Chapter 28 Evera #2
Twisting my lips, I considered for a moment.
“What of Calix? Is there something more you aren’t telling me about him?
And are there others who know what he is?
” As I began asking the questions, more came to me.
I drew my brows together, frustrated by the onslaught of complicated implications.
“I’ve only ever heard of female Alidian.
And—” Too many questions bombarded me at once, too many ideas; I could barely speak.
“How has he learned to control his magic? What he did was targeted and purposeful, and it didn’t kill those men.
Neirin, his magic should have killed them, shouldn’t it have? ”
“That is a lot of questions.” Neirin dropped his other hand from my waist, using it to support himself as well. He leaned back slightly and held my gaze.
“I know,” I confessed.
“I do not know why people only speak of women being Alidian.” Neirin frowned.
“But I suspect there may be a simple explanation—more Alidian are women than are men. On the rare occasion a male is discovered, Astraea sends to have him collected, even if he comes from one of the cities in the west. Females are much more commonly discovered, and when their magic overtakes them and they become a threat, they are—” His frown deepened.
Handled. Taken care of. Killed.
Sorrow lodged in my throat, but I nodded and redirected the conversation. “What does the Queen have to do with the Alidian?”
“Your questions are becoming difficult to keep up with,” Neirin mock scolded.
“Astraea’s messengers are all like Calix.
She selects them, offering them the allure of a life in trade for their loyalty.
The children are trained by the castle commander in stealth and discipline.
Astraea instills them with cunning, and they study among the boys of the guard to learn literature and politics.
They are used for their skills and their discretion.
The magic, however, to my knowledge, is not supposed to used by the children.
I did not know Astraea was teaching the children to control their abilities.
Or it could be that Calix learned on his own. His restraint is impressive.”
Sighing, I scrunched my brows. There were still missing pieces, things that did not add up, but it was altogether too much to absorb at once. A single thought returned to me, turning over in my mind even as it held itself on my tongue.
“If your name is cleared,” I said, hesitating slightly, “do you believe the Queen may let me assist in her cause? I want to help those children, Neirin. I want to do good, as she does.”
“No.” Neirin’s tone was firm. “I will support you in all your endeavors, but for this one. I will not let Astraea poison your heart.” Sitting up straight, he cupped my cheek with one of his palms. “It was not in cruelty that I stated Calix would have been better had I taken his life than bring him under my care.”
“How can you say that?” I drew his hand down, hurt, confused.
Swallowing, Neirin lowered his gaze. A heat trickled from him through the invisible cords of our bond.
It was not a warmth this time, though—not affection or desire.
It was a fire. Something that burned, that caused pain.
It drew me to hesitate as I recalled his admission in the pasture of how he feared losing control to his fox, how his own distress could rile it.
Neirin drew the dark cloth of his cloak over his head and let it fall to the grass beside us.
“Restraint,” he said, “and control. They come at a great price. Whether there is kindness behind Astraea’s lessons, I cannot say. A part of me believes that in her mind, she sees herself as helping those children. In a way, I suspect similar to how she was ‘helped’ when she was young.”
“Neirin, what are you saying?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“She is like Calix.”
My mouth gaped. I shut it, dismissing each question as it rushed over me before I could voice it. What I needed was for Neirin to finish his explanation, so I remained quiet, still, even as the breeze caught my hair and sent a chill down my spine.
A muscle at his jaw flexed before he crossed his arms and grasped the hem of his shirt.
Arms above his head as he withdrew the linen garment, the muscles of his torso bunched, and I swallowed, taking him in.
His body was taut, his skin stretched over muscles formed by years of training.
Despite the weight of our conversation, the sight of his bare chest distracted me, if only for a moment.
“I’m trying to be serious,” Neirin said as he tossed the top aside.
Reluctantly, I raised my eyes from his waist, where a distinct V shape led to the band of his pants. I found his gaze set on me, one dark, teasing brow raised.
My cheeks heated. “Yes, I know.” Huffing a breath, I regained my composure. “Go on.”
The corners of his lips twitched in the faintest of smiles before fading to a more somber expression. “At the festival, you asked me about my scars. Do you remember?”
I nodded.
Neirin took one of my hands in his. He brought it to the chiseled ridges of his body. The set of his jaw was a firm reminder, and I swallowed, forcing my mind to focus even as the coiling in my belly tugged at my consciousness.
Steadying my breath, I lowered my gaze to where my hands rested on him.
The white line of a rough scar traced from his collarbone to beneath his ribs, and another ran above his navel.
Other smaller scars left pale lines and uneven ridges.
They marked the brutality of his occupation. They spoke of his strength.
“Not those,” Neirin said, his voice soft, vulnerable.
I continued my exploration. As I did, I sobered, desiring to memorize his body so I could know him by touch alone. Closing my eyes, I trailed my index finger from his chest to his navel, then stopped. Brows drawn, I traced up again.
