Chapter fifteen - The Rivernorth bloodline

Hours after the arena fight, I find myself exactly where I knew I'd be.

The Draggards district.

Any sane person wouldn't trust someone who'd mysteriously mentioned your father and told to meet in the district where no one dared to ever enter. But the entire day, I'd kept quiet, thinking of how she said she knew him, how he'd spoken of me.

Therefore, once I'd made up my mind, I explained to Freya I needed fresh air out in the city. She'd nodded with a smile and resumed with her newest passion: poetry.

And here I am, at the mouth of brothels and judging stares from people as I walk past. I'm all familiar with that look, so it did not bother me.

Streaks of golden sunlight carve the grime-cobbled roads full of stalls, selling meats still dripping in blood, herbal medicines, and... creatures in cages of all sizes.

Heart hammering, I slowly make my way through, trying not to glance at them. I keep one hand on the sheath at my waist and cover it with my cloak. But a nasal voice, old and frightened, calls from the sides, "Help me, please help me!"

Don't look, don't look, don't look—

"Shut up," someone says before muttering, "filthy Goblin."

I suppose not looking is out of the question now.

Clenching my fists, I spin on the heel of my boots and spot a Vendor banging the small cage. It rattles as the Goblin falls onto its bottom. Its bat-like moss green ears flap over its obsidian eyes, covering the hook of its nose.

I storm up to the vendor. He turns, albeit he's taller than me, as his belly protrudes from below his linen shirt. "How much for the Goblin?" I jerk my chin towards the cage. Guilty, for the first time, I feel guilty that I'd captured these creatures, and this is where they ended up being sold as slaves or who knows what else. I'd set it free as soon as I'd pay the seller, but I didn't have much on me. Despite a trainee, we didn't get the payments a true Venator would.

The man lets out a nasty phlegm-like laugh. "Why would you want a goblin for?" His rotten grin revolts me. "I think you're lost, sunshine. Why don't I point you in the right direction back to the brothels?"

Oh, I'll break his hand, then cut it off and feed it to the Goblin.

Glaring with such maliciousness, I reach for my dagger then stare at those stocky fingers caked in dirt. I'm about to lunge at him with it, but a firm voice from behind causes me to cease my movements. Why does everyone stop me!

"That's not how we speak to women, Tig. You should know that by now." The man now comes to stand close beside me. I sneak a side glance up at the dark hairs curling below his ear and his black cloak like mine. "Learn to respect them unless you'd rather end up in one of these cages." He smiles mockingly towards Tig. "Though I doubt that'd be humiliating enough for you. I'd much rather see you being chased by a Rumen."

I swallow the laugh prickling at my throat.

"Archer," Tig mumbles. "Always a delight when you visit."

"I'll take the Goblin. He must tire from seeing your face every day." Archer hands over some copper coins and, much to Tig's grumbling hesitance, takes it. Turning to me, Archer narrows his brown eyes with a glint of humor. "Nice dagger."

My gaze shoots down to the blade still tucked inside my fist. The edge wasn't as sharp, neither did it shine like a knife should, but it's one I'd had for years that still managed to work. I sheath it back in, staring up at him. Strange... For whatever reason, it's as if he looks like everyone I'd known in my life merged.

"What is your name?" He asks, a smile rippling from his lips.

"I'm—" I pause just as my attention snags on a wooden sign behind him, at the far ends of the street. The Crescent Eye. "I'm sorry," I say, looking back at him. I do not have time to talk with people I'd likely not see again. "I have to go, I—thank you."

"You have nothing to thank me for." He says, and I draw my brows in at the familiarity of him. "Enjoy the rest of your evening." He bows, and I nod another thank you regardless before rushing past him towards the tavern.

Reaching the doors, I peek over my shoulder only to see Archer gone as well as the cage where the Goblin was held.

I can't tell what type of person Archer is, but whether the Goblin was safer with him, I'd never know.

Pushing back that thought, I forget the Goblin and everything else as I set foot inside the tavern. Sweltering heat from drunken bodies flocks the crimson room with their brays of nauseating laughter and brawls among tables. Nothing but drabs of brown ripped dresses and men in ragged tunics blend with the entirety of the vast Inn. Such starkness to the bright shades of clothing in the central of the city.

And it didn't take a genius to figure out Leira is the woman who'd asked me to come and meet her here.

A tankard hauls across the tavern, splattering mead on the walls as I make my way to a barmaid at the edge of the bar. I ask for Leira, and the woman doesn't smile, doesn't react. She just bows her head, extending an arm towards the back of the Inn, and leads me through a beaded curtain doorway.

