“So all knights, they go through this?” Rosalind’s voice sounded far away.
“Yes.” Frederick turned to Elayne again. “But, like I said, with no war on there aren’t many avenues for me to prove myself.”
“Well,” Elayne managed through grit teeth, closing her eyes, “I’m so very sorry we’re not at war with anyone.”
“I don’t mean it like that.” He waved his hands. “I’m just saying that’s why I’m here.”
Elayne took a breath, squeezing her fists. She pushed past the white-hot anger rumbling inside and opened her eyes again. “So what you’re really saying is otherwise you wouldn’t care.”
“Uh, no, it’s just—”
“No.” Elayne stood from the table. “You wouldn’t.” She whipped around the bench and stormed off toward the entrance to the hall. She tried her best to block out the whispers of the other knights as she passed their table, dipping her head low and looking away. Her legs screamed at her to run, but she kept a steady pace. She wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction.
“Wait, Elayne!” Frederick’s voice came from behind her, but she escaped the dining hall and hastened her steps. There were a few courtiers lounging against the windowsills of the corridor outside, and they turned to see why Frederick was shouting. She went to run, but Frederick caught her upper arm and held her in place.
“Don’t!” she yelled, wrenching away.
Her face was heating up, the eyes of the courtiers on her. Frederick glanced at them, then back at her. He mouthed an apology, but still put a hand on her elbow. Too stunned to yell again, Elayne allowed herself to be guided a few paces down the hall and turned into a narrow, empty passageway.
Even in the darkness, Elayne hunched her shoulders and tilted her head down to hide the redness building in her cheeks. She was relieved to be away from the others, but this was far from alone.
“Elayne, I just want to help,” Frederick started in a hushed tone. “You can’t be happy like…this.” He gestured to all of her.
She glanced down at herself. Just because he wasn’t wrong didn’t mean he got to say whatever he wanted. “I don’t believe you,” she hissed back, “Ro might be naive enough to think you have some great knightly duty, but I’ve never heard of senior knighthood, and what’s this about suddenly giving a shit about anything?”
“I give a shit about…things!” Frederick shouted in a whisper, his eyes narrowing, his voice losing the faux sophistication she knew he’d put on.
They stared at one another for a long moment, and she felt the anger rising up in her again. Elayne wanted to look away, to hide her face, but in the shadows it was easier. In the shadows, it almost felt familiar, standing there, talking with him. Gods, she thought, looking at him straight on, We’re actually speaking. And then the anger was suddenly dashed away.
“Of all the things for you to joke about.” She was barely able to get the words passed a lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. “And for all the reasons you could have talked to me. Why’d it have to be this?”
“It’s not a joke.”
“Oh, it’s not a joke, huh?” Elayne took a step back and stared at him. She waited, but he never cracked a smile, never started laughing. She crossed her arms, shrinking into herself. “Even if I did believe you—which I don’t—I can’t exactly leave. I’m indebted to the crown.”
“You’re a duchess,” Frederick scoffed, “You can do anything you want.”
“I’m the duchess of a place no one has even crossed the border of in ten years,” she hissed back, a twinge in her chest at the admittance, “It barely counts. When it comes to Heulux, fixing my face is the least of anyone’s worries.”
“But don’t you want to?” Frederick genuinely looked perplexed. When she didn’t answer, he grunted, “Come on, I’ve got a plan!”
“Oh, you’ve got a plan?” She blinked at him. “Well, aren’t you a genius.”
“Look, clearly you hate me, and that’s fine, but this will only take a few days, and then you never have to talk to me again if you don’t want to.” He waited a moment, then rolled his eyes. “Please? I’m asking nicely here.”
Scorching fury rushed through Elayne’s veins again. “Look, I know you’re used to getting whatever you want, Frederick, but things don’t really work that way. Even if you ask nicely.”
Before he could stop her, she turned and ran blindly from their shadowed spot. To the godless gorge with decorum, she just needed to get away, and so she flew, but very unfortunately right into another courtier.
