Chapter 7: Broken
The screaming woke him again.
It wasn’t a loud scream. It was a choked, guttural sound, strangled in the throat, followed by the frantic thump of a body hitting a stone floor. Caius was out of his bed and across the hall before he was fully awake, his hand already on the door handle to her chamber.
He stopped. He listened. Hard, panicked breathing from within. The whisper of fabric. A low, wounded sound that was almost a whimper.
He knocked softly. “Astrid?”
The sounds inside ceased, frozen. He imagined her on the floor, coiled in the dark, eyes wide and unseeing. He could picture it perfectly because he’d seen it twice already in the three days since they’d ridden out of the Blackwood.
“It’s Caius,” he said, his voice low. “I’m coming in.”
He pushed the door open slowly. The room was lit only by the embers in the hearth, casting a bloody glow. She was on the floor beside the large bed, tangled in a sweat-damp sheet, her back pressed against the carved wooden bedframe as if trying to burrow into it. Her knees were drawn to her chest. In the gloom, she looked smaller, a sketch of the person he’d first seen defiantly tearing a wedding gown.
“Bad dream,” she said, the words raspy and automatic. It was what she said every time. An apology for the disturbance.
“I know,” he said. He didn’t move further into the room. He’d learned that the hard way. On the first night, he’d rushed in, knelt beside her, tried to touch her shoulder. She’d reacted like a scalded cat, scrambling backwards with a cry that was pure animal terror, cracking her head against a bedside table. The look in her eyes—not recognition, but the absolute certainty he was there to hurt her—had lodged in his gut like a piece of cold iron.
Now, he stood just inside the doorway, a silhouette against the torchlight from the hall. He’d stopped wearing his sleeping robe. He slept in his breeches and a linen shirt, ready for these nightly interventions. Ready to look less like a lord in a bedchamber and more like… whatever he was now.
“Can I light the lamp?” he asked.
A pause. Then a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
He moved to the small table by the fireplace, struck a flint, and lit the oil lamp. A soft, warm glow pushed back the shadows. He didn’t look directly at her. He busied himself poking the embers, adding a small log, giving her space to orient herself. To remember where she was, and who he was.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her untangle herself from the sheet. She was wearing one of his old tunics, a soft grey linen that swam on her. Her own clothes, what was left of them, had been burned. She’d refused the gowns the maids had offered. The tunic and a pair of woolen leggings were her uniform now. Her hair, that famous auburn mane, had been a matted nest when they’d returned. The castle’s elderly healer, Elara, had quietly, patiently, cut most of it off with shears. It now fell in ragged, chin-length waves around her face, exposing the sharp lines of her jaw and the dark hollows beneath her eyes.
“They had onions with the stew tonight,” he said, keeping his voice conversational as he warmed his hands at the now-crackling fire. “Cook claims it’s for flavor, but I think it’s because the cellar’s running low on decent turnips. A mild culinary crisis.”
Silence.
“My mother inquired after you today. Politely. As one inquires after a horse that’s gone lame before a big hunt.” He kept his tone light, amused at the queen’s expense. “I told her you were recuperating and that her continued good health did not depend on your attendance at supper.”
A faint, almost non-existent huff of air. Not a laugh. But an acknowledgment. A sign she was listening.
“Your father wants to storm back in there,” Caius said, shifting topics. He sat on the hearthstone, leaning back against the warm mantel, putting a good ten feet of floor between them. He looked into the flames. “Ölaf and Gunnar have him on a barely-leashed chain. They’re arguing logistics in the east barracks. Gunnar thinks a frontal assault is suicide. Your father thinks anything less is cowardice. Ölaf just keeps sharpening his axe and glowering. It’s quite the tableau.”
“They shouldn’t.” Her voice was a dry leaf, fragile. She cleared her throat. “The tunnels. They shift.”
He went very still. This was the most she’d said unprompted since the healer’s tent. “The tunnels shift,” he repeated, careful.
“The rock… it’s not right. Varigon. He… knows it. Shapes it. The black stone.” She spoke in fragments, eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance. “You go in one way… it’s different coming out. Traps you.”
A cold knot tightened in Caius’s chest. That explained the impossible flanking maneuvers, the way their forces seemed to materialize from solid walls. It wasn’t magic. It was geology turned into a weapon. “Thank you,” he said, the words heavy with meaning. “That… that will save lives.”
