Winter's Fallen (The Conquest of Kelemir Book 1)

by A. F. Dery

  “It’s hard to say until the time comes.” Hadrian gave a little shrug of his shoulders and went carefully over to the table to sit down.

  Rupert rubbed at his temples briefly. “Do you need help, Grace?”

  She turned to him with a hot bowl of stew in her hands, tucking a spoon into it. “Yes, please. If you could take this over to Hadrian, I’ll be right there with ours,” she said.

  He took it from her and she thanked him.

  “You don’t need to thank me, Grace. I was raised to be a gentleman,” he said with a smile. “It’s a shame I haven’t been able to help you more…but there are some good things about having hands.”

  “More than some, I’d think,” she said lightly, then suddenly she flushed and turned back to the stew pot in a hurry. He raised an eyebrow at her back, his smile widening.

  When he took the bowl to the table, he caught a glimpse of obvious irritation on Hadrian’s face before he turned his head away, muttering his thanks.

  “You’re welcome, Hadrian,” Rupert said in the kindest voice he could manage. “I hope it makes you feel much better.”

  Hadrian muttered something else, but it was unintelligible even to a former wolf’s ears.

  Grace joined them a moment later with a bowl in each hand and handed one to Rupert. She was still blushing, and he loved the bright color in her normally pale face. She’s prettier than she knows, he thought, sneaking glances at her between bites of stew after they both sat down. Especially when she’s snapping at Hadrian.

  Hadrian himself seemed to have lapsed into a silence that struck Rupert as being somewhat sullen. As usual, he only picked at the food in front of him.

  Suddenly, the blind man tensed, his spoon clattering onto the table. He turned his face unerringly in Rupert’s direction and shook his head. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, aghast.

  Rupert frowned, setting down his spoon. “I’m eating, what are you doing?”

  “I’ve been keeping a closer eye at your magical energy levels by observing your aura from time to time,” Hadrian said bluntly. “I just looked at it and it was spiking…you have to be using some kind of magic. Or rather, you just were. It’s normal again now.”

  “I wasn’t,” Rupert said, shaking his head. “I was just eating. You’re imagining things, or seeing things that aren’t there.”

  “It’s true, Hadrian, he’s just been sitting here eating. He’s perfectly calm,” Grace said, bewildered.

  “I know what I saw,” he insisted. “If you weren’t doing it on purpose, then you’re emitting spikes of magic at random even when you’re just sitting around.”

  “But nothing’s happened!” Grace protested. “The last time he released any magic, it was obvious. Why would you have to even look for it? I thought you said before that you could feel it when he did it.”

  “That was a much greater amount of magic than what was just used. This time anyway, it wasn’t enough to really do anything so it just dissipated. Whether the magic has any effect on what’s going on around him depends on what he’s doing, what kind of mood he’s in, how much magical energy is involved…there are many variables. It won’t be exactly the same every time,” Hadrian explained.

  But Rupert continued to shake his head, his eyes widening. “You’re trying to turn me into a danger even when I’m doing nothing. You want me to go back…to being the wolf!”

  “Now why would I want that?” Hadrian asked, blinking rapidly.

  “Because the wolf can’t talk,” Rupert said in a clipped tone. “The wolf can’t make Grace laugh, or blush…not that you would know about that part. The wolf can’t touch her-”

  Hadrian was on his feet, his face bright red and his chair falling over behind him. “Enough,” he hissed. “You need to leave her alone. She’s not some toy for you to play with until you’re ready to drop her and run again.”

  “She’s never been a toy to me, unlike the way you’ve been jerking her around-”

  “All right, stop! Do either of you care that I’m sitting right here? This is ridiculous!” Grace sputtered. “Are you really arguing over a shepherdess? Have you both lost your minds? Are you both that desperate?”

