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Once upon a time there was a girl from nowhere—a speck of a town that no one knew or would ever remember—until one day a powerful mage came to her house and told her that she was special, that she was important, that he could change her life. It was the only thing that she had ever wanted—to leave. To become someone great, someone powerful, someone with influence and a legacy. And so, she took his hand and stepped into a carriage more lovely than any that she’d ever seen before. She did not look back.
That was where the story began.
Once upon a time, there was a boy with deep brown skin and kind eyes, who was strong and brave and loyal, and he too stepped into the carriage. And then another boy followed, with orange-red hair as vibrant as the flames he would become so well known for, a boy who loved books and cats and only ever wanted to learn.
Once upon a time, the girl from nowhere fell in love with those boys. Once upon a time, they loved her too, and each other, and even when the training was hard or painful or exhausting, they all had that love to fall back on. They swore they would always have that love to fall back on. That they would always have each other.
But they did not know then that their story was never meant to be a love story. There was never going to be a happy ending.
Once upon a time, a powerful mage promised three children the world. And then he turned them into weapons. Into monsters. And by the time they finally understood, it was too late.
Monsters do not get happily-ever-afters after all. But sometimes, if they are very patient, they can get revenge.
Trent Ikithon is going to die. Not within the day, or the next, likely not even within the year, although anything might happen during a war.
But as Astrid Becke makes her way to Trent’s office, she reminds herself that he is going to die, and if she has her way, it will be at her hand. She just needs time to put all the necessary contingencies in place—she’s been positioning herself for years as his natural successor, has made herself indispensable, knows that he trusts her as much as a man who doesn’t truly trust anyone but himself can. Over ten years she’s played this game, covering the smoldering coals of hatred in her chest with icy neutrality, and she fully intends to win it.
The past several days have thrown a wrinkle into her plans though. The beacon is a useful distraction in many ways—Trent has been consumed by his studies and has delegated more responsibilities to her and elsewhere—but she dislikes the thought of him gaining more power, especially the type of all-consuming destructive force that dunamancy offers.
Perhaps she should have allowed the Kryn traitor his shot at killing Trent the previous day instead of intervening. But frankly, Astrid hadn’t thought much of his chances, and if Theyless failed and she and Eadwulf hadn’t stepped in, it would have compromised them with Trent.
That is not a risk she’s willing to take, especially not for a man she doesn’t even know.
But it’s worth considering whether the timeline should change—she can reassess as soon as she’s dismissed for the evening, which should be as soon as she delivers to the lab the chest of enchanted artifacts Trent requested she fetch from his office.
The room is empty and still—unsurprising—but Trent is a spymaster, and Astrid is not so foolish as to assume that he would let even her into his office alone without some sort of fail safe to alert him if she did anything beyond the bounds of her assignment.
The small chest she’s looking for is easy to spot, positioned on the edge of the desk. Astrid crosses behind Trent’s chair and reaches for it—just as she does, a column of green flame materializes in the center of the desk, flaring so bright for a moment that she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she freezes.
The note left behind by the arcane fire is the merest scrap of paper. It stops Astrid’s heart nonetheless.
She doesn’t get scared much these days—fear is an emotion that she’s learned to ruthlessly quash, a liability that she can’t entertain—but as she stares at the four simple letters scrawled in blood on the note, she’s more terrified than she’s been in years.
Bren.
Astrid knows Owelia’s handwriting, messy and rough as this is. She can imagine in an instant what likely happened, connecting the dots of the bloody writing and the power of the flame—Owelia was never much for flame spells herself, regardless of their usefulness for this type of communication, but Bren—
Owelia is dead. Astrid feels the truth of that in her bones, and for a moment, vicious satisfaction slithers down her spine, pride for the man at the other end of the magic. But then the ice engulfs her again because the note isn’t just a note. It’s Owelia’s last laugh, a ticking bomb, setting something in motion that Astrid isn’t prepared for. Not yet.
Memories claw at her mind—Bren, Eadwulf, herself—hours of softness, sweetness, loving embraces and wicked flirtations, the love they shared the only pure thing they had left. Jokes, laughter—gods, when was the last time she truly laughed?—memories that she’s tried so hard to lock away because they’re far too painful now, when three has long been reduced to two and the loss still aches like a phantom limb.
She still has burn scars on her hand from the last night Bren was himself. Before he broke and Trent took the opportunity to teach them all a lesson, making her and Eadwulf watch as he opened up every healed scar on Bren’s arms and ripped each residuum crystal from his skin. The message had been clear—I made you, I can unmake you just as easily.
