Chapter 46
There was singing for the solstice—but not as Will knew it. Every light in the castle had been extinguished, and outside, snow and wind battered the windows, while silence settled over the halls.
The butler led the procession, carrying the only lit lantern, its dancing glow barely illuminating the unfamiliar halls.
Behind him walked Eric and Elodie, who held a bundle of smoldering herbs in one hand, their thick smoke filling the air with spice.
Blood dripped from her other hand, and at every doorway she drew a glyph and a circle.
But Will could not take his eyes off Eric. In a deep voice, he sang incantations in a language Will did not know. His words rose with the smoke into the shadows of the vaulted ceilings. Eric marked the doorframes as well, though he used ash the cook handed him.
The air crackled with magic and with something older, from a time when the gods still walked the earth, when nights were still dangerous, when the world was still filled with mystery, before progress and human greed tipped the scales.
Will shuddered, but followed them in silence, his heart filled with pride for the two mages.
At last, the servants shut themselves inside their dining room, and Elodie blessed the door behind them.
The library was comfortably warm, but Will shivered when Eric sealed the door with a spell. Elodie’s blood ran down the veneer and gathered in the molding. A gust struck the windows so violently that the candles trembled.
“What exactly are you planning in here?” Eric asked. He was seeing the library from the inside for the first time, and Will flushed. He hadn’t expected Eric to make it after all, nor had he expected to have to explain himself.
“I thought we were searching the library for clues?” Eric added as he wandered between the shelves, where small lanterns stood at regular intervals along the baseboards. The air was golden in the candlelight.
At last, Eric came around the corner and discovered the nest around the sofa. Pillows and blankets lay scattered across the rugs, and small tables were covered in pastries and cookies, arranged perfectly for lying down and indulging. His dogs had already curled up before the fireplace.
“Did Duke Wilkinson prepare a romantic evening for his fiancée?” Eric laughed, and Will wished to disappear between the books.
Somewhere deep in the dark corners of his heart, he hoped that one day he might spend an evening like this with Elodie and Eric, but he knew it would not happen tonight.
He wasn’t even certain he wanted the other man to know what Will and Elodie did together.
“Is it not delightful? Wilkinson would never have thought of it—this is all Will’s doing,” Elodie said brightly and dropped onto the sofa.
Surprised, Eric turned toward him, only to find Will frozen in place.
“Is that true?”
“The cookies were my idea. I am surprised the duke allows wine,” Will managed and slipped past Eric toward the fireplace. He would rather stare into the flames than be forced to endure Eric’s mockery.
“It is beautiful,” Eric said dryly. “This is my first solstice without my family.” Will heard his footsteps behind him. “We have very similar garlands at home.”
Will pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, desperate to feel anything other than embarrassment. Of course Eric had immediately recognized the details Will had borrowed from his visit to the Arcos family.
Fingers tugged at his sleeve, and Elodie smiled up at him. “Come. We can still have a good evening despite Eric’s miserable face. The room is beautiful enough that he will hardly be noticeable.”
She pulled him onto the sofa with her and whispered, “Should I have lied? Given the servants the credit?”
She knew him far too well already. He sighed and shook his head.
Eric wandered through the room and examined every small detail Will had worked into it, from the golden angel he had found in Wilkinson’s study to the straw stars brought by the stable boy.
He even tried a cookie, but his expression remained unreadable, and he folded one arm behind his back so that he looked like a teacher inspecting his students’ work.
Suddenly, something crashed above them, and dust sifted from the chandelier Will had left unlit. Everyone froze, their gazes fixed on the ceiling, while the dogs growled, their hackles raised. But silence returned, even as the storm grew stronger.
“It is beginning,” Elodie whispered and nestled against Will’s side.
Eric raised an eyebrow, then turned abruptly. “Wine.” He uncorked the bottle Duke Wilkinson had undoubtedly chosen for himself. The label was embossed in gold, and red wax covered its long neck.
Eric poured Will and Elodie a glass as well, then, after an uncertain glance around the room, lowered himself onto the cushions on the floor. The tails of his embroidered silk coat spread over the patterned rug, and he stretched his long legs toward the fire.
