Chapter 33

Kestrel and Sephira skulked through the alleyways that Kestrel had once called home in a shellshocked daze. It was all either of them could do just to think straight. Aris was in charge of the city guards, but it was impossible to tell how many had been corrupted like Rel and neither wanted to chance it, so their journey was painfully slow as they flitted from shadow to shadow, praying nobody saw them in their blood soaked clothes.

Neither said a word. Each were swept up in their own thoughts. Kestrel had been brought into this world by Wallace, he had practically begged the old soldier to teach him magic. The black and white world had been dyed in shades of grey, but nothing could've prepared him for what had just happened. Even the worst of memories that Wallace had used as a shield for his mind hadn’t readied him.

He had thought everything would be so easy.

What a fool he’d been.

How much worse was the trauma for Sephira, he wondered?

She was unaware of the currents that steered their nation. How deep did those tendrils of magic dig into their world? What Kestrel had seen had shocked him to his core and he had grown up on the streets.

He had seen comrades slain before his eyes, Sephira hadn’t. How could she possibly handle what they had just seen?

Sephira, for her part, seemed to be taking things in stride.

She didn’t know how to process what had just happened, so rather than being flooded by thoughts and emotions, she shut down that part of her mind that had witnessed the brutality of the Inquisitor and his sudden, shocking suicide.

She blocked it from her memory.

Sephira didn’t know what bothered her more, the fact she was able to shut herself down so completely or that the strange touch of magic seemed familiar to her, as if what the Inquisitor had done pulled at an old and long forgotten scar on her soul.

Why did the magic —and how did she know it was magic?— seem so familiar to her? She knew that she hadn’t ever trained in it, nor could she recall ever learning anything about it, but she still had an innate knowledge of what she had just witnessed.

Why did it feel so familiar? Why did she feel like the magic she had witnessed was her birthright?

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Kestrel’s feeble apology broke the long silence between the two of them. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sephira said.

It was a lie, but not completely.

“You wouldn’t have been dragged into this mess if it wasn’t for me,” the tone in Kestrel’s voice told Sephira he blamed himself for what had just happened and he would back away from her in order to protect her as a result.

A sudden anger blazed in Sephira’s chest. She clinched her fist.

The man was an idiot. He had no right to say that!

She stopped in her tracks. It was foolish to be so angered, but she couldn’t let his words go. She was so furious. She didn’t know whether she wanted to scream or punch him in the face. She had to physically restrain herself from slapping him.

“What’s wrong?” Kestrel asked, puzzled.

“You have NO RIGHT to do that!” Sephira hissed.

“Do what?”

“You KNOW what you’re doing!” she accused Kestrel.

Kestrel gaped at her, at a loss for what he had done to offend her so. His idiotic silence only stoked the fire in her.

“You have no right to decide for me!” her voice was nearly a shout.

Kestrel desperately tried to shush her. Fearing their presence would be discovered.

“You do NOT get to run away from me and call it protection! That’s what cowards do! I’m not gonna let you run away like a coward! You’re not in the streets anymore. You don’t get to act like a coward anymore! Now you’re a man. You’re training under my uncle, the bravest man in the empire, and you’ll act befitting of your training! You WILL NOT hide behind fear and call it protection! Do you understand me!?”

Kestrel stammered at a loss for words. Her words had cut through every argument that had been running through his mind. Eventually he simply nodded. Unable to understand how she had cut through the lies he had told himself and hadn’t known that he believed.

Even bedraggled and covered in the blood of slain comrades, Sephira was beautiful.

She was astonishing.

Kestrel had never known any with the same inner fortitude as her. How was she so wise beyond her years?

Her words had, at the same time, taken any argument from his lips and had admonished him into action.

She had killed a burgeoning cancer in his heart with a few simple words.

She truly was amazing.

*****

The walk, which usually would have taken a half an hour, was dragged out into a two hour excursion as the pair skulked through the shadows, Sephira following Kestrel’s well trained lead.

