Saving the Immortal

Chapter Nine: Found

I had walked with such purpose leaving that throne room that I gave no thought whatsoever to the path back to our quarters, and by the time my composure began to falter, I found myself utterly lost within corridors I did not recognize.

The palace, I discovered with mounting alarm, was a labyrinth in truth as well as in beauty. Every hallway resembled the last — black stone walls, silver veins catching torchlight, doors identical in their carved grandeur, offering no clue whatsoever as to which direction might lead me back to familiar ground. I turned one way, then another, my earlier fury slowly giving way to something considerably less commanding.

My heart began to race.

I told myself there was no true danger in simply being lost within my husband's own home, that someone would surely find me eventually, that panic served no purpose beyond making the situation feel worse than it truly was. But the corridors stretched on regardless of my reasoning, torchlight flickering in ways that seemed, in my mounting distress, almost deliberately unhelpful, and I felt my breath growing shorter with every turn that led nowhere at all.

I stopped at last in a corridor entirely unfamiliar, chest tight, hands trembling slightly, the full weight of the morning's confrontation finally catching up to me now that the fury which had carried me through it had nowhere left to go.

A hand closed swiftly about my waist.

I gasped, startled entirely out of my spiraling thoughts, and found myself drawn backward against something solid and unyielding — the specific sensation of colliding gently with a wall that had somehow moved to catch me rather than the reverse.

I looked up.

Ruselon.

"You are safe," he said quietly, before I could voice the alarm still gathering in my throat. "I have you."

"I was lost," I said, my voice betraying more of the fright than I would have liked. "I could not find the way back, and I did not know—"

"I know," he said. "I felt you were troubled. I came to find you."

"You felt it," I repeated, still catching my breath, still acutely aware of his arm remaining firmly about my waist, steadying me in a manner I found myself, somewhat to my own surprise, entirely unwilling to pull away from just yet.

"A small talent," he said, echoing his own words from the garden, "among the less alarming ones. I can sense distress in those I am bound to. It is not always precise, but it led me to this corridor swiftly enough."

I looked up at him properly then, close enough that I could see the particular darkness of his eyes in the torchlight, close enough to notice that his own composure, so carefully maintained throughout the morning's confrontation, had not entirely returned even now.

"You heard everything I said to your father," I said quietly.

"Every word," he confirmed.

"I did not ask your permission before speaking," I said. "I do not regret it, but I recognize it was not my place, perhaps, as a new bride only just arrived in your court—"

"Ivy," he said, and something in the way my name left him stopped the rest of my sentence entirely. "No one has ever spoken to my father in such a manner in my presence. Not once, in my entire existence. I do not know precisely what to make of the fact that you did so on my behalf, having known me for less than two days."

"I could not simply stand there," I said. "Not while he spoke of you that way. Not while your own brother stood by grinning as though your humiliation were some private amusement arranged entirely for his benefit."

Something moved behind his dark eyes — gratitude, perhaps, or something considerably more complicated than gratitude alone.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "I do not know how else to properly express what that meant, so I will simply say it plainly. Thank you, Ivy."

We stood there a moment longer than propriety strictly required, his arm still steadying me, my hands having found their way, at some point during the conversation, to rest lightly against his chest.

"I believe," I said eventually, my voice quieter now, some of the panic finally receding entirely, "you ought to show me the way back before I embarrass myself further by becoming lost a second time."

The ghost of that genuine laugh from the garden flickered briefly across his expression.

"I would be glad to," he said.

He did not release my waist immediately, and I found, standing there in that unfamiliar corridor with torchlight flickering overhead, that I did not particularly wish him to.

Eventually, he did.

He offered his arm instead, formal once more, though something in his eyes suggested the formality was, for the moment, simply another shape kindness had chosen to take.

I took his arm.

We walked back together through corridors that no longer felt quite so much like a labyrinth, and quiet, though it stretched between us the entire way, felt considerably less lonely than the panic that had gripped me only minutes before.