Before you read: This chapter contains depictions of child abuse, including physical violence and emotional manipulation. Please take care of yourself and read at your own pace. If you’re not in a good headspace right now, you might choose to read this later.
The Supreme Assembly, held after the gates were secured, set the fate of the continent for the coming centuries. The majority of leaders voted in favour of the policies we currently uphold across every state of Fyrgen. But exceptions always exist, and Xerata has always been one. Her husband, Commander Lloyd Thrymcrag, one of the great leaders who played a prominent role in bringing newfound freedom to our continent, passed away from an ailing heart days after the war was won. Xerata did not waste time grieving as the day of the Supreme Assembly’s meeting drew near.
— The Foundation of Fyrgen Archives, The Great Hall Of Learning
She created a meticulous scroll outlining the joint vision she and Lloyd had held for the world. It was in direct contrast to what the other leaders had in mind and was thus declined. However, the fallen commander’s contributions to the continent’s fate could not be diminished, and so they granted Xerata the freedom to rule the vast north-western piece of the continent, the land where she was born, as a gift to her and Lloyd for their benevolence. She was free to run it however she wished. No policies or rules stretching across the rest of the continent would apply there.
Thus the Xerat Mountains were blessed with the eternal gift of autonomy and self-governance. But there was a condition, one promptly accepted by Xerata. Current or future rulers of Xerat would never be granted the right to participate in decisions made by the Council.
~ Kushiana ~
“The temperatures are soaring higher than usual today. Don’t you think?”
I ask Agnes, who sits perched atop the marble water fountain in front of me. After an intense training session with Hinjk, cleaning up, and visiting around seven households in the Quaser to discuss improving their living conditions, all I can bring myself to do is collapse onto the garden bench.
“The temperature is fairly regular. You must be heating up at the idea of seeing your frost nemesis later,” she says with just the right amount of teasing in her voice.
I hate that her words get me flustered instantly. An image of the towering, winter-pale prince and that infuriatingly easy smile flashes through my mind. There is nothing particularly remarkable about Caelen’s features on their own, yet somehow his face still manages to linger.
“I sincerely hope you choke on fresh worms today,” I reply as nonchalantly as possible. If she finds out it is affecting me, it will only get worse from here.
“I would say the same, but you take forever to chew through a piece of dry lamb.”
“Save some of that kindness for later, Aggy. We might need it when we cross the mountain warriors.”
“Gladly, my princess.”
I continue lying in silence for the next few minutes, the sounds of the forest, the water fountain and the buzzing of bees working as excellent inducements of an ill-timed slumber.
Katherine’s voice reaches my ears and breaks my focus. I open my eyes to find her standing right beside me. Funny, I can barely hear her footsteps sometimes. She is wearing a subtle but beautiful blue silk gown today, her hair woven into a crown as per tradition. She extends a graceful bow in greeting.
“Your Highness, I have a message from the king. He is in the privy chamber and has requested your presence. Nothing largely crucial, only that his schedule has cleared and he wishes to speak.”
I give her a quick nod and rise.
“Surely. Your agility in conveying messages is always appreciated, Katherine. You may rest. I am leaving to visit a friend after seeing Father.”
~Zir~
As soon as we are back in the manor, Uliya gives me the generous sisterly gift of forced silence, slipping into the leather sofa with a glass of wine and completely ignoring my presence. Since I have already had dinner and am the most stubborn of the three of us, I play along and get back to the codex I had to abandon earlier because of her antics. Yer and Cecil tired of us and left after ten minutes.
Around an hour later, she speaks.
“Seriously? You dragged me out of there like the fallen angel had rained the worst upon your drab manor, and now you are the one refusing to speak to me?”
She says it through clenched teeth and I finally look up from my book to offer her a look of genuine confusion.
“I am the one refusing to speak? You have made it abundantly clear through your face and posture how open you are to dialogue since we returned. What were you expecting me to do? I was waiting until you were ready.”
“Ready?” She scoffs with pure disdain. “No, Zir. I have not been ready since we came here. And you have done nothing to help me out of it. In fact you never even acknowledge it.”
I set the book down on the side table and cross my legs.
“Every time I try to bring it up you snap at me, Uliya. So tell me, how exactly am I supposed to help you through it?”
She leans back further and crosses her arms, fixing me with a look of visible frustration. The conversation is about to get significantly more complicated.
“Spoken like a good brother, Zir. You are the one, entrusted with the responsibility of looking after me for the past six years, yet you act as though I am the one supposed to initiate every difficult conversation.”
