Renard

Renard came the next night. Late. Through the back entrance that Lady Thorne had unlocked. He moved through the house quietly and he entered the sitting room and he saw Elara and he stopped.

He looked at her the way you look at a person you thought you knew and have discovered you did not. She was dressed in dark clothing. Her hair was pulled back. Her face was thin and sharp and the hollows in her cheeks made her look older and harder and the dress she wore was clean but the stains from the night before had not fully come out and there were faint brown marks on the fabric that could have been rust or dirt or blood and Renard looked at them and he knew what they were.

"You are out," he said.

"I am out."

"The King does not know."

"The King will know soon enough. Sit down."

Renard sat. Aldric stood by the door. Renard looked at him and then looked back at Elara and he did not ask why Aldric was there. He understood the arrangement. He had always understood it.

"I need you to do something for me," Elara said.

"What."

"I need access to the King's chambers. Not the public rooms. His private rooms. The rooms where he sleeps."

Renard's face changed. The sharp features went still. "Why."

"Because I am going to kill him."

The room went quiet. The fire crackled. The city outside was muffled by the walls. Renard looked at Elara and he did not speak for a long time.

"You have lost your mind," he said.

"No. I found it. The tower was clarifying. I told you. I am clearer now than I have ever been."

"Killing the King is not clarity. It is suicide."

"Being the King's prisoner is suicide. Being the King's sister is suicide. Everything about my existence is suicide as long as he is alive. The only question is whether I die on his terms or mine."

Renard stood. He paced. His hands went through his hair and he moved with the restlessness of a man whose calculations have just been disrupted.

"I have been feeding you information. That is one thing. Information is manageable. Deniable. But this. This is regicide. If I help you with this there is no going back. There is no story I can tell. There is no angle I can play."

"You are already past the angle. My brother knows about your visits. He found out. That is why he moved me to the tower. When he finds out I am free he will come for you. You know this."

Renard stopped pacing. "He knows."

"He knows. Your fondness for me was your weakness and he found it and now you are exposed. You have two choices. You can run. Leave the capital. Leave the country. Hope he does not send men after you. Or you can stay and help me end this and when it is done you will be the man who put the rightful heir on the throne and the rightful heir will remember who stood beside her."

"The rightful heir. You mean yourself."

"I mean myself."

Renard looked at her. He looked at Aldric. He looked at the room and the fire and the stains on her dress.

"You are not the same woman," he said.

"No. I am not."

"The tower changed you."

"The tower showed me what I was always becoming. You knew what I was Renard. You knew before the tower. You knew when you came to my chamber and you saw the way I looked at him." She gestured at Aldric without looking at him. "You knew what I was and you wanted me anyway and that is your weakness and it is also your value. Because a man who wants something will do anything to keep it and I am the thing you want and I am telling you that the only way to keep me is to help me survive."

Renard was quiet for a long time. The fire burned. The house was silent around them.

"What do you need," he said.

"The King's private chambers. The lock. The guard rotation. The times when he is alone."

"He is never alone. He sleeps with two guards outside his door and one inside."

"Then I need to know when the inside guard steps out."

"He steps out at the changing of the watch. Midnight. For approximately three minutes while he relieves himself."

"Three minutes."

"Three minutes."

"That is enough."

Elara stood. She walked to Renard and she stood in front of him and she put her hand on his chest. Over his heart. The same gesture she used with Aldric. The same placement. But the meaning was different. With Aldric it was ownership. With Renard it was commerce.

"Tomorrow night," she said. "I need you to make sure the inside guard is delayed. Not absent. Delayed. Five minutes instead of three. That is all."

"How."

"You are a resourceful man. Find a way."

She moved closer. Her hand went from his chest to his face. She touched his jaw. She looked at him and her face held the softness that Aldric had seen at the feast. The warmth. The recognition. The mask she wore for Renard. But now he could see through it because he knew what was behind it. Nothing. The mask was a mask. There was nothing behind it except calculation.

"Help me," she said. Her voice was low. Warm. The voice she used in bedrooms. "Help me and I will be yours."

Renard looked at her and he was lost. He had been lost since before the tower. Since before Greyhollow. Since the first time she had let him touch her. He was a man who had been claimed by a woman who did not want him and he would do anything she asked because the alternative was not being near her and not being near her was not survivable.

"Tomorrow night," he said. "I will delay the guard."

She leaned forward and kissed him. On the mouth. Brief. A seal on a contract. Renard closed his eyes and when she pulled back his face was raw and open and he looked like a man who had just been given communion.

