by D. Brumbley
He sighed heavily and patted her on the shoulder once as he moved past her. “I’ll catch up with you a little later, alright? I gotta…go.”
“Okay. Good luck, Ziem. Go see the Alpha when you’re settled in. You’re technically still an exile seeking asylum, so he’ll have to formally revoke it.” She said with a shrug, and then she was back to work.
He said goodbye to his other friends, several of whom he had actually bitten himself, and so they were more or less his brothers by wolf tradition, even though they were turned rather than pureborn. He made his way over to the hut, where he hesitated for a moment, not really sure what to say after so long away from her. He had thought he would come back and find her mated to Nick. This…was something that he hadn’t really prepared for. But that didn’t keep him from knocking. “Knock knock.”
Aura jumped at the sound of someone actually coming up to her house, so she stopped her jewelry project and got up to answer. When she opened the door and saw who it was, she was surprised beyond words. She looked a little different than he’d last seen her. Thinner, if that was possible, and she had dark circles under her eyes, but she was still beautiful. “Ziem?”
He grinned, and it just about broke his face open in the process. “Good. So I haven’t gotten so ugly you don’t recognize me. I was worried there for a minute.”
“You were never ugly in the first place.” She smiled at the sight of him and she took a step out to hug him, but she held back. Aura didn’t want to make things any worse for him if he was back after exile by associating himself with her. “I, uh, you probably don’t want to hang around here long.”
“I just got done not hanging around here, or didn’t you notice? You remember, that day I went out for cigarettes and never came back?” He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug more or less against her will. “I missed you.”
She actually melted into the embrace, touched that anyone was talking to her, let alone hugging her, and so she hugged him back tightly. Almost desperately. “I missed you too. I had no idea what happened until the next morning…” She sighed as she thought back to being a teenager and getting caught kissing someone she really wanted to kiss, even though it had made his life terrible after. “I never got to tell you I was sorry for what happened. Even though I was never sorry for kissing you.”
“Well, that makes two of us on that, then.” He let her go with the same wide smile on his face. “And don’t be sorry. I tried to write to you, but they kept sending back my letters, of course. They actually kicked me out of the continent, but I went up to Ireland and I’ve been hanging out there for a while. Might as well be a different continent, right?” He sighed and put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t be sorry. I’ve been alright. Better than that, even.”
She kissed his cheek gently. “You look amazing. You must be taking care of yourself.”
“No, actually that’s because my pastime for the last few years has been mostly bar fighting.” He chuckled and grinned at her, leaning against the doorframe of her hut with nothing but confidence in his posture. “It’s been a good life, all around. Not much money in it, but a hell of a lot of fun.”
Aura smiled as she listened to him talk about his former life. “I had a good life too. I was going to get my own tattoo parlor one day. That didn’t work out well at all.”
“Your own tattoo parlor?” He looked her over, and put a hand over on her shoulder where she had claw marks and chains inked to her skin. “So what, did you do these yourself, then?”
She shook her head, but it took some time for her to answer since she wasn’t expecting him to touch her. It was strange, after spending all her time alone in silence to be touched by someone else. Aura missed the company and the chance to just…talk. “It’s not quite the same experience if you do it to yourself. It feels too good to pay attention, the needles raking up and down your skin, and you just end up with permanent scribbles.”
That made him break out laughing. “I never thought about it that way, I guess. Virgin skin.” He said as he spun around to show her his un-tattooed skin, though it was plenty decorated with scars.
Aura ran her fingers across his scars as he spun. “I could do something for you, if you wanted.”
“What’d you have in mind?”
She shrugged and then pulled her fingers away from his skin. “The artist doesn’t usually choose for the person getting the tattoo.”
“So? You make exceptions for old friends, don’t you?” He looked around at a group of several wolves that passed by, currently in wolf form, who were glaring at the two of them, and then he looked back at her. “Wow. So…Lea wasn’t kidding.”
Aura crossed her arms and looked down at the ground. “When I’m in my wolf, I can hear them all. Some of them wish that they could do something about it, drive me away from here. I’ve even heard some who want to hurt me but know that it would only end up badly for them if they do. They all want me gone. Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m still here.”
“Lea said it was because you fell in love with a Shadowborn.” His tone got a little more serious, but he didn’t look back at the audience that had gathered. “Is he the guy I’ve been hearing so much about up in Ireland? The guy the whole wolf community is currently scared shitless of?”
“He stepped up against Council fighters with a Lightborn.” She said, still staring at the ground. “So, yeah. Probably.”
“I’m sorry.” Ziem said quietly, with the most serious look on his face that he’d worn so far. He usually wasn’t known for being very serious about anything. “This all has to suck for you. It’s not like you can really help who you fell for, is it?”
“I deserved it.” She said quietly. “I loved them both, and so I lost them both. Him and Nick.”
“Just because you love something doesn’t mean you have to lose it.” He sighed heavily and got closer to her, poking her side. “Is this what ten years and two boyfriends have done to you? Made you all serious and grim all the time?”
