Chapter 17 #2
In Callodosis, she’d been in the odd scrap here and there, holding her own most of the time, but the reality of an actual fight had found her seriously lacking.
She’d had her arse handed to her twice now, whilst Keeran had floored all six men without even breaking a sweat.
Literally. It had been nothing to him to kill them with his bare hands.
Aelia side-eyed where he rode next to her, gently rocking in the saddle.
She took in the muscle straining beneath the fabric of his sleeves, the breadth of his shoulders and chest that tapered to his trim waist, his huge thighs making the saddle look far too small.
Aside from being rather lovely to look at, the sheer bulk of the man screamed of a life spent in heavy training.
Physique like that didn’t come from performing with the Peregrinians; it didn’t even come from something as strenuous as years of logging.
She’d know. If the scars she’d seen were anything to go by, it had come from something far darker.
It was beyond time for some answers; she just didn’t relish the prospect of asking him. Taking a breath, she steeled herself for the awkwardness, wishing she’d had the sense to quiz him more when she’d still hated him.
Not that she ever really had. He was just an easy target to direct her anger at.
It had taken her an entire day on her own to realise it, but it turned out severe boredom was fuel for self-reflection.
That and a desperation to think of something, anything, other than the grief that had begun to eat her alive once she was alone.
Shoving that thought quickly aside, she turned in her saddle.
“Keeran, I…” She trailed off, suddenly wishing she’d thought a little further ahead. He looked at her cagily, probably guessing what she was about to ask. She persevered. “How did you learn to fight like that?”
He shrugged. “Practice.”
Aelia tried to keep the scowl off her face, but by the smile twitching at his lips, she failed.
“Where? Who with?”
Keeran flicked his reins over the horse’s neck, adjusting the leather straps more comfortably in his grip.
“I was a soldier in the King's army.”
“What kind of soldier?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. The sword he’d revealed this morning looked far too expensive for a common foot soldier. And he certainly didn’t fight like one.
“A good one.” He smiled devilishly and, for a moment, she was distracted from her line of enquiry.
“You can’t have got all those scars in the army, there hasn’t been a war since I was a toddler.” Keeran’s smile dropped, and Aelia could have kicked herself for her tactlessness.
“That’s true,” he admitted, turning his attention back to the road ahead. "l didn't have the easiest of upbringings. I was born into a society that was much harsher than yours. You had to fight to survive, so that’s what I did, and at first I wasn’t very good… hence the scars."
“There isn’t a society like that in Demuto. No artemian would condone that."
Frustration made her bolder. Despite their animalistic origins, artemians clung to their humane heritage to avoid descending into the incivility of their animal ancestors, fighting their innate instincts that could be so powerful. Did that mean he wasn’t from Demuto?
Keeran stared pensively out across the lake for a few long moments before answering.
“There are some things that I can’t tell you, for both my safety and yours.
But no matter how barbaric my past sounds, I can only ask that you trust me.
I know that might not seem fair, but all I can say is that I am not like the people I was born amongst." She opened her mouth to press him further, but he held his hand up to silence her.
"l really can’t tell you anymore, so there is no point in asking. "
His lips were set in a firm line, the black rings in his eyes seeming to darken. Aelia reluctantly changed the subject.
“Who were those men yesterday? Could they have been with the Astraea?" She was surprisingly hopeful at the prospect of his having killed six of them.
“I doubt it, they are more likely to be petty thieves, stealing what they can on the road and selling it at towns and cities."
“I'm surprised they didn't Shift," she mused.
“Thieves tend to be artemians who are smaller, better suited to sneaking and creeping through tight spaces rather than fighters. They were probably more adept at fighting in their human form. What surprised me is that they had no swords, just those knives.”
“Would it have made a difference if they’d had swords?” she asked, genuinely curious.
His lips tugged sideways thoughtfully before he answered. “Honestly? Not really.”
At least he was honest. Aelia played with her horse’s mane, twirling the soft hair through her fingers absentmindedly.
“What are you thinking?” He sounded apprehensive, his voice quiet, as if unsure he wanted the answer.
“Honestly?” She threw back at him. “I was wondering about your eyes.”
His jaw clenched and he looked down at his hands.
“That’s something else I can’t talk about.” This time the quiet in his voice was of an entirely different nature, a hint of danger leaking into it.
Aelia swallowed, hard, but her fear was laced with a hint of intrigue, the memory of how his irises had been jet black when he kissed her sending a cold rush tingling over her skin.
“Is it… dark magic?” she whispered, as if just saying it could summon the ideolan from the North.
“No!” Keeran spat, the astonishment in his voice too genuine to be feigned. Not ideolan then, Aelia thought, with no small amount of relief. That would have been a little hard to swallow. “You think I’m from Ideolanthea?”
