Chapter 31 #2
She did not meet his gaze. ‘He could have poisoned you to feign innocence.’ But she did not believe it, was only strung out with strain, trying to protect her brother. Trying to prevent him from making things worse.
‘Do as you like,’ she said at last. ‘But if you die, I’ll kill him.’
She and Jocosa left, and Blythe stepped into the stairway. Meilyr followed Osian silently, save for the faint shiver of chains.
‘Can you manage the rail?’ Osian asked.
There was enough room between the cuffs that he could.
Upstairs, the prince saw him inside and closed the door quietly behind them.
The stillness was so loud. Meilyr stood in the midst of the parlour, nails sharp in his palms to stop the shaking. To keep the chains quiet.
Osian hesitated a pained beat, then retrieved something from his desk and returned, revealing a small key. He touched Meilyr’s hands as though they might shatter, unfolding his fingers to touch the red welts he had left behind. ‘I am so sorry. I am truly, truly…’
Meilyr turned his wrists to gently take Osian’s hands. ‘It is not your fault.’ There was an awful lump in his throat. One more push and he might actually break. ‘Leave them. If this is how it needs to be—’
‘You are not responsible.’
Meilyr tightened his grip. The way Osian believed it burned more than the shackles, so ardently it almost made him tremble. ‘Leave them.’ His voice was small, pleading. Osian’s fingers were so warm. ‘You should rest, you are still recovering.’
‘I will not rest if you are in these. Please.’
Looking into his eyes was a mistake. Stood so close, with Osian’s earnestness bared so vividly through their bond, he again pressed the world out of alignment. As seamlessly and ruinously as he had pressed Meilyr against that wall.
It was effortless to recall the softness of his mouth. The weight of his body. The fervent, undeniable way he cared.
Meilyr looked away before he could not. ‘They do not hurt,’ he tried.
‘Please, Meilyr.’
He let the prince unlock the shackles and set them on his desk.
‘Both crownsworn who were killed were under investigation by my knights,’ Osian told him. ‘I think there can be no doubt now that someone is choosing specific targets.’
Meilyr rubbed his wrists. He wanted to fade into the stone at his feet. ‘Who else would know they were under investigation?’
‘My knights, and perhaps anyone paying enough attention. These people were known because they were openly hostile to Cyngaleg townsfolk, openly discussed anti-Cyngaleg sentiments or travelled in close circles with those that did. Before I arrived, they had no reason to conceal themselves, so most did not.’
They stood in the wake of that as the rain hissed against the windows.
The crownsworn who had fallen from their horse had pushed Pedr in the corridor. Could Pedr have…?
Guilt and doubt. Pedr had never shown a hint of malevolence, and had moved with such certainty at Osian’s call to try to save those crownsworn. Surely they could not be the killer.
Henbane.
The fox had met him beside golden henbane. The thought tangled with a thousand others, laying him bare as though the entire world waited for him to finally admit this was, somehow, connected to him.
Osian braced himself imperceptibly where he stood, swayed by an exhaustion that lanced through their bond. Meilyr moved to steady him at the elbows. ‘You need more time to heal.’
‘I am fine, that merely…’ Meilyr’s look quelled him. He steadied his breathing, and they let each other go. ‘Perhaps,’ Osian admitted. ‘Forgive me, it was presumptuous – selfish – to bring you up here. I only…’
It was a good thing he could not say it. ‘It is fine,’ Meilyr managed, tamped into old habits. Struggling not to glance over the edge of the precipice that reared towards him no matter where he stepped.
This was supposed to be a lie. This was a lie.
So why did the touch of Osian’s hands linger fiercer than any trace of iron?
‘Edeva is not speaking to Aldreda until she lets you go,’ Faina told
him as she sorted the armfuls of books she had deposited on Osian’s
desk. ‘She keeps using Jocosa and me as mouthpieces, which, as you can
imagine, Aldreda loves.’
Meilyr smiled slightly for her, perched on the armchair as Demelza combed his hair. His shackled hands were folded in his lap. ‘I am sorry. You can tell her I really am fine, if you think it will help. You also did not have to visit.’ Though he was truthfully very glad to see them both.
‘Nonsense,’ Demelza said gently, as Faina said, ‘Yes, we did. We know you’re innocent, and how busy Osian will be over the next days.’
Councils, overseeing questioning, overseeing redistribution of forces around Eascild – across Cyngalon.
Trying to calm the Marcher Lords. Aldreda had offered him further respite, but he could not leave the work in another’s hands.
Meilyr’s fear for him was not the devouring dread it had been, but it plucked at his nerves, leaving his heart constantly thrumming.
‘Besides, you’ll perish from boredom without good books. I recommend this one.’ She waved a pale purple tome, pleasantly worn. ‘The love story is perfect! The bit in the barn is so – well, you’ll find out.’ She winked at him.
‘Faina,’ he began. She was always easy to read, and her energetic air concealed something in particular. ‘You were questioned. I am so sorry.’
She sighed, and smiled more honestly. ‘Now why would that be your fault? Besides, everyone of Cyngaleg heritage is being questioned. Mine was reasonably painless, though I do not like Lord Gelens. I can say that in present company.’ She shuddered animatedly.
