Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sleep doesn’t come easily. Even wrapped in Vale’s arms, I find myself restless.
He sleeps, the glow of the dying hearth molten across his form.
I step into the night. Velvet green wafts in on the cooling breeze as I stand on the balcony set just outside my chamber.
Dim moonlight draws silver lines across every ridge and peak.
I remember my vow. My promise to this land.
I may not be able to heal its scars, but I will fight for it all my days.
My hands stroke at the cold balcony wall, its edges rough against the soft skin of my palm.
I’m comforted by how solid it all is. The weight of this palace, far more looming than it was when I first arrived.
It is the fortress within which I will build my future.
It’s more than these walls, though. The mountain keep, the valleys and worn paths winding through each craggy climb. Every blade of grass and pebbled stone—all a part of the land I now belong to.
Air plays across my skin, and I feel held by nature itself.
I am reminded of the cottage in the woods.
The glade that felt so magical in bloom.
It’s even more otherworldly than those in the conservatory.
Ever since the solstice, the blossoms have stayed lush and full.
Well beyond what the season should allow.
Something prickles at the back of my neck.
I withdraw from outside and return to bed.
Vale stirs, ready to soothe me had some nightmare taken hold.
I no longer feel haunted by that relentless pull.
The nights grant me peace—for now. It’s the days that leave me rattled.
Niceties laced in pretty ribbons, lovely yet binding.
I settle back in his arms and slip into slumber until morning light.
Morning comes, and with it a new rush of preparations. I receive comforting words from many. The drama of the night before is not forgotten or ignored, but the focus seems to be on my place in Caerhollan, my vow, and the wedding drawing nearer each day.
“It’s been so long since we have had anything this exciting,” Brindwyn fawns at the usual table in the Solarium. Even Milandra joins in the excitement, still circling back to her own potential engagement any chance she gets.
“Will you have ladies with you, or shall you walk the aisle alone?” Carynth asks, each of the ladies leaning in expectantly, perhaps hoping to be included in the ceremony of it all.
“I believe alone,” I say, honestly not sure of all the details, given how much information has been passed to me without end.
I let them continue speculating, doing my best to stay present—though my gaze drifts across the room, wondering how many share the opinions of the crone at the banquet.
I have not seen her nor her husband since that moment, and I suspect I won’t any time soon.
I don’t dare ask what will happen with them.
Ace continues my education in the library, Fenloris always indulges my desire to learn more of the surrounding lands in his office, and Soria has now taken on the mission of preparing me to be a lady of the court any chance she can.
With her mother having been the main caretaker for the princess, she is no stranger to the decorum and the role of a queen.
I appreciate her more than words can ever express; I strive to be a diligent student, yet I find my mind straying often.
Never too far off topic, a moment spent thinking on the late queen Sylara, I long to understand the woman as much as her role in the kingdom.
The role I am now charged with stepping into.
She was the queen, yes, but also Vale’s mother.
As Soria tries to ease me into what is expected of me, a deep ache takes root in my heart as she recounts how Sylara stepped into a different role when Vale took the throne.
A grieving widow, she still guided her son.
Yet through sorrow—her daughter in a far off land, her husband lost to the treacherous arctic pass—she stepped back.
I don’t ask too many questions. Not to Soria, not to Vale. They both lost too much that day too.
I struggle trying to strike the balance between understanding but not prying.
Between reaching for hope but respecting the pain.
The hope I hold dear—for a future I now fight for—comes twined with the responsibility of bringing that same hope to all of Caerhollan.
I remind myself that brighter tomorrows are slow work and a journey I must take one step at a time.
I carry Soria’s words with me long after she’s gone—unable to escape the pain no years can erase.
There are hours when I can bear the weight of what I’m stepping into, and hours when it feels too vast to look at directly.
So I do what I’ve always done when the world grows loud: I seek a quieter corner and let learning steady my hands.
