GAV:
He fell in love before he fully understood what the concept of love was.
Gav often felt, in the afterwards, that she had bewitched him. That was fitting for a girl with witchblood in her veins, logical, even, but then there had never been anything logical about him and Saskia.
It had always been fire.
Carter glanced towards him, Ashryver eyes mimicking Gav's own gaze in the dim light. "Sensing anything?"
Gav shook his head, tightening his grasp on the reins. Wind whispered uneasily through the pines above them. He trained his gaze on the horizon, Carter following it.
Saskia looked up at him, glaring with ash sprinkled over her face like freckles. "You do not get to decide what I do," she snapped, all the words laced in fire, and his blood roared with embers.
Gav blinked and Saskia disappeared.
The wilderness gave him too much damned time to think.
Stars peeked out beneath the pines. The air was still laced with the frigid cold of the north-the Stagorns' perpetual state. The wind whispered, telling stories, setting Gav on edge. The wind reminded him of home-of Father's lashing winds and Brigan's gentler gusts, but for the most part it reminded him of Illia. With her, the uneasy murmuring of the winds were only the beginning.
Gav was really searching for trouble tonight.
Carter said, quietly, "I'm beginning to think we won't see anything here."
Gav exhaled. In truth Carter was right. Gav had only had them sitting here freezing their asses off for this long because he kept getting distracted by himself. "Let's go," Gav said, and tugged the horse's reins, turning the stallion around and ducking as the cover of pines brushed his head.
For the journey overland he and Carter had remained by vast part in their animal forms. Carter's shifting gifts were limited-he was still learning, and it was clear he didn't have his mother or Iris' unlimited ability. That said, he excelled at several of Gav's favourite creatures: hawks. Eagles. Wolves. They'd flown north, and then had spent the last few days looking for trouble in every place Gav knew to find it, frankly putting off joining his men until he felt less desperate. Honestly, there wasn't any real point in hunting down trouble when he was a Galathynius and Carter was an Ashryver, and by all accounts, they attracted it regardless.
Gav remembered running after her. He remembered her fourteen-year-old scowl across family dinners. He remembered that her eyes cracked and sparked. That she never gave a shit what anyone thought. That witches were her friends and wyverns were in her blood and she craved stars like air.
He remembered all of her wild, because that was why he fell in love with her. And he remembered her depthless, because that was why he'd stayed.
The trail opened up slightly, Gav ducking low over the borrowed horse as the tight copse of pines released them. It had been a tight fit on the horses, but the vantage over the smuggler's hold had been even harder to justify hiking on foot. Out of the dark of the trees, the last light of the day dwelled behind the mountains, a winding ribbon of deep golden orange weighed heavily by veils of blue and silver. Terrasen sprawled vividly green and deeply shadowed in all directions. The mountain wind snapped, and some of the heaviness in Gav's chest released at all of that open air.
The horses picked their way carefully down the path again, winding back towards what could still not be considered a road but a more passable track through the mountains. "You know you've dragged me all over northern Terrasen," Carter said, pebbles skittering over the path in the half-dark. "I'm beginning to think you're avoiding something."
"Don't make me regret dragging you out here, Ashryver. You could be spending the spring and summer cataloguing books in Caraverre."
"How did you convince my parents to let me come?" Carter asked. It was the first time he had asked. Gav would've weaseled the answer out of his own companion ten times over by now, but then Gavriel was annoying, and Carter was not. Far more clever than he let on, yes. Dangerous, most likely. Young and perfectly unburdened by wyvern-riding girls with black hair, absolutely. But prying? Never.
But Gav wasn't sure why he had brought Carter. Just for company? Just to give him part of the adventure he had craved at that age? Or was it because sixteen year old Gavriel had absolutely worshipped the ground Aedion walked on, and now maybe twenty-three year old Gavriel was hoping, however selfishly, to be the worshipped one. Brig had long since gotten smarter than Gav, Elena had never worshipped anyone a day in her life, and Mary didn't take anyone's shit, least of all Gav's, which was generally similar to her own nonsense.
Gav could really use someone liking him right now.
"I love you," Saskia had told him, and he'd known she meant it.
He was, he realized, less angry because she was upset and more angry because he didn't know why. Why did he have to let go of her when she was all he wanted? Why did it take her distancing to make him come to his senses? What had happened to them?
Gav didn't want to be alone with all of it, and maybe Carter was just the person he could count on to keep him from falling apart into loneliness while not asking any questions.
"Did you pull rank?" Carter asked, into the silence. Gods, how long had he been wondering that? "Carter," Gav said, "I've never pulled rank on Aedion Ashryver a day in my life, and the gods know I never will."
"What about my mother?"
"You mean the frightening one? Take a wild guess."
Carter was silent. Gav glanced back and found his cousin half smiling down at his horse.
"I said some fresh air and wilderness would be good for the developing wildling's soul," Gavriel said.
"Oh?"
Gav shrugged. "I may have left out a few key points."
"Like demon hunting."
"It was never confirmed that we're hunting demons."
"My father is with the Bane. Won't he notice his secondary unit is missing?"
