"Please don't freak out."
Pain lances through my arm from the effort to let only a small amount of the power out. I can feel it lashing out and begging to be set free, but my control has gotten better, and the pain fades after a second of pulling it up.
Holding my hand in front of me, I snap my fingers, igniting a spark that encases my hand in flames and slowly goes up my arm.
When I first was learning to use the elements, I felt like I was on a sugar high. Adrenaline rushed through me, my body felt lighter than ever, and I felt more...me. For so long I was lost in myself, trying to find out where I really belonged and who I was behind the mask of the Crown Prince. Then Clare came along and she helped me put puzzle pieces together, but having thought about it, I never really felt like myself until I woke up after a four-day elemental sleep. Then shit happened, and I felt even more lost than before. Not even the summoning of the elements feels like more than numbness now.
With the flames sheathing my arm, I find myself wishing that they would burn away at the skin rather than warm it like a blanket. I'd happily put the elements back into the pendant if I knew how, or if they weren't going to be something I'd likely depend on to get Clare back. The only thing I feel when using them is the pain that I've always felt summoning them, and even that's rather dull. I want to smile and not have it be something that feels false. I want to laugh easily and make small fire animals for people to enjoy. I want so much more than my soul is willing to give – or can give for any matter. The flames dance brightly on my arm, and yet to me they feel black and white.
"Heathens burn me." I look to Brandr, an eyebrow raised as he stares at my arm. "Sorry, poor choice of words."
"I think they're a rather appropriate choice of words," Gabe chimes cheerfully. If I weren't currently trying to keep the Asturians from jumping out of the window in fear, I'd toss a ball of flame at him. At least Mal punches him in the arm.
"May I..." One of the blonds who sits in a chair, his wife sitting wide-eyed on the arm of the chair, has a hesitant hand raised towards my arm.
I nod and slowly make my way over to him, making sure to walk around the left side of the table so that no one is near the flames as I pass. I hold out my own hand towards him, keeping a respectable distance away. He reaches out to touch it, but his wife stops his hand before it can get too close.
"It's alright," I tell her. "It won't burn him unless I want it to – and I don't want it to."
She doesn't look convinced, but she slowly releases his wrist. The couch and chairs creek as the others lean forward to watch as his hand enters the flames. He huffs a shaky laugh, playing with his fingers in the fire. He says something to his wife in Asturian, and with a nervous glance at me, she lets her own hand reach out and touch the flames. When they don't burn her, she smiles and adds her other hand to it.
"Cup your hands," I tell her. She does, and as I gently pull my own hand away, a small baby flame stays within her own. It takes more focus to keep the thing controlled, but it's a good way to keep the power from spilling over the edge and to train my capabilities at the same time.
Leaving her and her husband to play with the small lick of fire, I walk around the room and let them all wave their hands through it. They smile and move slowly when leaning forward, but in the end, they all feel what I do. I know because I can see it in their eyes. It's an odd thing to touch fire without being burned, just as it is to feel every breath that everyone in this room takes. There are things that I still don't understand, and that bothers me more than anything. Sibella is in Layara, and though she told me how to train and what to look for, I still wish she were here to tell me why I don't feel more normal.
"Aurea Deus."
The strong voice brings me out of my thoughts. I turn to find Fatima looking up at me with a sort of...wonder. It has me shifting on my feet uncomfortably. "What?"
"Aurea Deus."
"The Golden God," Arthur translates. "She's calling you the Golden God."
"I'm no God, ma'am." My cheeks heat with further embarrassment.
"Not yet," she corrects simply as if it's not some kind of intimidating declaration. It doesn't help that the other Asturians are nodding along, each with equally settled eyes.
I want to shake my head and scream at how wrong they are because Gods don't allow themselves to be drugged and dragged miles away from where they should've been. Gods don't lose their loved ones unless it wasn't really love in the first place. I've made more mistakes and plan on committing a hundred dark acts in the future - all for the sake of the good, of course – but that doesn't seem like something a God would do. Aside from Helias and Griselda and every other dark lord.
