CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In an ideal world, Ilain would never have left her parents’ home in Faurna. She would have grown up among the rolling moors, riding horses through the heather, and enjoying a small life.
Instead, her skin itched, and her hair was greasy.
She’d been traveling so long that she should have become used to dirt under her nails and the constant ache in her limbs.
It wasn’t her age that made the journey difficult.
Being a forty-three-year-old Mage was not the same as being a regular human in their forties.
Magic kept her from feeling the natural weakening of age.
Her muscles were still strong, her body in its prime.
No, the bone weariness within came from a distinct incongruity to who Ilain really was at her core.
Using the back of her wrist, Ilain brushed the hair from her eyes.
Her fingers were caked with spices as she seasoned the rabbits.
As she finished her task, she handed them over to Auden—some for drying, others for dinner that night.
The meat sizzled in the pot, letting the scent of robust coriander and sharp rosesprig drift through the air.
Tucked between her brother and her betrothed, Ilain glanced longingly at Brea and Isla, lounging a few feet away and teaching Thom the rudiments of the Schonese language.
She didn’t particularly care for their company—though she loved her sister-in-law and did miss Thom’s regular conversation, oddly enough—but she envied their freedom from the slime and sinew of raw rabbit.
Ilain was a woman who liked being a woman.
She enjoyed the finer, more feminine things life offered—dresses, of course, and regular bathing being chief among them.
But she also loved embroidery, poetry, music, drawing, and dancing.
She liked grand parties, palatial luxury, and overindulgent food.
Her life as a Mage granted her access to many of those things.
Yet, it also came with the weight of injustice.
If Ilain could have chosen any life for herself, she would have remained in Faurna, non-magical and insignificant. She would have still worn many beautiful dresses, danced at all the local parties, and maintained the freedom of the tranquil life she truly preferred.
No one would guess that Ilain desired such a menial life. She’d worked hard to ensure it. Why should she—the ostentatious, flippant, reactive flirt—care to live a life of tedium?
Don’t let people know what you value, and they can’t take it away from you.
That was Ilain’s guiding principle in the thirty-two years she’d lived in the Order of the Flame’s tower. It was the only thing that kept her safe, kept her sane. The mantra and Auden.
Handing another fillet to her brother, Ilain smiled to herself. Auden had always been there for her. Even when he traveled for his work as a magister, he sent her constant notes to keep her company. And he had never been gone for long.
As a viceMage, Ilain’s duties kept her bound to the Order’s tower continually.
When the breadth of her magic had been discovered, she quickly became a political figurehead, a symbol of power, both for the Order and for the Alliance.
The people began to recognize her as Pyra reincarnated, and she’d climbed ranks quickly throughout her youth, moving from probate to aterian within ten years, a pace unheard of amongst the Orders.
Yet, she’d never spent her time hired out as a regular aterian would.
Not with the power she wielded.
The Order of the Flame’s archMage, Hybold Daleran, saw Ilain’s potential from the start and wanted to ensure she never got away.
Unlike the other aterians produced by the Order, he wasn’t willing to sell Ilain off to the nobility’s highest bidder.
She was more than a simple guard, he’d professed.
She was an asset to the whole of the Order.
And so, he set her up to become his right hand, training her in politics and nurturing her mind as well as her power.
“It will be good for you, Lainy,” Auden had told her. “These are the skills you’ll need when things change—when you run Doorstunds Reach.”
They’d always been careful when discussing the Alliance within the Order’s walls.
No one would be shocked to hear that Ilain aimed to take ArchMage Daleran’s place.
But they needed everyone to believe it would be upon his retirement and not through a coup that overthrew all the Orders and the monarchy itself.
“Do you really want to rule . . . or is it just what’s expected of you?”
Ilain glanced at Ethenn on her other side.
He was almost finished butchering the rabbits while she and Auden prepared and preserved them.
How had Ethenn known her doubts? After all these years of preparing to become the Highlady Chancellor of Doorstunds Reach, Ilain harbored her uncertainty deep within.
She hadn’t even voiced her hesitation to Auden—and she told Auden everything.
Yet, somehow, Ethenn suspected the truth.
Perhaps that’s why she liked the young man so much. He was vastly observant and keenly alert. He knew her and her heart without needing a word to be spoken between them, which was strangely touching. It made her feel seen in a way she had never been in her entire life.
Vayden dropped down beside the campfire.
