Crown of Iron

Chapter Three

The stranger's cloak rustles when he goes to straighten, as soft and as gentle as falling feathers. His lead-grey eyes sparkle with secretive mirth. Somehow, she knows that he is aware that the attention of Lord Rian's estate is solely upon him. She can't blame them for being transfixed—they rarely get any visitors of any interest, true, but to say that they are enraptured by his presence solely because of his novelty would be nothing short of a lie.

She'd always been sensitive to magic, both to others' magic and to her own, but there isn't any way that the aura that hangs in the air goes unnoticed by everyone else. It isn't visible when she looks at it directly, disappearing as though it had never been there, but it remains when she glances at it out of the corner of her eye. Anya had heard tales of mirages, of travellers lost in the Etrian desert seeing water where there was none when it was nothing more than heat refracting the light to create an illusion. She had never seen one for herself—deserts were few and far between in Aldyn and if there were any, they certainly wouldn't be found anywhere near Mórsail. Still, she imagines his aura is something similar to those mirages—the light around him is distorted, almost flickering in the firelight with strange, unnatural colours.

"My Lord," says the stranger, snapping Anya out of her pensive reverie. His voice is soft but the authority it commands is undeniable. The fire crackling in the centre of the room is louder than he is, and yet his voice carries across the room, the gossiping nobles leaning in closer to hang onto every word.

Lord Rian tenses beside her, his fingertips digging into the arms of his chair. "I don't like surprises," is all he says, voice tight as though holding back far unkinder words.

"Then I offer my apologies." The response is exactly what Anya would expect from any other visiting dignitary but there's a danger to it, like he won't stand for Lord Rian's pride. His voice is as sharp as a steel knife, ready to cut Lord Rian to pieces. Lead eyes, silver tongue.

"My name," the stranger continues, "is Elias."

The name seems too small for him, somehow. It's as though he's about to burst at the seams, confined by his own name. As a child, her mother had told her of the Fae selkies—seals with the most flawless of coats who would shed their skin and walk amongst men as one of them. The tale had always unnerved her; Fae of any sort were rarely, if ever, a sign of good fortune but at least the Fae beasts were an easier foe to face than their noble masters.

She dreads to even think about the kings and queens of the Fae courts and the power they had wielded before their empire had dissolved into ruin, and the Fae had integrated into human society to survive, passing on scraps of their magical power down to people like her. But people like her have levelled cities. The power of a single noble Fae would be enough to burn all of Aldyn to the ground.

However, Mórsail is safe from all of that. They're nothing more than a part of Lord Rian's expansive demesne, barely a village of a hundred citizens. The citizens are farmers and hunters—ants, to people like Lord Rian, and smaller than that even to the Fae.

Brigid's words echo in her mind once more. A mage like her is wasted in a place like this.

"What are you doing here, Elias?" Lord Rian spits out the name like it's a curse, and perhaps to him it is. Mages, he'd said once, were nothing more than a corruption of good human blood by the Fae.

"Merely passing through." If Elias notices the Lord's distaste for him, he hides it well. He clasps his hands behind his back, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "I felt that I should pay a tithe to the Lord, out of respect."

Anya sinks back into her seat, taking a sip from her wine to disguise the laugh she chokes back. Knowledge of Rian's dragon-like greed had clearly made rounds.