Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ISOLDE
Advisor had a meeting with High Magelord Gautier. Brief, but they shook hands before he left. Seems like an alliance is forming. Will report. —S to Man in the Mountain
La’Angi Keep
Thomas knew before I did, and for that I almost fed him his own testicles.
Audrey took a day for herself, licking her wounds in her tower. I’d figured when she came back up the stairs after trying to visit him at night that something had gone wrong. When I’d heard her muffled sobs, I’d even gone and soothed her.
Viewed pragmatically, her grief made sense.
I’d known it would never be a long-term situation.
How could it possibly be? But she’d been taking a short-term view with the knight.
He was a decent man, so it made sense they could enjoy one another’s company.
I’d figured it would all come crumbling down at some point, but I hadn’t expected it to yet.
She hadn’t said why. I hadn’t pressed. Eventually she’d tell me.
A rest day also made sense physically for her, though it hadn’t been terribly long since the last. That hadn’t been a proper rest day, just a day without training. Seeing her in bed a day didn’t worry me.
But on the second day, she remained in bed.
By the time the sun was high, I’d scouted out the possibilities and formulated my plan of attack. I’d dressed for the occasion, too, choosing a shirt with loose cuffs, easy to roll up.
The covers were a big, sad pile on top of her. Her hair had fallen over her face in lank strings, and her eyes were puffy.
“Time to get up,” I told her, firmly.
“I can’t,” she said, the words cracking.
“Why?”
“Because it hurts,” she whispered.
“Train through the hurt.” I pulled off the covers. “Nothing’s broken that won’t be fixed again.”
She curled up in a ball with a groan of despair.
I swallowed down the sympathy. She didn’t need sympathy now. She needed steel. “Get up,” I told her, tossing her pants to her. “And I’ll tell you how I know you can still train.”
She didn’t instantly refuse. But she didn’t move, either, blinking her puffy eyes at me.
“I’ll tell you how I trained,” I offered, “when I first came to my tribe. When I hurt.”
The quiet was so complete that the sound of her swallowing felt like a shout of discovery. Battle energy flooded my body, the power making my muscles stretch taut.
“Isolde…” She was sitting up. “I’m sorry, you don’t need to…”
I rolled up the sleeve of the shirt, showing her the scars around my forearm.
My hands didn’t shake. I saw the flutter of my pulse in my wrist. She wouldn’t.
She’d be distracted by those big, twisting scars, the ones I’d always refused to tell her about, the ones she’d learned not to look at.
My forearm looked more like tree bark than flesh. It was testament to my survival.
“You could still see bone through flesh when I got there,” I told her, as she stared for the first time in years, perhaps seeing the marks from the eyes of an adult, perhaps shocked that I’d offer the information.
“It’s why I favor my left. I spent months more training my left because this took so long to heal.
” The smell of the wound clogged my nose.
I dropped the fabric, doing the ties loosely.
“Come. Pain is part of the process.” There was no way around it.
She knew it already, but we all needed a reminder sometimes.
I dug for patience, for kindness, and was shocked when I found some.
“The hurt will take up plenty of your time. It’ll sit in your heart, and in your head, and you’ll give it its due.
And it can be there now, if it must be, sitting in your heart.
” I ran out of air. From speaking so much, no doubt.
I forced myself to pause and take a breath.
Into the gap, as she reached for her pants, she said, “What happened? You don’t have to say—”
“I’ll say,” I promised. “While we train. You can train with pain, Audrey.” And, just in case she’d forgotten, I added, “You can live your whole life with it.”
The next day she was up and training with me again, her focus renewed. Gone was the slower pace, the what do you feel like? She leapt at me when the sparring opened like a woman wronged.
Interesting. I defended, kept her moving, pushed and let her push back. She used her superior height and bulk ruthlessly. I wanted to laugh.
I’d thought their dalliance was a fine thing. Now I was glad of it.
Her rage she carried with her into her dealings for the day. A merchant was left white-faced, a group of guards shaken. “I don’t have time for this,” she told a runner who wanted her to visit a tailor to confirm an order of blankets by weight.
She spent hours closeted in the Steward’s rooms with Brian, poring over books and ledgers.
Chay stood at the door, looking as welcoming as Thomas.
That evening, rather than lingering by the fireside down below, she sat with me, grip-trainer in her hands, pacing back and forth across the floor of her room.
She discussed ins and outs of her city’s dire financial situation unless they could get wheat or fermentable grain and send at least some guards to uphold the agreements.
“I don’t know enough to know how to plan yet,” Audrey was saying.
“I’m stuck here planning for everything.
I can’t switch it off.” She pressed her knuckles to her forehead, squeezing her eyes closed.
“And then I have so many plans, they’re getting tangled up and I can’t remember them properly.
So I write them down, but then I get sidetracked partway and want to add to one I haven’t done yet or another one.
I feel like my brain is tight-laced and I haven’t been able to use the privy all day and I’m trying to untangle skeins a cat’s toyed with. ”
“Did you feel this way when the knight was in your bed?” I asked her, selecting the next color of wool for the cloak I was repairing.
“This has nothing to do with Chay,” she shot back, the words venomous.
“It might have something to do with energy that needs an outlet,” I offered, keeping the words neutral. “Which is a manageable issue, hence why I asked. Or it might be that you’re missing the connection of being with someone you feel good with. Again, manageable.”
She kept pacing, silent.
I didn’t tell her it had always been doomed. They’d built a relationship in a flurry of danger on a basis of mutual fear and lack of options. Understandable. Human. But doomed.
“Shopping for dildos is probably difficult for you,” I acknowledged. “I’ll source a selection. When the markets open back up, I’ll keep my ears to the ground for a clockwork pleaser. Faster, simpler, and cleaner than a partner, I hear. You’ve the coin, so you may as well use it.”
“Isolde,” she said. My name crumbled in her mouth.
I felt for her. I really did. “As for your heart—you need to prioritize your time with Storm. Nothing leaves you as calm as time with that horse. Consider claiming a room nearer the stables as an office so a brief visit is simpler. Even just seeing that part of the castle from the window might center you.”
“I love him,” she said, the words thick with tears.
“That’ll make it harder.” I shook out the sewing while I listened to her wax on and on. No one could ever call me impatient. “Love not returned is just another toxin, Audrey. Channel it. You want to plan? Plan your life to continue despite him.”
The tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t think I’m ready to hear this yet.”
“I don’t think you are either.” Pride stirred in my chest. “While you get to the point where you are…love yourself. Focus on yourself. No one will take that from you.”
She nodded, turning away, her shoulder shaking. “Goodnight,” she said through the tears.
I didn’t tell her she was taking the hits like the peerless warrior she was, same as she always did, but I thought it as I gathered up my sewing and snuffed the candles. She wasn’t ready to hear that feedback either.
She’d go down.
She’d survive.
She’d come up again swinging.