Lazerin (A Crown of Lilies: Book Two)

PROLOGUE

Traitor. I could still hear them shouting. Even in the cold, damp dark of my cell, with the half-mad wailings of my neighbors echoing off the stone, I could still hear them. Tugging the edges of my wool cloak tighter about me, I buried my head in my arms and sought to stifle the memory of the rocks and rot they’d hurled at me along with that awful word.

Traitor.

I could have been sitting on a chaise sipping watered wine and gazing out at the sea. I could have been wandering the world with nothing but the words of Adulil to guide me, or far away in Laezon poring over breeding charts and cataloguing the last of the new foals for the season. I could have been a thousand other places – better places – and still had a name and a place and a future.

But instead, I was there in the cold, damp dark with that word rattling around my skull.

Traitor.

My chest tightened with the urge to weep, to succumb to the utter despair of my situation, but I heaved a deep, shaking breath and shoved it away. Tears could not help me. Fear is a paralytic, and I could not afford to falter now. Only courage could see me through this end.

I’d kept my wits about me, on the dais in the temple square. Solomon had wiped those wooden planks with my plans and my reputation, but I’d been smart enough not to reveal any more than was necessary. The High Priest knew my parents were rallying allies, but as far as I could tell, he’d no idea we’d learned of Persica’s alliance with Hydrax or the army we’d spotted amassing at Alesia’s western border. He knew about the ships we’d stolen – ah, gods, Adrian – which were sure to be recalled if they hadn’t been already.

But there was one key bit of knowledge I’d kept carefully hidden, even from our closest allies. One final piece on the board. A last desperate ploy to see the tide shift back in our favor, to give our allies one final chance to stabilize all that Persica had worked to destroy.

The assassin.

I had to hold my tongue.

CHAPTER 1

"Elivya.” A warm summer breeze blew in through the window, drawing my gaze and pricking that incessant yearning to escape the interminable prison of my mother’s lessons. James was somewhere outside, probably sprawled out in the sunshine or playing with the new litter of kittens in the barn. I fidgeted in my stupid, itchy dress.

“Elivya.”

My eyes shifted back to the table before me, my mother’s rigid figure staring me down with marked displeasure. Muttering a sullen apology, I focused once again on the well-worn tome laying open on the desk, its spine cracking and pages well-thumbed.

“The House of Oristei,” she repeated the prompt, each word short and pointed.

Drawing a breath, I tried not to glance at the book in front of me. “Lord Reyus and Lady Amelie. Music and the arts. Ostris contains the nation’s largest supply of sapphires-”

“Emeralds.”

“Emeralds,” I revised, biting the inside of my cheek as I struggled to dredge up the rest of the information she’d been drilling into my head for the last week. “Crest is a silver lyre on a saltire field of lavender and violet. Lesser Houses are Ulitri, Evitra, Ardontus, and….”

She raised her brows at me as I dug for the fourth. Or were there only three? No, four. Definitely four. The pressure in my chest continued to build as I searched the hollows of my memory in vain.

“Istaris,” she supplied after a long wait. I huffed an aggravated sigh and slumped in my seat across from her. “I know you can remember these.”

“I’m trying,” I whined.

“Then why do we have to keep reviewing this?”

My head lolled back in a poetic display of youthful drama. “It’s so boring! Why can’t we learn about Kortas or Rume?” I leaned forward onto the table, fixing my hopeful gaze on her. “Shera says that in Dacia, they teach girls to shoot from the saddle when they’re eight.”

Despite the narrow-eyed look she gave me, the corner of her lips betrayed a hint of a smile. “You can tell Shera it’s the boys who learn such things, not the girls. And you will learn about your own country before we begin on another.”

I slouched in defeat once more. “Alesia is boring.”

Her smile faded. “Boring is safe.”

“Boring is boring.”

“Boring or otherwise, you will learn it.”

“Can’t we at least read about something interesting? What about the War of Crowns?” My mother’s face shuttered, a familiar reaction that only amplified my exasperation. “Houses and flags and bloodlines are in every book from here to Cambria! I want to learn about Brandon the Bastard. I want to know how he lost the field at Istra.”

“Your father has told you that story a hundred times.”

“All he talks about is the King,” I drawled with a roll of my eyes. “Amenon in his golden armor. Amenon atop his snow-white charger. Amenon riding out to meet his brother in the midst of the battle.”

In truth, I loved that story, but after a few dozen retellings, I began to notice how much he was leaving out.

“Father was there, too,” I said. “And the Black Company. How could Brandon outnumber the King’s forces four-to-one and still lose?”

“Numbers aren’t everything. Sometimes a single soldier can turn the tide of war.”

The unsatisfied twist of my face told her just how little stock I put in that particular claim. I thought she might turn me back to our lessons yet again, as she’d done all the other times my focus had strayed, but she didn’t. Instead, she loosed a quiet sigh and shut the small book on the table before her.

