Sometimes Elina wakes up and comforts her, sometimes Halvalin gets up and wanders through the house and Vamir can hear her quiet footsteps, like a pale ghost searching for something it has never known.
During the nights she leaves the room he keeps her company in the kitchen, he makes her tea and sits with her while she stares out of the window, not daring to look at him. Maybe because she’s scared that he will ask questions. Maybe because she’s scared that she’s going to start crying.
He remembers finally being free of the world he grew up in only to find that he didn’t know how to act in this new world he stumbled into. Not home in either one or the other, lost and alone and without anyone to talk to.
Vamir refuses to let this child experience all this the same way he did.
One night when he finds Halvalin sitting on the window sill, bathed in moonlight and wrapped in one of Elina’s big sweaters he hands her jasmine tea, pulls up a chair next to her and takes a few deep breaths.
After all these years, talking about feelings is still hard.
He will never be as good at it as Ira already is, Ira who, with only eight years, is able to articulate how she feels way more confidently than him. He is fiercely proud of this.
“I was in love with one of our servants while I still lived at home”, he finally says and Halvalin blinks at the unexpected sound of words. She doesn’t turn her head to look at him, but he can see that she’s listening.
“His name was Timeon, he was a human. Sometimes he snuck food out of the kitchen, things he knew I really liked, so he could give them to me when I was locked in my room.”
Vamir looks out of the window as he keeps talking.
“I’m not good with magic and my parents were endlessly frustrated by that. Probably not as frustrated as I was. I once got so angry about having to learn magic at all that I broke one of my mother’s very expensive vases. I was locked in my room for over two weeks after that.”
“Timeon climbed up to my window after my parents were asleep and he brought me books from the library. And food from the kitchens. When you grow up in a world where kindness is a very rare commodity every little act of kindness feels almost overwhelming...”
Halvalin bows her head to look at her lap. The moonlight shimmers on her short, blonde hair. Vamir notices that the small talisman she showed him earlier has started glowing slightly as he talks. It almost feels like approval even though Vamir doesn’t understand where it’s coming from.
“It was the first time someone told me that being locked in my room was not a thing that should be happening to me. Or any of the other things my parents did. It was hard to believe, just because I didn’t know any better. It took me a long time to really understand that it was all wrong and that no child should be raised like this.”
“Ira is never locked in her room?”, she wants to know.
“She doesn’t have to learn magic at all?”
“Not if she doesn’t want to.”
At the moment Ira is more interested in picking locks, drawing dragons and asking every adult she meets if they can teach her archery.
“If she never learns a single spell or falls in love with a hundred girls or breaks all of our plates and vases I will still love her all the same, just like a parent should.”
Halvalin is chewing on her bottom lip and she holds her teacup so tightly that Vamir is a little concerned that she might break it and spill hot tea all over herself. It takes her almost five minutes to finally start crying.
“You’re really brave, Halvalin”, he tells her quietly and she sniffs before taking a sip of tea. “I know it’s unbearably hard right now. But I’ll do my best to help and to keep you safe, alright?”
She takes a deep breath and turns her head to look at him again. Her eyes are red but there is determination in there, too.
“Lin”, she says. The name Elina calls her.
Vamir, who once was Vamiran, doesn’t have to ask what she means. He understands.Â
