Page 60 of The Iron Hex

“I didn’t find any memory witches in Luwha, so if she’s dead it wasn’t me,” Hugo said coldly, glaring at Evangeline before looking over to Eira’s horrified face. “Sorry, Eira, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupted, not really wanting to hear more about Hugo’s witch-hunting exploits at this precise moment.

“That’s actually ‘Eira’ for it not being fine,” Evangeline snipped.

“Believe it or not, I did spend more time with Eira than you did, on account of me being her guard,” Hugo shot back.

“Technically I’ve spent almost every minute of every day with her for three years, so you’re incorrect.” Evangeline leanedforward with each word she spoke, the malice radiating from her like the sun’s heat.

“You were a rabbit, that hardly counts,” Hugo retorted.

“Both of you,” Eira said, slamming her hands down on the table so hard the cutlery rattled. “That’s enough! You’re like bickering children.”

“Humph!” they both huffed in unison, leaning back and crossing their arms. This journey was going to be terrible if they kept up like this.

“We need to go to Luwha,” Eira said. “At the very least to figure out if this witch is still alive.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Evangeline said, eyes sparkling with what Eira assumed was the hope that her plan from earlier might still be able to come true. “And maybe Hugo will just die on the way there.”

“I can’t handle this,” Eira said, throwing her arms up and storming out of the building and into the moonlit garden beside the tavern, leaving the two bickering monsters at the table inside to deal with themselves. It was cold, and most of the flowers had died, but Eira had always felt like anything bathed in moonlight had a certain beauty to it.

A memory witch in Luwha was a good lead, but Eira worried that it would set off Evangeline’s ideas about fleeing to Osnia. Eira tried to remember if there wereanywitches in Osnia... If there were, they were not nearly as skilled as Astran witches had once been. Corisia too—their witches existed, but they were historically far less powerful than the witches in Astra... before most of them had been killed, of course.

A nagging feeling dripped in the back of Eira’s mind—she needed to understand what Hugo’s plan was. They’d found the princess, but he hadn’t mentioned what their next steps would be after they got Eira’s memory back. There was a reason he left the capital and defected from the Iron Retinue, but shewasn’t sure what it was yet. She trusted Hugo, but did he trust her enough to tell her what his true plans were, if he even had any? Eira needed to decide if it was worth it to bring it up before she got her memory back, or if she should simply wait until it returned. But Eira had never been good at being patient.

She cracked open the notebook from her home in Cilirien as she sat on a cold stone garden bench. As she began to read, she realized that, while it wasn’t in a different language, it was confusing and full of illogical sentences that made no sense.You fool, as if you’d just write everything down clearly for anyone to read, she thought. It was probably in some sort of code, a code she didn’t know because her memory had been wiped by her own spell. Eira hadn’t even begun to process what Evangeline had said to her earlier in the night.

“Eira, you can do it all,” she’d said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Witches didn’t cast in multiple domains; they simply couldn’t—but apparently, Eira did. What did that mean Eira was, and what implications did it have for what witches could become, or what the Flow was? So many questions unanswered, and Eira couldn’t help but feel that if her memory was there, maybe, just maybe, some of them could be answered by her own history.

Eira pored over the journal in the cold winter air for a few more minutes before giving up and snapping it shut. She stood, coming face-to-face with a masked man. His hand shot out and closed around her mouth as she let out a muffled scream, and he pulled her into the forest behind them.

30

Hugo

Hugo had felt so comfortable around Eira this past week, but he’d never felt more awkward in his life as he sat across from Princess Evangeline, scowling at him as Eira stomped into the tavern’s garden.

“You going to go get her?” Evangeline said, ankles still crossed on the table in front of her, arms now crossed as well, as malice radiated from every inch of her.

“I’m going to give her a second,” Hugo answered.

Evangeline scoffed and rolled her eyes, looking away from him.

“Did you know about her magic before you fled the capital?” Hugo asked, his curiosity about the bounds of Eira’s secrets getting the better of him.

Evangeline turned to him as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Hugo knew that feeling; it was the feeling of being watched. He glanced around the room quickly, but no one was paying attention to him. Still, something didn’t feel quite right.

Had he seen that brown-haired woman in the corner before? She sat with a man, her cheeks flushed, and an empty jug of ale sat in front of her. She could be anyone, but she did remind himof someone he’d seen in Cilirien when he’d first arrived to find Eira. Or he was being paranoid? Cilirien wasn’t far from where they were; she could easily be a merchant in the area, or a fellow traveler who happened to be going the same way.

“I didn’t know she was a witch,” Evangeline admitted, and Hugo’s attention snapped back to her. “But you remember, Commander, it didn’t really matter if you were a witch or not back then.”

The princess was right. Sometimes people’s abilities were more likely to be obvious, but most witches hadn’t really talked about their magic if they were members of a noble family, and they certainly hadn’t discussed it with their guards. It was only after the revolution that it became more important, and far more dangerous.

“How do you live with yourself?” Evangeline asked. “Knowing how many people you killed? And for this.” She spread her arms, and Hugo knew she was referring to all of it, every horrible thing the Iron Empire had done.

“I don’t sleep much,” he answered.

“I can tell,” she sneered. “Your dark circles look terrible.”