42 Eira
Eira
Five and a half days later, they arrived at a small inn about five minutes outside of Luwha, just as the sun was starting
to set. Though he had initially aimed to get them there as quickly as possible, Hugo had ultimately decided to take the three
of them through less-used pathways to the city to avoid other people traveling to and from the city. Their run-in with the
spies had shaken something in him, and keeping Eira safe had become even more of a priority than it already had been. While
they had likely avoided the detection of prying eyes that might report back to the Iron Retinue, they also had had to trek
through exceptionally deep snow for much of their journey, lengthening the trek in their bid to stay hidden.
Eira could see a fire crackling through the window of the tavern as they tied their horses in the stables for the night, and
she yearned to feel that warmth. She handed Arthur a piece of dried apple from her bag as Hugo turned to head into the tavern,
scratching the horse’s nose and telling him to have a nice night.
The Griffon’s Nest sat nestled at the base of a mountain, and as Eira, Hugo, and Evangeline stepped into the bar it was clear that this was a popular spot.
A bard sat on a stool on the stage in one corner, strumming a lute and singing.
There was a group of boisterous miners playing cards in another corner, and the bar, of course, was packed.
Eira supposed Luwha was similar to Cilirien; there wasn’t much to do outside of drink and try to be merry.
Eira followed Hugo as he wedged his way into a tiny empty section of the bar, grabbing her hand and waiting for the barkeep
to say something to them. Evangeline scoffed as Eira took Hugo’s hand and then waved her own hand dismissively as she turned
around to look for a table.
“Hi there! I’m Carth,” the young man behind the bar said to Hugo after watching them approach, turning a bright smile his
way. “You looking for a room?”
Hugo smiled in response, his lip lifting higher on the side without a scar—it sent Eira’s heart fluttering. “You bet. We need
two rooms,” Hugo said.
“I’ve got a few left for the night. Two next to each other okay?” Carth said, tossing the cleaning towel over his shoulder,
a piece of his pulled-back hair falling into his glasses-covered eyes. Hugo nodded.
“Perfect,” Carth said as he handed them two keys and Hugo handed him the coins for the stay. “Rooms come with a round, what
can I get you?”
“Three meads, one of them whatever is your sweetest. The other two . . . whatever is your strongest,” Hugo answered.
Eira smiled, knowing the sweet mead was for her. Sure, it was a small preference to remember, but Eira felt like she was being
seen in a way she hadn’t been in a long time.
Hugo handed Eira a sweet berry-colored mead before grabbing the other two and heading to the table in the corner Evangeline
had grabbed for them. Thankfully, in the boisterous space she had managed to secure a relatively private table in an alcove.
They had made it; Luwha was just a few minutes away, and they were closer than ever to the answers Eira was looking for. She looked at Evangeline and Hugo as they both watched the bard play, a pang of yearning for Cilirien seeping into the moment.
What if Viscountess Eira was someone Eira Eckhart didn’t like? Eira didn’t know what to expect when her memory was unlocked.
Evangeline and Hugo seemed to think Eira would be whole again, the version of her that they had always known back in full
force. Eira wondered how much of her would stay as she was now.
Hugo’s words from her afternoon crying in the bath rang through her head: that as Eira Eckhart, she had become the best version
of herself, the version of herself without the weight of being a viscountess on her shoulders. Would that weight return, along
with her memories?
Hugo placed a hand on Eira’s thigh, rubbing circles with his thumb on the lush green fabric of her skirt.
She watched him, golden tanned skin brighter than it had been when they’d met. Hugo had mentioned that he couldn’t sleep well,
but he’d been sleeping next to her perfectly fine. His dark hair flopped over his eyes and fell to his shoulders as he turned
away from her to keep watching the bard play. Eira wondered if Viscountess Eira had felt as strongly for him as she felt now.
She wondered how much of what she was feeling was seeded deep in the back of her mind. What would change when she got her
memories back tomorrow?
Eira desperately hoped it wasn’t her feelings for Hugo that would change. In Hugo’s arms she felt safe, despite his history.