  She was on her feet now, too, blinking back tears. “Find something else to bicker about. I don’t want to be dragged into it. It’s nothing to do with me! You just don’t like each other so you’ll seize on any excuse-”

  “Now that’s not true, Grace,” Rupert said sternly. His tone seemed to give her pause. She wiped an arm over her eyes. “We don’t like each other, but you’re not an ‘excuse.’ Not for me, anyway. You must know how dear you’ve become to me. I can’t stand the way he treats you.”

  “And I can’t stand this act he’s putting on to get under your skirts,” Hadrian said angrily. “He’s just trying to distract you now. I know what I saw before. My eyes may not work, but my mind certainly does. You were using magic, Rupert, whether you were aware of it or not. Like it or not, that’s the truth, and you are more dangerous than you seem to think, to everyone around you. This time, it wasn’t enough to do anything, but next time? Who knows. If you can’t even tell it’s happening…I don’t understand how you can act like this is just nothing.”

  “I act like it’s nothing because it is nothing. There is nothing happening,” Rupert insisted.

  “And how do I convince you?” Hadrian looked towards Grace. “How do I get you to believe me, Grace, when you can’t see what I see and he won’t admit to anything?”

  Grace said nothing. She was fidgeting rather aggressively with the hem of her sleeve, her eyes downcast, her face still streaked with tears.

  Rupert frowned. It hurt him to see her like that.

  “If you would feel safer, Grace, I’ll go back to being the wolf,” he said in a low voice. “But I honestly don’t think I’m using any magic and I don’t see how I could be without knowing it.”

  “N-no,” she said, without looking at him. “I don’t want you to go through that again. Besides, if you are using magic without knowing it…you could be doing it as the wolf as well. Isn’t that correct, Hadrian? You said before that the wolf should be able to use magic, too, or he wouldn’t be able to transform back.”

  “It is,” Hadrian agreed with a nod. “It may be more difficult, but if it’s happening at random, then it must be happening as the wolf, too. Possibly not as often, but…” Again he shrugged. “I just don’t know.”

  “Then this changes nothing. We just keep on as we have been,” Grace said, but her voice was tremulous. Her uncertainty and fear were plain and it saddened him, and made the wolf in him want to tear into Hadrian anew for causing it.

  I couldn’t be using magic without knowing it, he thought bitterly. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. Certainly it wasn’t happening before, when I was being taught. Someone would have noticed. Hell, I should be noticing…things should be changing around me at random, shouldn’t they?

  He tried to think back, but the longer he was human, the harder it was for the wolf-thoughts he’d once had to make sense in retrospect. It all bled together, in a way he could no longer fully understand.

  One thing, and one thing only, had been certain: the first storm of winter had been unusually fierce, descending with unusual rapidity.

  But that couldn’t possibly be my fault…the magic that would take…there’s no way I wouldn’t notice that. I can change things with my magic, even my own body, but the weather?

  He shook his head, trying to clear the confusing thoughts away. It was absurd. He was only thinking of such a mad thing because of what the Murderer had said. And he couldn’t possibly be trusted, for all sorts of reasons, not least of which was that he clearly wanted to make sure Grace did not trust him, Rupert.

  “We’ll keep on as we have been,” he repeated, but he shot a dark look at Hadrian that the blind man could not see. And I will find a way to reveal you for what you truly are, he vowed silently. If I leave here with nothing else, I will make sur
e Grace knows the truth about you.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Grace wasn’t sure how she washed the dishes, or how she made it up the stairs. She felt like she’d been plunged into a fog. The idea of Rupert just randomly sending out magic was frightening, but it was hard to know what to think about it. Hadrian didn’t ask for her help going back up this time, a fact for which she was grateful, given the apparent effect his last request had had on Rupert.

  Did he do that on purpose? Was he just trying to make Rupert mad? The way he’s acting makes no sense…Rupert is dangerous to him, too. Even if he wants to die…he keeps on acting like he doesn’t want me to. And then he does stupid things like that to provoke him!

  She felt confused and bewildered, more so the more she thought about it all.

