I lowered my gaze, chastised. I should have kept my mouth shut. “You’re right. That was… impulsive. Apologies.”
For a fleeting moment, something flickered across his face. Disappointment? Amusement? A missed opportunity for debate? Whatever it was, it vanished too fast to name.
“Have you read the prophecy?” he asked me instead.
I shook my head. “I had never heard about the prophecy before, and prophecies aren’t anything humans concern themselves with.”
“We will get to that at a later date. In short: The fact of your creation and my birth was no accident. It is a signal, an omen, that something stirs in the dark. And whether we are ready or not, the burden of facing it will fall to us,” Auretheos clarified. “These here are maps of our world, unlike anything you have seen. The human maps only ever show their own continent and a few islands, because the other parts of the world lay hidden from them.”
The map indeed exceeded anything I had imagined the world beyond our borders to look like. The biggest two continents were Sevalis, the human continent and Aerethia,where I stood now. But between the two of them, there were several smaller islands, some of them connected to each other by stretches of land. To the north there was another vast continent, interspersed with small lakes. I suddenly felt embarrassed for all the times I had claimed to be well-traveled because obviously, I had only seen a fraction of what this world had to offer. Auretheos’ voice pulled me out of my musings.
“For thirty years, my agents have moved in silence,” Auretheos began, still focused on the scroll before him. “Since the moment we learned of your birth, we have watched the realm patiently. Some of the isles remain unreachable, remote, warded, and fiercely defended by Fae who do not welcome unfamiliar faces.”
He lifted a hand and pointed to a region on the northern map. “The threat remains… unclear. But all signs lead us here. Lacustria. The lakes remain silent, yet the weight of that silence has grown.”
I knew I should’ve been paying attention. Lacustria sounded vaguely ominous and suspiciously wet, but instead, I was staring at his hands. They were large, strong, and calloused in a way that didn’t make sense for someone who spent all day indoors surrounded by dusty books. Either the man moonlighted as a sword smith, or the library had a fight club I didn’t know about.
If he noticed my intense analysis of his knuckles, he gave no indication. His voice remained calm as ever. “Has anything unusual occurred in your realm recently?”
This time, his eyes met mine.
And wow. That look short-circuited something inmy brain.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
“You mean aside from being cornered in the geography department by a shrine rag from another realm, who decided I was destined to fight evil because of some dusty old prophecy? No, all perfectly normal.”
Auretheos didn’t react. Didn’t blink. The man didn’t even twitch.
After a few long, painful beats, he looked back at the map and hummed. Just… “Hmm.”
I glanced over at Caelan, who shrugged and mouthed, “No social skills.”
Meanwhile, Auretheos had already resumed scribbling in some language I didn’t recognize. He paused, then: “One final question before you’re shown to your chambers. What is it that you can do with your heka, Maelis?”
The way he said my name? Criminal. Like the verbal equivalent of whiskey: warm, smooth, and dangerous. I momentarily forgot how to breathe.
What was wrong with me? I blinked, shook my head slightly, and forced myself to focus.
“Ehm, usually, I write my spells down on paper. I invoke the Fates, burn the spell after it works. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.” My voice softened. “Not all of them come true.”
My mind drifted briefly to my mother. What would she say if she could see me now?
Auretheos studied me again, eyes dragging over me with a clinical kind of interest. “Then you have only tapped into a fraction of your gift. We will begin training at once.”
He turned his head. “Caelan. Contact Lydia. She is to meet Maelis at the Lodge immediately.”
Caelan stood and nodded. “She’s a wordsmith like you,” he explained to me. “One of the best. She’ll handle your training.”
A fraction of my gift. The words echoed inside me. If what he said was true, if I’d been using only a sliver of what I was capable of, then maybe… maybe there was still hope. Could I be strong enough to heal my mother? To undo what years of illness and helplessness had taken from us? My heart clenched at the possibility, followed swiftly by fear. Power always came with a cost. I knew that better than anyone. And yet, for the first time in a long while, the ache inside me felt like something that could change into hope.
Caelan’s tone shifted and he pulled his shoulders back. “Before we go… There’s something you should know.” He turned to Auretheos. “We were attacked earlier. The Heralds found Maelis at the same time we did. Tried to take her. She held them off, giving me enough time to deal with the rest.”
I didn’t like the way Auretheos’s gaze swept over me with a measured, detached look on his face. Like he was inspecting a weapon rather than a person.
“Are you injured?” he asked curtly.
“No, I’m fine. I’m looking forward to a bath, though. And maybe some food.”
