I woke up to Jon staring at me. He was sitting on my chest and giving me a look with his black eyes.

"Hi," I said, staring back at him.

"I want to do it," Jon said.

"It being?" I asked, unsure how to respond.

"The dragon potion," Jon said. "I want to go full Smaug, burn Laketown, assemble a hoard, and snag a princess or two."

I blinked. "I don't think actual dragons do that."

"You don't know that many," Jon said.

"I've met four," I replied. "Five counting their god."

Jon paused. "Okay, that is a lot more than the majority of people living outside of those How to Tame Your Dragon movies. Still, I've had a lot of time to think."

"It's been a day," I replied.

I turned my head to look to see if Ania was still beside me and to no one's surprise, she was not. I was still inside the tent we'd erected, though, and lying naked underneath my bedroll. It was morning and the rest of the camp personnel was already moving about. My conversation with the Wise Man weighed on my mind even as I struggled to figure out what my next move should be.

"Let me guess, you talked with Weis again," Jon said.

"Yeah," I said.

"You should tell him that I am very annoyed I'm not invited to these latest sessions," Jon said. "I saved your life the first time and got to mast--"

"I remember," I replied.

"I'm just saying, maybe I'd like to sleep with a murder goddess!" Jon said, pausing. "Maybe without the fact she's now my kid, somehow."

I didn't respond.

"Too soon?" Jon asked.

I sighed and cast a CLEAN spell before getting dressed. "I need to talk to Ania about that."

"Really? Because I think I'd never ever reveal that detail of your life," Jon said. "Ania is about as nurturing as an owlbear."

"Those are copyrighted," I replied.

"Not if I call them owlsines!" Jon said, displaying his usual bravado. "The Pathfinder way!"

I shook my head. "You do that, Jon. I must focus on..."

On what? Following Weis' instructions? I wasn't sure I wanted to do that anymore and I wasn't just being obstinate about it. I was as committed as I was before to stopping Veles and his forces, but I didn't think discount Gandalf was the best man for the job. He'd confessed to sending an assassin after the Dragon Queen because she hadn't agreed with how to deal with Veles and the Old Gods. It had resulted in my cousin turning against him and throwing an enormous wrench in Weis' plans.

It wasn't that I didn't understand Weis' reasoning. Despite what Alek said, I understood the hard calls. I just felt that if you kept making them without looking for alternatives, you forfeited your right to call them hard. I also didn't think Alek's vengeance spree against the Wise Man was going to benefit the world. Veles was going to kill everyone and, cliche or not, we had bigger concerns than one man's vengeance. I also fully acknowledged that his situation was uncomfortably like my own. He'd fallen in love with the fictional heroine of a novel he loved, who turned out to be not-so-fictional after all. How would I react if, to save the world, Weis killed Ania? His granddaughter? I knew he would because he'd sent me to befriend Zorya and kill her.

I knew exactly how I'd react. Weis would be dead, or I'd die trying. I also knew Ania would happily die to save the world.

Dammit.

I walked over to the middle of the camp where Ania was preparing breakfast in the same fire pit that I had sat with the Weis man. Given the remains of Graham crackers on the ground, I had the distinct impression it may not have been a dream.

I took a deep breath. "So, yeah, Weis appeared to me last night. It turns out he's your grandfather and killed the Dragon Queen so he could replace her because apparently, she had her own plans for dealing with Veles. That's why Alek is on a killing spree and allied with Veles because he wants revenge. It turns out they hooked up. Alek and Celestyne I mean."

Ania blinked, looking at me. "Okay."

I tapped my fingers together, nervously. "There's also something else you need to know. It turns out Zorya and I had a child that she slept with me to conceive. But the child’s become an adult now. It's the host body for her god force or something."

Ania nodded. "Okay."

I looked at her. "Okay?"

"You'd prefer I be upset?" Ania asked. "Honestly, I was expecting Mokosh to show up with a child any day now. Maybe one she trained underneath a lake for decades. That’s how Lancelot arrived in King Arthur’s court, ya’know. We could refer to him as Aaron the Younger.”

I stared in horror. "Please don't joke about that."

"Who's joking?" Ania asked. "The gods rarely do anything for a single reason and the pleasures of the flesh are rarely motive enough for that. If they want sex, they have whole hosts of messengers and worshipful souls at their disposal."

