Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (55 page)

Roen felt sick and empty. A cold fear grew in his stomach, and he didn’t really know what he was doing. He had the vague notion that he was leaving, but sometimes he found himself asking why. His whole self felt torn between surrendering to the truth he and Eloryn couldn’t be together, and the desire to deny that, to fight it, to do anything to make it happen. But fighting could hurt more than just him. He would not follow Thayl’s path. He had to leave.

It was hard telling Memory. He hoped he would survive telling Eloryn. He’d put it off long enough.

He knocked on the door of her office and exhaled slowly.

“Enter,” called a man’s voice. Roen opened the door and found Hayes working at the queen’s desk, papers spread on every inch of the surface except a small plate of fruit in the corner.

“Councilor,” Roen greeted him, confused. “I was hoping to see Eloryn.”

“
Her Majesty
is busy, Roen, and I thought we had come to an agreement about your relationship with her?” Hayes’s voice was calm, and he only barely glanced up from the documents on his desk.

“It is not a social meeting I seek,” Roen said.

“Of course not. You won’t be swayed will you?” Hayes put his pen down and looked up at Roen properly. His gaze wasn’t aggressive, and he let out a loud sigh. “You’re young, and for what it’s worth I do understand. But never mind. You’ve come at an opportune time, as I have a favor you could assist me with. Could you run an errand in the city for me?”

“An errand?” Roen repeated, not fully understanding, but glad not to be on Hayes’s bad side.

“We’ve discovered some rare magic works that survived Thayl’s reign, and I need someone I trust to collect them so they can be safely stored in the Council’s collection. I’d go myself, but I’m stuck here with this paperwork, and it really is quite urgent. “

“And you’d like me to collect them?”

Hayes eyed him critically. “I can trust you, can’t I?”

“Of course. I can go right away.”

“Very good,” said Hayes, taking a slow bite from an apple. He scrawled an address on a scrap of paper and handed it to Roen. He already looked back at his documents and waved Roen off with a wiggle of his fingertips.

Roen felt odd doing a job for Hayes, but the distraction was welcome. A way to put off telling Eloryn for a little longer.

Or so he thought until he ran into Eloryn on the castle steps.

“Roen, are you on your way out?” she asked. She wore a more casual dress than usual, and her hair had been left loose and natural, tumbling down to her hips. The soft rose fabric of her dress played up the ever present flush in her cheeks. Roen swallowed and reminded himself how to speak.

“Just a quick errand in the city. And yourself?”

“I, well I wasn’t feeling very well, so Hayes offered to let me have some time off today.”

Roen bowed his head to her. “I’m sorry to hear you are unwell.”

Eloryn shook her head and looked to her side. “It’s something that has been troubling me for a while. But I feel I may find a remedy if I try harder to do so instead of avoiding the issue. I think a change of scenery would be nice to try. Could I join you on your errand?”

Roen took a deep breath and forced a return smile. “I would be honored to have you accompany me. As long as you are feeling well enough.”

Eloryn’s smile widened into her blushing cheeks. “I am. I’m feeling much better already.”

A carriage took Roen and Eloryn into the city, with her bodyguards on horseback surrounding them. Roen looked across the cabin to her. The small bumps rattling the carriage made her hair dance and shimmer.

This might be the last time I ever spend with her,
thought Roen. He planned to treasure it.

“Would you walk with me?”

She agreed with a quick nod and Roen stopped the carriage and helped Eloryn step down onto the street. Eloryn’s guards dismounted and secured their horses then gave the approval for Eloryn to proceed. Erec, as usual, remained closest to Eloryn, just a few paces behind them. He smiled, unlike the other guards with their stern expressions, and Roen didn’t like how attractive he was. He felt a pang of jealousy at how much time Erec must have with Eloryn and would continue to have when he was gone.

Roen extended his arm to Eloryn and she took it, walking by his side. He hoped she couldn’t feel his trembling.

It was a dull day. The sky was a mass of low lilac clouds and a mist of rain curled up the fine strands of Eloryn’s hair, making the edges glow like a halo in the filtered light.

Few other people were braving the damp, and the stone streets were eerily empty, with just a few city folk around to gawk at the queen and her handlers.

Roen led Eloryn into a small square filled with the cooing of pigeons. They lined every eave and sill on buildings around the square, sheltering from the wet. He smiled down at Eloryn. Looking at her, he could forget the weather, the trailing guards, or the fact he soon would be leaving. His nerves threatened to take over and he panicked about how to behave. Memory’s voice came to him.
Just be yourself around her. Your flirtatious, sexy self.

“Thank you for coming with me. It makes me look good, having a queen on my arm,” Roen said in a mock haughty tone.

Eloryn raised her eyebrows slightly, her lips pursed. “It has been my greatest aspiration to become an attractive accessory,” she replied with a straight face, followed quickly with a small smile and blush. Roen swallowed. He’d miss the way she blushed so easily.

