A cool draft slithered past Elara, a phantom touch more unnerving than Kael’s proximity. She had to convince him. Her life depended on it.
“You simply couldn’t bring yourself to do anything truly awful to me.” Her voice, though trembling, carried a manufactured certainty.
He watched, his dark gaze unblinking. The raw, animal intelligence in his eyes showed her words were hollow echoes. He believed nothing.
Then he moved. A single step. His large hand rose, fingers tracing the line of her throat. A shiver, cold and sharp, bolted through Elara’s frame. “Why?”
Her breath caught. The warmth of his touch, so incongruous with the chill in her heart, stole her voice. “Huh?”
“Why can I not do anything awful?” His thumb brushed the pulse point beneath her jaw, a feather-light pressure that sent her heart into a frantic drumbeat against her ribs.
“Because… because it’s against the… the sacred laws of the Duchies!” The words tumbled out, desperate and unconvincing even to her own ears. Memories of the shadowed paths in the Serpentwood, the glint of his hunting knife, the heavy thrum of the enchanted necklace around her neck, resurfaced. His touch, so gentle now, felt like a premonition of suffocation.
She bit her lip, a flicker of an ancient custom igniting in her mind. Elder Bran, the manor’s oldest groundskeeper, often spoke of the ancient pacts, the ‘Foresight Marriages’ that bound bloodlines and estates. These were not unions of affection, but of destiny, chosen not by heart but by the weaving of fate, sometimes years in advance.
A spark, sharp and cold, ignited in her eyes. It was a perilous gamble, but the only card she held. “If you… if you were to harm me,” she began, her voice gaining a strange, brittle strength, “it would be a Kinslayer’s Oath.”
For the first time, a flicker of something other than primal instinct crossed his face. His brows furrowed, a dark storm brewing. The small, tarnished needle he had been idly turning in his fingers clattered against the stone floor.
Elara’s conscience pricked, a fleeting phantom. She crushed it underfoot. This was survival. “Because I am… I am your betrothed.” She let the lie settle, a venomous seed sown in the fertile ground of his fractured mind.
---
Days bled into weeks, marked only by the shifting light through the infirmary’s barred window and the unsettling rhythm of Kael’s deep, unnaturally prolonged sleep. The manor felt like a vast, empty mausoleum, each shadow holding a breath.
Out in the overgrown gardens, Elara knelt by a venerable Ironbark tree, its ancient limbs gnarled and thick as a bull’s neck. A lightning bolt, charged with raw, wild magic from the recent storms, had ripped a jagged gash down its trunk, blackening the hardy wood. Lady Seraphina, the frail matron of a neighbouring estate, wrung her lace handkerchief, her eyes red-rimmed.
“It’s the birth tree for my youngest son, Lord Julian,” she murmured, her voice a reedy whisper. “Planted the day he drew his first breath. He’s away, serving in the Duke’s Guard. This… this is a terrible omen, Miss Vance.”
“We’ll see what can be done, Lady Seraphina.” Elara ran a gloved hand over the charred bark, feeling the tree’s faint, struggling pulse through the living wood. Her brow furrowed, a mirror of the tree’s distress. “It needs surgery, yes. Deep scarring, but the heartwood is salvageable. We’ll need a bracing of wrought-iron rings and a potent growth draught to knit the wounds.”
Bran, his weathered face etched with worry, knelt beside her, a satchel of tools clinking softly. “What if they blame you if it doesn’t take, Miss Elara?” he whispered, his gaze darting to the distraught noblewoman.
“The roots are strong, Bran. And the life-force, though battered, remains. It will recover.” Elara brushed loose soil from her fingers. The sleepless nights had taken their toll. Dark smudges bruised the skin beneath her eyes. Her usually neat braid was slightly dishevelled.
“You look tired, Miss Elara,” Bran observed, his gaze sharp and paternal.
