by Nicole Locke
She looked over at Reynold. Watched him watching the night sky. His back was to her, his stance wide. A ruler looking over his domain.
She knew otherwise. He stood this way to avoid showing her more of himself. He asked questions and pricked and prodded to quit the conversation. He said talking of the Jewel was difficult, but for that he had sat and kept his gaze upon her. He told her the tale of his parents and their greed.
But this he wanted to avoid. No. He waited. She wouldn’t let him. Standing very slowly, she walked behind him.
Saw the tenseness in his shoulders, felt the heat of his back against her front. But she did not touch him. Instead, ‘I know what love is,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t felt it until you. I haven’t felt as though I belonged until you shoved me into that fortress of yours in Paris.’
He leaned forward, placed his hand on the sill and bowed his head.
‘I haven’t felt safe or protected until you gave all your warnings that I wasn’t safe and yet every action you’ve done since I arrived was to guard me. Even my virtue, something that should have meant nothing to a man of your nobility, wealth and station, you protected until I undressed for you.
‘That’s why I demand things, ask questions of you. Why I want more though it isn’t safe.’
He pushed himself off the sill and turned around. Ruthless. Savage. Arrogance still drawn in every feature of his countenance. But his eyes...his eyes beckoned her to continue, so she did.
‘You love me. That’s why you’ve fought me, because you want to protect me. I didn’t recognise it because I wasn’t expecting love. But you fell for me.’
‘Immediately,’ he answered, in that even voice of his. It wasn’t cold this time, but warm, tender. Telling her in one word that she was right about everything.
‘Why then?’
‘Because of my family, because of who I am, because you deserve so much more than me. But I couldn’t let you go...just as I couldn’t let her go.’
He shook her head. ‘I didn’t remember her mother’s name if I even learned it. What will I tell Grace about her?’ He looked at her apologetically. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I want to know.’
‘Why would you want to know my cruelty?’
‘Because you did it to protect yourself and I suspect you’ve protected others over the years. You pretend this is all some game that you’re manipulating and you’ve taken risks as difficult as Orpheus and Odysseus.’
‘I will take more—it’s not over.’
‘I hope for your sake, it’s not. I can’t imagine how cruel your parents are. Massacres, wars? And I know your brothers are not innocent. But whatever it is, I can’t imagine you killing them and what that would do to your soul.’
‘It would be no more or less than they deserve.’
‘Maybe, but is that for you to judge?’
‘I’m no judge. I’m their executioner. I’ve killed hundreds, Aliette. I could not have done otherwise.’
‘To survive. But...you’ve been different since you’ve taken in Grace. Louve and I both noticed. Underneath it all, you’re trying to be better.’
He clenched his jaw. ‘If it comes down to it, I will protect you by any means. I did unsheathe my sword today.’
‘Only when it became necessary,’ she said.
He shook his head as if wanting to deny her words. ‘I will win my game. I won’t give it up.’
‘I understand that now. I’m not asking you to. Your parents don’t deserve this legend. And it terrifies me that someone of their calibre would want it. But when you get this Jewel of Kings, what will happen to it then?’
He looked at her so long, she thought he wouldn’t answer. They’d been talking for so long she almost forgot he could do this.
‘It will disappear.’
Not the words, but his gravity of his voice was what gave him away. ‘And you intended to disappear with it.’
He nodded. ‘But not now. The Jewel, the task of it all, will go to someone else.’
‘Balthus?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s no trust between us, but I will tell him what no one else knows as I will tell others. If only because one person isn’t enough. I know that now. Even if there was honour and stalwartness...priorities change...or are changed for them.’
‘For the better.’
‘For the better,’ he agreed. ‘There are others who are aware of it and are already forming alliances. I’ll send messages out. There will need to be a meeting.’
‘With people you’ve considered enemies.’
‘With good people who will consider me one. Just as you did. Why do you call me Darkness? Is it my hair?’
She shook her head.
‘My eyes?’
‘They’re grey!’
He frowned. ‘My clothing?’
She grinned. ‘You don’t like it when I have secrets. What if I tell you about Orpheus and Eurydice now?’
‘Now when I’ve failed every vow I’ve given. To keep my secrets, to not let anyone close. You want to talk about loss and doubts and faltering. Orpheus failed to save his wife from the Underworld because he doubted she was behind him!’
This had to stop. ‘You think this journey we’ve been on is all about you failing? If you’re Orpheus or Odysseus, I’ve been every bit Eurydice and Penelope!’
She pointed to her chest. ‘I was an abandoned child, that is nothing new in Paris. But they left in the middle of the night...in the dark. I’ve hated the night and being kept in the dark ever since. I imagine that’s how Eurydice felt, buried under the earth in hell. Hidden from warmth, from light and love. But her husband Orpheus showed it all to her again. That’s what the story is about: longing and happiness and risking everything for it. He looked back. Maybe he did it because he was happy and overcome. Maybe he was worried she wasn’t there and wanted to ensure she needed no help. But he risked everything for her. Orpheus showed love was worth that risk. Orpheus’s trials showed Eurydice his love. That is what he gave her.
