A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

42. Rev

Chapter 42

Rev

I had never been to the sea.

Yet, somehow, I knew it well.

The contrast of the white waves that folded into blue-green water I recognized without ever having seen it. The language of each crash was one I understood, speaking as if in constant greeting. The scent of salty brine was something that pulled deep from the place I had once called home.

Karus gripped my arm and beamed at me, her body buzzing with excitement as I gazed upon the vast ocean for the first time in my life.

I finally understood her reference to my eyes. I understood her love of the sea, how it called over and over to us, beckoning our souls to step into the life it gave.

The salted breeze brushed across my lips, and I pressed them to hers, the taste seeping into my tongue as if the ocean could not bear to let me ever forget its presence.

As if I could.

I wished we could stay longer. I wished we could set up a house on the cliff’s edge—a quaint little cottage with a thatched roof where Karus and I would walk the beach everyday, collecting the shells long since broken. They glittered in the morning sun as the waves brought them to the shore, the ocean letting us gaze upon the beauty it brought and wonder at the power it possessed.

“You look good here, Rev.” She pressed into my shoulder, sitting her chin upon it. “Well, everyone looks good at the ocean…but you especially belong in this light.”

“I remember that,” I chuckled. She had recited the first words I’d spoken to her as she’d stepped into Viridis for the first time.

“I think this might be your Viridis. I think you might have found the light you belong in.”

“Ah, Karus,” I took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “I found that light many years ago.”

I filled my lungs again with more breath than I ever had in my thirty years. “Thank you.”

Her smile enchanted me, the perfect rival to the beauty of the sea.

“We didn’t travel out of the way just to look at it, Rev.” She was already pulling her boots off, tossing them on the sand and sinking her toes into the soft grains. She turned around and ran backward, her arms out and free, her hair whipping in the wind as a challenge for me to follow her movement.

She sprinted to the waves, and they lapped over her legs, soaking her skirts as her laughter flew through the air.

I loved her.

I loved this place.

I loved us.

We arrived back at the carriage, boots in hand, the bottom half of our legs soaked in seawater. Mychael spoke to the driver and two other guards while Philius watched Parvus and Rauca play in the tall grass on the cliff’s edge.

“You’ll be cold now, on the way to the village.” Mychael’s lips lifted in amusement seeing us attempt to wring out our clothes.

“We have magic for that.” Karus shrugged, her cheeks flushed, her lips rosy. She called out to the lumens and the Prince, ready to continue our journey.

The four of us sat inside the ornate carriage, embellished with the long gold, crimson, and midnight blue tassels which represented Hyrithia. It had been a short journey to the sea; a detour Karus insisted we make, but one I’d never forget.

At our departure from Hyrithia, Moira insisted she fly ahead, claiming she had no patience to wait for a human contraption to slowly take her there. That was more than fine by me. I didn’t want to listen to her complain on the road for two days about human ways of travel.

We planned to stop at a small village about a day’s ride from Felgren and rest there at the inn. I squeezed Karus’s hand as she looked out the window at the fields of wheat we passed, long since harvested for the year. The dry stumps rose from dark earth, an expanse of dreary rows of what would not bloom again until next spring.

She turned to me, and I glanced at the Prince and then back to her, a sly smile creeping across my face.

Her eyes darted to Philius and she rolled them, huffing loudly.

He rested his chin on one black hand and stared out the window while he tapped at his leg in clear frustration.

I’d been watching him carefully since his magic had sparked when he hit me, and I saw glimpses of it now in subtle orange flickers every few taps at his knee.

It was ironic to me that the Queen, who spoke of controlling tempers, raised two channelers whose magic came unbidden so often in a state of anger.

Mychael glanced back and forth between us and cleared his throat, breaking the awkward silence. “What is the Fortress like in Felgren? Is it akin to the Castle of Hyrithia?”

