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March 5, 1203
"So you had planned on that happening."
Thanks to a particularly tedious paper she'd put off until the last minute, Arydath hadn't attended the party a few days earlier. But, as pretty much everyone else she knew had, she'd heard about Aspen and Nato's drunken nuptials within her first waking hour the next morning--and that, despite his not having told her he planned on attending, her betrothed had been there. Said betrothed being Aspen's own brother, his presence at the party that had birthed the marriage--his presence as a graduate at a party on campus--merited some investigation. Not being one to take the roundabout way, Arydath had opted to ask Darry upfront.
At least he'd been honest with her. "You're an idiot."
Darry sighed. According to Celina, his parents' scoldings hadn't sunk in immediately, but that had been yesterday. He'd had the likely-sleepless night to reconsider. "It honestly seemed like the best option. Or... the least worst option, at least."
"As opposed to just letting her go?" Not that Arydath thought Aspen's plans had been any less horrifying than they were, but it was Aspen's life. "I would have thought that to be the least worst option, though at least we agree on the lack of a 'best'."
"I should hope we'd agree that letting her absorb an island's worth of illness isn't 'best'."
"Might I remind you that you know nothing of what it's like to be Aspen?" Arydath craned back her head and braced herself for whatever wave of stubbornness she was bound to get in response. Darry had been forced to admit his own abilities to her years earlier, when she'd stumbled across him telling off an old oak for complaints about the weather. Of course, admitting that had led to his having to let her in on Yvanette and Aspen's abilities as well. She was half-convinced he'd only started courting her to buy her silence on the issue, but that hadn't been necessary. She could see why his sisters, at least, would have wanted silence on the issue.
And that seemed to have been exactly what Darry failed to grasp. His own power was relatively invisible, didn't have a downside beyond having to put up with the occasional annoying conversation, and remained in constant use even when there were no trees around to overhear. Yvanette's powers, before they'd shifted with the birth of her son, had led to emotional decay and borderline agoraphobia, her lack of control and her ability's insistence on asserting itself making her half an invalid. Aspen's insistence on using hers, therefore, made Arydath wonder about whatever happened when she didn't. "It might be a choice of taking illness willingly, or taking it... unwillingly."
"I-- I'll admit that I didn't consider that until Yvanette mentioned it yesterday." With a pitiable twinge, Darry collapsed onto the bench, arms like a discarded rag doll. "And you either figured it out instantly just now, or you worked it out ages ago and assumed I'd done the same, because of course I should have. I'm a horrible brother."
"Don't say that. You did take Celina to the party, at least."
"Yes, because I needed an excuse to make Aspen go--and I don't think Celina's exactly thankful for the hangover."
Arydath shrugged. "It won't be the last hangover she ever has. As for Aspen... well, no one can claim you don't care, at least, even if you've been an idiot about showing it."
"I hope you're right." But he slouched in resignation, like he didn't think she was. "Do you think there's any chance she'll stay now?"
"I'm not the person to ask about that." Not everyone had Arydath's apparent patience for cute idiots, after all. "If Aspen finds reason to stay, she'll stay. That was the case before, and it's still the case now. Just leave her be for a while."
NEXT CHAPTER:
March 3, 1203
"Are you out of your damn mind?"
Ashe's experience with parenthood had not been free of occasions that would merit his asking such a question, but he'd always held it back before. As a general rule, his children's poor decisions were more dangerous to themselves than they were to other people, and such behaviors tended to be symptoms of some more serious issue that needed to be addressed, something personal and deep-seeded like Yvanette's anxieties or Aspen's reckless interpretation of purpose. His children, for the most part, weren't cruel--and to that, Darry was no exception.
But whether Darry himself was cruel or not, whether he'd meant to be cruel or not, the fact was that his actions had been. "Begging me to let you put one sister in a setting she's not ready for, insisting that you'd keep an eye one her, convincing me that it would be in her better interests--just so you could get another sister and some man drunk enough to get married? Why the hell would you do that? Don't you care about your sisters at all?"
