Chapter 18:
Roots In The Frost Interlude — Elen
The house smelled faintly of oiled leather and the crisp, clean scent of the Ashford winter, seeping in through the stone walls. It was a small house, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a sitting room, tucked against the edge of the Ashford estate, granted by the Duchess herself as part of her mother's appointment.
Elen sat at the scarred wooden table, her hands neatly folded in front of her, back straight. Across from her, Ser Alis Trivelle, her mother, her only family, moved with quiet efficiency, setting two plates down between them. Bread, dried apples, and cold venison again. Soldier’s fare. Unchanging. Practical.
Her mother sat with a quiet sigh, her sword belt resting against the side of her chair.
For a moment, they simply ate in silence.
Only after a few minutes did Ser Alis speak, her voice calm and measured, like always. “The banquet went well.”
Elen nodded stiffly. She hadn't been there. Only her mother had stood watch, a knight among nobles, present but not counted.
Her mother took a slow sip of her tea, eyes thoughtful. "Lady Grace was presented formally. Sat beside the Duchess. Carried herself perfectly. Just five years old, and already... marked."
She didn’t have to explain. Elen understood.
Grace wasn’t just the Duchess’s daughter now. She was a piece on the board. A future heir after only one brother remained. A beacon around which power would gather.
"You should rise with her," Ser Alis said.
The words should have been inspiring. They weren't. They sat heavy on Elen’s chest, pressing down harder than the morning cold.
She bowed her head, fingers tightening around her cup.
“I’ll try,” she said quietly.
Her mother studied her for a moment, then set her cup down with a soft clink.
“You're the last of House Trivelle,” she said simply. Not unkindly. Just stating fact. “It falls to you.”
Elen’s throat tightened.
She knew this. She had always known it.
Her father, a common-born soldier turned knight, had died before she was old enough to remember his face. Slain in one of the border skirmishes that the court liked to call “minor matters.” There had been no fief to inherit, no lands granted in his name. Only a battered sword and a broken lineage.
It was her mother who had pulled their name from the mud. Her mother who had fought through the Circles of a mage, risen through blood and grit, earned her knighthood and her place among the Ashford guard.
But even that victory came with limits.
Knighted nobility was nobility in name only.
Without lands or a fief, they were still servants, glorified, honored, but still paid from the estate's coffers like any soldier or clerk.
Three gold a month.
It sounded rich, compared to the three or four copper it cost for a common meal, or the twenty-five copper to match a single silver and the fifty silver it took to match a single gold coin.
But it wasn’t enough.
A noble dress alone could cost five gold. A true noble’s education even more. The price of hosting a single formal tea with other young ladies — renting the room, arranging the silks, the proper invitations — could devour a month’s earnings in an afternoon.
And yet... Ser Alis spent it. Every spare silver. Every last copper.
Books for Elen’s lessons. Tailors to mend her old dresses into acceptable fashion. A fencing tutor once a fortnight, borrowed at cut rates from the Ashford guard.
Nothing for herself.
No new sword. No new armor. No comfort.
Everything for the future.
Everything for Elen.
The bread in Elen’s hand crumbled slightly under her grip.
Across the table, her mother watched her with steady eyes.
“You have a chance,” Ser Alis said. “A real chance. If you prove yourself beside Lady Grace... if you rise in her shadow... we can become more than a footnote in history.”
A small smile tugged at the edge of her mouth, dry, almost bitter. "More than two names in a ledger."
Elen forced herself to nod, but her mind drifted back to the week behind her.
Her first week at the Ashford estate.
Her first week studying beside Grace of Ashford... and Clara of Bellgrave.
Elen was the oldest — seven years to their six and five — yet somehow, she had felt smaller every day.
She tried harder than either of them. She listened. She copied the glyphs twice over. She repeated the court manners until her fingers ached from curtsying. She stayed late after lessons to practice her posture, her speech, her sword forms.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
And yet... every day, she felt it slipping further from her grasp.
Clara smiled, fluttered, laughed, so sweet and polished, like she'd been born for silk and music.
And Grace...
Grace was something else entirely.
Grace didn’t smile because she needed approval. She didn’t laugh unless it suited her. She spoke in a voice too calm for a child, with words too sharp for a schoolgirl.
And when she looked at Elen, really looked, it was as if she saw everything: how hard Elen worked, how badly she wanted to be worthy... and how far she still had to climb.
It gnawed at her, every night, as she sat alone with her worn practice scrolls. It burned, bitter and slow, every morning when she walked back into the lesson hall with her shoulders squared, pretending she didn’t see the difference.
Trying.
Falling behind anyway.
Working harder.
Never catching up.
Elen looked down.
Only two members left; her mother, and her.
Their house wasn’t a lineage. It was a thread. Thin. Fraying. A single wrong move, and it would vanish.
The weight of it settled on her small shoulders. Heavy. Cold.
She thought of the boutique. Of Leon’s fist. Of how Grace hadn’t flinched when danger came, hadn’t even blinked. She thought of how she had moved instead. How she had thrown herself forward without thought, like the knight she was supposed to become.
And how afterward, Grace hadn’t thanked her.
Hadn’t needed her.
The bread felt heavy in her mouth. She forced herself to chew, to swallow.
“You did well," Ser Alis said, as if reading her thoughts. "And you will do better. You have heart. Discipline. And when the time comes... you will not stand behind anyone.”
Her voice hardened. “You will stand beside them.”
Elen looked up. And for the first time that morning, she met her mother’s gaze fully.
“I’ll make you proud,” she whispered.
Ser Alis nodded once. Crisp. Final. “I know.”
