Chapter 19- The Watchers' Blood

They put me in Theron's study when we return, not my rooms, and I am too tired to ask why.

There is a fire, and a blanket around my shoulders, and a cup of tea pressed into my hands that I do not drink. Theron stands at the window with his back to me, and Cassius stands by the door. No one speaks, until I cannot bear the quiet a single moment longer, and the questions come out of me all at once.

"What was that thing?" My voice shakes. "In the woods, you looked at that... that thing." I still recoil from the memory of it. "You knew it. That is what you said. That your mother was right. Right about what, Theron?"

He does not turn for a long moment. When he does, his face is grave.

"No. I have never seen that thing before in my life. And yes, I knew it all the same." He frowns. "I just took one look at that thing and knew it. From the old stories my mother used to tell me. I don’t frighten easily, Bree. That thing frightened me. I will not pretend otherwise."

“What is it?”

He crosses to the fire and stands looking into it for a long moment before he answers, "A god. Or something the old stories called one. A beast of power older than the mountains it sleeps under."

“But how can that be? A god? What is a god doing in the woods? Why was I drawn to it? Its weeping, its song…” The moment the word song leaves my lips I connect it. The song. The same one that I hear before dark beast attacks. The same one that kept ringing in my ears until only recently going quiet after tonight.

Theron turns to look at me then. “My mother loved the old stories,” he says. “She collected them.” He turns the ring on his finger, slowly.

"That was what set her apart. She was the one in her house who remembered the old stories when every other house in the south let them rot into things nursemaids say to frighten children. She used to say they were not stories at all. That they were a task. That her house had been given something to carry, older than the empire, and that it was meant to be kept and passed down, mother to child, and never let die." His jaw tightens. "That the world had forgotten it, and one day it would be sorry.”

The fire pops. I have stopped breathing.

“And I thought,” Theron says, quieter, “that it was only ever just stories. I never truly believed her. But today, a creature from one of her stories was in the woods. Facing my wife, and I knew it, Bree. Down to the marrow, I knew it. She was not mad. She was the last person in the south still telling the truth, and I let it die with her because I was ashamed of it.”

I try to take it in. Theron believed these were only stories. And the stories are real.

“oh, well…” I clear my throat, and try to muster up more courage. “If this god is behind the song then perhaps they are connected to the dark beast attacks.” I think back to what Aodh had told me. A sickness.

“I think so too, but the question is how?”

“I think I may know. Or at least some ideas.”

“Well, do tell my dearest wife.”

I nod. “Every dark beast that attacks is tainted. Dark, wrong, the same way the woods were tainted.” I suggest.

Theron shakes his head. “It’s possible, but I don’t think this god is fully awake. It is more like… a remnant of it. Which means if it were truly awake and free it would be even more powerful, and more dangerous.”

We all sit with that. I look down into the cup still in my hands and take a sip. I let the warmth of it settle into my stomach in hopes that it will calm my nerves.

“What do we do, Your Majesty?” Cassius finally asks and breaks the silence.

“We need more information. Charging blindly into the woods will not solve anything.”

“I think I may know something.”

At this both the men turn to look at me.

“Nothing about the god, but… more like the history.” I sip the tea again to ground myself and avert my gaze, not because I am submissive, but because I do not like the prolonged eye contact. “I can’t tell you how I know, but trust me that it is true.”

Cassius scoffs. “And what do you know?”

Theron raises his hand then and silences Cassius. He moves and lowers himself into the chair across from me and gives me the whole of his terrible attention. “Tell me.”

"There was a war before the empires. Your mother's stories had it right, all but one thing." I watch him listen, still and intent. "It was not beasts against men. It was beasts against beasts. Some of them turned on humankind and meant to unmake it, and some of them stood with us against their own blood. They won. But they could not kill the thing they fought, so they bound it under the mountains and set four guardians to keep watch. One for each quarter of the world."

"And each kept something," Theron says slowly.

I nod in agreement. “Yes, each quarter was assigned a watcher, or guardian of sorts. The southern one kept knowledge. Memory. Lore." I hold his eyes. "The stories, Theron. The southern watch was the stories your mother would not let die."

“The stories,” Theron says. His voice has gone rough. “The southern watch role was meant to remember. To hold the knowledge.”

I nod. “Yes, your line is what is left of it. That is why your mother would not let them die. Some part of her house remembered that remembering was the whole of the task.”

“And the north.” He is already there. Of course he is; he is the cleverest man I have ever met. “The northern watch. What did it keep?”

“Fire,” I say. “Fire and storm. And that line thinned the way they all thinned, watered down through each generation.” I finish up the last of the tea and set it on Theron’s desk.

"But it doesn’t explain why this powerful god or beast attacked me. Why I can hear a thing no one else can. Why my tears can heal.”

“Since when can your tears heal?” Cassius interjects, arching a brow.

“Aodh was hurt and I cried.”

“Aodh?” Both men say the name at the same time.

“Yes, the beast fox that stays with me. His name is Aodh,” I reply. “Anyways, that’s why I am confused. All my life I was hollow. Magicless. That is what I don’t understand. Why now? Why is all of this happening now?”

