Chapter 55

“Again,” Kestrel demanded as he twirled his metalvine and circled his opponent, a lanky, but spider strong guard named Triska that called Aris’ barracks home.

“You’re doing too much Kes,” Triska, who’d taken to calling Kestrel by his shortened name, told the younger man. “You’re going to burn yourself out. You’ll be of no use when the time comes that we actually need to defend ourselves. If you overtrain now, you’ll be useless in the future.”

Kestrel grimaced at the guard’s comments, but they hit close to home. Triska was right. He would be a fool to blow himself out now and risk injury when he was needed now more than ever.

He couldn’t allow himself to work himself to death practicing and not be able to protect those whom he loved when they actually needed him the most.

He couldn’t do that to Cillia, who, right now could be suffering under the touch of the Inquisitors or losing everything at the touch of a Forgotten. He couldn’t allow himself to be sidelined when she needed him so desperately. He couldn’t allow himself to work himself to death when Sephira needed him. When he needed to protect the one he loved.

‘Loved.’ That word caught him by surprise. He knew that he loved Cillia. She was practically his daughter. He had taken her from the streets, saved her from starving, and had raised her, protecting her from the elements and all the monster that might take advantage of her innocence. He truly loved her. She was his family. Cillia was dear to him, but it wasn’t Cillia that had popped into his mind when he thought of love.

It was Sephira.

His thoughts seemed to always end up back at her. Her raven-black hair swaying in the wind, her bright eyes shining with a mischievous smile that hid the whole world behind them. Her beautiful form hiding a surprising strength.

His thoughts always led back to her. She was always on his mind.

Kestrel wasn’t sure he’d known anyone more beautiful than Sephira. Hers wasn’t a superficial beauty either, it was a strong beauty. The type of beauty that builds. Beauty that inspires those whom come into contact with it to better themselves in order to project that radiance from the rest of the darkened world around them and allow it to shine brighter. It was a beauty, not only of the physical, but the spiritual. The kind that fueled poets for centuries. The kind that great epics were written about. The kind that gently changes the world around it into a reflection of wonder.

Kestrel loved her. He loved Sephira.

He loved her and that terrified him. She was a burning star, he was an orphan, abandoned by those who were supposed to care for him. He was a man who had completely failed the one person whom it had been his duty to protect. What would happen if he allowed this love for Sephira to grow inside him? Would he fail her like he’d failed Cillia? Would his life of living on the streets poison him towards Sephira? Would only serve to hurt her?

How could he love her and claim her for himself? That was pure arrogance.

“So, I’m taking it that you’ve had enough?” Triska asked, breaking Kestrel from his reverie.

“Unh,” Kestrel grunted in affirmation, embarrassed at being caught off guard, wading through the complicated emotions that were consuming his mind.

“It’s General Aris’ niece, isn’t it?” Triska asked.

“Wha…? How?” Kestrel stuttered.

“Your feelings are so obvious that even a blind mountain mole could see them. Every time that Sephira girl is around, your whole demeanor changes. You lose that hard street edge that you have around the rest of us. In the barracks we like to joke that General’s niece has domesticated our favorite stray.”

“Wait, what do you mean, you guys talk about me?”

“You really think that a beaten body that’s dropped into our midst, who suddenly finds himself buddy-buddy with our General, a man who frankly, terrifies most of us, and who uncovers corruption in our organization wouldn’t be talked about?” Triska laughed. “I honestly thought that you knew about all our gossip and decided to ignore it. I didn’t realize that you were just an oblivious dullard.”

Kestrel found himself grinning despite himself. Once he would have bristled at the name calling, but the months he’d spent among Aris’ guards had softened him. It had built a sense of brotherhood in him that he’d never known before, and while he was still regarded as too much a stick in the mud, even he would join in on the teasing and masculine camaraderie of the other guards every once in a while.

For the first time in his life, he felt as if he’d found a brotherhood. A place where he belonged.

“I guess I am pretty oblivious, aren’t I?” Kestrel chuckled.

“Yeah, you really are. I’ve seen rocks with more perception than you.”

“I think we’re gonna have to fight again,” Kestrel took a playful swipe at the taller guard with his metalvine.

Triska brought up his own metalvine to ward off Kestrel’s halfhearted blow and returned with his own strikes. In seconds, the playful duo had switched to a serious demeanor and began to test each-others defense with strong probing blows in a hope to score against the other fighter.

By the time that the pair had finished their sparring session, the duo were covered in a lather of sweat and welts where the most skillful of the blows had found their way through the guards of the other.

