Chapter 71 Aldric
Chapter seventy-one
Aldric
Monster.
That word flickered through the darkness, taunting him. An oily, invasive whisper that slithered through the cracks of his unconscious mind. Promising violence.
Promising ruin.
You are nothing but a monster. And you are mine.
It clawed at the edges of his sanity, dragging him down into a pit of cold, suffocating ash—until a touch broke through the dark like a single shaft of light piercing a storm.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound of water cut through the mental fog. Sharp. Rhythmic. Real.
Water splashing into a bowl.
Something cool and damp pressed against his forehead, moving with a tenderness that made his breath hitch in his throat. Soft fingers brushed against his temple, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear.
His legs burned—a steady, throbbing fire in his calves. The skin of his back was too tight. Too tender. A dull ache radiated from his shoulder to his hip. But he was warm with heavy blankets piled atop him and thick wool socks now covering his feet.
Aldric forced his heavy eyelids to part, to look up. The world was a mere blur of more canvas and lantern light swimming in and out of focus until it finally sharpened into a face.
Sera.
His pretty wife leaned over him, her chestnut hair pulled back in a simple braid that rested over her shoulder. Gone was her armor; now she wore a dark wool dress and a cloak lined with thick fur, looking more like a commoner than a queen.
Sera’s eyes were gray storms, the pale skin beneath bruised with fatigue. But the moment her gaze locked with his, the storm broke. Her face softened; a smile dawned on her lips. It was a small smile, trembling at the edges, but it undid him more thoroughly than any blade ever had.
His chest cracked open. His heart ached. For years, he had been waiting for a woman to look at him like that—like the sight of him filled her with joy rather than despair. But now he knew, in the most quiet places of his soul, he had not been waiting for just any woman.
He had been waiting for her. For Seraphina.
Far in the distance, murmurs rose and fell. Horses whinnied. So many questions burned on his tongue. Where were they? What happened? All he could recall was the witchfire, the desperate scramble, the arrows…
Aldric tried to speak, but his throat felt like he’d swallowed broken glass. He swallowed, the movement pulling tight against the bandages wrapping his chest.
“Here,” his kirei murmured, pressing a cup to his lips. Cool, clean water rushed down his throat—the most delicious water he had ever drunk.
“Where is Reyla?” It was the first rasp he managed when she pulled the cup away and set it aside once more.
“At the Dawnspire,” Sera explained, another weary smile tugging at her lips. “She is safe, Aldric, don’t worry. Dame Florence is still with her.”
Safe. The word loosened the knot that had been twisting his gut ever since he had first been taken captive. Reyla was safe. He exhaled a long, shuddering breath and let his head fall back against the pillow, looking back at his kirei, drinking in the sight of her like a starving man.
And then he saw it.
It was faint—a thin scar slicing across her left cheekbone. A mar on perfection. A mark that had not been there when he rode away from her that day in Goldreach.
A dangerous heat kindled in his chest, warring with his pain. Aldric lifted his hand. His arm trembled with a weakness that shamed him, but he forced it upward anyway.
As if understanding what he wanted without him even saying, Sera leaned into his touch, making it easier for him to cup her cheek. “Who?” he asked, dragging the calloused pad of his thumb across the scar. “When?”
She closed her eyes, a hint of pain flickering across her features. Shadowed. Fleeting. “Back in Goldreach,” she whispered, “when I was escaping…”
There his kirei hesitated, her eyes opening, her gaze dropping to the blanket covering him. Absentmindedly, she smoothed the fabric across his chest. “It is a long story.”
Aldric swallowed hard, his thumb still resting against her cheek. He should have been there with her. He should have protected her from whatever caused her to hesitate now. “I have time to hear it.”
But she didn’t speak. She just stared at his chest, her expression unreadable. As he watched, her face crumpled a little. Her eyes began to shimmer with the threat of unshed tears.
His throat tightened. Had he done something to upset her? He could still feel it—that strange pressure that now seemed to live in his heart. Not the ache of his wounds nor the burn of the fire. It was deeper. Stranger.
A warmth. A light.
A tether binding him to her that hummed with a quiet, terrifying intensity. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before. What did it mean?
But more importantly: was this what was upsetting his kirei?
…Could she feel it, too?
Finally, she spoke. “You took it with you,” she whispered, reaching her hand out to rest it against his chest, to trace the shape of the sun pendant he still wore beneath the blanket.
A frown tugged at his lips. “Of course,” he rasped. “You gave it to me.”
Her face crumpled even further. A tear slid down his kirei’s scarred cheek.
His chest constricted. That a woman like this could cry over a man like him…
“But I was so cruel to you, Aldric,” she continued, so softly, so bitterly. “I said terrible things. And then.” Her voice cracked. Her lips trembled. “I thought I lost you.”
She thought she had lost him…
Her words cut him to the bone. Her pain swelled to fill the space between them.
“No,” he whispered, shaking his head. He wouldn’t let her carry that guilt with her. He had earned her ire back in Goldreach. He should have told her about the witchblade sooner.
