Silas was already on our bed made up of thick quilts and furs. The jacket of his fighting leathers already removed with a hand behind his head, he was concentrating on something he was reading. Though I was quiet his eyes snapped up as soon as I entered our tent like he had been waiting for me. Counting down the seconds till my arrival.
He dropped the paper on the ground immediately, giving me all his attention. At a quick glance I saw it was notes on what we had discussed in our meetings, all of our options. He held out a hand to me. I walked over without hesitation as he pulled me onto his lap to straddle him, my hands flat against his chest.
He frowned still.
“Hmm?” I promoted.
“I don’t like how you’re one of our options. It’s selfish, I know. You can do what others cannot, but I…” His voice sounded pained.
“I know.” I responded, running my hands through his hair, following the direction in which it usually sat. Silas had a habit of running his hand through his hair when he was concentrating or on edge. It was naturally parted to the left and with his repetitive movement through it, it swayed that way still but more in a natural disarray.
“We will make it out.” His eyes snapped up, I could tell he wanted to believe me but he didn’t quite.
I moved down to kiss him, gently at first before the rush of urgency took over us both. I put a stop to it quickly, knowing I had plans for this last night with him, in the quiet and safety, the luxury of space we wouldn’t get soon again.
I kissed a trail down his chest, never moving my eyes from his. Reaching the tie of his pants I skilfully undid them. I made quick work of ridding him of the remnants of his clothing altogether before I leaned down and kissed a train from his stomach down again, now that I didn’t have any obstacles to hinder my progress. My repeated path earned a growl of anticipation from Silas that had me skipping the rest of the trail I was making and taking him in my mouth without much notice.
The breathy gasp he made told me that it took him by surprise much the same. I worked his length lazily, flicking my tongue in circular motions, enjoying it as much as he was. Whenever I did so a small sound escaped him. It didn’t take long before he grabbed me and turned us quickly, landing me on my back. Silas made quick work of my clothes, using his tendril of wind to untie and unbutton, and when it got too much he simply shredded them with claws of hard air, leaving them in scraps around me.
I didn’t have time to be concerned with what I would wear tomorrow as he entered me with as much notice as I had given him. His hips rocked fast and deep, our mouths meeting in a frenzy of kissing. It was not the slow discovering of our time in the forest outside of Venta, in the freshwater pond under the silver moonlight. This was pure need and anguish, a craving we both yearned for. To feel one another and know that through everything, no matter what lay ahead, we were constant.
We met each other in pure bliss, stars floating across my vision, his name dancing off my tongue the sound absorbed by his mouth on mine.
Silas moved to grab a thick quilted blanket that had been left for us and came back, covering us both. Tucking me tightly into his side.
We didn’t talk about the war. We didn’t talk about tomorrow we just simply were. I fell asleep held in his arms. My skin warmed by the hands that I had thought of every moment I was in the dark and so I counted his breaths until the call of sleep was one I could no longer resist.
Twenty Five
Dee
Move appeared before me, or I suppose rather I before it.
I had not expected to see what beheld me.
It was true. Move was no longer the city I had known. The city I had come to many
times with Phillipa both as young girls looking for excitement and again as adults. A companion guard to the Queen of Vyterra. My heart sank slightly as it usually did when my friend crossed my mind. In these last few days how I had felt her presence all around me. Her steadiness and courage. Perhaps it was her daughter who reminded me so much of her, it was as if I was speaking with the Phillipa from my youth. Even so, through the stubbornness and courage that Phillipa had passed on to Terraleise, it was her father I also saw. How it would have made him happy to have seen parts of himself adopted by his daughter. Her adaptability, her slight quirkiness. Her selflessness. Her need to explore. Those were all her father. A brave heart.
Called back to the present by the distant sounds of people, I evaluated the city in front of me. The City of Spices. Of wonderful colours and vibrant, unimaginable foods. It was a shell of the city it had been. There was no life left in the walls around me. While most of the buildings remained intact, the heart of the city, the vendors and stalls. The market squares. All of it had been destroyed. Burned. As if the intention was to not destroy the city but to sever the place from its soul. For some reason that revelation didn’t surprise me. In fact, it seemed silly that we had not thought of this tactic of Cander’s before.
Still, as I walked through the desolate streets towards the northern edge of the city, towards the docks, the noise of life slowly, though not as bright as it was in my memory, fluttered into hearing range.
It was shocking at first. Confusing and incredibly overwhelming. I had not been faced with so much emotion in my entire life as I had this past year. All along the coast, through the docks and moving to the east a settlement of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people – Vyterran’s – had camped together. I could hear music trickle throughout the easy conversations that dotted the packed camp before me. I could smell…spices. Gods, I couldn’t think of a single way this was possible but the people of Vyterra, of Move and Venta, they were all right before me.
