Everything was Aletheia’s fault.
She knew two spells. Since her showing in Sam’al’s arena, she had done next to nothing in battle except stand around and whisper encouragement. When they confronted a monster, she stayed silent. And when loot was divided, she received only a stipend from Astera’s cut. Like a pet. Not even a partner.
But still, everything was her fault. It was a looming certainty she felt. She knew it in her heart.
Why she knew she couldn’t quite express. She didn’t need to. When she sat alone at Arqa, staring at the burning sand, she simply did. Somehow she was to blame.
The inn with the funny name was the exception. At the end of last year. That was clear. She knew exactly how, why, that was her fault. The kind old woman behind the bar, her daughter the waitress. All in flames, all because of her. How many people dead? Lives ruined? Eris was right. If she had stayed put at the tower, if she’d gone with the mercenaries, wouldn’t the world be a better place?
Now Eris was gone. She had been gone. Aletheia did not like Eris, but everyone knew Rook did. They flirted constantly. She was what a man like him wanted. She was what Aletheia wished she was—tall, exotic, beautiful, powerful. No longer—and it was because of Aletheia. Just like everything else.
She knew Jason felt the same way Eris had. How long would it be before Rook came to his senses? How long before he left, too? Or worse?
She waited for it. Every time she woke up, first thing. An expulsion. News that he was returning her to Antigone, collecting on her bounty, like Eris wanted. She expected it from him. It was another thing she knew would come. He would talk to her and smile and joke one day, but the next, there it would be. As certain as her own mortality. He would leave, and Pyraz, too.
He never did. And he never would. But she worried anyway.
Astera’s presence never faltered that way in her mind. She was different. Aletheia didn’t understand what Astera saw in her, but she was constant as the Daromese sun. There was no one she trusted more, no one she had ever trusted more. With Astera at her side she could still sleep.
Sometimes.
The bleached bone flew from Rook’s fingertips and arced across the cloudy sky. One end tumbled over the other. Pyraz held one paw raised, poised; as it passed over his head, he leapt. He backflipped in his dive, first straight up then over himself, nabbing the bone right out of the air before twisting around and landing back on the sandy shores of Lake Arqa on all four paws.
He shook his head. Wagged his tail. Sprinted back to Rook.
Aletheia clapped.
“Fantastic catch!” Rook cried.
“That wasn’t anything,” Jason said.
“Why don’t you try catching a bone with your mouth then?” Aletheia said.
“I could,” he said.
Rook grabbed the bone. He offered it to Jason, who lounged nearby on a blanket. Pyraz sat and stared at it. Slobber dripped onto sand.
“Ready, boy?” Rook teased.
“I said ‘could,’ not ‘will.’”
Rook threw the bone again, this time higher. Pyraz caught it, again. “Good boy!” he said. “Come on!”
It was a cool, cloudy summer day in Darom, where rain was still far off—for the time being. It wasn’t even humid. Two days prior they rescued the son of a minstrel from sandshrews; now they relaxed in luxury with their winnings. The water was like a heated pool in Snaiga, like the ones Antigone and the elders used to relax outside.
Not that Aletheia was ever allowed into the spas. But she’d seen them. Imagined. Watched the steam. Lake Arqa was how she imagined them.
They’d gone in a few minutes previously, but it got hot fast. So now they lounged on the sand.
Pyraz rolled onto his belly at Rook’s feet. Aletheia rubbed his ears, Rook kissed his neck.
“You’re going to get sand in your teeth,” Jason said. “Or fleas.”
“You shouldn’t say that,” Rook said, “he can hear you.”
“He’s a dog. He doesn’t mind.”
“He’s not a normal dog,” Aletheia said.
Jason sat upright. “Yeah. He is. You think he’s special because he can catch a bone?”
Pyraz barked. He wriggled out of his humans’ grasps and turned his gaze on Jason. Sitting then, expectantly, like he had a treat.
“We found him in a mausoleum,” Rook said.
“His owner got sick of all his begging.”
“A locked mausoleum.”
“Really sick.”
“He used to be human,” Aletheia said.
“Yeah, right.”
“We never figured out how he got there,” Rook said, “but he’s no normal dog.”
Jason shifted to look Rook in the eyes. They were both shirtless. “Everyone thinks that about their dogs.”
