The Broken Kingdoms of Osvolta (Kingdoms of Osvolta #1)

79. Revelations

Chapter seventy-nine

Revelations

A ldrik’s chambers covered the entire top floor of the turret. Wooden support beams kept the ageing roof stable. The four-poster bed on the far side was still draped in lush velvet blankets and silken forest green sheets. All of it unchanged from the last time she had slept within it, her Lord beside her. The bookcases were untouched, still cluttered as he’d preferred. He’d run out of room for his ever-expanding collection, and never had the heart to part with any of them.

Solveig moved through the space, taking a seat by his desk. A book lay open beside a quill and a dried pot of ink, discarded as though in a hurry. The note he must have been writing was nowhere in sight.

This room was every piece of him. Of them. Of their lives. This would have been their home; had they taken the vows they had promised each other before she had held him as he took his last blood-soaked breath.

She continued to move around the room, as though she were living in a memory. Wandering over to a windowsill that held an array of framed flash powder images. Many already fading with time, ones they had planned to replace as the years of their lives passed by. Most of them she’d removed from her own chambers in High Tower Castle, no sooner than they had lowered his body into the hallowed earth. Hesitantly, she picked up a tarnished silver frame, tears in her eyes as she stared down at their smiling faces burned in time from the blackened flash powder.

They had taken the image at their engagement party. She had worn a dress of lightest ice-blue to match his eyes, and his suit matched the forest green of hers. It was her favourite image of them, but the more she stared at it, the more she noticed something was off. Where parts of it appeared faded by sun damage as was expected with flash powder, other areas did not. She brought it closer to her face, realising then that something lay beneath it.

Slowly and with shaking hands, she turned the frame around, loosened the fastenings, and removed the backing. She froze instantly as it revealed a folded square of paper. Solveig’s shining eyes flicked back to the desk where the discarded ink and quill sat. Swallowing heavily, she lifted the paper with one hand and placed the frame back down.

Slowly, delicately, fingers still shaking, she unfolded the paper, almost falling to her knees as she saw the first line of his scrawl, addressed to her.

Dearest Sol,

If you’re reading this, it means that which I feared has finally caught up to me. I know I should have told you, confided in you, but I didn’t want you to worry. There was nothing you could have done, and I hoped to live out the rest of my days happily. Perhaps that makes me selfish, but I hope one day you will understand. That you will cherish the moments we had, and not those we lost.

Wherever life takes you, know that I will be with you. In this world and beyond. I was blessed to know you, to love you, and to be loved by you. You were the air I breathed, the blood in my veins, and every thought in my mind. My days started and ended with you, and if I am lucky, my life will come to its end with you as well.

To die with those you love around you is all that one can ask. Still the burden of knowing the pain I will leave in my wake grows almost too much to bear. Sol, you are the strongest person I know. The level of your power has never defined you and you must never let it. Who you are, and what you believe; your knowledge of that which is right and wrong; fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves. That makes you more deserving of the crown than that gold encased rot that looks down upon you. Never allow them to darken your spirit. You’re more important than you could ever possibly know.

We deserved to see out our lives together, but I know now we will be robbed of that dream. One day I will fade to be but a memory to you, and you should not feel guilty for it. You were my whole life Sol, but I cannot be yours. Live Solveig, for both of us. My love will follow you endlessly. It will not fade, nor falter. Even in the darkest of places, and the bleakest of hours.

Yours, in this world, and the next.

-Aldrik

Tears clouded her vision as she held this gift, this last piece of Aldrik that she had not known existed, to her chest. It lifted and destroyed her, to understand, finally, why he hid it from her. Yet to stare the evidence in the face of just how thoroughly she had failed his memory, gnawed at her insides. She had allowed the golden rot to taint her, to darken her. To transform her into something that she was sure even Aldrik would turn away from, and she would not blame him.

Fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, he had written. Yet she had spent the last few years as a glorified executioner. She was the sword in the crown’s golden hand, stained and dripping with blood. She had become the villain and saw no way of freeing herself from those bonds now. Aldrik had been her lifeline, her way out of the sickness, and after he was gone, it had all too easily infected her.

She had grown to find power in fear, freedom in blood. Who would she be without it? Nothing more than chattel to be sold off to the highest bidder. There was no place for the woman she had been. She had faced the unthinkable and fought to survive it.

Shattered tears fell unbidden down her sullen cheeks as she slipped the note into her pocket. Taking a deep shaking breath, she moved to piece the frame back together when her eyes caught on a larger one, hidden at the back. Its image severely faded. Older. A shot of Erynmar Academy, the school a foreboding presence in the background, the students lined up before it.

Solveig found herself easily toward the centre, Aldrik on one side, Adira on the other. This had been the end of her final year at Erynmar before they had summoned her back to Torrelin to face her manifestation ceremony. The last time her life had felt simple, through the eyes of a child, at least. She scanned the others, a sea of nameless faces, but paused. There, in the back row, a tall boy with a riotous mess of curls stared forward, smiling widely. He stood a step away from all the other children. How had she never noticed how odd his positioning and demeanour were before? Yet it was all too clear to her now as she stared into the fathomless eyes of the childhood version of the Prince of Elithiend.