A light-skinned man with a strong jaw and reddish hair calls from the bow, “Throw a rope down! Now!” He wears Ruranan necklaces and royal robes, and on his head, a circlet of a crown glints in the moonlight. Prince Torhvin. It must be. “We’ve found her!”
Dekala looks at Ruti. Her eyes are opaque, but her hands are trembling, and there is dread in her voice that she hasn’t managed to conceal entirely. “That man is my soulbond,” she says, and her fingernails dig crescent-shaped furrows into her marked palm.
Ruti reaches at once for the vials in her cloak, her mind racing as she struggles to think past the last few minutes and find the right song to plead with the spirits. This is her moment, the reason why they’ve traveled for weeks and risked their lives to make it to this point. And now, finally, Ruti must cast her spell.
She pulls out a vial, her fingers closing around the cork.
A hand lands on hers, staying her movements, and Ruti stares up at Dekala again in confusion. Would she prefer they do this in secret, after dodging Prince Torhvin’s overtures and risking a bonding?
But Dekala gives nothing away. Her head is steady now, the dread has faded from her eyes, and Ruti doesn’t understand. “No,” Dekala says.
There is a grand feast to celebrate Dekala’s return. The banquet hall is opened with the help of some earth Bonded who reshape the wall of the palace, forming a covered open porch on which visitors can dine and dance. The mood is festive, and the princess—dressed in white and gold and wearing fine golden gloves—is particularly beautiful.
Ruti had tried to avoid the party. She doesn’t feel much like celebrating. Orrin and Kimya have yet to return to the palace. To clear Orrin’s name, Dekala has artfully reframed her disappearance as an attempted kidnapping by the Diri that left her separated from her bodyguard, but Ruti barely trusts Orrin, and every day without Kimya is another spent pacing in helpless dread.
This is the second day since their return, and Kalere had given her no choice but to attend the feast. Ruti doesn’t know why. It isn’t as though Dekala wants her here. Dekala hasn’t spoken more than a few curt words to her since the boat, and only in response to her queries about Kimya. Dekala has returned to the untouchable Heir.
So far, that distance has also been extended to Prince Torhvin, a welcome guest in the Royal Square. Ruti despises every bit of him, from that strong jaw to the too-green eyes to the genial confidence with which he carries himself. The Regent adores him. Dekala hardly speaks to him.
“This stew reminds me of a dish we have in Byale,” Torhvin remarks to her at the feast. He is seated between Dekala and the Regent, Ruti on Dekala’s other side. “It’s quite tasty. The cooks once told me that their secret is to let the meat sit on the heat through the night.”
Dekala says, her voice icy, “Do you often consult with your cooks on your dinner?”
“I consult with everyone who works beside me,” Torhvin says, smiling as though he hadn’t noticed Dekala’s tone. “Even the humblest position in my palace is worthy of attention. And as I am a third son, I can never forget my own humble beginnings.”
Ruti eyes him resentfully. His words are wise and regal, his posture perfect and without strain, the picture of a great ruler, but there is something that Ruti distrusts about him. Perhaps it is only his mark, majimm prominent on his palm and a match for Dekala’s sewa. Perhaps it is that he is so calm and pleasant, so wise and caring, that Ruti—who has seen the worst of so many people in her life—is left with suspicion when presented with their best.
Dekala has a new bodyguard while Orrin is away, another man Ruti’s seen training with Tembo. Behind Torhvin is his bodyguard, a woman whom he had introduced to Dekala as Winda. She is tall and imposing, scowling down at anyone who looks at her for too long.
There are others in Torhvin’s entourage, guards and soldiers and courtiers who sit along the tables in the banquet hall or stand against the walls. A few of the servants against the walls have caught Ruti’s eye. They stand alone, fixed smiles on their faces, and they wear paint along their bare arms that winds around in patterns to their wrists. At their wrists, they wear thick black bracelets made of a rubbery material. The bracelets curve around the backs of their hands and over their palms, and Ruti glances back at them a few times as Dekala speaks, her words acid.
“If you spend this much time on the workings of your kitchens instead of the workings of your farms and cities, it’s no wonder your harvests for the past three years have been so paltry.”
The room falls silent. Torhvin blinks, taken aback. The Regent hisses Dekala’s name in a low tone. Ruti smiles into her food.
After an awkward pause, Torhvin lets out a loud guffaw, rich with humor. “What a tongue!” he cries out. “Oh, I can tell this woman is one who will never let me rest.” The courtiers laugh with him, the tension in the room fading away, and Dekala sits placidly, thunder rumbling in the distance. “I have wondered for many years when I might find a worthy soulbond,” Torhvin murmurs, and he reaches out to touch Dekala’s hand. “Then I set my eyes on you, and I knew.”
“There are many who have claimed to know that I was theirs,” Dekala says coolly.
“And did you don golden gloves around each of them?” Torhvin retorts. Dekala stiffens. Ruti slumps. There is no other justification for the gloves, which Dekala had put on the moment they’d returned to the Royal Square. She hasn’t asked Ruti to do her magic this time. Possibly because Ruti is the only person in Somanchi whom Dekala wishes to be around less than Torhvin.
