Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Elara
Morning kneels me in the herb plot behind the kitchens, but grief seems to be the only thing that thrives out here. The earth is cold enough to bite, damp seeping through my skirt until it finds bone, while my knife scrapes at dry rosemary that breaks with the small sound of a neck snapping.
When the bushes in front of me blur all over again, I wipe my sap-sticky wrist over my stupid eyes. Daron is best with the eyes, but I was supposed to wire Father’s jaws. Put marigolds around him. Cut a hole in the ground.
My bottom lip quivers.
I wasn’t there.
Another tear trembles loose, landing on a winding stem of dry thyme, but I ignore it.
Mist clings to the herb garden like a shawl someone forgot to shake loose, settling heavily over frostbitten grass.
The sun crawls slowly toward the palace, as if reluctant to touch the rot inside, the curse it holds, or the many secrets it hides.
When the yellow-stained envelope pokes from the pocket of my apron, I shove my final wages deeper into the cotton once more. Take what you need, child, Miss Hampshire told me when I handed her my notice, pointing her nubs at the herbs in a last extension of kindness before I take the carriage home.
What else was left here for me?
There’s no more goal. Nothing left to try. No hope. And Vale’s plan? Well, it benefits nobody but himself—the lying snake of a bastard.
Memories shove forward unbidden: the library’s dust, his breath heavy against my mouth, fingers curling into my flesh with trembling restraint. The way he kissed me patiently, gently…and then hard.
And what if I tell you that it will?
Heat licks up my sternum, stupid and treacherous. God, look at me, being a fool all over again. For all I know, that kiss might’ve been another of his attempts to distract me. Get me out of the library, away from the truth. Away from the fact that Vale can’t be trusted.
I shake my head, eyes climbing to the dark windows at the corner of the palace, draped until the light dies at the seams, a mausoleum stitched shut. For days, Kael has kept the door barred, refusing Miss Hampshire, refusing maids, refusing food.
Refusing me.
The basket digs into the crook of my arm as I rise from the dirt. No. Even if Vale had true affection for me—which he doesn’t, the filthy liar—his brother has shut himself away from me so completely, so irrefutably, that there’s nothing left here to salvage.
I turn toward the hedges leading back to the kitchens, the basket clutched to my chest, the herbs inside trembling with each step. It’ll take all day, the ride in the carriage. Maybe longer if—
“Elara…”
It’s merely the breath of my name, carried on the cold air like a fragile thing not meant for mornings, yet it halts my steps.
That’s not possible…
I turn.
Kael stands halfway down a path, one arm braced against his ribs, breathing like each inhale claws him raw. The sun slices across his face, and he squints, grimacing at the sting of light.
What on earth is he doing here?
“You shouldn’t be out here.” The words feel strange, as timid as those slow steps I take toward him. “It’s much too bright.”
“I am aware,” he says with a slit-eyed flinch. Then softer. “But I had to come.”
My heart beats faster, the rhythm as tangled as my thoughts as I take him in. He’s dressed—actually dressed—in a fresh shirt, fresh trousers. Damp golden hair is combed around his crown, a few strands curling down along freshly-shaven cheeks.
God, he combed himself.
He takes a step closer, blinking hard as the daylight needles at his eyes. “I heard…” His jaw works, the muscle in his cheek fluttering. “Some maid at my door. She mentioned…your father.”
Everything in me pulls tight, twisting in on itself like a rope yanked too hard. The basket sags on my arm the way Father’s bucket used to before emptying—heavy and uneven. I don’t know what to say.
Why is he here?
Outside?
In the sun?
“I meant to find you sooner.” He swallows, breath fogging between us. “To see if you were…alright.”
If I’m alright.
The words scrape something open inside me. I clamp my jaw shut, swallow it back down. I will not fall apart again. I’ve already cried myself raw. I’m hollow enough to rattle.
He steps closer, and his shadow folds gently over my feet. “You cried,” he says quietly.
My spine stiffens. “It’s nothing,” I manage, swiping at my cheek in a useless, frantic gesture. “Truly, it’s—”
“Hush.” His voice doesn’t command; it offers. Soft. Careful. His hand rises. Pauses midair. Then touches a tear I missed beneath my eye, brushing it with a tenderness that makes something inside my ribs quake. “Cry if you must, Elara.”
