Chapter 25

Aris and Corrine’s eyes danced between the battered young man and their niece.

Corrine shot Aris a look that said ‘you have a lot of explaining to do.’

He shrugged, he didn’t know anymore than his wife.

“Kestrel!? What are you doing here!? What happened!? Why are you all bandaged up!?”

Kestrel stood in shocked silence. Sephira was the last person he had expected to see when he’d walked through the doorway of Aris’ home, stubbornly waiting for the promised conversation the general had sworn to give him.

“I…” Kestrel stepped forward to speak.

The ground disappeared from underneath him and Kestrel collapsed into a heap.

Sephira was at Kestrel’s side in a flash. Aris had never seen such a worried look in her eyes before. Who was this Kestrel and how did his niece know him? How had he missed their connection? How had he, a man who’d solved so many mysteries, missed THIS. Was this what he had to look forward to with the twins when they grew up?

“What are you doing just standing there uncle?!” Sephira shouted at Aris, breaking him from his reverie. “I said help me pick him up! He needs immediate care! He had just started being able to walk like a normal person again last time I saw him! He should’ve never been caught up in whatever just happened!”

Aris opened his mouth to object but a withering look from Sephira silenced him and he kept quiet and shored up Kestrel, leading them to the large but sparse guest room.

Corrine, who was following closely behind him with a pitcher of water and a towel that he hadn’t realized she had grabbed, smiled at him. She was curious and she would definitely be demanding answers from him very soon, but she couldn’t help but be amused by Aris’ floundering under the righteous anger of their niece, who’s eyes dug into him.

“Now lay him down,” Sephira commanded her uncle when they reached the bed. “Be gentle. Whatever brought you two together was obviously dangerous and something he should never had gone through, especially after what happened to him.”

Aris nodded and placed the injured young man in the bed.

“So what happened? How did you meet?” Sephira said, not taking her eyes from the young man as she took the wet towel Corrine had proffered and dabbed at Kestrel’s fevered brow.

He felt molten.

“I went to visit my old friend and commanding officer, but he wasn’t easy to track down, so I was forced to seek the services of a less than reputable asset who thought that my recent alleged heroics had caused his business to suffer,” Aris replied. “It will suffice to say that he thought this would be the perfect time to take out the thorn in his side that he thought I had become.”

“What do you mean, ‘take out’ Dear?” Corrine’s voice had turned to ice. Her posture was controlled fury.

Aris stayed silent, but he couldn’t hide the guilt from his body language.

“You purposefully SOUGHT OUT the services of a man you knew hates you and who has no problems with murder?”

Aris flinched. He opened his mouth to explain.

“You dear, are an IDIOT! What is WRONG with you!” Corrine said before Aris could speak.

“I…”

“You almost died?” Sephira’s voice was filled with shock. “Are you okay? What happened? Why didn’t you tell me that!?”

Aris saw the terror in Sephira’s eyes at the prospect of losing another father. That look stabbed into his soul. He stepped to her and wrapped his niece in an embrace. She melted into his arms, absorbing his comfort.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m fine. So is young Kestrel. The worst injury was crossbow bolt that hit Wallace in the meat of his shoulder,” Aris said as he kissed his niece on the forehead and tussled her raven hair.

Sephira pulled from the embrace. “Wallace was injured! How is he? The second we finish with Kestrel, I need you to take me to him!”

Aris nodded. If only he had known her connection to his old partner, none of this would’ve happened. Why had she kept it secret from him? He should be furious at her, but despite it all he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry at her. Instead he was astonished at Sephira’s strength.

“When did Sephira become so strong?” he asked.

“She’s been strong the whole time,” Corrine’s fury at him shifted to pride at her in the blink of an eye. “You’re just seeing it now.”

Corrine then stepped to the side of the bed by her niece and helped to cool the feverish boy as she coaxed Sephira to share the story of their meeting. It took a little prodding for her niece to open up, but when she did, the words flowed from Sephira like a bubbling mountain brook.

Sephira told of their first meeting and how she had given his young ward a loaf of bread, and how happy the little girl had been. She went to relay how she had later ran into them when she’d stumbled across the attack by the guards, one of whom had smelled of long unwashed sour sweat. She had been about to step in and demand them to stop when they had attacked the young girl and blood plumed from her tiny head.

She’d cried out then, but it had been drowned out by Kestrel’s yowl of rage. He had blindly rushed the two of them and had fought admirably. He even blinded the eyes of one of the guards. Still he couldn’t face both of them together and had fallen to a blow from behind from the injured guard who had gone into a blind rage and had mindlessly brutalized Kestrel’s fallen body until he’d been pulled away by the other man because of the mob that was gathering, threatening they’d do the same to the two guards.

Something had compelled Sephira forward to the side of the battered young man. She knew that she needed to help him.

It was then that she met Wallace, the only other person to help the fallen boy. He had led her to his small riverside shack where she had helped to clean the wounds that Wallace patched up with the skills he’d developed in the mountain campaigns.

When the physician that Sephira had demanded a servant to fetch almost as an afterthought arrived, Corrine turned to Aris and told him. “We’re going to have some interesting conversations these next few days. You better be ready.”

End of Part I