4 - Bound to Fall: Villains and Virtues
Author: Caggiano, A. K.
Date: 2023-09-05T16:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Villains and Virtues#4

A Villains & Virtues Tale

Bound

To

Fall

A.K. Caggiano

Copyright © 2023 A. K. Caggiano

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Bound to Fall is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental, and would, frankly, be pretty damn wild, don’t you think?

Cover Art and Final Image by Anna Mariya Georgieva

Map by E. C. O’Connor

First printing 2023 by A. K. Caggiano

For more, please visit:

http://www.akcaggiano.com

ALSO BY A. K. CAGGIANO

Standalone Novels:

The Korinniad - An ancient Greek romcom

She’s All Thaumaturgy - A sword and sorcery romcom

The Association - A supernatural murder mystery

Vacancy
a contemporary (sub)urban fantasy trilogy:

Book One: The Weary Traveler

Book Two: The Wayward Deed

Book Three: The Willful Inheritor

Villains & Virtues
a fantasy romcom trilogy:

Book One: Throne in the Dark

Book Two: Summoned to the Wilds

Book Three: Eclipse of the Crown

Villains & Virtues Spinoffs:

Bound to Fall – Celeste’s Tale

Bound and Tide – Xander’s Tale

For More, Please Visit:

https://www.akcaggiano.com

For anyone learning to love yourself

May you vanquish all of your evils

Contents

CHAPTER 1 - HOW TO EULOGIZE YOUR SISTER

CHAPTER 2 - AN ANALYSIS OF PAST AND PRESENT DANGER

CHAPTER 3 - THE GODS ARE IN THE DETAILS

CHAPTER 4 - BED CHAMBERS AND BAD MAGIC

CHAPTER 5 - ARCANE INTOLERANCE

CHAPTER 6 - HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO

CHAPTER 7 - ARCANELIGHTING, AN INTIMATE LOOK AT DOUBTING ONE’S PERCEPTION

CHAPTER 8 - MAKING A DEAL WITH THE DIVINE

CHAPTER 9 - FORGING BONDS

CHAPTER 10 - THE FALSE SECURITY OF RAISING ONE’S VOICE

CHAPTER 11 - THE DELICATE ART OF NOT ASKING QUESTIONS

CHAPTER 12 - SAYING BOTH NO AND YES

CHAPTER 13 - IN WHICH THE AUTHOR CIRCUMVENTS PROPHECY WHEN SHE REMEMBERS HOW FRUSTRATING IT IS

CHAPTER 14 - OF OFFENSIVE HANDS AND THEIR SEVERING

CHAPTER 15 - SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS AND HOW TO DRESS THEM

CHAPTER 16 - FIBS AND LONGING IN THE DEW DROP INN

CHAPTER 17 - INEVITABLE INEBRIATION

CHAPTER 18 - A COWARD SWEATS EVEN IN WATER

CHAPTER 19 - THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

CHAPTER 20 - UNTOLD TALES AND OTHER GREAT AGONIES

CHAPTER 21 - WHEN THE CONJURED BIRD FLIES

CHAPTER 22 - ANATOMICALLY SIGNIFICANT FRUIT

CHAPTER 23 - THE MANY MEANINGS OF BROKEN APART

CHAPTER 24 - STOPPING TO THINK AND FORGETTING TO START UP AGAIN

CHAPTER 25 - FROM DIVINE LIPS TO INFERNAL EARS

CHAPTER 26 - ALTERING THE ALTAR AT WHICH ONE WORSHIPS

CHAPTER 27 - THE STAIRWAY TO EMPYREA GLITTERS ONLY BECAUSE IT’S SO RECENTLY BEEN MOPPED, SO TAKE CARE NOT TO SLIP

CHAPTER 28 - DESTINED TO SUCCUMB

CHAPTER 29 - KNOWING WHEN NOT TO LET GO

CHAPTER 30 - STRENGTH, TIME, AND LOVE ENOUGH

EPILOGUE - WINK WINK

A SNEAK PEEK

Reading Note:

Bound to Fall is a standalone spinoff of Villains & Virtues, a completed trilogy that follows the exploits of Damien and Amma. This tale takes place in the spring, following the events of Villains & Virtues, and it does contain spoilers for the series, including character death. However, Bound to Fall focuses on a new couple and can be read as a standalone story.

Author’s Note:

Please be aware that this book contains, amongst other potentially disturbing subjects, the following:

- Manipulative verbal abuse including gaslighting, name-calling, and purposefully intensifying a victim’s known insecurities and shame

- Sexual abuse and physical abuse perpetuated on the page by the antagonist

- Discussions of past verbal, emotional, and physical abuse

- Discussions of past child abuse and child death

- Discussions of past torture

- Negative self-talk, body dysmorphia, and brief allusions to self-harm

This book also contains explicit, consensual sexual content

Please see a complete list of warnings on the author’s website:

https://www.akcaggiano.com

CHAPTER 1
HOW TO EULOGIZE YOUR SISTER

D elphine Delacroix was dead. For most who had known her in life, this was a relief, which isn’t a particularly nice thing to say about a dead woman, but Delphine had not been very nice herself. There was really only one person in the realm who would mourn her passing, but as that person stared at the noxscura-entwined brambles covering the disused temple that was the place of her sister’s untimely demise, rather than sad, she found herself confused.

A message had come to Celeste Delacroix many moons prior through the arcanely connected crystals the sisters shared. The messaging crystal had been quiet for some time, and though she had been at first relieved by the silence, Celeste had grown trepidatious of the lull. Each passing day weighed more heavily in her gut, telling her without words that she had been wrong for running away and shutting out her only living family. Celeste wrote, of course, and she sent the post with all manner of agreeable creatures, ravens, spiders, vipers, but she never heard back.

And then the blustery, autumn day came when the crystal pulsed with arcane communication. Celeste had gone for it so quickly that she knocked the slippery thing from its hallowed spot on her side table. It bounced better than any crystal had the right to do, shooting beneath her cot and falling through a crack in the floorboards of the bedraggled inn she temporarily called home. After an embarrassing conversation with the elderly man who occupied the room below hers and used the opportunity to berate her for daring to walk across his ceiling twice a day, the crystal had been retrieved, and she finally holed herself up in her tiny, rented chamber to listen to the message that would surely say her sister wanted her to come home.

But when Delphine’s sharp voice cut into Celeste’s mind, her cautious relief was torn to shreds like a skirt caught on brambles amid a reckless escape. There was no heartfelt yearning in her sibling’s voice—though she was probably a fool to have expected anything akin to sentimentality—only the impatient snapping of a woman who was perpetually disappointed by everyone in her life, especially her little sister.

Only this time, Delphine had apparently been so disappointed, she decided to up and die to get her point across. She was nothing if not dramatic, but dying was a lot, even for her.

If you are hearing this, sister, I am no longer amongst the living. Yes, that is correct, your only kin left in this world, struck from the plane. Been murdered most likely, so thank you very much for cruelly abandoning me and providing none of the protections that you’ve enjoyed at my expense all these years. However, I know what kind of company I keep, so I arranged for this message to be sent in the wake of my passing.

I’m aware this will be a monstrous undertaking with your limited abilities, but if you can find it somewhere within that blackened heart of yours to do me one last, small favor, I’ve left a list of necromancers in the sepulcher of the temple. Dark gods know I’ve written the instructions simply enough for someone with your dearth to their faculties to follow, but if you do find it too overwhelming to bring me back, ask Damien for help. If you’re pathetic enough, and I’m sure that will be no trouble, he will assist. If he’s in one of his moods and resistant, then you know what to do.

I suppose this is goodbye, for now, so—

The message had cut off there. Celeste chose to believe it was simply a failing of magic that left Delphine’s last, potentially affectionate words forever left up to her imagination, but it is perhaps relevant if dismal to say that this was indeed the message’s true end.

It had taken Celeste the entire winter to work up the courage to return. At first, she questioned whether the message was even real, fearing some enemy’s ruse or even a trick by Delphine herself. Things had not ended amicably, after all, and Celeste had yet to not take the blame and subsequent retribution for each and every familial falling out.

But as the days and then moons passed and there was no follow up to betray that it was a trick, the dread in her heart thickened, so when the first thaw came, she boarded a ship and crossed the Maroon Sea for Eiren proper. There was nothing for her on their ancestral island of Clarriseau anyway, just as Delphine had predicted, and in the end, the prospect of a more familiar ridicule and coldness won out.

Traversing the mainland realm was not as quick as by sea. She purchased passage on merchants’ carts over well-traveled roads northward, though the last leg had to be made on foot—no one, it seemed, wanted to go to Briarwyke. Not even Celeste, really. Yet by the time the roads were their muddiest and the air was still chilled but didn’t threaten snow, she made it back to the place she had last seen her sister alive with the intent to be very sad about the whole thing.

Only, if Delphine really were dead, there was still quite a bit of her left swirling around, and so in place of sadness, Celeste was simply, as stated, confused.

Noxscura ran through the dried-out thorns that wound themselves up and over the desecrated temple. Delphine used arcana to protect the building and convince villagers it was simply cursed, but she had never done it quite like this, never so visible and imposing. The temple was set off from the village it was meant to serve, down a winding path through the forest to the north, and so Celeste pushed back her hood in the seclusion of the wood. She circled the exterior of the fence twice, shoes sinking into the mud until her soles were soaked. There were only a few places to peek into the shadowy barrier, but no passing through it. Well, no passing through for most.

Celeste touched the locket that hung from her neck. It was nearly empty and had been for some time. She never let the magic run completely dry, but hadn’t come across a way to refill it in Clarriseau. Though it was often difficult to find something that one did not seek out.

But now an abundance of noxscura pulsed and purred before her. Too much, really. She worried her lip between her teeth, fingers slipping over the smooth, enchanted metal, then with a swallow, she flicked the tiny latch to open the locket.

Arcana was drawn to the empty space without Celeste’s bidding—a lucky thing because she would probably screw it up on her own. The blackened tendrils broke away from the vines, crawling over one another in the mud, and then creeping up along her legs, coiling around her waist, and filling up the arcane pocket that hung about her neck.

Even colder than the early spring air, the magic bit at her skin, damp and grimy despite her cloak, and her heart thumped like the marching of some far off battalion filled with conscripted youngsters preparing for a war they had not agreed to. It had been so long, she’d forgotten how terrifying it was to harness so much power, how dangerous her body and mind could be made, and how…well, frankly, how icky noxscura truly was.

But the barrier moved quickly once so much of it had been drawn in, and when it finally cleared from the fencing and vines, she snapped the locket shut and ventured through the gates.

It was a mess. A big mess. A murderous mess, in fact, and she was only gazing out over the front courtyard. There was Tempest, Delphine’s favorite pet, in a heap where he’d been slain, impossible to miss even when he was mostly bone. She picked her way across the dried out grasses carefully, like its skeletal jaws might snap at her when she ventured too close. The massive wyvern had never warmed to Celeste, but he’d never managed to take a chunk out of her either, so she’d straddled an uncomfortable reverence and fear for the thing when it was alive.

A human body covered in plate armor, as old and dead as Tempest, lay beside, clearly the wyvern’s undoing as well as his own. The markings on the armor and sword were ornamental, no symbols of any god or region in the realm that she knew. Had this been the man who brought death to every being at the temple? If so, she probably should have been upset, but she’d yet to confirm there was nothing living at all on the grounds. Plus, he was mostly bone as well, and it was difficult to be mad at a skeleton. Apparently, the noxscura hadn’t kept everything out, and the flesh had been eaten away in the four or so moons between Delphine’s message and Celeste’s arrival.

A shadow flitted in the corner of her vision, and she swiftly turned, cloak and hair splaying around her. The temple’s fencing was covered in brown brambles, and a few scraggly trees dotted the yard of overgrown, dried-out weeds. No creatures stirred—no living ones, anyway. She supposed strange shadows and mysterious glints were to be expected in a place so filled with death and dark magic.

Resolving to contend with the skeletons and armor later, she turned for the temple proper. Celeste was familiar with Valcord even if Delphine had never bothered to learn the name of the god whose temple she’d…acquired. There was little room in either of the Delacroix sisters’ hearts for the gods and even less for those who served them, but one had to know these things, and as it was mostly useless knowledge, it fell to Celeste. One of the spring deities who remained in Empyrea, Valcord had a handful of temples dedicated to him across Eiren, but as he was a god that required actual service, there were not many followers.

Briarwyke’s Valcordian temple had, in fact, only two priests when Delphine originally sought it out some four years prior. Celeste was sent up to its doors in a ragged cloak, her hair mussed and dirt smeared across her face. She was meant to get herself invited inside by playing at being wretched and pitiable. Very little playing required, Delphine had remarked before nudging her along. In truth, Celeste had been trembling when she knocked because the prospect of stepping inside a temple horrified her, but her fear proved pointless when the priests turned her away. Maybe she shouldn’t have rubbed the cloak with quite so much manure.

As Celeste stood before the chained doors on the portico again, there was a familiar tremble in her knees, and she could hear Delphine’s voice anew. How in the realm do you get yourself rejected by holy men? It was embarrassing but a relief as she hoped they would give up on the temple, but Delphine insisted they stay because she had plans—plans that involved violence, death, and arcane research she had never deigned Celeste worthy enough to be told the details of.

Carved into the pitch that shrouded the temple’s entry was a half-risen sun, its rays protruding to the eaves. Crickets, the place was even bigger than she remembered. She dug into one of the many pockets on her skirt and pulled out an old key, surprised when it fit, but at least Delphine hadn’t changed the locks.

Through the quiet antechamber with its lower ceiling and windowless walls, Celeste’s footsteps squished into the silence. It smelled of must with a twinge of sweet decay, but the light through the doorway ahead drew her forward.

The temple’s main chamber ran the length of the building. The grand space was flanked by columns carved with the delicate, divine details of Valcord’s glory, though more than a few apparently had an unfortunate meeting with something smashy. It rose much higher than the entry, and flora had taken over at an extraordinary rate, strange for the winter that had just passed.

Husks of thorny vines hung from the broken windows along the back wall and ceiling. Those windows were meant to allow in dawn’s light and cast a warm glow on the pink stones and the golden accents of the temple. Instead, the chamber was dappled with shadows, and the cloudiness of the day only allowed in a grey haze that matched the dreariness outside. Somewhere, unseen water steadily dripped, and wind whistled through the side passages.

At the back of the main room stood the broken altar to Valcord. Celeste went toward it, maneuvering quietly around the soft seating in the chamber’s middle. She left her overstuffed pack on the sofa, a piece Delphine had commissioned from a lamia artisan in the mountains to replace the many benches that had once lined the chamber for worship. Her footsteps felt too loud even though the place was no longer holy. As much as she failed to understand and perhaps even loathed the idea, she was quietly touched then by the thought of coming there to pray to the god of dawn and clover, of new beginnings and hope.

Then Celeste stopped short at a divot in the floor. That was new. And ominous.

Before the altar that Delphine had turned into an extravagant seat was a crescent-shaped pit carved into the stone floor. Celeste was unsure she could trust the thin bit of stone that served as a bridge over its middle, but even less did she trust the hole itself. Her hand went to her locket, squeezing tight, and the newly acquired noxscura rattled. Steeling herself, Celeste crept to the edge and peered down.

So many bones, and all so small.

Celeste bit back the yelp that wanted to escape. Noise like that would be unacceptable in the silence of the place, even if it was accidental. Cruelty was commonplace in Delphine’s presence, but stupidity and failure earned the brunt of her abuse. Celeste wasn’t surprised to see the corpses were child-sized in that regard, but they had to have been reanimated from the graveyard out back and not new—she couldn’t bear to think of her sister being so cruel, so hypocritical, as to hurt children.

Then Celeste peered deeper, and a tug in her chest nearly toppled her right down to the pit’s bottom.

One of the bodies wasn’t quite so small. She recognized the dress that had been Delphine’s, a shroud of shimmery black feathers blanketing bones that belonged to her sister. Pain pricked at her eyes, her legs wobbled, and she fell to her knees at the pit’s edge.

For all that her older sister had been, misery and nastiness and cruelty, Delphine was the only person Celeste had in the entire realm, and there was no question now, even if her features were eaten away from her skull, that she was gone.

Celeste Delacroix’s heart languished deep in her chest, softening to barely a thump. Beneath her hand, the locket thrummed, a stark reminder of her own weakness. Delphine never needed an enchanted vessel to hold errant noxscura like Celeste, so incompetent that she was forced to carry around arcana like a child might a blanket, and yet her skills had not saved her. Delphine’s death seemed an impossibility, but no—that was her sister at the bottom of the pit, all bones and spent magic and dashed hope.

Sitting back, she lifted her eyes to the altar and the orb carved upon it, wings flanking either side. The sun didn’t have wings, didn’t need them to ascend every morning into the sky to warm the earth and light the way, but she imagined it would certainly help on days when rising felt like too much.

There would be no cobbling together what was left of Delphine despite what the woman requested in her posthumous message. Necromancy wasn’t the kind of tool that would really bring her back anyway, not whole, and especially not when the corpse was so spoiled. A spoiled corpse, however, could have been avoided if Celeste had arrived sooner, a thought that had been niggling at her for moons.

Because she had stalled, after all, and it wasn’t only due to her fear the whole thing could be a ruse.

As Celeste spent the winter pacing the tiny chamber of the Clarriseau inn, being yelled at by her downstairs neighbor and wondering what exactly to do, there was a second, quieter thought that whispered itself into her mind about Delphine’s death. It was a thought she knew was wrong to have and thus wasn’t really being had, it was just sort of having itself in the peripherals of the place where she actually thought all her real thoughts, and it was this:

Maybe, just maybe, Delphine’s departure from the plane was not the worst occurrence in the history of the realm.

But Celeste could not—should not—bring that unthought thought to the forefront or even the aftback of her mind because it was too cruel, and it was ungrateful, and it was certainly a betrayal at its very core. And now that she knew the woman was truly dead, it was especially guilt-inducing even though Celeste hadn’t really thought it, a thing she would swear by with tears in her eyes if the truth were demanded of her. The thought had only just sort of thought itself.

However, Celeste was nothing if not deferential despite the impossibility of the task. She wiped at her eyes and pulled herself to her feet, Delphine’s cutting but honest words ringing through her mind, Darkness knows I don’t have time to clean up after you if you fuck something up down there, so stay out of the sepulcher. Never had she been allowed below the temple on her own, so if Celeste were being instructed to go down there now, something important was surely to be found within.

A door off the main chamber had another lock on it, this one arcane. Celeste swiped her fingers over it once in the pattern she’d been taught for emergencies, but nothing happened. She repeated the movement, familiar with the need to do things twice when she inevitably failed. Again, nothing happened. She sucked a breath in over her teeth and squinted, then slowly performed the motion one more time. When the latch again did not give way, she recklessly tried the arcane movements a last, frustrated time.

There was a pall of blackness that enveloped the lock, and a crack that nearly knocked Celeste off her feet, but then it cleared, and the latch lay in two pieces on the stone floor.

Whispering apologies to the inanimate object, Celeste took the winding stairway underground and halted on the last step to stare into the darkness. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. In fact, she preferred it, how it allowed her to go along unseen, to exist amongst things like herself. But the things in the sepulcher weren’t like her, not really. These were important things, revered things that deserved special care, and her insides churned, telling her she didn’t belong.