His tunic collar was rimmed with sweat from training.
On the far side of camp, Hewitt’s ghost stood with Deckard, Evylin, and Rafferty.
Ilain was glad for their final days with the man, even if she still found his ghostly presence unsettling.
It wasn’t natural, no matter how safe Lord Obel claimed.
And she knew that it made Auden uncomfortable as well.
“That’s exhausting,” Vayden said with a huff. “I haven’t trained so hard in years.”
Auden and Ilain shared a grin. “You are quite old,” she teased. Though Vayden was only four years older than her, his non-magical body had experienced the rigors of age. And despite his lifetime as a spy impersonating Prince Rouland Blount II, he’d been out of the service for the past seven years.
“So are you, Lain,” he returned good-naturedly.
Ethenn shifted uncomfortably beside her but kept his eyes down.
However, Vayden caught the movement. Ilain saw the shift in her eldest brother’s demeanor. He remained playful, but his eyes studied the young Warrior with pointed interest.
Casually, Vayden cleared his throat, gaze locked on Ethenn. “While the others are distracted,” he said, a light tilt to his voice, “I think it’s the perfect time for me to do a little brotherly bonding.”
Ilain snorted, hearing the truth behind his words. “You mean brotherly interrogating,” she said.
“Not at all,” he argued. “I’ve hardly gotten to know my little sister’s betrothed. Seems an error of my judgment, and I’d like to rectify it.”
Ethenn hardly looked up from his work, his hands preoccupied with skinning the last of the rabbits. “What would you like to know?” he asked, sounding neither forthcoming nor perturbed.
Ilain smirked. This was the same Ethenn who sat across from her beneath the willow two nights ago: reserved and guarded but smart enough to know he couldn’t completely ignore the questions in front of him.
Why is he so closed off? she wondered. What has caused him to cling this tightly to self-preservation?
Ilain knew why she protected her innermost self. She hid her truest values so others couldn’t exploit or take them from her. But what caused Ethenn to defend his secrets so fiercely?
“Well,” Vayden began, “you’re a soldier now, but I know that’s a recent development. What were you before?”
“I was a hunter,” Ethenn said flatly. “But when I wasn’t in the woods, I also worked in my uncle’s smithy to pick up the slack.”
“Sounds like you were busy.”
“I was.”
“And where did you live?”
“A small town in Estshire,” he explained. “I believe we’ll pass by on our way to the Terrae Keep.”
Ilain perked up. “We will? Does that mean I’ll get to see your hometown?”
Ethenn shrugged. “I’m not sure if we’ll actually ride through Trollenston, but perhaps. Though it isn’t much to see.”
“Does your family still live there?” Vayden asked, and Ilain tried not to flinch. It was clear by Ethenn’s avoidance of her own questions about his family that there was something damning he didn’t want to say.
Ethenn’s jaw tightened, but he replied, “Some.”
“Do you have any siblings?” Vayden asked, either unaware of Ethenn’s discomfort or not caring to acknowledge it.
With a final flick of his knife, Ethenn ripped the hide from the rabbit’s muscle. He deftly slit it from neck to bottom and began to flay it from the bone. “A sister,” he said.
Ilain blinked in surprise.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Auden said.
Ethenn shrugged. “It never came up, I suppose.”
Vayden smiled brightly. “Older or younger? No, let me guess.” He held up a hand, considering. “You’ve got a protective ‘weight-of-the-world’ sort of manner. The kind that demands you take care of those you love, even to your own detriment. You’re the eldest, aren’t you?”
Ethenn made his final slits to deconstruct the mammal, then handed it over to Ilain for seasoning. “Yes,” he said without emotion, then stood. “Excuse me, I need to wash up.”
And with that, Ethenn walked away.
Ilain and her brothers watched him thoughtfully.
“Is he usually so withholding?” Vayden asked quietly.
Ilain turned back to him with a pointed stare.
“I’m just curious, Lainy,” Vayden said. “He’s your betrothed, which makes him my brother. It makes him family. Yet, neither Auden nor you knew he had a sister?”
“Like he said,” Ilain replied, shaking the jar of spices over the fillets of deep pink meat. “It never came up.”
Auden nodded. “We don’t exactly sit around telling childhood stories.”
“And Ethenn is reserved,” Ilain added. “He doesn’t tell you things if you don’t specifically ask about them.”
“I know you, Lain,” Vayden said. “Family is important to you. You asked, and he lied.”