I wanted to leave without a word, because there was a part of me that still thought I was right, and if I spat that venom at Cienne I'd only sicken him more. Then I wanted to write a letter, because I'd tried to make Cienne's choices for him one too many times, and taking my last words away from him stank too much of glass shards and festered bile.

So in the end, there was only one choice that gave back Cienne some of the control I'd wrested from him. There would be no vanishings in the night. No envelopes on pillows with salt-stained pleas.

I knocked on Cienne's door during a frigid, thin-aired noon.

"Lucet?" I heard a thunk twenty pounds heavier than I expected. He was taking to the treatments well. The treatments I'd tried to keep from him. "Everything okay?"

And fuck, things had gone so wrong between us that the first thing he asked was that. "Honestly? Not really. But if you don't want to talk, I'll leave."

I held a slip of paper between my fingers. If he didn't want to talk, I'd slip it into the Plane of Calm when I left. Hiding my last words in a place he'd only reach if he was unshakeable was the least I could do to ensure my absence wouldn't be sprung on him when he was already knocked down.

But the door opened before I could cast a spell, and Cienne was in his neatly-tidied room, his Redlander's robes pooling around his feet. Waves lapped at the warm sand of his soul, and he stepped back in an unspoken invitation.

The paper crinkled in my hands, and I shook my head. "If I step into that room I'm not going to be able to leave," I blurted out.

Cienne tilted his head, lips pursing, and I could see my soul reflected in his eyes, all back-alley bilgewater and broken bottles. The realization swelled inside him like a bubble of magma, boiling his idyllic beach into mist and quartz. "You're leaving the city," Cienne finally said.

I had an entire letter working up to that revelation, and he saw through me in an instant. "I wrote an explanation, if you don't want to hear it from me now, but—"

"If that would make it easier for you," Cienne began, then grimaced. "...no. No, I want to hear it from you. Why you'd rather die by inches rather than let Zhytln treat you, you stubborn—" He cut himself off.

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"Go ahead," I said.

"Like hell I will. You came here to say something, and I want to hear you out."

I took in a deep breath, then looked down at the words in my palms. I could drop them and run, and Cienne wouldn't get in my way because only one of us tried to stop people from taking the medicine they needed, and that was the coward's way out and if there was one thing I would never again be it was a coward.

"Okay." I wish I could have met his eyes while I spoke, but truth be told I'd stammer and stutter and shy away if I had to improvise this, so I looked down at my letter and began to read.

Cienne, it simply began. If you're reading this, I'm already gone. I skipped that part, true though it was, and read aloud from the second sentence. "You're building a life here, and I can't be part of it. Because you're finally happy and healthy and safe and content, and there are things I need to do that won't let me ever be any of that."

Cienne's hands twitched, as if reflexively he wanted to reach out to me, to comfort me like he had so many times before. Before. Before we'd clashed. Before he knew what it meant to be a riftmaw.

"Part of me wanted to hide where I'm going for your own good," I continued, and I was glad now that I had an excuse to look anywhere but at Cienne. "But I don't get to decide that for you. So while you're living your life on the docks of Knwharfhelm, the same abomination of an institution that gave us cancer and killed Sansen is still murdering and brainwashing and claiming the moral high ground while they're at it. And I'm going to steal their medicine and wreck their war machine and show them what a pissed-off soulmage with nothing to lose can do. And this is where both of us belong. You enjoying your freedom and health. Me trying to win that for everyone who didn't escape. Because that's why I'm doing this. For the people like you who never found their peace. And for the one who did."

Lines of frost crept from my fingertips, ink twisting into brittle runes. I looked up at Cienne, as if he would convince me to change my mind, to take Zhytln's treatment and stay in the struggling, growing household he'd made.

Maybe there was once a Cienne who would have asked me to stay. But I'd killed that man on the docks of Knwharfhelm.

"...Will you talk to Meloai and Sansen before you go?" Cienne finally asked.

"I knew I'd only be able to do this once."

Cienne closed his eyes.

"Then go," he finally said. "And when you see Witch Aimes..."

His brows creased, eyelids twitching, and his soul shuddered and wrenched. He never finished his sentence.

"I'll know what to do," I said. I almost reached out to take his hand.

But his soul was placid and still once more. I'd disturbed him enough already.

So I drew a line in the air, peeling open a rift between our home and the streets of Knwharfhelm, and took my first step towards the Silent Peaks.