Chapter 85

Arik

Sleep was a fine thing to suggest to the others, but I never slept within the Duke's walls. We should've come here at a slower pace, stopping at inns for a proper bed and bath. We shouldn't have come here at all, I amended. I could've sent word, a raven, with a message about the plan. I could've asked the duke to pretend he'd caught sight of the golden stag. It's not as if Magnus could check his assertion for its veracity. I should've stayed in the damn capital, doing what I could to stop the worst of my brother's excesses, but instead I was here.

The gardens at Fallspire were always beautiful. Despite the moon shining bright above me, I couldn't see the colours of the flowers much, but the monochrome landscape helped reveal the elegant lines of the garden's design. Not hard edges, each bed was an undulating mass of different heights and foliages, taking the beauty of a field of wildflowers as its inspiration. The hall was the duke, hard lines and Gothic arches, but this…? This place was all Ariel.

As I walked across the grass, the damp dew staining my boots, it wasn't hard to see a young stripling of a lad towering over a diminutive girl with long dark hair and eyes as blue as the sky. He was utterly transfixed by her in the way only young lovers can achieve. They walked arm and arm deeper into the garden, what burned between them a flame that needed to be sheltered from prying eyes, but they didn't see the shadows lengthen the further we got away from the manor.

Dark shapes loomed higher and higher, the shapes of trees on the grass transforming into something far more sinister. A cry of warning lodged in my throat, but it did not manage to escape. There was no point, that was a mantra I repeated over and over, ever since the day Ariel died, so instead I did the same thing as always and just kept moving forward.

The two of them faded once we reached here. The family cemetery was marked by a ragged fence made from deer antlers, alerting the viewer to the fact that this was sacred ground. It'd existed well before the manor was built, before the duchy of Fallspire was created. The bodies of the first kings lay within that graveyard.

As did she.

The markers for King Ragnar's grave had long since rotted away, replaced now by formally chiselled stone, but more recently were the resting places of each of the dukes and duchesses of Fallspire. Ariel wouldn't normally have warranted a plot here. She would be married off to someone, her body interred in her marital family's cemetery, but Ariel hadn't managed that. Her body was tossed aside like rubbish after Magnus got what he needed from the exchange: making clear how toothless the Duke of Fallspire was. Oh, and my unending pain.

"Arik…"

I tried to persuade myself that this was just the wind, my mind playing tricks on me. I was converting harmless shadows into monsters, so why not the breeze into a voice? Her voice. But when I turned around, there she stood.

"Ariel."

"You've come again, my love?" Those full lips of hers quirked up at the edges. "You haunt this place far more often than I do."

"I rouse you from your rest?" I frowned, then shook my head. "I did not know—"

"You rouse me from nothing." Her hand felt ice cold as it touched mine, but I couldn't help but grip it tight. "I am nothing, nothing but your memories. You remember me," Ariel glanced at the manor, "more than anyone else."

I nodded slowly, feeling it, that pain that has been aching for so long, so deeply, I barely noticed it anymore. It'd become a part of me, just another feature like my eyes or my hands. But that didn't mean I had to like it, those jaws that gnawed at my guts, my heart. Perhaps it was that pain that had me straightening up, saying the things I never dared to the girl I had loved when she still lived.

"I remember you went to him." My eyes found hers and I caught the flinch of pain there, but it wouldn't stop me. In some ways I was just like my brother, hurting women needlessly. "I begged you not to. I told you what he was like, what would happen if you did."

"But my father—"

"Knew nothing." Rage, pure and sweet as the best honey mead rushed up and out of me. "Thought that Magnus would be bound by some unwritten rule to keep a noblewoman, his queen safe." I shook my head sharply. No one listened to me about Magnus. They tried to fit him into the grimy pantheon of horrors they'd seen, but none of them knew him like I did. "Your father was bested on the battlefield, but that wasn't enough for Magnus. Any sane man would've consolidated his position, brought about peace…"

I frowned as I considered what I'd said, realising something that seemed immediately obvious as soon as I verbalised it.

"But my brother is a madman." I stared at Ariel. "Your father put you in the hands of a madman and then was surprised by the inevitable result."

Ariel was a noblewoman, but she was also the daughter of one of the most powerful duke's in the country, so her chin jerked up in a way that was all too familiar.

But it wasn't her that she reminded me of.

Ariel faded momentarily, the daughter of a duke replaced by a princess.

"So if you knew what would happen, why didn't you save me?"

Ariel's eyes glittered in the moonlight, but right as I thought I would bear the brunt of her terrible rage, her hand slapped down on her neck.

"Ariel… Ariel, no!"

I leapt forward as she gasped using lungs that no longer existed, clawed at a throat that slowly bruised, then blackened. Her breath came in rapid little pants as she tried to beg, plead for mercy. I moved, to pull her hands away, to get between her and her attacker, but there was no mercy to be had. Ariel wasn't a ghost, but an echo of the horrors that were done. A tear rolled down my cheek as I watched her fingers claw at her throat, another tear, then another as she tried to dislodge those unseen fingers. My vision went blurry, my whole chest heaving as I was forced to watch her eyes go wide, so wide, filling with disbelief, then her terror. The sounds she made grew more and more hoarse, my hands clenching tight into fists as I felt my heart torn from my chest all over again. Nothing I did now or all the other times I'd seen her ghost helped her find her eternal rest. Instead I was just forced to witness her death again and again.