No, not again.
Not here. Not in front of him.
I grit my teeth against the swell rising in my throat and shake my head. “I’m alright.”
But he doesn’t step back, doesn’t retreat into the shadows the way he used to. He just stands there in the painful sunlight, blinking through it, eyes watering from the brightness.
Hurting…for me.
And something inside me gives.
The next breath I take collapses instead of fills. A choke breaks loose from somewhere too deep to swallow again. My vision blurs, blurs more, until his chest is nothing but contour and color, until the herbs in my basket double and triple, until the ache inside can’t be forced back down.
A sound I hate tears out of me—small, broken, childlike. The basket slips, herbs scattering around my boots.
Kael catches my arms before I fall to my knees, pulling me into him with a care so gentle it undoes me entirely. His chest is warm beneath my cheek, steady in a way nothing else in this cursed world seems to be.
“Shh…” He wraps one arm around my back, the other coming up to hold the back of my head, fingers threading through dampening strands. “Let it out.”
Somehow, that makes it worse.
I sob into his shirt, shaking so hard my ribs throb with each breath. He doesn’t stiffen, doesn’t pull away from snot or tears. There’s just the slow weight of his palm between my shoulders, the steady stroke of my spine as if he’s teaching my breath how to move again.
When the sobs burn down to something smaller, he lowers his mouth to my hair. “Stay,” he says, quiet as a prayer lost in my strands. “Please.”
The plea knocks my breath sideways. I thought that whatever fragile closeness I’d scraped together with him had snapped clean in the cave, and now he’s asking me to stay? Why?
But it doesn’t matter why.
None of this is mine to choose anymore, never was. Whatever fragile thread I had spun between Kael and me, Vale never intended for it to reach its end. He will never allow it.
“I can’t.” My voice tears as I retreat from the warmth of his chest. “I have to go. Mother…Daron. I need to be with them.”
He nods against the top of my head. There’s no argument in it, no rejected king. Only understanding.
That, and… “Then I shall bring them here.”
“What?”
He eases back enough to see my face; the light bites his eyes till they gloss, and still he looks. “Your mother. Your brother. Allow me to bring them here.”
I blink up at him, sure I’ve misheard, until the words settle. “Here? To the…palace?”
“Rot is everywhere, even in the palace.” He glances at the draped windows and back to me, the deep orange of the morning sun giving his face a warm glow. “Here, rations are slim, but still regular. Linens are clean. Water, fresh from the spring.”
“You would do that?”
His eyes search my face for a moment. For what, I can’t say. “Yes.”
Three letters, simple and unadorned, yet they cause a flurry at my core. “Why?”
The question hangs between us in the stillness of the morning, as heavy as the moisture clinging to the chilled air. Guilt is a cruel friend, and shame even crueler. Is he trying to buy himself penance? For the suffering he knows he caused? What if this intimacy between us didn’t erode after all?
My lungs stall for a moment. What if it grew deeper than I thought?
“Perhaps it is as simple as wanting,” he confesses at last, voice roughened at the edges. “Wanting to repay your kindness, your patience.” A small breath. “Not to mention your utter rudeness and annoying tenacity when I need it most.”
A sound snags in my throat, tries to be a sob and decides to be a chuckle instead—crooked, wet, painful as a stitch in my side. I clamp a palm to my mouth, but it leaks out anyway.
A faint smile curves his lips, if only until his blue eyes narrow once more when the sun shifts out from a small cloud. “Yes?”
I study him through the leftover blur in my vision. How he blinks against the sun. How he draws his breath slowly, as if trying to warm the air before it stabs his lungs. What if this situation isn’t doomed after all? What if not all is lost?
On instinct, my eyes wander down along his throat, and for once, not to check on the rash there. No, to look exactly at the place where his esophagus bobs—where Vale might slit his brother’s throat the moment he lifts his crown.
Unless I prevent it.
I can hardly warn him of his brother’s plan without implicating myself. And my family? Is bringing them closer to this mess wise? I’m not sure, but Kael has a point. The palace is in bad condition, yes, but still much better than the city.
Against the tension in my arm, the subtle dread tingling my fingers, I lift my hand to rest on the side of his neck. Then I nod. “Bring them.”
If Vale’s scheming means Daron dies, then I guess it’s time I do some scheming of my own.