Aelia swallowed, hard, but her fear was laced with a hint of intrigue, the memory of how his irises had been jet black when he kissed her sending a cold rush tingling over her skin.
“Is it… dark magic?” she whispered, as if just saying it could summon the ideolan from the North.
“No!” Keeran spat, the astonishment in his voice too genuine to be feigned. Not ideolan then, Aelia thought, with no smallamount of relief. That would have been a little hard to swallow. “You think I’m from Ideolanthea?”
She’d never met an Idoelan; one of the terms of Demuto’s alliance with Ideolanthea was that their borders remained uncrossable. All she’d heard were rumours of Northerners polluted by their terrible magic. Aelia didn’t know how the King had managed to keep them at bay for all these years, especially when half of Mithrylaya, the continent across the sea, had succumbed to them. From what she’d heard, they had a lot to thank him for.
“Well, no,” Aelia backtracked. “It’s only, I’ve never seen anyone else’s eyes do that. Go black, I mean.”
Aelia trailed off, hating herself more with every word she uttered, as Keeran watched her struggle in unimpressed silence.
“I’m artemian, born in Demuto,” he said, his eyes meeting hers with unaffected sincerity. “And I would never touch dark magic.”
Aelia just nodded, a little ashamed of her probing. Fortunately, it didn’t last long.
“Is it my turn to ask the prying questions?” Keeran smiled at her, one eyebrow raised.
“I suppose that’s fair,” Aelia acquiesced, begrudgingly.
“I heard you in the forest, that night with Shiva,” he said. Every muscle in her body tensed, and her horse’s ears flicked back towards her nervously. “I heard you say you couldn’t Shift.”
“I’d guessed you had.” She side-eyed him, frowning.
“But you’re not human,” Keeran stated. That much was obvious, all you had to do was look in her eyes and you’d see the ring of magic.
“I thought you were meant to be asking questions, not stating the obvious,” Aelia replied, wryly.
Keeran huffed a laugh through his nose. “Alright, fair point. Do you know why? Your father, what was his second form?”
Aelia felt immediately less guilty for the invasive nature of her own questions.
“Wow, Keeran, way to keep it light.”
“Says the woman who asked about my scars,” Keeran said, raising his eyebrows.
“Fair enough,” she said, shooting him a grudging look. “I have no idea who my parents are. Otis wasn’t my father, he took me in when I was small, just a baby, I think. But even he never knew who my parents were. So no, I have no idea why I am the way I am.”
“I’ve seen you run, you’re as fast as any artemian I know. Faster.”
“Stronger too. My senses are heightened, my reflexes faster. I just can’t Shift,” Aelia admitted, matter-of-factly. It wasn’t something to brag about, not when Shifting was all that really mattered.
“You’ve never shown any other signs of magic? Nothing unusual?”
Confusion lined Aelia’s brow. “Like what?”
Keeran shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Aelia looked up at the sky, as if thinking hard. “I once pretended to curse Shiva as a child, and the next day he got sick and was off school? The other kids were particularly nice to me for a little while after that.”
Keeran smiled, shaking his head. “Gods help us all if you turned out to be a witch.”
“Don’t worry, you’re safe. Other than a frustrating inability to Shift, I am, to all intents and purposes, artemian.”
Keeran looked out across the lake, squinting at something in the distance. Aelia looked too, just about able to make out a dark blur protruding from the water.
"Look, Aelia. That's the town of Aquila."
Sure enough, when Aelia peered out across the still water, she could just make out a cluster of buildings protruding from the lake.