“He can prove it!” Aletheia said.
“Great. Fascinating. I’m going back in the water.” Jason went to stand, but just then Astera appeared over the nearby dune. She wore her leathers and did not otherwise seem equipped for leisure, but she was unarmed.
“They say Dagom Snakes live at the bottom of Lake Arqa. I’m going to catch us one for dinner,” she pronounced.
“At the bottom of the lake?” Rook said.
She nodded.
“Well. That was my next stop, too,” he said.
“Come sit with us,” Aletheia said.
“I will, but I want to swim first. I often swam in the rivers of Seneria.”
“You can swim without hunting,” Rook said.
But she was already off toward the water, and only a moment later she dove into the waves, submerging herself entirely.
Jason frowned and sat back down. “On second thought, here is fine.”
Aletheia looked at Pyraz. “He knows a lot of tricks.”
Jason groaned. “Like what?”
Rook smiled. He put his hands behind his back. “Roll over.”
Pyraz rolled over in the sand, barking once in enthusiasm. No delay.
“Every dog can do that,” Jason said.
“Dance.”
Pyraz danced on his hind legs, waving his front paws and standing upright for a brief moment. That trick always made Aletheia laugh.
Jason rolled his eyes.
“Wait,” Rook said. He threw the bone. Pyraz watched it, turning his head, but stayed put. “Okay, boy. Fetch—crawling.”
So Pyraz did that, too. It looked ridiculous, to watch a dog crawl all that way there and back through the sand, but he never once faltered in his efforts. Even Jason had to laugh at that.
“All right,” he said, “that one’s not bad. How’d you teach him to do that?”
“I didn’t. Hey Pyraz—untie my boot.”
Pyraz stared at Rook for a minute, confused, then glanced at Aletheia. She smiled encouragingly at him, and then he stuck out his tongue, wagged his tail, and bounded over toward the nearby spot where they left their shoes. He grabbed one of Rook’s boots out from the lot, brought it over, then carefully undid what remained of its laces with his teeth.
“See?” Rook said.
“He’ll forgive you if you pet him,” Aletheia said.
Now Pyraz laid down on the sand. He chewed on the boot. Rook had to pull it away. “Well. Still a dog,” he said. “Now go lick Jason.”
“I’m not really a dog person—” Jason started, but it was too late. Pyraz pounced on him, knocking him over onto the sand, licking his face. “Ow! Help! Get him off! Seriously, stop!”
Pyraz didn’t stop. But they were all laughing. After that they played, and once the dog was tired Aletheia held his bone and sat with him on her lap. She’d never felt so much like she had a family.
Her eyes surveyed the lake’s surface. Waiting for Astera. Minutes passed, then half an hour. No sign. She never even came up for air.
Until she did.
She appeared suddenly, close to the shore, shambling through the waves. In her hands she wrangled a huge eel. It slapped against her, pulled from her hands, nearly slipped into the water, but her fingers glowed with fire for a moment, and she grabbed it around its oversized head, at the base of its throat, and throttled it—until it went limp.
She dragged it back to their beachside rest.
“Is that a Dagom Snake?” Rook said.
The eel was tossed onto the sand beside Pyraz. He barked, jumped away, growled, then hid behind Jason’s back, eying the serpent.
“I don’t know,” Astera said. “I don’t know what else it would be.”
“You just—caught that thing?” Jason said. “With your hands?”
She nodded. “I’ll cook it later.”
“You aren’t very good at leisure,” Rook said, relaxing backward. He tugged Pyraz back toward him. “We should all pretend like we’re at University.”
“Sounds like hard work,” Jason said.
“Very easy work. No concerns or duties or obligations. Only time for relaxation and…fun.” Aletheia watched his eyes as they closed. He was clearly thinking of a number of ‘fun’ activities, that for whatever reason were inappropriate to name at this current moment.
“I didn’t take you for a truant,” Astera said.
“I wasn’t. When I went to class.” His eyes opened. “I’m going back in the water.”
“I’ll come with you,” Jason said. “This fish smells.”
When Rook stood Pyraz came to Aletheia’s side. She felt the urge to stay with Astera despite the fish, which did smell. Astera was the one she trusted, who she felt safest around. The boys were more capricious. She didn’t understand them very well.
