Love Between Two Worlds - Chapter 9

  

Chapter 9 — The King's Secret

For several seconds, no one moved.

Eleanor's final warning seemed to hang in the air over all of them, invisible and yet heavier than anything Amelia had heard all night.

Do not trust the king.

And then, quieter, worse—

Do not fall in love with Adrian.

Amelia looked at him.

He looked away.

That hurt more than she'd expected it to, and she hated that it did.

"Well," Mara said into the silence, dry as old paper, "that could have gone better."

Amelia barely registered her. She turned to Lucien instead. Every trace of royal composure had drained out of his face; he looked less like a king now and more like a man who'd just heard, out loud, the voice of someone he'd failed a long time ago and never stopped hearing anyway.

"What does she mean?"

He didn't answer.

"Why shouldn't I trust you?"

His eyes finally met hers. "Because your grandmother had her reasons."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he admitted, quietly. "It isn't."

Adrian stepped forward at last. "Lucien."

The king's gaze cut to him, sharp.

"You knew Eleanor could still reach through the ring."

"No."

"You knew."

"I suspected."

"Then why say nothing?"

"Because if I had," Lucien said, each word deliberate, "you would have done exactly what you're doing right now."

"Which is?"

"Protecting her from the truth instead of letting her decide what to do with it."

Amelia looked between the two of them, patience thinning to nothing.

"Stop talking about me like I'm not standing right here."

Both men fell silent.

She stepped toward Lucien. "I want the truth. All of it, this time. No more pieces."

He studied her for a long moment, then nodded once, as if some private argument had finally resolved itself.

"Then you should know what your grandmother uncovered before she ever left Elarion."

Amelia's pulse quickened.

"The Hart bloodline was never simply a family entrusted to guard the Veil," Lucien said. "It exists because the very first Hart made a pact with something that lived beyond it."

"Beyond the Veil?"

"Something old enough that old barely describes it."

Adrian's jaw tightened at that, though he said nothing.

"The first Hart gave part of her own blood to bind the two worlds together," Lucien went on. "That blood became the key — the reason your family has ever been able to command the Veil at all."

Amelia looked down at the ring, suddenly heavier on her finger than it had been a moment ago.

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Everything."

The word landed soft, and somehow that made it worse.

"You're not merely the last Hart heir, Amelia. You're the first in centuries to inherit the bloodline whole. Complete. Undiluted."

Her stomach folded in on itself. "What does that actually mean?"

"It means the Veil recognizes you."

"And if it recognizes me?"

"It obeys you."

Silence swallowed the room again.

"You told me I could decide what happens to both worlds," she said slowly.

Lucien nodded.

"But there's a price. There always is, with things like this."

His hesitation before answering told her more than the pause itself.

"What price?"

"Every time the Veil opens, something on the other side has to give way to let it."

"Give way to what?"

"Memory. Time. Blood." He paused, and his voice dropped further. "Sometimes a life."

Her mouth went dry. "And my grandmother knew this?"

"Yes."

"Is that why she left?"

"No." Lucien's eyes dropped, unable to hold hers through the next part. "She left because she discovered what the royal council intended to use you for."

Amelia went cold. "Use me how?"

"They believed your blood could be made to strengthen the Veil permanently. Not temporarily — forever."

"They wanted to bind her to it," Adrian said, and his voice had gone flat with old anger.

Lucien nodded again. "They meant to make you the living heart of Elarion's barrier itself."

Horror crept up Amelia's spine, cold and slow. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning you would never have left this world. Not once. Not ever."

The room seemed to empty itself of air.

Adrian moved closer to her, close enough that his shoulder nearly touched hers.

"Eleanor refused to let that happen to you."

"And that's why they hunted her."

"Yes."

Amelia's eyes stung, hot and sudden. "My grandmother gave up everything — this world, her home, the man she loved — to save me from a fate I didn't even know existed."

"Yes."

"Then why didn't she just tell me?"

Lucien's gaze went to the ring, gentle now in a way his voice hadn't managed all night.

"Because she wanted you to have a life that Elarion had never touched. Not even the shadow of it."

Amelia's fingers closed slowly around the band.

Thirty-two years. Eleanor had carried this alone for thirty-two years, tea and reading glasses and salt on the windowsills, all of it a fortress built around one enormous, protective silence.

And now Amelia understood the shape of it fully, for the first time.

Her grandmother hadn't only been hiding Elarion from her.

She had been hiding Amelia from Elarion.

A knock struck the door.

Everyone in the room went rigid.

Three knocks. Slow. Measured, like something counting rather than announcing itself.

Adrian's blade was in his hand before the sound had finished. Mara snuffed the lantern between two fingers without hesitation.

"Who's there?" Lucien called out.

Nothing answered.

Then another knock — four this time, slower still.

Adrian's face changed in a way that frightened Amelia more than the sound itself had.

"What?" she whispered.

His eyes found hers in the dark. "That's not the Guard's knock."

"Then whose is it?"

He didn't look away from the door.

"The dead's."

Ice moved through Amelia's chest.

The ring began to pulse against her finger — once, twice, a third time — and then the voice returned. Not Eleanor's this time.

A man's voice. The same one from her vision, cold and patient and utterly certain of itself.

"You promised us your granddaughter."

Lucien took a step backward, and for the first time all night, Amelia saw real, unguarded terror cross the king's face.

"Caelan."

The door handle began, slowly, to turn.

Adrian's hand found hers in the dark. "Whatever happens next — stay with me."

Her fingers closed around his, tight enough to hurt.

But before either of them could move, the door swung open on its own.

No one stood in the frame.

Only darkness, thick and total, spilling into the room like something poured rather than merely absent of light.

And from somewhere inside that darkness came a woman's whisper, close enough that it might have been standing right beside her.

"Amelia..."

She knew the voice instantly. Her grandmother's.

But this time Eleanor wasn't warning her.

She was crying.

"He's coming for you."

The ring erupted with light, and the room disappeared into it.