28. Eva
Chapter 28
Eva
W e sat at a long ashwood table in front of enormous open windows that overlooked Esterra—a city of domed spires and stained-glass windows, rising from the swirling sand. The heady scent of the hanging gardens on a balcony below wafted toward us in the breeze, the greenery a stark contrast against the white sand dunes in the distance.
Despite the view, I hadn’t been able to stop staring at my uncle. The resemblance was obvious now that I knew to look for it—the color of his eyes and raven-black hair, the slant of his brow, even the way he held himself. Something inside me ached at the living reminder of my dad, a pang going through my chest at the small mannerisms I had forgotten about so easily.
Eliav had brushed away any further talk of what we had come here for until after the meal. The heaping trays of grilled meats and eggplant, olive oil doused dips accompanied by warm flatbreads and crudité, eggs baked in tomato sauce, and artfully arranged fruits had kept our hands and mouths far too occupied to hold more than the most basic conversation.
But I could feel him watching me too, those familiar eyes seeming to catalogue my features as diligently as I had his.
My stomach stuffed to bursting, I pushed back my chair, walking to the windows to take in this new city. What I assumed were palace guards were training in a lower courtyard, flames shooting in carefully controlled bursts down the line of similarly leather clad soldiers. The way the elemental fire users wielded their magic seemed more like a dance than anything else as they twisted and swerved, their movement flowing yet precise. Unable to help myself, I copied some of their motions with my fingers, my darkness flowing around them like black flame.
A particularly wild blast from below made the hair on my neck rise as, for a second, I saw the fire that had consumed my home around me, felt it licking at my heels as I ran?—
“Impressive, aren’t they?” Eliav said from behind me, making me startle enough that he raised a brow.
“That they are,” I agreed, noting Bash’s eyes on me…along with a protective surge of concern in response to whatever old terror I had sent down our bond. I sucked in a carefully counted breath through my nose, hearing my father’s voice as I let it out slowly. Grounding myself back in reality as I pretended to still be watching the training below.
“My Kingsguard are the best in the realm,” Eliav continued. “Though your anima and his coterie might disagree.”
I shrugged with feigned nonchalance. “I haven’t met a lot of fire users.”
Though Alette’s fireball tearing through Morehaven had certainly shown me what they could do.
His gaze fell to my hands, then back to my eyes, where I belatedly realized my darkness must still linger. “Your father wielded darkness too.”
I hadn’t known that. While I knew about my mother’s light, the bittersweet realization that I shared my magic with my father but could never talk to him about it, learn from him…It was yet another injustice of his murder, another thing that had been taken from me.
The declaration took me so off guard that I blurted out, “You look so much like him.”
Eliav flinched, almost imperceptibly. “When my brother disappeared in the night with his children, I never expected them to return without him. I had hoped we would one day be reunited here.”
“Then you should be willing to fight against the king who killed him,” I said firmly. “To ally with your family, before it’s too late to stop him.”
“What I know is that the False King is buried beneath rock and stone and ice,” Eliav said with a condescension that made my blood boil. “That my brother fled because of him, and never came back.”
“But I did,” I whispered. “As did my brother. And we need your help.”
“You’re far too revealing to play the game of kings,” Eliav said, his voice sincere for once. “Though your father was never one for politics either, despite his station and Celestial ability.”
“Lucky the game I play is for High Queen,” I said, matching his tone while trying my best to share a confidence I didn’t feel. Though my parents’ stringent strategy lessons had prepared me more than I realized, it was another thing entirely to take on the role that was needed of me without feeling like an imposter.
His mouth quirked, just a hint of a dimple forming on the right side of his mouth. “Then I look forward to seeing if more than just his darkness was passed on through you.”
I tried and failed not to tense as a blast of fire so hot I could feel it rose from the Kingsguard in a fiery inferno, more than one of them adding to its fury. They were putting on a performance for me, I belatedly realized. A way to show off their might, no doubt ordered by the king beside me.
Did he know the exact circumstances of how his brother died? The fire wielders that had terrorized us on the False King’s orders?
If he didn’t, I wasn’t about to offer to tell him.
