Chapter 20 #2
Aynhard stands near the doorway, silent, watchful.
Charles looks up sharply. Relief flickers across his face—but falters when he sees me.
“Fastrada,” he says. “What are you doing here? You should be resting.”
I swallow hard. My mouth feels dry, useless.
“I need to speak with you,” I say. “Now.”
Charles glances at Aynhard.
“Stay,” he orders. Then, to me, softer: “What is it?”
I step closer, forcing myself not to flinch when his attention sharpens fully upon me.
“Why,” I ask, voice breaking despite my effort, “would you wish to hurt me?”
The question is loud, and there is a sharp intake of air from Aynhard as if he wishes to speak. Charles raises a hand toward his companion, silencing him.
He stares at me as if I’ve spoken in a foreign tongue.
“Hurt you?” He laughs, sharp and incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
I curl my hands into the folds of my cloak.
“You tell me.”
Confusion creases his brow. Offense follows quickly behind it, dark and quick.
“I have never meant to harm you,” he says. “Never. Not once.”
Liar.
“Why was Tassilo’s attacker rewarded with newly minted coins, Charles?” I whisper.
His breath quickens. He begins to pace, boots striking the stone with increasing force.
“After everything I have done,” he says, voice rising, “everything I have given you! I brought you into my house. I made you queen. I shielded you from men who would have torn you apart for less than your name!”
He gestures sharply toward the maps. “I am surrounded by enemies—Saxons who spit on God, nobles who smile and sharpen knives behind my back, a pope who watches me as though I am already fallen!”
He turns back to me, eyes burning. “And now this—this poison in your thoughts!”
“I am afraid,” I say, the truth spilling out before I can stop it.
That is the moment his fear answers mine.
His voice drops, dangerously low. “Of what?”
I made a mistake by coming here.
I cannot answer.
“What are you scared of, Fastrada?” Charles bellows, the words slamming into me like iron. He flings the paperweight from the table, letting it crash into the wood-paneled wall with a shattering crack. Splinters jump from the impact.
“I…I don’t know,” I whisper, voice breaking, and tears spill down my cheeks.
He spins toward Aynhard, eyes blazing. “Out! Leave, now!”
Aynhard hesitates, lips parted as though to argue, but the fire in Charles’s gaze warns him enough. He bows his head slightly and exits, the door thudding shut behind him.
I had never liked Aynhard—his unyielding stare, the barely concealed disdain for what I represent. But now, in this room, I wish he had stayed.
My shoulders draw inward. I fold in on myself, a house of cards collapsing in a gust. Why did I confront him? Why did I bring the shadow of doubt into his mind?
Charles is furious now, every line of his body taut with rage.
My body reacts of its own accord, it remembers the sudden violence of him, the way the weight of his presence presses down when his temper slips its leash. The way love becomes something unrecognizable, dangerous, unpredictable.
“I-I shouldn’t have said anything,” I stammer and start to leave. “Forgive me. I’m tired. I didn’t mean—”
He crosses the room in two long strides, grips my shoulders like iron bands. “Look at me!”
I cannot.
“What must I do,” he demands, voice low, trembling with intensity, “to make you trust me?”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes.
Silence swells between us, thick and suffocating, heavy with accusation. His grip tightens. The ring on my finger pulses faintly, its magic tugging at the edges of his mind, fueling the tempest I have wrought without knowing.
“Do you not believe me?” he hisses, and his voice cracks. “Do you think my love is false? Do you think…do you think I do not suffer for you? That I do not bear this world upon my shoulders because of you?”
I shrink back instinctively. Panic coils in my stomach. I remember, too vividly, the past: the harshness of his hand, the bruises blooming on my skin, the times he pressed me too hard, too close, the nights I woke screaming. Those are memories burned into bones, like patterns worn into wood.
My throat closes. My chest heaves.
“I…I—” I cannot speak.
“Why do you fear me?” he demands, almost pleading now, voice rising and falling like a storm tide. Tears are falling. “Why do you doubt that every action I take, every blow I strike, every sword I lift is for you? For our children? For our legacy?”
The words wash over me, incomprehensible. My mind whirls. His love, his obsession, his fury—they are all tangled, inseparable. I feel them pressing down on me from all sides, suffocating, inevitable. I take a few steps back, but he follows, until my back is against the windowsill.
“I know they mock us,” he continues, voice raw, ragged. “Whispering at my back. I see it. They plot. They try to turn my world against me. Against you. Against what we have built.”
I shake. I cannot process it. He is speaking of Saxons, nobles, spies—he says God has not yet claimed the North, that the land is evil and corrupt.
He says he will strike them down. Every last one. For me.
“Do you see now?” His grip tightens, and I feel the magic of the ring thrum against my skin, responding to his madness. “I will kill them all for you. Everyone. I will cleanse this place. I will make it right. For us.”
I cry, full and unrelenting, memories crashing over me: his hands when they hurt me, the nights I feared him, the times I barely escaped his fury.
He grabs my face with angry hands and forces me to look up at him.
He isn’t hurting me, but I can feel the energy it takes him to hold me there, so close to hurting me.
His eyes burn into mine, desperate, unyielding. “Do you understand? Do you see that this is my love? That nothing is too great, nothing too terrible, to keep you safe?”
I cannot answer. My body folds in on itself, a heap of shaking limbs and sorrow.
Then he is suddenly gone, storming out. His orders are spoken as he moves: sharp, precise, merciless. I hear the commands—the lists of names, the swift mobilization, the machinery of vengeance already clicking into place.
I sink to the floor and curl into myself, trembling, then sobbing.
Outside, the wind howls, rattling the palace walls like a living thing.