29 Eira
Eira
The three sat at a table in the remarkably busy travelers’ tavern, pints of mead in front of them as they waited for their
food to arrive at their table. Eira’s stomach grumbled quietly as she smelled the meals being served around them.
Her eyes were drawn to the table next to them where a group of boisterous traveling salesmen kept yelling instead of speaking
at a normal level. Their volume left the three members of Eira’s group at a loss as to how to even have a conversation over
the din . . . not that they could have a civil conversation anyway. The air was so thick with tension that Eira could cut
it with the knife that sat on the napkin beside her.
“I was down in Archport a few weeks ago . . . Did you hear about their crop this year?” one of the men said. “Rotten, all
of it.”
Evangeline’s head turned slightly at that, and Eira watched her mouth the word “strange” to herself.
“That’s funny,” another said. “I was at the capital a few days ago and heard that Corisia was literally burning down noble
houses . . . maybe they’re sabotaging our crops too?”
“You know what that means? War. And you know what war is good for? Our coin purses,” the other crowed, raising his glass as the three men cheered to the profits of war.
Eira watched as Hugo and Evangeline scowled in unison, disgust clear on their faces. If they weren’t careful, one or both
of them was going to say something—or worse, do something.
Eira stood and quickly walked over to the bar, straight to the elderly tavern owner, who was pulling a pint. “I would love
it if you could somehow get those men over to this bar so my friends and I could have a moment to chat,” Eira said as she
handed over two silver pieces from the stash she’d found in her home in Cilirien. It was overkill, but someone might be killed if Eira didn’t do something.
“You’ve got it, honey.” The woman winked, pocketing the silver and starting to pour a few small glasses.
“Hey, you three!” she called over to the men, breaking their conversation up as she motioned them to the bar. They stood,
walking past Eira as she headed back to her now-quiet table. A moment later the boisterous merchants stood at the bar drinking
from the small glasses, leaving Eira, Evangeline, and Hugo to . . . sit in awkward silence.
“Nice weather out there lately, huh,” Hugo finally said, scoffing.
“Shut up,” Evangeline grunted, putting her drink down and rolling her eyes.
“You’ve always been such a wonderful conversationalist, Evangeline.” Hugo smiled at her, sarcastic and pained.
“It’s difficult to have conversation with someone who has less intelligence than the average rat,” Evangeline sniped back.
“At least I didn’t sit by while my best friend erased her memory permanently,” Hugo said, lifting his drink in Evangeline’s
direction.
“At least I didn’t join an evil regime that is hell-bent on killing the woman I—” Evangeline started, leaning over the table,
fingers twitching as if she longed to wring Hugo’s neck.
The woman he . . . what? Eira thought, her interest piqued even as her annoyance grew.
“Don’t you dare,” Hugo interrupted her.
This was exhausting.
“Argh! Both of you need to get off of each other’s throats,” Eira shouted, slamming her mead onto the table and capturing
the attention of the whole tavern. She wilted under the glares from other tables.
“Sorry, everyone!” she called out and the other patrons turned back to their respective activities, leaving them to their
own business once again.
“I mean it,” Eira continued, quieter now. “If we’re going to be traveling together, we need to at least be cordial, if not
friendly.”
“I don’t think friendliness is going to be an issue for Hugo with you, Eira,” Evangeline said, crossing her ankles on the table and leaning back in her chair, dark brown curls falling behind
her in a luscious wave. Eira hadn’t been much of a jealous type in Cilirien, but she wondered if she had been at the capital
with Evangeline all those years ago. The princess was beautiful in an effortless, athletic way that Eira never had been, and
if Eira wasn’t so certain that Evangeline and Hugo hated each other, she’d have fleetingly wondered if Hugo preferred Evangeline
to herself. Hate sometimes wasn’t so far from love, in Eira’s understanding.
Eira caught Hugo’s eye as he watched her, and as soon as she looked at him he glanced away to stare at the fireplace on the
wall behind her head. He’d been acting so strangely. But her jumbled feelings for Hugo, and however he felt about her in return,
weren’t going to solve the fact that Hugo and Evangeline hated each other.
“I’m serious,” Eira said. “You both need to get it together.”
“She’s right,” Hugo said.
“I don’t really care if she’s right,” Evangeline retorted, taking a long drink from her stein.
“What was with your reaction to what those loud merchants were saying before? You both looked like you wanted to rip their heads off,” Eira asked, trying to defuse the tension and change the subject.
“The houses being burned down at the capital . . . if it does mean war, then Astra is in for a terrible time,” Hugo said as
he took a sip of his mead. Eira noted that he hadn’t used the term Iron Empire when referring to Astra. “And I think it’s disrespectful to have such little care for the lives that would be lost in a war.”
“That’s funny coming from Commander Witch Hunter, Lord of the Witch Hunts, King of Hunting Wi—” Evangeline snapped before
clamping her mouth shut as Eira glared daggers at her.
“And you?” She pointed to Evangeline, not breaking eye contact.
“The rotten crops are a really bad sign,” the princess said.
“Of what?” Eira asked.
