by Rae Brooks
“Much,” he answered. He offered her a half-hearted smile and slowly got to his feet. Though he was bandaged, he still had to move with careful consideration. “I’ll go make sure that no one else survived.”
She was grateful that he took the task upon himself, and she hung back as he started forward. Her eyes couldn’t seem to find anywhere to stare that didn’t reveal bloody bodies. So, she focused on Leif’s face and found that his expression was pained in the subtlest of ways, and she also found that she desperately wanted to hold him, or at least touch him. After a few moments, she spoke to him. “Nothing?” she asked and panicked when her voice broke.
Leif stood and shook his head as he headed back towards her. “We should have slept in our armor,” he said emphatically.
“I saw some of our armor by the oasis,” Aela answered. She wanted to concentrate on anything but the fact that they had just lost ten men. She had been unable to do anything to help them, and she had nearly lost her life as well. Now Leif was injured, and they would still be expected to get to Telandus.
Suddenly, she found herself reveling in the fact that she’d cut her hair. If she hadn’t, she was sure that it would be clinging to her neck, and getting into her eyes. Though, now, even soaking wet—it touched neither her neck nor her eyes. “The horses are alright too,” she told Leif deferentially.
This seemed to bring him a degree of relief, and he nodded his thanks to her for the statement. Before he headed back to the oasis, though, he stopped. “Aela, are you alright, love?” he asked softly.
It was the pet name, she was certain, that made her guard fall enough so that she found tears streaming down her cheeks. Vaguely aware that she shouldn’t, she let him pull her to him and whisper soothing words into her ear. Men had just died in front of her, and she was standing among their bodies at this moment. Leif had nearly died in front of her! “I will take you back to Cathalar,” he said.
“No,” she said immediately, “we will go to Telandus. I will not let those bastards do what they came to do.”
Despite Leif’s stiffness, he continued to hold her, running his fingers through her short hair. Even that felt wonderful, and being in his arms, her panic slowly began to subside. She only wished that she hadn’t cried in front of him—now he’d be even more likely to think her a damsel. After a few more sobs, she managed to compose herself. “We need to go make sure no one takes the armor,” she said.
Pulling her away, Leif continued to hold her by the shoulders. Their eyes locked for a long moment, and neither of them said anything. They didn’t need to, because in that moment, Aela knew that they were communicating precisely what the other felt. Leif was worried, but he had faith in Aela enough to keep going if she was willing. Aela was nearly hysterical, but she felt safe enough to continue in Leif’s presence. And neither of them wanted to be away from one another.
“We’ll go get the horses. I know you know how to ride. We are going to need to take as little as we can.”
“Are you going to be able to ride in your condition?” she asked.
He seemed to think about this for a moment. His wounds had not been severe enough to merit death, but Aela didn’t think she would want to be riding a horse after being beaten so thoroughly. Leif was much stronger than she was, and he showed that with his next statement. “I’ll be fine. If I feel like I can’t continue, we’ll just have to take it slow for a few suns.”
She thought about telling him that there was no need to try. Telandus wasn’t going anywhere, and they could wait until he felt more like riding the horse—but she knew that the war was approaching, and that waiting would do no one any good, not really. “Just make sure you let me know,” she said. “Not that you’ll be able to keep up with me when you’re better.”
Attempting to make light of the situation seemed to be the best idea. She had to put this experience out of her mind if she was going to be any use to Leif, and she desperately wanted to be of use to him. He was still alive, and she knew that she was partly the reason for that. So she would try and keep things that way. “Is that so?” he said thoughtfully. “Also, you look lovely with short hair, princess.”
She felt herself grow indignant as they made their way back to the horses, who were still waiting with less than patient expressions.
“He inspired hope and truth in those that had long since forsaken the ideals. And yet, never was he satisfied, never could he see it.”
-A Hero’s Peace, v.ii
Chapter xvii
Calis Tsrali
Calis squeezed his forehead between two of his fingers and let out a very long sigh. He paced the entirety of his room, back and forth, back and forth. “I can’t even look at her. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am aware that she has no dignity, and probably doesn’t expect a real relationship any more than I do, but—she is still a person. And I can’t even…”
The words had been pouring from his mouth since his advisor had entered his room a few shifts ago. He would be expected to entertain Miss Avyon on this particular sun, and Calis had never been less prepared for anything. He had spent the last few suns going into Dark District and making sure that Kilik was recovering well enough. He was, and he always looked incredibly dismayed at Calis’s return. There was something entirely charming about that, too.
Kilik always seemed so agitated with him for arriving, and yet there was the strangest light in his eyes that said he was surprised each time Calis returned. Kilik had been so stiff that sun on the horse, and Calis knew that it had been due to more than the simple detail that the boy was injured. There was an assured possibility that Kilik felt the same way that Calis did, and that thought created so much turmoil and excitement within Calis that he could scarcely contain it.
And now he was expected to entertain some droll girl for the entirety of the morning! He was very glad that Lee had the decorum to come talk to him before it all. Lest Calis be completely insane by the end of the engagement. “Treat it as you always have,” Lee finally said. “Just because you may have developed feelings for someone else doesn’t mean that things have changed between Lady Avyon and you. After all, it isn’t as though you felt anything for her before this… circumstance arose.”
