Chapter 16: The Morning After

I woke to the smell of bread and honey, and for a moment I forgot where I was. The mattress was soft beneath me, and the blankets were warm, and the fire had been relit sometime while I was sleeping, casting orange light across the ceiling in dancing shadows. I could have been anywhere. I could have been back in my mother's cottage, waking to the smell of her cooking, believing that the world was still a place where good things could happen.

Then I saw the stone walls, and the frost on the window, and the tray of food sitting on the table where no tray had been the night before.

I sat up slowly, my back aching from where I had pressed against the headboard, and my legs stiff from being pulled up against my chest for so many hours. The cloak had fallen off my shoulders sometime in the night, and I pulled it back around me, feeling the warmth of the fur against my neck and the weight of the wool on my back. The boots were still on my feet, and I wiggled my toes inside them, grateful for the soft lining that kept the cold from seeping into my skin.

The room was empty.

Leandro was gone.

I did not know why that surprised me. He had never stayed. He had come to my room exactly twice since I arrived at this castle, and both times he had left before I could even process what had happened. But something about this morning felt different. The fire was burning higher than it should have been, and the shadows on the walls seemed softer, and the air smelled like smoke and something else, something that reminded me of him. Pine, maybe. Or snow. Or the wild, untamed scent of the forest where I had tried to escape.

I looked at the tray of food.

There was bread, still warm, with a crust that flaked when I touched it. The loaf was round and golden, dusted with flour, and when I broke off a piece, the inside was soft and steaming. There was a small pot of honey, golden and thick, the same kind that had been left outside my door after the nightmare. The pot was made of clay, glazed with a pattern of leaves and vines, and the spoon beside it was carved from dark wood, smooth and worn from years of use.

There was a cup of tea, still steaming, the liquid dark and fragrant. I could smell the herbs in it, familiar and comforting, the same blend my mother used to make on cold mornings when the frost covered the windows and the wind rattled the shutters.

And there was a note.

It was folded in half, tucked beneath the edge of the plate, and I reached for it with fingers that were still shaking from the cold of the night before. The paper was thick and expensive, the kind of paper that cost more than most people earned in a month, and the handwriting on it was messy, almost illegible, like the person who had written it had been in a hurry, or nervous, or both.

There was only one word written on it.

"Stay."

I read it once. Then again. Then a third time, trying to find the hidden meaning, the secret message, or the trap that I was sure was waiting for me somewhere beneath the surface of that single word. I turned the paper over, looking for more, but the back was blank. There was no signature, no seal, and no indication of who had written it except for the messy scrawl that I had already learned to recognize.

But there was nothing. Just ink on paper, or just a word that could have been a command or a plea or something in between.

I did not know what it meant.

The king had left me breakfast, left me a note, and the king had written one word and signed it with nothing but the messy scrawl of his handwriting, and I did not know what he wanted from me. Was he telling me to stay in this room? To stay in this castle? To stay alive? Or to stay with him?

I thought about Elara's words. "He does not know how to say it, so he gives things."

This was not a gift, this was breakfast. This was a note, and a word that could have been spoken aloud but had been written instead, as if the act of writing made it easier, made it safer, or made it less likely to be rejected. Leandro could have waited for me to wake. He could have told me whatever he wanted to say. But he had chosen to leave, to disappear, and to hide in the shadows while I ate his food and read his words and tried to make sense of a man I did not understand.

I picked up the bread and tore off a piece, and the warmth of it spread through my fingers and into my chest. I dipped it in the honey and put it in my mouth, and the sweetness filled my tongue, and I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last time I had eaten something that tasted like this. The honey was rich and golden, with a floral undertone that reminded me of summer, of flowers, and of warmth that had nothing to do with fire.

I could not remember the last time I had eaten honey. My mother used to buy it from a merchant who came through our village once a month, a small pot that she would ration carefully, using it only for special occasions like Birthdays, Holidays, and days when the sun was shining and the world seemed like a place worth living in.

She would stand in the kitchen with flour on her apron and honey on her fingers, and she would hum while she worked, and I would sit at the table and watch her and pretend that everything was going to be okay. I always had to pretend that she was not coughing up blood, that she was not getting thinner every day, and I had to pretend that she would always be there, humming and baking and smiling at me like I was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

That was before she got sick. Before the coughing started, and before the blood appeared on her handkerchiefs and the light faded from her eyes and the warmth went out of our home forever.

I ate the bread and drank the tea, and I tried not to think about my mother, but her face kept appearing in my mind, smiling and sad and so far away that I could barely remember what her voice sounded like. The tea was warm and bitter, with a hint of mint that soothed my throat and settled my stomach. I drank it slowly, savoring each sip, feeling the heat spread through my chest and into my limbs.

When the food was gone, I looked at the note again, and read its content once more.

"Stay."

One word. Four letters. A command that sounded like a question and a question that sounded like a plea.

I did not know if Leandro was telling me to stay in the room, or to stay in the castle, or to stay alive, or to stay with him. I did not know if he was asking or demanding or hoping. I did not know anything about him except that he had golden eyes and shaking hands and a voice that sounded like broken glass. I did not know why he had left me breakfast, why he had written me a note, and I did not know why he kept coming to my door and then disappearing before I could see his face.

I folded the note carefully, pressing the creases flat with my thumb, and I put it in the pocket of my trousers. The paper was warm against my leg, and I could feel the weight of it there, small and insubstantial, but somehow important. It was the first thing anyone had ever given me that was not food or clothes or something I needed to survive. It was just a piece of paper with a word on it. But it meant something. I did not know what. But it meant something.

I did not know why I kept it, and I did not know why I wanted to hold onto something so small, so ordinary, and so meaningless to anyone but me.

But I kept it anyway.

The fire crackled. The wind howled. And I sat there against the headboard with the cloak around my shoulders and the note in my pocket, and I thought about the king who had left me breakfast and written me a message and then disappeared into the shadows before I could wake up and see his face.

Somewhere in the castle, he was watching.

I could feel his golden eyes on me, burning through the stone walls, through the locked doors, through the darkness that separated us. He was always watching. Always waiting. Always there, even when he was not there. I wondered if he had stood in my room while I slept, looking down at me, watching my chest rise and fall with each breath. I wondered if he had touched my hair, or pulled the cloak back over my shoulders, or whispered something I could not hear.

I did not know what he wanted from me.

But he had written me a note, I had kept it, and I did not know why.