But Delphine had ordered her to go, and even in death, her older sister’s commands had to be followed.

Celeste took a torch from the wall, and with a slip of a finger over her locket, set it alight with a black flame. Black fire didn’t illuminate as well as the other colors, but it was all she could conjure with noxscura. Delphine could do the entire spectrum, and other wielders of arcana could command fire that burned for more than just light, but Celeste had only ever managed black. It was enough to make her way though, and she moved forward into the slightly-less-dark darkness.

The temple’s burial basement was used in winter to hold bodies when the ground was too firm for digging graves. It was a small space with coffin-shaped nooks lining the walls and a stone table in the center for preparation. When Delphine took over, she hoarded spoils in place of corpses—those usually just got tossed into the woods.

Most of the nooks were empty now, bottles of wine stashed in one, a forgotten urn stuffed in another, and a trove of coins gleaming from one on high. Celeste’s eyes went wide at the amount, but she moved on until she found a small book propped up in the last.

The parchment inside was covered in Delphine’s handwriting, long, slanted, and beautiful. There was the list of necromancers and where they could be found, one back in Clarriseau, a few at the edges of Eiren itself, and one in the Accursed Wastes—not that she was going there, not again.

The rest were in far off realms, and one was even listed in an entirely different dimension with a footnote from Delphine that read: Necromancer Hargreaves is likely the strongest, but he is the equivalent of a crown’s guard in his world, and as he will need to be taken here against his will, it will prove most difficult. But he is tall and pale and has dark hair, you know, just your type, so if his abduction can be managed, I’ll think about letting you keep him.

Celeste went red even standing underground where no one, not even the gods, could see what had been written. She didn’t want to keep someone, the thought alone making her ill. And tall, pale, and dark-haired wasn’t her type anyway. Celeste never shared her romantic preferences with her sister, knowing she would be mocked for her tastes, she had just never been very good at hiding her accidental infatuation with Delphine’s long-suffering significant other.

On the following page were instructions to bring someone back from the dead, but they were unsurprisingly unfinished. Delphine had not been stupid. She knew that being brought back by a necromancer wasn’t true resurrection—Celeste didn’t know anyone who could do that—but the woman had been ambitious, likely intending to figure it out before she was actually killed. She hadn’t though, and Celeste sighed out a guilty breath of relief.

As she watched the black fire dance against the dirt walls of the sepulcher, she whimpered in the back of her throat. Relief at her sister remaining dead was neither loyal nor nice, but she quickly convinced herself that her relief was actually in response to not having to do any of the complex arcana at all. She would surely mess everything up anyway, she’d never abducted anyone all on her own, let alone a necromancer, and despite Delphine’s suggestion, Damien Bloodthorne would not have helped. Implying that he would was like having a thorn twisted in Celeste’s side—he had been the subject of their biggest disagreement.

“You shouldn’t lock him up like that,” Celeste had braved saying once when her older sister’s antics turned from regular cruelty to truly heinous. She had just delivered food to Damien, blood dripping down his face from a newly opened scar and defeat in the hollowness of his once-spirited eyes, and the words came out despite herself.

“He likes it,” Delphine had flippantly replied.

That should have been the end of it, but something sparked in Celeste that wouldn’t allow for that. “You’re hurting him. No one likes being hurt like that.”

For perhaps the first time, Celeste’s words had managed to stop Delphine short. The woman turned, lip curled in both amusement and disgust. “How in the Abyss would you know?”

Celeste stood under Delphine’s disdain, and she did the only thing she knew to do: she shrank. Tugging in her shoulders and dipping her head would perhaps save her from the worst vitriol, and even if she could muster a response, it would be shorn into ribbons.

“You,” Delphine had gone on, voice falling low as her shadow prowled closer, “have no place telling me what to do. I’ve sacrificed more than you could possibly know to give you everything you have, and you’ve done nothing in return but be constantly incompetent and ungrateful. You should be ashamed of how little you understand after all this time. The fact I tow you around with me everywhere, provide for you, protect you from the harshness of a realm that hates us, is as much a burden as it is an embarrassment, and yet I endure it all for my sister.”

Celeste remembered only cowering, arcana crackling at the edges of her presence, prepared to be struck if she dared retort.

But then Delphine let out a sharp laugh, waved a threatening but flippant hand through the air, and turned away. “But how can I really be upset? No man has ever been infatuated with you, and I doubt they ever will be, so how could you possibly understand?”

Perhaps it had been that dig, or perhaps it had been Celeste’s embarrassing affection for her older sister’s boyfriend, or perhaps just a growing desire to do the right thing, but she had made her decision then. That night, she secretly severed Delphine’s enchantments on Damien, and he finally escaped the temple after moons of imprisonment and torture. Celeste knew from experience that escaping abduction did not inspire a desire to return to it, and there was no amount of pathetic that she could play at to convince Damien to help her now, even if she told him she’d been the reason he was finally freed.

She had taken too long to help him, and that was unsettling. It was only that it had been nice to have someone around who was marginally kind to her, even if it was in a piteous way. Damien, at the very least, always said thank you when she brought him the meals Delphine allowed, and he murmured on occasion that Celeste didn’t deserve being berated for the calamities she caused.

But Celeste was not Delphine. She did not bind people up and force them to stay under proclamations of love.

Love.

She shook her head. Celeste hadn’t actually been in love with Damien. In fact, she’d probably never really been in love ever, but…

Celeste flipped through the rest of Delphine’s journal. There were a few pages filled with ingredient lists and some vague theorizing about imp blood. Another had measurements for the depth of the lake south of Briarwyke, and there was a page dedicated to listing metals and their usefulness in potentially piercing a divine shield, but her written words stopped there. She checked again, and then once more, and finally a third time so frantically that the pages crumpled and tore under her frenzied fingers.

How could there be nothing else? No quickly scribbled note? Not even a private entry? Delphine had written every word contained in that book, she’d even sketched out half of a seemingly useless map of tunnels, and intentionally left the journal for Celeste, but none of those words were really for her, to her. Celeste had written Delphine numerous letters since she’d left, full of apologies and begging for forgiveness, but had never heard back, and yet she had always hoped…

“You were my sister,” she said quietly to the emptiness of the pages. “You said that mattered. That it was important.”

“Sister?”

Celeste swung around, hair nearly catching in the black flame. She hugged the journal to her chest as if it could protect her with its thickness of blank pages and gaped wide-eyed at the sepulcher. That had not been Delphine’s voice, but no one else had ever called her that.

“Is it really you?”

Across the chamber, in one of the coffin nooks, sat a jar. Well, an urn, she had thought, meant for storing remains. But remains didn’t speak.

“You are the sister,” the voice said, and there was a whisper of an unseen smile in it. “I have heard so much about you.”

Celeste cocked her head. “How do you…who would mention me?”

“Your sister, of course.” It was the jar speaking, Celeste was sure now. It should have been spooky, a talking urn, but she was rather comfortable around spooky things what with being one herself.

“She’s dead now.” The words were pulled out of her, blunt and odd as was often her way, and when they left her mouth, the heft of them almost made her knees buckle.

“I know. I felt it when she died, losing my chance at freedom along with her life. I am sorry for your loss. Our loss.” The voice sounded sincere. It was smooth and deep, rumbling up a throat it did not have. “But I am not sorry she is gone.”

Eyes tracked on the urn, Celeste slipped the journal back into one of the nooks and crept around the slab in the chamber’s center. She didn’t want to talk about Delphine anymore. “Who are you?”

“A prisoner of your sister’s.”

Celeste swallowed, supposing it was impossible to avoid the corpse upstairs. “Oh, sorry about that.”

The urn was tucked only a foot or so into the nook at eye level. It had looked ordinary from afar, but up close there was arcana pulsing about the rim where the lid met the container.

“She would speak to me sometimes.” The urn’s voice—or rather, the voice of the thing inside the urn—grew heavier as she crept closer. “She said some horrible things.”

“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Celeste frowned, hesitating, but she couldn’t help herself. “Were they…were they about me?”

The quiet that hung in the sepulcher answered first, and then the actual voice followed. “Yes. She said that it is a wonder you are related at all, that you are not the same, that you are disloyal, weak-willed, stupid, unskilled, clumsy—”

“—all that, huh—”

“—and perhaps worst of all, you are nice.”

Celeste’s gaze fell to the floor, veins flooding with the unpleasant heat of humiliation. It was shameful how she had turned out, she already knew that, but to be called nice was worse than a curse on Delphine’s tongue.

“Is she correct?” the voice asked, snapping her out of the hollow and confusing place she often went when there was nowhere left to hide.

“I wasn’t here to help her, and she died,” she said, voice cracking. “I don’t even know if I would have been powerful enough to save her.”

“Perhaps she did not deserve your help,” the voice suggested, echoing a thought Celeste had been far too afraid to have. “And perhaps your power lies elsewhere.”

Celeste shook her head, dark hair swaying as she studied the shadows on the floor. That was a thought she never had—she didn’t deserve what she could do, and she certainly hoped there was nothing new she would ever discover.

“Well, then perhaps she was right about it all, that you are too weak to truly defy her. Too weak to undo her wrongs.”

Celeste blinked back up at the urn. “Undo her wrongs…”

Before she could think too long about what she might do, Celeste plucked the urn from its spot. She hadn’t expected the heft since it was so small, and it nearly slipped from her fingers, but she pulled it to her chest and held on tightly. The magic around its lid prodded at her, and an arcane barrier pushed against her palm as if to will her away. Delphine sure had trapped the thing tightly, and with an unrecognizable magic, but then Celeste’s emotions were often too overwhelming to properly identify arcana anyway.

“You would free me?” it asked, the voice echoing into her chest, desperation on its unseen tongue.

“Yes,” she grunted, digging fingers into the barrier her sister had created, an odd sparking there as the arcana crackled, warm like the rising sun. “I’m not like her. I don’t hurt people. Now, open,” she pleaded, fighting what kept it closed. There was a jolt against her chest as her locket unfastened on its own, noxscura enveloping her limbs and assisting unbidden.

With a pop and a sizzle, the lid came free, and magic burst forth from the jar as a smoky haze filled the sepulcher. Celeste inhaled sharply at the strength it had taken, arms trembling as she watched the chamber fill with an entity that had been too-long restrained.

It was everywhere, deafening and blinding, but there was something like a hand that softly grazed her cheek. No one had ever touched her like that and meant it, and she tripped backward into the slab, but then that voice was in her ear. “Thank you, Celeste,” it said, and her skin yearned to be touched again, everywhere. “Your sister was right.”

All at once, the arcane entity swept out of the chamber, and she was suddenly left alone.

Heart beating hard, a flicker of noxscura slithered up to hover at Celeste’s shoulder. It twisted slightly as if to say it understood about as much as she did when it came to what had just happened. She cast her gaze once more on the journal that had been Delphine’s and frowned.

Perhaps it did not matter, sisterhood. Perhaps the only importance of the role had been its ability to make her comply.

Celeste abandoned the empty urn on a shelf and willed the noxscura back into her locket. That was enough of that, and so she returned upstairs as the ghostly touch faded from her skin, intent on undoing at least a few more wrongs.

CHAPTER 2
AN ANALYSIS OF PAST AND PRESENT DANGER

T hinking about what came next was much easier when Celeste had something to do, and there was much to be done at the temple. She wasted no time digging in, literally, because the first tasks involved a significant amount of excavation.

One service Valcord’s followers offered was burying the dead which meant there was already a small graveyard behind the temple. She counted the stones, but no new ones had been added, so it was up to Celeste to break the hallowed ground for the first time in over four years. Even if she wasn’t one of Valcord’s disciples, she didn’t object to the work—everyone deserved to be cared for and tucked in one last time.

Noxscura was good with necrotic things which meant it could make quick work of the corpses. Celeste didn’t really mind that which others deemed too odd to touch, but she wasn’t particularly strong, and some of the bones were much too heavy, so she did what she could, aided by her oft clumsy magic.

When the hole she’d dug with both a shovel and arcana was big enough to fit the fallen man who had slain Tempest, she used noxscura to place him inside piece by piece as gently as she could, only dropping a few of his fingers and toes in the tall grasses. When they couldn’t be found, she decided they would make for good fertilizer. With some difficulty, she stuck the sword into the nameless knight’s plot in place of a stone, and she lay a small bundle of flowers beside it. Maybe he had killed her sister, maybe not, but ragwort wasn’t all that nice, and the yellow blooms would wither in a few days anyway.

Noxscura also aided in cleaning the last of the hide from Tempest’s bones, but she had to leave them piled out front, too big for her to bury. Delphine had cultivated a roost of miniature wyverns in the temple’s rafters, purchased off a breeder from across the Maroon Sea, but they had apparently also met a violent end. Celeste gathered up most of their noxscura-cleaned bones in a box, but set the acorn-sized skulls all along the tops of the bookcases in the library. Their empty sockets stared down into the octagonal chamber, the room a little less lonely that way. The library had been Celeste’s favorite, and perhaps worse than finding it littered with dead wyverns had been the damage done to the books, but there were more pressing things to attend to than rebinding at the moment.

Pressing things like all the blood that stained the stone floors. She tried very hard to not dwell on to whom it may have belonged as she scrubbed on hands and knees, but it couldn’t have all been her sister’s. Thankfully, she got the arcane faucets in the temple to run with clean water, and she only blew up one bathing chamber in the process, so at least she could wash up after.

Then there was that divot and all those other bones. Another Valcordian service was taking in the orphaned, though there hadn’t been any children at the Briarwyke temple when Delphine took it over. Celeste found unsettled graves in the yard, so assumed the littlest corpses belonged there. The tedium of deciphering a femur from a humerus negated the somber thoughts of how small they all were, and those graves got flowers too, nicer ones as she ventured into the forest to find some powder blue chicory that have braved the cold to bloom.

A week went by in a sweaty, exhausting blur, but the temple was secluded and had no visitors, so she could take short breaks whenever the urge to have a small cry became overwhelming. Though the place was still an utter mess, and Celeste still hadn’t come to any real conclusions, the temple at least had fewer bodies strewn about it. Except Delphine’s.

Digging another plot and transporting the body was simple. It was just more work, another thing to be done, but when Celeste was deciding what she might choose for a marker, she finally broke down into an ugly fit of tears. It was an odd sobbing, full on and painful and a relief all at once.

She apologized to the mounded dirt for how long she had taken, for not being there when it had happened though she had no idea what she could have done, and for what a failure she had turned out to be. In the silence that came after, a chickadee sang. Its call rose into the still air, and Celeste listened for its mate’s answer, but none came.

Sniffling as she traipsed mud back into the temple over her clean floors, Celeste shook off the lingering noxscura from her limbs, and a shadow flashed through the main chamber overhead. She’d caught the tail ends of darting shadows all week, but this one was different. This one fluttered.

“Hello?” she called, her voice raw as it echoed into the rafters.

Amongst the dried out thorns and the crossing beams, a tiny head peaked out, and a croaky call answered. The head craned down on a long neck, and then wings unfurled as the wyvern took to the air. Celeste stuck out her arms as it dove for her recklessly, the fastest she’d ever seen any of the miniature ones move, and then with one hard flap, it slowed just enough to land talons-first in her hands.

The wyvern croaked again, and Celeste sniffled back. He was only as big as a squirrel but with none of the fluff, all sinewy limbs and thin skin pulled taut over bony wings.

“Where were you hiding?” she asked, bringing him close to look over for injury.

He had no wounds, silvery horns still intact and talons sharp, though he was a little too skinny, but then the same was often said of Celeste. His long tail wrapped around her wrist, and his knobby fingers gripped her thumb tightly. Wyverns were smart enough to follow commands, and Delphine’s sharp tone kept most of them in line, but there were always the odd few who didn’t work well with the others and were assigned solo tasks like delivering messages. Perhaps this one had been away when the fray that had decimated its brothers and sisters occurred.

“Are you the only one left?”

Cocking his head like a bird, she knew he could almost understand.

“Yeah, me too,” she whispered, scratching under his chin. “I bet you’re hungry, huh?”

At that, he croaked like his little brain could perfectly translate Key.

Celeste deposited the wyvern on the sofa and offered up the last piece of fruit from her pack. The creature took it in his winged arms and rolled onto his back, glomming on with all four limbs and his tail to munch away. Juice and flesh spattered all over like organs from a rent belly. “Oh, you’re cute, aren’t you?”

A garbled screech answered in what she assumed was the affirmative.

Delphine had discouraged naming the wyverns save for Tempest, but Celeste couldn’t help but note how this one and the fruit’s skin were nearly identical in color. “I think I’ll call you Plum,” she said, and he seemed agreeable enough, chirping between swallows.

With the last of her food gobbled up, Celeste squinted at the broken windows overhead. There was still enough daylight to make it into town for a meal, but she looked absolutely dreadful covered in dirt and sweat. Thankfully, Valcord’s followers allowed themselves the small decadence of rather nice bathing chambers, and she’d only accidentally blown up the smallest, so there were two rather fancy ones left. The one at the head of the acolyte’s hall was generous with a big tub that could arcanely be filled with hot water, and Celeste made quick work of scrubbing off the effort of the day.

Delphine hadn’t gotten rid of Celeste’s things despite always sniping about them being childish and frivolous. She was pleased to find the wardrobe in her old, private chamber still stuffed with pastel linen dresses and donned one of her favorites. Then she spent a little too long deciding whether she should tie her hair up or leave it down—one choice elongated her already too-tall form and the other invited comparisons to a drowned corpse. She finally split the difference and pulled back half of it with a ribbon, collected some coins from the sepulcher, and after dawdling until her stomach ached with hunger, marched herself through the gates and to the path into town.

Celeste hadn’t ever been allowed to visit Briarwyke during the years she occupied the temple with her sister. It was easier to keep the villagers away if they thought the temple was simply cursed. Delphine hired wanderers to do the most mundane tasks like gathering supplies, replacing them when she felt they’d worn out their usefulness. This had been mostly fine with Celeste though, knowing she wasn’t particularly good with…well, not with much at all, but especially not with people.

She’d found her way to the temple a week prior by sticking to the town’s outskirts and trekking through the woods, but if she wanted supplies, she’d have to take the main road southward. It wasn’t disused, but that only meant she might meet someone on it. The thought of running into a villager overtook the hunger in her belly, twisting itself into nausea.

Maybe she could take up foraging or hunting instead? Though learning how to string a bow would have been helpful before she ran out of food, it might still be easier than convincing the locals she belonged. Despite her efforts, it hadn’t worked in Clarriseau, and she really did belong there considering it was where she was born. But the only person on the island who had ever come close to liking her was her elderly downstairs neighbor, and he decidedly did not.

But she couldn’t hesitate much longer with the sun setting, so instead of turning tail and risking her life on whatever berries she might come across, she continued on and quietly practiced introductions under her breath so she wouldn’t stutter out the worst possible thing to whomever she came across first.

“Are you here to avenge your sister?”

Celeste saw the flitting shadow half an instant before she heard the voice, but it was not enough time to keep from yelping in surprise.

A woman stood ten paces ahead on the roadway, black trousers and black, sleeveless tunic covered in dagger-filled holsters. “Your sister,” she repeated, eyes unblinking from under a pinched, impatient brow. “You’re here to avenge her?”

“My sis—how do you, I mean…huh?” Well, that wasn’t how she meant to introduce herself at all.

