by Rae Brooks
The threat was one that Taeru had heard too many times to be affected by it. He knew the consequences of being caught but being reminded of them did little for him anymore. At first—he had been afraid every time the nobles had mentioned it. A few times, they had even pretended to know who he was—only after a while did he realize that they were bluffing.
As the men sprinted off towards their horses, that were tied to a pole not too far off, he smiled. “Always a pleasure, gentlemen!” he shouted cheerfully to their backs. Shockingly, they didn’t return the pleasantry.
“Th-thank you!” the shopkeeper stammered. For a moment, Taeru worried that the man was going to leap out from behind his stall and wrap Taeru in a hug. That would have required a little more closeness than Taeru wanted.
Fortunately, though, the man didn’t move to hug him. Taeru offered a quick bow. “Not a problem, goodsir. Try not to be so afraid of them,” he said gently, “most of them couldn’t beat a paper sack in a swordfight.”
The man smiled and nodded his head gratefully. Surely the people of Dark District would start to understand they could defend themselves soon enough. Already he’d seen a little more spirit appearing in them when they handled the nobles—at least he’d managed to do some good for his running away from Cathalar.
“Impressive,” the voice behind him shocked him. He’d forgotten that his traveler friend was still in the market. “And modest too… a hero is rare, but a hero that refuses to take credit for his deeds is rarer.”
Taeru fought his blush before he turned to face the traveler. He offered a quick smile. “Modest or a coward?” he asked. “If the nobles knew my identity, then I’m sure I would make an easier target.”
The blond smiled warmly and seemed to deeply approve of this response. “Modest, still—modest and sensible,” he finally said.
There was a light blush this time that Taeru hoped his mask did a fair enough job of covering up. With a quick bow, he thanked the traveler for his words, dashed up onto one of the rooftops, and found himself moving much faster than usual to get away from the crowds that would no doubt be trying to follow him and determine who he was.
Once he’d gotten out of his costume and back to his home, his legs buckled the moment he crossed the threshold. “Kilik!” a voice squealed. Katt—Juliet’s apprentice. He couldn’t help thinking that he was going to get questioned even worse, now that Katt was here.
With a little help, Taeru got to his bed and worked to control his labored breathing. Despite the toll it had taken on him, he was glad that he had been there to help out the man in the market this sun. And even if the blond traveler thought Kilik was a bumbling imbecile, he seemed to have a high enough opinion of the Phantom Blade. “What’s wrong?” Katt asked. “You look flushed. You have a fever!”
He just mumbled some answer that he didn’t fully understand himself, but she was already off to fetch a rag and some cool water to put on his face. He didn’t know where this fever had come from, but if his dreams were so bad that they caused him a fever—then he might have a problem. A few moments later, Taeru heard someone else enter the house. “Kilik!” Alyx’s voice was stern. “I saw what happened in the square earlier! You were sick, you foolish boy!” she cried.
“What did he do?” Katt asked when she returned with the rag.
Taeru winced and shot Alyx a warning glance before she let out a sigh. She wasn’t about to let this be turned into her fault. “He was just running about. I knew he was sick from the events of our last moon, and he insisted on going about this sun as if nothing was the matter.” Taeru had to give her credit—that was a lovely way of handling it.
Katt accepted the explanation readily and went to fretting over Taeru and telling him how foolish he’d been for going out when he wasn’t feeling well. Then, there was another excited voice in the room—though at this point everyone sounded the same, and as though they were coming from the back of a cave. “Did you see the square?!” someone asked excitably.
“Yes, and be quiet,” another voice chided, “Kilik is sick.”
For some reason, Taeru was frightened of the idea of falling asleep. He didn’t know how badly his dreams would be now that he’d given way to a fever. Sadly, he had no choice, as his body seemed to get a little weaker by the moment.
The horror of his dream was no less than what he expected. Immediately, he was thrust into a field of blood and carnage. Somewhere in the distance, he knew what was happening—Telandus and Cathalar were finally at war. He was hurt, though, more so than he should be—and he didn’t think he’d been involved in the battle. Maybe he should have been, though.
In the distance, that seedling called out to him—though now there was a large black mass that seemed to pulse terror into his body as he stared up at it. “Please, don’t do this,” he begged, though he didn’t know for what it was he was begging.
“This is your fault,” some far off voice told him. “You have failed. You have failed and everyone you love will pay dearly for it!”
Taeru slowly began to panic as he stumbled forward. He tripped over one of the people lying in the field of blood and gasped with agonized horror when he realized who it was. “Ryo,” he choked. “Ryo—no.”
His older brother didn’t stir, and though the monstrous creature continued to call to Taeru, he stayed with his brother. He brought Ryo’s head up into his lap, trying to rouse him. “Ryo, Ryo, please wake up! Ryo!”
There was no response. The pull from the mass in the distance was strong, and he could feel his own body trying to move without his permission. He couldn’t leave his brother, though, and he wouldn’t. If he had failed, then Ryo shouldn’t be paying the price—Taeru should be paying the price. He spoke to the presence with desperation. “N-no, this isn’t fair. You said I failed. Don’t hurt Ryo! Don’t hurt my family. Leave everyone else alone! I’m the one that failed!” he cried into nothingness.
