3. Lope
3
Lope
A whispered name,
A whispered plea,
A blade plunged through shadow—
Two gone up in smoke.
I n the dim light of the countess’s guest room, I sat at the desk and wrote down last evening’s nightmare. I did so in fragments on pieces of letter paper, in my smallest writing.
The freckle-faced boy
Skin from red to blue
Eyes from blue to white
A desperate—
I sighed. I hated the words and hated the images. I folded the paper, watching the flame dancing in the candlestick.
“To any divinity who will listen,” I murmured. They had not been on friendly terms with me lately. But speaking to the gods was like dancing with a partner you could not see. I had to trust that if I took one step, the gods would respond with another. At least, they were supposed to. These days, it more often felt like I was dancing by myself. Looking like a fool.
Perhaps I was. Perhaps I was arrogant to think I was worthy to be heard by any of the hundredfold nameless gods. No matter how many offerings I presented to them.
And still I let the flame devour my words.
“For pity’s sake,” I murmured. “Help me end these monsters for good.”
Wouldn’t the gods want that, too? Wouldn’t they approve of my quest, dispelling the monsters created by the dark god they had cast into the Underworld? Couldn’t they see how desperately I wanted to serve them?
The foul smoke rose from the candlestick and into my lungs as the paper curled in on itself. Black husks. Like the bodies of the Shadows, withering beneath my fingers as I screamed, blood rolling down my face, and Carlos lying motionless beside me—
I breathed. The wrong thought, the wrong memory, the wrong smell , and my stomach would tighten, my chest would ache, the world would spin, and I would be back there . As if that final day were playing out all around me. As if it hadn’t been twenty-six days ago.
Sighing, I massaged my eyes until red spots danced through the darkness of my vision. I wished I could erase the nightmares, erase the memories, burn them up in little pieces until I was back to what I’d been twenty-six days ago.
Twenty-six days. A thousand years ago and a moment ago, all at once. The wound still felt so fresh.
I had many scars; every knight did. Faint silver lines down my throat, rough scrapes down my arms and legs, calluses and nicks littering my hands. They proved that I had endured much and had lived, had fought against monsters and come away with my life. But I hated that this gaping wound was on my brain, unseen, invisible, pulsing, begging to be remembered.
Seeing that Shadow lunge for Ofelia... it had dragged me back through time, had made me stare once more into the face of my dying friend. It painted blood on the backs of my eyelids and whispered fiercely to me, Remember .
I dipped my quill in ink and pulled my new journal toward me.
Every book I owned, every journal, they were all from her. Even my words I owed to her. She was the one who taught me to write in the first place.
I had only just arrived as a new recruit at the manor. The moment she saw me at the wall, that very first day, she decided I’d be her friend. Despite my severe expression, she sought me out, asked me dozens of questions until my heart cracked open just for her. And when our little chats weren’t enough for her, she showed me how to write just so that we could exchange letters.
Why would we write letters? I’m not far, my lady , I’d said. I live just at the edge of the wall.
Her laugh, bright as silver, had rung through the courtyard. But it’s so romantic to write them, don’t you think?
Thanks to her, I had learned to wield a new weapon. I learned the beauty and the magic of words, the power in collecting them, piecing them together. My journal was filled with ink, with broken lines and words and phrases that could sometimes be stitched together into a poem. I shared with Ofelia only those that I was truly proud of. Little shards of beauty that I had gathered: a description or a couplet. She would marvel at my words like I was something great, and my heart would flutter in my chest like it had grown wings.
Carlos was the only other person who had coaxed me into sharing my poems. From the day we met, he had teased me like the other soldiers had for having my head in the clouds, but once I read that first poem to him, he smiled at me and called me an artist, and he meant it.
I sighed and set aside the paper. Even writing made me ache.
I granted myself one luxury to placate my writhing heart. A sweet daydream I often turned to, letting it rest within me like capturing a firefly within the cage of my hands. I imagined myself on horseback with Ofelia’s arms around me, and we would ride off, the two of us, to someplace better. To a place with no monsters. Where she would be safe, and I could write poems. Where I wouldn’t have to fight anymore.
Where I wouldn’t have to watch a friend die. Where death didn’t exist at all.
It was all so clear: her reddish curls streaming in the wind, the rose-petal perfume of her, her soft cheek against my neck—
I pushed away from my desk, breathing out, letting the firefly-dream drift away.
This world was different. This world was full of Shadows. This world decided that one girl was born the daughter of a countess and another was born to fight monsters. A world in which children lost their parents, where children sought freedom and revenge by learning to fight; a world in which death was called the noble final sacrifice of every knight .
I swept up the notes I’d kept on the desk, where I had recounted the movements of these monsters for the past few weeks.
July 4—From the northeast. Thirty Shadows.
July 5—From the north. Thirty-one Shadows.
July 6—From the north. Twenty-seven Shadows.
July 7—From the east. Forty Shadows.
I swore and stood up from the desk and began pacing. Forty. There’d been forty, and Carlos had been by my side, and I’d cut down the beasts, one and then two, and then I felt his scream ripping through me.
I gripped the bedpost to steady myself as sorrow clenched around my heart like an ice-cold fist.
We were so helpless. We’d known nothing of these creatures when they first appeared, and we knew even less now. They had begun to appear only around thirty years ago, and never in such numbers. How could it be? How could anyone have ever lived in a world where monsters only existed in fairy tales?
Desperate and enshrouded in a fog of anger and misery, I stumbled back to the table and unrolled a map of the kingdom. I muttered prayers of supplication and marked with my quill the number and the direction of the monsters in the past thirty days. North and east. Always, always north and east.
