“Together.”
Chapter Forty-One
The days that follow settle into a new routine—quiet hours combing through the journals and Ace’s jabbing quips about our insatiable appetites over every meal. We all know he is not speaking about anything on the plate, and yes, the gift of intimacy that a honeymoon is made for.
We do not keep the journals a secret. Not entirely. Ace and Soria need not know the full extent of how deeply we are poring through them, nor our true motives—not yet. However, being in a place where they all spent so many of their formative years, it is only natural for me to grow curious about the past.
“Is it true you two tried to shave an ox?”
Laughter builds like a chorus around the table where we share our meal. Vale attempts to give Ace a look meant to silence him, but instead only prompts him to seize the perceived stage.
As he regales me with the story from his perspective, I delight in the twists and turns. A tale I first witnessed through the eyes of Sylara in the pages she wrote now springs to life with new agenda and intrigue.
Though Soria is essentially a lifetime younger than the pair, she saw enough of their adventures to assure me it all rings true.
“I remember once Ace tried to convince Aurienne she was invisible!He should have known far better by then, but as you can see”—she gestures broadly at all of Ace as evidence—“the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
I cherish this. The coming together. The feeling of family I always longed for but never truly believed I would know.
I know I should be searching for answers. Each day we sit in the library for hours with little more than passing mention of the magic that was once so commonplace it was overlooked as a simple way of being. Yet it is the simplest parts that reach me the most. Not the way entire communities would band together to shift a stream toward wilting crops—though that feat was quite impressive—but the way his mother speaks to the heart of things.
I never knew a mother. Soria’s care and guidance is the closest I have ever known. Yet through these journals, I have come to know Sylara. Come to love her.
“Do you think she would have approved of me?” I ask Vale one lazy afternoon, just after reading about the many faces present on a journey into a town down the mountainside—a town I fear may have fallen to ash years ago.
Vale looks at me from a chair across the room. So often he reads by the window. I often remark that it is my favorite view in all the manor. Today, he takes a more formal approach—back upright, a table at his side with parchment ready to capture any sliver of information he deems worth noting.
“Without a doubt.” The comfort is immediate. He continues, not merely to reassure me but to knit us together into his heart. “You two have so much in common.” He lets out a small laugh, his smile drifting sweetly as his gaze turns inward. “And yet you are wildly different. If you are the flame, then she was the hearth. She did not blaze—not like you, little flame. She held. This family. This home. All of Caerhollan.”
He closes the journal in his hand, a small ribbon marking his place, and leans forward with his elbows resting on his knees.
“Change struck everyone hard. I was sheltered through much of it, but I remember.” The smile shrinks, the familiar pain following close behind memory. “My father worked tirelessly—trying to keep thekingdom together, keep people fed. My uncle went off to war, but my father… his battle was harder, in some ways.”
He leans back in his chair, resigning himself to the past—pain, love, and everything in between.
“Mother would always give me some tedious task when word came that my father was near. Training in the yard. Fetching her flowers for the dinner table. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that when my father arrived, it was her alone who greeted him. Whatever burden he carried, she was there to lighten it long before he ever turned to me.
“It is because of this—because of my mother’s enduring strength—that my father and I had the relationship we did. It wasn’t until years later that he confided in me. The agony of seeing starving faces and not having enough to offer. The hollow defeat of helping to bury the dead. We are a steadfast people. The amount of loss suffered before we sought refuge at the High Hold… it was too much.”
He pauses, then smiles again.
“My mother carried it all. And still,” his smile deepens, “she carried hope. Hope that brought us Aurienne. Hope that drove my father and me to work not only toward survival, but toward healing. She held it all.”
Even now, she holds my attention through her son’s retelling of her boundless love.
“And yes, my love, she would have absolutely adored you. Approval would not have even been a question. She would adore you for the happiness you bring me. She would adore you for the ways you never back down. And I am quite certain she would recognize something remarkable in your heart.”
Quiet pride settles within me, along with a connection to a woman shared only through memory and legacy.
A legacy I feel intense stewardship toward later that evening in the garden. Vale has just received word from the palace, and I decide to take some time among the carefully tended beds of soil and shrubbery that surround the manor.
Soria has joined me on walks here more than once since we arrived. It is an honor to walk beside her not as Lady and maid, but more like sisters. I try not to dwell on the way the manicured beds and climbingivy pale in comparison to the descriptions I have read of late. It was Soria who first remarked on it.
“I wish we could have seen it. The groundskeepers are remarkable—but from the way it was told to me, back then it was… magical.” The word carries so much weight. When magic itself shaped the land, it was beyond spectacular.
Now, sitting alone on a stone bench in the garden, I try to harness any energy that may reside in me.
In the journals, she speaks of flowers blossoming at a mere thought. Try as I might, no amount of willful determination makes a single petal bloom. I let out a frustrated huff. It all feels so useless.