“Don’t play dumb. The woman who used to haunt that old temple was cut down, and now you’ve shown up looking just like her.” She gave her a cursory glance up and down. “Sort of.”

Celeste clasped her hands and pressed her lips together. She did look like Delphine. Sort of. They shared the same silver eyes of a nox-touched and the same thick, black hair of a Delacroix, but Celeste had none of Delphine’s curves, all spindly limbs and bony hips and a humble chest. Her cheeks were thin, eyes too big for her head, and her skin had been described as ghost-like on more than three occasions directly to her face and probably many more behind her back.

The woman shifted, one of her dagger hilts catching the last rays of the sun. She was deeply tan with a short crop of dark hair all pushed forward to hang over one eye, a faint pall of fading, surprisingly infernal arcana around her.

“Oh, are you that shadow I’ve been seeing around the temple?”

Her sharp perception was blinked away, toned shoulders pulling back and mouth dropping open, but for only a moment. Then the challenge ran right back into her face, and though she was much shorter than Celeste, she was still imposing. “And if I am?”

“Um, I guess I’d just be happy to know it’s not an infernal hanging around. I’ve never been able to banish anything by myself before, and the really nasty ones can cause a lot of damage, but, uh, nevermind.” Celeste wrapped her arms around her middle. “I’m just on my way to get something to eat, not vengeance.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed again. “Well, the people in Briarwyke didn’t kill her. They have their own problems to deal with, and they don’t need another witch around. Though I would gather you’re…not that. Witches don’t normally cry so much.”

She shook her head because it was true: she wasn’t a witch regardless of how often she wept. “I’m not here to cause any trouble.”

Sucking her teeth, the woman took a step back. “We’ll see.” And like that, she was gone.

Celeste blinked up and down the forested path, but there was only that arcane shadow slipping into the trees. It took skill to disappear in the dark and even more to do it in the dying lights of the day, a skill she’d seen before, but it couldn’t be the same—it just couldn’t. She shivered, shaking off memories of the last time she’d encountered such magic, memories of abduction and being nothing more than a pawn in her sister’s games, and set herself toward the town again.

The sun was nearly set when she arrived. A boarded-up well marked the village center, surrounded by cobbles that had been worn into the dirt over many decades. The well’s roof was caving in on one side, and thorny vines that had dried out in the winter winds clung on stiffly. Those thorns sprawled at the edges of a well-traveled path circling the center, connecting the northern and southern-bound roads out of the village and an east-west road as well.

Thankfully, the circle was empty of villagers save for a lone chicken pecking at the cobbles. A chilly wind blew up from the south and whistled through the gnarled brambles. Four looming buildings, much larger than the sprinkling of darkened cottages she’d passed on her way in, marked the circle’s edges.

Just to her left stood the largest, a set of double doors and a hanging sign above that read Dew Drop Inn. Much too large for the town, empty stables ran along one side, but warm light poured from its windows. The building rose to a second story with many more windows that remained dark. A few of the shutters were hanging at sad angles, and a stack of shingles were piled in its side yard, presumably for the patches the roof needed, but the multiple, crooked chimneys puffed out big plumes of smoke, and Celeste could smell something delicious enough to give her the courage to approach.

When she tugged open one of the doors, a set of children sprinted by, a playful shriek cutting through the heady air of the tavern. Such a contrast to the grey outdoors, the interior glowed with warm, orange firelight. The space was large, a massive hearth along the back wall with a set of elk antlers hung up over it, and the murmuring of voices and a stringed instrument were layered over the fire’s crackling. Most of the tables were empty, though, and one of those chairs was knocked into by the sprinting children to clatter across the wooden floor.

“Pick it up!” barked a voice that made Celeste jump to attention and go straight for the chair. As she lifted it upright, the two came skidding up to her.

“She meant us,” said a little girl with a giggle, a tooth missing when she grinned, and the slightly older boy at her side tugged the chair from Celeste’s hands.

Celeste backed toward the door when the eyes in the tavern fell on her. Crickets, I should have worn my cloak.

“Oh, is this her now?” A woman in an apron carrying a set of mugs swept past, a ladle securing her auburn curls in a messy bundle. She set the steins down at one of the occupied tables and gave a wave with the linen she had tucked into a pocket. It took Celeste a long moment to realize she wasn’t being shooed out but beckoned toward the bar lining the side wall.

Happy to scurry away from the light by the door, she followed the direction eagerly. The woman swept behind the counter with a graceful ease, using her hip to knock a drawer shut as she went. There were six stools, but only one was occupied at the very end, and Celeste was surprised to see it was the woman from the roadway, a stein to her lips, dark eyes sharp, daggers still on full display.

“Um, hello,” Celeste began, taking a seat at the opposite end of the bar, a hitch to her voice as she tried to recall the things she had planned to say. “I was wondering if I, um…”

“Charlie, a meal,” the woman called over her shoulder as she pulled a clean stein from beneath the bar. “Ale will cost you coin, or you can have a cup of grog, but I’ll be honest: the grog is disgusting.”

“Oh, um, ale, I guess then?”

“Good choice.” She poured from the tap on a massive barrel fit into the wall and gestured with an elbow to the smaller woman sitting a few stools down. “Kori tells us you’ve taken up in the old Valcordian Temple, eh?”

“I’m not here for vengeance!” Celeste held up empty palms, eyes darting over to the shrewd woman.

The filled stein was set before her, foam sloshing but not spilling out. “There’s not much you can do to this place that hasn’t already been done in the past forty years.” When the woman smiled, she too was missing a tooth like the little girl, the skin around her eyes crinkling. Silvery strands hid amongst the auburn along her temple, highlighting the weariness in her features. She wiggled the fingers of her free hand.

Celeste pulled a gold from her skirt’s pocket and pushed it across the bar.

“I’ll start you a tab. What’s your name, honey?”

“Celeste,” came out quietly, the woman nodding as she tucked the coin away.

A girl of maybe thirteen came through the door behind the bar and delivered up a plate and a cagey stare as she called into the tavern, “Willow, Eliot, come help!” She backed through the door, holding it open until the other two children bound in, and all three were shut up in the kitchen. Celeste could still feel the girl’s dark, wary eyes even after the door was shut.

“Don’t mind Charlie, better she’s cold than comfortable—cold means she knows not to mess with you.” The woman slapped a spoon down beside the plate and settled in directly across from Celeste. “Now, tell me what you think, and don’t hold back.”

Before her sat some sort of baked square, golden and crispy atop a white sauce, a pile of buttered, wilted greens beside, and a huge hunk of bread. It smelled of chicken and peas, and when she sliced through the crispy square with her spoon, found it was soft in its middle. Under the woman’s expectant watch, she brought it to her mouth, and her eyes widened with the starchy, savory goodness. Celeste tried to say how delicious it was, but shoveled in another bite around a jumble of complimentary words.

“Halfrida has another happy belly!” The woman slapped the bar with both hands and made Celeste jump but didn’t deter her munching. “Now, you can come in here anytime to be fed from sunup to torch out, and all it will cost you is a little of your time. We can consider you square for this one since you tried to tidy the place,”—she snorted—“but the next meal comes with a side of chores.”

Celeste nodded, unable to stop chewing. She’d do a hundred chores for something so warm and delicious.

The keeper bustled away to tend to other patrons, and Celeste was left with her food. She ate quickly, taking in the wooden sign hanging up behind the bar, It Be Sundown Sumwear, and the other beside it of a broken sundial and slightly worse Key below that read, Ayl O’Cloq.

She was happy enough until she felt eyes on her. Kori, the woman had been called, was eating her own meal, and though she was staring, did not look like she wanted to be spoken to which was fine, really, since Celeste would probably only mess up whatever good will she’d curiously earned with the woman.

“Well, hello there.” A man inserted himself between the two, flashing Celeste a brilliant smile. He was devastatingly handsome, and from the way he draped himself over the bar, he was well aware of that fact. “It isn’t often we get newcomers, so I must ask,”—his brows rose high and his grin widened—“you wouldn’t happen to be my daughter, would you?”

Celeste shoved another spoonful into her mouth to avoid the awkward squeak she wanted to make. He wore lavishly colored clothing beneath a long, violet coat, and his good looks and well-groomed goatee distracted from his age, but he could have been her father, she supposed, in that regard. But his skin was as dark as a nutmeg seed as opposed to the milkiness of hers, his shoulder-length hair bounced in tight coils unlike how hers fell heavy and ragged, and his soft features were wide and round in contrast to the sharp points of her own. She swallowed and stuttered, “I’m from Clarriseau,” as if that explained it.

“Ah, well, I’ve journeyed all over, but have not made it out to that little isle, thank the gods.” His wider grin revealed a charming set of impressively straight teeth.

She understood—she would be relieved to not be her parent as well.

“Don’t even think about it, Longfury.” Halfrida came bustling back, throwing down her cleaning linen on the bartop and scowling at the man. “She’s much too young for you.”

“That’s only exactly what we were discussing, Miss Morn! You never know when your progeny might walk through the door on a quest to find you, so it’s best to head off the worry right away and ask.”

“That is not a common concern for most folk, even those who gallivant across the realm, so long as they keep it in their trousers!”

“Well, now, where’s the fun in that?” The man’s grin never faltered, and in one swift move, he pulled the lute strapped to his back over his shoulder and began to strum. “If I had a copper for every lass, I’d be as rich in coin as I am in—”

“Longfury!” Halfrida had only been rolling her eyes as she wiped down the bar, but when she cut him off, there was a burst of giggles from the kitchen door, and it swung in the wake of sprinting children. “I told you to keep it clean until the little ones are in bed.”

He only laughed as the three ran past, rising as he continued to strum, following at the children’s beckoning. The man broke into another song, but the lyrics were decidedly more chaste as he sang about a band of corsairs turned land travelers after their ship had been dragged to the depths of the Maroon Sea by the gods themselves.

Celeste chuckled until she felt Kori’s eyes on her again. She scooped another spoonful into her mouth and tried to look demure, but to her surprise, Kori actually nodded at her and went back to her own food.

“Don’t mind Gaspard Longfury.” Halfrida bit down on the man’s full name like testing a gold coin and finding out it was counterfeit. “The only threat he poses is getting one of his dirty, little songs buzzing in your ears like a mosquito when you’re trying to fall asleep. Oh, look at you, nearly finished, you must have been famished! But of course you are, you’re barely more than bones yourself. You all right up in that temple all by your lonesome?”

Celeste licked her spoon clean and nodded, heart speeding up.

“It’s come down with a bad case of being cursed, they say, since the priests abandoned it a few years back, not that it was a great loss to the rest of us—drunkards, both of them, brewed so much of their own ale we never even saw them in town! But if you say it’s fine, then it’s fine, nobody should be dictating where a woman ought or oughtn’t be anyway. Just remember, if you get lonely, this place has plenty of empty rooms and most of them don’t leak.” She wiped down a stein and threw Celeste a boastful grin. “Whole village is a bit leaky really, but that’s not a reason to give up on it. We beat a plague and we beat a werewolf infestation and we beat a corrupt mayor—well, ran him out of town actually, but I would have liked to beat him.”

Eyes wide, Celeste grabbed the hunk of bread left on her plate and pocketed it. “That sounds like a tough couple years.”

“That was just one season!” Halfrida laughed as if it were not nearly as tragic as it clearly was. “But I refuse to let the realm tell me to give up on this place. I’ll give up when I’m good and ready.”

The smile Halfrida gave Celeste then was full of a warm mischief. The woman had not mentioned anything about the temple’s previous occupant nor Celeste’s resemblance to her which was the best relief she could have hoped for, and probably pushed her luck to its limit. With gracious thank yous, she gave her spoon a last lick and made her way out of the Dew Drop Inn and into the darkness of newly fallen night.

There was a chill in the air, and Celeste shivered, chastising herself once again for forgetting her cloak. She rubbed skinny arms and looked on the circle in Briarwyke’s center. There was no one about which was how she preferred things, though the inn’s warmth and company had been surprisingly pleasant.

The two moons, Lo and Ero, hung a bit lower in the sky, bright dots amongst the sea of deepening blue. If she kept to the outskirts of the village, she couldn’t befoul anyone’s life or get in their way, and maybe a weekly meal in town wouldn’t be so bad.

If the people of Briarwyke didn’t need a witch, that was just fine—she didn’t intend to be one.

CHAPTER 3
THE GODS ARE IN THE DETAILS

I t was not considered an omen, dusk, though the timing could have been better for a Holy Knight of Valcord to meet his destiny. But as travel and plot would have it, the sky was alight with the orange glow of the sun’s last rays when Reeve rode into the outskirts of Briarwyke.

The village came into view over the ridge just as the sun slipped behind the trees. The forest’s pines were silhouetted against a darkening sky, and the boot-worn road was covered in a pall of blue with coming night. That was all right—Reeve liked blue. He was probably supposed to prefer yellow, like the crest on his surcoat of the winged, rising sun, but he had always been partial to the softness of the sky against the clouds and the way clusters of cornflowers dotted open fields.

Gently tugging his horse to a stop, Reeve dismounted and took Earylyte’s reins in hand. Briarwyke was still many paces off, the first farmhouse coming up on their left, but the village looked to be even smaller than he’d been told, and riding through would not be polite.

“So, we’ve made it back?”

Reeve sighed, grinning. “That we have.”

“And no running away this time?”

That made his grin falter. “I didn’t run. I wasn’t even here to begin with, not really.”

There was a sound, a thoughtful one, that came from his baldric, though the maker had neither mouth nor mind to produce it. “Well, you were an Abyss of a lot closer before.”

Reeve grunted and glared down at the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker. “I know, you keep reminding me.”

The golden gem on its pommel glinted back. “That is my job.”

“Your job is stabbing, Sid.” Reeve began toward the village, eyeing the road for others but finding no one. Beside him, Earlylyte followed, shaking out his blond mane and chuffing.

“Your job is stabbing,” the sword said. “My job is channeling your arcana. And a little persuasion when need be.”

Reeve wasn’t sure that was true. His job was much more complicated than stabbing, though stabbing was often a big part of it, usually the easiest part, and while he needed a sword to do it, he’d done so without a talking one for years before he found Sid.

“You have to admit, I have a point!”

Reeve groaned but couldn’t suppress his chuckle, a small crack forming on the anxious cast that had settled over his chest. There was a lone cricket chirping his arrival somewhere in the grasses but no one to greet. That was also all right: he knew he had reached his destination if not quite his destiny. Not yet.

He’d been stalwart to seek out that destiny the previous summer after many prayers to Valcord, climbing into the peaks of Ashrein Ridge to find the Denonfy Oracle and discovering he did indeed have a purpose he had yet to fulfill. But that purpose was…confusing.

The Denonfy Oracle was either brilliant or an idiot, everyone had their own stark opinion, but there was no doubt they were arcanely gifted by the gods in ways that were incomprehensible. Unfortunately, the prophecy they’d given to Reeve had also been incomprehensible.

That was by design, both because it made things interesting and the oracle found it amusing, but Reeve didn’t know that. What he did know was the Denonfy Oracle used very big words and overly complicated metaphors and probably a few too many parentheticals—though these would be set off by em dashes if someone were to write it all down. And write it down Reeve did because there was no way he would remember the prophecy—he couldn’t even recall it now.

When Reeve trudged back down the mountains in the heat of summer, he had passed right by Briarwyke unknowingly—which, to be fair, was how he did a number of things—then took the long way around the Gloomweald—because, also being fair, a haunted forest is unnerving even to a holy knight—and eventually returned to his home temple in Bendcrest on the southern border of Eiren.

There, Father Theodore helped him piece together what the prophecy actually meant. The oracle’s sesquipedalian words were broken down and made understandable, and with a map and a purpose, Reeve was set to once again leave the only home he had ever known.

But then chaos had broken out in Eirengaard, King Archibald was slain by a demon, and holy knights were called in from all over to help set things right. Reeve remained in Bendcrest to protect the temple and the people there in the wake of so many of his brothers and sisters being called to serve elsewhere, a calling which did inspire a bit of jealousy, though he swallowed that down.

Winter came, and with it harsh weather that made travel unsafe, but just as the oracle had said, by the time spring was bursting forth into Eiren, so would Reeve burst forth into his inevitability. There was perhaps an intended crassness in that bursting, but the holy knight tried to push the oracle’s friendly laughter from his mind.

“Once we’re in town, keep an eye out for the temple,” said Reeve, the murkiness of falling night deepening. Usually there was a pull in Reeve’s chest, an arcane tingle that told him where his god could be found, but the temple in Briarwyke had been desecrated years ago, so he couldn’t follow his magical inclination.

“Don’t really have eyes, buddy,” replied the sword.

“Well, your arcane senses then.” Reeve still had yet to understand how The Obsidian Widow Maker actually saw and spoke and thought for that matter, though he wasn’t pressed to find out—it was just one of those things, the sword had tried to explain, one of those magical things that wasn’t really supposed to make a lot of sense and simply be accepted because it worked. It often meant Sid fell into random slumbers, but Reeve wondered if those were just times when it was most convenient for the sword to forget he had consciousness.

Candlelight flickered in the window of the next cottage along the way. An older couple sat on its porch at the road’s edge. Their low tones dropped off when Reeve approached. “Good evening,” he called, waving over Earlylyte’s back.

The man lifted his chin slightly, his scowl unnerving but also could have just been how his face was—Father Theodore’s face was like that, always pulled down grimly, making one wonder if one had done something wrong even though one could only remember striving to be good, but Reeve knew no kinder man than the Valcordian Priest who had helped raise him.

An older woman sat beside the man, her fluffy grey brows lifting and the corner of her mouth twitching up in response to Reeve’s greeting. That was friendly enough for both of them. When Reeve noted the two were holding hands, he reasoned that the grumpy-looking villager was probably not so grumpy. At least, he assumed having the hand of someone to hold would make a person a lot less grumpy no matter how their face naturally fell.

“You sure you want to head to the temple tonight?” The road narrowed ahead as more buildings came into view, and Sid lowered his voice. People didn’t usually take well to talking swords, even after it was explained they weren’t cursed anymore.

“Of course,” said Reeve, squinting into the newly fallen dark down the dirt crossroad. There looked to be only residences in one direction and a pen filled with goats along the other.

“But you don’t know what you’ll find,” Sid cautioned as they continued along the main thoroughfare. “If this is your destiny, surely you won’t be able to overcome it in a night’s time, and after a full day of journeying? Seems like asking for trouble. Strike out with the dawn, I say, as Valcord intended.”

Reeve tipped his head. Sid was right—the sword’s job was persuading, and he was good at it, likely due to his ability to see into its wielder’s heart. “As Valcord intended,” he repeated with a nod.

The road took them past more scattered buildings, some clearly empty with doors broken on their hinges and smokeless chimneys, but others gave off the warm glow of indoor candlelight. No one else loitered, and unease crept its way into Reeve’s belly, but it wasn’t that he was frightened—holy knights weren’t afraid of the dark or abandoned buildings or even the low creaking of unfastened shutters caught in the wind. Holy knights were, however, arcanely perceptive, and there was something else about Briarwyke, something caught up in the thorny bushes that snaked over the buildings and through the unlit lampposts and even beneath the earth itself, that told Reeve to be cautious.

