Chapter 38
THOMAS
The solar was dim after the yard, the fire banked low, the air smelling of wax, old parchment, damp wool, and ink. Hob stood beside the table with the sword laid before him on its cloth. His hands rested at his sides, but his expression had lost all of its rough humor.
He looked at Thomas. “Want me to go?”
“No,” Amelia said.
Both men turned to her. She looked at Hob, and the fear in her face was threaded now with something gentler. Trust, mayhap. Or gratitude. “Please stay.”
Hob’s brows lifted. Then his face settled into stone, the way it did when arrows were flying and men were screaming and the world had narrowed to orders that meant life or death.
“Aye,” he said. “I’ll stay.”
Thomas shut the door. Not fully. Enough for privacy, not enough for scandal, though if the household had not already learned that scandal kept poor hours at Ashcombe, it was far too late to educate them now.
Amelia stood near the table but did not touch the sword. The sapphire caught the light from the narrow window and held it deep, blue, and beautiful.
“This is not the first time you’ve seen it,” Thomas said.
Amelia closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered.
“Where?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him with a grief so old it seemed impossible that he had known her only months.
“I can’t tell you yet.”
The answer was a door. This time, he did not kick it open. He set his hands flat on the table, one on either side of the sword, and leaned toward her.
“Can’t or won’t?”
Her mouth trembled. “Both.”
Hob sucked in a breath through his teeth.
Thomas kept his voice low. “You asked me to ask.”
“I know.”
“So I’m asking.”
“I know.”
“And still you won’t answer.”
Her eyes flashed then, bright with hurt. “Do you think I like this? Do you think I want there to be a whole piece of myself I can’t give you because every word sounds mad even inside my own head?”
“No.”
“Because I don’t. I hate secrets. I hate not being able to explain.
I hate that the one thing I’ve been afraid of and wanting has just arrived in your solar wrapped in royal gratitude, and everyone is smiling because Ashcombe is saved, and I am happy, Thomas.
I am. For you. For us. For all of them.”
Her voice broke.
“And I feel like a horrible person because part of me wants to run screaming into a pantry and never come out.”
Hob looked toward the door. “Edith would drag you out.”
A laugh escaped Amelia, cracked and small.
Thomas looked at Hob.
“What?” Hob said. “She would.”
“She would,” Amelia said, wiping beneath one eye. “She’d bring a ladle.”
“Likely the heavy one.”
The sword lay between them, gleaming.
Thomas touched the table edge. “Is it a threat to you?”
Amelia stared at the sapphire. “No.”
“To Ashcombe?”
“No.”
“To me?”
Her eyes flew to his. “Yes.”
Hob muttered, “That’s less comforting.”
Thomas didn’t move. “How?”
Amelia’s lips parted. No words came. Then she looked at the sword again, and he somehow saw the answer without understanding it. The blade was not a threat because it could cut. It was a threat because it could take.
Thomas’s skin went cold.
“What is it?” he asked, softer.
Amelia wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s a door.”
Hob crossed himself and shut the door to the solar.
Rain began against the shutters, though when they had entered the solar, there had been sun and not a cloud in the sky. The new sound was faint, a tapping at first, then a patter, then the low roll of thunder beyond the hills.
Amelia heard it too. “No,” she whispered.
The sapphire flashed.
Thomas looked down as blue light moved in the stone, so faint he might have doubted it had he not seen Amelia’s face.
Hob swore, softly and with great feeling.
The latch lifted.
Thomas had his sword half-drawn before Friar Huck pushed into the solar, breathing hard, robes hitched above his ankles, rain in his beard and a small jar of honey clutched in one hand as if he had been summoned from some urgent negotiation with bees. He took one look at the sword and stopped dead.
“Well,” Huck said softly. “That’s not natural.”
Amelia made a strangled laugh that was perilously close to a sob.
Thomas glared at Hob.
Hob lifted both hands. “I did not fetch him.”
“The bees did,” Huck said.
Thomas closed his eyes for half a breath.
“Huck.”
“Aye?”
“This is not the hour for bees—”
“The bees know more of God’s workings than most men,” Huck said, setting the honey jar on the nearest chest with great care. “And they were troubled.”
Hob made the sign of the cross again. “The bees were troubled?” He peered into the corridor and then shut the door again.
“Aye.”
“Saints preserve us.”
“That is rather the hope,” Huck said, then looked at Amelia, and all the jest left his round, weathered face. “Child.”
Amelia swallowed. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Nay,” Huck said gently. “But I think you know what it wants.”
