of his bones.

Joie fought the impulse to face him and press her body against his, flesh to flesh. What is the matter with me? she scolded herself. Zale is just a boy.

No, he isn’t, her heart answered. He is nothing like anyone you’ve ever met.

“The Two Fishes?” Zale prompted.

“Once upon a time there were two lovers, a princess who lived in the sea and a prince who lived on land.

“They would meet at dawn at the edge of the world, and for a while more than a while, they were happy to have those few stolen hours.

“But they longed to be together, this sea princess and her prince, and so each asked their fathers if they could leave their own land and go to the other’s.

“This made both their fathers very angry, so they fled the wind and the water, and came at last to a rocky island without a single tree and nothing but saltwater to drink.”

“I thought she lived in the sea,” Zale said, “and could drink saltwater like a fish.”

“She could,” Joie said, “but he could not. So he died of thirst, and she starved. When their fathers found their bleached bones on the island, they both shed tears as salt as the sea, and those tears summoned the goddess Idrissa.

“She chided the fathers for being so cruel and then took the lovers’ souls into the sky with her where they could be together for all eternity, swimming among the stars.”

“That’s a sad story,” he said.

“It’s a story my grandfather brought back from his travels,” she said. “He told that everywhere he went, there were other stories told about the same stars and that the names they’re called by reflect the personality of those who name them.”

“That makes sense,” Zale said. “A star shape we call ‘the Quincunx’ in Ryland is called ‘the Kite’ here.”

“Exactly,” Joie said, pleased that he understood. “Lord Giddis of Seethe told me that all the constellations he knows are the names of insects and animals. That what we call ‘the Tower’ here is known in his land as the ‘Scorpion’s Tail.’

“When I was a little girl, I didn’t know there were names for the pictures I saw in the sky, so I just made them up.” She smiled at the memory. “I still think some of my names were better.”

She pointed up at a line of stars that flowed along the horizon. “That’s called ‘the Snake,’ but I used to call it ‘Mother’s necklace’ because all the stars are red, like the stones in one of her favorite necklaces.”

“It’s a much better name,” he agreed.

“You try,” she said. “What would you call that one?” she asked, pointing at a triangle of stars just overhead with a winking red star anchoring the longest angle.

“In Ryland it’s called ‘the Vampire’s Eye,’” he said sheepishly, “because of the red star.”

“Yes,” she said. “I have heard that. But what would you call it?”

He looked at her helplessly for a minute, clearly unable to come up with anything. “Eye of Joie,” he said finally.

“Because your eyes are red,” he added, then winced.

Joie laughed. “I wonder what Oldo the Ugly would have said.”

“He probably would have made a pretty rhyme about a dark-haired beauty with all-seeing eyes, a beauty enclosed in a glass tower that pierced the canopy of night.”

Joie suddenly found it hard to breathe. The moment stretched and stretched, and then Qweet landed on the window sill with a flutter of feathers and a soft hoot to announce his presence.

Glad of the interruption, Joie turned to the bird, stroking his head softly as he settled his feathers.

Qweet disliked most of Joie’s visitors, but he tolerated Zale and would take tidbits of food from his bare hands without leaving bloody claw marks.

He gulped down the offering and then pecked at Zale’s hand softly, as if asking for more.

“What a greedy boy you are,” Joie scolded Qweet. She was very conscious of how close she was standing to Zale, so close that she could catch a tantalizing whiff of lavender from his freshly laundered shirt.

“There is beauty in darkness,” he said, “but I would miss the sun.

Have you ever been out in the day?”

“Of course, I have,” she said. Then, because she was afraid she’d spoken too harshly, she went on, “It was very hot and burned my skin. Mother scolded me for being so foolish.”

“Does your mother often scold you?” he asked.

“Not often,” she said. “Father says I’m terribly spoiled, but he says it fondly.”

“You are lucky,” Zale said, and again there was that note of sadness in his voice.

“I know I was lucky,” she said. “Your parents are not…fond?”

“No,” he said. “My mother—among her people, it is the custom for mothers to give their babies to nurses to raise. Some women are suited for nurturing, others are not.”

She impulsively reached out to touch his hand in sympathy, and he recoiled as if the touch scorched him.

“I’m not some unwanted puppy for you to pet,” he said, and this time it was Joie’s turn to draw back, hurt.

“I can’t be your friend,” he added, and would have said more, but Joie interrupted him.

“But of course, you can,” she said.

And just like that, Joie kissed him. And he kissed her back.

* * *

It was a sweet kiss, and he did not try to deepen it, to sip the wine of her mouth.

Her gesture was innocent, he was certain, and he did not wish to spoil it for her.

But then she reached for him, pulling him toward her, drawing him deeper into the kiss.

“Oh,” she said, and at first, he thought he’d hurt her. Then she said it again, and collapsed bonelessly at his feet.

“Princess?”

Alarmed, Zale bent over her. “Joie.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide in the starlight, her pulse beating rapidly in her throat. “Essa!” he called out, though she couldn’t possibly have heard him from the bottom of the tower.

“No,” Joie said weakly. “Don’t summon anyone. I just need to catch my breath.”

“No,” he said. “You’re ill.”

She looked away from him then, as if suddenly fascinated by the pattern of tiles inlaid in the floor.

“Please don’t spoil my birthday,” she begged him. “My father has invited guests from all over the Twelve Realms, and it’s important that their meeting not be overshadowed by concerns for me.”

“I don’t like this,” he said.

Joie gave him a look that was very like a look her father might have given him. “It is not for you to like or dislike, Zailian. It is what I want.”

Zale met her look with a steely one of his own.

“I am not one of your subjects, Princess.” Zale’s eyes had darkened, and even beneath his brush of a beard, she could see the tight line of his jaw and the angry throb of his blood.

* * *

Joie stared at him, furious, but also aware that her racing heart had more to do with Zale’s nearness than her own collapse.

“Don’t be angry with me, Zale,” she said softly, for he only ever called her “princess” when he was cross.

“I could never be angry with you,” he said at once. “But you are in distress, and it defies reason that you would not seek recourse.”

“I have,” she said. “There is a physician in the Old Quarter, an Idrissan trained in the arts of the goddess. He says that my blood is poisoned.”

“Superstition,” Zale said. “What about the healers in the Shadow Palace?”

“They answer to my parents,”’ she said. “The illness of a princess is a matter of state. They would not keep my secret.”

“But why should they?” he asked.

“Because once my parents realize I’m ill, they will shut me away to treat me, and also to make certain that whatever contagion sickens me will not be passed on to another.”

Joie’s eyes filled with tears. “They wouldn’t let me see you.”

