*Book One of The Accursed Chronicles*
August was a man from a normal world, living a mundane life until one night everything changed, and he was sent spiraling into a world stuck forever in winter, full of magic, creatures, and a curse that has grip...
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The situation with August was growing more troubling and looked to be requiring much of my attention. It made me question if I were going to be able to recover The Remnant from its devastating losses or not, if most of my time was being spent on him. It felt like he was becoming more and more my responsibility everyday and not simply because Daesa had asked me to watch over him.
After we had left Aegar, most everything had been quiet, almost too quiet. Daesa had taken to herself and hadn't spoken of the occurrence in Aegar since we had left. I hadn't gotten her full opinion on the matter because of that. She had seemed to be watchful of August though, gaze hardly leaving him whenever we would camp for the night. Her attention to him had me desperate for answers, wishing to know what she had seen in Merk after she had touched him. I knew that she had the power to see the color of one's aura and its intentions and knew she had seen August's. All of me needed to know before I dedicated my time to ensuring he didn't lose his head at the chopping block in Laelmos.
But that had to come later. I hadn't yet told August what had become of the four people he had met in Aegar and I had been delaying it, as I knew how emotional he was. He wasn't equipped for a life here, yet he would need to grow thick skin quickly or drown in the hardships of a life in Laelmos.
Within two days we had reached Lorge. Lorge was the closet city to the Krak-Eyrin border and was a day's journey out from the town of Two Rivers, a neutral territory between Krak and Eyrin. Lorge, therefore, was a city enriched with traders from Eyrin, filled with elven silk, gems, and ashwood from black forests deep within the mountains of Cathalan, those that lied near Varen. Lorge was never my city of choice as it was far too crowded, the streets not easy to maneuver without being elbowed or pushed.
That had been why I hadn't left the castle since we had been given our rooms by Lady Endora of Lorge.
The crinkle and flip of a page of paper broke my concentration from the window I had been staring out for some time. I had been looking North towards Eyrin, where the road from Lorge meandered through the lowlands then disappeared into the tree line. I'd only gone to Eyrin once, to Lysandria to attend a marriage between Princess Gaiane of Krak and Prince Heron of Eyrin. It had been yet another union between a Damari and a Cathain.
Though, I didn't miss Eyrin nor wish to go there again, not now that I knew my sister Lissa was in Kalle.
As I turned away from the window, my gaze fell to August who sat in the chair beside the window. He sat strangely with one leg pulled up onto the chair and arched, being used as a rest for the book I'd given in Aegar, while the other was stretched out. His boots sat discarded next to the chair along with his cloak that had been draped over the side table. He'd been here with me since he had snuck away to my room. I hadn't bothered to tell him to leave, considering what had happened the last time he had left my sight.
"Have you learned anything or are you merely skimming the pages?" I asked pointedly when I noticed him flip to the next page a little too quick.
He looked up at me with bright eyes, attentive to my words. "I have, for your information. I know each of the four major houses of Laelmos."