“How’d you catch it?” she said.
“I swam along the lakebed,” Astera replied. She sat cross-legged.
“I thought you drowned. You were below so long.”
She reached a hand around Aletheia’s shoulder. “I wasn’t beneath the water an hour, hardly enough time to drown.”
“You could still breathe?”
“I held my breath.”
It was sometimes easy to forget how unlike the rest of them Astera was. They sat together for a time, watching Rook wading off into the waves. Aletheia thought back to what she said, about fishing in Seneria, and asked her about it.
“The waterways glow with luminescent algae and the currents themselves course with mana. The river near my village was particularly strong; every sip was delicious, and when we were young we would swim in it together, each submerged energizing our bodies. The fish that grew in those rivers were fat and delicious. I would catch them for my family when I wasn’t on patrol, or gathering in the forests.”
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Astera had told her about the blue and purple forests of Seneria, of the land that had no sun but was kept alive from the bottom up by seams of Manastone and the auras of magical creatures and the aether. She knew it was a terrible place beneath its surreal beauty, that it was where demons roamed rampant, where cannibalistic orcs captured prey. But in her imagination there was no danger. Only calm, dark serenity.
Astera stopped then, looking seriously off toward the horizon. Aletheia nudged her.
“Tell me more. About what it was like. Something you haven’t told me before.”
She thought for a moment. “The islands. Off the peninsula’s eastern shores. They rose off into the sky thousands of feet, overlooking the forests, looming over the water like birds frozen in air.”
“In the sky? Floating?”
Astera nodded. “Manastone crystals lined their bottoms, and on their tops emitted golden glows we could see even from miles off. We wanted nothing more as children than to visit one of those islands. Birds would often flock to them, some of the strangest in the continent.
“We woke up once to find the islands had moved. My father explained to us they often did, over the centuries, and that it was normal enough. My friends and I were amazed—and we noticed that now one of the smaller islands had come nearer toward the cliffs of the forest that overlooked the water, at their highest point. We gathered there some hours later, and together we focused our Essences to levitate ourselves across the gap. It was quite the gap. Terrifying to look down. But we all made it to the other side, there were four of us, and we saw the islands we had imagined so often up close.
“Never had I felt so much mana in my life. Even in the ruins of Ewsos, in the old city, the magic made no comparison. Underfoot was glass that shimmered gold. Trees of silver lined the sheer drop-off shores. Shards of Manastone stuck like boulders from the ground everywhere. We pressed into the forest there—it wasn’t large, although very thick—and soon we saw it. The source of the golden spotlight.
“Traces of amber streaked past our eyes, like the lines off the aurora brought down to solid land. All led to the silhouette, the outline, of a person. Before our eyes the golden lights coalesced into a single being, mana condensing into physical form, and we felt the warmth of a sun we never knew except in stories against our skin. We all bowed to her in reverence—and once our respects were paid, we left her island, never to return.”
“What was she?” Aletheia asked. “Why didn’t you stay?”
“A demon.”
“You paid respects to a demon?”
“Not all demons are malevolent by nature. Few are, in fact. A demon is merely a being of Essence. A creature of the aether, born of mana. They can be good or evil, like humans and elves alike. We felt certain this was a generous entity, one who meant us no harm, but we disturbed her with our presence. It wouldn’t have been right to linger any longer, with our curiosities sated.”
Aletheia considered it. Golden and silver forests. Floating islands. “She sounds beautiful.”
“She was.”
“…will you take me to your village some day? When I’m older?”
That thought took a moment to process. Aletheia regretted asking it at once, she knew it was a sore topic, but she had to say it anyway.
“When I return to Seneria, it will be with you at my side. That I promise,” she said. “But you have a great deal left to learn before you’re ready for that journey.”
“I know. But some day.”
“Some day,” Astera said. “Some day, I promise. I will show you the islands off the coast of Seneria. I’ll show you the streams, and the fish, and the glow of the forest. You have my word.”
----------------------------------------
There came no sound but ragged breathing. Jason didn’t know what there was to see; he didn’t look. He kept his head against the wall. Eyes closed. Hoping that if he withdrew far enough away, the monster before him might disappear.
A bass, shivering sigh.
“I’m so sorry, Daphana,” the man’s voice said. It had a different timbre now. Deeper. More resonant. More composed. “I wasn’t myself.”
