Page 64 of Rhapsody of Ruin
I sealed the letter and laid it beside the steward’s notice. Two slips of parchment. Two lies made solid.
The room smelled thick with wax, herbs, cedar. My throat burned.
I turned to Nyssa, my mask slipping only enough to let her see the crack beneath. “It is done.”
She nodded once. “Then all that remains is to survive it.”
I glanced toward the window where the Shroud glowed faintly over Shadowspire, silver stretched thin, trembling with unseen cracks. My reflection in the glass wore serenity, but beneath it, I shook.
I whispered to the empty room, “Forgive me, Rhydor.”
Because when the time came, he would see my absence not as devotion to ritual but as betrayal.
And still, I would do it.
For the child.
Chapter 29
Rhydor
The hardest part of leaving Shadowspire was not the weight of politics or the danger of optics.
It was leaving her.
I told myself the kingdom demanded it. That Emberhold needed its prince more than I needed to keep watch over a wife who could more than hold her own. But when I stood in her chamber and said the words aloud, I nearly faltered.
“Elowyn,” I began, my voice low, careful. The brazier in her room smoldered faintly, cedar smoke curling around her, the scent of her clinging even when she wore her mask of composure. “I must return to Emberhold. Only for a brief time. Thariac’s reports are too grim to ignore.”
Her eyes lifted from the parchment she’d been pretending to study. Silver-gray, sharp as moonlight on steel. “You will go yourself?”
“Yes.” I crossed the room, every step deliberate. “I would ask you to come. To see Drakaryn with your own eyes, not just hear of it in council chambers.”
For a moment, something flickered across her face, longing, perhaps, or the shadow of some truth she would not speak. Then it was gone.
“My mother’s health falters,” she said softly. Her hands tightened on the edge of the parchment. “If I leave now, whispers will call it abandonment. They will say I fled as the veil trembles. I cannot.”
It was reason enough. Sound, practical. And yet something in me bristled.
“I will not be gone long,” I said. “A fortnight at most. The banner must be steadied, and then I will return.”
She inclined her head, the movement smooth, regal. “Then go. Do what you must.”
Her words gave permission, but her eyes did not. They held something else, distance, maybe even defiance. It needled me as I left her chamber, my cloak whispering against the stone floor.
***
Thariac awaited me in the courtyard with a minimal guard: Torian, Korrath, and a pair of veterans handpicked for silence. My dragon blood urged me to fly the whole distance, but the optics demanded some semblance of ceremony. We rode until the Shadowspire spires vanished into mist, then shifted into dragon form, our wings tearing across the sky.
The flight to Emberhold cut through cold winds, the air sharp as knives against my scales. Below, the mountains stretched black and smoldering, valleys dotted with pale farms gone thin. Smoke curled from forges, but it was thin, meager. A starving kingdom does not waste coal.
When I landed at Emberhold’s gates, the sight nearly undid me.
The fortress that had been my cradle looked diminished. The banners hung limp, their edges frayed. The stones were scarred, not from battle but from neglect. And when the gates creaked open, the guards did not snap to attention as they once had. Their eyes were hollow, their armor dented.
Inside, chaos reigned.
Kylian stormed down the hall to meet me, his hair unkempt, his clothes rumpled. His eyes burned with that familiar reckless fire, but behind it I saw the fray of a man unraveling.
