Chapter Text
Amberle wakes up with her heart racing and her ears straining for the sound of birds, the sound of anything – anything but the decided lack of sound that the demon in her dream left her shaking with. It’s after her. It’s right outside. It’ll kill them both.
She freezes, controlling the tremor in her body, when she feels Eretria’s sleepy arm around her waist, pulling her close and soothing her.
Despite the way she hears the birds – she’s safe, they’re safe, thank god – her heart beats harder. She subdues it as best she can, and carefully slides out from under Eretria’s arm.
She picks up her chemise from by the fireplace, brushing off the bits of tinder, and pulls it over her naked body, careful not to look at Eretria’s sleeping form.
She fails. The round tip of one of the girl’s ears is tinged red, like she’s slept on it too long, and Amberle notices a subtle mark on her collarbone no doubt left by her own lips.
She looks quickly away, and starts to dress.
Eretria stirs behind her, stretching lazily and only twinging slightly when it pulls at the healing wound.
“Good morning,” she murmurs, looking up at her with a smile.
Amberle gives her an uncertain smile in response as she pulls on her boots and ties her belt around her waist. “We need to go,” she says quickly.
Eretria laughs, running a hand through her hair. “There a rush?”
Amberle laughs – a hard, uneasy sound. “I’d say so. Demon hunting us and all.”
“That’s been true for three days,” Eretria points out, rising to her elbows.
Amberle swallows thickly as the full events of those days hit her, but she quickly pushes it away. Don’t think about it. You can’t think about it. “You’re better. You can move.”
Eretria laughs, an uncertain but stubbornly light sound. “Yeah, I think I proved that last night?”
Amberle turns quickly away as her cheeks rise with heat.
“Are you okay?” Eretria asks carefully.
She swallows and answers too quickly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She’s not. She only has to look at Eretria to be reminded of the girl’s cries of her name and her own surrender as they pushed each other to the edge, and her heart beats like she’s there again.
She can’t believe she didn’t stop it. She can’t believe she didn’t want to. She was there with her for every moment – lucid, wanting. She can’t begin to fathom what that means.
Or maybe she can. A much scarier thought.
God, what was she thinking? She closes her eyes. She doesn’t learn her lesson. First Wil, now Eretria. She can’t get attached; the Ellcrys had made that abundantly clear. Its seed presses against her thigh in its pouch, reminding her of what is still ahead, as well as what’s behind. The image of Wil’s dying gurgle comes back to her. She blinks, and it’s Eretria instead, throat slashed, eyes hollow, sacrificed for the sake of the connection between them.
She steels her jaw. No. She won’t let that happen.
“Get dressed,” she says emotionlessly. She turns away from Eretria’s hurt frown and quickly uncaps a jar of jam.
“My dressings,” Eretria says slowly, like she’s not sure her own wellbeing is something worth mentioning.
Right. “I’ll change them,” she says quickly, still working on breakfast.
Eretria’s frown deepens.
“You’ll have to look at me to do that,” she points out sharply.
Amberle puts the jam-smeared knife down and does, catching her gaze with something between a challenge and an apology.
She doesn’t find the same in Eretria’s, and her heart beats harder as the girl’s eyebrows pull together with a vulnerable question she hadn’t ever expected to see.
She looks back down hastily.
“Amberle…”
She doesn’t look up, despite the fact that her hands have stopped moving with the knife and bread. “Please get dressed,” she says, voice soft.
Silence falls – and lingers, every moment making the next all the heavier. Then Eretria scoffs, so softly that Amberle thinks she might have imagined it, but without a word, she obeys. Amberle hands her clean dressings, and her stomach turns at her grunt of pain when she changes them herself, but she doesn’t intervene. Soon, the girl is fully clothed again, armor well-secured and only weakly favoring her right side.
“So, what’s your next order, Princess?” Eretria asks, voice venomous.
Something twists inside her sharply. She can’t believe they’re back here – after everything. She doesn’t want to be. And yet – she knows Eretria’s not the one to blame.
She puts the bread down with a heavy sigh. “Eretria – ”
“No,” the girl says hotly, taking a step closer and looking at her like she only sees the lie, the deflection, she was about to say. “No! What the hell?”
“Please,” Amberle says, heart breaking. “Let’s not f–”
“I asked you last night,” Eretria interrupts, shaking. “I asked you if you wanted this.”
