“I need a messenger for my father.”

“Don’t speak milady,” the healer tutted while her fingers stitched the deep gash in Greer’s cheek. Alize studied it and wished for some hellebore root. It would heal into a fearsome scar. Davram and Alize had helped Greer into Tamer’s apartments in the palace. They were dusty, but tidy.

“We have deviated from our plan,” Greer continued. “Someone must tell my father.”

“Not me.” Davram answered. He sat holding Greer’s hand as she managed her pain. “I don’t want to explain why you were here tonight.”

“To protect your life.”

“Which I very much appreciate, but I’m not certain your father will agree.”

“He’ll hardly have a choice.”

“Enough speaking milady!” the healer chided, “or I shall insist your guests leave!”

“I’ll be quiet,” Davram responded quickly.

“Mmhmm!” Greer hummed, her mouth unmoving.

“And I’ll go find Kell,” Alize interjected.

“No,” Davram warned. “You stay close. Now that you’ve announced your identity, we have to be careful it doesn’t endanger you.

“No one will touch her,” Greer muttered through gritted teeth.

The healer gave her a stern look.

“But where is Kell?” Alize asked Davram again. She had seen him disappear out the door with Hollan in the aftermath of the confrontation, but Davram had grabbed her before she could follow.

Though Alize knew Davram had not consumed any poison, she had yet to receive the same assurances from Kell. After brooding over all the scenarios involving Kell’s nearly empty wine glass, Alize had tipped it over onto the floor, in case anyone else felt thirsty. The wine was thinner than the blood the stained the carpets. Davram said the bodies could wait until morning.

And what of the poison? Davram swore he had not seen Kell drink it, but Alize found that reassurance insufficient. In her mind she considered all the methods that could possibly counteract the poison, but could do nothing while Davram insisted she remain with him.

Seething impatience, Alize rose and Davram caught her skirt, pulling her back to the chair. “If Kell needs to find you, he’ll come here first.”

As Davram’s voice faded, the sound of rapid footsteps announced Kell before he appeared in the doorway, his face flushed but his stride even and strong.

“Miladay Greer,” he kneeled before the princess, “I have released Youni’s sister and her family from the dungeons and informed them of her service.”

“Mm mmm,” Greer answered.

Kell frowned in confusion.

“She says thank you,” Davram translated.

“Kell!” Alize blurted out. “What happened to the wine in your glass?”

“Oh,” Kell looked down, “You startled me, coming through the door. So it’s mostly on my shirt.”

Davram laughed out loud, but Alize sank into her chair. Her relief spiraled outwards from her lungs.

“What -you mean our wine was poisoned?” Kell asked.

“Icar forced Youni to switch the goblets to save her family.”

“Nocturne. Well, I didn’t tell them that.”

“As it should be,” Greer answered, “Youni acted to-”

“Enough!” the healer shouted, “everyone out!”

And so a small squat woman pushed two Sargons and a Hrumi out of a royal apartment on sheer force of will. She slammed the door shut behind her.

Davram sank down outside the door. “I’m going to stay.”

“Not surprised,” Kell smirked.

“And I want you two close.”

“Huh?” Alize and Kell said together. Alize could feel her face grow hot at the idea of being close to Kell.

“Close by,” Davram clarified.

“Oh,” Kell said. His cheeks had turned a little pink, leaving Alize wondering if his mind also jumped to the same thought.

When Alize found her voice, it cracked. “I have to return to Kell’s residence to release Sosje’s kestrel. That’s the agreement.”

“I can accompany Alize,” Kell said quickly. “We’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

As they walked the deserted streets, Alize told Kell how Greer had snuck them both into the palace under the noses of the guards. She reenacted Greer’s convincing coughing fit, although it ended will Kell laughing so hard he snorted. The thrill of victory hammered Alize’s blood, and the sound of Kell’s laughter completed it.

Inside his residence, Kell studied the kestrel as Alize rustled through her sac for Sosje’s signal. The little bird tilted his head and opened his beak wide as he yawned. His feathers ruffled momentarily, then he shook on his perch and they settled down once more around his delicate bones.

When Kell moved closer, the kestrel shuffled across the chair back. He bent his head low and gnashed his beak in warning.

“He’s skittish,” Alize apologized, “very particular about whom he lets close.”

“Of course he is,” Kell sighed, “raised by the Hrumi.”

Alize let her shoulders fall. “Must we do this?

“Do what?”