‘The sooner they go back to Khaim, the better, though there has been talk of that, too. Obviously, the king and everyone is desperate for the coronation, but from mutterings, some of the Marcher lot and the palace-based nobles might request leave to return home. Shows how terrified they are that they’d miss out on something like this, but I can’t blame them.
How you’re not scared out of your wits, Demelza, I have no idea. ’
Demelza’s hands slowed in his hair. ‘I am afraid, darling. Afraid for them, far more than for myself.’ As though she felt Meilyr’s question, she touched his shoulder. ‘You can ask me. I would, were our places reversed.’
‘Forgive me, Highness. I only…’
‘You are wondering why I am not returning to Khaim. Why I am here whilst my king remains there.’
He had wondered. Wondered at the chasm of sadness that weighed upon his shoulder.
‘Osian has a good heart,’ she said, ‘but I knew he would face difficulties here. He is the closest thing to a son I could imagine, Aldreda the closest to a daughter. The thought of abandoning them, of abandoning everyone here, when there is trouble has not even crossed my mind.’ The sunlight streaming through the windows burned her hair to darkest crimson, ignited with the resolve in her eyes.
‘My place is in Cyngalon. There is nowhere else I would rather be.’
There was a soft knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ Demelza called.
Garrick opened the door. ‘Forgive me, it’s time.’
Demelza and Faina left reluctantly, squeezing his hands regardless of the shackles. Osian had left him the key, but if someone knocked, it was better to appear suppressed.
He drifted between the windows and the books, wishing he could return to his desk downstairs: the makeshift apothecary station, with samples of three dozen or more plants from the gardens laid out, waiting.
Henbane. He had been so focused upon the trees, but perhaps he should continue with smaller plants.
Though it felt insubstantial beside everything that had happened.
He had wanted to weave himself with as much of the gardens as possible, one plant at a time.
He had no hope of stopping the gwehydd himself, but perhaps if he could recognise the specific plant they next used, he could find a way to trace them. Identify them.
Rowan. Alder. Henbane.
Why does it keep changing? Aldreda had asked. A very good question he kept asking himself, terrified of the answer. Rowan, for Lord Leighton. Alder, for Kenelm Radnor. Henbane, for a member of the crownsworn under secret investigation.
Something stirred at the edge of his vision, a shifting in the undergrowth of his mind.
There was a knock in the afternoon that he hoped was Osian but was Deryn with lunch. His heart sank at her shuttered expression, the torrent of feelings she tried desperately to hide.
She must suspect him. Who could blame her.
‘Highness.’ She unloaded the tray without meeting his gaze, the whole thing rattling with how much she was shaking.
He stared, unseeing, at a plate of tiny cakes. ‘Thank you, Deryn.’
He expected her to escape swiftly, but as she set down the final plate, she firmed from indecision to decision so violently he drew back. She sniffed, once – the only warning before she dropped to her knees at his feet and grasped his hands.
‘H-Highness, I need your help. Please, no one else can…’ Her pain snapped like a branch bent too far: hesitantly, then all at once. Tears swept down her cheeks, and she covered her mouth to stifle a sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed in muffled Cyngaleg.
‘Deryn.’ He grasped her hand as her pain ricocheted into his. Desolated, reverberating grief and hopelessness. For one terrible moment, he could hear his mother crying that night she was certain he had gone to sleep, that night Meilyr had tried to make things better and had only damned them all.
‘What happened?’ he whispered in Cyngaleg, unable to take another instant of imagining instead of knowing.
Deryn’s ailing father had grown sicker, suddenly. It was why she had
requested leave.
‘She went to the apothecary,’ Meilyr told Osian, moments after the prince returned that evening. ‘Heulwen visited him but said there was nothing she could do but make him more comfortable. She told Deryn to find me, to see if I could help.’
Osian had been troubled when he had entered. His frown only deepened now. ‘You are afraid there is little you can do without seeing him.’
‘Yes.’ Meilyr moved to stand before him, tethered on the edge of touch. Aware of it only because of how easy it would be to close the distance. ‘I am afraid he is going to die, whilst I am locked up here.’
The prince’s jaw worked in conflicted strain. ‘If it is discovered you are not here…’
‘I know.’ He truly did. ‘But I cannot just let him die, not when there is a chance I could do something. Osian—’
He caught the slip as the prince moved past him to retrieve the small key Meilyr had ignored all day. With it, the prince softly unlatched his shackles, pressing care into his skin.
Meilyr could barely breathe when Osian finally met his gaze. ‘I cannot risk you,’ the prince told him, let him go in that devastation and moved deeper into the parlour, dropping the cuffs on the armchair. They slid loudly against the cushion, and he poured himself a drink.
Deryn’s agony still echoed through Meilyr’s blood, mirroring his own enough to have dredged the ache in his chest into sharpness and guilt. Always guilt. ‘My Prince.’ He went to him, bared and honest. ‘Please. Please, let me try.’
It cost Osian something to repeat the words: ‘I cannot.’
Meilyr touched his wrist before he could raise the drink to his mouth, making him look at him again. ‘Then come with me.’