Trystan
“Where’s Rafe?”
“Rafe’s out,” Trystan says absently as he lies on his bed, not bothering to look up from the large Physiks text he’s engrossed in.
The eleventh month has come, and with it a killing frost, the trees suddenly laid bare, the fire in the North Tower now a necessity.
It’s late, the end of another week, and I’ve spent the last hour wrestling with my History of Gardneria text, new questions clamoring for my attention as I read and reread parts of the large volume. Things aren’t adding up, and I want to talk to Rafe about it.
We’re supposed to be Gardnerians, the Blessed Ones, the First Children, blameless and pure. And all of the other races are supposed to be the Evil Ones, the Cursed Ones. But more and more it seems as if life has the disturbing habit of refusing to align itself into such neat columns.
It’s all extremely confusing.
“What’s Rafe doing?” I ask as Trystan continues to read.
“Hiking. As usual,” he says absently.
“Oh.” That’s disappointing. Rafe’s always out and unavailable lately.
“He’s hiking with Diana Ulrich,” Trystan says as an afterthought. “He’s been out hiking with her every night this week.”
My eyes widen. “He has?”
Trystan glances up at me, perplexed by my surprise.
“She’s the Lupine girl,” I point out.
“I know,” he says calmly, looking back down at his book, as if the idea of Rafe spending so much time with a shapeshifter is somehow normal.
I think back to that night in the dining hall, to the way Rafe and Diana seemed to instantly fall in with each other. The look on her face when she glanced back at him, just before leaving.
“Don’t you think that’s a little...strange?” I prod.
Trystan shrugs. “Life is strange.”
My worry spikes. Rafe can’t become interested in a Lupine. He’ll bring the wrath of two powerful races straight onto his head. And hers, too.
“Do you think they...like each other?”
“Maybe,” Trystan says flatly.
I blink at him, really concerned now. “She’s a shapeshifter.”
Both his eyebrows go up. “Translation: ‘she’s an Evil One’?”
“Sweet Ancient One, no,” I sputter, sounding shrill and defensive to my own ears. “Of course I don’t think she’s evil, but...but Rafe can’t like her that way. Our people aren’t exactly on good terms with each other.”
Trystan smirks, his tone bitter. “So you think affection respects diplomatic pettiness?”
I fume at his sarcasm. “Perhaps it should. When it’s hazardous to your future.”
Trystan rolls his eyes and goes back to reading.
“How can you be so calm?” I don’t know why I’m asking him that. Trystan is always calm. And right now it’s driving me up the wall.
“Ren, maybe they’re just friends.”
I snort derisively at this. “Have you even met her?”
“No,” Trystan replies, his tone clipped. “I haven’t.”
“Well, she can be infuriating. And arrogant.” And brave. And kind. But she’s placing our brother in potentially serious danger. “And she runs around naked half the time!” I insist. “And now she’s trying to steal our brother away from us.”
There are things I’m growing to truly like about Diana, admire even, but I push them roughly to the back of my mind. I know I’m being wrongheaded, and I’m ashamed of my words even as I say them, but this is a road that could lead to disaster. There’s just no way around that fact.
Trystan’s eyes flicker up briefly from his book. He looks at me like I’m becoming mentally unhinged. “Do you honestly think someone could steal...Rafe?”
“She has bewitched him with her beauty.”
Trystan rolls his eyes at me. “They’re probably just walking around in the woods, Ren.”
How can he be so infuriatingly blind? “No. She’s trying to sink her claws, and I do mean claws, into him.”
Trystan smiles slightly at this.
I plop down on the bed behind me and glare at him in consternation, my arms crossed tightly in front of me. He goes back to reading his text, doing his best to ignore me as I sit there stupidly fuming.
Just then Yvan barges in, a bag slung over his shoulder, a pile of large texts under one arm. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees me and freezes, his expression rearranging itself into the familiar intense appearance he always wears when I’m around.
“What?” I snap at him, stung by his persistent unfriendly behavior.
He doesn’t answer me, just stands there looking mortified, spots of color lighting both his cheeks. I suddenly realize, in complete embarrassment, that I’m sitting on his bed.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I quickly apologize, grabbing my books and bag as I shoot up, my face also coloring deeply. Gardnerian and Keltic girls do not sit on men’s beds, not unless the man is a brother. This is a huge breach of etiquette.
Yvan stiffly pulls off his dark woolen cloak and throws it on the bed, along with his bag and books, as if marking his territory, and fixes me with another intense, green-eyed glare. Then he grabs some texts and stalks over to the desk near his bed.
I, in turn, take a seat at the foot of Trystan’s bed, my back slumped down against the wall behind me, my face hot and uncomfortable. The room has become claustrophobic, but I’m determined to stay so that I can confront Rafe about all this gallivanting with Diana. I pull my own books out, and the three of us retreat into the transient escape of study.
Every now and then I glance over at Trystan, and am surprised to catch him peering at Yvan’s back, his expression a bit odd, almost liquid, like he’s slipping into a dream state.
Feeling my stare, Trystan quickly looks back down at his book, and I nonchalantly peek at Yvan out of the corner of my eye to try and figure out what, exactly, Trystan is seeing.
Yvan is resting his forehead on his hand as he reads, his body stiff and ill at ease. It’s a Physicians’ Guild text, and I can make out surgical diagrams on the pages he’s open to.
