by Jack Whitney
She was sitting on the edge of a cliff past the castle.
She looked down at her hands, noticing the blisters on her knees and on her palms. Rhaif was sitting beside her, his fourteen-year-old self staring at her with water in his eyes. He reached for her hand and wrapped his own around it.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
Aydra swallowed hard, pushing the tears from her face. “I’m okay,” she lied.
“If I had my fire, he would not touch you again,” he promised.
“I don’t want you to worry,” Aydra whispered. “Zoria said—”
“I know what she said,” Rhaif argued. “I was in the room. But… he hurt you.”
“It’s okay,” she told him.
“Drae, it’s not—” His words ceased, and she winced at the grip he took on her hand. He must have felt it, for he softened and pushed her hair off her face.
“Our youngers will never know of it,” he declared. “Nyssari and Dorian. We can be better than our elders have been.”
Aydra met his eyes. “Do you promise?” she’d asked of him.
Rhaif leaned over, and he took her face in his hand. “I swear it.”
Aydra woke groggily on the third day and sat up in the bed. Her head throbbed, and she suddenly realized the noon sun was staring at her, which meant she’d been asleep at least a day. The memory of the dreams she’d been cursed with made her heart constrict. Her stomach growled, and so she pushed herself to her feet with the crutches beneath her arms, and walked out onto the balcony.
Her feet did not sting as badly as they had the morning before. On this morning, she could actually put some weight on them. The easy healing made her chest swell with gratitude.
Below were wagons and wagons of goods settled between the trees and around the clearing. Hunters were in lines, moving bags and goods from the trailers to their own storage carts. Her eyes narrowed down at Draven’s figure, who was speaking with who she assumed was the trader. The dark ecru skinned man had his white dreaded hair pulled up high on his head, the thickness of it stark against the dark forest. Draven handed him something, and the man shook his hand and clapped his shoulder.
“Morning, Sun Queen.”
The noise of a woman’s voice made her jump and thus quickly fall onto the floor as her ankles gave out from under her. She did a double-take up at the one who had spooked her—a woman Venari. She was smirking down at her, dark skin glistening in the light from the sun. Her thick black curls were pulled up onto her head in three buns down the middle all the way to her neck. Aydra eyed the tight brown pants and white tunic she wore, the leather vest fitted against her slim torso.
The woman huffed amusedly under her breath and shook her head as the grin spread on her beautiful face. “He said you were jumpy,” she muttered. “Didn’t realize he meant this jumpy.”
Aydra exhaled boldly, cursing herself for falling over her feet. “Who?”
“My king,” she informed her. The woman held a hand down to her, and Aydra reluctantly took it.
The strength of her pull off the ground made Aydra’s breath catch. Aydra suddenly found herself within a few inches of the woman’s body, and the woman smirked at her.
“Balandria,” she said.
Aydra swallowed hard and gripped to the crutch beneath her arm. The name was familiar. She felt her eyes squinting at her as Balandria’s dark gaze twinkled at her.
“You’re the Venari King’s Second, aren’t you?” Aydra asked.
“I am,” Balandria answered. “He asked that I bring you something to eat. If you’ll excuse me Spybreaker, my king needs me.”
Balandria turned and made her way down the steps without another word. Aydra stared after her figure, confused as to what had just happened.
You’re staring, the raven said.
Aydra pulled her cloak around her and stared down at the field of Venari men and women. I need to leave. Soon, she told it.
You are not healed.
If I stay here much longer, I’ll be seduced by all of them.
The squawk of her raven echoed in her ears. She glared at its cackle and made herself go inside to where Balandria had left her food.
The fill of her belly brought energy to her core. There was a rope out in front of the balcony that Draven had used the morning before to let himself down. It was more useful than her trying to get down the stairs without completely making a fool of herself, so she reached out for it and gripped it in her hands.
Her crutches landed in the grass, causing a few of the men to stop and frown up at her as she descended herself down the rope. She thought she was doing well, until she got to the ground and realized she’d no way to stand on her own with her crutches lying on the floor.
And she refused to ask for help.
So she used her foot to pick up the handle of one and brought it carefully to her hand. She was pretty sure she flashed a few of the men, but it was better than her admitting defeat.
“I see you made it out of the tree,” came Draven’s voice behind her.
She poised herself on the crutches and blew her frustrated hair out of her face. “I did,” she managed upon meeting his gaze.
He didn’t speak any further as he took a large bag of some sort from one of his men, and then he passed it to Balandria beside him. This continued for a few minutes, until the point that Aydra huffed impatiently.
“Where are my things? My crown? Bow? Sword?” Aydra asked, leaning on the crutches.
“Do not fret,” Draven said with an annoyed sigh. “They are safe.”
“I need them. I must take my leave.”
Draven straightened up and dusted his hands off. He gave her a deliberate once over then, and said, “All right. Walk to me,” using his hands to gesture her coming towards him.
Her brow raised. “Excuse me?”
“You say you’re well enough to leave. Walk to me. Without the crutch.”