And so cautious he was, especially when he came upon Briarwyke’s center, stopping in the shadow of an old mill-like building now in disuse. The circle was laid out wide before him, but he couldn’t imagine it busy, even in the light of day. The modern way was to arcanely leach water directly into buildings making wells obsolete, but something about the village’s well fallen into disrepair gave him a chill. He surveyed the manor across the circle, one light on high up on its third story, the biggest of the homes he’d seen. Even the light in that window felt dark, as if a shroud had laid itself thickly over Briarwyke. The light in Reeve’s chest, the one connecting him with Valcord that he couldn’t see but consistently felt, suddenly dimmed as well.

Then a different brightness lit up the northeastern corner of the circle. A slender figure stepped out of a building there, and as the door closed at her back, the gentler glow of the building’s torch illuminated her features. She was a young woman with a long fall of hair as black as the night sky, a stark contrast to the fairness of her skin and the powdery blue dress she wore.

Reeve held Earlylyte still at the edge of the southern road. There was no one else around, and he didn’t want to startle her in the fallen dark, but even if he had not been naturally inclined to the kind of thoughtfulness that made a man hide in the shadows when women were around, he still would have found it difficult to move because…well, she sure was pretty.

Reeve swallowed. He didn’t always have a hard time around pretty girls. In fact, sometimes he didn’t even notice, Gable or Flint having to point out, and in lewd detail, just how attractive certain women were. But every so often Reeve was struck by the look of someone—especially when they smiled the way this one did as she gazed up at the moons—and he was abruptly reminded that he had gone twenty-six years without successfully wooing a woman.

Holy knights didn’t have a lot of time for romance, that’s what he told himself anyway. There was no requirement that they be celibate, not by Valcord’s teachings. Some did choose to be, and they made a whole thing of it. Many chose not to be, and they too made a whole thing of it, especially Flint who acted as though sex and prayer went hand-in-hand. And then there were the few holy knights who were on the fence. That was where Reeve sat, and it was rather uncomfortable.

Though there was that one time with the succubus, but he wasn’t entirely sure if that counted.

“That one’s pretty, huh?”

Reeve inhaled sharply over his teeth, but the woman was already headed up the northern road and didn’t notice him at all which was probably for the best. “I thought you didn’t have eyes,” he said with a relieved sigh, her skirt swishing around her calves as she went. Even in the dark he could see they were nice calves.

“Doesn’t mean I’m blind.” Sid laughed lowly in the throat he didn’t have. “And I’m only asking because I have no idea, I just know that you went all stiff.”

Reeve snapped his gaze downward, but only the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker was jutting up from his hip where it hung, and Reeve had inadvertently grabbed onto it, allowing the sword to see into his desires. He grunted and released it, heading for the inn she had just vacated. “You know, I think you’re right,” he said, avoiding the question but less skillfully than he thought. “One night of recuperation and then up with the sun to face destiny would be wisest.”

“That sounds like a good plan, buddy.”

CHAPTER 4
BED CHAMBERS AND BAD MAGIC

C eleste teetered on the threshold of Delphine’s bed chamber.

Well, the bed chamber that had belonged to Delphine.

Once a private meeting room for the priests of the temple on its upper floor, it had been modified heavily to suit her sister’s tastes. Velvety drapes hung over the stained-glass windows, a luxurious bed covered in dark furs filled up one wall, and on the other was a fireplace decorated with thick candles, a jagged crystal that hovered over a silver base, and the skull of an unidentifiable creature staring disapprovingly out over the room.

Maybe Celeste should have brought Plum with her for moral support, but the wyvern was having too good a time with the chunk of bread he’d been given for breakfast. The chamber was a place Celeste was rarely allowed, and the last time she’d been inside was to sever her sister’s enchantments and free Damien. The fear from that time filled her up all over again as she hugged fresh linens to her chest and crept into the room. The uninvited feeling didn’t dissipate, but it did compound with the presence of arcana.

Delphine didn’t need to keep noxscura on her person like Celeste, but she did hoard the stuff when it sought her out. Hidden pockets of dark arcana lingered in the bed chamber, and in Celeste’s company, it began to stir. Shadows flicked at the corners of her vision as she continued up to the bed, but she ignored them and set to stripping the linens. She made quick work of it, fitting fresh blankets on, and then tossed the old ones at the fireplace: maybe she would burn them later.

With the linens changed, she surveyed the bed once more, large enough for two to sleep sprawled out. When she pressed a hand to the fluffy furs, the mattress sprang right back instead of sagging. That would be much more comfortable than the one in the tiny acolyte’s chamber she stuffed herself into, but…but her cot was fine. There was another large chamber beside this one that she could use, currently Delphine’s old wardrobe, but that too was unnecessary. The room downstairs along the acolyte’s hall had served her well enough for the years she’d lived at the temple before, and it would continue to.

She stepped back from the bed and sighed, shaking out her hands in preparation for what she truly needed to do. “All right, you can come out,” she whispered.

Shadows rose from behind the curtains and baseboards in answer, noxscura looking to be collected and used. She tapped a nail on her locket, waking up what swirled inside, and then flicked it open, calling the dark arcana to her. So much stronger and faster than what had been forming the barrier outside the temple, her blood ran cold as she was surrounded. Celeste felt herself be lifted by the sudden presence of it curiously prodding and scratching at her limbs, digging its way down the neckline of her dress and up under her skirt.

She snapped the locket shut well before she captured it all, and the magic fled back into its hiding places. Flexing fingers to regain feeling, she snorted—that had been unpleasant, and she was suddenly thankful her own chamber had always been down the stairs and on the other side of the temple so she couldn’t hear whatever creative ways her sister had used such strong magic.

Needing fresh air, she turned to leave, but in the doorway stood a figure, tall and wide-shouldered, and her innards went right to jelly. For a moment, Celeste thought she’d accidentally conjured him out of the wanton noxscura since he was the most handsome man she had ever seen in the entirety of her twenty-six years, but then she realized that was impossible—if she could do something like that, a lot of things in her life would be different.

“Um, hello?”

At her greeting, he drew himself up from the hunched position he had taken, and, oh dear, he was very tall, and her face was getting very warm. “Hello, miss.”

Celeste’s throat went thick, and she tried to smile, but a mental vision of her own discomfortingly wide mouth grinning in the dark made her press her lips back together. Her gaze fell away from his too-attractive face, quickly taking in the width of his chest and trying not to imagine what was beneath the embroidered surcoat he wore, but then flicked right back up, away from the symbol there.

“Valcord,” she whispered, and her brain mimicked the mush her guts had yet to recover from.

The need to flee flooded her, but there was nowhere to go except the attached bathing chamber. A vision flashed in her mind of fisted hands and holy symbols, but before panic truly took her, she brought herself back with words she’d taken to repeating when her fear became too strong: I am not a child, and I am not trapped in a temple.

Well, actually, she was in a temple, and she was sort of trapped with him filling up that doorway, but it wasn’t the same, was it? She wasn’t as little as she had been then, though she also wasn’t much stronger. At least there were no angry priests giving brutal orders, but also missing was the protection of her sister.

Celeste dragged in a deep breath and pushed the panicky thoughts away. This was one of Valcord’s holy knights standing before her, and if a holy knight had wandered into a disused temple, he was probably looking for something or someone. Someone…dead? There had been a body covered in plate in the courtyard beside Tempest. “Oh, no, are you his friend?”

The man’s amber eyes went wider. “I am…Valcord’s knight.”

“Right, I can see because of the sun on your,”—she pointed meekly at his surcoat—“I meant the dead man, the one out front.”

“Dead man?”

Swallowing hard at the way his brow pinched, she tripped over her words as she went on, “Well, he’s not in the front courtyard anymore because I buried him out back, but I could show you his armor, it’s stacked up around here somewhere, and his sword’s stuck in his grave.” Messy as her words were, a curtain of peace draped itself over the nerves she’d nearly surrendered to. That wasn’t the worst explanation she’d ever given, and surely he would be astute enough to understand—

“Do not attempt to threaten me with the fate of a brother-in-arms,” he said with a darkness his face didn’t carry.

Threaten? Celeste blinked and lifted her hands. “No, no. He was already dead when—”

“Stay back, foul witch.” The sound of metal rang out into the chamber.

“Foul?” Celeste’s gaze darted downward, but her dress was free of dirt for once. She covertly lifted a shoulder and took a sniff, but she smelled fine too. Oh, no—did she only think she smelled fine and was actually foul? But she bathed every night!

A flash of metal sliced through those questions and her tranquil shroud, the sword leveled at her much more worrisome than phantom odors. It was a huge thing, the blade shimmering and black, though that gave her pause. The man wore Valcord’s symbol and called himself a knight, he had to be a divine one, but she had only seen obsidian steel on the darkest of weapons.

Celeste bit her lip. “Oh, crickets.”

Then a veil of golden light lay itself atop the blade, the man’s hands pulsing in kind. Celeste had been privy to her fair share of arcana, and never once had the divine sort been good. Well, it was good, theoretically, just not for someone like her.

“Wait!” she squeaked, hands up a little higher. Her locket thunked impatiently at her chest, but the knight did indeed wait. She stuttered, not exactly sure what to do but confusion was an excellent distraction from fear, then blurted out, “Why?”

He stared back as if she were dumb. “You were casting the darkest of arcana and have desecrated the house of my god.”

“Oh, you saw that? Well, I didn’t—” Celeste grit her teeth. He wasn’t really wrong, but he wasn’t really right either. “Well, I didn’t mean to.”

And then he swung.

Celeste shrieked and jumped backward from the spell as it splintered the air betwixt them. Her hand instinctively called to the noxscura hidden in the chamber that had been itching to attack since it sensed the divine knight. Shadows enveloped the magic flung from the tip of his weapon, smothering it, but then the noxscura fizzled out too.

She sucked in a sharp breath. Celeste was taller than most women, but she was slight—if his spell had landed, it would have done quite a bit of damage. “Please, this isn’t what you think!” As she gestured to emphasize her impulsive words, more noxscura unintentionally answered, striking from both sides of the room.

The knight slashed through one shadow and then the next, more luxerna pulsing along his blade. He was both big and quick, a dangerous combination, but at least he wasn’t getting hurt.

“I didn’t mean to do that!” she called, waving her hands once again as yet another shadow swept out from behind a dresser.

He ducked and spun deeper into the room as the darkness solidified and sliced through the place he had been standing. The floorboard cracked, and he snorted, eyeing her.

“Or that!” Celeste clasped her hands, vision tunneling with the pressing noxscura, the strength of it overwhelming.

Clearly, he did not believe her. “Witch,” he shouted, rising with his sword leveled at her once again, “your reign of terror ends this day.”

Divine arcana pulsed into his blade, and he readied himself, making it clear he was going to stab her and not at all in the way she’d prefer.

Celeste stumbled backward, knocking into the bed and clambering atop it. The knight attacked, the obsidian blade arcing through the air, golden light spinning around it. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t meant to kill her.

Oh, crickets, he was actually trying to kill her.

This time, she had to command the noxscura with a more aggressive purpose, and luckily there was so much of it in the room that it didn’t matter if her attempt was messy and ill-aimed. It swept between the two and knocked the knight backward.

He disappeared behind the shadow, and there was a crash and a groan. Celeste plastered herself against the black-stained wood of the headboard, balancing on the bed’s overstuffed pillows. “Are you all right?”

He was splayed on the ground when the shadows cleared, the chest of drawers splintered all around him. A hand rubbed the back of his head as he sat up, the other still firmly around his hilt. “Yeah, I think so,” he muttered, then glanced up from under a brown curl that had fallen into his face. “You’re a powerful witch.”

Celeste turned her hands over, smoke swirling about them. “It must be the temple, or maybe this room? But I’m not a—ah!”

The knight had sprung up onto the footboard, charging forward valiantly. He closed in on her, black steel glinting, and she crumpled to her knees, throwing her arms overhead and blindly calling up noxscura with the flail.

No sword dropped down to cleave her in two, and over her own panicked breaths, she heard the knight grunt. Celeste peeked up between her arms to see him struggling against her arcana, black tendrils winding about the blade and pulling taut in either direction, suspending it just above her head.

With a more deliberate swish of her wrist, the noxscura shifted, and the sword was yanked right from his grasp and flung across the room with a heavy clatter. But Celeste had no moment to celebrate as the knight toppled, still trying to wield a blade that was no longer there, and landed atop her.

Celeste was crushed beneath his heavy body into the downy pillows. She immediately lamented being enamored by how big he was.

“So sorry, miss.” His voice lost all of the edge he’d injected into it when calling her unkind things. He pushed up, and she yelped again, his hand trapping her hair and pulling. “Oh, apologies—ah!” He jerked his hand away and then immediately flopped onto her again.

Celeste could not suck in a full breath, his form too heavy, but she would perhaps not have remembered to breathe anyway when he more carefully placed his hands on either side of her and pushed himself up again. Hovering so closely, she could see the depth to the amber of his eyes, his pupils like dark stars against a sky burning with the profound warmth of a new day’s sun. His broad, straight nose led to a mouth quirking with mumbled apologies, and a faint shadow of stubble covered his square jaw looking uncommonly soft. She could test that theory by nuzzling against his cheek, and it would have been easy with his face inches from hers.

This was Celeste’s type: classically handsome and completely unobtainable. It was an attraction she would have never shared with Delphine to avoid the mockery. Despite how well this man matched her fantasies, though, he was a holy knight, and that meant she should have been running. But he was calling her miss again, and his voice had gone soft, and was that a dimple in his scruffy cheek? She sighed, his unfair features holding her to the spot better than even his body could.

Then his brow narrowed, and he shifted swiftly, grabbing her by the upper arms. Celeste gasped, stiffening. With the intensity of the noxscura hovering in the room, she could really do some damage, so she balled fists at her sides to be sure she didn’t accidentally blast him in two. That would have been very messy atop her, and his face was just too pretty to go lobbing off his head.

But he was squeezing her rather tightly, and that inspired petrifying memories of much worse. She whimpered and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” he said for maybe the fifth time, loosening but not letting go.

Celeste peeked open an eye again, his weight no longer crushing her, but she still found it hard to breathe. A holy knight had never apologized for hurting her before, let alone frightening her. “What are you planning to do to me?”

“I have been sent to this temple to vanquish the evil within,” he said with the conviction of a zealot, but then his eyes flicked across the room to where his sword had been thrown, losing all their intensity. “But I’ve never vanquished evil without a weapon. And never…lady evil.”

That was, perhaps, a slight relief. “Well, while I’ve got you, er,”—she glanced down at his fingers holding her just above the elbows with a grip from which she could almost escape—“while you’ve got me, maybe you could let me explain?” It had never worked before, explaining, but she had also never come to this kind of stalemate in the midst of being attacked.

“Oh, well?” He sat back, straddling her. “I suppose that wouldn’t hurt.”

“Don’t let the witch worm into your mind!” A muffled voice called unseen from somewhere in the room.

His features flared with a hateful sharpness then, and when Celeste gasped pathetically at his tightening grip, he did not relent like before. “None of your dark manipulation,” he spat down at her. “The temple must be cleansed and reclaimed.”

A searing pain smoldered against her skin under his palms, divine magic singeing into her flesh. Not this, not again.

Noxscura leapt to her aid when her fingers unfurled. It wrapped around his body like chains as she shrieked, and it ripped him backward. Alarm replaced the lethal shroud over his features as he was restrained, and she scrambled right off the bed’s edge.

The man tried to thrash, but the noxscura had him bound, many tendrils of it wrapped tightly across his chest, his arms, and his legs, leaving him trapped on his knees on the bed. He could only maneuver slightly to face her as she got to her feet and backed away.

Celeste kept her hands up, arcana dancing at her fingertips. It strained against her will, wanting again to lash out, to squeeze, to kill. She shook her head at an errant shadow as she looked for the second voice’s owner, but only the two appeared inside the chamber.

“Who was that?” she asked raggedly, the panic of such familiar pain erupting within her. “Who else is here?”

“My sword,” he grunted, a hand wiggling at his side in the direction the weapon had been thrown.

Celeste craned her neck to see the obsidian steel wedged against the far wall. Strange, she thought, that the same rare metal had been listed in Delphine’s journal and then suddenly showed up at the temple. The noxscura had unraveled from around it, and she had seen enough cursed weapons to know the glint of the gem in its pommel was arcane. “That looks like Ukara Grave's work.”

“She knows Ukara?” the voice said, clearly coming from the sword. “Oh, buddy, you’ve got your work cut out for you with this one.”

“Just barely,” Celeste huffed. “I got stuck listening to her at Yvlcon one year, and she showed me about a hundred sketches of her wares. It took half the night, and I only got away when I pretended to have an allergic reaction to shellfish.”

“She’s been to Yvlcon,” the sword said. “She is truly villainous!”

“That wasn’t the part you were supposed to pay attention to.” She stomped a foot, and the man cried out as the arcane chains tightened abruptly.

“Sorry!” It was Celeste’s turn to apologize, but she was getting a little sick of feeling guilty for defending herself. “Listen, um, sir, you have things all wrong. I’m not—”

“Release me, foul witch!”

“I’m not a witch!” The room darkened as noxscura rose from every crevice, plumes of shadows pressing in, and the man’s face blanched under the horrid eclipse. “Oh, stop that,” she hissed, wiping the excessive darkness away, and the shadows darted back to their corners. “I just had a sort of accident a long time ago, and now I can do these witchy things.”

“You’ve still desecrated the Temple of Valcord, run off the priests and driven out divinity.”

“Well, no, see that’s the thing—my sister did most of that stuff.”

The man settled then, eyeing her. “And you?”

Celeste bit her lip under his gaze. He remained quiet and still, giving her the opportunity she had requested to explain. The temple was already in bad shape, no longer serving the village when they arrived, but that might not have been a very good excuse. Delphine had killed the two priests, in fact she had delighted in it, and Celeste merely cleaned up the mess, but she had stood by and watched. “Well, I only did what I was told.”

He growled—actually growled—and a divine light pulsed from beneath the tendrils of noxscura straining to hold him.

Celeste flicked her fingers through the air and doused his spell, surprised she had not needed to call in reinforcements from her locket. The noxscura in the room was more than enough to contain the divine mage, but then, the same bed chamber had held a mage in it once before.

She groaned in the back of her throat and shook her head. “Please, you must understand. I know this looks bad—”

“It is bad,” he spat, and the angry bend to his brow made her tremble. She liked him much more when he held his features softly and called her miss.

“Well, yes, maybe,” she snapped back, “but nothing bad is happening here anymore. My sister’s dead, and I’ve been trying to clean up this place. Now, I’d like to let you go—”

“And I would like to run you through.”

Celeste gasped, fingers flexing, and with them the chains tightened around the knight once more, this time turning his face red. She didn’t like how tempting it was to leave him like that, and felt into the arcana for a different solution.

There was so much noxscura, and it was well-trained—all that arcana could do something truly terrible. She shivered, sticking out her tongue. It had been some time since she’d been surrounded by such dark magic, but this…this was what Delphine had likely been looking for when she first sought out the place, the secret she’d never shared with Celeste. It was quite a special noxscura, but what was it doing in an Empyrean god’s temple?

She shook her head, no time to consider any of that. “I’m going to unbind you,” she said carefully, letting the magic loosen from around him. “But I need you to promise you won’t attack me when I do, all right?”