“Watch it, gremlin!” Vyvyan was aghast, straightening her dress and glaring down her perfectly pointed nose at Elayne.
The names always hurt, but this time—this time—Elayne felt it in the very depth of her soul. Her breath caught in her throat, and she sailed as fast as her legs would take her down the hall. Laughter echoed in her wake and long after in her mind, even when she fell into her bed behind a locked door.
CHAPTER 4
A dark bank of clouds rolled out over the farmlands in the east casting the sky grey. The color hadn’t changed for quite some time—years possibly, elves weren’t as keen on time as humans—but it had grown on Alaion. It was reminiscent of Azrada’s eyes, and in that way he was fond of it, but it was distinct enough, murkier, darker, to not remind him that she had lost her faith in the end and had to be done away with.
Alaion ran a hand over the stone wall that separated him from the drop to the ground below, a height that would kill even with his best healers. That had been a fitting sentence for some, a choice for others, but when he learned how badly it could damage the skull, he did away with the practice. The human skull was interesting, so round and soft in comparison to his own kin, and he had taken a liking to them. He kept the chipped ones as well, but they just weren’t as pretty when set into his throne.
“Ah, there you are.” He spied the black specks out amongst the rolling, grey sky. As they came closer, their forms fleshed out, wings spread so that they soared with the currents, snouts carving their way to him like steel-tipped arrows. They dipped low as they came in to skim the black waters of the lake, disturbing the still surface, then cut up quickly to scale the building and land just on the wall.
“Forsyth.” Alaion raised an arm, and his favorite wrapped talons around his glove.
The animal twitched its head as he ran a finger down its long neck, chirping from deep in its throat. The other five were no bigger than falcons, but Forsyth had outgrown them. Like his master, Forsyth’s size made him a natural leader, but his cunning was truly at the heart of his position. When he’d been born, Alaion knew immediately, of the few eggs they’d been able to retrieve from the depths of Heulux’s caves, Forsyth would be the most prized of the dragons. It was in his eyes. Though for all of his qualities, he was nothing in comparison to the stories. Yet.
“Tell me, what did you see?” Placing a hand over the creature’s face, Alaion closed his own eyes, and Forsyth fell still. The sound of the wind atop the castle, the gentle flapping of the other dragons’ wings, the distant rumble of thunder far off over the mountains, all dissolved into nothing as he listened to the scene that formed in his mind.
Forest, green, lush, and so starkly different from that in Heulux, swept by below him. In the midst of it, a river cut through, wide and running with life. Below the trees he could sense creatures hunting in the brush and their prey scavenging for insects and berries. Creatures, yes, but none like Forsyth.
A crisp breeze took him up and away from the forest. There were fields here, laid out in long rows where wheat, corn, and beans had been sown, and others rung with crude fences devoted to cattle and goats. And then he saw the first one, the little hovel rising up out of the ground with its thatched roof and plume of smoke. Deeper he was taken to a place where the huts were built closer together, the human smell more intense, offensive in its sheer existence, and worse that they themselves didn’t notice it. Below, a market where they sold their “g
oods” was laid out. A building, larger than the others, filled with debauchery, and others, larger still, squeezed in so tightly that if one went up in flame, they would all fall soon after.
And then he felt it, the spark of aether, but in that twisted and sick way the humans used it. There was nothing natural about a human having magic, but Forsyth and the others were drawn to it—the sheer intensity of that sudden spark—and as much as Alaion hated it, that was what allowed them to go so far beyond the border, farther than they’d ever been. They swept over the city toward castle spires, ignoring even the pull from the dark forest to the north for this. Colors exploded on the field below as the unkindness of dragons circled high above. They were fighting—no—playing? Of course, humans were so like children, even when they were dying, and this was, of course, how they wasted what they’d stolen.
Alaion could feel the other dragons’ urge to dive onto the field, but Forsyth proved his worth and willed them to hold steady just long enough for Alaion to be struck by something even stronger, a presence, and he nearly staggered back from it. Her.
