3. Cassiel
The ride back to the castle is as slow as ever.
I can no longer watch the passing of the time, but the darkness makes everything longer.
I try to imagine my surroundings based on the temperature, the change in terrain, the scent of the forest shifting from damp earth to cool stone.
I conjure the image of Caerthalen Castle rising from the misted edges of the hills, grey stone and high towers folding into themselves, as though the land had grown it reluctantly, layer by layer.
It’s a warm enough day, but it’s grey and foggy in my head.
There’s little light, and the purple flowers that wind up the stone around my bedroom are muted and dull.
The well-trodden mud path gives way to cobblestones, and there’s a shift in the air as we cross the drawbridge. Life hums faintly within the walls. Robin trots ahead, ears pricked no doubt, then stops to check I’m following. Dain keeps his pace beside me, unusually quiet.
Our horses stop at the stables. Someone comes to assist me with dismounting.
They talk, but I don’t register who it is.
I’ve stopped trying to give faces to the voices around me, stopped trying to remember who they are.
The reins are taken from me. My cane is pressed into my hand.
I make my way inside with Robin and Dain.
Inside, the corridor smells of smoke from the kitchens, polished wood, and the faint tang of herbs the maids leave by the windowsills. The world feels oddly small here, contained, safe, and yet… hollow.
I am the keeper of this hollow now.
“Your Excellency,” a voice calls softly. This one, I cannot help but know. It’s my mother’s assistant, Niora, which makes her mine for the time being. She steps forwards, stopping a respectful distance from me. “I have your correspondence. There are messages from the northern baronies, and…”
She rattles off a few other matters requiring my attention, and I give my answers as best that I can.
“Give the rest of the letters to Dain,” I instruct, once my mind feels like it will burst with any more information.
“Very good, Your Excellency.”
“No changes from my mother?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
She hesitates only briefly. “None, Your Excellency. Her condition is unchanged. But Princess Runara has asked after you. You know she struggles to sleep until you are home.”
The words coil in my chest. I didn’t even know it was late. But, if I’m honest, I’d been hoping to arrive back after she was asleep. Since Evander’s funeral, I’ve avoided her presence, avoided her requests, avoided asking the questions of what happened the night he died.
The night Wren betrayed us.
I’m too afraid of what she might have witnessed, and what my mistake cost her.
“I am… occupied,” I murmur, brushing past the words like dirt. “Tell her I have pressing matters, if she is still awake, but that I am safe and unhurt.”
Niora doesn’t press further. “Of course, Sire.” She steps back, leaving me in the quiet thrum of the castle.
I turn toward the stairs. My study awaits, greeting me with the faint scent of ink and old wood.
It is truly mine—not mother’s, and certainly not Evander’s.
I’ve had one since I’d started assisting him in political matters, not that I used it before when I felt so useless.
As the regent, it was expected that I’d move into my mother’s study, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so.
Besides, what do I care if mine isn’t quite as grand as hers?
Dain falls into the room beside me, the soft clop of boots on stone echoing faintly, and Robin nudges my hand as I settle down at the desk.
“Good boy,” I murmur.
His tail thumps against the floorboards.
Dain closes the door and clears his throat. “Should I review the letters?”
“Yes,” I reply, rubbing Robin’s head.
The letters are nothing new—reports of trade, minor skirmishes at the borders, petitions from merchants and nobility. Each one presses for attention I can scarcely give. My mind drifts back to the forest, and the whistle.
One of the knights, I tell myself. Nothing more.
I try to set it aside, but my thoughts turn to Runara instead. I should probably check on her. Even if it’s just for a few minutes. Perhaps later, when I know she’s asleep…
Dain’s voice drifts over the stack of papers. He opens another, taking his time.
“Hmm,” he says.
I lean towards him. “Hmm?”
“Amma Riverspire has written,” he says.
Amma. The wife of one of Evander’s best knights, who died in the same battle as him. I’d always liked Riverspire. Reserved, polite—but nothing could get him yapping like mentioning his wife and daughter.
“What does she have to say?”
“She wants to know if you were responsible for the random jewel that turned up in her apron pocket this afternoon.”
I pause, the words hanging like a shard in the quiet study.
A jewel, appearing without explanation, ought to be major news, but there have been other stories, whispers among the villages…
tales of strange treasures, fires that burned throughout the night, homes that held in heat through the winter, like they were under an enchantment.
