Eris watched with folded arms as Aletheia stared at the glass of saltwater. The lantern overhead swung with the rocking of the sea and even as the minutes piled nothing more than that gentle sway, the sway which shifted every shadow along every crate, changed inside the dim, damp hold.

This did not need to occupy the next hour.

“What is taking so long?” Eris said.

Aletheia glanced downward. “I can’t remember.”

“Cannot remember what?”

“What clean water tastes like.”

“You are joking.” Eris covered her eyes with a hand. The girl picked up Hold Portal quick enough, but this simplest of spells was proving more trouble than it was worth. She was straddled with inhibitions and a self-consciousness that inhibited her ability to cast magic quickly and effectively.

It was not for a lack of talent. Eris did not know whether Aletheia had always possessed an unusual quality to her aura or if this was a more recent development, a byproduct of an elf’s Essence transferred where it did not belong, but she noticed it now when the girl learned new spells, when she channeled mana and opened herself to the aether. Her magic had a different taste than Eris’ own, or Robur’s, or even Pyraz’s, whose esoteric spells were never-the-less still weaved from the same tapestry as any other magician’s.

That made Aletheia interesting. Curiosity was no doubt why Eris had not yet given up on their lessons. Curiosity, and boredom. But this self-consciousness was becoming seriously grating.

Aletheia shook her head, turning away from the glass. “I can’t.”

“Just cast the spell!” Eris gasped in exasperation.

“I don’t remember how.”

“It is a glass of water! You could not ask for a simpler task!”

“Can’t we do Hold Portal again?”

“You already know Hold Portal, there is no use in practicing with me further.” There was little use in ever practicing it, Eris thought then, but she kept that to herself. “If you cannot conquer a glass of seawater, you surely do not intend to have us count on you in combat?”

Aletheia hung her head. “You shouldn’t count on me in combat.”

“Hmph. Then we are agreed on something. Yet all the same, even you are within your powers to do this spell. So do it. Imagine a sip of clean water from a spring and banish the pollutants.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. Nodding. Then… “I still can’t remember what water tastes like! It doesn’t taste like anything!”

Eris groaned. “You are overthinking the problem. Forget the taste. Imaging the sensation, the feeling of hydration, the coolness down your throat.”

Aletheia tried again. Another minute passed, but at last Eris felt a breath of mana, a pulse in the air, a shock and a tingling up and down her arms. When it had passed she grabbed the glass and smelled it.

No salt.

“Congratulations,” she said ironically. She handed it to Aletheia. “Let us hope next time does not take so long, or we will have reached Rytus already.” A sigh. “You used far too much mana for such a small glass. You might have turned all my blood to purified water with a targeted miscast. Be more careful next time, ‘tis a spell that can be performed with a light touch.”

Aletheia took a sip from the glass. She paused. “Can the spell do that?”

Eris did not understand her meaning at first, but then cocked her head at the question. “…I do not know. If I am ever to find out, I would prefer not to be the one on the other side.”

The girl nodded and the two spent several minutes together in silence as she drank the now-pure water. Eris normally would have left, but just then she heard Rook’s voice through the hatch to the upper level. She did not want to see him now. Aletheia was a needed distraction. So she sat down.

Aletheia looked shock to see this. She frowned. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to leave?”

“We are stuck on a ship. There is nowhere to go.”

A moment—and then she heard Rook, too. Eris prayed she wouldn’t make the connection, but unfortunately, for all she was derided, Aletheia was not stupid. She smiled. “Okay,” she said. She pursed her lips. “Does it have to be water?”

“Do you mean to ask if we could purify seawater into cider? It is possible, but the casting would need to be changed. There is a difference between using mana to remove and using mana to add in. You would be creating a new spell. Learning such a thing is not easy.”

“Oh.”

“If I am to spend the time to write my own spell,” Eris continued, “it will be one which does not already exist.”

“That should work well. Thank you,” came the muffled voice of Rook from above. Eris cringed away, like she was about to be seen at any moment. Her heart jumped when she heard his voice and she covered her face in frustration.

Aletheia watched her. She had an expression like a cat eyeing a mouse, a half-hidden smile, and when Eris saw it she had a brief homicidal ideation.

“You know he really loves you,” the girl said after a long pause.

A dozen cockroaches in Eris’ mouth would have been more welcome in that moment. She made an expression of revulsion attributable only to insects and amors and gave Aletheia her evilest glare. “I am not discussing this with you.”

“He’s been depressed all week. He thinks you hate him now.”

“I do hate him, so ‘tis a thought well-had.”

“You don’t hate him,” Aletheia whispered. “You just hate yourself.”