“I can make no such promise,” he said, lifting his chin.

“Why not?”

He again looked at her as if the answer were patently obvious. “I am a man of my word, and I cannot make a vow I do not intend to keep.”

“Holy knights,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “Overzealous, all of you.”

“Devoted,” he corrected. “My cause, my destiny, is to cleanse the evil from this place, to reclaim it in the name of Valcord, and to do so, I must destroy, well…you.”

Her heart hitched at the look in his eyes. Moments earlier she had thought them so beautiful, and now they were filled with only vitriol. Vitriol for her.

Celeste may have been a hateful, disgusting thing—over that she had no power—but she was not evil.

She flexed her fingers once more and then pulled her hands gently through the air, feeling for the charms that had been laid into the chamber before, the ones she had to learn so long ago to sever them. Their remnants remained, and though she did not have power over this man like her sister had over the chamber’s previous captive, the holy knight had no command of noxscura so would make for a much-easier-to-detain guest.

With the reawakening of such well-crafted enchantments, she watched the noxscura once again fill the chamber, this time with purpose. The knight demanded to know what she was doing, but he would see soon enough. Dark arcana enveloped the windows, the ceiling, and formed a smoky barrier that ran from wall to wall. Then, when she was sure, she released the binds from around his body.

He blinked in surprise, eyeing her through the light haze for a long moment. Then he sprang from the bed, took up his sword, and charged, weapon brandished and glowing.

Celeste screamed, cowering beside the door and shielding herself with her arms. There was a jolt of magic, and the knight was thrown backward once again, away from Celeste and into the bed. At least he landed on something soft this time, but he didn’t move.

Gritting her teeth, Celeste eased herself off the wall and up to the noxscura barrier she’d reconstructed from Delphine’s original spell. It bowed under her touch, but it was still in perfect condition, like he hadn’t even tapped it.

The man groaned as he sat up much slower than the times before.

“I wouldn’t try that again,” she offered with a sigh. “Not if you want to stay conscious.”

“You cannot keep me here, witch.”

She scrunched up her nose—she was really getting sick of that. “Well, actually, it looks like I can, not that I want to, but you’re forcing my hand.” She held up a palm to him, and noxscura danced across it.

The knight grunted, but he did not stand again.

“Now, can we please talk?” Celeste stared at him, and he stared back.

His fingers tightened around his sword’s hilt, and the coldness did not run away from his face. “There is nothing to say, witch.” As if he knew just how much it hurt her, he repeated the word with a gut-wrenching twist that made tears spring to her eyes.

Celeste turned on her heel, and she stormed out of the chamber. Taking the stairs so quickly she could barely keep balance, she made it back to the main hall before the first tear fell, but then they came all at once, burning her throat and eyes. Blindly, she leaned against the archway into the worship space-turned…whatever it was now. A lair, she supposed, since she’d imprisoned a Holy Knight of Valcord there with the darkest arcana she’d ever encountered.

Oh, gods, what have I done?

Plum came soaring through the temple, and she wiped away the tears, reaching out to catch him. “He doesn’t understand,” she whispered to the wyvern, and the creature nuzzled his scaley head against her thumb.

But the knight would understand, eventually, because he had to. She would make him see she wasn’t as evil as he thought. And if he didn’t? Celeste blinked out into the desolation of the temple around her. Well, that wasn’t really an option if he ever wanted to be free again.

CHAPTER 5
ARCANE INTOLERANCE

C eleste hadn’t gotten a very good night’s sleep. It probably had something to do with all the banging going on upstairs, but even once the knight wore himself out trying fruitlessly to break free of the arcane cell she’d made, her conscience wouldn’t let her rest. She had never imprisoned someone before, not of her own volition anyway, and it felt…bad.

But she was determined to make things right.

The noxscura told her it still had him trapped, so Celeste sent Plum to watch the knight from the hall—not that the wyvern could do anything, but it did make her feel a little better about leaving both of them alone—and she hurried off into town with a plan.

Halfway to Briarwyke, Celeste hustled around a bend and came upon the woman who could disappear into the shadows, Kori she’d been called. She was carrying a massive basket and immediately turned to eye Celeste which made both of them stop short.

Crickets, what good luck—if anyone could possibly understand…

“Good morning,” she called, giving her a wave.

“No.” Kori turned away for Briarwyke proper as if Celeste were not even there.

Under almost any other circumstance, Celeste would have shrunk herself into the shadows and wept at that—in fact, she wouldn’t have even ventured the greeting at all for fear of eliciting that exact response—but today had started out so horribly that she only hurried along to catch up because it absolutely had to improve. “Having a bad morning? So am I.”

The short woman glanced sideways at her, lips already twisted into a frown. That couldn’t be the best answer she was going to get.

“Can we please speak for a moment, Kori?”

She clicked her tongue and glanced back to the road, Briarwyke still a few minutes southward. “I suppose I don’t have much of a choice.”

Relieved, Celeste made a thoughtful noise, and glanced into her basket. It was filled with newly harvested goods, lots of leafy greens and white shoots that smelled of onion. “Are you a gardener?” With all of her weaponry, Kori didn’t really seem like the type, but Celeste liked the idea of the woman using a dagger as a spade instead of its actual, stabby intent.

“What do you want?” she grumbled, not an answer.

“I think I need your help.”

Kori snorted. “Oh, that sucks for you since you’re not going to get it.”

Celeste’s steps slowed, but then she resteeled herself and caught up again. “Please, I just need a bit of advice.”

“I do advice even less than I do help. Go ask Halfrida instead.”

Celeste thought of the woman with the kind eyes and the firm voice who ran the inn and tavern, then shook her head. “No, it has to be you. You don’t seem like you’ll judge me too much for what I did.”

Kori’s gaze sharpened from under her fall of dark hair, interest sparked.

Celeste took a deep breath. “So, I’m not sure exactly how to—”

“Time’s up.”

“I have a man locked up in the temple!”

The woman came to an abrupt halt, interest aflame.

“There was this knight, he just showed up, and then he attacked me out of nowhere. He wouldn’t listen to anything I said, he just kept calling me a witch, and I’m not a witch. I didn’t mean to imprison him, but it just sort of happened, and now I don’t know what to do with him.”

“The holy knight that came into the village a day ago?” Kori started off again, but she was smirking.

“You met him?” Celeste’s stomach flipped over.

“I saw him. His horse is at the Dew Drop. Big guy, huge sword, kinda dumb looking?”

She wasn’t sure about the dumb-looking part. “Um, most of those things, I guess. He serves Valcord and came to the temple to vanquish the evil within,”—this she said in a low, mocking tone—“which apparently he thinks is me. I was only trying to protect myself, but he wouldn’t stop with all the slashing and the divine spells,”—and this she punctuated with a wobbly pull of her arm through the air—“and the next thing I knew, I had him locked up in a bed chamber.”

“Well, if you don’t already know what to do with a man you’ve got tied to your bed, then I’m not sure me telling you is going to help.”

“Not my bed, and he’s not even tied up, just sort of…stuck.” Imprisoned would have been the proper word, but it made Celeste shiver to even think it. Holy knight or not, surely he would be bothered by being locked up in a temple.

“So what do you need help with then? Killing him? I’m supposed to try and do less of that, but for the right price—”

“Crickets, no!” Celeste clapped a hand over her chest, and the locket vibrated against her palm. “I just need to convince him that I’m not evil—because I’m not—and I think I convinced you, so if you tell me how I did that, maybe I can do it again.”

Kori readjusted her basket with a hefty sigh. “You didn’t convince me, I’m just smart enough to know, which is clearly more than can be said for big, dumb men who run blindly into temples swinging their swords around.” They passed a cluster of houses, and Kori was walking even faster, bringing them close to the edge of the village’s circle. “So, if all he can see when he looks at you is some great evil, then you might just have to be that great evil and turn him into a sex thrall or whatever it is your sister used to do. I’ve known men like him, it’s probably all he’s good for anyway.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Celeste groaned, even though it was really only the thrall part that sounded bad—granted it was a very big bad. She peered across the center of town and down the road that led southward. A few others were milling about in the early morning but still too far off to hear their tasteless conversation. She would have preferred keeping to the shadows, but Kori was on a mission. “And that kind of magic won’t work on him anyway: he’s a holy man,” she said, lowering her voice and running fingers through her hair to pull in front of her face. “Holy people are the worst.”

Kori came to a stop then. “Oh, right, he is, isn’t he?” She curled her lip and looked thoughtful for once. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but not all of them are that bad.”

Apparently, Kori had never been beaten by a priest in the name of Osurehm for accidentally spilling her gruel. Celeste only made a noncommittal noise.

“There are plenty of them who use their god to hurt, but there are a few who use their god to help too. Figure out which one he is, and then use that against him.”

Celeste whined—she didn’t want to use anything against anyone, but clearly she wasn’t getting much more out of the woman as she was already walking away. “Will you also tell me where I can get some provisions in trade for coin?”

“Baylen takes coin at the Horn of Plenty, down East Road.” She pointed as she went the opposite direction toward the Dew Drop Inn.

Celeste looked from the unfamiliar road back to where the woman was headed, guts roiling at the thought of being on her own in the daylight. Then there was a flash of bright movement from the stables attached to the Dew Drop, and she saw the brilliantly blond tail of a horse.

“Wait!” Celeste dug a gold out of her pocket and hurried up to Kori. “That’s got to be the knight’s horse, right? Can you give this to Halfrida for his care?”

“The horse that belongs to the man who thinks you’re evil and is trying to kill you?”

Celeste shrugged. “The horse isn’t trying to kill me. Yet.”

Kori plucked the coin from her fingers and turned for the inn, leaving her standing at the head of the circle alone. An older woman and two children were coming around the other side of the boarded-up well, and a pair of men strode up the southern way, chatting loudly about a future hunting excursion. Celeste scurried in the direction she’d been shown with her head down.

Of the four pathways that spread off of the center of Briarwyke, East Road was shortest. The sun wasn’t quite high enough to shine directly overhead, and Celeste was relieved to step into the shadows of the buildings, but then heard an ominous crunch underfoot.

A sprinkling of glass shards littered the road along its entire length. She maneuvered carefully around them and up to the Horn of Plenty. The awning over the door of faded red canvas sagged slightly, its edges frayed. Above, a rope ran from the second-story balcony to the roof of the hovel across the way, and drying tunics hung from it. One dripped, filling a puddle in the road’s center.

The general store’s door was propped open, and the inside was brighter than the shadowed spot beneath the awning, a large crystal fixed to the wall casting an arcane glow over the space. It was a well-organized mess, shelves set up in clean rows, a stand filled with staves, a case lined with bowls and jars, a rack covered in colorful cloaks. And there was an open cupboard dedicated to just what she needed, lots of bagged, preserved foodstuffs.

“Morning,” called a sleepy voice from the back of the shop, and Celeste bent around one of the shelves to see a man—or rather, a cow—standing behind the counter.

Well, no, he wasn’t a cow, only…he was, a little. Celeste had met minotaurs, big burly, beast-like creatures that could rend you in half with their horns or kick you into the next moon with their hooves, and though she supposed this man was maybe also one, he was nowhere near as beefy.

“Baylen?” she asked carefully, taking a few steps down a narrow row toward the counter.

“That’d be me,” he said, the lazy lilt to his voice soothing and his gentle grin nestled into a fine beard. Most minotaurs had snout-like noses, but this man’s was more subtly flat. Less subtle were his horns, one curving up out of russet hair into a sharp point and the other snapped off at its middle. His ears too were unique, long and rounded as they stuck out from either side of his head. One flicked as her eyes roved over his features, and she realized she was staring, perhaps rudely.

“I was hoping I could purchase some goods.” She patted the empty sack she’d brought with her. “Kori says you take coin?”

“One of the few that do.”

“I need milled flour, something sweet like honey or syrup, eggs, butter, and some spices, if you have them.”

“You’re asking for a lot, but you came to the right place.” Baylen made an unhurried gesture as he stood from behind the counter and sauntered out on hooves, his thin tail swishing behind, a tuft of brown fur at its end. Probably more than two heads taller than her, he walked with a slight hunch, one Celeste was familiar using herself to hide her height.

He brought her to the shelf she’d spied and bagged up what she requested. Celeste was impressed with the fineness of the flour and the array of spices he had, picking out a few sweet and woodsy-smelling ones as well as a bag of peppery tea leaves that made her chest go warm just from the scent. A few scoops of dried beans and a foreign, salted meat were added to her order, and she found a good jar with a tight seal that would allow her to grow her own leavening. Baylen didn’t sell eggs as he explained everyone in town had their own chickens, but he was kind enough to give her half a dozen of his own.

Baylen filled up her satchel with neatly tied, parchment-wrapped packages. She told him she didn’t need such care, but he insisted—it was his favorite part of running a shop, seeing a tidy bag all packed up.

While he worked, she sniffed the last of his unmarked spice jars. There was a sharp tickle at her nose, and she pulled back with a gasp. “Dragon root from the Accursed Wastes? How did you get that?”

“Oh, I can get just about anything.” He winked, long lashes moving slowly. “I have connections.”

“Anything? Even chocolate from Nicosa?”

He nodded, and his ears flicked.

Celeste shook her head with a grin as he must have been joking. Nicosian chocolate was considered a delicacy even in Clarriseau, and her home island was just about as far north as merchants ever took it since the taste hadn’t caught on in the mainland realm.

“So, you’re familiar with the Accursed Wastes?”

She bit her lip, afraid to have given that away. “Only the most awful parts of it.”

“Hmm. Been to a lot of places?” He leaned on the counter as he closed her satchel. “And none of ‘em are quite right, I reckon?”

“I can never stay,” she heard herself saying, and then looked about frantically for a distraction. “Do you have a broom?”

Baylen cocked a brow. “A couple actually.”

“Could I borrow one? There are shards of glass on the road, and they should be cleaned up before someone gets hurt.”

“Oh, that.” He passed her bag across the counter with a chuckle. “The lampposts keep bursting. I’d clean them up myself, but Geezer says don’t touch the evidence yet—he’s doing research. Nice of you to offer though.”

“Research?”

“The lights are arcane, and they’ve been fine for years under Geezer’s watch, but then they just started exploding, say…about a week ago? Every night a group of them just goes wild, like the magic gets too big for the container it’s kept in.”

A week ago was when Celeste showed up, but she wasn’t going to accidentally admit that too. “Geezer,” she said carefully, hoping it was an endearment, “is a mage?”

Baylen gestured to the shop’s front door. “Sure is. Lives in that little shack just across the way. Keeps a lot of the village running. Well, best he can, considering the conditions and considering his condition.”

The knot in Celeste’s stomach went tighter. She thanked the minotaur man and hurried off with her heavy pack.

Outside, she wandered out of sight of the Horn of Plenty’s front window and found one of the lampposts. Shards of glass littered the ground, catching the midday sun. No one was about, so Celeste ran a finger over her locket and called out the tiniest bit of arcana to feel for what happened. Identification was difficult enough for her, but the magic left there was so messy, she was unsurprised it had led to broken glass.

She quickly stuffed her senses away and hustled to the resident dairy, a house at the south of town with a field full of goats. At least there were no cows, a slight relief as she’d asked Baylen, of all people, where she could acquire milk.

The amicable woman who ran the dairy traded jokes about how Celeste couldn’t possibly eat all of the cheese and butter she had just purchased, and if she did, where would she put it on her wiry frame? Celeste could only titter back, smart enough to not say she had a huge, probably very hungry man locked up in the place she was returning to.

Heavily laden with provisions and worry, she hurried back, and this time she noted the lampposts along the roads, covered in dried-out, thorny vines and each of them shattered.

CHAPTER 6
HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO

R eeve lay on his back, arms and legs sprawled, and stared up at the vaguely hazy ceiling. Trapped. He was well and good trapped—not to mention on the verge of concussed from all the crashing into the floor he’d been doing—and he had exhausted nearly all of his options trying to be free of that vile witch’s lair.

“How did this happen?” His throat was dry, eyes weary, and he wasn’t exactly sure when the sun had risen which was not at all like him, but the curtains in the sordid chamber that had become his prison were covering most of the stained-glass windows, and dark arcana refused to allow him to draw them back.

“Well, she overpowered you.”

Reeve rolled his head against the floorboards to glance over at the Obsidian Widow Maker lying beside him. “She was quite strong.” It sounded even more miserable than he’d imagined when he thought it.

“So are you,” said the sword. “Strong enough to choke someone whose neck is about as thick as my hilt.”

Reeve groaned. He could barely grab her, let alone choke her. Even if she was a witch, though she had insisted intensely otherwise, she was still a woman. And a pretty one at that. Though he knew he should be an equal opportunity slayer of evil, it did not feel entirely…right. “Maybe I should have listened to what she had to say.”

“Do you remember the last time you listened to a villain monologue?”

Reeve blew out a long breath, and the tip of one of his curls bounced against his brow. Baron Whitmore had been exceptionally deceitful—he wasn’t even really a baron. “Of course I remember. I got stabbed in the thigh, and if not for Flint, I’d be dead.” On Reeve’s other side lay his whittling knife, which thankfully could not speak, as far as he knew, and an old fish bone he’d been working on carving into a griffin. It wasn’t turning out anything like the one he’d seen back home in Bendcrest, and he was considering giving up on it. “It’s just…I might have figured a way out of here if I’d listened to her.”

“Is that really why you wanted to let that witch blather on?”

Reeve swallowed. No, no, of course not—he hadn’t thought that far ahead at all. He wanted to listen to her because he’d liked the way her voice sounded, and he’d liked the way her lips moved, and he’d liked staring down at her laid out on the linens with all that black hair cascading around her lovely face. And above all of that, she just didn’t feel evil. Reeve scrunched up his nose. “Yes?”

Sid made a noise that said he didn’t entirely believe him, and since the sword was arcanely imbued with the ability to read its wielder’s desires, it shouldn’t have believed him at all.

“Okay, you’re right,” he admitted, the heft of the lie—any lie—too much. “I just didn’t want to hurt her.”

“She would have killed you,” Sid huffed, and Reeve muttered that he understood into his hands. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt, buddy.”

Well, it was a little late for that. He’d been thrown into multiple pieces of furniture, nearly eviscerated by noxscura, and now his divine arcana was being strangled by the barrier all around him.

And she had done all of that. Maybe it didn’t matter how things felt, it only mattered how things were.

“Fine, I guess I’ll kill her first,” he moaned, thinking of the prophecy and Valcord. That was clearly the answer—a little prayer almost always solved everything—but he was too embarrassed by his predicament to let Valcord know exactly what had become of him, a holy knight, imprisoned by a witch, in his own temple. Valcord probably already knew, he was a god after all, but Reeve liked to pretend that he was polite enough not to peek in unless he was called.

“Knock knock.”

Reeve sat up straight, the twinge in his back crying out, but he ignored it. There she stood, his most contemptible enemy, the bane of his existence, the epitome of evil, and she was carrying…cakes?

The smell that filled the chamber was divine, and if there was one thing Reeve thought he understood, it was divinity. Steam rose from the plate of baked goods balanced atop her hand as she entered the bed chamber. In the other, she held out a saucer, a teacup rattling against it, and more steam swirled over the liquid inside. Strapped over her shoulder was a hefty pack, and her slow movement and tensely held features made him fear both scalding handfuls were one wrong move from being splattered across the floor.

