Chapter 23 | Lying magic.

Aire had never been destined for greatness. She had been a middle child of six, the second girl and the only one without a Wield. Her family had been large, full of warmth and laughter. When she thought of them, she rarely remembered their squabbles.

Then again, as time passed, she was beginning to forget their faces.

She had been entitled to little as the third child and Ríona was destined to inherit the Cearnain throne. And yet that had never caused strife amongst her sisters and brothers. Since she could remember, Aire's parents had fostered a love of Cearna, a duty of protection for the land that magic had sprung from. Each child, no matter where they moved to on the continent of Tearmann, no matter who they married, would be bound to the land first. Their love, the binding of their soul would be to Cearna first.

No matter if they wore a crown or not.

She had trained with the Aether when it became obvious that Aire would be of no use as a Wielder. She had borne the welts, borne the early hours as duty had burned like a hot flame inside of her throat. The only time she had ever shirked from her responsibilities was when it was declared she would marry – she would have to move across the stone stamped bridge into Vespith and live in their castle, always gazing across the sea to her distant homeland.

That should have been the first sign of her cowardice.

The second sign was when Kaelara had invaded, quick and lethal.

"Run," Ríona had told her.

Aire had listened; whether because she knew to obey her sister, or because she was a coward - she didn't know. But she ran. Far and fast. She had not escaped the castle on her own accord, too distraught to navigate the haphazard halls that had always been mapped in her brain in ink.

She had run. Run. Run and with every mile she had crossed, the weight of guilt had grown. It had grown to such a weight that to admit to anyone who she was, was shameful. Even if she had wanted to share the secret to a trusted friend, how could she? How could she expect them to look her in the eye, knowing that she had abandoned her home at the first sign of trouble.

Emotion was trembling inside her throat, a well of putrid guilt and anger searing inside of her. This trickster was just as bad as her. A liar.

This Ríona was false. Aire would make sure everyone knew that too.

The fake Ríona began to descend the steps, in elegant, languid steps. Aire bristled, her lip curling in distaste before she could mask it. Aire knew confronting the woman now would be a mistake – when the entire of Valherin was looking on and without proof.

The Aryshalin family were known for their silver hair: A legend had been born that an Aryshalin woman was one of the first to gain magic from when the gods still roamed the land. She had drunk a drop of silver light from the moon when it had been at its fullest and that had stained her dark Cearnain hair a shimmering silver. With that magic in her veins, she had tamed the seas that threatened to turn over her tiny fishing boat and ravaged the small coastal village that would grow into the Bay of Stars.

From that moment on, the Aryshalin family had been a pillar of support and protection for magic as it spread throughout the land. The family had spread throughout Cearna, throughout Tearmann for hundreds of years before the first rumblings of dispute began with their neighbours Kaelara.

During some lonely, dark nights, Aire wondered if there was another Aryshalin out there. Someone so distantly related that they were under no risk of being caught by the Bloodbounds or the Empire's soldiers. Someone whose hair did not have to be mucked and masked because it was a ringing alarm for anyone who understood the meaning of it.

"Welcome to Valherin," Ríona declared, her smile beautiful and warm.

Aire felt herself melting under it.

"I thought all the Aryshalins had died." Siseal breathed.

"That is what we want the Empire to believe," Ríona said lightly. "So they do not expect a rebellion gathering with such strength behind it that the very foundations of the Emperor's palace will fall apart."

Images danced in Aire's mind. Of a scowling man terrified as his world crumbled around him. Of a man's crown falling to the ground, then broken by her sister's welted hands. Ríona would break that crown and declare the land of Cearna free from Kaelarian control.

Aire frowned, willing the image to leave her mind. Not her sister.

"You are a falsehood," Bloodbound Roark's voice was a hiss. "A pretender grasping at an empty throne."

"Silence!" Sloane flamed, drawing a blade. "You dare speak so openly to ..."

"Sloane," Ríona...no, not Ríona – Pretender- soothed, her voice like the warm drop of oil on a knotted back. A breath eked out of Aire's parted lips, tension fleeing once again. "Do not pay attention to this creature's barbs. It would be inconceivable to him that the Empire failed in their duty, that an Aryshalin had survived the brutal attack all those years ago. But I did – from the river of blood that flowed through my home, I emerged barely clinging to life."

Aire blinked, and the smooth column of the pretender's throat seemed to gain a nasty, vicious scar. A grin of violent red.

The pretender, Ríona... no,- Aire was beginning to get confused. She had thought this was not Ríona, but the longer she continued to speak, the more convinced Aire became that she had been wrong. That Ríona somehow had survived the knife slicing through skin, through sinew ...

The Pretender continued to speak, "You would try and take my survival from me, wouldn't you Bloodbound. You would try and break the spirits of the Cearnain people so they have no reason to continue to fight."

