Several boxes of packed products, which Draven assumed were for the upcoming buffet, lay arranged all around the kitchen. Servants rapidly prepared tables with a wide assortment of ingredients, packing them into glass vials.
“Aemon! Get your ass in here, boy.” A shout from behind a row of boxes. “You think these boxes of garlic are going to peel themselves?”
A short man came into view—so short that he might as well have been a miner. His hair was the color of a bonfire, black eyes smoldering with impatience, and a deep, creased frown on his forehead that might just be permanent.
“And who in the Abyss are you? If you have time to stare, you might as well go put those boxes away!” His gaze settled on Draven with a fury that did not seem personal.
“My name is Draven Ori—”
“Did I ask?” He brushed past Draven, his compact frame carrying disproportionate power. “Boxes! And you, Janet, do I need to remind you what to do every damn time? Maker forgive me, I’m not a violent man, but I’m not against giving some of you guys a beating if I need to.”
“Not a violent man, my ass,” Aemon mumbled to the side. Somehow, he already held a wooden box of garlic and headed for an empty table.
“What was that?” Theodore swiveled around as if hearing it.
All the servants increased their pace, eyes focused on their work, which satisfied the short cook enough to make him let out a mild harrumph.
This was someone who did not care who Draven was or what title had been given to him. He did not respect him and cared little for his presence.
Draven had to change his approach—he could deliver the same message in different ways. He just needed to find which one was better suited for this situation. “Young Lord Nerovian requests three of your best spirits—”
“Say what? Does he want me to break my back and go looking for new stock on such short notice?” Theodore guffawed until tears brimmed in his eyes. “That brat can keep dreaming about it!”
Draven sucked in a breath of cold air.
“He’s the Virien’s son—”
“And I am my father’s pup!” Theodore walked up to him. “Listen, brat, I don’t give a ratshit about who you are. Did that Primus thing get to your head? Nobody orders me inside my kitchen besides Lord Orenn himself! And his dear wife, Maker bless her, of course.”
Ratshit? Nobody but a miner said something like that.
There were no rats in the castle, none that he had seen in the city's entirety. Most of these people would not even know the word's use. But Draven was different. Raised amidst poverty and mistreatment, rats were a bounty that put meat on their tables. If this man was a miner, then no manner of posturing would work on him.
“Look, Theodore,” Draven sighed and exaggerated a wince of pain. It was easy, given that his arm was still wrapped in bandages, and the black eye on his face stood out like a sore thumb. “If I go back without what he asked for, I don’t know what he’ll do to me.”
Authority did not work well on miners who grew up amidst injustice, but all of them knew compassion.
Theodore paused, his eyes scanning the wounds on Draven’s body for the first time. A look flashed in his eyes, but it was gone in an instant. “Aemon! Get someone to deliver two bottles to young Lord Nerovian’s quarters. Aged Winter and Severed Amethysts.”
“As for you, brat. Just get out of here if you’re not going to work.” Theodore shooed Draven away with a wave. “No space in my kitchen for lazing around.”
Draven looked into his eyes for a moment, and they seemed to understand each other. It was a fleeting moment amidst all the noise in which time stood still. They set aside all their differences, exposing their inner selves to each other as two people simply wanting to continue their lives. But like all good things, it ended as somebody else dropped a knife in the kitchen.
“That blade better not have chipped, you abyss-damned brat!”
Aemon grabbed Draven’s arm and rushed him outside the kitchen, into the corridors, and kept running until the noise was no longer heard. He looked back toward the kitchen, his gaze haunted.
“What about the spirits? Dammit, Aemon, that’s why we came here.” Draven snapped at him. All that trouble for nothing.
“Don’t worry, Calder got it from here. He owes me one.” Aemon gave a trembling smile. “Abyss take me, but I hate this place!”
They walked back to their quarters. It would not be long until whoever Calder sent to deliver the spirits reached Nerovian—twenty minutes maybe, add another half an hour for the young lord to get drunk. The timeline of their plan was one hour away from completion. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Leaving unaccounted factors to fate left Draven restless, so he left without Aemon half an hour in advance. He had a plausible reason to visit Nerovian at night, but explaining why an apprentice cook followed him did not bode well.
***
Two armed men guarded the entrance to Nerovian’s room, but they let Draven in with nods, without question.
“Might not be a good time to intrude, Primus. Lord Nerovian must be savoring the gift you sent him,” the guard said.
“I hope he liked it. Well, I’m here in case he wants to share it with another.” Draven nodded.
The guards suddenly burst into laughter.
“Maker protect my sister from you, Primus! This is the sort of thing you learn at an orphanage?” one of them said.
“I’m not sure I follow.” There was something wrong with all this.
