Echoes of Silence (31 page)

Cris could hide his bare skin beneath the jacket, but he couldn’t conceal the bloodstained shirt or his tear-stained face. Mari said something to him I couldn’t hear through the roar in my ears.

Olive hadn’t looked away from me, and I found myself trapped between being a princess and being a little sister. I didn’t know how to act, what to say, or where to stand so that I commanded the room. Those were lessons provided to men like Cris, who always dressed the part and knew what to say and how to say it.

Olive broke the straining band between us by striding forward and grasping me in a tight embrace. “Echo.” Her voice came softly, and I squeezed my eyes closed and inhaled deeply.

“I’m sorry.” I clutched her, afraid to let her go and see disappointment in her eyes. But when she stepped back, I found only love and relief in her expression. “I thought you’d returned to Iskadar, but when I sent for you, no one could find you.”

Mari gestured to us, saying Olive’s name loudly. My sister turned toward my husband, trepidation now shining in her face. He smiled—such a kingly thing to do—and stood in his regally graceful way. He shrugged into his jacket, pocketing his hands and bringing them together in front of him to hide himself as much as possible.

She still saw his scars. She glanced between us, her eyes narrowed like we were two pieces of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together. “So you are Echo’s husband.”

Though I needed to eat and nothing sounded better than collapsing into a pile of sheets, I strode across the room and linked my arm through Cris’s. “Yes.” I forced my voice to stay neutral. “He’s mine—” I wanted to shoot a glance at Mari, but refrained, instead choosing to keep that secret to myself, should I need it later. “He’s my husband.”

I increased the pressure on Cris’s arm slightly. “Cris, this is my sister, Olive del Toro.”

“Ah, of course,” he said, ever the perfect diplomat. “Echo has spoken quite highly of you and most often.”

It was a complete and utter lie. We’d never discussed my sister, for like Grandmother, I kept her closely guarded. But his words made Olive blush, and she dipped her chin in a subservient way.

“We’re to be your ladies’ maids,” Mari said. “When we didn’t find you in your rooms, we thought we’d find you here.”

I pinned her with a look I hoped would convey the thoughts of my heart.
I bet you wished you would find Cris—and only Cris—here.

“Did my father send you?” Cris asked, his tone much too light.

“Yes,” Olive said. Mari simply nodded, and I got the message. Forcing Mari to attend to me was a way to punish Cris—and he
did
know she served the High King, not me, and definitely not him. No wonder he’d paled in the hall earlier.

I extracted my arm from Cris’s and managed to separate Olive from Mari. I glanced down to her feet and back, looking for outward signs of abuse. “How did you come to be here?”

She glanced over her shoulder to where Mari stood with Cris, watching us. “I did return to Grandmother’s house.” She spoke so quietly, I had to lean closer to hear her. “I sent you a letter. Did you not receive it?”

I shook my head, a pressing heat beginning behind my eyes. My sister’s word surely would’ve helped me endure my time in the compound.

“I’d just gotten the garden cleared and planted when I received a summons to come to the High Castle of Nyth. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.” Her eyes stretched too wide, her voice stayed too hushed, for this to be a casual conversation.

True terror flowed through my bloodstream. “What have you been doing here? Why were you summoned?”

I hummed the first few notes of a detection spell, and Olive’s magic—limited as it was—reacted violently. She took a step back as if I’d struck her. Naked fear shone in her eyes. She simply shook her head, her gaze focused behind me.

New worries ate their way through me. “Come, you can show me to my rooms. I haven’t been there yet.” I returned to Cris and stretched up to kiss him on the cheek. “Something is wrong here,” I whispered. “Send for me in a few minutes.”

“Of course, dearest,” he murmured. I felt his eyes on my back as I left his rooms with Mari and Olive. The door clicked closed, and I mourned Lucia more strongly than ever.

#

My suite matched the grandeur of the compound with its rich rugs of brown and blue, cream-painted walls, and thick quilts. The difference here came in the windows. In the compound, I only had the sliding glass door for natural light. Here, glass composed entire walls, and when I went out on the balcony, the sky yawned so wide over my head that I felt small and insignificant.