Aydra’s teeth set. She hated the smug look on his face, the air of arrogance in his eyes. Not only that, but the snickering of the other Hunters around the clearing made her blood boil.
She clutched the crutches in her fists and glared at Draven. She knew she couldn’t. And she didn’t need more mocking from the entire of the Venari race when she would inevitably fall.
A slow twist rose on Draven’s lips. He crossed his arms over his chest, hair falling out of its ponytail and over his eyes. “You’ll leave when we say you can leave,” he told her.
“This is kidnapping,” she hissed.
“No,” he snapped, crossing the space between them. “This is saving my ass and yours. If you were to go back right now, your brother would send an army of Belwarks into my home, attack all the Noctuans, and he would do it without bothering to hear your or my side of what really happened. He would think I hurt you, and he and your little minis would start a war we do not need.” He paused to tower over her, and she could hear her pulse beating in her ears.
“Do not think for a moment that I want you here any more than you want to be here,” he hissed. “Do you think I relish argument at every waking moment? Hearing your voice doubting and making me question everything I do? We were building at peace before you got here. And now—” His hands made like they would grasp the sides of her head, and he instead gripped the roots of his hair. “The faster you heal and get out of here, the better.”
He turned and walked away from her then, leaving her words stuck in her throat. She inhaled a deep breath, hating that he was right.
“Then I must send word to my sister and Second. Let them know I am okay,” she called to him. “It would have been Lex’s responsibility to make sure I came home. And my sister… She is likely terrified. I do not know where she is.”
“We do,” came Balandria’s voice. “She’s in the Village of Dreams.”
Aydra eyed Balandria’s smirk, and if she could have crossed her arms over her chest, she would have.
“What’s wrong, Sun Queen? Didn’t think wom
en Hunters would speak such to you?” came Draven’s voice as he started helping again with bags of food. “Balandria is my Second, and also our fiercest fighter. Be glad it was Dunthorne who was with me on patrol the other night and not her. Your princess would now be Queen.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“WHAT EXACTLY IS it you trade with?” Aydra asked Draven later when he brought her dinner.
Draven shrugged. “Why? Planning on telling your brother our secrets?” he asked, his fingers strumming on the cup.
“Despite what you think, Venari King, I do not tell my brother everything.”
A smirk rose on his face, and he sat up, elbows sitting on the table. “Do I sense a feud between Haerland’s most loved brother and sister? Squabbles between the perfect pair?”
Aydra gripped the cup in her hands.
“Do tell, Sun. I’d love to hear it,” he said with a smug wink.
A flash of blue flames poured through her memory, and she blinked to push it from mind. “It’s not your concern,” she managed.
His smirk widened. “I knew there was something not perfect about those banquets. Not everything can be that grand all the time.”
“And here?” she mocked. “Is everything always so ‘family first’ as you like to put it?”
Draven took a long swig of his drink, his eyebrows raising. “Generally yes,” he said. “We usually settle arguments with challenges. Duels. But, if you must know, those that have problems with our ways are usually of the Infi. And we do not let them walk among us.”
“Are the Infi not your brethren?”
Draven’s cup slammed into the table.
A wild look of anger flashed in his green eyes. “They are not my brothers,” he snarled.
She felt a brow raise on her face and she slowly sipped her wine. “And here I thought Venari King meant leader of all Duarb’s cursed.”
He avoided her eyes, jaw clenching at her statement. “The Infi are nothing more than savages, only living for themselves—”
“And that is different from Hunters how?” she interjected.
His gaze met hers and he stared at her for a long enough moment that she felt her weight shift.
“You know nothing of my people, Sun Queen,” he said in a hauntingly quiet voice. “Nothing of the sacrifices we have made defending your own kingdom. Did you even know about the ship that arrived on Lovi’s shores almost three weeks past?”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“Exactly.”
“What kind of ship?”
“The enemy kind,” he replied shortly. “The kind carrying strangers and disease. With men not of our own, not of Haerland, suited up in armor and carrying weapons made from minerals not of our land. Men who were not created or sprung from the land, but rather of each other. The kind of ship that only means there will be more, and if we are not vigilant, the kind that will take over our land without question.”
Aydra swallowed hard. “What happened?” she asked.
“We took care of it. With the Honest,” he answered. “Fighting alongside those not of our own is something we do here in the southern realms.”
“Do you speak ill of your beloved mountain friends?” she asked, referring to the Blackhands.
“The Blackhands have nothing to fear, no reason to fret any such war coming to their homes. They stay to themselves and secure their own. I cannot fault them for that.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “We would have sent aid,” she told him. “Had you asked for it.”
A laugh emitted from Draven’s lips, one that mocked and told her nearly all she needed to know about what exactly had been wrong with her brother before her leaving.
“Oh, you poor thing,” he scoffed. “You really knew nothing of it, did you?”
She eyed him from across the table, and he shook his head.