She’d never met an Idoelan; one of the terms of Demuto’s alliance with Ideolanthea was that their borders remained uncrossable.
All she’d heard were rumours of Northerners polluted by their terrible magic.
Aelia didn’t know how the King had managed to keep them at bay for all these years, especially when half of Mithrylaya, the continent across the sea, had succumbed to them.
From what she’d heard, they had a lot to thank him for.
“Well, no,” Aelia backtracked. “It’s only, I’ve never seen anyone else’s eyes do that. Go black, I mean.”
Aelia trailed off, hating herself more with every word she uttered, as Keeran watched her struggle in unimpressed silence.
“I’m artemian, born in Demuto,” he said, his eyes meeting hers with unaffected sincerity. “And I would never touch dark magic.”
Aelia just nodded, a little ashamed of her probing. Fortunately, it didn’t last long.
“Is it my turn to ask the prying questions?” Keeran smiled at her, one eyebrow raised.
“I suppose that’s fair,” Aelia acquiesced, begrudgingly.
“I heard you in the forest, that night with Shiva,” he said. Every muscle in her body tensed, and her horse’s ears flicked back towards her nervously. “I heard you say you couldn’t Shift.”
“I’d guessed you had.” She side-eyed him, frowning.
“But you’re not human,” Keeran stated. That much was obvious, all you had to do was look in her eyes and you’d see the ring of magic.
“I thought you were meant to be asking questions, not stating the obvious,” Aelia replied, wryly.
Keeran huffed a laugh through his nose. “Alright, fair point. Do you know why? Your father, what was his second form?”
Aelia felt immediately less guilty for the invasive nature of her own questions.
“Wow, Keeran, way to keep it light.”
“Says the woman who asked about my scars,” Keeran said, raising his eyebrows.
“Fair enough,” she said, shooting him a grudging look. “I have no idea who my parents are. Otis wasn’t my father, he took me in when I was small, just a baby, I think. But even he never knew who my parents were. So no, I have no idea why I am the way I am.”
“I’ve seen you run, you’re as fast as any artemian I know. Faster.”
“Stronger too. My senses are heightened, my reflexes faster. I just can’t Shift,” Aelia admitted, matter-of-factly. It wasn’t something to brag about, not when Shifting was all that really mattered.
“You’ve never shown any other signs of magic? Nothing unusual?”
Confusion lined Aelia’s brow. “Like what?”
Keeran shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Aelia looked up at the sky, as if thinking hard. “I once pretended to curse Shiva as a child, and the next day he got sick and was off school? The other kids were particularly nice to me for a little while after that.”
Keeran smiled, shaking his head. “Gods help us all if you turned out to be a witch.”
“Don’t worry, you’re safe. Other than a frustrating inability to Shift, I am, to all intents and purposes, artemian.”
Keeran looked out across the lake, squinting at something in the distance. Aelia looked too, just about able to make out a dark blur protruding from the water.
"Look, Aelia. That's the town of Aquila."
Sure enough, when Aelia peered out across the still water, she could just make out a cluster of buildings protruding from the lake.
“They’re floating!” she gasped, open-mouthed.
Keeran chuckled. “Not quite. The whole town is built on foundations that reach all the way to the lake bed. The people who live there are exclusively artemian, and almost all of them Shift into water creatures of some description.”
“You’ve been there?” Aelia leant over in her saddle, squinting at the peculiar town; if she really focused, she could just about make out the indistinct shapes of people walking between the low, sturdy buildings.
“No, the Peregrinians never stop at Aquila. The artemians there are fiercely independent and don’t take kindly to visitors. They won’t even allow boats to dock there, so the only way to access it is to swim or fly.”
“How?” Aelia stared, uncomprehending. She’d heard of Aquila, but only when it was casually mentioned in conversation. She’d had no idea such a place could even exist. “How did they build a town in the middle of a lake?”
“Centuries ago, water artemians put down wooden stilts into the lake floor. They’ve petrified over time, making the perfect foundations for the residents to layer stone on top of them,” Keeran explained, and Aelia reluctantly twisted away from Aquila to turn towards him. “The buildings sit on that.”
“They made an island?”
“Exactly.” Keeran nodded. “But the lure of Aquila lies not in the town above the water, but the one beneath it. Apparently, they’ve transformed the bed into a paradise for water creatures.”
Aelia turned to look out over the lake once more. What would that even look like? She would have given almost anything to see it. But even if they’d had time, she had no way of surviving a swim down to the bottom of the lake.
She’d thought she was content in Callodosis, despite the constant struggle to get by, the struggle to prove herself.
But as she watched birds flitting over one another towards Aquila, she wondered if she even knew what contentment was.
The world was clearly not the place she thought it was, in more ways than she could have ever realised, and she wondered how much she’d been missing out on.
They continued past the town in distracted silence, each lost in their own thoughts.