Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
S unrise has never looked so beautiful, even though the clouds in the sky dilute the dawn colors until they appear rather bland. A couple dabs of pink are all that mark the moments before the sun turns the sky from indigo to cyan once more. Ayc is grateful for every millimeter of light that stretches over the horizon as he stirs the cast-iron pot over the fire. With the new light, he searches the stretches of sandy beaches and then the lands beyond until they are obscured by a town in the east. The Drakr are nowhere to be seen.
“Time to wake up,” Peregrin announces to the camp.
Peregrin has been keeping watch, even though Ayc has also been awake. Deep green streaks their face, the underlying skin grayer than normal. They have not spoken this entire time, but Ayc has caught Peregrin glancing at him. Perhaps, there's much they would like to say but will not.
Bronwen groans, lifting her face from where it has been buried in her arms. “Please tell me I smell food, and I’m not hallucinating.”
“I made cinnamon roll porridge,” Ayc assures. “I’m also boiling water for your tea.” He gestures to the kettle resting beside the pot. He still wears his gloves over the dressings Xylie placed last night. This morning, the skin doesn’t pull and ache with every motion, but he’s yet to inspect the remaining damage.
“I have no idea what cinnamon roll porridge is,” says Bronwen, sitting up and crossing her legs beneath her. Hair sputters out of her braid in all directions. She slept in her armor last night. They all did. But the purple beneath her eyes looks less like bruises and more like shadows this morning. The smile that tilts on her lips—only after she too searches the area around the camp—is less strained. “But I’m afraid when I find out, I might fall in love with you just a little.”
Ayc laughs quietly as he spoons the mixture into the bowls that he dug from Tavish’s bag. Syrupy swirls of deep brown contrasts against the paleness of the creamy porridge. “My cooking tends to have that effect on people.”
He hands bowls to Bronwen and Peregrin. He sets a bowl down beside Tavish, who murmurs a thank you without moving an inch. Ayc kneels longest at Xylie’s side. Her eyes are open, peeking from beneath the blanket that lays over her nose.
He rests the bowl on the ground to free his hands and signs, “How are you, friend?”
She tugs the blanket down a little further, and her hands appear. “How are you?”
“Asked you first.”
She sticks out her tongue. And that’s at least promising enough to make him almost believe her next signs. “I’m all right.” He arches an eyebrow, and she adds, “Promise. You?”
“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
He turns away so he can pretend he doesn’t see the protest in her hands, then ignores the soft chunk of dirt she heaves near his head to gain his attention back. Ayc dishes one last bowl of porridge and brings it to Lora.
For the last couple of hours, when Peregrin took over as guard, she hasn’t even pretended to sleep. She has stared upward at the stars above. When Ayc nears, she sits up. Her hair frizzes around her face, the curls not forming the usual taut, smooth spring. She fiddles with the clips on either side of her head to re-secure it from her face. Questions sit on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows them down, sour and bitter. He learned long ago Lora is best not trifled with before she has some sort of food and hot beverage in her system.
He offers the bowl, and she blinks down at it suspiciously. “Did you put explosive powder in this one?”
“That was one time,” Ayc says. “And we were kids.”
“We were sixteen ,” Lora corrects. “It nearly blew up in my mouth.”
Ayc shrugs. He could tell her that it was merely payback for when her Wyntra friends tied him upside down from the rafters of the stables. She stormed in to cut him down before the position made him pass out, looking utterly furious at him for wasting her time. Pouring the powder into her bowl was an impulsive, spur of the moment action the next morning.
He expected Yris to skin him alive, but she only looked at her daughter, whose nose was singed in the micro- explosion on her spoon. “Are you going to let him get away with that?” Yris asked.
He spent weeks waiting for Lora to retaliate. It never came. Maybe, she believed watching him jump in fear whenever she came near was enough retribution.
“Everyone else is eating it,” Ayc says. “It’s clearly not explosive.”
