The Shadow Tide

CHAPTER 18 - Sharing

Arture's favourite dish was roasted pork with citrus sauce, and that's what Amina served for dinner that night. Brethen brought a bottle of wine, as promised, and Arian brought two more, in addition to several bottles that Amina already had at home.

"To Arture's health!" Arian announced, raising his wine glass in the center of the table – it was already the third one he had that night – and everyone toasted.

The atmosphere between Brethen and Arian was still tense. They hadn't talked again since the argument in the music room, but they pretended everything was fine. For Brethen, it was much easier to pretend with other friends around, lifting the spirits and making her forget about the problems.

Amina's apartment was in the east wing of the palace, where several nobility members lived. She had moved there shortly after marrying Silas three months earlier. Whenever Brethen visited her friend, she paid attention to small details in the house that weren't there before. A tapestry of colourful flowers on one wall. A painting of a countryside scene on another. A small wooden statuette in the shape of a horse on one of the shelves. And it was all Amina's work, done by the skillful hands of the girl that many only saw as a pretty face.

When she arrived at the palace five years ago, Brethen doubted she would make friends there. She walked through those corridors, attended dinners and parties, and always felt like she didn't belong, like she was there only because she needed to accompany Arian. Until she met Amina.

The young noble girl didn't live in the palace at the time and studied at a prestigious school in the South province, dominated by House Caelix. She often visited her mother, Lady Alana Caelix, a council member who spent long periods at the palace.

The first time Amina and Brethen talked was at one of Arian's birthday parties. Not the official ball, of course, but the private party he organized with his closest friends. It was also where she met Arture and Serafine. That night, Amina was wearing a light blue dress, and she tripped on the hem of her skirt after a few drinks. She ended up colliding with Brethen's back and began apologizing intensely for staining her with wine.

At some point, the two started talking and spent the rest of the night sitting side by side, discussing their favourite books, how they hated carriage rides, and their love for spicy food. Amina never treated Brethen differently for not being of the aristocracy or asked about her years at the Bastat Academy. Instead, she shared many secrets about Arian's childhood and adolescence and gave tips on how to deal with specific members of the nobility. At that time, Brethen already got along well with Arian, but they weren't as close. Amina became her first true friend in the palace.

Now, years later, the two sat side by side again, a bit sprawled on the sofa, holding wine glasses and leaning against each other's shoulders as if they would fall if one of them left.

"Do you remember that day in Salvan, when we went to the lake?" Amina whispered, swirling the wine in her glass.

"The day you jumped from the waterfall, and I almost had a heart attack?" Brethen laughed. "Of course, I remember."

"Do you remember there were some little fruits on a tree nearby that I thought were blackberries?"

"I remember, and I told everyone not to eat them."

"I found out the other day that they are used to make a wonderful purple pigment. But they are really extremely poisonous, and that's why the pigment is so expensive, because the purification process that takes months."

Brethen twirled a strand of hair near her ear with her finger, took a sip of the almost empty wine glass, and asked, "You bought it, didn't you?"

"Of course!" Amina nudged Brethen with her shoulder. "I used it on that painting in dining room, the one with the peacocks, you know?"