Soon as the carriage wheels lurched to a stop on the flagstones of the Dragon’s Crossing, war broke out between Dad and Meya.
“Go! I can handle meself. Go to him!” barked Dad as he tried his damnedest to shake Meya’s hands off him, but she latched on like a caterpillar in a storm, tears of dilemma streaming down her cheeks.
“Let’s just get to your room, alright? Lemme get you to Mum,” she bargained as Dad dragged himself through the door and down the steps. As if Freda had heard her pleas, Mum burst through the inn’s front doors and tore across the courtyard, arms outstretched to receive him.
“I’m fine, woman. Leave me!” Dad raised his caneless, Meya-less arm to bat her aside, but Mum charged right back in with revenge.
“Oh, for Freda’s sake! Forget your pride for once, you old hog!” she snapped as she shouldered half his weight with her whole. Panting under the strain, Meya gasped across to her,
“Mum, Coris’s in danger! I’ll go tell his mum then I’ll fetch a healer for Da—”
“Then go. Now!” she added at Meya’s nonplussed blinking. “I’ll call the healer. Just go, Meya!”
Sobs barely sealed behind her gritted teeth, Meya gently lowered Dad’s right onto his cane. She sprinted across the court, crashed through the doors, leapt up the stairs three at a time, landing on the second floor with a stomp. She blew down the hall and banged her fists on the Hadrians’ door. Agnes’s shrill voice called back,
“Who’s there?”
“Meya, milady!”
“Come in!”
Meya fell through. A wave of air swept over her, smelling of hot bread and melted butter. Agnes knelt before the fireplace, folding clothes and whatnot for Persephia to cram into a bundle. Arinel was on the bed, fast asleep after all the crying. The Baroness stood nearby, livid and breathing heavy, her silvery eyes glaring past Meya at the door. Meya rushed over.
“Milady, they did the vote! We gotta warn Coris! We—!”
The Baroness’s gaze remained fixed above Meya’s shoulder. Frowning, Meya spun around, just as the door closed with a slam. A tall, burly, tan-skinned man in a Corbyn Purple guard uniform stepped before it. His black hair was cropped short and well-oiled, and his face now round and unfamiliar, but she’d never miss his scars and cold, glowing green eyes.
“Gillian?” Meya breathed, utterly confounded, then turned at the new voice from behind.
“We know,” panted Persephia as she threw her weight over the folded blanket atop the bundle. She thrust her chin at Gillian, “Coris sent him back with the news. Lady Kyrel took the seat, told the king Coris has The Axel. He’s in prison awaiting judgment. Baron Hadrian’s buying time, but they might have to flee by dawn-break tomorrow.”
The lid in Meya’s midriff opened and her bowels tumbled into a void. Tomorrow. It can’t be. How could it be this soon? This was just like Zier!
“NO!” She whirled around with a scream, only to crash into Gillian’s wall of muscle and metal so hard she glanced off it like sunlight. She staggered upright, pounding her fist on his chest. “LET ME OUT!”
“He commands you all not to visit,” the dragon hissed, eyes narrowing, demanding obedience. “He has no mate, no brood—”
“HE HAS A MOTHER, DOESN’T HE!” Baroness Sylvia shrieked in retort. She stormed to Meya’s side, blood rimming her eyes crimson. “I’ll see my son, and I’ll take my maid with me if she so wishes! If you’ll not lead my way, then leave it!”
Silence fell but for the bated breaths of becoming widows. Gillian pored into their eyes, and sorrow softened his. For even a dragon had his own that he left behind.
“Yes, he does have a mother. And a mate,” he whispered finally. He turned the knob and strode out into the hallway, waiting silently as the Graye twins shoved a few more wedges of cheese into the bursting bundle then trusted it to Meya. A meager gift to send off the Baron and his heir on their voyage.
----------------------------------------
Coris was held in a cell atop a tower, much like that of Laslarein Hasif. Seeing it was just the fugitive’s mother, led by a uniformed palace guard, few batted an eyelid as Baroness Sylvia, Meya and Gillian strode down carpeted hallway after carpeted hallway to the foot of the tower.
Gillian hung back to debrief his fellow guard as Meya and the Baroness scaled the spiral staircase. After the final turn, metal bars came into view, slivers of a shock of dark hair showing between them. Baron Kellis stood before the cell, eyes locked with a younger man clad in lavish purple robes.