Zale took a ragged breath. “They wouldn’t be able to keep me away.”

“Promise me you’ll say nothing,” she said. “Promise.”

“I promise,” he said huskily. And then he kissed her again, the salt of her tears bitter on his tongue.

Chapter 4

Her birthday was still some days away, and Joie was already heartily sick of the preliminary festivities. Zale wasn’t sympathetic at all, and mocked her when she complained. “Oh, no, however shall I bear it,” he said in a high-pitched voice that sounded nothing like Joie.

“Days of people giving me presents and nights of feasting and merriment.” He looked at her with a smirk. “It will be torture.”

“It will be dull,” she said. “Only a few people who are coming really want to see me. They mostly want to talk to my father and Lord Lavonne about what’s to be done with the Witch King.”

“You’re right,” he said agreeably. “It does sound dull. I hope you don’t mind that I’ll spend that night here, cataloguing the stars, while you’re otherwise occupied.”

“But I’ve already told my parents you’ll be in attendance,” she said.

“I do not like large groups of people,” he replied. “I never know what to say.”

“You can sit by my grandfather,” she said. “All you’ll have to do is listen to his stories.”

Zale smiled. “I’ve heard a few of your grandfather’s stories since I’ve been here.”

“Some of them several times, I imagine,” she said.

“I made a ballad of his story about the robin and the riddler.”

“You must play it for me,” she said. “On my birthday.”

“The song is not yet fit for your ears,” he said. “I will think of a better present.”

“Really?” she said, her interest piqued. “You can give it to me after we have cake, and I can leave the feast hall without arousing comment.”

“There will be cake?” Zale asked. “What kind of cake?”

“A very special cake,” she said. “A baker from West Themis Is making it especially for me. It is said that people postpone their weddings for months in order to secure one of her masterpieces for the festivities.”

Zale went still.

“The baker is from West Themis?” he asked.

“Yes,” Joie said, puzzled by the question.

“They have recently made an alliance with the Witch King in Lyraa,” he said.

When he realized Joie didn’t understand why that concerned him, Zale went on, “Are you not worried that the baker might intend to poison you and your family as a gift to Lord Jorant?”

The look Joie gave him told him the idea had never occurred to her.

“Is everyone in Ryland such a pessimist?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

Zale shrugged lightly. “It can be a cruel world outside your tower.”

She frowned at that, but he changed the subject. “Tell me about this birthday cake,” he said.

* * *

It annoyed Joie that Zale thought he could distract her as easily as a child but she had learned that he preferred to treat important matters as if they were trivial so as not to reveal too much of his private thoughts.

As she did not want to argue, she allowed herself to be diverted to a more pleasant subject.

“The cake will have twenty layers,” she said, “one for each of my years and each will be spread with rose jam—”

“What color roses?” he asked with a smirk.

“It’s very rude to interrupt,” Joie said. “Don’t they know that in Ryland?”

“I was overcome with curiosity,” he said, “about this prodigy of a pastry.”

“The jam will be made from crimson roses cut from the Queen’s garden.”

Zale nodded gravely. “Excellent.”

“And sliced honey lemons in a syrup will be drizzled over the top like sweet rain.”

“Even better,” he said.

“If you’re going to mock me, I don’t think you deserve a piece of my birthday cake,” she said.

“Not even a crumb from your lips?” he asked, because he knew it would make her blush.

“Perhaps a crumb,” she allowed…blushing. “But it might get in your beard.”

She studied his face. “Is it the fashion in Ryland for men to wear beards?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “Yes,” he said. “We grow our beards until we meet our true loves, and then we shave them off, never to grow them again.”

“So if you meet an old man from Ryland and he has a beard, that means he never met his true love?” Joie asked. “That’s terrible.” She looked at him slyly. “I hope that never happens to you.”

“I’m a bard,” he said. “We fall in love every day and sing of our love every night.”

He leaned forward then and kissed her sweetly. She laughed and returned the kiss, darting her tongue into his mouth before pulling back shyly.

“It tickles,” she said, stroking his beard gently. “Like kissing a clump of moss.”

He pretended to consider that. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

She smiled at him. “You have to practice on something.”

She leaned forward and kissed him again, and this time the kiss lasted longer and was deeper and sweeter.

“I think we need more practice,” he said, and then leaned in to kiss her again.

* * *

A dry male voice interrupted them. “Shall I come back?”

Joie and Zale broke apart like naughty children. “Grandfather!” Joie said delightedly when she saw who was at the door, and launched herself into the old king’s embrace.

“Sweet child,” he said and embraced her, looking over her head in frank appraisal of Zale, who bowed awkwardly.

“My lord,” he said.

“I don’t know you,” Lord Melix said.

“This is Zale,” Joie said airily. “A scholar and a bard.”

“A beard, you say?” Lord Melix replied playfully. “A scholar and a beard?”

Zale went red beneath his ridiculously bushy beard.

“He’s teasing you, Zale,” Joie said, and swatted the old king on his arm in mock displeasure. “Don’t tease him, Grandfather, or he’ll go home and tell everyone stories of how awful we are.”

Zale bowed clumsily.

“Zailian Ey Vanosi at your service, sir.”

“Ah, you’re Rylandu, then,” Melix responded.

Zale bowed his head again. “I am.”

“No need to keep bowing young man,” Melix said, “once is enough.”

“Thank you,” Zale said.

Melix looked at Joie with a smirk. “Thanking me is worse than bowing,” he said. “Go ahead and bow if it makes you more comfortable.”

Zale looked startled for a moment but then he smiled, as if realizing the king was, indeed, teasing him.

The old king studied the young man with eyes still keen with intelligence. “I have not been to Ryland in many an age. I hope you will sit with me at Joie’s birthday feast and tell me what I’ve missed.”

“I would be honored, sir.”

Joie smiled to herself, happy that her grandfather’s charm had accomplished what her wheedling couldn’t, and that Zale would attend her party.

Chapter 5

Joie’s face ached from smiling.

The birthday reception had dragged out for more than three hours as diplomats and attachés and couriers from all across the Twelve Realms offered elaborate greetings that were more like speeches. A pile of gifts was growing on a small table below the dais that held the three thrones. She was sandwiched between her parents, who both seemed completely engaged in the event.

Joie straightened as the royal seneschal entered to announce the next visitor.

“His Excellency Maxense de Santis of the realm of Idrissa.”

Beside Joie, Idrax stirred in his seat. She knew her father had been concerned by the news coming from the small country, rumors of discord between the Governor-General and the Reverend Mother, who shared power there. Merchants from the region brought spices and lumber from Idrissa, but also disquieting rumors. The Witch King had his spies even in the lands protected by the Rainbow Goddess.

