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“Careful,” Hal cautions as he holds Thaisha in the aftermath, where the jasmine of the Lloy family garden withers around her. She did not ask them to, but the flowers follow her heart and wisp to dust.
A healing word, lilting like his songs, lands like cool rain on Thaisha’s skin and knits up the last wounds from her night of horror. The traces of poison vanish. Various gashes, messily clotted and crusting over, close entirely until there is no visible injury. Her pulse and vision steady, the natural effect of replenishing lost blood, but the deathly cold of necromancy holds strong, unmoved in her core.
“You’re safe for now,” he murmurs into her hair for only her to hear. “You’re safe.” Hal rocks her and repeats the words like he’s learning a script, waiting until he believes them.
A hot pinprick lingers despite his efforts. The memory of danger, practically invisible amidst the draping of her tunic, the wound where that insolent wreck of a man cut her with his rapier.
Where she cut herself. Where she was cut open. Like her bard, she cycles through the phrases, tests them on her tongue, and finds they all fit equally. All the natural consequences of trying to hold Julien back, or down, or-
Sir Julien Davinos may be a master of several forms of weaponry, but his most pronounced talent in battle is surely his positioning. Namely, his talent for finding the worst possible position for any magic Thaisha herself might want to work.
“What the fuck is this?” Julien calls as he spins, limbs and cape dusted in the gold of faerie fire.
“I told you to duck!”
“To duck what?” He drops into a lunge, gauntlet thrown back, and spears an invisible quasit through what might be the eye socket. “Thunder? A blast of wind? A tsunami, conveniently centered on me?”
He punctuates “me” with a flick of the wrist, splattering the brains of the last tottering fiend. Before the rest of the body even meets the ground, he whirls towards Thaisha, the bloodlust still in his eyes.
“Her glitter was impeccable.” Occtis, dear Occtis, scuttles up to defend her. “Our attacks were useless before that. You, especially-“
“That is not the point,” Julien cuts in, not even glancing towards him. “Vaelus is close to the fight as I am, just as much in your way, yet she always escapes unscathed.”
She is indeed in the way. But despite her resolve, the intangible holy will that roots her like redwood, Thaisha hesitates to target her with the fire and ice and physical, elemental fury of druidic battle magic. Simply put, she is careful with her. Of course, she cannot state these calculations out loud, given the obvious risk of offending Vaelus.
“I break ties at random,” Thaisha lies.
Julien jabs a finger towards her, now openly seething. “Every morning you meditate, and delight in selecting new tortures for me.”
“Meditate on you?” Thaisha tosses her head and laughs. “You should be so lucky.”
“This is my fight. I will see it through to the end, but not this way,” Julien sneers.
“We cannot find another road through the Wastes in time.” Thaisha does not even glance his way, addressing Aranessa alone. “There’s no easy way out. I understand that’s a difficult concept for Julien, so he can come or stay at home, I genuinely could not care less.”
She restrains herself from pointing out why they have no easy way out. Julien had approached the keepers of the safe road with the intent of making the best of impressions, of explaining we are harmless travelers and our party includes no magical threats, certainly not an undead necromancer and a dread warrior of Sylandri. He ruined that plan as his shadow detached from him and the two of them began escaping their hosts’ courtyard by flitting up the walls, in defiance of all the laws of physics.
Of course, Julien would probably blame her for prompting an escape in the first place. She had trailed him as backup, and forgotten how jumpy other people get around talking spiders.
Julien throws up his hands. “Then we should not try the Wastes at all. Let me stay with you. There are other threads of the Tachonis plot that need unraveling-”
“Sir Julien.”
Aranessa utters only two words, but there is a direct command folded within them. Upon hearing it, Julien goes silent, but without a hint of the sullenness Thaisha would expect. His posture remains impeccable as before- spine straight, shoulders squared, chin high in the air- but the tension bleeds out from the clean lines and angles. All that remains is dignity free of effort and thought, natural as breathing.
“As you wish, my lady.” He bows to her, one arm bent elegantly in front of him, and then strides from the room to begin travel preparations.
Thaisha glances towards Aranessa. “He’s still devoted to you.”