“Well you do, make an attractive accessory. Not that I consider your beauty to be your only asset.” Roen smiled wickedly at her. “You are also very rich. If only you weren't so terribly intelligent, you would be the perfect catch.”

“Such a shame.” Eloryn lifted her palm to her forehead dramatically. “A shame I had thought you a better man than to want for such a lady.”

Roen slowed his pace and grew serious. He enjoyed these last few moments with Eloryn more than any other time he could recall, but their last day together couldn’t be filled with jokes alone.

Sincerity made his voice rough. “If I may, I would have to admit that it is your mind, and your heart, which I value above any of your many other qualities.”

Eloryn squeezed his arm in hers. He almost thought he could feel her trembling as well.

“I’m sorry I’ve not been able to spend more time with you, Roen,” she said softly.

“You owe me no apology. I understand the demands of your position. In fact I should be the one apologizing. I have to tell you—”

Roen got cut off by a young girl with bushy, carrot-colored hair running to clutch at Eloryn's hand, sending her guards into a flurry.

The guards tried to push the wide-eyed waif away, and Eloryn raised her voice in a commanding tone.

“Step back, men. Can you not see she's but a child?”

The girl seemed confused and looked from Eloryn to the guards and back again, then gave Eloryn’s hand a fluttering kiss.

“Thank you, m’lady,” she said.

Another child ran up beside her, hair the same color, suggesting she was a sibling. Both wore scrappy, dirt-stained clothes.

“Thank you so much, your highness.”

An older girl with rivers of brown hair followed the children, grinning widely. When she was closer to Eloryn, her grin failed, and she hassled the two children into deep bows, their chests lowered almost to the ground. She dropped herself into a curtsy.

“Forgive them, your majesty,” she said. “They mistook you for Princess Memory.”

“That’s not their fault. We are twins after all. Although her hair is somewhat shorter than mine.”

The girl stammered. “We’ve never seen her with her hair down before, majesty.”

Eloryn gestured for the three of them to rise. “You know my sister well? What is your name?”

“Maeve, your majesty.” Maeve stood back up but remained bent slightly at the waist, her head down and eyes lowered. “Yes, your majesty, from her shelter she runs not far from here.”

Maeve bobbed a small curtsey to Erec as well. He nodded in return, and Roen wondered how they knew each other.

Roen thought back to the clunky bracelet Memory wore all the time. “Is one of you little Edele?” he asked the two red-headed girls. They looked at each other nervously and then to Maeve, who frowned and shook her head.

Eloryn turned to Roen to continue on their way. Maeve took a step forward again, her mouth open, then lowered her gaze again.

Eloryn stopped. “You have something you wish to speak to me about? You can do so freely, please.”

Maeve nodded seriously. She tried to talk, but it looked like her effort to overcome her nerves enough to speak with the queen would take a while.

Roen squeezed Eloryn’s hand and let go. “If you’ll excuse me, I will continue on. I’ll only be a moment to pick up these items for Hayes and meet you back here.”

Roen left them talking and checked Hayes’s address again. It directed him down an alleyway just across the square. He glanced back at Eloryn and smiled before heading in. The gutter ran with grayed water and the tall stone buildings either side left the narrow alleyway heavily shadowed.

“Looking for something?” A burly man seemed to appear from nowhere. His nose looked like it had been broken more than once and his face was marred by scars, some which ran up onto his bald scalp.

Roen shook his head. The bruiser didn’t look like the kind of person that would be the owner of magic documents. A second man stepped up behind the first. If possible he looked even rougher, wiry and wearing a makeshift eye-patch.

“We’ve been looking for something, haven’t we?” the new man said.

He held up a crumpled sheet of paper. Even in the low light, Roen could read the word ‘wanted,’ and see the rough drawing of his own face.

Roen spun around, straight into the sights of another two men. They already held daggers in their hands, their intentions clear. The alleyway was only the width of one man and Roen could see no way past them, and no way back. A battle on two fronts.

On instinct Roen felt for his own blade in the seam of his pants, but he never carried it anymore. He held out his hands innocently and smiled. “I really think you have the wrong person. I am friends with the queen.”

“Yeah and I’m buddies with the lusty queen of the seelie fae.” The bald man laughed, groping crudely at his crotch. His expression turned vicious as he drew a bronze sword. “We know exactly what you are. Go on, run. Run like the street rat you are.”

Before the man even finished speaking, Roen kicked off against the grimy wall beside him, bounced off the other, launching himself higher in the narrow space between the buildings.

Reaching a point well above the men’s reach, he suspended himself there with outstretched arms and legs, looking for a window or some other exit.

“They always run, but we always catch ‘em,” said the bald man, laughing. He picked up a block of wood from some refuse beside him and hurled it at Roen.

Roen twisted his torso and the block flew past, cracking on the bricks beside him.

A second object flew at him before he could recover from the first assault and a blinding sting in his thigh made his knee buckle. Just a scratch, but enough to make him lose the tension he needed to stay suspended between the walls. A dagger clattered on the ground behind him, and he slipped.