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Ellery didn’t want to stay in the manor house any more than Nara did, but they were there for a reason. The little sister did not appear the same. He wondered at what point in this world’s history they had returned—or what image of this life the Fates had put them in. That seemed a far more likely explanation as to where they were.
Watching the now-closed door, he had wanted to ask Wren if she had seen them die. Over their previous lifetimes, he had told himself she had likely hidden away when Nara had been dragged off to the cold cells beneath the manor house. He would not be surprised if they ended up there again in some way. Nara stood too still, staring at the closed door. And then she was pulling at the cord that tied the top of her shirt closed as she raised sad eyes to his.
“Will you check?” she asked.
He nodded slowly, pulling at her shirt and reassuring himself that she didn’t wear the scars that mirrored the dress. He shivered from the cold that hung in the room, perhaps too a little at the relief of finding her skin smooth and unblemished. Wrapping his arms around Nara, Ellery pulled her close. “There is nothing there,” he whispered.
“I don’t want to stay in this room,” she said.
And he understood that. There were too many memories, too much of what had happened now screaming at them in the silence of the space. He remembered her being beaten by her father and lying by the bed, being dragged away from her, wanting reassurance that she would be safe. And she hadn’t been. Even if the old man had wanted her, he had been too comfortable with her being locked away in a cold cell.
Even if Ellery hadn’t made a mess of things, he wondered how much longer she would have survived. Would the old man have killed her, as he had the previous young wives? Or would she have been lost another way?
He held her close, reassuring himself that she was alive and safe.
“Where do we go?” he asked. He would follow her anywhere. There was no pull for them to stay. And if they left now, they might avoid the old man should he return. Ellery knew he would return. Although what that would mean for the wren and Lord Millard if he and Nara left, Ellery wasn’t sure. That didn’t concern him.
“Anywhere,” Nara replied.
“We could camp in the fields,” he said, thinking of the sweet scent, the endless blue sky and Nara pressed against him. “Or we could go further.”
She sighed against him, he hoped due to her memories of their time together. If only every day could be so relaxed. Free of the fear of what was to come or of what would take them, separate them. That was the hardest, the separation. Whatever it might be that had put them in this life—the Fates, or otherwise—they were always separated. He squeezed her tighter and closer.
“We can’t leave,” she whispered against him, closing her arms tighter around him. He wondered then if they could stay here, and whether he wanted to.
“Do you feel something?” he asked.
“I feel sad,” she replied.
“That we are back here?”
“In a way.” She pulled back from him despite his wanting to stand there and hold her forever. “Partly because it isn’t the same, and because it is just the same.”
He brushed her hair from her face. “What is different?” he asked gently.
“I don’t remember where I put my mother’s hair comb. Was I wearing it?”
She had been. It was one of Ellery’s first memories of her, the silver glinting in the candlelight, but he couldn’t remember what might have happened to it beyond the library.
“What do the stones tell you?” he asked, looking her over and thinking how different she appeared to that first night.
She shook her head but didn’t reach for them. They might tell him something different, although he kept his hands to himself. The light outside the window still appeared bright, yet it wasn’t penetrating the gloomy little room. He glanced at the closed door and then back to her.
“They don’t seem surprised that we are together,” he said, thinking it odd.
“We were together when we left,” she said, but her features creased as she thought back to that time. “Was she there?” Nara asked, her voice thick with concern.
“I can’t remember,” Ellery admitted, and he couldn’t. Some of that morning seemed so clear—the crunch of the gravel, the scent of the fields on the breeze that chilled his skin, and his concern for Nara. It wasn’t really a surprise that his own men had turned on him. They were doing as they were directed, and if it had been another soldier he would have done the same.
But it hadn’t been. It had been him, and it had been Nara he was protecting. He drew his sword. The sound of the blade running against the leather sheath was comfortable, familiar and grounding. The blade was heavy, heavier than he remembered it to be.
He held it before him, studying the pattern etched into it in the dim light of the room. Nara’s fingers were a surprise as they traced over the pattern on the blade. So focused, he hadn’t realised she had stepped back up to him. The marks and scratches were familiar, and yet he knew they hadn’t been there before.
They had done this already, standing in the field, studying what was different about objects that were not as they remembered. He willed the sword to light the room a little, and nothing happened. He thought it had glowed in the field, but that might have been the light. He was certain he had lit up the room when they first arrived.
As he thought of the light, it became dimmer still in the room. He shivered, wondering if they would be provided with a fire or were to be left here amongst the dead. It seemed a strange thought, yet fitting. For they were all gone, lived thousands of lives, or had lived thousands of lifetimes ago.
“What if it is the same lifetime?” he asked, staring at the blade that didn’t make any sense.
“You mean reliving in the same time?”
He shrugged, unsure if that was what he had meant. Had they been reborn to try again and ended up somewhere different, removed from the first life physically but not in time? He shook his head as he tried to make sense of the idea. They had seen them—the lord and Nara’s parents—in different lives, yet maybe those people had only shared similar faces and not the direct connection he had imagined.
He rubbed at his face, allowing the sword to point down to the floor. The heavy blade slipped easily into the hardwood beneath the threadbare carpet that covered it. He wanted to apologise to Nara for damaging her room, and yet he didn’t think she had ever felt it was hers. He raised his gaze from the sword and found her staring at the dress across the bed.