Another breeze swept him up above the village so that it was forgotten, and far off on the horizon he recognized the color first, grey, swirling, dark, and knew he was headed home.
Prying his eyes open, the elf released the dragon. Forsyth shook his head and with one heavy flap of leathery wings, alighted to perch on the wall beside his brood. Alaion was stunned. It had been so long, but the pull to the child who was both so like Cressyda and yet wholly different, was unmistakable.
He turned on a heel—there was much to do—but was halted by the elf who had just stepped out onto the battlements. Tavaris’s light grey eyes were expecting and so like Azrada’s that Alaion had to look away. A wife had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she was merely a replacement for what he couldn’t have. And she hadn’t produced the heir he had expected.
“Where’s Wren?”
Alaion glanced back to the dragons, taking quick count. One was missing. “Lost,” he answered flatly as he brought his gaze back to the boy. Well, no, his son was practically grown now, at least according to the calendar.
Tavaris’s eyes widened, and he ran to the edge of the wall. “He can’t be!”
Alaion said nothing—there was nothing to say, of course—and brushed past him.
And then his son chirped, “Wait! There!”
A dark, far off speck was headed in alone. It grew, but it did not soar gracefully to them as the others had. The thing that Alaion would barely call a dragon dipped a moment, then pulled up messily, covering more sky than the other six had combined, and with a speed that one would call reckless at best, it swooped down just before reaching the battlements. As it disappeared, Tavaris gasped. Surely the thing had run straight into the wall. Alaion raised a lip in annoyance, dreading his son’s reaction to the messy inevitability: even in death it would be more trouble than it was worth.
Then, in a mess of black and green scales, the creature sailed up over the edge of the battlement and splattered head on into Alaion’s face, catching the man off guard and sending him stumbling backward. The other dragons scattered, crying out in guttural, annoyed squawks. “Bloody mongrel,” Alaion growled, but Tavaris hurried over and collected Wren before Alaion could kick him away. For once Alaion was glad the thing was such a disappointing size.
“Whew, Wren, I thought you were a goner!” Tavaris brushed off the dragon’s head and gently tugged at his malformed wing. Everything looked intact.
Alaion grumbled, “We should all be so lucky.”
“You did great!” Tavaris scratched its slightly over-sized head, and the creature trilled back and nibbled on his finger.
Alaion wiped his chest off for good measure. “He barely kept up with the others, I don’t know how he survived going so far beyond the border, and his landing would have been decidedly more bloody had I not been here. Would you really define that as great?”
“Well, he did his best.” Tavaris was looking at the animal adoringly, and it returned his gaze.
Alaion balled a tight fist but kept it at his side. He would not strike him, he reminded himself, the boy was too old for that now. He would instead ask that Vulras be slightly more aggressive during their next lesson.
Tavaris simply had too much of his mother in him, and it was possible he would never grow into the heir he needed. He regretted beheading his number two, Haemir, just for a moment, but then a narrow smile crept over his lips at the thought of the loyalty of the krows. They would be able to travel even farther now that Forsyth and the others had proven it possible. He just needed more.
“Come,” he commanded and headed back through the archway into the castle. “The dragons have expanded their reach, and so we must expand the border.”
Tavaris groaned behind him as they traveled down the spiraling stairs. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”
“Much too slowly.” Alaion clenched his jaw at the confirmation. “Where’s Melorya?” he asked no one in particular as he swept out of the spire and into a nearly empty hall. A set of elven guards dressed in silver armor shot looks at one another until one let out a single breath through his nose and walked briskly off.
Tavaris’s annoyance was far more palpable. “Probably reading,” he whined, coming up beside Alaion, Wren still perched on his shoulder. Alaion looked him over as they walked toward another set of stairs, these ones grand and wide. The boy was almost as tall and had taken on most of Alaion’s own sharp features: a long, tapered nose, a pointed chin, deeply arched brows, hair so black it swallowed up even the crystalline aether lights lining the hall. He was even developing a deepening color to his veins at the edges of his temples and across the backs of his hands, the price of their work on the nexus. But Azrada’s light grey eyes still looked out on the way ahead of them.
