He’d tried to sneak back in, of course, but Kell wouldn’t help him, and there were other places in the palace to explore. But Rhy couldn’t forget the strange magic of that room, and that winter, when the weather turned and the sun never seemed to come out, he built his own map, crafting the palace from a golden three-tiered cake stand, the river from a stretch of gossamer, a hundred tiny figures from whatever he could get his hands on. He made vestra and ostra, priests and royal guards.
“This one’s you,” he told Kell, holding up a fire-starter with a red top, a dab of black paint for an eye. Kell wasn’t impressed.
“This one’s you,” he told his mother, brandishing the queen he’d fashioned from a glass tonic vial.
“This one’s you,” he told Tieren, proudly showing him the bit of white stone he’d dug out of the courtyard.
He’d been working on the set for more than a year when his father came to see. He’d never found the stuff to make the king. Kell—who didn’t usually want to play—had offered up a rock with a dozen little grooves that almost made a ghoulish face, if the light was right, but Rhy thought it looked more like the royal cook, Lor.
Rhy was crouched over the board before bed one night when Maxim entered. He was a towering man draped in red and gold, his dark beard and brows swallowing his face. No wonder Rhy couldn’t find the piece to play him. Nothing felt large enough.
“What’s this?” asked his father, sinking to one knee beside the makeshift palace.
“It’s a game,” said Rhy proudly, “just like yours.”
That was when Maxim took him by the hand, and led him down the stairs and through the palace, bare feet sinking into the plush carpet. When they reached the golden doors, Rhy’s heart leapt, half in dread, half in excitement, as his father unlocked the doors.
Memory often bends a thing, makes it even more marvelous. But Rhy’s own memory of the map room paled in comparison to the truth. Rhy had grown two inches that year, but instead of seeming smaller, the map was just as grand, just as sweeping, just as magical.
“This,” said his father sternly, “is not a game. Every ship, every soldier, every bit of stone and glass—the lives of this kingdom hang in the balance of this board.”
Rhy stared in wonder at the map, made all the more magical for his father’s warning. Maxim stood, arms crossed, while Rhy circled the table, examining every facet before turning his attention to the palace.
It was no kettle, no cake tray. This palace shone, a perfect miniature—sculpted in glass and gold—of Rhy’s home.
Rhy stood on his toes, peering into the windows.
“What are you searching for?” asked his father.
Rhy looked up, eyes wide. “You.”
At last, a smile broke through that trimmed beard. Maxim pointed to a slight rise in the cityscape, a plaza two bridges down from the palace where a huddle of stone guards sat on horseback. And at their center, no larger than the rest, was a figure set apart only by the gold band of a crown.
“A king,” said his father, “belongs with his people.”
Rhy reached a hand into the pocket of his bedclothes and pulled out a small figure, a boy prince spun from pure sugar and stolen from his last birthday cake. Now, carefully, Rhy set the figure on the map beside his father.
“And the prince,” he said proudly, “belongs with his king.”
* * *
Rhy screamed, and thrashed, and fought against their grip.
A king belongs with his people.
He begged, and pleaded, and tried to tear free.
A prince belong with his king.
The doors were closed. His father had vanished, swallowed up by wood and stone.
“Your Highness, please.”
Rhy threw a punch, catching Isra hard across the jaw. She let go, and he made it a single step before Sol-in-Ar locked him in a viciously efficient hold, one arm twisted up behind his back.
“Your Highness, no.”
Pain flared through him when he tried to fight, but pain was nothing to Rhy now and he wrenched free, tearing something in his shoulder as he threw his elbow back into the Faroan’s face.
More guards were arriving now, blocking the door as Isra shouted orders through bloodstained teeth.
“Stand aside,” he demanded, voice breaking.
“Your Highness—”
“Stand aside.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the guards stepped away from the doors, and Rhy surged forward, grasping for the handle just before Isra pinned his hand to the wood.
“Your Highness,” she snarled, “don’t you dare.”
A king belongs with his people.
“Isra,” he pleaded. “A prince belongs with his king.”
“Then be with him,” said the guard. “By honoring his last request.”
The weight of Isra’s hand retreated, and Rhy was left alone before the broad wood doors. Somewhere on the other side, so close and yet so far …
He felt something tear inside him, not flesh but something so much deeper. He splayed his hands across the wood. Rhy squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his forehead to the door, his whole body shaking with the urge to throw them open, to run after his father.
He didn’t.
His legs gave way, body sinking to the floor, and if the world had chosen that moment to swallow him whole, Rhy would have welcomed it.
I
Maxim Maresh had forgotten about the fog.
The moment he stepped through the palace wards, he felt Osaron’s poison lacing the air. It was too late to hold his breath. It forced its way in, filling his lungs as the curse whispered through his head.