The two fell to the dirt where they lay laughing at their sudden test of valor.

“You should pursue her,” Triska said as the laughing died down.

“Huh?”

“Sephira, you idiot. I’m telling you that you should pursue Sephira. It’s obvious that you are head over heels for the General’s niece, and anyone with two eyes can see that she feels the same way about you too.”

Kestrel’s heart leapt at those words. Could it actually be true? Was there a chance that Sephira felt the same way for him that he felt for her? Could it ever be anything more than an impossible dream he never dared to reach for?

“Yes, she does feel that way, and yes, you should pursue her,” Triska read the disbelief on Kestrel’s face and doubled down on his original statement.

“What…”

“You’re incredibly easy to read my friend. You practically shout your thoughts on your face, which is surprising, considering your closeness to General Ravenscroft, who’s face changes less than the mountains that tower over us,” Triska chuckled, answering Kestrel’s question before he’d finished asking it.

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“I…” Kestrel said. “I…Huh…”

Triska laughed.

*****

“Now reach deep,” Wallace instructed Sephira, whose comings and goings had been restricted due to the rioting and violence that had broken out after the fires, and had subsequently pestered the old soldier to teach her more magic until he had relented under her constant attack. “Reach deep and try to find exactly what it was I took.”

Sephira’s eyes narrowed. She had felt the touch of magic the moment that Wallace’s old fingers had fallen on the back of her hand. She recognized that strange tingling in her mind. Her uncle Aris and Kestrel both described the feeling as similar to the tiniest tingle you feel when a cool breeze tickles the hair on the back of your neck, but it was different for Sephira. The magic felt like a buzzing in her mind.

It felt like a static discharge shooting though her brain.

Why was it that she, the one who was most familiar with the gentle touch of Memory Magic out of the trio of Wallace’s students, was the only one that couldn’t actually use it? It wasn’t fair!

Why was she left out? She recognized its touch more than both her Uncle and Kestrel. She was close to surpassing Wallace in his ability. He had said as much. All she wanted was to be able to share in that same magic that had brought her uncle and Kestrel together. She hated feeling like she had nothing to offer. If she could use magic like those two, then maybe she could join them instead of being confined to her house, useless.

Why did she have to feel this way? She couldn’t stand having everything but the one thing she needed in order to help the ones she loved. She wanted to do more than sit back and observe. She wanted to protect those that she loved. She wanted to protect Aris and Corrine and her two nieces.

She wanted to protect Kestrel. Poor Kestrel, who despite having the world and all its cruelties thrown at him, still stood tall, with shoulders straight, ready to take on whatever hatred and darkness that the world could throw at him. She wanted to be the one he would rely on as a refuge from the darkness.

She wanted to be the one that Kestrel called home.

She loved him. She loved Kestrel.

Despite every reservation, every misgiving, she loved him. He was warm and compassionate despite having nothing. He was caring and self sacrificing despite every horror that he had faced. And he had faced many.

Sephira loved Kestrel. She loved everything about him, down to that devilish smile that he got every time he baffled her with a trick. She loved the goofy grin he tried to hide when he spoke of his sparring matches with her uncle. She loved the way he laughed with the other guards when he thought nobody was looking. She loved the way that when they hiked up the mountain to meet Wallace for their magic lessons, he would walk behind her and point out the best footholds, no matter how she complained that she was perfectly capable of finding her way up on her own. “I know you are. I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for me,” he would lie every time.

She loved that he was a protector.

If she were honest with herself, it was that very thing that had first caught her eyes, what seemed like years ago, when his ward, Cillia had crashed into her. She had seen the fierce protectiveness in his eyes then. He loved the little girl and would die for her if it came to it, and it very nearly had, for when they had next met, he almost lost his life like precious young Cillia had in an effort to protect the young child.

She had seen him rush the two corrupt guards, no regard for his own safety in order to protect the girl even as the life rushed from her head and took the form of blood puddling around her crown.

Kestrel was someone who would rather die than let any harm come to the ones that he loved, and Sephira loved him for it.

She loved him, but what could she do about it?

She couldn’t act on it. Not now. Not when the world was collapsing around them and everything they knew was being threatened. It would be cruel to do that to him to further divide his attention when the circumstances demanded complete focus to protect the streets he had once called home. It would be selfish and thoughtless to try to corner his heart when it was demanded elsewhere. How could she be so cruel?

