| |
She looked just the same as she always had—a little older, but Nuris would have recognised her anywhere, even without the odd sense that he’d known she had been coming to find him. Now she sat at his table sipping tea, and the child had moved onto her lap. She glanced around the room as though she knew it but didn’t at the same time.
“Is that drinkable?” he asked, indicating the cup.
She nodded and sat it down. “It tastes just like it used to. Although I’m sure that is the water, not the tea—still very weak.”
He felt his face flush.
“We did not have tea in the convent.”
“Really?”
She nodded and looked at the child smiling up at her.
“You haven’t told me much of where you were,” Nuris said, wanting to reach across the table and take her hand. It was an odd feeling, and one he was sure he should fight. The child turned her smiling gaze on him, and he sighed.
“I travelled with another for a time,” she said, looking across the room rather than at him. “I wouldn’t have survived without Rose. When she died, I found sanctuary in the convent.”
“Did they know who you were? What you were?” he asked.
She shook her head, but he knew it was a lie. Was she trying to protect those who were left?
“He will kill them all,” she whispered.
“Yes,” the child agreed.
“The cardinal?” Nuris asked.
As the child nodded, Nelda whispered, “The king.”
“He doesn’t want this. All those women and children. Witches, yes, given what happened to his son...” He looked at Nelda’s sad face. “I believe it wasn’t you.”
“He doesn’t. It may not have been a witch who started the fire that day.”
“Why did they start the fire?” he asked.
She looked down at the child, who raised a hand to her face and then slipped down from Nelda’s lap. She headed towards the door. There was a knock as Nelda made to stand, and the child raced forward and opened it.
Nelda was on her feet in seconds, her hand outstretched. Nuris worried for a moment what she might do, and then the maid arrived, smiling at the child and allowing her to hug her legs. The soldier followed, bolting the door behind him, and sighed as he looked at Nelda.
She lowered her hand and turned back to Nuris with a look of disappointment.
“I thought you would have come sooner,” she said. Although her words were directed at Nuris, not the man standing in the doorway.
“Your children assured me you would return to them.”
“Are they safe?” she asked quickly. “Frayne is...”
“I have had soup sent and fresh water. He is well enough.”
She nodded, her shoulders sagging, and Nuris wondered if they could be more closely related to her than he had assumed.
“The girl still sleeps,” he said, and the tension returned to Nelda’s body. Nuris took a step forward himself. “The younger boy...”
“They are twins,” Nelda interrupted.
“The younger boy,” the soldier repeated, “said she needed dirt.”
Nelda looked to the maid, who bowed her head. She headed back to the door but then paused when Nelda’s stomach growled. Nuris wondered how long it had been since she had eaten and why he hadn’t offered her food. He had with the child. Nelda shook her head. “She is of the earth; she needs some connection to the natural world.” She looked at the wall and then stepped forward to run her hand over the stones.
The soldier drew his sword and, as Nuris raised his eyebrows, sheathed it again. Nelda turned slowly.
“Show Heath the stones. Get him to hold her hand to them. That may be enough. The heat affected her,” she whispered, sitting on the floor. “They were too hot for too long.”
The girl bowed her head and then left. The soldier bolted the door after her and came back to stand at the table, where he watched the woman sitting on the floor and leaning against the cold stone wall. Nuris wanted to ask her about the boys—the twins, she claimed them to be although he knew they weren’t. She had been talking of the fire when the soldier had come in, and although he trusted the man, he didn’t want any word of who these boys may be returning to the king.
Nuris had spent his life working for the man, doing as instructed although in many ways he’d been free to do as he saw fit. Trusted. And he trusted that the king would do as he should for the kingdom. But there was something about these boys, and that Nelda claimed them as her own made him uncomfortable about the king learning the truth. Not that he understood what that truth was.
The child was watching him, he realised. The smile she had for Nelda was gone, and her eyes seemed to bore into him. And although he knew she could read his thoughts, he didn’t know if she could understand the scrambled mess that they were.
