18. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Today is the last day any High Fae of the House of Earth will leave the Keep. We must stand ready. No one in and no one out. The drums of war sound loudly in my ears, and I will not let my enemies surprise me.

~King Roderic, personal journals

After this afternoon's explosive moments with Cole, tonight is a welcome respite. An eight hundred pound boar is currently cooking in a pit, and the entire village of Aerwyn is celebrating. I knew that they were hungry, but I didn't know they were barely getting by. It's no wonder that they were licking their lips as they looked at me.

They're not hunters. Most of the Fae here have skills that are suited for killing, but only humans. They've been starving after living their entire lives in Draenyth until they were rushed to Aerwyn. You buy food at a market in Draenyth, and here… well, Aerwyn isn't on any trade routes.

"But you're just a Wyrdling," Bog the goblin says from his spot on the log. I'd never met a goblin before Bog, but needless to say, he terrified me initially. The mouth full of needle-like teeth were the first things I saw since he kept licking his lips in my direction. His sickly pale-yellow skin that seems to stretch more than normal skin would be the second thing. It reminds me of a toad's. Then there was the smell of sulfur that he seems to produce. Let's just say that I didn't want to sit down across from him.

Until I realized that he's hilarious. "Yes Bog, I'm just a Wyrdling. Even normal humans kill boars like this."

Bog squints at the boar and then at me, his oversized ears bouncing as he tries to understand this change in the world. "No, there's simply no way. That is too large a creature for a Wyrdling or human to kill with a spear. You must have used magic or trapped it. You didn't poison it, did you? I'd still eat it, but I want to know if I'm going to die."

I can't help but chuckle. Darian and Lee are across the fire just like last night, sitting beside Cole. Tonight seems different, though. No matter how hard they try, the twin High Faes can't seem to make Cole laugh tonight.

He's the only one that's in a bad mood. "Maeve, how did you kill the boar?" Rivertail, the only faun in the village, seems younger than most of the others here. He looks like a young man from the waist up, but from the waist down, he looks like a goat. Thick, shaggy fur covers his hips and legs, and instead of feet, he has jet black hooves, which he seems to enjoy digging into the soil when he's nervous.

Barely noticeable in his curly brown hair are two small horns that don't look all that different from the boar's tusks. Rivertail is nice in a way that I'm familiar with. Where Bog enjoys picking on people, Rivertail is just nice. He reminds me of Hazel, truthfully. Always ready with a smile. Never overstepping boundaries.

Before I have a chance to answer Rivertail, Bog jumps off his place on the log. "Yes. How did you kill it? I would love to not starve, and if a Wyrdling can do this, I'm sure that we could." He looks around at the rest of the village. Nearly forty of them in total.

I follow his gaze and try to come up with a way to explain how to hunt. It's the simplest thing in the world, and at the same time, it's impossible to explain in a way that they'll understand. If they don't know how to hunt yet, then how could I help them be successful?

"Maybe trying to explain how to hunt an eight-hundred-pound boar isn't the best way to start," I say. "Maybe we could talk about hunting rabbits? Or fishing? There's a river a few hours away that I'm sure we could visit tomorrow. I think that's something I could show you in a day."

Bog glances at Rivertail, who nods emphatically and says, "Oh Maeve, that'd be so wonderful. It's been years since I had fish. We mostly live on things we can forage. Fruit and tubers and the occasional grubs."

Grubs? I feel a little squeamish thinking about eating bugs. I've tried a lot of animals, but I think I draw the line at bugs. "Well, maybe I can teach you a few things so that you're not so hungry all the time."

"I will learn to fish and hunt with you, Lady Maeve," Bog says, suddenly sounding very formal. "I will learn to feed the village of Aerwyn." He bows his head three times and then turns around to sit on the log.

I notice Darian and Lee grinning as they watch Bog. Many of the other less talkative villagers seem to pay attention too, and they stand up to ask if I'll teach them as well. I hadn't expected this many people interested in learning to hunt and fish. It makes sense, though.

"I'd be happy to teach anyone who wants to learn tomorrow. We'll leave around dawn for the river. We'll need a lot of string, knives, gathering baskets for bait, and any bits of metal that we can use for hooks."

The villagers are in a stir now, and I feel Darian's hand on my shoulder. I turn around to look at him, and he nods away from the fire. Away from the villagers and the slowly cooking boar. Into the shadows.

I haven't spent very much time with Darian or Lee, but Cole seems to trust them. I follow him, not sure what he's leading me toward. Bog and Rivertail and several of the other villagers glance up at me as I leave my spot. They seem used to the High Fae doing things without talking to them. I guess they assume that I'm part of their group rather than the villagers, because they let me go without another word.

When we're far enough away from the fire, Lee steps out from behind one of the cottages. "We need to talk, Maeve." She says it without any of the wildness in her voice that I've gotten used to. It's serious. Somehow, dealing with a drakeling that could burn down all of Aerwyn, she was less focused than she is on this conversation, and that worries me.

"What do we need to talk about?" I glance from Lee to Darian, who also has a similar serious expression on his face.

Darian says, "You need to understand Cole better. We can't prove anything to you about him, but knowing him, he's told you absolutely nothing. Cole Cyrus is the best Immortal I've ever known, and when he asks you to trust him, it's for a good reason."

I say nothing. They've obviously planned this, so why interrupt? Lee takes over and says, "When Darian and I were children, our mother was one of Cole's tutors. His primary tutor, actually. While she was teaching him, she also taught us, something that was unusual since our mother was spending time on us instead of him sometimes. Cole seemed to focus better and work harder while we were there, so even his father was fine with us working beside him. Which led to us becoming thick as thieves. We did everything together."

