At the bottom of the valley, backlit by firmament, the hill was a mass of black. Leander shaded his eyes from the halo of sun. The hilltop ushered him. Crests of grass rippled down the acclivity. They knelt as he approached. No one in the kingdom showed him so much respect.
Marigold lagged behind. She lifted her skirts to her knees. Her turnip-shaped face was beet red and glistening. Leander feared his governess might collapse. They were both properly drenched; he had sweat through his tunic by the first hill. By the fourth, it was off his back and tied to his waist. Marigold would’ve scolded him for his improperness, if she could speak through her panting. There wasn’t a single formal Aedenian garment suitable for this weather. She suffered endlessly because of it, but the prince would be damned to suffer with her.
The governess battled with inanimate adversaries at the bottom of the last hill. The tall grass and mud were a worthy opponent for both of them. Leander’s battle was nearly won. He was three-fourths up the incline and crawled the last quarter. Marigold’s heeled boots sank into the earth. She was losing at every step. She blamed the shoes, the mass of skirts, and the dewy path for slowing her down, but never the true cause, her age.
Leander gripped the grass on the hill like the reins of a saddle. He anchored the soles of his feet into the tops of his shoes. Canyons of creases were carved into the leather. The glue holding the soles struggled. They were meant for ballroom dancing, not hill climbing.
He turned to tease Marigold. He had a childish tendency to mock her old age any chance he got. His heels lost traction, and he dug his nails into the hillside. She chuckled below him. She was a healthy third up the incline, and unlike the prince, upright. Her cheating was blatant. She ushered a mound of earth at her back that kept her straight and pushed her, albeit slowly, the rest of the way. Leander gathered himself and scurried to the top of the hill before he let the croon catch up with him.
He slipped into the force around the grave. The temperature dropped, and his stiffened body unraveled. Marigold’s magic kept the gravesite suspended in spring. A chiliad of fragrant spring flowers cushioned the hilltop. The lime-colored grass was as soft as southern silks. Leander buried his face in the earth, as delightful as the cold side of a pillow, absorbed the sweet scent. He prayed he’d die there beside his sister. He couldn’t imagine a more pleasant moment.
The princess was born during a carnassial spring. She was a fickle, temperamental season. For every precious sun-kissed day, the rain gnawed at the earth for a week straight. On the princess’s birthday, the sky was especially furious. The maid’s quarters were flooded, and Leander couldn’t train in the yard for a week without leaving with two shoe fulls of mud.
A chantepleure of wails, rain, and brontide resonated through the halls. The tripping raindrops were a lullaby to the princess. She slept straight through the chaos it caused.
Leander was freighted with the memory. He hated the rain before she was born. He loathed it after her death.
The air grew balmy, as if the gravesite might conjure a cloud and cry to spite him. The weather wouldn’t falter without the governess willing, but he flipped over to be sure. The sun winked at him. The field of magic marbled the blue sky with shimmery veins of light.
Leander forced himself to stand. He squinted into the distance. With not a single cloud in the sky, Lapis was visible. Only the rooftops. They were the most Leander saw of the city. He tried every visit to see past them. He never could. The gamey taste of longing coated his mouth.
Death can’t be too awful, he thought, Curses don’t matter. And I bet the view’s nice, eh? Leander tangled his fingers in the flower stems to hold his sister’s invisible hands. It’d been two months since his last visit and two months since Leander even stepped outside. She must’ve been lonely.
“Vines again,” Marigold knelt beside the spire. The pair were shoulder-to-shoulder. Leander did not notice the woman reach the top. She clipped away the vines with a pocket knife. Leander preferred to visit alone, but despite every protest, she joined him. Alone, he could nap in the cushion of petals for hours and relive the late nights his sister crawled into his bed to sleep.
