41 Rhona
Rhona
Days flew by unchecked as Rhona worked and searched and worked. Her efforts had been completely futile; there was so much
stone in the castle, and she felt overwhelmed, looking up at the top of every single archway she walked through to see if
there happened to be a gilded bull atop it. Bulls had never been a sigil of the De Clare dynasty, so Rhona was beginning to
question if this archway was even in the castle. The idea of having to search the entirety of Astrad was daunting.
To top it off, she still hadn’t seen Sir Jack. Under normal circumstances, she would have assumed he flamed out, that the
fight with the Corisians was too much for him, and so he defected. But something was nagging at Rhona. It didn’t feel right,
not for Jack.
As she headed from the barracks to the throne room to speak to the lord general, she worked through the same thoughts she’d been cycling through since she’d broken into Commander Hugo’s office with Maeve: Commander Hugo’s note about Saoirse, prisoners going missing, the same note talking about taking soldiers from the Iron Retinue for whatever they were doing, and the Corisian talking about soldiers that were alive but not breathing.
Rhona didn’t know if the three were connected, but she knew that something wasn’t right, and Sir Jack going missing amid all of it was causing the tension that had settled in the back of her neck to grow only tighter.
If he had been taken—and Rhona felt a pang of guilt for even wondering if the Iron Empire would do something like that—then
it was up to Rhona to find him, and that stupid gilded-bull archway.
In the back of her mind, Rhona thought about the letter she’d received from her family that morning, telling her that they
needed more coin this month. The crops on their farm had rotted and they had no income to feed her nieces and nephews. Was
the Rot that the farms around Astra had been falling plague to the same Rot that Commander Hugo had mentioned in his notes?
She was missing something, and she knew it. She just didn’t know what it was.
Rhona hadn’t been summoned by the lord general, but she did wish to speak with him about his plans for Corisia, and when she
needed to have her team ready. She strode into the open door to the lord general’s office and came face-to-face with . . .
not Lord General Kerrigan.
“Sir Rhona,” Commander Bartholomew said with an easy smile. “What can I assist you with?”
“Where is Lord General Kerrigan?” Rhona asked without thinking. Did she salute the commander? She was discombobulated.
“Lord General Kerrigan has had to take a brief trip to the north. He left a handful of days ago. There are some issues in the northern townships that need to be quashed. I have been placed in interim control of the Iron Empire until he returns,” the commander said, the long blond hair tied into a tight ponytail at the back of his head swaying as he strode to the map of Astra.
He was wearing his commander’s leathers, but not the lord general’s pin, so the lord general had gone somewhere without letting any of his reports know.
Was he hiding something? Rhona hated how much she was second-guessing
the man who had taken a chance on her.
“Understood, Commander Bartholomew.” Rhona nodded.
“Am I able to help you with anything?” Commander Bartholomew repeated, icy blue eyes boring into hers.
“No, Commander. I was eager to discuss a future plan with the lord general, but it can wait until he returns,” Rhona explained.
“Understood.” Commander Bartholomew nodded. “I heard you performed exceptionally well during the attack on the barracks. That’s
the kind of behavior we like to see from our knights.”
“Thank you, Commander. I was merely doing my sworn duty,” Rhona answered, her heart swelling with pride—all she’d ever wanted
was to be good at this, to be good at her dream.
All whilst she harbored an illegal witch.
No, whilst she used an illegal witch for her own benefit. She wasn’t sure if that made it any better.
“Of course. If that’s all . . . may the iron in your blood strengthen the iron in your sword.”
“May the iron in your blood strengthen the iron in your sword,” Rhona echoed automatically, her fist to her chest. Rhona,
still discombobulated, headed toward the door before remembering that Sir Jack was in Commander Bartholomew’s regiment. If
anyone would know where the redheaded lad was, it would be the commander, and Rhona would be able to finally lay her nerves about
Sir Jack to rest.
“Oh,” Rhona said, turning to face Commander Bartholomew at the door. “There is one thing.”
The commander nodded for her to continue.
“Do you know where Sir Jack has gone? I wanted to consider him for a future expedition I’ve been tasked with, but I haven’t seen him since the attack. I wanted to make sure he hadn’t flamed out.”
Commander Bartholomew looked at Rhona, his expression pinched and a strange look in his icy blue eyes as he laced his fingers
in front of him. Rhona’s heart started beating a furious rhythm, the fear that all soldiers worried about creeping up on her,
that she may have lost a compatriot.