Yes she loved him. But she had to let him free. That was what love was right? Letting go to do what was best for the other no matter how much it hurt. Right?

It had to be.

Sephira’s brain tingled with a sudden shock, bringing her back to herself. She felt Wallace trifling through her mind, searching for something. Immediately she brought up her mental walls, trapping him inside a prison of terrible memories, replaying the Inquisitor’s murder of the small guard unit that they’d stumbled into the midst of after the corrupt guard Rel’s ill-fated and almost fatal attack on Kestrel and her. The memory of the Inquisitor’s mental torture repeated itself over and over in her mind. The sight of him taking his own life and watching his blood pooling under him as she stood helpless trapped the old man before he could retrieve whatever memory it was that he was searching for.

“What are you doing?!” She hissed at Wallace, who looked at her with a strange wistful glint in his eyes.

“I’m accessing your memories, what do you think I’m doing?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You really didn’t hear me, did you?” Wallace inquired. His gravelly voice softening with a hint of concern.

Sephira blushed in embarrassment and lowered her eyes. “I kind of had other things on my mind…”

“Kestrel again?”

Sephira’s bright eyes shot up once again. Her eyebrows knitted in an angry question. Wallace’s response by way of a chuckle only caused the furrows to deepen.

“I’m a Memory Mage remember. It’s kind of like a special ability I have,” he said, playfully mocking her. “But of course I know it’s Kestrel. Even your uncle Aris, who’s oblivious to any woman except Corrine can tell there’s feelings brewing between you two sprouts. It’s as plain as the Wendig tracks we used to follow in the Mountain Campaigns.”

Sephira flushed. Was it really that obvious?

“Yes it is,” Wallace said, mirroring Kestrel’s conversation playing out at the base of the mountain at her uncle’s estate. “You love the boy, don’t you?”

Sephira nodded, her cheeks turning an even deeper shade of red. “How did you know?”

“I already told you. One would have to be blind to not see what’s playing out between the two of you, and, old as I am, my eyes are still as sharp as an eagles. Everything else on me may be failing, especially this shoulder,” Wallace patted where the crossbow bolt had pierced. “But I think my eyes will outlast the rest of my body. I’ll be laying in my coffin and long after everything else rots away, and they’ll still be sitting there, looking around, bored of the dirt covering them.”

Sephira scrunched her nose at the old soldier’s description, more so for his pleasure. She had grown up around the guardsmen, and though Aris and Corrine had tried to shield her from their crudest of talks, Sephira doubted there was little she could hear that would outmatch the darkness or bawdiness of the stories that the recruits desperately tried to outmatch each-other with. She may have grown up sheltered, but she wasn’t sheltered. She had not been much older than her twin cousins when she’d started sneaking to listen into their stories. At first she had had many question as to what they’d been talking about, but the swats her aunt Corrine had given her had silenced those lines of enquiry and at the same time had necessitated the development of her skills in stealth.

“Do something about it,” Wallace told her.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, you need to do something about it. Don’t just sit and do nothing. If nothing is done, nothing will happen. I know that all too well,” Wallace ran his hand through his bristly beard.

There was a story behind his words, Sephira could feel it. What could it have been? Who was it that had captured and broken old Wallace’s heart? She wished that she was a Taker like her uncle and Kestrel were. Maybe then she could find out the story behind the old soldier’s words.

Something told her though, that this one would be buried deep. That he hid the story of his love somewhere deep inside, protected by a maze of painful and horrific memories that the old man used as a shield against any other Takers who might want to steal his memories.

She would have to be content trying to weasel the story out of him the old fashioned way. But first she needed to make sense of her feelings for Kestrel. What should she do? Could she really take action?

“You say that I should do something, but what is it that I should do?” Sephira asked the old soldier.

Who would have ever thought she’d be asking love advice from a grizzled old soldier who’s demeanor led people to believe that he was more bear than human?

Life was strange at times, but then again, sometimes the deepest wells of wisdom were the ones that, on first glance, looked like shallow puddles.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Wallace huffed. “But I can tell you that you should at least do something.”

“That’s really helpful,” Sephira’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

Wallace shrugged. She wouldn’t be getting any more help from the older man, that much was clear.

It was also clear, surprisingly, for the first time to her, that she was in love with Kestrel. Not just the petty crush that she had thought her attraction had been, but something far more. Far deeper.

But what should she do about it? What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to act around him now? Her love changed everything. Things couldn’t be like they’d been before, love changed things. Their relationship was bound to change.

That thought terrified her. Was she ready for that?