I tilted my head as I realized that no one had told me something important. “Do you wield fire too?”
In response, Eliav let out of burst of blue flame so hot, I could feel it prickle against the skin of my face despite the space between us. It swirled upwards in a tight spiral before dissipating into falling embers.
“Not Celestial,” he said, so casually I knew it must bother him. “But powerful enough to rule this part of the realm.”
Everyone was watching us now.
“I wouldn’t be so foolish as to discount any display of power like that,” I said with a shrug. “Nor expect magic to have anything to do with what it truly takes to rule.”
Eliav stilled, as if shocked, before quickly recovering. The first crack in that careful mask of his I had seen yet. “Your mother told me something similar once. Perhaps you haven’t been taken over by dark magic after all.”
I tried not to let the longing that overcame me show on my face, even as I knew I had failed by the way his eyes softened, just slightly.
“Happy to hear I’ve passed your test,” I said coolly, still not over the affront to my anima .
Spinning on my heel, I walked back to the table and sat next to Bash, leaning back into the arm he had draped over my chair.
Noam offered me a tiny porcelain cup he filled with coffee from a brass pot. He smiled as I gave him a nod of thanks before taking a sip. “If it makes you feel better, we hoped the son of our Imyrian friends hadn’t become what was claimed.” He turned to Bash. “Especially after you fought so bravely in the last war.”
Bash lifted his own cup in acknowledgement. “I understand that there’s much at stake here. But rest assured that we’re not the ones trying to trick you with false narratives.”
Noam nodded politely, though I doubted we had yet convinced him.
I turned to him. “If you don’t mind me asking, what is your magic?”
“Air and wind and open sky,” Noam replied with an easy smile, a swift breeze whipping around the table. “Though I’m sure you know all about that form of elemental magic,” he added, lifting his chin at Yael in acknowledgement.
Yael was chasing some hummus around on her plate with a piece of grilled carrot, her expression slightly pinched—as it had been since the moment we had arrived. The concern in Marin’s eyes had me wondering what exactly she was sending down their bond.
“How did an Esterran end up in the court of the Southern King, so far from home?” Eliav sat across from me, gesturing with a hummus-covered piece of flatbread. “I always meant to ask you during the war, though it never seemed the right time.”
Yael bristled almost imperceptibly. “I’ve considered myself Imyrian since I was adopted by one.” Her fingers twitched toward her opposite arm—towards the faded scars I knew lay there, the reminder of the monsters that were her Esterran parents. She stabbed another piece of carrot a little too violently. “Esterra is not my home.”
Noam’s eyebrows flew up in surprise, but Eliav merely smiled, if insincerely. “Strange how war can displace so many. I take it you have no family here then?”
Yael scowled slightly as she shook her head, picking up a goblet full of green-tinged wine and taking a large gulp.
“We’re her family,” Marin said a little too sharply, as Rivan let out a low sound of agreement. Bash nodded definitively, even as I saw him shoot them a warning look, as if gently chiding, We’re here to make allies.
I cleared my throat. “In any case…perhaps it’s time to discuss why we’re here.”
“Ah yes,” Eliav said, sitting back in his chair. “Another war.”
Bash mimicked his stance, his voice casual in a way that I knew was calculated. “We wouldn’t be here asking for your assistance if the fate of our realm didn’t hang in the balance.”
My blood heated at seeing this side of him—the king he was, even if he would always be just ‘freckles’ to me. From the ghost of a smirk that crossed his face, I knew he had felt my response.
Eliav sniffed. “And you’re certain the savior prince is indeed the same old enemy that started it all?”
“Very.” Bash’s tone was light, only the thin streak of shadow working its way protectively around my calf under the table betraying his displeasure.
“Then it seems even fate picks its favorites,” Eliav said darkly.
Bash said nothing, though his ire rumbled down our bond.
“I would need some assurances, of course,” Eliav continued. “Something more binding than just your word. A blood oath, perhaps, that what you say is indeed true.”
Rivan lurched forward slightly, a snarl curling his lip. Yael let out a scoff like she should have expected this. I might have thought the quirk of Bash’s lips was teasing if I didn’t know better; his annoyance acerbic down our bond.