Lee was right, of course. Lee rarely spoke in a way that was not infallible. Calis knew that he was not as worried about the way Lady Avyon might feel as he was about Kilik. Naturally, Kilik would have no knowledge of these events, nor would Calis be quick to inform him. But—he felt as though he was hiding something that he shouldn’t.
Calis hadn’t the slightest idea why he cared, though. He had no evidence, aside from very speculative thoughts. Nevertheless, Calis found that he didn’t want to be in the company of a woman who would certainly throw herself at him, when he was more than certain of his feelings for Kilik. “Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I do have them for Kilik. And, I find myself worrying far more what he would think about this situation than I should.”
“I would imagine Kilik would be more than supportive of you entertaining your father’s needs. After all, if you didn’t, the wrath would certainly fall on his beloved Dark District.”
Calis frowned as he stopped in front of the mirror to investigate his appearance. He hadn’t slept much the moon before, and he could make out the faint purple circles underneath his eyes. “It boggles your mind that he cares about those people, doesn’t it?” Calis asked.
Lee clicked his tongue against his teeth, but finally nodded indistinctly. “Rather, he boggles my mind. He is clearly terrified of letting himself become attached, and yet he wastes countless amounts of effort on people that he does not know. It makes very little sense.” Kilik, in retrospect, was not someone that Calis understood either.
Kilik was someone that Calis desperately wanted to understand, and someone whose company Calis found himself constantly craving. “It is admirable, though,” Calis pointed out, “even if it does seem a little naïve.”
“What is it that you like so much about him, if I may ask?
” Lee said. He had been sitting on a chaise lounge in the corner of Calis’s room, leaned back with relative disinterest, until in that very moment when he sat up with a perplexed expression. “There are any number of things that I’ve considered. You are, after all, still a bit of an impetuous child—so I thought that perhaps you only like Kilik since he is the very opposite of what your father wants. He has no money, no position, no power—and he is a male! But, you don’t seem involved enough with your father to go that far.”
Calis was certain that was wrong. His feelings for Kilik hadn’t the slightest to do with Lavus or his expectations. He told Lee as much, then. “You should know that I stopped letting my father’s expectations of me affect my life long ago, Lee.”
An eyebrow quirked upwards as Lee nodded his head, as if he’d come to this conclusion on his own and only wanted Calis to confirm it. “Then, there is the matter of the unending mystery surrounding the boy. I think we have all but confirmed that he is the masked vigilante, which adds an entirely new element. But, in addition to that, he says that he doesn’t remember anything about his past.”
That was certainly part of it, Calis thought. He wanted to know more about Kilik, but he needed a reason to want to know more. He didn’t chase after Kilik with the sole thought of finding all of this out, as Lee may have. But he did want to find it out. “I want to know the answers to those questions, Lee. Or those questions that you cleverly disguised as statements, but more importantly, I just like him. I’m drawn to him. He is so brave, so strong, and so competent. And yet, something about him screams with vulnerability. His belief in people that will only let him down puts him at risk. I want to protect him.”
This seemed to bother Lee for only a moment, and then he leaned against the silver furniture on which he currently rested. The colors of Calis’s room did not match the rest of the castle, for even if he had to wear the royal colors, he did not like them. Instead, his walls were a royal blue color, and his carpet was an off-white shade. The room made him feel much more at ease than the rest of the castle, and he made sure that the window was always open, letting sun drench the room.
The furniture was less intimidating as well. Lavus hadn’t been happy with Calis’s tastes, but he hadn’t thought to concern himself with them too much. So the tassels were silver rather than gold, and the furniture was a deep blue that wasn’t as insufferable as the crimson red and black that littered the rest of the castle. The wood in the room was lighter, and his desk was knotty pine, which was very light compared to most of the mahogany throughout the castle.
His walls held no pictures of ancestors that he didn’t care about, and in fact, his room was rather bare. He had an armoire, a dresser, and a chest, all of which were far fuller than they had a right to be. In addition, he had a closet that held even more useless clothing and shoes that he rarely wore. His desk sat directly underneath the window, whose blue curtains were pulled back. The armoire sat opposite of his bed, and the dresser was directly beside the closet. His chest sat at the foot of his bed, and lastly, his bed was covered in a silver and blue comforter, nestled beneath a silvered headrest connected to a canopy laden with a silver curtain.
Calis’s room was the only one in the castle that was any different from the rest. Tareth had been given free reign over his own room as well, but he had made sure to pick out precisely the furniture that their father would have picked. For this, Lavus had only chastised the younger boy for being too easily bent to a will that was not his own, and that had infuriated Tareth.
That had always been a curious thing. Lavus loved to see people bend to his will, and yet when Tareth did it, he flicked the boy aside like some kind of flea. Perhaps his favoritism for Calis was because he really had faith that Calis could be a successor with just as much of an obsession with power as he had. That was Lee’s theory, but Calis had a hard time believing that Lavus had ever considered in his deluded mind that he would ever have to relinquish his power.