“You need to feed her,” she said.
“Nelda?” he asked, and the child nodded.
Hadn’t he had that very thought moments ago?
“I’m fine,” Nelda murmured, climbing to her feet. “I should return.”
“Not yet,” Nuris said too quickly. The soldier looked at him seriously. “I have things to learn.”
Nelda staggered a little then. He was quick to hold her, feeling just how hungry and weak she was as though the feelings were his own. Although he was sure his legs would collapse, he instead closed his arms around her and pulled her close.
“Frayne,” she murmured against his chest.
“He will be well,” he reassured her—or was he reassuring himself? Again, the same concerns she had seemed to wash over him. Had it always been this way?
He held her out at arm’s length and looked her over. He wanted to ask so many questions, but he didn’t want to do it in front of the soldier or the child. Although he was sure Pip had picked up more than she should have. “You should be sleeping,” he murmured, more to the child, but as Nelda leaned against him again, he could feel the exhaustion pull at him. How long had she been running?
“I will take her back,” West offered.
Nuris shook his head. And then there was another knock at the door, and the child ran and hid. He tried not to growl his frustrations. It was early morning, the sun barely above the horizon. How many people were moving around the castle, and what were they looking for?
He nodded for the soldier to answer the door as he quickly led Pip and Nelda into her childhood room. He pulled the door closed and turned back to the main room just as West bolted the door. The queen stood in the doorway, looking between the two of them.
“I did not expect...” she said, looking unsure though he doubted she was. She would have a plan. Aphera always had a plan.
“The king may have entrusted the child to me,” he said, trying to keep calm, “but she is still a witch, and we felt the more watching over her the better.”
“I heard your sister had escaped,” she said, not taking her eyes from his.
“Escaped?” he asked, looking to the soldier as though he hadn’t been made aware of the situation.
“Found,” the soldier said, looking at Nuris while remaining unmoving by the door. “I do not think Your Highness should be this close to the child.”
“Why?” the queen asked. “And where was she found?”
“The king has been made aware,” the soldier continued. “She is a witch, and we do not know what she might do.”
“She is a child,” Aphera said, a soft laugh to her voice as though the idea was unbelievable. Nuris looked at her standing tall, any hint of the depression she had carried as a shield for the past twenty years vanished. He wanted then to ask her who the child was who had died in that fire. Whose remains the kingdom had cried over, and the king. It was an odd feeling, and he had no idea where it had come from.
“There is a reason they are usually killed so young,” the soldier said. “If we could detect such things at birth, the world would be a different place.”
Aphera scowled at him. She clearly wanted time alone with Nuris, but he didn’t know if that was to gain access to the child or something else. She wasn’t moving, either. Nuris was tempted to yawn. Nelda’s weariness pulled at him even through the door as he thought of her. She was a witch, and yet for the first time he wanted to do all he could to keep her safe. And not for the first time, he saw the threat she was.
“The king should have put her down the moment she was discovered,” Aphera growled. Nuris almost took a step back, surprised by the venom in her voice.
“That is why you want the child,” he said.
“Your sister, if you can call her that, is a witch,” she replied as though he hadn’t spoken, and he struggled to work out who she was talking of. Did she want the child or his sister killed?
“You started the fire,” he said, the realisation hitting him as though he had been woken from a dream by a slap.
“How dare you!” she bellowed. “The entire kingdom knows your sister started that fire using her witchy powers. The same powers that allowed her to walk through the flames. I am sure she stood over the babe watching him consumed by the flames to ensure he was dead.” He did not hear the sadness in her voice she normally portrayed when someone hinted at or mentioned the lost prince. There was anger now, although that too felt contrived. Did Nuris know this woman at all?
“She is a witch,” he admitted. “That does not mean she started the fire.”
Aphera looked at him then, her features softening into confusion. “I will ensure the king does as he should in relation to these witches,” she said, but the anger was gone as she turned back to the door and waited. When neither of them moved, she glared at the soldier and then the door. He stepped forward, unbolted it, and held it open for her. “He will know what should be done,” she announced as she disappeared.
