A Whisper of Night

5.2 || LORELEI 🌊

           

Lorelei gasped, shooting to her feet. The glass tinkled to her feet as Queen Ceira stepped inside, her eyes wide.

"Lorelei?" her mother said. "What are you - "

And then she screamed, her hands flying to her face.

"Mother!" Lorelei said frantically. "Mother, it's nothing - it's just - " She scrambled to find an excuse - I'm trying to escape my nightmares - I'm trying to atone for my promiscuous ways - I'm trying to become Cerovar the Conqueror - but nothing came.

"What are you doing?" Ceira demanded, her fingers fumbling over a candle. "Your knees! What is this - is this riverglass?"

"No," Lorelei said, "it's not what you think - "

"Servants!" she shrieked, her voice echoing through the halls. Panic hammered through Lorelei's chest, and for one wild moment, she considered leaping out the window, escaping - "Oh, Lorelei...your knees...why, why would you do such a thing? Sit down - "

Lorelei collapsed onto the bed. She couldn't bear to meet her mother's eyes as Ceira flung open the drawers in the desk, yanking out heaps of gauze.

Under the sheen of moonlight, the mountain of riverglass had seemed beautiful, crystalline, almost magical. Now, beneath the candlelight, they looked ugly and twisted and cruel, like the teeth of a beast....

Ceira finished binding one of Lorelei's knees. She was still speaking, her voice strangely distant.

Someone entered, then two. Servants flocked like birds around the bed, twittering in fear. "I'm fine," Lorelei tried to say, but soon the entire hallway was ablaze in light, and more servants were coming....

She could not take her eyes from the riverglass. A year ago, when she could no longer stand the filthiness of her flesh, she'd started stealing from her father's armorer, sneaking bits and pieces of the priceless substance into her room.

Riverglass was tempered beneath the Wyvern River, cut and polished for the hilts of swords. Although legend claimed that it could not be shattered unless put under extreme amounts of heat (and Lorelei could not remember breaking any of the fragments upon which she'd knelt), the material was considered far too rare to be made into weapons.

"Lorelei?"

She raised her head.

King Glion stood before her.

"Father," she said quietly, trying to keep her voice even. No, no, no. You're the last person I need. Who called you? "I thought you were in council."

"And I thought you were asleep." His gaze flickered to the pile of riverglass, which the servants were quickly heaping into burlap sacks, and to his wife, who had finished bandaging Lorelei's other knee.

It seems that staying up late runs in the family, she thought. Anger shot through her and she gritted her teeth as her mother's moans of pleasure echoed in her ears.

"Why did you come in here?" she finally managed, staring straight into Ceira's eyes. Her mother still retained the beauty of her youth: large brown eyes framed by luscious lashes, gleaming raven locks, a high-bridged nose and sweetly rounded face. Lorelei had inherited her father's features instead: thin black hair, flat cheekbones, downturned almond eyes.

"I thought I heard something," Ceira said. "And...and I had a feeling...."

"What is the meaning of this?" Glion demanded. He stood by the edge of Lorelei's bed, his back turned to his wife. "How did you get so much riverglass in the first place?"