A Court of Distrust and Darkness

Windhaven

Nyx's point of view:

      I avoided a punch far too close to my side for comfort. I took the chance to try and return the favor to Lorcán, but he had already shifted out of range. He was watching me with an amused grin as he said, "A bit distracted today, aren't we, my lord?" I gritted my teeth and said, "Enough with that, Lorcán. You know I hate that title." He raised an eyebrow and sent a sloppy jab my way, which I avoided. He said after we started circling again, "Even more than princeling?"

     I nearly chuckled and said with a half-smile, "They're both equally despicable." He laughed loudly, which caused a few heads to turn from around us. Today we were training with the Illyrians up at Winghaven. A good group of us came up here to train every week; it gave us a chance to show our strength. However, today wasn't anything normal. My father and uncles visited all the camps to make sure everything was running orderly, and we were training with the soldiers. While they looked over the rulings of camps, we were looking over the soldiers and their families. We were watching their training exercises and helping instruct the soldiers in each camp, despite their unwillingness.

    Lorcán and Rainer joined me at the camps for different reasons. Lorcán is like his father, loud and commanding enough to make the men listen. Rainer, however, had his mother's sharp eye for detail which he used to watch and then critique. After fighting together in the blood rite, I had decided they both would run the Illyrians as Generals one day. Lorcán and Rainer are more like brothers than cousins, and even amongst my family, it was few I trusted more than them.

    They weren't the only ones to join our outing to evaluate the camps. Davina decided to join us by assessing the Illyrian women's unit. Prejudice was still common even though most camps now had many women soldiers, so they trained separately to keep the peace. It was only because of Davina's unruly spirit and the help of Rainer's focus that I knew they would work well together. They have always worked well together despite being siblings, and I assumed they would get the analysis done with efficiency.

    I asked for Karyan to come with us, but she insisted that with her father going, she wasn't necessary, and she would instead retrieve information from her spies. While Karyan took more interest in her heritage than my uncle Azriel, even she tended to stay away from the camps. She preferred to slink off and spy and come around only when necessary. Though Karyan promised she would be at my house by the time we returned to exchange information. However, I did miss her optimism as the day stretched on. While I knew that if Karyan had come, she and Davina would cause chaos, their cheerful personalities would have kept my spirits high.

     Our group was smaller without Karyan, but it's typically a small group of the family. No other siblings or cousins tended to join us at the camps. Asteria has always trained with the Valkyries because of her lack of wings, and Neith doesn't like training. I always insisted that if it weren't for Neith living at home still, I would swear she'd disowned us because of blatant disinterest. Neith's never been fond of the high lord lifestyle she grew up in and had no interest in politics of any sort. So Neith stayed out of the camps and anything really political. Her uninterested nature didn't bother me. I was just glad she found something she was interested in to busy herself.

    I felt the stinging blow before I focused enough to move. Lorcán had landed a good blow to my cheek, and I shook my head, trying to clear the ringing as I avoided the other two punches. I blinked a few times till the ringing was silenced. Lorcán was smiling snuggly till I threw a quick punch. He dodged easily but got whacked in the head by my wing swinging out wide. Lorcán skidded back about, ready to speed up the fight in a flurry of moves, but I paused us with a wave of my hand.

He relaxed, and immediately he went from aggressive opponent to friend as he said, "Good shot. Though next time, I wouldn't use your wings so much. The last thing you need is a sword going through it. Trust me, my father recounts of it, and it sounds appallingly painful." I laughed as he crossed to my side and said, "I assume it would seeing how many nerves are in our wings." Lorcán raised his eyebrows suggestively, and I shoved his larger form away. He shrugged despite my playful annoyance as he drifted back to my side. He combed his curly dark hair from his eyes and tied it back sloppily as he said, "You were thinking it to don't say you weren't. Though I can only assume that your train of thought included a particular silver-haired assassin along with your wings."