Chapter 69
I woke with a scream.
My eyes were still closed as my hand moved frantically over the soft fabric around me. I could see light behind my eyelids, but I still could not bring myself to open them.
“Princess, slowly,” a woman’s voice said somewhere beside me, but I flinched at the sound out of pure fear. “Please, calm down. I am just your servant,” she answered gently, and my eyes slowly began to open.
The bright light blinded me, and my hand instinctively flew in front of my face to shield it. “What happened?” I asked, but before she could even answer, everything came back to me in a rush. My head began to pound, and my stomach twisted painfully.
“You cannot get up yet. You fainted, Princess.” She tried to keep me pressed into the bed, but I pushed her away. Somehow, I managed to force myself onto my feet, but my vision blurred, and I immediately began to fall until her arms caught me and held me upright.
“Princess, you were asleep for almost two days. You must let your body rest,” she said, but I only held on to her arms as tightly as I could.
“Where is he?” I almost screamed. “Where is Lysande? What happened?”
She only shook her head, looking away. “Lie down—”
“Where is my knight?” I demanded, leaning directly into her face, but before she could answer, the door to the unfamiliar room swung open.
“Sister?” Sanaedeo said, stepping inside. “You are awake.”
He began walking toward me, and the servant immediately stepped away the moment I let go of her and grabbed his arm. He placed his palm gently against my face, his warm eyes moving over every detail of my features.
“What happened? Did they execute him?” My voice trembled violently.
His hands came to rest on both sides of my face, his thumbs gently brushing over my skin to calm me. “Brother?” Tears gathered in my eyes.
“They did not, sister,” he said quietly, and I finally released a shaky, tearful breath of relief. He pulled me against himself and held me tightly, but my mind was already racing.
“Where is he, then? Why is he not here?” I asked, and he froze for a moment against my shoulder.
“Lysande is alive, sister, but he is in very serious condition. Faran... Faran tortured and exhausted him. Some of the maesters do not believe he will survive.”
It was as though cold water had been poured over me. My skin prickled, and my stomach turned with nausea. “Take me to him!”
“You need to rest a little longer. You are weak—”
“Then I will go myself.”
I pushed past him and moved sluggishly, barely able to place one foot in front of the other. I caught hold of the first wall I found, trailing my bloody hands against it, and followed it toward the door. Through the pain and the dizziness, the only thing I could see was him.
“Stop, Isolde,” Sando sighed behind me, but I kept going.
I reached for the door handle, but his arms caught me from behind and held me in place. “I will take you,” he murmured.
Through the long hallway, with dozens of servants bowing as we passed, he carried me more than I walked myself.
“What happened?” I looked into his tired face, trying to find answers. “At the trial? What happened in the end?”
His dark hair fell across his forehead as he lowered his head, and a tired smile tugged at his face.
“You did good,” he simply answered, then reached for the door handle ahead of us.
He held me securely at his side as he opened it.
“The only thing that happened in the end... is that ser is no longer ser.”
The light from the room struck my face, and once my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw a bed at the far end of the room. And on that bed lay Lysande.
“He is Lord Lysande now,” Sando said, and somehow my weak, jelly-like legs found the strength to carry me toward the bed.
I grabbed hold of its wooden edge and pulled myself around to the side. My stomach twisted, as though hundreds of butterflies were beating their wings inside it all at once.
“My Lys,” I whispered, leaning over his face.
Wounded, mutilated, and still painfully thin, his face looked more like that of a dead man than the face of the boy I knew at the harbor.
“Sister, I have to tell you immediately. His chances of surviving are not great.”
Sando's voice pulled me back for a moment.
I did not take my eyes off Lysande as he spoke.
I felt the mattress dip beside me and my brother’s hand take mine.
“His wounds are terrible, and he has not moved in two days. I want you to prepare yourself. He may not survive.”
With that, he leaned over, kissed my forehead before rising back onto his feet. “I will leave you two alone for a bit. I will inform the King and Queen that you are awake,” he said, then quietly left the room.
Now that we were finally alone, I allowed myself to cry out loud, the tears flooding my cheeks. I took his cold hand, but his fingers did not close around mine; they simply lay there, limp and heavy.
“Lys?” I leaned over him, my lips brushing his cheek. “Lysande, wake up,” I whispered as my tears fell onto his pale face. “My love, please, wake up.”
But Lysande did not wake.
For days, I sat there in that quiet room, watching his chest rise and fall steadily. My own wounds had already healed, and I had regained the full strength in my legs and body, but I never moved from his side.
On the seventh day, even the King came to see us after I had repeatedly ignored his hourly summons. When he entered the room, he froze. His eyes moved over my disheveled form, then to my Lys, and finally to my head resting against his scarred chest.
“It is all my fault,” he said quietly as he stood over me, his old hand gently stroking my hair. “I pray you find it in your heart to forgive me.”
“If he dies, I will no longer have a heart to forgive,” I simply replied, pressing my ear closer against Lys's chest to hear the faint, slow beating of his heart.
The servants also came every day, but each time I drove them away at the door, taking the jug of warm water and the cloth from their hands so I could clean his body myself.
I carefully dripped water into his mouth and fed him watered-down food with a small spoon.
I even shaved his beard exactly the way he always did, keeping him clean.
I told him stories, and every evening, when everyone else in the castle had gone to sleep, I would slip into the bed beside him.
Every morning, however, the maesters would find me there.
They tried their best not to offend me by telling me that I could not do that, and then they would quietly begin to bandage the wounds covering his entire body.
They spread foul-smelling ointments over his torn skin, and with fire and thread, they closed the deep wounds that kept opening again and again.
On the thirteenth day, Lys’s eyes fluttered open for only a moment, but he did not truly wake.
On the fifteenth day, after I had spent the entire evening telling him what I had thought of him on the very first day we met at the docks, he only murmured one single word through his dry lips. “Sol.”
On the seventeenth day, he began saying other names as well, calling out for his long-lost brothers and sisters, and sometimes he mentioned my name too.
On the twenty-third day, Lys finally woke.
“My princess.”
Someone murmured beside me, the sound rough and warm.
I felt a touch against my face, as soft as the kiss of a feather, and my eyes immediately fluttered open.
“Good morrow, princess,” he whispered, his finger lazily playing with a strand of my blonde hair.
My eyes filled with tears all over again, but this time, they were tears of pure and utter joy. “Lysande!”
I threw myself at him, careful not to put my full weight on his fragile body, but his strong arms immediately pulled me down against him.
He buried his face deep in my hair. One arm held me tightly around the waist, pressing me flush against his side, while his other hand held my head against his neck.
He trembled beneath me, and my hot tears soaked his skin. I pulled my head back so I could see his face clearly, touch his cheeks, smell his scent, and make absolutely sure that he was awake, that he was truly alive.
His brown, tear-filled eyes looked into mine as though he could hardly believe this was real.
“My princess,” he said, pressing his lips to mine in a desperate, sweet kiss. “My darling princess,” he whispered again, his thumb brushing gently over my cheek.
I kissed the single tear that rolled down his cheek and rested my forehead flat against his.
“My knight, my lord, my boy from the harbor, half of my soul. You are mine to love, knight of my heart.”
He laughed, a quiet, beautiful rumble, and pulled himself into a sitting position, his strong arms wrapping around me once more.
“My Isolde,” he said, pulling my head against his bare, scarred chest, where the heart of my knight beat loudly and firmly against my ear.