I breathed in the scent of the early fall breeze and leaned on the railing of the balcony. I looked down into garden, now in the late stages of harvest. Fat pumpkins lounged among brown spider-leg vines and red ripe tomatoes bulged on bowing stems.

Nothing had been said in the few minutes it took to walk from Cris’s rooms to mine. Olive had opened the door and stepped back to wait for me to enter—very maidlike.

Mari had waited, her face masked of emotion. I stared at her, a clear warning for her to stay away from Cris, and we’d entered the apartment with thick silence between us. She refused to leave Olive and I alone together, and I’d escaped to the balcony.

I stayed outside as long as I dared. Finally I had to return to the safety of a room with four walls. Due to my healing of Cris’s wounds, I felt weaker by the moment and didn’t want to fall over the railing and become like the stalks of corn in the garden, broken and spent.

“Are you ready, Echo?” Cris asked at the same time he opened the door. He’d changed into a fresh suit of navy with silver stripes. His hair had been combed and glistened with water. Any evidence of his weariness had been erased, and he graced me with a small smile. “I had your meal sent to my rooms.”

Mari and Olive didn’t melt into the woodwork the way Lucia and Greta had. They stared at Cris, and then volleyed their gaze to me. They hadn’t prepared me for dinner. There wasn’t a dress in sight, no makeup pots to be seen, not even a fresh cloth had been offered.

I stepped past them, desperate to escape their scrutiny and to get something substantial in my stomach.

“Fetch her nightclothes,” Cris said to Olive. “She’ll be staying with me tonight.” He put his arm protectively around my shoulders and guided me into the breezeway.

#

Cris scarcely waited for the door to lock behind us before he asked, “What’s going on?”

I stepped further into the room and headed for the table bearing our dinner. “Mari is one of my maids,” I said. “Does that need an explanation?”

Cris frowned, causing a line to appear between his eyebrows. “I’m sure she wouldn’t do anything—”

“I’m sure she would. Without me, who would you have chosen?”

“Not her,” he said, strongly enough for me to pause in the unfolding of my napkin.

“What does that mean?” I’d seen her sneaking from his room.

He settled across from me and removed the lid from his plate. “I knew my father had sent her, and . . . ” He looked at me with frustration. “Remember how I told you I’d asked Gibson to do certain things for me?” He waved his hand in a general gesture. “That was one of them.”

“What was one of them?”

Cris took a gulp of his wine. “Gibson made Mari fall in love with me. I had to do something to make her reports to my father . . . favorable.” He pushed his food around on his plate. “I’m not proud of using her in that way.”

I watched him as I ate, not quite sure if I felt relief that he didn’t love Mari, or horror that he’d preyed on her emotions.

“Echo, please, don’t be angry.” He finally glanced at me, a pleading look in his eyes.

Angry wasn’t the right word. Wounded might work, for my heart felt desperately small inside my chest, and I could do little about it.

“Did you have Gibson influence me?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Only her. She hails from a fishing township at the northern tip of Nyth. My father planted her in the compound as another means to collect information on me—on Castillo, too.”

“I saw her, sneaking from your room on our wedding night.”

“No.” Cris shook his head, his eyes ablaze with determination. “I kept my door securely locked that night. I suspected she might come, and I—” He cleared his throat and leaned toward me. “I am
not
my father, Echo. He had several mistresses. I’m determined to have only one lover.”

Heat flooded my cheeks as I lowered my gaze to the tabletop. I couldn’t undo the knot of emotions in my chest. “My grandmother used to say that to truly live, one must love deeply.”

“Your grandmother was a wise woman.” Warmth radiated through Cris’s words. “Tell me what else she said.”

“Many things.” I didn’t wish to discuss Grandmother now. “Too many to discuss.”

“I see.” Cris’s words carried a hint of hurt. To show him that I meant no disrespect, I let him take my hand and guide me to the settee where I’d addressed his wounds.

“What of Olive? What isn’t quite right with her?”

“Her magic is strange.” I frowned at the memory of the detection spell. “She doesn’t have much power, but it has never fought with mine.”

Cris’s eyebrows creased together. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” I sighed and laid my head against his chest. “When Castillo said she was returning to Iskadar, I felt relieved. She had friends there once, people who love her for who she is, no matter that she cannot wield magic.”

