5. Second Circle #2
For a moment, he looked less like a lord and more like a man watching everything he cared about slip through his fingers. “He’s my blood, Clarissa. I’ll never let anyone harm him.”
“Your blood didn’t stop them from hurting me.”
Silence fell between them. It was the kind of silence that carried years of history I’d need to understand in time.
There was a story buried in that quiet. Poison and politics and whoever decided that Clarissa needed to die.
Hel told me the same hand that guided the blade through her daughter’s heart had been working here too. Now I was seeing the proof of it.
“I promise.” The words came heavy with the weight of an oath sworn on everything that mattered.
“I promise on my sword and my name and everything I’ve built over forty years of holding this house together.” He leaned closer to her.
His free hand gripped the bedpost until the wood groaned. “He’ll live, Clarissa. He’ll be tested on his own merits, never smothered in his crib because someone finds him inconvenient.”
“Anyone who touches the boy will answer to me personally. They won’t enjoy the conversation.”
She settled against the pillows, just slightly. The rigid set of her body loosened just enough to show she’d heard what she needed to hear.
She trusted him with me. She trusted him to keep the promise he’d made even though she wouldn’t be there to hold him to it.
“There’s something else you need to know.” Her voice was fading now .
Words came slower as the strength bled out of her along with everything else. “I kept a pendant from before. From the life I had before I came to your house.”
“It’s hidden in my chambers, beneath the floorboard by the window where the morning light comes through. Give it to him when he’s old enough to ask questions about where he came from.”
“I’ll find it and keep it safe for him.”
Her fingers found his cheek. They left a red smear she didn’t seem to notice or care about.
“And Henrik. I need you to know that I don’t regret any of it. I don’t regret loving you. Not the scandal or the whispers or any of it.”
She stopped speaking. A look passed across her face that I couldn’t read from this angle.
She was looking at me now, at the child in the midwife’s arms. I saw recognition there, or a thing like it.
It was as if she saw what lived behind my infant eyes that shouldn’t have been visible to anyone. Her hand dropped to the bed.
Her fingers went slack. The light left her eyes.
Clarissa de Hellen, mother of Danarre, healer who never learned what she could’ve become, was gone.
The room erupted into controlled chaos. The physician called for things I couldn’t understand with my infant brain.
Orders were barked in the clipped tones of a man who’d seen death before and knew there was still work to be done. Servants rushed in and out through doors I couldn’t see.
They carried linens and bowls and other things that meant nothing to me yet. The air filled with the smell of herbs being burned .
The smoke stung my new eyes and made me cry again. Henrik stood frozen at the bedside.
His hand still gripped hers even though there was nothing left to hold onto. His face was a mask of stone that had started to crack at the edges.
Grief worked through the fractures line by line. “She’ll be buried in the second circle of the family grounds.”
His voice was steady even though nothing else about him was. “Near the willows where she liked to walk. A marked grave with her name carved proper, not hidden away like something to be ashamed of.”
Someone acknowledged the order with words I couldn’t quite catch. Then the midwife carried me away from the scene of my mother’s death.
I was passed from her arms to someone else and wrapped in fresh linen that smelled of soap and storage. I was tucked into a different cradle in a different room where the sounds of grief faded behind closed doors.
A wet nurse appeared within minutes. She was a heavy woman with kind eyes and hands that knew how to handle newborns.
She lifted me with practiced movements and positioned me against her chest. The hunger that’d been clawing at my stomach found its answer.
I fed because I had no choice. This body had needs that overrode everything else, including my dignity.
I resented every moment of helplessness even as the milk soothed the burning in my belly. This was what I traded for when I drew those cards in Hel’s palace .
This was the price of the brands burning dormant in my soul. I was stuck in a cycle of helplessness and dependency.
I watched through infant eyes as the world moved around me while I couldn’t affect any of it. My mother was dead, laid out on bloody sheets while servants prepared her body for burial.
My father grieved behind walls I couldn’t reach. I was drinking milk from a stranger’s breast because I wouldn’t survive any other way.
Hours passed in fragments of sleep and feeding. Time moved strangely when every sensation was overwhelming.
