Hyderlin re-dyed her hair black and darkened her lashes as well, until her eyes stung.
Sarg buckled on two swords at his hip—one his own, and one hers. Hyderlin looked away from that and tucked Princess Beronis into his arms.
A carriage far too grand for the neighbourhood arrived to collect the false couple and carried them down the road.
Hyderlin leaned out the window.
Nadirotsa Castle watched over the city from its high perch, visible from anywhere in the capital. The fortress of heavy stone and old brick was, in itself, an army. Its enduring grey walls bore the quiet authority of something that had outlasted everything thrown against it. The stone buildings crowded within were like officers in a formation. The many towers strung with banners in their colours were the watchful eyes of sentinels standing guard on every side.
It had been Hyderlin’s home.
Home was a word that implied warmth and comfort—things that building had never offered—but no other word served.
She had been born in that castle. She had grown up inside its walls. She had died in its execution yard.
And she was returning to it now.
The banner above the gate grew close enough to read.
A red eagle.
Hyderlin drew the window shut.
“We’re nearly there.”
“The thought of coming face to face with him is already exhausting.”
Sarg pressed the bridge of his nose.
He had exchanged his plain undyed tunic for a jacket with silver thread embroidery. His silver-white hair was neatly combed back; his angular jaw was clean-shaven. And on the ring finger of his left hand was the new gold band.
Hyderlin wore its match. She accepted the baby from Sarg with a small smile.
“The price of fame is learning to endure it. Try to enjoy yourself—it might be more interesting than you think.”
“I had more attention lavished on me as a child than most people see in a lifetime. I didn’t enjoy it then either.”
The carriage drew to a stop. A royal attendant came to escort them. Sarg and Hyderlin exchanged a brief glance.
“This isn’t the direction of the audience chamber,” Sarg said.
The attendant replied with practiced courtesy:
“His Majesty wishes to receive you not as subjects, but as friends.”
“What a tremendous honour.”
The attendant led them into the main residential wing of the palace—where the royal family actually lived. He brought them to a stop before the king’s private study, the room Chesa used when receiving people he considered close to him.
The attendant knocked. Permission was granted. Hyderlin and Sarg stepped inside.
The character of a king’s private study, Hyderlin had always known, depended entirely on the king.
King Edibon II—the Scholar King—had filled his with rare volumes from across the world and forbidden even his children from entering.
King Chesaleto—the Knight King—had cleared everything except military texts and used the space to display his collection of weapons.
She still remembered them: blades mounted along every wall. As a little girl she had climbed onto the Knight King’s knee and badgered him to let her touch the gleaming longswords, the elegant curving bows.
Those weapons had remained even after Chesa took the throne.
“You are the son of the Knight King,” Hyderlin had told him. “A knight’s weapons, displayed where guests can see them—that speaks for itself.”
Chesa had taken her advice. A handful of swords, a shield, and a spear had always occupied one corner of the study.
But those beautiful, terrible weapons were gone now. In their place: floor-to-ceiling shelves of books, and bottles of monastery wine, and an ornate gilded hearth, and comfortable armchairs.
A young king and his queen sat in those armchairs.
“Meeting an old friend is always a pleasure! It’s been far too long, Lord Gloriosa.”
The young king rose and greeted Sarg with a warmth that extended to an embrace.
Sarg replied in the expected manner.
“I am grateful for such a welcome, Your Majesty.”
“Ah—and Margarite, you haven’t seen Lord Gloriosa either in quite some time. Won’t you say hello? Your knight has come.”
The king guided his queen toward them with practiced gentleness. The slight-shouldered queen had been staring vacantly into the hearth. Even the act of lifting her head seemed to cost her effort.
She looked at Sarg at last. A smile appeared at the corner of her mouth—careful, deliberate, placed there by an act of will.
“Lord Gloriosa. It has been a while.”
“It has.”
It was more stilted than an exchange between strangers would have been. A hollow, reverential awkwardness hung over the room. People who had once been close, reuniting before old wounds had healed—there was nothing to be done about it.
Sarg still remembered every word of the last conversation he had ever had with Margarite.
The queen turned her gaze back to the fire. Chesa wore a smile that concealed whatever lay beneath it and spoke on with easy warmth.
“Forgive her—Margarite hasn’t been well lately. Now then, Lord Gloriosa. Will you give me the pleasure of an introduction to your wife?”
Sarg made the introduction they had agreed on beforehand. Chesa looked past him to where Hyderlin stood, a step behind.
Hyderlin, who had been looking at the floor, raised her head.
The king and his sister met eyes for the first time in four years.