Maxense was a tall man who moved with elegant grace like a cat. His eyes were a piercing blue-green, and as he bowed three times, once to each royal on the dais, he kept his face upturned to glance into their eyes, a subtle signal that though he would follow protocol, he was in no way a minion of Eindar.

“The seven blessings of the goddess be upon you on this day,” he said to Joie, and held out a rolled-up parchment.

“Thank you, Lord Maxense,” she murmured, unrolling it to reveal a beautifully rendered celestial map, the constellations picked out in golden ink.

“This star chart was commissioned by the Reverend Mother Alois, heaven bless her name, and executed by Abdel Noor of Zoorea.” Maxense glanced in the direction of the royal gallery, where Joie’s Aunt Rilla was sitting with her husband Ruel.

“Abdel was a student of your court artist, I believe,” Maxense said, inclining his head in Ruel’s direction. Rilla clasped her husband’s hand proudly as he returned the nod with grave courtesy.

“This is a priceless gift,” Joie said to Idrissa’s emissary, but before she could add to her thanks, he interrupted her.

“Not quite priceless, my princess,” he said. “It cost a thousand thousand solbecs.”

There was an intake of breath from the assembly and Maxense preened, certain they were astonished by the vast sum he had paid for the gift…and blissfully unaware that he had been terrifically gauche by mentioning its price. It was not the custom to do so when conveying a gift to a royal because it could look as if someone was trying to curry favor.

“Thank you, my lord,” Joie said, and gave him a smile that was only slightly strained.

As Maxense backed away, the seneschal appeared again.

“Lady Hekla of the House of Sundar.”

It took Joie a moment to place the royal household. They were a family of ancient name who’d once laid claim to the island nation of Joxolo, but had long since fled to West Themis after a bloody coup overthrew their king several generations ago.

Lady Hekla was small and birdlike, her hair an untidy thatch the color of winter straw and skin so pale, it almost seemed as if she had no blood in her flesh.

She bore a cunning little puzzle box of some rich dark wood, and she presented it to the princess with a remarkable lack of flourish, almost as if she couldn’t wait to get it out of her hands.

“I understand you are an admirer of cunning devices,” the woman said.

“I am indeed,” Joie replied, her curiosity piqued by the box. “How do you open it?”

“There’s a spring on the side,” Lady Hekla replied. “You just press it with your thumb—”

“Oh,” Joie said as the box sprang open to reveal a music box with a tiny, dancing spider spinning a web as an old folk tune played.

“Oh,” Joie said again as the metal spider bit her hand, drawing blood. It hurt enough that she nearly dropped the box.

“Thank you, Lady Sundar,” she managed as she slammed the lid on the box, cutting off the tune.

“Are you hurt, Highness?” the woman asked, and Joie did not need much awareness to hear the falsity in her voice or the hollowness of her solicitude.

Although a bright bead of blood had blossomed on her thumb, Joie waved her other hand in airy dismissal. “It’s nothing.”

But Yalira had seen the blood and had given a slight nod to Erit, her personal Guardsman. Joie saw Erit follow Lady Hekla from the hall and knew he would have questions for the lady.

Eventually, everyone had repaired to the feasting hall for another tedious few hours of polite conversation and shadow diplomacy. Joie noticed that Lord Maxense was deep in conversation with Queen Anzelika, the Queen Mother of Branisav. Her birthday gift to Joie had been a case of the sweet ice wine known throughout the Twelve Realms for its potency.

“I pity Maxense,” Thyr said into Joie’s ear when he caught her glance toward the two guests. “They say that one night with her will spoil a man for any partner ever after.”

“Do they really say that?” Joie asked, watching as the still beautiful queen bent her regal head toward the much-younger Idrissan with a show of rapt attention that looked utterly genuine.

“They do,” Thyr assured her. “But I suspect her interest in him is less carnal than calculating.”

Joie turned toward him. “What do you mean?”

Thyr’s lips thinned. “Various…emissaries…of the Witch King have been seen abroad in Birsk and Niz. Branisav hasn’t had a standing army since the reign of the two Valerias. If war comes, they will need allies, and not just Eindar.”

Joie’s eyes wandered to the commoners’ tables, still searching for Zale and disappointed not to see him.

“Your bushy boy isn’t here,” Thyr said, as if reading her thoughts. “I thought he was planning to attend.”

Joie pretended not to hear him, but Thyr wasn’t fooled.

“Do you know where he is?”

“In the tower, I expect,” she said, but there was a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach because she really wasn’t certain.

* * *

At last the meal was over and the cake was served. It was, as promised, a most beautiful and delicious cake, and as everyone was surreptitiously picking crumbs off their plates with their fingers, Joie called for the baker, a black-haired beauty named Jinifre who had inherited her grandmother’s book of recipes and used them to become the most celebrated baker in all of Eindar.

Joie gave the baker a bag of solbecs. “That was the most delicious cake I have ever eaten,” she declared.

“It’s the most delicious cake you ever will eat,” the saucy baker replied as Lord Melix loudly inquired if he might have another piece when he saw that Joie had an untouched slice on a little plate in front of her.

Lord Melix was reaching for it when his wife touched his arm gently. “I believe that piece belongs to someone else,” she said, with a significant look at Joie, who blushed.

Lord Melix saw Joie’s expression and was delighted. “Really?” he asked the table at large, but the only one who answered was Thyr, who muttered darkly,

“Yes.”

“Excuse me,” Joie said, and rose to make her escape, bowing slightly toward the head of the table where her parents sat.

Yalira, who knew how desperately her daughter wanted to escape, murmured something to Idrax, who waved a hand in Joie’s direction, dismissing her.

Joie fled with her plate of cake, only to be waylaid by Ruel.

“Happy birthday Judit Joie,” he said, formal as always.

“Thank you,” she said, intending to slip past him, but he had a rolled-up bit of canvas in his hand.

“For you,” he said and proffered it.

Curious, she unrolled it and saw that it was a portrait he had painted of her, a likeness both fanciful and true. He had painted her as if she was a goddess of night, garbed in silver and crowned with stars. Joie was not a vain person, but the portrait was beautiful

“This is magnificent,” she said. To her surprise, the compliment seemed to dismay him, and he changed the subject.

“The star chart the Idrissan gave you?” She nodded, wondering where the conversation was going. “It’s a pretty map, but if he paid a thousand thousand solbecs for it, he was gulled.”

“It’s not worth that much?” she asked.

