Bistaff in hand, Torrense dances and sings.
He fights like a dragon—lore says he has wings.
He was born to be Love; power wasn’t his thing.
The throne is his brother’s. Death bows to the king.
“The Lordheir,” an excerpt from “Killián’s Guard”
A day passes, or maybe a year. A medic leans over me—Bardic. He re-straps my right arm. The canvas hammock swings as someone takes my vitals.
I’m being carried.
I’m on a train, and the jarring tug-and-pull of the stronghorse hooves makes me shudder.
I’m being moved—two lancers are transporting me. I shiver. Lady Death hovers over my head. I thought her eyes were red, I think—that’s how they are in the paintings.
“Am I dead?” I ask.
“I’m the one who’s dead.” She grips my hand. “You have to help me, Ko.”
Tawny eyes swirl to gray.
Linden?
A hussar.
My eyes close.
###
“He can’t hear you, darling.” The voice is soft. Soothing.
A spasm racks my body. Tears drip down my face, and fire ants burrow beneath my flesh. I burn, I ache, I writhe. I can’t remember a time when breathing wasn’t excruciating.
I try to open my eyes. I find I can’t.
Someone snuggles against my side. Curls against me. Ila.
“—and then Mr. Killián showed up!” she says. “He said you were in the First Circuit’s medi-center. He also said my beadwork was fantastic—and I’m already learning how to blow glass! Most apprentices don’t get to use the grandes forges until they turn twelve, but Lefe says I’m special. He says I need to stop painting calves on my urns, though—they’re undignified. What else is new…oh! I have a boyfriend, Ko! His name is Silas, and he’s Lord Galtero’s blacksmith tyro. He’s eleven and swears he loves me. I can’t wait for you to meet him!”
“You’re too young to have a boyfriend.” Felicity’s voice is sharp.
Lici.
“That’s what Lefe says.” Ila laughs. “But Silas is so cute! He has dimples.”
I imagine stroking her hair. Kissing her face. All I can do is shake and breathe and long for the ability to open my eyes. The pain crashes down on me in dull, lolling waves…
“We need to get Bard!” That’s Akeeva’s voice. “He’s seizing—”
Fingers reach out, brushing strands of itchy hair off my forehead.
“I knew you’d get hurt,” Felicity murmurs.
My body is dissolving in a bath of biter toxin. I spasm. I shake. I try to talk.
There’s a sharp sensation on my upper thigh.
She pinches me.
###
“We’re not going back to the Second Circuit until Ko is discharged.” Akeeva’s voice is firm. “We’ll stay with Ila in Fate’s palazzo.”
“Lefe will love that,” Bardic says.
“He totally will,” Ila says. “Methinks he’s pashing on Mom.”
“Ew,” says Felicity. “I’d rather sleep under a bridge than watch an old man make eyes at Keev.”
“Thirty-four isn’t old—Lefe’s younger than I am.” Bardic’s voice strains as if he’s trying not to laugh. “In any case, I’ve never known him to make eyes at anyone. His disinterest in intimacy borders on disgust—it’s one of many reasons he’s divorced.”
Ila isn’t dissuaded. “Mom’s never met a man she couldn’t seduce.”
“Ila,” Akeeva says sharply.
“I see the headlines now—L-Street whore ruins puritanical zealot.” Felicity makes a disparaging noise. “We’re not here to sleep our way into your weird religious circus.”
“Too bad,” Bardic says. “We’re on the hunt for a new Lady Fate. I’d pay good money to see that troth pitched to the Septemvirate. The chaos would be marvelously entertaining. Keev—you interested?”
“Please stop. Lefe and I aren’t going to…oh, never mind. Ko—can you hear us?”
“I’m putting him on doxidiol until the toxin works its way through his system,” Bardic says. “It’ll steady his pulse, but it may cloud his mind.”
“Send for us the second he’s alert,” Akeeva says, and my heart burns.
“You have my word,” Bardic says.
My arm pings as someone shoots me up with something—
###
The mattress beneath me opens its mouth. I fall into its jowls.
###
People drift around me. I try to speak to them. I can’t. I’m not sure if they’re really here. The circling figures dissolve into shadows. Their voices fade to long-lost breaths.
###
Choose a lady, the spirits whisper. Claim your power. Be free.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
I can’t, I tell them. I don’t want to choose.
Freedom. Freedom! FREEDOM!
Chants swirl to screams. They swarm like locusts. Invisible hands touch me, tingly, cold. They grab me, tug my hair, yank me beyond the veil.
###
The girl who sits by the moonlit window is young—sixteen, maybe seventeen—and breathtakingly beautiful. Straight brown hair falls in a shiny curtain down her back. War-paint draws attention to large eyes, high cheekbones, and red lips. Broad-shouldered and curvy, she’s clad in black leathers and sharpening a bistaff.
The twang of stone on metal sounds as vivid as a deadcrow’s shriek.
My voice is a rasp. “Who are you?”
“My name is Brid Naya’il di Vivar.” She parrots the words Brid spoke by the rock heap, but she says them differently—she sounds older, sadder, and mature. “Fighter extraordinaire, fear-bringer to my enemies, rightful general of tomorrow. Bow before me, or I’ll leech the blood from your veins.”
“That was less cute coming from you.”
“You don’t think I’m cute?”
I reappraise her. Still stunning, and now a little…vulnerable? “Your statue in the courtyard doesn’t do you justice.”