"Obviously! I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't." His son's scowl widened with every syllable, cross-armed stance tightening in furious sync with the tug of his mouth. "No reason I gave Aspen was good enough for her to stay, so I gave her Nato. I'm not pleased that I was too preoccupied with Aspen to keep Celina from having more drink than she could handle, but she was still with me all night and she'll be fine and I'm not sorry. Excuse me for not wanting Aspen to more or less run off and kill herself."
"And marrying her off against her will was meant to prevent that? Jesus Christ, Darry! All you did was take yourself off of any list of reasons she might have stayed!"
"Nato isn't just some random stranger, you know. Aspen loves him! And he loves her, if you haven't been paying any attention. The only people who didn't know that were Aspen and Nato." Darry gritted his teeth, a low hiss shoving through like he was holding back a growl. "And you, apparently. She'll stay for him, but neither of them would have figured that out."
"My God! Are you even listening to yourself?" How had that idiot Falidor heard all of this with a calm ear and thought it a plan worthy aiding? How had Darry managed to convince someone to get Nato to the party before someone with a shred of sense could have found and revealed the plot? The only way Ashe could push those questions aside was to thank God that at least his new son-in-law hadn't been a conspirator himself. "It doesn't matter how they feel about each other! What matters is how they feel about what happened and how--and given that Aspen's locked herself up at Capricorn House and Nato's mother says he's been destroying training dummies all morning, clearly neither are happy about it! What did you think would happen, Darry? That Nato would insist she stay like some brutish husband and Aspen would be oh-too-happy to oblige? If you thought Nato was that sort, then you have no right to think you were doing Aspen a favor."
"That's a bold jab, coming from the man who won my mother in a tournament."
That did it. Darry was far too old for a cuff to the head, and Ashe had never thought it right to cuff him anyway. But twenty-two was no worse than any other age for a grab of the arm and a firm yank inward, nor did petty jeers or steadfast lack of repentance deserve any better. "You don't know a damn thing about your mother and me, or anything we've been through--but suffice to say that our official relationship didn't start well, and it took one hell of a lot to fix that. With Aspen graduating at the end of the month, she and Nato don't have the time for that amount of fixing--and if she's anything like her mother, the first thing she'll want is to be far away from here. Don't think I haven't sent guards to campus already in case she tries to leave tonight."
"She's not going to leave! She won't waste all that tuition spent by running off mere weeks before she graduates. Besides, they consummated the marriage; she knows there's no going back after that, and it won't take her long to figure out that she doesn't want to anyway."
"She already planned to waste that tuition by running off right after! And you can end a consummated marriage--in absentia. And unlike you, Nato might just respect Aspen's agency enough not to run after her."
"So that's it? You've just given up on your own daughter? Her agency means more than her life?"
"That's it! You don't get to make any assumptions about how I feel about any of this--and not just because that tiny brain of yours couldn't handle the complexities." And now, in addition to everything else that Darry couldn't handle, he had half a mind to toss his firstborn son out a tower window. "Go apologize to your sisters, and to your mother, and to Nato and his parents and everyone else you've left to clean up your mess. And don't let me see your face again before you've done that."
NEXT CHAPTER:
March 3, 1203
"So." Dress donned and hair tidied, Aspen yanked the blanket over the telltale stains of the night before. Not that Nato remembered having any part in making them. "As soon as you walk out this door--this never happened. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Nato muttered as he finished lacing up his boots, his own voice too much for his throbbing head. As if either of their lives weren't complicated enough without their apparently having fucked in a mutual state of black-out drunkenness.
At least--he hoped it had been mutual.
"Um... I know this never happened, but I didn't...?"
She shrugged. What did that mean? If he'd traumatized her, she'd surely have been more shaken up. Unless she was repressing it, that was. Fuck. "I don't remember anything. You don't remember anything. For all we know, maybe I did to you what you're afraid you did to me. If one of us is a criminal, maybe it's better if we don't know who it is. If it's someone's fault, then it happened. But it didn't."
Right. It hadn't happened. As far as anyone had to know, all he'd woken up to was the headache to end all headaches. No doubt the only reason Aspen hadn't robbed him of that was that doubling her own hangover would make the non-event less of a non-event. "What time do you think it is? Am I safe to leave?"
Aspen winced as she glanced back out the window. Nato took the hint not to look for any sunlight himself. "It's day, but I think it's still early? My housemates should still be asleep."
