She found two more paintings. One depicted the underside of Garo’s dug-up palace, while the other showed the pattern of Evera’s ashes when her funeral pyre had burned low.

Aria stood frozen in place. She did not think so much as let thoughts wash over her. Perhaps these paintings had been dropped before her by some magical, meddling being. Or, Achi had painted them before his death and left them among the goods Garo would claim.

Which would make him a seer.

But Achi had no powers. Every power he demonstrated came from these rings - rings that his father made for him. So, if he could see the future, that meant that his father could too. And where did that leave her?

She looked at the rings on her fingers, wondering which of them told the future and at the same time wondering what Tivelo had known.

Poisonous kisses, ghosts, Evera dead, Tivelo broken. Paintings of the future.

She could feel Achi’s disdainful eyes on her, saying, “you’re so foolish, you picked a fight you can never win, on a battlefield you are ignorant of, against opponents from whom your only defense is that they do not yet take you seriously.

“If you die, that would be the best ending to this tale. It is far more likely, that your stubbornness and stupidity will find you a more painful fate.”

Achi had told her to hide. It was she who had gone to the middle realm and on to Evera’s palace. It was she who had challenged Garo and then robbed him, guaranteeing that he would never stop hunting her. She did not trust Achi’s promises enough to follow his orders. But why did she trust her own plans? His plans had not put her in danger yet, but hers certainly had.

Aria teleported. She chose no destination, only thinking of somewhere far away from where she was. In response, the world around her fell away and reformed to reveal the beach: sand below her, the sea to one side, and the house to the other.

To her surprise, the house still stood but that was the best that could be said of it. The interior had been gutted. Books and curios were strewn on the floor, trampled and damaged. Bookshelves had been detached from walls and broken apart. A few interior walls had been gutted, broken through, or simply demolished Pages were torn free of books. Garo’s looters had been thorough.

She teleported into the house and found the action to be a mistake. What she saw was not the destruction, but echoes of the past, vivid enough to shock her immobile. Achi was sitting in the ruined reading chair, watching her with that condescending gaze. He was walking through the lower floor, opening windows. He was in the bedroom upstairs, watching her in exasperation.

She blinked, shook her head, and forced the thoughts away but their exit only permitted the return of her other companions: fear, worry, visions of Tivelo bursting through the walls and hauling her back to his statue, or of Garo back for revenge.

She found a relatively untouched corner of the house and sank down there, back to the wall, eyes watching the openings.

Sleep did not come, and neither did peace, so she found herself cleaning. It gave her arms something to do, and brought back peaceful memories. If she could wish for anything at that moment, it would to be a petty servant again, with nothing but sweeping and dishwashing to look forward to.

She returned the unbroken items to their place, and hauled the rubble to the beach. Time seemed to pass and stay still as she lost herself in the task. She used no magic so that it would take longer and, thankfully, it did. And when it finally ended, her fear had retreated somewhat.

With the house clean and nothing more to be straightened, she returned to the empty spot where the bed had been, sat with her back to a wall, and pulled her knees up to her chest.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Then she broke into sobs, loud, violent ones. A part of her watched the event critically, but every other part gave itself wholly to the task. It felt good to cry, to feel sad rather than terrified, angry or driven, to do something that did not move her toward a goal, but simply brought relief.

She let it go on for as long as she could. No one intruded. Finally, minutes or hours later, she wore herself out and crying began to feel silly rather than good.

She cleaned herself up as best as she could and made the effort to climb to her feet. Back on the beach, she stared at the pile she had created and wished that everything broken in her life could be piled on there. She had intended to set the pile on fire, but she had nothing to start the fire with. So, she sat down in the sand and stared at the pile of rubble.

And, with nothing more to do, her mind conjured up Achi’s face.

“Are you angry with me?” She addressed the imagined figure. “You would be, wouldn’t you? You would say something like, ‘why are you so stupid? I told you to hold still and stop disrupting my plan. What possessed you to attack Garo? Why go to Evera in the first place? Was she so ignorant that she needed you to keep her informed about the world? Who do you think you are? Before engaging in heroics, consider heroically saving your own rotting carcass.”

She paused. The tone had been wrong, but she thought she had the sentiment correct.

“I’m sorry.”

The words were unexpected but true. She was sorry. And they were easy to say with no one there to hear them.

She continued to speak to him, knowing that he would not hear her and desperate to get the words out and relieve the pressure they made inside her.

“Do you know what I realized up there?” she asked. “As I was crying, I thought, ‘I probably did it’.” She took a breath. “Let’s be honest: I’d take a bite out of a dragon if he cornered me. With my back to the wall and no way out, I’d poison whoever I had to. But I wouldn’t do it if you were innocent.

“And all of this could have had a better ending if your father had handled it without locking me in darkness for months and then setting me on fire. And if you hadn’t stolen my memories and then pressured me to apologize for something I cannot remember and was probably justified in doing.

She sighed.

“Still, I would undo this if I could. You should be alive.”

The world would be better with him in it. It was a shame that the same could not be said of his father.

Undo it.

Was that really impossible? Ovi was the goddess of time and fate, Achi has said. If Aria found her, could she undo something that had already happened?

Aria leaned back and sighed. She was grasping at straws. Finding Ovi with every other deity on the hunt for her was simply more trouble for the mere chance of success. To her surprise, she wished that Achi was around to give her instructions. For the first time, she would actually listen to them.

She sat in silence for so long that she could have become one with the scenery.

Then she rose.

There was nothing more for her to do. Her enemies were stronger than her. Normally, that would be no reason to give up, but she was tired and wide-eyed about her chances of success.

She bowed to the pile of trash, a hysterical laugh forming on her lips.

“It’s sad that our story ended this way,” she said. “But I’m glad we met.”

Learning to serve Garo meant learning not to fear death. She had faced it every day for years until the thought of it no longer inspired the terror that it had as a child.

Yet, now, with no one to stop her, she felt reluctant. She indulged herself for a moment, hesitating. But, in the end, she had her wits about her. Her plan had simply been to inform Evera of Garo’s plans. After that, the choice between hiding from Tivelo and escaping him forever had the simplicity of basic arithmetic. She knew the right choice, and as much as she wished to avoid it, she feared it less than the memory of pain and smoke.

“If I did poison you,” she spoke to the absent prince, “consider this as me paying for it with my life. I endured darkness for two months and your father’s torture for hours. I don’t owe you anything else. No one can make a better payment.”

In the end, her training proved true. A servant of Garo does not fear death; it comes to everyone. The important thing is to die well, bravely, and with purpose.

She held her breath as she did it, and chose to avoid any theatrics. She simply took all the power she was clinging to, and let it out in one exhalation. Hope filled her as she did so. Fear followed, but loudest of all was relief. Finally, she would no longer be afraid.

The thought lasted for a while - too long. She was still thinking. That meant that she was not dead. Her sight was gone. She heard nothing, smelled nothing. Fury began to grow in her at the robbery, but it never reached maturity. Without warning, she was assaulted by a burst of vertigo, as if she had been untethered and launched, spinning, from the face of the earth.