Chapter 22: Solstice
The days dissolved into a viscous, gray stream. Time, for Eleanor, was no longer marked by bells or meals, but by the shallow tide of her own breath, the measured visits from Corvin’s cool hands, and the distant, muffled sound of her son’s laughter from the other side of the door.
She slept, but it was not rest. It was a sinking, a submersion into waters where dark, shapeless things tugged at her ankles. She’d surface gasping, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs, only to have Corvin’s bitter draught pull her under again. The room held the cloying scent of medicinal herbs and unspoken fear.
Lucian was allowed in for brief, supervised visits. He would clamber carefully onto the edge of her bed, his small face solemn.
“Mama’s boat still?” he’d ask, patting her hand.
“Mama’s boat is in a storm,” she whispered once, her voice a rasp. “But the captain is a very stubborn man.”
He liked that. He brought her his favorite wooden knight, placing it on her pillow. “For fighting the storm,” he announced.
Alistair was a ghost in the periphery. He was there when she woke sometimes, a dark silhouette in the chair, still as a statue, watching her. He spoke to Corvin in low, urgent tones that were more vibration than words. She’d catch fragments.
“…how long?”
“…straining…compensating, but…”
“He will be here. He has to be.”
He never spoke his fears to her. Instead, he brought reports. Dry, logistical updates delivered in that same calm, battlefield cadence.
“The first courier reached Port Sable yesterday. Fastest ship I could contract will carry my summons to the Free Cities.” A pause. “The man’s name is Vedrus. Half scholar, half vagabond, by all accounts. He has a fondness for rare manuscripts and expensive brandy. We have sent both. And a reminder of the consequence of refusing a king.”
“Consequence?” she managed.
“His sister’s family runs a lucrative spice trade out of the southern pass. A trade that requires my permission.” He said it without malice, a simple statement of leverage. “He will come.”
He always left the wooden practice sword within her reach. It became a totem. Some days, when the weakness was a weight pinning her to the sheets, her fingers would brush the rough-hewn hilt, and she’d imagine the feel of it swinging, cutting through the stagnant, sickroom air.
One afternoon, the quality of the silence changed. The castle held its breath. She could feel it through the stone. Alistair had not come. Corvin was late. Even Lucian’s chatter from the antechamber was absent.
Then, bootsteps. Not the measured tread of guards, but a quick, irregular scuffing. Her door opened, and Alistair entered, followed by a man who looked like a library shelf had vomited on a traveling minstrel.
Vedrus was perhaps fifty, thin to the point of being wiry, with a messy cloud of gray hair and keen, restless eyes that missed nothing. His robes were a faded, travel-stained blue, patched in three places with different colored cloth. He smelled of dust, horse, and something faintly chemical. A large, battered satchel was slung across his body.
His gaze landed on Eleanor, and he didn’t bow. He stared, clinically, absorbing her pallor, the sheen of sweat on her brow, the way her hands lay limp on the coverlet.
“So,” he said, his voice drier than parchment. “The famous heart that dances to its own rhythm and forgets the steps.” He dropped his satchel with a thump that made Alistair flinch. “King Thorne. You can stop glowering. The threat to my niece’s inheritance was creatively vile. I’m here. Now, everyone who isn’t sick or me, get out.”
“You will not speak to—” Alistair began, a storm in his tone.
“I will speak to you as a man who understands that every second you waste posturing is a second your wife’s heart labors under a burden it may not bear.” Vedrus didn’t look at him, already rummaging in his bag. “You bought my expertise. This is how it looks. Out. Send the stern one in—Corvin, was it? I’ll need his notes.”
A terrifying, electric silence hung between the two men. Eleanor watched, breath held, as Alistair’s jaw worked. He was a king, unaccustomed to being dismissed in his own castle. Every instinct must have screamed to break this arrogant stranger.
Instead, he gave a single, sharp nod. His eyes met Eleanor’s—a flash of pure, unguarded intensity—before he turned and left, pulling the door shut behind him.
Vedrus let out a long sigh. “Interesting man. All that pressure, like a mountain about to fall. Must be exhausting.” He pulled a strange, trumpet-like device from his bag, its end fitted with a disk of polished horn. “Now, Your Majesty. Let us have a listen to this rebellious organ of yours. Corvin’s notes suggest a fascinating, if terribly inconvenient, structural quarrel. Tell me, during the solstice events… did the weakness come in waves, or was it a steady decline?”
He asked questions for an hour. Some were medical. Some seemed absurd. Did she prefer sunrise or sunset? Had her sense of taste changed? Did she ever feel a fluttering in her neck, like a trapped bird? He listened to her heart, his face impassive, moving his odd device to different points on her chest and back. He examined her eyes, her nails, the color of her lips.
Finally, he sat back, cleaning his device with a cloth.
“Well?” The word scraped from her throat.
“It’s not one thing,” he said, almost to himself. “It’s a conspiracy. The pregnancy demands more blood. Your particular heart, which has always been a bit… artistic in its rhythms, objects to the increased volume. It tires. It tires, and the rest of you weakens. A vicious, but sadly elegant, circle.”
“Can you break it?”
“I cannot redraw the architecture of your heart. Not here, with herbs and hope.” He saw the despair flash in her eyes and held up a hand. “But I may be able to… renegotiate the terms of the conflict. Strengthen the blood, so what little your heart pushes carries more nourishment. Sedate the system, to slow the demand. It is a balancing act more precise than any treaty your husband has brokered. One misstep…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
“You will stay?” she asked.
Vedrus looked toward the door, beyond which the brooding presence of the king was practically palpable. “I rather think I have to. Besides,” he said, a faint, grim smile touching his lips, “it’s been years since I had a puzzle this compelling. And the brandy here is allegedly exceptional.”
He began unpacking his satchel with a quiet urgency, setting out vials of powder, bundles of dried leaves that smelled like memory and bitterness, and a small, delicate scale. The room, which had felt like a tomb, suddenly hummed with a new, precarious energy. It wasn’t hope, not yet. It was the silent, focused click of a lock being carefully, skillfully picked, while on the other side, time and a tired heart steadily ticked away.