All the contracts were signed and handled. They had even gone so far as to have Rufais gently escorted from the room. I wondered if he would ever recover from this, if it had all been the last straw. He would be a madman till the end of his days now, and I almost pitied him for that– probably would have, if not for what he had threatened to do to do innocents. He wasn’t to blame for my team– that rested squarely on Dahl’s shoulders.

Ava hadn’t left with him, much to his apparent distress, but she had calmed him with those soothing words of hers. She didn’t seem to want to meet my eyes, but I couldn’t stop staring at her, trying to figure out when this had happened, trying to figure out exactly how blind I had been.

Berd had known. That was why he had looked at me like that when I had left, those were the words he was going to share when I mentioned her name. He had been going to warn me.

Had she always been in it for power? It didn’t seem a terrible stretch the more I thought about it. She had come from nothing, wanted more than that. I had given her a little job as a seamstress– of course her ambition had reached for more. When it had come to light that the easily manipulatable madman wanted a new bride, it probably only took a moment for her to decide to apply to whatever selection process they had used.

I wondered if she had waited for me for even a moment, if I had been a fool to think she might.

“Aeron and Tirnaog gave us a deadline in their letter– demanded your head by the end of the week. That’s four days from now. We didn’t respond, and their armies have been gathering on the borders. Would you recommend waiting it out or sending a refusal?” Whelan asked me. “As we obviously will not be sending them your head.”

“What else did they want?” I asked, finally tearing my eyes from Avaline. “Besides my head?”

“Money,” Ennis answered. “A lot of it.”

“In coin or were they asking for trade deals and lumber?”

“Free lumber,” Durnin said, and though he hadn’t seemed to like the idea of any of this happening at all, he at least wasn’t being a poor loser. “A lot of it.”

“Enough that it would severely damage our existing trade deals,” Ennis said.

“Write back. Counteroffer. Something high but reasonable,” I told them.

Scowls went around the room.

“Why should we if you’re so confident you can win this?” Durnin challenged.

“Because people will die, and it’s better for people to stop dying,” I said bluntly. “What benefit are we going to get from Aeron’s army being decimated? Hm? Absolutely nothing. What benefit will Tirnaog get? Potentially a lot of new land. If we can make peace, it’s a much better sign to show to the Chantry, much as I despise them, to show that we know how to behave cordially, to show that we have Rufais under control and there will be no more diplomatic incidents. If we can make peace, our soldiers don’t need to die for a madman’s stupid decisions. Also, I did kill his daughter. We should offer them something.”

“Won’t Tirnaog’s army be just as devastated?” Berne asked.

“Not if they’re as smart as they were last time. There’ve been some rumors indicating that they’ll refuse to fight unless my head is on a pike,” I said, shrugging. “At least one of their generals and half their army has seen me slaughter them twice, the first time vastly outnumbered, and the second time on my own. They’ll probably hold off.”

“If they’re going to attack if we give them you anyway, what’s the point of any of this? It’s just posturing. Why bother with a letter?” Chirone said, irritated.

“They wouldn’t attempt a siege. Ildanach would lose some land. Really, though, I’m a price for them not to get the Chantry involved,” I said mildly. “That’s the real threat.”

“It still begs the question of, ‘why bother with a letter’?” Whelan noted, but he was watching me closely. He didn’t take me for a fool and legitimately wanted to hear the answer.

“Because we’re going to threaten them in the letter. You’re going to do something none of you want to do. You’re going to be nice to me,” I said wryly. “Speak highly of me in the letter, tell them you would never even think to sacrifice a primary part of your defenses and a valued captain and citizen. You don’t have to brag on me; you just have to pretend you like me.”

“To flatter your ego?” Berne said with a scoff.

“No. To make it clear that I’m not on bad footing with the ruling class anymore. They’ll know that they can’t bully you into handing me over; they’ll know that I will be fighting for you when the time comes; and they’ll know I’ll have an army behind me this time. If the bulk of their forces couldn’t take me alone, what are they going to do with less men, facing me and an army? It’s a threat. And it lets Tirnaog know they’re not going to be fighting. They might even just turn and go home, which would shatter Aeron morale.

“And then, after the threat, we offer them an out. They save face. Killough gets something to show his people for the war he just dragged them into after decades of peace. We get to tell the Church that we turned over a new leaf, that we made nice, and they get to tell their people that they cowed us into giving up assets. It’s a win-win, diplomatically speaking.”

“Except we’re giving away lumber,” Berne groused.

“Not more than we can afford, but yes. That’s the cost of peace sometimes. We can either pay it in a renewable resource, or we can pay it in blood.”

