Reader And Raelynx

CHAPTER 31

CAMMON had lived through some wretched days, but none as bad as the ones that followed the king’s death.

There was just so much grief. So much anxiety. Fear and tension and anticipation of violence. It lashed against him from all directions, impossible to block out. He tried to close his mind, concentrate only on the people who desperately mattered to him-but those were some of the people who were suffering most.

In public, Amalie maintained a steely calm that had everyone marveling. She listened closely to advice, made sometimes surprising decisions, exhibited only a decorous grief, and seemed ready to assume the heaviest burdens of government.

But at night, in her room, she broke down and wept so hard that she sometimes threw up whatever meal she had forced herself to eat last. Cammon could calm her-more quickly as the days went on, as he learned the trick of it-but sometimes she didn’t want him to touch her, didn’t want to be comforted.

That was especially true two days after the attack, when they had spent the morning burying bodies. Baryn and his fallen Riders had been interred in a cemetery on the palace grounds not far from the raelynx’s old haunt. Ghosenhall residents had not been allowed past the gates, but thousands of mourners had gathered around the walls, offering prayers and songs and leaving behind small tokens. It was not nearly the grand farewell a king deserved, but they did not have time for pomp. They did not dare parade the princess down the city streets as she followed her father’s casket through weeping crowds. They were forced to keep the ceremony small, private, and secure.

But that had not made it any easier for Amalie. She had been pale but tranquil at the graveside, quiet but functional as she made the day’s decisions, but as soon as she stepped into her room that night, she broke down completely. When Cammon tried to take her in his arms, she pushed him away.

“I want to get it out of me,” she sobbed. “All this sadness. I want to cry it away. Magic isn’t enough. I have to let it go.”

So he let her weep unrestrainedly for half an hour and then, when she was too tired to resist, he lay beside her on the bed and gathered her close. Still sobbing, she turned in his arms and buried her face against his shoulder. She let his hands play across her back, let his magic coax away her frenzy. The grief stayed inside her, black and silver and razor sharp, but he sprinkled it with peace, he blunted down its cruelest edges. He didn’t think he could take it away from her, didn’t think he should, but he could make it bearable, at least long enough for her to sleep.

Tayse, too, endured the funeral day with little outward emotion, though Cammon could tell that the Rider carried a heavy stone of sadness. But Cammon could practically see the marks of Senneth’s hands on Tayse’s heart; if there was healing that could be done there, Senneth was doing it.

Valri’s grief was just as deep and more unexpected. The day after the funeral, Cammon woke in the middle of the night with his stomach so tight he felt he had been dealt a physical blow. For a moment he thought he would be the one to start vomiting, but then he realized the pain was not his own. He kissed Amalie on the cheek and left her sleeping, though the raelynx lifted its head to watch him slip through the door. He need have no fear about leaving Amalie unguarded.

The pain was so strong that, at first, Cammon could not attach a person to it; he just held up his candle and followed the beacon of woe. But he recognized the door to Valri’s room and hesitated before he knocked. So many reasons not to seek out the widowed queen in the middle of the night, in her bedroom, unchaperoned. But then he rapped his knuckles against the wood.

“Valri? It’s Cammon. I know you’re awake. Let me in.”

He could feel her surprise and hesitation, but in a minute she opened the door. She had been crying; her porcelain face was blotched and red, her short black hair wild. “What’s wrong?” she asked in a low voice, raspy with tears.

“I came to see what’s wrong with you,” he replied, and stepped inside without an invitation.

Again she hesitated, then she shut the door and followed him inside. Like Amalie’s, her room was tasteful but luxurious. It was spacious enough to practically be two rooms, with a grouping of furniture on one side creating a sitting area, while the bed and dresser were arranged on the other side. Plush rugs on the floor held back the chill; the curtains and bed linens were colored in soft mauves and pinks and grays. Valri wore a dark green robe over a long nightdress but it was clear she had not yet been to bed.

“I thought you could not sense the Lirrenfolk and their emotions,” she said, sinking down into a well-padded armchair. He took a seat across from her.

“I can sense yours,” he said simply. “And you’re so distressed that you woke me from a sound sleep.”

She laughed shortly. “Now must be an uncomfortable time for a man with magic like yours.”

“It is,” he acknowledged. “I can’t even tell how much grief I might be feeling on my own, because everyone else’s is pressing so hard against me.”

She leaned her head against the back of the chair. “And yet you could still feel mine.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said quietly. “I didn’t realize you loved Baryn so much.”