The pleasant expression on Chesa’s face dissolved slowly, slowly—replaced by unconcealed shock, as if he had opened a door and found a corpse standing upright on the other side. His trembling lips parted.
Sister.
Hello, Chesa.
I have missed you so terribly much.
Hyderlin settled Princess Beronis more securely against her chest and offered the king a greeting.
“I am grateful beyond measure to have been invited to Her Highness the Queen’s birthday celebration.”
“Your voice is… different.”
There was no need to ask whose voice he was comparing it to.
Chesa, having composed himself rather belatedly, produced a sociable smile.
“I’m delighted to meet you like this.”
The king extended a courteous hand. Hyderlin went down on one knee and pressed her lips to the ring on his finger.
Sarg exhaled quietly beside her.
“Hys…”
Hyderlin glanced back at Sarg with an arched eyebrow. Chesa broke into laughter.
“Ha! Lord Gloriosa’s wife has rather knightly instincts, I’d say. Please, rise.”
Hyderlin rose, privately wondering whether court etiquette had changed while she was dead.
It hadn’t, of course. What had changed was her role.
“My lady. Your hand, if I may.”
Chesa lifted her hand and touched his lips lightly to the back of it—the proper reception for a noblewoman. Hyderlin suppressed the urge to wipe her hand on her skirt.
Chesa studied her with his coal-black eyes.
“You truly do resemble my sister very closely.”
“Your Majesty—”
Sarg moved to interject, but the king raised a hand to stop him, eyes still fixed on Hyderlin.
“If I hadn’t seen my sister’s end with my own eyes, I believe I would have taken you for her.”
The warmth of his smile did not reach those eyes. They were expressionless.
Hyderlin answered with perfect composure.
“Everyone who sees me brings up Countess Biche. I must resemble her quite remarkably.”
Chesa made no attempt to conceal his fascination.
“When Lord Petaora first described you to me, I thought he was exaggerating—it seemed unlike him. But seeing you now, I can tell he was not. I would believe you if you told me my sister had walked out of her grave.”
Hyderlin nearly brought up everything in her stomach—but showed nothing. Chesa turned his bright gaze to Princess Beronis nestled in her arms.
“I’d very much like to say hello to this young lady as well. Mac, was it?”
Hyderlin drew the baby closer.
“I apologise. She’s shy around strangers.”
The round-cheeked infant, for her part, looked Chesa over with wide curious eyes, then smiled and stretched out both arms toward him.
Hyderlin directed a silent torrent of exasperation at the baby.
Princess! Could you have any less sense of the situation?!
Chesa looked at the baby and laughed.
“Mac seems to like me. May I hold her?”
By the hearth, the queen, who had not moved since their arrival, slowly lifted her head. Her amber lashes were trembling.
Hyderlin kept her eyes off the queen and thought quickly. With three other people watching, Chesa was unlikely to do anything reckless with the baby.
“Please be careful with her.”
She handed the baby over. Chesa received her with hands that were slightly uncertain, and settled her against his chest.
“There is always something so wonderful about little ones… Margarite, look at this tiny hand.”
He brought the baby to sit beside the queen. Margarite, who had refused to face the king’s side of the room until this moment, finally stirred.
“…Lady Gloriosa. Could I… hold her too?”
Margarite, who had been watching the baby with an unreadable intensity, asked in a voice barely above a thread. Hyderlin nodded.
“Of course.”
A faint brightness came into Margarite’s face as she took the baby into her arms. Wrapped snug in her swaddling cloth, Beronis beamed and reached up with both hands. Small fingers found the queen’s cheek.
Margarite’s eyes went wide. She caught the tiny hand and kissed it softly.
“You are so very precious,” the queen whispered to the baby, her voice hushed and wondering.
“Little one. Grow strong and well. I want nothing more than to see you running and playing someday soon.”
The king watched his queen with an expression that was tender but shadowed with something uneasy. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Chesa had always loved Margarite. Had been willing to dirty his hands with darker things than he should have been, all in the name of having her.
To have gone that far—and then to destroy his own young children—
“Hys. Would you mind if I keep the baby for a little while? I can’t bear to let her go—she’s too wonderful.”
The queen’s request was tentative. Hyderlin had no reason to refuse.
“Of course. Mac seems quite fond of Your Highness already.”
Hyderlin smiled warmly and turned to Chesa.
“Your Majesty—is Princess Beronis asleep at the moment? Mac was born around the same time, and I had been hoping for the chance to meet her.”
“Ah. Beronis.”
Margarite continued to coo over the baby without responding to the question. Chesa rose from beside his queen.
