Chapter 14 #4
“The world the king has made us live in,” Adan said as he took a long drink from his tankard. “All when he decided to massacre hundreds upon hundreds of people. Arriving through the cover of night to slit their throats. They showed them, though, and they did not go down without a fight.”
Anelize looked at the harshest of the Bane twins. Like how she imagined she’d looked, there was anger, pain, in Adan’s eyes. Familiar and longstanding. Personal.
Glancing around the table, the twins and Aeric all looked to be around her age, if not a bit older. They must be in the age to have been old enough to remember the attack on the Vedrans. Could it be that they were…
“There were those who survived,” Aeric murmured, as if he had heard her thoughts.
A distant look overtaking his gaze as he stared into the flickering flame of the candle on the table, the wax melting down its side and pooling around its holder.
“Not easily, and what came next was equally as grueling, but those who managed to escape the Watchmen made their way to the city. Unless Watchmen had them cut their hands to prove they could not conjure, then there was no way of knowing if one was a Vedran by taking one look at them alone. It was relatively easy to hide amongst the beggars and sleep in alleyways to go unnoticed.”
The twins appeared lost in thought as they agreed. The food on their plates going untouched.
How much had they suffered by the hands of the king when they were mere boys themselves? Anelize was uncertain if she wished to know, unable to imagine a boy like Luca running into the dead of night while his family was slaughtered in their home.
“Have you all been together since then?” she asked.
Aeric said, “Not from that very moment. We each went our own paths and somehow, they joined together years later.”
“We met”—Idris chuckled—“after those fucking Watchmen tried to round us up to be tested. Much like you, Anya, we also conjured and managed to escape. Taking a few of the king’s men down in the process.
Then, imagine our shock, when we were tracked down to this tavern by some cocky boy who entered as if he owned the place, plopped himself down on one of the stools beside me and asked if he could join us. Adan nearly killed him.”
“Nearly? He was five seconds away from freezing the air in my lungs,” Aeric attested with a grin. “I’ll never forget the shock on his face when he saw me conjure.”
“Singed one of my brows off, he did,” Adan grumbled, and Anelize could see a small scar on the end of one of his brows.
“You didn’t find it alarming that a Watchman was asking to join you? You merely trusted him so easily?” She looked between them curiously.
Idris continued. “Not at all. There were fights, both physical and verbal. Not a day went by where we didn’t try to chase him off whenever he showed up on Henry’s doorstep, asking us to let him join our little group.
The rebels were dwindling significantly, and we were all holding on by the skin of our teeth.
Henry and Zara gave us all shelter, but they weren’t fighters.
With such a bleak past, I doubt anyone thought they could hold their own against the king.
But Aeric never gave up, nor did droves of Watchmen show up to take us all. ”
His eyes shining with admiration as he looked at Aeric, Henry then said, “You never were one to give up easily. How many days did you show up before we let you in through the door again?”
Aeric crossed his arms as he sat back in his chair.
“Seventy days, give or take.”
“How old were you?” Anelize frowned as she waited for him to answer.
“Fifteen. I was little more than a guard then, not a Watchman.”
“He basically fought like one, though,” Adan said.
“Aeric is the main reason so many Vedrans have managed to escape the pyre over the years, Anya. He has been helping keep many of us safe through his cunning and careful planning. It was all his idea from the start. All as a way to be able to get to the book.”
Anelize felt herself at a loss for words.
Seventy days he’d come and gone, trying to gain all their trust. A boy by all accounts standing out in the freezing cold, being cast out by the Vedrans again and again for the title he held as a Watchman. Yet he did not give up.
Unlike Anelize, who did not know what her place among them was, Aeric had set out to make one for himself. They all had. They had not allowed themselves to become diminished.
“I merely sought to find a way to put an end to senseless suffering. I wasn’t always successful,” he murmured as he drummed his fingers over the table.
Henry crossed his arms. “History has a strange, cruel way of repeating itself. What is important is that we do not make the same mistakes as those who came before us. Trying is better than giving up entirely.”
He looked at her when he said those words, and she felt them strike true.
Anelize had felt that some part of her was missing all these years.
A connection she had never felt before, to her people and their torrid history.
She had always heard the stories from her father, told as a way to warn her away from attempting to conjure and being discovered.
Never anything more than that. Magda hadn’t cared when she’d been born without any power whatsoever.
Like her father, Magda had retreated to the city long ago to live out her life amongst the rest of the Madacians.
Perhaps because she too strived for an easier life.
How would any of them ever come to obtain such a life? Was such a thing possible to begin with for Vedrans and Madacians to live in peace together? For a hopeful such as Enid, she would probably say yes. Anelize just wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
As they finished having their dinner and Henry cleared away their plates, Anelize stood from her chair to head off to bed.
But not before she turned to face them all.
She looked to the leader of the rebels when she said with conviction.
“I’ll go. To the forest. I wish to know all that I can, if you’ll show me the way. ”
Adan arched a brow in question as he and Idris exchange a glance, but it was Aeric who granted her a sharp, haunted smile as he interlaced his fingers. “As you wish.”