And why, you may ask, was I wandering through a medieval castle in the middle of the night?
Well, after King Leodegrance—my pseudo-father I mentally corrected—had dropped me off at my room he had spoken about how he wished my mother could see my marriage and how it had been her most fervent wish before her death.
Without thinking, I’d asked what she was like and through misty eyes he’d told me she was the funniest person he had ever met and how she used to snort-laugh at her own jokes whenever she told them.
He’d been halfway through explaining how she’d spent his own mother’s last few years scandalizing her with some of the things she would say when I realized it was almost as if he was describing my mom—not some faceless woman that magic had conjured up—but my actual mother, Adelaide Ramos.
After he’d left I asked one of the maids that was helping me undress if there was a painting of the late queen.
Most of the maids had ignored me, clearly having been instructed never to speak of her, but one had leaned in and whispered that there was a corridor on the far side of the castle that had a painting of her on the wall.
I waited until the bustle of the castle finally died down, too amped up from the day to even try to sleep, and got out of bed. I had snagged the half-burned candle on my bedside table before heading out on my little impromptu excursion into an unfamiliar castle, the candle doing little to soothe my frayed nerves.
“It feels like I’m in a horror movie,” I muttered to myself after jumping for what felt like the thousandth time as I turned down a dark corridor and the weak flame from the candle barely illuminated a foot in front of me, nearly blowing out from the draft that seemed to blow through the entire place. Apparently 6th century insulation left much to be desired.
Hoping that nothing jumped out at me, I turned into what I hoped was the corridor that the maid had spoken of. She told meto look for the blue curtains covering the walls and as soon as my eyes found the frayed edges of them I knew I’d made it.
This hallway was much smaller than any of the others and looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. Dust hung in the air and my feet disturbed it on the floor, tracking bare footprints as I had to keep myself from inhaling too much of it for fear of coughing up a lung.
In the middle of the hallway was what looked to be a pair of closed curtains with iron hooks on either side. Reaching for them, I gently pulled them aside and tucked them into the hooks so that I could get a better look at what lay behind.
Holding up my candle, I gazed at the painting on the wall. It was of a couple, the man clearly King Leodegrance—though a much younger version of him. He was staring lovingly down at a woman who was sitting in a chair at his hip.
Almost all of the portraits from this time period had been lost to the annals of time—some even thinking that they didn’t exist at all—so I had only ever seen what was painted after this time, but even I knew this pose was unusual. Most of the time, formal portraits would have both subjects looking straight ahead at the artist.
This meant that the pose was requested. Leodegrance wanted everyone to know how much he loved his wife.
My eyes skimmed down from Leodegrance’s expression to the woman he was directing it at and it felt as if someone had punched all of the air out of me.
“Impossible,” I gasped as I looked into the eyes of Adelaide Ramos.
The artist’s style had rounded out her face slightly and she was dressed in a way I’d never seen before, but the sharp intelligence that she always seemed to carry with her like a weapon shone from the painting as if it was actually her staring out at me.
I sat down in front of the painting, uncaring about the dust, the duvet around my shoulders falling at my waist as I stared up at it in awe.
How was it that in every universe and timeline she was gone? How was it possible for someone like her to even exist in two timelines in the first place?
Life is an odd thing,an unfamiliar voice whispered in my ear but the words echoed the same ones my mother had said to me a few days before she passed.
I had been railing against the unfairness of it all in a moment of weakness, asking her how life could do this to us, and she’d taken my hand in her own thin one and gripped it with a strength I didn’t know she still possessed, telling me those words with an almost knowing smile.
Had this been what she’d meant? Had she known something about all of this craziness that I’d found myself in? It couldn’t be. She would have told me. My mother told me everything.
A thready sob caught in my throat as I pressed my hands to my mouth.
“Are you well?”
I jumped, whirling to find none other than King Arthur standing at the end of the corridor holding a lantern that seemed to brighten the entire, dusty space effortlessly compared to my miniscule candle.
I wiped at my face and moved to stand, embarrassed at being caught by someone like him after our last conversation had ended in an argument earlier.
He seemed to be a stubborn, traditional alpha—not unlike some of the men I’d met in my own time—except here in ancient England his words weren’t totally unfounded or unagreed on by the general populace.
I was really regretting my theater degree right about now, wishing I’d chosen to major in history instead of minoring in it—and in art history nonetheless. At least then the thought of a chamber pot wouldn’t terrify me so much as the one in my own bed chamber did.
Arthur’s blue eyed gaze slanted away from me and in the light of his lantern I could see his cheeks flush. “Could you please cover yourself, my lady?”
His words had me glancing down to realize that the duvet was pooled at my feet rather than still covering my body.