The room seemed to shrink around them. Rain struck harder, drumming against wood and stone. Wind pressed at the shutters. The candles leaned, flames stretching blue at their tips.
The sapphire pulsed again. Amelia flinched as if the sword had called her name.
Thomas stepped around the table and put himself between her and the blade.
“You don’t have to touch it.”
She laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “That’s the problem.”
“I’ll put it away in the armory. Locked forever.”
“It won’t matter.”
“Then I’ll throw it in the river.”
Her eyes filled. “Please don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s yours.”
“I care nothing for a sword next to you.”
The words landed in the room with the force of a thrown gauntlet.
Hob went very still.
Huck’s mouth softened.
Amelia stared at Thomas, tears bright in her green eyes. For a breath, he thought she might reach for him instead of the sword.
But the sapphire flared again, brighter this time, and she turned toward it. Not choosing. Drawn. As if some invisible thread had been tied around her waist and tugged.
Thomas caught her wrist before she reached the table. Gently, because he would cut off his own hand before he bruised her. But he caught it.
Her gaze snapped to his hand.
He released her at once.
“Nay,” he said. “Not alone.”
Amelia’s breath trembled. “I don’t know what will happen.”
“Then we’ll stand with you while it happens.”
“You can’t fix this.”
“I know.”
That stopped her. Mayhap because it was true. Mayhap because for once, he was not promising what no man could. He could not stop a storm, threaten an enchanted sapphire, or command a door not to open.
But he could stand between her and fear.
The sword flashed brighter. Thunder cracked so hard dust sifted from the rafters.
Huck crossed himself, then began to pray beneath his breath, low and steady.
Hob moved to the door and set his back against it, axe in hand, as if he could keep the whole of heaven and hell out of the solar by sheer stubbornness alone.
Thomas held out his hand. After a moment, Amelia put her fingers in his. Together, they faced the sword.
The sapphire burned blue now, no longer pretending to be gemstone or light. It filled the solar with a glow that turned parchment ghost-white and made the shadows tremble along the walls. The blade hummed, deep enough that Thomas felt it in his teeth, his bones, the old scar along his jaw.
Amelia’s fingers tightened around his.
“Thomas,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
She looked up at him, and the truth was there balanced on the edge of the world.
The blue light reflected in her eyes. She looked half entranced, half terrified, and Thomas realized the sword was not waiting for permission. It was calling.
“Amelia.”
“I’m not doing it,” she said, though her voice had gone thin. “I’m not.”
Her hand slipped from his.
Not because she pulled away, but because the whole room seemed to draw one long breath, and in that breath Amelia moved, reaching for the hilt.
Thomas lunged, but Huck caught his arm with surprising strength.
“Wait.”
“I will not—”
“Wait,” Huck said, and now there was no honey in his voice, no jest, no soft round edge. Only command. “Look at her hand.”
Amelia’s fingers brushed the sapphire as the stone flared white-blue.
She gasped. A tiny sound. A fresh line opened across her knuckle, small and wicked as if the sapphire itself had cut her. Blood welled, bright red against her pale skin.
“No,” she breathed. “No, no, no.”
The first drop fell, striking the blade.
Hob crossed himself so fast he nearly clipped his own chin. “Holy Mother of God.”
Light exploded from the sword.
Huck’s prayer rose sharply, Latin tumbling into the room, wrapping around the storm and the roar and Amelia’s cry.
Thomas seized her about the waist and pulled her back against him, but the light did not release her.
It poured up from the blade, spilled across the table, crawled over the walls like living fire.
The solar split open. Not the wall. Not the door. The very air itself.
It began as a seam. Thin, vertical, impossibly bright. Then it widened, pulling the world apart as easily as cloth. Wind roared into the room, though not from outside. From elsewhere.
Thomas smelled rain on stone. Not Ashcombe’s old wet stone, full of smoke and lichen and sheep and years. Something sharper. Cleaner. Odd. He smelled roses beaten flat by weather. Wet grass. A sweetness like wine but not wine. Something bitter and bright, like lightning burning iron.
The seam became a doorway and beyond it stood a ruin. For a moment, his mind rejected what his eyes saw. Ashcombe’s tower was whole. But through the doorway stood Ashcombe’s tower now broken open to the sky.
The walls were jagged. The roof was gone.
A black night showed overhead. Pale flowers sagged along the stones.
Little lights, too many and too small to be candles, drooped like drowned stars.
A brass tablet gleamed upon one wall. The ledge by the window was there, the same ledge, but old.
Worn. Hollowed as if by the passage of time.
Hob made a rough sound.
Huck’s prayer faltered, then strengthened.
A woman’s voice came through the opening.
“Amelia!”