Some people reported seeing a spirit, an indistinct shape flitting through the houses.
It healed wounds, bestowed blessings, cooled fevers.
It’s foolish, but a part of me wants it to be Wren. But it can’t be. She’s no healer, never has been, and she hates fire.
Of course, she could have lied about all of that.
I grit my teeth. Why do I even want it to be her? Why does it matter that she does good? Why do I want her alive after everything she did?
The whistle from the forest, sharp and sudden, slices through the corner of my thoughts. I try to dislodge it, shake it loose, but it lingers like a ghost.
“It wasn’t me,” I say curtly. My voice is flat, dismissive. “Tell Amma I’m flattered she thinks I’m so generous. Tell her she should keep the jewel, unless someone asks for it. And maybe… maybe send her something. A hamper, perhaps. A gift for the child.”
Dain hesitates, then offers lightly, “You could invite her to tea?”
“No,” I reply shortly. “I’m in no mood for guests.”
I sigh, leaning against the desk for a moment, then rise. The day has left its weight in my bones. “I’m going to retire for the evening.”
“Want me to escort you to—”
“No.” My voice cuts him off. “I know the way.”
I set off with Robin, but I don’t go to my chambers.
At the last moment, I turn and head towards my mother’s rooms. The halls are quiet, almost reverent.
The scent of herbs and warm stone drifts from her door.
Someone’s in there with her—she’s never alone—which is just as well.
I’m not entirely sure I can face the silence right now.
I pause outside, hand resting lightly on the doorframe. Robin shifts at my side, a small nudge against my ankle, as if sensing my uncertainty.
Go on, he seems to say. You can do it.
If Wren were here, she’d shove me in. If Wren knew everything that was going on in my head, she’d talk me through it. She’d probably infuriate me in the process, and then make me laugh.
If Wren was here, everything would be fine.
No, it wouldn’t, I remind myself.
Because if Wren was here, I would have to arrest her.
Robin nudges me again.
“All right,” I whisper.
The faintly perfumed air of the chamber fills my senses as I inhale, and then I step inside. The world beyond the door seems to shrink, the corridors, the duty, the regency—all fading into irrelevance.
Robin trots over to the side of the bed. The person sitting at my mother’s side shifts, but says nothing. I step forward and find my way into the room, hovering at her bedside. I can hear her breathing. I can sense her warmth.
But in all other ways, she might as well be Evander in the tomb.
“Are you all right, nephew?”
I jump. I knew someone was in the room, but I thought it was a maid or lady-in-waiting. Perhaps a healer. I was unprepared for it to be Aunt Imogen.
Aunt Imogen is my father’s older sister, but she was my mother’s friend long before my parents’ courtship began.
She’s the Duchess of Erringtown now. She’s never much cared for romantic relationships and has no children of her own, but she is a marvellous aunt.
She used to whisk us away for fabulous summers.
She’d take us to Marisar, where we rode along the salt-bright coast and learned to sail in waters so clear you could see the shadows of fish darting beneath the hull.
Another summer, we went to Solmyria, where we wandered through sun-drenched markets heavy with spice and silk, and she insisted we try every strange fruit we could find; and once to Xaden, where the mountains cut into the sky and she hired guides to teach us how to climb, though she always claimed she preferred watching from below with a book in hand.
Sometimes we went farther still—north to colder lands where we skated on frozen lakes, or east to cities of glass and marble where she would spend hours in museums, translating old inscriptions for me just for the pleasure of it.
She’s the only person in my family that likes languages as much as me, and she sent me the best books for my birthday. After I lost my sight, she sent me my favourite texts in braille. I was too angry at the world at the time to appreciate them, and ordered them destroyed.
A few months ago, I found out from Dain that my mother kept them, hoping I’d be ready to learn at some point.
I’ve started to learn. Picking up new languages has always been easy for me, but finding a tutor and the time is another matter.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Aunt Imogen replies in her careful, clipped voice.
“You didn’t.”
“Lies, boy. They don’t become you.”
It’s probably improper for her to call the regent boy, but neither one of us says anything about it. I don’t feel much like a boy, not anymore.
I wish I did.
I wish for so many things, all of them impossible.
“Do you wish to sit with her?” she asks.