Love Between Two Worlds - Chapter 7

  

Chapter 7 — The House of Hart

(Rewritten)

The woman's house was warmer than Amelia expected, in every sense of the word.

Small, built from dark timber and pale stone, with a low ceiling crossed by heavy beams that looked old enough to have their own opinions. Dried herbs hung in bundles beside the fireplace, flowers tied above the windows in a pattern that felt more habit than decoration, and a copper kettle murmured quietly over the flames as though nothing outside these walls could possibly matter.

After everything that had happened since the study, the sheer domestic ordinariness of it felt almost obscene.

The woman shut the door behind them, and only then did Amelia feel the exhaustion hit — all at once, all the way down to her bones.

"My name is Mara," the woman said.

"Amelia."

Mara's mouth curved, faint and knowing. "I know."

Amelia glanced at Adrian. Of course she did. Apparently everyone in this world already knew her name before she'd had the chance to offer it.

Mara gestured toward two chairs by the fire. "Sit. Both of you."

Adrian stayed standing.

Mara's eyes narrowed on him. "You're bleeding."

"I've had worse."

"That wasn't an invitation to argue with me."

Amelia bit back a smile. It seemed Adrian had found yet another woman entirely unimpressed by his stoicism.

Mara vanished into a side room and returned with a bowl of water, clean cloth, and a small jar that smelled sharply of pine and something bitterer underneath. She held the lot out — not to Adrian.

To Amelia.

"You can manage it."

Amelia looked at him. He looked back, unmoved.

"What?"

"You heard her."

He sat.

Amelia peeled his coat open carefully, and the torn fabric across his shoulder gave way to reveal a cut far deeper than anything "nothing" should have covered.

She sucked in a breath. "This is what you call nothing?"

"I've had worse."

"You've said that already."

"Because it's still true."

She dipped the cloth in the water and got to work. He flinched the moment it touched skin.

"You're hurting me."

"Good." Her eyes flicked up to meet his, sugar-sweet. "You've been lying to me all night."

The corner of his mouth twitched, reluctant and real. "Fair."

For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. Mara watched them from across the room with the particular patience of someone who has seen this exact silence before.

Eventually she cleared her throat.

"You two remind me of someone."

Amelia looked up. "Who?"

Mara's gaze settled on Adrian, and something gentled in her face.

"Eleanor."

The cloth stilled in Amelia's hand. Beside her, Adrian's expression went somewhere far away.

"She used to sit exactly where you're sitting now," Mara said. "Thirty years ago, near enough."

Amelia's heart caught. "You knew her?"

"She stayed in this house."

"For how long?"

"Three months."

Amelia glanced at Adrian. He hadn't mentioned that — one more thing added to the growing list.

"What was she like?"

Mara's smile deepened. "Stubborn."

"That sounds about right."

"Brave."

Amelia nodded, unsurprised.

"And lonely."

That word landed differently than the others — sharper, unexpected.

"Lonely?"

Mara's gaze drifted to the fire. "Eleanor loved this world more than she ever let herself say. But she always knew she couldn't stay in it."

"Because of Adrian?"

Mara's eyes moved between the two of them, weighing something. "Partly."

Amelia turned to him. He'd gone entirely still, the way he did whenever a conversation edged too close to something he'd rather not walk through.

"What happened?"

Mara sighed, the sound of someone settling into a story they'd told themselves too many times not to know it by heart.

"Eleanor was promised to the prince of Elarion."

The cloth stopped in Amelia's hands. "The prince?"

"Yes."

Adrian looked away from both of them.

Amelia turned toward him slowly. "You never once mentioned that."

"It wasn't relevant."

"My grandmother was promised in marriage to the prince of an entire kingdom, and you thought that wasn't relevant?"

Mara answered before he could. "She was. And she refused him."

"She chose Adrian instead," Amelia finished, already knowing.

Mara nodded once.

The room went very quiet.

Amelia looked at him with new eyes. "You really did mean something to her."

