Can’t comment on Ceri’s wellbeing, as I haven’t seen her. Al was eager to make the journey to the manor in my place. You’ll no doubt hear a full report from him in due course.
Will check in again next week.
Take care,
Oswalt
PS. Really take care of yourself, please.
???
Dear Kai,
How are things at the palace? I can only imagine how surreal it must beto live among the Beira like nothing ever happened.
I hope you’re coping well enough.
Os asked me to check on Ceri and Eda at the manor, so I thought I’d give you a quick run down. Eda is the same as ever. She read my airs and told me I’d feel the waves on my skin again soon enough, so there you go! I know you don’t hold much stock in the Elder’s prophecies, but I hope you can take some small comfort just knowing she believes in you.
We all do.
Ceri is well, but she’s getting restless and I hate to say it, but I’m not sure how much longer you can count on her staying put. She wants to see you. I think she’s worried, but I know for certain that she’s bored out of her tree.
I wondered if you’ve thought about moving her to the Thornlands? She’d get on splendidly with the Earl’s daughters, and I could watch over her. I know Os has been kept busy keeping up communications with the host families, and I’m sitting idle until we’re called to the barracks to begin training.
Just let me know how I can help.
Al
Chapter 20
Kai
In his dreams, Kai was still in the ice. Each night his mind went numb and cold, the blackness pressing in on his eyelids from all sides. Time meant nothing as he slept; it was a fluid thing, a pale mist that eluded the frozen grasp of his fingers just as it had when his body hung suspended in the solid lake. He was simply dreaming forever, just as he’d hung in the ice forever.
But then he would wake to that resounding, world splittingcrack– he remembered the exact cadence, the rhythmic shudder of it, like a song twisted into his ear and hummed again and again until it drove him mad.
Shudder, splinter, CRACK.
And so he lived out his sentence again and again. Each night was a hundred lifetimes. The only difference between the dream and the true, waking nightmare was that he did not fight his way out of the darkness every morning. He did not have to count lives as he dug the Merrow from the lake, ice shards biting into his fists and arms, and drawing blood.
Other than that, his bright white suite in Selma’s palace might as well have flooded and frozen every night, trapping him for another eternity lived beneath Eisalaan. No concept of days or hours, years or centuries, barely able to form a complete thought.
That was another thing taken from him, he supposed. The ability to dream.
Shudder, splinter, CRACK.
He woke.
He was warm. He could feel his arms and legs, turn his head. There was light behind his eyes, and when he opened them there was space all around him, nothing but the thick white blankets against his skin.
CRACK.
Kai vaulted from the bed, but his feet had already touched the cool stone floor by the time he realised what he’d heard. A knock. Just a knock at the door. He sank back onto the bed, bare legs shaking with more than the sudden cold.
“Your Majesty?”
A timid voice at the other side of the door. His young valet Simon, come to wake him. A member of Selma’s household staff, assigned to serve and assist him during his time at the palace. He had explained to her, perhaps a touch bitterly, that the Merrow monarchy was not as grandiose as their Beira counterpart; that he didn’t expect servitude. But, the Queen had insisted.
