The Hollow Heart Read online

  “I have rested enough.”

  “You didn’t answer my questions.”

  She waves an irritated hand. “The dress is a gift from your father, obviously.”

  My worry grows. “It is not obvious.” He wants her to rest as much as I do. Why would he deliver a dress to make her feel like she needed to rejoin society, and take up her mantle as queen?

  “Well, I did not order it, and he knows my size perfectly.”

  “As does every dressmaker in Herran.”

  “There was a card,” she says, but refuses to let me see it, and begins unbuttoning her dress, revealing a sheer chemise beneath.

  “You want to believe this. You can’t cope with the thought that the kingdom can carry on without you.”

  “Arin needs me,” she says, “more than ever.”

  The card falls from her hand to the floor as she reaches for the red dress and steps into its heavy circle. I scoop the card from the floor. The handwriting is my father’s, but I don’t like the words. For Kestrel, the card reads. Something you deserve.

  To me, this sounds like a threat, not a gift.

  Samples of my father’s handwriting lie all over this house—in his letters, his drafts of laws and the speeches he hates to give.

  Anyone could copy it.

  “Wait,” I say, but she is already pulling the dress up around her.

  I snag her wrist, and am glad that I am strong, stronger than my small mother, who protests even as I use my other hand to pull the dress from her grip, and let it fall to her feet. I kneel to examine the dress. I order her to step out of it, and to my surprise, she obeys, her face ashen as she realizes what I suspect—and what she, too, now suspects.

  On the outside, the dress is all scarlet beauty, the brocade intricately—innocently—embroidered. But as I bend back the fabric to study the inside of the dress, I see that the fabric is not normal, that it is thick for a reason not apparent to the cursory eye.

  Inside, the dress is embedded with tiny barbs, each smaller than a cat’s claw. I prick my finger on one of them. Numbness spreads through my skin.

  The dress is poisoned.

  THE GOD

  RAVEN NEGLECTED TO POUR FRESH water into my vase. Still, I bloomed. My petals sealed shut at night and flourished in the day. Raven added to her treasures, and I became invisible among them, an item that had lost its luster of newness.

  Until the day she decided to wear me.

  She sat before the mirror, applying cosmetics beyond her kith, braiding her hair into an elaborate, black crown suitable only for a lady. Once finished, she stared at her reflection, her admiration dissolving into wistfulness. Like Irenah, I understood: it can twist a human to long for something constantly denied, to see what others have and know it will never be yours. As Raven regarded herself in the mirror, she knew she was as beautiful as any High Kith born, but the thought filled her not with satisfaction, but the desire for revenge. She did not want to be equal to a High Kith. She wanted to be better. She wanted something no one else had, not even the most privileged of Ethin.

  Her eyes fell upon me.

  Yes! she cried, intending to weave me into her braided hair. She pounced upon me, snatching me from my vase.

  But she had forgotten my thorns.

  They studded into her fingers, my little nails digging deep enough to make her yelp.

  Raven? Irenah called from another room. Are you all right?

  Damn you, Raven hissed between her teeth, and ripped my petals from their crown. Pain shredded me. I fell apart over her dressing table, throbbing, dizzied. She bent my stem, blood running down her closed fist, and tossed me aside. I lay in so many agonized pieces that I could not think. Raven ran from the room, shoving past her sister, who had come to offer aid.

  You call that a gift? Raven sneered, and was gone.

  Irenah leaned above the dressing table. With one finger, she touched a petal. I wanted to beg her to stop. It was too much. She looked down at the small heap of my petals, soft and ruined, her ordinary face growing horrible in its expression, yet dear to me, even through my pain, because I realized that I had missed her, that the only happiness I had known in many human ages had been to rest between her fingers, to lie hidden in her pocket, to behold the simplicity of her mouth, her eyes as green as a storm. Three tears fell from her eyes upon me: one that slid down the bowl of a petal into the shape of a crescent moon, the other two beading into perfect stars. Although to her I had no feelings, no senses, no soul, she pitied me for no other reason than that it pained her to see something beautiful destroyed.

  Her tears hardened into jewels against my skin, and I was free.

  Oh, Irenah gasped as I shone forth: whole, myself, a miracle. And in the light of the divinity she returned to me, I saw the fullness of her good heart.

  I fell in love.

  Which had surely been the god of games’s design all along. I heard the god’s terrible laugh. Well played, I told that god, full of bitter desire. It is the ultimate suffering to love a mortal, whose life is as fleeting as dew upon a flower.

  NIRRIM

  I STAND IN THE GREAT dining hall of the orphanage where I grew up, where Raven abandoned me after the death of my mother, her sister. Considering how fuzzy memories are for normal humans—fragmented, half imagined, colored by the emotions of the current moment—I assume that humans do not experience the vertigo I sometimes feel when a memory rises within me, sharp and real, just as though it were still happening, and lives alongside the present. Once, I sat on that wooden stool at that long wooden table—my body small, my eyes big, my limbs as quiet as possible so that I would not get in trouble. Once, I reached across that table for my tin bowl full of rice—and, on special days, fish. A High-Kith girl sits there now, just as quietly as I did … and even more afraid.