“If it was the original, it would be worth a thousand times more. But I heard it from Abdel’s own lips that after he completed the commission for Alois, she burned it.” Ruel’s eyes took on a faraway expression. “It was the last commission Abdel ever accepted. He contracted a fever on the voyage home and died.”

A note of melancholy crept into Ruel’s voice, something Joie had never heard before.

“I offered him the sharp kiss many times but he always refused,” Ruel went on. “‘It’s mortality that inspires me,’ he’d said. ‘If I could live out a hundred lifetimes, nothing I created would be special again.’”

“He sounds like he was an extraordinary man,” Joie said.

“I loved him,” Ruel said simply. “It is a burden to outlive your friends.”

Joie must have looked stricken at that comment, because he hastened to add, “It was a very long time ago,” he said. He smiled then, and kissed Joie on the forehead. “Happy birthday, my dear.”

Chapter 6

Zale was working at a table in Joie’s tower room when she entered. He saw the plate of cake in her hand and said, “Is that for me?”

“No,” she said. “It’s for me. I’m going to eat it in front of you and enjoy every bite.” And suiting words to actions, she picked up the fork.

“I came into the hall,” he said. “And I saw the place set for me, between your grandfather and the lady Loesse. And everyone seemed merry. It seemed a shame to inflict my presence on them.”

Joie’s annoyance drained out of her, and she put the plate down. “Is making merry so very difficult for you?” she asked. “If so, you might find it difficult making a living as a bard.”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said. “I promised you a present.”

“You did,” she said. “And I expect a wonderful present to sweeten my disappointment that you failed to appear at my feast.”

Zale scrabbled through the papers littering the table in front of him until he found one that was thickly covered with scribbled numbers and alchemical symbols.

He held it out to her as reverently as offering a gift of gold.

She took the paper from it and glanced at the writing, then looked again.

“This is Seethian mathematics.”

“Some of it is,” he said. “But in my travels, I met a scholar from Daire who claimed to have improved upon the original calculations. He claimed that what he had created was—”

“The equation for creation.”

“Yes,” he said. “I copied it out from memory, but I have a good memory.”

“You have given me a universe,” she said, awed by the elegance of the equation’s architecture.

Zale smiled, and his smile was sweet. “It is only what you deserve.”

On impulse, she reached out her hand. “There is something I want to show you.”

Zale gave her his hand willingly, and she led him out of the tower through a hidden hallway that the magicians had cunningly hidden behind a series of doorways.

The hallway led underground and came out beyond the walls of the palace. From there, Joie and Zale sneaked into the stables.

“Can you ride?” she asked him.

“Tolerably well,” he said.

* * *

“We’ll just take one horse,” she said, and he made no objection, for the idea of being close to her was pleasing. And indeed, as she snuggled back against him in a way that felt achingly familiar, Zale felt himself stir and knew that she must have felt it, too, though she made no comment but to tell him their journey was nearly over.

They came at last to the shores of a large and placid body of water, its surface a black mirror reflecting the stars above so perfectly, the illusion was created of a sea of stars that could be gathered up with one’s bare hands.

Joie jumped down from the horse and tethered it to a small scrubby tree growing at the side of the lake.

The night was warm, and a light breeze brought the scent of flowers, a fragrance he didn’t recognize.

“Do you smell the stellas?” Joie asked. “Those little pink flowers that only grow along the shore and only bloom at night.”

Zale slowed to inhale the fragrance, but Joie was striding ahead of him. Ahead there was a small boat resting on the shingled shore. It was made of a deep, black wood and had the royal sigil burned into the bow.

“My father’s boat,” she said. And then, with a wicked smile, she added, “I was made in this boat.”

At that remark, Zale grew harder, and he wondered if Joie could see how his trousers bulged.

Joie tugged the little boat down to the water and expertly launched it from the shore. Zale was clumsier and stepped into water up to his waist before he managed to pull himself in.

Joie laughed and set the oars, expertly rowing the boat into the center of the little lake. Once there, she shipped the oars.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s the most beautiful place in Eindar,” she said, and then she fell quiet for a moment as they drifted under and above the stars.

“There is another gift you can give me,” she told him.

“Anything I have to give is yours.”

Joie looked at him boldly. “I would not die a maiden,” she said. “I would not die without knowing what it is to love, body and soul.”

Had she been anyone else, Zale might have been tempted to contradict her with a pretty lie but he knew the words she spoke were only the truth. And so he spoke truth to her in return.

“I have loved you since the moment I saw you,” he said, “shining in the starlight with the moon in your eyes.”

He reached for her, and she came to him as if they had been made to fit together.

They explored each other joyously, tasting and touching and tugging and stroking. When their garments got in the way of their loving, they tore them away. By the end, they lay in the bottom of the boat, clothed only in moonlight. The night was so still, they could hear each other’s heartbeats.

“It’s always so peaceful here,” Joie said at last, drawing lazy circles on Zale’s chest with her finger. “At night when it’s cold and clear, I can hear the stars singing.”

“What do they sound like?” Zale asked.

“Bells. Golden bells pealing on a frosty morning.

They sing in harmony, with the blue stars in a deep vice and the red stars in a high voice and the yellow stars in between.”

“A choir, then,” he said with an indulgent smile.

“You think I’m being fanciful?”

“No,” he said, “not at all.”

* * *

He was silent for a moment, and then he added, as if recounting a story that had happened to someone else, “In the north of my country, there are great forests where only the bears and the snow wolves can live. My father used to take me to hunt there—great boars for the feast table and the triple-horned elk to celebrate the turning of the seasons. And we would hunt at night with only the light of the moon and the starshine to show us the way.

It would be so cold that drawing breath was like swallowing sharp glass. But in the hush of the woods, there was sound in the silence.”

Joie was very quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I did not know the triple-horned elk still roamed Ryland.”

He looked startled for a moment, and then his expression drained of all lightness.

“I am not from Ryland,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “We often have visitors from Ryland, and your accent is wrong.”

“You knew?” he said. “And yet—”

“And yet,” she broke in, “I could see there was no malice in your heart, and that the secret you kept belonged not to you but another.

What of your ‘mother’ in Ryland?”

Zale smiled bitterly. “The sculptress? Artists always need money. She was happy to earn a solbec or two just for telling a story.”

* * *

Joie’s hand was still on Zale’s chest. He felt the weight of it like a hot brand on his skin.

“Is Zale your real name?”

“Zailian is the name my mother gave me. It is an ancient name among my people. My father calls me Zelarus.”

Joie’s face was a silver mask in the moonlight, and Zale could not read her thoughts. “I have heard of a great hero named Zelarus,” she said.

“He was no hero,” Zale said. “He was a monster, as are all who bear the name.”