That last stuttering breath that marked the moment when her heart stopped and she died, it was a relief now, rather than horrific. It meant this was over for now, until the moment I stepped foot back on Fallspire lands.

I stared at her grave and sucked breaths in, regaining my composure as I put the hard armour of indifference back on. It was the only thing that allowed me to function in the world, but the process was interrupted. Right as the tears dried on my cheeks, the hoarse roar of a stag had my head jerking up, staring into the darkness.

Apparently Ariel wasn't the only ghost I'd see tonight.

The golden stag was the king of the forest that had covered the entirety of Khean well and truly before men came to these lands. The elders of the wolf shifters had no origin stories to explain him, just that he was the spirit of this land, there before they came.

But that vague answer was not enough for me right now.

"What are you doing here?" I snapped, advancing upon the beast. My belt knife found itself in my hand. He lowered his head in answer, not ready to charge, but able to at a moment's notice if needed. "Why are you here again! I killed you!" His hoof pawed at the ground. "You died and I lived and none of it mattered! None of it."

The air was filled with the sounds of heaving breaths, but they were mine now. I was the one with the tightened chest, the feel of steely fingers around my throat, because as my hand rose and slotted into the old scars there, I remembered.

My father was entirely the king, so when he introduced me to the royal playroom, he assumed that we two boys were like all of his other subjects. We would get on with doing as he wished, because he was king. But Magnus had been raised to expect to wield the same power one day, his mother whispering in his ear every day how precious, how important, how brilliant he was. He had few friends, because none could ever hope to attain his greatness. Other children flinched away from him because they were intimidated by his position.

Not because he was a bloody monster.

Those highborn children had nannies and mamas who would whisk their charges away from Magnus when his play grew too ‘rough'. Bruises would be covered over with fake smiles and mothers would be sure to supervise all visits to the crown prince. My mother was just a lowborn lass who had made the mistake of catching the king's eye.

And bearing him a son.

The queen had worked hard to ensure no bastard children were born to threaten her son's claim to the throne, but Father had kept Mother well hidden, only bringing me forth when I was old enough, he thought, to survive life at court.

I nearly didn't.

I can't even remember what it was that I did. No one would ever accuse me of being a fool. I learned to make myself as small a target as possible and yet here I was. I didn't see the stag, but my brother crouched over me, his hands wrapped around my throat and squeezing as hard as he could.

His bitch of a mother entered the room when the nannies and maids couldn't separate us, pleading for her to intervene, but she just watched. Those cool eyes observed my hands flailing, reaching out for someone, anyone to help me, but this was the moment when I learned the bitterest of lessons. Don't wait for anyone to come and rescue you. Don't expect anyone to have your back and even if you find them… I sucked in a shuddering breath, seeing somehow a grown Roan, Creed and Silas standing beside the queen, watching me sadly. My vision was darkening around the edges, the blood in my veins exhausting the oxygen I did have in an attempt to get more.

It was only in death would I be free of this, the memories, the experiences that shaped me, because when the darkness that threatened to swallow me bled away, he was left standing there. Golden, beautiful, somehow I knew his pelt would glow like a newly minted coin if the sun hit it just right.

Because Jessalyn's hair did.

Gods, above…

I marched back into the hall, winding my way through familiar corridors until I found the kitchens, the cooking fire long since damped down to coals. Ariel had shown me where the duke's cellars were. We'd spent a gloriously terrible afternoon down there, kissing between swallowing mouthfuls of very expensive wine, but I wasn't looking for a good vintage right now, not when rotgut would do just fine.

"That stuff is near on vinegar," the duke said as I climbed up from the cellar.

"Sour suits my mood perfectly," I said before pulling the cork from the neck and splashing some into a mug before swilling it down. I offered him the bottle and he just pushed a measuring cup my way. He joined me in the world's worst toast, right before settling down at the kitchen table, perching on a stool.

"You saw her again?" he asked mildly as I sat down myself. "Of course, you did." He shook his head and then took a sip, wincing at the taste. "I've always wondered at it, why she would haunt you and not her own father, but I think I know."

There was always a warmth, an intelligence about the duke that made me want to spend time around him. He was like my own father, when the weight of court and the crown could be set aside. I saw a sadness in the duke's eyes right now, as well as resignation.

"I have accepted my daughter's fate. We thought we would win the battle, depose the usurper who called himself king." He set the cup down. "But the gods were not so kind." His finger drew strange shapes in the flour dusting the tabletop. "I was ready to allow the sons, the lovers, the brothers, fathers, cousins of others to die on that battlefield to fight for a cause I thought was just, but in the end…" His hand stilled. "Ariel was the one who fought hardest, to stay alive, to survive that fucking bastard that cunt queen bore."

The quiet rage I saw in his eyes was not enough, not to mark what had happened and perhaps that was truly why Ariel visited me, not him. Her anger was mine. Her rage mine only to bear.

"But she didn't. That was a bad business, but it lies in the past." The duke stared hard at me. "What matters now is the fate of the princess of Stormare."

"Nothing will happen to Jessalyn," I growled, watching his eyebrow jerk up. "If there's even the slightest doubt I'll put her on the fastest horse I can and ride her out of this fucking cesspit and I won't look back, not even for a second."

"Well, then…" The duke knocked back the rest of his wine. "We best do all we can to bring the king to justice and put you in your rightful place."