All Chapters of I Died On Our Anniversary : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

23 Chapters

The blade that killed me

He steps back.I look down and the blade is already there, buried into my chest like it found the place it was always meant to go. The handle is dark wood. The candlelight catches the metal where it enters me and I think, with the strangest calm, that I never noticed that blade before. Three years in this house and I never once noticed it.Caelan straightens his cuff. Two fingers. Unhurried. Like a man who has just crossed the last item off a list before he moves on to whatever comes after.I go down on my knees. The marble comes up through my palms cold and final. I press my hands flat and try to hold myself upright.I cannot hold myself upright."You were never meant to survive this long."His voice. I have memorized every version of his voice over three years of marriage. The warm public one that makes people feel chosen just for being near it. The quieter one he kept for private rooms, the one I believed was the real him underneath everything. This is underneath both of those. Thi

The name

I can feel Caelan watching me from across the courtyard before I even start walking.He is standing in front of his pavilion with his arms loose at his sides, chin up, the whole of him relaxed with the ease of a man who has never had a reason to doubt an outcome in his life. I spent three years learning every small thing about him and I know what that posture means. He wears it at negotiations he has already won. He wears it at dinner when everyone at the table is about to agree with him. He is wearing it right now because he believes this morning belongs to him.My throat tightens. I press my lips together and keep walking.Not love. I know the difference now, even if my body has not caught up yet. What I feel walking past him is grief. Grief for what I believed he was. Grief for three years I gave to something that was not real. My body remembers all of it and does not yet understand that I am done with it.I start walking.First pavilion. Second. I give each man the required nod an

What changed

My father waits for the door to close before he speaks.He is sitting by the window in the small reception room off the courtyard, both hands around a warm cup. He looks like a king. He always looks like a king. But up close I can see what that costs him now in a way I could not see a year ago. The thinness of his wrists. The careful way he holds himself straight, like straightness is something he has to keep choosing rather than something his body does on its own.He turns from the window and his face does something I was not ready for."Are you alright?" he asks.Of all the things I expected him to open with. Not accusation, not confusion, not the weight of a kingdom's worth of expectation. Are you alright.I have to look at the window for a moment. I press my hands flat in my lap. My throat does the thing it does when I am not going to cry but it is a very close thing."Yes," I say. "I am." I sit across from him and I fold my hands in my lap. "Are you?"He almost smiles. "The court

The gate

Lysa finds me before I find Riven.She comes from the east wing direction in pale green with her hair pinned up, and she closes the distance between us quickly and takes my hands in hers before I can do anything with my own face. Her grip is warm and tight and exactly the grip I have known since we were girls. It is so familiar that it makes my chest hurt."Aelara." My name in her voice, soft and concerned. "Are you alright? That must have been terrifying.""I am fine," I say.Her eyes stay on mine. Reading. Lysa has always been good at reading people. It is one of the things I spent years calling intuition when it was something else entirely."I was so surprised," she says. "Everyone was. I just want to hear it from you. That you are happy. That is what you truly want."She means: tell me something I can use. Tell me whether the plan is broken or just delayed.I know that now. I did not know it when she was doing this to me every other day of my life, but I know it standing here hold

What they said

My father is sitting up when I walk in and that is the first thing I look for. Sitting, not lying down. Eyes open, watching the door.I ran the whole corridor. My breath is still uneven when I step inside.The physician passes me on his way out with a small nod that tells me nothing I want to hear and nothing that breaks me either. The attendants file after him. My father says "Out" with the voice he reserves for when he is still a king even when being a king costs him something, and the room empties.Just us."You ran," he says."The whole corridor," I say. I sit across from him and I look at his face and I try not to let him see what looking at his face does to me. The thinness. The effort underneath the straight back. He is holding himself upright right now by deciding to, and it shows, and I love him so much it is hard to be in the room."It was a spell," he says. "They pass. I have had them before.""How often.""Aelara.""How often are the spells."My father holds my eyes. "Ofte

