Light Wielder (Fire & Metal, #2) — Chapter 24

Chapter 24

ACKER

The figure on the roof across the street sits with his back to the smokestack, leg swinging lazily where it hangs over the edge as he sharpens the sword in his lap. Long, steady sweeps of stone against metal. He’s been out there since we were deposited at the cottage yesterday.

“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”

Letting the curtain fall back over the window, I turn to see Irina in the doorway of the bedroom, looking a tad rumpled, but surprisingly lively considering what she went through yesterday. She was lucky the bedroom was in such close proximity to the front door, as it took her less than a minute to fall asleep after face-planting into the bedding.

I inspect the tumbler of liquid I’ve been nursing since I awoke hours ago and shrug. “What else is there to do when you’re imprisoned?”

As if it finally occurs to her where we are, she takes in the living quarters of the cottage. It’s clean, but there’re little trinkets that feel personal to someone who lived here once before. A half-used bottle of men’s fragrance was left in the bathroom, along with a beard comb. And the pots and pans in the kitchen are well worn. Worn boots sit beside the door.

If I had to guess, this was a soldier’s personal residence. Someone who will no longer be coming back to it.

The walls are a soft white, the furniture crafted in varying shades of wood, and rugs covering the floors. Not very prison-like, no, but the soldiers making regular sweeps of the perimeter have made it abundantly clear we are not merely guests. At least, I’m not. Wells and Olivia, on the other hand, are apparently guests of honor.

“It’s a bit disappointing, isn’t it?” Irina asks, gaze moving back to me as she sits in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace.

She has a tone she sometimes uses that never fails to grate on my nerves. It’s meant to come across as light and conversational when it is, in fact, incredibly patronizing.

I waver on whether to ignore her or not, but the drink has me sliding into the opposite chair. Maybe. “What is?”

“Having your Match do the same to you as you did to her.”

“I think you’re mistaking my father’s actions for mine.” I swirl the liquid in my glass. “I did talk him out of the collar he wanted her to wear,

though.”

I realize my mistake a moment too late.

Irina’s gaze falls to my neck … to the absence of stones. Now that she sees me without them, there’s no hiding the obvious implication. I did visit Jovie last night, but it’s not as scandalous as she probably believes it to be. I thought that giving Irina a lover would lessen the hurt of living without my affection, but I’m not sure it has. Ever.

Irina’s emotions play across her face like the flicking pages of a book, telling me everything without saying a word. I am the cause of her perpetual heartbreak.

Olivia shuffles into the room. “You’re drinking already?”

Fucking maddening, these women. I down the remainder and hold the

empty glass up for them to see.

“Nope.”

Rolling her eyes, Olivia lays out on the settee, head lolling on the armrest as she looks over at me. “I heard you pacing around in here for hours. Did you even sleep?”

I’m surprised by her concern, having gotten so used to her ire as of late, but I am not one to turn down grace when it’s given. “I did,” I tell her. It wasn’t more than a couple of hours, but sleep is sleep. “But it sounds as though you didn’t.”

She groans as she rubs her distended stomach. “I think the boat made him unsettled. Like you, he has yet to quit moving.”

The midwives had come within an hour of us arriving at the cottage.

The four women disappeared into the second bedroom with Wells and Olivia and were dismissed one by one. They finally chose an older woman

dressed in layers of practical linen, her years of experience and positive demeanor highlighted by the laughter wrinkles bracketing her eyes and mouth.

It seems that arriving in Maile has calmed Olivia in some sort. Even clearly exhausted, she rubs her belly gently, a peaceful grin on her face. I know it’s because she believes her unborn child will be better protected here. And as glad as I am that Jovie has offered my friends sanctuary, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a false sense of safety, not now that I know my father can steal magic from Heirs. That type of power feels inescapable, no matter how far one runs from it.

My magic suddenly shifts. It’s been a while since I’ve given free rein to my gift, but the sensation of metals moving closer sends my blood buzzing and I look in the direction of the front door a moment before a knock sounds. Irina shoots to her feet, instantly on guard, and I urge her to calm with a raised hand. Olivia sits up, albeit a bit wobbly.

Wells appears in the open door of the bedroom, doing up the last few buttons on his shirt. “Who is it?” he asks, smoothing down his mussed hair.

Only one way to find out.

I’m somehow unsurprised by the sight of my sister at the cottage’s door.

What is shocking, however, is how … mature she appears. There’s a touch of make-up enhancing her strong features; her lips are painted a soft pink, lashes curled. A lavender dress hangs from her shoulders with a gold butterfly pinned to the neckline.

She stares at me in the same manner I do her, as if struggling to merge the memory of the sibling we grew up alongside with the version of them standing here now. Foreign, yet familiar. Familiar, yet foreign. Her inspection goes deeper than just the physical, her eyes flitting over the air around me, seeing colors and shapes I’ve never been privy to. I don’t move, nor so much as blink, knowing this moment is pivotal if I’m to be trusted.