"Good." Nato cracked his knuckles, caught off-guard by the cold touch of his own fingers. Damn hungover senses. "Um... so, that was not a thing I expected to not happen."
"Ah, but since it didn't happen, there's no sense in discussing it." Aspen asserted herself with a grimace and gestured to the door with a jerk of her head. "And you were never here, so you'd better get on that."
"Right." He sidled past her, their parting little more than a pat he dared land on her shoulder. It was probably the last time he'd see her, if her plan really was to leave the country, probably heading off to her death. But no--the last time he'd seen her had been the last time, he'd have to remind himself. This time hadn't happened, after all.
Or so he would have spent the rest of the day, the week, God knew how long convincing himself if his plan to slip away from Capricorn House unnoticed hadn't been an instant and spectacular failure.
"Good morning, Nato."
Oh fuck me. "...This isn't what it looks like."
"I think you're right about that." Darry smiled, the impossible sparkle of his teeth more than Nato's sore eyes and the brain behind them could handle. The oddity of such a wide grin on a man who'd just caught someone he barely tolerated leaving the bedroom of his virginal sister didn't exactly ease the strain. "You needn't worry about last night. I saw the two of you heading in there, you know--and believe me when I say you were both most enthusiastic."
And a statement like that might have been a dagger to the forehead. "What are you playing at here?"
"I'm not playing at anything, Nato. Everyone who knows my sister knows just how much she needed a good lay."
"And if you've been standing here with your ear to the door, then you'll know she'd rather people think she still did, because no one else is going to find out about last night."
Darry snickered. "My God, Nato, I didn't realize the two of your were that drunk. Everyone already knows. You kept the whole building up all night, for one--like my poor little sister. She's asleep on the couch in the sitting room, and she'll probably still be out for hours before she has to wake up to her first ever hangover, and to the memory of Aspen and Nato making the floor vibrate. And even before you got back here, you two were all over each other; I'm fairly sure you licked her out under the table at the inn at one point."
And yet, that knife-twisting smirk didn't waver in the slightest. "For a concerned older brother, you seem to find all of this much too amusing."
"Concerned older brother?" Darry laughed again, practically spitting needles into Nato's skull. "Christ, you two really do remember nothing! You and Aspen didn't go right back to Capricorn House after you left the inn, you know. A few of us followed after you two got thrown out, and none of us were ready to call it a night just yet, so we ended up dropping in on the biggest party animal in Veldorashire."
"Who the fuck is the biggest party--?" Nato cut himself off, the flash of a face in his mind's eye twisting his throbbing brain to the halt. That face, the mingled smells of wine and incense and jimsonweed, the acute awareness of a foreign object against his finger. "No!"
"Kind of sad for the rest of us, given his age and all. But, no sense in judging." Darry shrugged--now a much less flattering gesture than the one Aspen used to deny having slept with him. "That's the Lord's job, after all, even if Father Sextus wasn't one of his own men."
Father. Fucking. Sextus.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.
His mind a swirling mess of spirits and obscenities and horrified realizations, Nato would never quite know how he'd summoned the presence of mind to shuffle back to Aspen's door and nudge his fist against it. The only thought he'd have in focus when his father arrived to collect him some hours later would be the repeating assurance that--at the very least--neither he nor Aspen were at fault.
"Aspen? I think there was something else that didn't happen last night..."
NEXT CHAPTER:
March 2, 1203
"Oh my God! Aspen! Can you believe it? I finally get to go to an actual university party!"
Celina's older sister, as she'd expected, gave no hint of finding this impressive. Aspen had less than a month left at the university; she'd been able to attend an actual university party every week for four years. And Aspen didn't like parties much anyway.
Celina, however, did. Quite a lot, actually.
And a university party! With guests who were--well, a little older than her, maybe, but closer to her age than her parents'. And no one who was liable to rat her out to her parents if she happened to have a little more wine than she was typically allowed, or if she happened to bring her acquaintance with some handsome young man to a lip-on-lip level. Not that she made a habit of that, mind.
But oh, to keep the possibility open!
