Aurora’s World: Atecia: Aurora: A Night with Harrison
This entry is part 26 of 36 in the Aurora's World collection
Aurora never really meant to keep the job she’d inherited from her mother a secret from Harrison. Magic just wasn’t a subject that got brought up in regular conversation. It was safer that way. Talking about magic could be enough to get you executed, especially if you knew too much about it, because the King was paranoid. He truly believed that all magic users were dangerous, which was why he’d been able to let someone take his second son to the mountains to die as he was meant to be the son who always had magic. She knew that it was a subject she was more knowledgeable about then anyone else in the kingdom, so she had to be very careful not to say the wrong thing, even when she was with someone she trusted the way she trusted Harrison.
This entry is part 26 of 36 in the Aurora's World collection
There were people Aurora knew would call her an idiot for trusting the Crown Prince but they didn’t know him. When they looked at Harrison they saw someone who was related to the King and nothing more. She looked at him and saw one of her best friends. He was the only person in the whole kingdom that she truly trusted. That was why she’d given him a key to her cottage for when he got annoyed with his father. If she had been even the tiniest bit worried he might betray her trust then she would never have done it.
When Aurora walked to her cottage after work on the winter solstice it seemed like it was close to snowing again. The winter had been colder than normal and really all she wanted to do was spend the evening at home in front of the fire. However it was dark enough that she could cross the border safely without worrying that someone might see her, so her actual plan was to visit Griffin, because she hated to think of him out there alone on such a night, even though she knew that he’d be irritated with her for travelling all that way in such horrible weather. Her plan changed when she realised that Harrison was there. Smiling, she unlocked the door and stepped into her warm home.
“What happened this time?” Aurora asked as shook out her cloak to make sure there was no snow on it.
“I just needed to get away for a while,” Harrison replied, sounding tired.
She hung her cloak up before turning to look at him. “Were you planning on staying tonight?”
“I didn’t really plan anything. I’ll see what the weather’s doing later and then I’ll make a decision.”
“It looks like snow.”
“That’s what I thought when I walked over.”
“Your father doesn’t like you staying over. ”
“Of course he doesn’t. You’re an inappropriate friend and he thinks that you’ll put off any potential brides. He keeps telling me that as though I care about what he thinks.”
“Maybe you should, Harrison. Some day there might be a woman out there you might want to marry and she’ll be put off by our friendship.”
“If the woman can’t deal with you being my best friend then they aren’t worth marrying.”
“That’s really sweet, but…”
“There are no buts. I wouldn’t be happy being with someone who couldn’t accept the fact that my best friend is also a woman.”
“It’s not just the fact I’m a woman that might put off any potential brides.”
He stared at her. “Aurora, anyone who’s put off by the fact that my best friend is a woman and the daughter of two magic users is not worth any of my time. If you look at my family tree it’s possible to see that I’m related to two of the strongest magic users there have ever been.” He sighed. “Any woman who marries me has to deal with the possibility that my father will still be alive and he’ll force us to do the same thing with my second son as he did to my younger brother.”
“When you inherit the throne you’ll be able to change all of the anti-magic laws if you want. He won’t be able to force you to do anything.”
“That’s easy enough to say but I don’t think it will be quite so easy to do. It’s not just my father that’s against all magic.”
“Not as many people are against magic as you think. People don’t like losing their children because they’ve been unlucky. There’s nothing you can do to stop someone from being born with magic and it may have been a recessive gene from generations ago, when being born that way didn’t mean that anyone found to have any magical ability was going to be executed.”
Their eyes met. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a while now,” Harrison said, biting his lip. “There are records and I was looking at them the other day, because Father things it’s important that I read about the deaths that have happened due to magic. Some of them are executions, although they’re rarer now, and the other are records of deaths that have happened on someone’s eighteenth birthday.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Your mother was in them. I’m sure that will come as no surprise to you, as you know how your mother died, but it’s not something that you talked about before and, even though I knew your mother was a magic user, I didn’t realise that she’d been on the watch list for a very long time before she died. According to what I was reading she was being watched because she was helping other magic users to bloom and then guiding them to somewhere safe if that was what they wanted, until the day she died in the cottage of an old friend.”
Aurora nodded. “That was something she’d done from the time I was a child. I always knew she might die, so I was prepared for it to happen, even though I never wanted it to.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.