He left her alone in the wake of his anger.
Chapter fifty-two
“Is the pain gone?” Alexander eyed her as they sat at the small table in her sanctuary.
Norah drew in a long breath and nodded. “For the most part.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Two weeks had passed since she’d been stabbed outside the conservatory behind the castle. Her flesh had healed over, and the physical pain was gone. It was her heart that hadn’t yet healed. While Mikael no longer seemed angry, things were different between them. They still hadn’t reconciled.
Vitalia set a tray of tea and fruits in front of them. This was how they had started taking breakfast—with Alexander stopping by each morning and sitting with Norah as the sun poured through the windows. She liked him near. While tension remained high, his presence kept Mikael at a distance, something she needed, or thought she needed.
So easily the king killed, without thought and without regret. That scared her.
He scared her.
And yet… something seemed missing without him. And his absence spiraled her further into self-loathing. Who was she if she could look past this darkness? And what would she be for her people if she couldn’t?
Alexander waited until she finished before taking anything to eat for himself, as he usually did. She left the dried figs, as she usually did. She knew they were his favorite.
“This came for you this morning,” he said, breaking the quiet as she chased down the last bite of her biscuit with a drink of tea. He pulled a letter from inside his coat and set it on the table. Norah froze. The folded parchment held a silver seal. Catherine’s seal.
She only stared at it, unmoving. It was the first letter her grandmother had sent. “What does it say?”
Alexander shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Norah leaned back in her chair. She had prayed her grandmother would write. Letter after letter she’d sent with nothing in return. But now, now that she was full of self-doubt, her grandmother was the last person she wanted a letter from. Catherine abhorred her marriage to the Shadow King, seeing him as the great evil. Maybe she looked to remind Norah of that now, to tell her how this wouldn’t work. And maybe she was right.
“Will you not read it?” he asked.
“So she can shame me? Tell me I’ve made a terrible mistake and how this will all fail?” She couldn’t take it. Not when she truly felt like she was failing.
“She wouldn’t do that.”
Norah cast him an unbelieving eye.
“I’ve been keeping her informed of your health. I’m sure she’s sick with worry for you.” He waited for her eyes to meet his. “Read it, Norah.”
She picked up the letter, feeling the heavy parchment between her fingers. “I will. Just not right now.” She stood and stepped to the vanity and slipped it inside the small wooden letter box on top. “How is your brother? Have you heard from him?”
He snorted. “Yes. About how unfair it is I won’t let him come to the Shadowlands.”
She smiled.
“He asks of you. I’ve told him you’re well.”
She nodded. It wasn’t exactly untrue. “If I write him a letter, will you make sure it gets to him?”
“Of course.” He paused for a moment, then said, “There is something else. I have a task from the council. I need to leave for a while.”
She frowned as she sat back down at the table. “What kind of task?”
“Nothing I want to bother you with. You have enough on your mind. I shouldn’t delay, but I’ll wait until Caspian and Titus have returned.”
She supposed she should be thankful for the opportunity to send him away from the Shadowlands for a while. The tension between him and Mikael had only grown since her attack. She should have sent him home to Mercia, but she couldn’t. Perhaps this task was what she needed to force herself into action. He needed to go. But he wouldn’t leave if he feared for her.
“I have an entire army guarding me now,” she told him. It was the closest she could get in assuring him to leave.
He snorted. “Of Shadowmen.”
“There are good men here, Alexander.” She thought of Kiran. If not any others, at least one of them was good.
“Regardless, I don’t want to leave you again.”
She didn’t want him to leave either. He’d just returned a short time ago from investigating the attacks on Mercian towns. “I’ll be here when you return.”
Finally, he nodded.
“How long will you be gone?”
“Only a couple weeks.”
Too long. She nodded sadly and took another drink of her tea.
Norah made her way down the long hall of the castle to the library in the far wing, with an entourage of guards behind her. While her stomach wounds had healed over, the lengthy walk brought an aching stitch deep within. At least she didn’t have to go out into the winter to a separate building like in Mercia.
As she walked, she looked out through the windows at a narrow garden area with a thin pool in the center. It had wintered over, and its greenery had been cut back to the ground, but it would be beautiful when it came to life in the spring. On the other side of the garden ran another windowed hall, parallel to her own, and she stopped when she saw Mikael. He was speaking to an older man from his Circle, Kharav’s council. The man noticed her, and Mikael turned, with his eyes now on her. They stood a moment, their stares caught through the windows until she broke away and started forward again.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the king part from his councilman and walk down his own hall, keeping pace with her. Norah cursed under her breath. She would see him around the corner, where the halls met and became one. She could turn back—an appealing option. But she continued.
She came to the end of the windows and paused against the stone before turning the corner. She could still turn back…
And awkwardly shuffle through the army behind her…
And make it even more difficult when she next saw the king.
No. She pushed out a breath and turned the corner.
Mikael stood waiting where the halls joined before stretching to the library. “Salara,” he greeted her when she reached him. “I almost thought you’d turned back.”
“I thought about it,” she confessed.
His head gave a slight nod, and his eyes grazed the ground. “Are you going to the library?”
There was no denying it. The library spanned the entire wing; there was no other reason she’d be there. “I am.”
“As am I.”
She tilted her head in feigned amusement. “How coincidental.”
They walked side by side under the arched hall. Columns of stone rose to meet at the center above their heads and bounced the light with a majestic air. No matter how many times she walked this hall, she never grew tired of its beauty.
“It’s good to see you out,” he said.
It was good to be out, but she said nothing.
They reached the carved doors of the library—another sight that always overwhelmed her. Mikael could stand a man on his shoulders, and they still wouldn’t touch the top. But Mikael wasn’t looking at the doors; he was looking at her.
She shifted uncomfortably, searching her mind for how to part. “Did you have something to find here?” she asked, prompting him on his way.