Page 3 of Ironling
“He broke my new device and set a fire. He could have burned the castle down,” Aislinn argued, but without any true heat.
Brenna tutted. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”
“I said I was sorry,” Jerrod sulked from the safety of Brenna’s skirts.
The chatelain pinned Aislinn with a look of deep disapproval. “Ladies don’t hit. If your fits become violent, I’m going to have to tell your father you need confining.”
“No!” Aislinn dreaded that above all. While she didn’t exactlyenjoy most other people, she couldn’t bear to be locked away.
She loved her home. Dundúran was beautiful, built of local blonde limestone and crowned in blue-gray slate roofs. Blue Darrow banners flapped on poles atop conical turret towers. Her mother’s rose garden still bloomed, and the wisteria hung thick in the spring. The Shanago River meandered to the south, perfect for punting and shoreline strolls. She loved the castle and its staff. They were her friends.
“Then you mustn’t behave like a wild animal,” Brenna chided.
Aislinn’s gaze skittered away. She couldn’t look at Jerrod when she said, “I’m sorry.”
A long moment passed in silence, finally drawing back Aislinn’s reluctant gaze.
From his place at Brenna’s side, Jerrod considered her shrewdly with those eyes that were and were not her mother’s, a little smirk on his mouth.
“All right,” he finally said.
“Good man,” Brenna praised, rubbing his arm. “Now, clean this up, young lady. Then it’s time to wash up for dinner.”
Ushering Jerrod in front of her, Brenna walked them toward the study door.
“Oh, and I don’t think there’s any reason to tell your father about this,” said Brenna. “Accidents happen.”
Finally left alone in her study, Aislinn hugged herself tighter.
She couldn’t bear to look at the broken device, all of its lenses shattered and its metal parts twisted. The room smelled of smoke and probably would for weeks.
Heavy tears splattered her chest. Another wave of emotion rose up her throat, and she quickly closed and locked the study door.
In the privacy of her refuge, she had another fit, screaming and crying. She pulled at her hair and beat her own chest, her rage overflowing. What she’d done, the threat of being confined, herbroken device, all of it poured out of her in a maelstrom.
Thankfully, it was a smaller fit, most of her energy expended already, and Aislinn slumped to the ground when it was done, exhausted.
Surrounded by her books, Aislinn eventually dried her tears as best she could and then began to pick up the pieces.
1
Fifteen Years Later
For all that Hakon’s grandparents had done for him, gave him a loving home, taught him everything they knew at the forge and beyond, he couldn’t bear to stay in their home more than a fortnight.
It hadn’t been one thing but a series of little difficulties that felled his beloved grandmother—aching joints and a thick cough and a bitter rainstorm. Although already elderly, even for an orc, she was hearty and healthy—yet she’d quickly taken ill. She’d passed peacefully twelve days ago. It hadn’t taken his grandfather long to follow, his own health fading as rain pattered against the slate roof.
Hakon had begged his grandfather not to go. Not yet. There was so much yet they had to do. He was all Hakon had.
His grandfather’s gnarled green hand had risen to hang in the air, and Hakon hurried to grasp it.“You have everything youneed,vittarah,”he said. He hadn’t called Hakonlittle hammerin years.“You don’t need me anymore. But I need my mate.”
Hakon had sat beside his grandfather, weeping into the quiet night, as the old orc slipped away to his mate in the afterworld. Leaving Hakon behind.
That had been a week ago. A week was all he could bear in their quiet, cold house. No longer a home. The trinkets and tidbits of their life littered the house, their cold disuse burning him whenever he reached for one. What use was his grandmother’s shawl or his grandfather’s cane?
The life that had been lived in that house was over.
In his tide of grief, Hakon sometimes believed his own was, too.
