Chapter 777: The Bard & Shield Part 2

“I think it’s pretty cool, your name, I mean,” Evander said.

Gale gave him a skeptic look. “Do you now?”

“Yeah, I don’t even have a surname.”

“Commoners in this realm do not take the surname of their home?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like Witt of Dullwater, a man named Witt who was born in this insignificant village of Dullwater.”

Evander was curious about this Witt individual, but he thought it best not to ask any unnecessary questions. He had never managed to hold a conversation this long with the quiet and deadly vampire, he wasn’t about to ruin it now. “I don’t think so. Even if some people did have surnames connected to their homes, I certainly wouldn’t.”

Gale cocked her head to the side. A lock of her snow-white hair trailed down her face and hid her purple iris, leaving a scarlet eye that stared at him like a predator sizing up a small creature. “Why?”

It was a simple question. A single word. Yet a shiver ran down Evander’s back. He wasn’t sure if she was genuinely curious or if she simply was trying to figure out if he was a threat or not. If it was the latter, he worried she might come to the wrong conclusion. Evander swallowed and tried to form the words that he’d rather not say. Lying felt useless against her. She had barely believed him when he told the truth.

“You do not wish to say.” Gale leaned back and the light of the torch crackling between them cast a dark shadow across her face.

Her words weren't a question, rather an observation.

“No, it’s just,” Evander stopped himself and sighed. It had never bothered him to tell others of his past before, but sitting here, before the most stunning woman he had ever met, made him unnerved. She was a noblewoman who had no doubt grown up in palaces, waited on hand and foot, exposed only to the finest of fabrics and jewelry. His small stint in the Greymark manor had left him feeling small. What would a noblewoman like Gale want to know about a sand rat like him?

She stared at him, eyes slightly narrowed. Was she judging him? Had she decided he wasn’t worth the interest or time?

Panic filled Evander and he suddenly blurted the truth. “I grew up in the old Sand Grates.”

“I do not know this place.”

That somehow made it worse. “They’re the, uh, slums of Olduun.”

“Slums?” Gale looked at the ground and her gaze grew distant. “We passed by them at Olduun. It is where the poor live, yes?”

Gods, did she even know what slums were? What was he doing here? Talking to this living statue of sculpted beauty? He could describe her in a thousand words and it still would fall short. He was out of his depth and a voice in his head kept reminding him of it. The truth had ended whatever chance he had of continuing the conversation. She didn’t want to know about the slums. What noble ever did? None. Whatever left his mouth next would only sink her opinion of him even further.

It was only her expectant gaze that kept him from clamming up. “The Sand Grates weren’t really a place I could call home.” He clasped his hands together and stared at the river-smoothed ground. “I spent most of my time avoiding slavers, or stealing what little food I could get from the market stalls. But we had to rotate between different stalls around the city, otherwise we’d get caught. I never stayed in one place long enough to call it a home. Even if I had, Evander of the Slums doesn’t have a nice ring to it, does it?”

Gale looked at him for a long silent moment and Evander curled into himself, waiting for the blow of dismissal to come. Finally, she spoke. “Why did you steal food from the market?”

He looked up at her, surprised. She looked back at him, waiting for an answer. He shrugged. “I was starving. I needed something to eat. Maybe that sounds strange to a noblewoman.” He scoffed and chuckled at himself. “Not everyone gets food put on their table.”

“Yes, but what about the temples? Why didn’t you go to them? The priests would have fed you.”

“The temples don’t give out free food. Do they do that in the Ebon Realm?”

“Yes. The temples give food to the poor and house the orphans and the sick.” Gale furrowed her brow. “I thought all temples did,” she muttered.

“Our temples do none of that here. Gods, I wish they had,” Evander sighed dreamily at the thought.

“...If you needed coin, why didn’t you simply get a job as a porter or something else? Even an apprenticeship, you’re smart enough for it.”

She thought he was smart? No, smart enough, the voice in his head corrected. Smart enough for a sand rat. “Thanks,” Evander smiled weakly. “But the people here don’t take too kindly to sand rats.”

“What is a—sand rat?”

“Oh, um. A street urchin?”

The confused look on her face told him she did not know the phrase.

“Um. An orphan,” he said quietly.

“You’re an orphan?”

Though she phrased it as a question, Evander couldn’t bring himself to answer. It wasn’t technically true. Abandoned would be more apt. Though, for all he knew, his mother was already dead. The truth seemed much worse. Gale already saw him as a slum sand rat, and adding ‘rejected by the one woman who should love him unconditionally’ didn’t sound very appealing.

“I see.” Gale said nothing more. Instead, she waited, expectantly.

He took a deep breath and continued as best he could, the words pulling at his chest with shame and discomfort. “To the people of the Aurous Realm, we are a nuisance at best, a pest to be exterminated at worst. When they look at a sand rat, all they see is a thief. Nothing more. They would never give us a job. So we’re forced to steal in order to survive. Then we actually become thieves and I guess the cycle continues.”

“The Aurian people sound foolish. Even the lowliest of men can be useful if given the chance. My people do not waste good bodies, living or dead.”

