16. Killian #2
I waited, watching the children laugh and tease each other, voices drifting, the sound of work.
A roaring began in the back of my skull, and when I closed my eyes, I felt the shift, the change in the air.
Magic. I waited for the sweet taste of it, the sharpness that lingered, awakening my senses, but there was nothing.
Magic had died, or at least it was rare now.
Ilaris had warned me, but I didn’t stop to think about what that meant for me or my fire magic until now.
“They have a room,” Ilaris called, waving as she returned. “Only one silver for two beds, a hot bath, and a meal. I told her we already have supper, but she’s willing to feed us too. She has extra clothes too, we might find you something to wear, and the train station is only half a day away.”
The relief in her voice was palpable.
“Then we rest here tonight, and tomorrow we head for the train.”
We took turns bathing, ate, and found privacy in the room.
It was plain but neat, two beds, rather small but it was better than the hard ground, or pacing all night.
Evening fell, and despite the earliness of the hour, weariness made us lie down.
If it had been before, I would have explored the city, enjoyed tossing down a pint and more with my traveling companions, and explored what the darkness had to offer.
Now, the truth of my situation threatened to drown me, so it was a relief when Ilaris broke the silence.
“How old are you? I mean, I know thousands of years have passed since you were born—but how many years did you live before the Great Sundering?”
“Thirty-six.”
“That’s all? You’re young.”
“Younger than you expected?”
“Yes, I thought you might say two hundred and thirty-six, a number I couldn’t imagine. Rumors claim that giants lived a long time.”
I nodded, though she couldn’t see my head move in the dark.
That part the mortals had gotten right. “My people lived hundreds of years, on average, five hundred. The record for the longest anyone lived was nine hundred and eighty-six years. That was the devastation of it all: every generation had something to prove, had to work twice as hard to make a name, to be effective. That’s why I worked so hard and dug so deep.
That’s why it was easy for me to be the scapegoat.
” I paused, the pressure building. “How long do mortals. . . humans live?”
“On average, a hundred years, I think the longest living human died at a hundred and twenty-seven.”
“Such short lives,” I mused. “It gives you urgency, to make every moment count.”
“I haven’t thought about it that way.”
I shifted toward her, turning onto my side. There was something intimate about lying in the dark together, speaking of the past, of mortality, of life and death. I felt that string between us pull taut and that longing to close the distance.
“In case you wondered,” Ilaris said. “I turned thirty a few months ago.”
That surprised me. “I thought you might be younger. You spoke of trying to become a scholar.”
“You thought that by thirty, I would have achieved that goal, that I’d no longer be an apprentice. I thought so too. I’ve been a disappointment to many.”
I tasted the bitterness in her words, and it drove me to rise on one elbow. “You’re not a disappointment to me. I was surprised, not upset.”
“All the same.”
The sadness in her voice was soft and precise. I didn’t know what to say. It felt important—like she needed to remain in that sorrow for a moment, unhurried, without anyone trying to lift it from her before she was ready.
“Were you married?”
Her question caught me off guard. Such an abrupt shift in the conversation, yet I wondered if that had been her goal all along—the question about age only leading up to what she truly wanted to know.
I, too, shared in that hunger, that need for something more than companionship.
“No, I wasn’t married, but I was engaged to Princess Mischa of the Frost Giants.
I had yet to meet her, as an adult, even though I believe we played together when we were children.
I pretended it wasn’t happening because I didn’t want to think about what it meant. ”
“What did it mean?”
“Leaving home, right when I was on the cusp of finding the ultimate treasure. Which just ended in disaster and death, so perhaps it would have been better if I had gone.” I stared at the ceiling.
My eyes were adjusting to the darkness, enough to let me see the wooden beams arching above.
“It was tradition for the princes to travel, to spend decades in each of the five kingdoms. My father pampered me. I was supposed to leave when I was thirty, but he humored me. I wonder how differently it would have turned out if I had done my duty. Though someone else would have discovered the door. We were hellbent on destructive tendencies. There was a panic, a mania I see now that drove every action. The desire to outdo each other. I try not to dwell on the choices that led me here, but it’s impossible not to. ”
“Everything you loved, everything you knew and fought for is gone,” Ilaris said, her gentle voice trembling. “Grief is only natural. I do it too—I often think of what I could have done differently, to avoid mistakes, to fix the wrongs, to go back and make a better choice.”
“It’s life, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s tempting to look back, to scold ourselves, but we can’t change the past. It’s set in stone, as effortless as trying to unmake sunlight.
Those regrets won’t be erased or forgotten.
But there’s a lesson to be learned, an opportunity to make a better choice the next time.
Now that I’m back, it means I have that opportunity and I can’t waste time in regret. ”
“Grief doesn’t mean regret,” Ilaris objected. “You’re enduring under the weight of what you’ve lost. The more you share with me, the more I feel the enormity of it.”
It should have hurt, thinking of everything I’d lost, but as she spoke, the pressure in my chest lifted ever so slightly.
Talking about the past closed around me like deep water, depths I could not fathom, things I didn’t want to unravel.
I had to hold it together. But even that felt slightly less impossible with her.
I lay back, and the dark held us. We did not speak again, but I lay awake a long time, listening to her breathe. There was something terrible and tantalizing about being bound to someone by oath and necessity, and wanting, despite it all, to be bound to her by something more.