When they approached the Ravenscroft estate, Kestrel turned from the path that Sephira had always used and led her on a circuitous mountain route that kept them from any prying eyes.

It was the twins Elan and Elise who first spied the pair, covered in blood, and disheveled with torn and tattered clothing. Without a word the two turned and ran into the house. Seconds later Corrine appeared in front of them and spewed a series of questions, admonishments, at them and a stream of vile curses that reddened the ears of the duo at whoever had attacked them.

It took nearly five minutes before the two could get a word in edgewise between Corrine’s alternating scoldings and curses.

“What in the name of the Almighty happened!?” she said, finally pausing to hear an answer from the pair.

Kestrel looked from Corrine to Sephira and back, unsure of how much Sephira’s mother knew and what to say. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sephira quickly hushed him by placing her blood soaked hand on his shoulder.

“We were attacked. We were able to get to safety, but Treall wasn’t so lucky. He died protecting us,” Sephira hated omitting things for her aunt Corrine, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell her of the Inquisitor that had attacked them, nor of the slaughter that they had witnessed at his hands.

She wasn't sure why, but she felt dread at the idea of her aunt knowing of the world of magic that her eyes had just been reopened to.

Sephira would tell Aris, but she couldn’t shake the fear of what Corrine would do if she knew the truth.

“I hate that you have to lie to me. But you will tell your uncle Aris what happened,” Corrine glared at the pair. “Now before we do anything else, I’ll have baths drawn up for the two of you, and when you are both washed, we’ll see to your wounds,” there was a hint of sadness in her voice that the pair felt that they couldn’t share the whole story with her, but her many years as the wife of a general had tempered her. There were some things that couldn’t be shared after the heat of a battle.

Besides, she would still get the information out of them sooner or later.

“Help your sister you two!” Corrine shouted to the twins who had snuck within hearing range.

The duo, shocked at being caught eavesdropping, nodded and ran to Sephira’s side. Elan ran inside to inform the maids to draw up a hot bath and Elise steadied Sephira. Now that she was safe it seemed like the mass of pain and weariness that had been held at bay came rushing into her all at once.

Meanwhile Corrine shored up Kestrel and led him to the guards station where she called the young captain and commanded a bath to be drawn up and a messenger be sent to both the medic and her husband.

“Thank you for keeping Sephira safe,” Corrine whispered as she walked with Kestrel. “But remember this, if something like this ever happens again, your blood will be all over my hands. Sephira may not be my daughter biologically,” she winced as she said those words, “but I have raised her as my own for as long as I can remember. If something were to happen to her, I would not only kill the ones responsible, but whoever put her in danger in the first place. Do you understand me?”

Kestrel nodded. Corrine’s eyes told him that she meant every word that she said. There would be no mercy for anyone that hurt her family.

Should those she loved be injured, none would be spared her wrath.

Those words, and her eyes, dug into his heart as the pair of guards brought him to the bathing room of the barracks where, to his great embarrassment, they started to strip him of his blood-soaked clothes

Kestrel was able to shoo them off before they removed his underclothes and he painfully stripped the rest off and climbed into the steaming tub.

The hot water stung, but the pain was dulled by the healing temperature. A strange tingle numbed the rest of the pain.

He sniffed.

The soldiers had thrown in handfuls of shredded Fen bark that acted as a crude painkiller. It was an old trick that every soldier knew. Aris had taught it to him after their second sparring session.

By the time Kestrel entered the bath, Corrine had made her way back to the main house and had unceremoniously stomped into the wash room where the maids were tutting worriedly over Sephira as they gingerly undressed her.

“Can’t you see she’s exhausted. You’re prolonging her agony by being so careful with her. Just get it over with and strip those blood soaked rags off of her and get her in the bath!” Corrine growled at the trio of maids, who hurriedly obeyed her commands.

