Chapter Two

Icelyn stared at Malcolm, wishing that the answers to his questions would come into her mind. She didn’t know how to answer him so that it would make sense to him, and in truth she didn’t know much of what she was supposed to say to him. The reality was that she didn’t know for certain why Athan had chosen her to help him, and because she didn’t know how much Malcolm already knew about her or anything else that was happening, she didn’t know what she should tell him. The secretiveness that hung over the Order was strong all around them and Icelyn knew enough to know that breaking that secretiveness, even among those who should be trusted and believed, was something that could have dire unintended results.

Malcolm hadn’t asked her anything about herself and didn’t seem to know who she was. This was at once a good thing and a bad thing, and she was unsure of which direction she should lean in interpreting it. She wanted to do everything that she could to help Athan and the cause that he was supporting, but at the same time she still held within her a hesitancy that came from the years that she had lived and all that she had seen. She wished that she had had more time to talk to Athan about the situation before she had to go to the meeting hall to get Malcolm, but the older man had been insistent that they couldn’t wait for even a few moments. Any delay could mean Malcolm’s death and the compromise of everything that they had been fighting for already and were preparing for the fight ahead.

Icelyn knew that she needed to be cautious and give him enough information to assuage him without revealing too much. Biding her time and moving slowly would allow her to protect him while also guarding herself.

“I know that you are a part of the Order,” she answered.

Malcolm shook his head, leaning forward slightly to place his nearly-empty plate on the table in front of him. He sat back against the couch and looked at her with sadness in his eyes.

“I’m not a member of the Order,” he said.

“Of course, you are,” Icelyn argued.

“I used to be, but I’m not anymore. I defected to join Athan.”

He seemed both surprised that she knew about the Order and tempered by the heaviness of the reality of his situation. This was something serious and pressing, unimaginably difficult to anyone who wasn’t a part of the complex hierarchy and didn’t understand what it meant to be a part of it.

“Being a part of the Order is not an option. It is not a choice that is given to you for you to decide whether you are going to take it or not. You are born in the Order and you die in the Order. That is why they are so quick to destroy those who they feel have betrayed or threatened them beyond what can reasonably be punished. Even those at the top of the hierarchy know that there is nothing that they can do to remove someone from the Order once they have been made a part of it. If they no longer want someone involved in it, for whatever reason that they deem appropriate at the time, they cannot remove them and allow them to live. Their life has to end for their involvement in the Order to end.”

“What does that mean for me?” he asked. “And for Athan?”

“Are you regretting your decision?” Icelyn asked.

Malcolm’s eyes rose up from where he had been staring into the distance ahead of him and met hers. Where she expected to see even more fear burning behind them, she saw only calm. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I made that decision knowing exactly what I was doing. I don’t know now if I really considered all of the consequences that might come along with it or what might happen to me if it didn’t go the way that I planned, but that doesn’t make me regret it. I cannot be a part of them and what they are doing any longer. I can’t give of myself for something that I don’t understand and don’t believe. I know that I am in danger now and that I will be for the rest of my life, but I wouldn’t change my decision if I had the chance. I just now feel that I have no purpose, no position. If I am both a part of the Order and not, what does it make me?”

Icelyn shook her head at him, leaning slightly toward him to ensure that she had his full attention.

“You are still the Order. You and Athan are the true Order, the lingering remnants of what the Order has always been and was always meant to be. Your rebellion doesn’t mean that you are removed from the Order. Defecting doesn’t mean that either of you don’t believe in the things that the Order truly stands for. You are not rebelling against the Order. You are rebelling against corruption and defecting from what has fallen.”

“How do you know so much about the Order?” Malcolm asked.

Icelyn knew that it was a logical and expected question. At the core of the Order was the belief that you talked about it to no one. Though those who were married were given some forgiveness in sharing small bits of information with their wives, it was expected that members were to hold the truth and the details of the hierarchy close to themselves and give no one the opportunity to know the secrets that they carried. Icelyn was not married, which would lead Malcolm to wonder how she might not only know about the Order, but so much about it that Athan would choose her to help Malcolm. Despite the question being logical, Icelyn didn’t know what she was supposed to tell him or how much she should share. She didn’t feel completely comfortable with him. Not yet. Though Athan had asked her to help Malcolm and had reassured her that she could trust him, Icelyn hadn’t quite reached that point. She had learned all too much that trusting could be disastrous, especially when that trust was given too soon to someone who hadn’t earned it.

She shunned the question, instead picking up his plate and carrying it with hers back to the kitchen. She settled them into the sink, telling herself that she would wash them the next day. She didn’t want to spend any more time in the living room with Malcolm. It was all moving too fast. She was feeling too close, too willing to trust. That wasn’t something that she could allow herself to do. She needed to protect herself and her legacy above anything. As she made her way toward the hallway to her bedroom, she looked back over to where he was sitting on the couch watching her.

“You should try to get some more sleep,” she told him. “It’s still early and you have a few more hours before you need to be up. Training starts in the morning and you are going to need all of the energy that you can possibly get.”

Malcolm nodded.

“Alright,” he said. “Thank you.”

Without waiting for him to say anything else or responding, Icelyn turned and headed down the hall to her bedroom. She closed the door behind her and felt as though her lungs waited until they saw the light from the front of house go out before they released the breath that they held. Rather than taking her own guidance and going back to sleep, she stared up at the ceiling. She wished that she knew why Athan had chosen her to help Malcolm. There were so many other people he could have asked that could have been just as effective at protecting him. Possibly even more so. She was just one woman, alone in her house, no family. Nothing to give her the strength and perseverance to defend him if the members of the Order were to find out that he was with her and come for him.

Though her mind was repeating the question over and over, Icelyn felt like it was trying to convince her that she didn’t know what was happening. She wasn’t entirely sure of everything that was happening around her, but deep in her heart she knew that she knew more than she wanted to admit to herself. This was her legacy, the path that was left to her. There was something inside of her that had been given to her at birth and had only grown more important. Even if she didn’t completely know all that it entailed or what she was going to be called to do with it, she knew that she had been readying for this for her entire life.