Cold. Damnable cold.

Fire raged in the fireplace, fed with fresh fuel whenever it was needed and emboldened with magic to burn hotter than any normal fire, such that the warmth, if only for a moment, almost burned the skin. Yet the cold creeped in. Not just into the house, which was, at a glance, well insulated with clay and stone and furs, but also into the body. And Lukas Merveillo’s body was not built for the cold.

Even beneath three sets of furs, all of which sat atop three more layers of clothes of wool and cotton and finally silk, he was cold. His back, which faced away from the fire, was constantly chilled, and he shivered without stop. His fingers tingled as they began to lose feeling, his toes having lost feeling already.

Is this what age brings? Beside him, Rowena stared into the fire, looking warm and content. By comparison, at least. From time to time she would shiver, and Lukas would invigorate the fire once more with his magic.

How long will this damnable blizzard last?

It had been three days already. Three days of near permanent cold that was impossible to keep out. Even in his dreams there was the cold, and the snow. Twice already he had dreamt of walking alone in the blizzard until the snow buried him alive. Sleep came less easily, after that. All this, with a dwindling supply of food, and the painful pang of hunger in his belly.

“We should make a break for the church,” Rowena said. Silence grated on her nerves more than his own.

Lukas wrapped the blanket that donned his shoulders around himself tighter. The mere thought brought on a chill.

“Soon,” he said. A lie. A small one, but a lie. “Eventually,” he corrected himself.

“It’s always eventually with you,” Rowena replied, her tone filled with the exasperation of a scorned lover.

There was no question as to what she meant, and the topic it irked him. I’ve tried, damnit, he wanted to say, but didn’t. It would have done nothing but inflame her further. Then there was the guilt. I haven’t tried hard enough, I suppose, came the voice of reason, of logic. How could he fight such a voice, when he knew it was right? I’ve barely tried at all.

“When did it all start? Between us, I mean?” So many memories, most of them happy, and all of them out of order. I’ve grown old, and am growing older. How long before it all leaves me?

“Five years ago. Before I was a knight.” She smiled, lost in the memories. “I came to you for magic lessons, remember? After Louis of Balleux told me I wasn’t good enough.”

“Ah, Louis, I remember him. A tough teacher, as I recall, but effective.”

“Not so tough as you. You had me spend a whole week practicing mana drills, then failed me anyways.”

“You weren’t any good at magic,” he said, smiling.

“I was better than all your other students at the time.”

Lukas laughed. “Sad to say that none of them were remarkable in the least. And lazy, too. If they’d worked half as hard as you they might have kept my interest.”

She always had that, at least. Hard work. Determination. He could remember it now. She’d come to him an hour after dusk, banging on his door until he roused from his slumber and opened it only to see a girl as furious as a snarling lizard. “Train me,” she said, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. So he did, halfheartedly, expecting her to cower away from the training that needed to be done. But she came back, again and again, day after day, her palms bruised and bloodied and burned from misformed magic and mana overuse.

Lukas had not seen the necessary spark of talent that was needed to make her into a proper mage, but she had earned his respect, nonetheless.

“Our first kiss was during the Belle Nuit festival,” Rowena continued. “Or after, I suppose. All the others had gone home by then. You sat in front of the altar and prayed, all alone. And I remember, I thought it was strange.”

“How so?”

“The lanterns that were hung overhead had gone out before the festival ended. The whole place was dark, and I could barely see. But when you prayed I saw the three lanterns above you come to life. They were orange, and the ground became orange, too, but the altar…”

“Sparkled with a thousand colors.”

“Yes.” She looked at him, not knowing how he knew.

“It was the Gods,” he said. “I have seen this same phenomenon several times before. It is their way of messaging us, I believe. You were given a sign at that moment.”

“A sign of what?”

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Lukas shrugged. “Who among us can know the will of the Gods?”

The fire was growing dim and cold, so he put more wood atop it. Then, as the flames licked the underside of the fresh wood, he closed his eyes and felt his mana flow. When he opened them again the fire was roaring, its light casting long shadows over the house.

Then he took Rowena’s hand in a reassuring grip.

“The Gods work in ways incomprehensible to mortal minds. The Magehead believes that to understand them is our greatest challenge. But the truth of it is not something we’ll ever know in our lifetimes.”

“Could it have meant I was meant to be with you.”

Yes, he wanted to say. “Possibly. Or that you are to follow me. Or were to follow me. Much has happened in five years, my dear. It might be that our union is no longer necessary to their plan.”

Rowena took a deep breath, as if hardening herself.

“Or they may require something of us. Something you have refused to give me.”

Again with this.

“There is too much to be done.”

“There is always much to be done. And there always will be. That is no excuse. Others make do. Your father made do.”

My father was twice the man I am. But he couldn’t say it. Wouldn’t say it. Because to speak the words meant to give them power, truth. He would not live in a shadow.