Evander shrugged. “You saw me as a thief, not a bard. If even an outsider judges me, what hope do I have with the Aurian people?”

Gale blinked as if she had been slapped across the face.

Evander cleared his throat, already regretting his words. He needed to steer the conversation in a different direction. “It wasn’t all bad. One day—I was fifteen or so, I think? I met Grace. Then a few years later, we met others, people we could trust. After running a few jobs with them, they became my crew, my friends. We moved often, from one town or city to the next, but my crew became my home. We did pretty well for ourselves, for a while.”

“What happened?” Gale shifted her legs and leaned forward, inadvertently exposing the top of her breasts.

Evander instinctively glanced at the pale flesh before quickly looking away while running a hand across the back of his neck. He hoped she hadn’t noticed. “So, uh, there was this information broker, Ori. He told us of this job. Some kind of enchanted vase worth a lot of money, to us at least. But to the noble family who owned it, they probably wouldn’t even have noticed its disappearance. The job was risky, of course. We had a rule about steering away from nobles; they’re too dangerous, too vindictive. Our jobs focused on merchants, mostly.

“But Ori said the job was easy. That he had the plans to House Greymark’s manor. We could sneak in and out with no problem. All I’d have to do is distract a guard or two while my crewmates took care of the rest. It seemed too good to be true, but if we did this job, I’d have enough money to—” He sighed, “It doesn’t matter. When we did the job, it turned out that the information Ori gave us was wrong. There were thrice as many guards inside the manor as we thought. My crew and I ran as fast as we could. Some of us didn’t make it. The rest of us fled Olduun altogether. But it turns out Ori’s misinformation wasn’t the only way he fucked us. He told the Greymarks where our hideout was.”

“Red Pond,” Gale noted.

“Yeah. Victoria Greymark,” he spat the name as if it were poison on his lips. “She hanged my crew, my friends, everyone. Even Grace …She was just a kid.”

“No one survived?”

“None,” he whispered.

“And you? How did you escape? Last I recall, you were hanging right there with the rest of them.”

Memories of his neck snapping and pain shooting through his body as his muscles spasmed flooded Evander’s mind. He should have been dead. But he hadn’t died. Death hadn’t taken him. And he didn’t know why. “I’m not really sure,” he admitted. “It’s all a bit of a blur.”

“It’s not uncommon to forget much of what happens in your first battle. It all blurs together,” Gale said.

“I wish I could forget.” The last thing he wanted was to remember that night.

“…Grace was your sister, right? When we met, you mentioned you found her in the slums,” Gale said.

“Yeah.” He was surprised she remembered that.

“Tell me about her.”

Evander looked at Gale and searched her eyes for any hint of mockery or derision, but he found none. After a few long moments, he found his voice. “Grace was a tough kid. I found her running away from slavers after she punched one in the balls. I helped her hide. Once they were gone, I gave her some of my food and she started following me around. I could have pushed her away, but I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to see another kid get rejected.”

“Rejected?”

“A-Anyways, after that, we were sort of inseparable.”

“She became your family.”

“Yeah.” Evander scoffed with a small smile,“You know, I used to tell her these stories about the unicorns in the Ivory Realm. She didn’t believe they were real, but I told them that one day I’d take her to see them.”

“But they’re not real,” Gale said matter-of-factly.

“They are. They’re rare, true, but that doesn’t make them fake. I saw some as a child. A herd of them lived in a forest where I used to live.”

“There are no forests in the Aurous Realm.” Gale’s brow creased in a mild frown.

“I never said I was born here,” he was quick to reply.

“Then where were you born?”

“In the Ivory Realm. Have you been?”

“I cannot say that I have.”

“It’s quite different from this place. There is snow everywhere, almost all year long, but it’s never very cold.”

Gale looked him up and down, and nodded to herself. “I see, it’s starting to make sense.”

“What?” He glanced at himself, searching for something wrong.

“You don’t have the tattoos of the rulus, nor the horns of a sune. But you’re also too pale for a human who walks under the sun all day. You’re not human at all, are you?”

“Oh. That.” Evander turned his head so she could see his side profile, then he pulled back his dark hair and revealed a pointed ear.

Gale got up and sat closer to him to get a better look. “You’re an elf.”

“A snow elf,” Evander corrected, suddenly very aware of their close proximity.

Gale stared at his, noting the differences. Finally, satisfied, she sat back, though she was still sitting closer than she originally had been. “I’ve met one of your kind before, a few years back.”

“Oh, what were they like?” Evander hadn’t seen an elf in two decades.

“I don’t know. I killed him moments after we met.”

“Ah…” Evander stiffened.

Gale winced, as if realizing how her words might come across. “He was trying to kill Lord and Lady Veres. I am the Shield of Veres, I did what I had to.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Evander nodded along as if he knew what she was talking about.

Gale stared thoughtfully at him for a long moment.

“What? What is it?” he laughed awkwardly.

“How did a snow elf end up in the Aurous Realm of all places?”

“You’d have to ask my mother that,” he said bitterly.

“Your mother? She lives?”

