Chapter Three #2
Ger’s own hand twitched at his side, brushing the hilt of his sword in its scabbard.
Protector.
He could have drawn it. He could have charged Doran or beat back the creeping ice with a well-placed swing. He should have; the man he’d been even a week ago would not have stood for this, would not have stood by.
I am a protector.
But the Ger of today had seen how such defiance was rewarded; the Ger of today could barely move for that knowledge, for the heart that galloped in his chest so fast that his floundering lungs could not keep up.
The hot rush of his blood sang in his ears, head swimming so violently he could barely see straight.
Even if he could, he wouldn’t watch. He couldn’t watch.
But the Sorceress could.
She looked on vacantly, detached and almost bored as she blinked her long dark eyelashes and tilted her head.
She didn’t trouble to raise her voice; not above their terrified gasps nor the whisper of Aera’s winds, a soothing hush to the creak of the ice that wreathed itself in increasingly jagged layers.
“The Council,” Avette repeated, “must name an heir.”
Had Bertha not fallen to kneel beneath the cruel reach of the ice, Ger’s lurch beneath his own weak knees couldn’t have gone unnoticed. As it was, it earned him only a snort as he righted himself, then a quick elbow to the ribs from the nearest gard, that stupid, brutal giant, Benan.
“Try not to pass out, Pup,” Benan sneered. “Best is yet to come.”
Ger barely heard him. His focus had narrowed to the cool hilt of his sword at his fingertips, and he made himself recall the day he’d gotten it.
The chorus that had rung through his head; the words he still whispered to himself in those rare yet terrifying moments when his breath would thin to make room for his frantic heart.
I am a Gard of Eisalaan.
I am a protector, and I am protected.
“We will,” Bertha whimpered.
She crouched so low beneath the jagged stalactite that her elbows had come to rest on the frosted ground. Norris, at her side, had pressed his forehead to the frosted floor. They could’ve been a devout pair at the altar of the Goddess, were it not for their mirror expressions of sheer terror.
“We will name Selma’s Heir,” Bertha said again, louder now, straining to be heard over the ominous creak of the ice. Her voice splintered at the edge of every word, high and pleading. “We must. Of course, we must.”
The creaking ceased; the wind died.
At a gentle gesture from his queen, Doran yanked the councillors out from beneath the stalactites, a little rougher than necessary; sullen as a child made to tidy up their playthings. A petulant scowl tugged at his brow as he watched them scramble to their feet.
“We will,” Norris panted. He nodded shakily. “It’s our duty.”
Avette only smiled.
“Wonderful.”
???
The good news was that Ger’s body seemed to have realised he was not, in fact, dying.
But even with his heart’s sheepish return to its usual steady rhythm, he wasn’t sure he’d quite recovered.
His head was woollen, and it took an almighty bout of concentration to set one foot after the other just to maintain his assigned place in Avette’s escort.
The familiar hallways echoed, blank and endless.
Cold in a way they had never seemed before, with frost lurking like rot in the shadows.
By the time they made it to Selma’s old quarters, Ger could have lain down on the frigid marble floor and slipped straight into a taut and restless sleep.
It was always like this after one of his little episodes, as his mother used to call them; they drained his every reserve, yet somehow left him wired and on edge.
His muscles were both rubbery and tense when he drew up short to bow to the Sorceress, just a half second later than his fellow gards. He rose that half second later too—but not so late that he didn’t catch her gaze on him where she stood paused with her hand on the doorhandle.
Shit.
That was all that went through his head.
Avette’s dark eyes were both cold and covetous, and he stilled instinctively beneath them, a deer faced with the flash of the hunter’s blade.
Time slowed; he might have imagined that his post-panic fog had skewed reality, had the gards either side of him not shuffled slightly, a quiet murmur rippling through their ranks.
From their second-hand discomfort, he knew he had not imagined it; she had been holding his gaze for far too long.
Ger braced himself—for what, he couldn’t say—but Avette spoke not one word.
Just blinked those unfathomably long lashes and finally released him, turning for the door.
He wanted to be relieved, wanted to sigh.
His chest ached with withheld breath, but his body would not yet release him.
So he watched, lungs burning, as the door to the queen’s suite swung open to reveal a rail of glittering gowns in the room beyond.
Watched as two familiar figures rose from the stark white settee, only to drop once more in a swift curtsey.
Mareda rose with little of her usual grace, trembling slightly with the effort of drawing her own weight up on her wooden crutch, her broken leg angled slightly ahead of her. Imogen’s curtsey was fluid—she was upright by the time Ger’s gaze found her, her own eyes already trained on him.
Through the gap of the open door, they stared wordlessly at one another.
Ger wondered what she saw in his face; wondered if it betrayed his breathless panic. Imogen’s expression, on the other hand, was one he recognised; the painstakingly vacant expression of their late queen. It was a near-perfect imitation—save for her eyes.
This was not the first time in his life that Ger had cursed his own obtuseness, but the ache in his airless chest made that lament all the more bitter. Because Adeline would have read Imogen like a dog-eared book on her nightstand.
And Ger wasn’t even sure he spoke the same language.
He tried, in those brief few seconds before the crack in the doorway narrowed. He really did try, right up until the moment that Imogen turned away.
The door clicked shut.
He drew a painful breath.