Chapter 25 Marriage Cloak
Marriage Cloak
He woke to a sharp gasp from Ayla, and wrenched himself upright.
“Lady Blackfell?” Niel asked groggily. He was in the chair beside her; had fallen asleep leaning his head against the wall. It was dark, the fire weak and the hour late. The room smelled like smoke and sweat. “What is it?”
“This room,” she whispered. Her voice was distant, trembling again. “I hate this damned room.”
It was like the quiet shiver of her voice had bludgeoned him off a galloping horse, flipping him over so for one startling moment, the sky was the ground and the ground the sky, before he slammed breathlessly back to terra.
The room he’d taken over was the lord’s chamber.
Which made it her husband’s, because Blackfell did not sleep where his wife slept.
And the room he’d brought her to eat each meal was her husband’s, too.
And the bed she was sleeping in, the bed where she’d spent the last days tending him… he felt nauseated.
What had he been putting her through? Why hadn’t he realized? He, of all people…
“Mercy.” He slid from the chair, his knees smacking down onto the floor as he knelt, in apology and penance. “I will take you back to your room. Let me build a fire there, and warm the bed…”
The hearth crackled, a spent log splitting down the middle and shifting over the embers.
“No.” Ayla stared up at the ceiling, her eyes gleaming wet in the fading firelight. “I’m far too tired for that. So are you.”
“I’ll carry you. You needn’t be awake at all.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, and let her eyes fall closed. “I heard you, you know. All of it. You’re quite dramatic.”
“Dramatic? No, I do not think so,” he muttered.
“I survived the last three years,” Ayla whispered. “I’m not going to die from a simple grippe.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that.”
Her hand reached towards the side table for the cup of water. Watching her fumble for it, he reached over and nudged it into her grip without touching her. Ayla struggled upright, but did not ask for help, so he let her do it herself, and watched as she lifted the cup and drained it dry.
“And I do not hate you,” she added. Her wetted lips glistened in the firelight.
“Even better. What can I do for you, my lady?”
“Sleep,” she told him, and set the cup back on the counter. He refilled it for her, then went to build the fire back up. For a moment he stared at the chair beside the bed, then gave up and spread his body over the furs before the hearth instead. Sleep came quickly. She was going to live.
He did move her, the next day, when the sun was up.
He changed her bedsheets himself, and closed the shutters against the wind, and built the fire up in the hearth of her small chamber.
He warmed the bed with coals in a pan, and then carried her upstairs, still wearing his braies and oversized shirt, to her own room, where he tucked hot wrapped stones around her.
She was no stronger than she’d been before, and no more conscious.
He didn’t know how to care for someone, not really, but he remembered what she had done, and tried to do the same: clean clothes left beside her, so she could dress herself, which she did.
A wet cloth on the forehead when she sweated.
Tea and broth and porridge, which he tasted first, not for poison but to make sure Bode had not cooked it, which would be near as bad.
His heart hurt, just to look at her. He went from begging her to live to instead pleading for her comfort, no longer worried she’d make it but fretting nonetheless.
Hers was a small room, and he felt like he was right on top of her; a nuisance she would surely rather do without.
He looked out the window now and then, at the enemy army camped there, and begged the sun not to burn bright enough to melt away the snows until she was healed.
If combat came, he would have to leave her side. He did not want to do that.
By the third day of her illness Ayla was fully conscious, but still subdued and bed-ridden. He moved her stack of books within easy reach of her hands.
“Are you hungry?” Niel asked. “Can I fetch you anything else?”
She stared straight ahead for a long moment, not at him but at the wall. Dark shadows ringed her gray eyes. She’d pinned her oily hair up since she was not yet strong enough to wash it.
“My marriage cloak.”
“Your marriage cloak,” he echoed, in disbelief, certain he must have misheard.
“It should be in his wardrobe. Can you bring it?”
He wanted to argue, to tell her that no matter how poorly she felt her marriage was nothing to take comfort in.
The thought she might be missing the man who’d hurt her made his jaw tighten until his teeth ached.
But he nodded sharply, and went to find the damned thing, more miserable with every step he took.
The marriage cloaks most noble women made for their husbands were as elaborately decorated as tapestries.