‘You may think you’re failing me, but you aren’t. You said cruel words to shove me away and, because of my past, I believed them, until I saw you. And I realised all this time you’ve been protecting me, showing me you care, showing your love with your deeds.’
‘But—’
Shaking her head to stop him, she wouldn’t let him talk. These words needed to be heard. ‘The Odyssey isn’t only about the trials of Odysseus. In all those years, Penelope had them, too. Other suitors, family that demanded she give up on the man she loved for the sake of her duties. She waited because her love for him endured through those trials.
‘I, too, have had trials with what I’ve faced. My fear of the dark. My lack of trust in people. Then you put me in a dark tunnel and made me walk it.’
‘I never wanted you to feel that fear.’
‘It...didn’t last. Knowing we were all tied together down there, I realised there was something stronger than the dark. My feelings for my family, for you. As for my trust, I think Grace had something to do with that.’
His gaze softened. ‘She affected me the moment I realised she existed.’
‘If it was just me fighting you, I would have found a way to escape. But I couldn’t simply abandon Grace.’
‘Because you found an infant swaddled in blankets in the dead winter. When you took one look at a starving child whom I didn’t know how to hold properly, you demanded I fetch food.’
Aliette nodded. ‘Then it became a matter of my family versus her. And you made this fortress I couldn’t leave. But, by staying, it forced me to look at the world a different way. You with your contradictions and secrets. With your reluctant kindness.’ She placed her hand on his cheek. He leaned into her touch. ‘You’re not perfect, but you’ve been worth the risk...worth the wait. Because as different as we are, we’re
so much the same. I recognise you in the dark and would follow you anywhere.’
He kissed her palm, a curve to his lips that she felt. ‘I am perfect. It’s my family trying to kill us that makes our marriage less than ideal.’
‘Marriage?’
‘You don’t believe I want to marry you?’
‘I don’t completely trust this either. This is new for me as well. I’m not used to being loved when I didn’t demand it.’
‘Oh, you demanded it.’
‘How?’
‘Informing me that I love you. Not waiting for me to tell you the depth of that love.’
‘If I waited for a scrap of bread to ensure I wouldn’t get caught, someone else would get it.’
‘So I’m a scrap of bread.’ He took her wrist. ‘This is why I fell in love with you...this ordinariness. You do things around me as if they have no consequence.’
‘Things,’ she said, though she couldn’t keep her thoughts. Not when he brushed his thumb against her inner wrist.
‘Like comparing me to a bread scrap. Like taking in Vernon and Helewise. You were a starving orphan and you volunteered to help others. Like the bravery and compassion you showed Gabriel when you took him to see his parents.’
‘They needed me. I...needed them.’
He shook his head as if he couldn’t comprehend such recklessness. ‘Like taking care of Grace and making room for me on the bench. Like singing and flitting from one room to another to gather items. Everyone asks permission from me. And you just took.’
‘My gathering items made you fall in love with me?’
‘Your backside is just as perfect to me as your front.’
Reynold was teasing her. She grinned. ‘I’ll have to gather more items in front of you more often. Maybe bend down to pick them up.’
‘I’ll be a dead man in a year if you torture me any further. Of course there was also the time when you encouraged my men to disobey me. To mutiny and talk to you instead of the silence I ordered.’
So long ago. ‘I made you angry that day.’
‘All the more reason to love you, but none more than when you wiggled your toes. If I hadn’t already given my heart to you, that would have been the moment.’
‘They are nice toes.’
‘They are.’ She loved every word he was saying. Her whole life she’d been starved of compliments and praise and his were all the better because it wasn’t about the curl of her hair, or her unblemished skin. But about them together, sharing, yet she still didn’t understand. ‘Why, Reynold? Why these moments?’
‘You don’t know how extraordinary you are to me. There was nothing usual or typical in my life until you. Everything I did as a child had consequences. The way I walk, talk. Eat. All of it was regulated.’
His even voice, the elegant way he moved. It broke her heart a little, knowing this was beaten into him.
‘After I severed ties from the family, I was even more rigorous to make sure I could take them down. So I could stay alive. And you—’
‘I just do things.’
He linked his fingers with hers, the eddying grey of his eyes now steady. ‘There is something I need to show you.’
With a glance at his sleeping daughter, he led her to the room’s other door and opened it. The adjacent room was expansive—entire regiments could march through because of—
Aliette gripped his hand. ‘This bed.’
‘It’s not alive,’ he said. ‘It’s just meant to look as though it is.’
It was attached to the floor, and spread across the ceiling...like a tree, the posts large like twisted oaks, the tops their canopy.
‘It’s beautiful! It’s the bed, isn’t it.’
‘Odysseus was gone for years from Penelope. When he finally returned, she tested him. She told him she’d bring the bed down to him so he could rest. Only her husband knew it was a living tree that couldn’t be moved. When he said so, Penelope recognised him. Accepted him. Loved him again.’
He truly loved that story. Had this bed built in the hopes he could live here with his wife who loved him in return. And Reynold had brought her here. Showed her this bed.
