Chapter 22: Revealed
The journey back was a blur of aching muscles and gray daylight. The Blackwood, stripped of the Gloom’s presence, was just a forest—dense, quiet, and vaguely gloomy. It felt almost disappointing. The fight at the stones had been a seismic, internal event, but the world outside looked exactly the same. The mud still sucked at their boots. The rain still fell. Leif’s mother and sister, when they found them huddled in a hunter’s lean-to further up the path, were just two more thin, terrified people, not cursed spirits. Their rescue was messy, involving more tears and muttered thanks than ceremony.
Arriving at the castle gates days later felt like walking onto a stage after forgetting all the lines. The cheering was deafening. Confetti made from dyed parchment swirled in the air. The kings, beaming and proud, clasped them as returning heroes. Garrick and Kael got back-slaps. Runa and Elara received solemn nods of respect. Leif and his family were swept away to the kitchens, wrapped in blankets.
Astrid stood there, her hand still unconsciously gripping the pommel of her seax, Caius’s blood and hers long since washed from her palm but feeling like a phantom stain. She saw the courtiers’ eyes—wide with admiration, yes, but also that familiar, calculating gleam. The story was already being polished, stripped of its blood and whispers, turned into a neat ballad. The Prince and the Princess Who Conquered the Gloom. It made her teeth ache.
Caius, beside her, wore his public face—the charming, slightly weary smile, the gracious nods. But she felt the tension in his arm where it brushed hers. His eyes, when they met hers, were quiet. Exhausted. They’d left a piece of themselves in that stone circle.
Weeks passed.
The rhythm of courtly life reasserted itself like a tide smoothing over footprints. There were debriefings that turned into strategy sessions about trade routes through the now-safe pass. There were feasts where they were placed side-by-side at the high table, symbols of unity. They ate, they drank, they spoke when spoken to.
At night, in the rooms they now shared without question, the performance ended. They didn’t talk much. There wasn’t a need. The silence between them was a different kind than before—not empty, but full. Sometimes she’d wake to find him already awake, staring at the canopy, and she’d just wrap an arm around his chest and pull him back down. He’d let out a long, shaky breath and settle against her.
The physical wounds healed. The deeper ones itched.
Astrid threw herself into training with a brutality that made even Kael wince. She needed the clarity of steel, the burn in her muscles, the simple cause-and-effect of a swing and its impact. She’d come back to their rooms sweating and spent, and Caius would be at a desk, surrounded by scrolls about grain yields and border protocols, his fingers ink-stained, a different kind of exhaustion in the set of his shoulders.
They were orbiting the same quiet planet of shared trauma, working it out of their systems in opposite ways.
Then, one morning, the balance broke.
Astrid woke with a lurch, a sour heat flooding her throat. She barely made it to the chamber pot before she was violently, messily sick. It wasn’t the aftermath of rich food or mild illness. This was a deep, convulsive emptying that left her trembling on her knees, sweat beading on her forehead.
She heard the bed hangings rustle. A moment later, Caius was there, crouching beside her, his sleep-rumpled hair falling into his eyes. He didn’t flinch. He just gathered her braid in one hand, holding it back from her face.
“Alright,” he murmured, his voice gravelly with sleep. “Alright, let it out.”
When the heaving subsided, she sagged back against the cold stone wall, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her whole body felt hollowed out and strangely fragile. “Must’ve been the pork last night,” she muttered, but the excuse sounded thin even to her. She’d eaten less than anyone.
Caius dipped a cloth in the water basin, wringing it out. He pressed it gently to the back of her neck. The coolness was a shock. “Maybe. Stay there.”
He helped her up and back to the bed, his movements careful. He fetched a cup of water. She sipped, and for a horrifying second, her stomach clenched again, but it settled.
“I’m fine,” she said, the words automatic. “Just need a moment.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, studying her face. The pale morning light showed the pallor under her tan, the slight tremor in her hands. His amused expression was completely absent. He looked… watchful. “You’re not fine. You haven’t been. You’ve been pushing too hard.”
“I need to train,” she said, but the fight was gone from her voice.
“Not today.” It wasn’t an order. It was a statement of fact, soft but immovable. “Today, you rest. The kingdom won’t fall if Princess Astrid spends one day horizontal.”
She wanted to argue. The thought of lying here, in this soft, confined space, while the world moved on outside filled her with a claustrophobic dread. But another wave of dizzy nausea washed over her as she tried to sit up, and she surrendered with a groan.
“Fine. One day.”
He managed a small, tired smile. “A historic concession.” He stood, pulling on a tunic and breeches. “I’ll have some broth sent up. The plain kind. And maybe some dry toast. My mother swore by it.”
“Your mother jumped off a tower,” Astrid said without thinking, then immediately regretted it.
Caius froze for half a second. Then he let out a genuine, surprised laugh. It was a raw sound. “Fair point. Bad example. How about I swear by dry toast? Will that do?”
A weak chuckle escaped her. “It’ll do.”
He finished dressing, moving around the room with a quiet efficiency. He drew the heavy curtains halfway, leaving the room in a dim, restful twilight. Before he left, he came back to the bed, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. It was a simple, domestic gesture that sent an unexpected pang through her chest.
“Sleep,” he said. “I’ll check on you after the council meeting.”
She listened to the door click shut behind him. The silence of the room expanded, thick and quiet. She could smell the faint, clean scent of him on the pillow, and the lingering, sour trace of her own sickness.
Her hand drifted to her stomach, flat and hard with muscle under her linen shift. The training, the constant tension, the brutal journey back… her body had been a tool, a weapon, a thing to be driven. It had never betrayed her like this.
A cold, slow understanding began to seep in, cutting through the nausea.
She counted back the weeks. The frantic days in the Blackwood. The desperate nights in the cave for warmth. The lack of her moon blood, which she’d attributed to stress and malnourishment.
The blood vow at the stones. A new anchor. A different kind of binding.
“No,” she whispered to the empty, comfortable room. The word was swallowed by the velvet hangings and the thick carpet.
Outside, she heard the distant, cheerful clamor of the castle waking up. A dog barked. A merchant called his wares in the lower bailey. Life, ordinary and relentless, went on.
Astrid of Nordane, who had faced down a whispering demon without blinking, pulled the blankets over her head and tried to breathe through a terror that had no name and no enemy to fight.