Reign of the Fallen (Reign of the Fallen #1)(3)
Curiosity.
“What are they?” Princess Valoria closes her pale hand over the coffee beans, surprising me with callused fingers that scrape my skin as she pulls away. She brings the beans to her nose and inhales. “They don’t smell poisonous.” For the first time, she smiles. “I’ll try anything to help me stay awake while I finish my project.”
“Project?” I kneel beside the king’s shrouded body and tie back my wavy dark brown hair, ready to get to work—and not the party-planning kind.
Evander relaxes his shoulders, seeming to realize that the princess isn’t about to run screaming to her kin over my dirty little coffee habit.
“An invention. I’ve been tinkering with it all summer. I’m so close to finishing that I’ve not been sleeping much. I’m hoping . . .” Princess Valoria pauses, popping a coffee bean into her mouth and crunching it. She makes a face at the bitterness. “I’m hoping Eldest Grandfather comes back to us in good spirits. I thought if I went to the Deadlands to fetch him this time, he might be grateful enough to let me share this one with the people of Karthia.”
Evander glances up midway through crouching beside me to help prepare the king’s body and almost topples onto the dead man. He falls to the side at the last moment, knocking the king’s left arm askew. “You’re an inventor?” he growls, brushing off bits of grass. “I never thought I’d see one in the flesh. I mean, I heard a story about a man who invented a new recipe for a duke once. It didn’t end well, though . . .”
As we learn from birth, the slightest change from the old ways is forbidden in Karthia. No leaving the country. No new recipes, no new forms of art, no new fashions, and especially no inventions. “Progress,” the king always says when he gives his twice-yearly public address, “is a slow-acting poison that will ensure Karthia’s eventual death.”
Princess Valoria’s expression is defiant. “He’s not happy about it.” She points to the king, but doesn’t look at him. “But so long as I hide everything in my room and don’t show anyone, he doesn’t complain about it anymore. Not much, anyway.” She glances away, toward the sea again. “I spend most of my time alone, working.”
Now I know why I’ve never seen her at parties. Pity. I have the feeling her stubborn streak matches mine. We could have fun together.
“I thought you might understand,” she adds, nodding to the contraband coffee beans tucked in my pocket, “as you don’t seem to mind bending rules.”
“You could say that.” I break the stare, fiddling with the double-sapphire pin on my tunic. The pin is a gift given to every mage when they become a master, the gems representing our blue eyes that mark us as necromancers. Mine is still new enough that it feels oddly heavy at times. “Now let’s get this over with so you can return to your inventing, Highness.”
I pull up the hem of my long shirt and study the three glass vials on my necromancer’s belt. Milk. Honey. Blood. All three are full, two of them waiting to be called upon once we’ve traveled through one of the Deadlands’ constantly roaming gates.
But first, as always, comes the milk.
It gives strength to dead flesh, making it easier for a spirit to slip back into its shell. As I pour my vial of milk over the king’s body, the princess’s hushed voice rings in my ear. “He hates waking up all damp and sticky.”
“Well, then it’s a bad day to be him,” I mutter, stashing away the empty vial.
“What’s the honey for?” Princess Valoria’s coffee breath washes over me as she peers over my shoulder to study my belt.
I arch a brow at her. Most of the royal family members know all about raising the dead, especially since we necromancers live among them, and because so many of them are Dead themselves. But Valoria clearly keeps to herself more than most.
“The honey’s for us. So we aren’t tempted to eat anything in the Deadlands. Do that, and you’ll be trapped there forever.” Seeing the next question forming on her lips, I hurry to add, “The blood is for His Majesty’s spirit, when we find him. The spirits all crave it. It reminds them of the life they had and makes it easier to guide them back to their bodies.”
Beside me, Evander works quietly to make sure the king is completely covered by his shroud. One small slip once he wakes, one roaming pair of living eyes, and we’d have a Shade on our hands. And I really don’t feel like fighting a monster tonight. There are enough of them lurking in the Deadlands without adding one more.
“We won’t have far to walk, at least.” Evander points west, toward the sea.
There, suspended in the air above a not-too-distant rocky tree-strewn cliff, a round blue gate shimmers as clearly as the moon and stars. The gates are easiest to spot at dusk. At least, for anyone with blue eyes. To everyone else, they’re forever invisible, and my stomach clenches as I imagine what walking through this particular gate will look like for Princess Valoria.
Like leaping into the far-below sea.
“What do you see over there?” the princess demands.
“The way forward,” I answer, and her eyes widen. Sometimes I wish I’d been born with brown eyes like hers, so my Sight would show me how the parts of something worked together. I could’ve been a potioneer then, and worked in an apothecary like an ordinary Karthian. Of course, if King Wylding didn’t forbid change, I bet brown-eyed citizens would be anything but ordinary—putting their talents to work at new ideas.