Chapter 6
After a week spent in the Drakarri stronghold, Evran is finally feeling comfortable enough in his own skin to develop something resembling a routine.
The structure helps quiet some of the anxiety that still wakes him in the middle of the night, that whispers reminders about how precarious his position here truly is.
He spends his mornings and midday meal with Eira, working in the gardens outside the wall and learning more about the medicinal properties of mountain plants.
Their conversations during work have become easier, more natural.
She tells him about the books she likes to read—mostly histories of the clan and collections of old stories passed down through generations.
She confesses her dreams of traveling outside the mountain peaks someday, of seeing the ocean she's only read about in books, though she admits the idea terrifies her as much as it excites her.
In turn, Evran finds himself sharing memories of his siblings, carefully edited stories about growing up in the south.
He tells her about Merona's love of music, how she could pick up any instrument and coax beauty from it within days.
About Nathaniel's talent with horses, the way animals trusted him instinctively.
He leaves out the parts about his father's coldness, the constant pressure, the feeling of never measuring up.
Afternoons are split between two very different activities.
Several days a week he sits with Aether on the weaving terrace, his fingers growing more deft with each passing day at manipulating willow and thread.
He's found himself surprisingly good at the detailed work, and besides that, he actually enjoys it.
There's something meditative about the repetition, the way a basket or piece of cloth takes shape under his hands through patient, incremental effort.
The other afternoons he spends running practice drills with Kellin in the training grounds.
The weapons master is patient but demanding, correcting Evran's form with sharp observations and occasionally demonstrating moves with a grace that makes them look deceptively simple.
Evran is learning the basics—footwork, guard positions, how to read an opponent's body language for tells about their next move.
Then he cleans up for the evening meal, scrubbing away dirt and sweat before joining the communal dinner.
He sits among people he's beginning to know by name now—Aether and her quiet husband Tormund who works in the forges, a young couple expecting their first child, an elderly man who tells stories that make the whole table laugh.
The conversations wash over him, warm and inclusive, so different from the tense formality of meals in his father's house.
After dinner, he returns to his chambers to read from the small collection of books Leona has lent him—histories of the clans, practical guides to mountain survival, even a volume of poetry that surprises him with its beauty.
But he doesn't go to sleep—not for hours yet, not the last few nights anyway.
Instead, he lies in bed staring at the ceiling, watching moonlight creep across the stone walls, until restlessness drives him from the comfortable warmth.
He waits until the moon is high and bright in the sky, until he's certain most people have retired for the night, before he leaves his room and heads down the dimly lit hallways that, by this hour, are mostly empty.
There are guards making their rounds—the Drakarri take security seriously even in peacetime—so it's not like he couldn't be stopped if he was doing something outside the boundaries set for him.
But no one so much as blinks at seeing him walking through the stronghold in the middle of the night.
A guard nodded to him the first time, just a casual acknowledgment of his presence.
Since then, they've simply let him pass without comment.
He makes his way out of the keep and picks his way through the moonlit paths around the perimeter to where he knows the training grounds are. The mountain air is cold at night, sharp enough to make his breath visible, but he welcomes the chill. It helps keep him alert, focused on why he's here.
He's been doing this several times over the past week, always waiting until most everyone else has turned in for the night or at least retired to their rooms. It's not that he thinks he'll be stopped from using the training grounds—Kellin said they're available to anyone who wants to practice.
But he doesn't want to bother anyone with this undeniable itch underneath his skin, this desperate need to be more.
More useful. More self-sufficient. More reliable.
More worthy of keeping.
The thought drives him forward even when his muscles scream protest, even when exhaustion makes his movements sloppy.
He knows his residence in the Drakarri lands is tentative and could be taken away at any time for any reason.
Vaike made that clear—he has to prove his worth, has to earn his place every single day.
One misstep, one failure, and he could find himself sent back to face his father's fury.
Because without this new life, what does he have?
He can't return to his father's estate. He has no money or possessions to his name beyond the clothes on his back.
And beyond a basic knowledge of cultivation and weaving, he has no real skills to offer.
Right now he's digging in the dirt and tending vegetables—work that, if he's honest with himself, almost anyone could do.
A task that could easily be managed by someone with more experience, more strength, more of everything he lacks.
This was the problem before too, wasn't it? His father had looked at him and found him utterly worthless. That's why he'd sent Evran away in the first place—because the only value Callum could see was as something to be traded, used, discarded when no longer useful.
The training with Kellin is going well—the weapons master has even complimented his progress, saying he has good instincts if somewhat unrefined technique.
But Kellin has many students to teach, and Evran has other responsibilities that limit how much time he can spend in formal training.
A few hours every other afternoon isn't enough.
He needs to improve faster, needs to prove he can be an asset rather than a burden.
So he practices alone in the dark, pushing himself through drills until his arms shake and his lungs burn.
He knows the basics now—knows the proper stance, the correct grip, how to transition between guard positions.
What he needs is repetition, muscle memory, the kind of automatic response that only comes from doing something hundreds of times until your body knows it without thinking.
For a week now Evran has been coming out here after dark, training by moonlight in an attempt at staving off the doubt that creeps into his mind during quiet moments.
He spends hours performing the maneuvers Kellin taught him, pushing his body past fatigue in an effort to get stronger, faster, better.
By the time he drags himself back to bed, his limbs and lungs are burning with exertion, sweat cooling uncomfortably on his skin despite the mountain chill.
And still he pulls himself out of bed each morning when the sun rises, joining Eira in the gardens even though every muscle protests the movement. His hands shake sometimes from exhaustion as he works the soil, and more than once he's had to pause and close his eyes against waves of dizziness.
Eira has noticed the shadows under his eyes, the way he moves more stiffly as the week progresses.
Yesterday she'd asked if he was sleeping well, her voice gentle with concern.
He'd deflected with a smile and a joke about adjusting to mountain beds, but her worried look had followed him for the rest of the day.
But her kind words don't ease the voice in his head that says he's not enough—that he's never been enough, will never be enough no matter how hard he tries.
Tonight, Evran arrives at the training grounds fully expecting to have the space to himself as he has the previous nights. Instead, he finds it already occupied with the one person he's been carefully avoiding, the one man who is capable of taking everything away from him with a single word.
Vaike stands in the center of the grounds performing basic combat forms with a training sword, his movements flowing from one position to the next with the kind of effortless precision that comes from a lifetime of practice.
He's stripped to the waist despite the cold night air, and the muscles of his back glisten in the moonlight with a sheen of sweat, flexing with each controlled motion.
He looks every part the warrior trained from birth—someone who wields a sword like it's an extension of his own arm and moves gracefully through every dodge and parry as naturally as breathing.
The moonlight catches on the tattoos that spiral across his shoulders and down his spine, turning them silver against his skin.
Evran freezes in place at the edge of the training ground, his breath catching in his throat.
His heart hammers against his ribs, sending blood rushing in his ears.
He doesn't know whether he's more affected by the unexpected sight of all that bare skin and controlled power on display, or by the fear of finding the very man he's been trying to avoid here in front of him.
This is the man who looked at him with such disgust in the audience chamber. The man whose approval he desperately needs but is terrified to seek. The man who holds Evran's entire future in his hands and could crush it without effort.