Aura looked up and met his eyes. Just like nearly every else around them, his eyes were hazel, but they were patterned differently. Their eyes were like fingerprints with color, different and beautiful in their uniqueness. Her eyes were heavier on the green in the mixture with the brown, Nick’s were heavier on the brown, but Ziem’s were a balance that was stunning. “It hurts. That changes things.”
“Yeah. Pain does that.” He sighed and looked her over one more time. “Well, whatever happens now, I’ll be sticking around for a while. Unless Nick…excuse me, the Alpha…re-invokes my exile. Which I hope he doesn’t. When it comes to a fight, it looks like this is where the party’s at for the immediate future.”
Aura shrugged as she backed away from him to distance herself, to give him a way out if he wanted it. “No one is going to invite you to any parties if you keep hanging around me.”
“I don’t know. The party seems to follow you, actually. Here, Geneva, the road in between. I think I’ll just keep on hanging around you and wait for somebody who needs punching, if that’s alright.” Ziem’s grin was relentless.
She looked back inside her small house. “Do you want to come in? I haven’t seen you in forever. If you’re going to be stubborn enough to hang around me, I wouldn’t mind having you around.” She gave him a small smile that was silently thanking him for not caring about what other people thought.
“I’ll come back a little later, if that’s okay. I’ve got some buddies I need to get settled in here first, then I apparently need to be officially un-exiled.” He stepped forward with a hand on her waist, obviously not caring in the slightest about what other people thought of him near her. They had all abandoned him once too, but he had lived on happily besides. He would continue however he liked. “But I’ll be back a little later, if I can.”
Aura obviously looked a little disappointed, but then she nodded and stepped back into her house. She wasn’t going to beg for his company no matter how lonely she felt. “See ya, Zie
m.”
He saw the look of disappointment and caught her hand on her way back into the house. He obviously never was afraid of being physically forward with her. “Hey…”
Aura looked down at his hand holding hers and she couldn’t help but hold on a little tighter. Aura was the one who had initiated everything with him ten years ago, after all. She’d had a crush on him forever, and she was the one who had kissed him and ultimately caused his exile, though she hadn’t known that would happen. Another example of her selfishness wreaking havoc. “Hm?”
He pulled her hand up to his lips with a grin that had been a part of the reason she had kissed him so long ago, a kind of expression that pushed aside any possibility of anything being wrong with the world. He kissed the rings on her hand, and they rippled around her fingers in a single, simple wave at the touch. Ziem was happy to see her, no matter what the reason. “You’re still a princess to me.”
She reached out with her other hand to caress the rings in his eyebrow and then her fingers trailed down to the piercing in his ear. “Gods, I missed you.” They had been good friends for a long time and she was crushed when they exiled him. She and Nick hadn’t become close friends again until years after Ziem was gone.
He smiled at the touch, glad to know that his continued interest wasn’t just one-sided, and stepped back with a final squeeze of her hand. “Back at you, baby.” He reached down to the shorts he wore as he stepped back, and they dropped as he turned away. Ziem shifted into a blonde wolf with fur so light it was almost white, then picked up his shorts in his teeth and ran off through the compound.
Aura couldn’t help but stare as he ran off. She shook her head as she went back into her hut. What was she doing? What was she thinking? It would be better for Ziem if he kept his distance, and she knew it. All she could feel, though, was the fact that when he was close by, the world wasn’t crashing in on her. Someone cared. Someone she cared about didn’t hate her. It was enough to make her smile as she retreated into her room and fell back into her bed.
IV
Coren and Alina were the last to arrive at the impromptu meeting ground in the middle of the wilderness outside of Geneva. Their servants hadn’t yet deemed the Council Chambers themselves fit for business after the devastation that had been wrought there weeks before, and so they were still at one of Coren’s country estates by a lakeside as their temporary base of operations.
The huge lawn sloped down from the house to the side of the lake with a small beach of pure white sand and a stone pier that Alina had made for Coren once upon a time. At the moment, she was walking at his side as they went to join the rest of the Council members gathered on the wide, open lawn. They were seated on improvised thrones that Marc, Alina’s younger Stoneborn counterpart on the council, had made for all of them, and the message they carried was not lost on the other council members. They were still meeting on Alina’s terms, and therefore, Coren’s.
Teresa was drinking from a large glass very slowly with a glare on her face as Coren finally made an appearance. Just because he and Alina were the leaders didn’t mean that they should leave the rest of them waiting for over an hour. “Busy day?” She said bitterly and with a bit of a growl.
“All recent days have been busy, Councilor. Or they are for the rest of us who aren’t simply sitting back and watching events unfold for their amusement.”
“Amusement? You think I’m amused by everything that has happened? All the wolves that have died?”
“Considering you have consistently avoided committing any of your own fighters to the defense of this city, yes, it seems likely that amusement might be one of your prevalent emotions at the moment.” Coren snapped with uncharacteristic anger in his voice, as if the rest of the Council wasn’t yet aware of just how much he despised his younger counterpart in representing the Oceanborn. “Tell me, Councilor, what have you been doing to counteract the situation with the Ironborn?”
