Blood-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book I ]

12

One cannot lose oneself in grief forever. However deep her loss had cut her, Mhera was a child still, with a child's resilience. As the months passed, she continued to think of Koreti often, and of her aunt as well. But as the years passed, the sharpness of losing them both began to wear away.

Even Mhera's frightening visions diminished. This was, in part, due to her request that her looking-glass be taken out of her room. Gella had been hesitant to acquiesce; although the old woman did not approve of primping and preening, she considered a mirror useful in a practical sense. But Mhera was adamant, and Gella finally consented, replacing the glass fixed on the wall with a small hand mirror that had once belonged to the empress. This, Mhera kept turned face-down on her vanity.

Mhera bathed quickly to avoid glimpses of images in the bath, and when she washed her face in her basin she would not look down into the water. She found the affliction threatened her most when her mind was far away, so any time she felt that she was at risk, she would focus every bit of her attention on the task at hand. But now and then, in a quiet moment, she would find herself gazing down without thinking into her teacup, and a flickering image would surface there. A snippet of a childhood memory. A glimpse of Koreti's laughing face. Esaria's corpse.

Whenever Gella suspected something was wrong, Mhera told her she had a headache. Because Mhera was often bored, lonely, or afraid of a vision, she seemed to be unhealthily prone to "headaches" and began to get a reputation for being a sickly girl.

Without her best friend, Mhera had nothing to do but focus on her work. She attended her lessons as she always had, walking across the pristine Sovereign Square alone now that Koreti was gone. She applied herself to her domestic learning as well, improving all the skills Gella sought to cultivate in her. Before long, what had once seemed like tedious chores—sewing and embroidery, music lessons, and so on—became her main refuge from her own shadowed mind.

Mhera was dimly aware that, in another part of the palace, the emperor had applied himself anew to a neglected duty: the war against the Arcborn rebels. The so-called "rebellion" had been nothing but a tiny thorn in Korvan's side before. Mhera hardly remembered hearing about any efforts to quell the rebellion—only stories, grisly and fantastic, about all the wicked things the rebels had done to the Starborn in their time.

Now, after the loss of his son, Mhera had the impression that the thorn in Korvan's side had become a spear. The emperor must either yank it out and staunch the flood or die from the pain of it. His two remaining sons, Koren and Kaori, were of a like mind. But fighting the rebellion of the Arcborn was like fighting vapors.

Koren, Korvan's eldest son, was hot-headed and biased toward action. It seemed to frustrate him that there was much about running a kingdom as vast as Penrua that had nothing at all to do with crushing rebellions. He must never have had enough time during the day to focus on the war, for he often found it difficult to avoid the topic when he had his father's undivided attention—usually when the diminished family dined of an evening.

"We've got to find the bitch," said Koren abruptly one evening, thrusting his empty goblet out for a servant to fill.

Mhera glanced up at Gella, who was looking at Koren with an expression of disapproval. Gella did not appreciate crude language, although, by now teetering on the brink between childhood and young womanhood, Mhera certainly no longer had virgin ears. Dining with Koren had seen to that.

Emperor Korvan sat at the head of the table, chewing a bite of fish. He paused to swallow. "Do not speak of such matters with your cousin present." The emperor met Mhera's eye from his vantage point with a twitch of a smile.

"And why not?" Koren demanded. "You don't want her to know? She and Koreti were inseparable. She'll want the person who did it dead as much as we do, and it's been too long with no progress made. Mhera? Am I wrong?"