I followed Father Garius’s finger, all gnarled knuckles and leathered skin. His blunt nail pointed at carefully scrawled black ink on ancient vellum.
A raven spread its wings to two corners. The wings had been scrawled with a heavy hand that dripped ink as if each feather were bleeding. The artist had pressed substantial pressure into each detail, bloating its features, blurring its finer details.
Its dark beak hung open, its head tilted to the side, watching, waiting… seeing. Its sharp feet curled razor sharp talons into the page until the page itself bled. The artist’s wrinkled lines pulled, stretched, and squeezed until there was no doubt that this animal was dangerous.
This animal meant death.
Father Garius tapped the picture impatiently. I glanced around at the words scrawled on the borders and the paragraphs on the adjacent pages. But everything was written in a different language. One I couldn’t understand.
Father Garius tapped again and I lifted my eyes to meet his. He grabbed his throat with his other hand and pretended to choke himself.
“Yes,” I whispered, finally understanding. “Yes, I’ve seen this before. In my dreams.” I swallowed and breathed through my suddenly fluttering heart. “And at the river.”
The old monk’s eyes drooped with defeat. His hands slammed the book shut as if he could trap the raven inside those ancient pages. Alarm crept over my skin.
“What should I do?” I asked a man that couldn’t tell me.
Father Garius looked at me for a long moment. Finally, he moved to the bookshelf again, climbing a sliding ladder that allowed access to the upper rows of texts.
At last, he found the place on the shelf he needed. He moved books out of the way, piling them in a precarious heap on the lip of the shelf. He took two strong fingers and knocked at the back wall. Something gave way and his hand disappeared into a gaping black hole.
It reappeared gripping a leather satchel. He tucked it beneath his arm and reset the wall, the books and scrolls, and carefully made his way down from the ladder. He sat down and stared at me for another long minute.
He nodded, finally conceding to whatever idea had set him into motion. He untied the flap and removed the contents from within.
I sucked in a breath, the sheer force of it slicing through me with a knife’s edge.
The gold caught the late afternoon light sifting into the room like long fingers from the low sun. The ruby in the center of the diadem winked at me, whispering memories and meaning and a kingdom full of dreams and fuller of regret.
I reached for the crown before I’d put two coherent thoughts together. I closed numb fingers around the thin edges and let the gold cut into my palms, let it show me how real it was, let it prove that it was what I thought it was.
“How?” I choked on the word, stuttered on the weight of it. “How do you have this?”
He stared at me with those wise gray eyes and my mind drifted back to a day I dreamt about, but never thought about willingly.
A boy. A girl. A lost monk.
“They’re dead,” the little boy whispered earnestly. “All of them. The entire royal family.” The monk stared at the boy. “Take her. You have to. They’ll kill her if they find her.” The monk shook his head, denying the truth of the young boy’s words. “Take her now,” he pleaded. “Take her and take this.” He shoved the bloodied crown into the monk’s hands. His fingers left sticky fingerprints in the filthy gold. The monk gazed down at the crown, at the headpiece of an ancient kingdom and then at the frightened little girl. The monk finally nodded. Once.
I cried. I couldn’t stop crying. “I can’t leave you,” I told the boy.
His bright blue eyes stared at me with unshed tears of his own. “This is the only way to keep you safe.” He took a step closer, grasping my hands, red with blood not my own. “You have to go, Tessa. You have to go, or they’ll kill you too.”
“What about you?” I sniffled, trying to hold back the tears, trying to be strong and brave, just like him. “They’ll kill you too.”
He shook his head hard, jostling his dark curls, tossing them over his forehead. “They’re not after my kingdom. They don’t want anything to do with me.”
“I can’t leave you,” I insisted.
His blue eyes pleaded with me even as he pushed me toward the monk. “This is the only way I can protect you. Please, Tessana, let me protect you.”
I blinked, surprised by that memory. I’d forgotten about the prince. I’d forgotten about the crown.
“I’m to marry you one day,” that same little boy declared just weeks before. “I’m to marry you and that means you have to let me protect you.”
I’d tilted my defiant chin and argued, “I don’t need you to protect me.”
His smile had warmed my insides. It was as brilliant as the sun. “I know that, Tessa. That’s why you must allow me to.”
“Fine,” I’d sighed. “You may protect me. When we’re married. But not a single day before.”
Father Garius cleared his throat and my mind snapped back to the present. The crown pressed against my rapidly beating heart and I had to swipe away a tear I hadn’t realized had escaped.
“This is my father’s.” I spoke words trapped in the prison of my past. I moved my thumb over the diamonds and engraved vines. I closed my eyes and saw him seated at the edge of his throne, the crown on his head, a smile tilting his lips. I could see my eldest brother trying it on when my father wasn’t in the room. I could see my sister staring at it with open-mouthed awe.
This crown that didn’t only rule one kingdom, but nine. Nine kingdoms ruled by a legacy of one hundred kings.
The Crown