Aranessa holds her stare, long enough that she surely hears the words folded inside: he loves you. That boy is so in love with you that he’s insane with it.
When Aranessa responds, it is with a polite nod. “He is. House Royce will always be grateful for the fealty of House Davinos.”
Insane, yes. I have taken several steps back, out the blast radius.
Aranessa always was a wise woman.
Thaisha meditates each morning. When their surroundings are safe enough, she takes a seat at the edge of their camp, measuring her breaths, reaching out to greet each green, growing thing around her.
Crunch. Crunch. Sir Julien has deigned to wake up unassisted before noon, lumbering across a carpet of dried leaves. Thaisha shuts her eyes to block out the distraction, but the snapping grows closer, closer, until finally two leather boots plant themselves behind her, just out of reach. Next comes the slice of metal as Julien draws his rapier. Then a step. Another step. Julien begins repeating the most basic of movements, step, stab, step back, a drill she’s watched Alogar repeat since he was barely shoulder-high. He somehow snaps a new stack of leaves every time. She waits, silently pleading for him to add variation- a pass, a gathering step, anything to break up the endless stomp-stomping. But he remains wedded to the most tedious pattern possible, true child’s play, selected for no apparent purpose but to shake her out of her hard-won calm-
His blade calls her. She cannot see the metal, but she feels it- the needlepoint marking the same spot each time with masterful precision, never mind that he has no practice figure to guide his way. The target exists only in his mind, yet he strikes home with ten, twenty consecutive thrusts, hitting the very same patch of air, barely wider than a fingertip. Whomever he might be imagining, they would be utterly destroyed by now-
Oh. In her distraction, she’s utterly forgotten to breathe. Thaisha dutifully drags her attention back to the work of meditation.
And if she tethers her breath to the steady cycles of Julien’s footwork, that secret shall stay between her and the forest.
Julien learns to duck. He learns to guess when she will sling fire or ice, rock or radiance, and he dances out of the way of her spell before she even chooses it. Either that, or she has begun to mold her magic around him, to protect him on instinct.
Which option is more disturbing?
“My fault,” he calls, after a rare collision leaves him scorched.
“No, I should have known you’d want that opening-”
“No, I should know by now to walk around rogue orbs of fire, not through.” Summarily gutting the last monster, he wipes soot off his face, glossy and flushed like an overripe peach.
No other threats. His gaze stays on her as she unties the ribbon of a scarf from around her neck, dabbing at her own face, briefly dipping down between her breasts where sweat collects without fail.
The haze of battle still has its grip on Julien; his eyes are wide and dazed, rather like he’s been hit on his head. His mouth hangs open a moment, and his voice is rough when he finally mutters, “Worth it, though.”
They opt to celebrate. There are precious few excuses for revelry these days, and Dol'Rungja isn’t yet hunting them for sport. For now, Vaelus can stride through the city gates and declare her wish for fine liquor. “Fine,” she clarifies, means “capable of putting an elf to sleep.”
Thaisha looks to Julien.
He notices her looking and promptly begins to sputter. “Why- I’ve been to this city, yes, but why do you assume I’d know about the kind of … debauchery you’re describing?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to answer that?”
He does not. He instead leads them directly to an opulent establishment hidden down an alley behind an illusory wall, the sort of place with furnishings so extravagant they loop back around to tacky. Dropping into a crushed-velvet booth, Thaisha loves it instantly.
Vaelus selects a whiskey half as old as her, harvested in Faerie and aged in barrels of mithral; Thaisha’s eyes water just at the cost. Then they learn one glass of whiskey, admittedly generously filled, is enough to put an elf to sleep. It might be because of built-up exhaustion, or it might be because-
“Well, she was a nun,” Julien states as Vaelus slumps onto the table beside him. He pulls her back up to a seated position, rearranges the chain links of her veil so they fall gracefully instead of bunching up on her nose, and looks to Thaisha. “What now?”
She shrugs. “What do you drink here? You’re the expert.”
“I-“ One word in, he gives up on denying it. “They do a shot here called the Bad Idea.”
