Page 15 of Fear the Flames
“Yes,” a smile teases my own lips as I recall the moment, the brief look of surprise before he covered it up.
“That’s my girl,” Finnian says while wrapping his arms around me and bringing me into his chest. His heart is pounding against his ribs. “I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have—”
“It’s not up for discussion,” he cuts me off, but I don’t miss the nerves in his tone. “You know you always have me, witty remarks, arrows in necks, the whole package.” I don’t respond because emotion clogs my throat; I just hug him tighter. We stay like this, locked together in silence until I calm myself down and ease out of his arms.
“Let’s hope Ailliard takes it well,” I mutter while shoving my feet into my brown leather boots. My black boots are still soaked from the past two days.
“He’ll get over it,” he sighs while tying a dark blue cloak around his neck.
Finnian shuts the door behind us, and we begin our walk to the guard house. The town is alive, as it always is when the sun comes up. The shutters that were closed last night are now wide open. Familiar faces are hanging laundry or picking the last herbs of the season from their window beds. The amount of progress we made in the past fourteen years still shocks me sometimes. Aestilian wasn’t even Aestilian when I first came here. It was just a valley my guards deemed substantial enough to build a long-lasting structure. But now, there’s so much more to Aestilian than just one structure. It’s a small kingdom, but a kingdom in its own right. There are houses and shops made of dark wood with peaked roofs. Built with iron and resilience by the hands of myself and my people. There is now vibrancy where there once wasn’t any life. I smile and wave at anyone I pass on the street, greeting them by their first names.
“Do you have a plan?” Finnian asks beside me.
“I believe the tactic of improvising is one of my greatest weapons.” I lightly shove him after he scoffs, stumbling to the side and exasperatedly throwing his hands in the air before falling into step with me again. The truth is that I have a very vague, extremely cloudy, sort of semblance of a plan. Which is to tell Ailliard and brace for the second freakout of the day.
I should have had another cup of coffee.
Walking the path to the guard house doesn’t bring me the same kind of peace as it used to. The past few months, years even, have been plagued with an overwhelming sense of anxiety brought on by the rising tension on the continent as well as our rising population and dwindling food supply. I haven’t been able to be as mentally present as I used to be. I always do my job, healing or bleeding alongside everyone else, but how can it be enough when I have factors I can’t control weighing on me every day?
The guard house is the largest building in Aestilian, followed by the orphanage. It’s constantly being expanded upon; you can tell by the mismatched wood that makes up the structure. Some pieces are more sun-bleached and weather-worn than others. Mismatched shutters border imperfect window cutouts, but somehow it makes it feel more like home. Aestilian is a home, but it just hasn’t felt like my home in the past few years. It feels wrong to want more, but ambition shouldn’t be frowned upon; it should be encouraged.
I’m a few steps into the building when I hear a loud thump, followed by a curse. I spin on my heels to face my best friend, who’s now rubbing a hand on his reddened forehead. “How do you manage to hit your head every time we come here?”
“I don’t hit it every time,” Finnian argues. I scoff and roll my eyes because he does hit his head every time, on the exact same beam. “Not all of us can be under six-foot.”
I would stay and bicker with him further, but Ailliard’s office is close, and I don’t want to put this off any longer. After turning a few more corners, I raise my fist to the door of his office.
“I could hear the two of you from the second you walked into the building,” a raspy voice says through the wood before my fist can make contact.
“How does he always do that?” Finnian bends down to whisper in my ear.
“Maybe he’s a wizard,” I whisper back. “Or maybe he heard your head smacking into a doorway,” I tease while pushing the door open and slipping into the office before Finnian can say anything else.
Ailliard turns away from the window and gestures for us to take a seat in the two chairs he keeps in front of his desk. He may be a blood relative, but the resemblance between us is slim to none. His sky blue eyes are a stark contrast to my honey brown. He shaved his head a few years ago when he told me he was tired of watching his hair fall out, but a thick gray beard hugs his jawline. The office is cluttered, but that’s mostly because I handed off the ledgers after I was done going through them. His desk takes up most of the room, but cabinets filled with guard reports, financial records, population records, crop records, etc., line the walls.
“How was the raid?” Finnian asks, sinking into the seat beside me, probably knowing I need a minute to gather myself.
“We’ve had better,” Ailliard sighs, taking a seat behind his desk. “How was the midnight ride?” Either of us could answer the question, but I know it’s directed at me. Ailliard stopped getting mad at me for leaving Aestilian a few years ago. Not because he enjoys the idea of me leaving, but because he knows he can’t stop me.
“It was,” I take a moment to weigh my next word, “informative.”
“Informative?” Ailliard’s gray brows shoot up, deepening the wrinkles on his forehead. “Please, enlighten me.”
Instead of twiddling with the ends of my hair, my clammy fingers grip the teardrop-shaped moonstone pendant I wear daily, moving it back and forth on the chain a few times before dropping them into my lap again. “Did you get the guard report I left on your desk?” I ask.
“The one about Vareveth soldiers crossing the Fintan?” Ailliard inquires.
“That would be the one,” Finnian answers for me.
“Finnian and I rode to the tavern they were at. I wanted to spy on them.” My nerves may be causing an earthquake inside my bones, but my even tone reveals nothing.
“Spy on them?” Ailliard echoes. “Elowen, you are aware of the tension between Vareveth and Imirath, yes?” My anxiety slowly morphs into irritation when the slight hint of patronization enters his tone. I can ignore a lot of things but being spoken down to is not one of them.
“No, actually. It seems I’m the only person on the continent blissfully unaware that my father is a war-mongering bitch.” He opens his mouth to speak, but I hold my hand up to silence him; the words die on his tongue, and his nostrils flare. “It’sbecauseof the tension that I wanted to find out why they’re here,” I add.
“Did you?” his cheeks redden in anger.
