Chapter 142: The Unfolding TRUTH XXII

Third Person POV

Helen stood frozen.

The garden held its breath around her. The fountain kept running. The flowers stayed where they were. The sky above the enclosed stone walls did not change.

Everything was exactly as it had been a moment ago, except that the clearing at the far end was now empty, and the sound of Kai’s breathing was gone, and the warmth that had been pressed against her was gone with it.

He was backing away from her.

One step. Then another. His red eyes were fixed on her face and something behind them was fighting something else, something she could see happening in real time... the red bleeding at the edges, the green trying to come back through, his jaw tight and his hands clenched at his sides like he was holding himself together by force.

"Kai," she said. Quiet. Just his name.

He shook his head.

But not at her. He shook it at himself, once, sharp and short, like he was trying to clear something out of it.

Then he turned and ran.

Not toward her. Toward the wall. He crossed the clearing in three long strides, hit the nearest tree without slowing, and went up the trunk with both hands and one foot pushing off the bark, the kind of movement that did not look like effort, the kind that came from having done it many times before.

One leg hooked over the top of the stone wall. Then the other. Then the sound of him landing on the other side, and then nothing.

The garden was empty.

Helen stood in the middle of it and listened to the silence he left behind, and did not move.

The fountain kept going. The flowers leaned toward the sun. The small wind she had not noticed before moved through the tall grass at the edges of the clearing.

She pressed her hand flat against her neck where his mouth had been.

She stood there for a long time.

****

She did not see him that day.

She told herself it did not matter. She sat by the window in her room and watched the garden paths below, not looking for him specifically, just watching the way the light moved across the ground as the afternoon wore on.

The twins came at mid-day with food and too many words and the warm, relentless energy of two people who had decided that silence in another person was a problem to be solved.

She let them talk. She ate what was in front of her. She smiled at the right moments.

When they left, she went back to the window.

****

She did not see him the next day either.

She had stopped sitting by the window by then. There was no point.

She knew he was in the building somewhere. She could feel it the way she could sometimes feel things she had no explanation for, a low awareness at the back of her chest that meant something she could not name.

But knowing he was there and seeing him were two different things, and only one of them was happening.

On the afternoon of the second day, she went to the kitchens.

She did not need anything from the kitchens. But her room was too small for the amount of restlessness she had accumulated, and the hallways were long, and walking did something useful with her hands and her legs that sitting by a window could not.

She was on her way back, a cup of tea she had poured without fully deciding to, warm between both palms, when she turned a corner and stopped.

Kai was at the far end of the corridor.

She saw him before he saw her. He was standing near the wall, dressed in something more formal than she had seen him wear since the night they arrived, and he was not alone.

A woman stood close to him. Very close. Her hand was resting on his arm, fingers curled around his sleeve with the easy confidence of someone who had been told, or had simply assumed, that this was acceptable.

She was speaking to him. Helen could not hear the words. Could only see the woman’s mouth moving and her hand on Kai’s arm and the way she tilted her face up toward his.

An elder stood nearby. Grey-haired, straight-backed, watching the scene with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had arranged something and was watching it unfold exactly the way they had planned it.

Kai’s back was to Helen.

She could not see his face. She could not see whether he was leaning toward the woman or away from her, whether his eyes were interested or obligated, whether any part of him was fighting it or none of him was.

She could only see what was in front of her, which was his back and the woman’s hand, and the elder’s satisfied expression.

Something in her chest pushed outward.

Not anger. Not sadness. Something that sat between those two things and had its own particular shape, its own particular weight, pressing against the inside of her ribs with no intention of letting go.

She turned around.

She walked back the way she had come. She did not hurry. She did not let her feet change their pace, because changing her pace meant something was wrong and she was not ready to admit that something was wrong.

The tea was cold by the time she reached her room. She set it on the table by the window without drinking it and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the wall.

The kitten climbed into her lap.

She put her hand on its back and felt it purring and stared at the wall and tried to decide what she was feeling.

She sat there for a while. Long enough for the light coming through the window to shift, for the warm patch of afternoon sun on the floor to move across the room and climb the far wall and begin to fade.

She still had not decided by the time the light was gone.

****

She did not sleep.

The night was long and the bed was unfamiliar and her mind would not settle.

She lay on her side and looked at the window and listened to the sounds of the building, the distant footsteps of people moving through corridors, the creak of old stone doing what old stone did at night, the small sounds the kitten made while it slept curled against her feet.

When the grey edge of morning started showing at the window she sat up and gave up on the sleep entirely.

She sat at the dressing table.

Her white hair was loose around her shoulders. She had not pinned it. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought about pinning it and then thought about who she would be pinning it for, and that thought went somewhere uncomfortable quickly, so she stopped thinking it.

The kitten meowed.

She turned. It had sat up on the bed, tail wrapped around its paws, watching her with the complete, serious attention that small animals gave to things they had decided were important.

She reached out and it hopped into her palm immediately. She brought it up toward her face and pressed her nose against the top of its small head and felt its purring vibrate against her cheek.

She thought about the day he gave it to her.

The garden, her garden, back when she had a garden. The way he had stood with his hands behind his back and that look on his face, the one that was trying to be casual and was not quite managing it.

The weight of the small warm creature being placed into her hands. The way his eyes had been on her face when she looked up.

That was before all of this.

Before the stone walls and the throne room and the corridor and the woman’s hand on his arm. Before red eyes in a garden and a wall being vaulted and two days of not seeing his face.

She set the kitten gently on the bed.

She looked at herself in the mirror again. At the white hair and the grey eyes and the small black streak at the front and all the ways those things had made her life complicated and small and hidden. She looked at all of it and she was very tired.

A knock came at the door. She did not answer and ignored it completely.

But the door opened anyway.

He stood in the doorway.

The robe he was wearing was dark and formal, heavy fabric that moved differently from everyday clothes, the kind of thing that marked a transition. His hair had been combed back from his face. His jaw was set. His green eyes found her immediately in the mirror and held there.

She looked away.

She looked at her own reflection instead. At the white hair. At the grey eyes that were already doing the thing she hated, going wet at the edges without her permission. She stared at herself and held very still and did not turn around.

He came into the room. The door closed.

She heard him stop. Heard his weight shift once. Then stillness.

"I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness."

His voice was quiet. Not soft in the careful way it sometimes was when he was trying to manage something. Just quiet. Stripped of everything except what was underneath it.

"For what I did. I know I don’t."

She kept her eyes on the mirror. On her own face.

"But I hope you will forgive me anyway."

She did not speak.

"I came to tell you that you are free." He paused. She could see him in the mirror, standing just behind her, hands at his sides, his eyes on the back of her head. "To do whatever you want to do. If you want to go back to your cottage, your home, I will arrange it all. The carriage, the trip, anything you need."

Her jaw tightened.