“You’ll let us leave,” Astera said, a long while later. “That was our deal.”
“Why would you leave me?”
Jason opened his eyes. He saw the man now, and now he looked like a man. He was strong, virile, big, imposing. His eyes were blue, no longer green. There was no shadow that moved with him. No beast that crept around his silhouette.
Astera opened her mouth as if to respond, but she couldn’t find the words.
Jason acted.
“To get you more blood. That’s why,” he said. “She’ll be back. Me too.”
The man’s head craned in Jason’s direction. “Who are you?”
Jason didn’t have a lie prepared, because he didn’t know what lie this monster, this demon, would want to hear. He didn’t know anything. He couldn’t flatter without something to ground himself in.
“I’m a scribe,” he wheezed. His voice very quiet. Barely able to find the words.
“Have you come to write my chronicle?”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes. I’m a chronicler. We came to let you out because—we knew your side of the story was the right one—and I needed to be there to chronicle it.”
The man put a hand to his forehead. “My mind is still clouded by thick morning fog. I can’t remember…”
“That’s because—you are weak, sire. If you let us fetch more blood for you, you’ll be invigorated, and we can move together to more permanent residences…”
“Yes,” Astera interjected, finally catching on, “once your powers are restored, we might rule together again. But not until then. You should rest, and—”
“I’ve rested enough!” he snapped. He glared at her. His voice softened, “You treated me so terribly, yet even so I’ve wanted nothing but you for all this time, once my thirst was quenched—”
He reached for her and she pulled away. Jason went to intervene, but then he saw the body on the ground in the corner of his eye. That made him fall silent.
“Later!” Astera gasped. “Please…my love. You agreed to let us leave.”
The man stopped, quieting himself. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Lord Artoros Arqa honors his agreements. It’s been so long that I—the sun cuts away at me, I need to be at full strength to confront my subjects. You, scribe.” He pointed at Jason with an aggressive figure.
“Yes,” Jason gasped.
“Tell the people of Arqa their rightful lord has returned. Their daughters are the first tribute of many. One from each household with a talent’s income. If they swear fealty now, they will be spared the traitor’s fate, the fate they earned when their forefathers turned against me in rebellion. I will grant them clemency. But if they do not submit…inform them that I will drain them of their lifeblood and enslave their skeletal remains for all the rest of time. Their souls shall be entrapped in my dungeons, subject to torture, for an unfathomable eternity. There will be no respite or end to their suffering. They will languish in servitude like spikes driven into the earth to anchor down my reign, and I will never pry them free. That fate already awaits their fathers—but they might be spared the indignity. For now.”
Jason nodded.
“They will serve me one way or another. Daphana,” he, Lord Artoros Arqa, trailed a finger across Astera’s cheek, “you were always so excellent at persuading the mortals. Convince them to see reason. I don’t wish to hurt anyone.” He glanced at Aletheia’s body. “…now bring me more blood.”
The gate, still sealed by some spell, came unlocked at this. Neither Jason nor Astera wasted any time. They both ran through the corridor, up the stairs, through the dungeon’s entrance, and out into the open desert.
They did not go to Arqa #2. They, unlike Lord Arqa, were not men and women of their word. Instead, they ran straight to Rook.
----------------------------------------
Rook exercised through the pain. Disembowelment was no obstacle for his athleticism. Once his ribs were healed, he forced himself through push-ups. Practiced fencing drills. Lifted whatever he could find for weights. He had seen great warriors become invalid wastrels after injury, and he was determined to never join their number. He was determined to stay in shape. No matter how much it hurt.
And it hurt. He kept going anyway.
The day after Jason and Astera and Aletheia departed he became the most aggressive in his exercise, for lack of any other distractions (except Pyraz). That was when the pain was the worst. A dozen pushups aggravated the mostly-scarred wound to his belly so terribly that he spent the rest of the day on the floor, face-down, groaning in agony. Just like the day of the duel with the spider queen, he felt certain he had spilled his intestines across the ground.
He was surprised after a nap to find he was still alive.
After that it only got easier, and quickly. He went swimming the following day, and running the next. Soreness lingered where his two newest scars healed over, and pain when he moved suddenly, but his vigor had mostly returned by the time Jason and Astera returned to town.