“Sir Jack was sent on a mission outside of the capital,” Commander Bartholomew finally spoke after a lengthy and uncomfortable
pause, a ring of a lie in his words as they came out of his mouth.
Rhona hadn’t heard about any expeditions in the past week. Alarm bells set off in her head, adrenaline coursing through her
system. Rhona knew she needed to keep calm, pretend like she believed what she was being told for her own safety.
“How exciting!” she answered, smiling brightly. The grin was plastered to her face, and she could almost feel her eye twitching
from the strain.
“It is truly a privilege to see our retinue grow and succeed.” The commander nodded as he unclasped his hands and sharply
turned his body toward the map of Astra on the table behind him. “Is there anything else I can assist you with?”
“No, Commander, and I could not agree more. The Iron Retinue’s growth is a point of pride for all of us in the Iron Empire.”
Rhona nodded before turning and exiting the office, her smile dropping as soon as she was out the door. She walked quickly
and with little thought through the hallways, trying to desperately maintain composure as she nodded to each of the members
of the Iron Retinue in passing.
Before she knew it, Rhona found herself outside of Lady Maeve’s apartments, standing motionless in front of her door.
Would it even be appropriate for her to call on the lady?
Ever since working with the witch, Rhona had been questioning who she could trust in the Iron Retinue.
Mere weeks ago she would have trusted what Commander Bartholomew said, but now she was questioning everything.
Rhona knocked on the door, feeling the compulsion to leave before anyone answered so she wouldn’t experience rejection from
the lady she so wished to have approval from. As she made to turn and run, the door clicked open and she heard a familiar
twinkling voice.
“Sir Rhona?” Maeve asked. “Is everything okay?” She wore a simple gown, nothing like what she usually wore to traipse in the
gardens. Rhona liked it even better than the opulence Maeve usually showed the world; it made the lady feel like someone Rhona
could possibly be on the same level as.
“I was hoping you’d have time to talk, but it’s completely fine if you’re otherwise occupied.” Rhona waved her hand and began
to turn away, not giving Maeve the chance to tell her to leave.
“Quite the opposite. Come in.” Maeve opened the door and motioned Rhona inside.
The apartments had been well decorated after the fire in the Heathecote manor, and Rhona was increasingly grateful in that
moment that Lady Maeve had insisted on her own private apartments away from the prying eyes of the other members of the Heathecote
family.
Maeve gestured to a pink settee beside the fire for Rhona to sit before bringing over an extra cup for the pot of tea that
sat on the table next to it.
“What brings you to my lovely stone-walled quarters today?” Maeve said, picking up a dainty floral teacup and sipping from
it.
“Uh,” Rhona stuttered. “I-it’s nothing important.”
Maeve looked at Rhona, curiosity in her eyes. Rhona watched her gently place the cup down before she leaned forward and cupped
her chin in her hand, head cocked slightly to the side. “You’re not very good at asking for help, are you?” Maeve asked, a
smirk on her full lips.
“I—” Rhona started, involuntarily leaning back.
“I can see it in your eyes. Something happened, and you don’t know how to talk about it,” Maeve pushed.
“Sir Jack has gone missing and I’m worried because I think the commander was just lying to me about where he went,” Rhona
blurted out before she could think twice.
Maeve gently picked the teacup up again, a slight clanking noise reverberating through the now-quiet room as she did. She
leaned back, cradling the cup closely in her hands as if it was going to warm her up. “You think he was taken somewhere, like
Saoirse might have been?” Maeve pondered.
“We don’t even know if Saoirse was taken anywhere,” Rhona said, debating whether or not she should pick up the teacup in front of her.
“But we have a reasonable hunch,” Maeve countered, fingernails tapping her cup gently as she thought.
“Sir Jack was fairly fresh to the Iron Retinue, so it seems strange to me that they’d send him out of the capital already,”
Rhona continued.
“I don’t think your intuition is wrong,” Maeve said. “At all.”
It wasn’t until that pause that Rhona realized how tired Maeve looked, how unwell. “I am so selfish to have not asked, how
are you?” Rhona questioned, now worried she’d invaded Maeve’s space as she was recovering from illness.
“I don’t look that tired, do I?” Maeve chuckled, leaning farther back into her settee and taking a sip of her tea.
