Chapter 22 Svenn #2
"You can and you will."
Lady Deirdre's voice cuts through my protest. She's appeared in the doorway with Blaire and Siofra. Her dress is muddy and torn, her hair unpinned and loose around her shoulders.
Siofra moves toward Rhianelle with her hands raised in prayer position. Blaire follows behind, leaning heavily on a cane. "We will care for our queen."
"She needs me—"
"You're frightening them. They can't work like this." Deirdre's voice is firm. She positions herself between me and Rhianelle.
"I'm not trying to frighten anyone. I just want—"
"We know what you want." Blaire speaks up, her voice gentler than the others. "We all want the same thing. For Rhianelle to live."
She navigates carefully through the knights to approach me. "The healers need to focus on Rhianelle. They can't work with you here."
Only then do I notice it. The Hlaryan healers have withdrawn to the far wall, pressed tight against stone. Their eyes flick toward me, wary and uncertain. No one will come closer while I stand here.
"But what if she needs me?" My voice comes out small. Broken. "What if she wakes up and I'm not here?"
"We'll be here," Blaire promises. "I'll stay by her side and hold her hand. She won't be alone. I swear it."
There's something in her voice that makes me believe her.
I look at each of them in turn. Siofra with her hands already clasped in prayer position, lips moving silently to give Rhianelle blessings.
"You'll do everything to save her?" I ask.
"We promise," Lady Siofra says firmly. "The goddess will guide our hands. Her light will show us the way."
Every second I argue is a second stolen from Rhianelle's treatment.
"All right, I'll go." I force myself to stand. "But if she asks for me—"
"We'll send word," Deirdre says. "You have my word on that."
Darstan appears at my elbow as if summoned. His armor is muddy and his face exhausted. He must have been leading rescue efforts all day.
"Come on. Let's get you out of here." His hand is firm but not unkind on my arm.
"He should be in chains." The captain steps into our path, hand on her sword. "I can't let him walk free in this city. He belongs in—"
Darstan turns to face her slowly. Whatever she finds in his expression makes her step back. She says nothing further.
He guides me toward the door and I let him. But I can't help looking back one more time.
The healers have surrounded Rhianelle now. Their white robes create a wall between us, blocking her from my view. All I can see is one pale hand hanging off the edge of the table, fingers limp and lifeless.
"The queen won't die," Darstan says quietly as we step outside into the flooded street. "She's stronger than she looks."
I want to believe him.
But I've seen death before. I know what it looks like when life is slipping away.
We walk through the devastated city in silence. Word is spreading fast about what happened. People line the streets, staring at us. Well, at me. They whisper and their eyes are wide with fear and hatred.
The vampire brought the queen back broken and bleeding.
The monster finally showed its true nature.
I hear every whisper and feel every stare.
A lady clutches her child close, as if I might snatch the boy away.
"You can stay at my house if you'd prefer," Darstan offers as we walk. "My wife won't mind. You'd have a bed at least. Some comfort."
I shake my head. "Take me to the cliff prison."
He studies me from the corner of his eye. "You sure? The lower cells are likely flooded."
"Yes."
He doesn't argue.
Perhaps he understands that I need stone and bars around me right now, something solid between myself and the rest of the world. Or maybe he thinks it's fitting that I belong in a cage. Either way, he changes direction and leads me toward the upper streets.
Darstan has walked me to a prison before, back in Tavan. A different guilt and the same silence between us.
The prison rises above the city carved into the cliff face, its black stone slick with rain and salt spray. Seawater laps against the worn steps at the entrance, but it's still passable. Inside, the air turns colder. Torchlight flickers against wet stone, sending shadows writhing across the walls.
Darstan unlocks the prison and gestures for me to enter.
Water covers the floor but it's dry enough above the water line.
I step inside. He does not follow nor does he lock the door behind me.
I hear him pause, key in hand, and then the small sound of him pocketing it again.
There is no need. The knight knows this prison holds only one inmate and I have come to join him willingly.
The knight lingers at the threshold, the torchlight framing him in uneven gold.
"She'll be all right," he says before stepping back into the night.
The door swings shut.
Silence settles, thick and echoing. Water drips somewhere deeper in the corridor.
"Well now," a familiar voice drawls from the shadows. "Didn't expect to see you again."
I turn slowly toward the sound.
"I came to check on you," I say to Hrolf.
The dwarf sits on his cot with a half-finished horseshoe in his hand. He looks older in the torchlight. Maybe I just never looked closely before.
Hrolf snorts softly. "I'm still breathing. Trying to salvage what's left of the forge."
His words land quietly.
The prison here is nothing like the dungeons below the capital.
Rhianelle had made sure of that. Hrolf was to await trial in Volundr, far from the court.
Too many would have tried to kill him before judgment was passed.
So she gave him stone walls overlooking the lower plaza, a small anvil secured to the floor, and tools permitted under guard.
His confinement even has a window carved into the cliff face so he could see the street below and the sea beyond.
Comfortable, for a prisoner.
The memory of that quiet mercy tightens something in my chest. That was my wife. My kind and gentle Rhianelle.
Hrolf follows my gaze to the window.
"Saw the whole thing from up here," he says quietly. "The wave."
He steps closer to the opening, looking out into the dark as though the sight still lingers there.
"The sea pulled back first, then I saw it on the horizon. Wall of water taller than the towers." He exhales once before continuing. "A young elven guard was on duty. He threw the door open and told me to run."
Hrolf nudges the heavy iron ring still bolted to the floor. His chain clinks softly. "The guard couldn't get my chain free. The anchor bolt is sunk into the floor and he didn't have the key for it. He stood there trying to pull it loose with his bare hands while the water was already on the plaza."
His jaw tightens. "I told him to go. Took him three times before he listened."
"He make it?" I ask. Wait—since when do I care?
"I don't know." Hrolf picks up the mallet. "I hope so."
The dwarf pauses, taking in my appearance.
"What happened out there, lad?" Those keen eyes miss nothing.
I can't answer.
How the fuck do I form the words to explain how I've destroyed the only good thing in my cursed existence.
Hrolf waits patiently. Dwarves are good at waiting. They live long enough to learn patience.
"My wife is dying and it's my fault." The words escape as a broken whisper.
The dwarf is quiet for a long moment. I can hear him breathing in the darkness.
"You love her," he finally says.
Something breaks open behind my ribs. I look away and cross to the empty cell beside his to fall apart in private.
"If you love her then have faith, lad." Hrolf's voice follows me through the bars.
Faith.
I'm not good at prayer. Never have been. I don't know the right words or the right forms. But I try anyway. To any god that might listen.
If there's truly a god or seventy-seven gods like the elves worship, please let her live.
I don't care what you take from me. Take my years. Take my strength.
Please. Take me instead. Let her wake up and laugh and smile and see another sunrise.
Send the pain to me. All of it. Every wound she's suffering, give it to me. I can take it. I'm already damned. But she deserves to live.
Rhianelle deserves to be happy.
But gods don't answer monsters.