"Topaz!" Ruby hissed as her sister hopped up on her bed and hunkered down next to her, drawing the covers up to her chest like she was planning to spend the night. They had not slept like this since they were ten.
"What are you doing?"
Topaz turned onto her side, propped up her head on her hand and stared affectionately at her sister, "this isn’t fair," she said adamantly.
Ruby smiled sadly, reaching over to smooth her hair, which was loosed out and an unruly mess. Bianca would have a fit in the morning as she was the one often given the task of taming it.
"No, not much is in this life," Ruby replied, pulling away.
Topaz continued to stare at her as she looked up at the ceiling, her eyes were puffy and red, confirming Topaz’s suspicions.
Ruby then turned sharply, "where were you all afternoon? You really should not be disappearing like that, not with all the tension in the air."
Topaz shrugged, knowing her sister was only trying to change the subject.
"I was in the kitchen with the baker's wife. She made corn cakes, and cookies just for me."
Ruby rolled her eyes, a small smile playing across her lips, "wherever do you put it."
Topaz snickered, "I like to believe that one day I will burn it all out between etiquette classes and sparring with Jasper. But right now, it all just seems to go to my thighs and behind."
They both laughed. Ruby sobered first, "I am glad we are okay again sister. I thought I had lost you to puberty forever."
Topaz shoved her playfully, but she was right, their relationship had started a downward spiral when Topaz turned thirteen. Her sullen demeanour and black and white view of the world was like repellent to her energetic and bubbly sister. In addition to that, Topaz had felt wronged by her parents, having been made to share her life with someone who did a way better job of being a princess that she ever could. She had been jealous and angry and Ruby had shown herself to be too indifferent and self-involved to care. They had grown apart. Topaz had honestly believed she had hated her, until the reality of never seeing her again tore at her black and white heart, revealing its blood red, feeling interior.
"Ruby? What did Deswald do?"
Ruby was shaking her head in the dimly lit room, “I do not wish to talk about it.”
She could feel the annoyance reverberating off of her sister. Topaz had never been known for her patience.
“There are knights posted outside your door, there are guards everyway, jittery with their hands on their swords as though waiting for something to happen. I know this has something to do with Deswald? But I can’t imagine what he could do to deserve this.”
Ruby did not respond, but Topaz pressed on.
“Ruby, talk to me. I hate to see you under guard like this. It makes me nervous, the last time this happened you ran away.”
“I’m not going to…”
“You keep saying that… but I don’t want you to make promises you can’t keep.”
“What did Deswald do Ruby?”
Ruby sat up and sighed, “Deswald is a fugitive, the Royal guard are out looking for him… to answer for the deaths of some of the soldiers.”
Topaz reached for the lantern and lifted it between them so she could see Ruby’s face clearly.
“Do you mean from the Quest?”
“No. Apparently there was a break-in at the barracks. Whoever did it, killed a few of the soldiers and mutilated Deswald’s horse.”
Topaz’s eyes widened, “and they think Des did it?”
Ruby nodded.
“That’s ridiculous, he would never hurt his own horse.”
“I know he won’t. But they’re painting him like some kind of mad man. And father… father seems to believe that that is something he is capable of. His advisors seem to have convinced him that Deswald is lashing out because he can’t have me. So, he’s put me on guard, forbidden me to leave the castle without his permission. He says it’s for my protection, but… I know he’s hoping that Deswald will try to see me.”
Ruby swiped her hand quickly beneath her eyes; she was crying again.
“Do you think he will come see you?” she replaced the lantern on the night stand.
Ruby shrugged, “I don’t know. I hope he never comes here. I don’t want anything to happen to him, not because of me.”
Topaz fell back against the pillows and blew a puff of air against a strand of hair that had fallen into her face.
“I’m sorry Ruby.”
“It wasn’t going to work out anyway,” Ruby said, “Father was still going to marry me off.”
Topaz reached over and took her sister’s hand, “whatever happens Ruby I’ve got your back. You know that, right? You know you can trust me?”
“I know.”
✽✽✽
“Your majesty, the prisoner as you requested.”
King Kalgary turned around. Ajorel stood calmly beside the prison guard, his hands bound in front of him. Kalgary had requested another meeting with the prophet after two sleepless nights, marked by troubling dreams and unexplainable restlessness. Meeting him in his wife’s garden was more for his sake than the prophets. He needed the fresh air.
“Release his chains,” the king commanded.
The guard did not hesitate and king Kalgary noticed the reverent way with which he handled Ajorel as he undid his bonds.
“Walk with me Ajorel. You can wait here,” he said to the guard.
Ajorel fell into step with the king, “are you enjoying your new accommodations?” Kalgary asked.
Ajorel shrugged, “it is a lot more comfortable than that cold dungeon cell.”
“Good.”
“I admit I was pleasantly surprised at the change.”
“Really? I thought a prophet knows all.”
Ajorel chuckled, “A prophet knows only what is revealed to him. Sometimes El likes to surprise us too.”
The king nodded, as they made their way deeper into the garden.
“I did know you would summon me again.”
The king turned to look at him, “oh really.”
“And that those dreams would trouble you to the point of sleeplessness.”
