Chapter Eight
Eight
THE ROAD DOWN THE mountain was a treacherous one.
How anyone dared make the journey with a carriage in tow was beyond me.
My fingers ached from strangling the reins whenever Sovereign veered too close to the cliff.
She seemed to enjoy walking on the edge, but one misstep would send us tumbling into the valley below.
Relief coursed through me once the path wound back into the woods.
I urged Sovereign into a trot as we found ourselves on more familiar ground, but I was taken aback by how alien it suddenly felt.
A stranger’s eye could never have caught the microscopic stirrings of life, but I’d been so used to the crisp brown of dead and dying foliage that the change was striking.
The woods were no longer shrouded in sepulchral silence.
Life isn’t quiet; even the smallest lives rustle and chirp and breathe.
The beech trees had shaken off their perpetual autumn hues and now shone in full green.
Blooming spears of foxglove erupted from the ground. Life had returned to the valley.
And soon I found the cause. The riverbed that had scarred the landscape for so many years was a river once more.
Not a powerful river – no one would be writing poetry about the sweeping torrents – but the stream was enough to coax life back where it had been unable to flourish.
Raleigh had kept his word. The dam was gone.
Before I would have cut across the riverbed to make a beeline home, but I’d never been happier to take the long way over the bridge.
I was halfway across when I spotted the familiar faces of Lina and Katya on the other side.
The two girls were my age, but we had never been close.
Katya and I had had a falling-out many years ago over a certain baker’s son, and we’d both been too stubborn to ever close the rift.
But the sight of two familiar faces filled me with an emotion I hadn’t expected.
I called out to them, expecting an echo of my joy, but they only recoiled, horror etched across their features.
I pulled back on Sovereign’s reins, a nasty pit forming in the depths of my stomach.
I wasn’t a fool: I knew I wasn’t particularly liked by my peers, but usually they had the decency to smile and play nice until they thought my back was turned.
Now, though, I recognised the look they gave me.
I’d seen it on my father’s face, on Johanna’s and, fourteen years ago, on the faces of every man and woman in Orlfen.
It was an expression of terror we always reserved for Raleigh.
I ducked my head and guided Sovereign into town.
The main road would take me home eventually, but not before passing the bakery.
I slowed as I approached the old shopfront where Yann and I had eaten krapfen together all those years ago.
Was he inside? I wanted desperately to know if he was okay.
But the thought that he might not be made me want to turn straight back to Castle Rostenburg.
Was I ready to learn what had happened to the love of my life? The man I’d left for dead?
Father would tell me the truth either way, but I needed to see it for myself.
I found a place to safely tie Sovereign close to the bakery. Feeling sick, I pushed inside, almost toppled by the nostalgic scent of fresh bread.
There, behind the counter, was a familiar mop of blond hair, and all my anxieties were forgotten. ‘You’re alive!’
Yann looked up, his face filling with light as recognition dawned.
In a flash he was out from behind the counter.
His right arm was bound across his chest, but I didn’t have the chance to comment before he threw himself at me, wrapping me into a one-armed embrace.
Suddenly it felt as though the last weeks had never happened. For a brief moment I was home.
We hugged for an eternity, yet he pulled away all too soon. He held me at arm’s length, eyes running up and down, appraising me. ‘Goodness, you look … well.’
‘Prince Raleigh treats me kindly,’ I said evasively.
‘He doesn’t hurt you?’
‘Never,’ I said, surprising myself to realise this was true. ‘He’s … tolerable.’
‘Tolerable?’ Yann’s voice lifted an octave. ‘You were abducted by the man who killed my parents and now you’re trying to tell me he’s tolerable? I didn’t even know if you were alive, Clara!’
My heart welled. I’d spent so long wondering what happened to him, it never occurred to me he would wonder the same about me.
But of course he would; he’d never heard any word from the castle.
‘You never got my letters?’ I already knew the answer, but I’d clung to the smallest gleam of hope that it was his replies Raleigh had burnt.
That Moira hadn’t simply handed my one connection to the outside world to him to burn.
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Yann’s expression. ‘You wrote?’
That flare of frustration, now so familiar to me, rose again. I pinched the top of my nose, forcing it down. ‘I tried to.’ Yann would only worry more if I told him the truth. ‘We have issues with post up on the mountain. The couriers are … superstitious.’
