The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,98

verses, and I paused to drink some of the wine that Sven had poured me.

For the Dragon will conspire,

Wearing his many faces,

Deceiving the oppressed, gathering the wicked,

Wielding might like a god, unstoppable,

Unforgiving in his judgment,

Unyielding in his rule,

A stealer of dreams,

A slayer of hope.

Until the one comes who is mightier,

The one sprung from misery,

The one who was weak,

The one who was hunted,

The one marked with claw and vine,

The one named in secret,

The one called Jezelia.

“An unusual name,” Merrick said. “And if I recall correctly, it’s the princess’s name as well.”

I looked up from the page, wondering how he knew.

“The marriage documents,” he explained. “I saw them. You probably never even looked, did you?”

“No,” I said quietly. I had signed and ignored them, just as I had ignored her note to me. “But I’m told these are only the babblings of a madwoman?”

He pursed his lips as if thinking it over. “Could be. They’re certainly cryptic and odd. There’s no way to know for sure. But it’s curious that a madwoman could accurately describe such specific things thousands of years ago. And the brief Morrighese notes that were tucked in with it confirm it was uncovered more than a decade after Princess Arabella was born. Early nomadic text in Dalbreck’s historical record suggested something similar, in nearly identical phrasing—from the scheming of rulers, hope would be born. I always assumed it meant Breck, but perhaps not.”

The steadiness of his gaze told me more than his commentary. He believed every word.

I felt a beat like a warning, the juddering that crawls through your bones when a horse is galloping toward you.

“There’s a little more on the next page.”

I looked down at the papers and shuffled the top one aside. There were two more verses.

Betrayed by her own,

Beaten and scorned,

She will expose the wicked,

For the Dragon of many faces

Knows no boundaries.

And though the wait may be long,

The promise is great,

For the one named Jezelia,

Whose life will be sacrificed,

For the hope of saving yours.

Sacrificed?

This Lia had never shared with me.

Had she known all along?

Rage shot through me, and right on its heels, gutting fear.

It is true, Rafe. Every word is true.

I stood and walked to one end of my chamber and back again, circling around my desk, my head pounding, trying to make sense of it. Betrayed by her own? Beaten and scorned? Sacrificed?

Dammit, Lia! Damn you!

I grabbed tomorrow’s schedule and threw it against the wall, papers flying to the floor.

Merrick stood. “Your Majesty, I—”

I brushed past him. “Sven! I want General Draeger in my chamber first thing in the morning!”

“I believe he already has—”

“Here! By dawn!” I yelled.

Sven smiled. “I’ll see to it.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

KADEN

I used to go to market with my mother. Isolated on the estate, I didn’t get to see much of the world, so the market was a place of wonder to me. We traveled on this same road in the wagon with the cook. My mother bought supplies for my lessons with my half brothers—paper, books, inks, and small bags of candied peels as rewards for a week of diligent study.

She always bought something just for me too. Strange small gifts that fascinated me—trinkets of the Ancients that had no purpose or meaning anymore, thin shiny disks that caught the sun, brown coins of worthless metals, battered ornaments from their carriages. She told me to imagine their greater purpose. I kept them on a shelf in the cottage, carefully arranged treasures that held my imagination and took me to places beyond the grounds of the estate, objects that grew in wonder and helped me imagine a greater purpose even for myself—until one day my eldest brother snuck into the cottage and stole them all away. I caught him just as he was dumping them down the well. He wanted me to have nothing. Less than I already did.

It wasn’t the last time I cried. A year later, my mother died.

Less was all I’d ever had, or been. Even now. I was nothing. A soldier without a kingdom, a son without a family. A man without—

The day Lia and Rafe had parted churned in my thoughts again, as it had so many times before, like a piece was missing, something I didn’t understand. When she’d left Rafe to join us on the trail, her face was like a piece of stone sculpture with a thousand tiny cracks in it, a sightless stare, her lips parted, frozen the same way a statue might be. In the past months, I’d thought Lia had