Eris’ breathing came heavily. She was not above resorting to violence when such anger came on, but she was still in enough control of herself to be restrained—resurrecting this girl had been far too much work to throw it away now—and so she instead blustered toward the hold’s stairs. But then she heard Rook again.

“They’re working below deck, I think we shouldn’t disturb them while they’re getting along.”

She stopped dead in her tracks. Covered her eyes again. She wanted to storm out on Aletheia, but she wanted to face Rook even less, so she took a seat on the steps in silence.

Her anger burned away very quickly.

Aletheia was right. Eris did hate herself. She hated the emotions which ran wild through her. She hated that she was no longer in control of her own thoughts. She hated the power Rook had over her. She hated that she didn’t hate him at all, when this was all so clearly his fault. But then he had said…it was his idea…

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Eris could will the world around her into any shape she so desired, yet she could not shape her own emotions with mana. What a cruel irony that was. If only there were a spell to rid herself of all this….

Aletheia crept near her. She jumped up on an empty crate and kicked her legs slowly.

“That mirror is beautiful,” she said.

Eris glared at her. But she was forced to think back to the golden handmirror, tucked away with her things at the moment, and she sighed. “It is.”

“…I don’t know what you’re going through, but—if you could just talk to him—to tell him you don’t hate him…because we still have to work together, right? Can’t you talk to him?”

That was the one thing she needed not to do. He might try to touch her and she might not have the fortitude to resist and then—then all her progress in breaking this addiction would be shattered. For that was what Rook had become: an addiction. She was horrified at the thought of relapse, even as she shuddered from withdrawals. If she managed another week, or month, perhaps it would be broken…

“Love doesn’t go away just because you ignore it,” the girl added.

“I am not in love!” Eris shouted so loud that anyone above deck would have heard. In embarrassment she covered her face again. “And what does a thirteen year old know of love?”

Aletheia shrugged. “I love Astera. I wish I hated her, but I can’t. I still miss her.”

“Someone has to,” Eris muttered.

“…but I wish I could talk to her. You can still talk to Rook.”

“You cannot talk to her because she threw your carcass to the wolves to make her own getaway,” Eris said. “Forgive me if I am not eager for Rook to do the same to me. Because that is all love is—it did not save you. It will neither save me. It may be my death, however.”

A long pause. “It saved me in the end,” Aletheia said.

Eris blushed. She misspoke. Her rhetoric slipped. “I mean—it did not save Astera. It killed Astera. And it will kill me—”

She gave up. It was exhausting to maintain her outrage. She just wanted a return to neutrality. To feel nothing but ambition when alone at night.

Another silence fell.

Aletheia put the glass of water down, now empty. Then she said, “…what spell will you teach me next?”

“Do not push me any further than you have already. ‘Tis an excellent way to find your blood replaced entirely with water. Fetch another cup and we will see if you have actually learned this spell yet, or if you still require ten hours per ounce of purification.”

----------------------------------------

Aletheia clearly thought nothing of what was said. No one ever expected to get through to Eris. But their conversation haunted her for the days that followed. What if Rook was to die? Struck by lightning? Eaten by a whaleshark? Devoured by a dragon? Would she be happy with how their affair was ended, with an insult and weeks of silence, if they could never speak again? Of course she knew it wouldn’t matter; a corpse did not care. All the same she did not enjoy the thought. Soon these anxieties became too much to bear.

She relapsed.

She instructed a crewman to send Rook a message, to meet her in the hold after dark. There she waited for him. She played games with the fire of the lantern. As it danced overhead she warped it into the shape of a man, a dragon, a snake, sending wicked shadows against all the walls.

Then the hatch opened. A man descended the stairs. Eris approached him with twiddling thumbs. And there was so much relief, so much comfort and anxiety and a warmth that came to be in his presence again, which was just what drove her so mad.

He stared at her. Who knew what he was thinking, for his blue eyes were mirrors in the darkness; she saw herself reflected in them.

She broke the silence.

“If we wish to continue our travels together,” she said, “you must disavow me now. Forever.”

“Disavow?”

“End our relationship.”

“Forever?”

“Yes. Immediately. Please. ‘Tis for both our sakes.”

“…why?”

“Because I am asking you to, and you must if we wish to remain companions.”

He shook his head. Then a grin, that horrible handsome grin, spread across his lips. “I don’t know how to disavow you. Should I write your name in my Book of Grudges, like a dwarf? From the column of friends, into the column of enemies?”

“We needn’t be enemies, but—if that is what is required, then yes.”

He collapsed on a box. “You’ve always made my brain burn, Eris, but now it’s melting.”

“I believe my request is straight-forward enough. Promise you shall never again try to touch me and I will do the same.”

“And that will solve our—your—troubles?”

“Yes. I have given it much thought, and I have decided it is the only way we can survive near each other.”