The king stopped now and turned to the man, “what do you know about my dreams.”
“I know that El is speaking to you, and that you know in your heart that what I say is the truth.”
The king swallowed hard, “you unnerve me Ajorel. And as king you know it is hard for me to admit that.”
“Because your senses aren’t as dull as your predecessor.”
The king sighed, lowering his gaze and turning around. He clasped his hands behind his back and Ajorel came and stood beside him. Just as Ruby appeared from behind the bushes, she was hurrying back to the castle and when she saw her father her eyes widened in fear.
“You’re supposed to be in your room,” her father growled.
Ruby grimaced, “sorry, I needed some air.”
The king’s gaze fell on a book gripped tightly in her hand. Ruby always loved reading in the garden. Yet again he was subjecting her to restrictions she didn’t deserve.
“Go back to your room, have one of the guards escort you.”
Ruby hesitated, instead she was looking at Ajorel with intrigue in her eyes. Ajorel leaned his head to the side and smiled. This seemed to unnerve her. Hurriedly, she eased past them.
“Your daughter is beautiful,” Ajorel said.
“You know she’s not my daughter,” Kalgary said through gritted teeth.
“I am not trying to mock you. That young lady is your daughter. She has a great purpose in this world… her call will come soon. You will do well not to keep her from it.”
Hearing Ajorel talk about Ruby made Kalgary uncomfortable, “forget about my daughter. I brought you here for a reason.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Tell me Ajorel, what does our God say to us?”
Ajorel hesitated, Kalgary wondered if that surprised him too.
&n
bsp; “Your people are burdened by the weight of your laws. By the requests of your priests and the expensive offerings that bring nothing but a sense of loyalty to a way that has long faded. In the wake of the source of light, Aldor’s ways are nothing but a burden, an unnecessary yoke, muzzling them like oxen, weighing them down like beasts of burden so that their eyes are dimmed to the emptiness of your practices. You once safeguarded the prophecies, looking forward to the promised gift that would change his kingdom and this world. Now you guard your traditions and law books and gouge your eyes out to the truth.”
The king took a deep breath, restraining himself from the accusations in Ajorel’s words.
“The way of the source is light,” Ajorel continued, “he brings peace to the one who connects to him. Now it is not about safeguarding the border between light and darkness. It is about connecting to the source and then connecting to each other.”
Ajorel kneeled down now and drew in the dirt a straight line and then three diagonal lines coming out of it and then connecting them with a horizontal line beneath it. Kalgary watched with intrigue and growing discomfort. What Ajorel was saying was blasphemous in the highest degree, speaking so blatantly against their ways, but Kalgary could not stop him.
Conviction gripped his heart tightly as the prophet spoke, this was no fraud, this was a man filled with the light of El. A part of him coveted such power. Wouldn’t such a connection benefit a king more than a farmer? Yet here he was, standing above him, yet kneeling in his heart before the prophet’s obvious authority.
Ajorel looked up, “this is the way of the community. Brothers and sisters connected to each other by faith, by the light source now living in us. Spreading among us like wildfire.”
Ajorel rose to his feet and dusted his hand, “there is coming a day, when the light source will breathe their last and the borders will stand powerless. The people must carry the light within them or the darkness will consume us all. If this is the message that offends you, then you are not of the light. You may live within the borders, you may represent good by your crown, but your heart is filled with darkness. This is what the Lord says, judgment is coming to Aldor. As was prophesied the day of the great war is upon us.”
Kalgary turned away, feeling the crushing weight of the man’s words, pressing down hard on everything he had ever believed. As he turned to compose himself, out of nowhere came his other daughter.
“Father are you really going to let him speak to you like this!”
Her outrage was palpable. Kalgary took a deep breath, “not now Topaz.”
Her uncanny ability to slip into people’s presence without their knowledge always annoyed him. The girl would make a good spy. A spy who might cause wars because of her self righteous inability to hold things back for peace sake.
“Not now? Your people are already being stirred up against you and you are turning your own daughter against you with this ridiculous proposal. If your precious council even get a whiff that you are entertaining this man’s lunacy, which one of us would you ship away next to appease them?”
“Watch your mouth child!” the king growled.
Topaz shrunk back from his angry glare, but still managed to cast contemptuous eyes on the man standing behind her father, looking unmoved by her words. Ajorel was unnervingly calm. She tore her eyes away from him and shook her head at her father.
“Please father, don’t let him destroy everything our family has fought to build.”
The king’s eyes widened at her words and as though satisfied with what she had said, Topaz turned and walked away. But she could not know that what she said only added to the king’s shame. Instantly he was reminded of that fateful day in the temple, when he had overheard the prophet reprimanding his father. He had seen the fallout of his father’s disobedience. Even to this day, Saharia was still dealing with the fallout of his father’s selfish decisions. He wiped the horror from his face, before he turned back to face Ajorel.
“That’s enough for today. Time to return to your cell.”
Kalgary nodded to the guard who was waiting near the terrace that opened into the garden and he started walking towards them.
“She’s right, you know,” he said, “choosing to follow the truth will cost you… but so would choosing not to. Your daughter would be of great value to the cause of El, if only she turned some of that judgement inward.”
