Chapter 15 Desire Lines
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Desire Lines
“Darling, you look dreadful.”
“Thank you, M?mi,” Auria muttered, slumping exhaustedly into a chair. “Forget the startling intellect and relentless moral fortitude. I’m so sorry that I look bad.”
Auria’s mothers exchanged a dark look over her head.
The Marriosans lived in a tall, elegant townhouse on Goldendawn Avenue, a sought-after residential street near the River Corven.
Every inch of the interior was vibrantly hand-painted—a mix of delicate details and bold swathes of color, gold and silver swirls with constellations of pearl-stars, stark pink sideboards, and sunny yellow ceiling roses.
A droll city official had once declared it “a crime upon the senses and an assault upon the sensible mind,” which Auria’s artist mother, Lulí, had taken as an immense compliment.
The other of Auria’s mothers, Victaria, was a Royal Wardholder, having given up all the power in her well to help uphold the Great Wards of Atherin.
The king rewarded the Royal Wardholders with more ascens than most mages knew what to do with—it was for this reason that the Crown was rumored to be bankrupt, but also the reason Atherin hadn’t been invaded for centuries, and really, you had to weigh these things up.
“Her betrothed just died in the line of duty,” Victaria said, shooting her Nyr?thi wife a cease-and-desist sort of expression. “Perhaps we might forsake commentary on her complexion for the time being. How are you doing, my heart?”
Auria hadn’t shared any real detail on Tiernan’s death—so much of the Silvercloak work was classified, and there was also a sense of shame over how he had died. So she focused not on the events, but the feelings, of which there were an abundance.
“Every room I enter, I expect to see him there.” Tears sprung to Auria’s eyes like her body had some sort of internal leak.
“Every corner I round, every time my wand crackles with et vocos. For a splintering second, my heart believes it’s him.
I grieve a thousand times over, every single day.
I can’t comprehend that the future will exist without him in it.
And I just—I don’t understand where he’s gone.
That’s the kind of overriding feeling. A kind of frantic existential confusion. Where is he?”
“I know, love. I know so much.” Victaria’s brows crinkled in sympathy as she filled a kettle, voice fogged by her own grief.
Her hand went to the new pendant around her neck—the jewel of her late father, the locally beloved Papa Marriosan.
The yellow topaz gleamed as though freshly polished.
“Falling in love with another Silvercloak was always going to be a risk. Such a dangerous—”
“Says the Vallish patriot who fell in love with a Nyr?thi immigrant falsely accused of spying for her country,” Auria snapped.
“Emphasis on falsely,” Lulí said sweetly. Her frizzy ginger hair, which Auria had inherited, was cropped close to her head. She held up a brown paper pouch, shaking it in Auria’s direction. Her thick, muscular arms were heavily tattooed and smattered with paint. “C?nnafyr?”
Auria nodded half-heartedly, though she really did love c?nnafyr—a sweet, spiced coffee from Kylgard. She could use some more pleasure in her well, or at the very least something to ease the swell and scull of this perpetual migraine.
Lulí finished brewing the c?nnafyr and laid a silver tray down on the dining table. Victaria slid in beside their daughter, stroking her cheek with her knuckles. This simple brush of affection was enough to loose Auria’s tears in earnest, a hot, salty stream spattering over the table.
Pouring c?nnafyr into a cerulean-and-orange cup, Lulí sighed.
“It hurts so much now, daerlin—as you know, I was married and quickly widowed back in Kylgard—but I promise, it fades. You will never stop looking for them around every corner, and you will always, always wonder where they’ve gone.
But grief turns to remembrance, and the heart finds somewhere else to land. ”
“I can’t imagine that ever happening for me.”
A soft smile. “Do you know how new spells are developed?”
“Of course.”
“Explain it to me as though I don’t.”
Auria scowled like she was fourteen again. “Don’t patronize me.”
“Explain it to me, Aury.”
Auria sighed. “Fine. Most think of developing spells as a research effort, an intellectual pursuit. But really, it’s a matter of perseverance and time.
New spells work like desire lines. Say, for example, you have five square acres of grass, a castle at one side, and the entrance gates on the opposite side.
A fancy gardener or architect might lay a meandering path curving around the outside of the lawn—one that’s more scenic, and that will preserve the grass.
But left to their own devices, most people would choose to cut straight over, because it’s a faster, simpler way to their destination.
Over time, if that happens again and again and again, a new path forms over the grass, eroded by all that accumulated footfall. A desire line.
“Developing spells is like that. First, a visionary sees a better way of doing something. But because there is no direct pathway, no words linked to outcomes, no established commands to steer the magic…it’s hard to force the issue.
Magic is obedient, and will try and follow the nearest existing path rather than creating a new one.
It takes an immense amount of coordinated effort—of clear, identical intentions and perfect execution—for a legion of mages to forge a new desire line.
” Auria folded her arms petulantly over her chest. “But I don’t know what that has to do with mourning Tiernan. ”
Lulí laughed kindly. “You never were very strong with metaphor. When it comes to the loss of a life partner…it’s about gently rewriting desire lines.
Because over the course of many years, you have been creating desire lines around them, around their life.
You become accustomed to doing things a certain way because the person you love does them that way.
You brew the tea to their liking, you take an evening walk because they like to decompress after dinner, you pick up a certain newspaper every time you see it on a stand.
You call them every time you see a frostowl, because you know how much they love them.
You establish rituals and routines, carved through the ground again and again over time until they become intrinsic to your day, to your very existence.
And then the destination is suddenly gone, and you have all these paths that lead nowhere, and it feels both wrong to live as normal and wrong not to. ”
She rested her palm over Victaria’s hand. “But one day, when you least expect it, your heart will stumble upon another destination. And just like a fledgling spell, it will slowly, over time, form a new path there. A new desire line.”
Before Auria could process this, the tip of her sapphire-studded wand crackled to life.
“Et vocos, Detective Marriosan.”
Captain Karvas.
Auria hastily brushed away her tears, as though he could see them. “Sir?”
“Code four-eight-V on Broad Row. Detectives Jebat and Dallar have been dispatched, but I want a trained Healer there. I could send Paliran, but there are whisperings that it’s Whitewing related—your patch. Are you nearby?”
Standing from the table, grabbing her cloak, and draining her c?nnafyr, she said, “There in five.”
“Make it four.”