Page 113 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

OF OUTSTANDING CHARACTER

Les

BY NOW, LADY CELESTE SHACKLEY’S heart should have alchemized into solid stone.

The life she had been handed had been nothing but tragedy after tragedy.

Every time she finally felt like she was above water, the depths dragged her down once more.

It was an ocean, hitting her with wave after wave after wave.

There would be a time when she rose no more.

She just didn’t know when that would be.

Would it be today?

Kase lay motionless on the cot beside her.

They’d run out of space in the ward, and with Saldr needing to do all he could to fix her youngest son, they’d brought him here in his own tent.

After using as much Vasa as he’d dared, Saldr bound Kase’s chest in thick bandages, his wound carefully cleaned and dressed; traces of dried blood whorled over his exposed skin around the edges of the bandaged area.

Saldr had to work fast. They’d missed a few spots while cleaning him up.

Les bent against the cot, wishing she could block the memory of seeing her father take up the very same position at her mother’s bedside. It was one of her earliest memories.

Her father hadn’t been the same since her mother took ill and passed when Les was only four years old. That was the day she’d lost her mother to the grave, but her father’s heart had been buried with her. After that, he’d never given Les the time of day.

What became of a girl forced to grow up without a mother, without anyone to guide her in the world—a world on the brink of such tumultuous change, no less?

Books and Ezekiel had gotten her through, though her brother was only five years her senior.

Their father somehow clung to a half-life until Les was much older—in her early twenties.

He’d become bitter with age and tired of her running off suitors.

They’d never matched up to the heroes in the stories she loved so much.

Then Harlan had come into her life, and like fate had brought them together, she’d fallen deeper than she thought possible—so deep that she hadn’t seen the warning signs until it was too late.

She’d loved the broken man so deeply that she failed to see the shattered pieces of his heart had scattered before their children, putting them in harm’s way.

Ezekiel’s betrayal had nearly killed her, but it was her children who’d pulled her out of the suffocating sadness. Jove, Zeke, Kase, and Ana had needed her. They’d needed her just like she’d needed a mother all those years ago.

She refused to become her father. She refused to leave them alone in the world.

How ironic that in trying not to be like Lord Addison Fairchild, she’d become something worse.

Her whole-minded focus on her children had blinded her to her husband’s descent into abuse.

She’d grown distant in the years since Ezekiel’s and her nephew’s deaths, and he had too.

So distant she hadn’t seen him become someone who would hurt the children they’d brought into the world with the greatest love she’d ever known.

How had something so wonderful and passionate rotted so thoroughly, its decayed visage was only recognizable by memories that faded each day?

She clung to her Kase’s cold hand.

If he didn’t wake, she feared this loss would be the one that dragged her under for good.

He’d been on the brink of death, Saldr had said, but the magic dust that had saved her and Jove in the depths had finally taken root.

Now, it was just a matter of his body using the power and speeding up the healing process.

If Kase hadn’t been too far gone by the time Saldr reached him.

Between the pierced lung, chipped rib, and blood loss, it was a miracle her son was still alive at all; that she could count each of his steady, if shallow, breaths.

Kase was the lucky one. The other two gentlemen found with him had perished before Saldr could do anything at all.

Les wiped the tears from her eyes.

She’d thought losing her only daughter was insurmountable.

The guilt and grief still haunted her nightmares.

Many nights since, she’d woken and walked to Ana’s room in a half-daze to check on her, only to realize it was never going to have a little blonde girl tucked beneath the covers again.

Les would never sit holed up in the library with her daughter again, devouring romances and sipping tea, Ana reading all their favorite parts out loud.

She’d known the betrothal was a mistake, but she’d mistakenly trusted in her husband’s wisdom. Jove had been happy, and Zeke had gone into the army, prolonging his eventual ties to an heiress in Tev Rubika, but Ana’s had ended with her running away. Running directly into the flames.

Then Zeke hadn’t returned from the mission with Kase.

Her sweet, caring Zeke. Always the peacemaker between the brothers.

The one who brought her flowers on each anniversary of Ezekiel’s death.

