Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Iwas only just beginning to feel at home, finding a rhythm, when everything changed.
He has sat across from me with heavy words before. Each time, there was a choice: stay or go, risk or retreat. Each time he came with his heart in his hands and asked. Each time, I said yes with every part of me.
But this…
This strikes differently.
We walk the bustling midday corridors side by side, no longer pretending I have no place at his shoulder. I watch the atmosphere around him shift—the subtle weight in his movements, the way silence tugs at the corners of his smile.
I don’t press.
Not yet.
He came for me himself—not a page sent with a message, not a summons scratched onto parchment.
Him.
That alone tells me something has changed.
Moments earlier, Ace and I had been trading cheerful nonsense—the kind of conversation so light it felt like sunlight itself. Then Vale appeared in the doorway, and the world narrowed to him. I cross the room without thinking.
He catches me with a laugh, lifting me off my feet. Joy burst out of me—unrestrained, bright enough to startle even Ace.
“M’lady,” Ace sighs dramatically, hand to his chest, “if that’s the sound you make for him, I must assume you’ve only been humoring my wit.”
Vale lowers me slowly, my feet returning to stone though my heart still floats. His arms remain around me — steady, sure.
“Don’t fret,” I tell Ace with a grin. “I still find you utterly delightful.”
Ace bows as though I’d knighted him, stacking his books in theatrical defeat.
I turn to Vale. “What brings you here?” His presence alone feels like being set alight.
“The day is ours, flame,” he says, warmth threading through his voice. Then, to Ace, “You don’t mind if I steal her away, do you?”
Ace waves us off. “Go set the world ablaze.”
Vale guides me into the hall. I follow, sensing something simmering beneath his lightness. Part of me knows that I would follow him anywhere.
We walk, his eyes staying fixed ahead. The silence between us feels heavier than the words he won’t speak.
Courtiers bow as we pass; I barely notice. I watch only him—the tension in his jaw, the way his steps seem just a fraction too precise. Finally, the pressure grows too sharp to bear.
“I can’t do this anymore.” The words shoot out of me before I can temper them.
He stops mid-stride, blinking as though I’d pulled him from a dream. “What?” he asks, startled.
“This silence.” I draw a breath. “I am grateful to be here with you. But don’t think I can’t tell when something weighs on you.” My hand slides along his arm, trying to anchor us both. “Whatever it is, we will face it together.”
His shoulders sink—not with relief, but with resignation. He glances down the corridor—empty—and guides me into a narrow passage lit only by a single dusty window.
Worry coils in my chest. “Vale…” I whisper, pleading.
He takes my hands in both of his, staring at where our skin met—as if the truth were easier to speak into my palms than into my eyes.
When he finally looks up, the words cost him.
“I must leave.”
Quiet.
Reluctant.
Unyielding.
Breath catches in my throat. He sees the question forming before I can speak it. “Will I be coming with you?” I ask softly, trying to still the dread curling low in my belly.
“Not this time, little flame.” He shakes his head—gentle, but no less devastating. “It’s a difficult journey in numbers—but one I need to make.”
The last time he left Caerhollan, he bled out on the floor of my cottage. The memory splits through me.
My fingers tighten around his. “I need you safe,” I whisper, voice fraying.
“I will be.” His tone is wrapped iron in warmth, a promise hammered true. “There is nothing to fear, my love. I will be gone little more than a fortnight.”
A fortnight.
I count days against the life I’ve lived here—how brief, how full.
“The solstice,” I murmur. “It’s always been important to me.”
The rhythm of the moon and season—the very thing that once made me an outcast—has always felt sacred. Here, within ancient walls, I finally feel safe speaking it aloud.
“Then I shall return before that night.” He presses a kiss to my hands—sealing the promise in flesh.
I believe him.
Yet somewhere beneath the warmth of his words, the mountain hums—steady, waiting—its own promise to keep.
He keeps his vow to make the day ours.
He will leave at first light. I tell myself to savor every moment, bittersweet though it may be. We cling to each other more consciously now. These are not the fleeting touches that once gave me butterflies. This is deeper, threaded with ache.
We ride the mountainside, pine-sharp air filling my lungs, sunlight slipping warm across my skin. Spring pressing toward summer, yet I cannot be warmed entirely.
When dawn comes, he is gone. The scent of him lingering on the sheets. How cold it is now, knowing it will fade and ultimately be washed away long before his return.
The days feel hollow without him.
Ace’s usual charm isn’t enough to banish the ache of returning to an empty chamber.
Even Soria’s efforts to ready me feel muted, their purpose suddenly unclear.
Two weeks.
In any other life, a fortnight would pass swiftly. But here, after loving him in a blaze that remade me, it feels like eternity.
I think about how small it must all be to him, to all those who would watch an eternity unfold long after my time had expired.
I try to keep busy.
Afternoons in the library.
Evenings in the conservatory.
