Chapter 50 Evera
EVERA
At the edge of the woods, Neirin dismounted and peered over the river’s edge to the rushing water below.
This was the sixth time we’d stopped, and he was growing irritated.
“It is as I said.” He kicked a rock, and it splashed as it met the rapids.
“There is no place this river can be crossed, aside from the bridge.”
In front of me, atop my mare, Calix remained still, his back warm against my chest, his frame slight.
I, too, held back any response, knowing Neirin would only shut me down as he had at my last suggestion.
This side of him was new to me, but I empathized with it to an extent.
He was only frightened for our safety and unnerved by the position Calix and I had put him in when we insisted upon this path without any plan.
A plan was what we needed.
When Neirin rolled his shoulders and sighed, turning back to me with tired eyes, I held a hand out to him.
He cleared the short distance to Sorrel’s side. “I’m sorry for being so sharp-tongued.”
Shaking my head, I offered him a smile. “It’s been a long day.” As I spoke, the corners of my lips turned down, my thoughts returning to Ruairc. A knot formed in my throat, and Neirin squeezed my hand, a gesture of support.
“We’ll rest, reassess things at dawn.”
“What of the huntsmen?” I queried.
Lifting Calix off Sorrel’s back and setting him to the ground, Neirin turned his gaze to the Edthiel Mountains, just visible above the treetops to the south.
“I suspect they’ll return home to nurse their wounds and retrieve their horses.
Only a fool of a huntsman would return to Astraea after failing her.
It’s likely they’ll avoid her and avoid the capital, as we should be doing.
” His statement ended with pointed inflection.
“You know I can’t stand by knowing those children—” I glanced at Calix. “Not when there is something I can do to help.”
Neirin only huffed and helped me dismount Sorrel.
I’d spent the better half of the morning while we rode going over Calix’s notes and discussing his findings with him.
While some plants’ potency lay in their petals, others in their seeds or roots, I could not be certain what part of the elusive plant we would need to create the brew.
We would have to use the entirety of it.
In time, I could analyze the results of my findings and create a more precise tincture.
For now, a general tea would have to suffice.
But what if it doesn’t?
It was Neirin’s concern too. If we were to produce the brew, break into the castle, seek to remedy the children, and the tea proved ineffective— No, there was no use riddling over what-ifs. I would leave the worrying to Neirin, as he seemed intent on doing so regardless.
By dusk, we’d tied the horses and set up a makeshift camp for the night. We had no fire, as Neirin suspected it might draw the attention of soldiers stationed out at the bridge downstream, but the evening was comfortably warm, and we had prepared rations to fill our bellies.
Propped against a boulder, I sat with Calix leaning against me as I stroked his hair, the curls atop his head thick and soft. The last rays of light cast through the trees and fell upon cheeks still rounded with youth as he dozed.
“When we were tied to the tree,” Neirin started, voice low so as not to wake the boy, “my thoughts turned to your dagger. I know you are not ready to speak of it, but I resented not knowing something so important to you as I faced death.”
My fingers stilled in Calix’s hair just as a breeze caught, sending a shiver down my spine.
“You carry it again.”
The dagger remained sheathed, strapped to my hip with the belt Ruairc had lent me.
“Yes,” I said.
“If you are not ready to speak of it—”
“No.” I resumed my absent stroking through Calix’s hair.
The boy’s nose scrunched as if he were in a dream, then the creases softened again.
I sighed. “I am ready.” Not because Neirin had broached the subject, but because of the child who leaned against me.
Because of those we were going to rescue from the Queen’s hold.
Because of Ruairc’s words, when he told me to embrace the broken parts of myself.
“Aureus and I lived on the streets with our mother when we were children,” I said.
“One of the men that Mother took to bed—” I swallowed.
“He did not want her. He took my innocence, robbed me of the chance to choose for myself how I wanted to give my body, and killed Mother when she tried to fight him off.” It was easier, somehow, to say the words than I’d expected it would be.
Painful, but freeing too. Like I’d needed to voice them, needed to no longer carry the burden alone.
Sitting beside me, Neirin tensed, but he said nothing, only let me speak.
“It wasn’t until a few days ago that I recalled the events. The nightmares I’ve had all my life—they were fragmented glimpses into that night. Mother’s scream, Aureus hiding, my wrist being grasped, being tugged from my brother.”
When I quieted, Neirin buried his nose in my hair, his breath warm as he exhaled heavily.
I carefully moved my arm, and Calix snuffled in his sleep, readjusting himself with his head turned away in my lap. Drawing my dagger, I held it up to the last light of the evening. “It belonged to him—to the man who hurt me.”
“You defended yourself.” Neirin’s words came across as a statement, not a question, and I turned my chin to look up at him and meet his eyes.
I began to form the words to question him, but he spoke first. “You’re brave.
” He placed his left hand on my heart. “You have a fire within you. I saw it the first time I set eyes upon you.”
Turning my gaze back to the dagger, I let Neirin’s words sink in.
Was I brave? Or was I only rash, a fool, always lunging before I thought?
Perhaps there was no difference between the two.
“When I slashed the man across the face, his eyes pooled with hatred. I thought he would kill me, too, but a knock on the door of the pleasure house room we were in startled him, and he fled out the window. It didn’t matter that I cut him.
It didn’t make a difference or change what happened before I got my hands on his knife. ”
Neirin took my hand in his, coaxing me to turn the dagger. Its mirrored surface not only reflected the light, but it also reflected us. Neirin’s eyes were pained, as if he’d seen a ghost. “It made a difference,” Neirin said, swallowing.
I looked up to him again and found his face had paled. “Neir—”
He blinked as if clearing his thoughts. “You showed that man you did not fear him. And even if you could not take back what he took from you, in standing up for yourself, I believe you set forth on the path you’re on today.
I believe your action was the first spark of your fire.
And now—” He smiled, and the color returned to his face as he kissed my forehead.
“Now you burn brighter than any hearth, any wildfire.”
His words melted the edge of nerves the subject had brought, and I hummed, the corners of my lips turning up.
I sheathed my dagger at my hip, and with that, released the remnants of my fear of the man who’d hurt me all those years ago.
There was no way of knowing if the man was dead or alive, living in the streets or in an estate.
If he did live, he would see the scar of my mark each time he caught his own reflection.
And if he were to cross my path again, I would detect him in a heartbeat.
He wouldn’t hurt me again. Though that pain would always exist to an extent, I didn’t have to let it weigh me down anymore.
Neirin was right, something had sparked in me that night.
Embrace the broken.
Was that what Ruairc had meant? That without the moments that shape us, we are nothing more than a mold of everyone else?
Was it my broken pieces that made me unique, bold, and that fed my fire and strengthened my resolve?
And Neirin—he, too, was broken in his own ways.
Perhaps I was the broken piece to complete his puzzle, and perhaps he was the same unto me.
“Neir,” I said, breaking the quiet. “What happened to your guard uniform? The night of the festival?”
He nodded across the river, to the thick forested wood on the other side. “It’s still there, I suspect. I shed it when I shifted.”
I sucked in my bottom lip as an opportunity came into view before me. One Neirin would never agree to. Perhaps it was time for me to be brave again, to take the first step.