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Authors: Megan Joel Peterson,Skye Malone

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BOOK: Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood)
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“Thank you, my lady.”

Rising, he headed for the stairs.

She watched him go and then looked to the rest of the factory floor.

The room was quieter since she’d last noticed it, and the majority of the wounded had been taken elsewhere. A few wizards moved through the space, cleaning up the blood and mess, while others helped the remaining injured toward the cots that had taken up residence against the far wall.

Stiffly, she rose and then hoisted herself onto one of the crates. Ermengarde was nowhere to be seen; she’d lost track of the woman an unknown amount of time before. Katherine was likewise gone, and she could only assume both women were attending to the worst of the wounded in other parts of the factory.

Two wizards moved by, bearing a young man on a litter between them. Vague memories rose at the sight; she’d helped hold him as they bandaged his legs. Now he slept, soothed by the magic of the healers on either side.

“Thank you, your highness,” the women murmured, bowing their heads as they passed.

Her gaze tracked them, and then she closed her eyes, resisting the urge to rub her temples due to the dirt and blood on her hands. Aching muscles took the opportunity to make themselves heard now that the chaos had passed, and her stomach staged a conspiracy with her head to form a throbbing ache at the base of her skull. Images from the past hours crept through her exhaustion, interspersed with flashes of memories from the days before.

“Here.”

She opened her eyes to see Elias standing beside her. With a lifted eyebrow, he proffered a glass of water. Hesitating briefly, she took it from him and then watched as he lifted himself onto the crate by her side.

“Go on,” he said with a jerk of his chin toward the water. “You could use it.”

She eyed him a moment longer, and then drained the glass.

“Thank you for what you did today,” he said as she finished. “Turns out most of the wounded came from my region, and I can’t tell you what it meant to them, having you here to help. What it meant to us all, honestly.”

Uncomfortable, Ashe looked away. “I should get cleaned up,” she said, slipping off the crate and avoiding the blood still on the floor.

“It’s strange to you, isn’t it?”

She glanced back to find him regarding her thoughtfully. Her brow drew down in cautious questioning.

“Being queen,” he elaborated. “You just see yourself as a regular girl. Or close to, anyway.” He paused. “Right?”

Warily, she gave a small shrug. His lip twitched in a smile.

“But then, you only learned of this… what? A little bit ago?”

She watched him a moment before answering. “Yesterday.”

His eyebrows rose. “And the wizard thing was just last month?”

She nodded.

He whistled softly and then gestured back toward the crate. A heartbeat passed, and then she returned and hoisted herself back up beside him.

“You’re taking it pretty well,” he commented.

Her gaze dropped to the floor. He seemed to read the silence.

“Well, it seems that way to me.”

She glanced up. He gave her another small smile.

“Everyone here lives a double life, your majesty,” he continued with a look to the wizards across the room. “Or, at least, they did till the war. On the one hand, they were regular folks who had jobs, paid their taxes, voted in elections and whatnot. On the other, they’re wizards, with a royal family to whom they pay allegiance, magical powers they hide and all that entails. It’s never been easy being a part of our world. It’s complicated, keeping one foot with the humans and one foot here. More so when you go from regular girl to royalty-who-can-save-us-all in the space of a month.”

At her silence, he turned back to her.

“You’re doing really well, all things considered.”

She paused, uncertain what to feel. “Thanks.”

He shrugged.

From the corner of her eye, she studied him. Leaning back with his hands braced on the wooden crate, he looked as though he should have been sitting in a hayloft, calmly watching the sunset. Only the blood on his clothes told a different story.

“Elias?”

He glanced over.

She hesitated. “The wounded were from your region?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Survivors of an attack on their hideout in Montreal. They were heading here when the Taliesin caught up with them.”

She nodded awkwardly. “Okay, no, I just…”

His eyebrow twitched up curiously.

“What’s a region?” she asked quietly. “I mean, when you say that… and the others…”

The other eyebrow rose to join the first. “Oh,” he said, understanding. “Right. Of course. A region is an area that a councilmember presides over. We’re elected by the wizards who live there, and we serve as representatives for them to the king. The regions are divided by things like population, family ties, all sorts of reasons. There are twelve regions, so there are twelve members on the council, though it’s pretty rare for spouses to serve concurrently like Katherine and I do.”

