Chapter 736: Impressive Engineer (Part Two)
"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 become the master of my guild... In all that time, 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 same age you are, but last night, when I brought Ignatious home 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 me?" Isabell asked, frowning at how big of a deal Heila seemed to be making over something 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 me over her shoulder like a sack of vegetables and dropped me 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 came 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 homes..." Heila’s voice grew quiet as she applied more salve to Isabell’s cheeks and forehead with gentle, careful strokes.
"But she still carried me 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 me. Maybe especially people like me who have come 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 warmer with something 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 meeting Isabell’s steely eyes directly.