But Aspen pursed her lips. So unfair, really. Celina understood that Aspen didn't like parties. Why couldn't Aspen understand that Celina did? "Do Mother and Father know you're here?"
"Of course they do! Darry brought me here, in case you haven't noticed him standing there!" Though, now that she thought about it, he hadn't said all that much since they'd arrived on campus. Had he even spoken at all on the ride over? Here she'd thought they'd had such a nice conversation. "Darry made the convincing case to Father that it would be better for everyone if I attend my first university party while I still had two siblings on campus and one who still had friends there. Wasn't that sweet of him? Darry, you're my knight in shining armor!"
She turned around to pay her eldest brother a grin and a squeal, whipping back to Aspen just in time to see that her sister wasn't quite so enthused.
"Two siblings on campus? It's not enough that Darry and Dally go with you, but I have to go as well?"
"What can I say?" Darry swooped in before Celina had a chance to answer--possibly a first. "Father insists that she'd be better off if there's a responsible big sister around to balance out her two big idiot brothers."
"But it's my last term! I have so much work, and I have to prepare for the island, and--"
"And you're running out of time to spend with your family! That's partly why Father let Celina come."
That... was probably true. Celina forced herself to keep smiling. "That's true. If you insist on leaving, you can't expect us to just stay away."
"But--"
"Nato will be there." Darry smirked. "Falidor made sure of it."
"I'm not talking to Nato. We agreed that we both have our own problems and it's easier if we don't have to deal with each other's--and that was no big deal, since we weren't friends anyway." Aspen tugged at her braid, agitated. "Nato hates parties even more than I do."
"But he's there, since it might be his last chance to see you before you leave. Isn't that sweet?"
She snorted. "He's probably only going because it's the last place his mother would think to look for him."
"And it also happens to be the last place he'll get to see you." Celina widened her eyes and swayed about in search of that oh-so-important balance between adorable little sister and nearly-grown woman desperate for her first taste of independence. The Nato argument might have been something Darry made up in his head, but sisterhood was real. "And it might be the last place I get to see you too. Please? I never ask you for anything."
"Ugh. Fine." Her sister curled her mouth to a short-lived scowl, then took Celina by the arm and yanked her inward. "But the second somebody throws up, we're leaving."
NEXT CHAPTER:
October 8, 1202
"Couldn't you just cook up one of your diabolical plots? You used to do that all the time when we lived on campus."
That... was not entirely untrue. But said diabolical plots, Falidor had always made sure, never harmed, traumatized, or permanently altered the lives of the targets of said plots. Darry's request differed somewhat. It also differed in another important aspect. "Darry, all of my plots involve getting people black-out drunk. Do you really want your baby sister getting so drunk that she doesn't remember how she woke up with a hangover?"
"If it somehow keeps her from running off to Death Island? Damn right, I do."
"Death Island." Just what this conversation needed: another element of context-free nonsense. Darry must have been spending too much time listening to those damn trees. "What the hell is Death Island?"
"Oh--not common knowledge yet." Darry sighed in relief, or some facsimile of such. Ish. "Good. So... you remember Landus? He married my cousin Lyssa? They're in Carvallon now, since he's stationed there?"
"Sure? All you nobles do kind of look alike--even you 'technically not full nobles'."
"Funny." Darry groaned. "Anyway, he sent this report to Lorn about one of the islands off the coast. There's a convent-run orphanage there, and apparently they're dealing with... an outbreak."
An outbreak. That explained Darry's sudden willingness to accept the idea of a drunken Aspen. "Of... what?"
"Leprosy."
That really explained Darry's sudden willingness to accept the idea of a drunken Aspen. "All right, I think I can fill in the gaps now. I'm guessing Aspen isn't privy to this report, and that you and your father and everyone else who knows about the illness thing wants to keep it that way--because, knowing Aspen, she'll absolutely make a martyr of herself and head out there. So, in the event that she does find out, you want me to... keep her drunk for the rest of her life?"
"All right, when you put it like that, it sounds terrible." And yet, Darry made no effort to phrase it in a better light. "Just... at least she won't die young of fucking leprosy."
"And instead she risks dying of the much-preferable alcoholism. That is, assuming that my betrothed doesn't object to my obsessively providing drinks to another woman."
