Brendis was not, all things considered, an easy patient. He was used to activity, and intelligent enough to get bored quickly, so when he was in Raeca’s care, she watched him like a hawk.

And also did her best to keep him occupied, because if she didn’t, he would occupy himself and get into trouble.

A small part of her was sick of seeing him so often. She hated that she knew his habits so well. Usually when she healed someone, she expected them to stay healed, at least for a while.

Not Brendis.

This week, it was bandits.

Human ones, at least. Brendis found out they were bothering a village a few miles down the road and went to do something about it.

He came back triumphant, but full of arrows.

At least he got himself back to her this time. Although Raeca enjoyed Haroun’s visits, she preferred the ones that were not accompanied by Brendis being half-dead.

“If you do not get back into bed,” she said menacingly, and privately enjoyed the way the Hero’s eyes widened in sudden alarm. “I will knock you out and put you there myself.”

“That seems somewhat ambitious,” Brendis said, although he eyed her like he was considering her actual ability to do just that. “A whole troop of bandits just failed to drop me.”

“A whole troop of bandits without a single capable healer among them,” Raeca told him flatly. “You aren’t fast enough to dodge me right now and trying will pop your stitches. Again.”

He considered his options and her decidedly militant face, and deflated. “Can I sit at the table at least?”

Give him an inch and he would take a mile, but Raeca knew he was sick of the bed and wanted to move around a little.

“If you budge from that spot for anything but the privy or bed, I will drop you and have Mitso carry you up the stairs,” she warned him, and went to get a bowl of soup and bread for them both. If he was up anyway, he might as well eat, and he had lost a good bit of blood.

Too late, she realized that she had left the most recent of the Dark Sorcerer’s journals on the table. There was no way to get it before he saw it, and hurrying would catch his interest faster than ignoring it.

Well, she had wanted to talk to him about it. Hopefully he wouldn’t be too angry.

“What is this?” Brendis asked curiously, and picked up the old, leather-bound book. Simple spells kept the pages intact over the years, but its’ age was apparent the moment he touched it. “I didn’t know you liked to read. I would have brought…”

Raeca winced when his words trailed off. All but the first three of the journals were in Common, but the sorcerer’s name and vocational notes were in the Desert tongue, and Raeca couldn’t read them.

Brendis almost certainly could.

“Where did you get this?” He asked softly, tone completely even. Raeca turned around and set the soup in front of him before taking a seat herself.

“Someone brought it to me,” she said softly. “I see so much of you, and Queen Calliope that I wanted to know more about… about everything. Including the Dark Sorcerer. There are dozens of these journals, across all of his lives.”

Brendis considered her words as he paged through the journal slowly. This particular journal covered the last half of the Dark Sorcerer’s fifth life. One of the few where he outlived the other two.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“We were best friends,” he murmured, so quiet that Raeca wondered if he knew he was speaking. He rarely looked his true age, the survivor of a hundred lives, all tied to the same, brutal fight. Now, the weight of all those lives and all that grief bore down like they might crush him. “In our first lives. Our fathers were friends, but it wasn’t until I took the blade and he the spell that we met.”

“Will you tell me about him?” Raeca asked tentatively, surprised and pleased that he was taking the whole thing so calmly. “About the Dark Sorcerer? No one ever talks about him. Even Haroun doesn’t use his name.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“He was here?” Brendis demanded, and Raeca raised her hands peaceably even as her heart began to pound. “When?”

“He comes by about once a week for tea,” she said with a small bit of confusion, although she supposed it was reasonable. Haroun did say they weren’t friends.

She had never seen this side of Brendis, although it was almost certainly the last thing a great many monsters ever saw.

“What business could he possibly have here?” Brendis stood, and Raeca fixed him with a stern glare despite her nerves. He was in no condition to be storming around. “How did he find you?”

“He brought you to me,” Raeca said, and pointed meaningfully at his chair. Angry or no, he could sit or go back to bed, and nothing else. “You had been ambushed and poisoned. He helped me save your life that time, and again not much later.”

“I thought I made it to you alone,” The fight seemed to drain out of him all at once as he stared at her, shock apparently enough to derail his anger. “He… he brought me here?”

“He did, and immediately helped me save your life,” Raeca repeated, and leaned back, her hands around her mug of tea. “I don’t know much about poisons. If he hadn’t helped me burn it out of you, you would have died. He told me you weren’t friends, but I’ve never seen someone go so far out of their way to save an enemy.”

“You don’t know who he is,” Brendis said slowly, watching her with something like awe. “You shelter me, and taught Calliope to spin, and you don’t realize?”

“Calliope doesn’t like to talk about your history,” Raeca pointed out, although she was starting to feel like she had been very dim. “You spend most of your time here sleeping, and no one else knows anything about the three of you except half-remembered stories and a song here and there.”

He had to concede that and thrust his sword back into the scabbard with a sigh.

“He really saved my life?”

“Twice,” Raeca told him, and pointed at his soup. If he could talk, he could eat. “The second time, I talked him into staying for tea. He’s been teaching me magic.”

“You bribed him with honey cakes.”

“I bribed him with honey cakes.”

Finally the hero cracked a faint smile and began eating.

“He loves honey cakes,” Brendis said after a minute of thought. His smile grew a little stronger. “In our first life, when we were children, we would steal them from his father’s kitchens.”

“Why are you still enemies?” Raeca had to ask, even as she went to get a tray of those same honey cakes for Brendis. He loved them too, and like Haroun, wouldn’t admit it for anything. “You sound… you sound like you were close. Like maybe you still are.”

“It’s the prophesy,” Brendis murmured, although he did take a cake. “It hangs over us like an executioner’s axe. One will turn on Two, and the Two must defeat the One. Refusing to fight doesn’t help. I tried that, once. Refused to fight. Lived my life in a cottage, at the edge of a small village.”

“What happened?” Raeca asked gently. “Did you at least have a few more years?”

“Haroun died first, in that life,” Brendis recalled, his brow furrowed with effort. “I think Calliope outlived me, but I’m not sure. Just as the war ended, I woke to an assassin’s knife in my ribs. The last thing I remember is screams and fire outside my window. When I went back in my next life, my village was gone, razed to the ground and everyone who lived there was dead.”

“Do you think it was Haroun?” Raeca wasn’t so sure. The man in the journals was harsh, and a born ruler. But a massacre didn’t seem to be his style. The man teaching her magic was too fond of his books and magic to be the ruthless warlord of the stories.

Poor Brendis. He carried such horror in his life. It was a wonder he was as sane as he was. Small wonder Haroun was always so troubled. He shared that burden. At least Brendis and Calliope had each other.

“I’ve never known,” Brendis admitted reluctantly. “In a few lives we were almost friends again. We have lived so long that other threats do sometimes rise and must be handled. Like it or not, he is still the best mage I know.”

“Tell me about it,” Raeca suggested gently, and stood to get them both more tea. “I have his journals, and apparently him to explain them, and I would like your side as well.”

Brendis considered her for a while. Long enough for the tea to be hot again and for her to pour them both another cup.

“Why not?” he decided at last. “Perhaps you will see something we haven’t, being too wrapped up in our curse all these years.”

“Maybe,” Raeca shrugged. She doubted it would go that far. She was a village healer, not one of the Wise. “Either way, maybe it will help to tell someone.”

“Maybe so,” he agreed, and smiled faintly. “Three thousand years ago, I was born a noble, Haroun a prince, and Calliope a princess, and we met because our fathers were friends.”