Chapter 21
EVERA
The smoke in the air enhanced the vibrancy of the sunset, painting the sky a deep blood-red hue. The sun, dipping near the horizon, appeared a blinding white beneath the black cloud of ash carrying west from the fields.
Though the day was warmer, the earth held a chill, and the bones in my fingers ached as I worked weeds from our garden.
My pile was growing impressively, but there was still much work to be done.
As there always was this time of year. Weeds to pull, dirt to till.
The ground needed to be prepared before seeds could be planted.
Wiggling a particularly stubborn weed with fine, splintering hairs along its base, I cursed under my breath. It snapped at the root, and I stood, throwing its upper half to the pile. Cursing again, my eyes turned to the stable as they had several dozen times in the past hour.
I’d been crouched down, working, when Neirin had mounted Sorrel and taken her from the pasture. Though I suspected his use of her was related to the fire, it was still unacceptable.
With a hiss, I returned to my task. Scraping dirt aside with my fingers, I took hold of the stubborn root and yanked—only to hear the sickening snap as the stem broke in my hand again.
“Fucking—” I stood and kicked loose soil over the remains of the root. Good enough. My eyes rose to the double stable doors, and I brushed my hands on my skirts, dirtying the fabric.
Making up my mind, I crossed the garden and unhinged the simple wooden gate.
The stable was just across the cobbled road, and as I entered the building, I lowered the hood of my cloak. The usual greetings I received were lacking; the horse’s soft nickers were replaced with stepping and snorting. It was the smoke, their instinctual fear of fire.
Leaning against one of the stable doors, I held a hand out and clicked. The black stallion at the back of the stall tossed his head, and a fog of warmth clouded from his flaring nostrils.
“It’s alright,” I said.
The creature’s ears twitched, listening to my words, and after a moment of hesitation, he crossed to me. With slow movements, I stroked the side of his face, and the muscles at his neck quivered.
Hooves on the stone outside drew my gaze, and I caught sight of Neirin’s back as he rode past the double doors.
“You brought her back,” I spoke loudly to draw his attention. Neirin looked over his shoulder, and Sorrel stopped. His eyes met mine as I paced to stand in the doorframe. “You stole my mare.”
Neirin grunted, and for the first time, I noticed the figure of a child in front of him. Lying the lifeless form over Sorrel’s withers, he dismounted, then hefted the body over his shoulder.
“Borrowed,” he countered, hooking his free arm over Sorrel’s neck and guiding her past me into the stable.
“What—” I cut myself off as Neirin passed me; the dark curls of the child strung over his shoulder bounced as he walked. “Is that child … dead?”
Turning back to me, Neirin stopped and frowned. Sorrel, the headstrong mare she was, made her way to where hay littered the floor in small piles, fallen from the overhead attic space where it was kept.
“If he were,” Neirin said coolly, “things would be much easier for him and I both.” Then, as if the situation I’d somehow become drawn into was commonplace, he nodded behind himself to where Sorrel pushed her nose amid the hay on the ground. “Your mare is disobedient.”
“She’s fine,” I said, the words sharp as disbelief held me in a state of shock. A lack of what to say numbed my tongue.
Neirin ran his hand back through his hair, causing his hood to fall.
He sighed. “It was suspected that raiders had set fire to the farmland to the west. I went to lend my aid.” He peered around me to the stable doors.
“You do not need to whisper. It is unlikely anyone will return to the stables for some time. The fire has all free hands occupied.”
Abandoning my whisper because it was easier than arguing a moot point, I returned to the topic of importance. “You went to lend aid, yet you returned with an unconscious child?” As I spoke, my mind cleared enough to address the most pressing of issues. “Lay him down, let me look at him.”
Neirin obliged, lowering the boy unceremoniously to the dirty stable floor. When I knelt before them and shot Neirin a pointed look, he drew his brows further in and retorted dryly. “Where did you want me to lay him, Evera?”
Because there was no good answer, as there was no better place to put the boy, I huffed my frustration. “You did not answer my question.” I lowered my head and rested my ear on the child’s chest. It rose and fell steadily.
“It is not a simple question to answer.” Crouching, Neirin propped his arms on his knees, his gaze watchful.