Exhaustion took me without warning. It was the only escape from the reality of my new, tiny cage.
「The thread warms. An oath sworn in blood has weight.」
「Hel notes the terms.」
The notification pulsed along the silver thread and faded. Hel’s gift operated on different rules than the flesh it was bound to.
I was grateful for that small mercy even as I resented everything else about my current state.
◇ ◆ ◇
Hands lifted me again when the light through the windows had shifted from bright to dim. The wet nurse carried me through corridors my vision couldn’t resolve into anything useful.
Doors opened and closed around me. The quality of the air changed as we moved from one part of the keep to another.
The smell of smoke and oil grew stronger. It mixed with what might’ve been incense or the particular scent of old stone.
A new room resolved around me when my vision cleared enough to process shapes. It was larger than the birthing chamber .
A gray stone floor was covered in thick carpets woven with blue and silver thread. A fire burned low in a hearth that dominated one wall.
The cold seeped up from the stones beneath in spite of the flames. “Set the child here.”
Someone settled me on a cushion covered in velvet. It felt strange against my new skin.
When my vision cleared enough to focus on faces, I saw three figures standing over me like judges at a trial. Henrik I recognized from the birthing room.
He was the gray lord with pale eyes red-rimmed from weeping. He’d changed his clothes since I saw him last.
He traded the blood-stained doublet for something dark and formal. Grief still hung on him like a scent he couldn’t wash off.
A wolf pelt draped his shoulders, silver and gray. Even in sorrow, he held himself like a man who commanded armies.
Beside him stood an older man in physician’s robes. He was different from the one who attended the birth.
This one had the look of someone who dealt in examinations rather than emergencies. Spectacles perched on a nose that’d been broken at least twice.
Behind them both stood a woman in gray. Her face was hidden behind a veil that revealed nothing about what lay beneath.
“He’s only hours old, my lord.” The physician sounded uncertain about whatever had been asked of him.
“Testing at this age isn’t something I’ve ever seen done.”
“She died for him.” Henrik’s voice was flat and controlled. The grief was locked away behind sheer will.
“I need to know if he was worth what she paid. ”
The physician sighed and didn’t argue further. He apparently knew better than to push back against a lord in mourning.
He approached the cushion where I lay helpless. He produced a crystal from somewhere in his robes.
He held it above my chest with hands that knew exactly what they were doing. The crystal glowed faintly with blue-white light.
「The thread tightens. A lens probes.」
「Hel’s mask holds. Let them see only what she permits.」
Through the crystal’s examination, my infant body pulsed with potential that shouldn’t have been visible in someone this young. The dormant brands rested where they’d eventually manifest.
The Knight lay between my shoulders. The Emperor sat over my heart.
The Magician waited behind my left eye. Layers of protection that Hel wove into the silver thread masked the truth of what I carried.
They showed only what she chose to reveal. The physician saw a strong presence, nothing more.
He didn’t see the contract burning beneath my skin.
“Interesting results for a newborn.” The physician’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline as he studied the crystal.
“The child has presence, my lord. It’s strong presence, much more than I’d expect from someone this young.”
He glanced at Henrik. “Even one carrying de Blaise blood.”
“What about brands? Can you tell if he’ll manifest?”
The physician adjusted the crystal’s angle. He tilted it to catch the firelight.
“That’s impossible to determine at this age, my lord. The device detects potential rather than manifestation. ”
He shook his head slightly. “This level of baseline could mean anything.”
He paused, choosing his words with care. “A major arcana isn’t out of the question given what I’m seeing here.”
“We won’t know anything definitive until he’s older and the brands begin to stir.”
Henrik nodded slowly. His pale eyes rested on me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
Grief lived in that gaze, certainly, but there was calculation beneath it too. He was a man weighing what he’d lost against what he might’ve gained.
He was trying to find balance in an equation that didn’t want to balance.
“Worth it, then?” The veiled woman spoke for the first time.
Her voice carried cold edges that cut through the room’s warmth. “Worth the lady’s life, my lord?”
“Worth the scandal and the whispers and everything that comes after?” Henrik’s jaw tightened until muscle stood out beneath the skin.
“That’s not a question you have standing to ask.”