Aedan Part 7
Aedan stirred, woken by the sound of the door. He blinked, lost for a moment. Where was he? He started to uncurl himself out of the ball he’d slept in, wincing as his body remembered its various pains.
The door had swung open in the meantime, and Robb had entered. He was holding a tray in his hands. “It’s morning,” he said, seeing Aedan sitting up. “I’ve brought you some food.”
Aedan mumbled something incoherent and sat for a moment, blinking at his knees. The events of the previous day caught up with him, and his wing throbbed in reminder.
“Robb,” he said. “You’re – you’re here.” Aedan tried to sort through the complicated tangle of feelings that were filling up his chest. Robb considered Aedan an enemy now. Why would he be here, first thing in the morning?
Robb bent over to put the tray on the floor, not far from Aedan’s bare feet.
“What’s happening?” Aedan asked, curling his feet up underneath him.
Robb frowned down at Aedan. “With you? Nothing. Yet.” He hesitated for a moment, and then hunkered down to sit on the floor beside Aedan. He nudged the tray towards Aedan across the floor. “I just remembered that if I didn’t have something brought to you, it wouldn’t happen.”
The tray contained bread and fruit, and a pot of very cold tea. Aedan found, to his surprise, that he was hungry. He supposed he hadn’t eaten in a while.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, and reached out cautiously for a piece of fruit. His mouth was sore from where Lucas had hit him, yesterday. He tried to only chew on the other side.
Robb watched him, unsettlingly, as he ate. Robb was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and he had deep shadows under both his eyes. Hadn’t he slept?
Aedan picked up another piece, and glanced up at Robb. “Um. Have you…?” Tentatively, he pushed the plate a little towards Robb, offering it to him.
Robb’s brows pulled close together, and he stared at Aedan as if he’d done something crazy. Then he gave a short, humourless huff of laughter. “Not right now, Aedan. Thank you, though.”
Aedan nodded, uncertainly. He searched for something to say, something that wasn’t just repeating what he’d said yesterday. Please don’t hurt me. I promise I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt the king. I wasn’t spying on you, I wouldn’t even know how to spy.
He went to pour some of the tea. Hiding behind the pot was another tiny cup of viscous liquid. “Martin gave that to me for you,” Robb said, seeing Aedan looking at it. “He said it’s for pain. Your wing looks… better.”
It hurt, viciously, throbbing at his back. Aedan didn’t say that, though; he found there was only one thing he really wanted to ask Robb.
“Is Shae back?” he whispered.
“No,” Robb said.
Lucas’ voice hissed in Aedan’s memory. Trust me, Shae’s fine. She told me where to find him. She never liked that creature anyway.
Aedan’s chest hurt. He let the piece of bread he was holding fall back to the tray. “Is she – when she does come back – will she – ”
“I don’t know,” Robb said shortly. “I haven’t spoken to her in days.”
Aedan took a deep breath. “Robb… she didn’t tell Lucas where I was, did she?” He blinked, his eyes starting to sting with tears. He knew his voice was pleading. “She wouldn’t do that. You don’t think she would, do you?”
Robb looked uncomfortable. “I don’t… Did anyone else know you were on the roof? I wouldn’t have thought to look there.” He started to get to his feet. “But I really don’t know. Look, I’ll just leave the tray.”
Aedan sniffled, and gave up on holding back the tears. He drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. Robb had as good as said that, yes, he thought Shae would have told Lucas where to find him. They couldn’t both of them be wrong about her, could they?
Maybe Shae really would be glad to be rid of Aedan, he thought, listening to the sound of Robb closing and locking the door behind him. Was Aedan just really, really dense? Had he missed it? He remembered Tamsin telling him once that humans thought wingfolk were storybook monsters. So Shae probably hadn’t wanted to marry Aedan, maybe she had thought of him as a monster at first, but she’d changed her mind, hadn’t she?
Hadn’t she?
Well, maybe that changed when people like you took her father, he thought. Maybe that made her realise she doesn’t trust you at all.
He wondered what had happened. Uncle Aelric had wanted the treaty, he hadn’t wanted to keep fighting with the humans. He’d told Aedan that enough people had lost their lives – and Aedan had nodded, a little awed at having his powerful uncle speak to him so seriously. What had changed?
In the end, Aedan drank the little cup of pain medication. As he’d suspected, within fifteen minutes he found his eyelids drooping and his train of thought slowing.
Well, this is useless, he thought, lying listlessly on his front, propping his chin on his folded arms. I mean, it doesn’t hurt as much, but I’m not going to be able to do anything.
