Chapter 13 #2
I approach the nearest pallet, the boy in it maybe five. Wet rattles drudge through his lungs at each breath, the straw near his mouth soiled black.
“He took ill only three weeks past. The winter damp gets into their chests. We’ve given him nettle tea and steam, but…” she trails off, the unspoken ‘we have nothing more’ hanging in the air. “Death will find mercy on him soon.”
Weakness somehow creeps into my legs with such force that I have to lock my knees. For weeks, my sole focus was on Daron. Maybe that’s what happens when you spend years with the dead: you go blind to the sorrows of the living. But standing here, smelling the sickness and the stale straw…
My gaze goes to Vale. I don’t know, maybe I’m hoping that his eyes lock with mine. Maybe I’ll see there’s still something left in that chest of his that can come up with enough love, or even just pity, to end this curse.
My eyes find only his profile.
Because he’s looking at the boy, the shadows beneath his eyes standing out like bruises. His lips are pressed into a thin, white line, not in cruelty, but in restraint.
Then his eyes lock with mine. For a fraction of a second, the misery in his expression is so profound that it knocks the wind out of me.
Then, he breaks contact.
He tears his gaze away from the pallet and turns on his heel, his black coat swirling around his ankles as he strides behind a few healthier-looking children.
I stare at the empty doorway where he vanished. That was not the reaction of a vengeful god. That was not a monster reveling in his curse, clinging to a grudge for the sake of wounded pride.
Then what was it?
“Your Majesty?” Sister Merin squeaks, jolting me out of my ramblings. “Someone mentioned firewood when they announced your visit.”
“Right, um…” Closing my eyes for a second, I call my focus back. “We allocated some for the orphanage to be brought in regular intervals.”
“Nobody can afford it anymore with how the woods are starting to rot now,” she says. “Once the snow comes, we’ll have no choice but to throw the pallets into the fires.”
“I know you’re doing the most of what you can with the little you have at your disposal. Trust that you have my support.” I gather my skirts, and turn toward the small doorway. “If you’ll excuse me.”
The hallway beyond is narrow and reeks of damp stone, the commotion of the main hall soon replaced by the faint, muffled sound of voices. What’s this?
I round the corner toward another room, which holds only a ragged rug, a few battered stools, and shelves lined with worn blocks. Where did he go? Why did he—
I stop dead in the doorway.
Vale sits there on a low wooden stool that looks ridiculously small beneath him. His long black coat puddles on the floor around his boots.
Standing in front of him is a girl, no older than nine. A mess of curly red hair. Smudges of dirt on her cheek. She holds something up to him, her expression serious.
“It broke.”
Vale leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he examines the wooden toy. “Everything breaks, little one.” His voice is something I’ve rarely witnessed, soft and gently cadenced, letting a strange warmth rise in my chest. “It’s the nature of things.”
“Can you fix it?” she asks, undeterred by his philosophy, and lowers a wooden bird into his hand, one of its wings snapped off.
“I don’t fix things,” Vale murmurs, yet he turns the toy in his long-fingered hand. “I’m usually the one who takes them away when they’re broken.”
“Oh…” The girl frowns, putting her small, chubby hands on his knees. “So can you fix it?”
“Why would I?” Vale asks, not unkindly, but there’s a certain weariness in his tone. “Even if I mend it, little one, the wood is old. It has cracks. One drop, and it’s broken forever.”
“I know,” she says simply. “I still want you to try.”
Vale frowns. “If you know it will end in pieces, then why does it matter?”
The girl looks at him, throwing her hands up as if severely offended. “Because I want to play with it some more now. Sister Merin always says…she says”—a dramatic punctuation with her little hands—“now is all we’re ever given.”
Vale stares at her, his lips parting in a silent exhale while mine curls with a smile. He looks nothing like a god in that moment. More like a man humbled by a girl. Or a father schooled by his daughter?
The thought sends an unexpected pang through my chest, a quiet but warm kind of inkling. If there was a time when he longed for a wife, did he ever long for a child? Family? Does Death ever get lonely?
My knee gives a little crack.
The girl’s gaze turns to me, her eyes widening until they nearly swallow her face. Her mouth drops open in a perfect little ‘O’ as she points a grubby finger toward my head.
“You have a real crown!”