The one his somewhat-wife had sent to him had stitches so small he could barely make them out, an elaborate artwork of the Aronthian phoenix and the Mount Eyron red dragon tangling together.
Lady Blackfell’s, when he found it, was instead decorated with patches, each embroidered in a different style as if they’d been stitched by different hands, and then tacked messily on by the same clumsy-handed seamstress.
He crumpled it up in his hands. Then he sighed heavily and forced himself to fold it neatly.
“Here,” Niel said when he returned, a little more sharply than he meant to. “Your cloak, Lady Blackfell.”
“I don’t wish to be called that,” she said. She made no move to take the cloak from him. “The title is his by birth, and mine only by marriage.”
“Lady Ayla, then.” He continued to hold it out to her.
“Throw that into the fire,” Ayla said. “I want to watch it burn.”
He let out a sharp breath, almost a laugh, and grinned involuntarily. Niel did not hesitate. He stuffed the cloak in on the side of the hearth, half-over a log, so as to not smother the fire entirely.
“I knew I was miserable,” she said quietly.
“But I forgot what it felt like to not be under his thumb. To not be afraid every moment of every day. Even when he left, to go to court or such, he still felt… here. Even if this all ends badly, I can no longer pretend there is any future in which I could go back to being his wife.”
“I know what you mean,” was all Niel could say.
An acrid, unpleasant smell, like burning hair, began to fill the room. Niel took a breath through his mouth, unwilling to pull the cloak from the fire.
“Can you open the window?” Ayla asked him.
He got up to do as she asked. Reaching across the window seat, he pushed the shutter wide and let white, cold light spill inside, bringing a crisp breeze.
The world outside was blanketed in another snowfall.
He could see his men on the castle wall below them, clearing the walkway so sentries could stand guard.
“Snowed, again,” he informed her. “Good timing for us.”
“Will you tell me what the Queen did, to break faith with you?”
The question hit him like a punch. He grabbed hold of the windowsill to steady himself, and then turned slowly to face her. She was sitting up in the bed, the blankets wrapped around her waist and a heavy wool top over her dress.
“Why?”
“I love my country,” Ayla whispered. “I don’t see how Aronthian rule would make life here better for anyone. And I cannot quite hate you. But you are warring with my Queen. Why? Must you?”
Her loyalty to Enar made his jaw clench. His aunt didn't deserve Ayla's faithfulness.
“Yes. I must.”
“Is there no other way forward but treason?”
His throat bobbed. Niel approached her slowly and sank into the chair he’d placed beside the bed. He braced his hands on his knees to stop them from revealing the tumultuous flood of emotion dragging at his mind.
“No. Not for me.”
“You’re outnumbered. I know the food here won’t last forever. So make a deal. Please, do not make me watch your execution.”
“It won’t come to that. My father will send men.” He wasn’t sure why he was telling her his war plans, except that he didn’t like the worried look on her face.
“I do not like either outcome. There must be a way for peace.”
He stared at her face, beautiful even in her exhausted pallor, and fierce even in her softness. But it didn’t matter how badly he wanted her by his side. How his own half-marriage, which had previously felt strategic and necessary, was instead beginning to feel like a bitterly cold shackle.
“No. But you have nothing to worry about. They all know you’re my hostage. Nobody will accuse you of treason.”
“Please, Niel? I want to know why you’re doing this.”
He nodded, and shifted his weight, gripping his hands together instead of bracing them.
He stood abruptly, no longer able to sit still, and paced away from her, and reminded himself to breathe.
It was a small room. He couldn’t pace far before turning on his heel to head towards the bed again, his thoughts jagged.
He opened his mouth to let the truth out, and then closed it, his will resolving to iron.
There were some things he would not say. Even to her. Especially to her. She'd already seen him so sick he could barely move. He didn't want her to think of him as any less of a man than she already did.
“No,” he announced. Having decided not to reveal the truth, relief and shame flooded him, both at once and in equal measure. His face felt hot.
“What?”
“No,” he repeated, more firmly. “Go on thinking me a traitor, Ayla. Hate me if you must.”
“But…”
“Get some rest,” he said, and went to look back out the window, where she wouldn’t see his hands shake.