The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [146]
“But you remember now.”
“Yes. Why did I ever forget?”
Little point in keeping secrets now, when all their old scars were being ripped open.
“I took the memories from you,” Kiril said. “From everyone. It was the only way I could think to keep your secrets. To keep you safe.”
Mathiros laughed, cold and harsh. “It didn’t work. And now she’s taken Lychandra’s face to taunt me. She’s taken my son.”
That drew Kiril’s head up. But of course Phaedra wouldn’t abandon her plans just because he wasn’t there to help her. She was stubborn as Mathiros when she chose to be.
“I’m sorry,” Kiril said with a sigh. The honesty of it surprised him. “I’m sorry that Lychandra’s memory is tangled in this mess. And I’m sorry for Nikos. It’s you Phaedra means to destroy—Nikos merely has the misfortune of being too close.”
The king flinched at the sound of her name. “And isn’t that an irony, that Nikos and I might ever be too close. How long have you known?”
“Long enough.”
“This is treason. I could have you killed.”
“It is, and you can certainly try.”
Their eyes met, and it was Mathiros who broke. The king had never been one for cowardice, so he must still have a sense of shame. He stepped around the desk, leaving the sword where it lay. “Where is she?”
All Kiril’s anger was spent, only the bitter lees remaining. Just as he’d promised Isyllt, there was no satisfaction in any of this. “She lairs in the ruined palace. I imagine she’s waiting for you already.” He turned, infinitely weary.
“You can’t leave,” Mathiros said, entreaty threading the words. “Me, perhaps, but not Nikos. This isn’t his doing.”
He thought of Nikolaos, and of his own father, nearly forgotten after so many years. “Sons should never suffer for their fathers’ sins, and yet they always do. I’m sorry for that as well, but I have no service left to offer you. Goodbye, Mathiros.”
The door shut behind him, and with its echo he felt the sundering of thirty years. Not even the moment he broke his vows had felt so final.
He wrapped a shadow around him to avoid the inquisitive staff and turned toward the stables. He hesitated for a moment, and nearly laughed at himself. After all his great betrayals, the thought of stealing a horse gave him pause. But he needed to be gone, and that was the fastest way to do so.
It had begun to snow. Fat flakes snagged on his cloak as he crossed the courtyard. The first snow of winter. If it didn’t melt, it might last clean and untrampled till the New Year, when children would build forts with it.
Then the wind changed, carrying whispers of rage and blood and distant torches, and he knew the city wouldn’t stay clean.
Kiril paused in front of the stables—he’d thought to beat Mathiros there, but others had beaten him in turn. The princess and the pallakis Savedra waited in the courtyard while Captain Denaris gathered horses. Isyllt was with them. Riding after Nikos, through whatever chaos Phaedra had wrought in the city.
Isyllt lifted her head, scenting the night, and glanced unerringly toward him. She stood straight and slender as a blade, and the wind unraveled her braid in black ribbons. Through snow and shifting, torchlit shadows her eyes met his, and he felt the weight of her name on his lips.
She turned from him, the shape of her shoulders a shutting door.
CHAPTER 20
Isyllt had no time to regret walking away from Kiril; as soon as they neared the palace gates she knew something was wrong. A moonless night, but snowlight washed the sky soft and grey as a mourning dove’s breast. Except to the east, where clouds seethed red and angry. Something was burning.
“Don’t go out there, ladies,” called a guard at the gates. “Oldtown is rioting.”
“What happened?” Isyllt asked, drawing rein. Her gelding, a compact warmblood, responded easily. These were the same sort of horses the Vigils used, bred to be nimble on city streets, and unflinchingly calm above