Except that Celia knew how that story ended: in a century of war and sorrow. After her father and her brothers had avenged her, what summer lord would decide that Elithyon’s murder had to be avenged in turn, for the trick that had broken the peace? And how many people wouldheslaughter?
She looked down into the pale marble courtyard. There weren’t any bloodstains left on the ground; all of them had vanished. All those summer knights dead, and the summerlings weren’t angry about a single one of them, because they’d died with honor. They were making songs about Argent killing them, and more knights were lining up eagerly, thinking nothing of the risk of death next to the chance to be part of a truly glorious story. The same way they thought nothing of the people they killed everysummer in Prosper. Those people didn’t have stories that lived after them. They were just ordinary people: farmers and bakers and weavers, shepherds and millers. They lived and died unseen by the world, forgotten without ever being known by anyone. Anyone except the people who cared for them, the people they cared for.
And the kings of Prosper didn’t think about the ordinary people of Prosper any more than the summerlings did, with much less excuse, because theydidwant to live. King Morthimer had been handed a victory in the summer war, and all he’d thought about was making sure that Father didn’t take his throne. Likely he hadn’twantedthe war to end, Celia realized, thinking about it now. The lords of Prosper couldn’t afford to squabble amongst themselves when there was a war going. If one of them grew too powerful, the king could just put them in a keep that would be easily overrun, and so what if three villages were slaughtered afterwards?
And surely Elithyon hadn’t even really wanted to win the war himself. He’d wanted to keep avenging Eislaing, over and over. As long as he still had to avenge her, she’d stayed in his mind, in his memory, a story that wasn’t finished yet. He’d only really invaded Prosper after Father had started defeating his lords decisively, killing so many summerlings, and threatening to force an ending that Elithyon couldn’t live with.
Celia wanted that story to end. She didn’t want to bethe next chapter, the cause of another round of senseless war. But the only other ending she could write was the one where Argent died trying to save her, on the blade of the thirty-ninth or forty-third or seventy-first summer knight, and she did step off the tower afterwards, instead of starving slowly to death. Then no one else would ever know the truth. Father might guess that Gorthan was lying about the summerlings kidnapping her away from him, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, so he’d go home and turn his face to the wall and die, with the two children he’d cared about gone forever. Gorthan and Elithyon would both be crowned, and likely enjoy long and prosperous reigns, reaping the rewards of the summer peace made on the backs of her family.
Celia was her father’s sensible daughter, but she was also a descendant of the kings who’d been proud enough to keep a war going just to hang on to their thrones. She’d once swelled with a rage and agony furious enough to make sorcery with, and the story she really wanted was to live, and get out of this tower, and use her sorcery to tear Gorthan and Elithyon both into little pieces. It was their fault, the whole war was their fault: Gorthan and his father following in Sherdan’s footsteps, and Elithyon chasing after his own hungry vengeance, with all the same selfishness and pride. She wanted themdead,not satisfied and crowned with power; and if she couldn’t kill them herself, she did want someone else to kill them.
But she had a second brother. And if she did save the peace, Roric would get the same chance she’d be giving all those other people of Prosper: to make a family that could grow in peace. Roric would take that chance and use it. He’d marry, and have children, and he’d love them all. And he wouldn’t avenge Celia, but he’drememberher instead. She saw it as clearly in her mind as if she were there: Roric and his wife and children, all together in the warm, glowing sitting room in Todholme Castle, and he’d tell them stories about the sister he’d loved, and who had loved him.
Celia took one step and then another back from the edge. She had promised to care, and she would keep her promise. She’d care about Roric, and she’d care about the people of Prosper, and she’d even care about the summerlings, and give them a chance to write new stories of their own.
But it was a hardchoice to make, and harder all the next day, watching Argent fighting one summer knight after another, knowing that she could save his life with a single step over that edge. It would have been easier not to watch, but she’d spent so many days in the stands at Todholme watching him fight that she could see the fighting in herhead just from the sound. And by then the summerlings were all applauding wildly after every match, and catching their breath in horrified gasps whenever Argent was in the worst danger, so even if Celia hadn’t watched, she would have known every time he was almost about to die.
