Buried Heroes

Chapter 1-2

Iellieth twirled her amulet in her fingers as she tiptoed to the castle’s northern reaches and her family’s generous wing. The amulet was the only trace of her father that she possessed—she didn’t even know his name. He had left the amulet with the young duchess when he and the other elven diplomats were sent back across the Infinite Ocean. They were expelled from the kingdom of Linolynn, the weeks spent forging trade partnerships and alliances undone by the revelation of an affair between one of the ambassadors and a beautiful young noblewoman, her mother, who was married to the powerful Duke Calderon Amastacia.

Soon after the affair was uncovered, a terrible illness began circulating across Linolynn, affecting young and old of all classes, and the duchess took her young son by Calderon away to live by the sea, in Aurora, to escape the illness. Emelyee had left with the revelation that she was expecting her second child, one not fathered by her husband but by the elven diplomat. She refused to give in to Calderon or her parents’ urgings to get rid of the child, and she returned to Aurora, where her tiny daughter had been conceived.

Calderon stayed away, angry and sulking, for the first year of Iellieth’s life, but when the sickness crept beneath the door of the Amastacia household, claiming the lives of Emelyee’s parents, he found his way to making peace with his wife. Their second child, Lucinda, was born a year later.

Iellieth loved living by the seashore, and she constantly brought Emelyee magical shells and flowers she found. The young girl had insisted that she could see the flowers growing before her eyes, but her mother had explained the illusion and that she merely saw them blowing in the wind.

After the Autumn of Rebirth blew healing winds across the lands, Calderon convinced Emelyee to leave behind her peaceful life by the seashore and return to Linolynn proper, to the castle and the court.

Iellieth had watched as the servants loaded all the trunks and ushered Bruden, Lucinda, and their keepers into the coaches for the day-long trek back to Io Keep. She didn’t want to go. Mamaun had said that the new castle was too tall on the rocks for them to play in the ocean, and there was no forest nearby, only a small park. Why would they leave their home? There was only one thing to do. She’d take the ocean with her.

Marie saw her on her way and asked if she might accompany the young lady to the sea. Iellieth said yes so long as she helped carry the shells. She could only hold a few, and there was no way for her to contain the immensity of the sea. Dirt and sand coated her new white dress. Mamaun would be cross with her and would make her go to the cold castle. “What should we do?” her heart asked the ocean. It cried in reply, and Iellieth did as well. It didn’t know.

Her beautiful mother appeared and found her as she spoke with the sea. A few blades of the long grasses clung to her skirt, and Mamaun’s hair had fallen into loose, flowing strands just like hers.

“What is it, my darling?” her mother asked. She knelt down so they could be at eye level and smiled at Iellieth’s armful of shells and shiny rocks from the beach.

“I don’t want to go. He’ll never be able to find us. The duke won’t let him.” Saying this out loud was more than she could bear. Iellieth pitched forward into Emelyee’s open arms. The sandy collection was cold and wet against her skin, and she shivered.

“Are you talking about your father?”

Iellieth nodded her head, and her mother wiped the tears free from her cheeks.

“I think you’re old enough now for me to give you something very important. But you must be careful with it, like a good lady. Would you like to see?”

Iellieth sniffled and straightened. “Yes, Mamaun.”

Her mother removed a small wooden box from her pocket. “Your father told me that this box is made from different types of oak, each of which tells us a long story. It was made by one of the finest woodworkers in the elven capital of Thyles Thamor. Do you remember learning about the elves in our books?”

She nodded. The box was too beautiful for her to speak, and the ocean called for her attention as well. She wanted to touch it, but Mamaun did not like that. It was important to wait.

Her mother opened the box and revealed the amulet inside. The center of the necklace featured a deep-red ruby, held in delicate, twisting strands of gold that crossed the gem in a curving hourglass design interrupted by a diamond shape at the intersection point.