Karus shifted next to me. “No. It is much darker. Black. Black everywhere, but it’s Felgren you’ll truly love.” She smiled at him, then turned her attention to Philius. “It’s spring there, in the forest. You’ll get to see Felgren for the first time at its loveliest.”

The Prince clenched his jaw and nodded to her, then stared at me.

Obviously, we were not done here.

“And the training?” Mychael asked, doing his best to settle the tangible anger coming from the Prince. “What will that be like?”

I cleared my throat and shifted my attention away from Philius. “Were you aware you held channeler magic, Mychael?”

He shook his head. “My companion, she was always the one with the magic.” He chuckled, “Solla always wanted to become a conduit. I used to wonder if Baron Heimlen would’ve given her an offering if she had not been born in Hyrithia at the time of the Treaty. She was so adept at helping in the fields and growing her garden.” He glanced out the window. “There was this one tree. An apple tree. She would sing to it in the spring, and I swear the blooms would respond.”

“What happened to her?” Karus asked quietly.

He exhaled heavily. “The Black Fever.”

“I’m so sorry.” Karus’s voice broke and she reached across the cabin to take his hand. “If you’d like, we could set up a memorial in her honor in Felgren. Something you can visit to remember her. A place with her name so that she can be a part of the forest she wanted to see.”

That was one way to pull on my heart, and I grabbed her waist, tugging her close, kissing the top of her head.

“If I could,” she continued, “I would have every single channeler’s name carved into a tall rock and placed in Felgren. To remember those who never got to see it, and those who died to save it.”

“Thank you, Karus,” Mychael rasped. “She would have loved that.”

“So,” Philius spoke, shifting in his seat, “what is training like, then? How do you plan to expose our magic when one of us didn’t know we had it and the other can only summon it occasionally?”

I liked his directness. Philius got to the point—contrary to his mother. I studied him for a moment. He was the tallest of us all with bronze skin and black coils that he tied at the top of his head, letting them spill out in a thick mass. His physique was lithe like Karus, toned, but not particularly muscular, and I didn’t doubt they’d both ran through the same fields and climbed the same cliff faces.

But where Karus held a humbleness, Philius did not. He was raised a prince, a future regent of the crown, a man whose purpose was to choose a queen and create an heiress for their family line. Life in Felgren was going to be immensely different for him.

“Felgren is the key to your power. I can teach you how to summon your magic from its roots. I can teach you how to listen to your truest self in its breeze. It may take time, but I have no doubts you both will find your channeler magic there.”

“I want to be trained by Karus,” he challenged.

I laughed. “I have no qualms with that. She is more than capable and can teach you things I cannot.”

“Philius, don’t be stupid. Rev can teach you better than I can. I myself need to train still. It’s been years of my magic just sitting there unused.”

“I trust you more than him.”

“Well, I trust him more than anyone, so there.”

“He’s a liar.”

“Oh, and you’ve never lied?”

“Not about something so important.”

“What about your magic, Philius? Hmm? What about the fact that you had enough power to collapse an entire castle wall?”

“I couldn’t control that.”

“But don’t tell me you didn’t know it was in you. You kept that a secret, admit it.”

“What if I did?”

“Well, that’s a lie, then, isn’t it? Omitting can still be lying. You never once told me you had magic, too. You know how lonely it was for me to grow up being the only one.”

I listened to them bicker like siblings, realizing how very much they were. Karus crossed her arms at her chest, one knee hanging over the other while her foot bounced in irritation.

“I…I wasn’t sure that it was anything. I was able to ignore it most of the time.”

“Well, that didn’t work in your favor because now you need to draw it out.” She leaned in close, her body tense. “And Revich is going to be the one to help you do it. So I don’t want to hear any more of this. He lied to save me, end of story.”

“Maybe we could have saved you.”

“You could not. We’ve been over this, Philius.” She pounded her fist on the side of the cabin. “Driver, please stop. I need to get out.”

