Candace
"Look at this!" Estrella holds a single piece of green grass up in front of my eyes. "It's alive."
"I'm so happy for you." I force a smile. Despite the realization that this first application only affected the area right around where they put what they've started calling the elixir, Raven and Estrella are walking on air. Raven's barely left her parents' side, both because I know she doesn't see them as often as she'd like and because they're the only ones here who know what Escuro used to look like.
"Perhaps we could use the elixir to create more oases in Sundrop." She grabs my hands. "The applications are endless. There is no wound we cannot heal."
"It really is amazing." My mark aches. I didn't see Hollis at the ritual, but even just smelling him in the crowd made me sick. With the celebration tonight, I just want to lie down.
"Are you all right?" Ingrid asks as she walks up. "You look pale."
"Just tired." I offer another wan smile. "I didn't exactly get much sleep last night. I could use a nap before the celebration."
"By the Goddess, I'm so sorry." Estrella releases me. "Go, rest. We can speak later."
'I'll keep them distracted,' Ingrid says through the mind-link. 'The tent isn't exactly soundproof.'
'Thank you,' I reply.' And give Raven my congratulations.'
'Of course.'
I leave the ritual site, my steps dragging over new grass and old. I dodge chattering groups-most excited, some jealous-and wend my way through back alleys. At least Kieran and Anwen had some privacy when they were fighting the mate bond. They didn't have to do it in the middle of a campground with a hundred of their closest potential political allies. I would give almost anything for a real door I could shut between me and the world.
"I didn't expect to see you here." The voice is oily smooth, perfectly even. "Finally come to visit your mother?"
I twist and discover my back route has led me past where her prison cart is parked. Guards at attention surround it, and Mother's pale, long-fingered hand drapes out from between the bars. Dirt makes small crescents under her nails.
Before everything that's happened this past year, Mother was my closest confidant after Ingrid. I know what she's done, who she's hurt. But I can't tell anyone what happened between Hollis and I-except the one woman no one would talk to or trust.
"Open the door." I lift my chin, try to look like I have the authority to do what I'm doing. "I wish to speak to her inside."
The guards exchange looks. One of their gazes goes hazy with a mind-link. "King Kieran says she may," he reports a second later.
I try to keep my posture as they let me into the cramped wagon. Only a few shafts of morning light creep through the bars, just enough to illuminate the wide bench Mother obviously has to use as a bed and the chamber pot off to the side. A tray with a few food scraps and a pail of water promise Kieran is actually improving the dungeon conditions as he said he would, but seeing her like this is still jarring.
"How long has it been?" Mother fixes a lock of lank blonde hair.
I swallow. "Sev-seven months."
She purses her lips. "I thought I raised you better than that."
I flinch. I know I should have been visiting her. I did, a few times. In the beginning. Before the grime truly settled onto her-she refuses to bathe when offered water-and I could no longer look at her without acknowledging the truth.
The woman who raised me is a prisoner, and I am letting her stay one.
"I'm sorry," I mumble.
"I can't hear you," she says.
"My apologies, Mother." I force volume into my voice. "I have been-" Saying busy will only irritate her further. "Barred" is a lie, and I've been trying to stop lying since I realized just how like them it made me. "Frightened."
A small smile crosses her face. "Of what, darling?"
You. What your imprisonment means. How much I'm your daughter.
"I don't know." I shake my head. "I didn't know."
"But you do now?" She takes my hand, silver manacles around her wrists rattling.
Why does Kieran have her chained in silver? Mother is originally from Lightning Cape, a kingdom to the south Father conquered a few months after they mated, so she has some extremely minor wind magic, but nothing she's ever used for more than whisking a quill she didn't want to stand to retrieve into her hand.
Or pushing things off a table to make a servant she was displeased with keep cleaning.
I blink. "Something happened last night."
"Your first Haze." Mother's smile is sickly sweet, like she doesn't quite know how to do it anymore. "Did you-?"
I nod.
"And he frightens you."
'No.' My face burns as I mind-link Mother for the first time in almost a year. 'He...he doesn't want me.'
"Oh, darling." She cups my cheek. The silver stings my chin. "Who would?"
"What?" I flinch back like she hit me.
"Imprisonment gives someone a lot of time to think." Her smile sharpens into something dangerous. "And I've been thinking you're a disloyal bitch I wasted my energy trying to raise into a lady."
My pulse roars in my ears. "You don't mean that."
"Oh, but I do." She stares out of the bars. "You were my favorite, and you left me here to rot. You don't even visit. What is a mother supposed to think?"
I open and close my mouth. Nothing comes out. Mother was always cruel to Raven, but not to me. This is a woman I've never seen before.
"Yes, I've had a lot of time. Before the chains, I used that time to train my magic, but since then, I can only think." She stares at me, her eyes burning into mine. "You never truly took my lessons to heart. If you were meant to be the sort of woman I wanted, you wouldn't have had to work so hard. I certainly didn't. So I don't blame the unfortunate man the Goddess placed in your path. I'd help him run away." Her mouth flattens into a line. "If I could."
"I'm leaving." My voice wavers. I knock on the door for the guards to let me out.
"Of course, you are." Mother grins viciously. "That's the only skill you ever learned. Burying your head in the sand and letting other people get their hands dirty."
The door to the cart creaks open, and I explode out into the sunshine. I don't know when I started crying, but tears streak down my cheeks. The guards regard me awkwardly, not quite sure whether they should offer to help or leave me alone.
"Don't tell anyone about this." Before they can reply, I stumble away from the prison cart.
Luckily, when I reach our tent, there are still only a few people there. Most of the staff and family seems to still be at the ritual site. I plunge into the relative darkness of the tent and throw myself down on the bed, all thoughts of a nap gone. My shoulders shake with sobs. Mother's right. It shouldn't be this hard to make people like me. There must be something wrong with me. I just wish I knew what it was.
Eventually, my sobs peter out. I am exhausted. I said I was going to na-
***
The acrid stink of hot metal and blood consumes me. More blood than I've ever seen before, ever smelled before. Slowly, other details filter in. The air stings my skin-grit, flying in every direction. Pained screams echo from everywhere, those of the tortured and dying. Howls mix and meld and split apart in an aching cacophony. Finally, I manage to open my eyes.
I stand in the center of a blasted battlefield with a war raging around me. Dark mountains loom over the destroyed earth. A wolf lands at my feet, screaming in a half-human voice as another wolf tears it to bloody shreds. I try to recoil, but I can't control my body.
Instead, I lift up, up, up. With every foot I climb, I expect to see the edge of the fighting. It must end somewhere. But it stretches ever onward, horizon to horizon. My stomach churns. I would be sick, if I had enough control of my mouth.
I stare down over a war worse than anything Father ever created. The tiny sliver of peace Kieran clawed back is destroyed, forgotten in a disaster the likes of which the world has never seen. And everyone is dying.
***
I shoot up in bed, drenched in cold sweat. The light outside the tent flap is darker, approaching sunset. My head pounds. That dream felt so impossibly real that I know it's going to come true someday. Maybe soon. I have to tell-
Hollis's words ring in my ears. Mother's, too. Who would I tell? Who would believe me? No one even thinks my dreams are premonitions.
Ingrid lifts the tent flap. "Hey. I kept them away for as long as I could, but we have to start getting ready now. Are you okay?"
I wipe my face and force a smile. "Just woke up."