“Your father gave this to me before we parted,” Mamaun said, tears glistening in her own eyes. “I think he would have wanted you to have it.” Her mother reached behind her neck and unclasped a thin gold chain. She threaded it through the top of the amulet.

“Turn around,” she said, and Iellieth dutifully obeyed. The necklace reached to the center of her torso after Mamaun clasped it around her neck and gently pulled her hair out of the way. “What do you think?”

Iellieth gazed in wonder at her gift. The ocean and the shells had answered her. They were going to help her father find her and them too. Iellieth’s eyes brimmed over once again as she smiled. She sprang forward and hugged her mother, her hips thrust back so as not to crush her new treasure. “I love it, Mamaun,” Iellieth whispered in her ear.

“I am so glad, my sweetheart. Do you think you’re ready to go to the castle now?”

“Do we have to?”

The duchess nodded. Iellieth glanced at the seashells and rocks scattered around her feet. She placed one in her mother’s hand and one in each of her pockets. She looked once more at the ocean. The waves crashed their good-bye. Her hand opened and closed to answer them. She wrapped her fingers around her amulet and placed the other hand in Mamaun’s, ready to be shown to their carriage.

On the journey to Io Keep, Iellieth was quiet. She stared at the amulet, turning it over and over again in the sunlight that twinkled through the coach’s windows.

Iellieth wore her most prized possession always. When she was still quite small, she tucked it carefully under her shirts and dresses so no one would try to take it from her. As she perfected the art of blending into her surroundings—vanishing into the movement of a room during a social event or shrinking away from the gaze of her peers and their parents, having learned that the circumstances of her birth made her an outsider in Linolynn—she was more willing to wear it outside her garments. For a few years in her early adolescence, as her relationship with her mother worsened and she became more isolated than ever, Iellieth wore it openly. She relished the aggravation her one small rebellion caused the duke.

And in the days before her wedding, she couldn’t help but return to the childhood state of trying to call to her father through the necklace that, she was sure, was somehow imbued with magic. If only she could cry out to him loudly enough, if only he could somehow hear her need, she knew he would come for her. He wouldn’t have let someone like Lord Stravinske occupy the same room as his precious daughter, let alone betroth her to him. Of that, Iellieth was certain.

Lost in this reverie of trying to access her father, wherever he was in Azuria, and begging him to come find her, Iellieth rounded a corner and found herself back at her family’s wing more quickly than she’d meant to be. The heavy wooden door bearing the Amastacia crest—an intricate shield bedecked with black roses cast in silver, steel, and onyx—bore down on her, absorbing the shadows nearby.

Iellieth had inherited her great-grandmother’s family ring, the one her mother had worn as a girl. She always found it to be a fitting complement to her amulet. Tendrils of golden ivy stretched from the base to the tip of her left ring finger. Along the ring’s spine, silver-stemmed black roses grew from bud to bloom and back, each blossoming out of the other, and the two fully extended roses kissed at a tiny hinge above her knuckle.

Tradition held that the oldest woman in a lineage was the head of her family until she passed the honor down to her next female descendant. The duchess’s ring, a heavy gold signet worn on the middle finger of her left hand, proclaimed her station. And because Iellieth was older than Lucinda and recognized by her mother—she was, after all, an Amastacia, as the surname passed through the matrilineal line—her ring signaled that she held the second-highest position in the family and would be next in line to lead.

However, Hadvarian society was patriarchal. Before her wedding ceremony, she would have to turn her ring over to her half-sister as part of her abdication of her place in the Amastacia line. Iellieth glared at the shield and imagined Lucinda’s haughty demeanor in that moment of victory over her despised “bastard” sister. She seized the metal handle and leaned back, shifting its weight with her own till it creaked open, and slipped inside.

Iellieth walked through the entryway and receiving room, intent on reaching the one sanctuary she could, at least most often, call entirely her own.

“I would say it’s well past time that you arrived, but it would be a waste of breath to express surprise on the matter.”

