Chapter 6
My eyes shoot open. Every part of my body is stiff, and my heart is pounding loudly in my ears. Waking up with panic never gets easier, but I got used to it. I try to breathe calmly.
Inhale…hold…exhale.
Inhale…hold…exhale.
My heart rate slowly calms down and I release the hand I have been pressing to my chest.
“Another terror, my Queen?” Charles asks sleepily.
“Yes, don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep,” I murmur and drop a soft kiss on his shoulder.
Getting out from under the covers when we are making camp in a tent is the worst part of traveling. The servants are trying to ensure we are as comfortable as possible, but there is nothing they can do about the freezing cold temperatures that have been persisting for the past couple of weeks.
I quickly get dressed in three pairs of stockings and a thick woolen skirt, a blouse and a warm shawl.
Charles said it was important for me to get to know the kingdom and for our people to see us together. We have been traveling for the better part of six months now.
From the gold-drenched days of summer and into the slow dying of autumn, the road has carried us across lands I had only known through maps and secondhand tales.
Stone cottages perched on cliffs above winding rivers.
Villages tucked into valleys where smoke curled gently from low roofs.
Abbeys and market towns, forests so vast they seemed to swallow the sky.
Everywhere we went, people came to see us.
They lined the roads and crowded the squares, bowing and cheering, pressing forward with offerings of bread and flowers and rough-spun gifts meant to show their loyalty.
I learned their faces, their accents, the stories told by old men.
And in all that time, I saw no unrest—only gratitude, only relief, only the joy of being seen by their King.
Charles made certain I was always beside him.
I stood with him during audiences with local lords and abbots, listening as they spoke of harvests and taxes, of roads in need of repair, of disputes settled and grievances laid to rest. When he asked my opinion, it was often on matters of mercy rather than judgment, and I was grateful for it.
I found my place there more easily than I had dared hope.
In many towns, I organized small acts of charity: the distribution of grain from royal stores, seed for the coming spring, warm cloaks for the poor as the air grew colder.
It was simple work, and it filled me with a sense of purpose I had not known I was missing.
The people thanked me as though I had given them far more than I had, and each time, Charles watched me with unmistakable pride.
We were almost never apart.
If one of us was summoned, the other followed. If he rode ahead, I rode beside him. At night, whether in a lord’s keep or in tents beneath the stars, I slept within the reach of his hand. The road became our world, a narrow space belonging to only us. And the three hundred people entourage.
That is why the thought of returning to Acheron sits so heavily in my chest.
The capital looms ahead of us now, dressed in evergreen and candlelight in anticipation of the Christmastide celebrations. It is the heart of the realm, and the crown demands to be worn there in full. Charles will be needed again.
There have been rumors, murmured by guards and messengers: Saxon unrest in the North. Rebellion, or something like it. I know what that means, even if no one has said the words aloud: Soon, he will ride to the battlefields without me.
The thought leaves me hollow with fear.
I have not heard from my family in months.
Letters rarely find us on the road, and those that do are often weeks old by the time they reach my hands.
Familiar voices have faded into memory, and the court I once feared now feels even more distant—vast and echoing, filled with faces I do not yet trust.
Here, on the road, with Charles beside me, I know who I am.
In Acheron, without him, I am no longer certain.
And as the frost creeps thicker across the land and the year draws toward its end, I cannot shake the feeling that this season—this sheltered, wandering happiness—is already slipping through my fingers.
If there is one constant I have found on this journey beyond Charles himself, it is Aileen.
Trust did not come easily to me at court.
Too many smiles there are hiding people’s true intentions; too many words are chosen with care.
Everyone seems to want something—favor, influence, proximity to the crown—and I learned quickly to weigh my own thoughts before giving them voice.
But Aileen never asked for anything at all.
She listened. She laughed too loudly. She spoke freely, sometimes foolishly, sometimes with a surprising clarity that caught me unprepared.
Little by little, I let myself open to her.
With Aileen, fragments of another life began to surface.
Summers in the countryside, skirts hitched up as we ran barefoot through tall grass.
Sun-warmed berries stolen from hedgerows.