“Brandon lost the war because he cared more for the crown than those laboring beneath it,” she said. “He may have been of Adulil’s blood, but his hunger for power far outweighed any consideration he might’ve had for the people he meant to rule. He would have burned Alesia to the ground just to be king of the ashes.”

I held myself still and silent. She so rarely spoke of the war. In her face, her posture, the haunted look in her eyes, lay a well of dark memory from long before I was ever born.

“Amenon had his faults,” she added softly, “but he cared more for his people than any throne. That is why we followed him. That is why he prevailed at Istra, and why he won the war.”

I glanced down at the ancient tome before me, an elegant illustration of the Oristei bloodline painstakingly detailed upon the page.

“That is what it means, to be one of the Seven, Elivya.” The intent in her voice drew my eyes back up to hers, blazing emeralds piercing me to my core. “To put all else aside for the good of those we rule. To be willing to do anything, sacrifice anything, to keep them safe. It is not enough, to carry the blood of this House in your veins. You must be more. You must be unbreakable.”

Wait.

That wasn’t right. That wasn’t what she’d said to me, that day in the study.

The edges of my vision shuddered violently as I became aware of the dream, my mind rebelling against the wrongness of it. My lips parted and moved, but no sound emerged. I knit my brows and tried again, but still no words came forth. My mother placed her palms flat on the table and stood, and when she spoke, a hundred voices spoke with her.

“SEE IT THROUGH.”

CHAPTER 2

Pain. My constant, boundless companion. It yanked me back into the waking world, the metal cuffs around my wrists clinking from the sudden jerk of my limbs. Searing and insistent, it flooded every inch of my body before I’d even fully realized I was awake.

The blurred smear of my vision gradually cleared to a hazy focus, revealing familiar surroundings. Frigid, stale air. Damp stone. Two armored guards remained still as statues, barely distinguishable from the twisting shadows cast by a handful of iron braziers, their flickering light dancing over racks of rusted interrogation implements. Nearby, a meticulous row of tools gleamed in sharp contrast atop their table, cleaned and polished to a spotless shine.

A pair of pristine shears. A whip made of braided silver. A brass rod inscribed with Origin scripture. Vice grips. A tapered hammer.

There were more, of course. Eleven, in all. The sight of them made my feeble pulse race.

“Ah. Good. You’re awake.”

Fear striped through me at the sound of that soft voice. My eyes darted through the dark, searching. He stood before a silver basin, drying his hands, his bright red robes garish and out of place in the colorless dark of the dungeon. Hair cropped close to his scalp, he was an unassuming-looking man, small and subdued. I never learned his name.

I am a servant of Al’Rahim, and I am here to save you.

I’d laughed aloud the first time I saw him.

I wasn’t laughing now.

He set aside the towel and wandered past the table, pausing to gently nudge one skewed tool back into alignment before continuing across the stones toward me. His silk slippers barely made a sound.

“How do you feel?” he asked with a gentle smile.

My stiff shoulders ached from hanging, the skin around my wrists and ankles chafed raw beneath my bonds. The shredded remnants of my tunic hung from my shoulders, leaving my scourged back exposed to the coarse wood of the whipping cross. For a mercy, I could no longer feel the ruins of my left hand. My mind had long since cut ties with it in an attempt to cling to sanity.

The last time he’d asked me that question, I’d managed to snarl a halfway-convincing ‘fuck you’. Now, I just sagged in my bonds, head lolling and bloody spittle drooling from my split and swollen lips. A soft hand touched my cheek.

“You need not suffer any longer, child. Pray with me for Al’Rahim’s mercy, and all of this could end.”

I lifted my head to meet his pleading gaze, the very portrait of his conviction hovering before me.

“Tell me who your allies are, and be free of this pain.”

My lungs heaved, each inhale sending a riot of sharp pains through my chest. Sticky blood trickled down my back. The seeping heat of countless bruises bloomed across my skin. But as I stared back into those pious, dark eyes, it was the compassion, not the cruelty, that threatened to undo me.

Briad. Ulitri. Guillar. Oristei.

The names hovered in my mind, the key to my salvation. All I had to do was say the words.

Estentis. Therus. Fumandrel. Vekar.

Each House thundered in my head, screamed in silent desperation more loudly than any of my agonized cries.

Chamberlain.

Aubrey’s face emerged through the fog of my mind, sparkling amber eyes over a roguish smile.

“No,” I wheezed.

The priest hung his head with a sigh. His hand fell from my face and I heard him cross to the table, polished metal clinking.

I knew what came next.

Mother, have mercy on me. Adulil, give me strength.

My breath quickened to shallow, panicked gasps. I squeezed my eyes shut and saw my father’s stern visage, heard my mother’s voice telling me to be brave. I felt Shera’s bracing hand on my shoulder, the press of her shoving my sword belt against my chest.