  The truth was, Grace was indeed just a poor, barely literate, shepherdess, worth very little in the grand scheme of life, but she wasn’t actually stupid. The behavior of the two men was looking rather suspiciously like jealousy, and the very idea was impossible for her to process. There was just so much wrong with it.

  To think I’ve gone all my life unnoticed, and here all I needed to do if I wanted companionship was strand myself in a tower with someone, she thought irritably. Apparently a lack of all other choices makes me irresistible!

  It was easier to seek refuge in anger and annoyance than to admit she felt drawn to both men, and as much as she wanted to resent their attentions and blame them on desperation or perhaps just some type of transient, isolation-induced madness, she was still flattered by their attention. No one ever noticed her, no one ever saw her. She was invisible among her peers, and even among her own family. And yet now two men- three, if one counted the catastrophe with the warlord- had indeed noticed her existence and even seemed to value it to some extent. It didn’t and couldn’t change anything, she was what she was, and come spring, she had to go back and face what she’d done. If she was very lucky, there would be something to return to, and she would end up one way or another back in the same life she had left, where no one noticed, and nothing mattered, because she was nobody.

  Hadrian’s tenderness, Rupert’s protectiveness- they were aberrations, perhaps brought on by their isolation, both before and after the storm, or by pure loneliness, or because she was someone who could in some way grasp what they were going through. She too had run from something. She too had made a terrible mistake.

  But in the end, when the snow melted and the pass back down the mountain cleared, she was still a nobody. They would forget her quickly enough, whatever they thought of her now. She could try to help them find their way while she could, but ultimately, she was no remedy herself.

  Her heart felt heavy and ached in her chest, but although her tears had been flowing freely since she’d first arrived at this tower, they finally felt as though they’d dried up for good. This was the way things were, the way she was, and they would never change. She’d understood that back in Haevor, but somehow she had started to forget it here, where people worried about her (or at least acted like they did) and paid attention to her when she spoke, as if she were worth listening to.

  It had taken hearing them bickering, ostensibly over her, to remind her of reality, perhaps because the difference between life in the tower and outside of it was so jarring. She doubted anyone in her village, if anyone still lived, would ever believe her even if she had any intention of telling them about Hadrian- assuming anyone even cared enough to ask, or to listen to the answer.

  Amid the blur of her ruminations, she found herself standing outside the work room, her mind suddenly clear again. Hadrian had already gone inside, and Rupert stood a short distance behind her, likely waiting for her to go in as well.

  She turned to him, her face a blank. “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  He blinked. “The day is only half spent. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m just as I always am, in fact,” she told him. “You can go in. Help Hadrian, or don’t. Get along with him, or blow us all up. It makes no difference, does it?”

  At the look of wide eyed alarm on his face, Grace sighed and said, “Rupert, when all of this is over…when it’s spring, I mean…I won’t even exist to you anymore. We’ll all go our separate ways. Hadrian will do whatever he’s going to do, whether you or I like it or not. You’ll probably turn back into the wolf and, well, I don’t know what you’ll do then…but the fact remains, this…disagreement, or whatever you want to call it, with Hadrian, about me…it’s ridiculous. You must see that? I’m nobody, and you both know it. I’m very sorry you’re both lonely, and I won’t try to say I’m not lonely, too. I never used to think I was, but since coming here…yes, I realize I am. I do care for you very much, and…silly as it might sound to you…I’ve started to think of you as a friend. But that doesn’t change the way things are, or the way they’re going to be. A month or so from now, you’ll forget all about me.

  “So what I’m saying is…you can either help him or not, he’s going to do whatever he wants anyway. You don’t need to convince me of anything, and neither does he. I should not even be part of your decision as to what to do or not do. The world would go on even if you did kill me accidentally, and nothing would change, so why is anyone even worrying about it? I was just fooling myself if I thought anything could change. I forgot myself, but I remember now, and I can thank you and Hadrian and your absurd bickering for that.” She forced a smile and went to her room, closing the door behind her.