Fenloris and his maps hold history as fact.
The scars remain, but the distance time shapes carries them more gently.
As much as I find structure and knowledge in his company, today I find myself seeking the heart of Caerhollan, without audience, without having to coax it into words.
With a spare moment, before Fenloris is expecting me, I find my way to the quiet forgotten chamber filled with portraits of the royal family.
I study the paint across canvas spanning centuries.
It seems impossible to think that my face might be here among them someday.
Not just someday, but someday soon. A wedding portrait.
I walk to a far dark corner of the room. There, among the massive canvases with entire broods, I find it. Vale’s parents. Thalen and Sylara, their wedding portrait. Small in comparison to the others. A couple not meant to take the throne, married for the sake of love alone.
My fingers hover just above the brushstrokes etched in time.
The delicate lace of her gown, the ornate jewels across her throat.
The glowing smiles on their faces. Vale’s father standing proud.
There are none of the markings of a ruler across him—not like the later portraits from his reign.
Just the sight of a man and the woman he loves.
I linger there, praying for a blessing I will never hear from people I will never meet. A solemn moment before returning to the chaos of preparations.
Fenloris is just as ever, scuttling about before noticing me and forgetting whatever he might have been looking for.
“Ah, yes, there you are,” he says with a sense of victory, looking from me back to the stacks of parchment in the same instant.
He stops, his hands pressing down into the table wide at his sides. “What can I do for you today?”
Is that frustration I am picking up on? “We can continue another day if now is not a good time.” I am always so careful to not startle him for fear he might flinch.
“No, no, no, it’s fine, I just can’t—” His eyes scan again. “Here! Yes. Work must continue,” he mutters to himself. “We all have a job to do.” He rifles through more papers, placing a number of them in a satchel by the desk. “But where is my sextant?”
I step next to him, reaching across the desk to the instrument leaning against the window.
His eyes widen at recognition and exasperation at the item being precisely where he last left it.
“Good, good, and my seal…” He scans the desk once more.
Scrolls with pressed wax showing the mark of Caerhollan tell me it must not be far.
I search the cluttered terrain of his desk with him, lifting stacks but careful to set them back where they were.
He does seem to have a method to his madness.
I pull at the drawers, looking for the rogue item.
“No!” He belts out, and I take a step back. He pales at my intrusion.
“I’m sorry, I was just trying to help.” I retreat further from the desk, startled and worried I might have done something wrong.
“I-I just, my things, don’t mess with…” His hands are shaking with tension before he takes a deep breath. Running his fingers through his hair, then removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose, he continues, “Perhaps now isn’t the best time.”
“Again, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to… I’ll go. Maybe we can try again tomorrow.”
The exchange has me unnerved. As do so many of late.
For all the progress I make each day, a quiet undercurrent keeps pulling at me.
The bitter sulfur directed at me the night of the banquet still clings to me.
I push through, I always do. But the feeling lingers, something I cannot escape no matter how hard I try.
Vale notices. He always does. He watched me when I moved through the cottage, busying myself to avoid the war against my own desires.
The way I didn’t just wake in the night but woke trembling from fighting that call.
Even now, though I sleep peacefully through the night, he is keen to the struggles of the day.
He asks what’s weighing on me but doesn’t press when I can’t seem to put it into words.
Fact is, by the time his arms reach outstretched for me, I am ready to leave it all behind.
The planning, the fears, the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Each day I move forward, each night I relish the peace I feel with him.
As dawn creeps in past the curtains, I find myself not wanting to leave the bed.
Uneasy about facing the day. One more day.
Tomorrow, I will become his wife. I nestle into his hold, burrowing my face into the crook of his neck despite the way his beard tickles when I do.
“Can we just stay here until it’s time?” I groan into him, hiding my face from the world.
He sighs heavily. “I wish we could, little flame, oh how I wish we could.” He kisses the top of my head tenderly. The only crown I have ever truly desired.