“My statue is covered with ivy and bird droppings.”
“You’re Killián’s sister?”
“Half-sister. Different mothers.”
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I am dead,” she says cheerfully.
“You’re Lady Death, then.”
“Yosif’s lady has lived many lives,” Brid Naya’il says. “I’m her current incarnation, but I’ll be replaced. She’ll move to another vessel when my services are no longer needed.”
I don’t care what she says—she’s Lady Death. She has to be. Her leathers morph into a rich-girl ballgown with poofy sleeves and a low neckline—she gets up and curtsies. I avoid checking out Death’s chest. She’s a lot to look at, but Keev raised me better than that.
“Sorry for calling Killián delusional,” I say.
“He’s Yosif’s conduit,” Brid Naya’il says. “He can take it.”
“What’s a conduit?”
She sits down and picks up her bistaff. The ballgown is gone and the leathers are back.
“The conduit, the second-in-line, and the subjects can consult with Yosif—through me—from the lands of the living.”
“Who?”
“Killián, Jebah, and the dead or dying.”
I hope this is a fever dream and not my final moments. “You appear to everyone as they die?”
“Not everyone,” she says. “When Fate hasn’t finished weaving the threads, I offer direction to lost souls.”
“Fate threw me an orange. Is that why I’m lost?”
“Among other reasons.” She kicks her feet on an end table and her leathers squeak. “You’re popular with the ladies, and now you must choose one to follow.”
If this is a dream, I want it to end. If not, I need some answers before she shuttles me to…wherever.
“How does choosing a lady work?”
“There’s power in your world,” she says. “It can be studied, accessed, and stolen.”
“By royals?”
“By anyone, even you. Entropy, energy, order, chaos. Nature and nurture. These are all factors. Everyone has the potential to usurp a church, and the methods by which this can be done are outlined in the Testaments. Some individuals have more potential than others. Fate incarnate can identify these threats—most do not catch her orange.”
“I have good hand-eye coordination, and that gives me the potential to usurp a church?” I ask. “Which one?”
Her feet drop off the table. She looks at me intently.
“Depends on the force you consult for guidance.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Love embodies the power of connection. Death rules the spirit realm. War heals and fights for peace. Hope governs the forces of destiny and freewill. Fate commands the flow of time and cyclical patterns. Life nurtures the essence of vitality and renewal. Loss oversees sorrow and acceptance through memory. Choose one, or lose them all.”
That’s all the cryptic apologia I can handle.
“If this is a fever dream, I’d like to wake up now,” I tell her. “On the off chance it’s real—it’s been a pleasure chatting with you, Lady Death.”
“Do you choose me or not?”
“Can you direct me back?” I rub the back of my neck with my bandaged hand. “I have…unfinished business.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Gone is her tawny gaze. Her eyes are red, scarlet as her lip paint. One of her incisors protrudes, a slight flaw from her otherwise straight teeth. It doesn’t do anything to diminish her beauty.
“Killián had unfinished business too,” she says. “He left us in that house. Threw himself toward Bathune the day he graduated unders.”
“He was a teenager with an abusive dad,” I say, “and you’ve been dead for thirteen years. Might be time to let it go.”
“I could. I won’t. Do you know the story of Brid Naya’il?”
“You died in the Colosseum.”
“I had everything,” she says. “A promising career. Brothers who adored me. A doting fiancé determined to usurp his family’s throne and make me queen.”
She must’ve been engaged to Audrin before he killed his father and became the Lord of Love. What’s it like to be sixteen forever? Trapped in the lands of the living, feuding brothers for company, watching her husband-to-be claim the kingship and start a family. Brid Naya’il died—the realm moved on. She watched it happen from a box seat.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You deserved better.”
“I told you—I need your help.”
I don’t like where this is going. “Please don’t say I have to avenge you.”
“Fate’s incarnate has laid claim to you—that doesn’t mean you’re hers,” she says. “Genevieve’s gone rogue.”
It’s the same word Jebah used to describe their father. “Rogue?”
“Forsaken order for chaos. Fallen to her folly. For Fate, that’s Wrath.”
Linden’s song said something about that. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Choose Death. Kill Time.”
“There are two ways to interpret that.”
“If you want to survive a war with Fate, you need protection.” Brid Naya’il’s smile is fond. “I can protect you. Make a choice, soldier.”
This incarnate stuff seems super complicated.
Loss doesn’t have a lady, right?
It’s a no-brainer.
“I pick the seventh lady,” I say. “May her titan watch over me and guide my journey. Huzzah.”
Death looks at me for a long, hard moment. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t believe this,” she says quietly. “Two incarnates have courted you directly—Fate and Death—and you choose…neither. You worship her over us?”
“Marix doesn’t have descendants who’ll make my life harder,” I say. “There’s no one to usurp. It’s a win-win.”
“This is unprecedented.” She paces, swears under her breath. “Return to the lands of the living, and take the conduit with you. Don’t let his flesh vessel ascend again, or Yosif will keep him here.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not talking to you.”
“Who are you talking to, then?” I ask. “Are you angry?”
Glowing red swirls to moonlit tawny.
“Angry? No.” Her eyes rake down my bare chest. “Disappointed? Well…”
With a flourish of her right hand, she vanishes.
The room blurs and fades, twists to blackness.
Have I lost my mind, or did I just flirt with Death?
You sweet, simple thing. I’m not sure where the voice is coming from—the dark, or maybe my own mind. What have you gotten us into?