West bolted the door behind her, and Nuris leant on the back of a chair.
“Why would you think she killed the prince?” the soldier asked, pulling him from the confusing turmoil of thoughts racing through his mind.
Nuris shook his head. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore, other than the certainty that his sister had not started the fire. And the feeling of the boy—that he was something else—made his mouth dry and his chest pound, although he couldn’t determine just who he was.
“You’ve seen my sister’s children,” he said, and the soldier bowed his head. “What do you think—who do they look like?”
“They are handsome boys, General, but not one resembles you.”
Nuris shook his head. That wasn’t what he was asking. He wasn’t sure what he was asking. What if one of them was the prince? He would have known if Nelda was hiding a baby when he’d tried to kill her. He ran his hand over his scarred cheek.
“They would insist she is their mother, but I don’t believe she is,” West said again.
“Nor I,” Nuris admitted. Although he was sure she would die to protect them. “I want to see them,” he said, unsure if that was a good idea.
“And leave the child unprotected?” West asked.
He shook his head. The soldier was right. He couldn’t leave Pip alone, not just because she was a witch but because he didn’t know what the queen might do. Or when the king might send for her. He had no idea what the king was working towards or thinking, and he couldn’t risk being seen to go against him.
“You need to take her back,” Nuris said, although it hurt far more than he had thought it could to say. For too long, his only thought had been of finding and killing her. He believed he had been betrayed by the sister he’d thought he knew as well as himself, but he hadn’t at all.
Did this child understand what she was? How was it Nelda had lived as long as she had and not known the power she held? Or had something in the flames that night unleashed it?
“If I am to take her, it should be soon,” the soldier said, and Nuris nodded absently.
“I had only wanted to see you one last time,” Nelda whispered, and he looked towards the door where she leaned too heavily against the frame. The child was nowhere in sight; he wondered if she had finally succumbed to sleep. “I needed you to know,” she said, stepping forward, her legs shaky, and he took her in his arms.
“What did you need me to know?” he asked, holding her close.
“That I love you,” she said, a strange half sob escaping, and for a moment they were the same young siblings who had shared everything. And no matter what his king asked of him, Nuris was certain he wouldn’t be able to kill her. For it would kill him.
“Stay,” he whispered.
“I have to be with the children. I have to keep them safe.”
“You can’t protect them,” he said. No matter what she claimed, the king would take their lives if that was his desire. Especially the younger witch, who Nuris knew had nothing to do with her. “Why did they save her?” he asked.
“Heath is a good boy, kind at heart, and when he saw her with the cardinal he couldn’t leave her.”
“She was ready to die,” Nuris said. Although he wasn’t sure that was true.
“And now she is one of your children,” West said. Nuris had forgotten he was there. He turned and took in the soldier, his arms still closed tight around Nelda although she pulled at him now.
“They are all important,” she said. “Claiming them as my own will keep them safe a little longer.”
“Why?” Nuris asked, lost as to how she thought that would be the case.
“Why did the king not have me beheaded the moment I was dragged before him?”
Nuris shook his head. He was still trying to work that out himself. The king had spent his life chasing down witches, killing them on sight. Something that had always been done. But after the fire that had taken so many, he’d been particularly zealous.
Nelda had been a maid in the royal rooms, working with the queen in the preparations for the birth. Had there been something Nuris didn’t understand?
“He will wait as long as he can before he kills me, and in the meantime, I hope to show him that the children are to be saved.”
“Children,” he repeated. “Those young men are as old as we were when this all started.”
She nodded slowly and sighed, then stepped away and stood before the soldier. “I am ready,” she said. And without looking back at Nuris, she was led from the room. As much as he wanted to run after them, drag her back and keep her close, he bolted the door instead. Then he moved out onto the balcony to take in the early morning sunlight and the cold air. She was still the hopeful sister he had grown with. But there was nothing to guarantee her safety, nor that of the young men she claimed were her sons.