“My efforts were within this council itself, in warning you of the consequences that would follow a rejection of the Ironborn. The action of this Council was taken against my advice or consent. Why would I sacrifice my own people to a battle I did not choose, in which I knew most of them would die?”
Gregor, the male Fireborn representative, jumped in next, the grass at his feet actually turning black immediately everywhere he walked. “I’ll tell you why you wouldn’t. Because you’re a damned coward and you don’t deserve the seat your ass is taking up, Teresa. You counseled us to let the two Ironborn candidates just walk out of here. That they would just slink back to Spain and wait upon our pleasure. And we can all see just how well all of that worked out.”
Marc chimed in next, standing next to Gregor and imposing in a very different way. “They won’t be satisfied with taking back the Ironborn princess. No matter what rumors keep circulating, they’re going to keep gathering other vermin until they’re ready for another attack.”
Teresa growled louder. “Well, maybe you should have just given them the fucking seats that they wanted and then we wouldn’t have bloodstained hands and a huge problem on our hands! They have met the demands of the old law! And they obviously have a force that we could have used. Don’t sit there and preach to me about bad decisions.”
Isela didn’t want to hear the argument escalate. She just wanted to hear what they were going to do about it. As one of the oldest, she just spoke firmly and calmly as she looked over at Coren. “They took Zara. She knows too much. What are we going to do to get her back?”
Coren’s answer sounded bored. “Zara knew too much about what they have already taken. Her use to them is in specifics, and in how well she knows each of us, not in military strategy. All the same…” He stepped into the center of their seats so that he could address all of them in turn. “Let her speak if they force her to do so, and if she is found to be on the wrong side of this conflict when it ignites again, then let her die like one of them.” He dismissed any talk of Zara by looking over at Gregor and Marc. “They’ve taken Candra, and killed Lillet and Fernando. No one in this council will make the mistake of thinking that I speak out of fear when I say that we have no way of standing against the Shadowborn while Candra is with him. That is merely fact. The pair of them must be our chief concern at present. When they are separated, we can deal with the rest of the Ironborn uprising.”
“So your plan is to do nothing. You do something at the wrong time and nothing at the wrong time.” Teresa said with a shake of the head. “I can’t believe this. We should be trying to end this with some kind of reconciliation. Something other than war! They are Ironborn with our Heartborn and a Shadowlight pairing. And you want to do nothing.”
Ivy was a timid and young seat on the Council, a young Forestborn who had gained her seat on the Council mostly because she came from the right family and the male Forestborn representative knew she wasn’t likely to speak against his decisions on behalf of their people. At Teresa’s accusations, though, she spoke up, which was rare. “I agree with Teresa.”
“Do you?” Marc spoke up, having sat back down beside Gregor, both of them looking as condescending as possible. “And what form would your reconciliation take? Begging for peace with the people who just came into Geneva and destroyed our home? Our people?”
“I don’t want anyone else to die.” Ivy said softly, though she knew no one really cared about her opinion. She was too young, and even though she was powerful, not many people took Forestborn seriously. Only a little more than most Skyborn, really. Not her, though. She enjoyed peace a little too much for anyone to really take her seriously.
“I agree.” Coren said softly. “No more of our people should have to lose their lives to see the end of this.” His statement raised several eyebrows among the other members of the Council, but he continued. “Right now, that which must be done will be done quietly. Our homes, our people, must not be put in the same kind of jeopardy again. The new Alpha of the Ironborn has refused our proposal for a parlay. If he seeks
another attack on us, we must not permit him to come close enough to our homes to cause more bloodshed.
“I propose that this Council adjourn to our homelands to see to the safety of our people. We must bolster our allies against the rising Ironborn threat until it can be averted. Our first responsibility is to our own homes. If our homes fail, then this council seat in Geneva will be nothing but a hall of chairs without a purpose.” He looked around at each Councilor with concern in his eyes, the kind of slow, logical thinking that had won him his position as the Speaker for the Council. “Until we know the full intentions of the Ironborn, we must be cautious, or more will die. That much is certain.”
Teresa still wasn’t happy about that, since she thought that some kind of agreement could be made, but she would have to seek after it on her own time, on her own terms. Coren was worthless as a leader, and she knew it. Something needed to be done. Isela looked over at Coren and Alina, watching carefully as Alina responded to Coren’s decision.
Alina shook her head slowly and dropped her voice low so only Coren could really hear her. “You’re better than this, Coren.”
He stepped back closer to her, which was his rightful place anyway, as everyone considered his proposal among themselves, and dropped his voice just as low as he took a glass from his chair and took a drink. “Yes, I am. And when the rest of these sniveling idiots are back in their burrows and out of our way, I’ll show you just how much better.”
Alina wanted to reach out for him, since that was exactly what she wanted to hear, but then she just looked out toward the others. “We need to make sure the next time we come face to face with those mutts, we’ll destroy them.”
Gregor obviously wasn’t excited about the proposal, but he could at least admit that he saw the wisdom of it. “If the Ironborn were bold enough to attack Geneva, then nothing will stop them from coming for our individual strongholds, Coren. Some might suggest you intend us all to fight our own private war against them when they do.”
