Winter's Fallen (The Conquest of Kelemir Book 1)

by A. F. Dery

  She stared at him, momentarily out of breath, her heart racing. She wanted to cry again, or hit something, or go somewhere else to cry and hit something. It was hard even for her to tell.

  Hadrian was very still, the expression on his face completely unreadable. He’d given up squinting at her, and stared off into the room with half closed eyes.

  Finally he cleared his throat. “I’ll be upstairs when he’s ready to work,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  And he left without another word.

  Grace watched him go, her heart still pounding. Her anger drained away in a moment, leaving only numbness in its place.

  She felt very cold.

  “You…may be right,” a hoarse voice said from the floor. Startled, she stepped back and looked down at Rupert, who had sat up on one elbow. He looked up at her with heavy eyes. “I don’t think I would have changed, then, if no one else had been here…even to help you. I’d like to think…but I was the wolf, and you were half frozen already…” He frowned, his brows wrinkling in confusion.

  Inexplicably, she wanted to laugh. “It probably would have been kinder all around if you had just left me out there,” she told him unsteadily. “But I don’t blame you, Rupert. Or the wolf. The wolf, anyway, is honest.”

  “Just remember what I said before,” he said tiredly, with a slow shake of his head. “If he really wanted to kill himself…he’s had plenty of time to do it, before you came here. Tell me, did it look like he’d recently been hoping to regain his sight…when you awakened?”

  “It’s possible that it’s not what he really wants,” Grace rubbed her arms. “It’s possible it’s just what he thinks he wants.”

  “And it’s also possible that he is setting you up to see him in a certain way, a way that will keep you sympathetic to him,” Rupert’s tone was gentle.

  “I don’t see why that would benefit him. He knows I’m…I’m…attached. He could have encouraged that, but he didn’t.” She tried to keep her voice level, but it didn’t work. She swallowed past a lump in her throat.

  “He might not want you to stay, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you to protect him. Think about it, Grace…he is here for a reason. Even if all he has said about himself is the truth, then if he doesn’t really want to die…he can’t keep on here the way he has and continue to live. There could be people looking for him, after what he did. He may need your help when you leave…in the very least, your silence about where you’ve been…and who has helped you. I would not have let him live…if he had not helped you when I brought you here. I won’t let him hurt you now. So if you leave this place, and he must assume you will eventually…it is in his interest to make sure you are…invested in him, somehow.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. It was an explanation which made sense, but it was far from the only explanation, and seriously considering it hurt too much.

  Yet, painful though it was to hear, didn’t it make more sense than the things Hadrian had said after they’d kissed? He had said that he thought she was beautiful, that he wished things were different so he could be with her. The more she thought about it, the more absurd it all sounded. He couldn’t see her, and no one like him- an educated man, who had been in a position of power once- would want a lowly shepherdess, even in some imaginary scenario. She’d still smelled of sheep when they’d first met, for pity’s sake. She had thought the words were born from pity, but how was that more plausible than Rupert’s version?

  He must have seen her thoughts reflected on her face, because he suddenly began to stammer. “I-it doesn’t mean that you’re not…I mean…you have to know…”

  “I’m sorry I woke you up,” she said, forcing a little smile onto her lips. “You can go back to sleep if you want, or I can try to help you upstairs, if you’d rather…?”

  “I’m fine here, for now,” he said, laying his head back down on the stones. “But Grace…he may only see you as what you can do, or be, for him…but you are more than that. The wolf would tell you…” He made a frustrated noise, rubbing his face tiredly with a hand.

  “It’s all right, Rupert. You should rest now. That’s what I’m going to do,” she said, adding a little more wood to the fire. “Whatever is behind what Hadrian is doing, or thinking…let’s just assume the best for now, and stay the course.”

  “Be careful, Grace,” he murmured groggily, his eyes already closed. She waited another moment or two until he started to snore, then returned to her room with a heavy heart.

  The things Grace had said to him still rang in Hadrian’s ears as he went upstairs.

  The hardest part about hearing them was knowing that they were true. He had been doing exactly what she had accused him of, and he hadn’t even realized it at the time. He knew it the moment she’d said it, and it seemed so clear now that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized it before.

  Truly he’d gone blind in more ways than one.

  If he were honest…no, he wasn’t certain he could be honest. Not yet, anyway. There was an ugliness in himself that he’d glimpsed long ago and done his best to forget, a selfishness that was hard to deny. He couldn’t let himself think of it now. It was painful even to breathe, with her words in his ears. And what could he say to them? Nothing. They were true. She was right. He knew it should change something, but he had no idea what. He didn’t think he wanted anything to change, not really. He didn’t want it to hurt when she left, and whatever she thought of her prospects, she would leave, he was sure of that much. He didn’t want to live with more pain. Everything had been so hard for so long. Whatever courage remained in him fled at the idea of it becoming harder still.

