Page 13 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“We all assumed you wanted to crawl away from her, not to her. Considering how you disappeared.”

“You’re also assuming that I disappeared on purpose. Why are you actually assuming at all, Alyone? We weren’t friends. We were barely even allies.” Those years I spent in Hayes, I spent drunk or drowned in work. Any work I could find. She just happened to witness one too many of my struggles at keeping my sanity intact enough to work through my issues and return to my bird.

“You had just come back from visiting Adriata the day you disappeared, and then you went into that portal without reappearing for five long years, Malik. Every time you came back from visiting your home, the man I knew you to be was gone. That last time was different, I could see it. You went inside that portal without mentioning a single word.”

“The only one I owe any explanation on my whereabouts is the throne I serve.”

Her face fell a little, and she frowned. “Are you saying you went in there on your brother’s orders? Snowlin’s, perhaps?”

“As I said.”

She nodded. “When will you return to Heyes?”

“I’m not returning this time, Alyone.”

Her eyes dropped to the ground as if that would hide the disappointment from her shadows. “It can’t be final. You always change your mind. You see her and you will change your mind. And you know that you’re always welcome in my kingdom,” she said, turning to leave.

“You said I was late,” I said. “I’m never late.”

Alyone stopped by the doors, realisation flashing through her shadows.

Truth was, I had not made it in time to see the aftermath of her doomed marriage. I’d made it exactly in time to see the shooter take aim at her betrothed and then shoot him right between his eyes. Then I leisurely followed him towards the Sable Abyss forest, thanked him and then skinned his soul right off the bones for even thinking he could get that close to her without consequence.

The sun. I’d missed the Adriatian sun the most. Seraphim skies were still covered in thick grey fog. Though most had cleared already since after the war ten years ago, the air was still somewhat stale and the sun not warm, not bright either. And the past few days I’d spent...spying on my little bird had made me a little appreciative of the small luxury that Adriatian warmth was.

I laid back on the garden bench, squinting at the skies when a shade fell over me.

“What are you doing?” my brother asked, holding a sack of soil up on his shoulder. “Thought you came to help?”

“I am helping. Moral support. Keep doing whatever you do. Dig and stuff.”

He raised a brow and dropped the soil sack near a ploughed patch. “Moral support? For me or you?”

“Less talking, more of that,” I said, downing the lemonade Rain had made me, wincing at the bitter taste. “Crescent heaven. Have you introduced your child to the concept of sugar, or is that the evil nowadays?”

He pulled at the edges of his shirt and threw it over at the bench where I sat. “So, what moral support do I or you need?”

I let out a low whistle. “How do you still look like that at your fatherly age?”

He looked up at me, his expression all grave and much too stern. “We fuck a lot.”

I coughed out my bitter drink, sputtering it all over me, while the bastard had a crooked smirk on his mouth as he continued his farming activities.

“Thought you and Snow would have finished that army of Castemonts by now,” I said, shaking my wet shirt. “Eight, wasn’t it?”

When his whole body turned rigid and all shadows surrounding us suddenly stiffened, I leaned on my knees to study that funny reaction. “Will you tell me what that was about, or should I ask Snow?”

He gave me a hard glare. Which, the more I looked at it, the more I realised that it wasn’t directed at me. “Rain.”

“As in your child or the weather?”

“Snow got really sick carrying Rain.” He swallowed, his eyes darkening until the whole white and grey was a deep black. “It almost killed her at birth.”

I knew. That is why I left five years ago. But Snow didn’t want him to know just yet and the secret was eating at me.

He gave me that concerned look. “Are you alright?”

“Not really, but at least I’m still funny as hells despite.”