“Lexi? Lexi!” the Baroness sent her voice ahead of her, tripping over her dress in her haste. Meya pranced up and caught her arms. The two men spun around, eyes bulging.
“Sylvia?” breathed Baron Kellis. He and the guard hastily stepped aside as the women slid to their knees before the bars. Meya had eyes for none but the prisoner. Coris sat cross-legged on the hay-strewn stone, stripped of his Hadrian Red garb to his white undershirt and trousers. Apart from his tousled hair and the manacle on his ankle, he looked just as he always did. No injuries nor signs of struggle. His eyes widened in fear at the unexpected sight of them.
“Mother, you shouldn’t be here—” he sprang to his knees, scrabbling at the bars.
“Don’t you dare insult me with that!” snapped Sylvia. She pried her son’s hands from the cold metal and cradled them between hers, lamenting,
“Oh, your hands are frozen already.”
She lowered her lips to their joined hands, blowing warm air onto his fingers. Although Coris strove to remain stoic, he shuddered as waves of heat spread up his arms. Her heart lurching, Meya dropped her bundle to the floor and untied it with fumbling hands.
“Lexi, we got you blankets,” she rambled as she fed the thick cloth through the bars, then the rations. “Flat bread and cheese. Gotta take ’em one at a time then wrap it again yourself, I’m afraid. Got some books, if you wanna read—”
Coris took the parting gifts with slack hands, eyes unblinking, staring in bemusement at Meya.
“And who might you be, fair maiden?” he asked, his voice calm. Meya froze. She raised her eyes to his, then her heart, too, froze to ice at the empty void gazing back, swallowing her in its abyss.
“Coris?” she whispered. Beside her, the Baroness started as if she’d just noticed something. She ushered Meya aside, plunging her hands into the supplies the Graye sisters had laboriously arranged, now a miserable jumble.
“Just my maid, Haselle. Lost her sweetheart last winter. Hasn’t been right since. Poor thing,” she spoke as if Meya weren’t there, as one would when explaining away the antics of simpleminded folk, cramming a pouch of salt and books and whatnot into Coris’s hands. “Just take them. It’ll soothe her poor heart as much as mine.”
“May we continue, Baroness Hadrian?” said a deep voice behind them from the guard in purple. Sylvia stiffened, then hitched up a smirk.
“Will you not give a mother some time with her dying son?” she spited the daring man. “Or are we not human simply by virtue of being Hadrians, Your Majesty?”
She hissed, injecting a hint alongside the extra venom into those two words, answering Meya’s questions as if she’d read her spinning mind.
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Your Majesty.
Oh, goodly Freda.
Meya raised her eyes fearfully, studying the stranger she had taken to be a mere prison guard. A looming man in his early thirties, with shoulders that had carried corpses, yet his chest remained full and proud, and his eyes bright, piercing blue. Rich swirls of honey-brown crowned his head. Alden Corbyn, as young and handsome as rumored. He frowned at the Baroness as she warmed Coris’s hands against her heart, saddened by her unbridled hatred.
“Your son won’t die, Sylvia,” said King Alden, shaking his head, then motioned at Coris. “Young Corien just told me how he supports my reforms so fervently, he swallowed The Axel, hoping to bring it to me. And if it will return The Axel to Latakia, he’s ready to offer himself as candidate for surgery.”
Meya’s heart skipped several beats, before her head chided it. This was obviously just one of Coris’s mind games, made all the more convincing by the fact that Coris did in fact once supported abolishing the Ban, printing books for the commoners and all that. Yet, the king seemed genuinely moved by his passion. And it pained Meya to hoodwink him so.
“Surgery?” Baroness Sylvia raised her eyebrows. She rose to her feet, sardonic smile twisting her beauteous face further, “so you’ll allow it, now that it benefits you?”
“Of course not, Syl.” Baron Kellis stepped up to shield her in his arms, blue eyes narrowed with disgust at the young monarch. “He’ll gut our son like cattle on a hook. Claim The Axel for himself and surgery as a barbaric practice, then abolish it for good. Two birds with one stone.”
“Kellis, that is not my intention!” King Alden protested.
