All Chapters of The King's Second Heart : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

61 Chapters

Elowen in the Garden

"My lady. The king is at the door."Ysolde said it from the chamber door in the bright voice of a young Lycan woman who had been waiting all morning for this to be the news she got to deliver, and Elowen — sitting on the edge of the soft impossible bed in a cloak of deep grey wool lined with soft white fur that Ysolde had brought up from the wardrobe an hour ago — looked up sharply."At the door? In person?""In person, my lady. He has come for you himself. He has not sent any guard or any page. He is wearing his own dark cloak and he has come down the long stone corridor of the king's wing on his own two feet, and he is standing at the door of the antechamber, and he is asking very softly whether you are ready."Elowen put her thin hand to her own throat.She had not been expecting this. She had been expecting Ysolde to come into the chamber at the first hour after noon and walk her down the great stair on Y

Elowen in the Garden(2)

It surprised the king of Velmoria too. She felt the steady arm under her thin hand do the smallest possible thing at the sound of her laugh — not a flinch, not a startle, but a private warm thing that ran up the arm and through the shoulder and into the private space of the king's own chest. He had not heard a young woman laugh on his own arm in the king's gardens in twenty years. He kept telling her gentle things. He told her about the corner of the south walk that had the best view of the western mountains at the last hour of any sunset in the autumn. He told her about the three old oaks at the far edge of the gardens that had been planted by the first king of his line. He told her about his own grandmother — the old Queen Idris, who had been the queen of Velmoria in the long quiet years of the old King Aldric — who had used to feed the palace cats with the crusts of bread from the royal kitchen on th

Marrec Alone

"My king. Forgive me. I would not interrupt your walk for any unimportant matter."Lord Marrec Thorne said it in the warm courteous voice of a senior councillor of the crown of Velmoria who had spent forty years saying warm courteous things to kings on gravel paths, and the warm courteous voice did not have any trace of the private thing happening in the private space of his own chest behind it.The king of Velmoria did not move on the gravel of the south walk."Lord Marrec. You are not interrupting. You will allow me to introduce my guest. Lady Elowen, this is Lord Marrec Thorne, senior councillor of the crown of Velmoria. He has been on my council since I was a young king of twenty-five. Lord Marrec, this is Lady Elowen of Vayne Hold. She is currently a guest of the palace. She is recovering from an illness in the care of the royal healer, and we are taking the first walk of her recovery in the winter sun this afternoo

Marrec Alone(2)

His hands began to shake. It was not the shaking of an old man with a palsy. It was the slow steady shaking of a sixty-three-year-old man who had been holding the exquisite courteous face on his exquisite face for the entire walk back from the south walk of the king's gardens to the private study of his tall narrow townhouse, and who had been holding the face for so long without any release that the release was now coming through his hands in the slow steady way of a river breaking through a dam. He poured himself a full goblet of southern wine. He drank the goblet standing. The southern wine was the dark heavy wine of the southern kingdoms, and the dark heavy wine went down his sixty-three-year-old throat in the slow burning way of any dark heavy wine, and the slow burning was the first thing in the private study that did the job of slowing the slow steady shaking of his hands.

The Throne Room Dream

The garden walk had cost her more than she had let anyone see.Elowen had smiled in the colonnade. She had laughed — truly laughed, for the first time in years — at the story about the rude old gardener, and the laughing had lifted something in her chest that had not been lifted in a long time. She had taken the king's arm and walked beside him on the south walk and met Lord Eamon and a man called Marrec Thorne whose smile had been warm and whose bow had been courteous, and the meeting had lasted no longer than two minutes.She had been brave.But the bravery had been expensive, and the price of it came due the moment Ysolde helped her back into the blue chambers and out of the dusk-blue gown and into the soft linen shift.Her legs were trembling. Her hands were shaking. Her whole body had the faint hollow ringing feeling of a bell that has been struck too hard and is still vibrating. Wenna had warned her about this — the careful old hea