  Yet it already had, and would only continue. And now the wolf-man would be working at his side, instead of Grace. Those had been the only moments of peace he’d found since that one, blissful moment he’d had in her arms. He could focus on the work before him and her presence near him and try to forget all the rest and what was coming. He could even tune out the wolf in the room, and pretend she wasn’t doing her damnedest to keep her distance in every respect from him when all he wanted, with every fiber of his being, was to be close to her. It was as though he’d been starving for years and only just remembered what food was, and now it was all he could think about: hearing her heartbeat, feeling her breathe, the warmth and the weight of her when they embraced.

  That she wanted so much for him to live, somehow it meant something. She knew about him, knew what he had done, and had still wanted his company. It turned everything he’d assumed on its ear, and he wasn’t sure he could face that, even now, with it all spelled out so plainly for him.

  Instead of going back to the work room, he found himself sitting in the chair in Grace’s bedroom, burying his face in his hands and struggling with himself.

  The moment he heard her come inside, he felt unexpectedly afraid. Afraid that she would tell him to leave, or go out again herself, or keep saying things that hurt to hear.

  He dropped his hands and opened his mouth, intending to tell her that he had been just about to leave, but instead he found himself saying, “I would say I see the dead every time I close my eyes, but I don’t always know when they’re open.”

  Grace was silent, but he could hear her breathing and knew she still stood by the door.

  “I…I can’t tell you what it felt like, when they told me what had happened. Realizing what I’d done, and that I had no idea how to fix it, no idea of what could have even gone wrong. I expected to be punished, executed even, and I didn’t care. But Tristram…my Lord…he pardoned me at once. He blamed himself for requesting the plague to be made, even if it had been meant for an entirely different purpose. I was…” he laughed without humor, shaking his head. “I hated myself, all the more, because he didn’t. He should have, you see. He should have hated me. I had endangered all his people, as well as the enemy; I had failed him terribly. But we had been friends, and that meant something to him, more than I thought it should have
, given how many lives had been lost because of my stupidity.” He wiped at his face, his hand coming away wet. “Don’t you see, Grace? You should hate me, just like Tristram should have hated me. I should have been punished, and what’s happened to me is no penalty compared to what I did.

  “And what you did, it is different, whatever you think. Do you think it’s right for anyone to be forced into concubinage? Who could blame a woman for running from that kind of fate? But I certainly have plenty of blame for the men who would hand over one of their women each year rather than fight such oppression. No, Grace, I was meddling with things I should have never been meddling with, things I didn’t really understand. You were just trying to stay alive rather than being marched off to your rape and murder. I don’t know how to make you understand the difference, but I promise you that it’s real, and not a fabrication to support my view of the world. It’s just how it is.”

  Grace remained silent for so long that he started to doubt his own ears, but finally she said, “Rupert said if you really wanted to die, you wouldn’t have still been here when he brought me.”

  Hadrian closed his eyes, for whatever difference it made. “He’s right about that. I’m a coward. The very fact that I came here to study an impossible cure should tell you that. I should have done it back home, years ago, but here I am. I finally thought I was ready, that I had mustered my nerve and couldn’t bear anymore…just when I heard something at the door downstairs. And then I couldn’t just abandon you.”

  “Because of Rupert,” she said very quietly.

  “I would have helped you even if the wolf hadn’t stayed. I never wanted to be a murderer. I still don’t,” he said, frowning. Did she really think he would have just left her to die? A terrible thought occurred to him. “What has he been telling you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “In any case, I’m nothing next to someone like you. Or someone like who you were. Why does it matter what I think?” There was a hopelessness in her tone that hadn’t been there before, one that he didn’t fully understand, and didn’t like in the least.

  “Grace-”

  “No, no, you don’t have to say anything. Hadrian, I understand it’s been hard for you. I don’t think anyone who saw you here would question that. I’m sorry for all you’ve gone through, more than I can say. I know there’s nothing I can really do to make anything better. I know you’re still going to do whatever you want when I’m gone. Maybe I’m just being selfish for trying to delay the inevitable.”

  He heard her moving, then the sound of rustling linen as she laid down, he supposed, on the bed.

  “I know I don’t have to say anything, but…you were right about me. I just…I don’t know if I can change. If knowing you’re right is enough.” He shook his head. “I can’t stop seeing them, Grace. They’re always there. I dream about them. They never leave me.” His words kept tumbling out faster and louder, but he couldn’t seem to stop them. He felt desperate for her to understand. “I never forget, do you understand? There were so many of them. I saw some of them myself, before I came here. How do I make them go away? Would it even be right to? They’re always there, Grace, all the time now that it’s always dark. I can’t see anymore but I remember what I saw before, and it’s bodies in graves, all the time, fields of graves.” His hands were in his hair, he was breathing too fast, but she had to understand. “They’re always-”

  He felt her hands on his wrists, pulling down his hands. Startled, he didn’t resist, but froze where he stood, forgetting for a lightheaded moment to keep breathing. Her hands slid down to his, squeezing them painfully. “So you don’t forget them. You live with them,” she said simply.