"The Cearnain people will always fight." The Bloodbound's voice was low and lethal. "That is just who they are – a people of rebellion, of music and song. Until this Empire sinks down into the sea, the Cearnain people will fight Kaelara's rule. It is why the Empire cracks down so brutally upon them, why the Empire will not take their boot from their throats. And yet, as Cearna gasps for air, all they breathe is retribution. Cearna will fight and they will follow the true Aryshalin who has survived."

Aire went still.

Their words were hazy, as if she was caught halfway in between a dream and the real world. As if the words woven by the Pretender had sunk into her brain and the Bloodbound's words had broken them. She was surprised by the vehemence in his voice, by the passion. The heat of it rippled through her, clearing her vision. Steadying her.

This was not Ríona.

And Bloodbound Roark knew it too.

The Pretender's lips tightened. "A surviving Aryshalin?"

There was curiosity in her voice, and danger too. Aire could barely breathe, feeling as she was standing on a precipice. She felt, with frightening certainty that revealing her identity now would be a death sentence. Her gaze cut to the Bloodbound, who stared down the Pretender with venom.

"A true Aryshalin."

The Pretender's tight lips melted into a smile – a beautiful, deadly smile. "Tell me where they are, then Bloodbound. Where did you find my kin? Did you butcher them like you would me?"

"The one who sang with the Sirens, who snuck dessert off the table for the fairies flittering in the garden and always found a way to find out exactly what she needed survived – by true grit, by luck, I know not."

Alarm was slicing through Aire and she found herself gazing at him, wide eyed. He was speaking of her, like he knew her. And knew her well. Had he been amongst the crowds of people who moved through the castle, a nameless face? Had she sat on the table in the kitchen, sipping on honeyed tea as he scrubbed the floors?

No. She had known the kitchen staff well.

Had he been in the training fields, a few years older and sent to spar with the young Aryshalin girl? A fisherman perhaps, who had spotted her in the sea, concerned for her safety before he saw the silvery flash of Siren tails as they swam around her, always protecting her.

Sometime, during her examination, the Bloodbound's gaze shifted to her. Gone was the usual disdain, the cruel amusement – instead, he just met her gaze openly. He held answers that she needed and if she didn't need them, the secret-stealer of Irial could not resist the lure.

The Pretender had not responded. Aire didn't expect her too. How would she know who Bloodbound Roark spoke of? There were a rare few in her family who even knew of her escapades with the Sirens. She had cried enough by the sea to stir their interest. "Little girl, little girl," they had sung to her. "Why do you salt our sea so? It is salty enough."

She shouldn't have been so far away from the safety of her home's walls, and yet, she snuck out continuously. How had he known that?

"You will tell me where they are," The Pretender waved a hand, looking unperturbed. Yet, Aire had spent too long on the streets of Irial not to recognise the anger flickering across the Pretender's face. "I will get my answer. Take him to the caves."

Bloodbound Roark offered no resistance as he was dragged away. The crowd skittered away as he passed. The Pretender clapped her hands, smiling at them. "We shall hold a feast in honour of your arrival. But you look as if you all need a good rest and wash. I will not have you falling asleep at the table."

** ** ** ** ** **

The quarters in Valherin were magnificent.

Compared to the bedrolls they had slept on for many weeks, the bed was crafted from the finest of woods – built solely to cradle their bodies in fur and feathers. The rooms were small or felt small to Aire after sleeping so long on the open roads with the sky as a ceiling and the countless miles between her and the nearest wall.

And yet, in this small room, she felt safe.

Alone.

Finally.

The rooms were in a great house built into the walls. The whole place seemed to be hidden behind the great walls – where the corridors would lead them deeper and deeper into the mountains, hiding them away from the glass like streets on a whim. Aire felt like she was on the cusp of a rabbit's warren, where the paths could lead her anywhere. Her house had one doorway out into the street, but that didn't mean there wasn't a corridor burrowing into the house given to the Wielders.

A small tray of potted flowers lined the sill of her window. She could overlook Valherin here, with a small stone balcony that hung over the massive street. The city was abuzz with noise, the excitement tangible and she could hear preparations beginning down below. Food that had to be prepared, musicians to prep for a night of festivities.

And a night of festivities was all she needed – it was the perfect time to plan, to gain an insight of the land. To find proof that the Pretender wasn't who she said she was. Not that Aire wanted to step into her shoes; her sister deserved better than to have her memory tarnished by someone who could never live up to her, not even when Ríona was now dead.

And this Pretender would lead the Cearnain people into a war on a falsehood.

