Page 17 of The Duke and the Disciple

“If I say so.” He kissed her again. “Don’t worry for me. I know what I need to do, and I know I can do it.” He fingered the necklace she’d placed on his neck the day before. It was her mother’s, one of two left after the sacking of the village. The ruthless cowards had taken everything else of value, but Aesylt had been wearing both, huddled under her bed as she listened to screams without end, breathing the rancid, unforgettable stench of bodies burning in the village square. “I have everything I need now.”

“Come back to us.” Her voice cracked.Say it. Give him everything he needs, for he’ll need everything he can get.“To me.” She closed her eyes and whispered the words to return them both to the real world. “And now we return.”

Val glanced around in powerful relief. “All right then, beautiful. By the wings of this life or the bones of the next.”

Aesylt repeated the Vjestik refrain. He kissed her as the last word left her, held his hand to his mouth, and went to the barn doors.

“Better start picking out materials for a gown.” Val grinned, winked, and then he was gone.

Aesylt wasbent over the hearth in the library, heaving, when Tasmin walked in.

Tasmin quietly approached and chose the chair Rahn usually sat in. “He’s gone?”

Aesylt breathed out through a small gap in her mouth, choking back emotion. Her sour belly constricted, churning. She inhaled, eyes closed, and turned.

“I won’t ply you with reassurances. You’re Vjestik. You’ve lived here your whole life. You’d see right through them.” Tasmin leaned closer. “But if you’d like to talk, I’d be honored to listen.”

Aesylt had chosen the library for solitude. There wouldn’t be another cohort session until the Vuk od Varem was over, and depending on the outcome... No, she couldn’t let her mind wander such a path. But Tasmin, who had come to the Cross with Duke Rahn and her mother, Duchess Teleria, was easy to talk to. She had a natural warmth and wisdom that surprisingly paired well with her blunt assessments of everything. She and Aesylt had become fast friends, and even confidants. “I don’t even have words, Tas. I feel like a great void has opened up within me, one I’m neither capable of closing nor motivated to try. Letting it swallow me would be easier than standing on the edge of the abyss, waiting to fall.”

“You’re not one to wax morose,” Tasmin said lightly. “But if anyone has a right to, it’s you. I won’t tell you what I think about the Vuk od Varem, but I will pray to the gods for Valerian’s safe return.”

The gods. The Ancestors. The Guardians. There were so many deities in the realm, it was hard to lay accountability at any of their feet. “I know how it all must seem to an outsider, Tas, but I’ve heard some of Imryll’s stories from Duncarrow. Every culture has traditions no one else understands. Every culture understands brutality. It’s a rather universal language, don’t you think?”

Tasmin nodded at the fire, tucking her mahogany hair behind her ears. She was remarkably beautiful, in a way Aesylt struggled to define. There was an “otherness” about her that men and women alike found immediately appealing. Aesylt had never concerned herself much with her own reflection, but Tasmin’s arrival had her scrutinizing herself about things that had never mattered before.

It wasn’t just Tasmin’s arrival though. It was Rahn’s. No one had ever challenged her the way he had. Before he’d come along, she hadn’t even realized there were more challenges to be made.

Before his arrival, she hadn’t been living, so much as existing.

“You’re right. And I was born on Duncarrow, unlike Rahn who was old enough to remember Ilynglass when he came to our realm. Despite that, he remembers nothing. As you know, even raising the topic turns him into a cornered animal.” Tasmin shrugged. “Whatever world Rahn came from, whatever it looked like, I know it couldn’t be any more civilized than ours.”

Of their cohort, only Tasmin ever called the scholar by his given name. It made no sense why it rankled Aesylt, just like their easy way with each other shouldn’t be so maddening, but it did and it was. It didn’t matter that Rahn and Tasmin had been raised like siblings.

But theywere notsiblings, and the way Tasmin sometimes smiled at Rahn from across a room made it clear there were no familial boundaries between them.

“What aren’t you saying, Aesylt?”

Aesylt pushed off from the hearth and dropped into the chair next to Tasmin’s. “Val asked me to marry him before he left.”

Tasmin pitched forward. “Did he now?”

Nodding, Aesylt drew her legs up under her.

“Your answer?”

“What else could I say but yes to a man embarking on...” She couldn’t finish. “Even if he comes back, Drazhan would put up a fight about it, and...”

“He might not,” Tasmin said. “The boys who return from the woods are heroes, no? It would be an honorable match.”

“You’re assuming my brother is reasonable.”

“Oh, Iknowthe man isn’t reasonable. I was there for his entire illicit courtship with Imryll. He may be a gentle giant with her now, but we can’t forget he went to Duncarrow to extinguish the Rhiagain line.”

Aesylt could have defended her brother, but instead she closed her eyes and sighed. “Val is... He’s so dear to me, Tas, but I cannot see making a life with him.”

“Well, I imagine he’d be a proper beast in bed,” Tasmin said with a cheeky grin, which had Aesylt unexpectedly smiling too. “Listen to his chaos. It’s a symphony of unbridled promise.”

“What a way with words you have,” Aesylt teased, envious at how easy it was for Tasmin to speak of such things. If anyone heard them... but no one would. And she trusted Tasmin enough to know she didn’t even need to ask her not to repeat any of what was said to Drazhan or Imryll. “But I need more than that.” She frowned. “I think.”

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