Forbidden Family

The blood on my hands wasn't mine, and that was the first thing I noticed when I woke up.

Second thing: the smell. Copper and salt and something underneath it, something sweet and rotten like fruit left too long in the sun. I knew that smell. I'd grown up with it, the way other children grew up with bread baking and lavender sachets tucked into their pillows.

Third thing: I was naked.

Not entirely. There was a sheet twisted around one ankle, and my tunic was somewhere on the floor, I could see the edge of it, dark red against the pale stone. But my legs were bare, and my chest was bare, and the morning air coming through the window was cold enough to raise goosebumps across my arms.

I sat up too fast. The room tilted, then settled.

The body on the floor didn't move.

I knew her face. That was the worst part, maybe, though I wouldn't let myself think it yet. I knew the curve of her jaw, the silver streak in her dark hair that she'd always refused to dye, the small mole near her left eye that she'd covered with powder every morning for as long as I could remember. She was wearing her nightgown. White linen, embroidered at the collar with little flowers. I'd watched her stitch those flowers when I was a child, sitting at her feet while she worked, her needle flashing in the firelight.

Now the flowers were brown with dried blood.

I didn't scream. I wanted to. Something in my throat was trying to climb out, something hot and animal, but I swallowed it down and made myself look. Made myself see.

Her throat had been cut. One clean line, ear to ear, the kind of cut that took strength and certainty. The kind of cut that didn't happen by accident.

My hands were red to the wrist. Dried flakes of it under my fingernails.

I stood up. The sheet fell away. I was shaking, but my legs held, and I walked to the basin in the corner and poured water from the pitcher and watched it turn pink as I scrubbed. The water was cold. It didn't matter. I scrubbed until my skin was raw, until the water in the basin was the color of weak tea, and still I could see it. The stain. The memory of it.

I'd loved her.

That was the thing I couldn't say out loud, not even to myself, not even now with her blood drying on the floor. I'd loved her since I was old enough to understand what love meant. She was my father's wife. She was my mother, or the closest thing I'd had to one since my real mother died bringing me into the world. And I'd loved her in a way that would have gotten us both killed if anyone had ever found out.

Someone had found out.

I pulled on my tunic. It was inside out, and I didn't bother fixing it. My boots were by the door. I laced them with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling and tried to think.

The last thing I remembered was dinner. Roast pheasant, I thought. There'd been wine. Too much wine, maybe, because the edges of the evening were soft and blurred, like a painting left in the rain. She'd been wearing green. I remembered that. Green velvet, the color of pine needles, and her hair loose down her back the way she only wore it when we were alone.

We'd been alone.

Gods, we'd been alone.

I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw spots. Think. Think. What had happened after dinner? There'd been a fire in the hearth. She'd been laughing at something I said, her head tipped back, the line of her throat pale and vulnerable in the firelight. I'd wanted to kiss her. I always wanted to kiss her. But I hadn't. I wouldn't have. She was my father's wife, and I was better than that, or I'd thought I was, or I'd tried to be.

The wine. The wine had tasted strange, now that I thought about it. Bitter underneath the sweetness, like something had been stirred into it.

A door slammed somewhere in the house. Footsteps, heavy and fast, coming up the stairs.

I looked at the body. I looked at my hands, still stained pink despite the scrubbing. I looked at the window, three stories up, a sheer drop to the courtyard below.

The footsteps were closer now. Two people, maybe three. I could hear voices, low and urgent, but I couldn't make out the words.

I knew how this looked. I knew what they would see: the lord's son, covered in the lady's blood, alone in her chamber with the door locked from the inside. I knew what they would think. What they would say. The story was already written, and I was the villain of it, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

But I could run.

The window was old, the latch rusted. It took three hard shoves before it gave, swinging open with a groan that seemed too loud in the quiet room. Cold air rushed in, sharp and clean, and for a moment I just breathed it, trying to clear the fog from my head.

The courtyard below was empty. The stables were to the left, the gate beyond that. If I could make it to the stables, if I could get a horse, if I could ride fast enough and far enough, maybe I could figure out what had happened. Maybe I could find out who had done this. Who had killed her. Who had put her blood on my hands.

The door handle rattled.

I swung one leg over the windowsill, then the other. The stone was slick with morning dew, and my boots scrabbled for purchase. For one terrible moment I hung there, suspended between the room where her body lay and the long drop to the ground, and I thought about letting go. Just letting go. It would be easier. It would be over.

But I didn't.

I found a foothold, then another. The wall was rough enough to grip, old stone with cracks and crevices worn deep by centuries of rain. I climbed down faster than I should have, my heart hammering against my ribs, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Ten feet from the ground, I slipped. My grip failed, and I fell, hitting the flagstones hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs.

For a moment I just lay there, staring up at the pale morning sky, trying to remember how to breathe. Then I heard shouting from above, and I rolled to my feet and ran.

The stables were dark and warm, smelling of hay and horse. My father's stallion was in the first stall, a big black beast named Thunder who'd thrown every rider who'd ever tried to mount him except my father. I didn't have time to be gentle. I threw a saddle on him, cinched it with shaking hands, and swung up onto his back. He reared, and I clung to his mane, and then we were moving, bursting out of the stable and into the gray morning light.

The gate was open. It was always open at dawn, when the farmers brought their goods to market. I rode through it at a gallop, and no one tried to stop me, and then I was on the road, the cold wind whipping my hair back, the castle shrinking behind me with every beat of Thunder's hooves.

I didn't look back. I couldn't. If I looked back, I would see her face, and I would remember the way she'd smiled at me across the dinner table, and I would break apart.

So I rode. I rode until the castle was a speck on the horizon, until the sun was high and my legs were numb and Thunder was lathered with sweat. I rode until I couldn't ride anymore, and then I found a stream and let him drink and sat down on the bank and put my head in my hands.

The blood was still there. Under my nails. In the creases of my palms. I could scrub forever and it would never come off.

She was dead. Someone had killed her, and I was the one they would blame, and I didn't know who had done it or why or how I'd ended up in her room with no memory of the night before.

But I knew one thing. I knew I hadn't killed her. I couldn't have. I loved her too much.

And whoever had done this, whoever had put that knife in her throat and that blood on my hands, they were going to pay. I didn't know how. I didn't know when. But I made a promise to her, there on the bank of that nameless stream, with the sun burning down and the water rushing past and my heart still beating somehow, somehow, in my chest.

I would find them. I would find out what had happened. And then I would make them suffer.

It wasn't much of a plan. But it was all I had.