16. Bickering to warm the soul #2
I’d only just stepped foot into the bathroom to deal with my hair when a knock echoed at my door that made me tense. After swearing quietly, I tossed a pleading look back at the sprite hovering behind me. “Could you get that, please?”
Eilir tsked as they zipped away. “Oh, now the princess wants my help. Funny how that works, isn’t it?”
The lock clicked over, and hinges whined as I fought a brush through the tangled ends of my hair. Eilir’s indecipherable squabbling and the rumble of a masculine voice—clearly arguing with each other—quickly followed them.
I’d barely gotten my hair half brushed when Eilir shrieked out, “No! Wait in the hall, Jasper. This is a lady’s quarters. It’s not proper. I don’t care if—”
“Eilir,” he hissed back.
At least that quelled my minor concern someone other than the mage had shown up—the last thing I needed was a run-in with Maksym already, though I had a feeling the king would’ve felt the need to make his presence quite known should he deign to grace me with his presence.
I poked my head out of the bathroom and found Eilir barring the poor mage’s entry, one of their tiny hands gripping the door and the other fixed on the frame, fighting against the width of the man’s shoulders.
They were clearly fixed in some kind of stalemate, both unmoving, the mage’s hooded attention set directly on the sprite whose whole body buzzed with annoyance.
My mouth quirked as I fought my amusement.
“You can let him in, Eilir,” I called out, and both sets of attention snapped over at me. I flashed an apologetic smile before dipping back into the bathroom. “I’ll just be a minute!”
I wasn’t sure exactly when the sprite had decided they would become the protector of my nonexistent virtue, but it was endearing as all hell.
Probably annoying as fuck for the mage, but why not set the tone for him early?
I’m sure a mage of a high enough talent to be advisor to a nation like Grimmoria felt he had far better things to do than train his king’s unwilling betrothed.
The rumbling of bickering that carried across my suite left a smile on my face as I fashioned my hair into a quick braid, gave myself a head-to-toe once-over, and slipped back out into my room.
“When did Max promote you to maid, Eilir?” I heard Jasper chuckle just before I caught sight of him perched on the arm of one of the chairs spread around the fire, a wry smile gracing the exposed lower portion of his face.
I hadn’t expected something as innocuous as two beings bickering in my room to strike me with homesickness, but it did.
The mage had been plenty cordial, albeit a little formal, in the brief times I’d heard him speak, but it was a novel experience to see him so at ease with the sprite.
Eilir, who was picking up my tall boots from where I’d discarded them several paces apart from each other, stopped and turned to stare at the mage.
“They turned down my bed and tucked me in last night too,” I cut in. “A proper lady’s maid if I’ve ever seen one.”
The sprite set their stare on me, mouth gaped. As I headed over to retrieve my boots, they scoffed and squeaked, “Some of us take our duties around here seriously!”
The mage huffed an amused noise.
“I highly doubt your duties actually involve anything to do with me,” I said. “What did Maksym say you were again? An emissary?”
Eilir shook their head and dropped my boots ungracefully at my feet. “I am principal emissary of the denizens of the woods, thank you very much, and with that title comes an incredibly important secondary set of responsibilities—keeper of the house for Her Majesty, the Queen of Grimmoria.”
“Her—” I coughed and choked on absolutely nothing. “I’m sorry, Eilir, but is it not a little early for that?”
“Miss Wynn might not even see the other side of her trials,” the mage added as he came to join us. “Best not to get too attached yet.”
Now, Jasper wasn’t entirely wrong about that—and I intended to make full use of the day and get plenty of information out of him about my upcoming trials—but it clearly came as a shock to Eilir.
“Don’t you dare speak like that!” they squawked, flying right up to Jasper’s hooded face. “Enora isn’t going anywhere. The Agōn Ferr will be here and over and old news in a blink.”
Well, I was glad Eilir held enough confidence for both of us.
“We’ll see about that, sprite,” Jasper said before he turned his attention to me, and I was quick to realize the hood and shadows obscuring his eyes were going to drive me crazy.
“Shall we get going? There’s a scenic route to the garrison I’ll take you on, since I assumed Max didn’t bother with any of that, and we’ve got a bit of a…
shifter issue, so it’s better to travel in pairs. ”
Goddess, it was too damned early for me to care about any issues Grimmoria was facing, so I huffed out a dry burst of laughter instead. “You know your king well, don’t you?”
