59. Chapter Fifty-Nine
When I found Aurelie lounging on the chaise in our chambers, dressed in a silver silken robe with damp hair, I forgot how to walk.
No, truly. I basically choked on the air in my lungs as I leaned against the doorframe, fingering the metal keys in my hands idly. Aurelie didn’t look up from her book, but she knew I was there. Ouch.
I reminded myself how to breathe before walking over to her and placing a hand over her head, toying with the strands absentmindedly. She didn’t close the book, but she did shut her eyes. I kneeled, pressing a kiss to her shoulder and letting my lips linger.
“The Spring Queen sent word about Julius,” I said quietly. “She is planning a transport so we can do what we see…fit.”
Finally, she angled her head down to me, and she smiled the sort of smile that didn’t meet her eyes. I didn’t deserve that—even if it was slight. My gaze hung on her pointed ears before tucking some hair behind them. Her smile started to fade.
“Are you okay?”
Silly question. Of course she wasn’t.
“Let me rephrase that. What can I do for you?”
She chuckled breathily and set the book down, swinging them over the ledge and looking at me head-on. “Nothing,” she said, the ghost of disappointment lingering behind her tone. I placed my hands on her knees and frowned. “I mean it, Eero. I’m okay.”
I glanced at the book. The Soul of Fae. It was a book children often read when learning about their heritage—it gave them answers on things like the magic in the world, all the way to why their ears were as sharp as their tongue. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“You know the answer to that.”
I met her hardened gaze and smiled sheepishly, toying with the skin of her knees delicately. “Fair enough.” I stood, tugging at her fingers to bring her up with me. “Then let’s not talk.”
It was an innocent statement, but with the way her brows knitted and smirk widened, I knew that fiery sense of humor still existed. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I wrapped mine around her waist as we swayed.
Side to side, foreheads pressed to each other with our eyes closed. “It has been strangely…quiet,” she said, hushed. “Is it always so…so…”
“Boring?”
When I opened my eyes, she was staring at me with a thin-lipped frown. She nodded.
My lips parted, but I didn’t have an answer to give her. Most days were uneventful when war wasn’t blossoming, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was alluding to something else. Something entirely separate from boredom and fatigue.
“Life at court is different, Aurelie. It’s political on our good and bad days, and there’s almost always somebody staring at our necks. So, I wouldn’t call it boring, but I feel there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Her lips parted, eyelids growing heavy and casting a shadow over her cheek. She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder. “It’s selfish of me to ask it plainly, Eero.”
“Ask it however plainly your heart desires.”
A pause, long and quiet. She didn’t look up at me when she said, “Will you always be so absent?” I could feel her heart racing against my chest, knocking at the bone and begging for my own to breakthrough. My breath hitched, and she stammered, “I…I mean, busy. I understand…well, simply put, Eero,” she said, looking up at me, “I understand a crown is a heavy burden to bear. Will you always be so distant from me, Eero?”
My lips parted, the back of my throat as dry as a desert. I cleared it, reaching up to cup her face and brush some loose strands aside. “I have been rather terrible, haven’t I?”
“What?” she shrieked and shook her head wildly. “No, no, Eero. That is not what I meant. I meant…I meant—”
Her voice faded as I pressed a kiss to her forehead and closed my eyes. “Witchling…I have been busy, yes, but I have also been fearful.”
“Fearful,” she repeated.
“Fearful, yes,” I confirmed. “This is a greater fight now that Myrthana has been raised, now that the gods watch over us from the absent, muted stars. I know that you don’t wish to relive what happened to you, and I do not blame you. But…well, your wisdom is quite literally the only thing keeping me on my feet.” I let my sigh escape, shaky. I looked back into her emerald eyes and smiled weakly. “But I will not be the person forcing you to speak. No, that will not be me.”
Aurelie blinked up at me, shock coloring her pink. She moved a hand to cup the one over her cheek, turning her nose against my palm and pressing a gentle kiss. “I don’t know if I can, Eero.” She shuddered. “Part of it is pain—terror, maybe—but a bigger part of it is inexplicable. The things I’ve seen, I mean.”
I cocked my head. “Well. If we skip past the pain and terror, what then?”
Her bottom lip trembled, but she concealed it with another kiss to my palm. Finally, she dipped her head to look me in the eyes and cleared her throat. “I met…them. The gods, I mean. After I died—after I was murdered.”
My heart thrummed inside my chest. Death. Aurelie had died? I blinked thrice at her before I realized she had continued talking.
