Wicked is the Curse.

36 | The memories of blood

Chapter 36 | The memories of blood

The flowers in the pots before Aire darkened, wilted, and died. Those healthy roots spun from her Wield sloughed to rot. The storyteller did not look at them, even as the smell of decay stunk in the air. Both remained kneeling, in the moment, both unsure where to go.

"How is it that you possess such a memory?" Ferdia breathed. "So clear and vivid that it cannot be a falsehood?"

Though the flowers in the pot had died, those that had bloomed under her shawl had not. Beneath it, sprinkled amongst her moonlight hair, would be soft and delicate petals. One tickled her ear now.

Aire cleared her throat, making a show of plucking that flower. Pulling it from her head felt like pulling a clump of hair, but it was only a primrose with a long green stem. Around it, strands of silver were woven tight. "You are asking me a question that you already know the answer to."

"You could have been a child raised in the palace. A young Aether soldier who befriended one of the daughters." He levelled. "I do not doubt that the palace is a busy place."

"Was." Aire curled her fingers around the primrose. "Did they not raze the palace to the ground after they butchered everyone inside?"

"No. Parts of the city burned to the ground, but the palace remains. A shell of its former glory. They say the palace is haunted now, but the Kaelarian people are not as beholden to the passed souls as the Cearnains and Knechru people are."

She hadn't truly considered it before. The spirits that would wander the halls of the salt-stone palace. Her brothers and sisters, her parents trapped in the shell and unable to pass beyond the gate of the North-Star. "Whatever it once was, it is no longer."

"You consider Cearna gone?" there was a thread of anger in Ferdia's quiet voice.

"I have not touched Cearna soil in over a decade. I have no right to consider anything about Cearna, but even in Irial, we heard how yet another rebellion in Cearna had been brutally crushed. Whole villagers pushed over cliffs into the sea. Locked inside their halls and burned alive." The primrose in her hand sludged through her fingers as rot. The memories hurt, but Ferdia had been distracted from his original point. Her gaze flicked to his. "The Cearna I knew is gone."

"Cearna may be under Kaelarian leadership, but I believe she is waiting for her chance." That thread of anger was determination now. Ferdia looked younger, wilder now as the cloak of just 'storyteller' fell away. "They strike hard at us again and again whenever Cearna rears her head and yet, we do not stay down for long. Cearna's problem is that she is divided. Scattered. The leadership was culled, the Aryshalins apparently eradicated. If this Queen was to return, they would rally to her." Ferdia eyed the rot seeping from between her fingers.

"I suggest you bring that idea to Queen Ríona." Aire rose fluidly, shaking the rot from her hands. His rise was slower, his knees clicking as he stood to his full height.

"You are not done here, Aire."

Aire raised her chin. "I am not waiting to be dismissed like some child."

"You are an Aryshalin. I am sure of it."

Tension ticked inside the training room. Ferdia was tense, as if preparing to move if she ran. He was tall and she bet he would be quick, but she had spent years with people chasing her heels and learning to fight in dark corners. If she moved now – a blade to his throat to cut his voice and kill him quick before he could say anything or stop her.