“S’no use,” Leander watched her cut the vines hundreds of times. They’d be back by dusk. They could trek to the hilltop every day to snip away the relentless weeds, and it’d be pointless. They wormed around Leander’s loafers after long naps in the bramble. There was no stopping them from devouring the marble spire. Leander suspected the vines were sentient or somehow cursed, but by what magic? Marigold’s contempt for them suggested it wasn’t her’s. When he shared the thought with Marigold, she told him to stop reading his sister’s storybooks. Gods used to roam Thrae, but sentient vines? Those were absurd.
Leander shook his head at the governess. She really was too weary to travel all this way, magic or not. Her spine was as crooked as the spire. Her thick skirts took a few flowers when she stood. He observed the damp green hems. She hadn’t complained about all the laundry she’d have to do. She was acting strange, he decided. She was too quiet.
Marigold flicked her skirts behind her and buried her knife in its hidden pocket. She’d sewn the pouch herself. Pockets were a masculine clothing feature, too virile for a ladies’ silhouette. Most noble women in Faden never touched a knife outside the dining table. As much as Marigold scolded him for boorish behavior, she was far from exemplary at formal etiquette.
She gripped her necklace. Her other hand rested on Leander’s head. Her fingers trailed the black twine, stopping to hold the smooth iridescent stone. She rubbed the surface between her fingers to summon comfort. She wordlessly stared at the stone. Her gaze so intense, Leander wondered if she thought it might run off when she wasn’t looking.
Her necklace came from the Glade. Leander learned all he knew about the Glade from books in the library. Marigold never discussed the Glade. “Against her vows,” she claimed. Ironic, Leander thought. She abandoned the Glade mere months before her eighteen birthday. Marigold wasn’t a Maiden. She hadn’t been for decades now. She was a royal governess and a Courtfane mage, on the cusp of being a noble.
Most books in the library described the Glade, and the other sanctuaries across Faden, as cults. In reality, the Glade was a haven from patriarchal society; a place where Maidens could live their youth in peace until the curse took them. To Leander, Divin was more a cult than the Maidens, with all its senseless rules and rituals.
Marigold’s sigh took him from his thoughts. When she felt solemn, instead of weeping, she held the stone. She held the hands of the family she lost, consoling her maiden heart. She held Leander’s head and the stone the same way five years ago. They dug his sister’s grave themselves. The king refused to prepare a burial of any kind, lest he acknowledge her existence.
Painted with earth, they crawled up the hill and clung to each other. Leander cried until his head spun and the spire turned eidolon, but she didn’t cry back then. She carried his sister’s corpse on her back for miles, and she didn’t cry. She clenched her heart and kept Leander close.
“Wear a different face,” Marigold’s fingers stiffened on his head. He knew what she would say next and braced himself for it, “The king’s countenance doesn’t suit you.” He rubbed away his expression. The furrows in his forehead unraveled. The past few years felt like a carousel. He’d been in the same moment hundreds of times. Marigold compared him to his father, and his reaction remained the same.
“Can ya blame me?” Leander locked his jaw. Marigold grabbed the prince’s chin and shook his head.
“And speak properly,” she ordered. Leander fired his etiquette tutor three months ago when he’d finally had enough of her. The King knew the prince could speak as properly as any other. He simply chose not to out of spite. The baroness was merely there to return the favor. Marigold, apparently, was her replacement. The woman was truly a jack of all trades.
“Must you be so fastidious? We’re far from the king’s ears.”
Marigold ruffled his hair. He jerked Marigold’s hand away. With the governess around, he’d never grow up, but her coddling was an integral part of his idle lifestyle. He was slow to rid himself of it.
Leander and Marigold were the only ones who acknowledged his sister’s life and subsequent death. Ordered by the king, everyone pretended she never existed. Rumors became dust settled. She wasn’t even mentioned in whispers. All the rumors Leander heard were ones he knew to be false. The king had keener ears than most. Any mention of the princess, the late queen, or the prince’s curse would get a maid’s tongue cut out. That wasn’t a rumor. Leander saw it happen.
