Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (53 page)

I put it down to paranoia in order to lull myself into a false sense of security. It didn't work. I found that I wanted her to ask me the things that made my insides lock up for the desperate relief it'd bring. I wanted her to know so that I'd no longer be terrified of her finding out; I wanted her to know because I trusted her, in spite of our natures.

“I'm afraid I don't have much time,” Katja said, pushing open her chamber doors. “I'm due back at the ball in a matter of minutes. My mother isn't particularly pleased that I left so early yesterday.”

The room Katja led me to was undeniably hers, but the doors leading off it suggested that there was much more to her chambers. A portrait of her and Queen Kidira hung above a desk, and shelves upon shelves of books framed the sofas in the centre of the room.

Katja locked the door behind us.

“Oh, Rowan. You'll have to—you'll have to excuse me. I don't know how I'm to say this,” she said, pacing the length of the room and backing me into a chair in the process. “I don't rightly know if I
should
say it. If I'm simply jumping to conclusions. Oh, do promise me that you won't hate me if I'm wrong.”

She paused to look at me. I wrapped my fingers around the arms of the chair, unable to nod, to shake my head. I swallowed the lump in my throat and that was enough for her.

“Ever since we've met – from the very
moment
we met – I've felt as though there's been an undeniable bond between us. I meant to let it pass, but... but it hasn't, has it? And I admit, I have measured your reactions to certain things, Rowan, hoping you might bring yourself to tell me the truth.”

“Katja—”

“Yet I cannot keep this to myself any longer.”

She stopped pacing altogether. She stood over me, face awash with a mix of pity and remorse, but not for me; only for the way she knew things were going to change. It was hard for me to breathe, harder still to speak, but I tried regardless, words coming out as a tangled whisper.

“Katja, please don't...”

My voice cracked and she knelt down, hands on my knees.

“Rowan, are you...” All strength slipped from her voice, and I felt what she said more than I heard it. “Are you a necromancer?”

And then a strange thing happened.

The world didn't end. Guards didn't rush into the chamber, dragging me away, and Katja looked at me no differently than she ever had. My heart stopped pounding and I closed my eyes, thankful she knew, thankful the ground hadn't slipped out from under me. Frantic denial would've only confirmed what she'd concluded, and my silence worked in much the same way.

Katja pressed her forehead to my knees, shaking with relief in my place.

“Katja,” I said, words coming out clearly, “You can't tell your mother. No matter what happens, you mustn't tell Queen Kidira.”

“I won't! Oh, Rowan, I'd never do such a thing,” Katja said, shooting back to her feet. She placed her hands on my shoulders, and nothing inside of me recoiled or churned; now that we knew the truth about one another, nothing could catch me off-guard. “I swear to you, I shall never tell a soul.”

She was the only person who'd ever worked it out for herself. I wanted to thank her for showing me that it wasn't the end of all things, but when I stood, all I could say was, “I know, I know.” I trusted her. I had someone within the castle to protect me, someone who could keep Queen Kidira from me, should the worst happen, where Claire could not.

“I wasn't exaggerating when I said I had little time to spare,” Katja said, dabbing the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief, though she hadn't quite been reduced to tears. “There are guests from Agados here, come to see the—well, I simply couldn't go another moment without asking. You'll forgive me, won't you?”

What was there to forgive? All this time, she'd been plagued by questions she'd forced herself to bottle up, subjecting herself to the same sort of strain I'd always been at the mercy of. She hadn't breathed a word of it to anyone else, hadn't told her mother as the law instructed she ought to; she'd come to me, and she'd been nothing but understanding.

“There's nothing to forgive,” I assured her, and the fear she was stricken with crumpled into nothing.

I felt Katja's absence more keenly than I'd felt her hands at my shoulders. There was so much I wanted to ask her, so much I could learn from her, but she was gone, back to the festivities. With my bearings lost, I wandered the castle aimlessly, hearing a faint drone of music from within the larger halls.

