Exile. Part 9

Another death. Aurelia had known, of course, that Elise's husband had died right after Melony's birth. Why had it not occurred to her to question the cause?

"I threatened the king," her mother said, trying to rethread her needle. "Like an animal in a corner, I threatened him, and then I ran."

"But ... how?" Aurelia asked. "How did you know to come here?"

The thread dropped, and her mother's barren needle plucked at the fabric. "His Lordship was not, at the time, so disinclined to come to court. Though, due to the vast distance, his visits were ... notable."

Aurelia's eyebrows rose. Notable how? Had Lord Lester made romantic advances toward the queen?

The idea was not, when she thought about it, all that absurd. His Lordship was boisterous, opinionated, and sometimes rash. He seemed to care little for the rules and strictures of society, though this relaxed perspective did not apply, in any way, to his view of his wife's safety. If there was one thing Aurelia could not doubt about her stepfather, it was that he truly loved her mother. And he had done all he could to protect her. Even, Aurelia realized now, from his knowledge of the threats to her own daughter's life. Lord Lester might keep careful watch, through covert means, on the nation's politics, but Lady Margaret was clearly oblivious.

"Tyralt owes the Lester family a great deal," Aurelia's mother continued. "All the land between the northern Asyan and the Geordian Desert was once theirs, you know. It was His Lordship's father who made the decision to forego much of the t.i.tle and open his lands for settlement."

Aurelia nodded. She had studied the history of the frontier very well. "Yes, I know."

"Lord Lester had come to your brother's funeral. At the time, he offered his estate as a place of solace if I ever required it." Her mother's eyes peered out the window, past the garden, and into the tangled trees. "It was as far from the palace as I could hire a carriage to take me. ... As far away," her mother whispered, "as I could hide." The needle lay still.

Now was the time for the hardest question, the one Aurelia had avoided. "But I was only a child. Why didn't you take me with you?" She closed her eyes, afraid of seeing the emptiness remain on her mother's face.

"I was afraid. I didn't know anything about this place ... or if I would be able to stay here. I knew I couldn't go home to the Valshone. By leaving my position, I had disgraced my father. I only had a vague idea that I must flee. I could not take you with me. I didn't know if I would survive."

A stark image painted itself in Aurelia's mind, her mother riding through the shadows of the Asyan, her fingers gripping the side of her carriage, lest anyone ask it to stop-such as the king's guards, waiting to execute her on the road.

Flinching, Aurelia opened her eyes. There was no point in pursuing the topic, questioning if her mother had ever been concerned for her daughter's safety at the palace. Or why that concern was any less valid than the rest. Aurelia already knew the answer: fear. Her mother was driven by, defined by, and living in fear.

Lady Margaret again lifted the needle, though there was no thread on it. "Even after I was here, I could not trust anyone." She took a st.i.tch. "At times ... at times, I wanted to end my life. I had failed at everything I was raised to do, and I didn't have any dreams beyond that."

Again Aurelia's stomach turned. The story was too familiar. The upbringing to become queen. The disillusionment. Lack of power. Flight.

Her mother's hand shook, and she pierced her own skin with the needle. "I can't ever feel safe again." Blood welled between her ring and middle finger.

Aurelia reached toward the injured hand. Was this what lay ahead for herself? This abject terror of everything beyond the Fortress? Or even a single room? "Lord Lester-" Aurelia whispered, "do you love him?" Because maybe if her mother had love here, then her life was not entirely desolate.

"I don't know." Lady Margaret pulled her hand beyond her daughter's reach. The blood continued to swell. She could easily have wiped it off, but instead she waited, letting the bead fall and spread in a bright red stain upon the embroidered bird's throat. "He loves me. Isn't that enough?"

No, Aurelia thought as she descended the stairs, the sick feeling plunging deeper in her stomach with every step. She hurried down the hallway to the yellow room, thrust in the latch, and shoved open the door.

To see Daria, standing like a dark omen, already there.

"I-I'm sorry," Daria stuttered. "I didn't mean to intrude."

She was always intruding. Always pushing boundaries. Aurelia had not been to the cottage for days, maybe a week, for that exact reason. When had Daria become so a.s.sertive?

Silence filled the room.

"But this is urgent," Daria said, thrusting a bundle of cloth at her. "They're . . . they're my old riding clothes. I know yours were ruined."

Ruined? There was nothing urgent about riding clothes. Aurelia had not ridden since ... Bianca. The brutal last image of her bleeding horse jabbed Aurelia in her gut. "Please go." She felt the bile rising in her throat. She was about to be ill. "Just go, Daria."