‘Superstitious.’ He tutted, his bound arm jerking. ‘Why are you suddenly pretending we both don’t know exactly what he is?’
Of course. He knew better than anyone. Putting aside our frequent childhood speculations, he’d watched Raleigh kill the wolf. Had his bones crushed by Raleigh’s inhuman strength. ‘Did you know he hypnotised us?’ Yann asked. ‘We were halfway to Castle Rostenburg when he found us.’
I dropped my head. ‘I know,’ I admitted.
Yann sighed. He placed his hand on the crook of my shoulder and I closed my eyes, leaning in to his touch.
His thumb traced the cusp of my throat, brushing aside the high collar of my blouse.
It was loving, gentle. Until I realised he was checking for marks.
I pretended not to notice, but his lack of trust lodged deep in my heart.
I gave him my most innocent smile. ‘How have things been here?’ I asked, changing the subject in the vain hope that there might be some good news.
‘Better, actually,’ Yann said. ‘Your father managed to secure decent supplies in Triz soon after you left, and they’ve managed to irrigate the fields again. No one will be feasting anytime soon, but we think the autumn harvest will be the best in years.’
‘And nobody …’ I didn’t know how to ask, nor did I think I wanted the answer.
Yann’s face clouded.
‘Do you remember Clarence?’
My heart gave a sickening thud. Clarence was a year younger than us and had lived a few doors down from me when we were children.
There weren’t many children our age in Orlfen, so Yann and I would play with him often.
He had two older sisters, and though Yann teased him for it, he’d taught me the names of all the flowers and how to braid them into my hair.
After his father died in the same raid on Castle Rostenburg that had claimed Yann’s, Clarence and his mother moved further down the valley to live with his surviving grandfather.
We still saw him from time to time when he visited his sisters in Orlfen, but more often than not Yann met with him alone.
‘Not Clarence?’ I whispered.
Yann shook his head. ‘His wife.’
I didn’t know that Clarence had married.
Yann said it like I should have known, but no one had ever bothered to tell me.
I often missed out on the news circulating through town, unless Yann or Johanna told me, but I didn’t think he ever neglected to tell me things like this; he always said he thought I knew.
‘How did it happen?’ I asked.
‘She’d been sickly ever since their son was born last year.’ So Clarence had a son too. That would have been nice to know. ‘Clarence thought she was getting stronger, but two weeks ago he woke up and found her dead.’
My pulse quickened. I already knew the rest of this story.
‘Her blood was drained. Every drop. Someone came into their house at night and bled her dry. Someone murdered her.’
Yann’s snarl swam before my eyes, but all I could see was Raleigh drinking from his goblet, night after night.
Every night I’d forced myself not to think about where blood was coming from.
Now it had a name, a child, a husband. I’d seen Raleigh lick the remains of Clarence’s wife from his fangs, and all I’d done was look away.
Surrounded by luxury, embraced in his false niceties, it was easy to forget that the Raleigh I had come to tolerate was the same Raleigh who had brought us so much grief. He was the one who’d built the dam. He was the one who’d drained our loved ones. He was the one who’d destroyed Orlfen.
He had never deceived me and yet I felt strangely betrayed. I’d fallen for his act, even though I’d only ever watched from backstage. My home was here, with Yann, with other humans. Not in the nest of a monster.
‘Do you still think your husband is tolerable?’ Yann’s words cut into me like a dull blade.
‘He’s not my husband,’ I muttered.
Yann blinked in surprise. ‘You haven’t married?’
I looked away. ‘We’re engaged, I suppose. It’s not that straightforward. We made a deal, and I can’t tell you the details, but I promise you, before the year is out I will be home.’ I took a breath. ‘I’m not going to marry him.’
‘You made a deal with him? Are you mad?’
‘Would you rather I had married him?’
‘It depends what sort of deal you made.’
It took me a moment to decipher his implication. ‘He’s never touched me, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘I’m struggling to understand what else he’d want from you.’
That stung. ‘Is that really what you think? If you were in Raleigh’s shoes, do I have nothing else to offer?’
His silence was damning. ‘You know I don’t mean that,’ he said, far too late. He suddenly felt so far away, as though that second’s hesitation stretched longer than our two months apart.