Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In the late hours of the night, the Weatherstones and Corvines were in the castle infirmary.
Aurelia had watched the Order as they ventured down here.
It felt like an uninvited guest had helped themselves in her home.
Not like the nightmares, the battle sounds quiet by now, but still.
It set Aurelia on edge. She was happy to see them wait outside, only Leo joining her mom as she and Kayce went ahead into the infirmary.
Her mom had resolved to treat every cut and scrape despite Aurelia’s insistence that she was fine—genuinely, this time. She was so pale, so tense, Aurelia acquiesced for fear that her mom might crumple.
Where was her strong, resolute mother? It was like it was unbearable for her to be here, despite her mom’s best efforts. Though seeing to the princes’ injuries seemed to give her purpose.
“I said I’m fine now, Mom.” Aurelia pulled her neatly wrapped hand back. “Jace needs your attention more.”
The crown prince waved her off from the next cot, despite being in the worst shape of them all. His dog Fallon curled at the foot of the cot, assessing anyone who dared come close to his master with small growls.
“They’re all surface wounds,” Jace assured, catching the Lioness’s glare.
“Which you shouldn’t have in the first place,” Lioness Silva stated, thumb hooked onto the four pearls at her throat. “You should have let the guard handle it.”
“We trained them better than that, love,” Lion Magnar said from Terranth’s cot, a healer stitching up a bite mark on his son’s leg—also at Jace’s insistence. “You know they would never stay back.”
Color splotched her high cheekbones. “He is the heir—”
“Ma—Mother.” Jace’s tone held growing authority, but was still full of respect. “I apologize for your worry. But I cannot apologize for defending our people and our home.”
“It’s I who must apologize.”
Everyone turned to Fee. She stood in the doorway, wings out of sight. Her gown was spotless once more, the pale blue darkening her skin yet brightening the beads and shells woven into her braids. Her demeanor was solemn despite the lightness of her attire, her brow lowered.
“I failed as the Norenthian guardian,” she said, straightening like a soldier before her commanding officer. “It was my duty to monitor these boundaries. I should have known Adrian’s movements, the small rifts he found here. It is an error I will not make again.”
Studying Fee, Aurelia knew why she took this so personally. Fee had been at the tavern when the nightmares first broke into Highguard. She was having fun, her guard down. And this could be the moment it snapped back up, permanently.
Terranth moved to stand, waving the last healer to be excused, but Aurelia spoke first. “We can all assign blame to something we did or didn’t do.
Something to atone for the guilt we feel for what happened today.
The damage done, the lives lost.” Aurelia’s throat tightened.
She was speaking more to herself than anyone.
The captain had given the report to the Lions after seeing to his soldiers in the barrack’s infirmary. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but there would be empty beds tonight. And that was enough.
Aurelia cleared her throat. “The only failure here is with the Flameheart who betrayed his calling.”
Leo nodded, looking at her mom. “The rest of the Order is waiting in the hall.”
“Whatever needs to be said can be done with us present,” Kayce said from Aurelia’s side, a few stitches on his cleaned forehead.
Her mom, who had been unnervingly pale and withdrawn since her arrival, twisted her lips to the side. “I don’t think that’s wise. Not with the Order’s current climate.”
“That’s a kind way of putting it,” Leo muttered, arms crossed. “We’ve mucked things up enough. I’m done dancing around matters. Perhaps meeting the Weatherstones will make the others see what’s at stake.”
Her mom’s spine was an unbending rod. “But what about Lia’s Transcription—”
“We’ll discuss that.” Leo’s face softened a fraction. “Don’t worry.”
Aurelia watched her tension ease. Mom had asked her to keep her ability a secret, but there had been no avoiding it with the minotaur.
And it wasn’t like Aurelia knew the Order would be standing right there, ready to help after she had done all the work.
But Aurelia was smart enough to try to keep any conversation on her pen-less work to herself.
If Mom was so tense, there had to be a good reason.
Fee went and returned with the rest of the Order after acquiescence from both Leo and the Lions.
There was ample space for everyone in the infirmary, which housed twenty beds with only three occupied.
Kristof remained standing by Terranth’s bed, the Lions flanking Jace.
Her mom decided to tend to the crown prince with the infirmary workers excused.
Reynaldo whistled low, eyeing the arched windows and detailed stonework bordering each before easing himself beside Mirel on a cot.