There was no response and he could hear the unsteady beat of his heart. He clung to his brother until the body began to decay and wither away in his arms. Whispers continued in his mind and he tried to hold onto Ryo until at last, he was hovered over a grinning skeleton. Taeru threw himself away as tears began to stream down his face. “Please!” he begged. “Take me! Take me, not them!”
His feet stumbled towards the presence. Perhaps if he would go to it, then he could end this. If the presence could have him, as it so desperately wanted, then surely it would leave everyone else alone. Taeru couldn’t fail again. The black mass came into his vision and seemed to send jolts of agony down him by its mere presence. As he approached, though, there was another figure standing in front of the black abomination.
He continued moving forward, confident that he needed to get to this figure. Once he was close enough, horror struck him in full. The slight figure was sitting on a chair that seemed made out of thorns and in her hand, she clutched a white flower that had been painted with her blood. When she looked up, he could see her—his sister. But blood spilled down her face and her eyes were a frightening red color. “Aela,” he spoke warily. “Aela! Get away from there!”
His little sister? No. No, this couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t have failed so badly that Aela was forced to pay for what he’d done. The sister that he’d abandoned was now dying because of him. What sort of monster was he? “A monster indeed,” she spoke in a strange voice.
Taeru wanted to pull away from her, but this was his sister and he had to find some way to help her. He continued forward. “Aela, what happened? Tell me what happened.”
“You happened,” she growled. “You did this. You did all of this, and you will be the reason that we all perish, you coward.” Her voice was angry, and what was terrifying was that it was Aela’s. He’d never heard it spoken in such angry tones, but the voice was his sister’s.
Tremors took hold of his body. “N-no. I will fix this. I won’t let you die, Aela. I swear.” His words were sincere, and he would have done anything—but he didn’t
know if he was already too late. He’d already failed, according to everyone else, and he’d already watched his own brother wither away in his arms.
“Oh, will you?” she hissed. She dropped the blood soaked flower and started towards him, with those blood red eyes shimmering with some sort of a hunger. “Will you try to save me, brother? Do you swear it? You dare speak such words after you abandoned me? You left me to die in Cathalar while you went and piddled your life away in our sworn enemy’s land?” she growled.
He let out a breath. He wasn’t sure how to respond to this. He had abandoned his sister, and he’d been living with the guilt of that for five years. But he’d been sure that he’d made the right choice—that he ought to be somewhere, try and find another way to stop the war—since in Cathalar he had been unable. “I didn’t abandon you, Aela,” he whimpered. “I was trying to help you… I love you.”
“Liar!” she shrieked her response and when she did, something within the black mass started to stir. Was it going to try and consume her? His eyes widened, and he took another step forward. “You never loved me. You never cared about anyone but yourself. You’re a pathetic excuse for a brother, and more pathetic of one for a prince.” Her words hurt, but he couldn’t rightly deny them.
“I am so sorry, Aela. Please… just…” All at once, the rose that she’d dropped shot forward and stabbed into his stomach. The rose still sat before her, but it had extended deadly vines and they pierced his body without difficulty. He twitched as blood ran down the vine towards the rose, as if it was hungry for it. “Aela…” he choked.
“This is what we want,” she said. “Everyone in Cathalar wants you dead. Everyone in Telandus wants you dead. Because of you, this war will come to pass and we will all be held accountable for your failings.”
Taeru shook his head desperately. “N-no. Kill me, then. Kill me. Do whatever you need to do. I never meant to let this happen! Kill me if it will stop this war! Please!” he begged.
With his words, the figure of his sister twisted into something much more horrifying. A monster, a black monster with the blood red eyes and teeth that looked wholly ready to eat him. Terror pressed into his body. “Foolish child… your words will never mean anything.”
Suddenly, a black tendril shot out from the black mass and wrapped around his wrist, yanking him forward to the horrifying black monster. Another shot out from the tree just as he opened his eyes and let out a pained gasp.
“The Magister of Direction had promised the others that there was no other way—that destruction, their last resort, would end this disaster. And her words had been disproven, the foulest of all humiliations.”
-A Hero’s Peace v.i
Chapter viii
Aela Lassau
Aela dropped the book to her desk, just as her chamber maid, Isabella, stuck the last pin in her hair. She deeply wished that hair could be done before dressing, because the bodice of her dress was threatening to squeeze the life out of her. Isabella offered an apologetic smile and then stood back to admire her work. Aela’s hair was pinned up so that it sat at the top of her head, but a few of her curls were allowed to swing down around her shoulders.
She smiled approvingly and dismissed her aid without another word. She would have ordinarily been more friendly, but she was on her way to dinner—and that was never an overly joyous occasion. Her hand reached instinctively for the book she’d been reading, but knowing that she couldn’t be frivolous with her care of the forbidden book, she hurried to the little compartment beside her bed and eased it back in.