“Until about an hour ago I wasn’t sure I could survive another hour apart.”

“Your wit will not escape this bind. I have presented my terms.”

Rook hesitated. “We’ve been here before, haven’t we?”

Eris remembered. That night in Rytus, in the snow, when she promised to leave if Aletheia and Astera were not kicked from the party. Almost exactly two years previously. She had been bluffing then—bluffing but forced to follow through—yet this time she was more serious. Her feelings, this ‘love,’ if love it was, had her horrified.

“So we have,” she said.

“I don’t understand. I told you what would happen on our first night together, didn’t I? But you insisted, and I…but it was always your idea. Always. And now you’re threatening to leave because you’ve realized you care for me after all? That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“That is one way to understand the situation.”

He ran his hands through his hair, still short, and stroked his beard. She would have done anything to feel the coarseness of that beard. But her conviction was strong.

“Why?” he asked. “Eris. Eris—please. You’re the most frustrating person I’ve ever met but—Kings, I’ve never loved anyone more. You’re the most beautiful woman on Earth and brilliant and powerful and more exciting than everyone else I’ve ever met put together. Why do we have to go through this again?”

“I am frustrating?” she said. “You are infuriating! You never seem to listen. I have told you—so let me tell you once again. Our nights together have indeed been…gratifying. I find you impressive in many ways, and I am glad to travel with you once again. It may even be that you are a person I could learn to…” the word made her ill “…‘love.’ Yet if these feelings I have toward you are the seeds of love, then they are ever as I suspected. They are a maddening weakness which will bloom with the fruits of ruin.

“…for weeks I have been unable to think straight. When I look upon you I am filled with more than lust but—anxiety. You make visitations upon my dreams and invade my every thoughts. When I see you speak with other women I grow jealous. I wonder where you when you are not nearby, I…I feel like a dog must feel in the absence of its owner. I loath these feelings of dependence. I will do anything to be rid of them.”

Rook laughed. Eris did not like being laughed at, but he stood and came closer to her—at which she retreated—and said, “I’ve felt that way for you since the day we met.”

She frowned. “Truly?”

“Well. Since the day I saw you naked at the shore of that creek, anyway.”

He said it in jest, although she wasn’t certain it was a joke, but she laughed anyway, and gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. “Insight into the masculine creature, hm?”

“You must admit we’re rather more straightforward.”

“I am not so convinced that is true,” Eris said. “I will never understand you.” But now they were playing—this was exactly what she wanted to avoid. This was exactly what she was afraid of. She turned away from him.

“Do you remember what I told you, that night you left? How life is full of prices?”

“…and sometimes what is expensive is still worth having,” she said, repeating his own words. She glanced at him to see him nod. But she shook her head. “This time it is I who bargain with gold I do not have. Perhaps the price of love is worth it to you. To me ‘tis not. And my decision has been made. You know me well enough by now, surely, to know I mean what I say.”

His eyes closed. He nodded again. “I know.”

“You must promise me that what there is between us will be left to wither and die. You must promise that you will help me be released from this prison of love that I have stumbled into. You must promise never to kiss me or touch me ever again.”

“And what if I can’t?”

“Then I will be forced to leave you. Forever this time. I will stay with you until we find the manaforge, then I will depart. We will never see each other again. That is the way it must be.”

They stared at each other for a long time. Then he smiled.

“You know. That first night we had together, I lied to you. Like we talked about in the Petrified Jungle.”

“I know.”

“I’ve regretted it ever since. I lied because I wanted to sleep with you and I knew it was what you wanted to hear. And if I promised that I would disavow my feelings for you, it would be nothing more than a lie to keep you at my side. I’d regret that, too, because a man shouldn’t lie to the woman he loves. And I do love you, and unlike you I won’t pretend that’s a tragedy.”

He grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her into a kiss. He was forceful and extremely strong and it was impossible for Eris to resist, but she could have Disintegrated him on the spot if only she had the desire. Instead she melted into him for a very long time. She let his hands explore her back and clutched his own with hers. Then he pulled away.

“But I can’t control you, either—it would be no fun if I could. So make your decision. But I’m very tired of this game.”

He let her go completely and walked away. Just like that. Through the hold, to the stairs. There he added one final thing:

“There. Now I’ve given you my terms.”

Then the trap door slammed shut behind him.

She collapsed down to the floor. And for the first time in her life, Eris wished she were not Eris. She wished she were any other woman in the world, who could acquiesce without fear of impugning her pride, without need to respect her own ultimatums, because she did not want to leave him. And for the first time since she was a child she cried, because she knew she had no choice but to do what she said. She would have to leave. Once the forgestone was used, she could never see Rook again. That really was how it had to be. Any other choice was no different from slavery.