The Last Sanctuary
Once she had dismissed her attendants and followed him out through the corridor, a garden dense with marigolds, daisies, and rosemary came into view.
The rain-soaked plants filled the air with a thick scent of greenery. Breathing deep of that sharp, herbal fragrance, Aila turned her head and looked up at Barcas.
"What happened last night?"
At the hesitant question, the man who had been walking in silence turned his head toward her.
Aila stared into his eyes. Those pale, luminous blue irises held nothing at all. Meeting those eyes that seemed only to reflect everything back at her, she felt a fresh tightness in her chest.
Will the day ever come when I might dwell within them?
Lost in that thought, she watched as Barcas's firmly sealed lips parted.
"Nothing Your Highness need concern yourself with."
"…So something did happen, then."
Without any reply, Barcas strode into the rain-drenched garden.
Heavy raindrops whitened his broad shoulders and back. She was watching that merciless back ahead of her with a dissatisfied gaze when Barcas extended a hand toward her.
"The puddles are deep."
Grasping his meaning, Aila flushed and shot him a sidelong glance.
She had no desire to throw herself into the arms of a man who had been so unkind. And yet she could hardly leave her fiancé standing in the rain, waiting for her to approach. After a brief show of reluctance, Aila stepped toward him as if conceding defeat.
Barcas bent slightly, slid one arm behind her knees, and lifted her with ease.
Just as she had done since she was a little girl of five, Aila rested her head against his shoulder.
"You know, you have a rather underhanded streak."
At the non sequitur of an accusation, his brow lifted slightly. Instead of explaining her complicated feelings at length, Aila simply held him tighter.
Barcas wrapped his cloak snugly around her and carried her across the broad rear garden. Aila buried one cheek against his collar.
From Barcas's body came a sharp herbal scent, a faint metallic smell from his armor, and a distant fragrance like dry fallen leaves or hay. Lost in that cool scent of him, her unpleasant mood melted away as if it had never been. Aila let out a self-deprecating laugh.
How ridiculous she was, fluttering like a green girl over a gesture that, for him, was nothing more than an old habit.
The only reason this man treated her kindly was to keep a vow he had made to her mother. Kindness born of duty. Nothing more, nothing less. She knew this well, and still she could not stop her heart from aching.
You cruel man. If only you wouldn't be so gentle. Then I might have been content with a political arrangement…
She lowered her eyes in sorrow.
"I will have bathwater sent up to your chambers. Warm yourself, then rest."
Having crossed the garden in an instant, Barcas stopped at the entrance to her lodgings and spoke. Aila nodded.
He climbed the stone steps lightly and bent slightly as if to set her down.
Just then, the sky flashed, and a rolling peal of thunder crashed through the air.
Aila threw her arms around his neck by reflex.
A succession of earth-shaking booms rolled out, and golden lightning split the black clouds. Over his shoulder she stared blankly up at a scene that looked like the end of the world—and then, suddenly, a pale figure perched on a second-floor windowsill caught her eye.
For an instant she wondered if she were seeing some terrible hallucination. Aila's mouth fell open.
A flash of light laid bare a face of uncanny beauty. That pure white face, set atop a neck so slender it looked ready to snap, seemed to blaze with a chilling hatred.
It was not as though she had been unaware of her half-sister's extraordinary beauty—so why did it strike her anew with such force?
In the midst of the storm, Thalia's eyes glittered with venom, and she looked for all the world like an angel of death. At that thoroughly ominous sight, Aila held her breath without meaning to—and then Thalia, who had been as still as a statue, seized a vase from the windowsill. In the next moment, the porcelain came flying toward a pillar near where they stood.
Aila screamed.
Thanks to Barcas shielding her, she was spared a shower of shards, but a small cut appeared on Barcas's face. Aila hurriedly pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his cheek.
With his characteristic impassive expression, he took it and held it to his own face, then glanced upward.
Following his gaze, Aila found Thalia still glaring down at her, and her face hardened.
Without so much as a flicker of guilt for what she had done, Thalia sent down a piercing stare and twisted her mouth. Those blood-bitten lips looked exactly like a crushed rose.
A terror greater than anger stirred in Aila's chest. The half-sister she had always dismissed as nothing felt, in that moment, like the most ominous and threatening presence in the world. It seemed as though the evil spirit that had condemned her mother to a life of misery would drag Aila herself down into a pit of despair.
Aila shuddered at the chilling premonition.
The rain that had fallen all night finally eased only as dawn arrived.
Having spent nearly the entire night without sleep, Thalia stared out at the garden lit by the first light of day with hollow eyes.
The grass blades that had once shone so freshly now lay half-submerged in muddy water, giving off a thick, rank smell of greenery, and the flowers that had brightened the beds lay strewn about with broken necks, like corpses.
Looking down on that scene with darkened eyes, Thalia rose from the bed and approached the small table set before the fireplace.
On a silver plate, untouched food had gone hard and cold. She scanned it with indifferent eyes, then picked up the small knife resting beside the tray.
It had been made for cutting food, but it looked more than capable of slicing human flesh as well.
Thalia ran a fingertip along the sharp blade, then slipped it into the pocket of her gown and left the room.
A clammy dampness hung thick in the corridor. Moving through the sticky, heavy air as if swimming, she gripped the ice-cold knife tightly.
Her palm was soaked with cold sweat. Whether from tension or excitement, she could not tell. Perhaps both.
Moistening her parched lips, she crept up the stairs like a thieving cat.
Aila occupied a room on the topmost floor. Reaching the head of the stairs, Thalia pressed herself against the wall and surveyed the corridor, thick with darkness. Fortunately, no one stood guard at the door.
Letting out a small sigh of relief, Thalia carefully stepped toward the door at the far end of the hall.
As she drew near the iron-banded wooden door, a faint scent of herbs pricked her nose—the smell of incense burned to soothe the nerves.
Thalia twisted her mouth. So last night had not been entirely peaceful for Aila either. Recalling the face that had gone deathly pale at the sight of her, Thalia let out a soft, snickering laugh. But the scene that rose next sent her spirits plunging straight to the floor.
Her face contorted with a savage expression, Thalia thrust her hand into her pocket and seized the knife's hilt.
Her whole body began to tremble. The moment she had seen Barcas walking out through the pouring rain with Aila in his arms, she had felt something she had barely been holding together collapse in a rush.
She scrubbed roughly at her blurring eyes with the sleeve of her gown.
It had been her one and only memory.
A recollection she had buried deep in her heart for long years and taken out in secret, again and again.
Did even that memory have to be made into nothing?
Could they not have left even one thing as something special—something that was theirs alone?
Her mind seethed with rage. She knew it was an irrational feeling. And still she could not forgive the two of them.
She wanted to punish Aila for stealing even her last remaining sanctuary. She wanted to return to that man a pain equal to what she herself had felt.
Thalia forced strength into her burning eyelids and stared at the firmly closed door. Once she crossed this threshold, she would be crossing a river from which there was no return.
Perhaps history would record her as a wicked witch who had taken the life of an innocent, pitiful princess. She did not care. She was already regarded as the worst of villains. What more did she have to lose by sinking even lower?
With a hand that shook violently, she gripped the door handle.