‘Me too. Thank you, Meilyr. Should I leave?’
Meilyr nodded, that distressingly recognisable unmooring pressing at the edges of his mind. The trees in the distance swayed.
Haydn moved away and opened the door.
Pedr started – as Aldreda rounded the spiral staircase, on her way up.
Oh,gods.
Haydn did not miss a beat: bowed low to the Heir Apparent. ‘Majesty.’ He spun and bowed equally low to Meilyr. ‘I will see to your request immediately, Highness.’
He dared a secret wink with an apologetic smile as he straightened, and a little relief soothed Meilyr’s raked senses. Haydn slipped past Aldreda, bowed again and vanished down the stairs.
Aldreda looked at Meilyr and noted his missing cuffs immediately. He had forgotten to put them back on after he awoke.
But she only shook her head tiredly. ‘Osian ducked out, then. This works. Look.’ She leaned on the doorframe and glanced at Pedr. ‘Please tell Jocosa to find my brother. The taller, obstinately earnest one.’
The knight looked between them and, bless them, went to refuse.
‘It is all right, Pedr,’ Meilyr said. He did not know if it was, but Aldreda had a very different air to the last time he had seen her. She wanted to speak privately but was reluctant. Grim. Not about to run him through.
Pedr grudgingly marched down the stairs.
‘I’m sorry,’ Aldreda began, jaw tight, ‘about the other day. But that’s not why I’m here. The old man is dead. The one you knew. He was being monitored by our physicians, but, well.’
The world stopped. Like the wind dropping without warning, to stillness and absence.
Wade Bevan was dead…?
‘Sympathies,’ she said. ‘Take however long you need.’
She turned and descended the stairs, but Meilyr barely perceived her.
It rang through his mind like an awful bell.The old man is dead.
Wade Bevan’s kind, sun-rough face, beaming in greeting each time he hobbled into the apothecary. Over the decade or more Meilyr had known him, that expression had never changed, even as the lines deepened and his bones gave him more grief.
Sioned, his wife. His widow.
The old man is dead.
Wade Bevan’s smile, breaking into pain. Bloodied. Beaten.
Dead.
Meilyr’s mind twisted the image into the face of Deryn’s father. Into Idwal’s face, where he had died under Meilyr’s hands.
Twisted it into the lifeless, broken face of Meilyr’s father.
A single periwinkle shuddered. The one beside it. The two beside that. The high, ringing sound crawled back into Meilyr’s head.
Run—
His mother’s fierce press into his hair as she kissed his temple, as she set him down in the treeline, the world-rending schism of fire and emptiness behind her.Run, Meilyr. Don’t look back—
The life in the window boxes hissed as though a gale moved through them. A petal fell, then another. Another.
Meilyr covered his mouth, ears ringing. He listed towards the door, the stairs. ‘I am fine,’ he whispered, as though Aldreda might still hear him. As though to convince himself. ‘I just need a moment.’