To prove his point, Bronwen swallows and hums in appreciation. “How do you make something as simple as porridge taste like it was crafted by the divine?”
Ayc arches an eyebrow at Lora. “See?”
Lora shoves a spoonful into her mouth and raises both of her eyebrows defiantly. She looks ridiculous, with a spoon between her lips and her nose wrinkling in indignation. It’s a brief flicker of someone different than the fierce warrior he knows, and a smile tugs at his lips.
Then reality hits like a lightning bolt, striking him with the reminder that she did not tell the Drakr ‘no’ . That she could be considering telling him ‘yes’. For a brief moment he’d forgotten, but now it's returned.
Ayc opens his mouth.
Bronwen stops him with a question of her own, “Who taught you how to bake?” There’s a weight to the question. She’s not just curious; she’s attempting to distract him.
Ayc moves back to the fire to pour the tea from the kettle. “My mother taught me,” he replies as he passes out mugs to everyone. Xylie and Tavish are sitting up now, Tavish feeding Saga jerky from his bag. Lora tracks his every movement. “She had a small bakery and I helped her from a young age.”
Bronwen sprinkles her packet of herbs into the tea. She waves her finger in a gesture over the cup, and a whirlpool appears like an invisible spoon is stirring the water. She must be recovered from yesterday’s strain. “Your father was a lucky man, then.”
Ayc shrugs, settling back by the fire with his own bowl of porridge. “He wasn’t around much.”
He tries to picture the wealthy merchant who showed up in the village every few months, but Ayc barely even remembers his face, just a name. Hayes Thornwell. The fact Ayc doesn't share the man’s surname, but instead, bears his mother’s—Kendra Waylonder—should have been all Ayc needed to know about him. The merchant wanted only certain things from Ayc’s mother, things Ayc was too little to understand, and Hayes wanted nothing to do with Ayc. He always left without notice, leaving behind enough coin to help Ayc’s mother keep the bakery open for a few more months. When Ayc’s mother died, he thought Hayes might show up to take him. Instead, it was Evander, a distant relative of his mother, who found Ayc and took him to Creed Castle.
“Why not?” Tavish asks.
“Didn’t want to be,” Ayc says simply. It’s a less depressing statement than the truth, the truth Ayc didn’t realize until a few months before Ayc was taken to Everadyn. At a festival in Creed Castle, Ayc saw Hayes selling his wares. Ayc was about to say something to the man, when two children and a beautiful woman approached Hayes. The reality hit Ayc like a strike across the face. Hayes was too busy raising his two legitimate children with his wife to have much use with Ayc.
“Is he who sold you into slavery to the Drakr then?” Bronwen asks, cocking her head at him. “You speak of your mother fondly, so I can assume you don’t blame her for that. But that’s the story I heard at Wyntra. That Yris found you with the Drakr and rescued you from slavery.”
The suspicion that creeps in Bronwen’s otherwise lighthearted tone causes Ayc to freeze with a spoonful of porridge close to his lips.
Bronwen sips her tea, never taking her eyes off him. “Unless it isn’t true, which based on last night, I suspect it isn’t.”
Fuck, Ayc thinks. His gaze shifts to Lora, whose eyes are narrowed at her friend.
Peregrin, too, watches Bronwen carefully over their drink.
“Bronwen,” Tavish says, and it’s both a question and a protest.
Bronwen ignores him. She balances her tea between her crossed legs to free her hands and then makes gestures that Ayc immediately recognizes as words. She’s signing . “Why exactly does Lora think the Drakr want you dead?”
Ayc’s eyes widen. As do Lora’s.
“There was a sorcerer at Velphin who was deaf,” Bronwen explains. “We were quite close.”
A line furrows between Xylie’s eyebrows. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Bronwen shrugs, like she doesn’t know. But Ayc suspects it was for this reason. Bronwen didn’t survive both Velphin and Adamant, schools known for their brutality, without having some craftiness and tricks and even a little viciousness up her sleeve. People say careless things when they think no one is listening, and she has an advantage people don’t know about. She understood exactly what Lora and Ayc yelled at each other with their hands last night— about Lora’s mother and about how Ayc is supposed to be dead.
