It would be good to get away from everything if just for a while. Good to be alone with him.
They almost made it.
“Shan, Jeren, there you are.”
Jeren bit back a curse. Shan didn’t manage quite so well. He turned on the source of the voice with a snarled word. Indarin, the Feyna Shaman, raised one eyebrow. “Really? I don’t believe that’s physically possible, little brother.”
With a respectful bow, deserving of his brother’s position as Shaman, Shan bit back other words that he longed to say.
“We were just—” It didn’t really matter. He wasn’t going to apologise for wanting time with his wife. “What is it, Indarin?”
All Feyna were born with magic. It flowed through them with their blood. Few used it, however. Magic corrupted. One glance at their evil cousins, the Fellna, confirmed that. The Seers were taught to control it, to live in peace and focus on healing. But Seers could not fight. That was the preserve of the Shistra-Phail, the warriors, and sometimes magic was necessary. Indarin’s ability with magic manifested itself late. He was already a warrior and couldn’t change his course—or wouldn’t, Shan suspected. After their sister’s murder, they’d both faced dark and terrible grief where rage was the only outlet. So Indarin became instead a Shaman, the warrior magician, the healer in times of battle, the teacher of those like him.
Those like Jeren, whom the Seers shunned. Holters had no business here, they said, no place learning Feyna ways.
Luckily Indarin thought differently.
“Jeren,” said Indarin, solemnly. “Kindly remind your mate that you have many roles in this life and you are not his alone in all matters?”
Jeren cast Shan a regretful glance, and he saw the resignation in her eyes. There was a flicker of something else too, her wicked sense of humour.
“You’re fortunate to have such a wife,” she said solemnly, in formal tones that belied her disappointment. Her duty always came first. Though he knew, and loved that about her, it stung when he was the one to lose her to it. Once he’d told her she was too obedient, too willing to put others before herself. But how could he recommend that his perfect wife become more selfish? Especially when he was the selfish one, wanting her to himself?
“A party from River Holt wishes to pay their respects to you, Jeren. They’ve been waiting quite some time. Shan,” Indarin’s voice hardened, stopping Shan’s departure. Just enough that one who knew him would hear the urgency. “I also need to speak to you.”
“Very well,” said Jeren. “I’ll go now.” Her shoulders tightened with determination and Shan’s heart surged with sympathy for her as he watched her leave. He knew she didn’t want this, any of it. When he turned his attention back to Indarin, however, his brother’s stoic gaze quelled the anger in him.
“All things considered, I haven’t seen you so happy in years, brother,” said the Shaman. A different voice from Indarin’s, it seemed—cautious, thoughtful, deliberate.
“I doubt I’ve felt so content in all that time,” Shan replied, curious as to where this was going. “And yet—” He sighed. A weight of foreboding settled over him, drawn by Indarin’s dark mood perhaps. Or of the thoughts that came unbidden of how much he had to lose now. “I still fear the future.” He picked out Jeren’s form as she crossed the Feyna part of the camp. “I fear I’ll lose her. And if I do...”
He couldn’t say the words. Bad enough to even think of losing her. That night at the Vision Rock she’d seen two futures, one with him and one alone in River Holt. Either was possible. Both... he couldn’t see a way.
But Indarin wasn’t to be put off.
“And if you do?”
Shan shook his head. He didn’t want to answer, but he couldn’t lie to Indarin. “If I do, I’ll lose not just my mind, but my soul as well.”
Indarin snorted, disgust and laughter intermingled. “Better you keep her safe then. Such melodramatics ill become you. She’s a fine student, Shan, perhaps the best I’ve ever encountered. She marries the sword and her own magic together with hardly any effort at all. She will, I think, survive should Gilliad’s power pass to her.”
That was his fear. His greatest fear. Once he would have given anything to take Gilliad, Scion of Jern’s life. It had been his whole purpose, it drove him forwards as surely as his heart beat. Gilliad had trained with them, one of the Shistra-Phail warriors, a brother in arms at Shan’s side.
Falinar, Shan and Indarin’s sister, had loved the boy. She’d adored the awkward and faltering Holter. Since it was her wish and her choice, Shan had tried to be happy for her. Until the previous Ariah decided Gilliad didn’t belong there and tried to send him home. Perhaps she’d sensed his sanity slipping. Perhaps she caused it. Whatever it was, he murdered Fa by the holy pools of Aran’Mor and fled.
“Once,” said Shan to his brother, “all my being was dedicated to killing Gilliad of River Holt. Until I found Jeren, and then despite everything—losing Anala, our capture, all the deprivations and our battles with the Fellna—all that mattered was keeping her safe. Which meant keeping him alive.” If her brother died, if the magic that eroded his increasingly fragile sanity should invade her mind as the foremost Scion of Jern and the Lady of River Holt, if she lived—all these things were his constant fears.
Indarin’s hand closed on his shoulder. “The magic their ancestors stole is not like ours. It became a curse, a punishment. But we know that it does not overcome them all. Gilliad was flawed to begin with.”
“And Fa paid the price,” Shan muttered darkly.
“We all paid the price. Jeren too. You must not forget what she sacrificed. Her duty was part of her. A vital part. To walk away from it, to leave her brother ruling her people, even though she knew what he was... I think it would have broken her heart if it had not been for you.”
Shan gave a brief snort. “Me. I should be so much more for her. I wanted to kill him, Indarin. I wanted to so much.”
“But you didn’t. And you have given Jeren time to grow into herself, to know the small power she has and control it. You’ve given her love and a people, and something of a purpose again. Isn’t that enough, Shan? That she has time to prepare should Gilliad die without an heir. The curse of magic that falls on her will be terrible, it will threaten her mind and her soul. But I truly think she will survive.”
“Survive,” Shan echoed, dubiously. “Survive unchanged?”
“Change is a part of life. Nothing is unchangeable.”
“I don’t need the spiritual guidance at the moment, Indarin. What did you want to talk about?”
The look Indarin turned on him reminded him uncomfortably of their mother. It had a lot to say about wilfulness, arrogance and disrespect. But the words didn’t come. The tirade of anger and resentment never transpired. His brother was not their mother, after all.
“The Ariah feels that we should agree to support Jeren’s claim to River Holt, that she should indeed take her brother’s place as its ruler.”
He hid his shock behind a mask as smooth as marble. “Even if Jeren makes no such claim herself?” She expressed no wish to lead the rebellion everyone expected of her, not even in private. Quite the contrary. But revolution simmered among the Holters. They only needed her to embrace it too and they’d follow her anywhere. She only had to say yes once.
“Should she do so. And I believe she will eventually, Shan. No matter what she says now. Something will push her to it, some act of violence and desecration. This cannot go on. Gilliad is too dangerous and he hates us.”