Page 21 of The Duke and the Disciple

“I stopped concerning myself with the uninformed opinions of others years ago.”

Her laugh returned the smile to his face, but realizing what he meant to say next dulled it.

“I lost both my parents and my little sister that day. Grandparents. Cousins. Aunts. Uncles. And the saddest part is I hardly remember them at all. I can’t even picture my mother’s face anymore.” He glanced down at the intrusion of warmth, finding Aesylt’s hand on his arm. “I’ve never told anyone else that. I don’t know what compelled me to tell you now.”

Aesylt tossed back a generous swallow of ale. “Confessions of the unintentionally inebriated,” she said lightly, but her smile was joyless. “Would you feel better if I offered one of my own?”

Rahn rolled his hands over the cool mug. “You don’t have to do that.”

Aesylt finished her drink and flopped back. Her light hair spilled out on all sides, blending with the fur. “It’s not the kind of secret no one else knows, I’m afraid, but very few do, and they’re just as guarded about it as I am. Drazhan. My other frata, Hraz. My ota knew too. Nik and Val.” She sighed. “We may practice magic openly in the Cross, but even among the Vjestik, there are forbidden magics. They won’t ship you off to the Reliquary like the rest of the realm does when one of their children manifests something they shouldn’t. We deal with our troubles ourselves.”

Rahn turned to his side in alarm. “You possess forbidden magic?”

She nodded, her head rolling away from him. “When I was born, I... wasn’tthere. They delivered me, but then I was just gone. Disappeared into thin air. My oma started screaming for me, and my ota was ready to have every last nurse’s head if they didn’t explain what was going on. But then I was back. And no one ever spoke of it again until after my oma died, and I started goingelsewhereagain.”

Rahn’s mind continued to spin as she spoke. He was torn between wanting to stop her before she revealed something she wasn’t comfortable sharing and letting her finish.

“My childhood vedhma, Saskia, called the place I went the celestial realm, and Ota sent her away for it. I think because he was scared for me,” Aesylt said. Her tone took on a dreamlike quality. “She called me a starwalker.”

Rahn tucked his chin down in confusion. “A starwalker?”

“When I go into this realm, everything is the same but different. The sky... It’s like it’s right on top of me, and I’m one with the stars. Like land and air are one. Some things follow me there; others don’t... It’s different every time. I can see and feel and do everything I can do in the real world, except nothing I do there has consequence here. If I die in the celestial realm, I just wake up here again, like nothing happened.”

“If you...haveyoudiedthere?” Rahn was aghast. His pulse had started to pound, bolstered by an unmistakable sense there was more danger to her words than she was letting on. “Aesylt?”

She nodded, her head tilted back. Her mouth parted, then closed. She exhaled. “A few times. Hraz, maybe a dozen.” She smirked to herself. “Drazhan? Probably fifty.”

Rahn shook his head, trying to understand. “You all go to this celestial realm, as you call it, todie? To experience death with no consequence of death?”

Aesylt propped herself up for another refill. “I haven’t had this much ale in so long.” She quaffed it back in one impressive throw.

He knew what she was doing and why. “Then maybe it’s time to slow down a bit.”

“Vjestik are born knowing how to hold their spirits, Scholar.” She tilted her head back toward him. When her wide eyes implored him, his heart issued a betrayal, skipping wildly. She pressed a hand to her golden hair, twined with the dark bear pelt. It was the way she saidscholar... perfectly ordinary. Perfectly indecent.

Perhaps I’m the one who has over-indulged himself.

“I stand corrected,” he said hoarsely. He’d brought her to the observatory to take her mind off her fear and grief, not introduce a complication to her life. And his. “You were saying how you enjoyed murdering your brothers for sport?”

Aesylt chortled. “Well, I did enjoy it. In my defense, they begged me to take them. It was a safe place to practice. Hraz, for fun, I suppose. Drazhan for... everything that came after Nok Mora.”

Nok Mora. The Nightmare. Rahn’s heart ached for the village that had lost so much in one terrifying night and was still recovering from. “What about your own deaths?”

Her shoulders lifted against the fur into a shrug. “I prefer to face death and know it than wait for it and not recognize it.”

Stories of that night filtered back to him. Whispers of the little girl who had hid under the bed as her father and eldest brother were massacred in front of her... as the village and half its inhabitants burned to ash upon the order of a vengeful king.

Just as swiftly followed more unwelcome visions, of waking, sodden, upon foreign rocks, bleeding and confused. Waiting for a family that would never arrive. “I understand, even if I wish I didn’t.”

Aesylt tapped the fur with the hand closest to Rahn. “I could take you there.”

“To the celestial realm?”

She fought a yawn, but the urge won. “Yeah,” she said sleepily. “Only if you want.”

Rahn pressed his own yawn into his arm.Didhe want to go? Even if the answer was yes,shouldhe? His academic mind spun around the possibilities of such a place, but if there was one unspoken but powerful truth, it was that if something offered endless potential, expect danger in equal measure.

“Another time, perhaps,” he said, but she was fast asleep.

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