  He blinked his unseeing eyes, unsure what to make of such advice. “But how-”

  “Just live,” she said. “I know I need to take my own advice. I think…I think being here makes it harder. It’s all we have to think about, you know? How we ended up here. What comes next, if anything. But we need to stop…both of us need to just stop.”

  She let go of his hands and touched his cheeks, very gently. He shivered. “Y-you know I care for you, Hadrian. I won’t try to pretend that isn’t true, but you don’t have to worry about me staying where I’m not wanted, either. Just, let yourself think about having a future. Of accepting your pardon and moving on. It doesn’t have to be with me, it doesn’t have to have anything to do with me.”

  It doesn’t have to be with you? He didn’t like how she kept dwelling on that theme, didn’t understand where it was even coming from. Had she so quickly forgotten the moment he found himself clinging to every chance he had?

  “You may be having trouble finding this cure,” Grace went on, apparently not noticing his increasing distress, “but I know you can still do great things. You can help people. It won’t bring back the dead, but…maybe the thought of the living can help you live with the ones who didn’t. Maybe you could go somewhere other than where you came from and make a new start. Maybe the dead won’t seem so loud when you have other voices to listen to.”

  “What about your voice? I want to listen to your voice,” he insisted. “Don’t…don’t give up on me.” His voice wavered. “I know I’m contradicting myself…I know I can’t be making sense right now…”

  Her hands fell away abruptly. “I won’t say anything,” Grace said in a low, trembling voice. “About where I’ve been or who helped me. You can do whatever you want. So don’t feel like you have to keep in my good graces to have a chance…you don’t.”

  “I don’t feel like that…Grace, where is this even coming from?” He was bewildered and feeling more lost than if he’d been dropped out in the forest without a guide.

  “I…I just thought you should know.” She cleared her throat. “You should know t-that’s not something you have to worry about.”

  “And I’m not. Don’t talk like this anymore, please.” His voice broke. “I need you.”

  “I will help you however I can, no matter what, Hadrian. I promise. You don’t have to pretend with me. I owe you, remember?” She laughed a little, but it sounded forced. “I’ve been saying all along that I would have died without you. If you really think I was right before, then you agree with me now. You don’t have to do, or say, anything else for me to want to help you.”

  A sick feeling was bubbling up in his insides; he was suddenly certain that these words were not coming from Grace, but from the wolf-man in his kitchen.

  Why would he say such things about me? It’s as if she thinks I’m manipulating her for some reason, but why would I do that? Why would he think that of me? Is it that he would put nothing past the man who killed his brother, is that it?

  “Grace, I don’t know how to make you understand…whatever he’s told you about me, it isn’t true. I have never pretended anything with you. How could I? Do you…do you really think I could fake…w-what happened between us before?” Childishly, he could not bring himself to come out and say it any more bluntly. He was suddenly afraid that he had either imagined the whole event, or attributed greater importance to it than she had. Maybe I finally did lose my mind in here. Maybe I’ve been here even longer than I thought.

  She was quiet and he wished desperately that he could see her face and divine something from her expression. He wondered if he’d ever get used to living without that kind of information. He would have even used magic to sense her that way, if she’d had enough of her own to make that a useful option.

  Finally she said in a small voice, “I hope not. I don’t want to think that, but…nothing else makes sense.”

  “Makes…of course it makes sense. Why wouldn’t it make sense?” He shook his head, uncomprehending. “We’re two people, and we…we feel things for each other…and enjoy each other’s company…and understand each other. Or we did, before you started talking like this…before he started talking to you.” He felt a sudden surge of anger at the other man, one he instantly felt guilty for, given how that man had been wronged by him.

 
; But it didn’t make the anger go away. Whatever I’ve done, he couldn’t have said these things to Grace without knowing they would hurt her. He is not blind. Did he not care? Is punishing me through every possible means more important to him than she is?

  He thought uneasily of how much time the wolf had spent with Grace before they’d learned the truth about him, then all the times after when he’d been too steeped in his own torment to follow her from the work room as the wolf-man had never hesitated to do.

  He reached for her, to reassure himself of her presence if nothing else, but his hands met empty air. She had moved away again.

  “You can’t blame this on Rupert,” Grace said unhappily, from farther away than he expected. “You were clear before about what you wanted-”

  “I thought we were clear on the fact that I’ve been behaving like an idiot!” Hadrian protested. “But please give me another chance, Grace. Let me show you that he’s wrong about me.” And let me keep you from spending any more time alone with him so he can poison you against me, he added silently.

  “I’m not going anywhere until spring,” she said quietly. “Will you think about what I’ve said? About the future, I mean?”

  “Of course,” he said immediately. “Of course I will. But I want you to think about what I’ve said, too. I’ve never deceived you…sometimes not told you everything, it’s true, but I’ve never said anything I didn’t believe or tried to pass myself off as something I’m not. Remember that the other man who’s been talking to you has been deceiving the world for who knows how long to save his own skin, and he has every reason to despise me. He’s not unbiased in all of this. You can be sure he has his own reasons for whatever he’s been telling you, and I really doubt they’re all selfless concern on his part.”