The Kept

The Lesson

Sitting beside fire, Nerys felt colder than she had throughout their rain-drenched trek as Arthes appraised her with the detached consideration of a person buying a step stool.

    "After you let Kalea die for you, I planned to kill you myself if I ever saw you again," Arthes said casually. "But, your survival has left me with a surprising opportunity to make a great deal of money. All I have to do is deliver you to Cerebes in one piece, more or less, and I will be rich enough to retire to a vineyard in Hoalaetia."

    "You think I wanted to let it happen? I tried—"

     "Not hard enough! I have one last lesson for you, Nerys." Arthes smiled maliciously and called out to someone in the hall, "Bring in the boy!"

    Nerys silently panicked, trying to figure out a way to prevent whatever punishment Arthes had in mind for Dadien.

Instead of the prince, a wan and haggard Aimery was dragged into the room. Fresh black bruises and a nasty untreated cut over his eye were layered atop the week-old mottled yellow and green from Nerys's attack. He trembled slightly like an old man stricken with a condition of the nerves.

    "What did you do to him?"

At the sound of Nerys's voice, deep lines formed beside Aimery's mouth as it drew downward, but he refused to look up at her. Arthes delivered a swift kick to his unguarded chest, hurtling him to the floor.

"He broke his oath to the Esidiem for you." She kicked him again. "He was blindly loyal to you. Loved you. See done to him?"

    "Stop!"

Nerys rose and her former teacher shoved her back into her seat. Aimery feebly brought himself to a half-kneel.

"Nerys, don't." His voice was raspy and thin.

Arthes drove her knee into the side of his head.

    "Stop it!" Nerys lunged to prevent another attack, and Arthes knocked her down once more.

    "Careful, Princess, I lose a bit of gold for every bump and scratch you get," she said sneering. "What is your lesson?"

    Nerys placed herself between Arthes and Aimery and was rewarded with a vicious combination of fist and elbow driven blows that were so fast she could do nothing but block until she was forced into a crouching position. With Nerys momentarily neutralized, Arthes attacked Aimery once more— this time rendering him motionless.

    "Answer me! What is your lesson?"

    Nerys remained on her knees, staring at the floor. Her throat felt constricted to the point that her words came out mangled and unintelligible.

    "What's that?" Arthes leaned in. "I can't hear you through your pathetic tears."

    "Never underestimate your enemy," Nerys said quietly.

She leapt up and rammed her palms up against the bottom of Arthes's jaw, sweeping her feet under the woman's legs as she stumbled backward. The keeper hit the floor hard and quickly clambered to her feet without pausing to recover from Nerys's attack.

Her astounded expression changed to one of wrath. No longer was she simply teaching her errant student a lesson. She was a battle-hardened Kept warrior, and Nerys the ill-matched opponent who had just made the mistake of posing a challenge.
The mercenaries who stood outside the door did not burst into the room at the sounds of furniture breaking within. The older woman had skill, size, and anger on her side, but Nerys was not the same apprentice Arthes had trained. Her time with Trygve made her a much more formidable adversary than her former keeper anticipated.

In desperation, Arthes threw a large, heavy chair at Nerys. She dodged it but lost her footing in the process and fell, landing beside Aimery. His eyes were now open and his lips moved with an urgent, inaudible message. Almost as soon as she hit the floor, Arthes was on Nerys. She wound her fingers into Nerys's thick curls and pulled until her scalp felt like it would be ripped away in a bloody clump.

    "This is your lesson, Princess," Arthes hissed. "No matter your title, no matter what power you come to hold, you will never escape this truth: you are worthless. Those who grant you loyalty suffer for it, while you stand by and do nothing."
Nerys did not see the dagger in Arthes's free hand until it buried itself into Aimery's heart.

"And, this is the price of loving the undeserving."

    "No!" Nerys cried out.

    Arthes threw Nerys to the ground and she lay staring into white-lashed eyes that remained focused on her— slowly roaming from her forehead to her chin as though memorizing the contours of her face— until they were beyond sight. His hand fell open, the strip of crimson silk spilling out onto the floor between them. Nerys placed her hand on his, clasping the cloth to her palm.

    "Enzo! The princess has swooned," Arthes's voice sounded miles away.

    You will never escape this truth. The words haunted her like Aimery's unblinking eyes. You are worthless.

    "Nerys!" The still, dark green that had been before her was suddenly replaced by flashing blue ice. "What did she do to you?" Dadien asked softly.

    Somehow she had missed being moved to the small room, more a closet, where Dadien was being held. Nerys stared at him in a speechless daze for a long while before answering.

    "She... killed him."

    "Who?" Dadien asked. When she didn't respond, he lowered his voice and spoke more slowly, forcing her to focus on him. "Nerys, who did she kill?"

    "Aimery."

    "I can't say I'm sorry to hear that," Dadien said, sighing.

    "He loved me and it killed him. I killed him." Despite the intense pain she felt saying it outloud, she could form no tears. "I killed them all."

    "That's not true." Dadien spoke in a tone that Nerys had only heard him use with his daughter after Mari's death. He reached for her hands and she recoiled. "Hey! No. Listen to me." He grabbed her and received a backhand to the face for his efforts.

    "Leave me alone!" Nerys said, curling in on herself.

    "Let me help you!"

    "I don't need your help," Nerys replied. "I'm fine."

     "No, you're not," he said sternly, but he retreated to the other side of the closet anyway, worry etched across his face.

    Nerys was no longer looking at him. Faceless gray spectres surrounded her and filled her vision. She recognized their shapes: two men, two women-one whose ease and grace was as familiar to Nerys as her own reflection. And a little boy. All of her ghosts— Aimery, Trygve, Mari, Kalea, even sweet little Errol, though he did not know it— had died for her.
She hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in the small well of privacy it provided, the remnant of Aimery's cloak still gripped tightly in her fist.

    "I'm not worth dying for," she whispered to the memories.

    But we are worth living for, Kalea's voice responded.

    That is your lesson.