“Ey!” A man called out who was tending to a small fire, cooking something that had people forming a very long line for.
I frowned at him, not used to being greeting as such. Venta, I thought to myself. He left his station earning some disapproving grunts from the members of his line to which he whipped his head around, voicing the same “Ey!” as he had to me.
He walked right up to me, far too close for anyone who respected the boundaries of personal space. He looked me up and down, his attention to me had drawn the attentions of others. Some who were minding their own business, others drawn from their conversations, and more who were cooking and handing off food much like he was.
“Who’re you?” He asked. I supposed it was his nature to simply be rude then.
“My name is Drasmorè Sentadear. I am one of the Rouella.” The man’s eyes widened, taking a step back and taking on a sheepish look to him. It was clear his bravado façade was simply for show. He didn’t say anything more but simply just stared at me.
Another man from the crowd whose attention I had earned spoke up. Man was probably a bit generous. More of a gangly teen yet to grow into his limbs, nose and ears.
“Did you say you’re one of the Rouella?” His voice was deeper than his appearance would have suggested.
I nodded at him once curtly. He looked as if he was going to say something else when a woman from another part of the crowd spoke, awe tinting her voice.
“So you’re with them?” Her hand was flung carelessly behind her. My breath caught in my throat. In the distance, far enough away that you had to really look to notice, but once you saw them, you knew it could be nothing other than a fleet of ships. Their presence on the distant ocean serene and mysterious.
I couldn’t look away. Hadn’t I dreamt of this most of my life? Prayed to the Gods time and time again for a chance to go home. To see the place of my people, of my parents. I found myself stuck to the spot where I stood. A sudden wave of uncertainty holding me in place, not an emotion I usually felt. Uncertainty if they would accept me. If I would disappoint the Rouella who had come to defend the world and kingdom I had grown to love and shown them its worth. Perhaps they would not feel the same.
“Are ya?” The woman said again, her arm still flung behind her lazily to where it wasn’t even pointing in the right direction. I hadn’
t answered her question, the question they all had. They looked on in nervous anticipation.
“I am.” Saying the words aloud seemed to settle some of my hesitancy, replacing it with a feeling of belonging.
A chorus of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ erupted from the camp around me. The faces of the people elated and curious. It was another shock to me that they knew who I was, what I was.
“She’s one of the people that saved us!” I heard yelled from somewhere in the back.
“She might know more. They never came back, they just vanished!” Another threw into the mix. Questions began piling up and spilling out of every mouth I could see.
I didn’t wait, I simply closed my eyes and cast out my mind to the ship I could see in the distance. Turning to nothing but mist before them, escaping the onset of questions before they could reach my ears and vanished to the Armada.
I should have known they would be expecting me.
Landing in the centre of a spear tipped circle I was met with dozens of eyes of every colour sitting in faces of every shade. I knew better than to move, so I waited.
A man walked out onto the raised deck of the ship, forcing me to move my eyes up. Every thought left my head as I was sure my mouth hung open wide. He was…beautiful. His skin was dark and sun kissed, making the blue of his eyes shine almost as if they were luminescent. His dark hair was cropped on the sides but longer at the top, falling lazily to one side, tussled as if it fell wherever the wind directed it. He was tall and broad, filled out with muscles that had earned their place on his body. I recovered myself quickly, donning my usual look of calculated seriousness.
“Echt.” The man spoke, clearly a leading figure of the Rouella.
I knew the word he spoke. The language. Kavastin. It wasn’t only spoken by the Rouella but all of the people through The Passageway. My parents had spoken it a little in the privacy of our home, the language passed on from their parents and their grandparents before. They had tried desperately to keep the language alive but it always came with a risk. They eventually stopped speaking it altogether and I was left with only a little understanding of my mother tongue. This word though, I knew. Enough.
The soldiers around me moved as a single unit, their long spears moving from being directed at me to standing at their side, the height of their weapons as tall as the people that held them.
“Loralet!” The man called out, his eyes never leaving me. A woman stepped forward but I didn’t dare move my focus from him.
“Lour tadeska ney?” His eye moved smoothly from my face to hers. I could see movement from the corner of my eye, and my body felt like it was suddenly home to thousands of spiders, and then the feeling was gone. My focus was snapped from the man to the woman beside me, a jolt of recognition ran through me. How I could know a face I’d never seen before, I had no idea.
Every single one of the Rouella wore the same thing. Their uniform looked to be some kind of loose-fitting linen shirt and over the top they all wore a leather vest that tied at the front in a crisscrossing pattern from the bottom to the top. The bottoms were a similar worn leather with a plethora of weapons strapped to them. Their uniforms, for a moment, reminded me of those worn by the Prince of Lygot and his company and I thought that perhaps this was where they had gotten their inspiration all that time ago when our two people lived side by side. They all had hooded scarves that draped across the front and back of their bodies loosely, covering their mouths and leaving only their eyes on display, lined heavily with black coal.