Boys don’t have curses, the words beaded like blood along a shallow laceration. He remembered them every time he visited the grave. The irony of them weighed. Marigold slid her hand to his shoulder. He’d said the words out loud. She pulled him into her as close as her plume of skirts allowed. Lavender and rosemary smothered him.
Leander was born as normal as any Diviner’s son. He bore the Diviner’s blood, but he was still a human man—bereft of magic, including curses. The princess’s death was a catalyst, according to Prelate Russe, for the prince’s curse. The Prelate claimed the curse was an omen from the dead gods. Leander hadn’t forgotten the Prelate’s words: He’ll destroy the Veille line, Telios. Fate has spoiled the purity of the Diviner with Muiridi blood.
With that supposed prophecy, the Prelate and the Courtfane were permitted to conduct a plethora of bizarre exorcisms on the young prince. In silence, he still hears the archaic chants in the back of his mind.
Leander longed for his sister’s life, for reasons beyond just missing her. He begged the Courtfane to resurrect her with the immeasurable magic they were supposed to have. A selfish part of him yearned to be normal again. He didn’t care what fate his sister might’ve faced if she’d lived.
“Leander,” Marigold whispered. Leander reddened. He lost himself in thoughts and was tangled in Marigold’s dress. He didn’t want to break apart from her, but he was nineteen. He shouldn’t cling to her like a child. “We can’t stay here much longer.” She was right, but Leander’s mind was filled with stones. Lugging himself up and down the hills sounded impossible.
To the hilltop, he was a magnet. Marigold would never let him, but all he wanted to do was curl his body around the spire and rot away.
He whispered back, “A bit longer. He won’t notice.” He never asked for more time, despite the achey pull in his chest, but he couldn’t unbury his thoughts.
“He knows we’re moping around the pasture.”
“You told him?” Leander chewed on the inside of his lip. Marigold, despite everything that’s happened, was a rule follower by nature. He tried to reign in every rebellious instinct. She was the one punished when he disobeyed.
“Not wise to lie to the king,” Marigold avoided Leander’s eyes. Her pursed lips defined the wrinkles around her cupid’s bow. “He’s been patient enough as it is. You confined yourself for two months. You can’t hide from your duties forever.”
“My dawdling has become too much for him?” He scoffed. Dawdling was a word the governess liked to use. As he said it, his eyes grew vicious. “If he thinks I’m gonna pick up a sword again—” Marigold’s pursed lips let out a stiff laugh. Leander’s face pinched, and he became his father. Another expression Marigold would ask him to be rid of. He relaxed the tension in his forehead before she noticed.
“My poor, poor Andy,” She scooped his head into her arms and pulled him down to her chest. He lost height, becoming ten years younger, again. He squirmed under her arms. She was strong, for an old woman. She sighed and released him, “It’s much worse than that.” Her words were slow to his ears. He was too absorbed in himself to notice she’d been mocking him. Leander squeezed his bicep. There was muscle there before. When had he lost it? The daunting thought his father was right tickled his throat like a cough. He swallowed it.
The sun fled behind an orphaned cloud, and the shadows across Marigold’s round face hallowed it. Leander considered what could be worse than the hours of training he’d done for the first fifteen years of his life. The king would be insane to throw him into the council room. There was no war to ship him off to. And if there were a war, Leander would be happy to take a spot on the front lines to be slaughtered by Jasps.
“What are you talking about?” He took too long to ask. She was focused on a new thought.
“Too close to your spell for us to be wandering so far from the castle,” Marigold gathered her skirts in a sudden hurry. Leander suspected the old woman was trying to change the subject, but nevertheless, she had a point. The flowers at the spire’s base wilted as Marigold took a step away. All he wanted was more time. He never stopped feeling he was running out of it.
The routine of the hills, the dredging up and slipping down of them, lulled their thoughts. The wind picked up.
“Summer days remind me of your mother,” Marigold smiled fondly at the surrealness of the sky. Bitter melon and sugar cane, the scent of his mother, laced the wind.
