Vero was riding a horse. She was wearing a dress and riding side saddle, which caused her some difficulty balancing herself. Jean held her steady from behind. They were riding his stallion together, so he must not have given her Papillon yet.

“We’re nearly there.”

Vero leaned back into him and closed her eyes. “I’m in no hurry.”

The day was clear and cold. She felt Jean’s stubble across her cheek. They came to a stop and Jean dismounted himself before helping her down. They were not alone, but Vero did not pay much attention to the others.

A servant brought them their hawks. Vero was already wearing a gauntlet and wondered how it had gotten there, before concluding that she must be having another dream. Vero introduced herself to her bird. Whispering to animals took great effort on both their parts while awake, but it came to Vero easily in her dreams.

“You say you’ve never gone hawk hunting before?” Jean approached her with his own bird perched on an outstretched arm.

“Oh, yes. We went together many times, don’t you remember?” Vero released her hawk and Jean did the same.

“You command the animal like an expert. Slayer secrets, perhaps,” he mused.

“I can’t answer that, not unless you foreswear all land and titles to become my apprentice.”

“I’ll have to consider it. Are you a very harsh mistress?” Vero felt arms slide around her waist from behind.

“A hard mistress, very hard.”

Their birds returned. Jean’s held nothing, but Vero’s clutched a fat rabbit.

“Impressively done.”

“I prefer to work more directly, with my own hands.” She reached her free arm behind her to show him what she meant.

“I see.” He kissed her neck. “Perhaps I should find us more exciting sport.”

“I want you right now.” Vero struggled to get the gauntlet off so she could begin untying her dress.

“We’re not alone. Isn’t that improper?”

“So? This is my dream, not theirs. Why should anyone who only exists in my mind care what we do to one another? Don’t you start being the coy one now, because that was me.” Vero had the gauntlet off at last. She went to work ridding herself of the dress.

Jean was not undressing at all, but she did not want to bother with his clothes too, since she might be waking any moment. His mouth was free though so she kissed him.

Already the crowd of people around them was imperceptible, and Vero was sure that meant she would be awake and back in that dismal fortress again. She wanted to just stay here; she finally had the dress off.

“Now, there’s somewhere else I want you to kiss me,” she told Jean.

But it was already too late.

She had woken up.

It took only a few days for Vero to settle into her routine at the fortress.

She would wake well before dawn, and get dressed. Dressing itself took some time, given how many layers of clothes she needed to put on before venturing outside.

The interior areas of the keep were well insulated, but the courtyard and walkways between the towers were cold enough to kill, except during the brief hours of sunlight. To make moving easier, most of the slayers traveled by the underground passages.

Unfortunately, the guest quarters where Vero slept possessed only a single door, leading out to the open air. A lifeline had been tied to a bolt beside her door, which led to the nearest hatch and down into the gatehouse. This ensured that she could find her way, even in white out conditions, or if the trapdoor became buried by snow.

First thing in the morning, she always went to the chapel to offer her thanks to Mother Luna, for protecting her through another night.

After reciting her moonset prayers in rote Liturgical, Vero went to the great hall. There she ate breakfast with one or more of Pentarch, the boy Conner, Diana, her friend Philip, or even Lothair, if they ate late enough that he was finished with his duties organizing the kitchens.

Once breakfast was over, one of the veteran slayers would give a lecture on some subject which they were an expert in to the rest of the congregation. Sometimes it might be an exposition on a certain type of prey, or it might be a dissertation on some recondite piece of arcane theory.

It was presumed that the Curia watched them from their screened mezzanine over the great hall, but they could not be seen.

When the morning lecture was finished, it was time for exercises. They used an indoor training room, located in another outbuilding between the men’s and women’s dormitories, until the sun was high enough to go outside. As soon as they were able, they moved out to the courtyard where conditions were less cramped. They always trained hard and sparred with full contact until past mid-day, once the sun started to set.

Vero’s performance left a great deal to be desired.

She was still not acclimatized to the thin air so far up in the mountains, and not long after she arrived, she began to feel a terrible fever. Her leg was in agony, and many times she very nearly begged Pentarch for some poppy milk. Although he always refused her.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The worse she told him her symptoms were, the more certain he became that she needed to purge the drugs from her body.

Normal stamina exercises drained the energy from her muscles at once, and she could never catch her breath. She stifled her pride to work with light weights in her strength training to keep the correct range of motion.

It was impossible to learn the bow in the state she was in, but Pentarch refused to give her a crossbow, so she only embarrassed herself again and again.

When they sparred in close combat, she was too pitiful to match anyone but the novices. Diana typically paired her with Conner. The lad’s skills were limited, but her body simply refused to respond as she wished. She did her best to trip him as soon as possible with her superior grappling knowledge, and then just press down on top of him to keep them both immobile.

As the winter became deeper, eventually it was impossible to use the courtyard at all on some days. These events always lowered morale, and too many in a row created a growing sense of cabin fever. It was always terribly cold outside, even on the warmest days, but the fresh air and sight of sunlight had a salubrious effect on everyone when they could have it.

Vero was usually thoroughly humiliated after her daily training and preferred to take her dinner alone in the library. There she studied the books with great interest.

She never had access to such a large collection before. Jean kept a grand library at his estate, but most of those books were intended for entertainment rather than education. She loved hearing adventure stories and historical epics when she was a little girl, but as a grown woman she felt guilty when she spent time reading for pleasure. Reading to learn gave her no guilt, and she usually stayed in the library until it was time for supper.

