63 Leaves of Ink (2/2)
The Prince may well be drinking still with some dancers. Lloren said he was tired, when I saw him, he likely retired long before the rest of the party. Silly me, making grand plots where there are none. The night after tomorrow it would be better to search for them.
No difference in the sand below her and the dunes that had surrounded her since birth she let herself enjoy the feeling of them under her. ”There is no desert there,” she said to the sky. She had tried to read about the Realm when the marriage, and her role in it, was announced. The book, old and brittle had been impossible for her, the words written in the language of the Dark Realm, not in the common tongue shared by all realms. Still she had looked at the pictures. Trees of a kind she had never seen before, huge with dark, heavy leaves, had filled the pages, bordering words she couldn't understand. Is that what it's like? Forests, she recalled the strange word, a natural occurrence that did not happen in her own realm.
In the dream she sat up closed her eyes, drawing the energy around herself, moving it so that it formed something like she saw in the books. She opened her eyes to the same trees, funneled through her imagination, their canopy blocking the desert sun, laying strange patterns on the ground. ”Is this how the world will look when we pass through to it?” she asked the wind.
”There's still time to stay with Ferran,” she sighed. He had been right, they could just as easily take a street girl in her place. There were more than enough of them. Even an old woman would be fine. The Prince from the Dark would only take one wife and that would be Esti, the other, her position, could be anyone at all. ”If I stay with Ferran, what then? Will he move me into a house in the city, make me a soldier's wife? Or does he plan to move into a room under my mother, to win favor with my brother?”
What she knew of Ferran was far less than what he knew of her. But then, beyond the fact that he was a member of the guard, not the Hidden Guard for her father but the basic guard and slightly older than herself, she hadn't bothered to learn much else. He had seemed to be a way to pass the time and Porras enjoyed her consorts, Usoa thought it would be a nice distraction.
What do I want, she thought staring up at the strange canopy the light flickering and changing as the breeze blew through it. ”I feel like I'm just here, just waiting for something to happen. I might as well be Esti's maid. I have no purpose, no goals. I. Am. Boring.”
But there had been something in that touch of darkness that made her pause and even now under the strange trees she felt a sort of curiosity. Hadn't she stood on the roof to wait with Esti? Did I really do that for her, she thought, or did I want to see them come over the horizon for myself?
She frowned. Like this is no good, she thought, there is nothing but the same patterns, the same dreams, here for me. I'll go. I'll go and I'll make a life for myself there. If I don't like it, when Esti is bonded and safe, I will come back, I'll go somewhere else, I'll make something of myself, I'll make something of this, she decided.
”There you are!” Esti called.
Usoa turned, frowning at the girl who hurried through the trees to her. Her voice high like a bell, different from the deeper tone of Usoa's. Her figure clad in flowing, silver robes that danced in a wind all their own and looked like water. Her eyes shone bright like two copper colored coins. ”What do you want? Were you looking for me?”
”Yes, I traced your light all the way here. I want you to find my husband tell me what he's like. What he's really like,” Esti commanded.
”I can't, I don't think he's asleep,” Usoa replied.
”He's just gone to bed, less than half an hour ago. I waited up and then took some sleeping liquid so that I could come here right away.”
”Go yourself,” Usoa growled.
”I can't! You know the Sorgia can't see her groom until we've passed through the Third Realm and into the dark! It will mess everything up if I do it now!”
”That's superstition,” Usoa sighed. ”But fine, I'll meet your prince.” And see for myself some of what the Dark Realm really looks like.