“I – ” Her tongue catches on the lie her mind supplies, and refuses to utter it. “I did,” she says instead.
Eretria throws her arms wide. “Then what is this, huh?” Amberle stays silent, eyes downcast, and Eretria puts her palms on the table, begging her gaze. “What is this, Amberle?”
“The demon – ”
Eretria scoffs, pulling back and pointing viciously to the window. “No, the demon’s been out there for days. This is us. You dragging me to this town, risking your life for herbs, healing me back to life, kissing me… you don’t get to shut me out now.”
Amberle swallows thickly, but stays silent.
Let it go, she begs. Please, let it go. I can’t do this. Not again – it’s too much. She’d asked for her trust – but now that she thinks she may have it, it suddenly just feels like another burden to bear.
Eretria scoffs, looking her up and down bitterly. “You’re just like Wil,” she says finally, then laughs, a sour, hurtful thing. “No, you know what? You’re worse. At least with him, I knew what to expect. He never made promises he wouldn’t keep.”
Amberle’s breath catches, heart bolting at the comparison, and she looks up, eyes flashing. “That is not fair.”
“Then what, huh?” Eretria asks, laughing incredulously. “Because this…” She gestures between them, laughing again, just as humorlessly, just as lost. “…it sure feels like a betrayal to me. Trust me, I know what it feels like.”
She doesn’t doubt it, but she won’t admit what she’d call it herself. God, things felt much simpler when it was just about saving Eretria's life, not honoring this newfound honesty between them.
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I – ”
“Doesn’t what happened last night change anything for you?” Eretria demands suddenly, voice finally breaking.
Amberle’s resolve breaks with it.
“I – I don’t know,” she stammers, voice high and unsure. “No,” she says meekly, automatically. Eretria’s face hardens, looking like she’s not sure what answer she expected, but this one fell woefully short. She turns quickly away, but Amberle stops her. “And yes. God, yes, of course it does.”
Eretria freezes, frowns, and waits.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly and rushes on when the apology only seems to feed Eretria’s fire. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this! I told you you had my allegiance, and that hasn’t changed. But… God, Eretria, you have my trust as well. And that terrifies the crap out of me, because there’s a lot more riding on that than just my feelings!”
Eretria’s eyebrows rise up in surprise, like she’s only seeing that part of the picture now, and her brow furrows thoughtfully.
“With everything that’s going on, I don’t know how I can – ”
Suddenly a chill raises every hair on her body, and the silence as she breaks off rings louder than natural.
Eretria’s breath catches, and her hand rushes to her dagger at her side as Amberle does the same. Her breath freezes in the air between them. “We have to go. Now.”
Amberle doesn’t need telling twice, and she bounds up the staircase, looking behind her to make sure Eretria can follow. She grimaces in pain, clutching her side, but does.
“This way.” She climbs out of the window, reaching behind her to help Eretria as she grunts in pain. She ushers her ahead, and looks skittishly behind her at the open window. There’s no way the demon would’ve failed to follow the trail straight to their door. It’s there, in the place that felt like sanctuary, the place that gave her a moment’s peace.
She steels her jaw and pushes the thought away. She looks apprehensively over the edge of the eaves at the courtyard, and quickly regrets it.
Don’t look down, don’t look down.
She doesn’t realize she’s said it aloud until she hears Eretria’s voice from in front of her: “I won’t.”
They quickly scale across the next roof over. Amberle never loses sight of Eretria, taking in her precarious steps and hunched shoulders as she shields herself and tries to balance simultaneously. It’s too soon – she knows that if the demon hadn’t appeared, she wouldn’t’ve pushed her this quick, no matter how hard her heart had bolted at staying another night, another moment. She would have relented. She would have stayed. She shouldn’t have pushed her at all.
Eretria looks over the edge of the roof as they cross onto the next one, and her eyes go wide.
“Amberle!”
Amberle looks down, barely catching sight of the demon in the courtyard aiming a glowing red crossbow right at her before Eretria throws her weight forward and knocks them both down. She hears the whoosh of the arrow as it passes inches from her face, but she has no time to dwell on it, because they’re sliding down the field of the roof towards the courtyard, scrambling on the tiles but finding no grip.
