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To her surprise, he did.
Oriane stood, frozen to the spot. Her hostility was dissipating quickly. She wanted it back. In its place was something worse: a fresh torrent of grief, pain cascading through her, a sorrow so profound it was like a physical weight. Oriane staggered beneath it.
‘Easy.’ Andala was there, a firm arm around her waist. ‘Easy.’
She let herself sink back, Andala lowering her to the bed. It hurt. Everything hurt so badly.
‘Do you want to be alone?’ A murmur, careful and low.
DoIwanttobealone?She already was. She had never been so alone in her life.
‘No,’ she choked, the word catching in her narrowed throat.
For a moment, no response. Then Oriane felt a weight on the bed beside her. A hand, once again, tentatively smoothing back her hair.
She closed her eyes and prayed for the darkness to drown her.144
If she had not had to call each day into existence, she would never have known how much time was passing. But five times Oriane had been forced to let the king into her chambers, five times she had changed and sung and changed back again as quickly as she could; so five days must have elapsed between now and that unspeakable morning.
Andala stayed with her most days, leaving for a while in the evenings, then returning briefly with tea to help Oriane sleep. It worked, surprisingly. Oriane did not know what was in the brew, but she drank it gladly, for it sent her deep into a dreamless dark. She asked for it during the daytime, too, but Andala always refused.
‘It can be dangerous, this stuff,’ she had said, staring down at the tea tray in her hands. ‘I know it helps, but … It would not do to drink it all the time.’
Oriane did not have the energy to argue.
She did not argue either when Andala, on that fifth day, broke the news that Tomas was coming to speak with her. He had avoided her entirely apart from witnessing her dawnsong each morning, but this afternoon he would be coming back.
‘What does he want?’ Oriane asked. Her voice felt scratchy, hoarse with lack of use.
‘I think …’ Andala hesitated. Oriane dragged her eyes away from the window, which she had allowed Andala to open a crack. Andala was looking at her almost apologetically, as if she wished she did not have to relay this message.
‘What?’ Oriane prompted.
‘I think he still wants to hold the solstice ball, the one that people from all over attend every year. And I think …’ Andala looked145pained, her dark brows drawn together like ink strokes on her forehead. ‘I think he intends to have you sing.’
Oriane could not speak. The king’s audacity took her breath away.
She stayed silent as Andala left, as King Tomas arrived and said his piece. Andala had been right; he was still planning to hold the solstice ball, two days from now, and it would serve as Oriane’s introduction to the world. Guests and delegates from all over the kingdom and beyond would be arriving over the coming days. The festivities would begin in the late evening, and Oriane was required to be present for their duration – mingling with the crowd, being watched and questioned and fawned over, until it came time for the dawn.
The king barely looked at Oriane as he spoke. Questions ran through her mind: what did he hope this performance would achieve? What would happen to her after? But they were dull, muted, not important enough to justify the energy she would need to voice them.
‘Your maid will prepare you for the ball, and remain with you for its duration,’ the king was saying now. His voice sounded distant, as if Oriane were underwater and he above. ‘You will be expected to—’
‘Expected?’ The word burst from her as she swung violently, dizzyingly, from black grief to burning fury. ‘What right have you toexpectanything from me?’
Oriane ripped back the covers and rose from the bed, so quickly it set her head spinning. She stood only a few paces from the king now. The candle he held cast a glow between them, throwing his face into shadowed relief, illuminating the faint expression of shock that had appeared there.
‘What right?’ Oriane demanded. Her voice was strong now, her head clearer than it had been in days. The energy she’d struggled to146find before blazed through her, an inferno in her veins. ‘What right have you to keep me here like some treasure to show to your subjects, even now, now that my father isdeadbecause of you?’
In the gloom, she saw Tomas’s throat constrict, his jaw tighten.
‘It is for the good of the people,’ he said in a low, slightly strangled voice. ‘What happened with your father was … I never intended for him, for anyone, to come to harm. The guard who acted so rashly has been punished—’
‘What good is that to me?’ There was a bitter taste to her words that Oriane savoured. Better bitterness and wrath than the agony of grief. ‘Will punishment undo his actions? Unmake the blade that he put through my father’s chest?’
She expected a retort, some justification or pretty, kingly speech, but none came. Tomas was silent. In the light of the wavering flame, his eyes looked shadowed, like the gaping sockets of a skull.
‘Get out,’ Oriane whispered. That it was akingshe addressed in such a way did not matter.