The book had turned out to be quite the distraction. In fact, Aela had found herself so absorbed in the fascinating story of the book that she had missed one of her dance lessons and gotten quite an earful about that from Father. She deemed the venture worth it, though, as the book was doing more than helping her to not think about the terrible events that were on the horizon—it seemed to be subtly giving her a way to deal with them.
The book was precisely what Graan had said it was. There was a hero, and that hero was working with intense fervor to prevent two warring lands from—well, warring. The idea was to get the rulers of the lands to come to an agreement. The problem was that the two lands seemed opposed in every regard.
The Magisters then declared the lands unfit to exist in the realm of life, and the hero went to work upon convincing the gods that this was not the case. Aela had read the book twice, and was halfway through her third time. This had taken a couple of cycles, fourteen circles of the sun, but she was finally starting to understand the book.
Her dress clung to her body and swept out too far as she walked down to the dinner table where her father would no doubt already be waiting. Ryo tended to be later to these events, so she’d have to hope that the burden of being the last to arrive didn’t fall on her. The dinner room was a too-large room, with black and white tiling and a long golden table in the center. The table was meant to seat twenty, which made dinners that consisted only of Veyron, Ryo and Aela rather awkward.
Not as if Taeru had made much of a difference on the large table, but it was times like that when she missed him the most. She had tried to resume her frequent visits to Lower Town, and she had even had a few sword lessons with Arthal in the past two cycles, but nevertheless, she couldn’t stop thinking and worrying about her brother.
The last couple of suns he was in Cathalar, Taeru had spent with Aela. He had informed her of his plans, and he assured her that she would not want to go with him. She hadn’t believed him then, and she didn’t believe him now, but without Taeru’s guidance, Aela knew that she wouldn’t last in the wilds. That didn’t mean she didn’t have fantasies of following after her adventurous brother. Too many dreams had been of finding him and talking to him—just one more time.
As Aela had read the book, Taeru had been ever present in her mind. Perhaps because the hero of the story reminded her so much of her brother. The hero was reckless and did things impulsively—some of which didn’t turn out in his favor. Still, what he never failed to do was to show those around him that he did care—and that was inevitably how he forced the lands into peace.
Taeru was reckless, and he had always been reckless. He threw himself in the way of danger for no real reason, except that he thought he might help some flea with its troubles somewhere. He would have given anything to help anyone—anyone other than himself. Taeru’s problem, and it was not one that Aela had fully understood when her brother left, was that he blamed himself for things he couldn’t control. Guilt had plagued Taeru endlessly before he had left. Through constant bickering with their father over Lavus, and constant begging of Ryo to understand why the war couldn’t happen, Taeru had found a way to blame himself. Aela was sure that he had left, even though he may not have known it himself, to try and find another way to stop the war.
Neither Veyron, nor Lavus, was going to agree not to go to war. Especially Veyron, with the way Lavus handled things. For Veyron to refuse the war, he would have been selling all of his people into slavery. Taeru had figured that out just as Veyron had, which was ultimately why he’d stopped arguing for the position. Lavus was the one that had to be addressed if the war was ever to be stopped, and Taeru certainly couldn’t talk to him.
Aela entered the dinner room and was relieved to find that not everyone had arrived yet. They had invited a few guests, some of which were the men that she was supposedly considering in her marriage plans. A few of them were there, and she suppressed her sigh as she bobbed a curtsy to her father. “Evening,” she spoke clearly and precisely.
Veyron nodded to her, and he offered her a pleasant smile. Aela thought that she might complain to him later about how often he had been inviting these wretched people to the palace. She had resigned herself to handling the evening, when her eyes fell on the most horrific thing she could have imagined.
There he sat, with his dark, nearly black hair, olive-colored skin, and dark, dark blue eyes that reminded Aela too much of the foxes that she�
��d chased with Taeru in her youth. Vulpine was a perfect way to describe this abomination, and he offered her a sly grin when she met his eyes.
Aela frowned almost instantly, and her eyes shot to her father at once. Veyron almost looked apologetic before he glanced away. If she had not been vocally disagreeable about being forced to marry, she had made no qualms about letting everyone know that she would not be marrying Leif Firenz. He was a few years older than her, and when they were children, he was the one that oftentimes spent evenings with her.
But he was a child—and he had yet to grow up. He had messy hair that he didn’t bother with, and his eyes seemed to constantly scour the room for some kind of trouble to get into. She swallowed, but Leif had stood up. “Lady Lassau,” he purred, “it has been too long. One might say that you are avoiding me.”
“One would be right,” she answered harshly. A few of the less proper nobles didn’t manage to withhold their laughter. The others simply found ways to occupy themselves so that they didn’t show it.
Veyron let out a deep sigh and gestured for Aela to come to the table. She thought briefly of bolting from the room. The last thing she needed on this moon was this immature, pompous brat pestering her with all sorts of questions. And Leif would, because that was all Leif ever did. He asked questions—questions that bothered everyone and he didn’t care one little bit.
He was nothing like a proper nobleman should be, and yet he was certainly no street rat. He was an interesting mix, and Aela hated him for it. Mostly because too many times in their childhood had Leif gotten the better of her, and since then, she had made sure that she had always gotten the better of him. “You wound me, my lady,” he said cheerfully.