Chapter 16 - Shattering Shackles
Callan
My mother glanced down at her cup, taking a spoonful of sugar before stirring it into her tea. The silence that lingered between us made my skin crawl.
“Callan...”
“She’s an imbuing mage. I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t need her magic.”
My mother’s gaze snapped up to me. It was the second time her eyes had gone wide.
“I thought I could feel magic around her.” She lifted her cup to her lips, blowing the steam away before she took a delicate sip. Her eyes slipped closed as she savored the flavor.
We sat in silence as my mother took two more dainty sips then set her cup down on its saucer with the tiniest clink.
“This was the second attack in three weeks,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’ve lost six guards. Poison was used this time, and they’re getting more brazen.”
Again, silence, as my mother gazed down at the steam wafting up from her cup.
“People hated me before because of the blight, but now?”
“I never wanted this for you.” She gazed over at me with pity in her eyes. “I didn’t want you associated with your father’s brutality.”
“I am exactly what my father wanted.” I took a deep breath. The truth could not be changed. “I am his perfect weapon, and I may never be seen as anything else.” I let the moment settle between us before I continued, “I was a monster before, but once my magic manifested?”
“Callan, you’re not a—”
“Am I not? I am seen as the face of his war.” I closed my eyes, taking long, deep breaths as I lifted my hands in front of my face. “The death I have dealt with these hands...”
She squeezed her eyes closed, a tear slipping over her cheek. “I am sorry, my son.”
“For what? For your husband creating a monster? Or that your son is the reason our world is slowly dying?”
She shook her head before her eyes dropped to her tea again.
A long silence stretched between us, and I didn’t know if I had the energy to fill it.
Eight years had passed since I’d been sent away, and it felt like an eternity and yet no time at all.
We had been dreadfully close when I was an elfling.
Now we were two souls, lost in my father’s labyrinth of demands.
“Please know if I could change this—”
“Don’t,” I said as I shook my head. “I know.”
There was nothing more she could do. She had already made dangerous decisions in my youth to try to protect me.
In the end, she was a prisoner in her own home, no more in love with my father than I was.
She knew the price she would pay to leave.
He wouldn’t kill her, but he would make her wish she was dead.
“If I could have taken you away from all of this...” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but the words hit me as though she’d shouted them at my face.
“So many times I’d wanted to run with you to the Breven Mountains.
To find the other frost elves. To keep you safe.
” Her eyes were rimmed with tears as her words sank in.
I shook my head. “I haven’t come to make you feel guilty for something you couldn’t change.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, another tear slipping down her cheek. “I just...I need you to know that every day I wish I could have been brave enough.”
Our eyes met, and in that moment, I could see all my mother’s regrets in the lines of her face and the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. I swallowed hard, wishing I could pull her into my arms like I had when I was younger. To hug her like I had before my magic had manifested.
She stood abruptly, sending me back in my chair. “I’ll remove the girl’s shackles under one condition.”
I stood, trying my best not to burst out of my skin with instantaneous happiness. “Anything.”
“You’ll leave tonight with the girl. I’ll send you by frost phoenix.”
I was too stunned to speak, yet a piece of me knew why.
My father had likely already been given word I was in his palace, possibly even that I’d brought a human.
That he hadn’t already stormed in to confront me proved he didn’t deem my presence important enough to justify disrupting his usual schedule.
“I...”
“Please, Callan. Your father should not be—”
“We’ll leave tonight. As you ask.” I blinked a few times, willing my eyes not to well with tears. It was pathetic, but I missed my mother, and just being in her presence for a short time was not nearly enough.
“I’m sorry, my sweet son.” She reached forward as if to touch my face but froze when I pulled back.
Perhaps her own powerful magic would protect her from mine, but I would never take that risk. The sadness in her expression was immediate, and I squeezed my eyes closed.
“Forgive me, I forgot.”
“No apology. I was sent away so soon after...”
She tipped her chin up in frustration, most likely remembering my father’s hateful words the day I was sent away—the day I’d killed Delayn with my own magic.
My fiancée had been the woman my father had chosen for me, and I still wondered if he thought I’d killed her on purpose.
What he didn’t know was I’d fallen in love, and my happiness in knowing I’d be wed to a woman I cared for had tamed my anger at being forced to marry in the first place.
“Now then. This girl...”
“She has not been entirely forthcoming. Probably because I’m not exactly...disarming.”