I opened my eyes and studied a faint raised line. The scarring was so subtle it was nearly undetectable. Yet, when I became aware of them, I found them to be everywhere. Like the branching roots of a plant, splitting again and again until the lines dissipated and a new section began.
“The marks of Astraea’s lessons.”
My heart caught, and I shook my head. “I don’t understand—”
“All magic, Evera, is dangerous. The Alidian’s and my own. Magic brings death, pain, and suffering. Astraea has learned how to temper that innate danger. I suspect she is mirroring her own upbringing, but I have no way to be certain.
“The connection between my kind and the Alidian is a secret held by only those who possess such magic. The Alidian feed on my blood and the blood of others like myself. And while it doesn’t cure them of their affliction, it tempers it, in a way.
For some time, they can control themselves with less effort.
Still, it takes discipline to learn restraint.
When one of Astraea’s messengers slips up, begins to lose control, she corrects them. ”
“Corrects them?”
“Yes.” Neirin released a long breath. “The scars are a mark of her magic, of the static pain she strikes upon us to render us useless, unable to do anything but fall to our knees. She is strong, and she knows how to harness and control the output of the power she generates. Knows how to give just enough to make us submit, to remind us of the necessity of control and obedience without killing us. And though I do not need to feed on blood like the Alidian do to control my magic, learning that restraint took the same lessons, the same reminders.”
Sucking in my bottom lip, I shook my head and raised my eyes to his. “Neirin, how many times did she do this to you?”
The heat that radiated from him—that coursed through our bond—intensified, and when he spoke, his voice broke.
“Many. The pain,”—he swallowed—“it is indescribable. Yet when that power courses through my body, my fox submits without fault. Just as the Alidian’s magic submits to Astraea’s.
She has incredible power, and though I cannot explain how it works, we sense it. We learn control through suffering.”
“That’s horrid …” Blinking, I cleared the blur of tears from my eyes. My heart pounded in my chest.
“It is necessary,” Neirin said, wiping the wetness from my cheek with his thumb.
“It has taught me to restrain my monster, or at least it has aided me in doing so. Sometimes, when my turmoil is too much, he is impossible to push down.” He lowered his eyes.
“It is why, I think, that I crave violence at times. Yearn for a fight. When facing death, he quiets. All thoughts quiet. Nothing else exists.”
Words eluded me, so I took his hand in mine.
A tremble shuddered through him, and the fire built.
He touched absentmindedly a spot on his neck, one I’d noticed the night of the festival but thought little of at the time.
“Even Astraea, with her age and power, cannot control the chaos the magic gives her. Only the blood of the gods can do that.”
Following his touch, I evaluated his neck and found dozens of small slits that had healed over, although time had not fully concealed them.
Cuts from a blade. “Your arm.” My memory flashed to the stable, to Neirin’s wound when he’d returned from the fire with Calix.
Turning my attention to the spot, I found countless others, some overlapping.
“The children feed there. They do not have the restraint Astraea has not to drain my blood.”
It was madness. Impossible. How could such a world exist outside of what was known?
The children feed there.
“And Astraea, she—”
Neirin took my fingers delicately, keeping them at his arm.
“First, here, when I was young.” He swallowed and put my fingers to the marks on his neck.
“When I became a man, she took to me. Did not—” He swallowed hard.
“Could not force me to bed her. But she took power, pleasure, from the places she drained my blood. Perhaps she wanted me, perhaps there was an attraction, or perhaps it was only in her mind, another way to control me, belittle me. Maybe it was a way to look past my father’s betrayal. ”
My heart sank, and I sucked in a breath to regain myself. “Your father?”
Neirin nodded and closed his eyes, brows scrunching. He shuddered as he inhaled sharply. With unbearable force, the fire within him branched through the bond. The burning, searing, inescapable suffering was tangible. It could not only be felt, but tasted, heard.
I choked on a sob. A pounding filled my head and shook my body. Through the searing heat, Neirin’s hand clutched the back of my neck. A connection, a tether. Without thought, I let him pull me into his embrace.
He buried his head in my neck and breathed in my scent, his breath ragged.
In that instant, I became starkly aware of the smells of tilled earth, of pine trees, and of the brisk air before rainfall.
His scent. My mate’s scent. Through the shudders, I held on to that, let it fill me, and as it did, the heat began to subside.
He held me like that until the pain fell away, until the sounds of the crashing waves and the calls of the petrels returned. Until I felt the breeze on my skin and the world returned around us. And even then, he continued to hold me, needing this as much as I did.
With his vulnerability bare before me as he sought comfort in my scent and touch, I accepted our bond. There would be no forgetting him, no way to move on in my life without aching for this connection. This was raw, honest, and unbreakable.
One of his hands wrapped my waist, and the other wove through my hair. His lips brushed my neck, and his exhale heated my skin. His chest thrummed, and our hearts matched pace.
The intimacy of this moment was so much more than we shared in the tower. So much more than anything I’d ever shared with someone else. My soul called to him. Spoke that he was mine, and I was his, and this … this was everything.