Page 37 of Heart Cradle (The Melrathen Saga #1)

Maeve floated, that was the only word that made sense.

She wasn’t awake, but wasn’t asleep. Not gone, but certainly not present.

A strange kind of half-existence, like being underwater and above the clouds at once, weightless and unmoored.

She drifted, through moments and memories, some were hers and some were not.

Eiran laughing, soaked to the skin, being tackled by water sprites at a lake.

They were small but willowy, pale blue skin glimmering, white hair tangled with reeds and vines.

He wrestled free, chest heaving, his shirt open and plastered to his skin, eyes sparkling.

Maeve felt her own laugh rise, unbidden and it burst from her chest like a memory she didn’t know she still had, or maybe it was Eiran’s, maybe it was both.

She turned and the vision melted, and a new one rushed in. Nolenne as a child, stone-eyed and shaking, standing in a field of ash, watching her parents as they lay dead, but together. Maeve watched three young children cry for their parents.

Darkness, the feeling of shame and then her brother’s hand trembling as he raised a blade.

The crack of steel through crying. Blood in the snow and a scream swallowed by years.

Nolenne fell to her knees, lips mouthing an oath to never be powerless again.

Maeve sobbed, but no sound came, she tried to move, but she couldn’t.

She was there for so long she began to get cold, shaking with freezing fear and she closed her eyes to it and then there was Aeilanna in her cell, regal, even beneath stone.

Her almost ebony hair in a tangled plait.

Spell thread dangled from her fingers, skin pale and voice calm.

“Keep going,” she said, eyes boring into Maeve’s. “Don’t let them tame you.”

Lisbon now and the golden light of morning filtered through her window. Her room, the one she’d stayed in when she first kissed Eiran. She could smell citrus and dusty stone streets. The scent of soap on warm towels. Her phone buzzed, her ringtone, she turned to answer it, and the scene fractured.

She saw Orilan, much younger with long black hair.

He was sobbing over a beautiful woman’s still, dead body.

The wind in this memory was soft, cool with early spring and it pushed her through the room.

The sun was just beginning to rise above the cliffs of Moraveth, but the light had no warmth here.

It streamed through tall, arched windows into the quiet chamber.

Maeve watched, unseen, as Orilan knelt beside a four-poster bed, stripped of all former grandeur.

The Queen lay still and pale in the bloodied, tangled sheets, her golden hair fanned out across the pillow like sunlight, her face rounded, cheeks still round and her lips were parted slightly.

A silence deeper than death filled the room as Orilan sat on the edge of the bed, hunched forwards, his large hands trembling in his lap.

The mighty King looked smaller now, just a man in mourning.

He reached forwards, gently and touched her face with two fingers, tracing the curve of her cheekbone like he was trying to remember it forever.

"You said it would be fine," he whispered. His voice cracked, not with anger, but disbelief.

There was a wail from the far side of the room, a cradle. It was draped in soft cloths and warming spells, the newborn must have been Taelin. Orilan’s shoulders jolted, he looked towards the sound, as if remembering the child existed only retold everything that had been lost.

“I will love him,” he murmured, voice barely more than a breath. “They tell me I should keep him away, that I won’t be able to look at him without seeing you. But he’s... he’s all that I have left of you.”

He turned back to her, leaned down, and kissed her cold forehead. He stayed there, forehead pressed to hers, a King without a Queen, a male without a future. Just a father, undone.

“I don’t know how to do this without you. I don’t want to.” His next words fell from his lips like shattered glass.

He drew in a sharp breath, sat up straighter.

He reached for her hand, and for a moment, he only held it.

Then he laid it gently over her heart, and covered it with his own.

The scene shimmered, beginning to dissolve, Maeve caught one last look at Orilan as he stood and turned towards the cradle.

His eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw set like iron.

She felt as if she was falling, for so long, just falling.

London.

The flat. The hall light was too bright and her hand shook as she turned the key. She felt the dread before it happened. Her body remembered what her mind tried to forget. The sound of footsteps, the smiles. The breath. The laughing. The pain.

