The amusement faded from his eyes and he bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”
“No reason for you to be. My father loved me, as did his family. They couldn’t have predicted my mother’s death.” She hesitated before adding, “Childbirth is a dangerous business.”
“Your father raised you then?” He drew one knee up, resting his elbow on it as he studied her.
Such a simple, innocent question. No reason for to cause such a volatile surge in her emotions.
And yet…
Tyriel rose and eyed the swordsman, her eyes narrowing. Emotions swirled within, surging with the violent power of a storm.
Aryn uncoiled and got to his feet, hands out in front of him in a conciliating manner. His blue eyes widened, growing shades darker as nerves spiked.
Her sharp ears picked up the erratic trip of his heartbeat.
Tyriel blew out a soft, control breath and pulled back on the magic that had built inside her, causing her skin to glow and her eyes to spark.
Such uncontrolled spikes of power hadn’t happened in ages.
Closing her eyes, she pulled the power back inside her and turned from Aryn.
She walked away, his unanswered question an echo in her mind.
Hours later, that question still sounded in her mind.
Who raised you?
The wagon train left in the morning at first light. If she had any sense, she’d be in town, getting a decent meal at some fine inn, the last she’d have for several weeks, if not more. Instead, she sat by the creek near where the wagon train encampment, her leather leggings shoved up to her knees and her bare feet in the chilly water.
Lowering her eyes to the cold, clear water, she tried to figure out why Aryn’s question had upset her so much. She had loved her father, still did. She’d never once questioned his love for her. Keeping her isolated from her mother’s family had been a misguided attempt to protect her.
Da was a good father, had always been kind, loving, generous, unafraid to show those emotions. Not exactly a commonality among the high fae, especially the High Royals.
Not that her aunts and uncles hadn’t been kind, hadn’t shown her love.
But it had been a distant thing, their many years of life engendering a remoteness that even the bonds of family couldn’t break.
Outside the family, others hadn’t been so kind.
More than a few had found themselves bloodied by her father, one of his fighters, even by aunts, uncles and cousins.
Being a member of the High Family didn’t protect her from the prejudice too many elves carried. Being a half-breed was a step up from being a dog in the eyes of some.
By the time she was ten, her father had retreated with her to one of the most remote estates the family owned and there she stayed until she almost thirty—still a child in the eyes of the people but in reality, she’d been on the cusp of adulthood, thanks to her mother’s more mortal bloodline.
There, on the Estate of Hyra, a large piece of territory that had once been a fortress stronghold for the fae armies who guarded Eivisia from the wild magics that had nearly ripped their world in two, Tyriel learned her own magic under the tutelage of Eivisia’s greatest mages. She’d learned to fight and swing a sword under the tutelage of the land’s most fearsome warriors, her father’s own men, the legendary De Asir.
Her father had allowed every request, denying her nothing when it came to honing her skills with both magic and blade.
Many elvish princes and princesses barely trained their magic for anything more complex than lighting a fire or pretty little displays that might make a suitor laugh at court.
Tyriel thought the idea of court sounded terribly dull.
Her father had never cared for court himself and had long been a warrior. With countless enemies both inside the fae realm and without, the idea of his daughter knowing how to protect herself was a comfort.
He hadn’t realized she’d been training for the day when she’d slip away.
He’d loved her dearly, still did. His people were the same and every time she returned, it was to tears and laughter and celebratory balls that lasted for days.
She loved Averne and the lands of Hyra, but she’d been suffocating there.
Her father hadn’t realized he’d been stifling her.
That he’d done what he had thought was best, what he had thought was right, she’d never doubted. Keeping her isolated from all—the Kin and the Wildlings—trying to protect what some of his own cousins had deemed a ‘mongrel child’.
He couldn’t have known, or understood, how easily and deeply Wildlings gave their love. Not when the elves rarely gave anything easily, and loved nothing deeply, save themselves and their own.
So different from her mother’s people, the Wildlings of High Barrow.
When she had arrived among them forty years earlier, she had been welcomed with open arms and happy hearts by her mother’s family.
They’d thrown a weeklong celebration. There, she’d laughed, sang, played and danced with dark-eyed men with bold smiles and hot eyes.
Everything the Wildlings did, they did with passion and life—so very different from the People.
Absently, she fingered the elongated curve of her ear, so much longer than that of her human kin, yet it was remarkably dissimilar from her elvish cousins.
You should have died…she’d heard the whispers in the years since she’d forced her father to acknowledge she was no longer a child he could protect by locking away on a lavish estate.
Instead, because of her father’s love and her determination, she thrived.
After spending a decade with her mother’s Wildling clan, learning more about the magic her human mother had possessed and why her own was so different from other fae, she’d traveled farther west, into other mortal lands.
Five years at a school for assassins, another five at a school of higher learning where she studied the history of all the people of this world instead of just the elvish, and learning nearly thirty languages—within the first two years. The third year, the headmaster had said there was nothing more they could teach her so she could either become an instructor herself or she could leave.
She’d tried her hand at instruction which was great fun the first year, entertaining enough the second, and awful the third. After that, she left and went back to her father’s side for a decade, this time, insisting he live his life as he had before he’d retreated from elvish society to care for his little halfling daughter.
He’d been wary, but he’d relented.
He’d taken her with him to the first court ball only because she’d said she’d come to experience life at court.
Moments after their introduction, as they descended a grand staircase of pure Stefini marble, there had a titter in the crowd, followed by a low male whisper and laugh. Tyriel, without a blink, had dropped a blade into her palm and threw it. The man who’d laughed had screamed like a young child when it buried itself in his shoulder.
Nobody else had laughed as one of the footman rushed to retrieve the blade and bring it to her, after carefully cleaning the gleaming steel.
She’d accepted it and returned it to its place, while her father had said, tone bland, “The next time, she has my permission to use an iron blade. Insults to the royal families are punishable with any punishment we see fit to dole out.”