Love Between Two Worlds - Chapter 6

  

Chapter 6 — The Love She Left Behind

(Rewritten)

For a long moment, the only sound was wind moving through the trees.

Adrian had looked away.

He hadn't denied it.

Somehow that was worse than any confession could have been.

"You're telling me," Amelia said slowly, testing each word before she let it out, "that you were the man my grandmother loved?"

His jaw set. "Don't make this harder than it already is."

"Harder?" A disbelieving laugh tore out of her before she could stop it. "My grandmother is dead. I've just found out she lived in another world, belonged to a royal bloodline, and apparently left behind a man who's known her — known of her, loved her, whatever this is — for thirty-two years." She closed the distance between them. "And you want to tell me not to make this harder?"

His eyes finally came back to hers.

"You don't know what Eleanor and I were to each other."

"Then tell me."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because some truths aren't mine to hand over."

"She's dead, Adrian."

"I know that better than anyone."

"Then who exactly are you protecting?"

Something flickered across his face before he answered.

"Everyone."

The answer only fed her anger. She turned away and crossed her arms, staring into the dark between the trees rather than at him.

"Of course."

He watched her for several long seconds. Then, quietly, in a voice stripped of all its usual guardedness:

"Your grandmother saved my life."

She looked back at him. He'd lowered the blade without her noticing.

"When I first met Eleanor, Elarion was already coming apart at the seams. The royal family was divided against itself. The court was tearing at succession like dogs over a carcass, and the House of Hart's influence had nearly bled out entirely."

"And my grandmother?"

"She was the last person anyone expected to challenge the throne."

"Why?"

"Because she wasn't afraid of it." A faint smile touched his mouth, there and gone. "She walked straight into the royal court and told the king, to his face, that he was wrong."

Amelia blinked. "That sounds exactly like her."

"It was."

For the first time since she'd met him, real warmth colored his voice when he spoke Eleanor's name — and it stung more than Amelia expected, a small, strange, unwelcome jealousy. Not because she'd lost her grandmother. She'd made her peace with that months ago, as much as anyone makes peace with a thing like that.

It was because she was only now understanding that Adrian had known an entire version of Eleanor that Amelia never would.

"What happened?"

He looked toward the mountains, barely visible now as dark shapes against the violet dark.

"Eleanor uncovered something the royal family had buried for generations."

"What?"

"The Hart bloodline was never created to rule Elarion." He paused, choosing the next words with visible care. "It was created to protect it."

"Protect it from what?"

"The Veil."

She waited, and he went on.

"The Veil is the boundary separating the worlds. It keeps Elarion and yours apart — has done, since long before either of us was born."

"And my family controlled it?"

"Your family maintained it." His eyes dropped to the ring on her finger. "The ring is a key. But it's also a seal. It was never meant to be only one or the other."

She touched the band, feeling its faint warmth against her fingertip.

"Why did it choose me?"

"Because you're the last Hart left standing."

"And what happens now that it has?"

He didn't answer, and the silence itself was the answer.

"Something bad," she said.

"Something dangerous."

"Those aren't different things, Adrian."

The ghost of a smile returned — and then the horn sounded again, much closer this time, and it vanished as fast as it had come.

"We have to move."

"Where?"

"There's a village past the northern ridge."

"Will we be safe there?"

"No."

"You're genuinely terrible at reassurance."

"I've been told."

He reached for her hand.

This time, she let him take it.

They walked north, and the forest seemed to darken with every step, the two moons swallowed one by one behind a bank of cloud until the only light left came from the faint gold pulse of the ring, guiding them like a lantern neither of them was carrying.

Several minutes passed before Amelia spoke again.

"Did you love her?"

Adrian stopped walking.

She hadn't expected that — hadn't expected the question to land hard enough to actually still him.

He turned to face her fully.

"Why are you asking me that?"

"Because I need to know."

Something in his eyes softened, gave way.

