Aelion Silverwind's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Aelion left the estate under the winged lion banner and rode home to his own manor. Its pale towers rose against the night, moonlight caught in every window. He should have felt hope. Instead he felt blind. The noblewoman had told him a match waited to claim her. But she had not named the man. Aelion knew nothing about him. He could not fight a rival he could not see. He did not know if the match was weak or strong, willing or forced. Without that, he had no ground to stand on. "You look like a man planning to lose," Lyra said. She sat on his front steps, boots crossed, waiting. She had helped him from the start, the one who told him about the wolf, who lent him supplies and her good name. Now she studied him with those sharp purple eyes. "She's promised to someone," Aelion said. "And I don't even know his name." Lyra stood and brushed off her green dress. "Then that's your problem. Not the man. The match." She tilted her head. "You've been trying to be better than a stranger. Fool's work. You can't beat a ghost." "Then what do I do?" "Find out who he is. Every match has a crack. Money, a scandal, a debt. Learn the crack, and you have something to say when you stand before her family." So they went looking. Lyra knew people, and people talked to her. For two days she asked quiet questions in market stalls and back rooms. Aelion waited, useless, pacing his cold halls. On the third night she came to his door with a folded paper and a hard smile. "Your rival," she said, "doesn't want her." Aelion took the paper. "Explain." "The match was made by the fathers, years back. Land and a herd of winged wolves, traded like coin. But the son has no wish for it. He's already given his heart to a merchant's daughter across the river. He goes through with the marriage only because his father commands it." Lyra tapped the paper. "He's a prisoner, same as her. Neither wants the chain." Aelion read the lines. A name he had never heard. A debt the man's family owed the noblewoman's house. A love the man could not claim. The crack was not weakness. It was that the whole match was a cage nobody wanted. He understood then what he had to say. Not a boast. Not a challenge. A door. At dawn Aelion returned to the estate. The gate opened. The black winged wolf he had healed loped across the grounds to meet him, red eyes bright, and pressed its head to his hand. He walked past it to the great hall, where the noblewoman waited beneath her mother's banner. Her father stood with her, tall and gray and cold. "You have no place here," the father said. "I know your match," Aelion answered. "I know the son loves another. I know he weds your daughter to pay his father's debt, and nothing more." He looked at the older man. "You bind two people who want free. Break the match. Forgive the debt. Let the son marry where his heart is. And let your daughter choose." The father's face did not move. But the noblewoman stepped forward. "Is this true?" she asked her father. The old man was silent a long moment. "The son sent word a month ago," he admitted. "He asked to be released. I refused. Our name would look weak." "Our name," she said quietly, "already reaches higher than the ground allowed. Mother saw to that." She took Aelion's hand in front of them all. "I will not be the price of a debt. Free the son. He wants his merchant's daughter. I want this man." The father looked at their joined hands. He looked at the wolf leaning against Aelion's leg, at the row of cat bloom flowers her mother had grown, now blooming again beyond the garden door. Something in him gave way. "Then the match is broken," he said. "Let both houses find peace another way." Aelion planted the last of the cat bloom seedlings with her that same morning. The wolf slept in the sun beside them. She pressed her fingers into the soil, then into his, and did not let go. Three years he had waited at a closed gate. Now he knelt in her garden, her hand warm in his, and the gate stood open for good.