“Father, Mother, please!” cried Coris. He rattled the bars for attention, his knuckles white and trembling. “I’m not long for life. At least let my death serve a purpose. Let our guard end with me!”
“YOU—ARE NOT—DYING, LEXI!” Sylvia screamed.
“YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR MIND, SON!” Kellis echoed her. He spun back to the king, pleading in desperation, “my liege, can’t you see? He’s driven demented by guilt. His brain is addled by laudanum. He’s not of sound mind. He cannot consent!”
“I am perfectly sane and rational, Father,” said Coris flatly. “Occasionally more so than you, if I’m honest,” he added under his breath.
“Silence, Coris!” Kellis snapped.
“ENOUGH!” roared King Alden at last, a hand pinching the bridge of his nose. After a moment of rapid contemplation, timed by the pulsing vein in his temple, he surfaced with a sigh.
“I’ll hold court in five days’ time. He’ll be examined by a jury of the wisest philosophers, physicians and professors from our university. They will determine whether he is fit to consent, and undergo surgery.”
“Until then, he’ll be moved to a secret location. It will be well guarded, well furnished, and he’ll be warm and well-fed, to give him the best chance of survival. I will not cast the blood of the innocent upon the altar of progress.”
He declared, eyes hard and ablaze setting upon each Hadrian in turn. Yet deep down, Meya spied a well of sorrow and sympathy as he met Baron Kellis’s eyes. He, too, had a son, a little prince. Perhaps His Majesty now understood what for two decades Baron Hadrian fought so bitterly to protect. He bowed his head with another sigh.
“I’ll leave you to your farewells. Good day.”
With that, he turned and left in a flutter of purple silk. Silence clung tight until the corner of King Alden’s cloak vanished around the bend of the stairwell, then Coris spoke,
“Flawless, Father. And you, Mother.”
Meya spun around. Coris was smiling, his same old conniving grin when all went according to plan. Not a minim of the prior melodrama lingered. Baron Kellis, in contrast, remained tense.
“We bought five days. In exchange for an easy escape,” he frowned. Coris tilted his head, undaunted.
“You must’ve missed it, Father. He said I’ll be warm and well-fed.” He raised his eyebrows, silvery eyes glinting. “That means plenty of firewood, and a dozen meals at least Gillian will deliver to me. They’ll also clean and refurnish the room to welcome me. Plenty of movement he can track.”
Coris topped it off with a shrug. Baron Kellis shook his head, chuckling. Whereas Baroness Sylvia glowered in equal parts exasperation and affection at her cocky son.
The scheme unveiled to Meya then, and the clenched claws of fear over her heart unwound. Coris hadn’t meant to undergo surgery. He simply wormed himself into the king’s good graces, buying five more days of head start for Zier, and a more comfortable prison for himself while he waited. Then, when the king’s guard was at its lowest, Gillian would break him out.
The plan hadn’t changed. One way or another, this would be their last day together. This would be the last she ever saw of him in a long, long time. Or in this life. And his nonchalance insulted her.
His parents reassured, he finally turned to her. His eyes were no longer empty, but filled with longing.
“Meya,” he called. Meya raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, now you remember me,” she spited. Coris pouted petulantly.
“Come now. You know why I must act such.”
She did, so she crept forth as far as the bars would allow. He drew her in with his hand on the back of her head, kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, then took her lips between his. The bars burned on her cheeks as he bore down like waves chained, sucking all the air out of her to last him for the long voyage ahead. He set her free, yet he clung to her arm, and his fingers trailed down the curve of her face.
“I reckon this is farewell,” he whispered, his voice choked with tears. Meya shook her head, pleading,
“Lexi, please. There must be another way.” She truly meant it, this time, but Coris closed his eyes against the light, blowing it out with a sigh of despair.
“Meya, we’ve been through this.” He surfaced with a frown, his hands on her shoulders, shaking her lightly. “Have you met Graye? What did he offer?”
Meya avoided his eyes, her heart pounding. Graye’s voice whispered at her ear like Chione’s temptation.
“Nothing important,” she muttered. The furrow between Coris’s eyebrows deepened.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
There was no wriggling out of it. Meya wished she’d be bursting to share the news with him with a laugh of derision, wished she could mock Graye’s foolish, misguided attempt at humoring her, his sheer audacity, but she couldn’t. Her cheeks burned with shame, but should she be ashamed? Shouldn’t she be more ashamed she’d left her parents behind to suffer in poverty, when all this time, she could’ve asked for so much more?