The barmaid silently leaves me by the entrance, and I take a breath. Guttural noises from the tavern become muffled as my gaze shifts to every corner of the dim room full of shelves stacked with herbs and oils, likely for healing. But there's no windows nor paintings in this barren place that I wonder if I should have come at all.

A clutter drags my eyes to the center of a small oak table where Leira stands behind it. "Naralía," she breathes a smile. "You came."

I don't answer, observing as her smile fades and approaches me instead, placing one hand on my back and signaling me to sit on the chair.

She lights a candle and settles herself opposite me, resting her arms against the table. Beads and all sorts of bracelets dangle from her wrist as the flame flickers between us.

"You live here?" At last, I ask.

"We reside here most of the time, but my wife Aelle owns a cottage just far out of the city."

A slow nod comes as my reply, gazing off to my right at the shelf of books above a mahogany counter. All bound in leather before I look at the one out in full view. The same violet amethyst Leira carries in her hair is embedded in the core of the book.

Amethyst, a crystal many spoke of as a witch's symbol. And that book wasn't an ordinary one, if not a grimoire. "You're a witch," I say, gazing back at Leira all too warily.

Her eyes move to where the grimoire is, and she sighs. "I understand you're cautious of me."

"It's not every day I get a witch telling me in a secretive manner that we meet in the Draggards."

It's not everyday one accepts that offer.

She chuckles despite my mistrusting tone. "I understand. As witches, we're often depicted to be dangerous though, if we used any magic—" Her stare, empty as she looks away. "—We'd be better off dead."

My face hardens into concentration at the candle. I'd heard how rare witches were—that they used their magic to enchant any mortal, and if it was witnessed, they'd be hanged.

"It's not true, you know. What they say about us enchanting mortals."

My eyes dart up through furrowed brows. "Did you just read my mind?"

She shakes her head, drawing her bottom lip in. "No, we can't read minds, but we can feel emotions, influence them even. And based on your apprehension followed by the idea that everyone thinks of witches as manipulators, it wasn't hard to guess that was what you were thinking." Shifting on her seat and at my need to now hide any emotions, she says, "Millennials ago... our ancestors—witches called Exarees were guides and protectors to shifters after they helped the Exarees against the raging wars with—"

"Sorcerers," I cut in. "I know the history." Sorcerers and witches had feuded for centuries before the treaty, most against power. After the witches and shifters won, not many sorcerers lived. Now, most spoke of only a few alive, residing in other kingdoms.

"So, you know of the Rivernorth bloodline. The previous rulers of Emberwell that were shifters."

Again, I try not to let it show on my face, the surprise of never hearing that name. I knew there was a ruler before the queen but who? I'd never been told. "No," I mutter.

"I thought so." She leans back, talking more to herself.

"And how do you know?" I ask, narrowing my brows. "Witches aren't immortal."

"I know because my sister," she says, cautious. "Over twenty years ago, fell in love with a shifter. He'd lived through the era when the treaty was forged, lived to see the fall of the Rivernorths. All killed, which means someone else had to take the throne."

"The queen," I say with the single thought that'd popped into my mind. "Did she... kill them?" I'd wondered what her story was, what she was if she held power for someone who's lived over three hundred years. Yet no one knew, which is why rumors that she was a surviving sorceress surfaced.

"It's a possibility," Leira hums. "But the true extent of what happened is not known. That side of history is so buried in Emberwell, I'd only known parts here and there thanks to my sister."

"Where is your sister now?"

A speck of sorrow shines in her hazel eyes as she withholds my stare. "She perished."

I can't sense emotions, feel them like Leira says she can, but I felt pain in those two words. "I'm terribly sorry for your loss," I whisper, hiding the grimace over telling her a phrase I'd despised hearing myself from others in the past.

Her thankful smile is weak and sealed. "You know, sometimes I prefer to imagine she's somewhere else still alive, perhaps in one of the other lands of Zerathion. Then I remind myself how even if she were breathing, stepping foot into another kingdom might as well be a death trap."

"Because we have to stick to our territories, and only rulers can cross if they need be," I say what I know, what I mainly know.

Leira nods. "For meetings with the queen, to celebrate Noctura and to witness the trials of a trainee become a Venator. The only ruler who has never once made an appearance is the king of Terranos."

The Elven king.

"Why?" I ask. I'd thought previously that the Elven king despised Emberwell too much to ever come. For all I know, it could still well be the exact reason for him never crossing territories. He is the one whose land is known to hold the darkest, most fearsome place... The screaming forests.

I shudder, remembering the times I'd come close to the borders when trapping and days where Idris would pick me up as a child who'd wandered near there.

"It's something I'm still trying to figure out, " Leira notes. "Aelle and I thought perhaps he is the one in charge of those new creatures."

I frown at the mention of the new breed. "What about the Golden Thief?"