A Golden God doesn't seem like someone who feels like anything but golden.
I have powers, yes, but the ability to control two of the four elements that make up this world isn't necessarily something that should define me as a God. Heathens, I don't even necessarily like the Gods at the moment, so why in ten hells would I want to be one of them? All they do is sit in their finery and live their endless lives watching as us short-life folks fuck shit up - and they enjoy it. They enjoy seeing wars break out and people create drama for generations to come. Who knows, maybe they even like looking down on me, laughing as they harbor the thought of me being one of them. I couldn't be a God, and I couldn't care less about the little fact.
"What is it you need from us, Aurea Deus?" Brandr asks.
Still not liking the name, I look to Arthur, knowing very well that if I start asking questions and poking around at them, I'll be finding myself proving their gift of a name to be proven wrong. Of all the emotions I feel the lack of, anger never seems to be one of them. If anything, it feels like the only thing most of the time.
"I asked you earlier what you would do for your wife – for your daughter," Arthur starts. Brandr nods, his wife looking at his wounds and then at us.
"I've lost more than that, and I'll be damned if I lose the last piece of blood family that I have left."
I watch as Fatima once again looks over us, though this time her eyes seem to be searching for something rather than sizing us up. I'll admit, she may be in a dress, but from the way her body is built and how her expression holds tightly together, I'm slightly frightened that she could rip my head off. Clare would've already made friends with her.
"Your sister," she says. "That is who you speak of, is it not?"
None of us answer.
Arthur glances at me before responding. I've noticed how he tends to do that now. Like he's always double checking that I'm keeping myself intact. "You know who I am, you know who we are, we only ask that you tell us of anything that may be of use in our search."
"So it's true then. The happenings of Fernweh almost two months ago are true?" the dark-haired Asturian asks. He's rather slimly built compared to the rest of them, though his wife looks equally as skinny yet no less intimidating.
"What have you heard so far?" Garrison questions carefully. A lesson learned from our encounter with the Pirates. A piece of information for a piece of information.
It's one of the blondes who answers, reciting the rumors easily spread. "A man born from the depths of the underworld strolled into the castle and murdered innocents. The infamous Jade Assassins fought against him while everyone ran like chickens about to be plucked. Everyone got out, except one."
"Some say it was a Goddess who took pity on the plain souls of mortals," another dark-haired man adds.
"Others say that it was the ghost of the recent late queen," his wife continues. I tense at the mention of my grandmother.
"It was neither Goddess nor ghost, was it?"
I look to Brandr, biting my tongue to keep my sweaty hands from shaking and my breath quickening. This balaclava over my nose and mouth isn't helping me keep calm. It feels like any second it'll cut off all of my air, and I'll be left to suffocate until I die, but ever since we hit Cressida and someone took recognition of my face, Arthur has asked me to don a mask similar to his own to keep onlookers from looking twice. A good idea at the time, but now I want to burn it off.
"No," I snap, unable to keep myself from speaking. "It was nothing more than a woman who loved the people of Vandaria so fiercely that she threw herself into the darkness to keep them from being consumed by it."
Arthur passes me another glance and I bite my tongue again. Every time someone tries to give Clarice another name or another identity or say that it was someone else who gave themselves up for the sake of the people, I can't seem to keep my mouth shut and correct the false fact. People should know who it was and what she did. They should know that someone they once feared shouldn't be feared, but looked up to. I refuse to allow her name to go unused when she's giving up so much and has long since earned the credit.
"People will say what they want about the cruelties of the Ebony Nightingale," Vlad takes over. Ever the calm one. "But we know better than to believe those rumors, and we know the truth behind what lies beneath the mask."
Al steps forward, and I can feel his hands rubbing together as he speaks. "We're not asking you to join us. We're not asking you to fight against the very man who plagued our dreams."