"My unit is independent," Gavriel replied.
"Yes, but he knows I'm with you."
Gav twisted in the saddle to face his cousin. "A word of advice, cousin. When it comes to our parents, there is a certain amount of bullshitting that goes on. We bullshit them, fully aware they know everything, and then they bullshit us by letting us believe we have bullshitted them, and we all go on with our own measures of freedom sleeping well at night because we've proven ourselves clever and we all have plausible deniability."
Carter blinked. Then, "That explains Iris, doesn't it?"
Gav turned back around in his saddle. "She should teach you more."
"She does," Carter said.
That was unnerving.
"Gav, where are we going?" Carter asked.
"I've wearied of dragging us uselessly through the wilderness," Gav replied.
"Staring down an inactive smugglers hole did seem a bit of a stretch."
"I will leave you out here," Gav said.
Carter obediently fell silent.
"We're going somewhere where bullshitting does not come into play," Gavriel said. He turned around again and said, in all seriousness, "Your father is not aware this place exists. My mother is not aware this place exists. Now I don't know if they would truly be bothered if they knew it did, but frankly, I don't want them to. Understood?"
Carter nodded.
"Good," Gav said. The horses met the main track, picking up a pace tracking due east. "We're going home."
Brannon's Fortress was built straight into the side of Shatter's Peak. Lost to the dead pages of Terrasenian history, it heralded from a time when the wild mountain tribes caused enough trouble to warrant a military outpost built in total secrecy, as an unknown and impregnable base for those who spent their lives as professional soldiers battling in the wilderness.
Gav had first found mention of the faraway fortress in a slim volume of military history. It was an old book, but it was Brigan who had dated it back several hundred years. "This is all censored," he'd said, poring over the page with seventeen-year-old fascination. "This entire operation was conducted with the utmost secrecy."
"A fortress lost to history?" Saskia asked. Damn it, Saskia was in this memory, a lock of hair slipped from her braid, falling over her face as she bent over the page.
"Exactly. Now, based on what I can infer, this authour mentions it intersects the location of several battles. The Carnage of Willem and Shem, the Blue Loss at Trent-"
"The northeast Staghorns," Gavriel said.
From there, it was a process of elimination. Only so many peaks were accessible in inclement weather, close enough to towns small enough to be supply depots without word reaching beyond their limits, and large enough and obscure enough to be perfect.
They'd spent hours on Syrie's back in sleet and rain, and dozens of nights camped on mountainsides. Gav didn't know why he wanted it so badly. He had just gotten his own command-now that he had this slender taste of power, he wanted more that was his own, craved the freedom of his own decisions.
They finally found the entrance behind a crashing waterfall, just as the censored maps had inferred. Saskia had been the one to find the entrance-behind a near-hidden trail marked with a scent Syrie picked up.
Saskia had been in the fortress for that and so many nights after. He had envisioned her there, among the peaks and valleys and deep blue shades of their mountains, forever.
"What is this place?" Carter asked, as they led the horses up a slender trail that branched casually off of the main track. Water rushed and roared as it tumbled from the ice shelves high above, great white swaths that made up most of Shatter's Peak and fed the waterfalls and streams all over these mountains. The pool here was wide, deep and crystalline and undoubtedly shatteringly cold, but largely inaccessible by brush and stony tracks.
Gav led the horse up the path. By magic, brambleweeds and stones melted away into illusion as they walked. Footfalls that should have been hindered met even footing. They neared the waterfall, glacial mist tickling Gav's skin, and he walked straight through what should have been a sheet of water.
Instead he met the other side of a veil, wards zinging against his skin as he turned back to Carter. Carter stood absolutely gaping, staring back the way they had come. On this side of the illusion the sentries posted all over the clearing became noticeable, perched in shadows and distinguishable only by moonlight on steel, the well-trodden path marking it's way here.
"Come on," Gav said, and led Carter down the wide, torchlit tunnel into the mountain.
Carter's facial expressions alone were well worth having brought him all the way out here.
Gav hadn't been here in about three months. It was the longest stretch of time he'd gone without visiting in a while, and the fortress was suddenly nearly as striking as it had been the first time he'd walked in with Saskia at his side.
Back then they'd felt their way down the cobwebbed tunnel by their fingertips, shivers down their spines, a flicker of Gavriel's fire lighting the way. The slender flame hadn't lit the great hovering mass of dark they'd reached, suddenly becoming confronted with the great sense of nothingness before them. Gav pulled up a whirl of flames from within himself and the cavern lit in a rush of fire, as the palm-sized balls of it scattered, and the great interior of the fortress became clear.
It had been intimidating then, ancient and empty, and now it was awe inspiring.