Elias watched her for a moment. “Anything else you’d like to know?”

She hesitated. He gave a small look to the rest of the room.

“I won’t tell anyone you asked, your highness,” he continued softly.

Silent, she regarded him, trying to decide whether she trusted what he said. No pressure or impatience was in his eyes as he waited for her answer, just a tinge of humor that never seemed to leave.

“Okay,” she said. Licking her lips uneasily, she glanced from him to the room and back. “Um… this queen thing. Why does everyone
care
so much? I mean…”

“You mean why did they care you were here?”

“Or any of it.”

He shrugged amicably. “You’re queen.”

She looked away in exasperation.

“Seriously,” he said. “You heard Darius. You’re as much a symbol to them as anything. You represent hope for the war to end. That’s a big deal to folks who haven’t had an easy night’s sleep in eight years.”

Ashe grimaced.

“And it’s more than that. You represent the continuation of a part of their identity as the people of Merlin. They know what your presentation means. King Patrick is dead. But while they mourn that, the fact you’re still here means the royal line will go on.”

A heartbeat passed, and then incredulity and discomfort twisted her face as the implications of his last statement settled over her. He chuckled at her expression.

“No worries,” he assured her amusedly. “They’re not thinking like that just yet.”

Mortified, she locked her gaze on the ground, wishing she could melt through it.

“But,” Elias continued, “they’re also not thinking that the new Queen of Merlin would rush to get herself covered in blood and sweat, just to aid the wounded of a people she barely knows. Your father helped us, yes. He did what he could between his efforts to restore the spell. But you grew up outside this war and just got here yesterday. They have no idea who you are or what you’re about. To be honest, none of us do. But you just marched down here and demanded to help people you’d never met, despite the ‘recommendations’ of a quarter of your council. So yeah, even more than before… now they
really
care.”

Still feeling awkward, she couldn’t bring herself to look back up from the floor. “But…” she tried, faintly desperate.

“You’re just a regular girl?”

She made a noise of agreement.

“Not to them.”

Ashe looked away. On the far end of the room, healers moved among the wounded, most of whom seemed to finally be asleep. Closer by, several wizards cleaned up the boxes of food knocked over in the earlier chaos, discarding what was damaged and keeping what could be salvaged.

“So anything else?” Elias asked.

She blinked, pulling her gaze back to him. Hesitating, she floundered through the plethora of questions she’d amassed over the past day. “‘Line of authority’?”

He chuckled. “Hierarchy. Basically how the power goes if one of us falls.”

She bit her lip. “So Sebastian takes control if Darius dies?”

“Unfortunately,” he murmured dryly. He glanced at her askance. “Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen, eh?”

She met his gaze. The humor in his eyes strengthened.

“But how did
he
end up…?” Her face twisted expressively.

“Good connections. Knowing the right people.” Elias shrugged. “It’s politics.”

Ashe grimaced, and then looked back up as another thought occurred to her. “And Katherine outranks you?”

“Yep.”

Noticing her watching him, Elias shrugged again. “She’s been at this a bit longer. Seniority matters too.”

Ashe didn’t say anything.

Pushing a broom ahead of him, a wizard came by, and the two of them pulled up their feet to stay out of the man’s way. Murmuring an apology, the sweeper bowed as he passed, driving the dirty bandages along. With a twitch of his head, Elias motioned for her to jump down, joining her a moment later. Side by side, they began walking back toward the stairs.

“That all you wanted to know?” he asked when the sweeper was out of earshot.

“What are those blue lights on the doors? The ones that appear sometimes near a portal?”

“Wizard writing,” he answered. “Which is a ridiculously self-important name, if you ask me. Basically, it’s magic writing humans can’t see. There’s some scientific explanation for why it’s blue and not some other color, but that doesn’t really matter. These days, it’s mostly just used for certain types of portals. Some portals can be set up ahead of time and given variable destinations, so the wizard writing really helps distinguish…”

He fell silent when her hand twitched up.