Eretria goes over the edge first, and Amberle lunges forward for her hand.
“Eretria!”
Her breath is knocked out of her as she grabs it and the force of Eretria’s aborted fall grounds her on the edge of the roof. She grunts in pain but holds on, other hand shooting to Eretria’s wrist as she starts to slip.
“Amberle!” Eretria cries, voice high and scared as she claws for her other hand.
The courtyard stretches three stories below – too far to survive, especially with what’s lurking among the unkempt bushes. The demon steps easily around a moss-eaten boulder, looking up as Amberle looks down.
She catches its eyes, glowing red as the pits of hell.
Oh god.
It knocks another arrow, putting the bolt in place with excessive leisure, like it knows it’s won.
Amberle looks down at Eretria, holding tight to her hand as she dangles over certain death. Her eyes flit back to the demon as it aims. She can’t dodge. Not like this. Not holding on.
“Amberle,” Eretria whimpers, half pain, half begging, like she knows exactly what she’s thinking.
She’s wrong. She knows her heart, and as hard as it bolted with fear about Eretria not fifteen minutes ago, it fights for her now.
“I won’t let go,” she grunts, tightening her hand as tears squeeze from her eyes. “I won’t,” she repeats, louder, as Eretria whimpers and closes her eyes, preparing for the end.
Maybe after all they’ve been through, it’s fitting the end is together – hers at the hands of the demon, and Eretria’s, involuntarily, at her own.
The demon chuckles.
Suddenly, Amberle’s eyes land on a ledge of a window below Eretria’s feet, and her heart shoots up with hope.
“Eretria, swing!” she yells urgently. The girl’s eyes go wide, but when Amberle grunts with effort, she goes with the movement and reaches with her foot towards the ledge.
The demon’s chuckle dies down instantly, and it glares down the sight of the crossbow.
Amberle cries out and swings hard. The demon releases the arrow the exact moment she releases Eretria’s hand, and the bolt hisses by her ear just as she rolls out of its way. She pulls back from the ledge, breathing hard and hoping against hope that Eretria reached the ledge. Despite the way all her heart is screaming is Eretria’s name, she doesn’t dare to even look over the edge, and she strains her ears for a sound, an answer.
Another arrow shoots wantonly along the edge of the roof.
Good. Focus on me. Let her get away.
She scrambles quickly over the ridge of the roof to the other side, kicks in a window, and hurries into the house. She meets Eretria in the living room, rushing straight to her as she does the same, and she pulls her close with equal relief.
“Thank god,” she murmurs as Eretria tightens her arms, breathing fast.
“We have to go,” she urges.
Amberle nods. Heartfelt reunions later. They race down the stairs.
The streets are bare, as they’ve been for days, but the silence is stifling in the way they both know all too well. Amberle draws her sword. She realizes Eretria is weaponless, her dagger lost over the edge of the roof. She clutches her side and Amberle sees a new spot of blood.
“It’ll find us,” Eretria says like she read her mind. Her hand comes back red.
“It’ll find us anyway,” Amberle says, grabbing her hand and pulling her forward.
She proves her own words not two seconds later when they turn a corner and find their way blocked. The demon stands silent in the alleyway, ruined door on one side and shadowed wall on the other – shadows it seems to grow from, feed from, until it ripples with power and darkness that make it loom almost twice as tall.
Amberle raises her sword, shaking, and steps back, shielding Eretria behind her. The demon takes a step forward, daring to leave behind the shadows and stepping out fully into the light. Amberle takes it in for the first time – the uneven, swelling shoulders, the face like burned roots, the lean, trained legs crisscrossed with clefts and charred skin that makes it look like it walked up from hell itself. Its right forearm is severed into a stump, and Amberle’s gut twists with satisfaction – well done, Eretria. The glowing crossbow shines it its left hand instead, but as she watches, the curvature of the weapon collapses and morphs and transforms, and within seconds, the demon’s claws grip a deadly longsword more daunting than anything Amberle’s ever seen.
The weapon swivels between Amberle and Eretria, deciding. Its stump of an arm twitches with rage and it lifts the sword, pointing at Eretria and holding, silent as the grave, before slowly turning back to Amberle.