She fidgeted with her pen, sleek and bronze with a pearl tip.
And then there was Mikayla, eyeing Aurelia when she entered to take her place beside Leo.
Aurelia met her stare until Mikayla shifted her gaze. “We shouldn’t do this without Veera.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this at all.” Leo sighed with impatience.
Gone were the niceties, the soothing of tension.
Fatigue lined his face; disappointment furrowed his brow.
And sorrow embittered his tone. “Julian knew. He knew everything. And he was the only one trying to do right by our creed—our true creed. We might as well return our embers for all the good we’ve done with them. ”
“He never told us,” Mirel defended. “Not about the Seekers getting the Initiis, or that it actually existed!”
“Not like he could when he believed there to be a traitor among us,” Leo pointed out. “He didn’t know who until it was too late.”
“No one knows how the First Rift was sealed, exactly,” Reynaldo mumbled.
Aurelia frowned, sharing the expression with Kayce. “For readers, that’s pretty poor record keeping.”
Leo rubbed the back of his head in thought.
“I believe the first Order thought it wise. Less temptation to repeat history if the future, quite simply, didn’t know it.
It’s a theory, since the Initiis has never been seen and mentions of it in the most ancient of Flameheart texts are vague at best. Adrian has access to the Celestium Librus; it makes sense that he would’ve discovered the truth, bookworm that he is. ”
Silence filled the room and despite its spaciousness, it felt like it was getting smaller. They all knew who was missing. Aurelia struggled for a full breath, her mind racing as the Order looked at her.
But then she paused. Breathed. Let the thoughts drift, slow. She didn’t fight them.
The tightness eased. Aurelia relaxed.
And she told them.
She started from the beginning. Papa had been urging her mom to move back, to help him with the worsening rifts.
He saw them throughout the realms, his duties taking him to creations hurt from encountering the rapidly increasing tears.
He feared it was only a matter of time until they grew on Earth.
For worlds to even succumb entirely to them.
Aurelia had spent the most time with her papa leading up to his death.
He was increasingly absentminded, worried.
Preoccupied. He’d found records of the Initiis, fearing Seekers had access to at least one piece thanks to a Flameheart who found it within the Emperium.
It wasn’t until that six-eyed owl appeared in his garden, both a warning and confirmation. He had called her mom that evening, saying he had proof. Then came the accident. Adrian had been watching the house. Knew her papa had Transcribed the owl. Knew he had been compromised.
Aurelia swallowed hard, unable to continue. The others could draw their own conclusions from there. At the beginning of her story, Kayce’s hand had slid into hers, and she had yet to let go. She gave it a squeeze.
Leo sighed heavily. “This Order has drifted so far from what it once was. We’ve gotten lazy, enjoying the beauty and wonder of the Emperium without having to work to protect it.”
“Previous generations took care of that,” Reynaldo defended. “Are we really at fault?”
“We are when we refuse to look at the signs in front of us,” Mirel said in a low tone, her shoulders slumping. “The absence of a choice is still a choice. And our willful blindness was the wrong one.”
“Julian saw them.” Mist clouded Leo’s eyes.
“He should have been able to tell us about the tears across the spheres, his suspicions that some would worsen on Earth. When ImaginX marketed their MemoryBank, he voiced how eerily similar it was to our gift. From the whisperings of sightings in the last year alone, he assumed they experimented with tears, getting creations to Earth unharmed. He turned to Cordelia when we”—he hesitated, his voice full of conviction—“when I wouldn’t take it seriously.
And we refused to look into it until Aurelia Sparked. ”
“We’re busy,” Mikayla said, arms crossed over her chest. “We all have jobs to do, families to provide for. Did he expect us to just drop all of that to go on some wild chase across the universe? It would have been a waste of time.”
“It wasn’t a waste of his.” Aurelia stood, letting go of Kayce’s hand.
She was fed up with Mikayla’s flippant attitude.
“He found injured creations and helped them. He scoured your records for anything that might describe how the tears were worsening. He figured out the Initiis must be in play and did what he could to secure it. Before he realized there was a traitor helping the Seekers, he found at least one piece.”
“And where is that piece?” Mikayla asked, undeterred.
Elbows braced on his knees, Kayce interceded, “We don’t know. Just that Julian placed it somewhere for Aurelia to find.”