Chapter 42 Aura
AURA
Nightwall Keep, Skalor
Aura prods the meager meal of mush served in a wooden bowl. The tower guards deliver the unappetizing excuse for food to her cell in the tower twice a day.
“Back!” She hears them bark the order from the room above hers.
Once the slam and lock of the door shudder her curved walls, the thumping of the guards’ boots down the stone staircase signals that they are alone once more.
Aura slips into the corner of the tower room, which appears to have been used for storage due to its low ceilings. A gaping hole in the floor above her reveals her partner in this prison.
“I’m here, Mum,” Aura reassures Avina as her wavering shadow reappears through the crack.
“You should not see me like this.” Her mother’s teeth chatter, and not from the chill of the frigid air howling outside.
Since arriving in Nightwall Keep a few days ago, their days have been unstructured and chaotic, leaving little time for mother and daughter to reconnect.
Something Aura suspects is intentional from the Queen of Skalor.
They have discovered that they earn a reprieve from Lavinia and her handmaidens during mealtimes. The questioning of Aura and the torture of Avina over the past few days have left both of them shaken.
Not that the Queen of Treland is not already reliving the trauma of her previous imprisonment at the hands of her ex-husband Rendel. Despite the years that have passed, Aura can still hear her mother sobbing as the wind slips through the cracks in their dilapidated stone tower.
Hopelessness seeps into their very bones.
Lavinia has made it clear that the sole reason for Aura’s imprisonment is to coerce Calder into agreeing to become a vessel for Makt. Avina’s presence has had the desired effect of preventing Aura from tapping into her seidr and freeing them or murdering the Queen of Skalor.
Aura believes in Calder, Edmund, Argnier, and their allies, who she knows will attack Nightwall Keep and free them.
Then, she can use her powers to dismantle every single block of this godsforsaken castle.
She presses her fingertips to the nautilus around her neck. How easy would it be to call Briny and have her godly grandparents rescue them?
No, I can’t trust the gods after the collaring and their abandonment of Calder. Besides, if we are not fast enough, Lavinia will kill Mum.
“You were saying about the Azure?” Aura nudges her mother back into their previous conversation as she settles into the rickety chair in the corner beneath the hole in the ceiling.
From above, she can hear Avina grumble before she relays the plan with Bjorn to keep their father under sedation. She is stunned into silence at the stones on her mother. To think she has sought to protect their mission from the beginning.
She senses the added pain in her mother’s tone when speaking of Sigvid.
Dammit, Father.
“Please know Calder is not working with Lavinia.” She leans her head against the cold stone of the circular cell.
“I know, Aurie. Your father, on the other hand.” Her mother’s voice wavers with worry.
“Mum,” Aura fidgets with her fingers, “I love Calder. And he loves me. He will not hurt Father.”
She recounts their entire adventure in gory detail to Avina, omitting only the intimate moments she shared with the Iss Dregnr.
“All I have ever wanted for you is to gain the confidence to become a strong woman. It is an added gift that you found a deep connection with someone who loves you fiercely enough that they would be willing to do anything to protect you.” Avina’s words ring eerily similar, if not identical, to those her father spoke in Blackwood as he instructed her to stay away from Drengr.
Aura clambers onto the chair beneath the crack in the ceiling. “Mum, here.” She extends her hand, clutching the Treland Sacred Stone toward Avina’s watchful gaze.
“Oh, Aura. I cannot. You need that to escape.”
“I am uncollared.” She admits with a level of confidence she can hardly recognize in herself.
Avina hesitates, clearly wanting to inquire further, but a set of footsteps ascending the spiral staircase to their prisons forces her mother’s arm through the crack. She grips the silver cord and pulls it into her hands.
Unsurprisingly, the unwelcome guest stops at Aura’s door. The Princess makes no move to acknowledge the stranger, who bears a torch that illuminates their silver-cloaked figure.
Avina shifts along the floorboards above her, undoubtedly listening intently.
“Oh fuck, what do you want?” Aura curses as Isabel’s features come into focus when her hood falls back.
Gone is the haughty woman, full of poise and self-assurance. A sickly creature has taken her place, unlike the flushed cheeks and firm chin of the young woman who stood by Lavinia in Kaldrgataness. Even her luscious brown hair is thinning around her waxy cheeks.
“Pregnancy doesn’t agree with you, Issie.” Aura quips, leaning back in the creaky chair.
As she assesses her state, Isabel Kilton’s dark brown eyes reflect a heavy anguish.