“Technically, lives are also a renewable resource.”

I slowly turned around to face the speaker, as did most others in the room.

Raesh shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s good, but half the politicians in here were thinking it anyway. Don’t get mad at me for saying it.”

There was another short beat, and then Whelan chuckled, prompting myself and Faolain to crack a smile, effectively deflating the suddenly tense atmosphere.

“When diplomacy doesn’t work?” Garret asked.

“That’s rather pessimistic phrasing,” Jesne pointed out.

“I’m a pessimistic person,” Garret rebounded flatly before looking back at me. “What’s the plan? Or do you intend to do it solo again?”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that again,” I responded wryly. “If negotiations fail and Aeron continues their suicide run, I’ll be making the battle strategy from there.”

“Pardon?” It was Chirone who said it, but the sentiment was written over everyone’s face, particularly the generals.

“You can all direct and lead from behind like you’re ever so used to doing, but you’ll be doing it off a prewritten strategy that I am going to make. And you will follow it, or unnecessary lives are going to be lost. Maybe including yours.”

“Is that a threat, Captain?” General Barnabas asked softly.

“Yes,” I responded, voice level and blunt. “I’m running this show. You either fall in line with that, or I’ll manage without you.”

“You think you’re going to lose less lives by sacrificing all of your generals than by just letting us do our jobs?” It was Garret asking, baffled.

I saw again what had blinded him to the truth in every conversation we’d had– the unwillingness to accept that I was as good as I said I was, as good as I had demonstrated at this point. His inability to let go of his pride and admit that maybe the kid from nowhere who was half his age was better than him. It was unfortunate.

“Yes,” I said again.

“None of that was in any agreement that was–” Chirone went back to the political argument.

I rolled my eyes. “The agreement was that I would save you. I’ll be doing that my way, or you won’t be saved.”

That shut everyone up for a moment, long enough for me to turn to Hector.

“I need you to stay back with the generals and make sure they follow the plan I lay out. Or, assuming they decide they want no part in saving the city, I need you to just take their place.”

While the generals made offended noises, Hector just looked at me. “You’re shoving me to the sidelines while you go fight on the front lines? You want me in the back?”

“No,” I said very clearly. “I need you in the back, because I cannot be two places at once.”

Hector ground his teeth for a moment and then sighed. “Fine. You are going to owe me so many drinks when we’re done with this.”

“Anything you want, my friend,” I said with a soft, relieved smile.

“Speaking of money,” Faolain said, though it wasn’t the cleanest segue in the world, “this is for you, Captain.”

I turned in time to see her throw a pouch at me, which I caught reflexively. It jingled. We all knew what was in it. “This wasn’t part of the deal either.”

“No, but, as I understand it, you wern’t paid for the last time you saved us. Consider this back payment.”

“I’m not for sale.”

“I’m not buying you. I’m rewarding you for a job already well done,” Faolain said simply. “Before you continue to object, think about the state of your coffers currently. They can’t be wonderful. You do have bills, no? Like everyone else, you need money to function in society. This is just me saying that I would like you to continue to function in our society and expressing appreciation for the fact that I am still living. That is all.”

“This is us expressing that appreciation,” Whelan inserted a bit wryly.

Faolain inclined her head. “My apologies. It is indeed our thanks.”

I looked at them both for a moment, the money weighing heavily in my hand. But Berd had been giving me discounts for months now, and, if nothing else, I felt like I at least needed to pay him more, given this opportunity. I sighed and then dropped the money in front of Hector.

Hector blinked. “What?”

“Give a decent amount to Berd for me when you see him.”

Hector paused and then just accepted it, as he often did with my strange manners and requests. “Sure.” He leaned back a little more in the chair I had originally taken, which he had appropriated at some point after I had stood in the beginning of my dramatic exit.

“So, what is this strategic plan of yours?” Garret challenged.

I turned to look at him slowly. “How could I possibly already know that?” I said blankly. “I need a roster of troops we’ll have fighting, a map of the terrain we’ll be fighting on, and a list of resources and heavy weaponry at our disposal. I have done this before, you know.”

“For Akuma?” Dahl snipped.

I turned to look at him and then set my jaw for a moment. “Nyorai, actually.”

There was a moment of dead silence at my admission that I had, in fact, been involved in the biggest war the continent had seen in decades that had entirely reshaped the landscape of the West. Those of them who were bothering to do the math were looking at me a little different now, specifically Ennis and Jesne.

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence, considering they lost,” Chirone noted.