She curled inward, folding like a bird made of parchment soaked through.

Then, Eiran. Not a vision, no he was a flicker. A tether. His presence wasn’t a memory, it was weight. A warmth in the haze. He was solid and his voice wound through the chaos. “I’m here, love. You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone again.”

His scent, earth, salt, cedar, storm and safety, laced through everything. In some memories, he was distant, a tenderness in the corner of her mind. Other times, he pressed close, his hand steady on her spine, his voice whispering through the fear.

A new memory, but not hers. Fenric, laughing with a woman Maeve didn’t recognise at first, lean and athletic, her bronze skin glowing in the low light, light brown curls bouncing as she moved.

She had the kind of beauty that was effortless and sharp around the edges.

Maeve watched as the woman grinned and walked away, her stride easy and confident.

Fenric’s smile lingered, but it didn’t reach his eyes and it turned brittle as he watched her leave.

Maeve coughed at smoke swirling around her face, batting it until she saw Hayvalaine at a desk, eyes wet and her hands shaking as she whispered, “My Anna… my girl.”

Then, not a whisper turned into a roar and she stood so fast her chair toppled backwards, crashing to the marble floor.

“How dare he,” she hissed, voice shaking the walls of the vision. “He promised… he promised me she would be safe and then he throws her to the bloody wolves. Vargen, Petra, Davmon? They’ll kill her!”

The room was bright with magic, curtains snapping against the windows though no wind stirred outside.

“He thought arranging a marriage fixes anything? He thought tying her to that man undoes what was done to her?” Her voice cracked. “She was mine. My Anna. She wasn’t ready… she wasn’t ready!”

“Mother.” Soren’s voice was kind and steady. He stood just behind her, broad hands raised slightly, like he might reach out but wasn’t sure he’d survive it. “He did what he thought was right.”

“He did what he always does,” she spat. “He decided, he ordered, he didn’t bloody ask.”

Calen sat nearby, elbows on his knees, eyes full of stunned aching. “She wanted it, mother. She told me, she chose him.”

Hayvalaine’s breath hitched, like the words pierced something she’d been trying not to face. Maeve could feel the grief between them like gravity, a shared wound, impossible to heal .

Maeve didn’t want to see the heartache, she didn’t want to invade on other’s misery. She closed her eyes and felt herself move once again.

Orilan and Taelin playing knives-and-apples in a shaded glade. “You’ll miss,” Taelin said.

“I never miss,” Orilan shot back, grinning.

Her parents.

She cried and she bellowed, when she saw them as they were before she left for university.

A picnic in some park. Her mother in a yellow sundress, laughing with her whole body.

Her father, squinting at the sun, nose scrunched, holding up a bottle of lemonade like it was treasure.

She was in the centre, cheeks full and grinning wide.

She looked alive, she felt wanted. She reached for them, but they faded.

She still floated, she just couldn’t catch a thread long enough to stay. Although, sometimes she caught voices and words from beyond. She heard of Avelan, Vargen’s name spoken in warning tones. Talk of aggression and tension. Shouts of dead fae found near the northern border.

Jeipier’s name floated past, she grabbed it with both hands.

She felt his warmth first, a gentle weight, like sun-warmed stone pressed to her side.

Then the fluff of his tail, soft as dandelion seeds, brushing her nose, her cheek, her brow.

A sound, a huff, low and content, rippled through the haze.

“You smell like sunberries.” he murmured sleepily, his voice brushing her thoughts like velvet over glass.

Maeve smiled before she even realised she had.

She saw him now, clearer than memory and brighter than dream.

Scales the colour of autumn leaves and molten copper, brushed with faint streaks of plum near the joints.

He was still growing, still slightly too leggy and uncertain in his own body, but beautiful, so undeniably beautiful.

His wings folded close in sleep, his sides rising and falling with slow, even breaths the same as hers.

His amber eyes blinked open, catching her with a look so full of affection it made her breath hitch.