The other girl stood, stubbornly. "Robert is leaving."

Aurelia threw up, right onto that borrowed green dress.

Her chest felt like it was about to explode. She gagged, and her eyes watered. She tried, futilely, to undo the gown. The b.u.t.tons were down the back.

Then Daria was there, releasing the b.u.t.tons, ripping at the laces of the corset, helping her friend step free of the yards of reeking fabric, then wrapping up the entire pile and depositing it outside the door.

In her shift, Aurelia stumbled to the washbasin.

And Daria was there too, pouring a gla.s.s, and holding the basin while Aurelia flushed the sickness from her mouth and spit out the remnants.

Finally there was air. She could almost breathe. Enough to say, "No."

Her friend smoothed back her hair.

Aurelia tugged away.

"No," she repeated. "Robert can't be leaving. I saw him"-she glanced out at the darkening sky-"only a few hours ago." She had been up in her mother's room far longer than she had realized.

"Yes. I know." Daria held out the riding skirt, then helped her put it on. "Thomas overheard your conversation with Robert."

Aurelia blinked. She ought to react to that, but how could she? There was too much to comprehend.

Her friend's hand closed upon hers. "Robert is leaving the estate, Aurelia. Tonight. After dark."

Reality emptied as Aurelia's stomach already had. "No," she found herself saying, without logic. "He didn't say-"

"He discussed it with Thomas."

Thomas?! She flung away Daria's hand. "He hasn't discussed it with me."

Her friend didn't flinch, instead holding out the smock to go with the skirt. "It should not come as a terrific surprise."

Perhaps not. The cold realization gusted through Aurelia as she dressed. Over the past five weeks, Robert had become more and more distant. That was why she had gone running down to the stables today. She had needed the excuse in order to see him.

But how could he think of leaving without telling me? She tried to say the words aloud, and they came out, "How could he leave without me?"

"Do you want to go?"

"Yes." Well, there it was. The truth.

"Then go." Daria crossed the room and opened the wardrobe. "Just"-she paused-"don't hurt him, Aurelia."

Hurt him? Aurelia felt numb. "What do you mean?"

Her friend returned from the wardrobe with wool stockings and Aurelia's battered riding boots. She did not release them. "You must know."

Know what? "Daria." Aurelia's tone was threatening.

"He's in love with you."

The world stopped. For one long, outrageous moment, Aurelia let herself consider the statement. He had kissed her. Once. And saved her life. More than once.

But the idea that he could be in love with her did not-could not be true. "That's nonsense." She had tried to let Robert know she wanted to spend time alone with him on the way to Sterling. And he had rejected her. He was still rejecting her.

Daria handed her the stockings. "Honestly, Aurelia. There's nothing wrong with being in love."

Aurelia was not at all certain of that. What had love ever done for the people she knew? She thought of Lord Lester's unrequited devotion to a woman who never left her room. The king's blind attraction to Elise, a woman who might have murdered her first husband. And Melony's twisted pa.s.sion, which had turned Chris into a killer. And a corpse.

"I don't expect love, Daria. It's not in my destiny."

"Why not?" Her friend crouched down as though to help put on the boots. "You chose to leave the palace," she pointed out. "You refused to marry the man your father wanted. Why can't you marry for love?"

For a ridiculous half-moment, Aurelia let herself picture the image her friend had just suggested: a life in a cabin on the frontier with a husband, their children running around them, wheat fields in the background, the sunlight glowing. The vision was so thin, Aurelia could see through it.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the boots and jammed them onto her feet.

Marriage was not happily ever after. Even Daria's. Aurelia was no fool. She knew that Thomas's real role at the palace had been to inform upon her own status, and that of the king, to Lord Lester. What must it have been like for Daria to realize that her husband had initially been interested in her only as a means for reconnaissance? And how must Daria have felt when she arrived at her husband's home and learned he had been keeping so many secrets?

"If not for love, then why do you want to go?" Daria asked.

Aurelia tightened the laces of her boots. "It's my expedition."

"I don't think the expedition is that important," her friend replied.

It was though. Aurelia faced the reality she had been avoiding for the past five weeks. And yet even without speaking about her broken dream, the need for the expedition and its true purpose-to learn more about her people-had only become more obvious. She had known nothing about the inhabitants of the Asyan and very little to match her mother's description of the Valshone. And those were only two regions of Tyralt. She needed to complete this journey.

But she did not have time to explain that to her friend. Now was the time to say good-bye.

"Thank you ... Daria." Aurelia's eyes clouded. "Thank you for coming here tonight and telling me. I'm sorry things haven't been ... easier between us."

