The Letter

A week passed. She did not summon him to the hall again. She gave him tasks and he did them. She spoke to him in the normal voice of a lady giving orders to her knight and he responded in the normal voice of a knight receiving them. The men did not notice anything different. Briwer did not notice anything different. The servants did not notice anything different. The world outside the hall was ordinary and the world inside the hall was something else and the two worlds existed on top of each other separated by a door and a shutter and a silence.

Aldric wore a high collar as she had instructed. The bite mark on his neck was hidden. The cuts on his chest were hidden beneath his gambeson. He trained the men and he walked the walls and he carried messages and he inspected the stores and he did everything he was supposed to do and inside him the marks she had made pulsed with every heartbeat.

On the eighth day a letter arrived. Not from Caswell. From the south. The seal was one Aldric did not recognize. A crown and a tree. The paper was heavy and expensive and the handwriting was sharp and precise. Elara read it in her study with the door closed and when she came out her face was different. Not the controlled mask she wore every day. Something tighter. More careful. Like a person walking on ice who knows it is thinning.

She found Aldric in the courtyard drilling the men. She stood at the edge of the yard and watched him for a moment and then she said "My chambers. Now" and she turned and walked inside.

He followed. He climbed the stairs and knocked on her door and she said "Enter" and he did.

She was standing by the window with the letter in her hand. The window faced south. She was looking out at the Ashwood and beyond it at the road that led to the capital and beyond that at whatever the letter contained.

"Close the door."

He closed it.

"I need to tell you something. And after I tell you you are going to have a reaction and I need you to understand that your reaction is irrelevant. Not because it does not matter to me. Because it cannot matter. Do you understand the difference."

"I am not sure my lady."

"It means that what I am about to tell you will make you feel things and I see those things and they are real but they cannot change what is. They cannot change who I am or what I have done or what is coming. You can feel them. I will not stop you from feeling them. But you will not act on them. You will not speak of them. You will not let them touch your duty. Is that clear."

"It is clear."

She held up the letter. "This is from the royal household. From the Queen's own hand. It summons me to the capital. I am to present myself within the month."

He waited. She had said this would make him feel things. He did not yet know why.

"The letter addresses me as Lady Elara of Greyhollow. That is the name I have used for three years. That is the name you know. It is not my name."

The room was very quiet. The fire popped. Outside a bird called.

"My name is Elara Aldermere. I am the daughter of King Aldous the Third. I am the sister of King Aldous the Fourth who sits the throne now. I am a princess of the realm and I have been hiding in Greyhollow for three years because my brother wants me dead."

He stood very still. The information moved through him like cold water. A princess. Not a minor lady of a minor house. A princess. The sister of the king. And the king wanted her dead.

"The previous lord of Greyhollow was loyal to my father. When my father died and my brother took the throne I fled. Lord Moreton took me in and gave me Greyhollow and he died and I stayed. I have been here ever since. The crown did not know where I was. Until now apparently."

She looked at him. "You were sent to me by the household. Maren handled the assignment. Maren is my brother's man. He has been since before my father died. He sent you here because my brother found out where I am and he wanted someone here. Someone loyal to the crown. Someone who would report back."

The cold water reached his stomach. "I was not told that."

"I know you were not. You were told you were being assigned to a minor lady. You were not told she was a princess. You were not told you were being placed as a spy."

"I would not have come if I had known."

"I know that too. That is why they did not tell you." She set the letter on the desk. "The question now is what you do with this information. You can ride south and report to Maren that you have found the princess and he will send men. Or you can stay."

"I will stay."

She looked at him and the tightness in her face shifted. Just slightly. "You say that quickly."

"Because there is nothing to consider. I swore my sword to you. Not to a lady. To you. Whatever your name is. Whatever your title is. You are the one I serve."

"Even knowing that serving me may mean your death."

"It has always meant that. Every knight's service means that."

She turned away from him. She walked to the bed and sat on the edge of it and her hands were in her lap and for the first time since he had known her she looked tired. Not the controlled fatigue of someone who manages their energy. Actually tired. The kind of tired that lives in the bones.

