1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of Air: Book #5, Chronicles of Marsdenfel

Year 238 of the Bynding - the Realm of Grehafen - turn of the year - ii

Gaylen finds us before my brother's wife returns, and the specificity of the salves and wraps he brings with him admit that he Saw this coming. The guilt in his eyes is too familiar, as is the regret—that he didn't warn us, that he had to let it happen... I don't ask, and he doesn't volunteer.

He sees to Onlé first, thankfully, and ever-so-softly points out the injuries she can let her magic heal, the ones Darnell is currently unaware of.

The girl says nothing as she accepts his aid, but what benefit is there in words? She leaves in silence, moving with a careful, calculated casualness so she doesn't attract one of the worse men on her way to...wherever she's going. To take care of my son, I hope. He and Evonalé are both reading. It's a risk, but they needed to learn, and they're less likely to be murdered than any of the other children. Darnell still needs them.

Tears shimmer in my husband's eyes, but he holds them back. He'll weep later, where he won't run the risk of being noticed by my brother or being witnessed by me.

"Not your fault," I remind him gently.

He finishes tending the last of my injuries and drapes his arms loosely around me—carefully, watching to make sure it doesn't incite me to panic.

My husband is elfin, with only enough faery to give him his magic. That means he's no bigger or brawnier than I am, between my human father and his own castration.

Darnell's wife returns in that moment, before Gaylen can use the embrace to help me from her bed.

The woman moves as slightly and lightly as ever, more of a wraith than a woman. Court gossip says that's why Darnell 'indulges' me—since he's framed our relationship as willing and at my instigation, and it's easier for them to choose to believe it. Easier to think we felves like the abuse, rather than admit that the frighteningly powerful mage was lyng.

Tully told me once that the local anti-magic attitudes were ridiculous, that even my father would've been laughed off his throne, if all this had happened on the other side of the world, and that anyone caught even trying to make gryphons was 'terminated with prejudice' by the Knights of Light.

She'd paused, then. "Of course, there can be...mitigating factors."

Something in her voice warned me off asking.

I couldn't blame my mother for her folly, not entirely. She'd been abandoned to rule a too-significant realm that she wasn't prepared for, after all her parents and brothers had all died of various causes. She hadn't even been trained for it. If she had, I doubted she wouldn't have been so overwhelmed as to fall for the first charming man who came calling.

My father had been clever enough to take advantage of the naïve neighboring queen, maybe even enough to orchestrate the events that put her on the throne. His weakness had been his son, even after the other suspicious 'accidents' to others in the succession for Grehafen.

Darnell's wife is still silent and pressed into a nook between the wall and a table, staring at the floor and completely still.

"Are you feeling better?" I ask quietly in mountaineer, the local language for humans.

She doesn't answer, and she stays there while Gaylen helps me change the sheets and leave her room. She never answers.

I'm not even certain she can speak.