It doesn’t take much to fill in the blanks left by its silence, because Amberle knows, with a fear and certainty that nearly stops her heart, that once she’s dead, the demon will go for vengeance. It’ll turn its sword on Eretria and give her a fate that goes above and beyond executing a simple kill order.
“We have to run,” Eretria whispers behind her, shaking and nearly doubled over at the pain in her side.
Amberle takes another step backwards. The demon pursues.
“You can’t run,” Amberle hisses.
Eretria swallows thickly and squeezes her hand. “But you can.”
Amberle looks at her, catches her pleading gaze, and stops short. After everything – telling her to leave, doubting that she’ll stay, telling her she’s gone as soon as she’s better – this time, Eretria’s asking her to go.
The answer is as terrifying as it is simple.
“No,” she says, suppressing the tremor in her voice and turning resolutely back to the demon. “I’m staying.”
The demon takes another step forward, chuckling with anticipation of finishing them both, almost as eager for executing its orders as for exacting vengeance.
Amberle’s hand tightens on her sword and Eretria’s hand, and she takes a subtle step in front of her.
She’s not going to let that happen.
She lets go of Eretria’s hand and lunges, throat constricting with a feral cry.
The demon’s sword meets hers mid-swing, sending red sparks into the air.
Amberle retracts and guards, slowly advancing, putting distance between the demon and Eretria. They’ve come out onto a courtyard – a stage for what Amberle knows is her final battle.
She remembers her training. Just like there were no rules against girls running the Gauntlet, the pages in the stables didn’t discriminate in sharing knowledge and skill, and she learned how to wield a sword young. Her interest was art, but her memory is keen – she remembers every movement, every maneuver, and every duel won.
She just hopes her muscle memory will serve her as well.
The demon attacks, sword swinging wide. Amberle catches it overhead and staggers under the supernatural weight.
Magic.
She’s beginning to hate magic.
She pushes up with a savage shout, and quickly throws a counterattack. The demon parries, spinning with what looks like ease, but her sword rings true as it hits the enchanted metal, inches from its intended target.
Amberle pulls back and stabs forward again, sweat shining on her face.
She doesn’t know if they’re evenly matched. The rovers died so suddenly – the fact that she hasn’t gives her hope, makes her think that maybe she’ll survive this, that she’ll protect Eretria, the four kingdoms, everything that’s riding on her shoulders.
She works the demon around the square, feet moving fast and arm moving even faster as she lunges, blocks, dodges, and swings. The demon pushes back, every movement precise and exact as its black body writhes and twists under her attack. The air shines with sparks as her sword hits the glowing red metal of its longsword. It’s the same material as the dagger it stabbed Eretria with – the same bloody groove, the same twisted handle, the same black edges… It is the dagger, she realizes. Just as it is the bow. The realization makes every swing hit with a ferocity that almost surprises her, her fury at remembering Eretria’s pain and the urgency of saving her adding strength to her blows.
But she grows tired, and the sword heavy. The demon knocks away her attack like her effort means nothing, and her arms swing wide against the force before she can regain her footing.
She barely blocks another attack, and the demon’s longsword glances over the edge of her blade as she dodges its dangerous descent.
God, it’s fast.
Her arms shake as she parries another blow, and another, and another, as they hit with increasing brutality while her own efforts sag under the weight of exhaustion.
And strong.
She screams again, letting her rage carry her forward in what would in any other case be a killing blow. The demon knocks aside her attack and counters with what Amberle knows would be her end if she hadn’t followed up with a parry. She staggers back.
It’s better.
She tightens her failing grip and pulls herself up.
It makes no difference. She looks behind her and catches Eretria’s fearful gaze. She steels her jaw, pushing away the growing fear. She’ll fight to the end.
The demon lunges forward, and she deflects it, but it follows up with another ruthless attack like it knows her heart, knows her hopelessness. She jumps out of the way as the sword swings across her gut. The tip grazes over her armor, drawing a thin line of fire.
The pocket holding the Ellcrys’s seed frays as the ember races over it.
Her breath catches.
“No,” she cries, reaching for it, but the demon throws another attack, and she swings her sword up double-handed as the fabric continues to burn.
She spins out of the way, but the demon pursues with lightning speed, and she blocks the full force of its attack with both hands tight on the grip of her blade.
The tip of the Ellcrys’s seed slides into view as she dodges of out the way again, and her stomach drops.
