Queen of the Pale

by Sarah Hawke

  But thankfully, Rohen had a contingency plan. He shifted his sword back into the physical realm and gathered some dry straw. With the aid of a loose rock, he was able to strike the moonsilver blade hard enough to create a spark, and soon they were both kneeling in front of a small fire, basking in the glorious heat.

  “Do you think the Chol will see the smoke from the chimney?” she asked, holding her hands over the flames until she could feel the tips of her fingers again.

  “I doubt it,” Rohen said. “They’ll probably wander the castle for a while yet.”

  He didn’t elaborate, but Delaryn had overheard enough conversations to know what he meant. The monsters would almost certainly feed on the dead for some time before they were sated. Without an Anointed to direct them, Chol Dretches were little more than feral beasts. Her stomach turned when she thought about them eating the corpses of her servants and handmaidens.

  And her husband.

  “Still, we shouldn’t linger,” Rohen said. “Ideally, we’d head out in a few minutes, but…”

  Delaryn allowed the silence to speak for itself. They were stuck in this barn until morning whether they liked it or not. Only the heat of the sun would give them a fighting chance of surviving the walk to Dorelas.

  “Maiden’s mercy,” he breathed, slouching down beside her. He worked his fingers through the blood-soaked hole in his trousers and investigated his wound.

  “How does it feel?” she asked.

  “Better. Almost normal, actually.” Rohen shifted his emerald elven eyes onto her. “It shouldn’t be possible. Even tarnroot salve doesn’t work this quickly.”

  Delaryn glanced away. “It’s…I-I don’t know even know what to—”

  “Palerending.”

  The word hung in the air between them for almost a minute before she mustered the courage to meet his gaze again. Even then, she didn’t know what to say.

  “Only demons can channel the power of the Pale,” Rohen whispered. “Or mortals who are possessed by them.”

  “I’m not possessed!” Delaryn insisted. “I’m just…”

  He stared at her for what felt like an age, his face unreadable. “They say your mother wielded this power. They say it’s how she breached the Pale and summoned demons to destroy the Chol.”

  “I know,” Delaryn whispered. “I’ve heard the stories a thousand times.”

  Rohen swallowed heavily. “If the Keepers ever learned about this, they would—”

  “Burn me alive,” she said. “You don’t think I’ve worried about this? You don’t think I’ve spent every day for the last three years dreading that someone would learn the truth?”

  She turned back to stare into the fire. The heat had thawed the tears frozen in her eyes, and she could feel the briny river pouring down her cheeks. Her entire body began to tremble.

  Rohen’s hand squeezed her shoulder. “How long have you known?”

  “Long enough,” she murmured. “If the truth ever got out, I knew it would be a death sentence. Even Thedric wouldn’t have been able to protect me.”

  “So he didn’t know?”

  “No. He was already staving off angry tharns and priests by insisting that I was nothing like my mother. They had to listen to him—he had just ended the civil war, and the people in the south genuinely believed he had been sent by the gods to save Darenthi. No one could oppose him, not even the Tel Bator. But if I showed the slightest spark of magical ability, he wouldn’t have been able to keep them at bay. Everyone would have turned on him in a heartbeat for protecting me in the first place.”

  Delaryn shook her head and closed her eyes. “The Palerending…that came later. I still don’t understand how or why it works. It’s like channeling the Aether but easier. There’s no pain, no backlash…I wish I could explain it.”

  He stirred behind her and wrapped his other arm around her waist. Delaryn leaned against him, more grateful than ever for the warmth of his touch.

  I told you, he is not like the others. He may wear their colors and wield their weapons, but he has not been corrupted by the empty promises of silent gods.

  Delaryn swallowed and drew in a long, deep breath. She wanted to tell Rohen everything all at once, but she also didn’t want to overwhelm him. Knowing she could rend the Pale was one thing; knowing that she could speak with the spirit of her mother was something else entirely.

