The Door Again

Renard came at midnight.

Aldric heard the east entrance open. A low sound. Well oiled hinges. Someone had made sure they would not squeal. He stood in the corridor outside Elara's chamber and he heard the footsteps on the stairs. Light. Confident. The footsteps of a man who had walked this path before and knew where it led.

Renard appeared at the end of the corridor. He saw Aldric and he stopped. For a moment the two men looked at each other. Renard was dressed in dark clothing. No court finery. He had come quietly. Deliberately. He knew the palace and he knew its blind spots and he moved through them with the ease of a man who had done this before. Not just with Elara. The way he moved said practice. Habit.

"Ser Aldric," Renard said. Quietly. Not a whisper. A tone calibrated for corridors.

"My lord."

Renard looked at him and the look was the same as the one at the townhouse. Recognition. Acknowledgment. The look of a man who understood the arrangement and accepted it without judgment. But there was something else in it tonight. Something that had not been there before. A weight. As though Renard was carrying something he did not want to carry.

He walked past Aldric and knocked on the door. Two knocks. A pause. One knock. A code. The door opened and Elara stood there in a robe and her hair was down and she looked at Renard and then she looked past him at Aldric and their eyes met for exactly one second.

In that second she told him everything. Stay. Listen. Do not move. Do not enter. I need you here. I need you to hear this. I need what it does to you.

She closed the door.

Aldric stood against the wall. His hand on his sword. His back straight. His eyes open. And he listened.

It started the way it had before. Voices. Low. The murmur of conversation. The sound of two people who are comfortable with each other settling into a room. He heard glasses clink. Wine being poured. The small domestic sounds of an evening beginning.

Then the conversation stopped. And the other sounds started.

This time was different from the townhouse. The palace walls were thinner than the Thorne townhouse walls. Or maybe the room was arranged differently. Or maybe Elara was less careful. Whatever the reason the sounds were clearer. More distinct. Aldric could hear everything.

He heard Renard's voice. Low. Murmuring things he could not make out. Words spoken against skin. He heard Elara respond. Not words. Sounds. The same sounds she had made when she cut him. The same register. But fuller. More complete. As though with the knife she was reaching for something and with Renard she found it.

He heard the bed. The creak of it. The rhythm of it. He heard her breathing change. Quickening. He heard her say something. A word. A fragment. And Renard's response was a change in pace. Faster. The bed spoke louder. Her breathing spoke louder.

Aldric stood against the wall and his hand was white on his sword and his jaw was locked and his eyes were open and he could not close them and he could not stop hearing and the sounds built and built and he heard her climb toward something and he heard her reach it and the sound she made when she crossed that threshold was the sound he had heard her make against his hand. But louder. Fuller. Given freely to another man.

Then silence. The particular silence that follows. Heavy and satisfied and complete.

Then Renard's voice. Soft. Intimate. Saying things that were meant for one person only. And Elara's laugh. Low. Warm. The laugh of a woman who is happy. Not performing happiness. Actually happy.

That was the worst part. Not the sounds of the act. The sounds after. The tenderness. The ease. The intimacy that Aldric would never have. He had her pain and her hunger and her knife and her teeth. He did not have her laughter. He did not have her ease. He did not have the version of her that existed in the minutes after satisfaction when the walls came down and the mask was off and she was just a woman in a bed with a man she chose.

He stood there and he carried it. The way she had told him to. He carried it in his chest and his stomach and his throat and it was heavy and it was sharp and it did not fit and there was nowhere to put it because she had not given him permission to set it down.

An hour passed. Maybe longer. The voices continued. Low. Intermittent. The conversation of lovers who have nowhere to be. Aldric heard Elara say Renard's name again. Not in passion. In conversation. The way you say the name of someone you know well. Familiar. Easy. The name of a person who belongs in your life in a way that is uncomplicated.

He thought about his own name in her mouth. She had said it twice. Once in the hall at Greyhollow. Once in the room at the townhouse. Both times in moments of extremity. Both times as though the name was something she was not supposed to say. A forbidden word. His name was the forbidden word and Renard's name was the everyday word and the difference between them was the distance between what they were and what they could never be.

The door opened. Renard came out. He was dressed. Composed. He looked at Aldric and this time the look was different. The recognition was still there but the weight was heavier. Something had changed in the room. Something Renard had seen or heard or felt.

He stopped in front of Aldric. Closer than necessary. Close enough that Aldric could smell him. Wine and perfume and her.

"She talks about you," Renard said. Quietly. Meant only for Aldric.

Aldric said nothing.

"In her sleep. After. She does not know she does it. But she says your name."