“Yeah? What’s in it?”
“Some syrup, violberry juice, muddled … leaves of some kind, you would know better. A bit of gin, and this truly awful liquor. Possibly worse for the organs than drinking straight acid. They call it, ah, Yahrgraz.”
He lowers his voice, infusing the name with utter seriousness. Still, it takes her a moment to realize he thinks that Yahrgraz is new to her.
She hails the nearest server. “Two Bad Ideas for our table, please!”
“Well- look.” He has expressive hands, and the gestures are now panicking worse than his tongue. “It is what I drank, for a time, a long time ago. But they have a very thoughtful wine list, we could ask for-“
He’s cut off by the arrival of two unimposing shots, pretty purple and green. With a sigh, he takes his shot, stifling a cough, face wrenching into a grimace.
She tosses hers back, slams the glass back onto the table, and fixes him with an expression more innocent and doe-eyed than Hala’s. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a darling?”
The darkness gathers in his eyes, like summoning the storm clouds for call lightning. Not breaking from her stare, he shouts over his shoulder, “Four more of these, posthaste!”
There is no funeral, no fresh tragedy, no plausible excuse for going drink for drink with Julien Davinos. No justification, besides that he grows simultaneously merrier and more pissed-off with every drink and both moods are beautiful on him. He handles the later shots better, or at least he pretends to now that he’s noticed the competition. Unfortunately for him, she has more ways to needle him-
“It is mathematically absurd to lean in as far as you do. It’s not what the smiths designed rapiers for!”
- and every attack hits. The stone-fruit ruddiness creeps back up his neck, and his accent thickens as he gets himself worked up, each consonant ruthlessly enunciated, the phrasing somehow rolling more lyrically than usual. His limbs loosen, and the gesticulation grows downright florid.
“Deep lunges are vital to the offense, to catch the enemy off-guard and maximize your reach-“
“And expose yourself, and get stuck with no defense to speak of-“
“You don’t ‘get stuck’ with a counterweight!“ He waves his gauntlet. “You spring-load yourself for the next strike-“
“People can’t switch modes that fast-“
“Then perhaps ‘people’ should get a little fucking faster, yes? There is stylistic precedent among the competent, since the late Obridimian manuals of the Seismic Forges-“
“The Seismic Forges? Now cite Photonic Verses, as sources go it’s about as accurate-“
He’s properly furious now, leaning forward, elbows almost halfway across the table. Floating in a warm glow, Thaisha matches him for posture and alcohol intake, for fervor and volume, all while swallowing back uproarious laughter.
Vaelus stirs, and presses a few radiant fingertips into her temples, forcibly cleaning the liquor out of her head.
“Smart. I’ll get some water too.” Thaisha rises to fetch a pitcher of chilled water. When she returns, only Vaelus remains at the table.
“Negotiations occurred,” Vaelus informs her, “and Julien accepted an invitation to a room upstairs. ‘Same one as last time,’ apparently.”
Thaisha casts druidcraft to banish her own intoxication. Still, the sense of disorientation stays.
“I’m sorry,” Vaelus offers.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Thaisha replies automatically.
Neither does Julien. He forgot to leave the coin for his drinks, but he’ll do it in the morning when reminded and overpay in apology. As for his vanishing act, Thaisha’s never been one to judge. So long as the terms were fair, there can be no objection to whatever’s happening upstairs.
She wants to spark a bar fight. She wants to cast sleet storm, conveniently centered on this one over-pretentious dive. She wants to order another flight of straight Yahrgraz and inquire about the price of a room upstairs for her own use. It could be worth it if only for the look on Julien’s face when she offers a competing review of the services, tomorrow over breakfast.
Thaisha returns with Vaelus to the ordinary inn their party picked for the night, and resents the curse of common sense.
The mummies swarm, too many to lay low one at a time, and Thaisha has no choice but to cast fireball. Flame tears through their tattered remains and leaves a fine mist of smoke and ash. She squints through the cloud, searching for two figures standing strong at the center, but Julien’s wayward shadow has vanished, and there’s a horribly mundane heap on the ground.