The one who’d constantly checked in on her after Ana’s death, even with him being deployed most of the year in those early days.

She wasn’t sure she had quite processed his death yet. It often hit her out of nowhere, and each blow brought her back to her knees.

The only good thing about experiencing so much loss was that she’d learned how to function normally on the outside, even if the inside was a raging storm.

Then the last few months happened, and she’d had no way to cope with the truth of the lies she’d been told. She’d been a broken shell the last few weeks, and she didn’t know if anything could ever put her back together again.

She squeezed Kase’s hand and willed him to be okay.

Beneath the cot lay a book. It was so like her son to have something to read on hand. He got that from her. Without letting go of his hand, she picked it up. She needed some way to keep her mind from spiraling further than it already had. Books had always been there even when no one else was.

She opened it to Kase’s immaculate handwriting.

Ah, a journal. She peeked at him. He hadn’t moved.

He did seem like the type to keep his thoughts somewhere secret like this.

He might have worn his emotions on his sleeve—especially when it came to his brothers’ teasing—but she never quite knew what he was thinking .

She shouldn’t look. Not when he was fighting for his life.

But alas, Les read the first letter because it was addressed to Hals . She raised her eyebrows. Hals? She flipped through a few other pages. They were all addressed to Hals.

After picking up context clues here and there—including one atrocious, if adorable, stick figure doodle of a man and woman riding in what she thought was meant to be a hover—she guessed Hals was short for Hallie.

These were meant for Miss Walker.

She couldn’t help the smile that graced her face despite everything going wrong. Her little boy had found someone to love, and if nothing else worked in their favor, at least Kase had found that.

She’d realized his feelings for the girl before she’d even met her.

Kase would bring her up in conversations and make offhand remarks about how Hallie would love to see the first edition of Marisee’s commentary of Romeo and Juliet .

He’d mentioned girls in the past, but none brought the same sparkle to his eye like Miss Walker did.

She rubbed her thumb across his fingers and placed the journal back into its place. Miss Walker had been recovering from her own ordeal in the ward last Les heard. Did Kase know? Should she tell him once he woke up?

If he woke up.

She chewed on her tongue to keep her emotions in check. Kase would be fine. He would get through this. His body needed to replenish its energy and repair itself, that was all. If he’d survived the last fifteen years, he could survive almost anything.

Surely.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I haven’t protected you.”

He didn’t respond.

“I’ll stay with you until you wake up. I promise.”

Ana had always been the one scared of the dark, but it was Kase who’d refused sleep until he was certain both his sister and mother were taken care of.

That was after the nanny had long since given up, of course.

Those nights usually ended with Les singing them to sleep in his bed and tucking them in.

He’d always been proud and curious and quick-witted, but he’d always been courteous…

and quietly romantic, apparently, based on the journal letters.

He'd lost much of himself when Ana died, but he’d started to come back. Les suspected Hallie Walker had everything to do with that.

“Is she in there?” a feminine voice shouted from outside the tent.

Les jumped a little and rose, dropping Kase’s hand. The tent had a few guards, but whoever had attacked Kase had murdered his last one. Bloodlessly, but the man was still dead, and she wouldn’t allow the same to happen to her son.

It was difficult not to blame her husband for that oversight. She clenched her hands. Not yet. She wouldn’t deal with that just yet. Not until Kase recovered.

She hadn’t spoken to Harlan directly since being rescued. No matter what he said, she refused to listen. He didn’t deserve it. She had a pile of unopened letters in her own tent, and she couldn’t find the patience, grace, or love to read them. She wasn’t certain she ever would.

One of the guards outside replied, but Les couldn’t hear it. She moved toward the front of the tent.

“My daughter is missing, and Kase Shackley has something to do with it, so you’d best put that sword away before I snap it in half,” the woman snapped.

Les opened the tent flap. A short woman with dark, graying hair pulled into a tight knot stood beside the medic who’d helped rescue her and Jove, Stowe. The woman looked like she could indeed snap a sword in half. Stowe looked dubious. “Zelda, I’m sure Hallie is just—”