“Including you?” she asked.

“Especially me,” he said, and then with a deep sigh, he added, “There is a prophecy.”

“Isn’t that how all fairy tales begin,” she said. “With a prophecy?”

“This one is no fairy tale,” he said grimly. “Centuries ago, a witch had a vision of a ruler more powerful than any who had ever come before. The rise of this ruler would signal the dawn of a new era.

This ruler would be born with the blood of both a witch and a vampire.”

At these words, Joie went very still.

“Are you that ruler?”

“No,” he said. “The child is not yet born.” He looked at her so seriously that the moon reflected in his eyes. “Our child is not yet born.”

She did not say anything. Miserable, Zale looked up at the moon and out into the water, looked everywhere but at Joie.

“That’s why I came to Eindar,” he said finally. “I was sent to seduce you.”

“And so you have,” she said, but she didn’t sound angry, only very, very sad.

“I love you,” he said, “and those are words I’ve never said to another.”

“I love you,” she echoed, “and whatever may lie behind our meeting, that much is true.”

He gathered her to him then and kissed her mouth, her eyes, and her breasts, the urgency of his love overtaking him. And this time their coupling had a wild desperation to it, as if they both knew that their happiness could end at any moment.

And when at last they were spent, they realized the sky was beginning to lighten.

“It will be morning soon,” he said as the silence was overtaken by drowsy birdsong and the noises of little animals creeping down to the shore to drink.

“Not yet,” she said. “Listen—the nightingale still sings.”

He smiled at her. “No, love, it is the lark you hear.”

Zale cast another look at the sky, which had turned from midnight black to a blue almost as dark.

With a sigh, Joie began gathering her clothes. And then, she was suddenly shaken by a seizure so violent that she stumbled and fell out of the boat.

“Joie!” he cried, and dove in after her, into water so cold it shriveled his manhood and nearly stole his breath.

It took him three tries to pull her back into the boat, and by then, her skin was cold and her breaths were shallow.

He wrapped all their spare clothing around her, so as the boat came ashore, he was as naked as the day she was born.

Nevertheless, he jumped out with Joie in his arms, splashing through the shallow water toward a contingent of people waiting there with grim expressions. He recognized Essa the guard and Joie’s uncle but not the trio of guards behind them.

“The Princess is—” Zale began, but Thyr interrupted him.

“See to the princess,” Thyr ordered and two guards stepped forward. “I’ll deal with…Zelarus.”

Zale stood helplessly as the guards pulled Joie from his grasp.

* * *

Joie cried out, “I know he’s not a bard,” she protested weakly. “You can’t arrest him for that.”

Thyr turned to his niece, and his eyes were harder than she had ever seen them, so icy that she recoiled, but when he spoke, his words were for Zale.

“What is it you told her? That you were just some witchling brat come to Eindar to study astronomy and enjoy the fine weather?”

Zale didn’t answer. Joie lipped out of the guard’s grasp to stand on the shingled shore, clutching her clothes around her in an attempt to preserve her dignity as Thyr turned his gaze on her.

“This boy is the son and heir of the witch king.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“You know?” Thyr repeated, incredulous.

“I am Jorant’s son, yes,” Zale said. “But not his heir.”

Thyr looked at the prince, who was taller than he by several inches but who looked shrunken in his absolute, abject misery.

“Joie is very dear to me, boy,” Thyr said. “She is dear to us all. If nothing else, you will pay for trifling with her affections.”

“I love her,” Zale said desperately. “You must believe me.”

Thyr looked at him with cold contempt.

“I wouldn’t believe you if you told me the night was dark,” he said.

“How did you discover my identity?” Zale asked.

“A gambler at the House of Chaos and Chance recognized you, and sold your name to my man in return for wiping out his debt. We bought you cheaply, boy.”

* * *

Joie woke in her bed to find the sheets soaked with sweat. Her chamber felt hot and much too bright, and there was a faint reek in the air. Her mother was sitting in a chair by her bedside, reading, but put aside her book when she saw Joie was awake.

“Zale?” Joie asked, and her mother’s mouth compressed to a tight line.

“He has been detained,” the queen told her.

Joie turned her head into the pillow and sobbed.

Chapter 7

In the bowels of the Shadow Palace, Zale paced in his cell. It was a comfortable confinement, and any privation he felt, he believed he deserved. But it was torture not knowing how Joie fared. At first, he had railed and raged against the silence, beating his fists against the stone walls until they were bloody. Then he battered his head. His jailers were so alarmed that they threatened to drug him if he could not contain himself, and after that, he turned his rage inward, falling into a depression that robbed him of his will.

He was brought water and food, but ate and drank only when his warders insisted, watching to make certain he swallowed.

He ignored the books and writing implements at his disposal after he determined the pencil was not sharp enough to be used to slice open his wrists.

A diplomat from Lyraa had visited and told him that King Jorant would do nothing to gain his son’s freedom, and conveyed the Witch King’s disappointment at the dismal failure of his mission.

An advocate had also visited, but only to tell him that King Idrax was considering bringing a raft of charges against him, including espionage and breach of promise.

The only news he heard was from his jailer, a freckle-faced farm boy who had been in the capital only a year.

“They say the princess is dying,” he told Zale. “They say you enchanted her and that your magic cannot be reversed.”

“My magic is not of that kind,” Zale said, but he knew his protests fell on deaf ears. Even with bars between them, he knew the boy was afraid of him, certain that even cold iron could not contain whatever power Zale had at his command.

And then one night, Joie’s owl flew into Zale’s cell, ruffling his wings and pecking at his hands as if asking for a treat. Zale stroked Qweet’s head, then wrote a message on a scrap of foolscap. He handed it to the bird with a whispered order, then watched it fly away.

* * *

Joie was sleeping when the bird flew into her chamber. It circled her bed once and then landed on her pillow. Yalira, who had been dozing, roused when she saw the bird with the message clutched in its talons. She gently removed the paper and read the words Zale had scrawled.

I can help the princess, it read. On my life, I mean her no harm.

Yalira read the message once and then twice, and then read it once again. Then she left her sleeping daughter’s bedside and sought out Idrax in their own chambers, finding him scowling over some ledgers.

He looked up, alarmed, when she came to him.

“Joie?”

“She slumbers,” Yalira said. “But the witchboy has sent a message.” She handed the scrap of paper to Idrax, who read it and then crumpled it in his hand.

“No,” he said.

* * *

“I will not trust her life to the ministrations of an admitted spy.”

“Rab,” Yalira said, using the name Idrax had been given by his mother to lend weight to her entreaty. “Joie is dying. And not a healer in the Twelve Realms knows why.”