But even his father could not do what Rowena asked of him. The shadowy reach of the Empire was slowly encroaching on Hilva, threatening to strangle it, all while another war was broiling in the north and spilling over across the northern border.

“We could run,” he offered, hesitant. Rowena poked at the fire. “There is a port to the east and a bit south. We could buy passage to the eastern continent. I have th coin. Perhaps even enough to buy us a bit of land. A home. If we went now they wouldn’t be able to stop us.”

The fire crackled, and a black log split in two. Rowena pulled the iron poker from the flames, the steaming tip still orange from the heat.

“I will not leave,” she said.

Lukas looked away, unwilling to face her. “Why?”

“Hilva is my home. It is where I was born. Where I was raised. Where I met you and became your student, and where I fell in love. So deeply in love that I am tempted to say yes and run with you to the far ends of the world.”

“But you won’t give in, will you?” That damnable, lovable stubbornness of yours.

“No. Think of it, Lukas. Think of that sort of life. They would chase us. Hilva. Even Drygallis, maybe, if Hilva decided to lay the blame for the war on your shoulders. Could you do it? Run from the Vigilants? I don’t think we could. And even if, by some miracle, we eluded them, started a family. How long would that last? How many times would we uproot our lives, the lives of our children, out of fear of discovery, real and imagined? I refuse to live like that.”

“They may lay the blame on me if we stay,” he said. It was possible. Likely, even. They needed a scapegoat, lest the Empire be left to decide who to condemn. The cardinals would surely save their own necks.

“I have thought of that, too. But I am a knight. To stand my ground to the last is my duty. And it is the path I choose. I will carve out a life for myself here, where I belong, or die trying. And in all honesty, Lukas, when I think of the future, I must admit that I see your face less and less these days.”

He felt cold. Worse than the chill that surrounded them, and the numbness that permeated his fingers and toes. It was a cold that seeped its icy fingers down inside him into his heart, where no number of furs could keep him warm.

“I…” he began. Then stopped. He had nothing to say. Only a feeling. The desire to be with her, at her side. To make her happy. And, most of all, to wipe away her doubts.

“I want to stay with you,” Rowena said. “At least, I believe I do. But I need more from you. I need you to be with me, fully. I cannot stand the uncertainty any longer.”

“I can do that,” Lukas said. He gripped her hand. “I can, truly. I promise you.”

“Can you?” Rowena asked. “Do you know how much I am asking of you? What I’m asking you to give up? You, a Master of the Magehead, greatest mage of your time. Teacher to hundreds of students, possessor of Discovery magic, and the most devout man I have ever known. And I am asking that you give it all away. For me.”

All of it? Lukas took a deep, cold breath. Decades of work had been put into his career, involving more adventures than even Rowena knew of. And more prayer, too, though the rate had diminished in his old age. Bad knees, he told himself, but the truth of it was that, when seeing ahead to the end of the mortal coil that was his life, he saw how short his time left was.

There is so much to do, so much to see. So much to achieve. And I have barely scratched the surface. He didn’t know if he could give it all up. Not completely. But, sitting there, beside the love of his life, he felt he could.

“I’d like to keep my books, at least,” he said. Rowena laughed. A pleasant sound.

“That would be acceptable, I think. Experiments, too. The small ones, at least. I cannot forbid it all from you, can I? Your curiosity, your drive…they are why I fell in love with you in the first place.”

“It’s settled then,” Lukas said with an easy smile, though he knew it wouldn’t be true. There was much to be done, mysteries to be solved. He could not even begin to guess as to when it would truly be ‘settled’.

“Shall we rejoin the others, then?”

Lukas nodded. “I’ll clear a way.”

Opening the door revealed a white wall of snow nearly as tall as the doorway itself. Freezing wind blew in from the top, where there was a small gap to the outside world.

“This much in three days?” Rowena asked. Lukas could barely believe it, himself.

“All the more reason to hurry this damnable excursion along.”

Mana burning in his arms, Lukas unleashed a spear of flames into the snow. The fire he conjured now was far greater than that he used on the fireplace, almost on par with what he would have used in battle. Yet as the flames struck the snow and it melted into thin streams of water he felt something pull at the energies that swirled within him.

Stopping the stream of flames, he gasped. The wall of snow was almost unscathed.

Slamming the door closed, Lukas stepped back into the center of the house.

“What’s going on?” Rowena asked.

“Quiet!” Lukas yelled. Closing his eyes, he formed a circle with his hands, focusing the mana within him. He formed a stream of mana into a loop that ebbed out from his core and into his right arm, only to be reabsorbed back into his left and sent back around. Again and again the mana flowed, each time weaker than before.

A natural occurrence, he might have thought, had the mana not diminished completely by the fifth loop. The fifth, when any seasoned mage could do it more than twenty times, and Lukas himself more than fifty.

“We have to get to the others!”