Laughter that came easily, without consequence.
Those days have not returned to me in full, nor could they.
Too much has changed. And yet, with Aileen at my side, I feel steadier somehow, less likely to lose myself entirely to the weight of who I am now.
The present pulls me back with a sharp breath of cold.
I push aside the tent flap and step into the brittle morning air.
Frost glitters faintly on the ground, the fire at the center of camp burning low.
Aileen stands beside the fire pit, wrapped in her cloak, trading remarks with one of the guards.
When she sees me, she straightens at once, dropping into a flawless curtsy.
“Good morning, Your Majesty,” she says primly.
There is mischief dancing unmistakably in her eyes.
I laugh before I can stop myself. The guard grins, bows, and takes a step back—but he does not leave. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, I notice the faint color rising in Aileen’s cheeks.
I have seen them speaking before, more than once.
I suppress a smile, already imagining the questions I will corner her with once we are safely out of earshot.
The guard clears his throat. Up close, I can see that he is young, though broad-shouldered and solidly built, with reddish hair that curls where it escapes his helm. There is something boyish and handsome about him, a cheeky ease that fits Aileen’s outgoing nature.
“If I may, Your Majesty,” he says, eyes flicking briefly to Aileen before returning to me, “there’s something you might wish to see.”
Aileen’s hand finds mine at once.
“Come,” she whispers. “Before anyone notices.”
The guard—Rowan, I recall now—falls into step ahead of us, moving with the casual confidence of someone who knows precisely where every pair of eyes is turned. He leads us toward the kitchen tents, then slows, glancing over his shoulder.
“I’ll keep them busy,” he murmurs. “You’ll have a minute. No more.”
He stops near the path and raises his voice, calling out to two passing guards with an easy grin. I catch only fragments, complaints about the cold, a jest about burned porridge, but it is enough. Their attention shifts fully to him.
Aileen squeezes my hand and pulls me forward.
We duck into the kitchen tent. From a shadowed corner, hidden behind a basket of onions, Aileen retrieves a small satchel and presses it into my hands.
“Close your eyes.”
I do as she says. There is a soft rustle, then a gentle weight settles into my palm.
“Open.”
Dried plums.
A laugh bubbles out of me, half-delighted, half-disbelieving.
“Aileen,” I whisper, “how—”
“Trade secret,” she says, already tugging me back toward the flap of the tent. “Now hurry.”
Rowan is still there when we emerge, posture relaxed, one boot propped against a crate as the other guards drift away, none the wiser. He straightens at once when he sees us, the corner of his mouth twitching as Aileen darts past him.
“My thanks,” I murmur as we pass.
He bows, but when he looks up, his eyes find Aileen again, warm and unmistakably fond.
We run, skirts clutched, and laughter muffled, until we are safely hidden away in Aileen’s tent. There, crouched together like girls again, we eat our stolen sweets in peace, a small rebellion against the cold, the crown, and everything waiting for us in Acheron.
Outside, a guard’s laughter rings out, Rowan’s, unmistakable even at a distance.
“Now, Aileen,” I murmur, leaning closer, “how exactly does one come to know a guard well enough to steal plums under his protection?”
* * *
The camp is restless as preparations are made for the final leg of the journey. Horses stamp and snort in the cold, leather creaks, servants hurry with clipped voices. I linger at the edge of the clearing, wrapped in my cloak, watching frost curl along the grass.
The camp is already stirring, though dawn is still a long way off. I step away from the tent, meaning only to clear my head, when I hear raised voices carried across the clearing.
“I warned you this would happen,” Aynhard says. His voice is sharp, stripped of courtesy. “You were meant to use this marriage, not disappear into it.”
Charles answers more quietly, but there is iron beneath his calm. “Mind your words.”
“You spend every hour at her side,” Aynhard presses. “You keep her close, you indulge her, you let her distract you from matters that cannot wait. Hilde understood restraint. She knew when to step aside.”
The name hits me like a direct blow, even at a distance.
“This is not about Hilde,” Charles says.