"We only want to get her back," Mal finishes.
No one speaks, the only sound echoing in the air is the distant laughter of the children on the roof. I pull back the flames from their hands, letting them fade away back beneath my skin as the air element rises.
I can feel what Arthur and The Bhaltayr are feeling. I can feel the air around them growing thicker with love and grief as the thoughts of our words fill us. What we feel reflects off of us and onto the men and women before us, and I can sense their own emotions shift, though I'm not sure which ones I'm feeling exactly. It's harder to pinpoint them with strangers. I don't know them well enough to understand it.
"You all love her." Fourteen pairs of eyes look at the red-haired woman, not with fear of being read so easily, but with pleas to be heard and shining a light.
"In our own ways," Benny whispers. My eyes fall to the clean floor, knowing they'll betray me.
Things have gotten so confusing and I haven't been able to clear the clutter in my head enough to understand what I feel. My whole life the word love has been a thing I figured I'd never be able to touch. Well, aside from that of familial love, the rest of it just seemed so far out of reach. Since I was born, I've been told that I'd eventually get put into an arranged marriage where love wasn't to play a part in it. All of it would be political and for the better of the kingdom, never for me. So I never really thought that there'd be even a chance to feel it - even if I did give my parents a million and one headaches trying to avoid the subject and fight for the love I knew I'd never have.
Then I met a stubborn-headed she devil and things seemed...different. What became a scheme and a clever little fairytale suddenly started to feel real, and just as I was beginning to understand it, it was torn from me.
I care for her, that much is obviously crystal clear, I just don't know how far it goes, and I don't know enough to say it's love, but it's strong, and it's scary, and I don't like seeing people take one look at me and somehow come to a conclusion in seconds that's taking me cycles to still figure out. And part of me doesn't ask them because part of me doesn't want to know. Part of me fears it.
The redhead nods, looking over each of us as Fatima did. When she finds my own eyes avoiding hers, they stay there. I know then that something inside her own gleams, and for a split second I feel as if she can see everything I've ever felt for Clarice. I want to look at her – Saints, I probably shouldn't with her wide-shouldered and heavily muscled husband sitting beside her, but I want to. I want someone to know what I felt – what I so desperately want to feel again so that when I forget entirely, the memory of it will still exist in the world. I could care less if I get a black eye for staring, I just need someone to know – to understand. Or at least understand for me.
"Come." Brandr stands from his chair, wincing at the still bleeding cuts on his thigh and shoulder. I could burn the wounds carefully to stop the bleeding, but something tells me that's not in the brightest of ideas. "Before we share our knowledge of the present, I first must show you the knowledge of the past."
"You should care for your injuries," Arthur tells him.
"I like scars. Make for good stories." He allows his wife to put his arm around her shoulders and help him as he heads for the door. None of the others move to follow, but they nod and motion for us to do so.
He takes us to the stairs, leading us up to the roof. I could cauterize the wounds as Siscilla once did for a man who "accidentally" got an ax to the gut. There wasn't enough time for her to seal the large gash without stopping the bleeding, so she took the fire poker from the hearth nearby and told him that it was going to hurt. The smell of burning flesh was distinct, but I didn't entirely mind it. Thinking back on it, the scent of something burning never really bothered me before.
After the man passed out from the pain, I asked Siscilla what in heathens she just did, and that's how I got an hour lecture on how to cauterize a wound properly. I'm pretty sure that's the last time I ever asked her a question that didn't result in a quick answer.
He opens the door, grunting as he uses his bad leg to take the last step through it. The sound of high-pitched laughter greets us, followed by screams and the clash of wooden swords. I've been monitoring the six younglings since Arthur earlier reminded me that they were there. Looking around, I find that feeling someone isn't the same as seeing them. I can feel their quick breaths and make out a few words here and there based on the amount of air that rushes past their vocal cords and the vibrational echo that follows.