Renard held his gaze for a moment. Then he walked away. Down the corridor. Down the stairs. Out through the east entrance. Gone.

Aldric stood in the corridor and the words sat in him. She talks about you. In her sleep. She says your name. He had not been given permission to have that information. Renard had given it freely. It was not a gift. It was a weapon. Whether Renard knew it or not the words were a blade and they were now in Aldric's chest and he could not remove them.

The door was still open. Elara stood in it. She wore the robe. Her hair was tangled. Her face was flushed. She looked at him.

"Come in."

He went in. She closed the door. The room smelled of Renard. Of what they had done. Of intimacy that was not his.

She stood in front of him. She looked at his face. She studied it the way she studied his scars. Reading it. Mapping it. Finding the places where the damage was deepest.

"What did he say to you," she asked.

"He said you talk in your sleep."

Her face changed. The mask cracked. Not the slow controlled cracking she allowed. A real crack. Something she had not expected.

"What did he say I say."

"My name."

She stepped back. One step. As though he had pushed her. Her hand went to her mouth and she pressed her fingers against her lips and her eyes were wide and for the first time since he had known her she looked afraid. Not the political fear of the King. A deeper fear. The fear of a person who has been seen in a place they did not know was visible.

"That is not possible," she said. "I do not talk in my sleep."

"He said you do."

"He is lying."

"Renard does not seem like a man who lies about small things."

She turned away from him. She walked to the window and stood with her back to him and her hands were at her sides and her fists were clenched and her shoulders were shaking. Not with rage. With something else. Something that looked like panic.

"He should not have told you that."

"He did."

"It was not his to tell." Her voice was sharp. Anger covering the panic. "What happens in that room is between me and the person in it. What happens in my sleep is not for him to report to my knight."

"He did not report it. He said it as he passed. I do not think he intended it as intelligence."

"Then what did he intend."

Aldric thought about it. About Renard's face. The weight in his eyes. The way he had stopped and spoken quietly. Man to man.

"I think he intended it as a kindness," Aldric said.

She turned from the window. "A kindness."

"To me. He saw me standing outside the door and he knew what it cost and he gave me something to hold."

"You do not need something to hold. You have enough."

"I have your pain. I have your knife. I have your marks. I do not have this. I did not know this existed."

She crossed the room and stood in front of him and her face was the face from the room. Not the mask. Not the lady. The real woman. And she was afraid and she was angry and she was something else that she was trying to bury under both.

"Do not hold onto it," she said. "It does not mean what you think it means."

"What does it mean."

"It means I am tired. It means I dream. It means that in sleep my mind goes where it wants and I cannot control it and it is not a choice. It is not a feeling. It is unconscious noise."

"You say my name in your sleep Elara."

She flinched. As though he had struck her. Her eyes went bright and wet and her mouth tightened and she looked at him and the love was there. The same love he had seen for three seconds in the townhouse. But it was not three seconds this time. It stayed. It held. It sat on her face like something that had been locked in a room and had finally broken the door.

"Do not say that to me," she whispered. "Do not say my name and your name in the same sentence as though they belong together. They do not belong together. I have spent three years making sure they do not belong together. I have cut you and hurt you and sent you outside doors and made you listen to things that should have broken you and I did all of it so that those two names would stay in separate rooms and you will not put them in the same sentence."

"They are already in the same sentence. You put them there. Every time you call me to your room. Every time you put your hand on my chest. Every time you say my name in the dark."

She grabbed him. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him toward her and her face was close and her eyes were wet and her mouth was right there and she was shaking.

"I cannot love you," she said. The words came out broken. Not the controlled statement she had made in Greyhollow. This was a woman trying to convince herself of something she knew was not true. "I cannot love you. Say it back. Say it back to me."

"I cannot love you."

"Louder."

"I cannot love you."

She released him. She stepped back. She was breathing hard. Her hands were trembling. She pressed them together to stop the trembling and it did not work.

"Get out," she said. "Get out of my room."

He went. He closed the door behind him and stood in the corridor and he could hear her on the other side. Not crying. She did not cry. But breathing. Hard. Ragged. The breathing of a person fighting something larger than themselves.

He went to his closet and lay on the bed and he pressed his hand to his chest and felt the five scars and he thought about his name in her sleep. Unconscious. Involuntary. The truth that her body told when her mind could not stop it.

She says your name.

He held it. Not the way she had told him to hold the pain. Not as a burden. As a light. Small and warm and hidden in the dark of his closet in the palace of a king who wanted her dead and he held it against his chest and it was enough. For one night it was enough.