“...sacrifice. Yenira had…well, she’d sacrificed me, Eero. I know you said to skip over the pain, and t-the agony,” she said, stammering on her own words as she parted from me. I let my hands linger in the air where her face should be, the smallest tremble to them. Eventually, they fell to my side. Aurelie chewed on her nails between her words. “I can’t skip over this, though, and you deserve to know. She killed me. She tried to do it again, after the gods brought me back. She used my blood as the sustenance Myrthana preached to me each and every time I was projected into this celestial…place. I have no doubt she still exists within the plane, but she is whole now. She probably hides amongst the stars so we don’t catch her, but when my soul was drained in that tomb, the gods saved me.”
“The gods saved you?”
Aurelie nodded quickly, pacing back and forth so many times, I thought she’d carve a path with her feet. “And when I woke, I saw these fucking little pointy fucking ears.” She grasped at her hair to cover them, but they still poked through the wavy strands. “By the time I found my way outside, the gods spoke to me. Myrthana’s voice had once haunted me as badly as Sólkon’s presence, but now, it’s whoever watches over us. I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know what they want, but they saved me, and it will come at a cost.”
I was digging my nails into the meat of my palm so harshly. “As these things normally do,” I quietly said. “Aurelie…Aurelie, why didn’t you tell me that you died?”
She shook her head. “The gods led me to a tree where dozens of other bodies were hung, hands linked by silver nails.” I frowned, hating that she ignored my question. I captured her hand in mine and forced her to look at me. Her face was curled into the rawest form of despair I’d ever seen, but she shed no tears. “Sapphire had died, too, Eero. She told you I woke the dead, and she wasn’t kidding. I brought Sapphire back. She…she…she died.”
Aurelie was hyperventilating by the time death slipped off her tongue. I immediately brought her into my chest and squeezed my eyes shut. Why neither of them had told me the extent of what happened, I wouldn’t understand. Sapphire, specifically.
Perhaps it was a topic neither of them wanted to live through. Still, a terribly dark part of me wailed at the fact that she had died, however brief it was. If the gods had deemed her unworthy of a second chance, she would have been gone forever.
And the deep fear that guided my rage during battle would have been right.
“Aurelie…Aurelie,” I said and cupped her face again. I brought my lips to hers and, finally, I came undone. My stone-cold guard crumbled to ruin, and I wept, kissing whatever part of her face I could. When I wasn’t kissing her, I was hugging her. “I am so sorry—and you’ve been here, alone. Living with that. Aurelie, I’m so, so sorry.”
“Don’t—” she said, choking on her breath and pressing her palms into my chest to push me away. “This is why I did not want to tell you. I did not want you to focus on me again. No, none of this is about me.”
“But it is!” My voice boomed as my hands flailed into the air. She jumped at my outburst, bringing a hand to cover her mouth. I exhaled slowly, letting my voice mellow. “If I do not have you, witchling, this is for nothing. I do not care to live another day without you. This did not start with you, but it will end with you. Always.”
“This is not about me,” she repeated as she shook her head. “Do not be so foolish, Eero. This is your destiny, with or without me.”
I narrowed my eyes into slits, though not because of anger or annoyance—okay, well, mildly annoyed. But Aurelie was stubborn. I didn’t expect her to believe my words without a bit of a fight. If she lived, I didn’t care how hot-headed or fiery she was.
As long as the fire was there.
“My destiny is nothing without you.”
Her mouth clicked shut, brows knitting upward. “Eero…”
“Aurelie.” I offered a hand, the tremor all but faded with my palm to the ceiling. “Can I show you something?”
She eyed my fingers, and for a moment, I could have sworn we were back at Novus’ castle. Her hesitance, the fire in her eyes, the uncertainty—it both warmed and broke my heart.
I extended my reach and whispered, “Please.”
When her gaze struck mine, the fire melted, and her expression softened. Those delicate little fingers accepted my hold, and I led her from the room. She hissed at me about her slip the second I pushed past the doors, the balls of her feet grinding into the floor. I rid myself of my jacket and laid it over her shoulders.
It was enough to silence her, for now.
She hugged the jacket over her body, her bare feet smacking against the stone hallway as we descended the stairs to the main level. We were hurrying, slipping past servants and guards who were slowly occupying the castle. Casynox was vetting them thoroughly—within a few weeks time, the castle would be full.
And hopefully, the cities would be safer.
The pitter-patter of her feet slowed as we approached the double-doors that protected us from the throne room. I dismissed the guards with a nod, and although they were reluctant, they scurried down the hall. I paused when the lock clicked into place.
I had not seen this room in two hundred years.
“You tell me this is my destiny,” I said as I twisted the handle slowly. Her breath hitched when the hinges screeched. I didn’t know what state the room had been left in—if there was even a throne to be seen. The servants had cleaned every spot of the castle…every spot except this one.
This...this would be a first.
I breathed out when the shadowy room came to fruition. It was gloomy, barren, but at the end of the path were two thrones covered with a blanket.
I twisted to face her, extending my hand toward the room and gesturing for her to go first.
“My destiny only goes as far as you, Aurelie Cane.”