Chapter 67
Ashley
He is steadfast, just and endlessly kind,
so I slave to this new oath.
I wake up with something sharp in my chest that isn’t grief.
It’s anger. There was that wild, reckless anger that I’ve been trying to sand down for months.
It isn’t that. And it isn’t the defiance I learned was childish and dangerous.
It’s the part of me that refuses to bow.
The part that refuses injustice despite the consequences.
I thought it made me difficult. Impatient.
Unlovable. Un-hirable. But today I’ve decided to see it differently.
I just need to aim it properly. And I’ve found the perfect target.
“We need a plan.” I drag Eira and Kaed from their rooms and into our living area.
“We can’t sit here drowning in our feelings.
” Eira looks ready to snap at me, but I hold up a hand.
“I know you’ve lived under this longer than I have.
And I wasn’t as affected by his mind magic as you.
I’m not pretending I understand how it feels.
But we have to do something.” Kaed studies me with a fire in his eyes I can’t place.
Good. Let him see me. All of me. Just like I see all of him.
And I don’t know when exactly I started doing that, cataloguing him.
Filing things away. Like the way he sits on the edge of every chair, as if taking up the whole of it costs something he’s not willing to pay again.
Or how his laugh starts somewhere deep in his chest and then escapes all at once, or when he folds his arms when he’s listening.
Like now. But I don’t wait for his full agreement before marching straight to Aiden’s door and shoving it open.
He’s sprawled naked across the bed. White sheets thrown lazily over his hips, a glass of wine in each hand, sipping from them one at a time.
A beautifully curvy and very naked servant sits across the room in a brown leather chair.
Her legs are spread as she reads Romeo and Juliet in a sultry voice.
Aiden’s eyes roam her body, tongue resting on his lower lip, like someone trying to feel something they can’t quite reach.
The room smells of wine and something sour.
“Ashley,” he drags out my name, lifting both glasses in greeting.
“Get up,” I say, closing the door behind me.
“No,” he says. “Leave.”
“No,” I reply, planting my hands on my hips, “Get up.”
We stare at each other across the room, neither of us willing to be the first to back down.
His dark curls are a fluffy mess. And his face carries more emotion than I’ve seen before.
Pain, confusion, shame, fear, all plastered together.
He looks like a normal male who has been shattered and doesn’t know how to put himself back together. My stomach drops.
“Please,” I soften my voice until it’s barely a whisper. “Just… as your sister.”
His jaw tightens as he dismisses the servant. Looking away for a second, then back at me with shiny eyes. He sniffs sharply once the door clicks closed.
“I don’t know what this is,” he admits, downing one of his drinks.
“This, it’s like grief for someone. Me. Like something died, but it was me, I died.
And I’m grief. Grieving. But I’m sad. Free.
But nothing, empty. Is free empty?” His voice breaks slightly.
“I don’t know what’s real. What is me and what was him.
If I only ever saw what he wanted me to see.
If I only loved what made me think to love.
” He swallows hard and I try to make sense of his words.
“Is he the reason no one has ever loved me. Apart from mother, father. That was— that was the last time I was a person. My own person. He saw me the night I vowed at the basin, you know. Told him what I was going to do and he let me. He let me go. Did he make me vow? He— he didn’t love me?
Why?” He lets out a shaky breath and a bitter laugh when he slaps a tear from his cheek.
“I don’t know. What thoughts are now. And then.
Ashley. Ashley. I open my mind and… nothing. It’s, I’m broken.”
I climb onto the bed, shuffling up beside him while he swallows his other drink in one gulp.
Close enough that our shoulders touch. Part of me half expects him to pull away from me.
But he doesn’t. “You’re not broken.” I say softly, sifting through all the great advice I’ve been given in my life, trying to find something that fits.
“You’ve been told what to think. Who to be.
Who to trust. But this is where you get to grow.
To be whoever you’ve been trying to be, to be good and kind.
All the things he told us he was. And isn’t. ”
His bloodshot eyes search the ceiling and I tell him what I needed someone to tell me. What Kaed, Eira and Cook showed me. “You don’t have to be ready today. Or tomorrow. But don’t disappear, okay? We still need you.” My voice cracks. “And you are loved Aiden. Simply for being you.”
I close the door behind me. Some battles have to be fought alone, and this is his. All I can do is give him a place to go when he’s ready.
*
By the next morning, Summer and Mari are gone, summoned back to Ashen Reach with promises of secrecy and hurried goodbyes.
There are things they need to secure. People to warn.
Hunah and Xalan take us straight to the palace’s legendary library.
The air smells of ink and the sizzle of magic.
Kaed, Eira, and I sit at a long, crescent table, while Hunah spreads scrolls and maps bigger than her between us.
“If we are going to figure this out,” she says, “we start here.” This library isn’t anything like the one in the palace.
Here, the books are quiet. Old. Slow. Some of them actually cough and sneeze, little puffs of dust drifting from their pages.
Like a retirement home for knowledge. The ivory stone walls stretch high, they’re perfect symmetrical rows, and instead of shelves, the books are pushed directly into the stone itself.
Old Aiden would love it. Maybe new Aiden will too.
Hunah and Xalan carefully place a weathered journal wrapped in silk on the table between us.
“This diary belonged to Azezos,” Hunah explains quietly, “the son of Feye, who saw the thoughts of the God of the Future that fateful day.” Xalan opens it reverently, tracing a finger over faded ink.
I read it over his shoulder. “On the last equinox, the offering of the blood of the Black Flame was sacrificed, enough to fill the basin completely. When the blood reached the top and covered the inscriptions, it was consumed by the black flames and the Chasm opened permanently.”
“So, if I drain some each day and store it...” My heart leaps, and Eira puts her arms around me. “I won’t have to die.”
We cling to each other, jumping up and down, her laughter wild and loud in my ears. Kaed shrugs with a little smirk and a wink, as if to say he knew all along I wouldn’t be dying on his watch.
Eira stops jumping abruptly, almost winding me with her elbow.
“Isn’t the basin cracked? How are we meant to fill it with blood?
It’ll just drain out.” My heart drops and Xalan sighs, scratching the back of his head.
“I am unsure. That fracture appeared when Prince Joash opened the Chasm to let the Mer through.”
Something twists in my stomach. “If Aeron is a liar, then maybe we shouldn’t believe any of those stories either. Who knows what thoughts he’s planted in everyone about our history. Or my dad.”
Hunah’s eyes sharpen. She and Xalan begin pulling tomes from the walls, thick scrolls and brittle parchments piling up around us, accounts of King Herod, dad, Aeron, wars, treaties, purges, until we’re buried in history.
We read for hours, losing track of time as servants bring fruit, bread, and tea, replacing empty plates.
Cook eventually wanders in, eyes bright and full of stories from his mum and sisters.
We fill him in between laughs and groans until he settles beside us.
Then, sometime later, Aiden appears. Barefoot in the doorway, wearing only his boxers.
A wine glass dangles loosely from his fingers. I’m struck by how wrong it looks.
“Hey,” Eira says, like she’s trying to coax a scared kitten into the vet.
He hesitates before drifting into the room and perching on the arm of my chair for a while.
Then, apparently decides that isn’t strange enough, and climbs directly onto the table, settling cross-legged in the middle of it.
I glance at Eira, relieved to find I’m not the only one trying to hide my bewilderment.
When we catch him up, he listens silently, then reaches for a scroll and starts reading, teeth worrying at his bottom lip.
And, though he gestures for servants to refill his glass more times than I can count, he looks like someone who might be finding his way back to himself.
Or whatever version of him we might meet soon.