Daniel awoke feeling like a calcified mummy. His organs felt hydrated, but swallowing cut his throat with shards of broken glass. He tried to move but his bones creaked, stiff and brittle and pained until he collapsed onto the bed. Two more attempts was all he made before sleep seized him as a defense mechanism and claimed him once more.
2
On the eighth day, Sara came upon a massive swath of crumbling trees, each reduced to charcoal, laid bare in the summer heat. She could see for over a mile despite barely being able to see fifty yards only ten minutes before—such was the extent of the devastation. Large craters dipped the landscape, and a lone animal passing the charred mountainside spotted them, shaking black soot off its hide before running down the mountain back into the dense thicket of living trees.
“I don’t suppose you know what happened here?” Sara remarked to Raul. They were approaching Quell’s border (as Sayon’s Crypt lay west of Quell in the sprawling lands of Elcalore).
Raul gazed at the craters and fissures and blackened stumps with a shrug. “Beats me….” Then he looked at Emma, who was desperately trying not to crack, and said with a straight face: “But we should be careful. Whatever did this seems dangerous.”
Sara raised her eyebrows at Raul as Emma was reduced to giggles. She went to speak but found nothing to say, so she shrugged and continued riding, navigating her monta over the darkened warning Quell ignored on their way to the Three-Front Siege.
3
Daniel awoke to a soothing feeling washing over him. It ferried his mind into focus, and he could hear voices. He listened with his eyes closed.
“Just ask her.”
“Ask her what? If the whore’s cheating on me? Oi, Abni, you suckin’ a cock when I’m not around?”
Are they seriously having this conversation? Daniel thought. Have some decency. They were having this conversation near a complete stranger. Yet they sounded relaxed as if he wasn’t there.
“No…. Just ask ‘er where the money came from.”
“Where’d you think it came from? Making hats?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Listen, Roe. Ten-to-one says she’s trying to surprise you.”
“Oh, I agree. I bet it’s one hundred-to-one.”
Daniel felt a deep urge to tell these people to get a fuckin’ room but his instincts told him something was wrong and he had to stay silent and listen.
“That’s not what I mean. All I’m sayin’ is… look. Women think they’re right and find ways to get what they want.”
The other man laughed.
“Just… look. My misses? There was this one time I wouldn’t get our boy some toy. I said it’d spoil ‘em. She says ‘He’s a kid.’ So I said, listen Jesk. You wanna buy Went some toys? Get some work. And I swear, just to fuckin’ spite me, she ran carrier for a merchant two days to buy that damn toy.”
“Some merchant? You meana man? And that doesn’t bother you.”
“’Course it bothers me. When I found out, I felt Delina’s blessin’ bearin’ down on me. I almost ran that fucker through. Givin’ another man’s wife work without his knowin’? I had half’a mind to run ‘em through on principle. But I didn’t. Why? ‘Cuz I told ‘er to do it. I shoulda just bought the damn toy. Emanasa blessed ‘er with stubbornness that would’ve emptied my damn well. Get it?”
The other man calmed, breathing steadying before saying. “You gotta a good misses. I’ve met ‘er once and she looked like she’d challenge The Sword herself if she went after Went. But mine ain’t like that. She’s bitter. I pushed ‘er once durin’ an argument and I swear she’s been lookin’ at cookin’ knives a bit too long since.”
“No she ain’t, Roe. She’s talked to my misses once, askin’ if you were okay. You took the rebellion a lot harder than you think ya did. We were all worried.”
Daniel’s body froze when he heard the word rebellion. He didn’t like the word “rebellion.” Jason led a rebellion. Mary seized the throne. Sara sieged the kingdom. Only Jason led a rebellion.
The angry man didn’t speak, so the other continued.
“Now let’s finish up. If we don’t, we’ll learn the wrath of stubborn women.”
A short, bitter laugh escaped the emotional man’s lips. “Yeah…. When you put it like that, they’re all the same, aren’t they?”
“Yep.”
The healing feeling ceased and Daniel heard the men stand up.
“I’ll talk to the misses.”
“Sober.”
“Heh. Sober.”
“Good.” They left and shut the door.