"That boy?" Her brows rise. "He may be the only known shifter to carry all three dragon powers, but it's doubtful he's the one causing havoc other than robbing every store out there."

Just don't worry over those rumors, Lorcan had told me, but it's all I can do. "Well, did your sister never say? She knew a shifter, why—"

"Because even then she was secretive, she held onto many things and—and we'd fought too much, too often until she left one day, and I didn't see her for many years. I had to hear from someone who knew the shifter that they'd both been found dead near a forest up north."

I shut my mouth, slouching back onto the chair. The candle wavers amongst my movements. And then, after a minute, Leira says in a soft-spoken voice, "There's always something so frightening in life that we all terribly crave to change. Be it the death of a loved one, yourself, or the world, it's something we automatically yearn for."

Like her sister's death... my father's. "How did you know my father?" My voice is unrecognizable.

Leira loosens a defeated breath, running a hand through thick obsidian curls. "A year prior to his death, we'd met when another Venator had accused me of stealing. Your father swooped in and saved me. He'd always spoken how he didn't agree to many aspects of a Venator. Still, that day as a token of my appreciation, I invited him for tea, and from then on, he made sure to visit once in a while."

A lump forms in my throat, but I smile, picturing how he'd likely had made a quirky remark during that time.

"Your father was a man of great curiosity, Naralía," she continues. "Whenever he thought there was injustice, he'd say it, but he also managed to lead so many to victory as a Venator that he was a legend among us all."

I laugh under my breath, gazing down at my hands. "He was far too modest with it though."

"Not when it came to the love of his children."

I look up with my heart pressing so hard against my chest, but Leira's eyes darken in pools of fear.

"There is something that you should know with your father," she says as the saddened smiles I have on flatten into a straight line. "Weeks before I'd received the news of his passing, he'd become frantic, telling me there was something unsettling in Emberwell until, on the day of the Venator trials for the new trainees, he'd spotted me from the crowds and told me he'd figured it all out."

She pauses as if waiting for a reaction from me, yet I make no movement to say something; my face is purely stone.

"Confused, I'd questioned him," Leira notices how tense I am as everything she says comes out carefully. "But he'd only said that when he'd return from his visit to his family, he'd explain everything... Except he never got to."

Because that was his last visit to us, that was the week he'd died.

"Naralía," she exhales, closing her eyes and wincing before she opens them and meets the blue shades of mine. "I think your father's death was not an accident."

Accident.

The word I knew she would say and something that she knew herself I would disagree with.

"My father," my voice a quiet vex. "Was killed by a full-fledged dragon. He was attacked."

"But during that time—"

"I was there." A flicker of irritation in my tone. "I was there when my brother shot an arrow through that dragon's back. I have the thick scar running down my palm and my arm of that day."

"But could it have truly been a dragon? Could it—"

"I witnessed him die, Leira! I witnessed the dragon in front of me. I—" My hands pull back my hair as I shoot up from the chair. Leira rises, chary of how I'd just reacted as she slowly walks towards me.

"There is something off involving Emberwell," she says, the lines of her forehead crease. "I mean the history behind it, these new creatures? It can't be a coincidence that your father died right when he'd discovered something."

I shake my head, and my feet sway. "Coincidence or not, he died in a dragon attack, nothing more."

"Wait, Naralía—" She reaches for my wrist as I'm about to turn, and as soon as her touch connects with mine, her eyes fade to complete white before the words come out of her like a trance:

"The sun blooms again for she has found her moon,

Death, reign, and resurrection commence,

But he who shall bear thy wicked bite,

A beast no less, though a heart of gold—"

I snatch my arm away from her grip, and she stumbles back with a sharp inhale as if breaking through deep waters. Her eyes return to colors of green and browns as we stare at each other. Frowning, I hold my wrist to my chest, and she remains speechless. Whatever that was, she sang it like a lullaby, a soothing melody, but the words were chilling.

Still keeping my wrist to my body, I rush out through the curtain door where the main tavern is. I careen past the tables of people seated and out into the streets, never turning to see if Leira tries to follow me or not.

***

Stalking back into the barracks, my pulse beats alarmingly. I'd acted too harsh, leaving Leira when all she wanted was to aid and inform me of things I deserved to know. But nine years, I've seen in my nightmares how that dragon clawed at my father, nine years, I've carried this scar as a reminder of that day. Telling me that it might not have been the case is like changing the beliefs I'd had for so long.

"Nara."

I freeze near the corner of the empty hallway, scrunching my face as I mentally curse, knowing who is behind me.

"Nara, you do realize not moving doesn't make you invisible, right? I can still see you."

Huffing out a breath, I spin towards Lorcan's stoic stare on me, his lips in a firm line though I can see the faint tug at them.

It just had to be him that appears.