The staircase spilled down into another hall that had once been lined with portraits of the filthy human lineage that had led to all this mess. Humans often thought elves were vain purely because of how they looked, but they didn’t have long corridors filled with the result of hours of sitting to capture half-truths in paint. At least in Apos’phia that was the case, and according to Alaion, those were the only proper elves, even if they did turn a blind eye to his cause.
Only one portrait remained, though it was covered, and Alaion stiffened even as they passed the curtain that hung heavily from its gilded frame. They had long ago stopped asking him about it, and even Tavaris knew enough to ignore it as they strode into the throne room.
Alaion stood in the center of the room and cast his eyes upward to the high, domed ceiling. Atop columns that lined both walls were sealed ceremonial urns. The number had grown recently, but again not fast enough. The krows didn’t last for long past the border, but after feeling the child out there, he was invigorated to try again.
Tavaris was distracted by the throne, as always, staring at the hundreds of skulls as if they were looking back through hollow sockets, but when he felt his father’s living eyes on him, he looked over and gave him a wide grin. Alaion’s lips did not move.
“You wanted me?”
Alaion turned at Melorya’s apt choice of words. Dressed in lavender—always lavender—the elven woman stood in the throne room entry, the guard who had brought her already disappearing back down the hall. She kept her head tilted downward, but her eyes, as eerily lavender as her dress and a homage to her lineage, were trained right on his the moment he looked at her. She was nothing if not willful.
“Melorya.” The corner of his mouth twitched, but only just. “I want you to bring me another crossblood.”
“They’re unwell,” she said, her lips taut. “They need more time to heal before—”
“No. A new one.”
“A new one?” She screwed up her face, her composure broken. “You’ve killed off nearly all the mages; where do you think they come from?”
“Mages.” He spat the word out, synonymous with humans and one in parti
cular, Lionel Orraigh, that only didn’t cause him to fly into a rage because it was already dead. “Vermin always find places to hide. Just bring me one.”
Melorya cocked her head. “Why?”
The ire that would have risen in his voice at being questioned was swallowed down. “I’ve found her.”
Melorya’s sour expression blanched as if she’d been struck in the face. If Alaion had a recent frame of reference, he would have thought it felt nice to see her not scowling at him for once, but he didn’t, and so instead swallowed down that oddness too.
“I would like to arrange a family reunion,” Alaion chuckled lightly.
“Wait,” Tavaris spoke before Melorya could gather herself to respond. “Her? You mean Elly?”
Alaion twitched, but did not look at his son, his eyes locked onto Melorya. “Yes.”
The woman finally let out a breath and nodded. “I see.”
“So, a crossblood then?”
“Yes,”—she hesitated—“my lord.”
“Whoa, Dad!” Tavaris stepped between Alaion’s sight and Melorya’s form as she left the room. “This is huge!”
“Indeed.” He sighed. “Huge.”
Tavaris turned to Wren on his shoulder, grinning stupidly. “Did you hear that? Elly’s coming! Here!”
“Do not call her that,” Alaion said sharply, and Tavaris’s face instantly changed. His son nodded and cast his eyes down. The elf turned away from him to stare back, past the throne and to the massive, dark oak doors behind it. He could feel the nexus, always, but in that moment it pulsed even stronger as if it knew what was coming. And then—he smiled—he would finally have all of it: Heulux, Yavarid, and even the nexus itself.
CHAPTER 5
Elayne would have started suddenly at the rapping on her door had she not already been awake, stewing. It was, in many ways, what she did best. Her mind had let her pass in and out of sleep, but always brought her back to Frederick’s words: You can’t be happy like this. The things people said to her were often maddening, but they were at their worst when they were right.
She's All Thaumaturgy Page 4