He gestured for Hyderlin and Sarg to follow him and moved into the adjoining room, where he glanced briefly back through the doorway at Margarite before lowering his voice.
“This is embarrassing to admit—but I don’t know where my daughter is. My queen decided the child needed to be hidden somewhere safe, and placed her in someone else’s keeping. She hasn’t told me where. So I have no idea where my own daughter is.”
Right. That someone else is me. Hyderlin continued her performance of ignorance.
“Hidden somewhere safe? Is Princess Beronis in danger?”
From her own father’s orders to have her killed. She answered her own question silently. Chesa smiled with what appeared to be genuine discomfort.
“It’s a long story—not easy to explain in a moment. What I can tell you now is that my queen is… unwell. Deeply so. Her mind and heart are not in a good place.”
The rueful note in his voice was real enough. He looked at Sarg.
“That is why I’m so truly glad you’re here, Lord Gloriosa. With you here, perhaps Margarite will find some measure of calm.”
“…”
“It has been a long time. You’ll have much to say to each other. Please—go to her.”
“…Thank you.”
Sarg inclined his head slightly and made his way back toward Margarite. Chesa turned to Hyderlin and held out his hand.
“Then, Lady Gloriosa—shall we leave Lord Gloriosa and the queen to their long overdue conversation, and take a turn about the castle?”
Chesa took Hyderlin with him and walked.
Red tapestries hung at intervals along the cool stone corridor.
“So your name is Hys, you said… How curious—even that is close to my sister’s name. Is it your real name?”
Hyderlin answered lightly.
“It is what he calls me.”
“Ah. A name Lord Gloriosa gave you.”
Hyderlin nodded. Chesa tilted his head.
“Then your real name?”
“It is a name no one calls me by anymore. For now, I am only Hys.”
“Then I won’t press you on your mystique.”
He said it with a playful air. Hyderlin considered for a moment.
“Once, I was called Lin.”
One of the most common names in all of Lotsa.
“And your family name?”
“Verche.”
The king had placed surveillance on her. He would certainly already know that she had given the name Lin Verche to the antiquities and jewellery dealers in the gateway city. Since there was almost nothing to be uncovered through that name, she answered pleasantly.
“It is a humble family, Your Majesty—you would not have heard of them. Had it not been for Lord Sarg, I would never have had the honour of receiving an invitation from you.”
Chesa smiled with practiced pleasantness.
“If it’s your first time inside the castle, you must be curious about it. I can’t show you everything today—but I’ll take you to the places that matter most to me.”
To the left of the main wing was a modest chapel.
Small enough to hold perhaps twenty people, it was dim inside. Light entered only through the stained glass—two windows to each side, one directly ahead, five panels in total—and that was its only illumination.
“The Chapel of Saint Marcelina. Our family held services here. Even outside of regular worship days, I used to come and kneel here to pray.”
Chesa looked up at the central window.
“My sister did too.”
The coloured light passed through the glass and left pools of colour on the floor. Hyderlin looked down at them.
“Here is where she gave me her second oath of loyalty. She swore to me in blood that she would never betray me, whatever came.”
Her first oath of loyalty had been at the funeral of the late king and queen.
The second—it had been sometime after Chesa and Margarite’s wedding. Here, in this small chapel, beneath the scattered rainbow the stained glass cast across the stone floor.
An unofficial occasion.
The witnesses had been an old priest and a sorcerer.
Hyderlin and Chesa had knelt facing each other. They drew short blades and opened their palms, letting the blood well up, and mixed it into wine infused with herbs.
King and knight had shared the silver cup between them.
The liquid had burned going down—a heat that rose from the stomach upward. The wine must have been strong. It felt as though someone had pressed a hot iron inside her. Hyderlin had recited the prayer Chesa had taught her beforehand, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar words.
It had been an oath in a language that was now extinct.
“Ra bichellidi roem jemais seng.”
Something like that.
“In modern Lotsian, it would translate roughly to: My blade shall never cause your blood to flow. It’s the old knightly way of saying I will not betray you—as it was spoken in the age of the Twelve Kingdoms.”
That was what it meant. She hadn’t fully remembered.
“What makes it interesting is that the root of bichellidi—the part meaning my blade—is biche, which in the old language of the Twelve Kingdoms meant iron, sword, or knife. And the title of the countess my sister held was Biche. The Knight King gave his daughter, who had become a knight, the name that meant sword.”
Chesa smiled.
“Which means the oath my sister swore can also be read like this: I, Biche, shall never cause your blood to flow. Isn’t that rather fitting?”
He gave a small, genuine laugh. Hyderlin produced a smile. Two people’s laughter dissipated slowly into the air.
What remained was silence.