“It is precisely about her,” Aynhard snaps. “And about what you forget when you surround yourself with softness. She is beautiful, willing, eager to please—you think I do not see what holds your attention?”
There is a pause, long enough that I hold my breath without realizing it.
“You mistake desire for weakness,” Charles says at last. “And happiness for negligence.”
“Happiness,” Aynhard scoffs. “While the kingdom fractures at its seams? While Saxon lords test our borders? You cannot afford to be consumed by a woman who was bred to serve her father’s interests.”
“She serves mine now,” Charles replies flatly.
Aynhard lowers his voice, but not his venom. “You think keeping her constantly at your side will ensure that? You think passion makes loyalty?”
“No,” Charles says. “Control does.”
The word is spoken calmly, without heat.
“I keep her close because the court is a nest of vipers,” he continues. “Because peace depends on her father’s goodwill, and goodwill depends on her. I will not let her be poisoned against me by those who resent her place, or mine.”
“And yet,” Aynhard says, “you protect her as though she were fragile.”
“I protect what is mine,” Charles answers. “And what is necessary.”
Silence stretches between them.
“You are forgetting yourself,” Aynhard says finally. “And worse—you are forgetting her purpose.”
Charles’s voice hardens. “I know exactly why I married her. Do not presume to instruct me on my own designs.”
By the time their footsteps retreat into the noise of the waking camp, my hands are shaking inside my sleeves.
Not because of the cold.
My mind is spinning.
There had always been gifts waiting for me.
In every keep, every lodge, every borrowed chamber along the road—fresh gowns laid out before I arrived, jewels arranged as if by instinct rather than command. Servants reassigned to my service without my asking, their loyalties transferred as easily as cloaks.
“You deserve to be spoiled,” Charles would say, smiling as though indulgence were virtue. “You have given me everything.”
I never knew what he meant by that.
There were small moments when his laughter would turn sharp without warning. A joke interrupted, or a question asked at the wrong time. His jaw would tighten, his eyes darken, and the air around him would seem to shift.
Once, when a servant mentioned Queen Hilde in passing—only a reference, nothing more—Charles’s expression had gone utterly still.
“Do not speak of her,” he said flatly. “It is not your place to wear her name on your lips.”
The silence that followed had been unbearable.
But then, as always, he recovered quickly. A smile, a touch at my waist, a murmured endearment meant only for me. The moment dissolved as if it had never been, and I told myself I had imagined its weight.
He was magnificent with the people.
Charismatic, generous, beloved. He insisted I stand beside him always, guiding me through villages and halls alike.
“You must see my kingdom,” he would say. “Not through reports or whispers—but with your own eyes.”
And what I saw was joy. Gratitude. Loyalty.
When we spoke of the court, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “They poison everything they touch,” he would say lightly. “Here, we are free. Together.”
I had believed him.
He praised me endlessly—my mind, my kindness, my loyalty. He spoke of the future in sweeping terms: reforms he would make, heirs we would raise, a legacy forged by love rather than fear.
He asked my opinion often—but only on matters already decided, or those too small to matter. When I grew tired, when I asked for solitude, irritation would flicker across his face like a shadow passing over the sun.
“You are all I have,” he would say quietly. “Do not leave me alone with them.”
So I’d stay.
When I tried to ask about taxes, about noble alliances, about disputes I overheard mentioned only in fragments, he would laugh and draw me close. “You worry too much,” he would murmur. “That is my burden to carry.”
Letters from my father went missing. Or arrived already opened, summarized for me as though I could not be trusted with their full weight. I told myself it was the road. The distance. Coincidence.
The crackle of the campfire pulls me back to the present.
I stand very still, the cold biting through my boots, my breath fogging the air. Aynhard’s voice lingers in my mind.
You were meant to use this marriage, not disappear into it.
I had believed protection was tenderness, that closeness was devotion.
That keeping me from the court was kindness.
Now I wonder if it was something else entirely, not a wall raised for my safety—but a hand placed firmly at my back, guiding me away from doors I was never meant to open.
For the first time, I do not ask what Charles has shielded me from, I ask what he has chosen not to show me.
And whether protection and possession were ever truly different things at all.