Chapter 16 - The Queen Who Never LeftMara counted thirty-two steps from the eastern gate to the palace's underground chamber. She counted them because fear made numbers easier to hold than hope. A guard shoved her down a spiral stair, past a room full of broken mirrors and a door painted with a child's blue flowers. Elara followed, her hands bound by silver cords that glowed whenever she struggled. The guards placed them before a narrow window in the stone and withdrew to speak with Voss.
A woman stood on the other side of the glass. Her hair had once been black, but gray ran through it like winter branches. Her hands were thin and scarred, and the crown on her head was made from no metal Mara knew. She stood perfectly still, not like a woman in a painting but like someone who had been waiting so long that movement had become an expensive habit.
"Mother?" Elara whispered.
Queen Yselle came closer. She touched the glass. Elara did the same, and their fingertips aligned without meeting. For twelve years Elara had mourned a mother whose eyes now searched her face with unbearable care.
"My child," Yselle said. "They dressed you in silver. I hoped the spell would never have to wake."
Elara wanted to embrace her, accuse her, beg her to explain everything, and cry like the eight-year-old she had once been. Instead she said, "There are two of us."
"I know. I made you both. I thought I was giving each of you a chance to live."
The queen explained that her chamber was built inside the Mirror Gate's first seal. Food and medicine reached her through a narrow service hatch. Each year Voss paid attendants to keep her alive because her freely given oath was the gate's true lock. Killing her would release the Witness immediately. Allowing her to leave would do the same. So the kingdom buried her in plain sight behind the portrait commemorating her supposed death.
"The guards call you Primary Witness Y," Mara said.
"A name is difficult to erase entirely when there are ledgers," Yselle replied. "Your mother understood that."
Mara's throat closed. "She died believing she'd failed you."
"She died because she did not fail," Yselle answered. "She kept the original records away from Voss, even when it cost her safety. She taught you how to read the signs. That was her victory, though nobody gave her a medal."
Elara laid her cheek against the glass. "Why did you leave me with him?"
The queen did not soften the truth. "Because I could not carry you out while the gate was closing. I divided your memory so that one of you could live beyond its reach. I hoped your father would release the other when he saw what he'd done. I was wrong. I told myself hope was a plan. It wasn't."
Elara's heart hurt more than when the guards had struck her. She had wanted an explanation that would make every birthday without her mother sensible. There was none. Yselle had tried to save her child and had failed both daughters in different ways. Yet she stood here speaking without excuses, which made her more human, not less worthy of love.
Beyond the chamber, a bell sounded. Iris emerged from the shadowed service hatch with Roran and Hester behind her. The guards had left it unlocked to bring the queen's meal. Roran had copied the guards' shift schedule years ago and remembered the hour. He looked at Yselle and dropped to one knee.
"Rise," she told him. "I don't need another man kneeling where I need one helping."
Iris hurried to the glass. The queen looked from one daughter to the other and began to weep. She had imagined this reunion every night, but in her mind the girls had always been children. Now they were grown, frightened, and angry, and both had survived her absence.
"I am Iris," the second girl said.
"Then Iris you shall remain," Yselle answered.
A harsh scraping echoed from the queen's ceiling. The stone hand pressed against the back wall of the chamber, each finger broader than a man's torso. Yselle closed her eyes.
The queen's chamber contained a bed, a narrow desk, and a shelf of worn books. Elara studied each object through the glass with increasing dismay. Someone had supplied what was necessary to preserve Yselle's life while denying nearly everything that made living worthwhile. There were no windows. The candles were replaced by a small magical lamp that never showed day or night. A calendar hung above the desk, each date crossed off in careful ink. Every page was filled with notes to the daughters she had not been permitted to see.
Yselle told them the attendants changed often. Some were frightened of her; others believed she was a dangerous sorceress who had to be kept apart from the royal family. A few smuggled books and news of the city. She remembered each kindness. She did not pretend the kindnesses made the imprisonment acceptable, but they had reminded her that the palace did not contain only obedient cruelty. The world beyond the wall still held people capable of deciding for themselves.
Iris pressed close to the glass. She had spent her own years inside the tapestry surrounded by motionless faces. Yselle had spent the same years with a moving body but a locked door. Their sufferings were different, and neither tried to measure which was worse. Elara, who had remained outside both prisons, found herself grieving the childhood she had lived without understanding the price others paid to keep her there.
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Mara spotted a small bottle beside the queen's bed and recognized a tincture used for weak lungs. Her mother had taken the same medicine after the fire. She wanted to ask whether the palace had ever offered it to Iven, but knew the answer. Her daughter saw everything.
"It's no longer asking to be let out," she said. "It's asking why I am still holding it in."
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