“Continue to,” Alize grimaced, “misunderstand each other. Can’t we just be…” words failed her. Friends? That felt a farce, such a common, ordinary word that failed to capture all the different ways Kell had supported her. Comrades? That too, fell short of the meaning she sought to convey. Comrades protected each other with weapons, but Kell bolstered Alize’s spirits, that precious intimacy transcending any warriors’ bonds. Allies? That was what she truly wanted to say, maybe because she so desperately wanted it to be true.

And it wasn’t.

“Can’t we just be ourselves,” she said finally, finding her voice, “even just for tonight?” She stated her question somewhat rhetorically, anticipating Kell’s refusal. It would be due penance for all her accumulated errors.

But no refusal came as she fed the kestrel his signal. She guided the bird to the window, where he launched into the feral night sky.

When she turned back to Kell, his expression arrested her, his features caught in cautious deliberation. “I’m not so certain,” he spoke, “I even know you, Alize.”

That stung. It stung with the force of every insecurity that Alize carried, every doubt, every failure. She kept waiting for the words to come to her, something to say to set everything right. But they never came. She had nothing to offer Kell.

But this time, Alize decided she would not let that stop her. Kell’s accusation hurt so much she had to fight it. If she could not contest it, she could not face herself. She had to try, clumsy and fumbling, to tell Kell how she felt, and hope he would have the benevolence to listen, despite every horrible thing she had said to him. He had every reason to build a wall around himself, another force holding them apart. But Alize prayed that she could still reach him.

“I owe you an apology,” she stammered, “I just, I haven’t felt like myself, not since the Temple Battle. And I miss that. I miss doing things I know I’m good at. I miss feeling competent. I can’t relax, I can’t rest. I can see myself doing everything wrong,” Alize swallowed, needing Kell to hear her even as she dreaded his reaction, “but I still don’t know how to do it right.”

The distance between them seemed so wide and the silence jagged as a cliff face. Alize stood at the precipice, wondering at the depths below.

“Well,” Kell ventured, his voice disjointed, “it’s not like I’ve been acting my best either.”

“But, I can see you, Kell.” Every muscle in Alize’s body tensed with a longing she could not name. And she found that it was not enough to lose herself in Kell’s muddled brown eyes, not nearly enough. “I can see you even through your Sargon armor, I see you underneath.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Kell flushed at her words, and it made Alize bold.

We must afford each other some basic trusts, Hesna had said, in an ever expanding universe.

She took Kell’s hand.

Her fingers slipped over his to press against his rough knuckles. His hands were hot against her chilled skin and for the first time it made sense. It all made sense. She had spent her whole life seeking conformity, but Kell made her realize that the contradiction gave life beauty. Each benefitted the other. Alize’s determination bolstered Kell when his flagged and he returned the favor with patience in the face of her brashness.

Together they came a little closer to perfection.

Alize felt Kell’s hesitation, his hand rigid in hers. So too could she see how his breaths rocked his chest, the movements ricocheting across his shoulders. She could see the way his hair fell across his brow.

Her own breath fled from her lungs. Alize had never felt so alive, so fearless.

So reckless.

They had left the danger behind. Without Davram nearby she could just be a Hrumi, and Kell only a Sargon. Mortal enemies they may be, but given everything else she faced, this seemed blissfully simple.

Alize tilted her head upwards. Leaning forward, she touched her lips to Kell’s. It was a soft kiss, a question.

And Kell came alive with her, his fingers flitting at her waist before he engulfed her in his arms. His strength felt like it could withstand all the storms of the world. His lips pressed back to hers, announcing to Alize that for all her faults, he not only accepted her, he cherished her.

Alize leaned into him, basking in the comfort of his body and his soul. Offering her comfort to him.

When she pulled back to gasp for air, Kell fumbled with his armor, wrestling it off him. “What was that you said about underneath?” he murmured. He pulled his shirt over his head and the starlight shone on his plague scars. With steady arms, he drew Alize towards him, flush against his heat.

She inhaled the sweet scent of his skin, “How is it,” she mused, “you always smell of cedarwood?”

Kell pulled back to stare at her with total incredulity. Then he raised his arm, bent his head down, and sniffed loudly before assuming a falsely horrified expression.

“Leiz, I’m not sure you know what cedarwood is.”

“What?!” Alize laughed, “Evidently I know it better than you do!” She wrapped her arms around Kell once more, but he dodged her kiss.

Alize blinked as he pulled away from her.

“Don’t disappear on me,” he whispered.

“Sorry?” Alize tried to chuckle, but faltered under Kell’s earnest expression. He held her gaze, leaving her nowhere to flee to.

“Like a Hrumi eidolon. When you save your sisters, would you even consider coming back? Is there a place for that hope to grow?”