“Is that all?” Bash’s voice was dry though I could see his eyes flash, swirling faster.
“Did you expect me to go to war for you on just your word?” Eliav’s tone was more clinical than cruel. “To put my people at risk when they’ve barely put themselves back together from the last one? To believe the False King is truly behind all of this without assurances?”
Bash simply drew the dagger from his side, slicing it into his palm right below where he would receive a silvery message from me. I pressed my lips together, wanting to argue, to cry out at the very sight of his blood. But I trusted him to know how to respond.
Squeezing his hand into a fist, Bash let three drops spill onto the table in front of him before breaking the palpable silence. “The False King is back. Or, rather, he never left. He manipulated our world to his benefit, including stealing my anima from me after posing as the Crown Prince. I swear it on my magic and my life’s blood.”
He raised an eyebrow, as if daring anyone to disagree. I looked over at Eliav’s shocked face. He obviously hadn’t expected Bash to acquiesce to his demand, even if I didn’t understand the meaning of it. But the fact that Bash had seemed to have changed something significant, Eliav’s reserved calm gone in place of grim acceptance.
Bash’s blood glowed with a faint blue light, then disappeared in a wisp of shadow. I looked at him with wide eyes, but it was Noam who answered the question on the tip of my tongue. “To lie under a blood oath is to risk your magic returning to the Source from which it came. We do not take such a thing lightly in this realm, not when one misspoken word could cost the giver so much.”
My eyes shot to Bash, who simply shrugged. “We don’t have any time to waste.”
I placed my hands palm up on the table in a silent plea as I looked at my uncle. “We have to stop him. The fate of both realms hangs in the balance. And your help could make all the difference.”
Eliav stared at where Bash’s blood had disappeared, then around the circle, pausing at Yael before his gaze finally rested on Noam.
“Peace was nice while it lasted,” Noam said softly. “But we both know the price to keep it.”
Eliav nodded slowly, moving to briefly press his forehead against his husband’s before turning back to me. Whether it was Bash’s show of deference or the ugly truth he had shared, Eliav’s face was solemn as he looked at me.
“You look so much like her.”
I froze, the statement catching me entirely off guard.
A sad smile ghosted across Eliav’s lips. “It’s strange the things that are passed down from your parents. The hair, the eyes…they’re mostly hers. But my brother is present in the most innocuous things about you, like I’m seeing into the past. And if what you say is true, the bastard that took him from me was never truly punished.”
“He fought…the night Aviel came for us. It bought my brother and I the time to escape as he took the False King on.” My voice was hoarse as I asked, “Will you continue his fight?”
Eliav reached toward me, handing me a wine-filled goblet before lifting his own. His eyes softened in a way that felt familiar, and I knew I already had his answer.
“To vengeance,” Eliav intoned, raising his glass to me. “To continuing the fight. And for the realm.”
“For the realm,” came a chorus of responses.
But I stared straight into my uncle’s familiar golden-brown eyes as I echoed, “To vengeance.”
The taste of the wine on my tongue felt like a covenant. A promise bound by blood.
Bash’s hand lightly trailed down my back, breaking the spell. There was pride in his gaze as I turned to him, as something like hope flurried across our bond.
“Noam will begin the arrangements,” Eliav said. Seeing my surprise, he gave me a wry smile. “My anima was my general long before he was my lover. While our path to each other may not have been as complicated as your own, it took a war together before I accepted what he was to me.”
Noam’s smile was dazzling. “Even though I knew it all along.”
“And will never let me hear the end of it,” Eliav added with a long-suffering sigh.
Noam turned to Bash. “I assume you have thoughts about where our people should be positioned?”
Yael stood, looking around with a frown. “I brought some maps with us, if you know where they went. We have limited time to strategize before we need to depart.”
The guard by the door cleared his throat. “They must have been moved by mistake. I can take you to them to make sure you retrieve the right ones.”
Eliav nodded, looking distracted. “Escort her to my study when she has what she needs.”
Yael brushed a chaste kiss on the top of Marin’s hair before walking quickly to the door.