1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Grehafen

winter: Year 253 of the Bynding

The smoke and heat that greet Aidan on his return to himself are... disappointing, albeit expected.

He wrangles with the water in the air and nearby cisterns, forcing it to move towards the crackling flames that surround his wife. He's grimly used to Evonalé's slips. Even the servants are trained to flee and stay out of the way.

Their guests, unfortunately, are not used to dealing with random fires. Kitra's fine, since her affinity for air magic means she can't suffocate. Ferrel, however, is coughing something awful.

Aidan tackles the immediate problem first—fire is fire, and it doesn't matter what started it once it has fuel—and makes certain that's doused. The basins and cisterns added around the castle make it so much easier to use his magic, even with the discreet sabotage by people miffed by their queen's illegitimacy, or elfiness, or attitudes, or lack of heir, or....

In any event, water isn't a common affinity, here, so the petulant saboteurs don't realize it doesn't matter if they piss in the water. It's still water, and all they're doing is making their environment smell unpleasant. Even replacing the water with turpentine doesn't affect him, since he pulls water.

He hadn't realized how much he relied on the Nidar River to fuel his magic until he moved away from it, to a castle without the massive river he grew up beside.

He's able to pull water without such assists, but he's not used to it, which makes it dangerous. Magic can so easily cost a user's sanity.

Aidan's magic is decent in strength, but far better honed and controlled than Evonalé's, though hers is both stronger and more dangerous. Some of that's natural, and some is a consequence of how her education was...customized.

Aidan understands why Ferrel's twin sister Silva left significant gaps and misunderstandings in Evonalé's knowledge of magic. Her anxiety has mellowed over the years, and they had needed to ensure she stayed willing to use her magic, for the same reasons she's queen of Grehafen now.

Aidan isn't certain that it was wise, though, and fears the repercussions still haven't appeared. How much of her difficulty with controlling her magic comes from her incomplete education on how magic is supposed to act? How much of her continued sanity is because she's ignorant of how much her magic deviates from normal?

Is she ignorant of that? Evonalé isn't the sort to want to talk about such things.

She's aware that he killed her father and half-brother she'd grown up with, but she also doesn't care. Their deaths were a relief, as she does her best to think on them as little as possible while she untangles and fixes the mess they wrought.

It still bothers him, when he remembers how he had to kill his wife's family to end up with her. His grandfather killed his wife's family to get the throne of Salles, and that wife—his grandmother—ultimately assassinated him for it.

His wife's family more earned their deaths, and his grandmother was executed with cause, but to this day he doesn't know if his grandfather was similarly justified in killing Grandmother's family. Propaganda runs both ways, and he regrets that he never asked his grandmother's brother. That uncle was his tutor, so he'd had plenty of opportunity before the Shadow got him.