Her father’s empty eye sockets held none of his energy or cunning; the gray, receding skin told nothing of the strength that once lay underneath it. Lips pulled back over teeth stained red and pegged in gold would never again speak words of command or gentleness. Propped against the wall of his lavish bedroom in the palace, King Raput Latevisha greeted only Bariti this morning. Nuwan had come the day before and Hakil still could not look on him, which the princess thought to be a shame. Only a few more days remained before his burial, after which another year would separate them in the body.

Vibrant blues and reds gave the king’s body the illusion of vitality, dressed as one of the old conquerors in the days before the kingdom stretched far beyond the shores of Nuritjuka. Bariti supposed it would have pleased him to be displayed this way, but it did little to soothe her pain. Her father was dead, her mother escaped to her family’s estates far to the west, and Daruntala had accomplished it all before anyone could stop him. And where were all the others who had fallen with King Raput? Where was the minister Kajurta’s body displayed, who the usurper’s men had shot full of arrows in the palace gardens? Or where was old Mahalit, cut down at the doors of this very bedchamber with his sword in hand?

There were still too many lost ones to mourn for, too many lives taken by her step-brother’s ambitions. It had never been so tempting to let her mask slip if only until Daruntala could never hurt her again, but to give in now could be more disastrous than persevering. Plans years in the making and others only just beginning fought within Bariti’s heart for supremacy, as one thought loomed in the darkness at the edge of despair: her mother had abandoned her.

Many who held the titles of queen and first wife wore them only as a robe, to be donned and discarded as the occasion required; her mother was born to them. Buni would know the words strong enough to calm her heart. When the princess had lacked some counsel, her mother had always been there with some experience or old story to guide her. And now to have Queen Buni Jaretna back would mean her death, just as much as her absence might mean Bariti’s.

Two knocks sounded on the door of the bedchamber took the princess from her thoughts. She had not summoned anyone, but did not feel to send anyone away either.

“Come in,” she said, turning to see her nurse’s face framed in the crack of the open door.

“Your majesty,” Henija replied. “If I am disturbing you…”

“Not at all. Join me.” The woman bowed and approached, her footfalls light and measured on the stone floor. She seated herself beside the princess and looked up to the dead king.

“He was always the strong one,” Bariti said. “In war or peace, though the latter was ever in such short supply.”

“It was so much worse before you were born, your majesty. In the days of his father, King Kamubo, I thought we may never know peace at all. The islands of the bay still raided us constantly then, but it was in your father’s day that they became known as the Islands of Slaves. He was a good king.”

“Yes.”

The first pain came like twisting in her gut, strong enough to merit her notice but nothing more. When the second came a moment later, she found herself short of breath, as if she had been kicked. Her hands balled up into fists as the next wave of it hit her.

Henija was at her back in a moment.

“What ails you, your highness?” Another came over her, and the words to describe it vanished except one.

“No.” The terror set in almost instantly, stone-heavy and threatening to carry her down with it into the endless dark below the world. She was doubled over on the ground now, and the words of her nurse fleeing down the hallway in search of help faded into a haze that clouded out all but the agony. Blackness closed in from the sides of her vision, gradually at first and then so thick that it was all she could do to keep her eyes open.

It was in that moment that all the thoughts she could muster aside from the overwhelming urge to vomit rushed to the life she held inside her: little Jayatna, the future of her line, and perhaps all that remained of her dear husband. She wanted to cry out to them, but the pain was too great. Her eyes closed on the sight of bare feet entering the room quickly, though whose they were remained a mystery.

Dreams came to her, or at least what she hoped were dreams. A moment passed where she held an infant in her arms. His eyes were fierce like Keranta’s, yet the hair of his head was black and fell in curls to pudgy arms. It was as they said in the song; none could approach the sun’s perch high above the world and come away without being seared by its brilliance. So was her boy, she realized, and a burst of joy spread out from her heart.

How she wanted to sing to him of the love she felt, burning within her like all the torches of the great shadow plays, even to consuming her. Son of such prowess that rowers and queens would sing of him with the same vigor they found for his namesake. Sunthief they called him, and Prince of Serpents after he cast the father of all such creatures from the sky in his anger and left his scattered remains as the islands upon the sea. But in an instant, the light was gone.

She awoke to strange hands holding her down, and a quiet voice whispering in her ear.

“You were shouting in your sleep,” the woman said. Bariti’s eyes opened on the royal physician, Tula, who knelt at her side. She put a wrinkled hand to the princess’ brow.

“What happened to me?” Bariti asked, her voice sounding far away.

“We do not know yet, your highness, but I am doing all I can.” More of her surroundings became clear to her now. She lay in her own room, not far from where her father sat in mute judgement. What she had thought to be the gentle sunlight of morning was instead the deep orange of sunset, and the urge to vomit returned. How much had she missed? Had a day or more passed without her knowledge? Then the princess remembered her dream, as well as the fearful omen it contained.

“My son…” She wanted to say so much more and if not, to return to the pleasantness she had known but even for a moment. Instead, despair clung to her like a gripping hand around her heart.

“Rest, your highness. It is the best thing you can do while I do my work.” And though her body was weary, her mind shuttled between possibilities as endless as the sea. Her only chance at survival lay with her son, or in whatever fear kept Daruntala from enacting the final steps of his plan. There was no doubt now that this was his work. Whatever had been done to her, the usurper must have needed her away from court in order to work some intrigue against her. It was the only solution that spoke to the cunning she knew to be in his heart.

She hardly noticed the physician leaving and returning with the tools of her trade. Sleep took her once, then twice, and finally once more until she awoke with bitter smoke in her nostrils and a curtain of golden light across her eyelids. The princess tried to lift herself onto her arms but only fell limply back onto her pillow, heavy with sleep and the herbs of the physician’s ceremonies. It was said that sickness was the spirit leaving the body, and the weakness that followed was the atrophy of limbs neglected by the soul which animated them. What afflicted Bariti was more than that. Though she could not put the feeling in words, something felt missing, as if a portion of her energy had fallen away.

Her mind prodded at it like her tongue at a missing tooth, and that was when she knew that her son was dead. Jayatna, prince, general, king, extinguished before any could feel his brightness but her. The knowing was beyond words as well, yet it was true. Tears could not find her then; nothing could in such emptiness as this.

The bleeding began later that morning, continuing in earnest after her maids had secreted her away from the prying eyes at court. By nightfall, the shrunken, bloody form of her firstborn already lay in an unmarked grave, far enough from her balcony to escape notice but never distant from her heart. It was then, as the princess mourned the throne this child would never claim and the love of parents it would never know, that she swore her revenge on Daruntala and all the traitors by every god who would listen.

A soft knocking at the door of her room that night went unanswered, until only the tale of Jayatna Light-snatcher could be heard, masking the gentle patter of tears on the princess’ pillow.