Crown of Iron

Chapter Ten

The world is quiet and still. She can hear the beating of her heart in her chest, can taste unfamiliar air on her tongue, all sharp pine and cold air, can feel the grass and dirt beneath her as she falls, hands first, onto unfamiliar earth. The ancient stone walls surrounding Mórsail are nowhere to be seen. The bundle of fabric her father had forced into her hands skitters out of her grip, landing by Elias' feet.

Rocks, sharp and splintered and buried beneath a thin layer of dust that she'd brushed away in her fall, cut into the skin of her palms. Blood pools from a smattering of tiny cuts as she holds her hands before her, gathering until a lone droplet falls into the dirt beneath her. It seeps into the earth as she watches, and in the distance, words are spoken that she does not understand.

This is the furthest she has ever been. This is a promise broken, but perhaps also a promise kept. A lion, far from home, little no longer. A sparrow felled in the forest, left to decay beneath a canopy of ancient trees.

She can't go back, not even if she wanted to. She had found Elias by accident, panic and fear clawing out something dark and feral from within her, something ancient and powerful and knowing, but it is gone, now. Now, she has quiet, and a throbbing ache in her scraped palms, and ears that cannot hear the words that keep being spoken, hearing only Tiarnán's dying screams as he—

A hand settles on her shoulder, and the world comes back into sharp, painful focus.

"We need to go," Elias says, not a hair out of place as she looks up at him from where she'd fallen. There's a slight twinge of remorse in his cold, metallic gaze, as if the grief that grips her so thoroughly that she feels as if she can't breathe isn't entirely unfamiliar.

But she cannot bring herself to move, and suddenly the quiet feels empty. A weight presses down upon her, harsh and cold and uncaring if she threatens to collapse beneath it.

Another droplet of blood drips down her palm, down her wrist, and smatters against the dirt. In the distance, a bird cries a mournful song, and she wonders, briefly, perhaps even foolishly, if the world too is crying out.

A cold hand helps her to her feet, pressing her father's parting gift into her bloodied grasp, and she clings onto the bolt of fabric as if it is all that is left of Mórsail.

They walk, long enough for her feet to hurt in her tattered shoes, long enough for the sun to set beneath the horizon of an unfamiliar forest, long enough for cold uncaring night to settle in. Elias doesn't speak, not once. He leads her further down winding dirt paths, along narrow streams laden with frogs that croak as they disappear into the murky water.

"We'll camp here."

He's not a man of particularly many words, she notes as he clicks his fingers together, a fire sparking to life at his feet. The flames glow a pale blue, unlike any fire she's ever seen before. A hand rummages around in his inner coat pocket, pulling out a tattered bedroll from its impossible depths.

It unfurls lazily, like a cat stretching out before the hearth, pillow all matted and blanket holding together by the seams. It isn't a goose feather mattress with silk sheets, but still, Elias sweeps his hand toward it with a grand gesture as if presenting her with a prized racehorse.

"For you," he says, pulling out a mess of fabric and rods from his pocket once again, untangling it to reveal a simple cloth tent, as ragged as his bedroll.

Any other day, she might have asked him a thousand questions. Even now, there are a thousand questions dancing on the tip of her tongue. How they managed to travel so far, his peculiar blue fire, the way his pocket holds an entire world's worth of items within... But today, she has no strength for curiosity. Not for much of it, anyway.

"Where will you sleep?"

He blinks, as if her question is so absurd that he can't possibly comprehend it. "I'll be fine," is all he says, and the pursing of his lips indicates that he'll speak no further on the matter.

So, she nods, displeased but unable to turn her emotions away from the raging waves that batter at the dam keeping her tears back to consider his silence a moment longer. Silent, she falls onto the tattered bedroll, little more than a thin barrier between her and the cold, harsh ground. Through the thin fabric of the tent, she can almost make out the stars above as she leans back, rocks digging in through the bedroll. They shine with their ancient light, so impossibly far away that she can't even begin to fathom what they have seen in their eternal life. To them, she is nothing but dust that will be blown away the next day by a passing breeze. To them, they are all nothing but a flight of fancy that life has decided to entertain. Still, they exude a painfully familiar warmth. Even now, they are still the same stars she looked up at as a child, the same stars Tiarnán had been born under and had died too early to see one last time.

"It will hurt less, over time."

Anya lifts herself onto her elbows, peering at the mage silhouetted by the blue-white fire. "I'm sorry?"

"Your brother," he says in way of explanation. "Over time, his death will hurt less."

"I lost my mother when I was fifteen," she returns. "It will hurt less, but only because you learn to live with it. Then eventually... you forget. You forget the way their smile looked, the way they laughed, the way they smelled, or how their hand fit in yours."

"You are lucky then," he says in a voice just above a whisper. "Not all of us have the luxury of forgetting."

She opens her mouth to speak, but with a wave of his hand, the fire fades to glowing embers, and by the time her eyes adjust to the light, he's already gone.