Darian steps in then. "But Cole was the Prince of Flames, and we were just nobodies from the House of Light, a far cry from anyone of importance. We were all children together, but Cole… Cole's always been the Prince. He only pretended to be a child."

There's a silence that hangs in the air as Darian pauses. Leaves skitter across the thatched roofs of cottages carried by an invisible wind, and I can tell that Cole's best friends are nervous about what they're saying. This is the first time I've seen them unsure of themselves, and it makes me a little worried.

I don't interrupt, don't push them to spit it out. Whatever it is, it's a big thing, and I would prefer to know more about the people I'm going to be traveling with rather than less. Finally Darian says, "But we were not mature like that. We played, and we convinced Cole to play as well. As so many children are wont to do, we didn't always think things through when we were playing. When we came up with the plan to play a prank on the Prince of Steel, everything went catastrophically wrong."

Lee steps closer, as though she's trying to hide what she's about to say, interrupting Darian.

"Rhion was young. Several years younger than us, he hadn't reached adolescence. There was still a fear for his safety as his healing powers weren't fully developed, and he was nearly as vulnerable as a human child would be. Cole was running late that day, his training session with his father running late, and Darian and I wanted to surprise him by having everything set up before Cole got there."

She rubs her cheek and shakes her head slowly. "We were idiots. Everyone knew Rhion had a crush on me. It was just a cute childhood crush on the older female. That day, Darian thought it would be funny to scare him."

Darian raises his hand, and a glowing figure appears in front of us. The same size as a normal child, the image is made of light, it's more detailed than I could imagine. With subtleties like hair and clothes that move in the wind ever so slightly. I can't tell who it is, but it's obviously a very young child. Probably eight years old, though who knows how many years old a Fae would be at that size?

"So Darian turned into a basilisk," Lee says. "Our dual bloodlines of Light and Steel were well known, but we rarely ever showed our Steel powers. Even as adolescents, we were naturally gifted with both of our sets of powers."

Another figure, a long snake that's far larger than any I've ever seen, appears a few feet away from the little boy. Bushes appear in between them and hide the basilisk. It feels like a very stationary image, except that the wind moves everything. A part of me wants to reach out and touch it, and I wonder if it would be solid or let my fingers pass right through.

"Then I asked Rhion to go on a walk with me. Now, Maeve, understand that neither of us wanted anything bad to happen. We just thought we'd scare Rhion and then we'd have a story to tell Cole. It didn't work out like that…"

Another, larger female image appears next to the boy, and they walk toward the hidden basilisk. The basilisk slithers out from the bushes, and the boy steps in front of the girl.

"Rhion was braver than we'd expected. We'd thought he'd run from a dangerous creature like a basilisk. Instead, he tried to protect Lee. Instead of running, he attacked, and that changed everything."

The boy's figure changes in front of me, growing wings. Then he pulls a sword from his side. "He attacked. Darian hadn't expected it, and instead of retreating or reshaping himself into his normal form, he tried to scare Rhion again." The snake coils up and lashes out at the boy, who's flying above him now. "And Rhion fell. It wasn't that far of a fall, but for an Immortal as young as Rhion was, it was enough. He tried to catch himself, but the fall was too far, and both bones in Rhion's right arm broke."

The images show the scene, and then it all disappears as Cole's voice comes from behind me. "Then Rhion's guards tried to arrest Darian. There was only one thing I could do. Only one way to protect my friends from being turned into slaves."

I turn to him and see those ice-cold blue eyes blazing with heat and anger. "I told those guards that I had ordered him to do this to teach Rhion to stop being weak."

He turns his gaze away from me to Lee, who's looking nervous. There's not an ounce of happiness on Cole's face. "This obviously wasn't true, but it was the only way to keep King Gethin from considering it an act of war from me or an act of treason from Darian. Everyone knew Rhion was softer than the average Great House Prince."

His gaze shifts to Darian, who's staring at his feet. "My friends are telling you this story to explain why they trust me. I didn't let them get turned into slaves solely because I cared about them. Any other adolescents who had done the same thing would have been collared and served the rest of their lives as amusement or servants for the House of Steel as punishment. An eternity enslaved because they were stupid children."

He looks back at me. "I'm going to sleep, and you three should as well. Remember that tomorrow we train, and Maeve, you've promised an entire village that you'll teach them to fish. Get some sleep."

He turns and walks toward the cottage. His steps are as light as ever as he moves through the darkness. I turn to look at Darian and Lee, who are looking ashamed but just as serious as they were before.

"He missed one part," Darian says softly, not much more than a whisper. "His father burned him for hours to convince him to confess that he had no part in the prank. He threw him into a dungeon and refused to let his wounds be tended for days. You've seen his burns, haven't you? That's because of us. That was the cost Cole paid to keep us from being enslaved by the House of Steel. If he's hiding things, it's because there's a good reason."

I'm speechless as Darian nods and turns toward the cottage that Cole and I are sharing with them. Lee puts her hand out and squeezes my shoulder. She says nothing, but I know she feels the same as Darian.

They both trust him because he gave so much for them when they were so young. Does that mean that I should trust him? He already said that he'd have let anyone else be enslaved. Aren't I part of that "anyone else"?

He elicits such loyalty from everyone around him, though. This entire village trusts him completely. Maybe I don't fall into the "everyone else" category since I'm sure that stealing an entire village away from slavery would end with him getting hurt far worse than some burns.

I may not trust him like everyone else does, but I can admit that he has more layers than I'd expected.