Two strangers carried in a tin bath, pouring great jugs of steaming water into it. They poured a thick, opaque liquid into it and left Aire without saying much. There were simple clothes left in the wardrobe and before Aire could even bring herself to take a bath, she drew her hands over the soft, well woven cloth. Home. Even the thin shawls usually only worn for attending the great Cearnain temples of Danann. A place of worship for the gods long since silent.

'I wonder if they still stand?" Aire unbound her hair, tapping the crusted mud. They had left her with a comb and hair oil.

Aire stripped and sank down into the hot water, biting back a groan as her aching muscles soothed. There would be no lingering in the water. The filth of the road was always cracking off her, peeling like dried skin where it had collected. She scrubbed her skin raw, ducking her head below the water to feel the world close and grow quiet around her.

Next, was her hair. They would question the mud in her hair after been given a bath. A shawl would have to cover it until she could find some Rot-Wort or something else to take the sheen from it.

Carefully, so carefully, she began to clean it out. When she had been a girl, the care of hair was fundamental. Her family, her people put great consideration into their hair. How it was cleaned, how it was presented, how long it was. When she had cut her hair to hide in the countryside, cropping it close to her head, she had cried as if another one of her family had been taken from her. Since then, she had avoided cutting it again – risking hiding it instead of shearing it short. It was a piece of Cearna that they couldn't take from her, and when she saw the Irial markets flooded with the 'Hair of Cearnains' for rich nobles to buy, it only flamed her resolve.

Only when the hair was combed through, drying slow as the fire roared in the hearth, did she deign to look in the mirror. She was a ragged sight to behold. Hunger, pain and fear had hollowed her face, pinching it of colour and leaving her grey and gaunt. Her hair, limp and wet, hung in ragged ropes down her back.

And yet, Aire could only see slivers of her family as she looked at the low glimmer of her hair. Her sister's had the same curls that formed at the swell of their ears. Her mother's strong nose. Her father's brow. If she stared long enough and let her vision shake, those pieces of everyone would swarm together and she would see them.

Anger pierced through her, sharp and savage. "See who?" She asked the gaunt stranger in the mirror. "See what? A dream, a piece of your past? Stop this. Stop this."

The same old speech she told herself a hundred times. She would stop for a while, but then the grief would sneak back in through the cracks that had formed when her family had died, and Aire had never healed over.

Annoyed with herself, Aire slipped into her clothes. They were soft against her skin, clean and warm and at that moment, it was enough to distract her. She bound her hair, nimble fingers making quick work of her long, drying hair and she wrapped it tight to the crown of her head. The shawl was carefully placed, hiding her hair.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in."

Nyeth stepped inside, rolling her shoulders. She was dressed in a soft yellow gúna that hung down to her ankles and she had woven her hair in a silken shawl. She glided into Aire's room, bare-footed.

"Do your feet not hurt?" Aire asked.

"We wore chains like jewellery, Aire." Nyeth brushed her fingers along the flowers, smiling over the balcony down to the glass-black street. "But my father made me walk the sandstone caves barefoot as a girl so I got used to it."

"A cruel or clever lesson?"

Nyeth shrugged. "Sometimes, I teeter between the two."

"I can think like that sometimes."

Nyeth looked away from the balcony, back to Aire. "You were sad when we walked through Valherin."

"It reminds me of home."

Nyeth's mouth was downturned. "I came to check on you. Will this feast upset you?"

"No, the food is enough to distract me." Aire managed a tight-lipped smile. "And it will be a good kind of pain. A reminder of home when I've spent so long pretending that I did not miss it."

Nyeth shifted on her feet. "Do you need a hug?"

She opened her mouth, a no balanced on the tip of her tongue but then she paused. The pause was enough for Nyeth, who opened her arms silently. Aire could not find it in herself to say no, folding into Nyeth's hold. It was a brief, tight and warm hug. Nyeth drew back, holding tight to Aire's shoulders. Aire didn't know if she imagined the tears in Nyeth's eyes.

There definitely was gravel in her voice as she said, "Back home, my friends and I would always hug goodbye, hello, how are you, I'm sorry. It was a way of saying words we could not voice."

"You consider us friends?"

Nyeth's brows peeked. "I will forgive that question because those you considered friends in that hovel of rot, stabbed you in the back. I am going to see if Brice and the boys are ready to go to the feast."

Nyeth left as quickly as she came, in a whirl of orange blossom that lingered in the room. Friend. In some ways, that reminded her of Aevran. He had been bold and forward in his pursuit of friendship and Aire, lonely in the world, had grabbed onto it with both hands.

But not everyone was Aevran.

And an Aire alone, truly alone, was a terrible thing. 

| Welcome back to Aire's world. 

Tell me your thoughts, theories and conspiracies. 

Do you think Aire should accept Nyeth's offer of friendship? 

What do you think Aire should do about this pretender? 

Until next time, Saoimare. |