Chapter 30: Years
The silence in the west wing bedroom became a third occupant. It was not a peaceful quiet, but a thick, loaded thing, filled with the ghost of a child’s scream and the terrible truth it carried.
Alistair did not return that night. He spent hours in the map room, staring unseeing at the inked borders of kingdoms he’d conquered, the lines blurring into the bars of a different kind of cage. His anger at Lucian’s disrespect was a cold, hard pellet in his gut, but it was overshadowed by a heavier, duller weight: the image of Eleanor’s eyes going hollow, as if the last candle inside her had been snuffed.
He did, however, return the next evening.
It became a pattern, as rigid and unyielding as the stone of the castle itself. As dusk settled, he would leave the noise of court, the petitions, the strategies, and walk the long, quiet corridors to the west wing. He would knock once, a formality, and enter.
Eleanor was always at her window, or in her chair, a book often open but unread in her lap. She was a statue of composure, her fiery hair the only vibrant thing in the softening light.
He would stand, often near the fireplace, and deliver his report. It was never called that. It was simply what he did.
“Lucian’s arm is healing well. Vedrus says the bone is knitting true. He sat through his geometry lesson today without complaint.”
A pause. Eleanor would give a slight, almost imperceptible nod. She did not look at him.
The next night: “Ronan attempted to recite the lineage of the House of Thorne back to the first king. Got confused at the third generation and declared them all ‘a bunch of grumpy old men.’ His tutor was not amused.”
A flicker at the corner of her mouth. Gone so fast he might have imagined it.
The reports continued, a nightly bulletin from the world she was barred from. They were dry, factual, stripped of any personal reflection. He was the king, delivering a dispatch.
“Lucian was back in the yard today. Walked the pony. He did not smile.”
“Ronan has discovered a hidden talent for mimicry. Imitated Lord Brayton’s wheezy cough perfectly during supper. I had to leave the table.”
This, finally, drew a soft, unexpected huff of air from her—not quite a laugh, but the echo of one. She covered it by smoothing her skirt.
The seasons turned. The reports marked the passing time.
“Lucian has grown three inches. His new training sword is too heavy, but he refuses to use the lighter one. Stubborn.”
“Ronan asked the head gardener why roses have thorns. Received a lecture on natural defense. He then asked if that made the roses ‘prickly bastards like Uncle Corwin.’ The gardener nearly fainted.”
Her smile that time was real, but private, turned toward the window. She said nothing.
The years folded into one another, measured in these nightly increments. The boys in the reports grew, their outlines shifting, becoming more distinct. Lucian’s updates were all about discipline, strength, controlled aggression. Ronan’s were about questions, mischief, a disruptive cleverness.
Alistair’s delivery never wavered. He was a cliff face against which this daily tide of information broke. He offered no commentary, sought no conversation. He simply… reported. It was a penance, and a prison, for them both.
One evening, after a report on Lucian’s first successful joust against a squire two years older, the silence felt different. It was autumn. A fire crackled in the hearth, and the wind outside had a keening edge.
Eleanor was not at the window. She was standing in the center of the room, as if waiting for him. She looked at him directly for the first time in what felt like years. The hollows were still there under her eyes, but a different light burned in the green—not fire, but a steady, assessing glow.
“He’s twelve,” she said. Her voice was clear, unused to speaking in these sessions. “Lucian. You’ve made him hard.”
Alistair stopped, midway to his usual spot by the mantle. “The world is hard.”
“Is it?” she asked, tilting her head. “Or have you simply made your corner of it that way, to justify the shape you’ve forced everything into?” She took a slow step toward him. “Your reports are very thorough, Alistair. But I hear the unsaid things. I hear the fear in Lucian’s determination. I hear the loneliness in Ronan’s jokes. You tell me what they do. You never say who they are.”
He felt a spark of the old defiance, the need to counter, to control. “And you would know that from here?”
“I know them because they are pieces of you, and pieces of me, shoved into the armor you’ve designed,” she said, her voice rising slightly. “Lucian has my eyes and your relentless will. He thinks tenderness is a flaw because he sees where you believe it led me. Ronan has your strategic mind wrapped in my irreverence. He uses humor as a shield because he sees it’s the only weapon that doesn’t draw immediate retribution.”
She was close now, close enough for him to see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes that had not been there years ago. They were not lines from laughter.
“You come here every night,” she continued, her gaze unwavering. “You perform this… this ritual. You tell me of their accomplishments, their training, their growth. But you are not telling me. You are telling yourself. You are building a wall, stone by stone, report by report, between yourself and what you did. Between the king and the man whose son saw his mother’s life as a cautionary tale.”
The air left his lungs. The cold calculation he wielded like a sword was useless here. She was dissecting him with a precision born of years of silent observation.
“What would you have me do?” The question was stripped bare, almost rough.
“Stop.” The word was simple, devastating. “Stop the reports. They are a lie. We both pretend this is connection. It is just a slower form of silence.” She looked away, toward the door, as if she could see down the long hall to the bustling heart of the castle. “If you have news of my sons, let it come from them. Or from Vedrus. Or from the gossiping laundress. But not from you. Not like this.”
He stood there, exposed. The ritual was all he had built to cross the chasm. To dismantle it felt like stepping into an abyss.
“And what remains?” he asked, his voice low.
“What has always remained,” she said, turning her back to him, walking again to her window.“The facts. I am here. You are there. They are growing, in your image, warned away from mine.” She placed her hands on the cold stone sill. “The audience is over, Your Grace.”
He did not move for a long moment. The fire popped. The wind moaned. The structure of their last five years, brittle and miserable as it was, crumbled around him.
Finally, he turned and left. He did not close the door softly. The sound of it shutting echoed like a verdict.
Down in the courtyard, unseen from her window, Lucian—now tall, broad-shouldered, his face set in a serious mask—was drilling alone in the fading light, his movements sharp, forceful, perfect. In a tower room, Ronan was likely driving a new tutor to distraction with a series of inconveniently insightful questions.
And Alistair, standing in the shadowed archway, watched his heir train, and felt the vast, hollow silence of the west wing settle around him like a final, permanent crown.