"I have used you," she said. "I have used you since the day you arrived. I tested you and I shaped you and I took from you and I did it all knowing that you were sent here as a blade against me. And you did not know. And I did not tell you."

"I know now."

"And you still say you will stay."

"I will stay."

She looked at him from across the room. She sat on the edge of her bed in her plain dark dress with her hair down and her face open in a way he had never seen it and she was not Lady Elara of Greyhollow. She was a princess in hiding and she was afraid and she was alone and she had used him and hurt him and marked him and she was still alone.

"Come here," she said.

He crossed the room and stood before her. She reached up and pulled his collar aside and looked at the bite mark. It had healed into a scar. A permanent scar on his neck in the shape of her teeth. She ran her finger over it.

"I put this on you," she said. "I put this on you because I wanted to own something. I wanted to take something that was real and make it mine. And I chose you because you let me. Because you are the kind of man who lets me. And that is not a good thing. For either of us."

"I know."

"Do you." She pulled him down. Not gently. She gripped the back of his neck and pulled him down to his knees in front of her. She held him there with her hand on his neck and her face close and her eyes searching his.

"I am going to tell you something and I need you to hear it. I need you to feel it. Not for me. For you. Because you deserve to know what you are to me even if I can never say it in the way you want."

She pressed her forehead against his. Her skin was warm. Her breathing was uneven. He could feel her whole body through the contact point. The small warm place where her forehead met his.

"You are not a tool to me," she said. "You are not a weapon. You are not a plaything. You are not a spy I turned. You are the only person in three years who has looked at me and seen me and not flinched. You took a knife because I asked you to. You bled because I wanted you to. You knelt on cold stone and you let me break you and you came back the next day and you drilled my men and you guarded my walls and you never once asked for anything in return. No one has ever given me that. No one."

Her hand tightened on the back of his neck. Her nails pressed into the muscle.

"But I cannot love you. I cannot love you because if I love you then I have something to lose and I have spent three years making sure I have nothing to lose because losing things is what gets people like me killed. And I cannot tell you that I love you and I cannot show you that I love you and I cannot let you love me because all of those things are threads and threads are what people pull when they want to unravel you. Do you understand."

He understood. He understood in the way you understand that winter is coming. Not because someone tells you. Because you can feel it in the air.

"I understand."

"I will still use you. I will still hurt you. I will still take from you. That will not stop. It may get worse. Because I am going to the capital and I am walking into my brother's house and I need you beside me and I need you broken enough to follow me anywhere and I need you whole enough to fight for me when it comes to that. And I do not know how to make you both of those things at the same time. But I am going to try. And you are going to let me. Because that is what you are."

"Yes."

She released him. She stood and he stayed on his knees and she walked to the window and looked out at the south road again.

"We leave in two weeks. Prepare the keep for absence. Briwer will hold Greyhollow in our absence. You will ride with me. You will be my personal guard and nothing else. In the capital you will not be my lover. You will not be my friend. You will be a knight who serves a lady of the court. You will stand at my door and you will guard my person and you will watch me do things that will hurt you and you will say nothing."

"My lady."

"And when it is over. When we are alone. I will give you what I can. And it will not be enough. And you will take it. And that is all there is."

She did not turn around. He knelt on the floor of her chamber and looked at her back and the window and the road beyond and he knew that everything was about to change. That the small world of Greyhollow with its walls and its hall and its dark nights was ending. That the capital was coming for them and it would bring with it things far worse than knives and rope.

He stood. He bowed to her back. He left the room and closed the door and went to his own room and sat on the bed and pressed his fingers to the scar on his neck and the scars on his chest and he felt her there. In the marks. In the pain. In the words she had said.

I cannot love you.

He said those words to himself in the dark. He said them the way he had said the other words. You do not get to have me. Over and over until they lost meaning and then again until they got it back.

I cannot love you.

He believed her. That was the worst part. He believed that she could not. And he believed that she did. And both of those things were true at the same time and neither of them could be spoken and neither of them could be acted upon and they sat in the room between them like a fire that could not be lit and could not go out.