Page 62 of Winter Gods & Serpents

I guffawed. “Ah yes, gods and their tales. This better be good, what did they spin now?”

He studied my amusement for a moment all seriousness. “A dire-wolf of war and frost, a dragon of wind and clouds, a thunderbird of lightning risen by the cold white ash. Children of two lands, the Eldingchildren. One would spin the sky to the void, the other freeze the lands and the last would crack the realm in half with lightning. Three Aura born under the sky of Nubil and the lands of Krig, the wrath ybrises.”

My gaze diverted to Cai, who turned staring at me the same. I cleared my throat, and gave Mal a smile. “Ah, but all good prophecies should rhyme, didn’t that make you a bit sceptical? Are you are saying a grandmothers spin tale is why my family is dead?”

“It is inked in black shadows on the moonstone of Lyra, the sacred gates of Cynth, along with five others. Gods can see our paths of future and all the possibilities along, Henah used the gates to warn us.”

Was that supposed to make sense to me, more yarns of the divine?

“Well, is it still there?”

He swallowed and hesitated as if preparing for my reaction. “Yes.”

A dark laugh erupted from me. “An unfulfilled prophecy, either a sham or you had the wrong three. They did die for nothing. For one, I am the last remaining. Unless you expect me to be all three of them whilst not even being an Aura.”

“They have never been wrong before, the last predicted the Ater battles.”

They needed no predicting from what I have heard. Alaric would tell me how Eldmoor went mad appointing someone like the 97th Grand Maiden, apparently everyone sane knew the state of her lunacy. So he might as well have proven an empty point to me.

“There is a first for everything, shame this one was on my expense.”

He didn’t say anything else, only looked at me through heavy eyes. I prevented the twitch of a snarl raising in my face at the thought of pity and apology.

“Your brother,” I said, interrupting the silence again. “He always such a sweetheart?”

“He has his days.”

“And you, why don’t you look at me like he does?” They were rather kind russet eyes, not usually used to strangers unaffected by my presence, especially not Adriatian strangers.

He gave me a smile. “You are too pretty.”

I nodded. “You are right, I am.”

“Stunning.”

“Indeed.”

“The most beautiful woman I might have ever seen.”

I smiled back, throwing a bunch of hair behind my shoulder. “Don’t look any further, Malik, you have found her.”

“Please, call me Mal.”

A sigh of relief almost left me, maybe a layer of shivering caution left with it to. “Well then, Mal, join Cai and quietly adore my face while I deal with some business.”

* * *

Samuel eyed Mal suspiciously and in wonder for a long while before I pulled him away to explain to him that the people we had caught up north were surprisingly not Isjordian. Traveling that far up north was impossible to go undetected by at least one Isjordian patrol, yet Solaryans had.

“They had trident shapes carved in their forearms, all of them, is it some sort of cult?”

He halted examining me in disbelief. “Tridents?” he asked, and I nodded. “Solaryan mercenaries, this far above our borders? Impossible. Why would they be raiding our villages and temples at that? Why mercenaries, those are actions of petty thieves.”

I’d questioned the same doubts. “Do you think this has anything to do with shipments? Would it be connected to the agreement? Maybe King Magnus sent them to rile my father into cutting the Ianuris agreement. Elias knew they were Solaryan, and so did father.”

Solaryans had openly shown their dissatisfaction towards Isjord these past weeks, they were becoming hostile and had withdrawn all their relationships with Isjord. Last week they had secretly pulled all their emissaries and councillors back to their lands. No more shipments had left or come from main land Solarya.

“I served their previous King for years before your grandfather recruited me. They are not flashy in their action; this means they are beyond displeased. It is their patterns I don’t understand however.”