Claire was in one of them, but even if I managed to slip past the guards at the doors, the nobles within never would've tolerated my presence, dressed as I was. The dance floor would've opened up and swallowed me whole, lest I mar the ball for a moment longer.

After suffering a few wrong turns, I found my way to Claire's chamber and quietly let myself in. Not much had changed since I'd last been there, and I found myself overwhelmed by how little there was to do. An empty wine bottle and glass had been left by one of the armchairs, and I picked them up, leaving them on the edge of the table, for the servants to collect.

I spent the rest of the day alternating between watching Isin from the window and napping on the sofa, and awoke with a start when Claire slammed the door shut behind her.

“Oh,” she said upon seeing me. Just
oh
, neither irritated nor surprised.

It'd grown dark around me while I'd drifted in and out of sleep, and what little I could make out of Claire's expression made me realise, for the first time, that perhaps I shouldn't have let myself in without asking. She was back in Kastelir's armour, hair obscuring much of her face as she fought to remove her gloves.

Throwing them down on the tabletop, she dropped herself into a chair.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, not missing a beat.

She wrapped her fingers around the neck of the bottle, but it lifted too easily. Teeth grit together, Claire put the bottle back down, glass thudding heavily against the table. I didn't move an inch or say a word, giving Claire the time she needed to take deep breaths. She sat there, chin propped on her fist, looking away from me, eyes fixed on the wall.

My first instinct was to ask if she wanted me to leave, but I was afraid she'd force herself to say yes. When her shoulders showed no sign of relaxing on their own, I quietly got to my feet, tiptoed over to the table and claimed a chair for myself. I didn't sit too close, didn't place my hand on her arm, but I didn't back away, either.

“What's wrong?”

I tried being more direct, and though Claire still didn't look at me, it worked. There was a moment of silence, and she drew in sharp breaths before it all came tumbling out.

“The Agadians have arrived, which ought to be of no issue, but their long-standing ties with the Old West have deluded them into believing that they have some say in who succeeds King Jonas. King Atthis and Queen Kidira are of the opinion that this is a much more pressing issue than anything I have presented to them, and I am merely... I have been reduced to nothing but a guard, a footman, serving a foreign King and Queen,” Claire said, elbows on the table, fingers tangled in her hair. “I have betrayed my Kingdom, and for what? That I might be kept under thumb, unable to help anyone? Why King Garland thought me worthy of his trust, I cannot say. I have—”

Her hands shook as her voice rose. Carefully, I wrapped my fingers around one of her hands, squeezing it, and she turned to me, eyes wide.

“I apologise,” she murmured, as though returning to her senses. “I am merely tired.”

“Didn't you get any sleep last night?” I asked, not yet sure where to start with the rest of what she'd said.

“I was not returned to my chamber for long before Queen Kidira had me sent for,” she said, hands dropping onto the table. “I have... always had some measure of difficulty falling asleep in a timely manner, but recent events have exacerbated that.”

It wasn't of any surprise to me. The dark marks under her eyes had become an integral part of her, and in the months I'd known her, I couldn't think back to a time when she'd had a full night of sleep. My hand slipped from hers and I rose to my feet, heading across the chamber to where bottles of wine were arranged on a shelf, along with an assortment of glasses.

I picked a bottle at random, supposing that they were all good, and after wrestling with the cork, poured a glass for Claire and myself. I set the wine down on the table, and she took it with some hesitation. Half a glass in and she seemed to have relaxed, somewhat.

“I ought not to have said all that,” Claire said, pressing a hand to her forehead and brushing her hair back. “It has been a long day. That's all.”

I frowned over the rim of my wine glass.

“That's not all,” I said, as sternly as I knew how to. “If something's bothering you, you should tell me. I mean,
of course
something's bothering you, how could it not be, but you should be able to tell me about it, right? I know what's happening, Claire. There's no reason to keep anything from me.”

Claire looked as though she very much wanted to be convinced, but wasn't. She continued to stare down at the tabletop, occasionally taking mouthfuls of her wine, and I made myself be patient while she gathered together the means to say something in return.