Carter stopped full in his tracks, his mouth falling open as the fortress became clear: a bustling, whirling pit of military activity. Before them the path they'd been tracing split, winding into wide walkways on either side of them, and one sloping downwards to the level below them. The pit floor was a maze of movement: a vast bustle of activity spiralling on and on into the mountain, corridors branching off into subterranean barracks and offices and armouries and mess halls. The paths on the floor wound around sparring rings and training rigs, past weapons racks guarded by warriors, a circle marked out for spurts of fiery magic, a stable built straight into the cavern wall. Walkways looped around the breadth of the entire cavern, branching into a full other level of living quarters and private rooms and spaces Gav still couldn't conceive of a use for. At one time Brannon's Fortress had been capable of holding a thousand men within this massive space. It held Gav's elite squad now, stretching in size from fifty to two hundred at full capacity, but they were still loud enough to make the fire-lit cavern feel full.
"This is Brannon's Fortress," Gavriel said.
"This is-" Carter fumbled for words. "Spectacular," he managed.
"Lord Commander," a sentry said as he brushed past, nodding to Gav. Several others followed, nodding and ducking heads as the watch changed. Hounds came barreling up from the pit floor, barking wildly at Carter, who had been spending most of his recent time as a wolf. Carter immediately lost interest in the warlike potential of the ancient space, all of it sheltered beneath a roaring waterfall and winding so high into the peak Gav could station a lookout capable of seeing for a thousand miles in all directions, and dropped to his knees to greet the dogs.
"Ah," Terrence, Gav's long-suffering second, appeared by his side. "If it isn't our illustrious commander."
Gav grinned, clapping an arm on Terrence's shoulder. "How are you, Terrence?"
"We've been holed in a mountain for a week."
"So well."
"Oh, very. How was the Gathering?"
"It had a surprisingly low body count."
Terence nodded his head in Carter's direction. "Why did you bring a child with you?"
"He's sixteen."
"My point stands."
Gav led Terrence a few steps down the overlook, leaving Carter happily occupied with gaping and dogs. "That child is General Ashryver's son," Gav said, "fully trained, Fae and shifter blooded and capable of killing a man in a single blow."
Gav's second followed his gaze to where Carter was currently wrestling with the hounds-crooning.
"Truly lethal," Terrence said drily. "Do his parents even know he's here?"
"Of course they do."
"'Of course', he says," mimicked Terrence. "Says the male whose youngest sister trained with us for a summer without either of your parents' knowledge."
"My mother knew."
"Did she?"
"She knows everything."
"But you have proof that she consented to your fifteen year old sister living with a gang of men in the wilderness for three months."
"Well. No."
Terrence shook his head. "I better not have the shifter murder me in my sleep."
"They know he's here."
"Do they know what he's doing?"
Gav shook his head. Terrence paused along the overlook. "And what are we doing, exactly?"
Gav watched the neat lines of his band of warriors sparring below. "There's a force," he said. "A-darkness. Spirits or sorcery or blood magic, we don't know. But it's here, and it's causing trouble. Our job is to put out the fires. Quiet them before they ever burn."
"The Allsbrook uprising," Terrence said, half a question.
Gav nodded. "We can't have another one. This country needs stability."
"So we're just putting out fires? Don't we excel at starting them?"
"It was either that or research, Terrence, and I sure as hell wasn't going to volunteer for that."
Terrence half smiled. "I suppose not."
"We're hunting down trouble," Gav said. "We love trouble."
"And you brought a child with the active intent of starting a fight."
"No," Gav said, "I brought a child with the active intent of finding a fight."
"This is going to kill us."
"Fear will keep him alive," Gav said. "Namely yours."
"I'm really starting to question why I minded getting bored."
Gav clapped a hand onto his shoulder. "Now it gets interesting. Carter."
Carter jerked his head up.
Gav waved a hand towards Terrence. "This is Terrence."
"You must be an Ashryver," Terrence told Carter. "You look just like him."
Carter half smiled. "So I'm told."
"Can you scowl?" Terrence asked.
Carter blinked, but obeyed.
Terrence nodded. "Yes, that is exactly what the General looked like when he arrested me."
"Terrence may or may not have a criminal history," Gav admitted.
"Gavriel recruited me out of a prison because I pissed off his commanding officer enough to be noteworthy," Terrence informed Carter.
"And there is no one more trustworthy in my ranks. Did we miss dinner?"
"It wasn't dinner. Correy cooked."
Gavriel grimaced. "That is enough of that."
Terrence whistled. "Barnes. Take the horses to the stables." A passing soldier nodded and took the leads, leading the horses down into the pit. Terrence turned back to Gav, then looked to Carter and said, conspiratorially, "There may yet be something edible around here."
"I'm putting him in the room next to mine," Gav said, clapping a hand on Carter's shoulder. Terrence nodded. "I'll arrange accordingly. I'm assuming we'll be seeing you both in the morning."
"Training remains at dawn."
Carter blinked. "I'm training?"
Gav shrugged. "Do you have something better to do?"
Carter lit up like he was the one with the fire gifts.
Gav had to grin. "Come on, Carter. Let's find you a room."
He strung an arm around his cousin's shoulders and led him deeper into the fortress, Saskia's ghost tracing every step, his family's presence whispering after her. With every step into the mountain, Gavriel felt more himself, and more lost than ever-tugged in a thousand directions.
But he had a task before him, and Gavriel had always done best with action.