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“What do you mean gone?” The king tried to keep his voice level, but he was sure the anger and distress he felt were filling the throne room.
“The others are there, and they assured me she would return.”
“How can we trust their word?”
“She wouldn’t leave her own children,” the soldier said, sounding very sure. “Or would she?”
“They are not her children,” the king said, standing and stepping forward.
“She might have gone to her brother,” the queen suggested.
“He would kill her if she did,” the king said, trying not to sound disappointed. It was unsettling to have the queen so close, and he couldn’t understand why she was. She had kept to herself for so long and now, with the return of Nelda—and with her children, no less—Aphera couldn’t seem to keep away. She had been the loudest voice calling for Nelda’s death after the fire. Despite claiming disbelief that her maid would or could do such a thing.
He looked over the woman then, the wife he didn’t know. He had spent little enough time with her before the birth of their child, and then she had withdrawn from the world so completely after the fire. He had married as his father had directed, and she had never cared for him. He would rather have had a wife like Nelda if he could have chosen his own. Although, if his wife had turned out to be a witch, his life would have been very different.
And this wife, who had lived in obvious misery for so many years, certainly didn’t carry the air of someone upset, or depressed, or at a loss as to how to face life. There was that enthusiasm for information that he had seen in her when she had first arrived at the castle, that eagerness to be in the know.
“What is it of the witch that has drawn you out?” he asked.
She looked at him with a glance he couldn’t read, and then she looked down at the floor. It was an act, he realised—it had all been an act. The idea made him feel sick. Did she despise him that much, or the idea of more children, that she would pretend to be lost to the grief of her child for so long? And she wasn’t the young woman he remembered. Nelda still looked like she had as a girl. She had aged, certainly, but not to the extent of the woman before him. And he realised that, no matter the urging of the Circle of the Sun, his wife was beyond any more children, whether she wanted them or not.
“Aphera,” he said slowly, using her name for the first time in too long. She raised her eyes to him, a little warily he thought—or was he looking for deception now? “Do you believe Nelda is responsible for the child’s death?”
She nodded once, her chin set, but the sadness he usually saw in her eyes was missing. He waved away the soldier, who paused for only a moment before he turned and left the room. West had ensured the child was safe with the general; he would check to see if the witch had returned to him too. And whether or not she was already dead.
There were too few soldiers from that time left to recognise her were she to be wandering the castle. Although if she had left those boys and the little witch alone, it would have been for good reason. Dunstan wondered if he should send the soldier back to the chapel and the cardinal to ensure she wasn’t trapped there. But he didn’t want the queen knowing of their activities within the castle. He glanced at her again. He didn’t want her knowing anything of what was going on, and he hoped she hadn’t tried to reach the little witch.
“The child,” he said, and she looked at him as though she had been lost in thought. “The witch child,” he clarified. “What did you want to know of her?”
Aphera looked a little confused for a moment. “She reminded me of someone,” she murmured.
“Who?” he demanded, wondering at the origin of the child. Or were there many more out there, just as the cardinal had said? Were the convents filled with witches in hiding?
Aphera shook her head.
“Who?” he asked again. “You were keen to have her for yourself.”
“I did not want the child; I wanted some understanding. But knowing them will not bring my baby back, nor will it prevent others from dying.”
The sentiment was similar to that of the cardinal, and the king wondered if they might not have the same aim and interests. He hadn’t heard anything of the two of them together. But then, he hadn’t been paying Aphera the attention he should have been. He wondered who else she was spending her time with. She was younger than Nelda, he thought, looking at her features. If only by a year or so. She had been a very young woman when she had come to the castle, and still young when she’d had the child. She was not yet forty. Again, he found himself comparing her to Nelda.
He kept thinking of Nelda, and he tried to shake the feeling as he turned his back on his wife, stepped up to the throne, and sat down. He had thought of her often as he had searched out the witches across the kingdom—and reinforced her brother’s wish to find and destroy her for all she had taken from him.
