Chapter Fifteen #2
That was the only way to describe it. The pressure that had been an ever-present burden for more years than I could remember had finally been lifted.
The conversation with Thane in the dining room had cost me everything and given something back in equal measure, the way honest conversations with him always did.
Now I was climbing these stairs with every intention of going into that nest and saying the one true thing directly to Aveline, instead of hiding behind duty and what I think I should be doing.
I was done hiding.
Thane was behind me, close, his hand solidly at my shoulder as we reached the landing. A small thing, but I had spent three years being grateful for that quality in him without saying so, and I was adding it to the list of things I intended to correct.
The nest was empty.
I stood in the doorway and looked at the undisturbed furs—the space where she should have been—and the lightness that I’d had vanished.
“She’s not here.” Thane was already moving past me, into the bathing chamber adjacent. He checked it quickly and came out, shaking his head, panic etched on his face.
“Bedchamber,” I said, and he took the stairs two at a time while I stayed at the nest entrance and looked at the room.
Nothing disturbed. Nothing overturned. The food we’d brought up was still on the low table, partially eaten.
She hadn’t left in distress. Or she had, but not in a way that expressed itself physically.
Could her father have found a way in to take her?
Thane appeared back in the doorway. “Empty.”
I was already at the staircase.
The candle on the first landing was doing something candles didn’t do. I stopped and looked at it. The flame bent at a consistent angle, pointing downward, and I looked at the next one below it and found the same thing, and the one below that.
“Thane.” I didn’t need to say anything else. He was at my shoulder in seconds, following my gaze.
“All the way down?” he asked.
“All the way down.”
We went fast. Not running—the stairs were old and the footing uneven in places, and arriving at the bottom with a broken ankle would help no one.
I counted the floors as we passed them. Library.
Dining room. The bathing chamber we had discovered early on and used to clean the grime from our travels.
And then to the entry hall where we’d slept.
And there was where we found a door that we’d never seen before—we’d searched the space thoroughly. Or so I thought.
We hadn’t even crossed the space when we heard her.
Not words. Sobs—raw and exhausted and unguarded. Not dainty, simple, performed for effect. These were from the soul, deep inside, as if her heart was broken.
We exchanged glances and rushed into the small room.
It was hardly more than an alcove with a low ceiling, a single shelf, and Aveline on the floor with her back against the shelf and her knees drawn up and her face in her hands.
Her shoulders shook with heaving sobs, and a stone disc dangled from her fingers.
The room was cold and smelled musty and of old magic, like the air after lightning.
And underneath it, cutting through was a rich, deep scent of honey and silver blossom that made my attention snap into a different kind of focus. I noted it. Filed it for later.
Thane reached her first and dropped to his knees, and gathered her to him without hesitation, the way he always moved toward her.
He always knew exactly what to do and what she needed, and Aveline curled into him with a low sob.
She made a sound against his chest that cracked something behind my sternum.
I crouched in front of her.
“Aveline.” I kept my voice low. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head against Thane’s shoulder. Not hurt. Something else.
“Talk to us,” Thane said into her hair. “Take your time.”
She pulled back enough to breathe properly. Her eyes were swollen, her face red and puffy, and she looked at me with so many emotions flashing through it—grief and relief and anger, I thought.
She opened her hand and showed me the disc.
“There was a memory spell.” Her voice was unsteady but gaining strength as she spoke. “I touched the rune, and the door opened. There was a shelf with a book and this, and when I picked it up—” She stopped. Swallowed. “My mother was here.”
Thane froze, his arms still around her.
“A projection. Or an old spell triggered by my touch. Something she left behind.” She pressed the disc against her sternum.
“She built this tower. Not my father. She built it to keep me safe until the right people came through, and she built the wards to recognize—” Her voice broke briefly, and she held it together by apparent force of will.
“She said it would let my true mates through. Only them. That was the design.”
I looked at the room around us: the shelf, the book, the carved runes on the door. Someone who knew what they were doing had built this, had built it with intention and love, had built it as a long-term promise to a child who wouldn’t be able to understand the terms of it for years.
“She knew what my father was planning,” Aveline continued. “The binding he was trying to build. She interfered. She died attempting to stop him from doing to me what he’s been doing anyway since.” The brightness underneath her grief sharpened. “And she told me.”
I waited.
Aveline looked at me directly. “She told me she stopped him. I don’t think I killed her. He did it. He killed her because she got in his way.”
The room was quiet.
“It wasn’t me,” she said, her voice gaining conviction. “She said she interfered with his plans and was sorry she left me. It was never me. He lied to me.” She pressed her fist against her sternum, the disc still in her hand. “It was never true.”
Thane’s arms tightened around her. His jaw was working. Thane, who processed things through his body before he got to words, was holding her to give her his strength.
I sat on the floor.
Not a strategic decision. My legs could no longer hold me with the revelation that our suspicions were true.
I sat on the stone floor of a room her mother had built with enough love to leave a piece of herself in it.
I looked at Aveline’s face and something clicked into place.
The piece that I had begun accepting into my soul during my conversation with Thane was now finding a permanent place in me.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, the gesture practical and unselfconscious, and she looked raw and real and more fully herself than I had seen her since we arrived.
I reached out and took her hand.
Not the disc hand. The other one. She looked at me, and I held her gaze and let her see whatever was on my face without artifice.
“She protected you,” I said. “From the beginning. This whole tower has been protecting you.”
“I know.” Her fingers pressed against mine. “And now I have to—” She stopped. Something crossed her face, a flash of physical response she tried to stay ahead of and didn’t quite manage.
I noticed it. The faint sheen at her temple, the color in her throat above her shift that hadn’t been there when we’d come downstairs.
Her scent in the room had changed in the past few minutes, incrementally, the warm sweetness of it threading through the smell of old stone and resolved spell-work.
My attention had been cataloging it without my permission since we’d walked through the door.
She stood up.
Not gradually. She pushed herself to her feet clumsily, using Thane’s body as a lever.
Thane steadied her, standing once she did, his hand at her arm.
She let him, but she didn’t lean. She stood with her spine straight and her chin level with the disc in her fist. She looked like the daughter of a woman who had built a tower out of love and died to keep a promise. She looked like a queen.
“He cannot be allowed to rule any longer,” she said.
Not a question. Not looking for our agreement. A statement of fact.
I stood and met her gaze evenly.
“No,” I agreed. “He can’t.”
“We have to stop him.” She looked between us. “Not just protect me. Not just to win a battle. End it. Whatever it takes.” Her voice rang out in the small room, firm and resolute. “He doesn’t get to do this to anyone else.”
Thane took her hand. “You have our support, Aveline.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. Every inch the queen.
Then she doubled over.
One hand at the shelf for balance, the other pressed flat against her abdomen, her breath coming out in a rush. The scent in the room spiked immediately, sweet and sharp, and Thane jerked in response, his breathing hitched, his hand already moving toward her.
She straightened. Slowly.
Looked at us both with an expression that was equal parts exhausted and resigned. “I think my heat is starting.”