“The girl you sent in was pretty. Maker be my witness, but Sovrans and sharing are not words you would usually put together.” The man shook his head and stepped aside. “But that’s none of my business.”
Girl? Aemon sent spirits, not a girl. Unless…
Draven hurried his pace as the realization dawned on him like a blanket of metal pressing down on his shoulders. What did I do? Aemon did not know about Nerovian’s disregard for a Low Blood’s life, and he had not tried to tell him—it was not pertinent‌.
“Lord Nerovian, please…” A voice snuck from under the door.
Draven put his hand on the door, ready to open it, then hesitated. The life of a Low Blood, the very people who had oppressed the miners, put them into camps and harvested their lives as crops—as cattle—against the well-being of his family. He did not have to think about it; he would choose his brother and mother over a nameless girl every chance he got.
But the shame of his choice ate his soul.
“Is it too much to expect a servant to serve?” Nerovian’s voice was lethargic. Angry. “There is no honor in refusing a gift sent in goodwill. Now, will you submit, or shall I make you submit?”
He was drunk. It seemed Nerovian did not need Draven's incentive to drown his frustrations in alcohol. The meeting with his father must have been more serious than he had thought.
A muffled scream interrupted Draven’s hesitation. Enough! He burst into the room, anger, rage, and shame burning a hole in his heart.
Nerovian held the girl on the bed, an almost empty bottle in his hand. He threw it aside, unaware of Draven’s presence, though the girl looked at him pleadingly. Abandoning the bottle, the lord grabbed her dress and ripped it off without effort.
Draven pounced at him in the blink of an eye, grabbed him by the hair with a grunt of fury, and punched him in the jaw with all the strength he had. Dyad Vessel escaped his control, and before he knew it, its tendrils spread from him into Nerovian.
No! He winced, for he knew the Providence dealt more than just pain.
“Damn it to the Abyss! What did I just do?” Draven let him go.
Nerovian’s body sagged on the bed, blood from a split lip staining the white sheet with violence. His arm was broken. His eye was black. Maker be his witness, but Draven knew he had cracked the lord's ribs.
“You…” The girl looked at him with wide eyes. He expected judgment and accusation, but gratitude was the only thing reflected in her trembling smile. “Thank… you.”
“I didn’t,” Draven sighed, letting his arms go. “I screwed up. He’ll kill me for this. My family will… die because of me.”
Dammit! Why am I so stupid? She’s just a damned Sovran!
The girl collected her ruined clothes to cover herself. She stood there in silence as trembling sobs escaped from her. Draven did not do that to her, but the fault lay with him as much as it did with Nerovian.
The only solace was that he had stopped him before he could commit something that would haunt Draven for the rest of his brief life. He saved her, but at what price? Actions had consequences, and what he did only led to his death.
The girl stood up, picked up the bottle, and threw it on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Draven took her by the arm. “Want the guards to come and kill us both?”
“Shut up!” She picked up a glass shard and ran it along her forearm, tears brimming in her eyes as she bit her lip to keep from whimpering. Blood flowed out as if invited, spilling onto the white sheet in a round pool of crimson. “Help me patch this.”
Draven tore parts of her ruined clothes and helped bind her arm until the blood stopped flowing—the wound was not deep, just long. Blood on the sheet, a deed done. A lord in a drunken stupor who would not remember the events of the previous night. It was brilliant unless the same person also had a split lip, a broken arm, a cracked rib, and a black eye.
He was still doomed.
The girl gave him a nod, took one of Nerovian’s robes, and moved to depart.
“No,” Draven whispered. “You have to stay longer, or the guards will suspect you.”
“Move him out of the bed,” she said after a moment of hesitation.
“What—”
“Just do it!” she whispered in a hurry.
Draven did as asked, but saw no reason for it until she climbed back on the bed, stood on it, and jumped. The noise of springs and motion carried through the entire room, inevitably drifting back into the corridor where the guards were sure to hear.
For twenty minutes, they took turns trampling Nerovian’s bed. The situation might have made Draven laugh if his life did not depend on it.
She left half an hour later. He glued his ear to the door, but the only sound he heard was the laughter of the guards. She was safe, but that left him. Well, he and a beaten-up Sovran lord who looked like a carriage had just run him over.
The minutes passed, and Draven got no closer to escaping his death sentence until his sight fell on Nerovian’s library and the crimson book that held the means to save his life.
Draven flipped through the well of knowledge that rested in his frantic palms, ignoring all the new information he had been dying to learn all along—it was unimportant when weighed against the consequences of his actions. The pages came to an abrupt stop as he read the words he had been looking for.
Mending.
“The Art of Mending and Its Limitations,” he whispered in excitement.
This was it, his salvation.