  “What you did back in the castle,” Rohen whispered. “There are sorcerers in the Galespire twice your age who can’t channel that much power. No one has wielded that kind of elemental magic since back during the days of the Seven.”

  “I can’t explain that, either,” she lied. “It all just…comes to me.”

  He squeezed her again. “Gods, I wish Sehris were here. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s read every damn book in the spire.”

  Delaryn smiled tightly. He didn’t know the truth about she and Sehris, either, but that was something else she could tell him later—assuming they survived that long.

  “If we don’t leave until morning, we won’t be able to catch up with them in Dorelas,” Rohen said. “But we can warn the villagers about the Chol, and I should be able to convince them to give us horses. We can ride to Rimewreath and take shelter with the army. As the queen, you could—”

  “They can’t know who I am,” Delaryn said, slipping out of his grip enough to turn and face him. “Don’t you see? If they learn that the king was killed by Chol but find out that I miraculously survived…” She shook her head. “They’ll blame me. They’ll say that I killed him.”

  Rohen frowned. “There’s no way the Chol came all the way to Whitefeather Hold for just you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. That’s exactly what they’ll believe. Without Thedric to protect me…”

  “You’re still the queen,” he told her. “I know how the tharns feel about you, but surely you can still—”

  “I can’t do anything, don’t you understand?” Delaryn leaned away and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “You have no idea what it was like after the war. Thedric brought me back to the palace in Silver Falls, and I didn’t leave that building for almost a year. Guards followed me everywhere just to make sure no one tried to get revenge on my father one last time.”

  Rohen stayed silent for a moment, but she could see the pain and sympathy in his eyes. Knowing him, he probably blamed himself for everything bad that had ever happened to her. He had joined her father’s army at the end of the war even though everyone else already knew it was a lost cause. If the ranks of the Templar hadn’t been so devastated from the last Culling—and if Thedric hadn’t offered her father’s surviving soldiers redemption by serving the Order—Rohen would have died at Whitefeather Hold.

  “I felt like a prisoner in the palace,” Delaryn whispered. “I hated Thedric at first. For a long time, I wished I had died in the fighting like Skaldir or been hanged with my father. But eventually, I started to realize he was my only salvation whether I liked it or not. I knew he saw me as the spoils of conquest, but he wasn’t cruel or unkind. I think he genuinely believed that my father was evil, and he thought he was doing the gods’ work restoring the kingdom.”

  She took another deep breath. “He could have forced me to marry him, obviously, but he didn’t. He asked. He gave me the chance to leave.”

  Rohen’s cheek twitched. “Did he?”

  “Yes,” Delaryn said. “He came to me one night and—”

  “You just said he was the only thing standing between you and the mob,” Rohen said. “Just because someone asks a question doesn’t meant they are giving you a choice.”

  She slumped closer to the fire. She had a hard time believing that Thedric would have thrown her to the wolves if she had rejected him, but then again…

  “I heard all kinds of rumors about how he was treating you,” Rohen whispered. “The Lord Protector insisted that you were happy, but as much as I wanted to believe him, I also wanted to keep hating Thedric. He’s the one who took everything
away from us. He laid waste to your home and killed your family. He undid almost everything decent your father tried to do in Silver Falls.”

  Rohen sighed and dragged his fingers back through his dark blond hair. “He’s also the one who offered every man who opposed him a chance to join the Templar and redeem themselves. Most men in his place would have had us all executed on the spot.”

  For several minutes, the only sound in the barn was the crackle of the flames in the hearth. Delaryn couldn’t help but stare into them and wonder what horrors might come next. She had never loved Thedric, but like Rohen she hadn’t been able to sustain her hatred of him, either. It was…complicated.

  And it was about to get even more complicated once news of what happened reached the south. Thedric had many rivals, and without any legitimate heirs, there couldn’t be a proper rite of succession. Tharns across Darenthi would fight for the chance to sit on the White Throne, all while the Chol gathered strength here in her shattered homeland…

  “You should try and get some rest before morning,” Rohen said, unclasping his thick, blue-gold cloak and setting it on the ground next to her. “It’s going to be a brutal walk.”