Watching them here, however, feels entirely different. Now that I can see them and more clearly distinguish which breath is whose, I could plug my ears and still understand the idle, playful threats that come with the swing of their swords. Sibella said that with time and practice, I would find myself being able to do this with someone miles away. I honestly think it's rather impossible, but every time I think so, I remember how it felt when I first felt the power run through me.
I remember being able to map out the whole of Fernweh - and even Vandaria within a few breaths. I remember seeing what Clarice's own power allowed her to do. I've never seen the willow shine with such life without the fireflies there. It felt right, but wrong all at once. I missed seeing it as it once was, but I hoped that it'd be my grandmother who made it light up, not Clare. I thought that maybe there was some hidden message my grandmother was trying to send me from the next life. She always did like her tricks, but it didn't feel like a dimensional message. It felt...Gods I can't remember how it felt.
The kids don't pay us much heed as they continue to give chase and enjoy their childhood. It's not hard to figure out which one is Brandr and Fatima's. She's got her mother's unmistakable red hair, but there's no dismissing her father's sharp features. She'll grow to be the girl who every guy will give their life for with her eyes that are a brilliant blue and pop against her fair skin. Her cheekbones are soft yet definite, and her jawline is just as striking. She's probably eleven, but there is just no denying that she's the leader of the group.
With a boy no more than a year younger than she, and another girl likely in between the two, she screams her war cry and takes off for the other three kids charging back at her. It's like some kind of miniature war. She takes the oldest of the opponents, swinging her sword with a surprising amount of strength and skill. I glance at Arthur, finding his eyes squinting with what could be a hint of awe masked by criticism.
Looking back at the red-haired warrior, my eyes catch on something running down her neck and I follow it under her short-sleeved shirt and all the way down her arm. I know what it is, but I want so very badly to deny that a child who hasn't yet reached her teen years has a nasty long scar.
"There are things in this world that have no heart for the ones others love," Brandr says as he comes up beside me. He watches his daughter with a proud smile, but his eyes carry shadows of a memory. "There's evil in the world. It lurks around every corner, in both the darkest and lightest parts, waiting for you to slip up so that it can break you in the cruelest of ways. Some evil we can bear to withstand, but there's always something for the demons to feed on. No matter what you try to do to ensure that evil's hands never touch you, you can never plan for every possibility. That's why it's called a risk. You can never ensure that the outcome will be what you want it to be."
"You took a risk," Garrison concludes, watching as Brandr's daughter outright tackles a boy and makes him surrender.
"No. She did," Fatima whispers as her daughter runs to her, arms wide open. "Har du vunnet, barnet mitt?"
"Enkleste kamp hittil, mamma," she answers in a soothing voice.
"Marzibil, would you and the others please go fetch some linen and water from the nice man downstairs?"
Marzibil looks at her father, quickly skimming over his two wounds and blood-soaked clothes. She doesn't seem at all surprised or concerned about it. Instead, she yells at the other kids, and then they all burst through the door and run down the stairs, still laughing.
"What happened?" Arthur asks.
"You can't always protect those you wish to protect forever," Fatima says quietly, watching them go.
"I know that better than anyone."
"But do you understand the depth in which that means?" Brandr challenges.
No one answers as we all try and come up with a reasonable one, but we seem to come up empty.
"It's not that we can't protect them, it's that one day they won't need it. One day they'll have to face certain things on their own."
"Without our help," Fatima adds.
"Your nightingale is several years Marzibil's senior. She's plenty past the age of needing someone to always stand between her and her demons. You should know that better than anyone, Fox, and it's not your duty to always accept the choices she makes, only to try and understand it and do your best to remind her that her choices don't have to be made alone."
"If only she listened," Al seethes. His arms cross over his chest, his stance widening into one that prepares for a fight.
"Then don't tell her-" Brandr faces Al, his own crossed arms falling to take on the unspoken challenge "-show her."
Fatima stops him with a hand on his arm. Her expression is soft and gentle whereas he
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