“They also didn’t like to listen to me. Would you like to try their strategy in that regard and see how it works out for you?”

Chirone rolled his eyes.

“You do have a response for everything, don’t you?” Dahl muttered.

“You used to,” I pointed out, the simmering anger I felt towards him getting closer to boiling over the more that he engaged. “But your mental state looks about as secure as Rufais’ at the moment. Maybe we should get you a little girl to marry and see if that helps,” I snapped.

There was a beat of silence that followed my response again, and in it the faintest breath of a sigh could be heard– from Ava herself.

“Do you have an objection to that, Ms. Norel?” I asked her icily.

“I’m not a little girl, Elyon.”

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Something about the way that she said my name grated on me. It wasn’t what she had called me before all this. “Young enough to be his daughter.”

“And you were seventeen when you fought a war. You think that less challenging that marriage?”

Apparently she had also done the math on the Nyorai War. “I could have been older,” I pointed out.

“You once told me you joined the Turyn at that age, but that they bent the rules for you. I would imagine being enlisted in a war would convince them to let you have the religion you wanted to have upon your death.”

I smiled very faintly. “Clever.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I think it’s very different than marriage,” I finally said. “I don’t advocate for most seventeen year olds to do what I did. And also, yes, I do think it’s at least less permanent than marriage, assuming you survive. Wars don’t generally last a lifetime.”

“Their effects do.”

“Not really the point.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Pointing out that this marriage isn’t going to last your lifetime either? Because you may want to keep that quiet if you want to take power after his death.”

“That’s not what this is about,” she objected, a little louder for the first time.

“Then what is it about, because you didn’t fall in love with him, that’s for sure.”

“It’s about the city. It’s about saving this city. I would have thought you would understand that.”

“You think saving the city isn’t about power?”

“It doesn’t seem to have paid off that well for you if it were.”

“I’m not a pretty, innocent girl from the middle of nowhere, playing on men’s desire to help.”

“Is that what you think I did?” Her voice was quiet now, sad. She was hurt that I was accusing her of using me.

“Didn’t you? How long did you wait?”

Ava looked down at the ground.

“How long, Ava? Because it sure wasn’t a month. I walked back into this city three days after–”

“I know,” she said, quiet, and she looked at me again. “I knew you were back. I knew you survived.”

Her gentle blue eyes were pleading with me to understand. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be understanding in that moment, but I held her gaze for a long while anyway. And then I promptly looked away, becoming suddenly very aware of our confused audience.

“Well, I think we’re done here,” I said abruptly. “Thank you for your time. You should have the response letter sent back to Killough by the end of the day, and I would like those rosters I asked for by the end of tomorrow. You can find me at my inn in the meantime. Anyone need anything else from me right now?”

Slowly, heads were shaken in the negative and quiet “no”s went around the room, and just like that, I turned on my heel and left.

“What are you doing in the meanwhile?” Hector asked as he caught up with me, falling in step beside me. I appreciated how he didn’t ask, didn’t push, didn’t say a word about Avaline.

“Rebuilding the Turyn Temple and giving Priest a proper Turyn funeral,” I answered.

“Want a hand?”

“I’d be glad for one.”

Hector smiled.

“I would like to help also,” Jesne said, quiet. “If you’ll have me.”

I turned to look at her in some level of surprise and then nodded. “Sure. The more hands, the faster the work will go.” I looked at Raesh.

Hector looked at Raesh.

Jesne looked at Raesh.

Raesh sighed heavily in annoyance. “Fine! Fine, I’ll come move a board or something,” she muttered. “Not like I have anything better to do!” She turned to me with a glare, pointing her finger at me. “You better understand that as soon as this is all over, you can’t milk the ‘I saved you from the dungeons’ bit anymore. I’ve paid you back.”

I chuckled softly. “Understood.”

Rebuilding the temple started with ripping apart what had already been sort of rebuilt, as the makeshift ceiling that we had put on the building for Priest after its initial destruction bore little to no resemblance to the temple as it had originally stood. Raesh was a significant help with that, using her Surge to balance us on the roof as we went about tearing it out from underneath us.

I hadn’t expected supplies, but only an hour or two after we had gotten started, one of Ennis’ smaller wagons arrived bringing materials. They seemed surprised to see us there already but a quick conversation revealed that Ennis had had them drop off materials for this express purpose. I told them to send him my thanks, and then we kept working.

The job took a good portion of the day, and, less than halfway through the afternoon, all the others started nodding off in the middle of their work. I promptly sent them off to sleep, considering that they hadn’t gotten any the night before, having spent it preparing for the intrusion into the Cathedral. While they were gone, I performed the funeral.