Daniel lay in a state of suspended animation after that conversation, feeling the warmth of the sun on the bed, bearing the ache in his bones. He thought good and hard and deep about what he just heard, coming to the minimal conclusion that he was in a coma (judging by the passage of time and the rock he eventually remembered hitting his skull) and that someone had usurped King Escar’s power. “The General” wanted him alive, and some women were responsible. All of those things seemed positive on the surface. He was hurt, and Sara didn’t kill him—he was still alive and healed after God knows how many days or months or years he was locked in that deep sleep. Yet when men are alone with their thoughts for long enough (able to reflect on things that they’ve done—and the things that people have done to them) their minds bend and shift and turn this way and that until even the most positive of memories turn dark and twisted and filled with grief, embarrassment, and regret. And in those lost and lonely passages, speculating on what happened, Daniel’s mind turned to the worst, imagining Jason and Mary fucking on King Escar’s throne with the former playing the righteous judge as the latter prepared to poison him. Worse yet, he thought of Sara, who might’ve abandoned the kingdom, holding a grudge over him for life, waiting for him to awake so she could torture, rip, and tear his body, mind, and soul to ribbons for the things that he’s done. Only then in that cold and sinuous state of paranoia did he question how much Sara loved Kyritus and Tiber and whether she’d truly feel torn and broken after getting back everything she had lost. In that state of speculative delirium, his mind came to the worst conclusions, even considering that Sara had a secret child that escaped his intelligence efforts, and she had lost her child in the reversal—something that would explain her hatred. That’s where he was for the next three hours—feeling just like that jealous, abusive man—knowing he was blowing things out of proportion despite all the signs that clearly stated that people were caring for him and wanting him to live. Yet he couldn’t help it, and after hours of torment, he finally drifted to sleep once more, praying that he’d get answers the second time around.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
4
Sara watched Emma and Raul by the campfire. Emma had fallen asleep on Raul’s shoulder, slowly drifting her head into his lap, and he just sighed with a slight, hollow smile and let it happen.
“Why not?” Sara asked, gyrating a full bottle of helshma in her hands.
Raul shrugged and looked at Emma. “It’s gonna happen.”
“Why not now?”
“Grieving I guess.”
“About what?”
“Dunno. Or, I do….” Raul took a deep breath. “There’s just some things that define you. Give you purpose. Lead you forward. Dreams. Pressure to go to college. Ambitions. Hobbies. And I guess one of those was my love for you.”
“You said that so casually.”
“That’s ‘cuz it doesn’t have weight anymore.”
The fire popped.
“Did you give up, or did you just lose the feeling?” Sara asked.
“You act like I tried.” Raul brushed some hair out of Emma’s eyes. “And no, I haven’t, but… it’s not what you think. I’m not sure I ever had… a crush on you. You’ve just been… more of an ideal. The ceiling, and I think I…. I think that if we actually ended up together, I’d figure out that you were just… normal.”
“You say that like a bad thing.”
“It’s not… if you’re getting married. Or want some normal friends. You know—to live life.”
Sara stopped gyrating the bottle of wine. “So I wasn’t a person?”
“You’re a friend.” Raul looked deep into the fire with a pensive pause. “That much’s never changed. But beyond that….” He shook his head. “You were an ideal—a concept.”
Sara smiled ruefully and looked at the blood-red moon, approaching its culmination in the nighttime sky. “What do you think now?” she chuckled. If his ideal was a blonde tennis player with a perfect body that wouldn’t magically stretch for children, a porcelain smile that would make neighbors and coworkers jealous for life, and ambitions of wealth and success—
—what happened once he found out how rough and jagged she was without the makeup or LA’s societal expectations? What happened when he saw her hunched over dinner tables, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, angry, broken, and alone, willing to resort to violence and nefarious tactics to solve problems with consequences that he didn’t understand?
“I grieved,” Raul said bluntly. “I had to admit that whoever I married would probably be a nightmare under the hood.”
Sara grinned and chuckled.
“Then….” Raul picked up a stick and threw it into the fire. “ Then I just saw you as the next ideal—a symbol of power and greatness… and perseverance in this this fucked up world.”
“I thought it’d be darker.”
“It has been… at times.”
“What changed?”
“I saw the world.”
Sara nodded and thought of Daniel, obsessing over Emma as an ideal. It wasn’t that different than how Raul saw Sara or how Jason saw himself. So she imagined the tragedy of returning to Reemada near the seventh anniversary of Emma’s death, only to figure out that she was far more normal than he remembered. Or that she was a child by comparison and all the childish things he loved were now annoying. Or, worst of all, he’d wake up and learn that his henchmen traumatized Emma, giving her PTSD that made it difficult for her to smile—only for a war to cement that into her psyche forever. It made her pity Daniel—more than she ever thought possible.