Bren hadn’t fought then. Hadn’t screamed. He’d been…catatonic, his mind locked away somewhere else, eyes staring unblinking at nothing.
Astrid had screamed though. Not in the moment, not in front of Trent, but later that night. She had teleported to a forest on the very edge of the Empire with Eadwulf and had screamed and screamed and screamed until both her voice and her legs gave out and Wulf’s arms around her were the only things keeping her standing.
Trent can’t find him. Trent can’t know. Not now, not when Trent has a new project. Not when he’s spent days experimenting with the beacon and new methods of torture and death. Bren can’t draw his focus now. Not when Astrid isn’t sure she can stop what might come of it.
She had been in this room the day Bren escaped the sanatorium Trent had locked him away in. She had seen the flint in Trent’s eyes as his too-calm composure wavered for the first time since she’d met him when the guard delivered the news. She left the room and watched through a crack in the door as Trent tried and failed to scry on Bren before throwing the scrying orb at the fireplace.
She can still recall the sound of the crystal shattering.
No, Trent can’t find him again now. Nothing good would come of it, and it would break her and Wulf all over again.
It’s too soon, the fear whispers, we’re not strong enough, and Astrid’s fingers twitch ever so faintly in the direction of the scrap before she catches herself.
She’s not a fool, despite what the desperate echo of her teenage heart is begging of her. It would be easy to take the note, or simply destroy it here, but she doesn’t know what protections Trent has on this room. If he found out, and he would find out—
Trent Ikithon is going to die, but not if she blows it all now and loses whatever capital she’s gained by being one of his pets all these years. And she can’t protect Bren that way either. Not really.
So…so—
Astrid steels her spine, letting herself welcome the ice creeping through her veins instead of fighting it, forcing it to twist from fear into sharp, cold numbness.
—she grabs the chest, as if she’d never paused at all, and steps back from the desk. Her one concession to weakness is the way she allows the corner of the chest to knock into the scrap of paper, pushing it off the desk and floating onto the floor where the sweep of her cloak sends a gust to move it further into the shadows.
There’s plausible deniability in that at least.
It takes nearly two hours for Astrid to deliver the chest to Trent’s lab and make her way home. Under normal circumstances, it would take half as long, but every location she passes seems to hold another memory and the ghosts cling to her, slowing her steps. The training grounds, the dormitories, the dance hall—
Bright blue eyes meeting hers and darting away as a blush colored pale cheeks—
“I don’t know how to dance.”
“That’s okay, I can teach you. That is, if you’re not bothered being led by a girl.”
“I’d follow you anywhere, Astrid. On a dance floor or otherwise.”
By the time Astrid closes the door to her small house behind her, there’s a scream caught in her throat that she refuses to let out. Not yet. She allows herself a few moments to lean heavily against the door before pushing herself off the frame and heading into her room.
It’s been months since the last time she tried to scry on Bren, assuming it was a hopeless endeavor once they learned he’d stolen one of the Cerberus Assembly’s anti-spying amulets. But she has a feeling tonight, and she can’t help herself.
Astrid wonders if she should call for Eadwulf first so that she isn’t alone. Even with the Bren-shaped hole in their hearts, Wulf is still hers and she is still his after all. And she needs to tell him anyway.
But.
Astrid’s hands are opening her jewelry box before she can think better of it, carefully prying up the false bottom and removing the object underneath.
“You’re a silly, stupid girl,” she hisses to herself even as her thumb caresses the woven edge of a fraying purple hair tie. Ridiculous to keep it all these years, especially when her hair isn’t even long enough to wear it anymore. Sentimental nonsense, really.
But it’s all she has left of him. This silly little band that he slipped her once on a mission so her hair wouldn’t be in her face.
Astrid sits on the edge of the best and closes it in her fist, taking a shuddering breath. And then, before she can think better of it, she focuses on the tie and casts out her mind.
Black is all she sees at first, and for a moment her heart leaps thinking the spell didn’t work, that Bren is still protected. But then the image filters in—a darkened room, a man in a long coat stretched out on a bed.
Even in sleep, his features are twisted in what looks like pain, his lips moving silently as he tosses and turns. If he had the night that Astrid thinks he did, she imagines his demons are at the very forefront of his mind, whether awake or asleep.
He’s too thin and utterly filthy, his jaw coated in a heavy layer of scruff, but Astrid would know him even without the spell. Her hands have traced every inch of that face, that body, countless times. The years have frayed him badly, turned him into a shadow of himself, but that shadow is as familiar to her as her own.