Coming to a stop at the base of the stairway, she glanced at him. “
Variable
destinations?” she asked, trying to ignore the quiver in her stomach at the words.

“Right. Sorry, my lady. Variable destinations means–”

“Elias?”

One hand on the banister, he looked over at her.

“Could you just call me Ashe?”

He paused. “Never going to happen, your majesty,” he said assuredly. “My apologies.”

Bowing slightly, he gave her a small grin and then started up the stairs.

“Variable destinations,” he continued as though she hadn’t interrupted, “means that a wizard can attach the portal to more than one endpoint, typically selected by options written on the door itself and accessible through a variant of the basic portal spell. Portals themselves are just a rather unique twist of magic that uses magical resonance to create an effect far stronger than any one wizard could achieve on their own, which means that ultimately, portals possess a tremendous amount of energy and that even a fairly weak wizard can make one…”

Her brow drawing down, she watched him as he climbed the steps. A mystified look drifted over her face, and she shook her head to drive it away. Gripping the banister, she hurried up the steps. He glanced over as she joined him, barely pausing before continuing his explanation.

“So, more recently, we’ve managed to connect technology to these variable destination portals, as you might’ve seen with cell phones. It’s all just magic, whether it’s tied to a phone, a doorframe, or some stereotypical staff with a big jewel on top. But regardless, the cell phones and the wizard writing serve the function of confirming the selected destination’s viability…”

A bemused expression on her face, Ashe followed him away from the factory floor.

 

Chapter Five

 

“…and two cousins,” Elias concluded.

“Two?” Ashe repeated.

“On your mother’s side,” he clarified. “On your dad’s side, you only had one.”

Her temple resting on her hand, Ashe’s brow furrowed as she traced the wood grain of the table with a fingertip. Isolated in an office in an infrequently trafficked part of the factory, they’d spent the past hour running the gamut of every question she could think to ask, coming at last to the touchy subject of her family history that no one back home had ever wanted to discuss.

“What were their names?” she asked, still studying the table.

“Peter and Olivia were your cousins on your mom’s side. They were about…” he thought for a second. “Maybe two and four years older than you, respectively? Madelyn was on your dad’s side. She was three when she died.”

Ashe paused in her tracing and glanced up at Elias. He shrugged, a sympathetic look in his eyes.

“And my uncle?” she asked after a moment, returning her gaze to the tabletop. “Cornelius said my dad had an older brother.”

“Alexander,” Elias confirmed. “His wife was Yvonne. On your mom’s side, Rebecca had an older sister named Lily, for whom your sister was named. Her husband was Michael, who was a cripple, actually.”

She glanced up again.

Elias nodded. “They met when Michael was in college and Lily was… auditing classes,” he said with a grin. “After a fashion, anyway. Your maternal grandmother, Imogene, wasn’t too fond of the match, but as I remember her, your aunt was nothing if not headstrong. She–”

He cut off as the office door opened. Ashe turned, irritation surging at the interruption.

Cornelius glanced into the office and then stopped at the sight of her. Expressions chased themselves across his face so fast she almost couldn’t catch them, racing past surprise and alarm and then vanishing behind the mask of meticulous propriety she was starting to suspect he wore nearly all the time.

“Your highness,” he said tightly. “Councilman de Vila.”

With a small nod toward them both, he stepped into the room and let the door shut behind him. “I’ve been looking for you, my lady.”

Elias glanced to her. “Perhaps we can continue our discussions later, your majesty.” Pushing his chair away from the table, he rose. “Did you catch the Taliesin?” he asked Cornelius.

“No, they had already fled by the time we arrived. Discussions?”

“Her highness and I discovered we had acquaintances in common from my region,” Elias answered easily. “Among the cripples, that is. We were just sharing stories, reminding me of home.”

Cornelius paused. “Ah.”

Elias eyed him briefly, curiosity flickering through his gaze at the man’s tone. With another look to Ashe, he grinned, though the comfortable humor was missing from his eyes.

BOOK: Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood)
10.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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