“I accept that I am not good at initiating conversations, let alone difficult ones within the family. But that does not mean I ever closed myself off to you. I wanted you to stay here with me more than anything. But the moment you turned thirteen you decided to get your own place and came up with that story about being an affluent orphan with an aunt who sees to your comfort. Do you think that did not hurt? Yet I tried to support you. I simply did not want you to feel caged here. And Uliya, do not get me started on the debau—”
I do not finish the sentence, realising too late I should have phrased it differently. She agrees, because she does not hesitate to send the glass vase beside her in the direction of my head. I deflect it with mine and it shatters on the carpet.
“How dare you. You have no idea what I have endured that shaped me this way. Just because you are still pathetically holding onto one female from your past and refusing to let anyone else in does not mean the rest of us have to live the same way.”
She is yelling now, complete resentment and rage swirling in her pale copper eyes, and I will admit it unsettles me. So I exhale and reply, “You are right. I apologise for that. It was not my place. Please sit. I am truly sorry.”
It calms her faster than I expected. She sinks back into the recliner, the last of the shadows leaving her eyes.
I give her a moment and a glass of cold water before continuing.
“We have clearly had very different experiences, and I have failed to keep up with yours the way you have kept track of mine. I admit I could have handled things better. It was wrong of me to assume you needed space when what you needed was for me to understand and speak to you. But we cannot keep fighting and shutting each other out forever. So please, talk to me.”
She clicks her tongue, unable to hold my gaze. For someone who spends most of her day communicating, Uliya goes remarkably silent when uncomfortable topics arise between us.
“I just felt like you were pushing me away. I understand that you have never liked spending time on others. Books and community work have always been your true escape, not because you despise others but because that is what you love. But what you failed to see was that…”
She looks up, a tear slipping down her cheek.
“I was not made like that. You left home at sixteen, but I was only ten, Zir. I did not know better than to cling to you. You were never cruel or absent, but you felt distant. Being your ten year old sister, my whole world was you. But as I grew older I started feeling disconnected, and came to the conclusion that you wanted to keep your life separate from mine. So I forced myself to create one of my own. And you never made much effort to reach out after I left either. I wanted to talk to our parents about it but I knew they would say it was all happening because of our decision to leave home, that we were the ones responsible for tearing the family apart. I tried to talk to Kush about it but she was already drowning in her own responsibilities. It broke me even further. I have never hated you, but I had to make you feel like I did. So the rare contact between us would not break me instead.”
Her words are so rare and so honest that I cannot help but sink to my knees in front of her. I did fail her through my ignorance. I do not interrupt her, because I know she has more to say.
“And about the women. It is deeper and darker than you think. Nobody creates an addiction overnight. Something happened that broke me. Something I could not talk about. I do not know if I still can.”
I lift her chin gently. “Of course you can. Maybe not right now if you are not ready. But I am listening, Uliya.”
She shakes her head and the crying deepens. “It is abysmal, Zir. You are never going to look at me the same way again.” I have seen her cry before, but never like this, and it unsettles me in a way she never has. Uliya always seemed the most composed of the three of us, even more so than Kushiana and I.
“I just—”
Her voice breaks on two words and I move to the edge of the recliner, pulling her into a hug. She will speak when she is ready. The best I can do is be here until then.
We sit in silence as she sobs. As heavy as this moment is, I am grateful she is finally letting herself feel what she has held hostage for so many years. My parents always considered me the closed off one, given how little I say. But it is actually Uliya, the chattiest of us, who buries her unspoken pain the deepest.
“Do you remember Apateus?”
She asks it after a long silence. I search my memory.
“Yes, I believe he was the young assistant in the treasury Father briefly appointed when we were still home. From Zephridge, if I recall. He left for Xerat later on.”
She nods, still flushed from crying.
“What about him?”
“How do you remember him, Zir?”
“He seemed a decent enough fellow. Capable, always helped around the palace beyond just the treasury. I remember Mama being appreciative of him. Kushiana and he were even pals at some point, I think. He lived in the palace for most of his tenure.”
“Since you asked. He was not polite when he told me, ‘Your father is ashamed to have you as a child. He said you are of no use to him. That you have no magical abilities or royal companion at age nine, when your siblings had theirs at five.’”
It takes a moment to comprehend the words, and then, like waves breaking against a shore, rage sweeps through me all at once.
“What?”