Iellieth jumped at the nasal sound of her stepfather’s droning voice. She was still upset following her conversation with Katarina and looked at the floor until she could compose herself to face Duke Amastacia.

“Where have you been?”

Iellieth took a deep breath. “On a walk.” She saw her mother standing behind Calderon, bathed in sunlight. The duchess rearranged the flowers on one of the many side tables in the elegantly appointed room, but Iellieth knew she was listening closely to the conversation.

“To the gardens no doubt. I told you she would be there,” he called over his shoulder. “We all have enough to deal with at the moment. I trust you will be punctual and attentive during the Festival, particularly to Lord Stravinske.”

“I would hate to burden you with undue worry. I can assure you that I will be neither, particularly when it comes to Lord Stravinske.” She spun on her heel to go.

“I’d stop there if I were you.” The note of warning, though spoken with quiet control, dripped with threat all the same.

“Would you?” Iellieth turned back toward him, fury blazing from her eyes. She should have known it would be pointless to try to resist his goading on this day so near to his triumph. “I certainly wish you would. You can both turn a blind eye all you want, but your senses will need to be deadened beyond violence to delude yourselves into believing that I will not fight you every step of the way to this ceremony that I have neither welcomed nor consented to.”

“Now, that is—”

“Do you expect me to grovel in thanks for a marriage to a disgusting man who assaulted me two years ago? Am I to forget about being shoved into a column outside the ballroom and forcibly kissed the moment your back was turned?”

The duke’s lips were two thin lines of anger, and his expression narrowed in malice. Iellieth was afraid to look at her mother. She couldn’t bear the thought of her mamaun willingly sacrificing her to this, and she refused to see if the expression on her mother’s face was the apathy she feared.

“You and I both know that nothing of the kind happened. I spoke with Lord Stravinske myself shortly after your ‘encounter,’ and we settled any element of misunderstanding.”

“That sounds terribly expensive. How much did it cost you, Calderon?” She spat out his name.

“I will be damned before I brook another instance of disrespect from you. Were you not already betrothed, I would throw you out for such insolence. You will—”

“But you have no right to throw me out, do you?” Iellieth twisted her lips into a small smirk to hide the terror coursing through her veins. She had nearly succeeded in angering the duke to the point of banishment before; perhaps she could manage it this time? But he would never allow the public disgrace those actions would provoke, however much he wished to be rid of her. And his way was crueler.

“That is more than enough, both of you.” The duchess stepped toward her husband. Why was she stopping him? This was Iellieth’s last chance. Frustration coursed through her, the anger so intense she could feel it spark between her fingertips, waiting to explode outward. She wanted to scream.

Thwack.

Her mother leapt back as the pot she’d been tending burst. A tumble of vines poured across the table. Her stepfather clutched his chest, surprised. “Bridget, come here please,” the duchess called, gazing at the tangled greenery.

Staring at the pot, Iellieth wondered why she herself had not been startled by the sudden noise. Had she known that the pot couldn’t take any more and all the life contained within had to be released? Had she willed that to happen?

Emelyee stepped carefully over the shattered pieces and glanced at the wild profusion of fresh-cut flowers spread around the room. “Something strange has happened, to be sure.” The other bouquets were suddenly overgrown and unseemly. The sprigs used to enhance the decor had sprouted new growths and run off the tabletops. They reached out, collided. Like the call of the ocean when they left Aurora.

The duchess wrapped her hand around her husband’s elbow. “Now, Calderon, why don’t you see about Bruden’s preparations for the Festival. I worry that he hasn’t packed his warmer finery appropriately.” Before he could object, she added, “And I am well aware that Sir James has assisted him. I’m sure Layne has done his part as well. Please?”

“Yes, dear,” he said. He patted her hand and, with a final glare at Iellieth, skulked away to their son’s room.

“Iellieth,” the duchess began.

“Are you going to tell me that I don’t have to go through with it?”

“Well . . .”

“Then you have nothing to say to me.”