A sardonic smile twisted her trembling lips. She raised her face and met his moonbeam gray.
“He offers for me to be Baroness Graye,” she said blandly. Coris blinked, eyes wide. “He’ll bring back Mum’s Song, give Dad a golden palanquin, freeman permits for all me brothers and sisters. So I can help Greeneyes without worry.”
Coris swallowed his lips. His hands trembled on her arms, and blood left his cheeks, leaving it bone-white as the day they met, months ago. Meya’s smile widened.
“But you’ll never give me those, won’t you? You had all the time in the three lands to, and you haven’t.” She hung her head, staring at the bare stones. “You have your people to feed, too. They’ll want golden carriages and servants, too. You can’t just give to me, you’ll have to give to all of us.”
Silence reigned once her bitter laugh melted into air. Over and over, Coris shifted his grasp on her arms.
“Is Farmer Hild’s hip paining him terribly?” He managed finally. Meya wiped her eyes, and he rushed to help her.
“He can barely walk without a cry. Mum’s fetching a healer for him, but I dunno if there’s anything we can do,” Meya surfaced, tears streaming down her cheeks. His restraint blown, Coris tugged her into his arms. She sobbed against the side of his neck,
“He toiled so hard, Lexi. His bones must’ve worn to nothing. I dunno how long your jewels will last us. What with me and me babe. Myron’s apprenticing. And Marin and Deke still need us. There’ll only be Maro and Marcus bringing bread in. So many mouths to feed…”
Coris smoothed his hand down her back, struggling for words to console, scattered by the sound of boots clattering up the stairs. Meya was too drained to turn and see.
“They’re coming,” said Gillian, cold and clipped. Meya’s heart lurched just as Coris’s embrace tightened in fear. He drew her back, staring her straight in the eye.
“Do you still have our contract?” Meya blinked, then her fury boiled.
“What’s that gotta do with—!”
“There’s a clause. Your reward for services rendered,” Coris cut across in a rush, rattling her for attention. “Once I’m gone, show it to Arinel. She’ll know what to do. Should give you more time to settle matters, give Farmer Hild the rest he needs. Then you and Marin can serve in Crosset Castle to help out your brothers. You can be wet nurses, even.”
Meya’s anger calmed, but her woes remained. How long would it last? What difference would it make? She’d still be a poor peasant girl, with a child born out of wedlock, fathered by a fugitive on the run. Her whole family would still be peasants, would still be poor for the seventh generation running. There was hope of ending that, but not from Coris.
As if he’d read her mind, Coris bowed low, his sigh heavy.
“You’re right. I can’t match Graye’s offer. I won’t.” He shook his head.
“Hadrian’s riches aren’t mine. They belong to the people. I spend them in their place for their good. I take as my share only what I can justify. I can’t give you a golden palanquin. What I can give is the fair chance to earn it. But if that’s not enough, then perhaps…Hadrian isn’t right for you.”
He trailed away into a faint whisper, as if he’d only just realized what this meant, what it might entail, and he was powerless to prevent. Meya sank weak-kneed onto her haunches, staring in horror at his bowed head. He was accepting it so simply.
“Aren’t you going to stop me?” she breathed. “I carry your child.”
Coris shook his head, his whole self trembling.
“You’re no fool, Meya.” He raised his face at last, his voice weary. “He’s using you to punish me. Once that’s accomplished, he’ll discard you like he did the twins. You know that.”
You could’ve just said you love me! You could’ve begged me not to leave! You could’ve married me right here, right now!
Lie to me. Vow you’ll come back in time to see the babe. For once in your life, don’t give me a choice! Chain me to you. Make me believe. Give me a shred of hope!
In her heart she screamed, as purple-clad guards arrived to join Gillian and pulled Coris from his cell. As he turned back for one last melancholic smile, one last look at her glowing green and red-gold dawn, before they shoved a black hood over his head. As they led him down the stairs by a leash tied to his bound fists, stumbling and blind.
And like so, he left her. Again. Her best friend, her beloved, her husband, the father of her babe, her Lexi. The tempest had left for sea.