“I was not in love with him, no, but I loved a great deal about him,” Valri said. “I would have done anything he asked. I believed that while he was in the world, there was goodness and justice and order. Now I’m not sure any of those things still exist.” She flung up a hand as he started to answer. “And Baryn’s death makes me remember Pella’s, and remembering Pella, I remember all the things I left behind to be with her. And so loss piles upon loss and it becomes too much to bear. Do not worry about me, Cammon. I am touched that you heard my despair and came to comfort me, but I am not your burden. I will mourn, and I will recover, and you will need to do nothing for me at all.”

“It’s just that I don’t think you have anyone to comfort you,” he said. “And that makes you even more lost.”

She did not answer for a moment, just surveyed him. Against her red-rimmed lids, her eyes were even more impossibly green. “Who comforted you, when everyone you loved died?” she asked. “I heard the stories you told Amalie. No one cared for you. And yet you survived.”

“I did not survive very well.”

She shook her head slightly. “Do not try to take me on, Cammon. I am too dark for you. I want you to pour all your light and all your goodness into Amalie. I don’t want you to spare any of it for me.”

He smiled slightly. “That’s an odd way to hear oneself described. As being full of light and goodness.”

“You are, though. And that’s what she needs most at this moment.”

“I thought you wanted me to keep a proper distance from her.” Cammon did not particularly want to be discussing Amalie with Valri right now, but the conversation distracted her, eased some of her grief, and so he didn’t try to change the subject.

Valri lifted a hand and began picking at the fabric of the chair where her head rested against the upholstery. “You can’t marry her, of course,” she said, almost absently. “But I think I don’t mind if you love her for a while. She is happy when you are nearby, and fretful when you’re not. There is something about you that gives her peace. And right now, Amalie deserves to hold on to anything that gives her joy.”

“I love her,” Cammon said. “And I know you care for her as much as I do.”

“I love her as if she was my sister’s child. I didn’t think I would. I came here for Pella’s sake, and because my goddess asked me to. I thought I would find Amalie a duty, not a delight.”

“But you’re thinking of leaving her,” he said.

Now she narrowed her eyes and watched him silently a moment. “I don’t think I like how easily you are picking thoughts out of my head,” she said at last. “Clearly you have learned to break through the shroud of Lirren magic.”

“Only yours. But, yes, to some extent I can read your thoughts and feelings. And I know that you are planning to leave Amalie once you think she is settled.”

Valri made a helpless gesture with the hand that had been picking at threads on the chair. “A dowager queen-and such a strange queen as I have been!-is more an encumbrance than an advantage. Amalie will have plenty of other problems to deal with. I am not going to add to her troubles.” He started to speak and she kept talking over his words. “Besides, I have been tied to Ghosenhall too long. I want to see my family. I want to see the land I left behind. I want to see what else I might make of my life, when I might make my life about me.”

“Will you go back to him?”

She gave him an icy look, but he could tell she was unnerved. “Back to whom?”

“That man in the Lirrens who loves you.”

She turned her head away. “Who may still love me.”

“Will you seek him out?”

She was silent a long time, her head still turned to the side. “I will try to discover if his heart is still unclaimed. And if it is…I may look for him. I may travel to wherever he is. I’ll try not to hope he still loves me. But I’ll try to discover if he does.”

“And are you too dark for him?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

That made her smile, barely, thinking about this man she loved. “Oh, he is like winter, in a way. He has a still beauty all his own. Sometimes when I would come to him at night, he would seem to glow like moonlight against snow. I don’t think my darkness would trouble him at all.”

Anyone who could talk like that about a man she hadn’t seen in six years certainly deserved to hope he had waited for her the whole time they had been apart. But. “Don’t leave Amalie too soon. Don’t assume she doesn’t need you, just because so many people are clamoring for her time now,” he said. “But I think, once the war is over, you should definitely go searching for this man.”

“His name is Arrol,” she said. “And I will.”

He straightened in his chair, ready to stand up. “Do you think you will be able to sleep now?”

She turned her head to look at him again, and the expression on her face was both puzzled and sweet. As if she had been surprised by benevolence. “Yes. Thank you. You have done me a great kindness, Cammon.”

“I don’t want you to think you have to be alone, even when you’re sad.”

She watched him rise to his feet but made no move to get up herself. “Then I won’t be. I’ll know you are worrying about me, and that will lift my spirits.”

He wanted to give her a hug, or take her hand, or in some physical way make a farewell; he wanted to infuse just a whisper of his magic into her veins, diffuse just a little of her remaining heaviness. But she merely settled more deeply in her chair, her arms along the armrests, and watched him pick up his candle and shuffle to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned to give her one last look.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Don’t divide your loyalties,” she said softly. “Give Amalie your whole heart.”

“Nobody’s heart is whole,” he said.

“No,” she said, “but don’t squander love.”

He opened the door and stepped into the hall. “I don’t think I ever have,” he said quietly. “I don’t think it was ever wasted.”

She was smiling again as he shut the door between them.