Page 66 of Rhapsody of Ruin
When I left Emberhold, it was steadier. Hungry still, but steadier.
I left with ravens dispatched carrying ration orders, patrol schedules, edicts sealed with my crest. I left with Eirik on the throne, Valyn waiting in the wings, Kylian sullen and silent in his chambers.
And I left with the hollow ache of absence.
Because the longer I stayed, the louder Shadowspire called.
I mounted the wall one last time, the wind biting, the mountains stretching endless. I looked east, toward the veil that shimmered faintly beyond the horizon. Toward her.
“Back to Shadowspire,” I ordered. My voice carried, but inside I whispered something else.
Back to her.
Chapter 30
Elowyn
The chamber stilled when the latch clicked. No herald announced him. No guards preceded him. Only the heavy weight of his presence as Rhydor closed the door behind him, the sound echoing louder than any shout. The flames in the hearth snapped sharply as if they too recognized his anger.
I stood by the table, hands resting on an open ledger I had not read for the past hour. The words blurred on the page, meaningless scratches in the candlelight. My body felt rigid, my breath shallow, every part of me aware of him.
He strode into the room like a storm barely leashed. His boots struck stone, hard and final. The air shifted with the scent of steel, leather, and faint sulfur. He carried the weight of Drakaryn’s forges in his skin, and tonight, every ember of it was sharpened into fury.
“Where,” he said.
Just one word. Low. Threaded with dragonfire.
I forced myself to meet his eyes. Molten gold and ember, bright with restrained violence. “Where what?” My voice was calm, but my fingers dug crescents into the ledger’s edge.
He advanced, the distance between us shrinking with each step. “Where did you take him.”
My throat tightened. The child. Valimir. He knew. Not how much, not everything, but enough.
I smoothed my expression into the mask my mother had taught me. “I don’t know what you mean.”
His jaw tightened, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “Don’t play games with me. The court whispers already, your absence,your knight, three nights gone. They say you left to hide a child. They say you defiled your vows with another man.”
Heat surged into my face, not from guilt but from fury. “Lies.”
“Then prove them false!” His voice snapped like a whip, fire licking at the edges. “Where did you go? Why did you vanish with Sir Thalen while I steadied Emberhold? Do you expect me to believe in sacred rites when rumor brands me a cuckold before the court?”
The word cut like glass.
I pressed my palms flat against the table, grounding myself. “It was the Moonshrine Veilturn rites. Three days of seclusion. You know of them.”
His laugh was sharp, bitter. “Sacred silence? Convenient silence. Do you think me blind? Do you think I cannot see the lies unraveling before me?”
“I did what I must,” I said, voice like ice.
“What you must?” He paced, circling like a predator. “You leave without a word, take a knight into the woods, and return to whispers of a child hidden from crown and court, and you call it duty?”
I held his gaze, though my chest ached. “Yes.”
He stopped, fury radiating from him like heat from a forge. “You risk Masking. You risk exile. If you will not tell me the truth, the council will demand it. Do you want that? To be judged before every mask in Lunareth, your secrets torn open?”
My lips trembled, but I forced the words out, steady and cutting. “You married a Fae. What did you expect?”
The silence that followed was heavier than iron.