“Your brother knew all about the ship,” he informed her. “He knew everything. We asked for a Belwark patrol to be sent, to take one of these men back to Magnice alive so that your brother could question them. We offered that. We offered for him to take lead on the charge.” He paused and shook his head at her, still fumbling with the cup. “He refused to send aid. Refused to even acknowledge an enemy arriving on our shore. Simply told us to take care of it as though it were a hunting party. And this isn’t the first time.”
Aydra felt the color drain from her face. “That’s not… he wouldn’t. I am head of security. Anything threatening our borders should have gone through me. He would have told me.”
Draven huffed amusedly under his breath. “A title given to make you feel as though he trusts you, as though you have a place in his court. Nothing more.”
“I was not given such a title to simply execute wandering thieves,” she said through clenched teeth.
“No. I’m sure you chose to do that on your own,” he mused. “I think you crave getting your hands dirty.”
“I refuse to sit back and bark orders when I can take care of a problem myself.”
He stared at her a moment before pushing off the top of the table where he’d rested himself. He walked across the room to the desk where she’d seen letters upon letters strewn over the top of it, and he plucked the one on the top of the pile.
“You want evidence of your brother’s cowardice? Here it is.”
The letter flung into her lap, and he turned his back on her, striding to the opening out onto the deck to leave her sitting there. She stared at him, and then opened the letter. She recognized her brother’s handwriting at once.
What lands on Lovi’s shore is your problem, Venari. Take care of it.
Aydra nearly crumpled the letter between her tightened fists. She struggled to her feet and grasped the crutch in her hands, forcing herself out on the deck. The cool wind wrapped around her body. Draven’s back was to her. She could just see the outline of his figure from the great bonfire going down below them in the clearing.
“I am sorry, Draven,” she said softly. “I didn’t know.”
She saw him do a double-take and frown at her over his shoulder, eyebrows flickering surprise. But then he sighed, and the surprise she thought she’d glimpsed vanished. “I know you didn’t.”
“How many men did you lose?” she asked.
“Five. The Honest lost thirteen,” he answered. “It sounds like a small number to you, I am sure, but for us… when our children are born from Duarb’s roots with one of two fates, and the Infi claims a majority, every person counts.”
“I would have been here,” she assured him.
“Somehow I doubt your brother would have allowed you bring a guard of your own.”
“My brother doesn’t dictate everything I do. Nor does he own every single Belwark.”
He paused and looked her over deliberately. “No. I’m told you have a special way of luring them into your own company,” he mused with a raised brow.
The crutch clenched in her hands. “How I choose my pleasures is not your concern, Venari.”
He smirked and held his hands up. “I’ve no judgement for how you live your life. Every king has taken the liberty of multiple persons in their bed. Why should you not enjoy life’s pleasures simply because you are a woman?”
“And are you such a king?” she heard herself ask.
A pause washed over the air as they dared one another to blink.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think you’re hard to figure out,” she admitted. “But what I am sure of is that you’ve never found yourself wanting or bereft of pleasure.”
A huff of amusement left him, and he turned back to the bonfire. “Infinari persons rarely do.”
Her eyes narrowed just slightly at his use of the word. She gripped to the railing at the edge of the deck and used it as a prop, lowering herself down to the wood floor to sit. “You chose that word at banquet to speak of the Infi in our streets,” she said as she laid the crutch on the floor next to her. “Why that instead of calling it what it
was?”
“Because it wasn’t always Infi,” he said simply.
“What do you mean?” she frowned.
He met her eyes, and she swore she saw a shadow of darkness fall over his features. “Are you genuinely interested?”
“I am,” she said sincerely. “I never understood how you are born with two fates. Can you tell as infants what fate they are of?”
He sighed in silence and sat down on the deck a few feet away from her, his legs dangling over the edge of the wood. His eyes danced with the flames of the fire in the clearing, and she could see his hands fidgeting in his lap.
“It’s in their wailing,” he said softly. “By the Dead Moons. Venari children do not wail upon hearing the Aviteth scream. They grow quiet. Her cry calms them, a comforting lullaby. Infi children scream, as though the screech is piercing their ears, shutting down their core. They turn red. Their skin burns…. And then there are those with both fates, also known as the Infinari.”
“Are not all of them born with such?”
“We used to be,” he said quietly. “Infinari children laugh. As though the sound of the Aviteth is a joke. It’s easy to tell the three different ones as we are only born during the Dead Moons.”
Something dark rested in his eyes, and she could see his mind working behind his gaze, a battle to admit something to her that she wouldn’t expect.
“Which were you?” she asked.
“Every Venari King has been Infinari at birth,” he admitted slowly. “We grow up with an inkling of the fate Duarb would choose for us, but it is not always certain. Previous kings decided that by the age of ten, we would have chosen our fates. We are taken to Duarb, and he marks such a fate in our hands and arms—” He stopped and held up his forearms, revealing the phoenix marks of the Hunter etched crudely into his skin on the back of his hands and his forearm. “Once chosen, the current Venari King takes those marked Hunter under his wing.”
“May I see your mark again?” she asked of him.
