The ride to the Duke's manor had been short and i don't want to ever go on such a ride again.
Ilya is sitting beside me looking like he has not a care in the world and that really gets on my nerves sometimes. He has told me countless times that i have a bit of a petty gene in me and even that part was something that i could not understand until i read up on it in the science section of the royal library.
He keeps himself holed up in there all the time and it's maybe one thing that i admire about him. He has been at the castle ever since he turned sixteen. I was turning seventeen at the time and i had still been a big baby. Dorian teased me about the fact that i looked like a man but i still behaved like a child and father was always there to tell him that last born kids took longer to grow up.
At seventeen i was almost as tall as Dorian himself and he has a good two years on me. I was upset that mother wasn't around to do most of the things i had expected her to do. She had been on royal visits and campaigns for most of the season. Reports had come of a dissension brewing in the north. The warrior females of the winter manor had decided they wanted to rule themselves, they said the men were too soft in their approach to certain things, too soft and too slow in taking decisions.
There was also the fact that they had been poisoning the Ician of the winter manor for some amount of time, his men were loyal to him, to a great fault even. A maid had escaped and taken the pains of travelling all just so she could report what was going on to mother. She begged that her life be spared and mother did just that.
Well she did that after she had gathered her armour and made the journey there through one of the secret passageways they have all across the Kingdom. Journey through any of these paths that cut through villages and cities would leave you totally hidden from the presence of others. Father said it had taken a great deal of sorcerers to achieve that feat and that was when magic still thrived in Erilea. Magic is sort of like a bed time story now and i sigh as memories wash over me.
I hate going on road trips. I hate being locked in this carriage with the snob of a person i have been living with ever since my seventeenth birthday.
"You know i can feel you staring at me?".
I sigh.
I imagine it hasn't been a long time since i was seventeen but it seems it has been a long time since he was sixteen. He sounds in control, he sounds bored and formidable but at the same time, he also looks like Ilya and i don't want to dive into that right now.
"I'm not staring at you"
He scoffs.
Sometimes the sound of my own voice surprises me because i have grown considerably well since i was seventeen. At the age of seventeen i was tall, yes. I was almost as tall as my nineteen year old brother who looked like the epitome of perfection but at the same time i was all still gangly legs and limbs. Father caught me staring at myself in the mirror that one time and he simply hollered the words "Give your body time!!!!".
The words sounded so weird to me but they made sense all the same and i sigh at that now.
The fact that he had been right is yet another thing i like about my father. There is also the part where he told me "Give him time, he'll come around", but that declaration doesn't seem to e working.
I'm sure Ilya still hates me and i still do not know why. We had been best friends at some point. Well....... that is after i had been able to bring myself to get over the fact that he was the first person my mother had gone to see after she had come back from what i knew would be a very bloody massacre. Father and mother rule this realm together, they don't believe in all that king is the only leader stuff. They have a fine balance that they have perfected in ruling their family and that is the same thing they do with their realm.
Mother will not hesitate to take Dorian to the training room and challenge him to a duel, after which she will sweep him off his feet several times because she is a warrior and she wants to show him that underhanded tricks aren't the way of a true leader. His tricks aren't underhanded or dirty though, well at least not to me.
The image of my elder brother thinking he sees an opening to surprise my mother but being having his feet swept out from under him before he can even think of going for it makes me smile.
Mother taught me better.
The dull pain from where my butt had crash landed on the floor a few days earlier also reminds me that i am still a far stretch from actually being as good as her. She trains with us so we do not train with father because if we train with father....
One wrong move and your arm might be hacked off.
Ilya trains with father though and that is what the punishment of the other day had been about. He has refused to talk to me for the past year and a half now, when i say talk, i mean like really talk to me about anything. He has erected this wall between us and i should say that i do not understand what all that is about.
He says he is keeping polite distance, i say he just doesn't want to talk to me anymore.
I confronted him about it, though i suspect it is how i went about it that warranted me a beating.
My body still aches and i let the silence remain between us. It's better like this.