“Whatever you were told,” Theron says quietly, “it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. And perhaps it never was.”

We sit in silence again until Theron breaks it, and begins to play with the ring on his finger again.

“Two watchers,” Theron says at last, and I can hear the tactician in him laying the pieces down, seeing the shape they make and hating it. “North and south. Bound in a marriage neither of us chose, arranged by two men who thought they were playing politics.” A breath that is almost a laugh, and has nothing of humor in it. “Your father meant to shame me. I meant to buy five years of quiet at the cost of a wife I would keep out of my way. And instead we are the two halves of the oldest duty in the world, put back together by accident, at the exact hour it is needed.”

“The gods have a sense of humor,” says Cassius from the door, “and it is not a kind one.”

I still don’t seem to get it, and Theron notices. But he begins to explain.

“One of the stories my mother told me was something about the four lights of the world going dark one by one, and how, when a monster from under the mountain came, the scattered lights would be drawn back together, because the old blood always finds the old blood in the end.”

I scrunch my nose.

Theron gives a coy smile. “Come now, Empress. You are much more clever than that. You said so yourself. The north watcher was storm and fire. Your father wields storm magic.”

“You think I’m a descendant of the northern watcher?”

“It makes sense.”

“It also lines up with the areas of heavier attacks,” Cassius chimes in. His arms stay folded, his voice flat and dutiful and cold as it has always been with me. “The beasts come down worse every season, from the northern passes and the southern woods. More bold and violent than the year before.” His dark eyes move between us. “It is not just a coincidence. If you both are descendants of some kind of guardians over this god and he just woke up, then it means its seal is failing, and every dead village on both our borders is proof of it, and it will only get worse.”

“Yes,” Theron says grimly. “It will.”

Cassius inclines his head a fraction, the barest courtesy, the first he has ever shown me. “I came into those trees thinking you were a spy, but I don’t enjoy discovering that I may have been wrong.” He says bluntly and a bit harshly. “For now you should not return to the woods under any circumstances,” he turns to Theron, “if that is okay with His Majesty?”

Theron nods. “Yes, I don’t want my wife wandering into any more trouble.” He then turns to look at me. “It’s best if you stay here in the castle in the meantime until we gather more information.” Theron gestures over to Cassius. “Now leave us.”

Cassius inclines his head before heading out the door. It is now only Theron and I in his office.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Theron says quietly. “I know how to hold a border. How to run an empire, own a battlefield, and cut an enemy down.” For the first time he looks at me as if he is lost. “I have no idea how to protect you from a god. From whatever this creature is.” He takes a steading breath. “But I know one thing for certain. I will not lose you.”

“You won't lose me,” I say immediately. My hand reaches for his. And in that moment he holds mine. His hand squeezing my own in comfort, or perhaps seeking comfort.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” I say with finality as I squeeze his hand. “At least, I hope… I am scared too.”

Theron rises and lowers himself onto the chair beside me, and wraps his arms around me. The weight is steady, and I find myself leaning into his touch as much as he is leaning into mine.

“Then we will not know how to do it together,” he says. “Which is more than either of us had this morning.”

And it is such a small thing, and it undoes me entirely, because it is the first time in the whole of my life that I am not the only one carrying a burden.

We sit like that for a while until the fire burns low. He then takes my hand and I follow him to his bedroom that night. We cuddle under the blankets and in the dark, in his embrace, I give voice to a burden I never thought I would willingly speak aloud.

“My mother is dying.” The tears begin to fall as I say it. “My real one. Not the queen. She was a maid.” I can’t seem to stop the tears now that I have started talking.

“She is sick. Very sick, and she is not getting better. I hate that she is a thousand miles from me. Some days the fear of losing her is louder than the song I hear before the dark beast attacks.”

I do not tell him the rest. I do not tell him about Torsten, or the letters, or the vial of pale gold, or the price I have been paying. I am not brave enough for that, not tonight, perhaps not ever. But this much is true, and I give it to him, because today he has given me something only my mother has ever given me. The feeling of being safe. Even if it’s just this moment in time. And I treasure it dearly, more than any gold.

I sniffle and feel his thumb wipe away one of my tears. I look up, and in the dark of the bedroom I can see the gold of his eyes.

“Then when this is done,” he says quietly, “whatever it becomes, we will bring her south. Better physicians. Winters that do not kill. If she can be reached, Bree, she will be reached, and I will see to it myself. You have my word, and you know by now I do not spend it lightly.”

My lower lip trembles and I can’t help but feel more tears fall. Not just from relief but from the sense of betrayal. I know he means this, yet I have been working against him this whole time. He does not know that every gentle thing he says tonight is a knife, and that I am the hand on it. He does not know that I am going to have to choose, and soon, between the man whose shoulder is warm against mine and the mother who is dying a thousand miles away.

But that is tomorrows grief.

Tonight, I let myself feel safe. Feel loved. For the first time since I came south, I do not feel so alone.

And tonight, that is enough.