This Eira knew he’d changed, that he wouldn’t forgive himself for what he’d done—but she could forgive him. She could be with him
just as he was.
“I want to talk to you both about something,” Evangeline said abruptly, running her long fingers over each groove in the wooden
stein she’d been given.
Eira looked up, breaking out of her spiral about her memories and glancing quickly at Hugo before saying something.
“Is everything all right?” Eira asked.
“I want to tell you something, but I don’t have all of the answers. So I need you to understand that if I’m not able to answer
your questions, it’s because I still need answers too,” Evangeline replied.
“We understand,” Hugo said, gathering his hair at the nape of his neck and tying it with the ribbon he kept in his coat pocket.
“I’ve been thinking about the failing crops and Lord General Kerrigan’s goal to invade Corisia,” Evangeline continued. “My
father told me about something before the Iron Empire overthrew us, something he said he would tell me more about once the
rebellion had been quashed. He said if we weren’t careful and pragmatic, we’d lose Astra, and everyone in it.”
“Did he say what it was?” Hugo’s brow furrowed in confusion; he’d clearly never heard anything about this from the lord general.
“He said nothing,” Evangeline answered, leaning back in her chair. “Which was, honestly, unusual for him . . . so it must
have been something very sensitive for him to have withheld it from me.”
“How do we get the information he was hiding? He’s dead,” Hugo said, and Eira assumed it was without thinking, though it didn’t
stop her from cringing at his bluntness.
“And whose fault is that?” Evangeline glared daggers at Hugo.
“I didn’t kill the king or the queen, Evangeline,” Hugo answered.
They stared murderously at each other for too long, a silent battle playing out in front of Eira. Would they keep arguing,
or keep her happy? She could fix this.
“It’s a good question, though. How do we find out what he was waiting to tell you?” Eira chimed in.
Evangeline looked at Eira and then back at Hugo, indecision clear in her eyes.
“There’s something in the palace that the Iron Empire hasn’t found, isn’t there?” Eira gasped, hand to her mouth. It was so obvious once she said it out loud. Of course the king had kept something hidden under lock and key.
“Don’t be so loud,” Evangeline hissed.
“I highly doubt there’s a corner of the castle we hadn’t found,” Hugo said dryly.
“We?” Evangeline cocked her eyebrow.
“You know what I mean.” Hugo waved his hand.
“There is. Only I know how to access it and I need to be in the castle in order to get to it,” Evangeline said, ignoring him.
“Shit,” Hugo and Eira sighed simultaneously.
“If it’s as bad as my father made it out to be, well, it just makes it all the more important that we handle the Iron Empire.
He made it sound like it was the world ending, and I can’t help but feel like all of these crop failures and poisoned rivers
we’ve been hearing about have something to do with it.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Eira said.
“As do I,” Evangeline retorted, her fingers playing with the locket around her neck.
The three fell into silence. The farmers in Cilirien had been talking about their crops spontaneously being destroyed right
before the harvest this year, but Eira had suspected some sort of bug or sickness had overcome the farms—it wasn’t uncommon
for plagues to befall food as they did people. But whatever Evangeline had been told by the king had clearly been important
enough that he hadn’t wanted to pass it along until they’d handled the rebellion. It was clear to Eira that the king had been
so certain of his victory that he’d never expected to not be able to tell his daughter what she needed to know.
Now they needed to find a way to take down the Iron Empire and convince Corisia to attack with them, instead of joining forces with the other countries to fight back against Astra and take control for themselves.
That alone was a good reason for Eira to get her memories back; Evangeline was going to need another noblewoman, her skilled counselor by her side to navigate the politics of war.
Hugo held out his hand to Eira and she looked up to meet his hazel eyes. “There are people dancing, want to join them?”
Eira smiled, taking his hand and letting Hugo lead her to the small space that the tavern’s patrons had carved out for dancing.
They joined a young couple who couldn’t stop touching each other and an elderly man and woman on the dance floor. Hugo placed
his hand on the small of Eira’s back and pulled her close as he began to step, a shock pulsing through her at the touch.