“Here.” She drops two sacks onto the floor. One opens, and an orange rolls onto the dirty floorboards. “I have enough food for your mother.”
“What is this?” Aura gestures at the fruit. The mere appearance of it makes her stomach rumble.
Isabel paces, tangling her bony fingers through her greasy hair. “Can I not bring you a meal devoid of mushed oats?”
“No, you cannot, Isabel.”
Aura observes a franticness in her ex-lover, who examines her own trembling hands before pressing them to her extended stomach.
Isabel huffs as she snatches one of the sacks and storms out, slamming the door. Aura can hear her footsteps up the spiral staircase to Avina’s cell, delivering the pack to her equally starving mother.
When she reemerges into Aura’s prison, grief etches itself on her face.
“You have no reason to trust me, Aurie.” Isabel settles on the edge of the splintered cot. “But I do have a request.”
Aura’s laugh is hollow. “After everything you have done to me, what makes you think I will listen to anything you-”
“I am dying.”
Aura assesses her closely at the bluish tinge to her skin.
There may be truth there.
“I will not apologize for my actions. You’ve no idea the tortured life I lived under the Manchineels.” Isabel turns away, biting her lip in a simple act more genuine than she has ever shown. “Please, Aura, listen to my request and then choose to dismiss me.”
Aura nods curtly.
Isabel staggers to her feet, her hand clutching her stomach with an unusual gentleness. She shuffles out of the room and down the stairs.
“I do not trust her,” Avina whispers through the crack in the ceiling.
Aura nods as Isabel reenters, tugging in an older woman dressed in rags with milky, tired eyes.
“I thought perhaps you would respond better to a real Seer.” Isabel perches on the tattered cot, leaving Aura to face the wizened woman whose frown lifts into pure happiness at the sight of the Princess.
“Only when Salt melts Ice will peace descend upon the realm. Child of the Salt Province, let me look upon your strength.” The Seer shuffles forward, touching her curls with delicate reverence. “You melted his heart, oh praise Volund, Calder has finally found peace in you.”
“Tell her, Seer.” Isabel prompts, not unkindly. “Tell her what you told me of my son’s fate.”
Aura assists the elderly woman into the only chair in her cell, which hardly creaks under her frail body.
“Tell her,” Isabel says as if it is a plea for her life.
The Seer sighs, reluctantly. “The grandson of the last Timber King will sit on the unified throne of Treland. That much is certain from the Norn.”
Aura and Avina both inhale deeply. Their combined response creates a hissing noise in the tower.
The Seer motions Aura forward and whispers yet another damning bit of information in her ear that, luckily, no one else can hear. Everything she envisioned for her future shatters with her quiet words that the Princess dares not share with a soul.
Once the Seer leans away, Aura’s gaze flicks to Isabel, seeing her in a strange new light.
“As a dying woman, I ask two requests of you.” Isabel leans forward, balancing her elbows on her thighs. “Undo the seidr frost that bites away at my unborn son.”
Seidr frost? Calder…
“Allow me to give birth to him, for I know that is the sole meaning the Norn intend for my life in this world.”
“And?”
Isabel licks her lips. “Ensure my son is raised far away from Timber. Lavinia has already written to the Manchineels. They will want to use him for their vengeance against your clan. Please, Aura, help me challenge the Norn. Let him grow up to be happy and healthy. Away from all of this and these damned prophecies. Away from us.”
The Seer shakes her head with indignation. “You cannot defy the Norn. Your son’s fate is spelled in the runes around you, Isabel Kilton Manchineel. Your father felt their vengeance when he turned away from the Redwood prophecy.”
“He was already damned to his fate because the Norn sought the Guardian line to merge with the Redwoods!” Isabel spits.
“There is always a choice, daughter of Rendel. Had any Treland king varied in their paths, the country would look far different from what it does today.” The Seer warns.
Aura reflects on her parents’ journey as she stares at Isabel. She would never forgive herself for denying this selfless request.
What could this harm?
Even with the Seer’s words continuing to bind the Manchineels to the Sigvidsson-Redwood clan, she must allow these future choices to be made.
Against her better judgment, she strides toward Isabel and offers her hand.
With tears brimming in her dark eyes, Isabel places her wrist in Aura’s palm.
Without overthinking her actions, she reverses the seidr, watching a tiny black snowflake float out of her skin, leaving a healthier flush to Isabel’s cheeks.
“And my son? Will you keep him safe from my family?”
Both women know the truth.
Isabel will not survive long after her son’s birth, and Calder will ensure her swift death.