The Hollow Crown (Kingfountain #4)

“I can never accept that!” he said in anguish. The look in his eyes showed the depth of how much she’d hurt him. He was pale, his humor slit open and spilled. “I can’t believe that you and I are meant to repeat their story. We are different.”

Without another word, he whirled and stormed away from her, trampling the grass with his stride. He stalked off quickly, vanishing from the garden in moments.

She watched him go, and once he was gone, she finally released the tears that were lingering on her lashes. The sobs hurt, but there was a feeling of profound relief too, like drawing a sharp splinter trapped beneath the skin. She might have lost Fallon’s love and his friendship forever. It was possible his grief would drive him to someone else, someone like Morwenna, in retaliation. She had to prepare herself for such a possibility. But she believed she had done the right thing, despite how broken she felt.

She decided she could never go back into that garden again.




Trynne and her mother stood on the beach full of sea glass, watching the sun set. Trynne held her own slippers as well as her mother’s while Gannon knelt in the moist sand, sorting the different colors of pebbled glass as the breeze tousled his hair. The smell of the air was delicious and fragrant, a soothing balm. She had found her mother’s slippers at the foot of the steps leading down from the rock wall. It was her mother’s place of solitude and comfort. But it was also full of ghosts.

“Did I do the right thing in how I rejected him?” Trynne asked her mother, giving her a sidelong look.

Sinia smiled as she put her arm around Trynne’s back and squeezed her shoulders. She kissed Trynne’s hair. “Most people are afraid to tell others the truth about their foibles and weaknesses. We fear to offend, and for good reason. Most people are so easily offended. But you did the right thing, Tryneowy. And I’m proud of you. Fallon needed to hear it, even if he didn’t want to.”

Trynne put her arms around her mother’s waist and pressed her cheek against her bosom. “Men prefer to be flattered, I think.”

Sinia laughed softly. “’Tis true. But people generally despise where they flatter. And I don’t think you despise Fallon.”

“Not at all,” Trynne said. “He probably despises me now. But someone needed to tell him the truth about himself.”

“Indeed. Your father and I have had many discussions about this,” she said as they enjoyed the sound of the crashing surf. “He was always thinking about discernment because of Ankarette, you know. How can you learn to trust someone? We all have weaknesses. Some we know about ourselves, and they are obvious to others too. Then we have faults that we are blind to ourselves, but are plain to everyone else. Some weaknesses we deliberately conceal from others. But the most rare are the ones that are both invisible to us and to others. Those we are blind to. They may be our greatest weakness of all.”

Trynne turned her head and looked up at her mother. “But how can you find out about those, Mother? I’ve never thought of that before.”

Sinia stared at the sea, her gaze a little distant. “Your father said these were the greatest threat to happiness. The blind weaknesses. We agreed when we first wed that we would be honest and helpful to each other. That we’d help each other learn to see our own weaknesses. Like me forgetting my shoes,” she added with a tender smile. “But there is only one way we can ever discover the blind ones.”

“How, then?” Trynne asked hopefully.

“Actually, it was Myrddin who helped us get to the answer. Long ago. Sometimes we can learn about them from the Fountain. Not in whispers. But by circumstances we face. Those circumstances reveal the weakness we never knew we had.”

Sinia smiled once more, gazing at the gray-green horizon. “And then we are no longer blind to them.”




Trynne swung the glaive high, and Captain Staeli caught it, jammed it down, and followed through with a knife toward her ribs. She twisted, trapping his arm, but he levered her backward, nearly making her fall. His counter was perfectly timed.

She released his hold and stepped back, feeling the sweat streak down her cheeks. Her training clothes were sodden from their lengthy practice. She twirled the glaive around as he watched her movement, preparing himself for her attack.

“Well done, Captain. This weapon can strike from either end. Be ready.”

“I’ve seen well enough what it can do,” he grunted, his eyes intense and focused.

The door of the training yard creaked open and Farnes limped into the yard with the help of a walking staff. Trynne stilled her weapon and straightened, turning to face her herald as she saw he had come with news.

“My lady,” Farnes said in his wheezy voice. “Several ladies have arrived at the castle. Some are young. Others are much older. The queen sent them. You mentioned, when you returned, that you were expecting some . . . visitors?”

Trynne gave him a broken smile. “I am. Let them come and see.”





Sometimes we put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.

Myrddin





EPILOGUE


The Hidden Vulgate


Morwenna Argentine smoothed her hand across the ancient page of the wrinkled vellum, staring at the marks and runes and feeling the overwhelming giddiness that always came when she read from it. The book was ancient, bound in fraying leather with sigils and wards on the cracked spine. Whoever had created it had been a master Wizr, one who had lived a very long life. It was a compendium of the words of power, what they did, and how they were invoked. It was a book of intrigue, of subtlety, of the machinations of power. It should never have been created. And yet it was hers.

She still remembered the day she had discovered it in the hidden vaults of the poisoner school in Pisan. It was the school’s deepest secret, and no one had really understood its significance until Morwenna came along. Only the masters of the school knew of it. But she was good at ferreting out secrets. And with the book, she had discovered an entirely new world. The book had probably been stolen again and again over the ages. It was The Hidden Vulgate. The keeper of secrets. The lore of the Wizrs. Her mastery of the craft had seemed miraculous to everyone else, but with the book, she knew information it would have taken ten lifetimes to acquire piecemeal.

Her sly smile turned into an angry frown. Yet despite all her knowledge, all her skill at intrigue, events had wobbled out of control at Guilme. The wagon cart of her destiny had crashed. She was still furious about it. So close—she had come so close to achieving her aim!