Page 222 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Chapter 43
OF OUTSTANDING CHARACTER
Les
BY NOW, LADY CELESTE SHACKLEY’S heart should have alchemized into solid stone.
The life she had been handed had been nothing but tragedy after tragedy. Every time she finally felt like she was above water, the depths dragged her down once more. It was an ocean, hitting her with wave after wave after wave. There would be a time when she rose no more. She just didn’t know when that would be.
Would it be today?
Kase lay motionless on the cot beside her. They’d run out of space in the ward, and with Saldr needing to do all he could to fix her youngest son, they’d brought him here in his own tent. After using as much Vasa as he’d dared, Saldr bound Kase’s chest in thick bandages, his wound carefully cleaned and dressed; traces of dried blood whorled over his exposed skinaround the edges of the bandaged area. Saldr had to work fast. They’d missed a few spots while cleaning him up.
Les bent against the cot, wishing she could block the memory of seeing her father take up the very same position at her mother’s bedside. It was one of her earliest memories.
Her father hadn’t been the same since her mother took ill and passed when Les was only four years old. That was the day she’d lost her mother to the grave, but her father’s heart had been buried with her. After that, he’d never given Les the time of day.
What became of a girl forced to grow up without a mother, without anyone to guide her in the world—a world on the brink of such tumultuous change, no less? Books and Ezekiel had gotten her through, though her brother was only five years her senior. Their father somehow clung to a half-life until Les was much older—in her early twenties. He’d become bitter with age and tired of her running off suitors. They’d never matched up to the heroes in the stories she loved so much.
Then Harlan had come into her life, and like fate had brought them together, she’d fallen deeper than she thought possible—so deep that she hadn’t seen the warning signs until it was too late. She’d loved the broken man so deeply that she failed to see the shattered pieces of his heart had scattered before their children, putting them in harm’s way.
Ezekiel’s betrayal had nearly killed her, but it was her children who’d pulled her out of the suffocating sadness. Jove, Zeke, Kase, and Ana had needed her. They’d needed her just like she’d needed a mother all those years ago.
She refused to become her father. She refused to leave them alone in the world.
How ironic that in trying not to be like Lord Addison Fairchild, she’d become something worse. Her whole-minded focus on her children had blinded her to her husband’s descentinto abuse. She’d grown distant in the years since Ezekiel’s and her nephew’s deaths, and he had too. So distant she hadn’t seen him become someone who would hurt the children they’d brought into the world with the greatest love she’d ever known.
How had something so wonderful and passionate rotted so thoroughly, its decayed visage was only recognizable by memories that faded each day?
She clung to her Kase’s cold hand.
If he didn’t wake, she feared this loss would be the one that dragged her under for good. He’d been on the brink of death, Saldr had said, but the magic dust that had saved her and Jove in the depths had finally taken root. Now, it was just a matter of his body using the power and speeding up the healing process.
If Kase hadn’t been too far gone by the time Saldr reached him.
Between the pierced lung, chipped rib, and blood loss, it was a miracle her son was still alive at all; that she could count each of his steady, if shallow, breaths.
Kase was the lucky one. The other two gentlemen found with him had perished before Saldr could do anything at all.
Les wiped the tears from her eyes.
She’d thought losing her only daughter was insurmountable. The guilt and grief still haunted her nightmares. Many nights since, she’d woken and walked to Ana’s room in a half-daze to check on her, only to realize it was never going to have a little blonde girl tucked beneath the covers again. Les would never sit holed up in the library with her daughter again, devouring romances and sipping tea, Ana reading all their favorite parts out loud.
She’d known the betrothal was a mistake, but she’d mistakenly trusted in her husband’s wisdom. Jove had been happy, and Zeke had gone into the army, prolonging hiseventual ties to an heiress in Tev Rubika, but Ana’s had ended with her running away. Running directly into the flames.
Then Zeke hadn’t returned from the mission with Kase. Her sweet, caring Zeke. Always the peacemaker between the brothers. The one who brought her flowers on each anniversary of Ezekiel’s death. The one who’d constantly checked in on her after Ana’s death, even with him being deployed most of the year in those early days.
She wasn’t sure she had quite processed his death yet. It often hit her out of nowhere, and each blow brought her back to her knees.
The only good thing about experiencing so much loss was that she’d learned how to function normally on the outside, even if the inside was a raging storm.
Then the last few months happened, and she’d had no way to cope with the truth of the lies she’d been told. She’d been a broken shell the last few weeks, and she didn’t know if anything could ever put her back together again.
She squeezed Kase’s hand and willed him to be okay.
Beneath the cot lay a book. It was so like her son to have something to read on hand. He got that from her. Without letting go of his hand, she picked it up. She needed some way to keep her mind from spiraling further than it already had. Books had always been there even when no one else was.
She opened it to Kase’s immaculate handwriting. Ah, a journal. She peeked at him. He hadn’t moved. He did seem like the type to keep his thoughts somewhere secret like this. He might have worn his emotions on his sleeve—especially when it came to his brothers’ teasing—but she never quite knew what he wasthinking.