His hand moved to cover hers, to squeeze tight the slender fingers now trembling where they rested atop his sternum. “I lied to you, Sera. I kept the truth from you. You had every reason to be angry with me. Every reason to hate me. Do you hear me?”
She sniffed once and nodded, bowing her head. A strand of hair fell loose from her braid, curtaining her face.
Aldric watched her—this precious woman, this woman who had risked so much to come and pry him from the very jaws of death. For a moment, his heart forgot how to beat. For a moment, his lungs forgot how to breathe.
He barely dared to ask what any of this meant. He barely dared to hope it might mean something at all. Her coming for him. Her pushing him out of the way of the witch’s flame. The light smoldering in his chest. Her carrying him to safety. She had done the unthinkable.
She had risked everything…for him.
He was a man who understood war. Who understood death. But her? He didn’t understand her. Not for a single moment.
But he wanted to. So very desperately, he wanted to understand his wife. “And now?” he whispered.
She glanced up, eyebrows knitting with confusion.
Clearing his throat, he clarified, “Are you still angry with me?”
A quiet huff of breath, almost like a laugh, escaped from her.
“No.” Sitting up straight, she withdrew the warmth of her hand from his chest and swiped the tears from her cheeks.
“I mean, yes,” she added, her tone light despite the words.
“You did almost die for me after I went to all this trouble to save you, after all.”
The corner of his mouth pulled upward—a weak attempt at a smile—but it faltered when he caught the way she was looking at him. As if he were something…important. Something precious.
As if he were the sun.
Not the shadow unfit to look upon its radiance.
“Did you mean it?” she asked.
Now it was his turn to be confused, the fog of his pain still clinging to his thoughts. “Did I mean what?”
Almost shyly, she murmured, “When you said you loved me.”
The memory slammed into him. The heat. The witchfire. The raining arrows. The desperate need to shield her, to take the blow so she wouldn’t have to. The words torn from his soul in what he thought were his final seconds.
He looked at her—this wife who owed him nothing and yet had ridden into danger to find him. This queen who sat by his bedside in a drafty tent, wearing wool and scars, waiting for his answer.
“Yes.” The word tried to lodge in his throat, but he forced it out. She had a right to know. That he was mad for her. That he would do anything for her, if she only asked it of him. “I meant it.”
Breath escaped his kirei in an audible rush.
He shifted upon the cot, sending his wounds smarting when he growled with an attempt at wry humor, “Even though sometimes I wish I didn’t—”
She cut him off, leaning down to capture his mouth with hers. It wasn’t a tentative kiss. It was fierce. It was a reclaiming. It was lingering and deep, tasting of salt and desperation and life.
Aldric drowned in her. He lost himself in the scent of her, in the warmth of her, in the impossible knowledge that, against all odds, this extraordinary, courageous woman wanted to be with him. That she was his.
And he was hers.
The odd bond linking them flared brighter, a roaring hearth in his soul, chasing away the lingering vestiges of that oily voice that had taunted him before.
“I love you, too.” Those words were but a caress brushed against his lips in between kisses. Four perfect words that rang true on the air. But still, he struggled to believe them.
She didn’t pull away from them, even when the kisses ended and warm, familiar silence blanketed the tent instead.
Carefully lowering her head, his kirei rested her cheek against the uninjured side of his chest, her hand splayed over his heart.
Aldric lifted his hand, his fingers tangling in the soft hair at the nape of her neck, holding her close.
Questions tugged at the edges of his fogged mind. Where were his Sons? What had become of the witch? Was the battle truly over? Where was Soot? Mourn?
He should care. He would care.
But not now.
Not when the woman he loved lay trembling in his arms.
The tent was quiet, save for the wind rattling the canvas and the steady beat of his own heart beneath her ear.
But in the wind, he could have almost sworn he heard that voice again. That voice that called him Monster. That claimed he belonged to it.
Clenching shut his eye, Aldric tightened his hold on his wife.
The war for Elmoria was only just beginning. The war for Drakmor had not even yet begun. But none of that mattered right now. Nothing else mattered. Not while she lay there with her head pillowed against his chest, warm and safe in his arms.
Thank you, Lord, he prayed, another shaky breath shuddering from his lungs. All these years, he thought his God had abandoned him. He thought the Lord on High had stopped listening to his prayers. Had simply refused to answer a single one.
But now, he realized, the Lord had heard. The Lord had answered.
He had answered with Seraphina. His wife—his clever, wonderful, maddening wife—was all he had ever prayed for and more. That truth settled in his bones, like the warmth of spring chasing away a long winter.
A tear escaped from the corner of his eye, slipping free before he could blink it back. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this—to deserve her. She was sunlight. She was hope. She was the dawn.
And what was he? Merely a Crow. Filthy. Stained. A carrion bird and nothing more.
Yet she looked at him as if he were more. A man worth saving. A man worth love.
And for her, he would become that more.
To keep her safe from all the trials yet waiting, from all the darkness even now threatening to swallow them both whole, he would finally become the king he was born to be.
Because far beyond the canvas walls, he felt something stirring. A shadow waking. A threat unresolved. A danger yet to come.
Let it come.
He finally had something worth fighting for.
And the Lord help whatever dared rise against her.