His heart was thumping painfully in his chest. It wasn’t like Kilian to be nervous, but ever since his and Elina’s midnight dance in the ballroom it constantly felt as if he had something lodged in his throat. It was uncomfortable and suffocating.
Part of him knew that what was ‘stuck’ in his throat were all the words he wanted to say to Elina but never could. And yet there was something else, too; an uncertainty about what Elina had actually been doing, wandering the castle in the dead of night when he was asleep.
She said she was looking for magic. But what? And why? Or…for whom?
If she had been wanting to help Kilian then Elina would have asked him to help in her search. He knew the castle far better than she did, after all.
When Elina came through the door and smiled at Kilian strewn out on his bed all suspicions were forgotten. He didn’t want to dwell on such things, especially when he was already obsessing over what his brother was up to. The servant Kilian sent down to the border was yet to return, even though he was two weeks late.
It would definitely have taken him longer than four days as a round trip, so I was being unreasonable with my time frame, but even still…
He shook the thought from his head. “What’s in the box?” he asked Elina curiously when she placed it onto the bed beside him. “Secrets? Magic?”
Elina laughed softly. “No. Nothing like that. It’s…a gift.”
“For me?”
“No, for me. Of course for you, Kilian.”
The look of tolerance on Elina’s face at his stupid question filled him with unbearable affection for her. The lump in his throat returned; Kilian gulped it down. “Can I open it now?”
“Unless you want to lie there and stare at a box all day whilst I stand and watch you watching it.”
He smirked. “Point taken.”
But when Kilian sat up and reached out to take the lid off the box Elina grabbed his hand, her expression anxious and somewhat embarrassed.
“I’m – I’m still nowhere near as good as my mother is but I did try really hard with this and I hope you like it and –”
“Shut up, Elina.”
Kilian took her hand away, altogether more interested in the gift now he knew Elina had made it herself. When he lifted the lid of the box she stood there, nervously biting her lip as if she were silently pleading for Kilian to like whatever was inside.
She needn’t have worried, for when Kilian unfolded the long, high-collared, elaborately embroidered overcoat from the box he was instantly enamoured. The fabric was a dark, moody blue dashed through with silver thread that shone like gold in the light from the fire – like his hair. The interior fabric was soft and luxurious against his fingertips, promising to insulate him against the cold when he wore it. The buttons were engraved with a pattern of vines and flowers that seemed oddly familiar, though Kilian couldn’t place it.
When Kilian didn’t speak or react Elina only grew more worried. “Do you –”
“I love it. This is – why did you make this for me? When did you start making this? It must have taken weeks.”
She blushed. “Just under three. I didn’t do much else other than make it whenever I wasn’t with you. I…decided to make it after we got drunk together. I couldn’t stand watching you wear that ridiculous, moth-eaten overcoat of yours, and then the colour scheme and embroidery pattern came to me so quickly it almost felt like I had no choice but to make it.”
Kilian was torn between trying on the garment and pulling Elina down onto the bed with him, to demonstrate his gratitude the only way he knew how – physically. But then he thought of the lump in his throat, and how his life would be so much better if it simply disappeared.
“Elina,” he began, avoiding her eyes at first through sheer nerves. “I don’t know how to thank you. For everything.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Kilian. I didn’t do any of his for your gratitude.”
“The fact you did anything at all for me means you get it regardless,” he quipped. Gently placing the overcoat on top of its box Kilian got to his feet, gesturing for Elina’s hand. When she gave him it he enveloped it in both of his; her skin was hot against his own. “I had no idea just how much I would come to depend on you when you first started working for me. You’ve completely changed me.”
Elina wrinkled her nose. “I don’t really think I’ve changed you, Kilian. You just didn’t know who you were. And you’re still insufferable and lazy, even though you’ve definitely gotten far more tolerable since you sobered up –”
“You really know how to ruin a moment, don’t you?” Kilian laughed, shaking his head incredulously. When he locked eyes with her he realised how stupid it had been to pretend his feelings for her were trivial.
There were anything but.
“Elina –”
“Sire?”
Kilian and Elina frowned at each other, then simultaneously looked at the door. For there was the servant Kilian had sent to find out why his brother was delayed, looking uncertain and confused by the scene he had walked in on.
Kilian let go of Elina’s hand immediately and stalked over to the man. “What have you found out?” he demanded, now on edge and nervous for an entirely different reason than confessing to Elina. Outside the wind violently buffeted the window, as sure a sign as any that Kilian had little to no control over his own feelings once they were forced to the surface.
“Your Royal Highness, he…”
“He’s what?”
“He’s…” The servant looked at the floor. “Missing, sire. Your brother is missing. He has been since that first messenger was sent.”
Kilian roared in fury, the sound all but drowned out by the rapidly-forming storm outside. He turned from the servant, fervently pacing his room as the reality of what Gabriel being missing meant.
It means he isn’t coming back. It means I’m stuck here. It means I must be king.