“An understatement,” she said with a smirk.
I shook my head with a grin before I continued, “I believe she’s an imbuing mage of significant power.”
My mother nodded slowly. “I could feel it—warm but not overbearing like other fire mages. How did you find her?”
“Magdala bought her with a collection of other thralls.”
“I’m shocked you allowed thralls at your fortress.”
I swallowed my dark words. I hadn’t wanted them there.
It wasn’t because I was scared of humans, or that I hated them.
It was partly my father’s edict, but also because of what they represented.
I’d won the war for my father, but at what cost to over half the continent?
As punishment for invading our lands, we enslaved every soldier left on the final battlefield as reparations.
It hadn’t been my choice. Just like it hadn’t been my choice to go to war in the first place.
My mother stood and walked with sure steps into the room where Wrenora rested, and I followed.
“I should try it now before she wakes. The process can be...harrowing.”
I hadn’t been present for the removal of shackles before, so I simply followed, hoping my presence would be reassuring should Wrenora wake.
“Are you comfortable holding her arms, or should I call for assistance?”
I stood a little straighter—the thought of someone touching Wrenora immediately putting me on edge.
But I couldn’t. I shouldn’t have carried her in the hall.
All it took was one accidental slip. A glove not covering my wrist completely.
A hand reaching out and touching my neck or my face by accident.
I clenched my teeth. “I’ll use my armor.”
My mother nodded as she sat on the side of the sofa.
Once I’d willed my armor in place, I knelt and took Wrenora’s forearms in my gauntlets.
My mother placed her hands over the shackles, her pale gray flesh contrasting with Wrenora’s warm beige skin tone.
It was hard for me to pry my eyes away from the girl’s sleeping face, but I tried to focus on my mother’s eyes instead as they slipped closed in concentration.
After a moment, her eyebrows furrowed as she took a long slow breath.
Her magic sparkled in the air, a frozen mist that swirled and pooled around Wrenora’s wrists.
The metal bands frosted over with a strange crackling sound—like the slow breaking of ice.
Then, without warning, the shackles broke into pieces, a few of which fell to the ground at my feet.
My mother’s shoulders sagged in exhaustion, but I was too lost in a blizzard of emotions assaulting me all at once to help her.
I squeezed my eyes closed to collect myself, swaying slightly as I tried to focus on where I was and why I was there.
Without my permission, my armor melted away and I jerked my hands back from Wrenora, only to instantly need to be closer to her.
I reached, fighting with myself, torn between what I needed and what I could have.
What I desperately wanted—what I required to live.
Boiling heat writhed through my veins, searing my insides and ripping a cry of agony from my lips as I struggled to remain upright.
“Callan?”
So hot.
I’d never been so hot in my entire life.
It was like ribbons of fire tightening around every inch of my skin at once, pulling and pulling and...
I gasped for air as I pitched to the side to avoid touching Wrenora or my mother, my gloved hands splayed out on the cold floor.
My mother reached for me, but I flinched back.
“You can’t touch me.”
“Callan, what's wrong?”
I shivered hard, taking long, slow breaths to drive the madness away. Slowly, so slowly, blessed cold oozed through me, quenching the fire determined to melt my bones within my body.
Two more breaths.
My vision cleared, focusing on the steam wafting from where my gloved hands touched the floor. I straightened, remaining on my knees before the sofa, my eyes wide as they found my mother’s.
“What’s wrong with me?” My voice felt so far away, like it had been ripped from my lungs before I’d given it words to speak.
“I can fetch the healer—”
“No.” I took another deep breath, my gaze falling on Wrenora’s sleeping face.
That same warmth built in my chest—more manageable in its intensity. It wicked through my extremities, blooming goosebumps down my arms.
“I’ll be fine.”
My mother’s speculation burned into me as hot as whatever magic had just consumed me. When I met her concerned glare, I could do nothing but stare, open-eyed and lost, unsure what had happened.
“Perhaps you need rest, Callan.”
“No. I can’t...” Leave Wrenora, I almost said.
The thread that had been weaving around my bones since she’d come to my fortress felt more like a rope, squeezing my throat every time I moved farther away. I swallowed hard. What was this? Why did I feel like my heart was being ripped from my chest every time I moved a fraction of an inch away?
“I...” I squeezed my eyes closed again, willing myself to my feet.
“Callan?”
“I’m fine,” I said. But it was a lie. Something was very, very wrong.