Instead the only thing that made it easier was Elithyon’s growing unhappiness. In the thirteenth match of the morning, Argent fought a knight who had two swords that turned into four and then six, wielded in arms that came springing out of his shoulders like mirror images, and made a whirling cloud of death all around him as a shield. Argent couldn’t come at him, and every time he tried, the summer knight answered as quick as lightning, his swords darting in and out. He drew first blood, and second blood, carving slashes through Argent’s mail on both his arms, to cries of horror, and then twice more on each of his thighs, blood streaming like thin banners as Argent twisted away, just barely avoiding a mortal blow.
Even as Celia almost cried out to say she’d jump, to stop it, Elithyon lurched up from his throne as ifhemeant to protest, but before either of them could say anything, Argent had continued the movement and come up from under that swinging blade close in to the other knight’s body, so close inside his guard they were almost in an embrace, driving a dagger up beneath his ribs.
Argent let the knight slide off him to the ground. His head was hanging with fatigue, and blood was stilltrickling down into puddles around his feet, and dripping from his wrists. Elithyon didn’t even have to declare the halt before the summerlings were already hurrying to Argent with fine bandages of pure undyed silk, but he sent his own cupbearer to bring him a flagon from inside the palace, and from it he filled a drinking horn to the brim with a drink that glowed with shimmers of gold and silver, and carried it to Argent himself. When Argent drank it, the red stains stopped spreading through the wraps. Elithyon stood looking at him and said, “Withdraw your challenge, and the sorceress will live out her mortal days in comfort; she will have food and drink befitting of her rank, and I will even have servants attend her, to see to her needs,” as if he were at a negotiating table, bargaining for Argent’s life, and he sounded as desperate to save it as Celia felt herself.
That didn’t make it easier to watch Argent straightening up to hand back the cup, and saying steadily, “No,” before he turned and went to his pavilion, to get ready to keep fighting his way to the death ahead of him. But it did make it easier for Celia to forgive Elithyon when he bowed his head in misery at Argent’s back. His sorrow cooled the hot resentment inside her like a breath of autumn air through the windows of Castle Todholme, and when he turned and glared up at her in a rage, his fists clenched, she didn’t glare back at him. She looked at him and didn’ttry to hide her own grief: a terrible fate they had to endure together.
His own fury quenched as he stared up at her, as if he saw something in her face he didn’t understand. He sat with grim resignation all the next day, and after Argent went to rest with seventy-eight summerling knights dead by the side of the courtyard, higher than any of the songmakers had guessed after the first night, Elithyon came up the tower stair and burst into her chamber and stood over her where she sat curled on the stones by the edge of the window, watching Argent oiling his mail for the next day.
“Do you imagine even he can win your freedom?” he said savagely. “Never have I seen such valor, but it cannot bring him victory in this challenge. He may slay a hundred of my knights, but what good will it do you? A hundred hundred more will come forth willingly to face him in the court. End this. I will let you speak to him. Tell him that you wish him to accept the bargain. You will have food and drink, and service—”
He stopped there a moment, but then in the pavilion, Argent got up to put his sword on the rack, and the step he took was limping, even though Elithyon had given him another silver-gold draught at the end of the night. Elithyon saw it, and he clenched his fists by his sides and bit out, “You will have more chambers here in the tower, garments befitting a queen as well, and each night amongyour dreams you will walk among the gardens. Will this not satisfy you better than to sit here and cower, clinging to a miserable existence that will last you only long enough to wither the most shining flower of knighthood that ever my realm has seen?”
She stood up and faced him and held out her hand. “Take off the ring, you with your ten thousand knights at your back, before you callmea coward.”
He glared at her over it, his jaw tight. “You are determined, then, to see him die for your sake?” he said in cold disgust. “To waste such courage and strength and honor, for no reason?”
And she knew it wasn’t any use, but Elithyon had known the same thing, and he’d tried anyway; she had to bargain for Argent’s life too, if she had any chance at all. So she said, “Let me tell him that I don’t want to be avenged. If he’ll agree to go, and forget about me, I’ll jump.” Only even as she said it, she couldn’t help but think of the curse, the curse that had so twisted Argent’s life. If she was dead, it would weigh on him forever. But she couldn’t help asking anyway.
