The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,145

changed.

My mother hadn’t been by. Aunt Bernette and Aunt Cloris had come three times during the night to check on me, both of them weary, with red-rimmed eyes. They gave me doses of the thick, syrupy medicine the physician had prescribed.

“It will help restore your blood,” Aunt Bernette whispered and kissed my cheek.

When I asked her how my father was, her face dimpled with worry, and she struggled with a hopeful reply, saying it would take time.

Aunt Cloris cast wary glances at Kaden, who dozed in the chair beside me. She didn’t like it, but clucked only mildly at the breach of protocol. Finally, late in the night, she shooed him off, having prepared a room elsewhere in the citadelle for him. I had slept fitfully after that, one dream dissolving into another, and I finally shook awake when I dreamed of Regan and Bryn riding together in a wide valley. I didn’t want to see what came next.

Per Aunt Bernette’s orders, I took another dose of the sickly sweet syrup. I didn’t know if it was the sleep or the elixir, but I was feeling steadier on my feet.

I tied back the drapes, and light flooded into the room. I looked at the bay, a rare clear day where the rocky island of lost souls was visible in the distance, its white crumbling ruins catching the morning sun. Ancients who were once imprisoned there were said to still rail against walls that no longer existed, caught in a timeless prison of another kind, memories caging them as strongly as iron bars. My attention traveled west to the last standing spire of Golgata, still leaning, facing its imminent demise with stoic grace. Some things last … and some things were never meant to.

I heard a tap at my door. Finally. There were clothes in my dressing chamber—all still locked in trunks—the ones Dalbreck had dutifully returned. They had never been opened. But if I was to address the conclave this afternoon, or for that matter, any of the many tasks before me, I couldn’t do it in a thin borrowed nightgown. Aunt Bernette had gone to fetch someone with keys. I was about to search for a hairpin so I could pick them open myself. It was going to be a long and full day.

“Come in,” I called as I pulled back a drape from a window in the dressing chamber. “In here.”

I heard footsteps. Heavy ones. Boots. My heart thumped against my breastbone, and I stepped back into my room.

“Good morning,” Rafe said. He was back in his own clothes, no longer needing to hide who he was.

My chest beat harder. Every emotion I had tamped down bubbled up at once and I heard the eagerness in my voice. “I was wondering when you’d come by.”

There. I saw it in his eyes again. Saw it in his swallow.

“You’re looking better than you did last night,” he said.

“Thank you for coming to help.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I guess I was waiting for a note.”

“I recall you telling me not to send any.”

“Since when have you listened to me?”

“Since when have you paid attention to my notes?”

His worried expression was replaced with a grin, and that was all it took. I ran toward him, reaching for him, his arms folding around me, both of us holding each other like we’d never let go, his fingers sliding through my hair, his faint whisper of Lia in my ear, but when I tried to turn my lips to his, he pulled away, stepped back, grasping my arms and deliberately returning them to my sides.

I looked at him, confused. “Rafe?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” I asked, the panic rising in my voice. “Are you all right? Did something happen to—”

“Lia. Listen to me.” His eyes burned into mine.

“You’re scaring me, Rafe. Just say it.”

He blinked, something shifting in his expression. He shook his head as if his thoughts were racing ahead of him.

“I need to tell you about the circumstance of—The truth is—What I need to tell you is, I’m betrothed.”

My mouth went dry. I waited for him to laugh. To declare it a poor joke.

He didn’t.

I stared at him, still not believing it. My mouth opened to say something, but I couldn’t think what. He loved me. I knew he did. I had just seen it in his eyes.

At least I thought I had. Yes, we had parted ways weeks ago, but was that all it took