because I felt that the Legion’s commander intended him harm.” Aeren stepped forward, a frown touching his lips. “And I brought him because he seems… familiar.”
Both Eraeth and the other guard stiffened when Aeren moved, their gazes falling on Colin as if they expected him to leap up with bared sword at any moment. Colin didn’t have a sword, didn’t even have his staff or satchel, although the satchel must be close if he could smell the Lifeblood. He hadn’t dared move since he’d caught sight of the three Alvritshai; he’d seen how fast they could move when there was need.
Now Aeren tilted his head slightly, his attention focusing completely on Colin while the two guardsmen shifted farther into the room. “Who are you?”
Colin cleared his mouth of blood-tainted saliva and swallowed. Then, in a hoarse voice, he said, “Colin. My name is Colin.”
Aeren’s eyes narrowed as he thought. Colin could see his mind racing, reaching back, then back farther, memory tugging at him.
And then his eyes widened. He swore, in Alvritshai, but the flavor of the words was clear.
Eraeth asked him something, and he responded in a hushed voice. Eraeth said something, realized that Colin couldn’t understand, and repeated himself in Andovan. “Impossible!”
Colin eased up onto his elbow, swung his legs off the edge of the bunk, aware of the Alvritshai’s swords. And aware that doubt had settled into Aeren’s gaze.
“I survived the attacks by the dwarren and the Shadows… the sukrael,” he said, “but only with the help of the Faelehgre.”
“The Faelehgre?”
“The lights in the forest. The ones that burn with a pure white fire. They’ve lived there with the Shadows for hundreds upon hundreds of years.”
Aeren’s eyes narrowed. “The antruel. The Guardians.” Both Eraeth and the other guardsman shifted nervously.
Colin thought about the Faelehgre, of the Well. “They call themselves the Faelehgre.”
Aeren nodded. But he hadn’t relaxed. Neither had Eraeth. “And how did these… Faelehgre help you?”
Colin shifted uncomfortably, dropped his head, the memories rising up so fast, so vividly. He breathed in deeply to steady himself, smelled the grass of the plains, the clean wetness of the storm that had passed. “Most of the wagons managed to escape the dwarren battle,” he began, his voice low. “We halted at the edge of the forest. The dwarren followed us, but they refused to come to within a hundred paces of the edge of the trees. We thought we were safe. But then the Shadows attacked. The sukrael.”
“We warned you,” Eraeth said, voice tight with contempt.
Colin looked up, anger rising in his chest. “Where else could we go?” he asked bitterly. “After the fight near the underground river, fleeing across the plains, the storm…” He shook his head. “Even if we had followed you, we wouldn’t have been able to go far. We were exhausted. We would have slowed you down, even without the wagons.” He remembered how fast the Alvritshai warriors had moved back then, how fast they could run, nearly keeping up with the horses.
Eraeth grunted, still dismissive, still suspicious. But Aeren intervened before he could say anything more. “How did you escape the sukrael?”
“I… didn’t.”
Aeren’s brow creased in confusion.
Pain filled Colin’s chest, cold with the memory of the Shadow’s touch, but he forced himself to continue. “The sukrael attacked the wagons, and everything went to hell. Karen and I tried to find our parents, but everyone was running back and forth, and the Shadows were everywhere, falling on everyone, taking the horses, the Armory… nothing could stop them, not swords or axes. When we finally found Karen’s father, he’d been cornered near a wagon. I watched him fall, tried to hold Karen back. But she broke free.” His throat closed up but he forced himself to swallow. The emotions weren’t as raw here, away from the forest, away from the plains, but they were still strong enough to make breathing difficult.
He glanced up, met Aeren’s pained look, Eraeth’s narrowed, his mouth turned down in a frown. “I stayed with her, held her. I couldn’t move. Too drained-from the run, from the intensity of the dwarren battle, from the horror of what was happening around me. So I simply sat there and let the Shadows touch me.”