Sephira winced as they hurriedly stripped her off the rest of her garments but she was grateful for her Aunt’s commands.

She had wanted to say the same things Corrine had, but she hadn’t been able to find any words. They had disappeared along with her strength the moment she had crossed the threshold.

Even thinking was exhausting now.

Every time she tried to summon a thought, the sight of Treall and the guards falling to the Inquisitor swam through her mind. She had locked it away, but now safe, those visions came back unbidden and she was powerless to stop them. She watched as he slowly plunged the same dagger that had killed Treall into his own neck.

And the memories of torture that he had poured into her…

She felt to frazzled to do anything.

As Sephira, too tired to feel any shame in her nakedness before her aunt and the maids, stepped into the bath and felt the blood lifting from her light skin, Corrine shooed the trio of maids out of the room and added more of the healing minerals that they’d already poured into the bath.

“Look at you child,” Corrine muttered as she grabbed a towel from the side of the tub and gently scrubbed off the stubborn blood caked around the wound on Sephira’s abdomen that refused to be washed away by the heated water.

Sephira winced as the rag ran along the long gash that’d scored the surface of her skin.

A tear trickled out of the side of her eye. She couldn’t find any words to say. She was too tired. Far too weary.

She leaned into the embrace of her Aunt Corrine and sobbed.

*****

Kestrel didn’t know how long he had soaked in the healing waters, but when the knocking on the door came that broke him from his somber thoughts, the water had long gone cold.

With a wince, he pulled himself from the tub and languidly dried himself, being careful to not press too hard on the assortment of cuts and bruises he’d gained from the battles with Rel and the nameless Inquisitor.

“I’m coming,” he said absently as he dressed himself. How had he not noticed the simple but clean outfit that’d been place tub-side? Had he really been that caught up in his thoughts?

“Let me see you,” the greying medic, the same one that had treated him when he had first arrived at Aris’ estate, said as Kestrel opened the door. “It’s a shame that you got dressed because I’m going to need you to strip out of your clothes again so I can check and see what damage you’ve sustained,” the medic said.

“Sephira?” Kestrel croaked out.

“I’ve already seen to her,” the old man replied. “Now strip.”

Kestrel reluctantly peeled off his clothes, wincing as he did so. He hadn’t realized how much he hurt all over until he had stepped out of the tub. The adrenaline and the painkiller soaked water had dulled him to the soreness, but now, despite the touch of the Fen bark, the pain was crashing into him like waves.

After taking an embarrassingly long time for Kestrel to strip down to his linen undershorts, the elderly medic started his examination.

“I see that your body has miraculously recovered from your previous injuries, and that makes it all the more shame that you’ve gone and added these fresh cuts and bruises,” the aging medic commented.

“Well, I can assure you that it wasn’t my intention to injure myself again,” Kestrel retorted, eliciting a light chuckle from the healer.

“Of course not son. Sephira didn’t tell me much, but I do know that you were attacked by a trained soldier and your defense helped to save her life.”

“As she saved mine,” Kestrel remarked. He knew that if it wasn’t for her help, both Rel and the Inquisitor could easily have taken his life.

The medic nodded. He smiled at Kestrel’s praise of Aris’ niece. Too often he’d seen the brave actions of women save the lives of many and go unnoticed. It spoke well of the young man that he was quick to point out Sephira’s bravery.

“We’ll have to stitch this one up,” Hunter said as he examined a deep gash next to Kestrel’s left elbow.

Kestrel, so bruised and mentally exhausted from the ordeal, hadn’t even noticed the cut until it had been pointed out.

“Thankfully, besides that laceration, some deep bruising, and a rib that’s going to make it hard to breath for the next two weeks or so, you’ve come out unscathed for the most part,” the medic, who’s name was Hunter said. “I know that you’ll never share with me how and why this has happened, but you need to know that you don’t have to close yourself off. Aris is a good man. You can share whatever troubles you’re facing with him.”

Kestrel nodded.