Love.
‘Do you want me to test you, Reynold?’
‘You’re doing it now. Why me, Aliette, when I have done so much wrong?’
‘You have done wrong, but you’ve been trying to make it right, and with Grace and her mother, in time she will understand.’
‘I can’t believe she will ever love me—I can’t believe you do. Even if my soul isn’t as black to you as it is to me, how?’
‘You read to yourself when a passage in Greek is difficult, you hold Grace as if you never want to let go, you have taken in men who need you and...you’re very good at untying boots.’
His brows lowered, his mouth quirked. As if her words made no sense to him, but pleased him at the same time. ‘These things you notice?’
Releasing his hand, she walked backward until her legs hit the bed, then she sat. ‘I recognise you—I accept you. I love you.’
‘What are you doing?’
She slid across the bed and delighted in the way he followed until he loomed over her, his dark hair falling across his forehead, his thick eyelashes casting shadows across his face.
‘I’m making room for you,’ she answered. ‘It’s a marriage bed, isn’t it? A husband-and-wife bed. A waiting-years-for-happiness-and-enduring-every-hardship bed. You had this made and it has been here waiting for us.’
His eyes lit with a feral need, a longing that he no longer hid in the depths of his eddying grey eyes or in his heart. To everyone else he would always be shadows and nightmares. Darkness. But she could see him now and would always want him more.
‘How do you know these things about me? How are you different?’ he asked, as if the answer continued to elude him.
Everything in her wanted to comfort the longing in his voice. To tell him a thousand words to express the ways.
Threading her fingers through his raven hair and curling every limb she had around him, she whispered, ‘Because I love Darkness.’
Epilogue
‘I can’t believe you have told me of all this,’ Balthus said, looking around the hall, which was empty. ‘I’ll need a flagon of wine.’
‘It’s morning and there’s much to do.’ The air was warming, allowing them to look out in the courtyard should they desire. The mercenaries seemed to be getting along. It was all the encouragement Reynold needed to begin his conversation. He felt some satisfaction in surprising his sibling as he told him all the truth. The facts of their parents, the Jewel of Kings, Grace. At first, he believed he’d merely piecemeal the facts, slowly display his vulnerabilities as Balthus revealed his. But after the evening spent with Aliette in the marriage bed, he wanted it all. Now.
It had been difficult leaving the warmth of her wrapped around him. Her dark hair tangled on the pale linen sheets, one fist curled as if, even in sleep, she fought him leaving. After this morning, he wanted to revel in that warmth that she brought to their bed, he wanted to marry her and never have to think of intrigue or battles again.
He didn’t want to place any trust in his family, but in the end, he’d have to place a lot of trust in many people. He might as well start here with Balthus.
‘My telling you doesn’t mean I wholly trust you,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps there will be more some day. However, with the dagger separated from the gem, there’s limited time and we need to act now.’
His brother stood there. His expression confused, wondering...a little wary. But something else that eased through him. Perhaps through them both. A sense that they were brothers. It was something he hadn’t felt for a long, long time.
‘I’ve told you nothing and you’ve given me everything,’ Balthus said.
‘Not everything. There’s on
ly a smattering of coin at Nicholas’s estate, Mei Solis, but it’s all yours. And Nicholas, being Louve’s friend, will give you shelter until you know where to go next.’
‘I should have thought about my wealth. Leaving it all in our parents’ coffers while I betrayed them wasn’t intelligent.’
‘If you would have taken your coin, they wouldn’t have trusted you despite damaging your hand.’
‘Mere moments in your company and I owe you a debt.’
‘No debt—I shouldn’t have left you.’
‘I wasn’t ready to go then. It took Ian’s deeds to want something else. We may need that flagon for everything I want you to know. I’ve been privy not only to our parents’ secrets, but to our brothers’.’
Years Reynold had toiled to acquire information, now it was being offered freely. ‘You have to go. It’s not safe for my family.’
‘Just like that?’
‘If we’re brothers, then you know why it’s necessary. If we’re not, and I’m right in being cautionary with our dialogue, Ian will be expecting you. Either way you have to leave.’
‘If you should ever need me—’
‘I won’t,’ Reynold said.
‘But if there’s a chance—’
‘I won’t give you one.’ Brothers they might be, but newly made brothers. For Aliette’s sake, he would continue to be careful. For her sake as well, he would try to trust. In the end, Reynold proved that he could survive without any help, but more that he was the strongest of all his family. Stronger still for the love of Aliette and her found family. That made him stronger than both his brothers.
‘Some day I’ll prove you can trust me,’ Balthus said.
Then they’d be brothers. Too much to hope for, but Aliette had shown him he could. ‘That would be welcome.’
Balthus’s eyes gleamed before he looked away and exhaled. When he gained his breath, he said, ‘So you told me all this to gain my help. Take down Ian, gather the Jewel.’
‘Don’t pretend this doesn’t align with your game. You get your revenge.’
‘It must be done. Ian will keep with his plans until more countries are weakened, until he has more power.’