“I apologize if that was offensive,” Rhona said, putting her hands up and kicking herself internally. She was so bad at this,
at talking to anyone that wasn’t in the Iron Retinue—this was why she didn’t have friends. Blurting out that someone looked
terrible was not considerate, especially when Maeve didn’t even look terrible . . . just tired. Goodness, she hoped Maeve
didn’t think that Rhona thought she looked bad.
Maeve laughed instead. “Please Rhona, relax.”
Rhona just clamped her mouth shut. If she said nothing, she couldn’t say anything wrong.
“Do you know how my visions work?” Maeve asked.
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Rhona countered. Obviously she didn’t know how the seer saw the future aside from brief mentions
in passing, and Rhona hadn’t wanted to know. Part of her still didn’t.
“Fair,” Maeve laughed breathily. “It takes energy and focus. The visions don’t just come to me. I noticed there were some
changes last time to some of the people I try to seer about, so I’ve just . . . spent a bit too much energy this week seering
about the changes.”
“Is it normal for magic to drain you like that?” Rhona asked, interested and yet trying to fight the pit in her stomach that
still hated everything about magic.
“It’s a balance. Using magic gives me energy to an extent, because of the Flow.” Maeve cocked an eyebrow as she gauged Rhona’s
reaction to her using the term “Flow,” and Rhona couldn’t control her reaction of disgust. The lady smirked, though a sadness
rested somewhere in her gaze. “You can’t just destroy the Flow by telling people it’s not real.”
“I know, it’s just difficult to erase years of training in an instant,” Rhona said, not apologizing, but understanding how
her disgust could hurt Maeve for the first time.
“I know, but you must try because I can promise you, you’ll nee—” Maeve clamped her mouth shut, clearly stopping herself from
divulging something about Rhona’s future. What else did the woman know? What was she hiding? Maeve carried on, bringing the
conversation back to where it had been. “So, if I try to seer too much, the Flow starts to take from me and leaves me tired.
I’m sure fighting is similar for you. The rush can be invigorating at first to help you fight more and then as you push harder
and further, it starts to take from you. Everything in life is a give and take.”
“So a witch’s power isn’t unlimited?” Rhona asked as she tried to push the earlier comment out of her mind .
. . Why would she need to get used to the term for Astra’s forbidden magic?
Nevertheless, she hoped the answer to whether they had limited power was yes.
If there were more hidden witches like Maeve, she at least hoped they had a threshold for their abilities.
“Never unlimited, but witches with more power can cast more and for longer. I’m just a seer. I can’t do much more than think
about people I want to know about and see the visions given to me when I tap into the Flow.”
“Visions do not come to you?” Rhona asked.
“Very rarely, and generally only for people I often go looking for in visions—it’s as if the Flow learns who I wish to know
about,” Maeve chuckled. “It’s quite annoying because it first showed me you in a vision about myself, and I had to figure
out who you were.”
A pause filled the air. Rhona didn’t enjoy thinking about how Maeve had manipulated her way into their alliance . . . friendship
now. Although she was grateful that the relationship existed, if only for the opportunity to get to know Maeve. Rhona didn’t
know how she felt anymore. “I’m sorry for insinuating you looked bad,” Rhona said, twiddling her thumbs to push down her feeling
of discomfort.
Maeve stood and walked over to Rhona’s settee and sat next to her, grabbing one of Rhona’s hands before embracing her.
Rhona couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hugged, felt the warm touch and comfort of another person. She felt tears
prickling in her eyes, pain searing through them as she tried to hold the emotions back.
“You didn’t hurt my feelings,” Maeve whispered. “Thank you for coming and speaking to me, though. I know that this must have
been challenging for you.”
“I’m just sorry if it hurt your feelings,” Rhona repeated, stiff and unsure of how to respond to the affection and kindness.
“Rhona,” Maeve said, reaching a hand out and gently tipping Rhona’s head up by the chin so Rhona would look at her, their
faces mere inches from each other. “I enjoy your presence, and I appreciate that you cared enough to ask about my health amid
your concerns about your friend.”
“Okay.” Rhona nodded, Maeve’s hand still on her chin, and a flush of heat ripped through Rhona. “I enjoy your presence too.”
Maeve smiled and put her head on Rhona’s shoulder as a single tear rolled down Rhona’s cheek.