Page 85 of The Duke and the Disciple

His smile faded when she was out of sight. The light of her presence was replaced by the dark memories of hearing her call out for her brother, Hraz, in her sleep, a mournful cry that had no answer. On some nights, it was for her father. But it had started a few days after they’d consummated their relationship. His own nightmares had begun around the same time, and he didn’t yet know what to make of them or what might connect their research to the memories.

Aesylt’s Nok Mora was his version of the Passage. Better left unaddressed. Un-remembered. But he wondered what happened to the unaddressed, un-remembered pieces. They hadn’t died with the past.

He couldn’t ask, because questions about the past were impossible for him too. He couldn’t bear to do that to her. The only power he had against the darkness were the nights under the stars when they made their own light.

And once Drazhan concluded the business with the Barynovs in the Cross, it would all end.

Aesylt had the business of the research notes well in hand, so Rahn grabbed his cloak and prepared to head to the keep. But as he shrugged the furs over his shoulders, he noticed a stray scrap of paper under her desk. He quickly leaned to reach for it, worrying she’d forgotten a page, and skimmed the words.

I lack the words to describe what’s been happening to me. I have never felt more myself than I do with him. I remember what it is to know strength now. To know it can come from so many other places than trauma and war and strife. But the closer he brings me back to myself, the more the past returns, mocking me, as though there’s work to be done and I’m failing to do it. Work I don’t have the faintest idea how to begin. Memories I can’t quite access and truthfully don’t want to. Everything comes with a cost, it seems. Everything?—

Hands shaking, Rahn dropped the paper. Aesylt’s private notes. He doubted she’d meant to include something so personal in the Reliquary package, so the page must have slipped out when she’d compiled the roll.

He almost tore the paper trying to feed it through the small gap between the drawer and the top of her desk.

Aesylt rode beside Pieter,several paces behind Rahn and Lord Dereham. They all pulled their heads low as sharp bands of sunlight reflected off the melting snow. All around them, by the dozens—hundreds, she thought, watching them stationed every ten yards—were guards. Mostly for her protection, she’d been told by Lord Dereham. As their host, he refused to leave his treasured guests at the keep when he had the means to safeguard them. They were surely homesick by now, he’d said, and it was important to keep their minds busy.

Other hunters streamed behind them, townsmen fortunate enough to be invited to one of the most important days of the year for Wulfsgate.

Aesylt wasn’t the only woman on the hunt, but there weren’t many. Neither Nyssa nor Lady Dereham had come. Only the women on the lord’s council had been invited to participate.

There was a fleeting period every year in the far north that belonged to no season. Some called it the “in between,” others “the deep breath.” It was the portend of what was to come. If the ground thawed, there was hope for a few weeks more of relief. If not, they hung their heads and prayed for a better next year.

With Wulfsgate being farther south than the Cross, their springtide was often more than a whisper, and they actually celebrated the passage of autumnwhile. But both micro-seasons were treasured and never taken for granted. The first thaw meant a greater variety of beasts emerged, harkening an urgent hunt to restock the meat stores for all the village. The Derehams had a long-standing tradition of involvement in the many traditions that kept life moving in the capital.

“You’re unusually quiet this morning,” Pieter remarked. She hardly heard him over the prattle of conversations ahead and behind. She’d been perfectly happy riding in silence.

“Am I?” Aesylt’s breaths slowed by will alone. Her heart had been a cataclysmic mess ever since she’d handed the last notes to the scout, though she didn’t know why.

“Your first hunt?”

That prompted a snorting laugh from her. “No.”

“Your first potential kill then?”

A hard fist gripped her heart, but it was gone just as fast. “Not my first kill either. We do learn to hunt in the Cross. We just have to travel far beyond our own woods, and it comes with its own host of challenges.”

“Do the Vjestik have an annual tradition like this one?”

She almost couldn’t believe he’d asked the question, and when she turned toward him in disbelief, she saw a flash of regret in his eyes. “You mean the one where we send our boys into the forest, praying they’ll return, so we can finally hunt ourownforests again? And since they almost never do, we then pay twice as much as the meat is worth to Wulfsgate so we don’t starve?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head with a tortured look upward. “I was trying to make conversation, and I wasn’t thinking. We can talk about something else.”

“I’m fine not speaking at all,” she muttered, training her eyes on Rahn several paces ahead.

“I really am sorry, Aesylt. You pick the topic. Anything you want. I won’t refuse.”

She started to roll her eyes when an opportunity formed in her mind. Rahn thought she was naïve in her trust of Pieter, but he was their only path to the Reliquary for the time being—and for who knew how long, as the news from Witchwood Cross had been the same for weeks... more riots but no move from the Barynovs that would turn tensions into outright war—and his guard had slowly lowered around her in return. Her show of trust in him was as much a matter of needing his help as wanting him to believeshebelieved his aid was purely altruistic. Men had been underestimating her for years.

“If you want a conversation so badly, tell me where you’ve been for the past eight years,” she said with a haughty smirk, indicating she knew exactly how his answer would go.

Pieter straightened in his saddle, and she thought that would be the end of it. “You really want to know why my family won’t look me in the eyes and often pretend I’m not even in the room?”

“I’ve only asked a dozen times.”

His face scrunched in thought, his gloved hands readjusting on his reins. “How much, if anything, have you read about the villages scattered among the foothills of the Seven Sisters of the West?”

She’d actually read little about the seven-peaked range in the Westerlands, but it was purely because she’d not gotten her hands on any books or pamphlets. Back when Imryll was the sole architect of the concept ofThe Book of All Things, her original vision had included travel across the kingdom, but once the Reliquary took over, and co-opted the project as their own, the institution had limited their scope to the Northerlands. “Not much.”

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