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

Year 233 of the Bynding - On the Road to Grehafen - after Winter Solstice

Kindhearted Onlé, who saw a child in trouble and traded her own safety to save the child. So much like her mother.

"Endellion," Tully says again. "Please. At least let me protect your daughter."

I flinch, reminded of how I can only protect her daughter by treating her cruelly. "You can't," I remind her gently. "Darnell can find her by blood and by the Bynd. He'll come for her." If he wants his son to be able to inherit the Bynd from him, he'll have to leave me a daughter alive.

At least he doesn't know when she was born. Children are only vulnerable to curses on the eighth day after their births, and I have no intention of telling him the truth so he can torture her in yet another way. It's bad enough to watch what he does to my people and wonder if there will even be anyone left to save, by the time Evonalé somehow frees them.

I cannot protect my daughter from the aftermath of my mother's mistakes, but I can at least refrain from burdening her with mistakes of my own.

And letting Tully take her would be a mistake.

"Red magic interests Darnell," I quietly inform her. "He's close to it already. I can't afford to give him reason to look to it."

Tully taps her breastbone twice, in the local human method of supplicating the Creator's help to ward off evil. It could as easily signal her skill at blending in as it could indicate that she's chosen to follow their faith. "If it interests him, he'll study it regardless."

Not quite. "He is an angry, controlling man. He rules his realm, puppeteers some others, and doesn't trust anyone to be his seneschal or mesne. As long as things unfold how he thinks they should, he'll be too busy to pursue it seriously enough to do much harm by it."

"And his children?" she points out, because she isn't stupid. "How long until they pick up their father's hobbies? They won't have those limitations."

"Oh, Drake and Carling both take quite after their father in inclinations," I try to say lightly, wryly, but the words stick in my throat. Carling already displays a keen sense of tactics and manipulation despite her young age, and I fear what she'll do once she's older.

But that's off-topic. "I know it doesn't make sense. I don't understand it, either, but I trust the Creator knows what He's doing. That's what prophecy is for."

Tully's body language shifts into wariness. "There's prophecy?"

"Did Aldrik not tell you?" No, Aldrik wouldn't have sent her without warning her. Nor would Mataine. Jarvis, perhaps, but he's too afraid of Darnell to work her in. "How did you find me?"

She gives me a flat sidelong look. "Your brother isn't the only one who can track the Bynd."

Ice grips me, fear that Darnell will find out and realize yet another way he can keep control of us. "You can feel it?"

"Sometimes. I think. I guess." Tully shrugs. "I never paid it much attention even before Darnell"—I flinch—"before it left your mother."

Father's theft of the Bynd kept it from passing properly and naming Mother's heir. The magic had never disliked me—it loathes Darnell, who stole it from our father—but...

Tully's too distant a relative. She shouldn't have been able to feel the Bynd. That she did indicates that, had my father not interfered with the magic, she might have inherited the Bynd and rule of Marsdenfel...which means Onlé may be in line to inherit even before my own children.

I cannot let Darnell even suspect that the Bynd can jump lines like that. He'd destroy all the ruling families of the elves, near and far, to ensure that the magic could never leave his control. I have dozens of cousins from Tully's father alone.

"Fine," Tully says. "I'll kill him."

Her father? No, she means Darnell. I stiffen. "He's bound to the Bynd. Whoever kills him will themselves be killed." If there is an exception, nobody's found it yet, so far as I know. There are only four Crystals in the world, after all, and the elves were the only ones to create a Bynd for theirs.

My cousin—my more world-wise and well-traveled cousin, who's been her father's puppet since before I was born—looks away, though the windows are covered.

"You want me to leave you," she says quietly. "To walk away and let that monster do as he will to you both."

She's seen and survived things at least as bad as all that Darnell has done to me. I would rather not remind her of that, but... I know better than to think she'll leave me, otherwise. "I dreamt, while in Salles." I'm elfin enough to dream true. "Darnell sold many of the men to Oswen."

Her eyes widen, her face goes white, and her tightened breath isn't feigned.

"Gaylen knew he would—he Saw it in the prophecy. Evonalé will cause Darnell's fall, somehow. And somehow, that requires her to..." To be abused and hurt and learn not to cry. And I won't be able to save her from that.

"May I hold her?" Tully asks, voice so soft and brittle that I almost don't recognize it.

She was never allowed to hold her own daughter.

I offer Evonalé over, demonstrating how to support her, how to hold her head.

Tully takes my infant daughter with the caution and care I expected of her, and her magic is as gentle as her hands. "She's so small."

"Only for a human."

Does she realize her magic is identifying Evonalé's, to be better able to recognize her in years to come? It's impossible to judge. Autonymous magic is normal for elementals, and her human half enabled her to be born one.

We spent some minutes in silence, Tully cradling my child in her arms.

At some signal only she knows, she gently returns my baby to me. "What's her name?"

"Evonalé."

Tears shine in Tully's eyes despite her smile. "She's beautiful."

She puts her helmet back on and quite obviously prepares to leap from the moving vehicle at the point where she'd offered to free me.

I pray to the Creator that she finds more happiness than I ever have.

All I can do is offer her reason to hope for it. "So is Onlé."