5 #2
"—and the archive wing's been sealed off for repairs going on three years now," Yeva was saying, turning a small ward over in her hands with genuine, unfeigned interest. "No one on staff can read the old warding scripts properly anymore.
It's a dying craft, apparently, and here I am standing in front of someone who clearly hasn't let it die. "
"Restoration work on old wards is a different discipline than carving new ones," Ilinca said, cautious, though I could hear the current of genuine interest running underneath the caution. "Reading someone else's warding line without breaking it takes—"
"Skill you clearly have, or my brother wouldn't have spent an entire market morning standing in your stall pretending to discuss trade routes.
" Yeva said it with a perfectly straight face, and I watched color rise fast in Ilinca's cheeks and felt something in my own chest do the same rusted almost-laugh it had done two days before.
"Yeva."
"I'm simply stating facts, Kason." My sister didn't so much as glance at me, entirely too pleased with herself. "Castle Ironmoor. A proper commission, proper pay, and a chance to work on warding scripts older than either of our families' claims to the throne. What do you say, Ilinca Hollow?"
I watched Ilinca's eyes move from Yeva to me and back again, weighing something I couldn't fully read — the notice still pinned to the market post, the magistrate who now knew her name, the careful, hard-won smallness of six years standing at the edge of a decision that would end it either way, whether she said yes or stayed and waited for the Council's registration order to find her regardless.
"I'll need to close up my stall properly," she said finally, quiet, and something in my chest that had been coiled tight for two days finally, finally let go. "And I'm not doing it for the coin."
"No one said you had to," Yeva said, warm and satisfied, already turning to arrange the details with the brisk efficiency of a woman who'd gotten precisely what she came for.
"Welcome to Castle Ironmoor, wardsmith. I have a feeling you're about to make the archive wing far more interesting than it's been in three years. "
I said nothing, because there was nothing safe left to say in front of my sister, and let Yeva handle the arrangements while I stood at the edge of Ilinca's stall and felt, for the first time in weeks, something under my sternum settle into a stillness that had nothing to do with an Alpha's command and everything to do with the simple, dangerous fact of watching her decide to come with me.
The fisherman who worked the stall two down from hers — Dobrin, Yeva had already learned his name within the hour, the way she learned everyone's name within the hour — took the news considerably less gracefully than either of us expected.
"Castle Ironmoor," he repeated, arms crossed, looking at Ilinca like she'd announced she was walking directly into a wolf's den, which, I supposed, from where he stood, wasn't an unreasonable read of the situation.
"You've spent six years making sure no one important ever looked at you twice, and now you're riding off with the crown prince's sister on a whim. "
"It's not a whim. It's a commission." Ilinca's voice held steady, though I caught, underneath it, the distinct defensiveness of someone arguing a decision she hadn't fully finished making peace with herself. "Proper pay. Proper work. I'd be a fool to turn it down."
"You'd be a fool to trust a castle full of wolves who've never once had a reason to look out for someone like you."
"I have a reason," I said, before I could stop myself, and both of them turned to look at me — Dobrin with open suspicion, Ilinca with something more complicated I didn't have time to read before she looked away. "I'll see to it she's safe. That's not a promise I'm making lightly."
"Promises from princes don't tend to mean much to people like us," Dobrin said, not unkindly, though the edge under it was unmistakable. "No offense meant, Your Highness. Just experience talking."
"None taken. You're not wrong to be careful with her." I meant that more than the polite phrasing let on, and something in the way I said it must have carried, because Dobrin studied me a moment longer, weighing whatever he found there, before some of the suspicion eased.
"Look after her," he said finally, to me, quiet enough that it wasn't for the market to hear. "She'd never ask anyone to. Doesn't mean she doesn't need it."
"I intend to."
He nodded once, sharp, and turned back to Ilinca to say his own goodbye, and I stepped back to give them the moment, watching the easy, unforced affection between them with something that wasn't quite envy and wasn't quite anything else I had a ready name for.
She'd built a life here, small and careful and entirely her own, and I was about to walk her straight out of the middle of it into a world with much sharper edges than a market square's coin disputes and runaway carts.
I told myself, riding back toward the convoy camp that evening, that Yeva's plan was sound. That a royal commission was the safest shelter available to a rogue the Council hadn't yet decided to notice. That I was doing this to protect her, and nothing more complicated than that.
I did not, riding back through the gathering dark with her scent still caught somewhere at the back of my throat, entirely believe that either.