“Kell, tonight-”

“I’m not talking about tonight. I’m talking about tomorrow. And the day after.”

His words wrung Alize like wet cloth, as if to drain anything worthwhile left within her. “My future is uncertain,” she told him feebly.

“But you could forge a path, if you thought…” Kell gripped Alize’s hands.

Without intending to, she wrenched her hands from him to press against the hardened scar over her heart. The truth that ruined everything. Cursed Deku.

She stepped back, letting the air flood the space between them. It felt so tense, Alize imagined tiny sparks of lightning might ignite the taut air.

“I’m sorry, Kell. But, I don’t think you would want that.”

“Nocturne, Alize,” Kell spat. “How would you know? At least have the courtesy to blame it on yourself, instead of acting like I have some fault that ruins this. That’s cruel.”

“I just mean, you have your life, you protect your friends, you save princesses, crown princes – I can’t help you with those things!”

“What-? What do you think just happened tonight-”

“You’ve seen my soul – I can’t control it-”

“Let me help you!”

Alize drank in his voice. But she could never concede to him, for all she wished to. She knew better.

“You can’t,” her voice cracked.

“I get to make these choices!” Kell hurled his words at her. When she made no response, he dropped his hands in irritation. “If you don’t like me, just say it!”

“I do like you!” The words, once said aloud, felt so true Alize nearly crumpled under their weight. But love? she wondered, is this love?

She did not have the chance to resolve that uncertainty. Before her, Kell had calmed his expression. Alize could see his mask settling once more.

Kell clenched and unclenched his jaw, looking away. “But not enough.”

Alize held every bone in her body utterly still. Her mind never stopped. Deku, cursed Deku.

“No.”

Kell watched her, clearly expecting her to continue. Alize’s knees felt weak. The heat grew in her throat and her eyes became itchy. Still the silence pooled between them, adamant, blunt. Alize knew of no words that could soothe it, and her crippling shame prevented her from trying to find them.

“Right,” Kell said flatly, “I guess I’m glad I asked.”

“Kell-“

“You know what, it’s late, I’m going to bed, if you don’t mind.” He gathered his armor in his arms. His footsteps up the stairs left Alize’s ears roaring.

She staggered to her own room. Dropping her slippers to the floor, she thrust down the bedcovers and huddled under them while she waited for her grief to subside. But it only festered as she stared at the ceiling, a wound that blossomed into pure pain each time she dared to agitate it.

She sat up in the darkness. Her feet sank into the plush carpet as her legs carried her towards Kell’s doorway. It no longer felt strange to want to be inside, indeed, Alize wanted it with a desperation she almost could not bear.

She rapped the wood with tremulous knuckles.

“What now?” Kell grumbled from within.

Alize pushed the door open. It was not boldness that underlay the action, but her flagging defiance. She could no longer deny the hunger she felt around Kell. For the first time, she did not perceive it as a weakness. She wanted to curl into it, to see what could happen if she released herself from her own constraints.

Inside Kell had lit a single candle to combat the suffocating darkness.

“Kell. This is me trying to be honest with you,” Alize whispered.

Kell looked up, his bare face as hostile as his Sargon mask.

But even that could not deter Alize. She had meant what she told him. She could see him underneath it.

“Keep your armor, Alize,” Kell sighed, “it obviously means a lot to you.”

“But I don’t want it to become who I am,” Alize countered. After everything he had trusted her with, all the kindness he had shown her, she owed him the truth. “Just, can you listen, for a moment?”

Kell’s wary silence neither rejected nor assented to her request. That would have to suffice.

“You know why I came to Parousia.”

“I’m in no mood to hear about the Hrumi’s innocence again-”

“Yes,” said Alize, “for the Hrumi. But what I’m about to tell you has nothing to do with them.”

Kell kept his brows furrowed.

“The reason I can’t stay,” Alize hiccupped, “is because of Davram.”

Kell started to speak, but Alize could see the confusion on his face.

She shook her head. “Because I’m a danger to him.”

When Kell spoke, his voice was ever so slightly less heavy. “I don’t follow.”

“Let’s see,” Alize twisted Greer’s ring on her finger to prevent herself from touching her heart. “The Deku are a family. And you know better than anyone how families strive,” uttering the words aloud felt like pushing a boulder uphill, “to recover their lost daughters.”

Comprehension barely preceded the revulsion that snaked across Kell’s features. He leaned back, away from Alize.

And she cursed herself for imagining she deserved any better.

You monster, Celile had whispered. Her last breath in this life had condemned Alize with the fate that was never her choice. Your ambition will destroy everything we have built.

