A Court in Flames

Chapter 14

Rowan's POV

One year. It had been one year since I lost Aelin and yet I still reached across the bed every morning only to remember that she was gone and I was left here with my miserable life.

Fleetfoot licked my face. And I wiped the slobber off of my face.

Fleetfoot's twin puppies jumped on me as I got out of bed.

"'morning, Rowan," Aedion mumbled. I just sighed and sat down. "Aelin always loved Beltane. It was the one day she could be her." 

"That's today?" I asked him.

"Yes. But now... It just has a mournful feel to it." He said as he stirred his tea.

"That was the first time Aelin and I didn't fight, really, on Beltane eleven years ago. She hed a self-imposed burnout. I took care of her through the rest of the day and several days after that. It was also when I found out she'd been a slave in Endovier." I frowned. "I reacted poorly."

"You should've seen the way I reacted to finding out. I blamed myself for not getting her out sooner," Aedion told me while sipping his tea.

"Is there anything we can give to Elena and Gavriel?" I asked him while looking in the cupboard.

"You finally named them?" Aedion asked me and I nodded.

"I was going to name Elena, Aelin but I thought that would be weird and plus Elena saved Aelin's life when she was younger," I told him.

"There's some leftover steak in the fridge." Aedion pointed behind me.

Lysandra then walked in the kitchen in her ghost leopard form. She stretched while yawning and stole the steak right out of my hands.

"That was for the puppies and Fleetfoot, Lysandra," I scolded her and she just growled, so I froze the steak in a block of ice. She tried jumping on me but I had a wall of air ready for her.

"Ah! Here we go," I said as I pulled some more leftover steak and unfroze Lysandra's. She just growled at me before attacking her meal again.

I cut the steak into thirds and gave a piece to each dog.

Fleetfoot immediately took hers and went to wait by the door again. I smiled at her sadly.

"That dog misses her almost as much as you, Rowan," Aedion said while smiling sadly.

"I know," I said sadly. "Let's just get through today."

Feyre's POV

"No. That's the symbol for the sky, not earth. This one's earth," Aelin told me.

"Why is this so hard?" I asked her while rubbing my head.

"Well, if it was easy everyone would use it. Now, what's this symbol?"

"Valg." She nodded and pointed at another.

"King." Another. "Queen. Water. Earth."

"We just went over that. It's the sky. This is the earth." She added both to my list to study. "Now, read this."

"The Valg king searched for their Queen. No. Valg kings searched for their Queen in every world," I said slowly at the sentence she had scribbled out on the paper.

"You're still going at this?" Mor asked as she looked up from the book she was flipping through for Aelin.

"Would you like to join us?" Aelin asked her.

"Sure. Why not?" Mor replied. "I would love to be able to use symbols to escape from people." She slid off the bed to join us.

Aelin picked up some of the flashcards she had made from earlier sessions.

"This is open," Aelin started. "This is close." She held up another. "Feyre?" 

"That's fire." She held up a forth. "Valg."

"That should be enough for today for you Mor. I'm going to keep asking Feyre. When you think you have them memorized just tell me and I'll quiz you." She then handed the cards over to Mor.

After ten minutes Mor handed the cards back to Aelin. "She held up the first card."

"Close." Aelin shook her head.

"It was a trick question, Feyre?" She held up the card for me to see.

I frowned, "Sky? No. Earth."

"Earth?" I nodded. "Finally! Feyre you got it!" Mor just raised a brow and Aelin explained. "That one she's been studying for weeks." Mor smiled.

"Why did you give me a trick question?" She asked Aelin.

"Because you have to realize that there might be slight variations in each design so it's not enough to only memorize a small part. You have to remember the whole thing. Trust me. This will make it easier later. I let Feyre get away with it and she only just got the sky versus earth versus close. Those three are really similar."

"Oh..." Mor said. 

"Here." She handed Mor a piece of paper and a pencil. "Why don't you write them out a couple of times? It makes memorization easier and I also test Feyre each week with a written quiz and there's some drawing to it, too."

After we finished the lesson, Mor was shocked that Aelin had learnt so many.

"So you guys know it Calanmai today?" Mor asked.

"What's Calanmai?" Aelin asked.

"It's fire night. We have huge bonfires and huge drums with lots of music and food and dancing, you'll love it," Mor explained.

"That sounds like Beltane. We celebrated it every year. It was always my favourite. We would leave trinkets for the Little Folk and we decorate the hawthorn bushes. And danced around the maypole. There were bonfires and beautiful music. It was my holiday because a fire-wielder, like me, love fire and it was like a fire night," Aelin said with a sigh. "Elentiya was born at mid-day on Beltane. And I knew she would have a huge amount of fire magic. Almost as much as mine is now."

"You arrived on Calanmai, Aelin. Which means you've been here for a year," I explained. Aelin blinked.

"It's May 1st?" She asked. I nodded. "I've missed so much. Her first birthday, her crawling, her first solid food, her first words probably. I wish I could figure out a way back."

"Aelin... We'll help you. Every step of the way," I told her and Mor nodded in agreement.

"Thank you. I keep meaning to give this to you, Feyre." She handed me a piece of paper with wyrdmarks on it. I recognized only some of the symbols. Fire, earth, water, air, sky, ice. And then there was open and close and the night court symbol and portal... it was a portal. "It's the portal I used to get here. I copied down all of the symbols two days after I woke up and tested it. It brought me to the same place. Just be careful with it because it will close behind you and pull whoever is closest through it. Also, the marks fade away immediately afterwards. Just in case you ever want to visit you can come back."

Mor and I just stared at her. "Aelin! This is awesome! Thank you so much! How could we ever repay you?"

"Well, you could visit me once I get this thing sorted out and I need to figure out better symbols to replace these two." She pointed to one symbol, "That means that it will suck you into the portal and that one," she pointed to a second symbol, "means it will only stay open for one person. I would've been fine because I was holding Elentiya, but if you try to go through with more than one person it will close before the second person can enter."

"You're one step closer to getting your daughter back, Aelin."

She smiled at me, "I suppose I am."