Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“No,” he says. “I remember coming here and playing with Seth. I remember a horse that you had with a long black braid. But I don’t remember much of anything else.”
Understandable. He was practically a baby.
“Keep reading,” he urges.
I’ve never seen such strong magic from someone so young. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised—he is royalty. But from what I’ve known of Aurelian, his magic isn’t anything extraordinary.
Ronan seemed surprised himself. He jumped back from me, his little shoulders rising, his face furrowing like he might cry. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to.”
“What did you do?” I asked him. I’m sure I frightened him, but I was frightened as well. Frightened that he’d hurt my baby somehow.
“I don’t know!” He was practically shouting; I worried half of the castle would come over to see what was wrong. But luckily, or unluckily, perhaps, everyone else was inside with the king. “I didn’t mean to. She was hurting.”
She was hurting. I reach instinctively for my neck, my eyes meeting Ronan’s uncertainly. Did he heal me? Did he feel me in pain of some kind?
Could he have sensed me even then?
I couldn’t decide whether to yell at him or to thank him. There was something about the way he said it that was so sincere. I think he truly believed he was helping me.
And yet I can’t shake the feeling that something is horribly wrong.
My belly stilled then; the baby’s kicks had stopped.
I panicked. I should have lied to him and told him nothing was wrong even if I thought it was, especially given who he is, but when the kicking stopped, I yelled at him. I told him what he did was dangerous.
I sent him away.
The kicking resumed a few minutes later, and I felt horrible about it, but what was I supposed to say? How could I tell him that nothing is wrong when I don’t know that myself?
He has been watching me ever since. It’s like he can’t stay away. Everywhere I go in the castle, he’s nearby.
And the baby…It’s like they’re aware of him too. They kick more when he’s near, or maybe that’s just my imagination.
I have no answers now, but I know for certain I must find them. The baby will be born soon, gods willing, and they’ll spend a lot of time together over the years. I feel the strong and overwhelming urge to keep him away from her. No, not her. Them. There is no way he can possibly know it’s a girl.
I’ll ask Lysander to read this in the morning. He’ll probably tell me I’m insane, but I can’t explain it. I just know I must do whatever I can to keep them apart.
My eyes meet Ronan’s.
“I can remember it a little now that you’ve told me. I remember Diana yelling, but I can’t truly remember what I did. I wouldn’t have hurt you,” he says, his words coming out in a rush.
“I know that.” I take his hand.
“I must have felt something somehow. There were a few times that I can remember feeling things from others. And more than a few occasions with the light magic as I got older, though there were even more with fire.”
Seth rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dense. Clearly you saved her in the womb. Hell, maybe you even bound her to you somehow with your magic. It would explain her ridiculous obsession with you.”
Ronan pulls tightly on my hand to keep me from pommeling my brother.
“Shadowbound. Do you think that’s what it means? We’re bound to each other because you saved my life?”
“Maybe,” says Ronan. “Although there would have to be more examples of a light-born saving a shadow-born through the years. It wouldn’t be that rare.”
“It might be,” says Taran. “There weren’t many shadow-born guards until recently. Your father didn’t hire them. He didn’t trust them. Or maybe it was when she saved you?”
“Or because we saved each other,” I suggest.
Seth takes one of the more recent journals from the chest, holding it up to one of Ronan’s lights. “These are all palimpsests. Like the scrap I stole. All of the later ones. Look.” He pulls out the scrap of parchment he showed me back at his camp. It’s the same type in the journals.
We each take a journal and hold it up to the light. Almost all of them have other writing just barely visible, scratched into the paper beneath my mother’s writing. They’ve been rebound, but for some reason, my mother wrote almost exclusively on used parchment.
“And the lovers Vayla and Vahlo held each other in a holy embrace,” reads Seth slowly.
“Lovers?” The gods Vayla and Vahlo aren’t lovers. They’re twins.
“That’s what it says. An error, I guess. This one must be an older Codex. It’s just scripture. Mother never did have much respect for it. She must have stolen these from the temple when she ran out of paper.”
“This one says ‘lover’ too,” I say. “Vahlo, born of night, and his lover Vayla, born of day, did give their gifts to the world, their dual magic entwining, binding them together eternally.”
“These aren’t the Codex,” realizes Ronan. “They’re the apocrypha.”
“The same apocrypha Zara found?”
“It must be.”
There are dozens of journals in the chest. My mother filled them with not just her diary entries but plans, receipts, records of her travels. The answers we’re seeking must be in here somewhere, but it will take us ages to read them all and the apocrypha hidden underneath.
In truth, I’m a bit afraid to read my mother’s journals.
Not just because of the implications for myself and Ronan regarding whatever the Shadowbound Prophecy means for us, but also because I’m afraid of what I might learn about my mother.
There was a time when I would have given anything to have found this, when I would have wanted the chance to know her better more than anything in the world.
But now, after meeting Ronan and learning of what her people did to him, I’m not certain I want to know anything else about her.
Seth doesn’t share my qualms. This is everything he’s ever wanted. “We have to take them,” he says. “All of them.”
We cram the weapons from the other chest in with the journals and the papers from the desk. Ronan assures us Karis won’t insult us by searching the chest when we take it, and he’s right.
“I guess we know what we’re doing this winter,” says Seth as we walk up the path to the cottages. “Who’s up for a little light reading by the fire?”