“Do you remember the dances you knew as a viscountess? The muscle memory?” he whispered in her ear. Eira turned to try to
catch his lips quickly but Hugo pulled away with a smirk.
“I don’t,” Eira said honestly.
“You were not only the most voluptuous and beautiful woman on the dance floor, but you had the best footwork. Everyone wanted
you.”
He spun her and Eira tried to let her muscle memory take over. Don’t think too hard and you’ll get it right, she thought as she stumbled at the end, Hugo’s strong arms holding her up.
“Did you ever dance with me?” Eira asked coyly.
“No,” Hugo said. “But I remember the last ball. This newcomer to town, Lord Bartholomew Wilkinson, had managed to convince
you to dance with him not once, but twice.”
“Was he handsome?” Eira asked.
“His mother was Corisian. He had this long blond hair that he kept braided and tanned skin and I wondered if you had liked
how different he was compared to the boring lordlings you’d grown up with,” Hugo said.
“What had stopped him from being at the palace?” Eira asked.
“His father was the port lord of Archport,” Hugo explained, his hand taking a piece of Eira’s wayward auburn hair and tucking it behind her ear as he looked at her, softness in his eyes and something else . . . jealousy. He didn’t like thinking about other men being around Eira.
“What happened to him?” Eira asked. “After the uprising?”
“He became a commander,” Hugo said. Every question she asked, he answered . . . just like she’d requested that first night
she’d learned about her past. But Eira kept wondering what he wasn’t telling her. Had she made a mistake by not asking for all the details then? She reminded herself that she would know all
of the answers she seeked soon enough, regardless. “I think if you’d stayed at the capital you’d have ended up marrying him.”
“Not you?” Eira asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. “You were a commander too. You climbed to the same rank. Why not you?”
Hugo’s eyes caught Eira’s, the jealousy gone and replaced with something else. “Maybe in another life we could have lived
that instead,” Hugo said, sadness laced in his voice.
They stepped, Eira learning the pace of the dance after a few minutes. There was something that felt wrong about Hugo’s reaction
to her wondering about a happily-ever-after for them. Did he not believe she would have chosen him? Or was there something
else that he wasn’t saying?
“Hugo,” she asked, untying the ribbon and running her fingers through his hair as they danced, his eyes closing briefly as
he reveled in the feeling. “Why didn’t you come with Evangeline and I when we fled?” The question had been plaguing her for
days. Why hadn’t Hugo come with them? If he cared for her . . . if it had been his job to protect her, why wouldn’t he have fled?
Hugo sighed, the long silence between them filled with the slow lute playing of the bard.
“The Iron Empire convinced me I could be more than I was born into. My family were the lowest of the low, and I managed to climb my way into guarding your family with nothing but luck itself. But . . . I had a lot of bitterness in me. I hated the De Clares for holding people like me back, or at least that’s how the Iron Empire spun the story to me,” he said slowly.
Eira watched warring emotions flit across Hugo’s face as she thought about how hard it must have been for him.
“I thought that if I had been afforded what you or Evangeline had been born with then I would have been able to be in a better
position than I ever could have achieved as I was,” he continued. “And when the lord general promised me a place as a commander
for my work, when he told me he respected my will to do my job . . . I fell for it and I . . . I thought you’d chosen the
De Clares over Astra, over me.”
“I don’t blame you for that,” Eira said.
“What?” Hugo lifted his eyes to meet hers.
“I don’t blame you,” Eira repeated. “It sounds like it was a very real dream that you felt like you could make reality. It’s
not your fault they sold you a false dream.”
“You don’t hate me?” Hugo asked, sounding stunned.
“Hugo,” Eira said, holding his gaze. “You must stop thinking I hate you. I see you for who you are. You’re flawed and you
made mistakes, big ones, but . . . I’ve only seen you trying to do better. Isn’t that the real indicator of change?”
Hugo’s eyes softened and he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, slow and soothing. “I hope you’re right,” he said, walking
her back to their table to finish their drinks before they retired for the night. Eira hoped she was right too.