She stood, fastening her sword belt, the steel glinting under the morning sun.
“I have duty at noon,” she said, adjusting her cloak. “You have your lessons. Make the most of them.”
Then, after a hesitation so slight it could have been imagined, she reached out and brushed her hand through Elen’s hair, the ghost of a mother’s touch, stiff with the awkwardness of soldiers who forgot tenderness long ago.
Then she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her.
Elen sat in the silence, feeling the cold air rush in.
Her house depended on her. Her mother’s sacrifices depended on her. Everything depended on her.
And she wasn’t sure Grace Ashford even saw her.
She exhaled slowly, steadying herself, planting her hands firmly on the table.
It didn’t matter.
Whether Grace saw her now or later, Elen would make her see. She would climb. She would endure. She would matter.
Because she had to.
Because she was all House Trivelle had left.
And because no one — not Grace, not the Duchess, not the world — would erase her name so easily.
The morning frost still clung to the ground as Elen stepped outside, her wooden practice sword slung across her back. The estate grounds stretched out before her; gray sky, pale winter light, and gardens sleeping under the weight of the coming cold.
No one was watching.
Good.
She made her way to the empty training yard tucked behind the house, where the grass had long since surrendered to a thin crust of ice. Her breath steamed in the air. Her boots crunched against frozen earth. The wind carried the scent of stone and wilted rose stems.
Elen drew her practice sword and set her feet apart, feeling the chill creep through her gloves and boots.
Again.
She lifted the blade and began the drill.
High guard. Sweep. Step back. Pivot. Thrust.
Again…. And… Again.
Each movement carved a rhythm into the cold air, simple and precise. Her muscles burned; her arms ached, but she didn't stop.
She couldn't stop.
Not when she had so much further to climb.
Not when House Trivelle’s future lived or died on her shoulders.
Her breath grew ragged. Her strikes faltered, slower with each pass.
Still, she pressed on.
Again.
High guard. Sweep. Step back…
The world tilted.
A sharp, sudden tug pulled at her chest, not her lungs, not her heart, but somewhere deeper, behind the heart itself. Like a string inside her was yanked tight.
She stumbled, catching herself against the frozen ground.
The tug grew stronger. Sharper.
Elen gasped, dropping her sword, clutching at her chest as pain lanced through her, bright and searing and wrong. Her knees buckled. She hit the ground hard, the frost biting through her trousers, the cold soaking into her skin.
No, she thought, panic rising. No, not like this.
She pressed her hands against the frozen earth, willing herself to breathe, to move, but every heartbeat sent a jolt of fire through her chest.
Her vision blurred.
The cold, once distant, wrapped around her like chains.
Tears welled unbidden in her eyes. Not from fear. Not from weakness.
But from the certainty that this was the end.
That she had failed.
That she would never rise. Never matter. Never be more than a footnote.
Her hands slipped. She collapsed fully into the snow, her cheek pressed against the ice, her breath shallow and fast.
I'm sorry, she thought weakly. Mother... I'm sorry...
Then… just as the darkness began to swallow her.
A whisper. Not sound. Not voice. A feeling.
Soft and ancient, brushing against the edges of her mind like the rustle of leaves in a hidden glade.
Be still.
The words were not spoken aloud. They bloomed inside her chest, light and warm.
You are not alone.
Elen's breath caught.
And somewhere deep inside her, in the part of her soul that had always known the old stories, the old truths, Elen realized:
Lirien.
The Goddess of Nature. Giver of life, of balance, of patient strength.
The old tales said that when a true Mana Core formed, sometimes, if you were really lucky, your soul heard the whisper of the god who blessed you.
And today, Elen had heard it.
Lirien had spoken to her, calmed her, and taken away her fear.
Slowly, the pain dulled, shifting into something... different. Not agony. Not fear.
A thrum.
A pulse behind her heart, deep and slow and steady, like a second heartbeat.
And as she lay there in the snow, the world shifted.
Shapes sharpened at the edges. The brittle branches above her gleamed faintly, each twig traced with threads of emerald light. The ground beneath her hands pulsed with a soft, living warmth she had never felt before.
Mana. She could see it.
Faint green motes danced in the air around her fingertips, spiraling lazily like dust caught in a sunbeam. The frost under her body hummed with life, not death. Roots slumbered just inches below. The breath of the earth itself moved against her skin.
Elen sobbed once, not in fear, but in wonder.
This... this is real.
Behind her heart, the second beat grew stronger. Louder. The mana in the air shifted, responding to her presence, wrapping her in invisible threads of energy.
The world was no longer cold. It was awake. And so was she.
She didn’t understand how she knew it, but she knew: Her Mana Core had formed.
It wasn’t earth or water or lofty light.
It was nature. Growth. The silent strength of the roots beneath winter’s ice. The patience of trees older than kings.
And it was hers. Slowly, trembling, Elen pushed herself upright. Her hands were shaking, not from exhaustion, but from the wild, surging energy now humming through her veins.
The cold didn’t bite her anymore.
The snow didn’t sting.
She sat there for a long moment, blinking tears from her eyes, breathing in the life she could finally see.
The whisper, the feeling of something greater, faded, but it didn’t vanish. It settled behind her heart like a quiet, eternal presence. Watching. Protecting.
She wasn’t alone.
Not anymore.
A slow, stunned smile broke across her face as she pressed her palm against her chest, feeling the steady thrum of her second heart — her Mana Core — blooming in the center of her being.
I did it, she thought, wonder rising inside her. I really did it.
For House Trivelle.
For her mother.
For herself.
And maybe... just maybe... one day, she would stand not behind Grace Ashford.
But beside her.
And rise.