On her shoulder rode that little wyvern, the one who had stared at him from the safety of the hall for half the day. Its tail wrapped around her neck, and its clawed feet dug into her soft-looking skin. A familiar, surely, but such a brazen choice—at least a cat could be explained away.

The witch tried to mask her true self otherwise, wearing that frilly, blue dress again, the one she’d been wearing the first night he’d come into Briarwyke and laid eyes on her. If only he had sensed it then, if only the rest of the villagers knew what evil walked amongst them, if only he had thought to strike out…he probably still wouldn’t have.

The witch carefully lowered herself to her knees and then set the plate and saucer at the edge of the barrier, managing to only spill a few drops of tea. Her eyes, massive and grey, flicked to him, and then her hand moved quickly over the noxscura, and she pushed the plate and cup through to the other side. “For you,” she said in that quiet voice he liked, the one she probably used for exactly the purpose of knocking holy men off their guard.

“I do not want your poison-riddled illusions,” he said, colder than even he expected of himself. And then his stomach betrayed him with a growl.

She tipped her head and opened the satchel strapped over her chest, pulling out a wedge of cheese. “Well, I didn’t make this, so maybe you’ll want it instead.” She pushed it through the barrier too, then went back to her bag. The array of things that followed made the pack seem bottomless: a loaf of bread, salted meat, a bottle filled with something dark, another filled with something white, and a stack of books. She lined it all up and pushed it through, the satchel finally empty.

“Is that…milk?”

She nodded. “There’s wine too from the sepulcher, and the tea which I can make more of, but milk makes baby cows into big cows, and you’re big, so I just figured…” The woman sat back onto her feet, eyes going wide and cheeks going pink as she stared at the floor. “That didn’t come out how I meant it, and that’s goat’s milk anyway.”

Reeve looked down at himself. Well, she was right, relatively, but how in the realm did she know he preferred milk to everything else? He clicked his tongue at her mysterious witchery. “Why are you keeping me imprisoned here?”

“So you don’t kill me. But if you’ve changed your mind about that, I’d be happy to let you out.”

Reeve grunted and shook his head, eyes wandering over to the tray of cakes again. They were stacked artfully, golden on top and looking soft and fluffy, honey dripping down their edges.

“They’re good,” she said, an awkward grin playing at her lips. “I ate one and so did Plum, and we’re both still alive.”

Reeve only crossed his arms over his chest.

She sighed and shifted onto her hip. They both sat on the floor of the chamber on opposing sides of the barrier she’d made, the air thick with floundering silence and the increasingly enticing smell of cake and tea. Maybe just one would be fine—Reeve had a very strong constitution and could probably survive a little poisoning.

“Oh, I saw your horse! They’re taking care of him at the inn.”

“If you disturb one hair of Earlylyte’s coat…”

She shook her head and lifted her hands, those same hands that had cast against him. “No, no, I just saw him, didn’t touch him. If you want, I can try to coax him to come here, or maybe I could ask Kori to do that. Well, not all the way up here—I don’t think horses are good with stairs—but to the courtyard, and, well, I guess you wouldn’t be able to see him because of the windows.” She glanced around the room and frowned at its dismal light. “Maybe I should have brought you some candles and a firestarter. You wouldn’t purposefully burn down a temple to your god, would you?”

“Leave my horse where he is,” said Reeve, drawing his legs in to cross before him, studying her harder. She was doing quite a good job of playacting innocence, but he would not be tricked.

When her eyes fell back to his, she swallowed so hard he saw the lump travel down her throat—her delicate, fair throat, the one Sid had suggested strangling. Reeve grimaced at the idea, and the witch looked quickly away, fingers curling around the hem of her dress. “So, what’s your name?” she asked.

It wasn’t safe to give one’s name to every entity, especially beautiful ones, but since he was already captured, he did it anyway. “Reeve.”

“Reeve…” She waited for the rest.

He gnawed his cheek. “Dawn.”

“Reeve Dawn,” she repeated, and it was too nice sounding on her tongue. “And you’re a knight of the god of dawn? Well, that’s coincidental.” Her lips flickered up into an uneasy smile, and he wasn’t sure if she were being sarcastic or not—he often had a hard time with that. It took a specific variety of unkindness to poke fun at someone for being orphaned though, and she didn’t seem like the type. “This is Plum,” she said, shrugging a shoulder as the wyvern croaked, “and I’m Celeste Delacroix.”

His thoughts of her being cruel and needling him fell away with the lilt of her own name. It was such a gentle name that it seemed its owner couldn’t be anything but. He watched her long fingers trail the lace of her dress, a flash of the noxscura she’d used surrounding them in his mind, but then she pet the wyvern with those same fingers using a tenderness he was sure evil didn’t have. “Your name—are you from Clarriseau?”

She nodded, her smile growing, and it really was nice. “Have you been?”

Reeve shook his head. “I have a brother, Gable, from the island.”

“I didn’t spend much of my life there, but it’s where I was born,” she admitted quickly. “Where are you from?”

Reeve opened his mouth to tell her of Bendcrest and the temple there, but the clearing of a non-existent throat made him clamp his lips back shut.

“Your sword can speak,” she said carefully, eyeing Sid. There was no shrewdness in her gaze, just a curiosity that made her lean nearer the barrier.

Unsure if he should confirm or not, he just watched her as she assessed the weapon. Her face had fallen back into its natural frown, and a little guilt swam in his stomach for allowing that. But then, she’d tried to kill him, and she was still keeping him, and neither of those things were acceptable no matter how well wrapped up they were in nice packaging.

“The tea is getting cold,” she said, voice lower.

The steam had gone, and the honey on the cakes was solidifying as well. Reeve grunted, his eyes passing over everything she had pushed through to him. It would have been simpler to just let him out instead. Simpler but deadly.

He reached forward, watching her from the corner of his eye, and her back straightened, fingers going tight on her dress’s hem. When he picked up one of the books, her shoulders sagged.

The tome felt strangely loose in his hands, and he thought, surely, all of his suspicions were confirmed: she had tampered with everything, and it was a trap. Reeve let the book dangle at arm’s length, pages flipping open, and like a dagger had once pierced the spine to ruin it, half of the pages littered the floor.

Well, if it was a trap, it was a bad one.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t pay too much attention to which books I grabbed,” she said, taking a generous breath and then going on with speed, “I’m not supposed to leave the room when I have things baking in the oven because I’m not very good with the arcana in it. I burnt half a kitchen down once, and we had to leave the manor Delphine had taken over because it drew too much attention. She work so hard to get rid of the man who lived there too, and she was so angry that—well, nevermind. Do you want a different book?”

Reeve only eyed her harder. “No,” he said flatly, not wanting to give her another chance to harm him. “Why would you even offer?”

“So you won’t be bored? I thought it might be…nice?”

He dropped the book into a pile atop its pages and leaned forward. “Why are you being nice to me?”

She bent away from the barrier, eyes wider. “Well, because…because I am nice?”

Reeve scoffed. “Nice people do not have to say they are nice.”

The witch called Celeste remained very still for a time, and Reeve watched her, watched her hands for more dark magic, watched her face for a break in its deceit, but she only drew her lips into a pout. “Apparently, they do have to say it to you.”

She got to her feet then, the wyvern taking off, and she swept out of the room in a blur of blue and black behind the flying creature. The sound of her slippers quickly fell away down the hall beyond where he could see.

Reeve held his breath, listening, and then sighed, pressing a hand to his chest. Why did that feel so bad?

Then the footsteps came back, and her head poked through the doorway, hair in her face. “I’m sorry for shouting, that didn’t prove my point, but still.” And just as quickly, she disappeared again.

“You didn’t shout,” said Reeve, but she was already gone.

He stared into the silent hall for a long while, but then his growling stomach brought him out of his thoughtless gawk. Sid said something as he reached for the plate and saucer, but he ignored the sword. Sid wasn’t always right, and Reeve wasn’t always wrong, and it was worth risking this time.

The cake was fluffy and delicious, just as he knew it would be. It tasted like nothing he’d ever had before and yet like being young and running around the sisters’ feet and begging for a crumb of whatever they were baking.

He waited for something dastardly to happen, his throat to swell, his bowels to churn, his vision to blur, but only his stomach responded with an urging for him to eat more. If that were the curse she’d put on the cakes, then that was fine with him.

Witches, he had to assume, did much more dastardly things than make cake.

CHAPTER 7
ARCANELIGHTING, AN INTIMATE LOOK AT DOUBTING ONE’S PERCEPTION

C eleste had made tea cakes once before in an attempt to befriend. It hadn’t really worked then either, but it was still worth a try. At least Plum seemed to enjoy ripping his apart and scarfing it down.

But the shopping and the baking and even the upset at the knight’s stubbornness hadn’t distracted her from the prodding thought that something wasn’t quite right. Not just the temple, not just the man she had locked up, and not just the boost to her manipulation of noxscura, but an unseen something happening in Briarwyke.

After pacing around the graveyard, asking the stones what to do and getting little in the way of an answer, Celeste went back to the sepulcher and found the small urn she opened the night she arrived. It was still empty, only a vague sense of arcana left about its lid, nothing to really be worried about, but what was the harm in checking?

Well, the harm was that the thing she was afraid of would be said aloud, and then it would be true, but she supposed, if it were true, it would be true regardless of whether it was said or not which was as frustrating as it was, well…true.

She traveled southbound into the village for the second time that day, likely about to set some personal record for most social interactions in one sun, and told herself that she was probably making a mountain out of a minikin goblin den. The small, ceramic jar bumped along in her satchel innocently enough, but it would quell her nerves to be a little more sure, and wouldn’t it be nice to not worry about one of the mounting concerns meddling with her mind?

Of course it would, but few are ever that lucky, especially less than a quarter of the way through their tale.

The whole of East Road had been filled with shops at one time, but the windows were mostly dark and empty now, signs gone illegible without upkeep, and only the Horn of Plenty remained in good order. The hovel across the way was a single-storied cabin at the road’s end. A dingy little door with a worn knob sat back under a shadowed archway directly beneath the clothesline. The laundry had been taken in, but the puddle remained, so either Baylen or the man he called Geezer was probably still around.

Celeste knocked. No one answered.

She fiddled with her bag’s strap and then with her locket, eyes darting to Baylen’s shop. She didn’t want to involve anyone else, but the warm glow of the arcane lamp in the window told her the minotaur was inside.

There was a click, and Celeste swung around to see the door had popped open, but no eye gazed out at her from the dark crack beyond. She called a nearly inaudible, “Hello?” into the nothingness, and when she got no reply, used her foot to ease open the door.

There was an entry beyond, she could feel it more than see it due to the lack of light, as narrow as the door and as deep as perhaps two people pushed up against one another, one of them barrel-chested and the other smaller but willing to climb and—oh, crickets, she really shouldn’t be thinking about that, but it had been difficult after sitting across from that knight and looking at his unfairly handsome face all over again.

A sound came from deeper in the darkness, and there was light too, but it was odd and filmy. Anxiety and manners forgotten, Celeste squinted and stepped inside.

The whole realm shifted beneath her. It was only for a fragment of a moment, and perhaps it hadn’t happened at all, but after, Celeste found herself standing in a room absolutely cluttered to its brim—a brim that was, as far as she could suddenly see, much wider than it had appeared from the outside.

Where Baylen’s shop had been an organized mess, this was just a mess mess. There was only a bit of floor to walk on that wound between stacks of books, crates of jars, and a table overflowing with parchment being written on by a quill moving of its own volition.

Somewhere something boiled, she could hear the popping of bubbles and catch its smell, slightly burnt but earthy too with a hint of the arcane. There were chimes tinkling, the sound that had drawn Celeste in, clearer now and moving in the windless room unseen. She called out another greeting to no answer, inching along the pathway, boards creaking underfoot.

Celeste jumped when a face came into view. Well, it wasn’t a face really, just a mask, but it was meant to look like a face in a way. It sat atop a full suit of armor, pressed between a shelf filled with scrolls and another with incense that would have been offensive if more of the lids were set askew.

Carefully, she walked up to the suit. One of the gauntlets was missing as well as a shin guard, so she could see it was empty. Its owner would be taller than her, perhaps the height of that knight she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. Another step brought her only an inch away, and she peered up at its not-face, her fingers tight around her satchel’s strap.

It gave off no warmth, not like how an actual man might. But Sir Reeve Dawn didn’t wear armor, not like this, made of metal and covering every inch of him. She was glad for that, the not-being-covered part, then bit her lip. Holy knights who were gifted arcanely often forwent quite a bit of protection in order to be able to channel their magic through their weapons: they needed their skin to make contact.

His skin had made contact with hers to do just that. She gently touched her upper arm where the divine spell had bitten in. Her flesh was still tender, and though it was only a little bruised, that was too much because a little bruising almost always led to a lot, and sometimes, when one was unduly forgiving, broken bones.

“I thought I heard someone come in.”

Celeste spun, knocking into the suit and making it clatter against itself. She scurried away and into the desk, upsetting the well just as the quill dipped into it, sloshing black ink everywhere.

Stuttering out apologies, her hands instinctively went to her locket, and she flicked out noxscura to contain the mess before it could get much worse. Then, when she realized she had just cast dark magic in front of a stranger, she fell still.

Heartbeat in her throat, she blinked into the mess of a room and nearly missed him as he was as embellished as his surroundings. Wearing a scarlet robe with violet trim, he swept up to the desk, pale eyes wide. His belt jangled with an assortment of hanging objects, a bottle of some green liquid, a single sheathed dagger, a pouch filled to bursting. Thick but well-manicured eyebrows writhed with inquisition over a wrinkled forehead, silvery hair swept back and receding generously from either temple.

“Oh, now, I haven’t seen that in a very long time.”

Celeste scrambled to will the ink back into the well. The liquid blackness blended with her own smoky version, and the mess only grew, ink squelching out from her clumsy handling of the noxscura. “Oh, crickets,” she hissed as she went for the inkwell and tried to manually scoop it back in.

But then the old man was across the desk from her, bent over and staring sharply at the magic, watching in utter awe. That, of course, only made things worse, her noxscura fumbling with more eyes on it, and Celeste had to grab a blank piece of parchment to sop up the ink before it reached the desk’s edge. “Please help,” she whispered.

“Hmm? Oh!” The old man blinked like he’d forgotten how to speak then straightened. With a spin of his hand, all of the desk’s parchment began to swirl in a frenzy that Celeste swiftly backed away from, and then the tornado of pages was sucked down into an open drawer, ink and all disappearing into the much too small space, and it promptly snapped shut. She had never seen arcana like that, as if it had no source. Magic needed fire or water or shadows—something—but this? It wasn’t even the air coming to aid him, the arcana was just there.

Left holding the well, Celeste could only stare at the place the mess had been, her own noxscura hovering there and looking a little confused. The end of its tendrils swiveled to point at the stranger, bobbing up and down like it was taking his form in, and the old man reached out a tentative finger.

Before a much bigger disaster could occur, Celeste swiped her free hand over her locket, and the noxscura was drawn swiftly back, hidden away as it should be. Then she carefully set the well on the stained desk and gazed up at the mage. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone?” He chuckled, a brightness sparkling in his pale eyes. “I’m probably the best secret keeper in this whole village—been doing it from myself for years! Do we have an appointment?”

She shook her head tightly.

“Well, you ought to follow me anyway, in case you forgot too.” He turned, gesturing with an age-spotted hand.

Celeste glanced back at the way she’d come, but the door was no longer there. With no other choice, she followed, pulling her elbows in and holding her satchel tightly to avoid upsetting anything else. She opened her mouth to ask after what he had meant about secrets and forgetting, but then she stepped through an archway at the room’s back, and the question was swept away along with her breath.

Her hair whipped her in the face, wind tearing past her. Blinded, she batted at the strands to gape out over the bridge on which she stood. Narrow and surrounded with a thick, wooden railing, the thing appeared sturdy, but they were so high up that her knees buckled. Mistiness swirled below, and mountain peaks dotted the blue-grey landscape, tiny specks of birds circling far off in the never-ending sky.

“Come, come, it’s safe.” Her host had already passed over the bridge and was disappearing through another arch, darkness beyond it and so out of place against the clouds. “I use this room to help remember. It’s decided to be Ashrein Ridge for now, but it’s only an illusion. I think, anyway.”

Celeste skittered over the bridge and let out a relieved sigh at the warmth that took her when she passed through the darkness at its end. The next chamber was dull, if only in comparison. Two fireplaces roared to life across from one another, one blue and one green, but neither gave her pause. Colored fire was nothing compared to teetering hundreds of feet in the air, illusively or otherwise.

“Wh-what was that?”

“Hmm? Oh, like I said, it’s supposed to help me remember.”

“Remember what?”

He shrugged. “I forget, but I think maybe everything. Now, we’re not already acquainted, correct? None of the locals have hair black as midnight like yours, and most of them are pretty firmly in here by now.” He tapped the balding part of his temple.

When she shook her head, a proud smile crawled up his face. He stood in the room’s center, a surprisingly clear space, then snapped. Two big, fluffy chairs popped into existence, surrounded by a smattering of little tables covered in doilies, a set of arcane lamps, and a lumpy, teal rug.

“But you are here, and we don’t have an appointment, nor do we know one another, so—”

He was interrupted by a terrible, muffled squawk, and when he pulled the corner of the rug back, a mess of scarlet feathers took to the air.

“Zak!” A bird swept by, much larger than any of those in the forest, its long tail trailing behind as it maneuvered itself right out of the room. “Haven’t seen him for half a moon. Anyway, what did you say your name was?”

“Celeste,” she said, “but I didn’t say.”

“You don’t have to mollycoddle me—the one thing I can always remember is that I forget.” He chuckled and dropped into one of the seats. “You can call me Geezer, everybody else does, and it’s better than a name because it’s easy to remember too.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mister Geezer.”

“Just Geezer—don’t complicate it with any misters.” He waved a hand through the air and a cup popped into existence before his fingers with a clink. “Now, I assume you’re here because of that, uh, you know back there?”

Celeste shook her head. She did not want to talk about noxscura. “Actually, I was just wondering if you’d figured out whatever broke the lights on East Road?”

“Oh, probably the same thing that blew up the lamps on North Road and South Road too.”

Briarwyke sure was clever with their street names.

“Which was?”

“Arcana. Not entirely convinced of what kind yet.”

And Geezer sure was clever with his answers.

She took a tentative seat across from him, and a cup appeared before her as it had Geezer. She scrambled but caught it before it dropped into her lap. Thoughtlessly, she brought the tea to her mouth and then nearly choked—that was not tea.

Her reflection sloshed in the amber liquid inside the cup. The fiery taste stabbed at her mind, waking a memory of being offered something similar by her sister many, many years ago. She’d refused it after a sniff, but then was forced to drink the entire cup when teasing inevitably turned to the threat of a much worse alternative. At least Delphine and her henchmen, Tarquin included, were amused by her agony.

Tarquin—she hadn’t thought about him in a long time.

Celeste wiped at her mouth and stared hard into the liquid, so much stronger than any ale and deeply amber. Amber like that knight’s eyes.

She swiftly set the cup aside and pulled open her satchel’s flap. The urn was much lighter now that it was empty, but it did feel more eminent, as if laden with answers for which she didn’t yet have questions. She held it out, and the old man leaned in close, pale eyes wide. “I know it’s a very, very long shot, but is there any possibility that whatever broke those lights could have come out of this jar?”