“If medicine has failed, what makes you think magic will succeed?”

Yalira shook her head helplessly, feeling the prick of tears. “I don’t know. I can only feel. Joie loves this boy and believes he loves her.”

Idrax rose to embrace his wife, folding her into his heart. They stood there for a long little while, and when they broke apart, a decision had been made.

* * *

The farmboy guard came to Zale with a folded tunic of black wool. “Smarten yourself up,” he said. “The king has granted you an audience.”

Zale’s heart soared. He had not truly believed his message would reach anyone any more than he believed a message in a bottle tossed in the sea ever reached shore again.

“Will you do me a favor, Imre? I can pay.”

“What?” the young guard asked warily.

“I need a razor.”

Imre began to shake his head. “I can’t give you a blade.”

“Then shave me.”

Imre locked eyes with the prisoner.

“How much?”

“A solbec and an aster,” he said.

“Two solbecs,” Imre replied.

“Done,” Zale said.

* * *

It was an hour after sunset when the guards brought Zale to the throne room. King Idrax and Queen Yalira, both dressed in black, sat rigid on their matched thrones of carved lorch wood.

Yalira was the first to notice that Zale was clean-shaven. His barber had been awkward, and there were bloody cuts on his face and neck. He is so handsome, she thought.

“He is so young,” she murmured to Idrax, who ignored her, unmoved by the sight of the prisoner.

Young he might have been, but the shambling boy Zale had pretended to be was gone, replaced by a man who carried himself with quiet authority, despite the chains shackling his hands and feet.

There were whispers around the room that died as Zale stepped away from his guards and went to his knees before the twin thrones.

It was so quiet, everyone in the room could hear every word he spoke, though what he said was directed at Idrax and Yalira alone.

“I admit I came here under false pretenses. But when I pledged my soul to her, I did not lie.

I can help Joie.”

These words caused the red light in Idrax’s eyes to flare, but Yalira stood up and walked over to Zale. He stared up at her with his heart in his eyes.

“Can you cure her?” she asked.

“No, my lady. But I can help her.”

“How?”

“I can put her into an enchanted sleep while physicians and mages look for a cure. She will not age, and she will not suffer. She will have no need for food or drink. It will be as if she is merely asleep.”

Yalira nodded and returned to her seat beside her husband.

“I do not like this,” Idrax said to her. Yalira was about to answer when the door to the throne room was thrown open and Joie stalked through.

She wore a black cloak over her nightgown, and her hair was unbound and wild.

Her face was very pale, but when she spoke, her voice was strong.

“Witching,” she cried, and Zale turned to face her.

For a moment, they were caught in each other’s eyes.

“You shaved your beard,” she said.

“As is the custom,” he said, “when a man finds his soul’s true mate.”

Joie approached Zale, speaking so softly that no one there could hear what passed between them. And then she took his manacled hands in hers and bent close. He kissed her hands, and for a long moment it seemed as if everyone present held their breath.

“I trust him,” she said.

At that the king stood up and everyone else stood as well, except for Zale, who bowed his head humbly.

“I will make my decision tonight,” Idrax said, and left the room.

“Come, Joie,” Yalira said, and with a last look at Zale, the princess obediently followed.

* * *

The king was in a foul temper when Yalira and Joie joined him and Melix and Thyr.

“Father,” Joie began, but he waved her to silence as he removed the crown he wore and tossed it onto a table as carelessly as if it had been a gilt toy.

Much to Joie’s surprise, it was Thyr who spoke.

“I’ve interrogated the boy, and found him honest and honorable,” he said.

“Except that he’s a liar and a spy,” Idrax said.

Thyr nodded to acknowledge the truth of that statement, but only said, “He loves her, Rab.”

“If she were your own daughter—” the king began.

“She is the daughter of my heart,” Thyr said, reaching out to pat Joie’s hand.

She smiled at him, then turned to her father.

“I am not afraid, Father,” she said. “But I am in pain, and I fear the time when that pain will be so overwhelming that I will no longer be able to bear it.”

Idrax looked stricken. “My child,” he said.

“Let me go to sleep. Let Zale do this out of love.”

Chapter 8

Once the decision was made, Joie insisted that there be no delay.

She made her father promise no harm would come to Zale, and then she dressed herself as if for a wedding to make her farewells.

For a solid night, she received guests and their good wishes in her bedchamber, demanding there be no tears.

At last, there was no one left in the room but Joie, her parents, and Zale.

He gave her a cup of a fizzy yellow drink that smelled of roses and rain.

“It’s sweet on the tongue at first,” he said, “but don’t sip it, for it will turn bitter.”

She took the cup from his hands and drank its contents in a single swallow, then handed it back to him.

“Kiss me goodnight,” she ordered him, and he complied. He could taste the bitterness of the draught on her lips. But even as he embraced her, he felt her slipping away from him.

He carried her to her bed.

“I will dream of you,” she said into Zale’s ear, and those were the last words she spoke, for she fell asleep, like an exhausted kitten.

Qweet hooted from his perch in the corner of her room and then flew out the open window.

“Is it done?” Yalira asked Zale.

He nodded, respectful of her grief.

Idrax spoke in a voice cold with anger. “I thank you for what you have done,” he said. He looked at his sleeping daughter, and then back at Zale.

“If you are still in Eindar when the sun rises tomorrow, you will not live to see another sunrise.”

Without waiting for a response, Idrax left the room. Zale picked up Joie’s pale right hand and brought it to his lips. “I will dream of you as well,” he said. Then he turned for the door and Yalira stepped away to let him pass.

* * *

Zale was gone by the next morning. No one saw him leave the palace, though Thyr had set out guards to escort him to the border. Most assumed he’d simply magicked himself away.

Interlude

And so the years passed as Joie slept in her tower.

Changes came to Eindar, and some were for the better and some were not, but the princess slept and did not change at all.

She was rarely alone in her tower room. Her mother came daily to read to her or just to talk.

Idrax visited less often, but when he did come, he sat by his daughter’s bedside and told her stories of his long life and the people he had met.

Rilla brought her dog, and when her dog had puppies, they played on Joie’s bed, then snuggled up to nap beside her. When they did, Joie smiled in her sleep.

It was known that Zale had not returned home to Lyraa, and reports came to Thyr that he’d been seen as far away as Zoorea. Ten years into the princess’ long slumber, it became known that Zale had apprenticed himself to a reclusive sorceress, a woman rumored to have been cast out of Lyraa by the Witch King. But that was all that was known of him until, on the morning of what would have been Joie’s forty-second birthday, a traveler presented himself at the gates of the Shadow Palace and asked for an audience with the king and queen.

