The Faintest Ink (Watty Winner 2015)

Chapter Sixty-Five

"Ignatius Cuthbert Ambrose Jasper..."

Jain stopped. Tears halted her throat. She'd been repeating the name all night, but she just couldn't feel him any more. She couldn't sense him. For the first time in sixteen years, she felt an empty space where his spirit used to be. It was like he disappeared.

She had hated doing it at first, calling his name into the void. It had felt so wrong, but she couldn't help herself. After listening to the baby cry all day, and having Lady Fae glare at her all the time with those small, suspicious eyes of hers. She would cry herself to sleep in her chamber at Hoxleigh, whispering his name into her pillow just so that she could feel him beside her as she slept.

If Lady Fae noticed her red eyes in the morning, she never said anything. She would just purse her lips and tell her to take the child out to sit in the fresh air. Jain would take the little princess down to the orchard sometimes, and sit under the trees, breathing in the sweet scent of the apple blossom until her limbs were sodden with it.

Sometimes she didn't even need to weave the magic. Just saying his name was enough. She would recite it like a prayer.

Lady Fae had always thought her a fool. She knew that. When the girls started their lessons, Jain was made to sit at the back of the room with her sewing. No doubt Lady Fae would have preferred it if she wasn't even there, as if stupidity was somehow catching, but the girls liked having her in the room. They needed someone to wipe away their tears when Lady Fae's strict tones were too much for the tiny things.

Perhaps she really was an idiot. As the girls got older, she was less and less able to follow their lessons. Even after their classes for the day had finished, their talk would be about all manner of things which she didn't understand. Philosophy and literature and great thoughts about the world they lived in. They didn't want to play her games any more. And they didn't need her to mop up their tears.

In the end, she was little more than a lady's maid for the princess. Someone to help her into her gown in the morning, and brush out her hair at night.

But no matter what, she never had trouble remembering his name.

They had showed each other their name books, during that long winter when they could think of nothing but each other. It was dangerous, and foolish, and utterly wonderful. She had poured through the pages as if reading the most sumptuous poetry.

They'd sat in the bakehouse, the only place outside the looking glass of the citadel where they could meet in relative comfort and warmth. The oven was lit from the early hours, and the bakers were done for the day by the time most of the court had woken up. He'd lain with his head in her lap, reading out parts of her book, making her shiver as he spoke her name in his fine, smooth voice.

She would never have forgotten it. She would never have got his name wrong. And if the magic wasn't working, if she couldn't feel him, that could only mean one thing.

Blinded by tears, she stumbled down the road, clutching her cloak around her as if to hold herself together.

She'd been walking for days, heading north. The soles of her shoes were peeling away from the uppers and every step sent sharp shots of pain up through her legs. There was a point, while crossing the moor, that she couldn't go another step. She'd fallen onto her knees, collapsing to the ground, her body unable to carry on.

Out there on the moor, the wind had buffeted her, blowing her cloak out above her like wings. She didn't do a thing to stop it. She lay, watching the horizon, out miles in front of her, and said his name.

He'd been thinking of her. She liked that: seeing him when his thoughts were of her. It was as if there was an invisible thread holding them together, and that when she gave it a little tug, he could feel it. No matter how far apart they were.