The Boy in the Courtyard

Two nights passed without dreams.Elowen walked the corridors of the king's wing twice each day on Ysolde's arm, a little farther each time, and she ate Wenna's prescribed meals of soft bread and broth and honey, and she drank Wenna's tonics, and the king came at dusk in the same quiet way he had come every evening for the past week. He told her about the three old oaks at the far edge of the gardens. He told her about his grandmother Queen Idris, who had kept a small colony of palace cats in the kitchen wing and had fed them scraps from the royal table every evening of her reign until the day she died. He told her about the small old chapel on the north side of the palace grounds where the kings of the line were buried, one grey stone for each, with no names on the stones because the Lycan custom held that the earth knew who was lying in it and did not need to be reminded.He did not ask her about her dreams.He did not

The Painting in the Old Wing

"Walk me somewhere new today, Ysolde."It was the morning after the second dream and Elowen had slept badly and she did not want to walk the corridors of the king's wing again. She had walked the corridors of the king's wing every day for ten days now and she knew every stone of them — the small carved niche where a forgotten vase of dried flowers had been sitting since before she arrived, the tall window at the turn of the stair that gave a narrow view of the western mountains, the portrait of a former queen whose name Elowen had not yet been told. She wanted to see something she had not seen.Ysolde's face brightened."There is the long gallery in the old north wing, my lady. I have been meaning to take you there. It has the portraits of the kings of the line, ten generations on one wall. The household women call it the King's Walk. It is a fair distance but you are strong enough for it now if we go slowly.""Yes. The K

The Painting in the Old Wing(2)

The man in the portrait was the man from her dream. The man in the portrait was the king on the grey stone throne in the great hall. The man in the portrait was the father on the stone terrace who had watched two boys playing in a sunlit courtyard. The man in the portrait was King Arden the Steady, ninth king of the line of Velmoria, who had died eighteen months after his eldest son Castien had been murdered on the western road, and whose kind tired face with the pale grey eyes had been the last face Elowen had seen in the throne room dream before she had woken up. She had never seen this portrait before today. She had never been in the old north wing before today. She had never walked the long gallery of the kings of the line before today. She had never stood in front of this heavy carved frame with its small brass plate and its careful artist's rendering of the ninth king's pale grey eyes and his kind tired face.

Ironbough Rotting

Far to the west, Doran Blackwood was dying.He had lost twenty pounds since the morning in the courtyard. The weight had come off him in the wrong way — not the lean slow thinning of a man who is not eating, but the grey loose sagging of a body that is being eaten from the inside by something that has finally found its way home. His face was the colour of old ash. His hands trembled when he lifted a cup. His eyes, which had once been the sharp dark confident eyes of a young Alpha who had believed that the world owed him whatever he was strong enough to take, were now the dull flat eyes of an animal caught in a trap it does not understand.He could not sleep.Every time he closed his eyes, the men came. The men he had killed. The men whose deaths had been bled off into Elowen's small body by the wolf-debt binding for four years — the border skirmishes he had won by cruelty, the pack-challenges he had won by treachery, the q

Two Investigators, One Quarry

In the east wing of a fine stone townhouse at the upper edge of the capital, Lord Marrec Thorne sat down at his writing desk at the third hour after midnight.The house was quiet. The servants had been dismissed for the evening. The fire in the study had been built up and banked, and the room was warm, and the only light came from two tall beeswax candles on the desk and the low orange glow from the hearth. The heavy oak door of the study was locked. The key was in Marrec's pocket.He had locked the study door for the first time in fifteen years on the evening he had returned from the palace gardens, after two minutes of courteous conversation with a young woman on the king's arm whose grey-green eyes had looked at him and whose grey-green eyes had not been grey-green at all but pale grey — the pale grey of a dead prince who had been looking back at Marrec Thorne out of a stranger's face.That had been three days ago.In

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