Geezer made a variety of noises as he tipped his head this way and that. He stood and hovered over it, made a great effort to bend down and peer upward, and just as he was trying to stick his head between her outstretched arms to assess the other side, she offered it up for him to hold.

“Oh, that is easier,” he mumbled, taking the urn and peering beneath the lid, then doing a more thorough inspection all over. “This,” he finally said, cross-eyed as he looked up at her, “is an apotrope.”

Celeste blinked. She had heard the word before, but it had been a very long time. “You mean it’s a…a ward?”

“In a way. You see, this ceramic is crafted from clay sourced in the Everdarque, hardened in a kiln warmed by brimstone, and it’s been blessed many times over by divine magic. It’s extraordinarily powerful and rare, and while it does indeed ward against evil, rather than keeping something out, it keeps it in.”

And I opened the damn thing up. Celeste scooted to the edge of her seat. “You can tell all that by touching it?”

“Yes,” he said gravely then flipped it over. “And also from this little writing on the bottom here.” Script had been carved around its base so fancifully it simply looked like decoration.

“I guess I should have looked closer.”

“It also says you can wash it with abrasive soaps, and it won’t lose its color, so there’s that.” Geezer flipped the jar back over, holding the lid in one hand and the vessel in the other. “Apotropes require a large expenditure of power to be created because they’re meant to contain beings that absorb arcana. I’ve seen a few in my day, or I think I have, but this one’s really something. Seems like it was meant to hold a great evil.” His eyes narrowed on her. “Are you absolutely sure we didn’t have an appointment? One we might have set up, say, three or four years ago?”

Celeste blinked, thrown, then tried nodding and shaking her head at the same time. “No, no we’ve never spoken or met or anything.”

“Hmm, well, all right.” He weighed the two pieces of the jar in his hands then glanced upward, and Celeste followed his gaze along crammed bookshelves that scaled the walls. “I bet I have writings about apotropes and the things they’re meant to hold somewhere. Maybe not in here though, this library only goes through alchemy.”

“So, the thing that was in this—if there was a thing—I could use this jar to trap it again?”

“Well, are you a priestess?”

Celeste shook her head.

“This apotrope works with divine arcana. It’s even got some Ouranic written here…” He pulled a scroll of parchment and a reed from an inner pocket of his robe and copied it out. Celeste would never be able to translate it herself, she’d always been terrible at the language of the infernal let alone that of the divine. “That’ll take some time for me to puzzle out, but it seems this was crafted for a specific entity that someone really wanted locked away. Knowing its name would help, and the kind of thing it is, but if you want to utilize the apotrope, a strong, holy source would be best to wield it.”

Oh, she knew of a strong, holy source, all right, but it would probably want to stuff her in the urn instead. “So, I need good arcana,” she said, distress lacing her voice. “And I’ve only got the bad kind.”

Geezer handed the urn back. “I don’t see why you couldn’t try—no arcana is really bad or good, in the end. It’s all just neutral.”

Celeste ran her fingers over the lid as she sat the jar in her lap. She wanted to believe that, but experience had taught her otherwise. After a moment, she stuffed it back into her bag. “Thank you,” she said, “and, um, would you please not tell anyone about the…”

“The what, dear?”

Celeste opened her mouth then snapped it back shut. Perhaps he had actually forgotten about the noxscura or was just being gracious, but either way, she would take it. “Thank you for your time, Geezer, but I should probably get going now,” she said as sweetly as she could.

The elderly mage popped out of the chair, spry and alert, waving around the parchment he’d written on. “Of course! I have lots of research to do!”

Hoping he would actually forget all of it the moment she left, she let him walk her to a drawn curtain even though it wasn’t the way they’d come in. When he pushed it back, it revealed a door, a symbol carved into the wood like a leaf torn in two. He made a thoughtful sound, like he hadn’t expected that, and then pulled the door open. On the other side was a vast forest, humid and lushly verdant, filled with wide-trunked trees and hanging vines.

“Wildwood?” the mage murmured, and then there was a squawk as a flurry of red feathers swept into the room just as Geezer shut the forest away. “Huh, well, that’s not the exit to East Road.”

The bird promptly splatted into the door and tumbled to the ground.

Celeste jumped back as the creature righted itself with a grumbly noise, glaring up at the two of them. Its black, hooked beak was a bit off center, but she wasn’t sure if it was naturally offset or a result of the crash. It stomped a taloned foot and took off again, leaving behind a scarlet feather.

“Zak’s so clumsy,” Geezer chuckled, then went to another curtain and opened the door behind it. On the other side, Celeste recognized Briarwyke in the darkness of late evening, though she didn’t see Baylen’s shop. “Well, West Road’s just as good as East, I suppose.”

When Celeste stepped out and turned to thank him a last time, Geezer and his hovel weren’t there. Instead, she stood at the side entrance of the garden attached to the largest house in Briarwyke, a massive manor that took up a quarter of the center circle. The garden was surrounded by a brick fence covered in more of those brambles found all over the village, but entwined with the dried-out thorns were little shoots of green as if to say spring was nearing.

She scurried away from the stranger’s property to stand beneath a lamppost on the only road that still had them intact. Squinting out at the circle, she could see the Dew Drop Inn’s torch lit across the way, but no one was about, likely all enjoying something delicious Halfrida had cooked up for dinner. Even the windows of the manor she’d been let out beside were darkened. Maybe she could go into the tavern and ask a few questions, but she was already worn from so many human interactions that day, and then she shuddered at the thought of the villagers finding out their latest trouble was actually her doing.

Geezer might have been forgetful, or he might have been kind, but he wouldn’t keep her secret forever, not if he couldn’t fix what was plaguing Briarwyke. But she could fix it—at least, he said she might be able to, and it was worth trying.

Celeste checked the road in both directions, and though she saw no one in the gloom of late evening, didn’t like being so exposed under the light. She flicked a finger over her locket, calling up a shadow of noxscura to surround the globe atop the pole. Deeper darkness closed in, and though that wouldn’t normally give her chills, a shiver ran through Celeste as if fingers were climbing down the nape of her neck.

“If it isn’t my savior.”

“Crickets!” Celeste straightened, the closeness of the voice holding her to the spot.

A chuckle ran back up her spine, trailing behind it another chill. It was the voice from the sepulcher, the one from the urn that she carried in her bag, but she hadn’t expected to encounter it so soon and with Geezer’s words still in her mind, telling her that the jar was crafted to hold a great evil. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” it said into her ear.

False protest fluttered in her throat along with her thrashing heart, but words did not find their way out of her mouth.

“What are you up to, wandering the streets in the dark and plucking out the lights? Trying to impress me?”

“I think…I’m looking for you,” she finally managed to say.

“Of course you are.” A touch brushed over her shoulders, and the voice left one of her ears for the other. “And playing with arcana, I see.” The noxscura she’d set around the globe swirled faster, light breaking through for a moment, and in it she saw a hand extending from over her shoulder, the fingers long and clawed. It didn’t have a hand before, she thought, it didn’t have shape at all. But now…

“Did you destroy the other ones?” she asked, staring hard at where the hand had been even after the noxscura was allowed to fall back into place and plunge them into darkness once again.

“Contrary to what some may think, I’m not really interested in destruction. I only took what already belonged to me once upon a time, and I have nothing but pure intentions for the arcana I’ve gathered.”

Celeste’s fingers hovered over her locket, her other hand at the flap to her satchel. Together, perhaps, she could use noxscura and the urn to pull whatever this thing was back in. But she had to be sure because she couldn’t allow herself to imprison another being unjustly. “What do you mean?”

“All of this,”—a shadow flickered beside her—“this town and this magic, it was mine once. I foolishly shared my gifts, and then my own power was turned against me.”

“That sounds…unkind.”

“It was,” he hissed in her ear. “And now I am owed it back.”

That too sounded unkind.

“Delphine wasn’t the one who trapped you, was she? Did you lie to me about that?”

“I never said she did, only that she kept me like a prize, like a thing that belonged to her.” In the silence of the calming breath he took after his biting words, Celeste felt the caress of something like a hand on her shoulder. “Tell me, to whom do you belong?”

Once, she would have said her sister too, and before that, the Osurehm priests, but now? It was much too frightening to think about, let alone to say, that she was on her own. The presence at her back closed in, and she stiffened. She was meant to be asking the questions, not him. “What are you called?”

More rumbling laughter rolled up her spine. “Oh, now, that is a good answer, pet.”

Celeste’s face reddened in the dark, and her throat tightened around the words that would clarify that wasn’t what she meant.

“You may call me the name I was given: Syphon.”

“Syphon,” she repeated. So, he had a name, and he had shared it which meant it was either a lie, or it had no power. Somehow, both options gave her the courage to turn around.

There was a form there, but it wasn’t complete. If she’d reached out, her hand would have gone right through him.

“I think we have a few things to sort out, Syphon,” she said, hating how meek her words were as she flipped open her satchel. “It might be a good idea if you get back inside the jar, and then we can talk.”

The form didn’t have a face, but there was an expression in the darkness about its head, something she was so familiar with, she could identify it without features: disappointment. “You don’t want me to do that,” it said, shadows shifting where its mouth would be as it spoke. “I can offer you so much more outside of that prison than I ever could trapped within. You do want more, don’t you?”

Celeste swallowed, heartbeat speeding up.

The form came closer, and shadowy arcana shifted around her, but it was not like noxscura. It was, instead, the faint trace of magic, the potential of a spell, the remnants of arcana gone past. It prodded at her, reading her, and she should have stopped it, but she was too terrified to move. “No, not more, not like that sister of yours. You want…something different.” Syphon’s voice was in her ear again, and her scant vision darkened further.

“I don’t want to be like this,” she admitted, the words escaping without her permission.

The entity chuckled again. “I would say I’m offended, our powers being so deliciously similar, but I could show you what you really need, and then I could give you everything.”

What Celeste needed at that moment was to see him. She stroked her thumb over her locket, calling back the noxscura from the arcane globe over her head. The light inside was revealed, and it fell on the shadow. For a too brief moment, there was the ghost of someone tall and masculine, but light always doused shadows, and the form was just as quickly burnt away.

The pull in Celeste’s chest surprised her—he was gone, and she hadn’t wanted that—and then there was a crash.

Celeste cried out, sharpness digging into her arm. She cowered away from the shattering globe as a second and third lamppost burst along West Road, dousing her in a deeper darkness. She clamped a hand over her arm but pulled it away just as quickly as a second shock of pain bit into her fingers. Staggering through the circle, she went toward the only light left, the tavern’s torch. Arm illuminated, blood ran from where slivers of glass had embedded themselves in her bicep.

A set of hands grabbed her uninjured arm before she could pick out the glass. Celeste would have torn herself away if not for the fierceness of Kori’s scowl thrust into her face. “That’s too deep. Don’t touch it.”

She was guided inside the tavern, lively that evening and filled with music and voices. Glad for Kori’s tight hold as she was beginning to feel wobbly, she was dragged behind the bar, through the kitchen, and into a storeroom where she was dumped atop a crate.

Her vision tunneled, an awful lot of blood running down her arm, speckling her dress, dripping on the floor. She’d been covered in blood like this once before, spitting up crimson all down her front. She was sure she would die then, she’d even wished for death, but it had unmercifully not come.

There were voices, and others had packed into the cramped storeroom. Halfrida with her big, red curls and a basin of hot water, Kori still scowling but in a concerned way, and a third woman, a beautiful woman, the most gorgeous woman she’d ever seen—a goddess? Maybe death finally was coming for her after all.

But then she saw the point to her ears and realized it was only an elf, and that elf was tending to her wound along with Halfrida’s help. Kori’s harsh voice explained to the others that Celeste had been unlucky to be caught under the lamppost when it blew. If she had actually seen, there was no way she would have thought Celeste innocent, but the short woman’s tone was confident, and no one questioned Celeste’s motive, they just bustled around her and worried and…and what was this? What was happening?

Well, glass was being extracted from her arm—that Celeste could focus on because it hurt. She was no stranger to pain, and it was much easier to understand the way her skin felt rather than other people’s intentions. Another feeling followed, warm and wet as a linen was pressed to the gash, and yet another as deft, elven fingers cast arcana along her limb.

The sounds in the storeroom went fuzzy, but there were bandages being applied to her arm, hands touching her gently, and then a voice. It asked her once, then twice, and finally a third time, in patient and soothing tones, how she was feeling.

“I…I don’t…” She spied the droplets of blood on the floor again. “I’m sorry I made such a mess. Please, I’ll clean it up.” She reached a weak hand for one of the linens, but Kori stopped her.

“Quit that,” the short woman snapped. “Just sit still and let Ima’riel help you.”

“Taters!” called another much higher-pitched voice. The littlest girl from the tavern came sprinting into the room carrying a massive bowl in both hands. She crashed into Celeste’s knees and shoved a spoon into Celeste’s mouth. “Eat!”

Potato mash was apparently just the thing Celeste needed to drag her out of the panic and confusion. “Thank you,” she mumbled around the mouthful, taking in the worried faces that stared down at her, relief painting them.

The elven woman gave her a nod, standing to her full, towering height, and beside her, Halfrida dropped her hands onto her hips and snorted. “West Road was the last of the arcane lights—we’ll need to start using torches again. At least it wasn’t the old blacksmith’s forge that went, but gods know that’ll probably be next at this rate!”

The elf responded in her dulcet tone, “Let’s hope not. I’ll go to see Geezer again. Fire arcana is far from my specialty, but I would like to avoid any more injuries.”

“More taters,” said the little ginger girl, and she shoved another spoonful into Celeste’s mouth.

CHAPTER 8
MAKING A DEAL WITH THE DIVINE

I cannot read this part out loud,” mumbled Reeve as he turned the page.

Sid continued to pester him, though he was fairly certain the sword didn’t care about what was actually written in the book, he was just bored. It wasn’t that the man had no sympathy for the sword: not having hands or feet or eyes was probably difficult, but the Obsidian Widow Maker was almost always shoved away in a scabbard—couldn’t he just be content laying out on the floor for a little while?

Reeve cleared his throat and simply said, “Because.” He wasn’t going to tell the sword that the writing was growing indecent, and really, Sid probably wouldn’t enjoy this part anyway since he didn’t have any of the bits that were being described in increasingly vivid detail to do any of the acts that were hopefully going to be explained with more direction on the following pages.

Another day had passed, and the holy knight had made many gallant attempts to escape his noxscura prison. He executed an all-out assault on the shadows, slashing into the barrier that kept him in place with all the brute force of a man who knew no other way. Arcane metal crashed into arcane wall, especially frustrating as that wall was essentially transparent, but the sword was thrown back with each swing, and subsequently so was the knight. Reeve landed painfully on the floor more times than he could count as he’d knocked his head rather hard after the seventeenth attempt. That would have stopped a different man, and whether that man be weaker or smarter or more-prone-to-concussion-er, it is difficult to say, but it did not stop Sir Reeve.

What Sir Reeve gained from his questionable relentlessness was the ability to actually slice through the barrier instead of be thrown violently away from it. Yes, it did seal itself right back up before anything else could pass beyond, including himself, but it was progress. The truth was not quite so favorable, it was just that the noxscura was beginning to feel a little bad about all the hurt it was causing him even if he was sort of causing it to himself, so the shadows made themselves malleable instead of delivering him forcefully to the hardness of the floor.

Reeve simply thought, of course, that he was weakening the enchantments, and perhaps he was, in a way, but he was also weakening himself. The knight was nothing if not resilient, but even divine arcana has its limits, and once he was doing little more than casting glittery light to be swallowed up by the shadowy wall, he had no choice but to wait for his magic to catch up to his will.

Frustrated, he resorted to wielding a different blade and turned to whittling the brittle fish bone he’d brought from Bendcrest, but once he snapped off one of the griffin wings of his carving, he gave up on that too. Then there were the books. Two of the tomes the witch left him were typical Valcordian prayer missals that Reeve already knew front to back. He moved on to the field guide of the surrounding forest, quite old and filled with illustrations of plants and beasts, but it was a quick read, and then there was only the tome that had fallen apart.

The pages were no longer scattered across the floor. He might have been occupying a witch’s chambers against his will, but there was no reason to leave it messy, so he had gathered them right away and set them aside. But with nothing left to fill up his time, he began to piece the story back together, and once he caught a glimpse of a salacious phrase, he’d been enthralled since.

It had begun innocently enough, the tales of a man and a woman on separate paths, but then their destinies converged followed by their bodies. He’d just come to a very interesting part involving tongues and their potential application in places Reeve hadn’t yet imagined when Sid really started in.

“Come on, bud, I’ll help you pronounce the big words.”

Reeve grunted. He couldn’t be a holy knight without being able to read, but Sid liked to poke fun at the time he’d misinterpreted the Ouranic carvings on a haunted crypt and temporarily lost his soul to a lich. Luckily, Flint had been there to call it back. But it was true that Reeve had never really cared for books. He hadn’t had the opportunity to realize it was likely because the temple only allowed him to read morality tales, and while they had taught him to be chivalrous and polite, the stories also gave him secondhand guilt for vices he never even considered doing.

There was certainly never anything like this at the temple, discussions of racing hearts and sweaty palms and the eager sound a woman might make when expecting something of a man.

“Ahem?”

Right. Like that.

Reeve’s heart thumped, his eyes flicking up from the page. Across the room from where he sat on the floor stood Celeste. Er, the witch. Already half obscured by the doorway, that long length of her black hair swept down over her face so that she was almost entirely hidden. He snapped the book shut and thrust it along the floor so that it slid under the bed, pages again scattering.

Oh, Valcord, please don’t let her see any of those vulgar words. Actually, could you not look either?

The witch’s gaze lingered on the fluttering parchment and then crept back to him. Reeve willed the heat out of his face and scrambled to his feet. No longer exhausted, he was ready for whatever fight she would bring to him this time.

“Oh, you ate the tea cakes! Did you like them?”

Reeve opened his mouth, but no words came out, glancing over to the empty plate he had set up on the mantle, the saucer and cup stacked neatly atop along with the empty bottle of milk and full bottle of wine. Yes, he liked the cakes, quite a bit in fact, but it felt too charitable to say. Yet, he should say because it would be polite, and it was true. But she was a witch. A witch who hadn’t poisoned him. By Dawn’s Light, why was she being so confusing?

He had contemplated his response for too long, and the moment passed simultaneously with the hopefulness from her face. She sidled into the room, carrying with her a jar and the wyvern on her shoulder, but the knight had an ominous feeling she had not come bearing treats this time. “So, um, I was hoping we could talk, Sir Reeve.”

Sir Reeve. Oh, was that how she wanted to play this? There were villains who liked to feign respect with their opponents, but Reeve would not be tricked by sarcasm this time. He crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head. “There is nowhere else for me to go, witch, so talk.”

She clung to the jar, long fingers spread over the black ceramic, and she frowned. “I find myself in a situation that it appears you might be able to resolve.” Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, but her words felt sincere, if practiced.

“You are plotting something dastardly and wish for my assistance?”

“Not dastardly,” she insisted, and the wyvern waved one of its wings with a dissenting croak. “The opposite, actually. I need help trapping something.”

“A hunter would be better—”

“With magic.” She looked back up at him then, taking a step closer to the barrier. “With holy magic.”