She just wrapped her arms around her knees again, making herself small. The tunic sleeve fell back, revealing the mottled yellow and purple of a fading bruise on her forearm. He’d seen the map of them Elara had documented. He still heard the healer’s clinical, devastated voice listing the injuries: three cracked ribs, severe soft tissue trauma, ligature marks, signs of prolonged malnutrition and exposure… The list had gone on. Caius had listened, his face a polite, impassive mask, while inside something hot and dark had curdled.
“You should sleep,” she said, not looking at him. Dismissing him.
“The floor looks comfortable,” he said, nodding to where she sat. “But I’m told the bed is superior.”
A flicker in her eyes. Something like irritation. Good. Irritation was better than nothing. “I’m fine.”
“You’re on the floor.”
“I like the floor.”
“It’s cold stone.”
“It’s solid.”
He leaned his head back against the mantel. “He’s going to try again, Astrid. Varigon. The attack on the wedding… it was a statement. He’s not hiding anymore. My scouts say the woods are quiet. Too quiet. He’s regrouping.”
She was silent for a long time. The fire popped. Down in the courtyard, a guard called the all-clear on his rounds. “He said I was a seed,” she whispered finally. “A seed of your failure. That I’d rot in the dark, and you’d all know it.”
The words hung in the air, ugly and poisonous. Caius felt a surge of fury so intense it blanched his vision. He breathed through it, focusing on the grain of the stone beneath his fingers. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “He was wrong. You didn’t rot. You are here. And he has made a profound error.”
She finally looked at him, her green eyes reflecting the firelight. They were empty of the fiery defiance he remembered. Now they were just deep, and tired, and terribly old. “What error?”
“He showed me what I’m fighting for,” Caius said simply. “Not for a treaty, or a border, or a kingdom. He made it personal.”
A faint, painful-looking frown wrinkled her brow. “It was always personal. For me.”
“I know. I was slow to catch up.” He pushed himself to his feet, his joints protesting. “I’ll be right across the hall. The door will be open. If you… if the floor gets too hard.”
He moved to the door. As he reached for the latch, her voice stopped him, so quiet he almost didn’t hear it.
“Caius.”
He turned.
She wasn’t looking at him. Her face was turned toward the fire, the new, short ends of her hair brushing her jawline. “The stew. Did it really have onions?”
The barest hint of a smile touched his lips. “An offensive amount. I’ll have a word with Cook in the morning.”
He left, pulling the door shut but not latching it. He stood in the dim hall, listening until he heard the soft rustle of her moving from the floor back onto the bed. Only then did he return to his own cold room, sitting on the edge of his own too-large bed, listening to the silence, and planning the eradication of a man who thought he could bury a seed in the dark.
Only then did he return to his own cold room, sitting on the edge of his own too-large bed, listening to the silence, and planning the eradication of a man who thought he could bury a seed in the dark. Dawn found him still there, his thoughts a tangled map of supply lines and the strange, shifting geology she’d described. He dressed mechanically, the weight of sleeplessness a familiar cloak.
When he entered the solar for breakfast, she was already there. This was new. She stood at the tall window, his grey tunic drowning her frame, staring out at the mist-cloaked training yards below. She didn’t turn, but her posture straightened slightly at the sound of his footsteps. A silent acknowledgment.
“They’re late with the bread again,” he said, moving to the sideboard where cold meats and cheese were laid out. His voice was rough from lack of sleep. “The baker’s youngest has a fondness for chasing geese, apparently. It disrupts the entire morning.”
“Geese are vicious,” she said, her voice clearer today. She finally turned from the window. The morning light washed out her face, making the scars on her lip more visible. “We had a gander in Nordane that could clear a courtyard faster than any guard.”
“See? A strategic asset.” He gestured to the food. “You should eat.”
She didn’t move toward the sideboard. Instead, she walked to the heavy oak table and sat, not in her usual chair far from his, but in the one adjacent. It was a small shift, a matter of inches. It felt like a mile. She rested her elbows on the wood, her hands clasped tightly. “I dreamt of the stone river fork. Where we met the horses.”
Caius stopped, a slice of cheese halfway to his plate. He sat down slowly, leaving the space between them untouched. “That was a clean exit. We had the high ground.”
“It was quiet,” she said, her eyes fixed on her whitened knuckles. “Too quiet after all the noise. I could only hear your horse breathing, and the rocks underfoot. It was the first thing that didn’t hurt.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just listened. He pushed a plate of figs toward her center-table, an offering without pressure.
“My father,” she started, then stopped. She took a breath, a shallow thing. “When he sees me, he sees the break. I can see him trying to piece together the fragments of what I was. It makes him angry. At them. At me. At everything.” Her gaze lifted to his, and the raw need for understanding there was a physical force. “You don’t do that. You just see the break itself.”
