A far more pressing matter busily scrambled to find sense in what he saw. The woman didn’t wear the light brown robes of priesthood, but rather a common gown and sleeveless vest. As much evidence as there was for her to be Hamish’s sister, he could scarcely believe it. Yes, both princes had divulged that a sibling lived with the cloister, but in all the conversation they’d engaged with, never had either man mentioned their sister was…
A spellster.
That meant there was magic within the bloodline. Clear and strong enough to be made known. Gordon bumping through his shield wasn’t a fluke. The man had to be a Nulled One and Hamish—
Well, Darshan had used direct magic on his lover before. Hamish clearly wasn’t immune to it like his brother, which left only one option.
The woman swung to face Darshan, seeming to finally realise he was there. One sweep of his attire was all she gave before a veil of suspicion fell over her face. “Can I help you?”
Hamish cleared his throat. “I’d like you to meet his Imperial Highness, Darshan vris Mhanek, me—” He stalled, clearly flustered. “Me… uh…”
“Your yours?” the woman said, a soft smile crinkling her blue eyes. Not as aesthetically crystalline as her brother’s, but dark like the oceans he had travelled to get here. “I see.” Her gaze darted to Gordon, then Hamish, before she extended her hand to Darshan. “Nice to meet someone who is me brother’s.”
Darshan swiftly re-evaluated the woman’s clothing. She indeed wore a shirt beneath the vest but the sleeves were tight along her arms and the same tawny shade as her skin. He clasped her hand and offered a small bow. “Your highness.”
She giggled. “I’ve nae been called that since I was a wee lass. You dinnae get to keep your titles when you’re cloistered.” She gave his hand a hearty shake. “Caitlyn is fine. I wouldnae have thought they’d allow a vris of the Mhanek to leave the Udynea Empire.”
“He’s me friend,” Hamish blurted, his cheeks having gone an adorable shade of plum red.
“What would you ken of Udynean politics?” Gordon asked of his sister whilst simultaneously giving his brother a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, the man’s jovial tone taking the edge off his words. “I dinnae recall Mum teaching us anything about them when we were bairns.”
“There’s more than a few mentions of Udynea in the older texts. Any decent study of the body requires slogging through the dregs of old rivalries and rumours of far off wars. Of course, there are the translations, but only a right idiot believes those. Nae that they cannae be called technically correct, but…” She rolled her eyes, rocking her head from side to side.
“I hope we were nae interrupting any serious studies,” Gordon said.
Caitlyn shook her head. “Just giving meself a wee refresher of basic human bone structure. We’d a lad with a snapped thighbone and an absolutely shattered hand just a few weeks back. It was touch and go at finding someone with the power and proper understanding of how fingers work to mend him.”
“It must’ve taken some doing for the lad to break it.”
“Aye. But they mended his leg easily enough. Just a clean break. It was his hand that gave the most trouble.”
Darshan nodded his agreement. They were some of the trickiest bones in the human body to mend correctly.
“He’ll be walking with a limp now, but at least he still has full use of his hand. Certainly learnt his lesson on horse thieving.” She jerked her thumb back at the book. “Anyway, I should be taking this one back. The information is good, but the diagrams are piss-poor compared to the ones in the archive.”
“You’ve diagrams of human anatomy in your archives?” Darshan blurted before his manners could take command of his tongue. He smiled woodenly at the trio, secure in the knowledge that none of them could’ve possibly understood him. To the uninitiated mind, Udynean was often a garble of noise.
But whilst both the men stared at him with the almost identically confused expressions Darshan had expected, the twinkle in Caitlyn’s eye suggested she had understood his every word.
“Would you like to see them?” she asked.
“Very much,” he managed in Tirglasian. He hadn’t been in a space dedicated to sketches of human, or elven, anatomy since his years training as a healer. Seeing the difference between what he remembered from the academy and here would be quite the education. “If you do not mind.”
~~~
Hamish watched as his lover trotted off at his sister’s side. “I guess I’ll stay here, then,” he mumbled. It wasn’t as though he would understand half of what they spoke about. When it came to medicine and ailments of the human body, his knowledge didn’t go much beyond splinting broken limbs and applying pressure to wounds.
Gordon chuckled, drawing Hamish’s eye from the empty doorway. “What did you expect?” He leant back on a table, his arms casually bracing himself. “He’s new and exciting; a spellster from another land. We’re just her brothers. She sees us at least once a year.”
It used to be every week. Back when there’d been a cloister within a few hours’ march of Mullhind, before their mother had forced the priesthood to abandon it. They were fortunate Caitlyn had been sent this close as it was, for many of the spellsters had been spread out over the southern cloisters.
“In the meantime.” His brother reluctantly pushed off the table and jerked his thumb at the door. “I should probably make sure the priests ken to bunk us all near each other tonight. I dinnae want to try explaining once we get back home why our return trip lacks a certain ambassador.”
“Do you really think they’ll try to keep him here? Or could contain him?” Darshan was right in that none