Oh my love, my love, my love—
She yanks herself out of the spell, blinking rapidly as the familiar walls of her bedroom replace the dim vision. She feels raw, like someone slipped a knife between her ribcage and then began peeling off the skin—she is so used to pain by now that it hardly registers most of the time, but this is an entirely different kind. Her whole body is one exposed nerve and her breaths begin coming too quickly. She can’t—she can’t—
She casts Sending.
”Come home. I need you.”
Astrid doesn’t say anything more, doesn’t bother trying to fill the other twenty words of the spell. The five she did reveal enough weakness as it is, and she grips the bedpost to steady herself as the cracks in her walls spider out more and more.
“I’m on my way,” Eadwulf replies instantly, and it’s no more than ten minutes before she hears the front door open and shut.
”Astrid?” His mental response had been calm, measured, but in person, in the privacy of this house, he lets his concern shine through as he calls for her. Eadwulf steps into her (their, more often than not, even though he has his own house as well) bedroom without waiting for a response, but stops still when he catches sight of her face and the hair tie she’s still gripping in one hand like a lifeline.
”He’s back,” she whispers. “And Trent will know soon. Owelia sent a note.”
Astrid watches as the other man she loves nearly flinches, the pain washing over his face. He doesn’t say a word yet, although she knows he will. Instead, he crosses to the bed and sits down, pulling her into his arms and burying his face in her hair. And that small act shatters the rest of her resolve, her walls crashing down as a sob that she feels as though she’s been holding back for years is wrenched from her chest.
There is so much to say, so much planning to do, but Astrid can’t halt the flood, can just cling to the man in front of her as the waves crash over her and she tries not to drown. At first he just holds her, they hold each other, but soon that’s not enough. It could be a minute later or an hour, Astrid isn’t sure, she just knows that she needs more than his arms around her to keep her from falling apart.
When she kisses him, Eadwulf doesn’t argue, allowing her to push him on his back and straddle his waist. She is not gentle and neither is he—sweet and gentle lovemaking was for the innocent young lovers they were, not for the monsters they are now—but the roughness of his touch only grounds her so much. When he hooks his hands behind her knees and drags her up his body to taste her, her mind flashes back to the scry and she wonders what Bren’s scruff would feel like on her thighs if he did the same. The pleasure that sparks through her body is sharp, almost painful, and Astrid floats in a haze of memories, simultaneously present and not. Her body knows what it’s missing, knows there should be a second pair of hands on her, a second set of lips tasting her breasts or capturing her own mouth to swallow her moans. The ghost is so present in the room with them that when Eadwulf puts her on her knees and slides inside her, she can almost convince herself that the fingers slipping down to touch her clit aren’t her own.
When Astrid orgasms, it feels like a death. Fitting, since the name that falls from her lips belongs to a ghost. She would feel more guilty for that if Eadwulf hadn’t said the same name.
”Trent isn’t going to leave him be,” Astrid says several minutes later once she’s caught her breath and started reassembling the pieces of her composure. “He’ll want him brought in.”
Eadwulf sighs and pulls her tighter against his side. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’ll send us yet. Not unless he’s willing to trust one of the others with watching over his secret science sessions with the crick. And Bren—” his voice wavers and he clears his throat. “—Bren can take care of himself. He’s better than them.”
”I think he killed Owelia tonight,” she admits, and the dark rumble of approval in Wulf’s chest echoes her own feelings on the subject.
“Good.”
Her thoughts take a dark turn in the silence that falls. Yet, Trent likely wouldn’t send them yet. But he would send them eventually if other volstrucker hadn’t gotten results.
Could she do it? Could she bring him in?
If killing him instead would be a mercy, could she do that? Kill the man who had been a boy she loved to save him from an even bigger monster?
She’s killed so many people. But Bren—
Astrid’s fingers trail up Eadwulf’s chest until they bump the pendant that rests against his sternum, a symbol to a goddess that he has always put faith in. She’s never put much stock in faith before, but it seems fitting in their line of work to pick the goddess of death over any other. And she’s not above using any and all potential tools at their disposal.
”Will she protect him, do you think?” She asks, tracing the lines of the pendant. “The Raven Queen? If you ask.”
Eadwulf covers her hand with his own over the holy symbol.
“I don’t know,” he says quietly, and his tone is an apology. “But I will ask if you want me to.”
Astrid leans up and kisses him.
”I want you to.”
Their conversation peters out again as they both fall deep into thought. Eventually, Astrid can’t fight the exhaustion in her body any further and closes her eyes, resting her head on Eadwulf’s shoulder.
”Ich liebe dich,” she murmurs, falling back into Zemnian as sleep pulls her under.
I love you.
Wulf presses his lips to the top of her head and echoes the words. And from the past, a ghost with hands of flame whispers the same.