“What are you doing here?” he asks, brushing my white hair aside to get a better look at the face that’s matured since last we saw each other.
“I…I’m a Crusader now,” I say, breathless, but pride seeps into my tone. It hasn’t been made official yet, but being just a couple of days away now, and after having downed the large shadowcreature behind us, I think I can confidently say I’ve earned the title. “I joined the Shadow Crusade. I’m here to retrieve shadowsteel and…”
My teeth clamp down on the words. If I am to claim the title of Crusader, then I should also uphold their secrets, and the Spirit Keep had made it clear that knowledge of the necro-ink did not belong among commonfolk.
To my chagrin, Adrien doesn’t beam at me with pride at the mention of my accomplishments. Why should he? The life of a Crusader is brutal and quick. But it’s more than that. He is a man who’s made a life out of evading the Magistrate, his legion, and all the Crusaders under his command. If I am a Crusader, I am his enemy.
“I can’t imagine your parents are too thrilled about that.” His words twist in my belly like a knife.
I lower my gaze, unable to hold his, but his hand finds my shoulder, and I have no choice but to look at him.
“My brother…” he says cautiously. “Is he…has he…”
I purse my quivering lips together.
Adrien nods and sucks in a shaking breath. His hand drops from my shoulder, and he paces the courtyard, deep in thought. While he takes the time he needs to mourn in private, I use the opportunity to examine the people he’s with more closely. There’s six of them in total, including my uncle, and they’re about as varied as anyone else in Arcathain. There’s a woman who’s tall and dark, and a man who’s short and pale. Another among them has a scar stitched over his eye, and another wears thick black bands of tattoos like armor.
My gaze lingers the longest on Ryven, and he watches me right back. Even as he nods to whatever the group is discussing, his dark eyes always find their way back to mine.
Adrien finally returns to us. He makes his way over to me again, and as he stands, I realize his posture is nothing like the aristocratic stiffness of his brother’s or his nephew’s.
He crooks his thumbs into his belt, a lazy lean to his spine. “The Shadow Crusade, they’re led by my brother’s bastard son these days, so I hear?”
I nod.
He grows pensive and leans in closer, as if he doesn’t want the others to hear him. I don’t understand why he’d keep the company of people he doesn’t trust, but then again, I’ve never been a fugitive.
“Be careful around those people,” he whispers. It takes me a moment to realize those people he’s talking about aren’t the ones behind him, but my fellow Crusaders, my family. “Your cruel Uncle Esmond has always hated your family, and I wouldn’t put it past him to bestow that hatred onto little Alphy as well.”
I smirk at the childish nickname, knowing it’s precisely the kind of thing General Alphonse would abhor. But Adrien isn’t wrong. There isn’t a bone in Alphonse’s body that doesn’t hate me.
But then my thoughts latch on the phrase hate your family.
“Alphonse and Esmond are my family, whether I like it or not,” I argue. “They’re the only family I have left, besides you and Kalli…”
Adrien’s shoulders sink again at the insinuation of the family I’ve lost recently…his own brother.
“I’m sorry—”
“It’s quite all right, Halira,” he says, dipping his head. He looks up at me through lowered lashes, his roguish smile telling me that the last thing I need to worry about is hurting his feelings. “But I was talking about your mother’s side. Come to think of it though, as I go down the line, there’s really not anyone those two don’t hate. Me, your father.”
I chuckle. “Me, as well.”
He dips his head again to hide his smirk. “Yes, well, Esmond has harbored a special hatred for your mother ever since she and Oddo met. You know how the Magistrate is about unwanted refugees from the Eyve.”
Rolling my eyes, I stifle a growl, but being here with Adrien, with family, makes it impossible to hold on to my frustrations. I still can’t believe I ran into him, here of all places. Truth be told, I can’t believe he’s still alive.
I want to spend hours catching up with him. He has always been a wealth of endless stories, and I want to hear them all. His perilous adventures evading the law, the whirlwind romances that always end with him leaping from some duke’s balcony as their wives discover their infidelity, or with him drifting out at sea with a pirate lord for months until he falls for one of his crewmen. My uncle knows no limit to the life he lives. Every moment is seized. Every story, captivating and riveting.
“They’re coming.” Ryven’s voice is as low and ominous as a growl, jarring me from my whimsical dreams of this family reunion. “Tell them, the Crusaders are coming.”
“Me? Why do I need to tell them anything. They’re standing right here—”
Before I can finish, Ryven spreads his membranous wings and leaps into the sky.
“What did he say?” Adrien asks, urgency in his tone.
Gaping up to the dark sky, I can no longer see Ryven. He’s disappeared somewhere behind the black clouds, but I still can’t stop staring. There is still so much I don’t understand about him, about why he was here, about any of this.
“What did he say?” my uncle asks again, more earnest this time.
I blink, pulling slowly on the words like they have sunk into honey. “He said the Crusaders are coming.”
“Dark as shadows!” mutters the man with the scar. “They’ll take our shadowsteel if they find us.”
“And the necro-ink we’ve managed to syphon,” adds one of the women.
Adrien runs his hand through his long, umber hair.
“We have to go,” the woman says gently, though there’s something frightened lingering beneath her tone.
“I know, I know,” Adrien says quickly. He turns his sorrowful eyes on me. “This really isn’t the reunion I had hoped for. Forgive me, but we must be on our way.”
I can feel the sting of tears prickling to break from my eyes, but I do what I can to hold them back. The last thing he needs is to see me hurt and feel compelled to stay, thus risking being captured by the Crusaders who would most certainly turn him into the Magistrate. And although a life in the Shadowthorn sounds hard and cruel, it is at least one of freedom, a thing my uncle Adrien values above all.
“I-I understand.”
He flashes me a rueful grin. “Be well, my niece. And remember, guard your secrets well. I know your mother is gone, but Imryll will protect you now.”
My heart stutters. A cool wave of uncertainty and panic wraps around me until I am too strangled to even speak. What secrets is he talking about? Does he know of the strange occurrences that have been happening to me, of the mice and the ravens that I’ve been able to summon? And that word, Imryll, I’ve heard it somewhere before, but I can’t remember where. I’ve stumbled across a few books in the library written in the archaic Arcathain languages, so I suppose it might be something from there. Who knows the kinds of beliefs my uncle has adapted since his life in the Shadowthorn or in Eyve—wherever he dwells.