That put an entirely new perspective on angels for me. "Alright, I was afraid you'd freak out."

"Because you think I'd abandon our soul bond because you sired a bastard?" Ania asked. "Even though my father raised Garland under the auspices of being his natural born child. I'm not my mother, Aaron."

"I see," I said, pausing. "I'm still getting used to the intricacies of this."

"I mean, Thistle is seventy-six, and has like six bastards," Ania said. "Two she gave birth to."

I paused, letting that sink in. "How?"

"Magic," Ania said.

"Ah," I said, blinking. "Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"That is life in general," Ania paused. "How do you feel about it?"

"What?" I asked.

Ania's expression was sympathetic. "You were used as a stud horse by the Wise Man and Zorya Dawnbringer. I know how much you care about...things."

"Things?" I asked.

"People," Ania said, getting an awkward expression on her face. "It's something I'm not used to encountering with the people I travel with. You're reminding me that caring isn't weak. Just..."

"Kind?"

"Stupid," Ania said, but with a smile that told me she was teasing me. "It seems you won't have to raise this one, though."

"Yeah," I said, sighing. "I guess not. She's had her entire life already lived for her. I feel sorry for her."

"Do you know her name?" Ania asked.

I nodded.

"Good, then you won't accidentally end up sleeping with her," Ania said.

I stared at her. "Ania, please."

"I mean, deliberately is still possible," Ania said, not changing her usual monotone. "What did Jon call them? Daddy issues? We know all the Old Gods suffer from them despite having two. Sometimes three."

"Not funny, Ania." Was everyone doing incest jokes now? Would I be god of them next?

"It's a little funny," Ania said before her expression became troubled. "Do you want children?"

I paused, not having thought about that angle. "Excuse me?"

"You seem...disappointed."

I wasn't sure how I felt. "I dunno. I never gave any thought to being a father. I was never in a position to support a child financially and the most serious relationship I was in prior to, uh, well, you were with someone who believed the traditional family unit was oppression."

"Uh huh," Ania said, dryly. There was something in her expression that told me my ex’s perspective on such things hit a bit too close to home.

"She didn't want to raise any children," I replied.

"I used to believe the same thing," Ania said.

"Used to?" I asked, surprised. Ania was internationally famous as a tomboy character after all.

Agata called over. "As members of our class, Ania, you wouldn't be required to raise your children. You would have nannies for them as is proper!"

A horrified look passed across my face. "Your sister was listening?"

"I imagine everyone in camp was listening." Ania said. "Just like they were listening when we were together last night."

"Ah," I said, surveying the others around the camp. They were all looking guilty.

I sighed. "I am terrible at keeping secrets."

"Are we a secret?" Ania asked, smirking.

"No, never," I answered her.

Ania paused, her expression distant. "There's something you should know, Aaron. That is if we're to continue this. You'll always be in my heart, but you may want to consider other options if you know it."

"No, never," I said, pausing.

Ania glared at me as I was dismissing her. "Hear me before we continue."

"Alright," I said, wondering what she could mean. I already knew she was a murderer and that seemed like it covered most things I could learn about her.

Ania stared. "I've read the books Weis wrote about our world on Jon's lightning book. I know how much you know about my world. Which is a lot. But you don't know everything."

I nodded, acknowledging her point. "Okay."

"The Dark Moon assassins are a sisterhood that is pledged to Zorya Nightbringer," Ania said, looking at me. She was now uncomfortably aware of the other people listening in and took me by the arm, leading me away from the camp.

I followed her. "Yeah, the elves and humans have the same gods. Mostly."

"I didn't know she was corrupted into being the Wind Demon when I took my pledge," Ania said. "None of us did. All we knew was that pledges had grown darker and the costs greater. The Nightbringer turned the order from a group dedicated to making covert strikes against the enemies of the elves into something designed to spread chaos. We might have had peace between humans and elves dozens of times over if not for the Dark Moon disrupting that process."

I wasn't so sure about that, but I only had Weis' treatment of them to go off. The Dark Moon elves were close to a terrorist group by the time the books had begun, attacking humans indiscriminately in hopes of terrifying them into backing off on their land grabs. As my world showed, you didn't really need the direct hand of a god to make that sort of situation messier.

"I never understood why Thistle spared your life to be honest," I said.

