17 An Ache
An Ache
Elijah slammed the door to the library behind him. His footsteps echoed loudly in the palace halls, his breath uneven despite his casual pace. He was the Crown Prince of Eastvale, and he’d allowed himself to be cast aside by a librarian.
Galfri has resided in that library longer than I have drawn breath. His fathers voice echoed in his mind, calm and absolute. The library is more his than it is ours. Under the mountain, he is master.
Those words had come when Elijah was still a boy, after he and a group of friends had stormed the library, disrupting the quiet and darting between the shelves.
After Elijah had taken a candle to a stack of books, Galfri had intervened.
Elijah remembered threatening to have him executed.
He hadn’t dared let those boys see the embarrassment he felt at being spoken to like a child.
The librarian hadn’t even flinched. He had only smiled, ushering them out with a firm hand on Elijah’s shoulder.
The lecture from his father had come only a few hours later.
He was no longer a boy, and Galfri, while frail and weak, still commanded him with that same infuriating calm. Elijah clenched his fists as he took the stairs two at a time.
He turned left towards the West Wing and a trio of servants appeared from a side hall, returning from the King’s Tower. They pressed their backs to the wall, heads bowed, eyes fixed on their feet.
He didn’t spare them a glance.
What could Vaelira and Galfri be whispering about that he wasn’t allowed to be a part of?
He had brought the girl here, at Galfri’s insistence, nonetheless. The old man had promised she would be instrumental in their fight against these summoners—his best chance to show his people he was a worthy heir—and yet they had shut him out like an afterthought.
He exhaled hard and rapped twice on the heavy wooden door leading to his father’s chambers. It creaked open and he stepped into the quiet entry hall, where two guards stood at attention. There would be two more stationed on the other side of the double doors further ahead.
“How is he?” The words came out clipped, sharper than he had intended.
“He is resting, Your Highness,” said one of the guards. “The physicians have administered a sleeping draught.”
“I will see him.” He didn’t wait for permission.
The second set of doors opened before he reached them, and Queen Mairese emerged, skirts of crimson velvet rustling as she closed it gently behind her. She turned, surprise rippling across her face before vanishing beneath her mask once more.
“He is sleeping, Elijah.” Her voice was as cold as ever. There were faint smudges beneath her eyes where cosmetics had been hurriedly reapplied, and a few strands had escaped her tightly pinned hair.
“Father has not attended the last three council meetings. I wanted to check on him before I retire.”
The Queen raised a brow. “You have not bothered until now.”
“I have been preoccupied.”
The guards were motionless, eyes averted, pretending not to listen. They wouldn’t speak of whatever was said here. The punishment for treason was too steep.
The Queen followed his gaze and offered a warm smile.
It didn’t touch her eyes, and he knew better than to trust it.
It was the expression she wore in public.
The benevolent Queen, the loving mother.
It couldn’t be further from the truth, not where he was concerned.
But if she didn’t trust the guards enough to drop the farce fully, that meant they weren’t part of her network of spies. Interesting.
“I am going to pray,” she said, moving past him towards the corridor. “It would be a comfort if you joined me.”
More false words. She knew whatever faith he had once held had long since burned out. Why she of all people still clung to the gods was beyond him.
“Not tonight,” he said, holding the door as she swept past and out of the King’s Tower. The last thing he needed was to walk through the city with his nerves on edge. A bath and a stiff drink would suffice.
She dipped into a graceful curtsy. The gesture mocked him. “Goodnight, my son,” she said, her voice dripping poison. He watched her disappear around a corner.
Son.
She rarely used that word. It never belonged to him, not really. It had belonged to Laurence. Her first born. The one who had walked beside their father as though he were born in his image. The one whose every flaw was forgiven, for he would one day be King, and a King’s word was law.
Elijah had always been the spare. Even now, with Laurence long buried, he remained an afterthought.
She despised him for surviving, and he despised himself.
The sickness had hit them both, but it hit his brother harder, had slowly killed his mother’s lion.
He still remembered watching her stroke back Laurence’s golden hair, whispering to him in the dark room his brother had insisted they shared.
He supposed they must have been friends at one point, but those memories no longer existed.
Their mother had never sat at Elijah’s bedside.
The nurses had tried to comfort him, but it was his mother he called for when the fever was at its peak, when the pain flared sharp in his lungs and his vision blurred.
He remembered waking in the dark room, the pain a little less painful than before, to find his brother's bed empty, the sheets stripped.
The howls that tore from his mother had echoed through the palace for hours.
Despite the emptiness he had felt at Laurence’s death, he had also felt hope that she might turn her attention his way, but she never came. Not for him.
Logic told him it hadn’t been his fault, but his heart spoke a different truth. One he refused to acknowledge.
He was never meant to rule, but with every passing day, every meeting his father missed, the crown edged closer, its thorns of iron dangling over his head. He felt it in the eyes of the council members, always watching him, as if expecting a circlet of gold to appear above his head at any moment.
He didn’t remember entering his rooms. In the dim candlelight of his bathing chamber, Elijah leaned against the cold stone wall, watching steaming water fill the sunken marble tub.
A woman was already seated on the narrow stone bench within.
Her dark hair hung loose over her bare breasts, one elbow propped on the edge of the tub.
Amber eyes peered at him curiously as the water pooled around her delicate feet, encircled her ankles, then started to rise slowly up her pale calves.
Somewhere behind him, a servant moved quietly, gathering his discarded clothes from the floor.
He relished the bite of the chill air against his naked body and took a swig from the glass tumbler in his hand.
The burn in his throat stung, but it was the only thing that cut through the numbness that now threatened to consume him.
His muscles ached. Other parts ached more, and Vaelira’s voice rose unbidden.
Elijah.
He saw those hazel eyes gazing up at him like he was a god. Like she was ready to kneel in worship. He stiffened at the memory. It clawed something primal to the surface, something raw.
That she could hold such sway over him was concerning.
She could destroy him with a look. She already had.
He had wanted to claim every inch of her in that tavern.
If that boy had arrived even a moment later with the water, Elijah wouldn’t have answered the door.
His hands would have been too busy showing her that he could worship too.
If she ever turned those eyes on him with intent, tried to twist his emotions into chains, he knew he would let her.
He placed his drink carefully on the low table beside the tub and drove his fist into the wall.
Pain lanced hot up his arm.
He hadn’t hit with his full strength, just enough to bleed out the fire rising in his chest. Another kind of heat pulsed low in its place.
He stalked towards the tub. The woman’s full lips curled into a smile as her eyes dipped below his waist. Steam coiled between them as the heat bit at the bare flesh of his legs, the water rising no higher than his mid-thigh.
The woman stood slowly, the scent of heartviolets and soap joining her as she reached a slender arm up to wrap around his neck.
He grabbed her wrist with one hand, then with the other, he shoved her head down.
She resisted at first, but it only took her a moment to remember her place.
Then he let the burning consume him.