Although now, seeing her again in the flesh, he was reminded too easily of the girl she had been and the feelings he’d had. He had missed her in some way over the years. His first thought at the claim of her children was that one of them might have been his. It was followed rapidly by a worse thought—that she had been with someone else, often enough to produce three children.
He blew out a soft breath, trying to calm the thumping in his heart that had returned in the same way as when she had spoken that day in the throne room. He looked to Aphera. But although she had remained, she stood looking out over the empty room with her back to him. Could someone have hidden Nelda away, loved her enough to keep her safe and give her the family he could not?
He tried to shake the odd feeling covering his skin. He could never have given her such, nor had he ever promised, nor had she expected him to. Whatever they’d had was brief, a mistake, and the reason his child wasn’t watched over within the moments after his birth when he was so cruelly killed. He sighed. He was making excuses for her now. Perhaps she had left his bed and killed the child just as he had thought all those years ago, and his wife suspected. Although he was sure she hadn’t known what was going on between him and the girl. Aphera certainly wouldn’t have killed the child out of spite and blamed the maid.
He watched her back as she stood too still. But then, he didn’t know her at all—that might have been exactly what she’d done.
He certainly wasn’t going to ask her. If she had been so bitter, he didn’t want it clarified for him. She was his queen, after all. There was nothing he could do. Although he was sure his advisors would have much to say on the matter.
Instead, he stood and marched from the room, leaving her behind. He didn’t care if she followed, but he needed to be outside, away from any hints or reminders of what the world had been before that dreadful day. It was everywhere, and he had allowed that to be the case. He had made sure it stayed with them, to remind them of the horror and ensure it didn’t happen again. Although that also meant they could never move on, never find a new way for the kingdom.
They were forever trapped, searching out the women they feared would be their undoing. That search was creating more fear, and the burning of the convents was frightening him. Although he knew it was necessary and he despised the man behind the act, he had to admit it was making a difference. Three witches were now inside this very castle because they had been found out in convents. Although if they had been left in peace there, then they wouldn’t be here posing a greater risk to him and his crown.
He found it hard to imagine Nelda the risk he had thought her to be, now that he had seen her. He moved out into the garden, the cool morning air blowing over his skin, and he shivered. Despite the cold, he walked on. He kept seeing her face every time he closed his eyes. He had dreamt of her. He’d had to tell himself it was because of her witch ways, her magic permeating the castle. Not that he felt something for her. She had been a maid; there was nothing of feeling involved.
He brushed against a damp bush, the leaves flicking against his face when he startled, wondering if it was a good idea being alone with a witch on the loose. But he was well trained with a sword and confident he could defend himself, unless she tried to incinerate him too. He had to remember she wasn’t what he had thought her to be. She wasn’t the kind maid who smiled so sweetly, whose long, dark hair fell about her bare shoulders when she allowed him to undress her. She was a witch who had burned half the castle to the ground, killing his newly born son and his father. He couldn’t allow that face that was so familiar to win him over. That was not who she was.
She wasn’t someone to be trusted, just as the queen was not as she had appeared to be.
He stood for too long in the early morning sun, staring out over the world he thought he knew. Too many conflicting thoughts filled his head. He tried to imagine what his father would say, what advice he would give at this time. Although he would likely start by chastising him over a dalliance with a maid. But then, he might not. Dunstan hadn’t known his father well enough, hadn’t taken the time to understand him as a man. He had only stood back and tried to learn from a king, and even then not well enough.
He needed to find a way through this. An answer that would appease the people, prevent the witches from acquiring any power, and end the cardinal with his strange hold over the kingdom. It wasn’t just the church—the man had too much power, too much influence. And the sisters of the Goddess, whom he had given very little thought to in the past, were being eradicated at a higher rate than the witches.
West had not returned with any word on the whereabouts of the witch. If she was causing any trouble, the whole of Sunsong would be in an uproar. He looked back at the cold stone towering over the garden. From this angle, it looked abandoned. The morning light reflected from some of the windows, but there was no sign of life or people. No one else was in the garden—no one, not even a guard on the tower tops. Were they providing privacy, or was this some dream and he too was lost?