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There are no quiet places left in the world. We destroyed them long ago, and I helped. A choice I’ve long since come to regret. Even now, as I shed my clothes to bathe, my head hums with factors I haven’t accounted for, gentle nudges from a mother who knows better than to let me rest.
Perhaps I should’ve built a silent stone bathtub.
Son.
The tub fills the air with steam and white noise, rippling as I dip my toes. The water chills, on the verge of solidifying before I draw back. I’ve forgotten how cold I’ve let my body become.
Cold numbs. Cold kills. Cold–
“Keeps people from getting too close,” I mutter. I’ve known this for years, ever since Thomas turned to ash beneath my fingertips. If only Mare were so easy to kill.
There’s nothing stopping you.
A bitter laugh escapes as I force my skin to a boil, bubbles drowning out any lecture I might’ve endured. Tomorrow, I will be married.
Tomorrow, I will have a wife.
But today is not tomorrow. Today I can pretend tomorrow will never come, that I may kiss a bridesmaid instead of the bride, soak myself in sorrow until the dread threatens to drag me under.
Foolish.
Perhaps.
There’s a knock at the door, a sentinel reckless enough to startle me from my haze. He clears his throat. “Mare Barrow requests your presence.”
At this hour? The nerve.
Send her back.
“Let her in.”
Court taught me what it means to be beautiful. What it means to cloak yourself in silk, to deem jewels worthy of hanging from your neck. Beauty is strength. Beauty is power. Beauty is clean, refined, cultivated through discipline and centuries of fine breeding. It is not something we are trained to look for in Reds.
Yet I cannot stop staring as she makes her way forward, shutting the door behind her. Her clothes are casual, an insult. I drink them in like a man starved. “I’m busy.”
She stares back. “You didn’t have to let me in.”
“Yes I did.” Mother begs to differ. “What do you need?”
Mare pauses. “Evangeline dragged me here.” I don’t miss the snarl she attempts, feeble and half-hearted. “I don’t want anything from you.”
Of course. “Evangeline.” I tip my head back, chuckling. “My sentinels are cowards.”
I should tell her to leave. Let her whither in her room where I’ll never see her again, not even as a corpse. “She brought you here to convince me.”
“Convince you?”
“Marry Iris, don’t marry Iris.” My grip tightens to a vice. “She certainly didn’t bring you here for a tea party.”
Mare shrugs. “No.” The word is a sigh, meant for someone I can’t be.
“She thinks what I feel for you can cloud my judgment. Foolish.” I keep myself cold so no one will touch me. Mare is no exception.
She flinches, and my mind goes white, reminds me I am poison, poison, poison, unlovable but through eternal deceit. Yell at me, I want to scream. Hit me, curse me, stab me–anything but that.
But I have more sense than that. Sense enough to not come closer, to refrain from comfort I have always failed to deliver. “Heard you started smashing things again.”
“You have bad taste in china.”
The smile comes before I register it, staring at the ceiling so I can pretend she smiled back. Slivers of my body rise above water, and a part of me wonders if she cares. “The wedding is tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t know?”
“How would I? I’m not exactly kept informed.”
I force myself to shrug. “Yes, well, I didn’t really think you were going to start breaking things over me, but . . . “ I can’t stop staring. “It felt good to wonder.”
Several seconds pass.
Mother fills them with commands, orders to stop wasting time and dismiss already. She doesn’t love you . I almost laugh. She never did. Never will.
Mare finds her voice. “Do you like Iris?”
My hand rakes through my hair, pulling. “As if that has anything to do with it.”
“Well, she is the first new relationship you’ll have since your mother died. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays without her poison in you.” My head moves, a nod that nearly slides to a head shake. She’s still here, I almost whisper. She’s been listening the whole time.
“And you were betrothed two months ago,” Mare continues. Her fingers drum at her side, and I want to kiss them. “It seems fast, faster than your engagement to Evangeline at least.”
I huff. “That tends to happen when an entire army hangs in the balance.” Water drips from my fingertips. “Lakelanders are not known for their patience.”
“And House Samos is so accommodating?”
My flamemakers spin around my wrist, light catching from all directions. “They have their uses.”
She shrugs. “I thought Evangeline would’ve turned you into a pincushion by now.”
Snort. “If she kills me, she loses whatever chance she thinks she has, however fleeting. Not that her father would ever allow it.” One of his few redeeming qualities. “House Samos maintains a position of great power, even if she isn’t queen. But what a queen she would have made.”