Now that Alize too knew the truth, she could not even contest Celile’s verdict. Not with her sisters in jail, murdered by her own family’s hands. Celile had not even been wrong.

But still she had dared to hope, buoyed with Sosje’s encouragement, that Kell might not judge her so harshly.

In the painful stillness, his silence confirmed Celile’s pronouncement. Alize’s hope withered like frostbitten fields.

You don’t need him, she reminded herself for the millionth time. But, standing so close to Kell, her lips still feeling the shadow of his, she could no longer deny that his esteem meant the world to her. With him, she had seen a different part of herself, one that she would now have to surrender as gracefully as she could.

“Right,” Alize whispered, turning towards the door.

"Wait, Alize. Wait.” Kell called from behind her. The shock in his voice shifted to bafflement. “You’re telling me you’re-you’re a Deku? And you’ve known this whole time?”

Alize exhaled, her eyes tracing the folds of the gnarled wood in the door before her. All the filaments twisted together. The wood accommodated the deviations, wove them as a single mass. Rather jarring the surface, the aberrations created a fibrous flow, transforming its abnormalities into beauty.

Alize wanted to hack the wood out of spite. She was an aberration and it granted her only misery.

“They told me in the citadel.” Alize wished for Sosje’s confidence, grasped for it, but it failed her. It failed her like Hesna, just like the trees, and now Kell. “But I didn’t come here knowing Davram was Ginmae,” she finished, “I never asked for that truth.”

“Alize,” Kell murmured from behind her. “Look at me.”

Alize could not move, could only raise her hands cover her face. She had been wrong. She could face Celile’s reproof, but Kell’s stung somewhere much deeper.

She trusted his judgment.

Behind her, Kell’s bed creaked, easing upwards. She imagined his presence moving closer but still nearly startled when his fingertips alighted on her shoulders. His palms smoothed down her back, curving around to her stomach as he gently pressed her to face him. His touch felt as soft as moonlight.

Alize’s feet stayed heavy as stone. She was not brave. She could not even drop her hands from her face lest she have to confront his full rebuke. “You want to see what I look like terrified?” her voice shook.

But Kell grasped her hands to peel them from her face as he drew her into his arms. “That’s the last thing I want to see,” he whispered. “But if it’s how you feel, I won’t leave you to face it alone.”

Alize scarcely dared acknowledge Kell’s comfort. It seemed so flimsy, like he had not yet truly understood her admission. “I am the danger that paralyzes Davram. Me.” Alize shook with the violence of her guilt, but Kell’s body against hers seemed to muffle the incipient panic. “I can feel the hunger, Kell. The explosion at the Temple must have awakened it - I felt it when I held my soul.”

“But you did not act.”

“One success does not grant me control.”

“Not yet.” Kell murmured in her hair. “Davram needs to learn to face his demons. But, after everything we’ve been through, I promise you’re not one of them.”

Alize inhaled in a gasp. There was not enough air in the world to fill her lungs. “I don’t want to be Deku.”

Kell pressed his lips into Alize’s temple. “Identity may not be wholly within our control but neither is it wholly outside it. Life becomes easier when we stop expecting to have full control.” He pulled away from Alize to grin at her. “At least, that’s what I hear.”

And the realization rushed to Alize. Kell burned with a steadiness she recognized. He was the rhythmic blinking of a light on the horizon, the guidance for a ship adrift and hammered by the tempest.

Alize whispered, “I don’t even have the words to tell you how I feel about you.”

Kell’s arms encircled Alize’s waist, pressing her into him. His lips grazed hers and then drew her into a deep kiss. It expelled the sadness to make room for a much more urgent, immediate, emotion. He drew away to regard her. “You don’t need words,” he told her, his breath ragged, “Deku, Hrumi, I see you too. Stay with me, if only for tonight.”

Alize stammered, “I want to.” Pulling Kell back to her, she stopped fighting the instincts that had pressed her into Kell’s arms, cautious at first, and then bolder as Kell matched her eagerness. The emotions swarmed her, but for once she did not let them frighten her. She guided Kell’s hand to where the ribbon held her dress closed. Kell met her gaze before beginning to tug at it.

Alize’s hopes were fragile as candlelight, but with Kell, it was if the gales thrashing the flame stilled. The trembling ceased so her light shone unperturbed, steady, strong. Maybe there was strength for her.

Maybe she too could be a lighthouse.

When Kell found the black scar on her heart, he listened to Alize’s explanation and pressed his lips to it. He discarded her memories and replaced them with unexpected ecstasy.

This time he pulled away only to blow out the candle. The smoke curled upwards in the night like a smile.