  Even though all the girls are dressed in the same sand-colored wincey dresses, it is easy to tell the orphaned High-Kith children from the orphans who have lived here since being abandoned, as I was abandoned, in one of the baby boxes outside the orphanage’s door. My children have wise faces. My children look at me with fascination and hope, because they have already heard of my great feats.

  The other children look upon me with dread, because they have heard the same thing. They study me warily. Their gazes dart over Aden and a few godling children I have personally selected for this event. We are stunning: I in my Elysium-colored silks, the bird resting on my shoulder, Aden in cloth-of-gold, and the children in shades of the sea, to represent our triumph over the islands we have conquered to the west of Herrath.

  The headmistress claps her hands. “Children, kneel before your benefactor, our savior: Queen Nirrim.”

  They do, dropping from their stools to kneel upon the gray stone floor.

  I walk down the aisle, my silk dress hissing over the stones, Aden beside me, the godling children fanning behind. With pleasure, I note the Half-Kith children who turn worshipful eyes to me. I understand that not all the children gathered here do the same. Some of them stare at the floor. Of course they are ashamed. Their parents were traitors to our divine blood. Their parents were criminals, descendants of the acolytes of the god of thieves, who employed them to build the wall around my people and make them forget their power. These children are lucky they have been spared by my people—more, they are lucky that they have been taken from their old lives, where they would have been ignorant of their own privilege. Now, they have the chance to be part of my new world.

  I stop and place a hand on the shoulder of Tarah, the plain girl who can create beauty. Her oval face is serious, her gray eyes so pale they look like water. One might not think she would be useful in our conquest of the first island of an archipelago we learned was called the Cayn Saratu. But when our ships landed on the shore, she painted all of us with awe-inspiring splendor, so that the Caynish soldiers who had come to beat us back faltered, suddenly loath to attack. Those who would easily crush a spider will not kill a butterfly. “Show the child
ren,” I say, and her power spins radiantly from her, casting rainbows. She turns tin bowls into gold, transforms the wincey dresses into silks. It is all an illusion, and will fade, but the orphans gasp. Aden casts a shower of light over the hall, golden droplets sprinkling over everyone.

  I say, “My children—for you are all my children now, no matter how you were born—we have come with a message of hope. Would you like to be able to wield the power we do? My Elysium will discover who among you has been blessed by the gods.”

  “Oh,” a brown-haired girl says, her word a little cry of disappointment. “I wish it could be me!”

  “But it could be,” I say gently.

  “I would know if I could do something like this.” She trails her fingers through a veil of Aden’s sunshine.

  “I didn’t know,” Aden says, and although he is playing his role perfectly, his handsome face encouraging, I don’t like that he has stepped into a conversation that was mine.

  Smoothly, I say, “The ability to use magic seems to rely on you knowing that you can.”

  A small High-Kith girl places a tentative hand over her heart, the gesture all of us in the orphanage were trained to use if we wished to ask a question.

  She is not to blame for her parents, Other Nirrim says.

  I know that.

  Be kind to her.

  I have already been kind to her.

  By having her parents executed?

  For crimes they committed against us, I remind Other Nirrim. I tell her, It is a kindness to raise the girl in a new way: with the right guidance, the right ideals.

  Other Nirrim says, You sound like Raven.

  This makes me so angry that I frighten the girl by the expression that must twist across my face. It is unfair for Other Nirrim to suggest that I am manipulating truths to make everything the way I wish it to be—that I, like Raven, would punish anyone who might interfere with those lies.

  Is it unfair?

  I wipe my expression clean and smile brightly. “Yes?” I say to the High-Kith girl who wishes to ask a question.

  “When can I go home?”

  “You are home. These are your sisters. Your teachers are your mothers. And I am a very special mother to you, as your queen.”

  “But I miss my old home,” the girl whispers.

  “Your new one is better.”

  Another girl pats her chest, eager to speak. She looks typically High Kith, in that way we call Old Herrath, with thick black hair and silvery eyes. When I call upon her, she says, “Will your Elysium try me? Please? I want to see if I have magic!”

  Other girls cry out, eager for the same. I smile indulgently, and begin to speak when Aden says, “Of course, little one.” He lifts the Elysium from my shoulder, which, although it squawks, lets him handle it. Maybe the bird is attracted to his god-blood. Maybe the bird cannot help this betrayal of me, but I fume at Aden. He is supposed to be here as my second-in-command, as my loyal officer, not to speak and act as though he were my equal.

  As though he were king, Other Nirrim warns.

  In the midst of girls crying out to be first, the shy brown-haired girl, still sitting on her stool although others have leapt to their feet, places her hand again over her heart. She says, “Where are my parents?”

  I do not know, but before I can speak, Aden says, “You will see them one day.”

  This is a midnight lie, because even if her parents are dead, the girl will one day see them in the realm of the gods.

  Reassured, the girl touches a spoon, her fingers passing through the rainbow puddle that sits in its bowl, and smiles.