Chapter 9

There was no question the stranger was Zale, grown to manhood in the twenty years that Joie had languished in her enchanted slumber.

At thirty-seven, Zale was hawk-faced and handsome, his bronze skin stretched over sharp cheekbones. There had been a softness to his features as a boy, but now his face seemed cast from living metal.

But his green eyes still glittered with intelligence. He was lean and stood half a head taller than King Idrax, who was reckoned a tall man.

Idrax and Yalira received Zale in the Throne Room, and although they had not outwardly aged a day since their last meeting, it was clear to all that their sorrow had taken its toll.

And though the king had once promised that Zale would die if he ever set foot in Eindar again, he welcomed him back civilly enough.

“So, Zelarus, we find ourselves here again,” Idrax said after Zale had approached the thrones and made his bows.

“It seems so, Majesty,” Zale replied, “but I do not come empty-handed.”

Beside Idrax, Yalira stirred. “Have you brought a cure?”

“I have,” he said.

Gwinna Brislan, the new head of the Twilight Council, scoffed, a breach of protocol that would have been shocking twenty years earlier. “We’ve seen the gifts Lyraa has to offer.”

“My father is dead, lady, and your quarrel with him should have been interred with his bones.”

“You did not inherit the crown?” Idrax asked, for he had heard the Witch King’s son had turned his back on the kingdom and lived in exile in Joxolo. Idrax knew there was a story there, but even after Jorant’s death, Lyraa remained a kingdom of secrets they did not share easily.

“My life has taken another path,” Zale said.

“What of the cure?” the queen asked.

Zale reached into a pocket of his traveling cloak and produced a vial of crimson mist, which he held out so all in the chamber could see it.

“This is the cure,” he said, “but there’s a wasp in the honey.”

The queen struggled to maintain her composure. “Explain.”

“Joie…the princess…will be cured, but the price of her recovery is that she will be mortal. She will live out a human lifespan, but no more.”

“That is not so terrible,” Idrax said, reaching out to clasp Yalira’s hand.

“Easy for a vampire to say,” Gwinna muttered, not quite quietly enough.

The king sent a warning glance her way, and she subsided.

The queen was the one who spoke. “Better a happy human lifespan than an eternity of suffering.”

“What is in this cure?” Idrax asked.

“Witch blood and magic,” Zale said, “and twenty years of my life.

“Pour this into her mouth, and she will wake. She will be very hungry and thirsty, but otherwise it will be as if she has just roused from a long nap.”

Yalira dropped the King’s hand and left her throne to approach Zale. He went to his knees before her as he had done almost a lifetime before. “Thank you, Zale,” she said softly, and kissed him on his forehead as a mother might kiss her child. And then she removed the chain around her neck and placed it around Zale’s. Everyone present gasped, for the necklace was part of the kingdom’s royal regalia, a jewel worn only by queens and consorts going back a dozen generations.

“Let this be a token of Eindar’s gratitude and my own,” she said. “Will you come with us to the tower?”

“I cannot,” he said.

“Whyever not?” Yalira asked.

“I made a promise, my lady, and I do not break my promises.”

Zale handed the Queen the vial. And with those cryptic words, Zale rose and left the throne room as
the crowd behind him exploded in excited chatter.

* * *

Joie woke with a mouth so dry, her tongue felt like it had turned to stone.

“Drink,” her mother said, holding out a cup of cool water, which she gulped.

When Joie held out the cup for more, and her mother wordlessly refilled it from a stone bowl.

Finally, her thirst quenched, Joie looked around at the family members surrounding her bed. They were all smiling, though her mother had tears running down her face.

She knew she had been asleep for many years, but since everyone appeared unchanged, she could not tell how many. But though she wanted to know that, and much, much more, the most important question she had was, “Is Zale still here?”

When her father explained that Zale had left, apparently called back by some terrible compulsion, Joie was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “He has returned to the woman with ice in her heart.”

Yalira and Idrax exchanged glances, as did Lord Melix and Thyr. “Do you mean he has taken a wife?” her uncle asked her.

“No,” Joie said. “There is an enchantress who holds him captive.” She looked stricken. “He bound himself to her service in return for her help in finding a cure for me. She sent him here to test his honor, and told him if he did not return there would be consequences.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Yalira asked.

“I dreamt it,” Joie said. “I have seen her shadow many times, but I have never seen her face. I only know she is the reason I am awake. And she is the reason my love is not here.”

Joie rose from her bed then, and though she was a bit unsteady on her feet, it was clear her resolve was firm.

“I have slept long enough,” she declared.

Chapter 10

Nothing and no one could dissuade Joie from her course once she had plotted it. In the end, she left Eindar accompanied only by her uncle and her pet owl Qweet, who had watched over her while she slumbered.

“She’s determined to go,” he told Idrax and Yalira, “so the best we can do is keep her from harm on the journey.”

Thyr and his niece had always enjoyed each other’s company, and the ease between them belied the amount of time that had passed. But Thyr quickly learned that though Joie had been asleep for a second lifetime, she was not the same person she’d been. At twenty-one, Joie had been fiercely intelligent, a little willful, carelessly kind, and a bit spoiled. She’d been a girl on the threshold of womanhood.

Twenty years later, she had crossed that threshold. She was more serious, more focused, more determined. “My heart has been broken,” she told Thyr as they passed the day in a roadside inn halfway to their destination, “but it has been mended with gold and so is more precious.” Thyr, who was old, but not so old that he’d forgotten how passionate young love could be, held his tongue. As he had told Idrax all those years ago, Joie was the child he would never have, and her happiness was precious to him. He worried that she would find herself bitterly disappointed when confronted by the reality of the dream that had sustained her for so long.

He'd only once broached the subject. “Zale is not the boy you remember,” Thyr warned her. “He is now a man of middle age.”

“He’s not yet forty,” she said. “And besides, what does a vampire care for age?”

“You’re no longer a vampire,” he reminded her gently.

“I’m not sure what I am,” she replied. “A human vampire born, but with a witch’s blood flowing in my veins.

“Look,” she said, and put her hand into the water. Instantly a school of bright fish crowded around her hand like puppies begging to be petted. “It’s the witch blood,” she said. “I can feel it in my veins like music.”

Thyr shivered at those words.

“I’ve never been comfortable around magic,” he admitted, “not since dealing with the Stranger and his magic-born vampires.”

“This is a different sort of magic,” she said. “There’s nothing wicked in it.”

He looked at her, skeptical, but only said, “I hope you are right.”