He nodded slowly. “Whether or not I’d like to.”
“Wait!” Eilir screeched.
They came buzzing right between us and thrust something towards my face. It took a solid second for my eyes to focus and realize it was a biscuit. A lumpy, beige biscuit no bigger than my thumb.
I blinked between it and Eilir, and the sprite scoffed.
“You can’t go without eating, princess.” They forced the unappetizing-looking morsel into my hand and pushed at my back a second later, steering Jasper and me towards the door. “Eat that on the way and get going, both of you!”
For only having half his face not obscured by hood or wisps of shadows, the mage looked wildly amused when my door clicked shut behind us.
I sighed. “You want to split this, or…?”
Jasper shook his head and left me to take a cautious bite on my own. It dissolved on my tongue instantly, tasted like nothing at all, and left me infinitely more confused.
“Deceiving, I know,” the mage chuckled. “But it’ll keep you going. Eilir does their best, even though sprites don’t eat.”
Taking the scenic route through Grimm’s Keep was a thoughtful gesture from Jasper, but one that ultimately felt pointless. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to tell the sprawling buildings and pathways apart—just a sea of dark stone and lush foliage in every direction.
The mage kept his commentary light as I took it all in—he seemed to be a man of selective words, after all—but when we’d turned down the supposed final path to the garrison, I knew a handful of mildly interesting facts about the construction of my new home.
“Is it always this…wet here?” I swept my hand through the air.
It was thick with mist, like the morning Maksym brought me up from my cell, and I was getting the impression Grimmoria saw more humidity in a day than Odessa did in an entire season.
“It is.” Jasper winced. “You’ll get used to it, though. It doesn’t bother me much anymore.”
I hadn’t intended to pry into the mage himself, seeing as Maksym had forcefully injected me into the poor man’s routine, but when given the opportunity…
“You’re not from here, then?” I asked. “The Wilds?”
He hesitated before shaking his head. “Wastes, actually.”
“Oh.” I realized a second too late that his sudden shift in demeanor felt an awful lot like shame, so I plastered on a smile and added, “A lot of folks from the Wastes make their way to Odessa, you know that? Many settle in the lowlands, but plenty make it up to the fortress, too.”
“I’ve heard that.”
Clearly, I’d fumbled our conversation entirely, because the mage’s downward tone hadn’t recovered at all.
“Probably half of my friends growing up came from there,” I added again, in a hurry. “I think I got along better with them than I did with any of the Odessa-born kids at the fortress.”
The mage nodded slowly. “I’m sure you did. You know, we should probably chat a bit about the Agōn Ferr. I assume Maksym didn’t go into any important details about it last night?”
Well, that was one way to kill a topic and start one I had little interest in discussing. Not the impending test of my merit, of course, but Maksym. The soldier in me was looking forward to these events, despite the circumstances. I wish I could say the same about my future nuptials.
“Are you asking if anything useful came out of that dinner?” I scoffed. “No.”
“I figured as much.” Jasper sidestepped a passing farmer rolling a cart with ease and steeped in a thoughtful pause.
“The Agōn Ferr is as old as Grimmoria, even though it’s not quite the same now. Once, in privileged times of unprecedented peace, to even be considered being a foot soldier, you had to pass all twelve of its gauntlets.”
“Twelve? Eilir said—”
“It’s only five now, don’t worry. It dropped over the millennia—one here, one there, more often than not when times of conflict arose and the king and his generals felt a pressing need to add to their ranks.
Eventually, they did away with it as a requirement for entry, and it became a test of merit for only the highest banner under His Majesty’s service. ”
For once, I was confident I knew something.
“And that’s the Elixia?” I hedged, and Jasper nodded.
“They’ve evolved over the decades as well.
For a long time, they were the king’s personal mercenaries, issuing executions to anyone who so much as looked the wrong way at the king.
But, as you may think, that caused a lot of…
hostility towards Grimmoria’s kings. So, they evolved into more of a personal, specialized guard than anything, and the Agōn Ferr became mandatory for them, but no one else. ”
As much as my head was spinning just a touch from the dump of information, I appreciated that at least one being other than Eilir was taking an interest in educating me.
“And that’s where we are today with the trial?”