A Taste of Mourning
The castle was silent.
Everything had been swallowed in black—black curtains, black hangings, black dresses. Beyond the veils of mourning, small voices whispered.
Nina let the words out under her breath.
"Sitting there talking bullshit."
Adrian, reading by the window, looked up.
"Nina. Are you going to keep talking like Jin?"
"But they are talking bullshit."
Each time she spoke, her breath fogged white, though they were indoors. The room they had been given was a drafty corner, and not a single stick of firewood had been spared for them.
Adrian smiled.
"It is true that I'm a bastard."
"Just because it's true doesn't mean they have to keep chewing on it. And is it our fault that woman's son died?"
Nina grumbled. Her hair was neat enough, thanks to Adrian's trimming, and that was the whole of it. Cut a little short of her shoulders, swimming in a uniform she had folded and pinned to make it fit, she looked for all the world like some penniless boy squire.
They were attending a funeral.
No—attending was far too active a word. They had drifted at the edges of it from beginning to end, and had nearly been refused even a place among the family.
The Duke of Rubuaene had three sons: Adrian, the bastard, and Gerald and Jayden, born of the Duchess. Bastard though he was, the Duke had acknowledged him, so Adrian held a claim to the succession as well—though only behind Gerald and Jayden, whose claims came first.
Today was Gerald's funeral. Nina knew perfectly well what the Duchess might do, having lost her eldest. She was here to stop it.
Adrian, her childhood friend and captain of the knights, wore the same untroubled face as ever, whatever he was thinking. She knew that steadiness was his virtue. It worried her all the same.
Like this, how's he ever going to survive a world so cruel?
He had sent their comrades, Jin and Kirill, and the vice-captain, Louis, back the day before. The border of the Purple Forest could not be left unwatched for long. He had meant to send Nina back as well, but she had simply lain down and refused to move. With the look of a man who knew there was no help for it, Adrian allowed her to stay.
A knock came at the door.
"Come in."
At Adrian's word, Nina crossed the room and opened it.
A servant had come—of all things. From the day they arrived, not so much as a nose had shown itself, and they had been left to ask after every appointment and hunt the castle on their own. Jin, a former mercenary with a temper like wildfire, had nearly struck one. And now a servant came looking?
"The Duchess requests that you take tea with her."
It was not an invitation one could refuse.
Nina snorted. Invisible until this moment, and how promptly he appeared when it suited them.
"Fine. We'll get ready—"
"She summons you at once."
Nina's eyes narrowed. She planted her feet wide, ready to give him a piece of her mind, but Adrian closed his book and rose.
"If she's in such a hurry, we ought to go to her at once. Nina, if I told you to stay here..."
At the look on her face, he smiled bitterly.
"You wouldn't. All right."
He nodded. Nina stuck close at his back, and the servant said nothing of it.
The deeper they went, the brighter the castle grew. It had been so long since Nina had come to Silver Lake Castle that the corridors muddled her a little. Her breath no longer fogged.
By the time they stepped into the Duchess's tea room, the air was almost too warm.
The Duchess did not rise to receive them. She wore black mourning and a necklace of black pearls, her skin blanched to a bloodless pallor, but her expression, set against that pallor, was gentle.
"I offer you my greetings, my lady."
Adrian bowed with careful courtesy. His black hair slipped softly forward.
"Sit."
When he had taken his seat, the Duchess poured the tea with her own hands.
Nina stepped forward. As always, she meant to do the food tasting—to see whether poison had been slipped into the cup.
"It's all right, Nina."
In a voice soft as singing, Adrian stopped her and took the tea.
"I've been thinking, these past few days. About us. Gerald was such a clever child, and so beautiful."
The Duchess's words never reached Nina's ears. Her eyes were fixed on Adrian's cup alone.
This is it.
This. It has to be. And if it isn't—that doesn't matter.
Nothing goes into Adrian's mouth unless it goes through mine first!
As Adrian lifted the cup, Nina took it from his hand as if snatching it. Lukewarm tea splashed her fingers. She drank it down in one swallow.
A raw, bloody scent curled at the tip of her nose.
"Nina!!"
Adrian went white and lurched to his feet. The chair crashed over behind him.
For an instant it felt as if fire had caught inside her stomach and her throat. Nina clapped a hand over her mouth. She could not stay upright. Blood kept spilling between the fingers pressed to her lips.
It hurts.
It felt as though her insides were melting. She collapsed where she stood.
"Nina, Nina!"
Not even a beast dragged to the slaughterhouse would have screamed as Adrian did then.
"Kkh—khk..."
Spitting blood thick with clots, Nina could not believe it.
He drank this. How did Adrian survive?
Adrian gathered her into his arms and looked around.
The servants stood in their ranks with smooth, untroubled faces, as if nothing at all had happened. The one beside the table brought a fresh cup and set it down. Languid, the Duchess filled another.
"Come now. Leave that rude guard where she is, and have another cup."
Soldiers seized Adrian's shoulders with brutal hands. They meant to force him back into the chair.
He ground his teeth and held Nina close. When he felt the gasping breath in his arms begin to fade, fear took him. He had never been this afraid. He had never been this angry.
He surged to his feet, and the shadow rose with him. The soldiers screamed.
Beneath his feet, darkness took on a will and faced his enemies. It was an uncanny sight. From the face that had always worn a smile, every trace of one was gone.
"Get out."
The words were mercy, not a threat, but no one there understood them. The soldiers drew their swords instead. To level a blade at Adrian, who held an open claim to the succession, was treason. No one thought of it that way. Neither did he. He ignored them and ran.
"Darkness—tear every last one of my enemies apart."
⟨ Incantation ⟩
The spirit of Darkness carried out his incantation with perfect fidelity.
Screams and shouts tangled together. Stabbed, their foe took no wound; slashed, it would not part. In the spirit's touch there was neither feeling nor mercy.
Leaving the reek of blood behind, Adrian only ran. In a moment he was down at the stables. He dragged a horse out by force, swung up, and drove in the spurs.
To Nina, cooling in his arms, he begged.
"Nina, don't do this to me. I'm asking you. Please—I'm begging you."
She wanted to see his face, but her eyes would not open. She could not move so much as a finger.
Fire and ice were fighting inside her. Everything was growing cold, and slow. She had no thought of resisting it. The ice within her was desperate to keep her from the flame that meant to burn her away.
Her spirits, North Wind and Frost, strained to slow the poison as it spread.
Savoring the feeling of sinking slowly beneath a glacier, Nina drifted, dreamlike, into a scene: the moment the memories of the other world had come back to her.