  She was wrong about her tears drying up for good. She went to the bed and laid down, muffling them in the pillow. Rupert and Hadrian both had keen hearing, and she needed to be alone.

  This is how it is, and how it’s always been. You’re being childish for crying over it, she chastised herself.

  She hated that she’d let herself forget. How had she done that so easily?

  Grace heard a knock at the door. She turned her back to it, having no intention whatsoever of answering. Then she heard voices on the other side of it, raised.

  They’re arguing again. Hadrian must have heard what I said to Rupert. Grace groaned, throwing an arm over her head to cover her ear. How many explanations do I have to give before even one of them will accept how stupid this is?

  She closed her eyes, accepting defeat.

  Hadrian had not only heard everything Grace had said, but every word had felt like a knife twisting into him.

  She doesn’t see herself clearly at all…she says nothing can change, but she’s changed me. How can she not see that? he thought in frustration. Does she not realize what it was like for me before she came?

  She sounded like she had given up, and this thought was unbearable like little else was. He had to make it right, he had to show her how wrong she was. There was no just forgetting her and moving on, not for him. How could he swallow the poison now, knowing what she’d think if she knew about it? His life might turn back into a hell of remembering he couldn’t escape from if she wanted nothing more to do with him, but he couldn’t forget her now any more than he could forget the dead and the pain that he’d caused.

  He went out into the hallway and nearly fell over what could only be Rupert, still standing between the work room and Grace’s room.

  “This is your fault,” Rupert hissed. Hadrian could hear the low rumble in the back of his throat as he spoke, and it raised the hairs on the back of his neck. “You couldn’t leave me alone, no matter how much it hurt her, and now you just heard what you’ve done. After all the death you’ve caused, you’re still destroying anyone who has the misfortune of coming across you!”

  Hadrian swallowed hard, feeling like he’d just been punched again, but he said, “I didn’t argue with myself, Rupert, and I’m not the only one who has been talking to her, saying things that hurt her. I know you’ve been trying to poison her against me since you became a man again, knowing all the while that she’s come to care for me. You had to know that would hurt her, but you did it anyway. I understand why you d
on’t want me to have any happiness, and I’d personally agree with you that I deserve none, but Grace? Do you think she deserves this, too? Has the wolf no loyalty, if the man does not?”

  “Don’t speak to me of the wolf,” Rupert snarled. “The wolf would be pleased to tear out your throat for what you’ve done- for all you’ve done. My brother was all I had once, and you took him away from me. Now that I have found something else, you’ve been hell bent on taking her away too! I can give her a life, a future, and you can’t.”

  “It’s not your choice, it’s hers,” Hadrian said quietly. “I’m sorry about your brother. I’m sorrier than I can say for what I did. But Grace was wrong, this isn’t about me or you. It’s about her. She’s become important to both of us, and she needs to know that there is no leaving here with nothing changed.”

  He groped his way around Rupert, who remained unmoving, and reached for the door and knocked.

  There was no answer.

  “Well, it looks like she’s chosen,” Rupert said tersely. “Now leave her alone. I’ll speak with her whenever she’s ready to come out. You’ve done more than enough.”

  “After all you’ve been telling her when I’m not around?” Hadrian let out a dry laugh. “No, absolutely not. It’s her choice, but it should be one based on the truth, not on what you want her to think.”

  “I’m telling you, Murderer, to get away from the damned door and leave her alone,” Rupert’s voice was climbing in volume. Hadrian felt the air around him begin to chill. He grasped his magic to himself and saw Rupert’s magic was once again spiking and flickering.

  “You’re letting off magic, right now,” Hadrian said angrily, frowning. “Are you going to keep denying it?”

  There was a moment of silence, then: “I’m not. I would know if I were. You would know if I were…because you sure as hell wouldn’t still be standing there when I told you to move!”

  “What kind of a future do you imagine giving her if she can’t even stay under the same roof without risking something happening to her from your magic?” Hadrian demanded. “How can you even try to control it if you won’t even admit it’s happening?”