  Her eyes flicked between him and the cloak. “What about you?”

  “I’ll keep watch just in case. I still doubt the Chol will head this way for a while, but we’re close enough that anything is possible.”

  Delaryn studied his silhouette in silence for a moment, marveling once again at just how mature he looked compared to three years ago. He was a man now, not just a boy playing at war. His armor just looked right resting on his shoulders. She knew it was a strange thought to have for someone who had spent so many years of her life fearing and avoiding anyone affiliated with the Tel Bator, but she couldn’t help it. At their best, the Guardian’s Templar were still the greatest warriors in Darenthi—perhaps in all of Torsia—and they remained the last and only hope of defeating the Chol.

  On impulse, Delaryn rushed out and touched Rohen’s shoulder. The firelight flickered in his elven eyes as he turned back to face her, and she leaned up on her knees to kiss him. She could feel the anxious dread on his lips, but it promptly melted away when she cradled his cheeks in her hands and pulled him in close.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed, gently pressing her forehead against his. “I should have told you the truth about my powers earlier. I was just…I wasn’t sure how you would react. I couldn’t live with myself if they made you hate me.”

  “I could never hate you,” Rohen whispered. “I just don’t know if I can protect you.”

  Delaryn smiled. She should have known better than to doubt him. Just because he wore the Guardian’s Shield on his chest didn’t mean he was a zealot like so many of the others. He wasn’t going to turn her in; he wasn’t going to hand her over to the Keepers. She didn’t know what he was going to do, exactly, but worrying about the future seemed pointless when there was no guarantee they would survive the present. The Chol could be upon them at any moment, and Dorelas and Rimewreath seemed impossibly far away…

  Delaryn kissed him again, but this time she tasted hunger, not fear, on his lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed him in tighter until she could feel his heart beating through his armor. Despite everything that had just happened—no, because of everything that had just happened—she was more desperate for his touch than ever. With no guarantee of a tomorrow, she refused to allow tonight to slip through their fingers.

  “I want to feel you inside me,” she breathed into his ear.

  Rohen kissed her. Hard. Harder than ever before. Not like he wanted her—like he needed her. Almost as much as she needed him.

  Delaryn unfastened the straps of his brigandine coat while he cast off his gloves and unclasped her bodice. As he hoisted his armor over his head, she unbuttoned his undershirt and dragged her fingernails across his smooth, muscular chest. His body had always been the perfect combination of man and elf: lean but strong, sharp but powerful, delicate yet unmistakably masculine.

  His manhood was desperately awaiting her caress when she freed it from his trousers, and her skirt effortlessly slid from her hips at his touch. Sliding her arms around the back of his neck, Delaryn pulled Rohen down on top of her as she laid upon his cloak. His stem, thick and throbbing, pressed against her yearning sex as she parted her knees and wrapped her legs around his waist.

  A soft, contented gasp escaped her lips when he nudged the tip inside her, and she opened her eyes and stared up at the face of the man she had loved her entire life. He smiled down at her, eager to plunge into her deepest depths but sweet and humble enough to wait for her permission.

  “You’re the first,” Delaryn breathed. “Just like I always hoped you would be.”

  Rohen’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  She wanted to explain—she wanted to tell him how Thedric had never truly taken her in a month of marriage. Before today, she had resigned herself to her inevitable fate as the last Whitefeather queen; she had known that she would eventually have to bear Thedric an heir to the throne. But she had kept waiting and hoping, never allowing her husband to plant his royal seed…

  And then she had learned about Rohen’s visit, and everything had changed. She had wanted him to be her first since she was old enough to have a first, and against all odds that moment was finally here. Even if this was their last night in this world, it was going to be on her terms.