Ruti’s lips still tingle when she remembers their kisses, a stolen moment cut short by Dekala’s soulbond. I will never fall in love, Dekala had declared, and the horror on her face at their kiss had only confirmed that for Ruti. Ruti is a ridiculous sap to crave more, to still touch her lips and remember the feel of Dekala’s hands on her skin, to linger in a palace where she is surely no longer wanted.
She shudders now with what feels suspiciously like heartbreak. Absurd, that Ruti has become a dreamer. Absurd, that she had spent so long with Dekala outside of her element that she’d believed they might have mattered.
Still, she remembers Dekala rushing to her in the quicksand, remembers lying in bed with their eyes locked over Kimya’s head, and she can’t quite dispel the dream altogether.
“I will not be bonded,” Dekala says, turning to the Regent and dismissing Torhvin entirely. “I am the heir to the throne, and I will not be bullied into a marriage and a soulbinding by a pair of third sons.” Her words are biting, her tone high with disdain.
Torhvin is unbothered by it. “I do understand your hesitation,” he says patiently. “I didn’t choose this destiny, either. I hoped to be a general in the Ruranan army one day, fighting for my brother, King Jaquil. But events unfolded in a way that left me no choice but to shepherd my kingdom. The one beautifully unexpected element to all this, of course, is you, and I confess that I can think of little else now.” His words are pretty as his gleaming emerald gaze, and courtiers at the table swoon over them. The Regent is beaming, his wife’s eyes wet and shining, and Ruti violently stabs a fork into her stew and splashes gravy all over the table.
Dekala glances at her plate for a moment, distracted by the minor explosion of Ruti’s stew, and Ruti thinks, for an instant, there is humor glimmering in her gaze. It is iced over a moment later, and Ruti watches for a moment too long.
At the Regent’s behest, there is a couples’ dance next for Torhvin and an iron-eyed Dekala. Dekala’s movements are fluid and almost magical, as free and flowing as the wind, and Torhvin moves well to complement her. Ruti watches Dekala, her heart aching. There is no one in the universe who can contain Dekala, no one who will ever be able to match her. She is a vision, so far above Ruti that Ruti doesn’t know what she’d been thinking in that boat, leaning in, kissing Dekala as though they’d had no tomorrow—or perhaps a tomorrow together. And now.…
Dekala might not bond with Torhvin, but the possibility of him will remain forever, hanging over her destiny and tempting her on an easy path toward queenship. The Regent will not bend now, especially with a prospect as likable and convenient as a Ruranan monarch. Dekala’s only chance is in the two stone vials in Ruti’s pockets.
And Dekala wants so little to do with Ruti that she would continue this endless farce instead of letting Ruti work her magic.
The dance ends, and Torhvin says, “I have brought with me three witches.” He nods to them now. They are seated at one of the smaller tables, two young men and an older woman, and Ruti turns to watch them, her eyes narrowing. Three witches is more than anyone might need, a show of power that rubs her the wrong way. “Might they perform something for you?”
Dekala doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t refuse, either. Her gaze flickers over the witches, and Ruti likes to think that Dekala is making the same calculation Ruti just had. Torhvin takes it as acquiescence. “Go,” he orders his witches.
They sing, their voices joining in perfect harmony. A weather Bonded stands behind them, and Ruti doesn’t miss the significance of that choice. If Torhvin and Dekala are bonded, they’ll be majimm and sewa, with mastery over the weather.
The skies open as the Bonded raises her hands, and the witches sing the clouds close, dip them down in magnificent patterns against the sun. They glow orange, rising and falling in what looks nearly like hills in the sky, and Ruti gasps with the crowd, awed at the sight of them.
The hills break, racing through the sky in what is nearly a dance to the witches’ song, and then streak downward, joining together in a massive cloud in the distance. Abruptly, the woman witch’s voice goes high while the men go low, and the cloud splits, the center soaring back above them while the rest circles into a ring around the Royal Square. At the finale of the song, the center cloud scatters, pouring a burst of rain upon the dancers, and a rainbow glows high and bright across the sky.
Dekala is soaked, Torhvin just as wet beside her, and she blinks, looking a little dazed at the display. “Amazing!” Torhvin shouts, applauding, and the crowd breaks out in cheers. Ruti wonders if she could do the same kind of magic, her own mouth hanging open as the witches bow and her eyes drift back to Dekala.
Dekala is looking back at her now, and Ruti wonders if she’s thinking the same thing. For a moment their gazes catch, and Ruti bites her lip and feels all the emotions from the boat return, her heart thumping with new longing in her chest. Dekala’s lips part and it looks as though she might speak—
Torhvin seizes her hands. “I have a gift for you,” he says, his green eyes glowing. He is handsome, his hair long and pulled back with a band, and they make an attractive couple. The Regentess is whispering about it now to her companions, her hands pressed to her heart as she watches them, and Ruti swallows and looks away from Dekala’s gaze.
A servant from the wall comes forward, carrying an ornately decorated silver box, and Torhvin holds it out to Dekala. She opens the box and removes a tear-shaped decoration made entirely from glass. In the center of it, a flame burns, flickering in place. It doesn’t grow, but it doesn’t go out, either. “It’s a warming lamp,” Torhvin murmurs as Dekala holds the glass in her hands. “One of our most exquisite. The flame within it will never go out. It is one of our greatest secrets.”