Evander grimaced. Idiot. Why did he have to say that?

“You lied. You’re not an orphan, are you?” Gale narrowed her eyes.

“No. Well, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I never met my father. As for my mother, I don’t know if she lives. The last thing I remember about her is that she woke me up in the middle of the night and threw a cloak over me so large that I couldn’t see anything. I asked her where we were going, but she never answered. We walked for a long while, until I stepped onto a dais of polished steel. Then I saw this bright light and I could have sworn I was floating for a moment. The next thing I knew I was on Olduun’s Chrome Gate. It was hot. The air was dry. And my mother was gone. She had left me with nothing but the clothes on my back in the middle of the Aurous Realm.” Evander laughed bitterly, “I do not know if she lives, but I hope she’s dead, truly.”

“...How old were you?”

The question caught him off guard. How long had it been now? It was hard to remember sometimes. “I was ten,” he whispered.

The conversation fell into a lull, the silence filled only by the crackling sound of the torch’s flame.

“So, unicorns are real then?” Gale asked softly.

“Yeah,” Evander replied quickly, relieved to talk about anything else. “Grace didn’t believe me either, at first. But the more she listened to my stories, the more she wanted to see them. I promised her we’d go to the Ivory Realm someday. The only problem was that passage through the Chrome Gates is very expensive. So, we saved up all the money we could over the years. The plan was to leave this whole place behind. I wanted to leave this place so badly,” he sighed. “That’s when Ori came to me with a tip…”

“The job to steal from the Greymarks?”

“Yeah. I thought if we could sell that damned vase, we could make enough money to leave the Aurous Realm altogether,” Evander’s voice tightened as he spoke. “I put the idea of escaping this place over the safety of my crew. I failed them, but they were the ones who paid the price.”

“Gods, I’m terrible.” He wiped the corner of his eyes. “How is it that everything I say leads to a depressing story? I’m sorry. I’m an awful conversational partner right now.”

Gale glanced at Tauri sleeping on her bedroll, her back was to them and her body moved ever so lightly with the breath of one who slept. “...I had a brother. I always pushed him, even when he didn’t want it, because I could see his potential. He had it in him to be the greatest swordsman my family had produced in over two centuries. He was brave and loyal. Clypeus was the best of us.”

Gale smiled sadly as she stared at the fire. “Clypeus never backed down from a fight, no matter how outmatched he was. …There was a battle and I wasn’t there. People have told me it wasn’t my fault, that there is nothing I could have done. But deep down I know I should have been there, but I wasn’t. My brother died alone protecting the heir of House Veres. Now I protect the man Clypeus died for. I fight for the dream that Clypeus believed in. And every day I’m out here, away from Lord Veres, knowing that he might be hurt or worse, I feel as if I’m failing him, and I’m failing my brother. So, you see, you’re not the only one who’s terrible at conversations.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” he said bittersweetly.

“When we arrive at Olduun, I will honor my side of the bargain. I will help you find Victoria Greymark. We will avenge your sister, on that, I give you my word as the Shield of Veres.” Gale placed a hand over her heart.

“Thank you, truly.” Evander bowed his head. “Um, if I may ask, what is the Shield of Veres?” He hoped the question wouldn’t upset her. She always seemed annoyed when he asked her questions about her homeland.

This time she replied without any hint of disapproval, rather, she seemed proud. “My house has sworn fealty to House Veres for a thousand years. Our founders shared a special bond that has echoed through the generations and is reflected between the lords and ladies of House Veres and House Gale ever since. I have the honor of being Lord Veres’ Shadow.”

“This Lord Veres sounds very special.”

Gale nodded. “He is the King of Hollow Shade, the Ebon Prince. But more importantly, he is a t— he is special. And I am his Chosen.”

“Chosen? What does that mean?”

Gale appeared reluctant to answer. “It’s complicated. Suffice to say we are destined to walk eternity together.”

“Ah. I get it.” Evander felt his heart drop. He didn’t know why he ever had his hopes to begin with. Of course, a woman like her was already promised to another. And to a king at that. It made sense. He suddenly felt like a nuisance, a fly zipping around one’s head.

“Wait, that came out wrong—” Gale said.

“No, it’s fine, really, I understand. Sorry for all my questions. I didn’t mean to bother you for so long. I’ll let you get back to your training. I should probably get some rest too, it’s late,” he rambled on while staring down at his fidgeting hands.

“Oh. Right, of course.” Gale frowned slightly in disappointment, but quickly smoothed her features before Evander noticed. “I’ll take first watch. Nothing will get past my blade, that I promise.”

“I believe you,” he said with a sincere smile.

“Good,” she nodded stiffly, got up, and took her post at the other end of their camp.

“Goodnight, Lady Gale,” Evander called out softly.

She turned back to him. “Goodnight, Evander of the Ivory.”

He blinked at the name, then grinned and bowed with a small flourish before lying down on his bedroll. He did not notice the vampire’s gaze lingering over him for a moment too long. Tauri, however, was watching the whole scene unfold from the corner of her eye with a small smirk on her lips.