  “Take me,” Delaryn begged. She locked her ankles behind his back and pulled him inside her, fire racing through her blood at the delicious stretch. “Please…”

  He moaned in ecstasy as his manhood thrust all the way inside her. He felt every bit as right as she had known he would, and she threw back her head and purred in delight when he began plunging in and out of her. His lips returned to hers, and they shared every breath, every gasp, every shudder of delight as their bodies became one.

  “Gods,” Rohen breathed, his face scrunched above her as he fought a losing battle with himself. “I can’t…”

  “Remember what I told you,” Delaryn said, smiling and cupping his face as he plunged deeper and deeper into her core. “Don’t hold back—never hold back.”

  His strong hands slid down her smooth thighs, and he propped her calves up on his shoulders as he began hammering into her with reckless abandon. She grabbed onto his muscular arms, trembling in ecstasy as the love of her life took her, really took her…

  And then Rohen spilled inside her. Her toes clenched in the air and her fingernails dug into his arms as she spent along with him, breathless and delirious and as content as she had ever been. He slumped forward on top of her, his lips finding hers, and Delaryn promised herself that no matter what happened tomorrow, no one, not even the gods themselves, would ever keep them apart again.

  8

  Blood in the Snow

  Rohen never intended to fall asleep. His offer to stand watch while Delaryn got some rest had been completely sincere, and it absolutely would have been the wisest course of action given the very real, very probable danger. A little fatigue was a small price to pay to avoid being ambushed by a swarm of Chol in the middle of the night.

  But then he had made love to her, and everything had changed.

  Rohen had no idea how long they spent wrapped in each other’s arms, but the warmth of her body melted everything else away. The blizzard, the Chol, the slaughter at the castle…even his deepest fears about her dark magic seemed impossibly distant when he kissed her. This was all that mattered. She was all that mattered.

  He didn’t even realize he had fallen asleep until an eerie blue glow pierced his eyelids and snapped him back into the waking world. He inhaled sharply when he realized he was staring at the glowing runes of the wraithblade dagger lying on the floor beside him.

  “Shit!” he hissed, shooting upright. Delaryn didn’t move; her white cloak was still wrapped over her like a blanket as she slept. Behind them, the fire had dwindled to a scant few embers, and the temperat
ure had fallen with it.

  The cold wasn’t nearly as concerning as the glowing dagger, however; Rohen instinctively turned and reached out for his scabbard half buried beneath his armor—

  Only to see that Varlothin remained as dark and calm as when they had laid down in the first place. Frowning, he slowly pulled the sword from its sheath just to be sure.

  “What’s wrong?” Delaryn whispered, her eyes fluttering open.

  “I’m not sure,” Rohen said, glancing back at the dagger on the other side of the belt. All wraithblades were forged with the same basic enchantment; it didn’t make sense that only one of them would be trying to warn him about the Chol.

  “Oh, gods!” Delaryn gasped when her eyes finally spotted the runes. She rolled over and leaned up, her cloak sliding down her chest, but Rohen snatched her wrist before she could stand.

  “Can you hear them?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “The Wailing,” he said. “Can you hear them?”

  Delaryn paused and shook her head. “No, not since we left the Hold.”

  “Then they aren’t nearby. There must be something wrong with the blade.”

  Rohen pursed his lips in confusion. He had never heard of anything like this happening before, though he obviously wasn’t an artificer. If only he could ask Sehris…

  “We should get moving regardless,” he said, grabbing his brigandine coat. “Sunrise can’t be far away now, and there isn’t much left of the fire anyway.”

  Delaryn nodded and pulled her cloak more tightly around her body. “Twenty miles…”

  Rohen forced a smile as he stood and helped her up. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky. Today could be unnaturally warm and pleasant.”

  It wasn’t, of course. The wind outside was as cold and bitter as ever, and the first rays of sunlight seemed utterly devoid of heat even as they painted the snow an eerie shade of crimson. Still, Rohen felt far more rejuvenated than he should have after just a few hours of sleep, and Delaryn seemed to have more energy as well. They headed northwest to try and meet back up with the road, and they didn’t spot a single Chol along the way.