He was practicing cutting outside when Pyraz barked. He turned and he looked and he saw Jason and Astera alone. Their packs looked light. Their faces were dark.
He knew at once. This exact moment had happened to him before. Black marble to either side, a messenger with hideous news, the once-safe halls of a place of learning, all reduced to rubble in the course of a single letter. A revelation so horrible, so grotesque, that it couldn’t be believed.
It couldn’t be happening again. Anyone but her. Anyone at all. The bright day of Darom eclipsed in a heartbeat.
Jason stumbled to the well at the center of town. With the jug left there he drew out water for himself, and like a man near death from dehydration he bathed in all of it. When his thirst was finally quenched he stopped and stared at nothing on the ground.
Astera saw Rook and turned away. She stopped on her approach. Her look confessed everything.
He stormed in their direction.
“Where’s Aletheia?” No response. He came much closer. First to Astera, who shied away, like an elephant to a mouse, then toward Jason. “What happened?” Jason shook his head. “Where is she?”
“We had no choice,” Astera said.
“What happened?” Rook said again. At first his voice was soft, but now he spoke loudly. He took nothing more seriously than the protection of his friends.
Jason shrugged the shrug of defeat and indignity. “She’s dead,” he whispered.
A confirmation of what he already saw, but the words still made him freeze, made him bubble with anger. This was his fault. He let them go without him. He never should have trusted them to watch her. It was idiotic. There was no purpose. Another six days and he could have gone with them, even if…even if…
“Where are her things?” Rook said. Her jewelry, her dagger—they weren’t with either of them.
“We didn’t take them,” Astera said.
“Why? What happened? Tell me! Explain how you’re both here uninjured while she’s gone!” A temper he once couldn’t control was now off its leash, and if he could manage it he had no desire to. He knew at once, he knew something was wrong. His attention turned to Jason—he was the culprit. “Did you throw her to a chimera to get away? Run from a serpent and never look back?”
Jason said nothing.
“What happened?!” Rook said again. This time he grabbed Jason—a much smaller, much weaker man—by the collar and pulled him to his feet. The scribe didn’t resist, but Astera yelled out,
“We let a creature free from its prison. A demon in the body of a man.”
Rook turned to her. “What?”
“He was locked within a vault beneath the old keep, where the ghouls congregated.” She spoke with sorrow, but not remorse. “He was impervious to our weaponry. And my spells. He destroyed my sword.”
“He’s a vampire,” Jason said. “He smelled her. He wanted blood.”
“…and you let him have her…?” Rook said.
“We had no tools to defeat him,” Astera said. “What else were we to do?”
He tried to imagine the scene. It played out a dozen different ways in his mind, and each was too horrific to dwell on. He couldn’t stand his own imagination. Astera had sworn to protect Aletheia, they both had, and to betray her like this—he would have died first, and gladly. A thousand times over.
"She was like a daughter to you," Rook said quietly.
“Don’t think I didn’t love her,” she replied. Still sorrow in her voice, even tears in her eyes.
“But you loved yourself more.”
“Would it have made sense for all three of us to die in a fight, when two could go free?”
Jason looked up at this. “She’s full of shit,” he said, panting. “He thought Astera was someone else, someone he used to know, another elf who betrayed him. That’s why he let us go. He said—she had to choose between her life or Aletheia’s as punishment."
Rook’s voice came very softly now. “You could have saved her.”
She averted her gaze again, like she felt some shred of guilt over what next she had to say. “I had never loved a mortal more than her. But she was still mortal. Her life to mine is a blink of an eye. Would it have made sense, to trade my life for hers?”
He stared at her. Disbelief swelled in his veins. Selfishness and callousness he expected from Jason. Pretentiousness and self-importance he expected from Astera. But he always thought in Aletheia this elf had virtue. Aletheia trusted her with her life. They were closer than blood family. And to be told now that this relationship could be shattered in an instant because Astera didn’t want to die, because she was an elf who intended to live forever—something in Rook was pushed beyond the edge.
Only a monster would ask a question like she just had. The answer was obvious. After all she had told that girl, after all her charades—of course it made sense.
His humors sublimated into fury. His jaw and fists clenched. For the first time in nearly three years he felt hatred—hatred he hadn’t known since his father was killed.