"Well, I never said it had to be alcohol. You can come up with schemes that don't involve alcohol, right?"
"Darry, my father taught me how to scheme; it's either alcohol, nudity, or unsuspecting animals--or some combination of the above." Falidor indulged himself with a smirk, but it was apparently too much to hope that Darry would find any part of that humorous. "Look, if this isn't going to be public knowledge, I don't know if you need to worry about it too much. Sweet that you'd be willing to risk your sister's respectability to save her life, though. A lot of people have an odd tendency to mix up those priorities, it seems."
NEXT CHAPTER:
September 19, 1198
"So." The flare in his hiss and the ice in his eyes would have made for enough of a shock if Nato had been in the habit of waiting for Darry outside of his bedroom door. As it was, Nato kept to his own room more often than not, and couldn't be said to have much more than a nodding acquaintance with any of the other seven men at Libra House. The shock of his appearance, plus the venom about his usually indifferent presence, was enough to make Darry forget that he had both the size advantage and the better standing with their housemates. "Mind telling me about this trip home of yours?"
Darry squinted, mouth falling agape. It wasn't difficult to figure out which days someone had classes if that person lived in the same building, but he wouldn't have guessed Nato to have been paying much attention. And it wasn't often that a student left campus on days they had classes, particularly for the span of more than a day, beyond a death or a wedding or some other such event--but, again, he didn't see what reason Nato had for caring. "...Sorry?"
"I happened to walk by the top of the staircase when you and Yvanette were talking at the bottom. You've been gone a few days--and according to my sister, so has she. Family matter, I take it?"
He and Nato might not have been friends, but the same couldn't have been said for their parents--particularly their mothers, who'd been thick as thieves long before either of their fathers were ever in the picture. Darry swallowed. "Surely your mother would have been among the first to know anything urgent."
"Only if your mother told her--or anyone." Which begged the question as to why Nato, of all people, was prying. "Yvanette mentioned one of your other sisters; she meant Aspen, didn't she?"
"Aspen." Darry bit his lip. She had, in fact, met Aspen. "Since when are you and Aspen close?"
"We're not." Not that it seemed to dissuade him from this confrontation. "She made herself sick again, didn't she?"
Darry blinked. Twice. "How do you know about--?"
"Ask her yourself how I know, when she's feeling better. Just tell me what happened this time."
"Why should I? It's none of your business."
"It is if I can do anything to get her to stop doing this."
"Well, you can't." Nobody could. And not for lack of trying. "She's too stubborn, and too good. She sees it as an obligation."
"She is not obligated to make herself ill so someone else can get better." As if that hadn't been what Darry and Yvanette and their parents had been trying to tell Aspen ever since it all started. "Who was it this time? And what does she have?"
"There was a fire in the kitchens. We managed to put it out before it could cause any irreparable damage to the structure, but some of the servants inhaled a little too much smoke."
"So Aspen took it on." Nato scowled--and Darry had to frown. In all his years of knowing Nato as his mother's friend's grouchy, aloof son, he recalled only a disturbance of privacy being able to get much of a reaction out of the man. "Fuck."
"She, uh... she's better now, if it helps." Not that it ever really did, but Darry didn't care to drag this out any longer than necessary. "It's just a light cough now. She'll be fine."
Nato sniffed. "This time."
Darry scuffed his boot across the floor. This time. He supposed Nato had a point there. Sooner or later, it was bound to be... that time. "We do our best to keep her from anyone really sick if we can. We didn't let her near my Uncle Searle when he was dying."
"Damn good thing you and your parents keep track of every dying person in the kingdom, then."
"What, you think I'm disagreeing with you? She's my sister! I care about her, you know--a hell of a lot more than you do." And to that, Nato could say nothing--finally. "What do you expect us to do, even? Do you really think she'd listen if we told her to keep it to minor scrapes and runny noses?"
"No, but perhaps you could persuade her to start here early. There aren't a whole lot of sick people on campus, and you can talk her out of healing hangovers by pointing out that the regular offenders might take advantage. And maybe she can get some perspective while she's here, if she picks the right studies."
Darry sighed. If only it were that simple. "Well, thing is... with powers like these, you do need to use them every now and then..."