She’s looking at Ayc like she can see straight through all of his lies. Sweat beads at the back of his neck. Ayc has too many secrets. They spin like a ball of yarn in his head. If one comes loose, the whole thing might unravel.
Lora stands. “We should pack up and go.” Her bowl remains mostly full; her cup of tea untouched. The message is clear. She wants to be done with questions. Right now.
Bronwen rolls her eyes and opens her mouth, but Peregrin speaks first.
“Go where?” They drain the rest of the tea to down the gryphon feather they put within. “We have not yet decided what quest we will try for next.”
Lora crosses her arms over her armored chest.
Peregrin sighs. “If you don’t know, there is no sense running aimlessly around. We can sit and figure it out.”
“Laud,” Lora says with a finality of someone who has just come to a decision. “We should go to Laud.”
Tavish sputters on his tea. “Laud? The land of the giants?”
Lora nods.
“Lora, pirates won’t even go to Laud.”
“Exactly.” She brushes the fingers of her opposite hand against her chronicler. “Forge a new path.”
Bronwen huffs, throws back the rest of her tea in two gulps, and stands. “Are you telling me you’re so desperate to avoid a conversation with us that you’re willing to sail all the way to fucking Laud? We’re your Five. Don’t insult us by pretending that last night didn’t happen. What are you hiding? And what are you going to tell the Drakr?”
Lora stares past Bronwen at the shoreline. Gulls cry out as they circle above the water. The fishing village to the north is already awake. Ships are setting sail from the docks and cutting across the sea. Ayc tries to deduct what the lines of Lora’s face might mean, attempting to read motivations and plans in the curve of her jaw, the outward bow of her cheekbones. He desperately wants to see something there to prove that she is something other than clay that Yris has molded and formed into her own image. But Lora remains unreadable, like a book filled only with blank pages.
“Lora?” Peregrin presses when she’s been silent far too long, using their cane to push to their feet. “What are you going to tell Lahlis?”
She inhales sharply through her nose and exhales the answer through her mouth. “I don’t know.”
Ayc’s throat grows tight. The unspoken words are suffocating him, so he has to speak. “I can’t be one of your Five if you make a deal with the Drakr.”
Five pairs of eyes snap toward him, and they all bear different weight. Lora’s are sharp as steel, Bronwen’s wide with surprise, Xylie’s soft with understanding. Ayc doesn’t glance at Peregrin or Tavish. The others are enough to deal with on their own.
“I won’t force you to serve me, Ayc,” Lora says, ice edging her tone. “You’re welcome to leave whenever you like.”
Ayc bursts to his feet and paces a few steps away, before coming to an abrupt halt. “It’s not that simple,” he says. And you know it, he almost adds, but he grinds his teeth together, knowing the other four are marking his every word.
Lora scoffs. “It certainly is simple. I’ll even pay for your passage on a ship back to Wyntra.”
Oh, of course, she’d be ecstatic to have a reason to get rid of him. Heat boils on Ayc’s tongue, begging for release. Whatever he is about to say, he’s certain it will begin a fire he won’t be able to extinguish.
Peregrin interrupts him. “You might as well send me with him if you accept the deal.”
The white broadens in Lora’s eyes. “Peregrin…” Her voice cracks over the name, and she stops. She looks almost… hurt.
Bronwen flings her palms to her temples, shaking her head. “My divine, Lora, what is going through your head? I know you, and I know you want to tell that Drakr to go fuck himself. Don’t you?”
“Of course, I do.” Silver blazes in Lora’s eyes. Her voice shakes, unsteady with anger… but there’s something else there, too. Something a bit uncontrolled. “You of all people know what my mother’s alliance with the Drakr has cost me. Has cost the people I love.”