From time to time, she would encounter Iosephus, the master slayer who managed the library. He possessed elven features, but his hair was white and his body was so frail with age as to require a cane.

He went to great pains to avoid speaking to anyone whenever possible. When one did need to speak with him – for instance, to find a certain tome – he would limit the contact to the bare minimum required by his duties. His glazed introspective eyes always made it clear that his view was still directed inwards, towards the personal world inside his own mind. His manners suggested that any disruption originating from the external world around him was a distraction to be dealt with as quickly and directly as possible.

Vero preferred to read quietly and without distractions, so they got along together very well.

At supper time, she returned to the great hall for the final meal of the day. Again, she ate with one or more of her regular companions. This was when she took her daily ration of strong alcohol and cannabis, both of which were given to everyone in the fortress in small amounts. They helped ease the soreness from the daily exercise, and the misery from her fever.

After supper Vero had free time. She usually spent it drinking or smoking with the handful of people who seemed well disposed towards her until she felt tired.

She learned that Richard – the ill-tempered man she met on her first day there – was the member of a gang who worked as informants for one of the factions within the Curia. None of them bothered to hide their hostility to her. Although their group was disliked by most of the other slayers, the spies were also feared for their connection to unseen masters.

Aside from Pentarch and his allies, or supposed allies, the other slayers had no wish to stand beside a target. Everyone else remained as far from her as possible.

That suited Vero just fine.

Philip was the only man in the fortress she found handsome, and she was sure that was why Diana so visibly staked her claim to him when they were together. The other men were all either naturally ugly, or had become the victim of grotesque maimings on one of their previous hunts.

Conner looked as though he might eventually grow into the sort of man who would interest her. The way he was always blushing and stammering near her, she was sure that she had caught his interest. But he was still too young and needed more filling out, in her opinion.

Some of the serving girls were pleasant to look at, but they were even more frightened to come near her than the slayers.

Vero was still less isolated than Isolde, who everyone – Vero included – wished to ignore entirely. The sorceress took her meals separate from the others and spent the rest of her time in her quarters, which was in a room like Vero’s, located atop the opposite end of the wall from her own.

The other slayers’ main pass time, when they were not on duty, was gambling.

Mama always told Vero never to gamble because it was a waste of money. She considered it good advice to follow, but occasionally watched the others.

Pentarch introduced her to a board game which used colored stones to represent armies. It was based entirely on skill rather than luck, and they did not play for stakes. Vero had yet to win, but she enjoyed the games and felt certain that she was improving.

When she started to feel the pull of sleep, Vero always bid farewell to her fellows right away. It was a habit for her to take her rest when she could, and never try to stay awake when she felt tired, unless it was a necessity. Fatigue could be deadly on a hunt, and she did not believe in courting the Veiled One.

Before returning to her room, Vero stopped at the chapel for several minutes to pray, and meditate at the moon shrine as she waited for her thoughts to quiet themselves. Vero would rather have said her prayers to the moon Herself, but often it was cloudy- and it was always atrociously cold.

When she did pray in the chapel, she tried her best to avoid looking at the wall of arcane angles. Even so, they drew her eyes almost like a compulsion, and did strange things to her fever-addled head.

She perceived the full measure of them almost like a whisper on the edge of hearing. She felt her grasp had been stretched to its farthest extent, yet she could brush it only with her finger tips. The tendons were strained to the point of breaking, but the pull continued.

When she did tear her eyes away towards the other half of the room, it did her no good.

She now saw those same terrible lines and curves rendered behind the outward veneer of religious tradition. The two sides of the room were indeed painted as a mirrored pair, but only in one was the true immensity of the work fully laid bare without any veil of artifice.

The whole thing hinted at some monstrous truth beyond her understanding, and when she came too close to it, a rising panic would start in her chest. The tremors would intensify until they became too much to bear.

Then began the desperate search for Luna’s light. Once she found it, she dare not let it go, for fear of the dark that was all around her.

Slowly, the world would come back into focus. The Goddess always led her back from the brink of despair. Even in that cold faraway place, she was not alone.

Vero repeated the cycle of terror and relief many times before she started to see.

When she was done with her meditation, she returned to the guardhouse, forced up the trapdoor with a lever mechanism from under the accumulated piles of snow, and used the lifeline to return to her room.

There she undressed, climbed into bed, and usually fell asleep almost at once.

When she slept, Vero most frequently dreamed about Jean, but from time to time she also dreamed of others.

There was Luiz de Valance, a priest of the Healing God she knew in Lusitan. He was not so handsome to her as Jean was, but he had a calm and even disposition. He made love to her with a mechanical efficiency Vero sometimes thought she felt more comfortable with than the passionate romanticism of the Marquis.

And sometimes she dreamed of the dark haired and olive-skinned Theodora. They traveled together in disguise as man and wife, and she was now waiting for Vero to the south. On the northern edge of Velian land, where it became too dangerous to risk taking her farther.

Those sorts of dreams were her favorite, and she often woke from them in a mood for vigorous exercise.

Sometimes she was visited by the shades of those she had lost, Antoinette, Virgil, or Mama. These dreams made her sad, but she still felt more determined to press forward the next morning.

Once she had dreamed of her former master. And she had not liked that at all.