"Go," she said. "Go and do what I have asked and tomorrow night this ends."

Renard left. The door closed behind him. The house was quiet.

Elara stood by the fire and her face was not the face she had shown Renard. It was the other face. The real face. The one from the tower. Cold. Clear. Hungry.

"He will do it," she said.

"He loves you," Aldric said.

"He loves what I let him have. That is not the same thing."

"It is the same thing to him."

"That is his problem."

She turned to Aldric. She looked at him and her face changed. Not to warmth. Not to the mask. To something else. The thing that was between them. The thing that was not love and was not hunger and was not devotion but was all of those things compressed into a single point.

"Come here," she said.

He went to her. She put her hands on his chest. On the scars. On the new cuts that were still healing. She pressed them and he tensed and her breathing changed.

"Tomorrow night I am going to kill my brother," she said. "And tonight I need to feel something that is not the plan and the calculation and the cold. I need to feel you. I need your pain and your blood and your obedience because those are the only things that are real and tomorrow everything becomes theater again and I need to store something real before that happens."

"Elara."

"Take off your shirt."

He took it off. The cuts from the night before were scabbed. The older scars were white lines. She looked at all of them. The map of what she had done to him. The territory she had claimed.

She took the knife from the table. The same knife. She held it and she looked at him and her eyes were the eyes from the tower. Hungry and clear and uncontained.

"I am going to mark you one more time," she said. "Tonight. The last mark. The one that matters."

She pressed the blade to his chest. Over his heart. Not across. Not the parallel lines of before. A different shape. She cut slowly. Deliberately. Not the ragged hungry cuts of the night before. This was controlled. Precise. The craftsman was back. The woman who had built the architecture of pain in Greyhollow had returned and she was building something final.

The pain was enormous. The cut was deep. Deeper than any she had made before. She was cutting into the muscle beneath the skin and the blood came freely and ran down his chest and his body shook and she did not stop. She carved with the focus of a woman writing a letter she has been composing for years. Each movement of the blade was a word. Each cut was a sentence. And the sentence said mine.

When she finished she set the knife down and she looked at what she had made. A shape. Cut into his chest over his heart. A letter. An E. Her initial. Carved into his flesh. Permanent. Inescapable. Not a scar that could be interpreted or mistaken for an accident. A name. Her name. On his body. Forever.

She put her mouth on it. On the letter. On the wound. She pressed her lips against the cut and the blood filled her mouth and she swallowed and her body shuddered and the sound she made was the sound of a woman who had taken something final. Something that could not be escalated. Something that was the last step.

She pressed against him and her hands went to his back and her nails drew blood and her body moved against his and she was taking everything. All of it. Not just his pain. His existence. She was consuming him. Drawing him into herself through the wound she had made and the blood she was drinking and the sounds she was making and her body was pressed against his and she was shaking and she crossed the threshold and the sound she made was loud and raw and it filled the room and it filled him and when it was over she held onto him and did not let go.

"You are mine," she whispered against his chest. Against the letter. Against the blood. "You are mine and tomorrow I am going to do what needs to be done and you are going to stand beside me and when it is over the world will be different and you will still be mine and that is the only thing that will not change."

"Yes."

"Say my name."

"Elara."

"Again."

"Elara."

She held him. He held her. The blood was between them. On both of them. The letter on his chest pressed against her dress and the blood soaked through and they stood there in the firelight and they were one thing. Not two. One. Bound by the cut and the blood and the oath and the thing that had no name.

She pulled back. She looked at his chest. At the letter. At her name written in his flesh.

"Clean it," she said. "Do not let it close. I want it to scar deep. I want it to be the first thing anyone sees when you take off your shirt. I want it to be the last thing you forget."

She walked away from him. She sat at the desk. She picked up the pen.

"Go to your room. Rest. Tomorrow night we end this."

He went. He cleaned the wound. He looked at it in the mirror. The letter E. Cut deep into his chest over his heart. Her name. Her mark. The final mark.

He lay on the bed and he pressed his hand over the letter and the pain was enormous and under the pain was the thing that would not die and the thing said yes. Yes to all of it. Yes to the knife and the blood and the tower and the plan and the killing. Yes to whatever came after. Because she had asked and she was his and he was hers and the letter on his chest said so and the letter was permanent and the permanence was the only truth he had.

He slept. The sleep was dark and deep and in the dark he dreamed of her face and the knife and the letter and the sound she had made and the sound was the sound of a woman who had taken everything and was still hungry and would always be hungry and he was the only thing that fed her and he would feed her until there was nothing left.

He slept and the night passed and tomorrow came.