You are the heir of Lazerin, and they cannot break you.

They tried their best.

CHAPTER 3: TOMMY

I knew they’d come. Was only a matter of time before they found us. Most of my hideouts were either burned or scrapped, but I never told any of my lads about this one. This one was ours. Ana’s and mine. Long time ago.

I heard the raised voices first, my two boys on lookout callin’ out a challenge. Then a few thuds and a crash as the outside door splintered open. I scrambled out of my cot with one knife already in hand, keepin’ a sharp eye on the door as I snatched the other from my belt nearby.

A few more shouts sounded from the main room. Few more thuds. Whoever they’d sent knew what they were about. A scuffle broke out right outside my door, the light underneath shifting with shadows. Then the wall shook, sendin’ a shower of dust down on me.

A groan and a thump as my last boy hit the floor.

I gripped my knives and rolled my shoulders. No gallows for me. I’d make ‘em gut me here, on my own turf, my own terms, before I’d swing.

The knob turned. I smiled and thought of Ana.

See ye soon, lass.

CHAPTER 4: ELIVYA

"Has she confessed?” The question slithered through the dark, tugging me up from the abyss. I’d spent hours drifting back and forth across that threshold, never quite making it to one side or the other. I didn’t want to come back, but something about that voice pulled at me.

“Our work continues, Your Holiness.”

I dragged my eyes open, wading through the pain and forcing myself to some level of consciousness. Still strapped to the whipping cross, I dangled from my shackles like a slaughtered pig at a butcher’s shop.

“Is she lucid?”

I knew that voice. Somewhere deep within, locked away in the iron vault where I’d buried as much of me as I could fit, a feeble spark of rage stirred.

“It comes and goes, my lord.”

An edge of impatience crept into that familiar, haughty tone. “Can you rouse her?”

“You’ve picked an inopportune moment, I’m afraid. We’ve only just finished the Prayer of Ishum.”

The seared-flesh stink of those benedictions still hung in the air.

He took a few steps toward me, the muddled blur of his white robes edging into my field of view. A flutter of red followed at a polite distance.

“Ah, my lord, I wouldn’t-”

Fire splintered through my left hand. A shriek tore from my throat, quickly stifled when Solomon released his grip on my mutilated finger. I gulped down thin, excruciating breaths, too weak to even lift my head to glare at him. The High Priest obligingly lowered his own, peering beneath the ragged edges of my sweat-and-blood-drenched hair.

“Not so brave now, are we?” he murmured. “Give me the names.”

Words reeled through my thoughts on an endless circuit, just as they had been for hours – days – narrowing my consciousness to a single thread until nothing else existed. Not the pain. Not the fear. Only the handful of empty syllables that had long since lost all meaning. The same ones that now rasped through my lips in a cracked whisper.

“I am the heir of Lazerin…”

Solomon stepped away. “Let her hang for the night. Perhaps a bit of solitude will help her see Al’Rahim’s Truth.”

Silk swished against stone. A flurry of footsteps faded to silence. The dark closed in around me.

I stared through the floor long after they had gone, a tiny piece of me resurfacing from the hollow refuge within. I shook, slowly at first and with increasing violence until I devolved into shuddering sobs. And then I wept as I had never wept before, a screeching, moaning lament of utter despair.

“Please,” I begged the formless dark. “Please just let me die…”

But there was no answer. I was alone.

CHAPTER 5

Panic jolted me alert at the sound of soft footsteps padding down the distant hallway toward me. Slow. Calculated. As though the Red Priest knew I would hear, and in hearing, shatter. It wouldn’t take much, now. I had nothing left in me with which to resist.

My shoulders had seized long ago, my arms numb from the iron cuffs, but even a wounded animal flails against the snare when it sees the hunter closing in. I thrashed in my restraints, an exercise in futility that only served to underscore the truth of my situation.

He would come.

And I would break.

I crumbled beneath the weight of that inescapable certainty, sagging in my bonds.

Ah, gods, that crushing helplessness. Squeezing my lungs, wrapping its icy fingers around my throat, pouring lead into my stomach. Every whispered step on the stones sent a ripple of terror through me. I could already see the red of his robes in my mind, the compassionate smile on his face. I could already hear the chime of polished metal, his tools singing at his touch.

But when the footsteps crescendoed in the far-off doorway and the shadows coalesced into form, it wasn’t the priest who took shape there.

Two figures, hooded and cloaked, slipped through the chamber. No red silk. No guards in polished plate. Their steps were quick but cautious, moving with the efficiency of those well-acquainted with the dark. When the flickering light hit them, I noticed one had a nasty bruise all along his left cheekbone; the other, a fairly fresh black eye. Their faces were unfamiliar to me, but they were both unquestionably Alesian. My heart stumbled with an impossible spark of hope.

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