Checking the boy’s pulse and finding it steady, I turned my attention to his head, searching for any obvious lumps. “Try.”
“There is nothing wrong with him. He will wake in a few hours,” Neirin stated calmly. “And I know the boy. He is a messenger from the castle.”
I stilled in my task. “I recognize him.”
“You do?” Confusion laced his expression, his silver eyes slits.
“I saw him at the festival.” It was unimportant, though, so I moved past it. “What happened to him?”
“He is exhausted, that is all.”
Nothing about the lifeless child before me implied a simple state of deep sleep, but I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with him.
Sitting back on my heels, I rubbed my eyes.
Emotion, pressed down in the initial moments of shock at seeing the listless boy, returned to the surface.
I drew in a steadying breath to keep my voice level. “Why are you staying in Elrune?”
Neirin’s expression softened. “Until I hear back from the huntsman I’ve sent to the capital, I have nowhere else to go. For now, I must just”—his eyes cast to the child—“avoid drawing unnecessary attention to myself.”
I offered a faint, sarcastic noise.
“Admittedly, taking the child in further complicates things.”
“What will you do with him?”
Neirin sat back, leaning against a post. With the dying sunlight coming into the barn at an angle, his profile cast a stretched shadow along the dirt flooring.
“I do not know,” he admitted. “There was a vulnerability to the boy tonight that softened me. If I cast him out, he will die.” His final word hung solemnity around us.
There was something about the boy Neirin wasn’t disclosing, yet the weariness that darkened the skin beneath his eyes told me that was a question for another time.
“You care for the boy?”
Neirin turned to me, and the light fell evenly across his face, painting him in a glowing warmth.
The length of his lashes caught, dark like his brows, despite the pale silver of his hair.
They framed his eyes in such a way that my heart thumped against my ribs.
“No,” he said, and turned his attention back to the child. “No, I just empathize with him.”
The response took me by surprise, and hesitantly, I reached out a hand and placed it gently atop Neirin’s arm.
For a long moment, the stillness of the stables held us. The boy’s chest continued in its steady rise and fall. The horses in their stalls snorted occasionally or shifted their hooves in place. When Neirin finally spoke, his voice was distant.
“Boys like him and I, we never got the chance to be children.” A muscle at Neirin’s jaw flexed. “We live our lives fully for the purpose of devotion to another. Him by necessity, me by … By the regrets of my past and an obligation to my brother.”
With each statement Neirin made, he somehow became more elusive.
More shadowed. I’d come to the stables to await his return, to confront him, to curse him for his insolence.
Yet sitting beside him, his arm beneath my touch and the marks of his bond, our bond, stark and undeniable, I could do nothing but remain still.
Quiet, listening, and wishing I could understand him better.
“The first time I killed, I was nine.” He kept his eyes cast away, and the muscles beneath my touch tensed. “Before joining the guard, all boys are expected to perform a blooding. A first kill to show they have the stomach for such a life. I was … weak as a child.”
It was hard to imagine the man beside me as anything but powerful, confident in his abilities. Yet the heaviness of the moment we shared hinted at a more fragile part of him. An aching desire to learn this side of him, to unravel the depths of his past, tugged at me.
“As the trial drew near, I became frantic. It was Astraea who … reminded me of the importance of it all.”
“What of your brother?” I asked, hesitant to break his trail of thoughts, but unable to connect the brother he’d hardly spoken of, to taking a role in the guard.
Or why a Queen would worry herself with the fate of two boys.
Perhaps Neirin and his brother were orphans who were taken in by her. “Is your brother a messenger?”
Despite the weight in the air, the corners of Neirin’s lips turned up, and he laughed. A quiet, almost hesitant sound, but there was amusement in it, and when he turned to face me, the dimple at his right cheek showed. “He is not a messenger, no.”
I held his gaze; the striking silver of his eyes was all-encompassing. Warmth flooded my body. Not as it did when I felt desire, nor even as it did when I felt deep care for Aureus or Farren or Renna. It was as if I could feel the depth of his eyes in my soul.
Before I could find my breath, regain my composure, and voice another question, Neirin brought his right hand to my cheek and stroked once with his thumb, the touch so incredibly light. My eyes fell to his lips, and my heart caught, but he withdrew his hand, resting his arm atop his knee again.