“I can only imagine.” Mare shudders.
“I can’t.” A confession, meant only for her. “Not really. Even now, I only see her as Cal’s queen.”
“You didn’t have to choose her after you framed him–”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly choose the person I wanted, could I?” The air grows cold, stops me from kissing her as I did in the throne room. From admitting I’d have chosen her a thousand times, had she only given me the chance.
She cloisters herself in the corner, staring at the window as if it might open. “You threw me into an arena to die.” A dagger. “You keep me chained in your palace, guards watching day and night. You let me waste away, sick–”
“You think I enjoy seeing you like this?” Something in me breaks. “You think I want to keep you a prisoner?” A hitch in my breath. “It’s the only way you’ll stay with me.”
Mare halts, eyes frozen. “You tried to murder everyone I care about. You killed children.” I don’t remember her laughing like this, a sharp keen more suited to a dying dog. “Because of you, my brother is dead.”
“And you killed my mother. You took my brother. You took my father.” The words ooze like pus from an infected wound. “The second you fell into the world, the wheels were in motion. My mother looked into your head and saw opportunity. She saw a chance she had been looking for forever. If you hadn’t–If you had never–” My mouth wires shut, protects me from my own reckless truth. “I don’t want to know what would’ve been.”
“I know.” She comes closer, close enough I could hold her face in my hands. “I would’ve ended up in a trench, obliterated or torn apart or barely surviving as the walking dead. I know what I would’ve become, because a million others live it.” I nearly expect her to spit. “My father, my brothers, too many people.”
"Knowing what you know now . . . would you go back?” A dangerous question, one I can’t help but ask. To learn if she, too, fears falling into darkness. “Would you choose that life? Conscription, your muddy town, your family, your river boy?"
"No.” The word is soft, light fading at dusk. Her hand closes around the side of the tub inches from my own. “No, I wouldn’t.”
I look into her eyes. “Those who know what it’s like in the dark will do anything to stay in the light.”
Mare scowls. “Don’t act like we’re the same.”
“The same? No.” I shake my head. “But perhaps . . . we’re even.”
She jolts. “Even?”
In pain, in sacrifice, in the lengths we’ll go to avoid becoming Nothing. “I used to ask Jon if he could see futures that no longer exist.” Her eyes grow hungry, though they remain distant. ”He said the paths were always changing. An easy lie. It let him manipulate me in a way even Samson couldn’t. And when he led me to you, well, I didn’t argue. How was I supposed to know what a poison you’d be?”
“If I’m a poison, get rid of me. Stop torturing us both!”
“You know I can’t do that, however much I may want to.” My chest burns of ash and blood. “You’re like Thomas was. You are the only person I care about, the only person who reminds me I am alive. Not empty. And not alone.”
I can’t read her expression and I don’t want to, content to stew in my own cursed nostalgia. “Jon would not tell me about the dead futures–the ones no longer possible. I think about them, though.” The words come unbidden. “A Silver king, a Red queen. How would things have changed? How many would still be alive?”
Mare frowns. “Not your father. Not Cal. And certainly not me.”
Mother echoes her, and I scowl. “I know it’s just a dream, Mare.” The words are sharp, an unwanted correction. “Any window we had, however small, is gone.”
“Because of you.”
“Yes.” I burn, soft and slow, a candle collapsing at the quick. “Yes.”
There is one quiet place left in the world. One nestled in the gap between dream and reality, where life is but a nightmare and my hands are not my own. One where I can ask a question I’ve always wondered.
Where the only sound is my flamemakers rolling on the ground.
Her fingers twitch. I won’t fight her. I won’t cry for help, so long as she stays with me til my last breath. So long as she burns as deeply as I do.
I won’t go alone. Not again.
Live with me, or die with me. Your choice.
In the distance, Mother screams, some headache I haven’t the care to focus on. What is pain, afterall, but an excuse for cowardice?
She hesitates.
Mother seizes her chance. If you die, Cal will pluck the crown from your corpse.
I sit upright, would’ve grabbed my flamemakers were I not bare as a babe. “You’ll be one of Iris’ ladies tomorrow. Enjoy yourself.”
Another wince, emptier than the last. I stare at the ceiling. “There’s the door.”
Mare lingers, a ghost, looking back even as she shuffles towards the exit. Mother screams for her to leave already, and for once I find myself agreeing. I stay in the tub long after the water has gone cold.
And I find a quiet place in the words we never spoke.