A Thousand Heartbeats

While I was all too happy to eavesdrop at her brother’s bedside, doing so at her father’s felt inappropriate. I kept my distance, allowing her to say whatever she needed to. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, after all the deaths I had witnessed since the Island, I could recognize the truth from a mile away.

That man was not going to wake up.

But I had no intention of stealing her hope. Instead, I set my mind for the millionth time to the identity of Kawan’s informant. There had been so many people on that island, and any one of them could have been with Kawan.

I hated to say it, but all my thoughts pointed me to Nickolas. His tone with her came across as condescending, and he was absolutely manipulating their conversations, so any argument seemed like her doing, not his. Maybe it wasn’t enough to go on, but where else could I look? If Nickolas was on the Island, and if he disclosed his relationship with Annika to Kawan, then there was no one with better proximity. . . .

But there was also the tiny issue of me hating him, and that might be seen as a bias where he was concerned.

I watched as Annika bent over and kissed her father’s forehead, not flinching at the greenish hue in his skin. I stared at him, noting his frighteningly shallow breaths.

This was the man who ordered the death of my father, who sent his decapitated corpse off into the wilderness with no care for where it ended up.

But this was also the person who made Annika. He raised a daughter both bold and gentle, both unwavering and forgiving. I found myself, at the end of it all, unable to hate him the way I thought I should.

And so, though he couldn’t see it, I bowed to him.

Annika rose and turned. I could see her eyes were brimming with tears. I followed her from the room, and I was beside her by the time I’d realized she wasn’t moving. “He’s not going to make it, is he?”

I sighed. “For now, you just have to wait and see. And you have to keep leading; it’s what he’d want you to do.”

Annika looked up at me, staring into my eyes. There were so many layers to her sadness; it seemed to run deeper than her father’s potential death, deeper than the weight of a kingdom on her back. When she looked at me like that, something in my gut wanted to scoop her up and run. I wanted to get us both out of here, off to somewhere I could live out a quiet life with her.

If we could survive in the cave, we’d thrive in the countryside.

Finally, she nodded. “Follow me.”

I walked two footsteps behind her as she wound her way through the palace. We passed one grand hallway after another, some opening to vast rooms dripping with gold. Paintings, lush furniture, and statues were everywhere. Servants moved quickly to and fro, as guards stood watch along the edges of every space, and, moving through it all, were the nobles with their powdered hair and silken coats.

I might have felt disdain for these people except that all of them seemed to adore Annika. Deep curtsies were given by every single lady, and so many inquired upon her health. I had to wonder if they had any clue what was happening to their king at this very moment because no mention was made of it.

Part of me wondered, How do they love her so?

But a much larger part wondered, How could they not?

As we walked on, the din of conversation and movement died down. We finally stopped outside two tall doors, and Annika turned to me and gestured to the room behind her. “This is our library. It’s been my hiding place most of my life.”

I smiled, thinking of my princess and all her secret places.

“Can I show you something?”

I nodded, following as she pulled the doors wide open. Whatever I’d been expecting, this far surpassed it. The shelves went so high, some had rolling ladders attached, and the sheer number of books before me was staggering. I could still write, and I could still read . . . but it had been far too long since I’d been allowed the pleasure of being lost between pages.

“Back again? Don’t you have a kingdom to run?”

I turned, looking for the voice that was greeting Annika too casually for my tastes, to find a boy with bright curls and a smile to match waiting by a large desk.

“The kingdom can wait a few minutes. I need to look at something. You see I have my guard, so I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, seeming offended by how quickly she brushed him off. “Based on what Officer Palmer said, it sounds the more people around you, the better.”

Annika smiled, a serene and diplomatic expression she must have practiced thousands of times. “He’s quite capable. I’m in a bit of a rush. As you said, there’s a kingdom to tend to. I’ll just be a moment.”

She didn’t wait for acknowledgment, but headed on to what she was looking for. I didn’t bother looking at the boy as I passed, refusing to play whatever game he was trying to start.

We arrived at a shelf with dozens of books chained to it, and Annika pulled one out and turned quickly through the pages.

“Who was that?”

“Rhett,” she replied.

“He’s almost as bad as Nickolas.”

She smiled—genuinely this time—and turned to me, speaking in a very inviting whisper. “We can’t be too cross with Rhett. Thanks to his teaching, I once escaped the clutches of a very dangerous man.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded. “And I’m very grateful. Had I not escaped that day, I wouldn’t be able to give that very dangerous man the extraordinary gift I’m about to give him right now.”