Perhaps they fled to the sea? Or hid away in the forests? My fingers traced northeast, through a forest, through a town, up to the coast—but no, there was something more significant before that. On that path was another landmark, its name written in beautiful, curling text. Le Chateau Enchanté.
There are no monsters at Le Chateau , the countess had said.
And yet they always seemed to make their way there. And yet Her Ladyship hadn’t returned.
Was this claim about the safety of the palace another fairy tale? A story the king wove to sate his anxious people?
Someone rapped their fist against my door, making me jump and grasp the penknife resting beside the candle.
“Lope?” Ofelia’s voice was soft and sweet with a small, frightened quiver to it.
My heart nearly leapt out of my breast.
The knife clattered on the desk as I set it aside and scrambled to unlock the door. This was the exact reason she had asked me to sleep in the house and not in the barracks. So I could keep watch over her in her mother’s absence and for nights like these, when she was fitful and needed solace.
She stood in the doorway, a ray of starlight dressed in a pure white shift. Her eyes were the very color of the dark walnut of her jewelry box. Upon seeing her—the freckles peppered generously across her rosy cheeks, the way her auburn hair was hanging in loose, riotous curls before bed—I had to suppress a moonstruck grin.
“May I come in?” she asked.
I stepped aside, and in an instant, she whirled into the bedroom, shutting the door. Fear was written in her eyes.
“I need your help,” she said.
At this hour? My brows rose. “Anything, my lady.”
She shook her head. “I doubt you will be so enthusiastic when you hear what I plan to do.”
What she planned to do. Gods, I loved her mind, her scheming, her imagination; but it was a fearsome thing, too. Her brush with death days ago was proof of this.
“Mother’s been gone too long,” she said, gliding past me to pace across the plush, ornate rug. “Either something’s happened to her on the road to Le Chateau, or—or maybe she’s still at the palace. Maybe she fell ill. Or maybe the king thought her request to stay was so foolish, he’s thrown her in a dungeon!”
“My lady,” I said, “I’m certain everything’s—” I stopped myself, looking at her. At the anguish gleaming in her dark eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and I balled my fists to stave off the urge to brush them aside.
“Don’t tell me I’m foolish for worrying so,” Ofelia whispered. She laughed, harsh and joyless. “I’ve tried to be practical. I know it’s too dangerous for me to go after her. I know that I could be fretting over nothing. Mother could walk through the entryway any day now. But”—she shook her head, her pale hand pressed against her heart—“something is wrong. I know it. I—”
She could speak no more. Ofelia inhaled shakily, her lip trembling, her fists tightened, as if she could will away her tears. Each one was like an arrow piercing my ribs.
I took a step nearer, and she embraced me, the last vestiges of her resolve melting away into loud sobs. I held her in turn, so grateful, and so sorry, to have her heart pressed close to mine.
Standing there with her in my arms, as the fear and the grief weighed her body down, my choice felt clearer than ever. She was light , laughter and kindness and curiosity and joy, the sun itself. She did not deserve to live in a world where such monsters roamed free. Carlos did not deserve such a fate, either. No one did.
I would seek out her mother. And I would find a way to destroy these beasts.
“I’ll go,” I said.
She sniffled against my waistcoat. “What?”
“I’ll go to Le Chateau. I’ll find your mother.”
Ofelia lifted her eyes to mine.
Heavens.
Up close, I could count the freckles dotting her cheeks and nose, see the streaks of auburn in her dark eyebrows, watch her long lashes brush against her eyelids as she gazed wide-eyed at me. If I believed in such things, I’d think she was a changeling. Some fairy-creature and not just a person.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
All I could see was that Shadow barreling toward her, the startled scream she’d let out, and Carlos, knocked to the ground, his face white as bone as his breath was torn from his lungs—
“No!”
She startled, and I staggered back, alarmed by the ferocity of my tone. I spoke like that to the other soldiers when they were being reckless and foolish but never to her.
“I—I’m sorry, my lady,” I mumbled, keeping my gaze from hers. “I simply meant that I cannot put you in danger. It’s a few days’ journey to Le Chateau. I’d be traveling both day and night, traveling in the midst of Shadows. It’s not safe for you.”
Her hand slipped into mine, her soft skin making shocks zip up my arm.
“You will keep me safe,” she said. She swept her thumb back and forth against my hand. “You always have.”
“By—by the wall, my lady, you nearly—”
“You saved me then.” Her eyes became sad, then, and serious—a look that was eerily unlike her. “Lope, this is for my mother . I would walk into the Underworld itself if it meant getting her back. If you do not come with me, I’ll just go on my own. You know I will.”
She pulled back from me, wiping the tears from her eyes. “But Lo,” she whispered, that dear name making my heartstrings pull taut, “there is no one else in the world I’d want to go on this journey with. The choice is yours, but... I hope you’ll say yes.”
Deep down, a wiser side of me knew this was a terrible idea. To travel, just the two of us, all the way to Le Chateau, on a road where Shadows prowled... What could lie before us but peril?
The sincerity and hope in her eyes made any protest die within me. The way she spoke of it all seemed so logical, so certain. We would make it to the palace, the two of us. And besides, she was my charge. I was instructed to protect her, no matter what road she chose. All this time, this was what I had wanted. For her to depend on me, for me to be of use to her, for me to be her knight. Perhaps at the palace, we could be—
I quickly dismissed that thought.
I was not made for love or for courtship. I had been trained to be a knight. I was made for killing Shadows. So when we arrived there, she could reunite with her mother—and my search for answers about the monsters who haunted our lives could begin in earnest.
I would find their origin and destroy it; keep these creatures from entering our world ever again. No more children would die at the hands of monsters.
Ofelia’s journey would be for love. This quest of mine would be for justice.
“What must we do?” I asked.