NEXT CHAPTER:
October 26, 1188
"Wait, what?" Darry's father cringed. Maybe he ought to have mentioned the trees sooner. "This started in June?"
"Um. Yes." Darry rocked side to side. There hadn't been too much urgency--at least he could ignore the trees, unlike Yvanette and her cat transformations--but his parents had said to tell them if anything out of the ordinary started happening to him. He guessed they'd meant 'immediately'.
"Sorry. I didn't want to worry Mama while she was expecting, and you looked like you needed something else to think about after the ladies rushed in."
"It's fine. Just... we worry about you kids." And with what Yvanette went through, Darry guessed he understood that.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't worry too much about it. But thank you for telling me. We can tell your mother once she's recovered from your sister's birth."
Another sister? But he already had two of those, and only one brother. Besides, the baby wasn't even born yet! "How do you know it's a sister?"
"Magic." He didn't say any more. He never did when magic came up. "Sit down, Darry."
He did as he was told. His father slung an arm around him and rubbed his shoulder. "Maybe keep this to the family for now, all right? For the sake of your siblings' privacy. Yvanette doesn't want anyone knowing about her condition, and who knows about any of others, so it's best that we keep the speculation at bay."
"All right. It's not too interesting a power anyway. All the trees do is insult people."
"Maybe." Yet, his father's fingers tensed against his arms. "Who knows what they've seen, though."
NEXT CHAPTER:
June 8, 1188
Darry wasn't supposed to go into the forest without an adult, but what his parents didn't know wouldn't hurt them. He went into the forest all of the time anyway. Was it so horrible that sometimes he wanted to walk home from school with his best friend instead of his sisters?
Trouble was, Falidor lived in Tetran and Darry lived in Armion. So, if Darry wanted to get home before his mother started fretting, he had to take the shortcut through the forest. The first time had been a little scary, but he'd grown used to it. He actually kind of liked it now. At least it beat walking home with his sisters. Yvanette was always in too much of a hurry, and Aspen liked to dawdle.
Hey, Frank! Look who it is!
Huh? Darry frowned. Was someone else using the shortcut? He'd thought he was alone.
It's that kid with the funny orange hair!
Orange? Falidor's was much more orange than Darry's was!
Nah, I think the other kid's is more orange. But this one has a funny nose.
Of course he has a funny nose! He's a meatsack, isn't he? All meatsacks have funny noses. Why would he be any different?
Hey, is it a little sexist that we're just assuming the kid's a boy? I mean, it's not like it's easy to tell the man meatsacks and the woman meatsacks apart...
Who the hell cares? It's a meatsack! Meatsacks don't have feelings.
Who was talking? And what was a meatsack?
Hmm. Yep, you might be right, Dave. Kid probably isn't even aware of boys and girls.
That did it. Whoever it was, Darry had a thing to make clear. "I'm a boy!"
Shit, Frank. I think he heard us.
Meatsacks can hear? That's news to me.
Were those voices coming from...? "Trees?"
He's talking to us! What do we do? Have you ever talked to a meatsack before?
Why the fuck would I have? I didn't even know they could talk!
Me neither. Hey, kid--can all meatsacks talk, or just you?
"I'm not a meatsack, I'm a human!" Darry shuffled off the path and toward the two trees in question. The talking trees. No one had ever told him trees could talk! "And most of us can talk?"
Really? The ones with the hairy tails never say anything.
"Those are squirrels!"
Eh. What's one meatsack versus another?
Darry snarled. Perhaps this was the time to try out some adult words. "You two are assholes!"
ALL TREES ARE ASSHOLES!
"All of them?"
Well, can you blame us? All you meatsacks keep biting us and build nests on us and chopping us down. Why shouldn't we be assholes?
By the way, what's an asshole?
Darry wouldn't dignify that with a response. "If you're all assholes, then why aren't all the other trees making nasty comments?"
They're asleep, you dumb meatsack! We're early risers!
"It's the middle of the afternoon!"
Yeesh, what a stupid kid!
I know, hey? It can't be afternoon. It's still light out!
Darry would have to start being more selective with his curiosity. This exchange had been a complete waste of time. "I'm going to leave now."
NEXT CHAPTER:
