Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

ROLAND

Roland paced the corridor, from one end to the other, never stopping. He couldn't stop, couldn't allow himself to have a moment when he might rest, and think, and consider what might have been. What had almost happened…

People came and went from the bedroom, Maidens of the Aurum, various physicians and nurses, but no one who wasn't thoroughly checked first. His Paladins patrolled the corridors and there were knights posted at every doorway. Sister Maryn, still bloodied and bruised, had all but snarled at him when he challenged her but he let that go because she was almost as frantic as he was.

Elodie was like a sister to her. And Maryn had been there when Sassone had taken her. She had failed to protect her. She couldn't fail now.

The rest of the regents' council were under heavy guard, in spite of their many protests. Even Ylena. Perhaps especially Ylena. Roland didn't know if she was involved in this or not but right now he didn't care. Let her stew for a while. It served her right and her arrogance could do with taking down a peg or two. Or more.

If they had planned this together, he would gladly see them all hang. He would put the nooses around their necks himself.

There had never been a coup in the history of Asteroth and it had come so close to succeeding.

‘Roland?' Maryn opened the door and beckoned to him. ‘She's asking for you.'

He moved without thinking, like a raw recruit summoned to his first parade.

They had brought her to her old suite of rooms. The maidens still clustered around her, but she lay in the bed of the queen now, a raised confection of a thing draped in silk and cloth of gold, not in the narrow and stark cell where he had last seen her. And she looked so small. Almost childlike.

Her golden hair spread out on the pillow around her and the white nightgown didn't help the illusion. Her skin was too pale, but there were no signs of injury or burn marks now. They had cut the collar and shackles from her skin and laid healing hands on her. Elodie opened her eyes and gazed at him for so long he wondered if she still knew who he was, or if instead she had lost her mind completely. When they tried to stop her sitting up, she waved them away imperiously and there she was, his Elodie, the look of pure irritation almost making him laugh out loud with relief.

‘Out,' she tried to say, but her voice was strained.

He had heard her screams. They had almost driven him to distraction. In all honesty he had lost any sense of reason as the gates had shattered – he had no idea how as the battering rams alone should have taken twice as long to break through but he blessed the light for it. He had ridden his warhorse up the stone steps at a gallop, trampling the guards beneath him, and plunged into the flames to reach her.

And then the Aurum had erupted through them all. As if by taking her from that vile fortress, he had let her call it. But she hadn't. She couldn't have. Elodie had barely been conscious. She couldn't have raised a spark. He knew that. It had to have been someone else and he suspected who that might be. But how could she have done that from up here?

He remembered Finn telling him of the madness that had overcome him when Wren was in danger and Roland knew now he should have been more sympathetic. He knew the feeling just as intimately. Only then it had seemed something lost to the past and another lifetime.

Now it was fresh and ragged and raw. It still churned in the pit of his stomach.

He would have done anything to spare her. Anything.

He still would.

The servants and the healers backed away, leaving the two of them alone. He hardly noticed when the door closed behind him. All he could see was Elodie.

‘You're alive,' he said.

She gave him that look again, the one that called him an idiot of the highest order. She still had that perfected. He might be Grandmaster of the Knights of the Aurum, but Elodie would always see the boy he had been. The same way as he saw the girl instead of the queen, the witch and the Chosen of the Aurum.

‘Thank you,' she said, and he wondered for a moment if he had misheard her. ‘If you hadn't come…'

She closed her eyes again, trying to push away the memories of what had happened to her. Her brow furrowed and, the next thing Roland knew, he was on the bed, holding her in his arms.

He shouldn't. It was a terrible idea. All their shared and separated past, all the lies and deceptions, everything they had done and every way they had hurt each other told him that.

But right now he wasn't listening to anything but her.

‘I will always come for you,' he told her, his voice rough in his throat. He took her hand and pressed the cold metal of the locket into her palm.

Slowly, Elodie curled in against him, taking a deep breath. Her hands came up to his chest and rested there, so cold through the fabric of his shirt. But oh, that touch was worth anything. Anything at all.

‘I thought…' Her voice shook and she couldn't go on. He could hear her fear now, feel it the way he had felt it in those terrible moments before he pulled her free. Trauma still racked her body and it would haunt her for years to come. He knew the way of it.

Carefully, he cradled her cheek in one hand and pulled back so he could look her full in the face, to fix her with his gaze and hold her full attention.

‘I will always come for you,' he repeated, a new vow, one just for her. ‘That was always true, El. It still is. Always, just as I promised.'

Tears spilled from her eyes, falling like jewels down her cheeks. ‘I had to go, Roland, all those years ago. I can't explain everything but I-I simply had to. If I had stayed…if I hadn't taken Wren…'

He knew he ought to ask all his questions, get those answers that no one seemed willing to give him. But right now, he didn't care. Or rather he didn't care enough. Elodie was here, and she was safe. She wasn't dead and for those dreadful moments after that bastard Sassone lit the pyre he had thought that he was about to lose her forever. Again.

But Elodie, his Elodie, was here. Safe. In his arms.

‘Later,' he told her. ‘You can tell me later. I'll wait. I'll wait as long as you need me to. I've waited twenty years. What's a little more time?'

‘But you…' She looked so delightfully confused. Elodie, who always thought she knew everything and who usually did.‘You need to know. They're going to want to put her on the throne and they can't, Roland.'

‘She's your daughter – our daughter…Of course she's going to sit on the throne after you, but not for many years, my love.'

But instead of comforting her, his words made it worse. He could see that in her blue eyes, the shattering of hope, the desolation of despair.

‘That's the problem…She is our daughter, but not…not actually…' She pulled back, cursing, and he let her go, because fighting her at a moment like this would never work. She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest and her teeth worried at her lower lip, like she used to when she was young, when she didn't want to tell him something or own up to anything wrong. ‘You must have suspected. After the trial. You must have guessed.'

‘What happened, Elodie? All those years ago? If you don't want to tell me yet, I will wait, but one day…one day you'll have to tell me. Please. I've waited, I've searched, I've guarded your kingdom for you. Yes, for duty too, but mainly for you. And when I saw Wren, the moment I saw her, I knew. I just knew . She looks like the women of my family, all of them. My mother's eyes, my aunt's build, my sister's?—'

Elodie shook her head. ‘I know what she looks like. But it isn't as simple as that.'

‘Then explain it to me.' He sighed and raked one hand through his greying hair. ‘Use the simplest words.'

At that, she laughed, a bitter and broken sound that was almost relief but was also something else, something lost and sad.

‘You won't understand.'

He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I know where children come from, love. And we did enough to create a child, didn't we?'

Her lips wobbled and she dropped her gaze to the bedclothes. And that was somehow worse, because a rosy blush spread up her neck to her face.

She looked up sharply, as if a thought had occurred to her. Her hands closed tightly on the fabric of his shirt, her grip as strong as ever. ‘There was never anyone else but you,' she told him adamantly.

‘I didn't think there was.' He tried not to sound bewildered. All these years, and she was a beautiful woman, one with needs and desires. And yet, he believed her. Because how could he not? ‘Nor was there anyone else for me but you. You know that, surely.'

Any other woman would be pleased to hear that, he thought, but Elodie nodded glumly. ‘I'm sorry, Roland. I'm sorry for everything. It's all my fault.'

She opened her arms to him again and waited until he settled himself beside her to curl in against him. He stroked her hair, freshly washed and brushed to a sheen like silk. He just wanted to hold her, now that he could.

‘What grievous sins have you committed now?' he asked. ‘The Aurum didn't seem to think there was any blame. It hasn't roared to life like that since?—'

He stopped, remembering. It hadn't acted like that since the last time she was here, when Evander had killed himself and summoned the Nox, and Elodie had fought it and won, vanquishing their ancient enemy in the holiest place in Asteroth.

‘Since I fought the Nox,' she whispered.

‘You defeated it.'

Please say yes, he thought. Please, Elodie, just say yes. Tell me you broke it and scattered it, and the dark goddess was banished forever. Tell me the pretty story about our triumphant queen who sacrificed herself to save us all, the one the maidens had spread throughout Pelias before Evander's corpse was yet cold.

‘It…it was almost defeated,' she whispered, staring up into his eyes. ‘It took a thousand forms, each more terrible than the last. It came at me like a dragon, like a whirlwind, like a thing from beyond our world with a million teeth. It tried everything and I drove it back.' Her hand closed on his shirt, her knuckles going white around the locket. ‘It made itself great and terrifying, and still I drove it back. I broke it to pieces, chipping away at it with the Aurum blazing through me. And then…'

Roland held his breath, listening because there was nothing else he could do. Part of him wanted to cover his ears or tear himself away from her. To call her a liar. But his voice was lodged in his tight throat, useless, helpless. Like him. And he couldn't let her go anyway.

‘It was almost done. Only fragments of it remained. I had all but banished it to the beyond. But at the last it took one more form. A baby. A little girl. With…with eyes and hair and skin like yours…Our child. The one we would have had. Should have had. It looked into my heart and my mind and it took the form I would never be able to hurt. It locked what remained of its power inside her and…I couldn't kill her, Roland. She's part of you and part of me, and I couldn't harm her. It knew that. It has always known. She is our child, the one we might have had in another lifetime, if we were different people. But…'

‘But?' He didn't know how he managed to ask. Elodie was a taut wire against his body and his pulse was thundering through his brain.

‘But at the same time, she isn't. She's the Nox. The last, vital part of it. And if she succeeds me, if they place that crown on her head and she stands before the Aurum…'

The words were ancient and hollow and had never felt more real or more terrible. ‘Then the lost queen stands alone,' he whispered. ‘That's you. But you won't be alone, Elodie. I'll be there. I'll?—'

‘You'll be dead. You'll all be dead. Asteroth will be at the mercy of Ilanthus and it will exact such vengeance on us… I'll be all that's left. Because it will want me to see our utter destruction. Alessander will want that. So will Leander.'

Of course they would. Elodie understood the prophecy better than anyone. She had studied it all her life. It was about her, wasn't it? Her and Wren…

‘Where is she?' Elodie asked after a moment of aching silence. ‘I need to see her. I need to explain it to her as well.'

‘She doesn't know what she is?'

He watched her swallow hard, pushing down her fears, her regrets. ‘I think she suspects and she is terrified.'

‘Shouldn't we be the ones who are terrified?'

‘Of Wren?' Elodie shook her head with a soft surprised laugh. ‘No. Not ever. You've met her, spoken to her, seen her. There is such goodness in her, Roland. She has been all that was good in my life since I left you. Oh, she has made mistakes but what child has not? No, Wren is the one thing I have done right. But I need to explain it to her as well. All of it. And reassure her.'

He dragged himself from her embrace and made for the door, summoning the squire and sending him running to fetch Wren.

But she was nowhere to be found.