Chapter 133

Aden stirred her awhile longer, letting his breath play on her neck, letting his fingers caress her pallid skin. Each breath roused more color in her cheek. Each touch seemed to raise more warmth in her skin. He teased her back to her normal color, until the summer warmth of her skin had returned in full before he pulled himself away.

“Tend to her,” he said to the 7th floor Delrose maids as he turned to the door. “Make sure she wants for nothing.”

They bowed silently. Aden cast a glance back at Ilyin. She had now drifted back to a normal, healthy sleep, the Delrose necklace still resting against her skin.

At the sight of it, his hands clenched unconsciously into fists. He didn’t like it, this object that had done so much to her. That posed danger to her still. However sparingly she might use the power in the future, it was still there. Still a threat.

For all her soft and generous heart, Ilyin inspired a harder heart in him, the tyrant he never wanted to be. For her beauty, for her heart, he would do anything. He wished he could bid her to forget everything that had given her pain or frustration. He wanted to erase Viscount Arlen from existence for his part in making the warm region a terrible memory for her – Ilyin, who was the very image of the warm region’s beauty.

The necklace had earned the same anger from him.

If he could will it so, she would never suffer again. With a kiss and a touch, he wanted to tease open the hand that still gripped the necklace. He wanted to slip it from her neck and secret it away where she would never find it, so that she would never be in danger from it again.

For her happiness, for her to live without pain, that part of his heart wanted to keep her in a safe little world. For the sake of her, he could be tempted to be a tyrant.

He pushed the thought down again, as he had before when it rose up in his mind. Ilyin’s life was Ilyin’s. Loving her meant respecting her choices. If she wanted a wider world, he couldn’t lock her away in a small one.

It had been her, after all, that had faced Viscount Arlen rather than shrink from him. Aden’s duty was not to be a wall to contain her, but a wall that would support her unfailingly.

His love was not tyranny. It was Ilyin that ruled now without question. Ilyin that could not do as she wished with him, could have anything she asked for. Everything was now at her whim.

He left the room on tiptoes. Crept away silently, so his Mistress didn’t stir.

***

“The casualties were high,” Idith said. He straightened himself as he came into the Grandmaster’s office but couldn’t completely hide the fatigue that weighed him down.

“What did Elo say?” Aden asked.

“Well,” Idith replied with a touch of hesitation. The report bore no fault of his, but he guessed it would anger his master to hear it.

“They claim that they couldn’t reveal their secret stronghold to the Yesters, so the reinforcement was delayed.”

“Not delayed,” Aden scoffed. “They didn’t come.”

Of course, it wasn’t that Elo’s reinforcement hadn’t shown up at all. But they came very late, not arriving at Elo until after the first wave was dispatched and Aden had already left to deal with the second army. They had arrived when Idith was still overseeing the cleanup of the battlefield.”

“We always thank Delrose,” their knights had said, but there was absolutely no sincerity in it. They merely spoke the words emptily and took over the grim duty of the cleanup.

“We can’t be more of a burden to the Delrose,” they’d insisted, but the tone was clear again. The Elo knights were kicking the Delrose knights out of their territory.

It was right to delegate the cleanup to the Elo reinforcement. It was their territory, after all, and Biflten was a place where each house’s territory was respected. But no one should be expected to look kindly on those who ignored a desperate need until it was over, then stepped right into ordering around those who had dealt with it.

“So, the scale of the casualties?” Aden asked, jarring Idith from his thoughts. He made a quick bow, his eyes sad with memories of Elo.

“We left Elo’s territory before everything was completely sorted. The actual situation won’t be known until we receive their report,” Idith said. “But it seems almost impossible to revive the area.”

“It was April,” Aden muttered, nodding to himself. He had seen much of it himself, but it was another matter to have someone else confirm it. April Yesters had fallen upon the citizens. The casualties would certainly be beyond the norm.

The Grandmaster’s office fell into silence. The first duty of the Duke of Winter was to protect the people of Biflten and the winter region.  Of course, the moment the four houses had been granted their own territory, that duty had been shared. The Elders of each house bore it as well. That was why they each had armies of armored knights.