“Get out,” he muttered to the servant. The man was only too happy to oblige, scurrying out of sight just as Elina reached his side and touched his arm.
“Kilian, there’s a solution to all of this. You just have to stay calm and –”
“What do you know?!” he screamed, wrenching his arm away from Elina’s hand as if she had burned him. She stared at him in shock.
“Kilian –”
“No, don’t talk to me in that tone. You have no idea what’s going on in my head right now.”
“You have to find out if your brother is still alive!”
“Who cares about that? Dead or alive, he’s gone, leaving me here to rot –”
“He’s your brother!”
“I don’t care!”
“Then you’re an even worse liar than you think!” Elina screamed back at him. Kilian was momentarily taken aback – he’d never heard Elina raise her voice like this before. “There’s no way you don’t care for him,” she continued on passionately, “he’s all the family you have left.”
Kilian averted his eyes. “Just because family matters to you doesn’t mean it has to matter to me. I’m the one whose father cursed him to stay a prisoner forever.”
“At least you had a father! And he clearly cared for you, whether you believe that or not. Have you never wondered what his true reasons were for placing you on the –”
“You know nothing, Elina. Nothing at all.”
She glared at him. “If you would just tell me then I would.”
“I don’t owe you that. I don’t owe anyone anything.”
“I wouldn’t want you to tell me because you feel like you owe me!” she cried, attempting for a second time to touch Kilian’s arm. He shrugged her off. “I want you to tell me because you…want to tell me. Because you –”
“Just get out, Elina.”
She blinked in surprise. “What?”
“Get out. Now.”
Elina glanced out the window at the howling, wretched blizzard obscuring the sky. It seemed like a distant dream that the sun had ever
been visible. “Kilian, don’t –”
“Now!” he ordered, voice like thunder to match the storm. “Don’t come back.”
For a moment it seemed like Elina would protest. There were tears streaming down her face; Kilian fought back the urge to wipe them away and apologise – to beg her to stay. But then she set her mouth in a grim line, pulled up the hood of her cloak and swiftly departed Kilian’s chambers without another word. It was only when the echoing of Elina’s footsteps were silenced that Kilian collapsed onto his bed and buried his face in the heartbreakingly beautiful overcoat she’d slaved away to make him.
It’s better this way, Kilian thought, hating himself, but hating Gabriel more. I should never have gotten close to Elina in the first place. I should have stayed alone, just like I have been from the very beginning. I could never have expected her to stay with me if I’m locked in this castle forever.
If he had never let Elina in then turning her away would not have hurt quite so much.
Kilian had never been in so much pain.
Chapter Twenty-One
Elina
“And here was me thinking we’d already had the worst of the winter weather.”
“This is the ugliest storm to hit Alder for years.”
“Even worse than when the magician –”
“Definitely worse than when the magician stepped in.”
Most everyone in Gill’s tavern glanced at Elina, then, though it wasn’t out of spite or annoyance. Because of her they had enough supplies to make it through the awful winter, even with this new barrage of snow and hail and thunder. She doubted she’d ever be spurned by the town again. But she was still the daughter of the magician, so of course whenever he was brought up they thought of her.
“You’d think, after twenty-one years, they’d have something better to talk about,” Lily sighed. Now that Elina had been accepted by the town, her mother had decided to venture out with her to enjoy the warmth and atmosphere of the tavern. Elina knew it was a thinly-veiled excuse to keep watch on her – she hadn’t exactly returned from Kilian’s castle in the best state of mind the previous day, after all.
Elina’s only response to both her feelings and her mother’s comment was to tip back the rest of the contents of her tankard of ale down her throat. She didn’t know what else to do. She felt useless. Kilian had been beside himself with fury; Elina didn’t think she’d ever seen a person so angry. But it wasn’t simply that Kilian was angry. No, in the moments after learning that his brother was missing he’d had the expression of a doomed man, his life having been forcibly ended before it had ever really begun.
She sighed. Kilian’s reaction wasn’t even over-dramatic. In reality anyone would react the way he had if they were being forced to stay trapped inside the same building forever performing a role they never wanted. But what Elina didn’t understand was Kilian’s lack of concern about his brother’s wellbeing.
It’s impossible that he doesn’t care for Gabriel, she thought, though in reality Elina could not be sure of this, given Kilian’s personality. But the mere fact that, before they’d been interrupted, Kilian had clearly been planning to tell Elina something important – something about his feelings for her – suggested Kilian was not quite as heartless and callous as he pretended to be.
But Elina could do nothing to help him, not just because he had sent her away but because Elina had no idea how to help him. Kilian had been right; what could Elina do?
Nothing, except stay by his side and support him. But he doesn’t want that.
Sadly she thought of the way Kilian’s face lit up when he saw the overcoat Elina had made him. She wished she could go back to that moment and stay in it, when curses and storms and thrones had been the last things on either of their minds.