"Yes."

No hesitation. No mystery dressed up around it. Just the word, plain and unguarded, the way he hadn't given her anything else since the corridor.

She looked away first this time.

"Did she love you back?"

The silence stretched so long she thought he might simply not answer.

"Yes."

Something twisted tight in her chest, and she couldn't immediately name why. Maybe because the word made Eleanor feel less like the grandmother she remembered — tea, reading glasses, salt on every windowsill — and more like a woman Amelia had genuinely never known at all.

"What happened between you?"

"Her family found out."

"The House of Hart?"

"The royal court." His voice darkened, roughened at the edges. "They said Eleanor could never remain in Elarion if she chose to stay with me."

"Why not?"

"Because I wasn't human."

She stared at him. "What?"

His expression didn't shift, didn't flinch from it.

"I was born in Elarion."

"So?"

"Elarion holds more than one bloodline, Amelia. Mine belonged to the Guardians."

His hand went briefly to the pale blade at his hip.

"The ones who protect the door?"

"Among other things."

"Is that why your eyes are silver?"

"Partly."

She studied him for a long moment, searching his face for something she couldn't quite name.

"Then what are you?"

He hesitated — longer than he had for anything else that night.

"Something your world was never meant to know existed."

Before she could push further, light broke through the trees ahead of them, warm and gold against all that violet dark.

She stopped.

A village. Small houses clustered beneath trees enormous enough to be older than the settlement itself, windows glowing amber, smoke curling up from chimneys into the night sky. For the first time since she'd stepped through the door, Elarion looked almost gentle.

Adrian didn't relax an inch.

"Stay close to me."

They walked in together. Conversation died as they passed — a woman dropped the basket she was carrying, an old man's eyes fixed on the ring and refused to move. Then a whisper, low, passed hand to hand through the gathering crowd like a struck match.

"The Hart heir."

Another voice, further back: "She's returned."

The word spread faster than Amelia could track it. Within seconds every face in the square had turned toward her, and she felt herself drift closer to Adrian without deciding to.

He noticed. His hand found hers again.

Small. Protective. Something that felt, in that moment, uncomfortably close to intimate.

A little girl broke free of the crowd — no older than eight, hair in two loose braids, eyes enormous when they landed on Amelia.

Then on Adrian.

"Is it true?"

He crouched slightly to meet her at eye level. "Is what true?"

"Is she the princess?"

The whole village went silent at once, as though someone had drawn a breath and held it.

"I'm not a princess," Amelia said, too quickly.

The girl's small face crumpled into a frown. "But my mother said the Hart princess would come back."

The ring flared hot against Amelia's finger, as if it had opinions of its own on the matter.

Adrian straightened. "We need somewhere private to talk."

An older woman stepped forward from the crowd, her eyes never once leaving Amelia's face. "You can stay in my house."

"Thank you," Adrian said.

As they followed her through the narrow lanes between houses, Amelia leaned close enough that only he could hear.

"You told me my family ruled Elarion."

"They did."

"You never once said the word princess."

"I was hoping you might get one peaceful day before that particular truth caught up with you."

She glanced at him sideways. "How many more of these are you sitting on?"

He didn't answer, and by now she'd learned exactly what that silence meant.

They reached the woman's door. Before Amelia stepped through it, she looked back once at the village behind her — every face still turned her way, watching her the way you watch something you've been waiting a long time for.

And for the first time since the door had opened at Blackwood Manor, she understood the truth of it, fully, all at once.

She hadn't simply stepped into another world.

She had come home to one that had never once forgotten her name.

Behind her, low enough that it felt meant only for her, Adrian said:

"Welcome home, Amelia."

She turned to look at him, and something in his eyes made her heart stumble over its own next beat — because for the first time, she found herself wondering whether Elarion wasn't the only thing in this world that had spent thirty-two years waiting for her to arrive.

Perhaps Adrian had been waiting too.