Wings, Beasts and Claws: Violet Embers

Ch. 19 : Memory Shards

Three weeks passed and the clean up of the city was nearing its end, with repairs being facilitated and supported by a few Noble houses who came running to aid the Capital in the name of the Crown. News of the first battle's overwhelming win helped raise the spirits of the city and Dorian's letters kept me sane along with the growing worries and chaos within the Palace.

Six maids and servants were arrested during the investigation in the missing children and found to have had contact with members of the Order that had remained hidden in the darker alleys of the Capital awaiting the attack. They never revealed why they helped them or why the children had been targeted. But with the help of the Viridi Vulpes and the rapid work of Sir Warrick, the children were found and returned to their families after twelve days.

Thankfully, they weren’t badly harmed when they were found and nothing else…. Unspeakable had happened to them either. Their little bodies were covered in mud, bruises and cuts from being pushed around and their wrists and ankles chained to bed posts. They hadn't been fed much and were barely given any water or blankets to keep warm at night. But they stayed close together and managed to stay hopeful until they were found and rescued.

Ivy still wouldn’t tell me why she was acting strange around Sir Warrick though. Which just added to the stress of all the paperwork and pressure from the Nobles that were demanding an explanation into why I had kept the kidnappings secret.

Add on top of that the quickly arriving birthday of my sweet niece Reya and my son Cal’s constant begging to go into the city to find her gift, and I was close to bursting into flames and taking the Palace down with me.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything more?” I asked, eyeing my sister-in-law as we sat across from each other at dinner. “I know that things have been quite hectic, but we can still manage to give Reya a big and fun birthday.”

Morina shook her head and looked over at her daughter, smiling softly as Cal and Reya whispered little secrets to each other and laughed.

“No, I think something small, with just us, would be perfect for her.” Her eyes darkened slightly and a painful pang struck my chest at the sight. “This will be her first birthday without her father, and I don’t want to emphasize his absence by gathering Noble families around her.”

I nodded, looking over at our kids as they talked and laughed.

It hurt to have to be away from Dorian for so long and I knew that it was affecting our kids as well, though they still smiled and played with each other. They would show their sadness at night before bed or in their dreams when they’d wake up crying and crawl into bed with their siblings or us, needing to be with someone to push away the sadness.

We continued to eat and soon had servants clearing the table when a sudden idea hit me and I wordlessly rushed up into the office while the others trailed behind me.

I burst into the room and started looking through the shelves on my side of the room, knocking a few books down until I found a thick book sized box with a little latch on the end. Smiling, I looked in and found it packed from end to end in small pale blue and green crystals that had been a gift from King Galen to Dorian after the birth of our twins.

They were called Memory Shards and were used with all sizes of Viewing Crystals to record live moments or large pictures. Their size allowed them to be stored safely in packs for travel and were mainly used to look back on memories shared with loved ones that one isn’t able to see easily. And the wonderful thing was that they were thin enough to fit perfectly within an envelope without much trouble and weighed about the same as a single gold coin.

“Morina!” I shouted, stunning the Knights on guard by the landing as I caught sight of the kids being ushered into the main bathroom. “We can send recordings!”

She looked at me confused as I beamed at her and shook the box of Memory Shards between us.

“Look.” I opened the box and continued to smile as she glanced inside, the wheels behind her eyes slowly beginning to turn. “Dorian packed a Viewing Crystal with him, so we can use these with the ones we have here and send Arden and Dorian recordings to the kids.” Her eyes widened and her hands came up to the box, staring into the crystals deeply. “Our kids can send them little messages and receive a response from them too.” She smiled and nodded, jumping happily as I continued. “They’ll get to see and hear their father’s and Arden won’t have to miss out on Reya’s birthday, or the holidays, or anything!”

We quickly rushed into the bathroom and explained things to our kids who were getting helped into their night clothes. Their reactions were loud and full of excitement that made us laugh and join in with them. And when it came time to take our children to bed I gave Morina a handful of Crystals to use and took the box with the rest into my rooms with my kids.

I felt ecstatic and a little pathetic that it took me so long to think about this gift that had been collecting dust on the shelf. But the sight of my happy bouncing Princes and Princess made it all better as I set up the memory Shard into a small slot within the Viewing Crystal that my father had given me.

A full hour passed with my children talking to the crystal as if it were their father while they walked on my bed.

They told him about the new games they had started playing. The new lessons that were starting with their tutors. What the garden looked like covered in snow. And even some new foods they had tried that they found to like.

On and on my little ones went until their yawns took over and I stopped the recording, helping them wiggle their way under the covers of my bed. They soon fell asleep and I slipped out into my sitting room where Ivy was rocking my baby Thea. I took her in my arms and urged Ivy to get some sleep, noting the dark circles under her eyes that seemed to have gotten darker.

After she left I set myself up on the loveseat with my sleeping baby and placed another little Shard into the small slot, placing the Viewing Crystal on the coffee table.

“I feel strange, speaking to the air right now.” I started, staring off into space as I tried to think of what to say. “I know that you’ll see this and that I’ll be able to see you in your response… but I still feel a little strange.” A small chuckle left me then and my mind drifted off to my many memories of him. “I miss you… I know it’ll fix nothing to say this, but I do.” My eyes wandered back to the crystal then and for a moment I could picture his deep crimson eyes looking back at me tenderly, like they always did. “I’ve been thinking back to how we met recently, and every happy moment that came after that too..... “ My voice broke slightly and I had to take a moment to gather myself again before the dam burst in my eyes. “Thea’s grown another tooth, and she’s getting much faster when she crawls too.”

I spent another half hour just talking to the crystal before I told him I loved him and stopped the recording.

I then tucked my sleeping baby into her cradle and tip-toed back into my room to set aside my Viewing Crystal. After that I climbed into bed with my children who so graciously left a sliver of space for me, leaving the door wide open so I could hear my baby girl. But no matter what I did, sleep wouldn’t come to me.

My mind, instead, was racing through time and drowning in the happy memories I had made with Dorian since I had met him.

The cautious and tender looks he would give me when I was a Queeness candidate. His shocked and stunned face when I revealed that I was pregnant with Cal after my k********g. His joyful laughter during our wedding/Coronation as we danced. And the overflowing love in his eyes when he would hold our children after giving birth.

Those and many more were deeply treasured memories to me and I found myself drowning in mixed emotions because of them.

This war and the people that caused it were keeping my Dorian, the father of my children and King of these lands, away from home. They were forcing us apart and making it impossible for us to form more happy memories as a family like we were supposed to, and it was fueling my anger and that deeply hidden darkness that lay within me. Yet, at the same time, I was proud of how Dorian was taking everything and how much he was still doing for his people and for our family while on the frontlines. And the amount of trust he put in me to do things as Queen Regent in his absence helped reassure me of my position as Queen soon after he had left.

But I missed him so much that it was crushing me at night while everyone else slept and the bare minimum of sleep would ever reach me before the sun rose again. And knowing that a war like this would last months if not years before reaching its end, was making this heavy loneliness even colder in my heart.

‘Please come back soon.’ I silently wished, finally feeling sleeps dark pull begin to sweep me under. ‘Please be safe and come back to me.’