Cris circled his thumb along my palm. “Echo, I do not wish to upset you.”

I looked at him and found worry burning in his eyes. “Upset me?”

“Olive would not be here if she couldn’t wield magic. My father wouldn’t waste his time on someone like that.”

My blood seemed to be moving too fast through my veins. My heart picked up the pace to keep time with the increased flow. “What are you saying?”

“I believe he brought her here to spy on you.”

Everything Cris said fit together, no matter how I wished it wouldn’t. “No,” I said. “She would never betray me.” I could not, would not, believe it. “He’s using her for something else.”

Cris’s grip on my fingers increased. “I’ll find out what.” He cleared his throat and looked away, uncomfortable inside his own skin. He stopped rubbing my hands and the fight deflated out of him. “I’m sorry. I’m not the prince—or husband—you deserve. I’m weak. I’m—”

“Stop it. Those are your father’s words, and I don’t want to hear them.” I cupped his face in my palm and lifted his chin until his eyes met mine. Unsaid assurances streamed between us.

I nodded and allowed Cris to show me to his bed and tuck me under the down quilts. After he’d returned to his private study, I lay awake, listening to the darkness speak stories of wicked magic and corrupt kings.

I got up and went out to the balcony. The sky was huge, dark, frightening. Quickly, before I could lose my nerve, I spun and padded down the hall to Cris’s private chamber. His door was unlocked, and I silently pushed my way in.

His breathing fell evenly against the air, and I hummed the first notes that would allow me to enter his mind. He wasn’t dreaming, which made the invasion much easier.

I pictured Castillo in my head, and the first image that came from Cris’s slumbering mind stole my breath. Castillo bent over an unmoving Cris. They looked to be young teenagers, with barely the beginnings of facial hair.

Castillo wept, fat tears sliding down his youthful face and landing on Cris’s. “You cannot be dead.”

I’d never heard sound during a rebound before, but I was exceedingly glad I could now so I could get a complete picture of Cris’s past.

His chest was a bloody mass of flesh, but I made out a mark from a cord—a wound when healed, would look like ropes of scar tissue across his bronze body.

“Stop sniveling,” a cold voice said, and ice ran through me at the High King’s biting comment. “You’re now free to bond with another. I did you a favor.”

Castillo pressed his eyes closed and bent his forehead to Cris’s. He began a spell to follow his brother into the afterlife, and suddenly, I got yanked into another vision.

This one followed Cris, who had indeed died. He stood on the edge of a spire of red rock, watching the vast sky before him flash images of his life.

He saw his mother’s funeral, while being held by a younger version of Helena. He cried, and then he sang, but his mother didn’t rise from the sepulcher. The next scene showed him and Castillo as young boys, maybe five years old, bonding as their shrill voices sang together.

Images passed through the sky, each depicting them performing an act of song-magic—great spells that swirled in colors, and barred doors, and held their father’s cruelty at bay.

I dared not blink, lest I miss the next secret. Castillo and Cris had been bonds. Cris could once sing wonderful and powerful magic into existence.

The sky darkened, and a woman appeared in front of him. Her dark hair blew in a magical wind, and she reached toward him with one pale hand. “Cris,” she said, and he stumbled toward her.

“Mother.” He cried into her hair as she gripped his shoulders.

“We don’t have much time.” She held him at arm’s length. “You have a choice here, Cris, a terrible choice.”

“Am I dead?”

“Not quite,” she said. “But the pathway is open before you.” She waved her hand to the sky behind her, which flashed with golden light. “You can also return.”

He looked over his mother’s shoulder and then behind to where I stood, unseen. His face held fear and indecision.

“Castillo can sing you back to life,” his mother said. “But it will come with a great price. A price, Cris, you will have to pay.”

“What will become of Castillo?”

His mother shook her head. “I think you know, my dearest.”

My throat squeezed at the endearment Cris so often called me. The vision tunneled, spun into the first image until Cris awoke coughing and gasping for air as the last notes of Castillo’s song echoed against the marble walls of the High Castle.

He’d sung his bond back to life, but only because Cris chose not to leave his brother alone in this world.