The thought of Athan knifed through the numbness and struck her heart. She had left him there, alone at the tower. She had abandoned him as she had the wind. Now, she stood muted before the image of a king who had become a god. What would history tell of her story, if it remembered her at all?
“His Majesty’s family can trace their lineage back across a thousand years to the reign of Retgar and Faedra,” Aldric explained as he stood with her looking at the window. “My people have no gods, but from the stories, it is easy to see how humans would raise the acts of Retgar to godhood. They say he saved the word from falling into Demroth’s shadow. Some say the blight is the return of that shadow, and that Retgar will return to save the world once more.”
He touched her shoulder with the cold metal finger of his gauntleted hand. “I prefer to place my hopes in the hands of those who are already here.”
Leaving her with that thought, he gently coaxed her from the window and guided her down a hallway lit by lanterns and quickly darkening windows decked on each side with ornately embroidered silken drapes. The farther she stepped from the window, the thicker the fog in her mind became. ‘The dragon skull and the window.’ She repeated the thought, over and over, each time more a struggle than the last. ‘The dragon and the window.’ They had, for reasons unknown, given her moments of clarity despite the collar’s hold. ‘The dragon. The window.’
“Here we are.” Aldric stopped in front of two, arched hardwood doors, each gilded and carved with intricate scroll work. Aldric used a bronze knocker centering one door to announce their arrival then waited.
Barely a breath’s length passed before the door opened. An older man wearing a finely embroidered vest and clothing of silken fabric ushered them inside with the sweep of his hand and a poised bow to Aldric. “Welcome home, sir,” the man said in a soft but firm voice. “The king awaits you in his study.”
“Thank you, Roden.” Aldric stopped them inside a grand foyer and removed his armored gloves, hooking them onto his belt from a grommet stamped into each glove’s wrist. He removed his helmet and Dnara’s cloak, handing them to Roden before letting out a soft sigh at Dnara’s disheveled appearance. “I have half a mind to see you to a bath before presenting you to the king. You still have half the riverbank matted in your hair.” He reached up and plucked a few blades of grass from her hair to make his point.
“The staff have already begun preparing a bath in her room, sir,” Roden said. “It will be waiting for her once she has been introduced to the king.”
“Her room?” Aldric questioned, both eyebrows raising.
“Yes, sir,” Roden confirmed. “His Majesty had us prepare it as soon as your messenger announced her imminent arrival. It’s just down the hall.”
Aldric’s eyebrows raised higher. “Her room is in the Royal Wing?”
“Yes, sir.” If Roden had his own feelings on the matter, he kept mute about it.
“I see.” Aldric’s gaze settled back on Dnara, but his eyes told her how truly unsettled he’d become.
What he could see, she did not know, but it troubled him greatly. She stared back into his eyes, trying once again to push through the haze and latch onto his concern. The collar quickly adapted and ended her fight for the surface before it began, dragging her back down into the endless sea where emotions were out of reach and time meant nothing at all. With a deep inhale, Aldric’s face returned to its stoic mask of command. As the last hope to stray from their current path vanished, he set a hand upon her shoulder and steered her toward the fate she had chosen.
39
A fire snapped and crackled from within its large hearth, its black stone facade dominating one wall of the king’s study. Set on its thick mantel were various statuettes, an embossed golden plate, two trophies bearing miniature jousters on horseback, and an ornate box inlayed with blue sapphires and red fire stones. Above the mantle hung the portrait of an older man and woman, regal in their attire and beautifully rendered. Each bore a crown on their head befitting a king and queen.
Dnara stared into the fire as Aldric stepped into the room with her and Roden quietly closed the double doors behind them. The fire played shadows against the other three walls of the square room, two of them filled floor to ceiling with books and various treasures. The last wall, the one in front of them, backed a mahogany desk with a leaded window and two glass-inlayed doors leading out to a balcony beyond. The doors were open to the night, and on the balcony stood two figures, their silhouettes cast in the moon’s gentle sheen as they looked out into the sea cliffs below.
The sound of crashing waves carried into the room, pulling Dnara’s attention from the fire to the open glass door. Trapped beneath the haze, she could almost smell the salted air, but the blurred moonlight masked the figures on the balcony instead of defining their shapes, and she could feel no wind from the open door despite the rippling curtains flanking the window. As she stared onward into nothing, tired and longing for sleep, the tallest of the two figures raised up from its conversation with the other and looked into the room. The starstone at the back of her neck pulsed with strange, new vibrations, and she felt herself pulled towards the tall figure despite her body not moving a single inch.
Aldric stood poised beside her, back straight