“I do not feel good, Rowan. It is not very exciting, nor do I feel as though it creates anything of worth within or around me, but there it is,” she said, placing the empty glass down. “Amidst all that is happening, I am endlessly
bored
by myself and my habits, and can only feel as though I am fated to make a mess of things. Again.”

Claire had alluded to it before, and Luxon had his own term for it. An
incident.
Talking about the past might help to take pressure off the present, or at least give me some idea as to what I could do to help, and so I asked, tentatively, “What happened last time?”

Her lips parted, but she gave no answer. I saw her eyes flicker over to the wine bottle, but I took hold of her wrist before she could reach for it and tugged her onto her feet. She was exhausted in more ways than one, and I didn't think to tell her to take her armour off. I pulled her onto the sofa and sat close, paying no heed to the way the tough leathers pressed against my sides.

“... there were dragons. I wish I could start a story without saying
there were dragons
, but such is my life,” she murmured softly, arm wrapped around my shoulders. I tucked my head under her chin, letting her say what she needed to. “I had been a Knight for a full year. A dragon attacked the town of Merion, and when I arrived, the creature was curled up on the ashes, exhausted for the distance it'd travelled and the sheer amount of fire it had breathed in order to level the town.

“I fought it, and I won. I managed to sink my sword into its side, between two scales, and I stepped back to wait for our forces to rally and drag the creature back to Thule. But I had... I had not been thorough enough. The creature was only injured, and once there was space enough between us for it to spread its wings, it was in the air.

“It could not move fast, or far, but it didn't need to. There was a village close by, not much smaller than yours, and the dragon pounced upon it. I charged after it, short a sword, and it did not have fire enough to raze the village in its entirety. I had become used to the stench of burning and what little remained of settlements, but in the village, the people were...

“They were still alive. The dragon lashed out, bringing down buildings, trapping them under the debris, and though I managed to retrieve my sword and finish the job, I could not –
cannot –
forget what I saw. What those people had to endure, because I had not been careful enough.

“After that, I was not myself for a long time. Or rather, I feared that I had become someone I did not recognise.”

I wrapped my arms around her, not knowing what to say. Surely she had heard it all a hundred times before: that it wasn't her fault, and that she had still saved those people. More than anything, I thought Claire needed the chance to keep speaking, and so I quietly said, “Is that why—you said you had a fiancée, and...”

“That was the trigger,” Claire quickly interjected. “I became unruly. I did not wish to fight dragons; I did not wish to do anything. Luxon was right: no one else would've been afforded a second chance, as I was. In the interim, I was not kind to her. We are friends, still, but much has changed.”

In the minutes that followed, no sound filled the room but that of our breathing. It was enough for Claire that I'd listened to her, but I didn't want that to be all the help I offered.

“Kouris and I would do anything to help you, you know. Even if it means running away from Kastelir and going to Thule ourselves,” I said, moving onto my knees and making sure she was meeting my gaze. “But don't keep being so hard on yourself, alright? You were put in an impossible situation, and you did what you thought was best. And you don't even know that it hasn't worked. King Jonas' death has just delayed things, alright? Don't give up now.”

Claire closed her eyes, pressing her forehead to mine, and said, “You're right. There are always other options.”

“Did you ever consider going to Agados for help?” I asked out of curiosity, tucking her hair behind her ears. “It seems like it's in better shape than Kastelir, at least.”

“Never,” she said firmly, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Agados has
thrived
in so far as it has refused to change. After the exodus from Myros, they refused to let refugees in, and even the pane have left the mountains Agados lays claim to. Kastelir, for all its faults, is the better option. The Agadians believe our roles are defined by body and birth, and I should not accept their help were they to offer it.”

I leant back against her, and she stroked my hair, saying, “I shall wait a week. See what progress has been made, if any. If not... I shall return to Felheim, and do what must be done.”

“We'll figure something out,” I said, hoping my tone reached her, rather than the few words I had to offer.