He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

"That choice split the royal court down the middle," Mara went on. "Some believed Eleanor had betrayed her own family's name. Others believed Adrian had ensnared her — charmed her into it somehow, the way people always look for someone to blame when a woman makes a choice they don't like."

"He didn't do that," Amelia said, immediate, before she'd fully decided to say it.

Both of them looked at her.

She felt her own words land a beat late, and pressed on anyway rather than take them back.

"I've seen enough of what passed between them to know she loved him. Genuinely. That wasn't manipulation."

Adrian's eyes stayed on her, something warm and unnamed moving behind them.

Mara's smile turned soft, almost private. "You have her eyes when you're angry, you know."

Amelia blinked. "What do you mean? My eyes are hazel."

"Not when the blood wakes up in you."

The room seemed to contract around the sentence. Amelia looked down at the ring, still faintly glowing against her finger.

"Wakes up?"

"The Hart blood doesn't announce itself all at once," Mara said. "It comes in pieces. This is only the beginning of yours."

Adrian rose. "Mara."

She didn't so much as glance at him. "She needs to hear this."

"She knows enough for tonight."

"No," Mara said, with a firmness that closed the argument before it opened. "She knows almost nothing, and you know it."

His jaw tightened, but he didn't stop her.

Mara turned fully to Amelia. "Your family carried the ability to command the Veil itself."

"Command it," Amelia repeated slowly. "As in—"

"Open it. Close it. Strengthen it where it's thin." Mara paused, and something grave settled over her face. "And, if it ever came to that — unmake it entirely."

A chill worked its way down Amelia's spine. "What happens if I can't control it?"

Mara didn't answer.

Adrian did, quiet and level. "People die."

Amelia turned to him. "How many?"

He held her gaze without flinching from it.

"We don't know."

The ring burned white-hot against her skin.

The windows rattled in their frames. Every flame in the room — the fire, the single lantern by the door — bent toward Amelia as one, as though the whole house had just noticed her for the first time.

Mara was on her feet instantly. "It's beginning."

"What is?"

The ring flared gold, and a thin ring of light spread outward from beneath Amelia's feet, tracing ancient symbols across the floorboards in a perfect circle.

Adrian reached for her. "Amelia — don't move."

"Believe me, I wasn't planning to."

The symbols began, slowly, to turn.

Then a voice rose out of the walls themselves — not from any mouth in the room. Not Eleanor's, not Adrian's, not Mara's.

A man's voice. Old in a way that had nothing to do with years.

"Blood has returned."

Mara's face drained of color. Adrian's blade was already in his hand.

"Everyone back."

The voice came again, closer this time, or perhaps simply louder.

"The crown awaits its heir."

Amelia's pulse thundered in her ears.

Then the front door blew inward off its hinges, and cold air poured through the house like something with intent.

Three figures stood in the frame. Black armor, silver masks — Royal Guard, though not the same rider from the forest.

Behind them stepped a fourth. Taller. His armor pale white instead of black, a golden crown etched across the breastplate in fine, deliberate lines.

His eyes found Amelia and stayed there.

Then he bowed.

Not to Adrian. Not even a glance in his direction.

To her.

"Your Highness."

Amelia's throat closed around anything she might have said.

Adrian stepped between them without hesitation. "She isn't going anywhere with you."

The man's mouth curved, unbothered by the blade pointed his way. "We haven't come to take her."

His gaze slid past Adrian, back to Amelia, patient and certain.

"We've come to bring her home."

Amelia looked down at the ring still glowing gold against her hand, and understood, all at once and far too late, why the entire village had gone silent when she walked through it. Why her grandmother had spent thirty-two years building a life around one enormous, careful lie. Why every person she'd met in this world so far seemed to believe, without question, that she already belonged to them.

But underneath all of it, one question rose above the rest, and she couldn't hold it back.

"If I'm the heir—" She turned to Adrian, searching his face for the answer before she even finished asking. "—then who is the king?"