The Palace

They moved into the palace on a Tuesday. The east wing quarters were larger than the rooms at the Thorne townhouse. A sitting room. A bedchamber for Elara. A small room for her servant. A closet that had been converted to a sleeping space for Aldric. It was barely large enough for a bed and armor rack but it had a door and a lock and it was ten paces from her chamber.

Ten paces. Not a floor and a staircase. Ten paces and a single door.

The proximity was deliberate. Aldric understood that immediately. The King had placed him close enough to hear everything and far enough to do nothing. Close enough to be a constant presence. Far enough to be a constant reminder of what he was not.

The first night in the palace Elara did not summon him. She sent her servant to tell him that she was retiring and that he was to stand guard in the corridor from the tenth bell until midnight. He stood in the corridor and he listened to the palace settle around him. The sounds were different from Greyhollow. No wind in the Ashwood. No river. Instead there were footsteps on stone. Distant voices. The clink of chains. The palace was alive in a way that Greyhollow had never been. It breathed and moved and watched.

At midnight he went to his closet and lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling ten inches from his face and listened to the silence on the other side of the wall. Her silence. She was there. Ten paces away. Sleeping or not sleeping. Breathing or not breathing. He pressed his hand against the wall and the wall was warm and on the other side was the woman who owned him and he could not reach her.

The first week in the palace was a study in restraint. Elara played the returning princess with flawless precision. She attended the King's levée each morning. She walked the gardens with courtiers. She sat at the King's side at meals. She was warm and gracious and devoted to her brother and the court adored her.

Aldric stood behind her chair at meals and at the edge of rooms during audiences and in doorways during receptions. He was invisible. He was furniture. He did not look at her. He did not signal her. He gave her nothing that the King's eyes could read.

Aldous watched. Always. But he found nothing. Elara gave him nothing to find. The performance was perfect and the perfection was armor and behind the armor the real woman existed only in scars on a knight's body and in the memory of a room that no longer existed.

On the fourth day Renard appeared at the palace. He arrived for a formal audience with the King and he saw Elara in the hall and he bowed and he kissed her hand and his eyes did the thing they always did. The lingering. The warmth. The history. And Elara responded the way she always did. With the soft smile. The ease. The recognition.

Aldric watched from his post and the jealousy moved in him like a living thing. It had changed since the night at the townhouse. It was no longer sharp and immediate. It was slower. Deeper. It had settled into his bones the way the cold had settled into the stone of the palace. It was not the fire of wanting. It was the ice of knowing. Knowing that Renard would come to her room again. Knowing that he would stand outside the door again. Knowing that she would summon him afterward and he would go and she would look at him with that compound expression that was guilt and pleasure and cruelty all at once.

On the sixth night she summoned him. Not to her bedchamber. To a small sitting room attached to her quarters. A room with a door that locked and a fire and no windows. A room that was not the hall but was close enough.

He entered and she was standing by the fire and she looked at him and the mask came off and underneath it was the woman. His woman. The one with the knife.

"Close the door," she said.

He closed it.

"I cannot do what I did before," she said. "Not here. The walls are too thin. The servants are too close. If I cut you the sound would carry and the blood would stain the sheets and the servants would talk."

"I understand."

"But I need something. I need you. I need what we had in the room. Even a piece of it. Even a shadow of it."

She came to him and put her hands on his chest. Over the shirt. Over the scars beneath. She pressed and she could not feel them through the fabric but she knew they were there.

"Take off your shirt," she said.

He did. She looked at the scars. Five lines. She touched each one with her finger. Tracing. Remembering. Her breathing changed. The hunger was there but it was contained. Held back by the walls of the palace and the proximity of the King's ears.

"I cannot cut you," she said. "But I can touch you. I can touch the marks I have already made. I can remember what it felt like to make them."

She leaned forward and put her mouth on the first scar. The oldest. She kissed it. Gently. Not biting. Not hurting. Just her lips on the raised tissue and the warmth of her mouth on his skin and the gentleness was worse than the knife because the knife was what they were and the gentleness was what they could never be.

She moved to the second scar. The third. The fourth. The fifth. The deepest. She kissed each one and her hands held his sides and her breathing was unsteady and her body was close and warm and he stood very still and let her mouth move over his body and he did not touch her because she had not told him to.

She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet. Her lips were slightly parted. Her face held the thing he had seen for three seconds in the room at the townhouse. The love. The naked helpless terrible love that she could not stop and could not show and could not speak.

"Put your hand on me," she said.

He raised his hand and placed it on her shoulder. She shook her head.

"Not there."

She took his hand and placed it on her chest. Over her heart. The way she had done the very first time in the hall at Greyhollow. He felt her heartbeat. Fast. Strong. Alive.

"Feel that," she said. "That is what you do to me. Not the pain. Not the blood. You. The fact of you. The man who stands outside doors and does not move. The man who kneels on stone and does not break. The man who lets me cut him and comes back the next day and drills my men. That is what makes my heart do this. And I cannot do anything about it and I cannot say it and I cannot show it and the only place it can exist is under your hand in a room with no windows."

He stood with his hand on her heart and her eyes on his and the fire behind her and the palace around them and the King somewhere in it watching and planning and the walls thin and the servants listening and none of it mattered. None of it existed. There was only this. Her heart under his hand. Her eyes on his. The silence that was not silence but was something louder than words.

"I am going to ask you for something," she said. "And you are going to say yes because you always say yes and that is what you are and I am using that and I know I am using it and I cannot stop."

"Ask."

"Renard is coming to the palace tomorrow night. He has arranged access through the east entrance. He will come to my chamber."

The hand on her heart did not move. The fingers did not tighten. The body did not tense. He stood very still and he held her heart under his hand and he felt it beating and he did not remove his hand.

"You want me to stand outside the door," he said.

"I want you to stand outside the door. And I want you to listen. And I want you to feel what you feel and I want to know that you are feeling it. Because when I am with him I will think about you outside. I will think about what it is doing to you. And it will make what happens in that room different. It will make it mean something it would not otherwise mean."

She was telling him that his pain was part of her pleasure. That the act with Renard was not complete without Aldric's suffering. That he was not a side effect of her needs. He was a component.

"Yes," he said.

She closed her eyes. Her heart beat under his hand. "You will not move."

"I will not move."

"You will not enter."

"I will not enter."

"And after. When he is gone. You will come in. And you will stand where you are standing now. And I will look at you and I will see what it cost you and that will be what I need. Not the act itself. The cost."

"I understand."

She opened her eyes. She took his hand from her chest and held it. His fingers were warm from her body. She raised his hand to her mouth and pressed his knuckles against her lips. Not a kiss. A press. A holding.

"Tomorrow night," she said.

"Tomorrow night."

She released his hand. "Go. Sleep if you can."

He went to his closet and lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and tomorrow night was coming and he could not stop it and he did not want to stop it because she had asked and she needed and he was what she needed and being needed was the closest thing to being loved that he would ever have.

He pressed his hand to his chest. The five scars. Her map. Her territory. He traced each one and he thought about tomorrow night and the door and the sounds and the morning after and he felt the jealousy already. Pre-emptive. A dark slow tide that rose in his chest and filled the spaces between his ribs and pressed against his lungs.

He breathed through it. The way you breathe through pain. Not because it helps. Because it is all you can do.

He breathed and he waited and the palace breathed around him and somewhere in it the King was breathing too and somewhere in the city Renard was breathing and all of them were breathing the same air in the same night and only one of them knew what tomorrow would bring and only one of them had chosen it and only one of them had no choice and that was the design and that was the cost and that was the fealty.