Come In

His rooms are nothing like I expected.I do not know what I expected exactly. Something that matched what the court believed about him, maybe. Cold, sparse, the rooms of a man who treated comfort as a performance he had not bothered learning. Instead there are books everywhere. Not arranged. Not displayed. Read, and put down wherever he finished them, and picked up again from wherever they landed. There is a low fire going that has been going for a while. A chair pulled close to it with a book lying open on the arm. A cup on the table beside the chair, still warm when I brush it with my fingers.He was not sleeping. He has been here, awake, for hours.I turn to look at him. He is standing near the window, arms loose at his sides, watching me take in the room with the patience of a man who has nowhere else to be."How long have you been awake?" I ask."Since you left the gate," he says.That was before dinner. That was hours ago. I look at him and he looks back and neither of us says w

The morning court

The court gathers for the morning meal as if nothing had happened.That is not true, of course. Everything happened. The whole palace knows it. But the court has a way of performing normalcy when it needs time to decide what it thinks, and this morning every face in the dining hall is arranged in the particular expression of people who are waiting to see what the people beside them are going to do before they commit to anything themselves.I walk in with Senna two steps behind me, and I feel every eye in the room adjust. Not turning. Not staring. The subtle shift of people who were watching the door and are now watching something else with great interest.I have spent my whole life in this court. I know how to walk across a room when people are watching. I do it now, to my usual seat, and I sit down and let Senna pour my tea, and I look at the room with the pleasant calm of a woman who is entirely comfortable with where she is.Half of that is performance. The other half is something

A father fighting for his pride

"Tell me about Lord Veran," I say.We are in the library. Riven chose it, which tells me something. He picked the room with one entrance and windows that face the inner courtyard rather than the corridors, the room where you can see anyone approaching from two directions before they reach you. I noticed. I did not say anything.He is standing near the shelves. I am sitting. We have established, without discussing it, that this is how we occupy a space together. He moves, I still, and between us we cover the whole room."Veran has been in Caelan's circle for twelve years," he says. "Long enough that his loyalty is not transactional anymore. It is identity. He does not support Caelan because Caelan offers him things. He supports Caelan because he has built his understanding of himself around being the man who backed Caelan Dray early and was right about it.""And now Caelan did not get the throne," I say."Which means Veran was not right about it," Riven says. "Which means everything he

The eastern garden

Lady Cassel walks like someone who has never been in a hurry in her life and has always been exactly on time anyway.She is already in the east garden when Senna and I arrive, moving along the stone path between the winter hedges with her hands clasped behind her back and her face tipped slightly upward, like a woman taking air. Like this is simply something she does in the afternoon and the timing is entirely coincidental.I match her pace when I reach her. Senna falls back three steps, which is exactly where Senna belongs in a conversation like this close enough to hear everything, far enough to give the impression of privacy."My lady," Lady Cassel says. "Thank you for coming.""Thank you for the invitation," I say.We walk.The east garden in winter is mostly bare. The hedges hold their shape but there is nothing flowering, nothing to look at except stone and sky and the wing of the palace that rises above the eastern wall, its windows catching the afternoon light. Caelan's guest

What rivern said

He comes to my room at the ninth hour.I know it's him before the knock. I have only known Riven Ashveil for two days in this version of my life and I already know the weight of his knock three times, unhurried, the knock of a man who is not worried about whether you will open the door.I open it.He comes in and looks at the room the way he always looks at a space he enters quick inventory, then attention on what matters. He sits in the chair near the window, the one I was sitting in an hour ago watching his thread move, and he looks at me with the expression that means he has something to say and is deciding the most efficient way to say it.I sit across from him."How did it go," I say."Better than expected," he says. "And more complicated.""Tell me."He leans back in the chair. Not relaxed exactly Riven does not perform relaxation any more than he performs anything else. Just settled. The posture of a man who has processed what happened and is ready to report it accurately."Ver

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