Out of Evenfall (BOOK 1)

Chapter 33

YUVEN

"Yuven, it was refreshing to see your handwriting again. I think you slipped some Navee script in the last one. I'm not quite as fluent in Navee as I'd like to be, but it looked like you wanted to say something else, but changed your mind halfway through. Maybe I don't need to wonder though, considering what you said before. I've compiled everything I've learned in Elvkana. The library here has so many books, and I think you'd like it there. I know you've read all the books in the Euros Annex multiple times.

Be sure to take your medication per my instructions. I'll see you home. I know it's been a turn and a half, and I miss you dearly, Ice Knight."

Signed ~ Maria Ollain.

Yes... a Turn and a half, but it feels longer. He put the letter with her neat scrawl beside his washing bin inside the Naveeran captain quarters. He ignored the rosy designs on the walls, meant to invoke a sense of home, but it brought him nothing but pain. How much longer... I cannot say. Footsteps outside the door made him turn. "Yes?" He frowned when Fenrer opened the door, alone and without another person beside him. "Where is the Anima?" A scoff escaped his lips and he headed up to Fenrer. "Don't tell me you left her to her own devices. You know it is dangerous."

Fenrer folded his arms. "I took her to a free room. I doubt she's going to get up to trouble when we're not watching her. I came to check on you."

"Why?" Yuven moved to the washing basin to brush cold water through his feathers. "I'm not the one liable to explode, I am quite well." He sucked in a breath and tucked the letter deeper behind the washing bin, out of sight of his Oathbound. "You should go get some early sleep. We'll have to get up early in the morning to see the Elder Conclave and head back to Fallholt. It is imperative that we get the Anima out of here as fast as possible and in the safety of Euros." Home... and maybe you'll wait for me even if I made you wait for so long... Yuven dipped his fingers into the waters embrace, but the ice crawled up his knuckles.

Fenrer's gaze lowered to the floorboards, and he said nothing.

"Fenrer?" Yuven removed his cold hands to face him. "Is there something on your mind? If you have something to say to me, say it. You know I don't like flurry fighting — bush beating — whatever the ridiculous idiom is." Yuven shrugged and came closer, and Fenrer drew his attention away from the smooth flooring. "What is it?" At Fenrer's insistent silence, he growled out his growing frustration. "Don't tell me you're still tearing yourself over what happened in Tebora — there is nothing we could have done."

"It's not that."

"Then what is it?"

"What are you expecting the Elder Conclave to do?"

That... is not what I was expecting. Yuven folded his arms. "I do not know. Is the Anima worried?"

Fenrer closed his eyes and folded his arms in an echo of himself. "Worrying about what is to come is putting it lightly."

"Is her aura bothering you?"

"Whether it's bothering me or not is not the issue. You know the Elder Conclave will not want to give up an Anima so easily — not after all the effort they made to make sure there was none." Pained empathy filled the greens as he drew back.

"Different Elders since that time, Wolf Boy."

"Not so different views, or else they'd have let us take Adara without discussion."

Yuven sighed out, and stifled a cough. "There's not much we can do, Fenrer," he repeated and wandered back to the basin, clutching onto the edges as rustic waves beat down across his brow. His reflection taunting him through beaded pupils. "We can only see this through." Fenrer shuffled behind him, and he huffed. "I do not plan on giving them the Anima that easily, if that's what's bothering you. We take her to Euros as per Warden Commander Faehariel's instructions."