There was nothing in the Turyn Code that said they couldn’t be there, but something about it felt private anyway, so I figured I might as well take the opportunity. I spoke the rites of Death over the fresh grave where I could see Priest had been buried and then took some time to root through the remains of the temple to find a burial stone. They were small statues, images of the goddess Death, and I placed one over his grave.

And then, next to his, I placed another four– Tola, Jair, Ehud, and Jehu, inscribing their names into stone that I placed in front of the statue, just as I had done for Priest. They weren’t Turyn; I knew that. None of them had been religious at all, in fact. But I knew they wouldn’t have minded me doing this either. Jair would have called it silly, Tola would have scoffed at the idea, and Ehud and Jehu would have been perhaps slightly touched in their own ways. They weren’t going to get any kind of burial anywhere else, so I placed the markers for them next to Priest’s, outside of the temple, and I prayed for their souls in the beyond.

And then, in the quiet of the forest, I took off my mask.

I held it in front of me, looking at it in my hands closely in a way I hadn’t since I had first made it, tracing the edges of the ceramic with my fingers. The white paint was still solid, unchipped despite what it had been through, strong and shining. The thin golden lines in spirals branching out from the eyes shone like the sun itself, twisting and swirling in various, nearly random patterns, but always circular in nature. I hadn’t designed their exact locations when I had made it; I’d simply let the paint brush go where it would to a certain extent. White and gold, colors of Palados, of goodness, righteousness, and the sun– I had written my intentions all over it.

And now here I was, burying my friends again, just as I had before I had taken the vows at all.

I couldn’t help but think and notice that when I had been wearing a very different mask, performing very different duties, I hadn’t been forced to bury anyone that I hadn’t killed myself, with my own hands.

Be better.

What was better? I wasn’t sure I knew the answer anymore, if I ever had at all.

I stood there for a long moment, looking at the mask and the graves behind it, thinking about the prices I had paid, wondering if the mask itself was just a new way of running away.

“Well, that’s a silly thought, isn’t it?” I mused to myself. “Of course the mask is another way of running away. So is the fact that we’re still running away. Never stopped.”

I saw six bodies drop to the ground, the echoes of six shots still lingering in my ears, watched the man who had executed them turn and walk back into the darkness of the cave. I remembered waiting in the bushes all night, convinced he was going to come find me, shocked when he never did. I remembered him leaving, taking the rest and heading out, barking orders, fiddling anxiously with one of his favorite knives. I remembered the blisters on my hands from holding the shovel as I had dug all six graves on my own after they were all gone.

I remembered the fire, long before that. The house had been their grave.

Never again, I’d thought. I’d been too young to think it the first time, but the second time– I’d thought it then. I’d gotten a new life for myself.

And now here we were all over again.

I could feel Tola’s neck snapping, hear the sound of it. I could see the monster Jair had become. I could hear their horrifying screams, and part of me wondered– what if they had still been in there, somewhere? We had burned it so fast. But what other options had we had?

As a child, I had been too young to promise myself impossibilities; now, I was too old. Five years could make quite the difference. Anyone who thought me arrogant now should have met me when I was seventeen.

I started to push on the mask, bending it in towards itself slowly, feeling the ceramic in my hands, wondering if I shouldn’t just give up and start again.

And then I stopped, sighed, and put the mask back on, fitting it back to my face and securing it around my ears.

I would have liked to have said I was done running, but I knew better. There were certain things I wasn’t ready to face– part of me wasn’t sure I ever would be. But I wasn’t running from this, at least, not today. I had a promise to live up to, an arrangement that had been sealed, and I would be saving the city one last time.

I took a breath and got back to work, toiling through the night to put the Temple back to its former glory as much as I could. The others didn’t return at all that night, and I figured they probably were still sleeping. It had been a long couple of days. I did as much as I could manage on my own without using my Rift-given powers, with which I would not sully the Temple, and then, in the wee hours of the morning, I headed back into the city.

I wound my way through the middle ring, twisting and turning on a number of side streets, until I eventually found it– Angelia’s Herb and Health Shop. It was tucked so far into the back corner of the city that it may as well have been invisible. The sign was dark and unobtrusive, for nothing in her shop utilized slivers of any kind. The shop itself was wedged between two residents in a section of the city where one didn’t come looking for a store, particularly not an herbalist shop, yet she stayed in business.

