Slaves of the Night

Chapter 24

Rax

We take the secret tunnel up to Kaisa's room, where Eero and I flop on the bed to wait while the girls get changed. Essie is wet from her charge and it's been literally all night. We're doing the gentlemanly thing and letting the girls get changed first, but happily Essie has dragged enough of my clothes up here so I'm able to get changed too. We checked on princesses on the way, they're fast asleep, now I'm in a fresh set of my clothes, dry and mostly healed and getting warm staring at the fire, with Eero only occasionally chastising me about the new scar on my stomach.

"You really didn't know?" I ask, quietly, We're sitting at the foot of the bed, because I tried to sit on the floor and Eero got all upset saying I'd been recently stabbed.

"Didn't know what?" he frowns, confused.

"The girls--?" his physical relationship with Maija was something of a sore subject with me, for obvious reasons.

"I knew about Leena—the timing was off. I suspected Liala too but, I wasn't positive. I didn't care, they looked like me, what did it matter?" he says, shrugging a little.

"I suppose," I feel like I can't ask him about that. It's fine if he's okay. I know he has to have biological children.

"You don't think he'd hurt them?" Eero asks, nodding in the direction of the nursery. We've decided that until we come up with a Maku-proof way to tell who is and isn't Maku, we need to stay together.

"I have no idea what he'd do right now," I say, shaking my head. For once I have no answers. No ideas.

"He's your---you knew him better than I did," Eero points out. He is like my brother. Apparently he's technically Eero's brother.

"I thought I did. I knew he had magic—but other than the odd simple spell I never saw him use it. He's been studying, practicing on his own it would seem—but you're the only one who's ever seen me do magic either," I point out, sighing, "I just don't know what he's capable of---and if he is your brother as he claims then we're out of luck he's definitely stronger than I am."

"Like I said that isn't---entirely surprising with respect to my parents—I could see them doing something like that---and we never knew where he came from did we?" Eero asks, "I'm sorry; I don't know what he said his history was---I only knew he didn't have family like you---except you do have family."

"No, he was a foundling—supposedly, raised by a few of the maids who also had little ones, just sort of lumped in with them and my dad's kids until he was old enough to do lessons with the Royal Guard. Same as me except my dad never lumped me in with his real family," I say, "So it could very well be true."

"Even so. Please don't walk up and stab people?" he says, putting a hand through my still wet hair.

"Yeah okay," I say, smiling a little.

"You done? So who do we think killed Maija?" Essie strolls out. 

"It didn't do a lot of good to say 'you done' when you just walked out," Kaisa says, following her overeager handmaid who also flops on the bed. It's been a bonding night. Kaisa sits primly on the edge. They're both in clean dresses and thick purple and pink sweaters, with clean scarfs.

"Sorry your scarf is rather ruined I bled on it," I say, nodding to the blood clothes I folded at the foot of the bed.

"It matched the dress you also bled on. You bleeding is still more of an issue than the ruined dress—anyway, knowing what we do now--- who do we think killed the princess?" Kaisa asks.

"More important how does he think he knows? It doesn't even matter what happened it matters what he thinks happened," I point out, "That's our problem."