“Just the manor’s air, Bran.” She offered a weak smile. As if summoned by unspoken anxieties, a faint chime echoed from the small, silver Whisper-Stone tucked into her belt pouch. She pulled it out, its surface glowing faintly with an inner light. “Excuse me.”
She retreated to the shelter of a thick yew hedge, pressing the cool stone to her ear. Her calm, professional composure, so carefully maintained moments before, began to unravel.
“Yes? This is Elara Vance.”
The measured tones of an alchemist from the distant Temple-Hospital of Sanctum Severus crackled through the stone. “Miss Vance. Regarding Lord Kael. He… he has stirred.”
Her heart, already a frantic bird, doubled its beat. “Stirred? But you said… months ago, you said he wouldn’t…”
“Indeed. A month past, he roused. Spoke. Though he retained no memory of recent events. We believed him merely… disoriented.” The alchemist’s voice held a strange, strained quality. “But the new reports… they are vexing.”
Elara clutched the Whisper-Stone. Her fingers bit into the soft leather of her gloves. “Vexing? What do you mean? I… I spoke with him myself. He was… lucid. Terrifyingly so, but lucid. He… he even threatened me.” The memory made her shiver.
The alchemist cleared his throat, a dry rustle. “Ah, yes. We received a report of his… outburst. And then, his sudden collapse. After your… encounter, he fell into a deep slumber.”
Elara pressed a hand to her mouth. She had known his collapse was tied to her declaration, but to hear it confirmed… A cold dread snaked around her heart. Was she responsible for some deeper malady?
“His consciousness has returned, according to the arcane resonance tests. The mind-spirits are active, his vital hum is strong. But… the awakenings are unpredictable.”
Elara held her breath, braced for another blow.
“He simply… will not fully wake.”
A guttural sound escaped her throat, a choked gasp. “But you just said he *stirred*!”
“A rare affliction, Miss Vance. One recorded only in the oldest grimoires of the Arcane Guild. The Shadow-Sleep.”
Elara’s fingers trembled. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them to the shifting green of the yew leaves. “Shadow-Sleep?”
“It’s also called the Somnolent Curse, or the Slumberer’s Folly. His mind is awake, yes, but his body cannot be roused. He drifts in and out, but the waking periods are brief, fragmented. We’ve tested every tincture, every charm. There is no damage to the spirit core, no arcane drain. It is… a prolonged state of profound, natural sleep.” The alchemist paused, then continued, his voice softer, “It’s been twelve days since he last truly opened his eyes.”
The silence that followed was broken only by the chirping of crickets. Elara couldn’t process it. Her mind, so long trapped in a cage of fear and desperate planning, felt strangely blank.
“We will return him to the manor, Miss Vance. He requires a familiar environment, and constant observation.”
“Wait!” Elara cried, her voice hoarse. She lifted her hand, the Whisper-Stone trembling within her grip. A gust of wind rustled her hair, cool against her suddenly damp forehead. “So… Lord Kael is not truly insensible, but no one knows when he will genuinely wake again?”
“Precisely, Miss Vance. For now, we cannot expect anything resembling a consistent awakening.”
“Huff…” The sound was a sob, a ragged breath of pure, unadulterated relief. The suffocating anxiety that had coiled in her chest, a serpent ready to strike, unwound and vanished in an instant. Her eyelids fluttered, tears pricking them. “Thank you. Oh, thank you so much.”
“Pardon?” The alchemist sounded baffled.
Elara inhaled deeply, a cleansing, freeing breath. The weight of her lie, the monstrous fabrication of their betrothal, lifted. If he only woke intermittently, if his memory was so fractured, she could simply deny it all. He could claim whatever nightmare he wished. She could claim it was a delusion born of his injury. “Thank you, doctor. Thank you for this news!”
Returning to Lady Seraphina, Elara’s step was lighter, her voice ringing with newfound optimism. “Lady Seraphina, be assured. I will do everything within my power to revive your tree!” Her own deadly seed, once a source of terror, was now merely a harmless fancy planted in a sleeping man’s mind.