“A lot of things,” Evangeline answered. Eira could tell she was omitting something, but she also realized that right now probably
wasn’t the time to push it.
“How are you feeling, Eira?” Hugo asked.
“Annoyed.” She smiled painfully, her teeth grinding from the stress.
Evangeline and Hugo both laughed.
“I’m glad my frustration can be a shared bonding experience for both of you,” Eira huffed.
“Don’t say that,” Evangeline said through a dry chuckle, her fingers worrying the locket that rested on her neck. “I don’t
intend to bond with a brute like him.”
“You’re pretty brutish too, if I remember correctly,” Hugo said.
“It’s actually illegal to insinuate that I’m anything but a proper lady.”
Hugo scoffed. “Right.”
“Evangeline,” Eira said, tapping the stein of mead in front of her that she’d barely touched. “We should talk about . . .
you know.”
Hugo’s dark eyebrow cocked, his hazel eyes glowing almost amber in the warm firelight.
“No, I don’t think we need to,” Evangeline said dryly, picking at a loose thread on her bodice.
“Evangeline,” Eira chastised.
“Talk about what?” Hugo prompted.
“Ugh,” Evangeline groaned, throwing her hands up. “Do we really need to?”
“Yes,” Eira said. The table lapsed into silence. Eira knew Evangeline didn’t want to tell Hugo; she could tell that the princess
wanted to convince her to run away, still.
“I know of a witch who is rumored to do memory magic,” Evangeline finally sighed.
Hugo leaned forward. “Oh really?” he said.
“Don’t get too excited,” she said. “It’s all the way up in Luwha, and I’m operating on a relatively old rumor. She could be
dead. Who knows, maybe you killed her.”
“I didn’t find any memory witches in Luwha, so if she’s dead it wasn’t me,” Hugo said coldly, glaring at Evangeline before
looking over to Eira’s horrified face. “Sorry, Eira, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupted, not really wanting to hear more about Hugo’s witch-hunting exploits at this precise moment.
“That’s actually ‘Eira’ for it not being fine,” Evangeline snipped.
“Believe it or not, I did spend more time with Eira than you did, on account of me being her guard,” Hugo shot back.
“Technically I’ve spent almost every minute of every day with her for three years, so you’re incorrect.” Evangeline leaned forward with each word she spoke, the malice radiating from her like the sun’s heat.
“You were a rabbit, that hardly counts,” Hugo retorted.
“Both of you,” Eira said, slamming her hands down on the table so hard the cutlery rattled. “That’s enough! You’re like bickering
children.”
“Humph!” they both huffed in unison, leaning back and crossing their arms. This journey was going to be terrible if they kept
up like this.
“We need to go to Luwha,” Eira said. “At the very least to figure out if this witch is still alive.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Evangeline said, eyes sparkling with what Eira assumed was the hope that her plan from earlier
might still be able to come true. “And maybe Hugo will just die on the way there.”
“I can’t handle this,” Eira said, throwing her arms up and storming out of the building and into the moonlit garden beside
the tavern, leaving the two bickering monsters at the table inside to deal with themselves. It was cold, and most of the flowers
had died, but Eira had always felt like anything bathed in moonlight had a certain beauty to it.
A memory witch in Luwha was a good lead, but Eira worried that it would set off Evangeline’s ideas about fleeing to Osnia.
Eira tried to remember if there were any witches in Osnia . . . If there were, they were not nearly as skilled as Astran witches had once been. Corisia too—their
witches existed, but they were historically far less powerful than the witches in Astra . . . before most of them had been
killed, of course.
A nagging feeling dripped in the back of Eira’s mind—she needed to understand what Hugo’s plan was.
They’d found the princess, but he hadn’t mentioned what their next steps would be after they got Eira’s memory back.
There was a reason he left the capital and defected from the Iron Retinue, but she wasn’t sure what it was yet.
She trusted Hugo, but did he trust her enough to tell her what his true plans were, if he even had any?
Eira needed to decide if it was worth it to bring it up before she got her memory back, or if she should simply wait until it returned.
But Eira had never been good at being patient.
She cracked open the notebook from her home in Cilirien as she sat on a cold stone garden bench. As she began to read, she
realized that, while it wasn’t in a different language, it was confusing and full of illogical sentences that made no sense.
You fool, as if you’d just write everything down clearly for anyone to read, she thought. It was probably in some sort of code, a code she didn’t know because her memory had been wiped by her own spell.
Eira hadn’t even begun to process what Evangeline had said to her earlier in the night.
“Eira, you can do it all,” she’d said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Witches didn’t cast in multiple domains;
they simply couldn’t—but apparently, Eira did. What did that mean Eira was, and what implications did it have for what witches
could become, or what the Flow was? So many questions unanswered, and Eira couldn’t help but feel that if her memory was there,
maybe, just maybe, some of them could be answered by her own history.
Eira pored over the journal in the cold winter air for a few more minutes before giving up and snapping it shut. She stood,
coming face-to-face with a masked man. His hand shot out and closed around her mouth as she let out a muffled scream, and
he pulled her into the forest behind them.