“Alaric!” I called, catching up to him. “They’ll kill you if you lay a hand on the baron.”
“I won’t have to. I’m a smarter cookie than I let on.” He continued walking, not pausing to wait for me to catch my breath like he usually would have. “I will avenge my brother’s death. You said it yourself. He is kinder than I, better than I could ever hope to be. He is all the good the world has to offer, and I’m only the dark.”
“No.” I clutched at Alaric’s hand. “Please don’t leave. Please don’t leave me alone up here. I’ll perish. I’ll go mad without you.”
He paused, wild eyes suddenly trained on mine. “I’ll come back for you, Olympia. I’ll understand if you can’t wait for me, but I must make this right. I can’t bring myself to live in a world where someone as good and wholesome as my brother is snuffed out without some sense of balance and justice. All this time, it has been him and me against the world. I betrayed him, even if for a silly childish prank, and it cost him his life. I can’t live with myself if I don’t do this.”
“B-but how long will you be gone?”
“I can’t say.” He wiped away my tears with the pad of his thumb. “Sweet Olympia Aberdeen, if I don’t make it back, know that you’re not alone in the world. You never were. You’re only as light as my dark. We understand each other. Whatever we’re made of is one and the same.”
Olympia
My Dearest Alaric,
Since you’ve been gone,it hasn’t stopped raining.
This rainy season is Skye’s worst yet. I like to think the sun refuses to shine until you return to me.
Mother grew sickly not long after her termination at Leith. I resorted to making her fresh broth each day, but within weeks, a virus stole her from me too.
It seems as if everyone has been stolen from me, all the people I’ve relied on in my first eighteen years have either perished or escaped.
Which will you be?
The rains have washed out this year’s crop just before harvest. Many will starve this winter, they say.
I should have gone with you to avenge Roderick’s death, fore at least I’d be with you, and sometimes I think that’s all my heart ever desired to begin with.
Leith has fallen on hard times. Your father has lost his mind, madness grips his days, some say because he banished his beloved son to his death. I don’t care for the why. I only know that Leith and all of Skye will be better off without him and every other landowner tyrant who steals from the land and its people. What would he think if he knew his beloved eldest son conceived a bastard child? Would he rage to know his bloodline carries on in the veins of a poor peasant girl?
Fate works in mysterious ways, and while my future and the fate of this child hang in the balance, I want you to know that I never lost hope in the life we could have led together.
Your dark and my light united for eternity.
It’s been seven days since my last full meal, and everyone in town is already rationing their pantries for the winter ahead of us. Neighbors are generous in bountiful times and strangers otherwise. I don’t know if the baby’s heart still strums within my womb. Perhaps the lack of sustenance has already stolen another life. Perhaps I have already failed at motherhood before new life could breathe its first breath.
The fastest way to end suffering is by ceasing to breathe, lungs evaporating like a cloud into mist, a vital force vanishing with the breeze. This brutally dark abyss welcomes my heartache whole.
My greatest sin was that I held the love of two men, one dark and the other light. I held the thread that split them both. Brothers in flesh, their bond shattered by my selfish heart. For as long as my soul walks, forgiveness remains out of reach.
Hold me in these pages forever yours,
Olympia
I foldedthe letter into threes and tucked it inside the envelope addressed to Alaric before slipping it into the pages of an old book. The leather-bound edition of medieval legends and lore was coming apart at the seams and had been a cherished favorite of Alaric’s when we were younger. I didn’t know if he would find my love letter, but it would be safe there at least.
Maybe it wasn’t meant for him; maybe it was only to leave a trace of my existence. I’d written myself into the pages of time, I thought to myself with a smirk before closing the book tightly and shoving it back on the shelf in Leith’s library.
I’d found the key to the hall in my mother’s things. I knew I could slip in the back door of the kitchen quarters because I’d been doing it since I was a child. And if I had any hope of leaving a thing for Alaric to find, it was here, within these old dusty pages.
If he ever came back to Leith.
If he was even alive.
While the moonlight shone bright through the library windows, I picked my way around the couch, paused to pat one of the old wolfhounds on the head, then slipped down the hallway as quickly as I’d come. I knew the dogs wouldn’t follow me; I’d been bringing them treats for years. I was one of the few people who sent their tails wagging when I approached. It served me well tonight, and it would never matter again.
There was a time I imagined myself as the next baroness of Leith. My silly schoolgirl crushes seemed irrelevant now, irresponsible at worst.
