Chapter 10 #2
“Go ahead,” she dared him. They still moved. “I want you to! I want you to guarantee me your dismissal. Do it! Do it so that I may rescue her from your—”
Hellveig stopped abruptly and realized where she was, just as I noticed the staircase, too.
“I’ll never write him again!” I called. “Please!” I said.
Elías seethed. “I am morally obligated to inform you that you are treading on such thin ice with me, Miss Hellveig.”
She used her cane to brace her position at the top. “What are you going to do, push me?” she asked.
“I have half a mind to, yes,” he said.
“W-What an example to set,” she added, nodding to me. “And how will you explain the murdering of an innocent woman to the Princess?”
“You’re hardly innocent,” he said. “Or did she just fall again? Did she shut her hands in another drawer? I can’t remember the last excuse, just that it was pathetic.”
“I’ve tried to help her,” she said. “She is ungrateful; uneducable, un-!”
“Unaware of how poorly she trudges on?” Elías finished. “Sounds familiar.” He took another clunky step her way, and she took one back, down another step.
“Elías,” I said. “No, no one will believe her.”
“Yes they will,” Hellveig said.
But Elías was not afraid. Not like I was. He was stoic, brave, and unimpressed. Leaning his head one way, then the other, as if the motion somehow enhanced how he heard the governess. She began to rant about propriety.
“Your room, Princess,” he reminded me.
“N-Not without you,” I whispered.
“Svana!”
I jerked awake, lunging into battle with the figure beside the bed. Its hands wrapped me, an attempt, I realized, to bring me ease, but at first felt like an attack. It was the repeated, steady and near-recognizable, “Princess!” responsible for suddenly shaping the voice into Ser Willoughby’s.
I searched the darkened room, utterly startled. “Ser?” I panted. “Ser Willough—Daniel?”
He sighed and his hands fell as my eyes adjusted. “You were yelling in your sleep again. Are you alright?” he asked.
I sank into mortification harbored by my sheets to mutter out a slight but genuine, “Fine. Thank you.” Then I shut my eyes in a flicker of peace.
“She’s gone,” I told myself.
Willoughby stood, politely, but bothered, whether by my comment or by the malice on my face. His hands went behind his back, folded into his perfect soldier’s stance, and he said, “She is. She’s gone, Svana… Should I find him for you?”
I took too long, worried I had invoked Willem’s name.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “Really.”
“Find who, Ser?” I asked.
“The Lord Commander, ma’am,” he replied.
“The Lord Commander?” I asked.
“Yes. You always call for him,” he said.
I sat up.
“I’m happy to go retrieve him for you.”
“No, I… I don’t need him. I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized I was talking,” I said. “What else did I say? Nothing too harrowing, I’m sure. It was just a nightmare. I was scared.”
The ends of his lips bent. “You should rest. I will see you at first light.”
“Right.” I settled. “Sorry to wake you.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” he said. He started to leave but something strange possessed me to say more.
“Willough?”
The name caught us both by surprise and I frowned.
“Ser Willoughby.”
“Yes?”
“What do you mean I always call for him?” I asked.
He considered it. “You call for Elías when you dream of her.”
“Were you nearby? Or was I that loud?”
“I’m on patrol this end of things. I don’t think I would’ve heard you from where my room is, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said.
“I was, thank you.”
He nodded.
“Will you not be exhausted by morning?” I asked. “We have a ride, you know?”
Again, he nodded. “It’s not the first, nor the last time I’ll work through the night, cousin. Good night.”
He closed the door behind him, not rudely or too loudly, or really anything, but I went out after him. He sat on the ground, unfazed by my appearance. He leaned back into the wall and closed his eyes.
“Ahem. You can’t sit there all night. Go to bed,” I told him.
“I’m working.”
“You’re dismissed.”
“That’s not necessary,” he replied. “I’d prefer you went to bed. You’ll sleep better knowing I am here.”
“Go back to your quarters,” I insisted. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. You said you were scared,” he said. “As Ser Elías would say, that is the time a knight should be at the Princess’s side.”
“I-” I stopped. “I don’t want you to be tired.”
“And I don’t want you to be scared,” he said. “Nightmare or not, it feels real when it’s happening. Fear lingers.”
“We’re in a palace full of guards and people, cousin. A hundred other dwellers. It’s downright absurd to be forced to sit out here for hours over a feeling.”
“I’m certain I’m alright,” he said.
“And I am certain that I am fine without a sentry.”
“As am I,” he said. “I’d never bet against you.”
“Great. Then you’re dismissed,” I said.
“If it’s the same, I’ll stay.”
“I-”
“If only in consideration of the Lord Commander’s concern, should I abandon you like this, and for my own rest. He would not approve of such negligence.”