Vale stiffens. The muscles in his back seize as he realizes his audience has grown by one. But before he can retreat behind his walls of ice and indifference, I step fully into the room, crouching down until my skirts pool on the dusty floorboards, bringing me eye-level with the two of them.
“It’s heavy and scratches terribly,” I whisper conspiratorially, offering the girl a smile.
“You’re the queen,” she breathes, looking as if she might vibrate out of her skin. She looks back at Vale, her earlier demand for a fix forgotten in the face of royalty. “Are you the king?”
Vale scoffs. “God, no.”
“Not yet,” I correct him. “But I’ll crown him my consort soon.”
He turns partially toward me, the ghost of that earlier softness still clinging to the corners of his eyes while his mouth twitches a little. “Never.”
That lures a soft chuckle from my chest. “Just one more wish away from it.”
He looks at me then, his gaze dragging from the toy to my face, catching on the curve of my smile. For a heartbeat, the air holds still. Slowly, helplessly, his lips betray him. They twitch more, then soften, curving upward in a shy, beautiful echo of my own amusement.
His blink fractures the moment.
A strange, twisted expression crosses his face—half resignation, half reverence—as he looks back at the wooden bird.
“You would do better to ask Her Majesty, little one,” he says quietly, extending the fractured toy toward me. His fingers brush mine as the wood changes hands, a fleeting, tingling contact. “My wife possesses an exasperating talent for mending things that, by all rights, should remain destroyed.”
I take the bird, my chest tightening. I’m not sure what he’s talking about, but I’m getting the sense that it’s no longer about the toy.
“I’ll do my best,” I murmur, holding his gaze.
“Clearly,” he replies, the words barely audible, before he finally stands to lean his shoulder against the wall.
I turn the bird over in my hands, aligning the jagged edges of the wing with the splintered body. It’s a clean break, thankfully. With a bit of pressure and a whispered hope, I wedge the wood back into its groove. It holds—precariously, but it holds.
“There,” I whisper, handing it back to the girl. “Fly it gently?”
“I will! Thank you, Your Majesty!” She snatches the bird with a grin that could outshine the sun and darts off toward the hallway, her footsteps thudding away into silence.
Left alone in the quiet, I brush the dust from my palms and straighten. I don’t follow her out. Instead, I turn and step closer to the wall where Vale leans, resting my back against the plaster right in front of him.
“I fixed it,” I say softy, tilting my head back to meet his gaze.
Vale stares down at me, his expression unreadable, though the tension in his shoulders hasn’t returned. “I feared you would.”
I take a half-step closer, my skirts brushing the toes of his boots. “You’re making it sound like it’s a terrible thing.”
His gaze drops then. It slides from my eyes down to the bridge of my nose, settling on my mouth.
The air between us thickens, growing heavy and charged, like a storm that hasn’t quite broken.
He doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t make a sarcastic remark, nor does he say anything hurtful.
He just looks at my lips as if they’re a question he’s afraid to answer.
“It is dangerous,” he breathes, his voice dropping to a rough timbre that vibrates in the small space between us.
Then, slowly—so slowly it feels like he’s fighting his own instinct to flee—he lifts a hand.
His long, cool fingers shape to the side of my neck, his thumb resting gently against the line of my jaw. “Terrifying beyond your understanding.”
He lowers his head. There’s plenty of time for me to pull away, ample time for him to stop, but neither of us moves an inch in retreat. The distance evaporates until there’s no air left to breathe, only him.
His lips brush mine. It’s not a demanding kiss, nor a hungry one. It’s soft, hesitant, and devastatingly gentle. I melt into it, my hands finding purchase on the lapels of his coat, anchoring myself against the sway of the earth beneath my feet.
When he pulls back, he does so with the reluctance of a tide being called back to sea. He doesn’t go far—just an inch, maybe two—keeping his forehead rested against mine as our breath mingles in the damp air between us.
He doesn’t speak. He just breathes, a shuddering, uneven sound that rattles in his chest. His thumb traces the line of my cheekbone as his eyes open. The look in them is raw, full of a quiet, aching wonder that steals the air from my lungs.
Then, the mask slides back into place—slowly, painfully, as if it hurts him to wear it again.
He drops his hand from my face, though his fingers linger in the air for a heartbeat before falling to his side. “I will wait for you in the carriage.”