* * *

When they came to a port that offered passage to Joxolo, Joie told Thyr she and Qweet would be making the rest of the journey alone.

“I’ll wait for you here,” he said. “If you have need of me—”

“I’ll send Qweet,” she promised.

She paid a boatman seven solbecs to ferry her to Joxolo, a place so overgrown with briars and brambles that only a narrow strip of beach could be traversed.

“Are you expected?” the boatman asked Joie, eying the impenetrable wall of thorns that protected a high tower of black stone, the only structure visible on the horizon.

“My presence will be noticed soon enough,” Joie said calmly, and handed him an extra solbec for his trouble.

“Will you be needing return passage?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “If I do, I’ll send Qweet with a message.”

The boatman looked at the owl sitting on her shoulder, blinking sleepily in the sunlight.

“Right, then,” he said. “I’ll be off.”

* * *

It took Joie nearly an hour to get past the first few rows of wild roses that blocked her way. Her cloak and gloves gave her some protection from the wicked thorns, but at last she found herself penned into an impenetrable cage with no way to go forward or back. In frustration, she pushed forward anyway, and gasped in pain as her hand was impaled on a thorn as long as her arm.

And then an odd thing happened. As blood poured from her wound, the brambles suddenly shrank away from her, creating a clear path to the door of the tower. Qweet hooted softly as his feathers were ruffled by the wild magic in the air.

Joie stepped forward and the brambles closed behind her, so close they pulled threads from her cloak as she passed.

She walked up to the tower door, which yawned open at her approach.

Ahead of her was a staircase, and on the landing was a tall woman wreathed in a cloak of gray the same color as her hair and silver eyes.

“Go away, Joie ix Idrax,” the woman said.

“I will not,” Joie said, “unless Zale comes with me.”

The woman in gray sneered. “He is bound to me and would not come with you even if I released him.”

“I do not believe you,” Joie said.

“I do not care,” the woman said. “Leave now, or die at my door.”

And as if in response to the woman’s threat, the thorny thicket rustled, and tendrils reached out to snag Joie’s hair.

But Joie looked into the woman’s heart, and there she saw the truth of her.

“You’re his mother,” she said in surprise, and then saw that her surprise was mirrored in the gray woman’s face.

“I am no one’s mother,” she said angrily. “Begone.”

But Joie refused to back down. “You cast a spell on yourself that allowed you to forget him,” she said, “because you could not bear it when Jorant sent you away.”

“No,” the woman whispered, but Joie could see into her heart and saw that the wall of ice around it had begun to crack.

“How could you know that?” the woman asked.

“The cure Zale brought me was crafted with witch blood,” she said.

“Then you are—”

“She is the Midnight Queen,” a deep voice said, and both women looked up to see Zale descending the steps. “The one foretold.” Qweet hooted a greeting and flew to Zale, who held out his arm to make a perch for the bird.

For an instant, time stopped for Joie as she took in the sight of the man she loved. She was not surprised to see him older-she’d dreamt each year of his life and the small imperfections that age had wrought had only made him more handsome in her eyes.”

“You are still clean-shaven,” she said and was about to say more when the gray woman interrupted, shaking her head as if suffering from an ague.

“No, this is not how it is supposed to be.”

“A lot of things are not as they were supposed to be,” he said. And then he added, “Mother.”

“No,” the woman said.

“Yes,” Joie said, and she stepped closer to place her hand on the woman’s heart.

Heat flowed from her hand into the woman’s chest, and Joie could see the last of the forgetting spell melting away.

The woman blinked once, then looked around. “Who are you?” she said as she looked at Joie.

“My name is Joie,” she said.

“She is my beloved,” Zale said as he came down the stairs to take Joie’s hand.

The woman stared at him. “Your eyes,” she said. And then, hesitantly, “Zailian?”

He bowed to her. “Mother.”

“Oh,” she cried, “I’m so so sorry.” And then she fell to the floor, overcome with grief. “Can you ever forgive me?” she asked, her thin shoulders shaking. “I treated you so badly. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

Joie released Zale’s hand so he could comfort the distraught woman, but even his quiet touch and soothing words could not calm her.

* * *

Over the woman’s bent head, Joie caught Zale’s eyes. We can help her, she thought.

Yes, he thought back. And they each put a hand to the woman’s head and then joined their free hands. “Forget,” Zale said.

“But remember,” Joie said. And then a blaze of flame flashed in the circle that connected them. When the fire faded, the woman looked up.

“I feel light-headed,” she said.

“You slipped on the stairs,” Joie said.

“I must have slipped on the stairs,” she said.

“You hit your head,” Zale said.

“I must have hit my head,” she said. “Help me up,” she said, and held out her arms, one to each of them.

As Joie took her right arm, she smiled and said, “Joie, I didn’t know you were coming to visit.”

Joie looked at Zale. “She’s come to stay for a while,” he said.

“That will be nice,” his mother said.

“There’s some Dairish cheese in the larder,” Zale said, “and some of that barley bread you like.”

“Have you eaten?” the woman asked Joie. “I haven’t been to market today, but there’s some bread and cheese in the larder.”

* * *

Later, when Zale’s mother had wandered off to bed—“Her name is Marana,” Zale told Joie—she sent Qweet out with a message to Thyr telling him that all was well and she would be staying in Joxolo for a while.

Give my love to everyone, she wrote, and let them know I’m happy.

Qweet came back just before sunrise with a reply. Know you are ever in my thoughts, child of my heart.

Joie shed a tear over that and showed Zale the letter.

“I am much loved,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “you are.” They smiled at each other, and only then did they embrace.

* * *

Later, as they lay together in his round room at the highest point in the tower, they spoke of the future and what it would bring.

“You are a prophecy fulfilled,” he said, “but it is a destiny you never sought. You are the rightful ruler of Lyraa, and if you choose, the crown is yours.”

“And you?”

He smiled at that. “And I was born to be your consort.”

“Then my choice is made.”

About the Author

Kat Parrish is a fantasy and science fiction writer whose work has appeared in various magazines and online sites. She is the author of the “Shadow Palace” and “La Bruja Roja” series. She was born in Washington, DC, but now lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Subscribe to Kat’s newsletter here.

Kat Parrish on the Web:

Twitter

Also by Kat Parrish

La Bruja Roja:

Aixa and the Scorpion

Aixa and the Shark

Aixa and the Spider

* * *

The Shadow Palace:

Bride of the Midnight King

Daughter of the Midnight King

The Midnight Queen

* * *

A Dream of Sun and Roses

* * *

The Summer Garden

* * *

L.A. Nocturne Collection

* * *

Hunter’s Kiss

* * *

Fashionista