Chapter Text
Xaden's POV of meeting Alice on the turret of Riorson House. The moment he realises she is alive and her life threads are intrinsically laced into the fabric of the Aretian riot and his friends.
Violet and I enter Riorson House after the attack to a celebration. Cadets and fliers mingle merrily in the halls and I don’t blame them. Violet has managed to find a way to raise the wards in Aretia and I’m so fucking grateful for it. Without it we’d be dead. She’s saved us all today. I am alive and unhurt because of her.
“You got the wards up!” Rihannon pulls her in for a hug and I take a step back and let her friends crowd her. She deserves to celebrate - to be praised for what she has accomplished and I almost allow myself to be dragged into it. But then I see Felix’s face and although we have muddled our way to a victory today, this is not the end. This will not be the last attack and strategically, splitting the riot in two after Violet’s torture has left us chasing our tails. This - a fully functioning war college in Aretia - was not supposed to happen.
“We got the wards up,” she counters and I watch as she is pulled into the arms of her squad one by one. I’ve never felt more distant from her. Our argument today about my second signet has thrown a wedge between our relationship and I don’t know how to get passed it. She still has me firmly shut out and I’m grateful for it. Grateful for the space.
Felix nods in the direction of the assembly chamber and I grab her attention. I pull her away from her friends and happiness and bring her crashing back down to reality. “We are needed in the assembly chamber right now,” I tell her. She nods and follows me but we do not speak.
I have broken her trust yet again and I don’t blame her for pushing me away. I’m tired of the same arguments. I’m tired of making the wrong decisions and of Violet deciding ignorance is preferable to a real fully functioning relationship. I have tried - god knows I’ve tried - to figure out a way through these issues but I flounder each and every time.
The assembly chamber door closes behind us and the noise fades away. I am thankful for it. The sound fills me with a rage I cannot place. “We need to find time to talk,” I say quickly to Violet as Mira and Syrena cross to her. Regardless of her feelings and what has happened between us, we need to talk. Avoiding it will only drag out the pain and I have a hundred other issues weighing heavily on my shoulders. The war will not wait for us to figure out what we are to each other.
I decide against going back to the room we share when the meeting is over. I retreat to the tower. It’s my safe space. I used to sit up there as a boy when my father was in one of his moods. I would dream about the summer months and Alice. My heart skips a beat. The ghost of her is ever present. Blue eyes in the hallways and sunlight on blonde hair in the courtyard. No matter how much time passes or how much I love Violet she is ever present. The memory of her follows me and it threatens to ruin my happiness.
I’m still thinking about her when I push the door open to the turret and I blink once. It can’t be real. My eyes are playing tricks on me. It’s that or I’m descending into madness. Alice sits on the wall facing away from me. Her long blonde hair is darker than I remember and I can’t see her face but she calls to me across the distance. The string between us tightens and it drags me across the threshold.
She turns to me and her lips part in surprise. I don’t mean to but I reach out to her. Blue eyes shine with emotion but I can’t read her intentions. She has no fucking intentions. She doesn’t know what she wants or what to think. My knuckles turn white on the door handle and I don’t know what to do.
I step back and narrow my eyes. This is a cruel joke. I should leave. Nothing good will come from this. My life has moved on without her and the implications of her being here are far reaching. She will tear my world apart from the inside out. I can already feel the thread beginning to fray. Her presence reaches out to me. It ties itself around me like a noose and pulls. I am helpless.
“Is it really you?” I ask clearing my throat as her fingers tighten on the stone beneath her. The fog between us clears and finally I see her intentions. Her thoughts drift across the space and find me and they destroy ever shred of hesitation I cling to. She can’t believe I remember her. She thinks so little of herself, she cannot understand that I would know her in life and find her in death.
“Yes,” she eventually responds quietly. She turns back around to look out at the city and I immediately miss her eyes. “I didn’t realise who your father was -” she tells me. Her voice is nervous, her hands tremble. “- I was too young or naive.”
I can barely fucking breath when she turns back around and strips me to the bone. “I’m sorry Xad.” I clench my jaw at the nickname on her lips. She is the only person who has ever been allowed to call me that. I crumble. My hand lets go of the door handle and I lean against the wall and close my eyes. I try to steady my thundering heart and control my emotions but the shadows betray me. They crawl across the ground to her and stop a hairs breath away. Terrified of touching her.
“I looked for you,” I tell her crossing my arms and propping my leg against the wall. I try to mask my feelings but she shatters my guard with one innocent look. “After the uprising I came looking for you. I thought you were dead. I thought they had got to your family as well. That by association they slaughtered you too.”
A heavy silence settles over the turret and she swallows down her emotion. She chokes on it until she muster the courage to speak. “They got to us,” she whispers. “or at least a different enemy did.”
I push of the wall and close the distance between us. My head is telling me to keep my distance but my heart claws it’s way too her. I cannot begin to understand what she has been through in the time we have been apart but I am desperate to console her. To make her feel better.
“After the rebellion we moved back to my mothers village,” she tells me. Her hair smells of lemon and chamomile and the familiarity of it has me falling into the past. It rips the future out of my hands. I lean forward onto the wall beside her. I gravitate towards her because for the first time since I was seventeen years old I feel like I’ve come home.
“You were so close all that time.” Grief and shame wrap their hands around my chest. I visited Mara first. It was the first place I looked for her. How many days did I miss her by - how close was I to finding her? I grieved her like a dead person and now she is alive and I can’t drag my eyes way from her.
“If I had know -” she begins to say in earnest and I want to reach out and shake some sense into her. It’s not her fault. Her family kept her in the dark about my family - about what happened - for reason neither of us can guess at. I long to pull her towards me and comfort her.
“There is nothing you could have done.” I need her to know I don’t blame her and relief loosens the knot in my lungs when she nods in acknowledgment. She is here now. I drink her in and she is fresh air after a bonfire. The sun breaking through the endless darkness.
Her cheek is bruised purple and blue and there is a graze on her chin. A small white scar mars the skin under her bottom lip and the memory of how she got it brings a smile to my face. “A mender,” I tease. “It suits you.”
She has been here all along, under my nose and I have been wilfully ignorant. Brennan won’t shut up about her - he keeps calling her the best mender of a generation. She’s the rider who bonded the snappy red dragon who won’t keep formation and she’s the one Aaric Graycastle, the fucking prince of Navarre, is hopelessly in love with.
She smiles at me and it is sunshine on a rainy day. “Shadows,” she responds with a raised eyebrow as they draw closer to her. They hang onto every single word. “You always where suspiciously good at hide and seek.”
I laugh. I fucking laugh and the sound cracks open a part of me I have kept hidden in the deepest darkest parts of my being. It explodes into the world and the implications have the ability to tear this place to pieces. I look down at her smiling face and I love her. I love her so fucking much it hurts. “It’s good to see you Allie,” I manage murmur as my world cracks apart.