Her left hand shoots down and catches her treasure just as it begins to fall. The demon takes the moment of weakness and swings hard. Her sword lurches under the weight and the tip hits the hard ground when she falls on her side, deflecting the attack but leaving herself completely vulnerable.
The Ellcrys’s seed tumbles out between her fingers as her extended arm hits the ground, and rolls fast across the cobblestones.
The demon’s eyes shoot down, following its trek as Amberle does the same.
Amberle knows what it sees – the true guarantee for the end of all times.
She scrambles after the rolling seed as the demon completely disregards her and steps forward, focused on the prize with breathless excitement.
Eretria is faster. Her fingers close around the holy kernel, and she stands, facing the creature as it advances.
“No!” Amberle screams, as Eretria’s hand rises overhead, prepared to toss her the seed and let her get away.
The demon raises its sword, and Amberle knows instantly why the Ellcrys warned against falling for Wil, falling for anyone. No matter how objectively the scales of morality may teeter, when it comes down to it, it’s hard to value the fate of the world over the life of a lover.
With a strength she didn’t know she had and a rasping cry that rises straight from her heart, she surges to her feet, swings her sword, and slashes it across the demon’s neck.
The demon slows, sword arm going rigid and blade stuttering to a halt centimeters from Eretria’s cowering form. Amberle watches as the glow of the blade dims, turning a lifeless black, before the metal lights itself on fire, crawls up the demon’s arm, and consumes its headless, slowly falling body in a cloud of smoke. Its severed head follow last, leaving an outline of ash on the cobblestones, until nothing is left of it but the rising smoke being whipped away by the wind.
Amberle breathes hard, frozen in place with her back still arched and sword swung wide at the end of its descent, dumbstruck. The tip of her sword drops to the cobblestones with a dull chime that breaks the oppressive silence.
She killed it.
Her hand loosens, and her sword arm sags.
She actually killed it.
She could cry in relief, but her heart aches for one thing. She looks at Eretria, hand on her side, cradling the Ellcrys’s seed in her other, and breathing hard in fear, and she rushes over without a thought to capture her in her arms and pull her close like she never wants to let go.
“It’s dead. Oh god, it’s dead. We won, we’re safe,” she mutters in a rush.
Eretria shakes her head desperately and pulls her close, burying her face in her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she cries, shaking.
“You were so brave,” Amberle murmurs, holding on.
Eretria laughs, a quivering, rueful sound. “Please don’t say that, you’ll only piss me off.” She pulls back, wiping a tear away with gruff annoyance. “I’m sick of being upstaged by you.”
Amberle pulls back, laughing as well.
Eretria shakes her head, eyes shining. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, trembling. “I’m so sorry for what I said. I shouldn’t have presumed.” She opens her hand, gently cradling the Ellcrys’s seed and pressing it into her palm. “I know your burden. Don’t let me add to it, alright?”
Amberle swallows thickly but nods.
“You have my… allegiance as well,” Eretria says, pausing a beat midway.
Amberle doesn’t ask her if it’s not trust – she hears the answer in the moment’s hesitation. With what’s ahead of her and how the Ellcrys had made it clear that sentimentality would hold her back from doing what needs to be done, she doesn’t need the burden of someone else’s trust – even someone she’s given her own. And despite the way that she knows that Eretria does trust her, allegiance is a better answer than she could have hoped for – a promise of action for her good, whatever it may be, instead of a promise of feelings or expectations that would only add to her burden.
“Thank you,” she says, and follows up her words with a kiss that feels like it’s been brewing for longer than the night and morning they went without one and that lingers long after they pull apart.
The smile that follows lingers even longer, as does the wave of relief that washes over them both.
“What now?” Eretria asks after a minute.
Amberle’s eyes flit in the direction of their sanctuary, almost tempted to forget what lies ahead and escape while they can. But despite what’s resting on her shoulders, with Eretria by her side – an ally, a friend, and more – the burden suddenly seems a whole lot lighter.
“We find the others. We go on.”
Eretria frowns but nods, and Amberle slips her arm under her shoulders and helps lift her weight as they start forward.
“I’m fine,” Eretria says instantly, her voice indecisive between snappish or simply stubborn.
Amberle smiles and pulls her against her, taking another step. “We will be.”
Though she ducks her head to hide it, Eretria smiles.