Blinks of memory flickered in Leander’s mind. He avoided them. His memories were full of missing her. They were full of nightmares and nonsense fairy tales. He feared his mother hated him. He feared he made her itch and seethe, the way his father made him itch and seethe: his father’s hair, his eyes, his nose, his confidence, his cockiness. Leander was his son, his heir. Before he was ever her’s he was a prince, an heir, a father’s son.
The queen swayed when she sat and when she stood and when she walked. She tapped her foot to the rhythm of silence, filling the stanzas of the room with notes of sound. She spooled tension with her thumbs like a spindle. A smile from her seized the breath of the room. Words were lodged between her teeth, hidden under her tongue, crushed in her molars, slid under her gums. Those words left her yearning unsaid.
Summer reminded him of his mother. Summer’s absence reminded him of his mother. The sweet-scented air curdled in his throat.
“Such a useless thing to say,” Leander snided. His teeth braced against each other. The old woman fiddled with her necklace.
“You’re not unlike your father,” Marigold went on. Violent and unreasonable, that’s what his father was.
“Really useless,” Leander hardened, “thing to say.”
“Don’t be childish,” Marigold glowered.
“Witch,” the word broke through his teeth. Marigold struck Leander behind the head. His molar drilled through his cheek. Witch, he thought again. She hit him again, as if she heard his thoughts. He stormed down the path.
“Being a king changes a man,” Marigold warned.
“I get it, Mari,” Leander shuffled his feet. Mud painted the tips of his shoes. “I’m childish. Stubborn. Unreasonable. You tell me everyday, as if I don’t know already.”
“Andy, my intention isn’t to insult you.”
There she went again. Andy. Only his mother called Leander that.
“I won’t be king,” his voice dragged in the weeds, “I never intended to follow in my father’s footsteps, much less the Diviner’s.” Death was the only way the prince would avoid the crown. Marigold shuttered. The ground shuttered with her. She wrapped her arms across herself. The vibrations sent pricks up into his shoes all the way to his ears. The whizzing of magic was foreign to Leander, despite the dozens of wounds Marigold healed with it.
The earth tore away from itself. Roots and stems clung to chunks of dirt and rose from the ground. A mountain of rubble corroded the path in front of them. Leander kicked a chunk into the bramble of weeds. Without looking back at Marigold, Leander hoisted himself over the mound.
“You’ve grown crooked into your cowardice, child,” She shouted. Her steps tore the earth under her feet. “Each mage in the Courtfane would pour every drop of magic into saving you. Don’t think you have even that much power over your life.” Such power didn’t exist. He’d never forgive his father if it did; the king could’ve saved his mother, his sister. He clenched his empurpled fists.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Leander’s voice cowered at the back of his throat.
“Try,” Marigold said. Try. He was trying. Waking up each day was trying. “Andy, there’s so much good you could do–” His father stood in the way. Leander knew nothing about real lives; he knew what he read in books.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Leander corrected. Talking became exhausting. His patience with the woman grew thin.
“Andy,” She pleaded. Anger rattled his ribs like a prisoner to a cage. She was going to ask for something. He heard it in the tremble of her voice. “The marauders. . .” Leander shook his head. The Glade. The marauders ravaged shrines. Nothing could be done about them. The women were doomed, with or without the Marauders.
“We can’t stop them,” Even as a prince, he had no control, no influence on his father, especially after the last five years.
Marigold’s age appeared in her frown. She ran her finger up and down the cord of her necklace. Leander softened his steps.
“The Glade is well hidden,” He reminded her. The same magic that protected his sister’s grave hid the Glade from the outside world. The chances of the marauders finding a sanctuary protected by a dozen powerful mages was slim to none. Marigold’s unruly red hair was graying. Emotion deepened the wrinkles on her face. Her green eyes were mossy. Heavy with thought, her head hung low.