5
A week passed since Daniel regained consciousness—seven days that he woke with cold sweats after reliving cruel events that he wished he could forget. Then he’d listen to Roe and Nankel talk about their wives—something he loathed. Daniel didn’t hear much about his situation, but he kept pretending to be unconscious, moving his skeletal frame when they weren’t there, trying to rebuild muscle to walk. He had enemies in Lemora—enemies he could control like puppets in health but would see him dead if he hobbled around. So he slowly brought his thighs to his chest and raised his arms silently, smoothing out the blankets before the guards checked in on him. In his mind, he wanted to spend the next three months like that, collecting information from the mages that healed him, building up his muscles, preparing for the day he’d “awake” or escape, depending on the circumstances. Yet that was out of the question for two reasons. The first was because he heard the guards express relief that Sara—Lady Reece—was on a trip, something that didn’t inspire confidence in him. The other was more simple:
I’m going crazy, Daniel thought. He had spent hours and hours alone without seeing or talking to people. His throat still felt like glass, and he was growing to regret saving Edico’s life and multiplying his hatred and fear of Sara by the day. So, instead, he’d deal with things differently—
—and the perfect opportunity arrived two days later.
6
The last week was the most relaxing Sara had in memory. On the first day, they hitched a ride on a merchant’s caravan near the town of Yetta in exchange for protection services. They sat with their backs on heaps of hemsgrain as the wagon rolled and bumped on wooden wheels. Raul laced his hands behind his head, put a stalk of hemsgrain in his teeth like a piece of wheat in between his teeth, and closed his eyes on the itchy grain.
“Is that actually comfortable?” Sara asked.
“Not at all,” Raul admitted. “But I’d die before sayin’ I didn’t do it.”
Emma giggled. “Can I join you?”
“Go for your life.”
She did—and regretted it, shifting her back, realizing that it felt closer to a bundle of sticks than hay. “What is this stuff, anyway?” Emma asked.
“Hemsgrain,” the farmer driving said. “She makes a mighty strong one.”
“Twalla,” Sara added.
“No shit?” Raul chuckled. “Stuff you pretend makes you feel good. How apt.”
Emma giggled as he crunched his back into the hemsgrain, wiggling himself into place.
That night, they told stories by campfires with the folk who talked of distant places Sara had never been but wanted to go to. Merchants talked of routes and wares and dreams, exchanging tips on sex houses and trading tips on people to avoid. Emma used water spells to let the montas drink, and they said, “Now that’s a blessin’, girlie. If I had half a gold I’d offer ya a job.”
“It’s just a water spell,” Emma said.
“Just a water spell, she says,” the man said, eliciting a few chuckles. “If we had ‘just a water spell,’ we’d be goin’ the short way instead of followin’ the creek into bandit country. Hell, we wouldn’t even need ya protectin’ th’ carts.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “Really? I… well, I could teach you.”
The merchants looked at each other and then burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” she pouted.
“They couldn’t even if they wanted to,” Sara said. “They didn’t establish a core by thirty, so they can’t use magic.”
“Hell, with my old ‘channels’ I can’t even squeeze a piss most days.”
The merchants laughed.
“But thanks, girlie,” he said. “That’s ‘bout the best damn offer we’ve ever been offered. I’ll make sure to treat you to somethin’ nice tomorrow as thanks. You can take your pick.”
The next day, Emma found herself holding a monta toy hand carved out of wood. Her smile was so radiant that Raul sat near her to bask in her warmth.
On the third day, a rider claimed there were bandits on the ridge. The trees were too thick for a wide barrier, and Emma’s pink “jelly barrier” (as they started referring to it) couldn’t fit the full caravan. So if there were archer attacks from the forest, people and montas could get injured. That’s the weakness of individually strong people—they can’t protect everyone at once. Instead, Sara had Emma create a massive fireball in the sky like a sun as Sara released a massive amplification circle with four words.
“Don’t fuck with us.”
No one did.
That night, Emma was lavished with more praise, raising her title to the Saint of the People rather than the Saint of Lemora. As for Sara, she never pulled out the unopened wine bottle because she didn’t think about it. Her anger and frustration were gone—her mind and soul clear. Sara was on the road—where she belonged—and she’d pray these days would never end.