The carriage rolled to a stop and she continued, “Stop telling yourself you could have saved me. Stop telling yourself you deserved a chance to try. Felgren is my home. Revich is my heart, and if you cannot see that by now, then you are blind to whatever doesn’t suit you as usual .”

She opened the door and flew out of it in one swift drop, storming through the broken fields.

The Prince glared at me before following her, slamming the carriage door, running to catch up to her.

Mychael grimaced, and I sighed heavily.

“In his defense,” he murmured as we watched them argue in the field, their hands gesturing wildly, “the Prince really did suffer in the knowledge that she was dead. We all were grieving after the Black Fever—I did my fair share—but the Prince never even knew she’d been taken until he recovered. He didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye and then she was gone. It broke him…something I suspect you know a little about.”

I nodded slowly, listening, but keeping my eyes on Karus.

“I’m not saying I think you were wrong to lie. I’m saying the Prince will need more time to heal.”

I bent forward on my knees, my body cold since she had left my side. “Me too, Mychael. Me too.”

When they reached some sort of compromise and got back into the carriage, not another word was spoken, both of them resolved to look out the window for hours.

Mychael and I didn’t feel the need to speak either as my own thoughts wandering to what Philius had said.

The truth was, I felt no guilt about lying.

I held no hesitancy in my decision, and I would not apologize for it.

Karus understood as well as I that love was the only way to bring her back, and the people she had left in Hyrithia would never have cut it.

I thought about who she’d been when she showed up for the first time in the Fortress. If I closed my eyes, I could remember that woman, resolute on proving herself useless and returning to Hyrithia.

I had waited and waited for weeks that turned to months for her to realize where she truly belonged. Even then, I was sure Felgren was her home.

But now that I was not wrapped up with her in The Spinning Wheel in Hyrithia, I worried.

I worried about the Blightress. I worried about her plans for Karus. She wasn’t done with her, that much we both knew. What would she do with my power if she could somehow take it?

The answers must be in Viridis. There must be something we missed about her history. There must be some line, some small paragraph about the Blightress and the power she held. Something about her origins or how to really stop her as the first Baron had done hundreds of years ago.

Felgren was threatened. The power of a Baron was threatened; therefore, conduit training and Karus herself was threatened, and I would never let that happen.

If we needed to destroy her heart, fine. We’d do that. We’d do whatever we needed to save the forest and to save ourselves.

The carriage slowed through the village and the single inn was a welcomed sight.

The Fields and Forest was charming in a quaint way. Two storeys tall, its front was covered in creeping ivy. The shape of windows was cut out at the top rooms so that patrons could look out into the muddy street. It was still autumn outside of Felgren, and the ivy was in the midst of changing its hue from deep green to a brilliant crimson. Two chimneys at either end of the inn puffed tendrils of smoke into the early evening air.

As the carriage rolled to a stop, I opened the door, thankful to be able to stretch my legs. The two guards from the back of the carriage hopped off and did the same. They’d accompany us to the boundary of Felgren before returning with the carriage to Hyrithia.

Mychael stepped out next, followed by Philius who ignored me completely as I held the door open. He spoke to the guards and proceeded to the inn, his stance regal, his voice authoritative.

I was curious how much he’d drink tonight. Karus had warned him we kept no ale and very little wine in the Fortress. He hadn’t been too happy about it. I eyed his trunk on top of the carriage, wondering if he’d stored any bottles inside.

I stepped in front of the carriage door and held out my hand. Karus took it while stepping down, exhaling heavily. I wrapped her arm around my waist, pulling her in, whispering in her ear, “He’ll come around.”

“You don’t know the stubbornness of royalty.”

“On the contrary. I think I’ve learned quite a bit about it the last few weeks.”

“I’m worried he will always hate you. I don’t want anyone to hate you.”

“You can’t force people to like me, Karus.”

“The fuck I can’t.”

I laughed and watched her eyes spark in defiance.