Vaelus bounds towards him, yet he does not stir at her luminous touch. Of course he doesn’t- he got surrounded and pummeled by several mummies, their fists wreathed by diseased, life-stealing magic.
She casts aid before Thaisha can scream at her to do it, forcibly extending his lifespan in defiance of necromantic oppression. With a groan he comes to and pushes himself up onto his elbows.
“You’re lucky Thaisha took you down,” Occtis argues instantly. “There wasn’t a better option.”
Shoving a mass of charred curls out of his eyes, Julien glances towards Occtis. “Better fire than undeath.”
Better fire than undeath, he says, without a scoff or protest. Without doubt. He gets to his feet, staggers away to a safer spot, and then sags back down once the swaying grows dangerous. He stays apart from the casters as the three of them huddle around Occtis’s spellbook, searching for an incantation he can quickly learn to undo the curse. Nothing Thaisha has prepared today will suffice. If she cast cure wounds on him, it would do nothing, yet her fingers twitch with the urge to try.
He does not look at her once.
“Protection from Good and Evil sounds exactly right,” Vaelus says.
“But does this count as ‘undead,’ or merely the effects of exposure to the undead?” Occtis frets. “And where are we getting the components, I just ran out of powdered iron-”
Thaisha cannot stop looking at Julien, despite the importance of the work at hand. He has busied himself with his own task: the cleaning of his mummy-dusted rapier. He draws it, lays the blade across his lap, and attends to it with cloth and oil and sharpening stones. Ordinarily his breath settles as he goes through the slow, methodical motions, and at first glance, this routine looks the same as always. But Thaisha watches, and sees how his weakened limbs struggle with the heft of the sword. How the sharpening stone slips and misshapes the edge. If he has any sense at all, he’ll set it aside for now and rest.
He keeps struggling on, every movement bleeding exhaustion, body coiling tighter with every mistake.
“Julien.”
His head snaps up, face raw with the suspicion of a wounded animal before he swaps it for careful neutrality. Thaisha wonders how often she’s missed that look on his face.
Leaving the scholarly discussion behind, she steps towards him and gestures towards the sword. “May I help?”
Even the neutrality grows taut as Julien pushes the lot towards her, sword and accessories all clattering onto dirt. “Have at it.”
“Thank you,” Thaisha says, and means it. She takes a seat by the sword, runs a finger over the hilt, and casts speak with metal from her own staff. “So how do you like to be cared for?”
Julien snorts. “It’s a stick with a point. Make sure it cuts, polish it if you’d like. It needs no care beyond that.”
That is blatantly untrue. Julien cares for this weapon himself, sanding away every trace of rust and angling the edge for both killing thrusts and featherlight cuts, the undefinable nuances of his own particular style. And as she lifts the sharpening stone for the first time, he tenses.
“It’s regularly subjected to stress, on a structural level,” she remarks. “It was meant for soft targets, but we keep facing enemies with plate and scale-“
“It was expensive. Threaded with magic. It can take it.”
“It can.” Thaisha nods. “I just wish it didn’t have to.”
He says nothing more as she handles his sword. His breath catches a few times like he’s about to object, but then she shifts her hand just so and he subsides, satisfied.
And if he draws one more cloth to wipe his own cheeks, she’ll say nothing about that either.
Vaelus and Occtis are away, presenting his case to the Sisters of Sylandri. Thaisha and Julien remain behind in a crumbling hunting lodge- owned by a man who looked at the Mournwood and thought what a nice vacation spot- with instructions to avoid breaking things or acquiring new curses and to behave themselves.
Vaelus had shot her a particularly weighty look after that last clause. Thaisha can’t imagine why.
The lodge overflows with trinkets and hunting trophies and long-abandoned houseplants, tucked within creaky floorboards and half-rotted cabinets. Bolaire would be delighted, if not for the fact that detect magic shows that it’s all perfectly mundane junk.
A flare of magic indicates an exception. Thaisha’s head whips towards a small stuffed rabbit’s foot, glowing with magic, and she turns towards it. With lightning reflexes, Julien darts around her and grabs it first.
