Dovar rolled a potato from hand to hand as he looked out over the garden. Snow fell idyllically, flitting through afternoon light in a non-existent breeze. Layers were already covering the tracks through yesterday’s snowfall.

He remembered little of the fight after getting pulled outside the school. The confusion, the struggle, the screaming. Then suddenly Pashar had come hurtling toward him, except it wasn’t her. It had been him.

A shiver ran down Dovar’s back. Him. Dhaakir. To call him human was a disservice to everyone else. He’d seen nothing like it. When he’d woken after the fight, Ranvir had been there. Bruised and cut up, but whole. He’d killed Dhaakir, destroyed him utterly. Their battle had been so dangerous even accomplished masters, like Asmar, didn’t dare interfere.

Somehow, it wasn’t hard to believe that Ranvir was capable of such. Despite the sheer violence Dhaakir exuded, Dovar believed fully that Ranvir handled him. I’m sorry I couldn’t do better. He leaned back against the emberleaf, feeling the core deep heat seep through his coat. There should still be a few weeks left before the tree went into hibernation.

His breath pooled white in the air as he sighed. He failed that day. They’d had too few soldiers, not enough tethered. Should he have asked for more from the Sleeping Sons? Except that wasn’t the plan they came up with.

With too many soldiers, it became difficult to stretch the fighting out. Get out of these thoughts. Get it together! He knew these were poor considerations, unworthy of his time. Yet, no matter where he turned, he found only doubt, self-recrimination, and guilt.

A gnawing, bone wearying force that wanted nothing less than to hollow him out. Tear him apart from the inside out.

The plan was never to resist the force of the Purists.

Writhing through him, worming past gaps and holes in his soul.

Delay them, string them out, but never fight them outright. We shouldn’t put their backs up. They would’ve been on guard.

Emptiness opened up within him, the home of the worm who now devoured all that was Dovar Sworden. Once-heir of a noble house.

I did the right thing. I had to. It was the plan. Stringing them out, tiring them, making them bored. All to ready them for the counterattack.

All that once was, would no longer be. The maggots and flies got everyone in the end. Some they just started on earlier than others. They’d found him before, this time they’d leave nothing left. Soon, he’d join the rest of his family.

For a time, the snow fell. For a time, Dovar sat under his dead mother’s emberleaf. For a time, he’d clung to the idea that everything could be alright.

Dovar bit his potato. Over-boiled, the chill had since hardened it up. Cold and mushy, he fought his way through the feeling. He looked over the garden of his family’s home. The winter had brought low most of the plants they’d been working on. Not killing them, but sending them to rest until spring.

Snow covered the grounds, layered to the edge of the eaves. Dark and abandoned. The few maintained rooms were invisible from outside. Dark and quiet and desolate. A wounded soldier not yet understanding he’d been dealt a deathblow.

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A house on the edge of destruction. A kid huddled in the shadow of his mother. My dead mom and my dead dad and my dead sister and dead me. I couldn’t do it, Ranvir. I’m sorry.

He took another bite of the cold, stiff potato. Much like him. Just waiting for the tree to stop protecting him.

If you are so set on it, go ahead. But do it properly. Explain it Asny. Whom you’ve given false hope?

“Ranvir?” Dovar asked, his head shooting up. Gray light covered the estate, nearly fully dark. “Ranvir, are you there? Did you hear me?” his heart hammering in his chest, Dovar staggered to his feet. Wide-eyed, he stumbled stiffly out from under the emberleaf.

The estate was empty. Snow crunching under his boots. A dog barked distantly. Dovar folded stiff limbs as he examined the gardens with pained eyes. Shivers racked him, legs numb from disuse failed him as he collapsed in the cold.

“Ranvir?” he gasped, spitting snow from his mouth. Yet Ranvir was not here. He was nowhere to be found. Had he ever been there? “You told me what to do. Did you mean it? Is that the way forward?”

Dovar made his clumsy, limb-chilled way to the back door. The effort of pushing it open nearly blinded him with pain, yet somehow he made it inside. Dust and snow trailed him through the mansion, into the kitchen. How long had it been since he’d eaten? He’d prepared the potato for lunch.

He squinted at the shuttered windows. It was growing brighter. It was morning already. “You want me to tell her?” he whispered, looking down at the dull fireplace. Remnants of a guttered flame remained. It was not the words that were important. It was the way he said them. There had been scorn in his voice. Daring Dovar to be so brazen and depraved.

Somehow, Dovar got the fire stoked, bleeding heat into his frozen body. Without the emberleaf, who knows how bad it could’ve gone? Dovar lay for a time, watching the fire. Slowly catching more and more, brighter and brighter.

It felt as if it seared the skin, yet he could not separate from it. For a time, he stared into the flames and saw nothing. For a time, he saw the flames, and he understood. For a time, he turned his back to the flames and readied himself.

Dovar transferred a flaming log from the fireplace to the least rusty stove. Getting the fire going, he retrieved what ingredients remained in his pantry. Dried fish, egg, potatoes, and apples.

It was then that his space was intruded upon. Sansir walked into the kitchen. He seemed taken aback by the room. “Hot in here,” he said. “Dovar, how are you?”

“Sansir,” Dovar said, chopping potato as thin as possible. “What brings you here?”

The tall soldier hesitated, looking Dovar over. The once-noble couldn’t help but wonder what his friend saw. Would he look disheveled? Likely, he’d been sleeping in his clothes. But he’d done it outside. Did that show?

“Might as well get it over with, then.” He sounded defeated, almost. “I worried you were going to starve yourself to death. Ranvir told me what you were like when he and Es found you. I didn’t want my friend to end up like that.”

He dropped a sack next to the counter. Dovar glanced at it but elected to ignore it for now. Instead, he focused on the green-eyed man next to him. “Ranvir sent you?”

Sansir looked over. “No. He’s preparing for Saleema now. Full isolation. Amalia has taken the kids. Kasos has done the reading the world thing. Saleema’s going to awaken, if she hasn’t already. Whether it’s some echo of his fight, happenstance, or something other.”

Sansir shook his head and looked at the ceiling. “Grev worried it was his fault. When he attacked the Purist camp, dozens of followers got away. But they were all mundane. By the time Saleema moves, they wouldn’t even be halfway across the desert.”

He didn’t send him. The realization dropped his heart into his stomach. Yet, there was a not all-together unpleasant ache to go alongside with the feeling. Sansir had come to him, because he wanted what’s best for his friend.

The man-in-question had found a whisk and the least dusty bowl. He spat into it and wiped with a rag, before he began cracking what eggs Dovar had left. What’s ‘best’ might be a strong word.

Dovar had never spent much time alone with Sansir. They were part of the same friend group, but aside from Grevor — who Dovar knew from noble gatherings — he mostly talked with Ranvir.

Sansir wasn’t funny. Or even fun to hang out with. He was grounded, however. There were no expectancies with him. He simply was. The only other of their group who hadn’t achieved spiritual alignment. He was soldier and in the way of those people, simple. Easy.

For a time, they shared a meal. For a time, he was warm and satisfied. For a time, he was happy.