CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #2
“He didn’t lie,” she said. “He simply didn’t tell the full truth.”
“Why not?”
Ilain met Vayden’s gaze. “How should I know? We’ve been together less than a week, Vayd. He’s had no reason to tell me these things, no reason to trust me with them.”
“He’s your husband.”
Keeping her voice low, Ilain said, “He’s been hurt.”
Vayden and Auden’s brows dipped in a nearly identical fashion. It reminded Ilain of their da. Despite the fact that Vayden didn’t share their Calder blood, he’d adopted their da’s mannerisms too. A testament that love and not genetics made family.
Ilain’s gaze shifted between her brothers. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know by whom,” she confessed. “But somehow, someone has hurt him—deeply. And he doesn’t trust people anymore.”
Auden dropped his eyes to his work while Vayden pursed his lips. His gaze flickered toward the Warrior in question, who was now talking with Hewitt and the others.
“I intend to fix that,” Ilain said with determination. “No matter how long it takes.”
Auden nudged her shoulder with his. His expression was soft as he smiled at her. “If anyone can do it,” he whispered, “it’s you.”
“Because he loves me?”
“Because you are the most trustworthy woman Terraeus has ever known.”
Ilain’s heart pinched with affection and guilt. She leaned over, pressing a kiss to Auden’s shoulder, and then rested her head there. He pressed his temple against hers before returning to his task.
Then Ilain rose to rid her hands of the rabbit and spices.
Using a bar of lye soap, Ilain kept her gaze on her hands in the wooden bucket.
Auden was wrong, of course. He’d always been too quick to believe in her.
Perhaps it was because she usually shared her true heart with him.
He knew her, even when no one else did. But she was a liar, as she’d told Ethenn.
She wasn’t trustworthy. She was a fraud.
If she’d been truly honest, she would have told Ethenn everything about the moment she’d realized her affection for him and the fear that accompanied it, as well as her hopes for their future. She would tell him that she didn’t just like him; she loved him. But she feared his derision.
After Thom’s assertion that Ilain didn’t want Ethenn—could never want him—she worried that Ethenn wouldn’t believe her when she spoke of her love.
She needed to ensure his trust in her before admitting such a profound truth.
Liar that she was, proving her honesty was a feat she wasn’t sure even she had the power to accomplish.
Hands refreshed and clean, Ilain returned to Auden’s side.
Isla had joined Vayden, the two of them speaking in hushed Schonese.
Ilain understood most of the language, but she didn’t bother listening.
Instead, she picked up her sketchbook and enjoyed her brother’s steady company as he tended the evening meal.
With rote familiarity, Ilain’s fingers began to sketch, finding the sharp angles of Auden’s face easily.
She’d drawn her whole family time and time again.
They filled most of her sketchbooks with mixtures of strangers and acquaintances scattered throughout.
It was rare that she’d repeated any but her family’s images until she’d met their troop.
Then she found the newcomers to be a unique case study.
Ephrians bore a fuller softness in their features.
Of course, Jonn and Thom shared some of the Waulden sharpness, though they still bore a gentler tilt in their mouths and noses.
With his paleness and broad forehead, Rafferty carried a Zemordian flair (he claimed a tale about an albino great-grandmother on his mother’s side; however, at the mention of her notably violet eyes, Ilain determined she was, in fact, from the northwestern continent of Zemord), but even he was a true Ephrian despite his ghostly complexion.
As for Hewitt, Evylin, and Ethenn . . . They were true Shiremen. And she loved to draw them all.
Though she’d met several Ephrians through her work with the Alliance, she’d never spent longer than a few days around them due to her position as viceMage. This mission granted her an opportunity unlike any she’d ever had before to study the people of eastern Allund.
But after months together, Ilain found herself returning to the practice of sketching her family. Her parents, Daultun and Rowana. Her brothers, Vayden and Auden. Isla. Reyana. And Maura.
Ilain had only ever met Maura a few times, but she’d been sure to sketch the woman carefully, capturing each angle. She found herself draping the starting lines on the page alongside her brother’s image.
Maura was a beautiful woman. Soft blonde hair curled freely around her shoulders.
Striking blue-green eyes twinkled intelligently.
She was trim, demure, and tall. In their first meeting, Maura had worn a dark purple coat with a high collar and golden embroidery.
Despite her position in the Order of the Night, the woman maintained an air of gentility and grace.
She wasn’t brutish or malevolent. She wasn’t egotistical or self-seeking.
Maura had been a magister like Auden, desiring only knowledge and the excitement of discovery.
Until her brother’s death.
Then Maura lost herself, and Auden lost her.
Angling in his seat next to her, Auden’s jaw tightened. “You got her nose wrong,” he commented quietly.
“I got nothing wrong,” Ilain replied.
“It’s too long.”
“You always did idealize her,” she returned kindly. “Her nose was her one flaw. Hooked and far too long for her face.”
“You take that back.”
“I will not.”
Dryly, Auden grinned, leaning against the saddles behind their backs. His demeanor became melancholy, as it always did when he thought of Maura, but despite his somberness, he also bore an air of contentment.