Eraeth hissed, the sound so unnatural that Colin started. Then the Protector muttered something under his breath, lips drawn back from his teeth as he reached for his sword, but he didn’t draw it. The effort not to draw it was clear in the tension on his face. “No one survives the touch of the sukrael,” he said sharply.
Colin felt his anger escalate. “I wouldn’t have. I wanted to die. But the Shadows didn’t take me right away, like the others. They’d been sated. So they tested me instead, touched me, searching for something. But then the Faeleghre came, and the Shadows fled. They saved me, led me to the Lifeblood, and-” He halted, about to say the Faelehgre had forced him to drink the waters; but that wasn’t true. “-they had me drink from the Well. That’s what saved me from the Shadows’ touch, but it changed me as well.” He hesitated, then shoved back the cuff of his robe, exposing the black mark on his skin.
Eraeth stilled, his body going rigid, but the other guardsman wasn’t as controlled. He stepped back, eyes wide with fear, and hissed, “Shaeveran,” warding himself.
Eraeth barked something in Alvritshai, the guardsman arguing with him a moment, until Aeren finally cut them both off with a gesture.
Colin covered the mark again. The other guardsman whispered something to Aeren, his glance shooting toward his lord. Aeren’s lips pursed.
“He says you’ve drunk from one of the sarenavriell, from a-” He paused, brow creasing as he translated the Alvritshai word, “-from a ‘Well of Sorrows.’ He says that you are cursed.”
“Well of Sorrows.” Colin barked bitter laughter. He thought of all those who’d died in the wagon train, of his parents, Arten, and Karen. “That’s appropriate.”
Eraeth’s suspicious gaze hadn’t wavered. “It could be a trick,” he said tightly. “He may not be the boy we met on the plains. He may have assumed the identity to get close to you.”
Aeren frowned. “Very few knew of the wagon train on the plains: you and the rest of the Phalanx present for that portion of my Trial, but no one else. Are you saying I cannot trust my own House guard?”
Eraeth’s lips peeled back from his lips in a silent snarl, but then he relaxed, the snarl vanishing. He shot Colin a black look. “Of course you can trust your guard.”
Aeren nodded, accepting the emotionless words without comment. He regarded Colin a long moment, the silence thick, his face unreadable, his gaze intense. Colin shifted nervously beneath that gaze, the rolling of the ship beginning to make him nauseous again. Then he straightened.
“I can prove that I’m the boy you met on the plains,” he said suddenly.
Before any of the Alvritshai could respond, he concentrated. His age fell away, the wrinkles of the fifty- year-old man smoothing, muscles tightening. He took himself all the way back to twelve, the age when he and Aeren had first met.
As soon as he started to change, the guardsman Colin didn’t know whispered something long and complicated. Colin could taste his fear. Eraeth’s blade slid from its sheath, and with a fluid grace he stepped in front of Aeren. The Alvritshai lord didn’t protest, his own eyes wide. Fear tightened the skin at the corners of his eyes, pressed his lips into a thin line.
“Stop,” he said, and waved his hand. When Colin only frowned, he repeated in a harsher tone, “Stop!”
Colin returned to the older version of himself. He could feel the tension in Aeren now, the lord fidgeting, as if he wanted to pace, which the confines of the cabin on the ship didn’t allow. He shot a hard gaze at Eraeth, then turned back to Colin.
“Do not allow anyone else to see you… change,” he said, his voice soft but dangerous. He waited until Colin had nodded agreement before continuing, relaxing only slightly. “Is this a consequence of the sarenavriell?”
“Yes. I can become any age I want, up to my true age.”
“And can you shift into other forms? Can you make yourself look like Eraeth, or myself?”
“No.”
“I see. And were there… any other consequences?”
“I have seizures, like the one you saw.” At the look of concern that flashed in Aeren’s eyes, Colin ran a hand across his mouth, as if there were blood still there, then grimaced. “There’s nothing you can do for me. If it