Her friend's fingers threaded through her own. "I know. But you have been through so much in the past two months, more, I'm sure, than I know. How could I have expected you to stay the same?"

Aurelia blinked. They had both changed.

"You are so strong," her friend continued.

How could she have noticed the change and still think Aurelia was strong?

Daria swung her friend's hands. "Try not to be too hard on Robert tonight," she said. "You know he honestly thinks he is making the best choice to protect you."

"He doesn't love me, Daria. If he did, he wouldn't be planning on leaving me now."

"If he didn't, he would have left for the frontier two months ago." Daria enfolded her in an embrace. She was still a true friend, Aurelia realized. The type to challenge a crown princess who had just received the shock of her life. Or to enter a room without permission so that her friend would not be irreparably injured by someone else's disappearance. Aurelia returned the embrace.

And before she had the chance to wipe the tears from her eyes, Daria was gone.

The light outside the window was failing, and Aurelia could not bear another good-bye.

But was it fair, she asked herself, to leave her mother like this?

She thought about the woman up in the Blue Room. The woman who had locked herself off from her entire past and had built an almost sacred refuge to keep it away, but then, piece by fragile piece, had allowed Aurelia in. Yet, in all that time between them, there had been no laughter. No touch. No tears, except for that first heart-wrenching day.

I didn't know if I could survive ever having to say good-bye.

Yes, Aurelia realized. In fact, this was the only way, for either of them.

Nothing could be gained by a return to that room. She had already learned everything she could from this encounter, and her mother was too fragile to withstand such a personal departure. There would be no warm embrace between them, no true relationship, no future. Because her mother was never going to leave that room. And Aurelia was. She had survived. And somehow, in the process, the chasm within her own chest had healed, if not filled. Her mother's emptiness and fear were not her daughter's fault. And they held no power over her.

Robert found Aurelia, fast asleep, on the back of his horse. Impossible. At first, he thought she was an illusion, conjured by his own exhausted mind and the shudder of the lantern's glow against the stables' pitch-colored night. It was late. Hours and hours later than he would have chosen to leave-hours of agonizing over whether he was making the right choice, whether, after all the extra time, he would have the strength. But Thomas had insisted Robert wait until word of his departure had cleared the chain of command-a delay that had taken an eternity. And most of his sanity. So it did not seem all that strange that now he was having delusions.

You promised, the vision seemed to say.

"She's safe here," he tried to argue. But he had promised, before the flames that night, promised her he would not leave her. And it didn't matter that she had been asleep, as the vision was now, resting with her arms dangling along his stallion's neck and shoulders, her cheek pressed into his mane, her left knee c.o.c.ked, her boot wedged just enough to be caught in the stirrup.

Robert's mind tried to make sense of that detail.

He had not saddled and bridled Horizon. It was the task he had been dreading, the final task. Because, somehow, to tighten that cinch, to strap on his supplies-the pack, the canvas Thomas had given him, the extra sack Daria had thrust into Robert's hands at the last minute-to go through those final mundane actions, was to sever the greatest bond in his life.

I can't do it. Robert sank back against the wall and lost himself in the darkness. Even if he left tonight, if he managed to force himself out onto the path or the Northern Road or even across the Gate to the frontier, it would lead to the same thing. A night, a week, a month from now, he would have to turn around. And come back for her.

Relief washed through him.

But when he lifted his head, the vision remained: that of his stubborn horse tolerating a sleeping pa.s.senger.

Impossible.

But Robert drew closer. He reached out and felt the sticky texture of the saddle's leather. Could one envision touch? Could he have imagined that crease, so fine, running along the curve of her neck? Could he conjure movement, the oh-so-subtle rise and fall of her chest and stomach as she breathed?

"Aurelia." He reached out gently. A strand of her hair tumbled at his touch. His breath caught, and he pulled back, then reached again. Her shoulder was warm beneath his hand. "Aurelia." He pressed down lightly.

She looked up at him, her eyes peering through sleep, straight into his.

He fell back for an instant. It was her. No illusion.

Impossible.

"How are you here?" he whispered.

She eased her head up along the stallion's neck, her sleepblurred words running together. "You're not leaving me behind."

He closed his eyes. The feeling that rioted through his chest and gut had no right to be there.

"This is my expedition, Robert." A long, soft yawn interrupted her speech. "I intend to finish it." She buried her face back in the stallion's neck. His stallion. His ornery, disloyal, docile stallion.

You know, Thomas's final, expressionless words came back to Robert, you can always borrow that old roan at the end of the stables if that stallion of yours can't handle all your personal effects.

The crown princess of Tyralt: a personal effect.