But I can only withstand the silent judgment for so long. “Well,” I say with a tilt of my head. “What’s the final verdict?”

Her dark eyes, near identically to my own, fix on my face. “Let’s go for a walk.”

They are the first words she’s spoken to me since her betrayal. I suppose a simple hello would be too gauche. “Sure.”

Beau steps back, waving at Olivia and Wells as she turns. “Hey, you two,” she says, and then pauses, eyes lingering on my wife. “And you, Irina.”

While her tone is dry, it’s not unkind either, and Irina offers a brief tight- lipped smile in return.

I keep an eye on the man on the roof as I step outside. The cottage we’ve been housed in sits on a bend in the road near the gulf, the water within walking distance and the wharf within sight. Aside from the rooftops of the cottages situated on the street up hill, I have no sense of where we are

in relation to the palace.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

Beau simply stares at me standing on the stoop. Her eyes are lethal as they scour my skin. Like I’m being gutted, sliced right to my core, like she’s trying to dismantle me from the inside and there’s not a godsdamned thing I can do about it. Finally, she takes mercy on me, eyes cutting to the direction where the road slopes down toward the coastline.

“This way.”

I fall into step beside her. Both of us are quiet and I use the time to take in the city once more. When we were marched up the hillside yesterday, it was dusk, and the lamps dotting the roadside were a beautiful sight to behold. The warmth radiating from the lamps made it seem like a blanket had been draped over the city, their glow making the white stone cottages all the more ethereal looking and I’m eager to see the city in the daylight.

“Does he go everywhere you go?” I ask, tilting my head to the figure leaping across to another nearby roof as he follows us.

“He goes where the queen tells him to go.”

If Jovie believes I am capable of harming my sister, it’s another stone stacked against me. Beau is more than capable of defending herself. Even if she weren’t, I never felt the same anger toward her as I did for Jovie. Her betrayal felt like it was born out of desperation. Beau suffered at the hands of our father. Trapping her mother, making her vie for a place at court by doing his bidding, constantly pitting us against each other just as he did with his wives.

Jovie’s betrayal just felt cruel. Like a punishment for something I wasn’t even aware I’d done.

People begin to trickle out into the streets as they start the day. They wave to Beau, well acquainted with her presence, it seems. A horse-drawn buggy heads toward us and we step to the side of the road to let it pass, a sweet smell following in its wake. “Bread delivery,” Beau explains.

“Evelyn makes bread as gifts for people in the capital.”

“As in … for everyone?” I ask.

She smiles as if I’m a toddler asking if the sky is going to fall one day.

“Yes. Every family gets a parcel at least once a year. Evelyn says it keeps her busy. She enjoys it.”

The path curves around a cottage with pink shutters, and as we round the bend it’s as if we’ve stepped foot into an entirely different part of the city. The path splits to the left and right of a theater sunk into the ground ahead, steps leading to a stage at the bottom.

Despite the cold temperatures, the trees bordering the round seating area are green and full. Flowers bloom on them in bright shades of purple. And, as gorgeous as they are, it’s the flutter of gold between the swooping branches that holds my attention. The way the sun glimmers off the butterflies’ wings looks like tiny fissures of lightning, a tiny spark of reflected light here and there before it’s gone, hidden by the beat of a wing.

Wow.

“I know,” Beau says. “It’s beautiful.”

I don’t know if I accidentally spoke the sentiment out loud or if she was able to surmise it from my aura. It’s been like this since we were children; she’s always been able to sense my thoughts without me having to say them.

As we approach, the sound of chittering diverts my attention to the seating area where children are congregated on the tiered stone steps. On the stage, a chalkboard stands next to a desk. A teacher’s desk, I realize.

I’m struggling to take it all in—the outdoor theater filled with children ranging from roughly nine-years-old to twelve, but also the butterflies flying overhead, and the sweet, perfumed smell of nectar from the flowers. I stand under the shade of the trees taking it all in, when I notice my sister walking down the stone steps and toward the stage, the children’s voices quieting as she passes.

“Good morning!” Her voice is lilting and a smile overtakes her features.

The class sings back: “Good morning!”

I promptly take a seat on the highest row as I come to the realization my sister is the teacher. My sister, who has arguably taken the lives of as many men as I have, picks up a piece of chalk and plays with it between her fingers as she looks over the students.

“Who did their reading assignment?” she asks, and every hand shoots up. “Good. Then everyone should be able to answer a question if I call on you.”

She opens a text on her desk and runs a finger down the page before asking the first question. Her eyes scour over the array of students until she chooses one, calling him out by name. Alec is swift to answer, and he beams when Beau gives him a pleased smile. She continues her interrogation—because that’s what it is—as she paces in front of the kids, figuring out if anyone has skimped on their assignment.

I’ve seen her in action enough to know when she’s sizing someone up, and most of the class sits at attention as they wait to be called upon. One boy, Mason, cowers in his seat when her eyes land on him, and I pity him as he stutters over an answer. He’s wrong, of course, and Beau’s disappointed expression is punishment enough for his lacking effort.

