Page 38 of Steeling Light
“I’m decent,” she says as she bends down to pick up her pack. I turn around, and when she’s standing, she stops moving for a second, her eyes looking past me to the wall. As if she’s decided something, she nods and says, “That’s what it is. I can feelyouinside me, Rhion. Your power still lingers. Not a lot, but it’s there. It’s excited.” Her eyes focus on me. “I wonder if this is how it would feel to be betrothed. I’ve heard Cole and Maeve talk about it a little. Their souls and powers are tied together. They can feel each other through that bond.”
I try to imagine what it would be like to have her power inside me, for hersoulto bebound to mine. It sends a thrill through me. To be connected to Ainslee like that… it would be a dream come true. No, it’d be more than a dream.
“Well, it should probably fade with time,” I say. “I hope it’s not too uncomfortable.”
The corner of her lip turns up. “No, uncomfortable is definitely the wrong word. Just strange.” Then she stops and snarls as if she’s just realized something. “Someone tried to kill me, Rhion. I woke up to that fire in my room.”
Every muscle in my body tenses at the thought, and I leave behind the happy path my mind had been on. I move closer to her. Every protective instinct inside me glides to the surface, and I know I’m not letting her out of my sight.
“Tell me what happened, Ainslee,” I say, my voice low and calm, but she hears the deadly seriousness in it.
Without hesitation, she describes how she woke up, how the bit of spiderweb above her was burning and had caught the ceiling on fire. She explains how I found her nearly roasted alive after saving a terrible inn and its inhabitants. And this time, it’s me who snarls.
“You shouldn’t have risked yourself like that. You knew that trough was too heavy.”
She growls back. “It obviously wasn’t. I saved the inn, didn’t I?”
“And you could have died.” It’s in a flat tone, and she doesn’t respond, staring daggers at me. The change in her attitude is sharper than I’ve ever seen. “You didn’t see your body. I did. Every crispy piece of skin. The muscles where your skin had melted. The bit of your cheek with a hole in it so large that I could run a spoon through. I never want you to have to experience that kind of pain again. You have to be more careful.”
She stares at me, not saying a word. Finally, after I refuse to look away, she says, “You don’t have to watch out for me, Rhion. I’ve done fine for nine…”
“I’m not watching out for you. I’m being completely selfish, Ainslee. I need you to stay alive. I need you to be happy.” I look past her, at the window into the world beyond. The clouds drift by as if nothing had happened today. “I do not want to live in a world without you in it. I don’t know if I could because you are my heart, and a man cannot live without his heart.”
It’s like she can’t believe me. I take a step toward her, and she doesn’t back away. “You are the only good thing I have ever had.” I raise my hand to show her the silver band around my wrist. “I would do anything to keep you safe because as long as you still breathe I can still hope for more happiness in my life. If you were gone…” I shake my head. “Then nothing would matter anymore.”
She sighs. “I can’t promise you I’ll be safe, Rhion. I just can’t. The world is crumbling, and I’m one of the few people still trying to prop up the walls. I can’t tell you I won’t ever put myself in danger.”
I nod to her. “I know that. But today was an unnecessary risk. Carry buckets. Use your powers to scoop up the water from that stupidly heavy trough and carry it to the fire.”
“I thought about that, Rhion. It wouldn’t have been enough. The fire would have spread. How much of the city would have burned because of it? Even if you weren’t here to heal me, I was hurt to keep an unknowable number of people safe. What’s more important? My pain orallof theirs?”
“Yours,” I say without a bit of hesitation. “You matter more than them, Ainslee Emlyn.” I let out a snarl and step even closer. My hand goes to her cheek so softly, but every muscle in my body is tense, and she can see it. “I’d let Selithar burn to ash to keep you from a moment of pain.”
“That’s not right, Rhion. They’re people…”
My nails dig into her skin, turning sharp but not sharp enough to draw blood. “Only you matter to me, Ainslee. Remember that.”
Then I let her go, and it’s like she can breathe again. Her hand moves over her cheek to the little white marks my nails left on her skin. She brushes them softly as she thinks. “I have to go to the Keep of Webs today,” she says. “Maerlix should be awake now.”
She looks up at me. “He’s supposed to know where Vesta should be.”
I could continue to harp on what I’d told her, but I don’t. I let the moment pass like the breeze, and I grin at her. “I’ve never been to the Keep of Webs. Let’s go for a walk through a spider den, Ainslee.”
She cocks her head for a moment and shrugs. “Maybe you’ll scare them into actually answering me without riddles.”
Interlude 4
RhionRahnwasawarrior. He was a Prince. He was loved by the soldiers and generals under him. He was many, many things, but there was one part very few people ever truly understood.
He was an enchanter. He had learned to infuse objects with power. His father had forced him to become a warrior. He had forced him to train with the sword and with formations. He had forced him to become a leader and the commander of the Steel army.
But Rhion hadchosento hone his skills with enchanting, and that made all the difference. It was something his father was never particularly skilled at, and he could embrace it without comparing himself to anyone. He could be a scholar, exploring his own path. He could be an innovator with no one to judge his experiments. He could be himself.
That freedom drove him. He surpassed every teacher he ever had. He brought the enchanting discipline to new heights, though few of the scholars truly understood how he did the things he had done.
When Gethin gave his son the order to find the relics of the Great Houses, he’d been working on something unheard of: enchanting steel. Only one being had ever successfully done this. Sidon the Strong. The creator of the Steel Gauntlet.
On this day, Rhion didn’t enchant steel, though. As he sat in his workshop, he held a piece of hematite. Silvery gray stone with lines of blood-red running through it. He knew hematite was rarely used in enchanting work because of the iron it was made of. It was not quite steel, so itcouldbe worked, but it was a difficult medium, to say the least.