“Everything you told her was a lie,” he growled.
“You wouldn’t understand—” she started, but if any words could have assuaged him in that moment, those were not it. He couldn’t take her condescension. He couldn’t take anything about her.
Hatred assumed command. He punched her. The travel across his torso caused his scars to sting, but he ignored the pain, just like he practiced, and followed the momentum through. Astera was fast, but she was caught off-guard. She tumbled backward in the dusty dirt of Arqa’s square.
“You selfish bitch!” he screamed. She tried to strike him back, but Rook knew martial arts well: he’d trained since childhood. He took her wrist and deflected her strike, pulling her forward and hitting her again. He kneed her, then pushed her to the ground. “A rabid cur would have more loyalty to a stranger!”
“Do not do this to me!” she said, scrambling to her feet, but Rook was too angry to think straight. He rushed toward her to kick her again—when a blast of wind knocked him over. He tumbled to the well and hit his head on the edge.
Jason scurried out of the way like a scorpion, cowering behind cover nearby, watching half-concealed.
Astera stood over him now. “I do not want to fight you,” she said.
He stared at her. With anyone else he might have been thinking reasoned thoughts, or contemplating de-escalation, but the nature of this elf’s betrayal, its insidiousness, her selfishness—it all reminded him too much of a past life, and he was blinded.
So he lunged for her again. They both toppled into the dirt, and there they brawled brutally. Rook had been around magicians long enough to know their tricks: he needed to keep her arms and hands captive, keep her locked and subdued, so that was exactly what he did. Punching. Kicking. Beating. Screaming in her face, words he wasn’t sure made any sense; all around Arqa’s townspeople gathered to watch, stupefied that their heroes were reduced to this scene, but no one did anything, no one intervened.
Rook delivered a closed fist across her cheek. He felt a bone break. In the moment it took him to recover, though, she seized the opportunity, and she grabbed him by the wrist, and her dull white eyes flashed red. Suddenly he felt fire around his hand as all the flesh was seared on his skin. The pain was incredible. He hesitated again, caught so off-guard, and when he looked she had another flame in her palm: coiling, swirling, burning electricity, gathering between her fingers. He jumped off of her just in time to see the energy streak past his head, followed by the crack of thunder. He scrambled toward his sword in the dirt and grabbed it, rolled with it, spun the blade around in his hand. His fingers found Astera’s foot and tugged; she gasped, and when he saw her again she had more energy in her hands, this black and twinkling like the starry sky at midnight, just about to be let loose in his direction—
But he lowered his sword to her neck, and they both stopped dead in their tracks.
“Stop,” she said. “No more bloodshed.”
She was beaten badly. So was he. Rook’s breathing came fast and hard, but looking down at her, shaking, the pressure escaped from his heart. He calmed. But he held his sword in place.
“What did you think would happen when you came back?” he said. She didn’t answer. “You let this…vampire, this demon, free, let it kill Aletheia, and you left it alive, and you ran away?”
“Yes.”
“A monster that can’t be killed. You let it free.”
She nodded.
“You’re worse than a selfish traitor, Astera. You’re a dangerous fool.” He stared again into her empty eyes. Then, quietly, he said, “Did she beg?”
“Yes.”
“You deserve worse than this.” He pressed his blade into her neck again.
Just then Jason approached from behind. “We told him we would be back. We made a deal. But that was tides ago. He’s going to know we lied.”
One adventure off. Just one. That was all it took. Rook closed his eyes. “We have to kill him.”
“How?”
“We’ll find a way. And you!” he looked again to Astera. “I won’t let you run away! You—you can’t leave these people with your mess, do you understand? Do you understand what you’ve done, Astera? Do you see now? It’s your job to fix it. And mine, too.”
“It won’t bring her back,” Astera said.
Rook pulled his sword away, leaving a nick on her neck, and sheathed it. “I’ll honor her by bringing her killers to justice. Both of them. And if we’re lucky, you’ll die seeking your redemption.”
He saw from how Astera’s face softened at his words that she agreed with him. That she knew he was right. The guilt she felt over her decision must have been immense, all-consuming over the last three days—the last six tides. That she still showed that guilt, and felt no regret, sickened Rook to his vey core. But he counted himself lucky, considered himself the victor, when she replied with the simple words,
“Very well.”