“A lot has changed,” Marigold muttered. “I-I cannot explain it, but I know. Something is not right.” It was rare for Marigold’s voice to become uneven, for her to stutter. Leander picked at his nail beds, focusing on the fraying skin. He didn’t know what to say. To stop him from nervous fidgets, she grabbed his hands and squeezed them.
She went on, “there’s been rumors.”
“Rumors?”
Marigold crushed Leander’s hands in her’s. She moved closer to him, “Rumors that Azazel’s fleet is close to locating the Glade.” Rumors were rumors. This one was unbelievable. The Grotto was notorious for ransacking shrines, but they’ve been searching for the Glade for thirty years. The same magic still protected it. They couldn’t have been any closer. In fact, Henri told Leander they’d likely disbanded since then. Azazel was last seen trading in Abalone, a small country to the northwest. Leander reminded Marigold of this.
She dropped his hands, “Not a chance Azazel gave up.”
“Even those rumors are true, Marigold, there really isn’t anything I can do.” His father was the only man with that power. Her mossy eyes tore into him. She wanted him to convince his father, he guessed, but that wasn’t an option. “The Grotto is as strong as any army. My father won’t get in their way. You’re better off discussing this with the Courtfane. Perhaps they can warn them, take them in, just like they did for you.”
The grass around the path drooped, pressed under Marigold’s frustration. He knew what she was thinking: he was just like his father—a coward.
“Your mother could do it . . .” Tears threatened Marigold’s eyes. Leander’s gut churned. “She’d convince him. She’d put an end to this.” Maybe she was right, but all the parts of him that were his father overwhelmed any semblance he had to his mother. Her restlessness, her charm, her determination. Leander couldn’t fit any of those pieces of her within him.
Leander and Marigold knew his mother was the sole reason the royal family was ever viewed favorably. When she was alive, she cared about the people. She made the king care in turn. As soon as she died, the laws protecting shrines like the Glade were no longer enforced. The nobles in Faden bought maiden stones illegally from marauders while the laws were enforced. Even if the marauder’s received pushback from the king now, too many nobles back the industry.
“I’m not my mother,” Leander laughed. “I’m not my father either.” She missed his mother. The whole kingdom did. He was all Marigold had left of her, but she struggled to find her in him.
Marigold glared at him, getting caught in his father’s eyes. He severed the gaze. The wind picked up and whipped her skirts around her feet. Loosened from its bundle, wisps of rusty hair swayed past her face. Her eyes were glossy. The words she wanted to say hurt too much to say them. She shoved past him, letting her dress drag in the mud. It caught on the plastered grass, raising it from earth like the hair down a dog’s spine. Since his mother passed, he rarely saw magic. He could feel it sometimes, the sharp tingling, whenever Marigold used it, but it didn’t pool like it had at his mother’s feet. Leander remembered reaching to touch the shimmering melted pearls. His fingertips went numb, and for several minutes, it was as if his fingers were cut from his palm.
It never occurred to Leander that Marigold was just as powerful as his mother had been; Marigold simply controlled the spill of magic more diligently. Marigold’s magic was rusted gold like a campfire, like her ruddy hair. The flames of magic trailed behind her. She was simmering, not quite angry.
In his gut, guilt fluttered like moths with torn wings. Marigold deserved his help, but Leander had no power, no will.
The walk back to the palace was silent. Leander’s footsteps lagged behind her’s, avoiding the tail of sparkling essence. A voice scratched the unreachable space behind his eardrums. It wasn’t Marigold.
Murmurs. Familiar words, but foreign in sound. Mixing with his thoughts, his mind became a stew of nonsense. He no longer felt the chill of the valleys, or the heat of the sun. Marigold was a smear of movement in front of him– he could no longer smell the notes of lavender and rosemary on her perfume.
He rubbed his eyes, but felt no relief from it. He felt nothing, in fact, but the phantom pressure of his hands, as if his nerves were snipped from his spine.
THE DIVINER'S SON 