“Your father sees a statue that’s been vandalized,” Caius said carefully, selecting his words like stones for a bridge. “I never knew the statue. I only met the woman in the rubble. It’s easier to accept the damage when you didn’t worship the original form.”
A faint, almost imperceptible tremor went through her. She unclasped her hands and reached for a fig, her movements still stiff. “I hate figs.”
“Why take one?”
“To remember I can choose to hate something small,” she said, and bit into it. She made a face, but she swallowed.
Later, in the weed-choked castle gardens, she walked beside him. It was her idea. She said the closed walls of her room were starting to feel like another cell, the hearth smoke smelling too much of the torches in Varigon’s hall. The autumn air was crisp, carrying the scent of decaying leaves and distant woodsmoke. She kept a careful, arm’s length distance, but her steps matched his slowed pace.
“Gunnar thinks we can use the limestone sinks to predict the tunnel shifts,” he said, talking to the air between them. “He found an old miner in the town who might know a thing or two. It’s a start.”
“The miner will want gold,” she said, her eyes tracking a hawk circling high above. “Gunnar will offer him ale. It’ll take twice as long.”
“Noted.” He smiled slightly. “I’ll send the gold.”
She stopped, toeing a moss-covered stone with her boot. “I want to see the maps. The real ones, not the pretty court versions. I want to see where you think they are.”
This was a leap. A week ago, she wouldn’t leave her room. Two days ago, she couldn’t bear the mention of the Blackwood. “They’re in the war room. It’s… not a gentle place.”
“Nowhere is,” she said, and started walking again, this time leading the way.
In the war room, the large table was a chaos of parchment and carved wooden blocks representing troops. The maps of the Blackwood Pass were detailed, marked with her father’s harsh script and Caius’s own finer notes. She approached the table like it might bite, her arms wrapped around herself. But she looked. She leaned over, tracing a line with a finger that didn’t quite touch the paper. “The stag-line here,” she whispered. “It’s vulnerable from this draw. You have it marked clear, but it’s not. The tree cover is thicker, it sucks sound. You could move twenty men through there and hear nothing.”
Caius moved to stand beside her, looking where she pointed. He needed to see the angle. As he shifted, his shoulder brushed against hers.
She flinched violently, jerking back as if burned. Her chair screeched against the stone floor. Her hand flew up, a warding gesture, and for a heartbeat pure, unadulterated fear flashed through her gaze, her breath catching in her throat. She stared at him, not seeing him, seeing someone else.
He froze, his own hands raised, open and empty. “Astrid. It’s just me. It’s Caius.” He kept his voice low, a steady, calm drone. “We’re in the war room. You’re safe.”
She blinked, the terror receding slowly, replaced by a shamed, furious confusion. She looked from his face to their shadows on the map, then back. Her throat worked. “I know.” The words were choked. “I know it’s you.”
“Okay,” he said, not moving an inch closer. “Okay.”
She uncurled her stance, forcing her arms down to her sides. She was shaking. She looked at the map again, but her eyes were unfocused. “The draw,” she said, her voice steadier than her hands. “You need to station lookouts. Not on the rim, lower down. Where the fox dens are.”
“I’ll see to it,” he said. He wanted to reach out, to steady her, but he kept his hands firmly on the table’s edge. The wood grain dug into his palms.
She nodded, a stiff, mechanical motion. Then she did something that stole the air from his lungs. She didn’t move away. Instead, she leaned sideways, ever so slightly, until her shoulder pressed again into his upper arm. It was a tentative, calculated point of contact, bearing no weight. A test. She kept her eyes fixed on the map, her profile rigid. But she stayed there.
He didn’t move. He didn’t dare breathe too deeply. He could feel the slight tremble in her, the tension corded through her frame. This was her leaning on him. Not for physical support, but for something else—an anchor to the present, a bulwark against the memory that had just swallowed her.
They stood like that for a long minute, silent amidst the maps of war. Her warmth seeped through the fabric of his sleeve. The fear had been real, but this quiet pressure was more profound. It was a choice.
Finally, she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper, aimed at the parchment. “Don’t let go of this. Of the planning. Even when it gets ugly.” She meant the war. She meant her.
“I won’t,” he said, just as quietly, a vow made in a room full of silent strategies. Outside, the hawk screamed, diving on some unseen prey, and the moment broke. But she didn’t pull away until she was ready.