“Elina? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, a small, humourless smile on her face. “Nothing, mama. I’m just…I don’t know. Stuck.”
Lily frowned at her daughter. “Stuck? How so? Has Daven –”
“It’s nothing to do with Daven,” Elina said quickly. In truth she hadn’t thought about Daven since she first slept with Kilian. For her mother to bring him up now felt bizarre and out-of-place. It made Elina realise that she really had outgrown Alder and its people, even if they were welcoming to her now.
“So his brother really isn’t missing?”
“You really think he could go missing? No, he ran off, I’m telling you.”
Elina’s ears pricked up at the conversation the group of men were having behind her. Noticing the change in her expression, Lily didn’t try to continue their conversation. Instead she listened carefully alongside her daughter.
“How would you know that?” Fred, the town head, demanded. Clearly he didn’t believe the other man.
“I was the one sent back to the castle to tell Prince Kilian that his brother was going to be delayed for a few weeks. It was all a ruse to buy Gabriel some time.”
“But why would he do such a thing? To run off when there’s a war going –”
“The war’s done,” the man interrupted. “As soon as Prince Kilian spoke to the foreign diplomats everything was tied up and sorted.”
Kilian doesn’t know that, Elina thought. It felt like her heart was simultaneously frozen and beating far too quickly.
Frederick clucked his tongue. “What in the world is going on? How as a country are we supposed to deal with a king who keeps our armies down at the border just so he can use them as a ruse to run off? And for what purpose?”
“A woman. It’s always a woman.”
“Why not bring the woman back with him and take his place on the throne?”
“Do you really think anyone in their right mind wants to live in a country where the winters are like this?” the man asked. Elina didn’t need to see him to know that he was gesturing out the window towards the storm. “She’s not from around here; she’s from much further south, apparently.”
“But living in a castle, married to a king…who wouldn’t want that?”
Elina stood up abruptly, surprising everyone in the near vicinity. Her mother grabbed her arm.
“Where are you going, Elina? If you want to head home –”
“The castle,” she muttered. The men who were talking stared at her, confused and unsure about what was going on. “Kil – the prince regent needs to know what’s going on.”
The messenger who’d been sent to tell Kilian of his brother’s delay grew pale. “You cannot tell him. It was his brother’s orders to keep him in the dark.”
Elina rounded on him. “Tell me, who sits on the throne? And who has run off? You should have told the truth from the beginning. You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve – what have I done?!”
But Elina stormed out of the tavern before the man had finished his sentence, though her mother was shouting for her to return. She was furious. She was heartbroken.
I scorned Kilian for not caring about his brother when clearly his brother does not care for him.
Tears began to well up in Elina’s eyes, burning painfully when the bitter wind blew against them. It really was too cold and tumultuous and dangerous to be outside. But if the weather was the way it was then Kilian himself could only be worse. Elina needed to see him. Talk to him. He needed to know what his brother had done.
When she finally reached the castle Elina could not feel her hands nor feet nor face. She was beyond freezing; even so, she struggled to the servant’s entrance to the castle and banged upon the surface. But the door was locked, and after a few minutes Elina had to conclude that nobody was going to let her in.
Staggering through the snow drifts she made her way to the monstrously large front doors of the castle, once more pounding her numb, ice-cold fists against the wood and iron.
“Kilian, let me in!” she screamed. The wind carried her voice away as if it were nothing more than a whisper. She hit the door again. “Let me in! Let me in! Let me in! Kilian, I
need to talk to you!”
But there was no response. Elina couldn’t even see well enough through the snow to know if Kilian was watching her from a window. And so she continued to bang against the door and shout until her throat was raw and her voice was hoarse, even though it was futile.
Eventually she could keep it up no longer. The cold began to make Elina tired – dangerously tired – so she leaned against the door. A few minutes later she slid down to the snow, her legs having lost the strength to keep her upright.
“Kilian,” she cried, her voice barely audible even to her. “I’m cold.”
He didn’t answer.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kilian
Kilian had been staring at a bottle of vodka for hours now. Every time he picked up the bottle, opened the lid and placed it to his lips something stopped him, which only made him more furious.
I want to drink, he thought. I want to forget everything.
He knew it was impossible.
Now that he was in full control of his senses he didn’t want to willingly take them away. Kilian needed to work out a way to free himself of the curse placed upon him by his father, and for that he needed his brain to be fully functioning. But he couldn’t work out what to do, or how. He didn’t have access to a magician or even books on curses and spells to work from. Not for the first time, Kilian regretted how little he’d paid attention to the education his parents had so desperately tried to force upon him.
When the window rattled in its frame Kilian jumped; it sounded dangerously close to shattering. With a sigh he dragged himself over to make sure the latch was securely in place, wincing at the noise the wind and hailstones made against the glass. He could see nothing outside but darkness and swirling, never-ending snow. With a sadistic grin Kilian thought of the town of Alder, the people fearfully huddled in their houses and clinging to the hope that the storm would soon pass.
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