Saviour of Ashes

Chapter 20

So it was brought to my attention that I had gotten the Manor house and the White Palace mixed up. I went back to change it (thankfully it was only a minor change). This is the chapter I had to change.

A daughter. Aelin had barely contained her own excitement as Manon squeezed her. They had gone into the foyer and kept it quiet. Aelin had too much to worry about. Starting with today.

She hadn't been able to sleep and dawn was hours away. Aelin had ran to the manor house they used to stay in. It was normally a day's ride but with her fae body and all the training she had done with Rowan allowed her to arrive within three hours. Aelin had kicked open the doors and stepped onto the dusty marble floor.

Her footsteps echoed as she headed towards the big staircase. The house was completely empty. Every single painting, every decoration had been moved back to the palace - or stolen.

She went into her old rooms first. The bed was smaller than the one back at the palace. It was broken in the middle. Her mirror on her dressing table had been shattered into tiny pieces. Everything else Aelin had owned had either been smashed or taken to be sold. Aelin rushed out of her rooms.

She felt sick. Her being in there was wrong. Bringing the knives she carried in there had felt sacreligious.

She took off her boots and discarded her knives inside them. She left them outside her old bedroom doors.

She padded down the hallway, flames dancing on her fingertips, lighting the way. Every step she took reminded brought her back to that night. Aelin had scurried to her parents' bedroom, frightened by the storm.

Aelin wanted to laugh at her younger self. A storm no longer scared her compared to the horrors she had seen. The last time she had walked this way, Aelin had been eight years old. Aelin hadn't told anyone that today was the day her life changed twelve years ago. She didn't want to spoil the happy celebrations. Aelin even allowed herself to forget...until she laid in her bed.

Aelin mused over the idea that the past twelve years had just been a nightmare and she was really eight years old, heading for her parents' room... But then she touched her bump. It was all real.

She gasped and stopped dead when she saw the large double wooden doors at the end of the hallway. She steeled her stomach. It would be disrespectful to ignore that room on this day. She wouldn't be able to sleep until she went inside.

"Fireheart," someone whispered behind her. For a heartbeat, Aelin thought it was her father. But instead she turned to face Rowan. "You don't have to do this alone."

"I didn't want to wake you," she said quietly and looked back at the door.

"Today is the day...all those years ago," Rowan said as he stepped towards her. She nodded. He looked in her eyes. "I'll wait outside for ten minutes."

Ten minutes...to see if she would break from the pain.

Aelin rested her hand on the doorknob. "It was this time of the morning that I..." She couldn't finish the rest.

Aelin opened the door.

The wooden floorboards were as silent as they had been when she had crept into the room years ago. The golden pianoforte gleamed in the moonlight. No one had closed the drapes - not since they were last opened that morning. It smelled like her parents. Fresh like her mother's water. Her father's musky scent. Aelin quickly scanned the bathroom - good. Everything had been left for Aelin to return to. She hurried into their dressing room. Her father's suits and clothes hanging on the right, her mother's glittering gowns hanging on the left. Aelin fingered a turquoise and gold dress. It had been the dress her mother had worn when she was introduced to her father, Rhoe.

Aelin remembered Rowan had only given her ten minutes, so she took a deep breath and headed to their bedroom.

The blood-drenched sheets were gone (thankfully). Servants had placed plain white covers on top of what must have been a new mattress. Every inch of the room had been scrubbed, but dust still laid on the dressing table.

No one's been here since that day...

Aelin walked to where her mother's perfumes and makeup sat. Her hairbrush still had some pale blonde strands in it. Aelin let out a sob. Her father's weapons belt was casually thrown over the chair. Aelin wiped at the dusty mirror. Her own pale reflection stared back.

So much had changed. She used to sit there as her mother got ready for balls, watching every graceful movement she made.

That belt... She had gripped on to it once, begging her father to teach her how to use the sword of Orynth - which Aedion now possessed. At least it wasn't lost to Terrasen as many things now were.

If I had gotten to the room an hour earlier... No. She wouldn't do that. No child could have known about the evil monsters that would threaten her parents. To a child, their parents are invincible.

Aelin knelt on the floor, not daring to disturb the room. "I am with child, mother. Father, you would have been supportive and Darrow would be kicking himself." She didn't know what else to say, anything she thought of just felt wrong.

Aelin headed back into her parents' foyer. She lifted the lid of the pianoforte and wiped the dust from the keys. Her mother would teach her how to play whilst her father listened, clapping in time. Then her father showed her the one song her mother had managed to teach him.

Aelin sat down on the stool. When she had been little the three of them could squeeze on to it. Now she was older, there was barely enough room for two. She started playing as quietly as she could.

Rowan walked in, assessed the rooms, and sat down beside her. She played until all of the emotions of that night drained out of her body.

For good this time.