Xylie's breath shudders audibly as she pulls her coat around her tighter. Lora’s stone mask fractures, giving a glimpse of empathy. Her hands raise, like she might sign something, then she drops them back to her sides. She looks from her cousin and back to Bronwen.
“And to hear that my mother made a deal to become Sovereign and that Everadyn should never have rightfully been hers, makes me so…” Lora growls as though she can’t come up with the words. “I have exhausted myself these last few months trying to figure out why my mother would choose now to step down, when I’m half the age she was when she became Sovereign, younger than any Sovereign in history. All along it’s because she bound herself to the Drakr all those years ago, and the price she was willing to pay in exchange–” Her voice doesn’t break, but something groans beneath her flat tone, like steel placed under too much pressure. Her voice would shatter if she was made of something less strong.
Ayc, though, is made of weaker things. He is made of dough and cinnamon and other fragile creations. Hearing that creak in her voice nearly undoes him. It’s evidence that he isn’t the only one who remembers that day. Perhaps, he’s not the only one who grieves what happened there.
“What did she do?” Bronwen asks, her voice gentler now.
Lora squares her jaw and says nothing.
Bronwen sighs. “Lora, we can’t help you if you don’t tell us what?—”
“Creed Castle,” Peregrin says.
Though their voice is quiet, its impact reverberates around the camp. Ayc closes his eyes to brace himself against it. He tries not to let himself go back to that day, but the memories live just a thought away. The blood. The screams. The fear.
“Peregrin, how dare you!” Lora snarls, fierce enough Ayc’s eyes fly open. “You know what my mother has done to keep that secret.”
Peregrin shrugs. “I know what your mother is capable of, Lora, but you chose me as your Third because I challenge you when you need it. And secrets have no place between you and your Five. We can’t make decisions to protect you and Everadyn if we do not understand everything in play.”
Lora’s sharp canines grind into her lower teeth, then slowly recede back to points that match Ayc’s own human mouth. Her fingers twitch at her side, like they would tremble if she let them.
“Creed Castle,” Tavish repeats, dropping his fist that was pressed to his lips. “Do you mean that your mother was responsible for the massacre at Creed Castle?”
Lora’s shoulders fall. “Yes.”
Tavish releases Saga’s guide handle as his face blanches from its rich black to a muted gray. Even the blue brushing his cheekbones seems to dim its vibrancy. “Oh… fuck…”
Saga takes advantage of the new found freedom and bolts into the nearby grass. He yips happily. Tempest lifts her mighty head from where she’s been slumbering, her beak still bloody from whatever her midnight meal was. Both creatures seem oblivious to the tension.
“In Adamant,” Bronwen says in little more than a whisper, “in Battle Tactics class our first year, we learned about the massacre of Creed Castle. No one understands how the Drakr did it, because the wards should have kept out anyone not human or not escorted by a human. You suggested to the professor that Aluina was betrayed. It’s because you knew.”
Lora nods. She doesn’t tell Bronwen that she was there, and Ayc doesn’t speak. That is Lora’s truth. She can confess it if she wants.
Bronwen goes on, “Your mother killed the royal family and everyone else within the castle. The wards were tied to the royal family bloodline. So long as someone of the royal family lived and remained within Aluina, the wards couldn’t fall. So Lahlis had your mother kill them all. Nothing could stop the Drakr from overrunning Aluina, then.”
Ayc tries to draw in a breath, but it gets stuck before it reaches his lungs. The memories rush in. Blood. Screams. Silver at his throat.
“But why everyone?” Tavish’s voice sounds distant. “The stories I heard… it wasn’t just the royal family who were killed. It was everyone in that castle.”
“I don’t know,” Lora says. Her fingers twitch again, and she wraps them around the hilts of her blades. The same black hilt she held in her hands ten years ago. “It was the order the Drakr gave. No one was to be left alive.”
Her eyes flick toward Ayc. Ayc dares to look back, though he knows it’ll make the little air he possesses in his lungs disappear entirely. Their gazes lock, and the tension sparks between them. They’ve never discussed what happened that day, but it lives like a wildfire between them, pushing them together and forcing them apart because it burns to be near. The connection blazes brighter in this moment, like a blade glowing red in the heat of a forge’s fire.
Bronwen follows Lora’s gaze and turns to Ayc. He watches the pieces snap together for her and hates the way her fierceness crumbles to sorrow.
“According to the Drakr, you’re supposed to be dead,” she repeats. Her hands press to her lips. “By the divine, Ayc. You were there.”
Fabric brushes against Ayc’s arm. Xylie stands beside him now, even though he never noticed her approach. She doesn’t reach out again or look at him. She's simply there, at his side, and he’s grateful.
“You’re divina,” Tavish says, tracing the circumference of the mark on his arm. “Did Yris spare you because of it?”
Ayc grinds his heels into the sand, anchoring himself against the rush of emotion, so he can keep his voice steady. “Our stories are quite alike, my friend.”
Tavish tucks his head and runs the pearl at his throat between his fingers. “Really stings, doesn’t it?” he murmurs at last .
Ayc barks out a one-syllable laugh—utterly humorless. “Yes, it fucking does.”
Silence blankets over them, heavy with the truth. Ayc uses the quiet to calm the chaos with him. He inhales slowly, the air sharp with the salt, and watches as Saga continues to romp through the grass. He scampers around Tempest, occasionally dropping low and wagging his butt as though inviting Tempest to play. Tempest inspects her paw and the lethal claws at the end, as though coolly contemplating the consequences of ending the beast. Somehow, Ayc knows she wouldn’t ever harm Saga. At least, not much.
Perhaps the innocence of the creatures gives him courage, because Ayc dares to speak. “Don’t take the Drakr’s deal, Lora,” he pleads. “Please.”
“I want nothing to do with the Drakr’s deal,” she snaps. “But I need time to consider the consequences. I suspect Lahlis won't take my refusal well. He could offer the deal to someone else. Can you imagine Marcellus with the help of the Drakr? Or maybe they won’t form another alliance. Maybe they will just punish me instead.”
“I doubt they would jeopardize their alliance with Yris by killing you,” Peregrin states.
“You overestimate my mother’s affection for me. Even so, that protection hardly extends to any of you. They could kill all of you. And even if somehow we survive it, what happens if I win without the Drakr’s help? What happens if I start my role as Sovereign making it clear that I’m not interested in playing nice with them the way my mother is? I’ll make an instant enemy. I understand that all of you hate this situation. Believe me, I do, too. But none of you are foolish enough to think it’s a simple choice. ”
But that’s just it. To Ayc, the answer is simple.
No. No. A thousand times no .
“I get it, Lora,” Tavish says softly. “I get that sometimes we have to make allies of the people we despise, if only to survive.” He stiffens, seeming to sense all the focus that locks onto him, and he hurries to add. “I’m not saying that you should work with the Drakr, but it would be foolish not to think it through.”
“I need more time to think. So I plan to walk back to Duell.” Lora points over her shoulder to the city in the distance, the one their airship landed in. The walls can be made out if Ayc squints, still a few miles walk. “And figure out when there is a ship headed east. Until then, give me time.”
Another heavy silence falls. Ayc feels every little sound in his head. The fire’s crackle, a gull’s call, Bronwen’s sigh, Peregrin’s fingers drumming on their cane, Saga’s yipping and Tempest’s growl. Then one by one, everyone nods. Ayc nods last, reluctantly, but what choice does he have? Going back to Wyntra would only mean Yris sending him right back here, after inflicting whatever punishment she justifies.
Lora bends to roll up her pallet, and the rest turn to do the same. The porridge he made sits, almost untouched, in six separate bowls. Ayc dumps the remnants of the hot water on the fire. The flames sputter out and die, leaving only smoke curling up from the ashes.