Amalthea's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

The prince arrived at dawn. Amalthea watched from a high window as his black-cloaked riders passed through the gate her father had sworn to bar. Thran had not turned him away. The treaty was too old, the witnesses too many. Now the shadow prince stood in her father's hall, and Amalthea meant to judge him herself. But the hall was thick with her father's men. Guards lined every wall. Servants leaned near the pillars. She could not ask a butcher if he ate fear while forty loyal ears listened. She found him below the dais. Prince Corvus wore a cloak of raven feathers that dragged the floor. Dark veins climbed one side of his face like cracks in stone. His eyes were near black. He looked exactly like the monster the book had drawn. Then he bowed, and his voice came soft. "Princess. I know how I look to you." He touched the veined side of his face. "They gave me this in exile. Not a gift. A curse. I would tell you the truth, if we had a room without your father's guards in it." Her chest tightened. He had named her exact problem. Every word here would reach Thran before nightfall. She needed him alone, and the hall would never allow it. Amalthea raised her voice for the room. "Prince Corvus has traveled far. I will show him the old chapel, so he may honor our dead before we speak of treaties." It was a private rite. No guard would follow a princess into prayer without shaming the king before his guest. Thran's eyes found her from the dais. He knew what she was doing. For a long moment he said nothing, and the whole hall waited on him. If he stopped her, he insulted the prince and broke the treaty himself. He gave one stiff nod. Amalthea led Corvus down a narrow stair. The chapel door shut behind them. Stone walls swallowed the noise of the hall. At last no ears remained but her own. "Now," she said. "No one hears us. Tell me true. The tales call you a butcher who feeds on fear. They also call you an innocent, exiled for a crime you never did. Which one stands before me?" Corvus knelt at the cold altar. His hands shook. "The man who ruled before me was the butcher. I named his crimes aloud in his own hall. He fled and left the blame on me, and the curse with it." He looked up. "I did not come here to harm you. I came because the treaty was my only road out of the dark." Amalthea searched his face. She believed him. And that belief was worse than any lie, because the prophecy still promised her death if she wed him. She had her private truth now. She just no longer knew what to do with it.