“Let’s get something to eat. Philius can mope and grumble to Mychael. I don’t doubt we’ll hear more of it soon enough.” I kissed her lips and fit my fingers through hers, pulling her inside.

Warmth flooded our skin and the smell of fresh-baked bread filtered through the air, welcoming all guests to sit and dine at the worn tables of the common room.

Mychael approached, holding out a key. “I took the liberty to reserve our rooms ahead of our arrival. They only had three left, so I will stay with the other guards and driver while you and Karus take a room and the Prince takes the other.”

I thanked him and led Karus to a table away from Philius. I’d seen enough of him for the day.

We sat and a young woman took our order of water and roasted mutton with vegetables.

Karus fell onto her hand, her elbow resting on the table. She rubbed her face and stared up at the wooden beams across the ceiling.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s everything.” She sighed again and yawned. “I just want to go home.”

My heart leapt at the anticipation.

She opened her mouth to say more, but stopped, sitting upright, her jaw hanging open while looking behind me.

I turned. “What is it? What?—”

A few tables away, in the back of the room, sat Talon and Ilyenna. Talon’s eyes were wide and Ilyenna was chewing her lip nervously.

I rose from the table, clenching my jaw, sliding my hands in my pocket for patience. I had a feeling I knew why they were here.

I maneuvered between the tables and stood before them as they squeezed together. Karus slid up beside me, peering over my shoulder.

Talon cleared his throat. “Baron Revich, Karus…” He stood, bringing Ilyenna with him, their hands clasped. “It is good to see you are well. Karus, we were so worried.”

My eyes flicked over my shoulder to Karus’s face. She was biting her lips together, her eyes alight with excitement.

“You might be wondering why we’re here,” Talon admitted, taking a moment to swallow.

He waited for me to speak, and I waited for him to explain.

“You see, Ilyenna and I…” he started, lowering his chin and clearing his throat.

“We’re companions,” Ilyenna finished in her soft voice that rose lightly in the busy room.

Karus flinched with excitement, leaning on my shoulder.

I was not as amused.

I waited for more, my eyes narrowing.

“Yes. We…” Talon straightened, rolling his shoulders slightly. I noticed his two black braids were wound with white ribbons. I could guess what they were from. “We bonded last night. While…while everyone was away.”

Well, fuck.

They’d only known each other for a few months and the minute they were out from under mine and the conduits’ thumbs, they ran off to do this.

I took a breath, gathering patience.

“Please say something,” Ilyenna pleaded, her soft blue eyes staring up at me. She was barely past twenty, Talon twenty-five. They seemed so young to do this.

Karus brushed in front of me and held her arms out to embrace Ilyenna, then doing the same to Talon. “Congratulations to you both. We will celebrate when we return to Felgren.”

Talon grinned, relieved. “We hoped we could stay a few more nights?—”

“You will do no such thing,” I interrupted. “You will return home with us in the morning, and we will discuss your decision then.”

Karus glanced back at me, a scolding look on her face. “Where did you find a conduit to conduct the ceremony? And how did you escape the clutches of Pompeii?”

“He was ill last night. He retired early, and we thought this was our chance because you wouldn’t approve.” Talon looked at me in appeal.

“I would not,” I stated.

“Will you join us?” Ilyenna gestured to the table, and my heart pulled at the lightness of her voice.

These were two of my channelers, my responsibility, and I had failed them. I should have seen this coming, though I knew I would have done the same with Karus had it not been for the very different roles we had been in seven years ago.

“Of course, we would love to.”

I glanced at Karus who was still grinning ear-to-ear. At least she could see some good in this.

We all sat, Talon and Ilyenna poking at their dinner.

“We were so relieved when the letter came that you were safe,” Talon spoke first, looking to me and adding, “And we were anxious to hear about your trial, Baron. Clairannia and Figuerah made us stay behind, but we didn’t want to. In fact, we thought we’d head to Hyrithia after another day here to see if there was anything we could do.”