The king watched as Ajorel was led away. Slowly he could feel life as he knew it slipping through his fingers.
Chapter 26
With nowhere to go and her heart sore from missing and worrying about Deswald, sleep was hard to come. Ruby was so tired of crying but she could not stop. Because somehow, she could not help believing that this was perhaps all her fault.
Ben had come to see her today. He was just as distraught over Deswald as she was, but he was angry… as angry as Ben could be. He did not believe that Deswald would harm his own horse and he spoke of something that happened at his home, something that spooked Deswald and would have led him to believe that Ruby had lied to him. Deswald knew. He had managed to find out the secret she had kept for selfish reasons and now she wondered if in anger he had truly lashed out at those men. She wondered if he too was angry with her. Her eyes were swollen and achy from all the crying, but she could not stop.
As she laid there, she heard a scraping sound just outside her window. Ruby sat up, narrowing her eyes at the window she often kept open for the entrance of the cool night breeze and the light of the full moon. Suddenly, a swift moving shadow filled the space.
Ruby gasped and fell back against her pillows, her scream cut short when the crouched figure on her window sill became clearer to her fear blurred eyes. Even as a silhouette, she knew him.
“Deswald?”
Deswald lifted a finger to his lips and stepped off the window sill. In the pale light she could see what a sweaty, dirty mess he was. Her eyes found the blade held tightly in a bloody bandaged hand.
“It’s okay,” he said, sheathing it to his hip. “I will never hurt you.”
The desperation in his eyes worried her, he looked so unlike Deswald in his disheveled state.
“How did you…?” Ruby pointed at the window through which he had climbed.
Her room was at least twenty feet from the ground; she would know. She had climbed out that very window herself not too long ago and with great difficulty. She imagined that climbing in would be even more tedious.
“Doesn’t matter now,” he replied, “I don’t have much time.”
She got out of bed and walked towards him, she didn’t care that she was inappropriately clad in an unflattering night gown, or that her hair was messily bound atop her head.
“You shouldn’t have come here. There are guards posted outside my room. They are all looking for you.”
He nodded, “I know. I know their protocols.”
“Des I know it’s my fault,” she whispered.
“I didn’t mean to keep things from you… but I… I guess I was hoping that if I ignored it, it would go away. I’m sorry if I hurt, if I made you… do things…”
He moved towards her quickly, sweaty palms gripping her arms in desperation.
“Please tell me that you don’t believe them? Tell me that you know I didn’t kill those men.”
Ruby’s eyes widened, “if you say you didn’t, I believe you.”
His grip loosened on her arms and he took a step back, turning about her room, like he was completely familiar with it, while being so completely out of place. Then he sat, as though exhausted, on her pink pillowed couch.
Ruby grabbed a robe and wrapped it tightly around her, then sat down beside him. He smelled like a man on the run, yet… she still wanted to be close to him. Truly she had been touched with insanity she thought.
“If you didn’t do it, who did?”
Deswald looked over at her, she could see every detail on his face in the pale moon light. He had a shadow of a beard and dark circles under his eyes
.
“The same person who mutilated Ryder,” he replied, “Serin.”
Ruby drew back, “Serin? But that’s impossible. We left him in Dravia. I thought he was dead to be honest.”
“Well he’s not. And is it completely impossible for him to be here Ruby?”
Ruby looked thoughtful, “how do you know?”
“Because he told me. He set me up Ruby. He told me about Ryder, he knew I would go directly there. He knew what would be waiting for me, a mutilated horse and some well-placed dead bodies.”
“Oh Des,” she reached out and touched his arm.
“Then you must tell father. Tell him the truth, he will absolve you from these accusations.”
“Do you think so? Your father and brother already think me mad… they may be right. You really think they will believe that a dead man whom we left in Dravia somehow got into Aldor… into the Royal barracks even… and killed Aldorian soldiers? He couldn’t even fight off two men when he was alive.”
Ruby lowered her gaze, “it doesn’t sound very good.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
She could feel his eyes on her, as a comfortable silence settled between them, you would think they had all the time in the world. Wouldn’t that be nice?
“Don’t feel bad about your engagement,” he finally spoke again, “I understand why you kept it from me, we both knew this wouldn’t work. You are better off without me.”
“No don’t you say that…”
He looked at her with sad eyes, “Ruby I love you, I do,” he said passionately, “that has not and will not change but I… I am not the same man I was when I left three months ago. I am… different somehow.”
“Deswald please,” she pleaded, “we can figure this out.”
“I’m sorry, we can’t fix this one,” he said, his brave mask crumbling into an expression of anguish.
“I came to say good bye.”
“No not again, please. I don’t have to marry that man; I don’t even need to be here. I don’t belong here as much as you do…”
“Don’t say that. You belong here. This isn’t about you or me, or the choices I’ve made. It’s just the way things are in this world. You are amazing Ruby Stone; you are light to me. Your father is right to try to protect you from me. I could never truly deserve you. And I can’t stand between you and all that you were made for.”
Kingdom's Darkness (Gemstone Royals Book 2) Page 21