She felt the weight of his head in her lap and the way he nudged at her hand for touch.

His presence never asked for permission, only offered comfort.

The Chain stirred, not violently or to claim, it simply shimmered golden in the light, trailing from her wrist like liquid metal and then it reached.

A length of it unfurled, light as air, and coiled gently around Jeipier’s foreleg.

Not restraining, just being, embracing him.

Jeipier looked down at it sleepily, then lifted his head and gave a quiet trill of pleasure.

“I like it,” he said simply. The warmth in his voice wasn’t just approval, it was faith. “It’s strong and kind. We can trust it, we must. ”

Maeve felt the Chain pulse in agreement. A thud, slow and warm, like a second heartbeat beneath her skin.

Not a weapon.

It was a bridge between her and the dragon, between magic and will, between what had been and what might be.

She didn’t speak, she didn’t have to. Jeipier tucked his head beside her again, wings shifting slightly as if to shelter her from whatever storm might still come.

Maeve, for the first time in that long, strange floating place, felt something like peace.

She moved again, being pushed to standing and then she heard laughing.

Branfil, no older than six, running barefoot through dew-drenched grass, chasing something gleaming and fast. A dragon, tiny, awkward, no bigger than a goat.

Its brown wings flapped too hard for its size, tail knocking over flowerpots.

Branfil giggled, the sound high and wild, all belly and joy.

The dragon, Tharein, even then, screeched in protest as Branfil tackled him into a pile of leaves.

“He likes you,” came a voice from nearby, Taelin. Younger here and so much like Eiran. His hair was longer and windswept as he crouched at the edge of the clearing, a gentle smile on his face. “Even the hatchlings know a good heart when they see one.”

Branfil beamed, cheeks pink from play. “Do you think… do you think my father would’ve liked him?”

“He would have loved Tharein,” Taelin’s smile didn’t falter, but his eyes shimmered. “And he would’ve been proud of you, I know I am.”

Branfil threw himself forwards and hugged him tight, sticky with leaves and dragon breath. Taelin closed his eyes, arms wrapping around the boy without hesitation. “You will always have a place here, Bran,” he said, voice thick with feeling. “Not just as a ward, but as a son. One of mine.”

The vision glowed around the edges, golden and warm, her heart ached again.

A sad, slow chuckle. “Of course I’ll need to ask my mate. I’m not that bloody foolish.” Eiran’s voice again. Tired. “She’s strong. She’ll wake. She has to, she must.”

But still Maeve floated, present and not.

Eiran, he was the thread that never frayed.

She saw him in flashes, cradling her in Lisbon, his eyes burning with fury at some council meeting, laughing on Xelaini’s back and whispering her name in his sleep.

He wasn’t just a presence, he was hers. Even here, even now and somewhere in the space between memory and magic, something else stirred .

The Chain, again. She felt it on her wrist, hot and cold in turns.

It pulsed with power, it was watching, a silent companion and a second heartbeat.

A quiet song beneath her skin. It shimmered, and she caught a glimpse of herself, not as she was, but as she could be.

Bathed in light, runes and sigils carved across her skin, eyes bright with knowing.

A warrior. A Queen. A woman who had walked through every fire and emerged alive, with ash in her teeth and stars in her bones.

She wasn’t afraid of it, she knew it was part of her now.

Maeve drifted higher, the memories slowed, the scenes became whispers.

She saw Elanthir Keep from above, felt the wind in her hair and the shift of Jeipier’s muscles beneath her legs. She felt joy ripple through her, sharp and pure, but then it faded into mist again, and she was translucent once more. Like a ghost inside her own skin, solid but intangible.

Then for the first time, she spoke independently. Not with voice, but with will.

I want to go back.

She didn’t shout it, she chose it and the Chain pulsed once in reply.

A deep, warm thud, the world cracked and the haze split open.

Light spilled through and her body remembered breath, remembered gravity and her fingers twitched.

She wasn’t ready to open her eyes, but she was close, she was close to leaving.