The same server, seeing we had moved tables, brought us two plates of mutton glazed in a rich sauce, roasted carrots and squash on the side.

I rubbed my mouth, defeated. “Alright. I’m angry. I suspected you two had some connection for a while, but I would not have guessed you’d go and do this. And in the middle of the night—sneaking out while Pompeii, your caretaker , was ill. I would have preferred we talk about this.”

Ilyenna shook her head. “There would be nothing to say, Baron Revich. Please know we did not intend to hurt you or anyone. We only listened to our hearts, which led us here. There’s a medicus conduit who travels from here to Hyrithia often. We found her last night and she conducted the ceremony for us. We didn’t tell her we were channelers from Felgren, assuming she wouldn’t approve.”

“I’d imagine not,” I started.

She continued, “But the truth is, Baron Revich, we knew you would not allow us to do this. Or it would at least take a lot of convincing, which neither of us wanted to do, so we took our chance when it arose.”

Karus tugged on my arm and set her chin on my shoulder. “It’s quite the surprise, but I’m sure you’ve made the best decision for yourselves. I hope Pompeii isn’t upset. Did you leave a note or anything?”

Ilyenna chewed and nodded. “We told Rell and Renn. They promised to keep our secret until the morning when they would reveal it to Pompeii and the other servants. It’s probably the first time they’ve ever kept a secret for so long.”

I suppressed a grin. Ilyenna was probably right.

“Are you both doing well?” she continued as Karus dug into her food. “I mean, I’m sure there’s so much to speak of, but both of you are out of danger?”

Karus nodded, gulping water. “Yes. We have much to explain when we return for everyone to hear, but for now, catch us up on everything that has happened in Felgren the past two weeks.”

Talon cleared his throat, looking at me again. I softened my face and picked up my fork. He and I would have a serious talk later.

“It’s only been a few days since you’ve been missing. There hasn’t been a lot of time for anything exciting to happen.”

“We did read about the history of Barons, though,” Ilyenna spoke excitedly. “We went on a hunt through the Fortress, searching for each one’s portrait.” She paused and tilted her head at me. “Yours is the only one we couldn’t find. Well, Heimlen’s was missing, but we understand why that is.”

Karus turned to me, wrapping her hand around my shoulder, no doubt trying to get me to relax a bit more. “You still don’t have a portrait hanging in the Fortress somewhere?” she scoffed. “We’ll have to remedy that the moment we return, Baron Revich.”

She leaned into me again. Her charm was working. I felt my shoulders drop under her touch.

“It wasn’t ever a priority,” I murmured.

She bit her bottom lip, her eyes flicking over my chest and arms, then back up to my face. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “Well, we’ll have to make it one.”

I shifted in my seat, unsure why her words sounded so sultry or how she managed to distract me so swiftly, leaning her head to the side, exposing more of her creamy neck.

I took my plate in my hands, and she immediately did the same. We stood, both of us knowing exactly where we needed to be and it was not here in this crowded room.

“Talon, I’d like to speak to you alone.” I nodded toward the stairs, and he furrowed his brow.

“Ilyenna,” Karus spoke, “A moment, please?”

Talon rose from his seat and followed me toward the staircase. I balanced my plate of food in one hand and embraced him with the other. He patted my back and repeated, “I’m glad to see you both unharmed.”

I jostled his shoulder, speaking firmly, “I don’t think you should have done this. But I am happy for you both. Do you have styris tea?”

He nodded, looking down at his boots. “We got some today. I hope you’ll forgive us, Baron Revich.”

“I already have, Talon.” I patted his shoulder and glanced back to Karus, her own plate in her hand as she held Ilyenna close. “I’ll meet you both here in the morning. I’d like to get home before sunset tomorrow.”

He nodded, watching Karus approach. She slipped her free hand in mine, and we left upstairs without a word, both of us eager to fall into bed, both of us needing to be close, both of us almost home.