I saw King Merek in the flesh, a little less than a year past, when he was still a prince. He’d been riding through my old home of Tremayne with a retinue of equally shining and proud young men. Lirys and I exchanged impressed glances, our cheeks flaming so red that my brother scowled at us, and then at the prince atop his white horse. Prince Merek was handsome, almost too handsome, his dark curls framing his face, bobbing as he nodded here and there to acknowledge those throwing flowers and coins into his horse’s path. Tregellan might have done away with its own royals, but we were happy to celebrate the future king of Lormere. He looked how a prince should look.
Before the soldiers came, I used to talk to the refugees hurrying through here on their way to Tyrwhitt. They told me how the king’s head, crowned with a crude wooden band, now sits at the centre of a row of them, mounted on spikes over the main gate into Lortune town. I know better than to be sentimental, but I can’t bear the idea of his handsome, hopeful face slack and staring over a kingdom he’ll never rule, surrounded by the heads of those who stayed loyal to him to the last. I don’t know if one of those heads is Lief’s.
I’ve asked every hollow-eyed refugee that I’ve managed to speak to if they’ve heard anything about a Tregellian being killed by the Sleeping Prince, or whether a head with hair and cheekbones like mine sits above the gates alongside the king’s. Whether they’ve heard of a Tregellian being captured and held. Or even hiding somewhere. I’ve spent hours walking up and down the length of the woods, waiting for him to come striding out, grinning manically, not even a little sorry for making me worry.
Because I can’t believe my brother is dead. Lief would have done anything to stay alive; he wasn’t the kind to throw himself on his sword. Had the Sleeping Prince told him to bend the knee to save his neck, he would have done. He’d have knelt, and bided his time until he could get out. He was clever – is clever. He must be trapped somewhere, perhaps ill, or wounded, or merely waiting until it’s safe to run.
Family first, Papa used to say, whenever we fought. He’d remind us of his grandmother spiriting her sons away from the old Tregellan castle the night the people rose against the royals and killed them. Our great-grandmother had been a lady-in-waiting of the queen, and the wife of the head of the army. When she’d heard the people at the gates, she’d abandoned her post, taken her children and run. Run from her old life to begin again in safety. Other people come and go, but family is for ever.
Lief did the same. He moved us to keep us alive. He had to go to Lormere because we had nothing. We sold everything to cover our debts when we left Tremayne. This hovel, this draughty, dirty, cramped little hut, and the apathy of our neighbours are the last things protecting me and my mother while we wait for Lief to come home. Now it’s going to be taken from us too. Now we’ll have nowhere to hide.
And we need something to hide, because when the moon starts to round out and become fat and heavy, my once-gentle, steady and loving mother turns into a monster with red eyes and hooked hands who whispers through a closed door all the ways she’d like to hurt me.
But at least when she has the beast in her she can see me. She can hear me. When she’s my mother I’m a ghost to her. Like my father, and my brother, except I’m still alive. I’m still here.
Seventeen furious villagers are on their feet, shouting and shaking their fists, some clutching their amulets, some waving them, their protests unintelligible, save for the swearing. The room, which felt so large when I first entered, now feels stifling and dangerous, and I shrink in my seat, my hand going to the vial in my pocket. The soldiers shout for order, imploring people to sit down, and to listen. Unwin is slamming his fist on the podium, demanding silence, but I’ve already tuned it all out, my ears buzzing with the sound of my own rushing blood, my fingers gripping the edge of the bench.