“It should have been decanted,” Elodie said, though she took another sip anyway.
“To a long night.” Eric sighed and raised his glass.
“To seeing morning again,” Elodie corrected, while Will sent a silent blessing home to his parents. He had written them a letter, though he had been unable to send it.
“I did not know you sang,” Will began and promptly earned a dark look from Eric.
“If this is going to become an interrogation, I would rather take my chances with the demons. I thought we were here to read.”
Will seized the first book within reach and tossed it into Eric’s lap. “Then start.” Instead, he took the book of fairy tales and sought Elodie’s permission with a questioning glance. She moved closer, placed a plate of sandwiches in her lap, and leaned against Will’s shoulder.
Together, they read the first story in silence, the open book resting across his legs.
For a while, it was peaceful, with only the wind whistling through a crack, until something suddenly scraped across the window.
It sounded like branches, but Will knew there was nothing outside for miles except the sea.
He shivered and was grateful he had drawn the curtains across the pitch-black glass.
Elodie tensed beside him as well. “I hate it,” she whispered and bit into another sandwich.
“I know,” Eric murmured and reached a hand toward her. When he gently squeezed her knee, Elodie relaxed again. “I still remember the solstice at your father’s. How old were we? Ten?”
Elodie had told Will about her sisters, about Hedgefort reading to them, but not about Eric and his family. By now, he was fairly certain Eric had been the fourth child in the drawing. Will returned his attention to the fairy tale, in which a warrior monk stole the heart of a goddess.
But he could not stop thinking that there had once been a time when the two of them had been friends; more than that, almost family, celebrating the solstice together.
“Why do you both want to become the Red Hand so badly?” he blurted.
They stared at him in surprise, and Elodie’s lips were already parting with an answer. He had not meant to ask; perhaps the alcohol was beginning to affect him, though he barely felt it.
Eric adjusted the collar of his coat, and Elodie bit her lip, but neither answered.
“You destroyed your entire friendship over this fight, and for what? Eric, you have a wonderful family. Is that not enough?”
Again, Eric shook his head, his lips twitching before he practically spat out the answer. “For Elodie. Is that what you wanted to hear? Can you finally leave the subject alone?”
“For me?” Elodie’s voice broke, and she put the plate aside. “In what deranged world do you take away the thing I want most and then have the audacity to say you are doing it for me?”
“Because you have no idea what you want! I have worked for that monster for years. I know what the position demands! Just because your father believed your mother’s death had some greater meaning beyond the tragedy it was does not mean you have to sacrifice your life for it!”
Elodie was on her feet in an instant. “I have already sacrificed everything for it! You were simply always too na?ve to see!”
Eric followed her and rose to his full height before her. “I know your father was horrible. But that does not mean you have to keep suffering for the rest of your life! If you become the Red Hand, the King is inside your head, giving you orders. You do not have a single moment to yourself anymore.”
Elodie clicked her tongue. “And you want to save me from that? To me, it sounds more like you do not want me to possess that kind of power. You think I am too na?ve to understand what it will cost me. I have nothing to lose—but I could save this city.”
“You have everything to lose! Every day I watch you give up another piece of yourself for this fight, it tears my heart apart.”
“Then stop being such an idiot and thinking you have to protect me! You only make it harder!”
Eric dragged a hand through his hair, loosening strands from the neatly combed style. “There will be nothing left of you if you take the office. The King breaks you. He controls you.” Breathing hard, he took a step back. “I have wanted to tell you that for so long,” he whispered.
“My father trained me for it. Everything he did was meant to make me stronger.”
“First and foremost, he made himself stronger.”
“Do you think I don’t know who my father was?” she hissed.
“No. Sometimes I think you still worship him in some twisted way. He was a sick bastard.”
“I know!” Elodie’s voice echoed through the room. “I was there when he ate my sister’s stillborn child because he believed the blood would give him more power!”
Will’s eyes widened, and even Eric faltered.
His mind painted images he did not want to see, but as on his first day in the ballroom, they laid themselves over his vision: fairy lights bathing the dining room of the Ormonde grand townhouse in green, a banquet, the head of the family seated at the end of the table.
With a violent jerk, he tore himself from the image and shook his head.