Yvan cuts a nice figure, I reluctantly admit. He’s long and lean, and when his piercing green eyes aren’t tense, they’re stunning. My eyes are increasingly drawn to him in the kitchens, his strength and lithe grace tangling my thoughts and setting my heart thudding harder. I can’t help but remember how he looked when he smiled at Fern on my first day in the kitchens—how dazzling that smile was, how devastatingly handsome I found him to be.
I bite the inside of my cheek in annoyance.
Why does he have to be so distractingly good-looking? And why do I have to find him so attractive when he clearly doesn’t like me at all? And besides—he’s a Kelt!
But I can’t help but notice that his hostility toward me has lessened lately. I catch him in the kitchens, sometimes, eyeing me back with those intense green eyes of his. As if he’s trying to figure me out. It always sends an unsettling warmth prickling through me. But soon after our eyes meet, there’s always that searing flash of anger as he glares at me, then looks sharply away.
After about an hour of tension-filled silence, Yvan abruptly shuts his book, gets up, grabs the bag on his bed and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The thick, uncomfortable tension in the room leaves with him, and I breathe a deep sigh of relief at his going.
“I don’t know how you can stand living with him,” I tell Trystan. “He’s so intense.”
Trystan doesn’t say anything. His eyes flicker up to meet mine for a brief second before making their way back down to his book.
“Hey,” I say suspiciously, “why were you staring at him?”
Trystan doesn’t say anything for a moment, continuing to focus on his book as I wait impatiently for his response.
“Because he’s beautiful,” Trystan finally says, his voice so low it’s almost a whisper.
The words hang in the air between us, and I can feel the weight of them pressing down on me. I have a sudden, uncomfortable feeling that things I’ve long been ignoring are becoming undeniable.
“What do you mean?” I ask slowly.
He doesn’t answer me, only stiffens and continues to stare at his book.
I’m misinterpreting him. I have to be. Yvan is beautiful. Achingly so. Trystan’s just stating an obvious fact. But the way he said it.
Unwelcome thoughts begin to assert themselves. Whereas I’ve often seen Rafe flirting with girls and noticing the pretty ones walking when we’d travel to the large, open-air winter markets, I’ve never once seen Trystan notice a girl. He’s always been happy to just spend time with Gareth.
Trystan’s eyes flicker up to meet mine again, his expression sad and defiant at the same time. I’m barely breathing, my mouth agape.
“Oh, Trystan. Please tell me you’re not saying...”
His mouth tightens into a hard line, his expression pained.
“You can’t really think he’s...beautiful. You can’t think that way. Trystan, tell me you don’t mean it that way.”
He doesn’t respond and plasters his eyes to a spot on his book as panic rears up inside me.
“Holy Ancient One, Trystan, does Yvan know?”
Yvan can’t know. No one can know this.
“I think so,” Trystan says stiffly. “Maybe that’s why he’s so careful not to undress around me.”
“Oh, Trystan,” I breathe, panic clamoring at the edges of my thoughts, “this is really bad.”
“I know,” he admits tightly.
“The Mage Council...they throw people in prison who...”
“I know, Ren.”
“You can’t be this way. You just can’t. You have to change.”
Trystan continues to stare rigidly at the book. “I don’t think I can,” he says softly.
“Then you can’t tell anyone,” I insist, shaking my head for emphasis. “No one can know.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” His voice is still calm, but I can hear pain breaking through. And an edge of anger.
“Who else knows?” I ask, my thoughts spinning out in all directions.
“I think Rafe’s figured it out.”
“And what does he think?”
Trystan lets out a deep breath. “You know Rafe. He goes his own way on practically everything. And lets others do the same.”
“What about Uncle Edwin?”
“I don’t know.”
“And Gareth?”
“Gareth knows,” he says succinctly.
“You told him?”
Why did he tell Gareth and not me? I feel a sharp pang of hurt.
“He figured it out.”
“How?”
Trystan finally abandons the pretense of reading and closes his book. “He knows because I tried to kiss him.”
My face flies open in shock. “You tried to kiss...Gareth?” For a moment I just gape at him. “What...what did he do? When you tried to...”
“When I tried to kiss him?” he cuts in sharply. “He told me he was sorry, but he was only attracted to women.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, the ramifications of his being this way like a dark storm brewing.
I rub at my aching head. “Oh, Trystan,” I say, stunned. My religion has just been turned into a weapon. Aimed straight at my brother. “They’ll see you as one of the Evil Ones. If anyone finds out...”
“I know.”
I shake my head, feeling dazed. “I seem to be collecting them these days, you know.”
“Evil Ones?”
“Icarals, Lupines—” A hidden Water Fae. “—and now you.”
Trystan shrugs slightly in response, suddenly looking very tired.
I gently nudge his foot. “I know you’re not evil, you know,” I softly tell him.
He nods back at me, seeming momentarily at a loss for words.
I sigh deeply, pressing my head back hard against the wall, staring up at the play of shadows on the ceiling rafters from the flickering fireplace and lamplight.
“I’m beginning to think it’s all hogwash anyway,” I tell him. “All this stuff about Evil Ones. But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone else seems to believe it.” I swivel my head on the wall to look at him with concern. “Trystan, I’m really worried about you now. I can’t...” Tears prick at my eyes as an unbidden image forms of Trystan being taken away, thrown into prison somewhere. A fierce urgency wells up inside me, accompanied by a very justified fear for my brother’s safety. “You’ve got to keep this secret.”
“I know, Ren,” he says softly.
“I’m not kidding. This is very dangerous. Promise me. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
“I promise. I’ll be careful,” he assures me, and I know he’s being serious and humoring me at the same time. But it will have to be enough for now.