Elithyon stared at her, bewildered. He said, “Notavenge you—” and stopped, as if he couldn’t make any sense of the request.
“Argent won’t die formysake,” Celia said. “I’ll be dead a minute after he is. But then this war you’ve made will be over for good, and the people of Prosper will be able tosleep in summer. And that’s worth dying for. Buthedoesn’t have to die, if he’ll just let it end here—”
“No,” Elithyon said, interrupting her. He’d drawn back from her as she spoke, his face going blank with the dismay of someone realizing he’d misunderstood an enemy, and now he broke in and shook his head almost fiercely. “No.” He stopped a moment, and said in almost a whisper, “Eislaing too loved her people, and the quiet folk. But if she had asked such a thing ofme,to let her die unavenged, forgotten, could I have granted her plea? It would have been only a bitter sorrow to know that, in her final hour, I caused her any grief. Why should you wound him so?” He turned and left her in the room, and she didn’t try to argue with him. She knew that he was right.
But she also knew, before the end of the next morning, that it was Argent’s final day, and hers. He’d recovered after the night’s rest, but his strength slipped away a little more quickly. And after she’d watched him fight and kill thirteen more summer knights, she ate an extra piece of bread, even though she’d only been letting herself have one each day. She was hungry, and there wasn’t any sense in suffering any more than she was going to anyway.
The summerlings knew, also. They’d stopped applauding after the victories; they were all silent now instead. When the midday halt came, the servants went to Argent and tended him gently, speaking in low voices as they guided him back to his pavilion. He’d been wounded fivetimes that morning. Elithyon watched from his throne with his face hopeless, and even looked up at her in misery instead of rage, as if he wanted to see someone sharing his grief. She met his gaze; she wanted the same thing. She was so glad that it would hurt him when Argent died. She was glad to think that he’d have to remember this as the end of the story he’d written for his sister: not a triumph, but a tragedy.
And then the sun crept over the sky, much too quick, and Argent came back to the courtyard. He fought and killed nine knights, but the ninth one put a blade through his side, front to back, even as he fell, and afterwards Argent sank to his knees in the courtyard, pressing a hand to the wound. Elithyon jerked a gesture and sent servants in to dress the wound, and let his head fall into his hand. Around the courtyard, all the summer knights who’d been so eager to fight before were edging back instead, as if none of them wanted to be the one to come in and strike what all of them could see would be a mere executioner’s blow.
Celia had stood up, her hands clenched, involuntarily. She looked at the edge, and thought again about jumping. But after the wound had been bound up tight, Argent looked up at her and smiled again, more familiar than he had been ever since the day he’d first ridden away from home to go to the summer games. Lightness and ease had come back into his face; the hard desperate grip he’d hadon himself suddenly unclenched. “It’s all right, Celie,” he said. “Don’t worry,” and she understood at last what he was telling her. This was his own way around the curse: a way to die for love, instead of glory. Something that was worth dying for, to him.
She did start crying then, because she knew that meant she couldn’t jump, after all, even in the last moment. Because that would be worse for him than if he died. This was his last chance, his only chance. No one else could love him, that he could love. He’d chosen, the same way she had. Tears were running down her face, but she also made herself smile back at him, and she said, “I love you,” to let him know she understood.
Argent bent down, carefully, and picked up his sword. “I’m ready,” he told Elithyon, and then one of the summerlings at the edge of the court cried out urgently, “Your Highness, look there through the trees—a visitor comes to your court!”
Elithyon sat up in flaring relief and said, “We must halt the challenge for the nonce, that we may welcome our guest,” a reprieve she thought he was granting to himself, more than to either of them.
But then she caught her breath as Roric came into the court and bowed his red-capped head, still dressed as a song-spinner. When Elithyon asked, he said, “I’ve come to offer my poor skills to amuse the Summer Prince and his court, if you’ll have me,” and Elithyon said eagerly, “Playfor us, then. Let us hear your finest songs and tales, and you shall feast with my court this night, and for every night so long as you continue.”