The woman who I assumed was Loralet moved over to me removing the scarf from around her mouth. Her eyes were soft and her face was open and kind.
“Yes.” She said quietly. “Yes, this is her.” She spoke out of the native tongue, her words dripping in the accent all Kavastins must have. Before I knew it she enveloped me in an embrace. I was so taken aback I didn’t even move my own arms to hug her back, not that I would have anyway, had I been in my right mind.
The man above turned to leave, yelling a command over his shoulder that had the rest of the Rouella on the ship I had vanished onto dispersing. Loralet continued to hold my shoulders as she finally released me from our embrace. I was more than a little confused so when she motioned me forward, toward the door that led into the room below the raised deck the leader had been standing on, I followed willingly, the questions already filling my mind as well as what I was going to say to get them to Altrey.
The inside of the main room above the deck of the vessel was lavish.
Incredible art work depicting a number of different landscapes were hung on the three walls that were not marked with a door. The wood of the floor, walls and ceiling was polished and shined, matching the table and chairs in the centre of the space. There was nothing else in the room yet it felt so full.
Loralet directed me to a seat at the table.
“Drasmorè, are you thirsty?” She caught me off guard – yet again. Something I was not used to being. I needed to figure out a way to remedy that. I had not spoken my name out loud yet, I would imagine she picked it up when I cast my mind in desperation for help.
I kept my voice strong. It wasn’t just for show. Though I felt out of my element I was sure of myself, of who I was, and I let that ground me. “No. Thank you. And Dee is fine.” She smiled at me kindly and proceeded to wave her hand delicately before her, summoning a pitcher of water and cups which appeared in the centre of the table. A glass already filled sat in front of me atop a colourful coaster that reminded me of the paintings on the walls.
“Talen won’t be a moment.” She added as she sat in a chair across from me. She continued to stare at my face in open fondness. It was a little more than disconcerting but for fear of offending any of the Rouella before they had agreed to come and help was the last thing on my mind, so I said nothing and smiled back politely.
“The man from above?” I asked as casually as I could. She smiled at me knowingly. I cringed for what felt like the first time in my adult life at the thought that my response to his appearance was as obvious to everyone as it had felt.
Talon entered through the same door we came in by. Closing it behind him, it shut soundlessly and immediately blended in with the walls on either side of it. He moved around the edge of the room, walking behind my chair to find his place at the head of the table. I looked with concern at the closed door, thinking there would have been more people joining us.
Loralet moved her attention to Talen, bowing her head respectfully before addressing him. I decided it was best to follow her lead and tilted my chin down as well. When I looked back up his gaze was searching my face with a new sort of curiosity. It sent my heart racing. Had I been less self aware I would have frowned at myself for the absurd reaction.
“Dee is the one who I received the message from.” Loralet motioned towards me. I assumed she meant for me take the floor. I cleared my throat before going on.
“Black Magic has plagued Vaashaa once again.” I held Talen’s stare, refusing to cower under its intensity or be the first to look away. It seemed neither was he. My words, however, had them both stiffening and so I took that as my invitation to continue, and so I told them everything. I started with myself, a back story I thought was somewhat necessary considering we were of the same people and I knew nothing of them or their ways. I spoke to them of many of the things I had sent in my message when I cast my mind out and everything that had happened since.
“If you have found the Heir what is your need of the Rouella?” Talen’s voice carried the same accent as Loralet, however it was not as thick like he had spent much more time speaking out of his native tongue.
“I didn’t know. Not then. Even now, Terraleise is strong, but we can’t know if it will be enough. We believe they have taken the people of an entire kingdom and subjected them to the Black Magic. Turned them into an army. There will be simply too many of them, and not enough of us. She will be able to do much more than an affinity wielder in the history of Vaashaa. Perhaps
I am underestimating her but it would be false if I didn’t admit that I feared the worst.”
“That it will take her life before she can complete the restoration.” Talen spoke the words I wasn’t able to. I replied only with a curt not. “And the prince?” He continued on. I nodded once again.
“He is strong. Their connection could be a deciding factor but they will not use it, not if
it can be done without it. The damage will be…considerable. Not only to Cander’s army, but our own.” He looked at me again, his gaze curious.
“You called the Rouella for what purpose?” Testing me. I knew he was trying to gauge my worth. My resolve.
“Because this world needs help. The people in it are no more to blame for this than you are. They were unprepared, their ancestors destroying everything they ever knew about Black Magic, and now it is killing the very land they stand on. If Cander wins, if he is successful…We are the only people standing in between him and the possibility he will take The Passageway to Kavasta.”
Heir of Vaashaa: The Lost Child of the Crown (The Lost Child of the Crown Series Book 2) Page 16