She nods quietly. “There were other things too. He demanded I visit him alone in the old audience chamber behind the garden through the secret passageway, many nights. He would sit on Father’s throne and decide my punishment for whatever small mistake he deemed I had made that day. Once he struck me three times across the back with a cane for spilling a spoonful of oatmeal on my dress at breakfast. Another time he made me hold my palms out flat and burnt my fingertips with candlewax for not smiling at him when he passed me in the hallway. The marks never lasted. He always made sure of that, healing every wound with magic before morning so nobody would ever have cause to ask. When Mama fell ill for a few days, he told me she was dying because I had made her run after me when I chased rabbits in the courtyard, that she had stepped on a poisonous stone that would kill her. I recall it word for word, Zir. He said, ‘If the queen dies because of you, every Fyrge in the continent will come after you with that same stone.’”
She manages to continue through the sobs, and I feel everything inside me collapse with grief for the small, sweet girl she was. The one I swore to protect the day our mother first placed her in my arms. I should have seen it. I was right there and I saw nothing. He healed every mark before I could sense a thing. I looked after her through the day and thought that was enough. It was nowhere near enough.
I do not weep. I find I cannot. What rises in me instead is a numbness, beneath which something ancient and furious is stirring.
“How dare he. That sick scoundrel. He played the part of a humble servant while doing these unspeakable things to you. I will rip the skin off of his bone—”
She scoffs and breaks into laughter, more out of bitterness than anything else.
“Can you, though? He is in Xerat now, remember? Isolated and completely protected from Fyrgen Crown Law. The violator chose a wonderful place for refuge. He left before anyone could catch him in the act. And when I finally found the courage to speak about it, I went to Father. The man I loved and trusted most. Do you know what he did, Zir?”
The answer is already written on her face but I wait for her to say it.
“He did not even register a moment of shock or anger. He said, ‘Uliya, you are so young. You must have misunderstood the playful antics of someone who sees you as a younger sister. The boy is long gone regardless. As long as he did not force himself onto you, let it go. Focus on channeling your magic so you can get your royal companion like your siblings. However late it comes. Do not seek trouble, you already have much to learn.’”
The words connect with other memories, one by one. My mother telling me Uliya was not coming out of her room and had stopped seeing her friends. My father brushing it off, saying younglings could be moody and she would come around. The day I asked her to come with Lume and me to Tyutir and she barely shook her head and stayed in bed. Kushiana telling me Uliya had asked Esmeralda, her lady in waiting, to sleep in her room every night because of the nightmares. And then…
I stand up.
“Is this why you clung to me that afternoon? Why you refused to let me leave Fyrgen without you, why you came with me immediately instead of waiting until you were older? Not because of the curse, but because of this?”
She looks up at me with glassy eyes and nods.
“Because you were the only one I trusted to keep me safe, even without fully understanding why.”
A whirlwind of grief, guilt and regret settles over me completely. I have been this wrong before, but never about something that mattered this much.
“And I failed you too,” is all I can find to say. It comes out less like a confession and more like something I am only now truly understanding.
“Not entirely. You did keep me safe. You inspired me to become my own person, supported me through more than you realise, even when you did not fully understand what I was carrying. It is not your fault you could not read my mind. I should have come to you sooner. I simply assumed everyone already knew what was happening. When he was gone and Yer was assigned to me, she was the one who told me to speak up, that what had happened was not normal. I confided in the wrong person first and refused to revisit it with Yer again after that. And because of the confidentiality bond between us, she could not pass it to your companions either.”
“At nine, Uliya. You were nine.” The words come out barely above a murmur. “I should be asking your forgiveness for the rest of my life.”
She shrugs and uses her power to float a cold glass of water across the room toward me.
“Hydrate. You look hideous when you are sad and confused.”
I take it, saying nothing for a moment as I think through what comes next when we return home. Xerata’s laws forbid us from setting foot in those peaks without her consent. Even as royalty in the rest of Fyrgen, in her lands we are bugs waiting to be crushed.
“Zir?”
“Yes?”
“I have never truly blamed you for any of it. Most of what I said came out of anger. Honestly I did not even understand the full weight of what those years had done to me until I met Liliana here. She told me about something similar her sister had faced, and that was the first time I understood that what happened to me was not something to simply carry and move past. I did not have the words for it until I was fourteen.”
I rest my hand gently on her head.
“My fault or not, I will correct it. I will find a way. His reckoning will come, I give you my word.”
She is quiet for a moment. Then she stands, meeting my eyes.
“I will be the one to deliver it. With my own sword.”
We both extend our hands and form an X with the magic rising from our fingers, binding and sealing the spell between us.
“Demiurge aid us in our quest.”
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