But the nights are the hardest. Restlessness takes hold again. It’s harder to fall asleep when it’s not in the aftermath of our love. Harder still to settle when I wake trembling without his arms wrapping around me and rough edges of his voice bringing me back to safety.
Ace notices how listless I become during our time; after a few days, he stops coddling me with distraction and simply lets me go, conceding with the expected flair when I depart to my solitude.
Strange. I once found peace only in solitude. Now, every quiet space echoes with his absence.
I write in my journal: details of court life, idle scraps of gossip Ace let slip. If my days are to be so empty, I will at least fill the pages.
But my sketches…
They hold deeper truths. Woodland paths from the village. The glade. Faces I barely remembered. I trace the life I’d lived before, and feel how distant it has become.
And how sharply the future calls to me.
A tug pulls at my chest. If the world feels hollow without him now, how will I survive any life that does not include him? I hate this feeling. The longing, yes, but more so the helplessness.
He loves me, truly, but he did not love some trembling pup whimpering at the door for his return.
No.
It was his flame he adored. In his absence I must learn to tend the fire myself.
I close the journal holding my thoughts and drawings alike and stand. Straightening, I leave the conservatory with no destination in mind, only motion.
I do not think. I only feel.
Walking with my head held high, I quiet the voice inside my mind that tries to interpret every glance or expression as I make my way across the High Hold.
If I mean to make Caerhollan my own, I must begin acting like it.
I cherish the places that have become mine, but I will not continue to hide away.
I have survived so much. I have endured. Even when I left the village, it was not to retreat but to claim my life for myself. The village did not break me. The wilds did not claim me.
Life here at court may be the greatest trial yet—the hardest pieces of both worlds I left behind, sharpened by even greater challenges.
But I can do this.
I will do this.
Fierce as I feel with my heels striking stone, I temper my boldness. The Solarium buzzes too loudly, as does much of the eastern wing. I turn toward the western corridors—not the chambers where Vale and I share our meals, nor those where he holds his council.
I ponder what quiet stories lie hidden behind the many doors I once passed without thought when all my attention was fixed on the man at my side.
I cross the grand entry, the divide between the common halls and those of the Crown. Here, in the broad space meant to welcome, people stream past.
No idle chatter, no lingering.
They move with purpose. Between duty and community, between the world within and the world beyond the gates that so rarely open.
I pause.
A family finds one another. A mother gathers a child at her side.
She tucks a stray curl back into the loose braid of a young girl who tugs at her skirt for attention.
The father approaches, smiling, lifting the child into his arms, taking a precious moment away from work to hold what truly matters. It stirs something deep within me.
I have survived through grit and determination. But watching them, taking in the quiet beauty unfolding around me, I finally glimpse the true heart of this kingdom, and I allow myself to wonder. Maybe, just maybe, one day I could learn what it means to thrive.
Each step feels lighter as I continue onward. I move through halls lined with doors both familiar and unknown. Ace has shown me the armory. I’ve visited Bracken in the stables more than once, yet the vastness of Caerhollan and all its secrets still calls to me.
I may not roam here as freely as I once did the woods, discovering the world with wild curiosity—but perhaps I can nurture that same curiosity here.
I huff a quiet laugh at myself. It isn’t funny. Perhaps I am simply resigning myself to subtle truths—unburdened by my fears, even if only for a moment.
Was it curiosity that kept me turning pages so relentlessly in the library, or was I searching for escape?
My gaze tracks upward. Light filters through, like sunlight piercing leaf cover. Damp stone carries a familiar tang, like dew on morning grass before the day warms. If I focus hard enough, the distant echoes might be the rustling of branches, neither friend nor foe until revealed.
My fingertips trail along the craggy walls as I move. I pass the portrait gallery, where Ace once spun tales of those who came before. Past the door where Vale so often greeted me when duty surrendered to his heart. Past the quiet alcove that holds our whispers safe.
This is not the forest, and yet it may well be just as much my home.
I continue deeper into the western halls. Rooms cluster more tightly here; men move in and out, exchanging quiet greetings and bits of business. They pay me little mind beyond returning my smile.
I turn a corner, and the air shifts: parchment, dust, and something older still. It reminds me of the library, yet with an undercurrent I cannot name. Then, like the mouth of the cave where I once sought shelter, a door stands ajar. Daylight spills across its threshold.
Curious indeed.
I slow, quiet and steady.
My palm glides against the grain of the wooden door as I lean, peering inside before I can be caught plainly in the doorway.
I see him long before he notices me. Bent over stacks of parchment, shifting piles of scrolls, scurrying about like a mouse. He pauses, one hand braced on his hip, the other pushing thin wire-framed spectacles back up the bridge of his nose.
“Lose something, Fenloris?”
My words slip out with gentle caution, more for his sake than mine. Like approaching a creature of the woods, I move slowly so as not to startle him. His head snaps up toward me, and I can’t help but laugh at how much he resembles a startled woodland animal.
My hands linger on the door, still a barrier between us. until his shoulders ease, softening beneath the warmth of my smile.