"It’s nothing special," Isabell said with a slight chuckle. "I’m just old. I’ve helped a king claim his throne, raised two children to the age of becoming apprentices, and beco the master of my guild... In all that ti, it would be strange if I hadn’t learned a thing or two about people, wouldn’t it?"
"But, but it’s more than that," Heila insisted. "I know plenty of people who are old. My parents are the sa age you are, but last night, when I brought Ignatious ho for dinner and introductions, they were half petrified the whole night just because he’s one of Lady Nyrielle’s progeny. If it wasn’t for Grandfather stepping in, I don’t think they would have said ten words the whole night."
"So, I think that Lady Ashlynn is right," Heila said. "I think you’re truly special. And I think Virve thinks so too. She would never have carried you like that if she didn’t respect your strength and what you did for Lady Ashlynn."
"And what would Virve have done if she didn’t respect ?" Isabell asked, frowning at how big of a deal Heila seed to be making over sothing as simple as carrying her upstairs and laying her down on the soft cushions that covered the floor around the room’s low table. "Would she have thrown over her shoulder like a sack of vegetables and dropped on the ground?"
"Or she’d have dragged you by your tunic," Heila said with a sharp nod that stunned Isabell. "Virve... Virve carries a lot of pain. Humans killed her father during the War of Inches when Virve was still just a cub. When we ca back from across the mountains and she learned how many villages the humans had attacked and burned to the ground, it just ripped her old wounds wide open. The Heartwood Clan, the Night Weaver Clan, all those families who lost their hos..." Heila’s voice grew quiet as she applied more salve to Isabell’s cheeks and forehead with gentle, careful strokes.
"But she still carried gently," Isabell said as comprehension began to dawn on her. She’d seen bitterness and hatred for ’demons’ from the humans who lived close to the border with Eldritch lands, but she’d never personally felt the pain of a century-long war that took the lives of friends and loved ones every generation. Now, as she entered the Eldritch world, of course, there would be people like Virve who were nursing old wounds and hatreds they’d carried their entire lives.
"Even though I’m human," Isabell said, nodding slightly in understanding. "Even though she has every reason to hate people like . Maybe especially people like who have co to the frontier for the ’opportunity’ to take lands for ourselves that were taken from the Eldritch to begin with. I, I don’t know that I could have been so gentle with an enemy like that."
"Exactly," Heila said, her voice growing warr with sothing that sounded almost like pride. "But you aren’t an enemy at all. She saw what you did for Lady Ashlynn tonight. How you stayed with her when her power could have hurt you badly. How you refused to abandon her even when she was... when she was more frightening than I’ve ever seen her," Heila said softly.
Heila paused in her ministrations, setting aside the airy salve and eting Isabell’s steely eyes directly.
"Virve judges people by their actions," Heila said, thinking back to how her own friendship with the bearish soldier had only blossod after Heila threw herself beneath the ice covering a frozen lake to help rescue Ashlynn from the death-grip of a Tuscan hunter. Once she’d proven that she was willing to risk herself to protect her lady, Virve’s attitude to the diminutive lady-in-waiting had transford to sothing much closer to an elder sister watching over her smaller, weaker sibling.
"Tonight, your actions proved you were soone worth respecting. Soone worth..." Heila started to say before she caught herself, snapping her mouth shut so quickly her teeth clicked as she realized she almost said sothing she wasn’t certain she should reveal.
"Soone worth what?" Isabell prompted gently as she searched the young woman’s grass-green eyes for a hint of the thoughts lurking behind them.
"Soone worth having as family," Heila said softly, her cheeks coloring slightly. "Our coven isn’t just about magic, Master Isabell. We’re... we’re each other’s family now. Ollie was struggling alone in the Lothian kitchens until Lady Ashlynn gave him a place to belong. Virve lost her father in the last war, but she found new siblings here, and she started letting down her walls around us even before she received her seed of witchcraft."
"And I..." Heila started as she smiled shyly, "I found people who see as more than just the servant I was not that long ago." Her hands stilled as she looked at Isabell with growing conviction. "I’ve been watching you ever since we t, you know.
"I know how hard it must be to co to this place and find yourself surrounded by people who are so different from your own. People you must have heard horrible things about your whole life," Heila said, gathering montum as if working herself up to sothing significant. "It was hard for Lady Ashlynn at first, too, and the first day we t, I think she was a little scared of even though she tried to hide it."
"You’re facing so many of the things she faced, and you’re not retreating from any of it. You’re treating all of us like people, whether it’s or Georg or Virve... And I know that isn’t easy because I’ve seen other humans whom Lady Ashlynn brought here that refused to even eat the food we cooked for them until they were on the brink of starving themselves. But you aren’t like most humans," she explained.
"I think that I have an advantage compared to humans who grew up so close to the wars and the border, though," Isabell said, unwilling to take credit for strength she didn’t feel like she possessed. "You might be a ’monster out of a story book’ from my childhood, but I never had to face your people in battle, and I never lost anyone to your people either. That makes it easier for ."
"But it’s more than just that," Heila said, shaking her head in disagreent. "The way you stood against Lady Ashlynn’s grief because you knew she needed soone to anchor her took real courage. And now that you’ve been hurt, you’re still worrying about using our precious supplies instead of demanding that we use our best dicines to treat you the way so other humans might in your place."
"That’s why," Heila said, her voice gaining strength as her certainty grew, "when Lady Ashlynn offers you a place in our coven, I hope you’ll accept it. Not just because your skills would help us, but because... because I think you’d help us beco better than we are. The way you helped Lady Ashlynn tonight, just by being the kind of person who won’t abandon soone they care about.
"She needs that right now," Heila said softly. "We all do. So please, when she makes the offer, will you at least consider it?"
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