I cocked my head at her, skeptical. “Which is?”

She handed the open book to me. “A glimpse at his family tree.”

I looked down, gaping at the wide page before me, trying to understand what I was seeing. At the top of the page was the symbol that had been sewn into my father’s cloak, that I now recognized was a crest. And beneath it was a surname eerily close to mine.

Before I knew what was happening, I was blinking back tears. “Annika . . . Annika, what is this?”

“This is a mythology book,” she said, her tone apologetic. She reached out, touching the brass chain, pinning it to the shelves. “You know, I’ve seen chained libraries before. At a monastery in Nalk, and in the palace at Kialand as well. They keep the most valuable books like this, so no one takes them. But I’ve started to wonder if these books were kept right here in the open so the librarian would know exactly who was reading them, all the while making it impossible for anyone to remove them, to show them to someone else.”

I could hardly take in what she was saying, still reeling from the crest, from the name.

She sighed, continuing. “It’s curious that, out of everything we have here, someone in this castle once decided that the mythology books were the ones that needed to be chained. The only thing is, everything in this book looks like cleverly hidden facts to me. Names, dates, crests. But this one here,” she said, pointing to the top of the page, “is the most striking one of all.”

“I’ll say. That’s certainly my name,” I breathed.

“No, Lennox. Look here.”

She pointed her delicate finger to a single word beside my abandoned surname.

Chief.

Suddenly the edges of the room were blurry, and it was very difficult to swallow.

“It makes sense that Kawan was thrilled to find your father,” she said quietly. “It also makes sense why he prefers to keep any of you from finding out more about your history. He might be the only one there who knows who you truly are. It’s also most likely the reasoning behind him keeping you so close. If anyone else knew the truth and found that he’d deliberately tried to hurt you, well, that wouldn’t reflect kindly on him. You are, after all, his sovereign.”

The room was shifting, and I faltered, stumbling into the shelf, holding on to it for stability. I took a few long breaths. My head stopped spinning, but not my thoughts.

“Sovereign?”

She nodded. “I think your ancestors were crowned by the other six clans. I think the other chiefs laid down their titles so that yours could be king. Well,” she amended, “most of them, anyway.”

“But what does this mean?” I asked, still trying to reconcile the idea of royal blood in my veins with the fact that I’d been sleeping on threadbare blankets for most of my life.

“It means that if anyone had the right to come and challenge my father for his crown, it was your father. It means if anyone has the right to take my position, it’s you.”

I pulled my eyes away to focus on her. My vision was still blurry, but she was dry-eyed, even as she told me her kingdom should be mine.

“You left everything to come and defend me. And because of that, an army might be on the way soon. If that happens, I wanted you to know the truth. When it comes time for you to make a choice, I won’t judge you for whichever one you make.”

I could feel a painful lump rising in my throat. “I’m choosing—”

But before I could finish, she put her hand gently over my lips. That hand could thread a needle and wield a sword and flit through a dance and knot up my hair. And it could stop me in my tracks.

“Don’t say it. Because if you tell me now that you choose me, and, in the end, you can’t, that will be a pain worse than death. But if you say nothing, and you choose your crown and your kingdom, then I’ll be able to live—or die—in peace. You made me no promises.”

I nodded, unable to think of anything to say.

“Can we take this?” I asked. “I just want to see more. I can’t believe there’s an entire book.”

She smiled and looked over my shoulder, waving her hand. I turned to see Rhett coming from a distance. Had he been watching us that whole time?

“Rhett, my father is likely on his deathbed, and my brother has expressed his deep desire for me to remain regent for the unforeseeable future. There is no one in this palace . . .” She stumbled over her words for a second. “There is no one in my family who outranks me. I want to take this book to my room for further study, so please unlock it.”

His eyes darted between Annika and me. “I can’t. I have to wait for the king.”

“Rhett. I am regent.”

He swallowed. “I . . . I can’t.”

I saw that she was irritated, but then an idea flashed behind her eyes so fast I almost missed it.

After a deep breath, she slowly nodded and walked over to Rhett and held out her hand to him. That charming face—the one she used when she walked in the library, the one she used when she tricked me in the dungeon—came back as she moved unusually close to him.

“Forgive me,” she said quietly. “I’m exhausted. I know you’re looking out for Kadier, and I truly am grateful, Rhett.”

His shoulders dropped in relief. He didn’t like being on her bad side. Personally, I thought he was missing out.

“Thank you, Annika. But come back and see me as often as you like.”

She gave another calm tip of her head, and we were on our way.