Like what? What are you going to do that the drugs are stopping you from doing?
He turned his face to the side, feeling hopeless. Nothing. He could do nothing. He hadn’t even tried to talk to Robb while he was here, because he was an idiot! If he was going to be locked up in a room and only be able to speak to Robb once a day, he should have found some way to work with that. He should have tried harder to get people to listen to him. Some token of peace you are.
If he had magic, like Tamsin, he would be able to get out of here. But you don’t, do you? Because you didn’t try hard enough.
One year earlier
Aedan leaned forward over his cupped hands, lip caught between his teeth, concentrating fiercely.
Nothing happened. He sighed and let his hands drop. “It isn’t working,” he said sadly.
Aedan and Tamsin sat under a tree, the breeze stirring their hair and Aedan’s feathers. Tamsin had her skirts tucked up around her crossed legs, revealing sturdy leather boots.
Tamsin caught his hands in hers and brought them together again. “Aedan,” she chided. “Heavens, we’ve been at this barely half an hour and you’re ready to give up?”
Aedan ducked his head, abashed. “Well, yeah, half an hour and nothing’s happened,” he said. “I thought you said it came easily to us?”
“Easily compared to humans,” Tamsin corrected. She flashed a smile that put dimples in her cheeks. “Did you think it would happen instantaneously, Aedan? It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work – up until it does! Keep trying.”
Aedan grinned sheepishly. “Okay,” he said, leaning forward again. He focused on the air in between his cupped palms, and willed a flame to appear.
Nothing.
“I just wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing,” he said, after another minute of fruitless concentration. “You said to concentrate, but concentrate on what? What does magic feel like?”
Tamsin leaned back, supporting herself with her hands in the grass. “It’s… hard to explain,” she said. “What does it feel like to use magic when you fly?”
Aedan cocked his head, frowning.
Aedan knew that his wingspan stretched a little over five feet from tip to tip. But, when he was flying, he also knew that they were ten feet across, or twelve. That they could grow and shrink with as much thought as he gave folding or spreading them.
“It doesn’t really feel like anything special,” he said, puzzled. “It’s just like… I don’t know, I decide that it’s going to happen, and then it does. It’s kind of like using a muscle?”
She snapped her fingers. “There you go!” she said, beaming. “That’s a good description! It’ll probably feel similar to that! Like using a muscle you didn’t realise you had.”
“Well, that doesn’t help at all!” Aedan protested, laughing. “Will you show me again?”
Tamsin held her hand out in between them, palm up. After a moment, a pale green flame appeared, flickering and dancing about an inch above her skin.
Aedan bent his neck around to examine it from different angles, and frowned. “I mustn’t be doing it right.”
“We’ll try again next time I visit,” Tamsin promised. She uncrossed her legs, hopped back up onto her feet and dusted her hands off. “You’ll get it eventually. You aren’t going to give up on me, are you, Aedan?” Her raised eyebrow was a challenge.
“No!” Aedan said indignantly. He scrambled up too. “Of course not!”
A few months earlier
“Aedan,” Phylla said.
“Yes?” Aedan said, his fingers gently smoothing the secondary feathers on her left wing where it was spread out enough to lie in his lap.
“If you do agree to this plan of Tamsin’s,” Phylla said slowly. “You know that you –”
He sighed. “Mama,” he said, a little shortly. “I said I’d think about it. I’m not going to jump into this without thinking of everything. Okay?”
Her wing moved under his hands, as she shifted position. “I know. I know you’re taking it seriously. That’s not what I was going to say.”
He moved to the next feather. “Well, what were you going to say?”
She held still. “You need to know that you can always come home,” she said quietly. “Always, no matter what, you can come back here to me. They’ll tell you that you can’t – they’ll say it’s a contract, they’ll say you made a commitment – but you can. It’s what I did. If you’ve done your best and it didn’t work out, if you aren’t happy, you can always come home.”
Aedan stared down at his mother’s wing. Her feathers were the same colour as his, deep brown. Big enough and strong enough to block out anything the world might throw at him. He used to wonder whether his wings would ever be that big.
“Sure, Mama,” he said softly. “I know.”
Aedan turned his head to watch the door, feeling sick with shame and misery, and the stupid pain drug. Part of him wished he had listened to his mother; she had thought this was a bad idea from the start and it looked like she had been right.
But Aedan had thought he was helping. He hadn’t wanted to give up. And look where it had got him.
I do want to come home, Mama, but I don’t think I can anymore.