“Negligence. You’re so loyal to his approval that you would defy me?” I asked.
“It’s not defiance, Your Highness. It’s just my nature. Besides, respectfully, if you fall back asleep and are loud enough to wake any one of the other hundred dwellers with the content of your cries—no offense—it’s better I’m here to distract them from it or challenge their accusations.”
A chill ran up my spine. “I must ask, and you must answer as you are under oath to my service and my blood and kin. What did I say, Ser Willoughby?”
He met my stare. “As I said before, you called for Ser Elías.”
“Willoughby!”
He hummed, pressing the back of his head into the stone with a wiry grin. “Svana, dear, sweet cousin, you said a lot of words I know the meaning of apart from each other. I’m sure I’m far too disinterested to string them together coherently.”
“And if you did?” I asked.
“Are you concerned I'll decipher a special meaning to your words?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Then I’ll say, I have been in your service a year now, not just tonight. Take solace in the knowledge that even if I had my suspicions, even if said suspicions were reasonably true and even likely, I’d never reveal them, even under pain of death.”
“...You wouldn’t?” I asked.
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“I respect him too much,” he breathed. “He’s like a father to me.”
I cocked my head. “Elías?”
“Had you spent time with the Viscount, you’d understand.”
I watched him a second longer. “No, I do understand. In fact, I…I know the feeling well. Very well. But—”
“The Lord Commander is a good man,” Willoughby said. “Most days I pray to be so noble. I pray for his patience and his goodness. If he did something to someone, they deserved it.”
“Elías did nothing,” I hurried.
Willoughby glanced and asked, “Hellveig did, though, didn’t she?”
I looked away.
“She hurt you,” he insisted.
“No.”
“She did. She hurt you. That angers me, cousin,” he confessed. “I wish I had known while she drew air. I wish I could’ve made her sorry.”
“An apology, what a concept,” I thought. “I-”
“Not what I said,” he said.
“What did you say then?”
“She can’t hurt you here,” Willoughby replied. “She can’t hurt you anywhere. She’ll never hurt you again. All that evil wench can do is look up in dismay as you live your life and let her rot.”
“Look up?” I asked. I followed his eyes to the floor. “From Hell?”
“She certainly didn’t go to see the Lord,” he said. “Children get you a straight ferry down, I’m told.”
“Children?”
“Hurting them,” he said. “She hurt you. She’s in Hell.”
I felt exposed. “...I don’t like people to know, Ser Willoughby,” I said. I knelt in front of him, meeting my hands.
“I understand. But I know.”
“Everybody knows,” I said. “At least back home. And I know they know, but I don’t like it. I try so hard to pretend it never happened. I try harder to ignore the whispers.”
“Again, I understand.”
“Did you…” I swallowed. “Can I ask you a blatantly awful question?”
He nodded.
“What is a Rusted Blade?” I thought about our ride “Is it a person or a team? Mr. Evergreen said…. He said nothing, really, but he seemed reverent of the idea—to you.”
Willoughby stared ahead. “A Rusted Blade is a knight who does bad things to bad people for a greater good. I guess you could call it a team, though we were never together in one room. The King appoints us based on…a natural ability.”
“To hurt people?”
“Yes.”
“And you are appointed?” I asked.
“I was. For the War. Though, as you can see, the title never really leaves you,” he said. “Once they know what you were, that’s all you’ll ever be. Rusted iron.”
We sat in silence. “Are you going to hurt Mr. Evergreen?”
“That depends entirely on Mr. Evergreen’s behavior. Has he been bad?” he asked.
“N-No?”
“Can you be trusted to tell me if he had?” he asked.
“He’s been good,” I promised. “H-He would never hurt me.”
He nodded. “Fine then. Good. Between you and me, I can’t say he was ever on my list. I actually like the man. I think he’s funny.”
“He is funny,” I whispered. I moved closer, taking a seat next to him.
“He is funny and kind and he would never hurt me. He’s had plenty of opportunity…
Hellveig… Yes. She hurt me. She hurt me a lot.
Nearly every day. But never without warrant.
I was poorly behaved, Ser. She only struck me to correct my mistakes.
Mistakes require correction, lest they repeat themselves. ”
“Does it feel better to say that?” he asked. “To say you deserved her violence?”
“Not really,” I said. “But it is the truth.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “I was awful. I had no manners. No concept of—”
“You’ll have a child one day,” he stated. “Maybe soon. She’ll be happy and free, like all children are, and one day she’ll make a mistake. Will you punish her like you were punished?”
“What? No!”
“Then you’ll pay someone to hurt her for you?” he asked.
“I would never! I would never allow her to be hurt!”