The one thing Tareth’s and his own room did have in common, however, was the size. Calis’s room could probably have fit three Dark District homes, he thought with a flush. He had the fleeting thought that Kilik would not approve, and the unprecedented desire to have Kilik in his room made him flush a little harder. He had to stop this. He knew that his being with Kilik was impossible, and yet his mind refused to let the concept escape him.
“You really like him,” Lee mused aloud.
This startled Calis out of his inappropriate thoughts, and he whirled to face Lee. Genuinely, Lee seemed to just be coming to this conclusion for the first time. Calis frowned. “What did you think? I was going to Dark District nearly every sun-up because I was curious?”
“You don’t do things halfway, Prince Tsrali,” Lee said bemusedly. “But, I suppose you’re right. I have just never known you to be taken by someone like you are with him. It is refreshing and disconcerting.”
“Why, Lee?” Calis asked playfully. “Were you hoping that one sun I would declare my love for you?”
Despite his best efforts, Lee couldn’t suppress the grin that made its way onto his face. “That is positively absurd, your highness.”
The time that he was supposed to meet with Miss Avyon was growing near, and Calis could feel the dread accumulating in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t think he was going to be able to get through this. They were supposed to spend a few shifts together, alone, in the sitting room, for tea or something. Calis would have no way to distract himself from her nonsense, and the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking of another man in the room with the woman he was supposed to marry was going to be blatantly obvious.
However, the idea of marrying for such a foolish reason as politics seemed even more angering now. Calis couldn’t imagine himself committing to some woman for which he felt nothing, especially when he knew that he did have feelings and that they were desperate to be noticed. “I suppose I ought to wash up,” he said assiduously.
“I suppose you ought,” Lee echoed, with far less interest than an advisor should have shown in his master’s upkeep. Calis smiled. “Or you could go roll around in some muck and cause the lady to desire you as little as you desire her.”
The idea would have been considerable, if Calis hadn’t known that none of Lady Avyon’s interest in him had anything to do with his appearance. Or if it did, that was certainly secondary to his position. “Where will you be?” Calis asked.
His advisor thought about the question for a moment, and then the green eyes fell on Calis with certainty. “My father wants an audience with me this sun. From what I’ve gathered, it involves my training one of the young children. I’m not sure why I got selected, but I’m assuming many others were too busy.”
Calis frowned at once. The idea of Lee being occupied with some nobleman’s child was not a happy one. “I intend to decline,” Lee said dryly. “If the others are too busy, then as the prince’s advisor, I should say that I am too.”
Sometimes, Lee’s audacity surprised Calis even after such a long time of knowing one another. To deny one’s father was not something a typical nobleman did, and yet Lee saw no harm in doing so. The Keiichi House was not known for its fierce leader, but Lee’s father was no easier to deny than any other man’s—except Calis’s. “You intend to decline? On what grounds, might I ask?”
This seemed to strike Lee as more of a nuisance than an actual question. “On the grounds that my advisee has found himself interminably busy and I will not be able to tear myself from his side so gratuitously if I am to stay in his favor.”
A smirk eased its way onto Calis’s face, as he observed his advisor with approval. “Your master sounds like quite a difficult man to please,” he said definitely, “I do not envy you.”
Lee stood and glanced out the window. “A much easier man to please than my father, in fact,” he said. “It is going to rain soon, so if you intend to go see the object of your affections—dress appropriately.”
“You do not think you’ll be do
ne in time to warn me of that after my engagement with Miss Avyon?” Calis asked. Surely, the meeting with Lee’s father wasn’t going to take as long as this excruciating arrangement.
A smile eased onto Lee’s lips at Calis’s tone. “Oh, I intend to be done long before you are, Calis. I would conjecture that I’ll see you in Dark District.”
“Lovely,” Calis said. He was not at all looking forward to this morning. Well, at least he wouldn’t be obliged to ask the woman to marry him this sun, and for that he ought to be grateful. At the pace with which Lavus typically advanced his plans, Calis was surprised the wedding hadn’t been planned for the next cycle.
Washing up was quick, and he did not take much care with cleaning the parts of him that probably needed more attention. He had become progressively less interested in his own hygiene when he’d seen the public baths Dark District citizens often used. Juliet, as a healer, had her own wash bin for their home, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t occasionally forced to wash in the public bath.
Regardless, he did what was required of him. Despite knowing that dirt was not the cause of his discolored eyes, he scrubbed them for a long time. The heat of the water felt good against his skin, anyhow. After he finished his bath, he dressed in the overly elaborate clothes that the servant had brought him. The outfit was a black coat, with an underlay of crimson vest, which sat atop a black shirt. Calis got sick of the constant theme of colors and the fact that any sort of white on his outfit was considered an insult to his family name.
His pants were black with crimson designs weaved throughout them, and his boots were their usual black and red. Lastly, he pulled on the shining red belt and walked out into the hallway. He could have walked through the halls of the castle and blended in as part of the scenery, he thought amusedly, and with that—he might be able to escape. No, Lee wouldn’t be able to cover for him if he disappeared now.