I spend the morning observing her as she lectures. The noise of the city bustling around the amphitheater mixes with the sound of wind in the trees and the buzzing of bees. As the sun rises in the sky, the canopy of trees keeps the theater shaded. It’s idyllic and makes me melancholy for the people back in Kenta. There’s a peace here I haven’t felt in years back at the capital.

Beau has always said children have the best auras. I never thought much of it but watching her interact with them reminds me so much of how her mother was with us when we were young. Still as intimidating as hell, but

also forthcoming with her joy.

In Kenta, Beau existed.

Here, she’s thriving.

Jovie has given her so much more in a few years than my father ever did in her whole life.

At the end of her lectures, she gives the kids the day off from assignments and they’re boisterous when they scramble to leave, running to the parents waiting for them around the circumference of the theater.

I wait for Beau to clean her chalkboard and tidy the supplies on her desk before she comes to meet me at the top of the stairs. We fall into step as we take a different path back to the cottage.

Maile is a city unlike anything I could have ever imagined, as if it was pulled from the pages of a fairytale. Magic is as common as breathing.

People exercise their gifts out in the open, free to use them however they please. I can practically feel the magic in my lungs, on the breeze as it dances across my skin. It’s intoxicating.

“Is this how it always is?”

Beau’s smile is earnest when she answers. “Always.” She swings the excess material of her skirt as she leads me higher into the city. “Your aura has calmed since this morning,” she says, eyes flitting over me. “Although, you’re still angry with me.”

The soldier from this morning has been replaced by another, and I keep my eyes on him as he scales the roofs a street over from us. I don’t remove my hands from my pockets, making it clear that I pose no threat. To my sister or otherwise.

“Tell me,” I say, returning my attention to the sloping street ahead.

“When exactly did you decide to overthrow our father? Was it an impulsive decision influenced by Jovie, or was it something you had planned since we were children?”

Beau’s never been one to be dismayed by my attitude. “I saw the deception in Jo’s aura as soon as I laid eyes on her.” Smirking, she reaches out and plucks a stray flower petal from my shirt. “Much like I see it in

yours.”

“That’s news to me.”

“You’ve always had a little bit of deceit hiding in there,” she says, twirling her fingers in the air. “Whether you mean to do anything or not.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“It was always my wish to overthrow our father,” she says without a hint of remorse. “It wasn’t until meeting Jo that I ever hoped it was a real

possibility.”

“And what was I? Collateral damage?”

“Yes.” She looks away, at nothing and everything all at once. “It wasn’t an easy decision. Jo wanted to bring the offer to you sooner, but I warned her against it.”

My heartbeat seems to still as I absorb her words. “Why?”

“You love too hard. Always have.” She shrugs. “But there’s one thing you value over love … and that’s loyalty.”

I exhale a burst of air through my nose in a huff as I shake my head.

“You have no idea how wrong you are.”

“I know.” She looks back to me, the corner of her lip quirked up in a small, humorless smile. “I can see that now.”

Something in her face sends a frisson of unease down the nape of my neck. “Oh, yeah?”

“I believe our father had been planting falsehoods in your mind for a long time. Probably starting before you even left to join the army. But your aura is vastly different from when I left home,” she says, swinging her skirt as she walks. “Loyalty is still there, but it’s divided.”

I look up at a flicker of butterflies floating on the breeze. “I hadn’t been home more than a handful of times since I joined the army, so when I did return, my perspective of our father was still that of a boy. I was just too stubborn to see him for he was—is.”

“Jo told me there was something you refused to speak of, on the wharf.

Something about the reason Wren switched sides.”

A humorless breath escapes me. “She’s not willing to have this conversation with me herself?”

Beau looks at me as she has done for the majority of our lives— admonishing, with a knowing tilt to her brow. She doesn’t need to voice the obvious, and that’s the fact Jovie doesn’t want to speak to me at all.

“Our father has found a way to regain his magic.”

By the way her expression doesn’t falter, it’s apparent she already suspected what was going to come out of my mouth.

“How do you know that already?” I ask.

She gives me a look that says everything without having to say it; she’s

not dumb enough to reveal her sources.

Sighing, I nod my understanding.

“Listen, I think you’re being honest about wanting to take the throne from our father, so please believe that what I’m about to tell you is in your best interest.” Her mouth thins as she inspects me before she looks away, as if she can’t stand to look at me as she speaks. “You’re wasting your time here. Jo will never help you.”

There’s something in the bluntness of her statement that tells me she’s being truthful. Whatever Jovie’s reasoning, it’s nonnegotiable, which makes me believe she’s holding on to an alliance with Roison. For what, I’m unsure. What could Chryse have offered her to not even consider hearing me out? Besides my marriage being an obvious point of contention.

“Does she draw anymore?” I ask, solemnly.

If Beau is taken aback by the sharp deviation in the topic of my

question, she doesn’t show it.

“No,” she answers, softly.

And that’s the worst news Beau’s given me today.