"You'd have to ask her that," Ania said, looking away. "I was a woman by Ledzianian standards, but just barely, when I was recruited by her. I'd already witnessed the slaughter of my family and had been kept a hostage in the capital to my sister's good behavior. The guards were not kind and my back still has scars from where they'd made demonstrations with a whip of what would happen to me if Agata didn't obey the Mad Queen. Piotr rescued me but his route took us right through elvish territory--"

"I'm sorry about Piotr," I said, interrupting her. I didn't want to point out I'd seen and felt those scars every time we'd been intimate.

Ania paused. "He sold us out to Veles, didn't he? Well before Veles took over his body."

"Technically, he only sold me out," I replied, weakly defending him.

"He sold all of us out," Ania replied. "You, me, and every other Undermaster. He broke his oath and he's probably in the Realm of the False."

I didn't really have a response to that. "Right."

Ania looked down. "Aaron, do you know when I realized I loved you?"

"I'm still surprised you do," I admitted.

Ania snorted. "It was when you rode on Stompy into the air to distract Chernabog from attacking us.”

"When I almost died?" I asked.

"Yes," Ania said, looking up at me. "It's when I realized, holy hells, you were actually sincere in all of your attempts to help me and my world. It wasn't just a game for you. You were generally willing to die to save people that were fictional in your world."

I paused. "It wasn't people. It was you. Also, the others, but mostly you."

Ania shook her head. "I'm used to people being hypocrites, liars, and betrayers. Even Garland wasn't always on the up and up. You, you on the other hand, were the real deal. That's when I knew I couldn't lose you."

"Thanks," I said, pausing. "It was really stupid of me."

"I wish we had more of your kind of stupid," Ania said. "We need more people like you instead of Piotr. You get to know a person's true self on the edge of a blade."

The story in the second book hadn't shown Piotr in a great light either. He'd bribed one of the guards to let him take Ania then murdered him, framing another guard to take the fall. From there, Piotr had planned to take Ania to the Sisters of Mokosh, but he'd run away when the elves butchered his men during their travels. Later, he'd welcomed Ania and even sponsored her as the first female Undermaster to remove her threat to the Mad Queen's rule, but it had been a calculated act designed to get Ania's forgiveness.

“Yeah,” I said. “He ran away and left you behind.”

"The Dark Moon assassins were beautiful and terrifying when they massacred Piotr's men," Ania said, a wistful look in her eyes. "Powerful. I wanted to be like them. Moreover, when Thistle explained what the Dark Moon was doing, fighting the Royal Family, I wanted to join more than anything. I didn't care that they were warring on humanity. I said I would do anything to be one of them."

"I'm surprised they let you join," I said.

Ania nodded. "Thistle's voice carried more weight than she knew. Thistle claims she's as free as any other elf but all of them were cowed by her presence. Thistle took me as her mistress and trained me. Even so, I don't think she expected me to survive the Dark Moon's Trials. The final test, what allowed you to access the Dark Moon's magic, was to give up something of immense value."

The books had been incredibly vague about what Ania had sacrificed. "And the Dark Moon, Zorya Nightbringer, was a monster by this point."

Ania didn't respond, clearly lost in the memory. "Yeah, the sacrifices imposed were always sadistic, but we didn't know it. Spirit had to murder her human lover. Honeycomb had to forsake any contact with her family forever after. Thistle...well, that's her story to share. I actually laughed when the Nightbringer named my sacrifice."

I wasn't sure what could induce that reaction. "What did she ask?"

"Something I never wanted," Ania said. "Something I thought was a trap for women. I wanted to be a warrior like my father and brother. A life that didn't have any room for being laid up for a year and then struggling with responsibilities for decades after."

It took me a bit to get what she was saying. "You gave up your ability to have children."

I suddenly hated Zora Nightbringer and decided I would take her on next if I could. The Wind Demon had to pay for this.

Ania frowned. "Yeah. I never expected I'd meet someone I'd actually want to have them with."

Wow. That was...big. Even more than proclaiming me her ke'tar. Maybe because it wasn't filtered through a fantasy lens. It was just raw emotion.

I didn't realize I hadn't responded until Ania responded. "Does this change anything between us?"

I hugged and kissed her. "Not a bit."

Ania smiled again, this one looking a lot more natural. "Good. Because we'll probably die horribly on the quest anyway."

"If we survive--"

"If we survive," Ania said, cut me off with a kiss. "We'll have each other. Whatever else will be a gift."