Page 60 of Heart Cradle
“No,” he said through clenched teeth. “She decides.”
The healer blinked, startled. “I can remove them now… ”
“No,” Eiran growled. “She lives with them, they are hers. Marks of what she endured and survived. You do not take those without asking.”
He turned towards Maeve, his voice softer now, trembling with devotion. “She is not something to be altered because it makes someone else feel better. She is not yours, nor mine. She chooses what stays and what goes. When she’s conscious, when she’s ready, she can decide.”
The healer nodded her head, voice gentle. “As you wish, Prince Eiran.”
Aeilanna crossed to the side table where the tinctures and wards had been set. Her fingers trailed briefly over the rim of a crystal vial, but her gaze was fixed on the Chain, still coiled, now quiet, around Maeve’s wrist.
“It changed,” she murmured. “The Chain. It evolved, and it responded to her, reshaped itself. Those runes, I’ve only seen about half of them before, and even then, only in fractured records.”
Yendel stepped closer, arms folded. “The resonance surge during her Awakening was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The Chain may have amplified it, possibly even shaped it.”
A pause followed, heavy with implications and Cira frowned. “Then we should remove it if it’s affecting her magic.”
“No.” Yendel’s voice was immediate. “If it’s woven into her awakening, then it may now be entwined with her essence. Separating them could cause backlash, magical collapse or maybe even death.”
Cira’s jaw tightened. “So what? We do nothing? Just watch it fuse further into her being?”
They both turned to Aeilanna and the Spellweaver’s expression didn’t waver. She looked between them, then down at Maeve, at the subtle glow of her skin. “No,” she said softly but with iron in her tone. “We do not remove it.”
Cira inhaled to protest, but Aeilanna cut her off. “It doesn’t belong to the realm anymore,” she said. “It belongs to her, and to try to take it now would be an act of violence.”
Aeilanna looked to Yendel, her eyes calm, clear. “We’ll write to the Runekeepers in Eldmire. Begin quiet, careful study. This is no longer an artefact to be secured, it’s now a relationship to be understood.”
Yendel gave a slight bow. “Agreed.”
Cira held her silence, then inclined her head as well, albeit with tension still rippling across her shoulders.
“We’ll leave the protections,” Aeilanna said. “And a stabilising rune-net in case she flares again.”
They were still huddled in conversation as they left through the door, Eiran barely registered their departure. He sat beside Maeve’s bed, brushing her hair away from her face. She looked peaceful, but still unreachable.
A fucking week.
Chapter Twenty-Six – The Between
Maeve floated, that was the only word that made sense. She wasn’t awake, but wasn’t asleep. Not gone, but certainly not present. A strange kind of half-existence, like being underwater and above the clouds at once, weightless and unmoored. She drifted, through moments and memories, some were hers and some were not.
Eiran laughing, soaked to the skin, being tackled by water sprites at a lake. They were small but willowy, pale blue skin glimmering, white hair tangled with reeds and vines. He wrestled free, chest heaving, his shirt open and plastered to his skin, eyes sparkling. Maeve felt her own laugh rise, unbidden and it burst from her chest like a memory she didn’t know she still had, or maybe it was Eiran’s, maybe it was both.
She turned and the vision melted, and a new one rushed in. Nolenne as a child, stone-eyed and shaking, standing in a field of ash, watching her parents as they lay dead, but together. Maeve watched three young children cry for their parents.
Darkness, the feeling of shame and then her brother’s hand trembling as he raised a blade. The crack of steel through crying. Blood in the snow and a scream swallowed by years. Nolenne fell to her knees, lips mouthing an oath to never be powerless again. Maeve sobbed, but no sound came, she tried to move, but she couldn’t. She was there for so long she began to get cold, shaking with freezing fear and she closed her eyes to it and then there was Aeilanna in her cell, regal, even beneath stone. Her almost ebony hair in a tangled plait. Spell thread dangled from her fingers, skin pale and voice calm. “Keep going,” she said, eyes boring into Maeve’s. “Don’t let them tame you.”
Lisbon now and the golden light of morning filtered through her window. Her room, the one she’d stayed in when she first kissed Eiran. She could smell citrus and dusty stone streets. The scent of soap on warm towels. Her phone buzzed, her ringtone, she turned to answer it, and the scene fractured.
She saw Orilan, much younger with long black hair. He was sobbing over a beautiful woman’s still, dead body. The wind in this memory was soft, cool with early spring and it pushed her through the room. The sun was just beginning to rise above the cliffs of Moraveth, but the light had no warmth here. It streamed through tall, arched windows into the quiet chamber. Maeve watched, unseen, as Orilan knelt beside a four-poster bed, stripped of all former grandeur. The Queen lay still and pale in the bloodied,tangled sheets, her golden hair fanned out across the pillow like sunlight, her face rounded, cheeks still round and her lips were parted slightly.
A silence deeper than death filled the room as Orilan sat on the edge of the bed, hunched forwards, his large hands trembling in his lap. The mighty King looked smaller now, just a man in mourning. He reached forwards, gently and touched her face with two fingers, tracing the curve of her cheekbone like he was trying to remember it forever.
"You said it would be fine," he whispered. His voice cracked, not with anger, but disbelief.
There was a wail from the far side of the room, a cradle. It was draped in soft cloths and warming spells, the newborn must have been Taelin. Orilan’s shoulders jolted, he looked towards the sound, as if remembering the child existed only retold everything that had been lost.
“I will love him,” he murmured, voice barely more than a breath. “They tell me I should keep him away, that I won’t be able to look at him without seeing you. But he’s... he’s all that I have left of you.”
