The Poisoned Throne

Chapter 24

Aurora

“This way,” Alison whispered as she crept further down the dark staircase. Her arm was twisted backwards so that her hand could pull at Aurora’s. “It’s just down here.”

At the bottom of the staircase, there was a heavy wooden door. Alison let go of Aurora to push at it with both her hands, letting in a gush of freezing wind before swinging open to reveal the landscape of black rocks. They had come from the depths of the earth, pulsating with heat and life, only to become stone and steam and bubbles rising to the surface. But they had built something; this island had risen from nothing; in fact, in the stories from the time where the First King of Etheron arrived, there was no mention of these formations of rock. What had once been a black, bottomless ocean now carried plants and sheep and life.

It was all that had given Aurora’s life meaning, to read these tales. They came in books so heavy that she could not carry them herself, bound in crumbling leather with yellowed pages. There were stories of how the first Lord of the Islands, a man named Edward Delroy, had fought away the ashmen from across the sea who had settled there. The King had, in return, gifted him with these islands, and he had brought sheep and horses to grass on the moss that grew here.

“There it is,” Alison said, pointing upwards.

The sky, lit by glowing stars, but darkened by the absence of the moon, was not all in black and starry white; a wide ribbon cut through it, moving as though in some spacial, godly wind. It moved across the sky, glowing an emerald green, with flashes of pink and blue and white sometimes interruption.

“In the south, it’s called northern lights, because it only occurs in the north,” Alison explained, but northerners have another name for it.” She smiled, looking at her mistress. “Aurora.”

Aurora blinked away the tears in her eyes. “I know,” she whispered. “My mother told me that when she showed me to my father, he looked into my eyes and said that I should be called Aurora.” She giggled, drying her eyes and clearing her dry throat with a cough. “Until then, I was supposed to be named Marjory.”

Alison stepped closer to inspect her eyes, then glanced to the show of lights. “He was right,” she said, nodding. “They do have the same color.” Tilting her head, she continued, “So that is why you wanted to see them?”

She nodded, not moving her gaze from the sky. She had not felt this close to her father since he died; the thought that this had been what he thought of the moment he first saw her - and now she was seeing it, that very thing.

He would have brought me here to see them himself, she told herself. Had it not been for the war, he would have stood beside me and held my hand and told the story that Celeste had to tell for him.

She did not know if the voice she imagined for him was close to what it had been, or if her memories had twisted it into something it was not, but she could almost hear him. Aurora reached out, wishing she could find his hand, expecting to find nothing. So the warmth of another hand closing around hers was unexpected and drew her out of her trance.

Alison smiled. “We should go inside,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”

Aurora nodded. “Will it be here tomorrow?”

“It’s possible,” Alison nodded. “We’ll just have to see.”

But Aurora did not get the time to see the lights again the next day. A letter arrived for her around noon, signed by King Raynor, asking for her husband’s assistance in the oncoming war. In fact, he asked that Robert send his ships as soon as he could to join their forces in Tibera. Aurora could not help but smile at the thought of Robert going away - at least for a month, she thought, most likely more. Perhaps a year.