Silver like Grief, Black like Guilt

By Meaghan E. Ward

The king is dead.

I slump in my best dress on the pew at the back of the cathedral while the funeral bells toll overhead. Outside the church, villagers scream in protest at the leaving nobility, whose emotions stream behind them in trails of color. Amber irritation. Pale boredom. Sour, brown fear.

My hands ball into shaky fists. I feel too much. The villagers’ anger is mine. The nobility’s fear is mine. Grief is a rope of silver around my neck, choking my breath.

They call it a gift—being an emotion-weaver, reading everyone’s emotions as colors, and sharing them with the royals like secrets—but really, it’s a curse.

Light streams through the stained glass windows, painting the king’s opulent coffin in jewel tones. It’s the touch of a blessing in this holy place, but to me, the sight triggers pain.

I am like that window. I am a riot of colors about to implode, and I need to release them, but I remain here and let them gnaw at me instead.

One of the last few visitors to pay their respects hesitates alongside my pew. Lord Gargrave, the king’s advisor. He pierces me with a hard gaze. “You.”

You were his friend. You grew up with him. It’s what I expect him to say.

“You were the king’s informant, weren’t you?”

His plaything, really. His slave.

“You needn’t look so surprised.” He sniffs. His eyes flick to the coffin, then back to me.  “He was boastful of attaining an emotion-weaver for his employment, though he always kept your meetings secret. I say, my dear, are you shaking?”

I keep my head bowed, hoping he will leave, but he settles on the bench beside me. The scent of the tea tree oil he uses in his beard wafts around him. The king’s study always reeked of it after Gargrave visited.

His voice drops. “You were reporting to him the day of his death, weren’t you?”

My fingers curl around my knees. Rioting wisps of color dance across the backs of my hands.

“If there is any information you have about his death, do tell me. I hear that speaking is the only way to be free of this particular burden.”

It’s not the only way. It just makes it easier to let go.

“Of course, we have lost a great man. Perhaps grief is a good burden to carry this day.”

The king’s brother and sister spare us a curious glance as they leave. The church is empty. There is only Lord Gargrave, the dead king, and me.

“I do not want this burden,” I say in a tone even softer than his. It’s a loud confession in the vast silence of the cathedral.

“Tell me,” he says again.

So I do.

I met the king in the hour before darkness fell. His office already burned with the golden hue of sunset. His was a pleasant face, but when he saw me, his smile was not pleasant at all. Grim lines hung around his eyes. “What news do you have for me today?”

“The rebellion against you is growing, Sire.” 

Red sparks floated in my vision. Anger. Sorrow. Pain. These were the emotions that had brushed against me in the streets and still buzzed disorientingly beneath my skin.

“Why do they hate me so?”

Was it a rhetorical question, or did he truly wish to hear my answer?

He laid a hand on my shoulder as he passed to the window. I shook under the touch, but I didn’t think he noticed. I didn’t think he cared.

“There were men publicly hanged in the square this morning,” I told him.

The king returned to his desk. “Death is a consequence of revolution,” he said.

“Did you even know who they were?”

He pulled a paper with neat, crisp handwriting from his desk. “I was given a list. Insurgents and murderers—every one of them.”

In the pew beside me, Lord Gargrave leans forward. His brow knits with puzzlement.  “We found no list,” he says.

My fingernails dig into my palms.

I told the king, “My fiancé was among those killed.”

The king looked startled. The paper floated back to his desk.

I shook hard before him, feeling weak, seeing nothing but red. It became a storm within me. “You murdered innocent people.”

 “If their deaths halt this rebellion now, we will save more lives than we lose.”

He rounded his desk. His hands landed hard on my shoulders. Blue. I saw cerulean blue before my eyes.

Peace. It was what he wanted me to feel.

“The list—”

“Was a lie,” I said.

His eyes tightened with sorrow, but all I felt from him was steel indifference and possessive resolve.

I shift upon the pew. My hands loosen. Colors leak between my fingers.

Gargrave, like the king, lays a land on my shoulder. Waves of that same cerulean blue, as transparent as stained glass, wash over me.

“What then?” he asks.

The king burrowed his fingers into my skin, forcing me to feel what he wanted me to feel, silently threatening me to remember my place.

Red overwhelmed the blue. Was it my hatred that I felt?

A knife rested in my dress pocket, guards stood beyond tightly closed doors, and I did not let myself stop to think.

Lord Gargrave’s hand freezes on my shoulder. His façade of calm spikes to yellow, then putrefies to brown. “You assassinated the king.” He breathes the words like he cannot believe them, but I know who wrote that list in the first place.

His beard oil gave him away.

My hands fall open. I let go. Silver like grief. Black like guilt. It streams from my skin and fades.

The king won’t be the last man to die for his crimes. This time, when I reach for my dagger, I feel nothing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meaghan Ward is an author and freelance illustrator with a passion for storytelling. She lives in the mountains of Colorado where she haunts the local library and daydreams of what would happen if she stumbled into a fantasy world. She also enjoys in-season portal hunting.

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