  I feel a twinge in my chest. The sensation is strange, because I do not think I am affected by a real feeling. Why should I care if Aden lied and the girl believed it, beyond caring that he has overstepped with me? No, it feels as though I have a muscle memory of an emotion I would have felt if I were Other Nirrim. The emotion steals over me like a phantom. My memory is so perfect that it seems able to conjure an emotion I did feel in the past, and would have felt, if I were the person I once was.

  There it is again: a squeeze between my ribs.

  Guilt.

  Abruptly, I leave the dining hall, my godlings stumbling after me as I hurry, surprised. The Elysium bird flies ahead.

  I don’t actually feel guilty. I have been tricked—worse, tricked by myself. Why must I be haunted by a shadow emotion, a guilt that isn’t even real, but only a memory of insipid Other Nirrim?

  Outside, in the courtyard that separates the girls’ wing of the orphanage from the boys’, I tell my godlings—Aden, too—to leave me alone. But while the gifted children I rescued from the Keepers Hall obey, Aden steps in front of me, his blue eyes bright—probably because he senses he has gained some advantage.

  “Stop getting in my way,” I tell him.

  “We need to go back. We are here to recruit more children to our cause. We have a job to finish.”

  “You do not command me.”

  “Because you are queen?” He draws the last word out in a sneering tone. His eyes are bright with something else now, something that looks like vengeance. “You are queen only because you say so, and enough people in Ethin agree. But not everyone does. Some people think that we would be better ruled by a king.”

  I should not have brought him to Cayn Saratu. His ability to create fire from the heat of sunlight was useful in beating back the Caynish defenses, but I am well aware of the whispers that it was he who won the battle. I should have guessed that my people, so starved of agency throughout most of their lives, would be drawn to the showy nature of his power. They do not realize how it fades quickly and leaves him exhausted, far more tired than I feel when I use my magic. If anything, I grow less tired the more I practice the skill, building my strength as though it were a muscle. But the Ward adored Aden even before I revealed the city’s past. Everyone thought he was special just because of how he looked.

  He says, “I did everything you asked, even when you treated me like your servant. I have been patient. I have helped you.”

  “Because helping me served you. Who would you be, without me?”

  “A lot happier, probably. Nirrim, you once loved me.”

  “I assure you I did not.”

  “We had something special,” he says doggedly. “You let yourself be fooled by that foreign girl, but where is she now?”

  The memory of sugar and perfume burns my tongue. Sid’s skin sliding over mine. The buttons on her jacket, her trousers. My serious little moonbeam, she called me.

  “Here I am, right by your side,” Aden says. “I have always been here for you.”

  “Yes, like a barnacle on a boat.”

  “You should reconsider how cold you are to me. How disdainful. There is something wrong with you, that you would treat me like this. No one else does.”

  “I am not to blame for the stupidity of others.”

  “Marry me, Nirrim.”

  I laugh, the sound sharp, echoing around the stone courtyard.

  He says, “I won’t ask you again.”

  “Thank the gods.”

  He seizes my wrist, his hand hot.

  “You asked me before,” I say, my voice deliberately bored. “I said no. My answer is still no, and will always be no.”

  “Because I’m not a woman?”

  “That is one of many very good reasons.”

  “It’s not normal.”

  “Well, it should be.”

  “It is against the will of the gods.”

  “The original gods are gone, and you have no idea what the pantheon believed. I am a god, and you must let me go. Find another girl to love.”

  “Oh, I don’t love you. Not anymore. I just think we should give our people what they want. You have even encouraged them to want it.”

  “A pretty tale of the perfect king and queen? That was all for show. Too bad, Aden, that I have no interest in sharing power with you.”

  His hand grows hotter. Soon, I know, he will burn l
ike a brand. “You have no choice. Marry me, or I will rise up against you.”

  He thinks he threatens me, but he has forgotten that my skin has a power of its own. I push my magic to where he touches me, and make him remember, as though it were freshly happening, all the times he kissed me and I did not like it, when I went to bed with him out of obligation, when I resented his possessiveness. His expression tightens. Then, because I feel I have not hurt him enough, I make him remember how his mother abandoned him, how she tried to leave Ethin and was executed for it. I used to console Aden, saying she probably chose not to take him with her out of fear that if she were caught, he would be punished along with her, but now I make him remember that I was not sure this was true, and that I wondered if in fact she sought to escape the burden of him.

  “Nirrim,” he gasps.

  And then, because he has threatened the only thing I care about—my rule, my mission to make the world fair for all—I torment him with a false memory of his skin so hot that it burns like flame. I turn his power against him. He cries out in agony, and drops my hand.

  “Only fools warn their enemies they are ready to strike,” I tell him, and leave the courtyard, my wide-eyed train of god-blooded children scuttling behind.

  * * *

  “My queen?”

  It is Mere, my loyal handmaiden, hands folded neatly as she waits. Other queens might have ordered their handmaidens to wear no finery, but I allow her the dresses I know she enjoys, the styling of her hair in the fashion to which she is accustomed. After all, we are friends.

  My Elysium chirps from its perch on a bedpost. This bedchamber used to belong to the god of thieves. I find it fitting to sleep here, in what used to be the Keepers Hall. If this bed was good enough for an old god, it is good enough for a new one.