It took too much effort for Ellery to pull the sword free and raise it up over his shoulder back into the sheath across his back. He stepped up to the bed and, without hesitation, picked up the dress that felt brittle in his hands. He wanted to fold it away, hide it from view, but he wondered what might happen to the material if he tried to move it.
Nara opened the chest and pulled out the red blanket, which appeared just as it had that first day. He wondered when it had fallen from her shoulders. Before they were dragged from the cells or after? It was the one thing not covered in dust. He dropped the dress into the chest and closed the lid. Nara handed him the blanket, and he was lost in the soft woollen fabric as she pulled the cover from the bed.
The room was instantly filled with dust. He spread the blanket out over the white sheets, which appeared stiff. He wasn’t sure he wanted to touch them. She dropped the cover on the floor as dust continued to swirl around the room.
“Do you think we could have a fire?” he asked.
Nara looked to the empty fireplace, but she didn’t answer.
“Food?”
“Are you hungry?” she asked, and he wondered if she was. They usually ate very litte. He had connected that to the idea that they might not truly be alive. He was hungry. As his stomach growled, Nara smiled, and it was as though the whole world lit up.
They stood for too long looking at each other before there was a knock at the door. Nara flinched and then drew a breath. “Come in,” she called.
The door swung open, and a woman Ellery had not seen before stood there. Nara looked at her without speaking. She was dressed simply, maybe a servant. There was something familiar about her, he thought, although he was certain they hadn’t met. She waited in the doorway without speaking.
Ellery glanced at Nara, but she was looking at the woman as though she too were waiting for something.
“Maybe she can’t speak,” Ellery said after too long.
The woman turned a scowl his way. “You are expected downstairs.” She remained where she was, unmoving.
“Has Lord Orman returned?” Nara asked. She sounded calm, but Ellery wondered what they would do if they came across the old man again. How often might he return to the large castle he had lived in when Ellery had served him?
“No,” the woman said, as though it were an unexpected question. She turned her gaze to Ellery then, as though his presence might indicate the old man was close.
“Who has asked for us?” Nara asked.
“Lord and Lady Millard are at table.”
Ellery blinked slowly, trying to process her words. “Dining hall?” he asked, and she glared at him again as though he were an unkempt soldier who did not understand how the world worked.
“They have been waiting,” she said, as though they were holding up festivities, although Ellery doubted anything would be done to mark their return—or Nara’s, at least.
The woman turned and marched away, and Nara let out a nervous giggle. When Ellery stepped forward to take her hand, she looked down at herself and then over her shoulder to the chest at the end of the bed.
“There is no need to change,” he said. “You are perfect.”
She smiled up at him and held tight to his hand as they headed out of the room. The chill of the stone pressing in on them, they made their way down to the dining hall, which appeared larger than Ellery either remembered or imagined. He couldn’t remember if he had been here on his last visit. The conflicting memories, or missing ones, were annoying him. He and Nara remembered everything. Even if they misremembered some aspects, such as the changing swords, he knew what they had done and where they had been as clearly as if they had lived it the day before.
This first life revisited was something very different, and he was more on edge than he thought he might be. Despite the lack of a sense of danger, a pull of creature to be defeated, there was far more to this life than there appeared to be on the surface.
The dining hall was near empty. Nara’s father and sister sat at a table at the head of the room, and Ellery was tempted to head directly to the blazing fire. He couldn’t feel any heat from the flames, though he was sure he would the closer he got. Several large grey wolfhounds lounged in front of it, giving him the idea of comfort.
Several men were dotted through the other tables, all of them already eating from the platters before them. Although the food was certainly not plentiful, it was more than Ellery had seen in some time.
There were two tarnished plates next to one another on the opposite side of the table the lord and his daughter sat at. Neither of them looked up from their plates as Ellery and Nara sat down on the long bench. Lord Millard and his daughter both sat in tall, simple but elegantly carved chairs. Ellery wondered how often they sat here eating in the large, nearly empty room.
Nara was opposite her father, and Ellery sat opposite the wren, although that name did not seem to suit her as it had. Ellery wondered what her mother might have called her. He kept his mouth shut, understanding that Lord Millard would not speak of his wife. Mentioning her might remind him of how much Nara looked like her. Which Ellery had only discovered on seeing her face in the white stone cavern.
He doubted the man needed a reason to be cruel to his daughter. Not that selling her off appeared to have done him any good as yet. Lord Millard was still an insignificant lord in a minor household, and whatever his connection to Orman, it hadn’t done him any good.
There were two platters in the space between them. One contained some form of cooked bird—it had been so long Ellery wasn’t sure he could identify it—along with slices of cold pinkish meat, also unidentifiable. The other platter contained soft, overcooked root vegetables. He wondered if they came from the fields or if there was a garden closer to the house he hadn’t yet seen.
They sat in silence, and despite the grumbling of his stomach and the scent of the food, he couldn’t bring himself to put any on his plate and eat it. Nara took a leg of the bird and chewed on it slowly. He glanced at her, but she appeared to not want it either. Were they not used to such luxuries, or did they not need them?
“Now that you have returned,” her father said, his voice carrying around the room, and one of the hounds looked up. “I thought...”
“We will not stay,” Nara replied before he could finish.
“Excuse me?” There was none of the hatred or vitriol that Ellery expected in his voice. It was honest confusion. “Why wouldn’t you stay?”
“We don’t belong here,” she continued, putting the barely touched leg down on the plate.
“This is your home,” the wren said, as though she too expected Nara to stay.
“Haven is my home,” Nara replied without hesitation, and Ellery smiled and reached for her hand.