When he rounds on her, his eyes and aura both gleam red. The gauntlet jerks and flails, knocking over a porcelain vase before it clasps her arm and pins her in place. He next drags her in and sinks his teeth into her shoulder.
She could misty step out of his grasp, gain distance from him and keep it. But this blow has no finesse, none of the lethal precision of his rapier strikes, and Thaisha is offended primarily on Julien’s behalf. With a snarl, she digs her free hand into his hair, twisting her fingers into the tumbling curls, and shoves greater restoration directly into his skull.
As he drops the foot and his eyes grow clear, she keeps her hold on him. “You have got to stop this foolishness.”
“I had to pick it up,” he spits back, still gripping her elbow.
“Why?” she snaps.
“Because otherwise you would have picked it up first!”
Thaisha flushes with indignation. But the truth is she certainly would have lifted the object for inspection, and she cannot blame him for knowing it before she did. She has no comeback, no defense against him.
So she lunges for his mouth.
Foolishness galore, but a pleased wolf’s growl rumbles from her throat as he surges into the kiss, crushing himself against her. With one hand he starts to strip off his armor, with speed evincing extensive practice. The other hand mirrors hers, snaking up into her hair, skirting the still-tender cartilage where an arrow clipped her ear the other day.
For her part, Thaisha does not grab whatever she wants, mindful of a cracked hip and femur from last week’s fall. This is an act of magnificent restraint, claiming the last scrap of her self-control. She means to be careful with her fangs, she and Hal always are, but one nicks the side of Julien’s throat and he simply looses a moan: “Again.”
And Thaisha abandons all thought of being careful with this man. She shoves him backwards. He takes a few steps at a backward diagonal and drops onto a nearby chaise lounge, yielding gracefully another man might have stumbled or pushed back against her. Already erect, he sprawls along the seat, spits into his hand, and strokes himself shamelessly as she removes her own robes.
Thaisha surveys the scene. “Are you going to come the second I touch you?”
“Fuck you too,” he replies easily, though his hand slows its pace.
The only path forward is through the fire.
His face is calm enough as she approaches him, features arranged in polite interest. The eyes give him away- pupils blown, blazing with heat, flicking up and down her body as he identifies her weak spots. Taking a seat in his lap with his body clasped between her legs, she targets his weakest spot first, locking the silken heat of his cock within her fist. She twists her hand and grins at the involuntary, piteous whimper, so his fingers- ever-bent on revenge- fly to her clit. Not to be outdone, Thaisha sinks down and cuts herself open on his cock.
Julien’s face seizes up for a moment; she fears she will lose him to an early finish, but he seizes a second wind from whatever well of resolve sustains him. Setting a vigorous pace he rolls his hips beneath her, face still screwed up in frustration as she rocks down to meet him. The wood below creaks with each motion.
“You have-” he grunts- “no right to be this beautiful. It’s distracting. Intolerable-”
Thaisha bends down to kiss his mouth and shut it up. To shut up her ridiculous mouth before it says something ruinous, like I’m afraid I love you too.
He wraps an arm around her back and twists and somehow wedges one foot into the corner of the sofa for leverage, an absurd show of athleticism that makes every thrust frightfully accurate. She shatters first with a cry, nails digging into Julien’s back as her climax blasts through her. It wisps away and leaves her quiet, able to memorize the soft rapture that steals across Julien’s face as he drives his hips up one final time-
And a sofa leg shatters beneath them.
As the whole structure collapses at once, they end up on the floor in a clinging heap. She lands on top of him, a sprawling, solid weight.
“We have to …” Thaisha pauses, struggling for breath and coherence in equal parts. “To tell them it was the curse. We fought and it broke the room, that’s all.”
“You can strike me with lightning to sell the act,” he grumbles, brow darkening ominously. “Your favorite use for me.”
He keeps up his dangerous scowling for five seconds before the smirk breaks through. Wearing the same silly smile, Thaisha protests valiantly and launches into a lengthy explanation of the intricacies of large-scale battle magic and holds him as close as she can.
The room is, like them, utterly wrecked. Thaisha glances at the spilled soil of a smashed-up vase and spies a new bud of jasmine.