There was something strange about Angelia, something uncanny. She had found me at the Turyn Temple and was clearly familiar with many who frequented it, yet she herself did not wear a mask nor espouse herself as Turyn. She spoke often and frequently of her god, yet not in any terms or manners that I ever heard anyone speak of religion here. Still, her aptitude for healing was beyond reproach, and she was sworn to no factions in Ildanach, which made her reliable, safe, and secret.

It was here that Hector would have brought Will, here where I asked him to bring her. I had seen Angel work miracles.

I knocked on the door softly.

It swung open, even though I was sure it hadn’t been so loose.

I stepped inside, boots squishing on the thick purple carpeting.

Even in the bright light of day, her shop was dark– now, when it was barely dawn, it was practically pitch black. Dark curtains hung over every window and also functioned as doors within the narrow shop. The walls were lined with shelves filled with flowers, baubles, and knicknacks with no regard for functionality or origin. She had relics from the forbidden Surge Orders sitting next to a scroll containing a canticle of the Chantry; it didn’t matter. The only light came from dim lanterns, hung strategically around the room to give a vague impression of furniture and keep one from running into things without revealing any of the mysteries of the place whatsoever.

“You’re late.”

I looked up and found her standing in the curtain that served to separate the front of the shop from the back, behind the narrow counter from which a disturbingly bright pair of unblinking green eyes were peering at me– her cat. “Was I expected?”

“She’s not well.”

I looked away. “How not well?”

“She needs a friend,” Angel continued as though she hadn’t heard my inquiry.

“I wish I could provide one for her.”

She snorted. “As though you’re not?”

“As though I wish there were better options.”

“Self-deprecation and wallowing in sorrow doesn’t become you, Elyon. Have a cookie.” She held out her hand, and upon a little squinting I deciphered a container in it being offered to me.

“.... um?”

“Have a cookie,” she repeated, walking over to me and shaking the cookie jar in my face.

I took a cookie. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She turned around and the jar disappeared back to wherever she had conjured it from originally.

“How old are these?”

“You think I’m feeding you a bad cookie?”

“I’m a little concerned about where they came from and when you had the time or place to bake, yes.”

“Eat the cookie and stop questioning my hospitality.”

“Okay, but if I throw up in the back of your shop, I want it known that I’m not liable.”

“You are terribly rude sometimes,” she said primly, but I could see the gleam of her teeth in the light as she smiled.

“Well, you said you wanted me to stop moping.”

“I did,” she agreed. She hoisted herself up to sit on the counter next to her annoyed cat, who took one look at her proximity and promptly removed himself, vanishing elsewhere in the depths of her strangely large abode. She kicked her feet like a child, uncaring, her long and straight pure white hair shining in a stream of moonlight that had crept through the curtains.

I took a bite of the cookie; it was surprisingly good. “How is she?”

Angel sighed. “Lonely, like I said. Malnourished, dehydrated. She’ll live though. For a given definition of living.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“She’ll live the way you do.”

I blinked several times at the bluntness of the statement. “I live just fine.”

“Not in a way you’d wish on anyone else though.”

Couldn’t really argue there. “She’s been fighting with me for over a year; she’d already seen–”

“It’s not the same. You know it’s not the same– when it happens in front of you. To people you love. And you can’t stop it.”

I rolled my shoulders slightly uncomfortably and took another bite of the cookie. “I know.”

“You were born in blood, Elyon. You’ve lived in blood and embraced that fact. She never did.”

“Is that somehow worse?”

“Hardly. It does mean it hurts more though, watching the blood consume everything around you.”

“Is that the fate of people who live in it?” I asked, quiet. She had a way with words, Angel did. Almost prophetic, if I had believed in such things.

“Yes. And they will die in it someday, too.”

“And I’ve embraced it?” I asked somewhat rhetorically.

“Have you not?”

“I was trying to put some distance between Death and I.”

“Which is why you started worshiping her, of course. Makes perfect sense,” Angel drawled.

I rolled my eyes and finished the cookie. “Do you have a point?”

“Yes, actually. She should stop living in blood. And you should let her.”

“Do you think I’d try to stop her?”

“I think you don’t want to lose another friend. But I also think you’re a good enough man to do it anyway.”

I blinked at Angel several times, her dark skin– gray, almost, a completely different shade than anything I had ever seen– melding with the background to some extent, save for her gleaming blue eyes. “You think I’m a good man?” My tone was bemused.

“I think this man is. The one who wears that mask.”

“And the man underneath?”

She looked at me for a long moment. “Oh, I think we both know what kind of man that is.” She stepped aside, holding the curtain for me. “Your friend is waiting.”

I walked past her, holding her gaze as I did until I couldn’t anymore.