“Divine arcana is not meant for doing evil.”

“Oh, crickets, it’s not for evil.” Frustration rose in her voice. “I need to catch something evil. I think it’s evil anyway. And it can only be done with your kind of magic. Good magic.”

The way she stood there, pinched in and hugging the jar, she looked quite sad and small, nothing like the corruption it was said had taken over the temple in Briarwyke. The Denonfy Oracle had told him of a great evil, and though their words had been difficult to decipher, Father Theodore expounded that Reeve’s duty and indeed his destiny was to see to this evil’s destruction. But this witch seemed like neither a great evil nor something to be particularly proud of destroying.

In fact, she was already damaged, a bandage wrapped around her upper arm, and another on her opposing hand. “Why are you hurt?” The words came out with more bite than he’d meant, his brow furrowing on its own. Had that been…been because of him?

“I did something stupid.” She awkwardly moved her arm as if she could hide the injury. “There was broken glass, I tried to clean it up. Tried to clean up…well, that’s why I need your help. There was something inside this, and it got out. Here.” Quickly, she moved right up to the barrier, placed the jar at the edge, and with a few swipes, pushed it through.

Reeve went to pick it up, but Sid’s voice cut in. “Careful, bud.”

The knight considered the container as he leaned over it, black and simple, though when he looked closer, almost every inch was covered in shallow carvings. “These can’t be,” he whispered and lifted the jar.

Murkiness. The light of Valcord pulsed inside him. There had once been something greedy and unkind and cold inside the jar, but it was gone now. He looked quickly up at the woman—no, not her. This thing, whatever it had been, was nothing like her.

Mother Mariesa had been an expert on the kinds of carvings all over the jar, and she had taught many of the holy knights how to replicate them and infuse them with divine arcana. They had an array of uses, but never had he seen so many scripted sigils meant for protection and warding in one place. He looked up at the woman. “When you touch this, you feel nothing?”

She was scratching the wyvern under its chin. “It feels important, I suppose.”

“But it doesn’t burn your skin? Or make you want to smash it into pieces?”

“The apotrope?” She shook her head.

Reeve made a thoughtful sound at the fact she was unbothered by its push to reject evil. An apotrope—he’d never seen one, but there was talk of them being made at the temple. Some of the holy knights had taken to Mother Mariesa’s teachings, but Reeve hadn’t been one of them, much better at wielding a sword than a reed or tome.

He took off the lid and peered inside, then quickly covered it up again. Oh, no, he did not like that. “How did the evil get out?”

“Well, you know…” She glanced up at the patently uninteresting ceiling. “The top came off.”

Reeve tested it, but the lid was crafted rather well to remain in place. He could also see the carved binding marks, able to imagine the arcana there—it was good work, work that wouldn’t just fall apart. “It sounds as though you are leaving something out.”

“Okay, well, that’s because I opened it.”

“You released the evil—”

“It was an accident!” She threw her hands up, the wyvern flailed and hung onto her shoulder, and Reeve straightened, prepared for an attack. But the witch just dropped her head back and sighed like she was the kind of exhausted he felt after a hard day of training. “I thought I was helping him, but it doesn’t matter because he, er, it, or, the thing is out, and it’s making a mess in the village. I can’t get him back in that jar, but someone with divine arcana can, and I think you’re the only holy person around.”

Reeve pursed his lips. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have murdered the other Valcordian priests.”

“I told you, I—” The witch huffed, fists clenched, but she contained her indignation. “I didn’t kill them, but you’re right, I shouldn’t have let it happen. I shouldn’t have let a lot of things happen, but this time I really did have good intentions, it just went all wrong.” Her shoulders slumped, and she looked up from under dark lashes, moving closer to the barrier. “I need help to do this. I have no power over this thing. Please, Sir Reeve, I need you.”

Need. Reeve’s hold on the jar tightened. He was needed, here, to do this, by her. And no one ever needed Reeve Dawn.

“And anyway,” she said quickly, “don’t you kind of have to? Isn’t this what your god would want? You can’t just walk away from here knowing a great evil that was contained within your temple was let free to wreak havoc on the poor, unsuspecting people here.”

Reeve frowned, guilt being an exceptionally powerful motivator, and his stomach wobbled. “I can’t walk away from here at all.”

“Oh, right. Well, I plan on letting you out, obviously, but we have to make a deal first. I will dispel the noxscura containing you, but you must promise not to attack me, all right?”

Reeve looked down at the apotrope. It had been forged by people of his faith, and if he could not figure out how to use it on his own, the priests in Bendcrest could, so there was no use for her in that regard. “But I’m meant to fulfill my destiny by vanquishing the evil inhabiting the temple, which is, you know, you,” he said carefully.

She let out a slow, measured breath. He knew that breath, it was the one people used when they were frustrated with him but didn’t want to show it. Father Theodore was almost an expert at covering it up, but Reeve still always knew. “Maybe you could wait a little on the vanquishing? Until after we’ve recaptured the actual threat to Briarwyke and, presumably, this temple?”

“You wish that we…postpone our battle until this deed is complete?” He lifted the jar.

She nodded. “I won’t use arcana on you so long as you don’t use it on me, and instead, we both do what we can to get the entity back in the apotrope where it belongs.”

He considered the jar a moment longer, then narrowed eyes at her. “Did you release this thing just so I would help you?”

“You weren’t even around when I released it! And I only let it out because I felt bad for it.”

She felt bad? Well, perhaps it made a kind of sense, if it was an evil thing, like her. Yet when he looked on her, evil was not what first came to mind. It might not even be the second thing he thought—it was quickly becoming a distant third, in fact. “This is what caused your injuries, isn’t it?”

The woman shrugged a shoulder with absolutely no confidence, and that told him what he needed to know.

“We shall put aside our conflict to resolve this.”

“Do you…do you swear it? Would you say, like, an oath to your god about not hurting me?”

Reeve swallowed, puffing out his chest. “With credence that the sun will rise, I will not raise my sword against you so long as we have an accord and a shared duty to carry out.”

“Oh, boy,” muttered Sid quietly from the floor.

She brought a hand to her necklace, and the dark arcana in the room began to shift.

“Wait!” Reeve pointed at her. “Are you not also going to swear an oath?”

“Uh…” She ran fingers up the chain around her neck. “Sure. What would you like me to swear it to?”

“To your god, of course.”

She squinted. “I don’t really have one of those.”

This struck Reeve in the way that a person reaching uninvited up someone’s skirt might be struck, which is all at once and totally deserved. He stood uncomfortably with the notion that someone might not have a god, and while it wasn’t entirely new, no one ever really said it to him before. But surely this woman—this witch—prayed to some dark deity at the very least. Though that sort of oath wasn’t ideal either.

“Oh, hey, I can promise on Plum,” she chirped, patting the wyvern. “On pain of being ripped apart by talons and fangs, I won’t cast against you unless you attack first.”

Wyverns were not gods, but neither were horses, and Earlylyte was quite dear to him, so with a hefty sigh, he nodded.

Arcana slithered along the chamber, over the walls and the ceiling and the floorboards, inky and cold. As it crept toward her, Reeve had the momentary desire to protect her from it. That was natural, of course, noxscura was evil, and she was…well, she was something.

But then the dark arcana was gone, and for the first time since they had met and engaged in battle, there was no barrier between them. Reeve’s eyes flicked to Sid—he really should have picked up his sword first. Warm arcana danced under his skin as his body prepared itself, but he willed it to remain subdued.

She still had her hands out, tentative fingers spread wide, eyes even wider, chest rising and falling too rapidly to be calm. He would have to do it, to make the first move, so he took a careful step toward her, the apotrope held out.

She remained still until he was close enough to crack her over the head with it—not that he would, it was only the quickest, nonlethal reaction if she did strike. But she only turned her palms upward to receive the jar.

Celeste’s eyes weren’t grey, Reeve realized in the closeness and darkness of the tiny room, they were silver. He had never seen silver eyes before, nothing that shined like that outside of magic itself. He peered into them as if he could glean something more, but all he saw was starlight glittering back.

Their fingers grazed one another as the jar traded hands. Noxscura and luxerna so close to the surface in each set of fingertips, there was a spark. Holding perfectly still, the two stared at one another, but neither attacked.

And then she laughed, a single, solitary bubble of a noise that she just as quickly pulled back as she hugged the jar to her chest. “That was an accident,” she said, grinning nervously as if it had all been her fault.

“It didn’t, uh…it didn’t hurt,” he replied, knowing it was as much his doing as hers.

Her lips twitched. “You’re really not going to attack me?”

“Of course not. I vowed I would not.”

“Yeah, well, those were just words. Most people would attack anyway.”

Reeve knitted his brow. “I am a holy knight,” he said simply.

“Exactly.” She swayed slightly in thought, looking him over.

Reeve felt a little too big then, too seen under her eyes. “If you thought I would attack you regardless, then why would you remove the barrier at all?”

“Well, I hoped,” she said, tipping her head. “And I really do need your help.”

Need. He liked the way she said that word. Perhaps too much.

“Then by Dawn’s Light, you shall have it.”

CHAPTER 9
FORGING BONDS

R eeve did not like lying. Walter the Weathered of the Seven Fables had lied once, just once, and his entire arm had been lobbed off because of that lie. It hadn’t been his sword arm, thank Valcord, but having both rather helped with balance.

Reeve rubbed at his shoulder as he strode behind the witch. She had finally freed him yet had him newly bound to an oath, and he was newly trapped in a way that required him to follow along with her plan—her dastardly, reprehensible, unscrupulous plan—to lie.

He stewed over the untruth she had told to a stranger in the village’s center. It was only a little one, she’d insisted, but the Obsidian Widow Maker needed no whetstone, it remained arcanely sharp all on its own, so she shouldn’t have said otherwise no matter how small she thought that lie was.

“Yes, I understand that your sword is enchanted, you have told me six times now, but no one else knows that, provided you can keep it to yourself,” the witch had said to him when he’d disagreed with her dishonest scheming. “I’m just going to tell some stranger that you need a whetstone so we can find out where the old blacksmith’s shop is without revealing the real reason.”

“Why must we be secretive at all?”

She had gnawed on her lip and scrunched up her nose. “They just shouldn’t know, okay? The fewer people involved, the easier this will be, and the quicker we’ll be done with it.” Her words had sounded very final.

“You’re eager for our deal to be through and our battle to resume?”

The woman had given him a long look then, one of the frustrated ones he would often catch from his brothers-in-arms when they tried to convince him to take part in some morally ambiguous task. But she did not follow the look by rolling her eyes or insisting he was being unreasonable, she simply requested he trust her.

Trust her?

Why on this plane and all the others she thought he would trust her was beyond his understanding, but then quite a few things were, and before he could puzzle out an argument, she’d gotten the information they needed by, indeed, being untrustworthy.

At least Earlylyte had been well cared for. They took a quick detour to the Dew Drop Inn to find his coat was brushed, his mane braided, and someone had even given him a bucket of fruit alongside the standard oats. The horse was safely left in the stables with assurance they would only be parted for a little longer, and Reeve followed the woman through the circle center of Briarwyke and down West Road.

She could request his trust, demand it even, but she would not have it. He trailed a few feet behind, keeping watch of her back. It was only coincidental that he may have preferred the position. He was relieved to not be under her eye, but he also appreciated the opportunity to watch the last lights of the day play over the dark strands of her hair and the tautness of her calves as she took harried steps.

She gave the lightless lampposts along the road a wide berth, shards of glass littering the ground. Well, she hadn’t lied about the lamps bursting, he supposed, but she could have been misleading him about the cause. Reeve peered into the darkened windows of the shops, many abandoned, on either side of the walkway. Farther along was a crossroad, and beyond that, the buildings spread out, the path narrower as it grew more secluded.

A tingling ran up the back of Reeve’s head, one he had felt before when entering a questionable tavern or a reportedly abandoned mine, and his hand went to his hilt. If she were leading him into a trap, she could have done better than allowing him to keep his weapon. But then, perhaps she wanted him to believe he was safe with the Obsidian Widow Maker at his side, leaving him falsely secure and thus more susceptible to whatever snare lay ahead, be it bewitched bandits under her thrall or goblin minions lurking in the trees. If she thought he wasn’t thinking simply because he had his weapon, then she was sorely mistaken—Reeve’s overwrought mind was prepared for all manner of treachery, and its ability to think was unchanged by the presence of a sword.

His fingers tightened on his hilt, and arcana thrummed through his hand as Sid made an inquisitive sound from the scabbard. Then again, if the witch was shrewd enough to make him feel false security, she may well be so clever that she expected him to guess at her plan to ambush him in the dark with infernal henchmen and have an entirely different trick up her non-existent sleeves. No, if she knew that he knew, then she would do nothing that he could defend against with his sword and instead lead him to some other doom, like a false-bottomed floor above a pit full of poisoned spikes. But wasn’t that just the original, sneaky plan—luring him into a trap? And if she knew that he knew that she knew, then how in the realms would that work?

Gods, she was a cunning witch.

The woman slowed, glancing back, and Reeve started—her silver eyes had a slight flicker to them in the dark. “What’s wrong?” Her gaze darted ahead again as she came to a full stop.

Reeve bowed his body away to keep from running right into her. “I sense peril,” he said almost directly into the top of her head, wanting her to know whatever her brilliantly nefarious plan might be, it would be thwarted.

She squeezed in her shoulders, her bandaged hand tight on the strap of her bag. “Did you see him?” The way she twitched, looking about like a bird, she was…afraid? Perhaps she should give up witchcraft for a life in theater.

He stepped to the side and gestured for her to keep moving. “There are few inhabitants in this village, and I’ve seen no one, but I don’t believe I would recognize this entity if I did. You could describe…him? We are looking for a man?”

“I’m not sure.” She fell in beside him, and he noted what little space she left between their shoulders. A pit he would walk over and fall in, then, seemed unlikely. And, to be fair, she hadn’t had time to run ahead and dig one out. “He sounds like a man when he speaks, and he was tall, like you, but not a lot of men that big can also fit into jars.”

“Not when they’re whole.”

She chuckled nervously, but her knuckles whitened even in the dark. Giving her satchel a little shake, the ceramic inside shifted. “You did figure out how to use this thing, right?”

After she had told him everything she knew about the apotrope, Reeve had spent some time sitting with it in the temple proper and studying the sigils, or rather just thinking very hard about them. “Oh, no, not at all.”

The woman straightened, shooting him a horrified look.

“I know how to use this.” He jiggled his sword’s hilt, an expert in wielding it, and swords were more complicated than jars—sometimes much more dependent on how many edges they had. “I’ll just cut him up, and we can shovel what’s left of him inside.”

“I don’t think that’s how the apotrope works.”

“Then how does it work?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, neither do I.”

She groaned with more of those quick, nervous movements. “I guess we will have to do the cutting up thing, but I think he might be made of smoke, and—”

A fox yipped into the newly fallen night, and she jumped, an even more genuine fear reaction, Reeve thought.

“You’re…nervous?” he asked, watching her closely.

Her lips were drawn down and her eyes wide. “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“Oddly conscientious for a witch.”

“I’m not a witch,” she said with exasperation. “And to be honest with you, I don’t even know what a witch is.”

“A witch is…” Reeve’s next step came slower, peering deeper into the darkness ahead. He rarely had the opportunity to explain things to others, and here he was, stuck suddenly. “Well, it’s a you.”

She scoffed, but at least her nerves were replaced with indignation.

“Then if not a witch, what are you?”

“Nox-touched,” she said. “Do you know what that is?”

Reeve pursed his lips and almost answered in the affirmative because of course he knew, he was well-versed in the evils of the realm, an expert on dark and seedy creatures that manipulated arcana for unholy machinations, but then realized while he had heard the term, no description came to mind. “I’ve never met one before,” he said, which did not betray he was unaware but also wasn’t equitable with one-armed, lying Walter’s shenanigans.

“Well, you have now.”

Reeve had seen many creatures, ones that masqueraded as things they were not, but his divine senses nearly always told him when he was in the presence of arcane deception. Valcord’s light told him nothing, though, when he pressed it in his chest. She was quite the formidable witch.

No, not a witch. There were many things about which she could lie, but not this. Evil creatures loved to brag about what they were, their unholy heritages and ancient bloodlines and unparalleled skills. Still, nox-touched meant very little to Reeve.

The…the woman tipped her head, returning his confused look. “I think that’s the smithy.”

They had come to a building set off from the others and down a short path, completely swathed in the shadows of early night. It was brick, unlike most of the other structures, and had a large opening set into its front. Nestled into the wooded outskirts of the village, a lifeless chimney rose from the building’s center, a wide shadow against the trees.

Taking a deep breath, she began toward the blacksmith’s old shop. Reeve contemplated her as she went, taking tentative steps. Then, as if only remembering he was the one with the sword and all she carried was a jar, he hurried to her side and held his arm out, barring her from entering the place.

Silvery eyes found his in the dark, shimmering again so like starlight he wondered how they had ever startled him. Starlight. He heard the word in his mind in the Denonfy Oracle’s voice then shook his head.

Celeste—that was her name, of course, as it was fitting—fell still just before the threshold. “Be careful,” she said in that soft voice. Nope, definitely not a witch.

Reeve drew his sword and stepped inside. She explained on their journey into town that, according to the villagers, the blacksmith’s forge had once been enchanted in the same way the lampposts were. The magic in both was older and at least a little chaotic, maintained with help from a local mage. Bendcrest too had some older magics, ones replaced only when they fizzled out. Apparently Briarwyke’s lights, however, were not going out quietly.

But if the entity they pursued was seeking out old fire arcana, there was none to be found inside the smithy. Reeve reached into himself, finding the warmth and light of Valcord that was always waiting in his chest, and drew it downward to pulse into Sid. The obsidian blade flashed, and like a torch, he held it out to illuminate the darkened space.

Celeste’s quiet gasp at his back told him she was still there, but of course divine magic would cause her shock. With a quick look to see she was not poised to attack him, he began his search of the smithy. The forge took up the shop’s center, a stone flue piled to the ceiling around a lifted base that would have been blazing with heat and light had the place been in use. The chamber still smelt of use though, coal and hot metal, the walls blackened with soot. Empty crates and barrels dotted the dirt floor, but little else had been left save for an anvil too heavy to take when the blacksmith had gone and a few rusted tools hanging from the rafter overhead. Notably, there was no whetstone.

Valcord, forgive us both our deception.

“It’s empty.” Reeve gestured with his head for her to follow as he lit the way. Circling the forge, there was nothing much of interest behind but a pile of warped wood and a hammer that had seen better days. A door led into a smaller chamber, but there was only a straw mattress left inside. “Not even the blacksmith stuck around.”

“Well, it’s hard to find a good one,” said Sid in a voice that was far too jovial for the situation, “they’re always forging their stuff!”

Reeve groaned, but Celeste let out a spark of laughter before swallowing it back.

“Is that the curse of the obsidian steel on your weapon?” she asked, carefully approaching the hearth and touching the stone of the flue. “It tells bad jokes?”

At that, the corner of Reeve’s mouth raised. “It is now, yes.”

“My wit is as sharp as it is a blessing, and you know it,” said Sid, the glow about him pulsing with his words.

“Ah, yes, a gift from Valcord to us all.” Reeve’s eyes flicked to Celeste as she circled the forge and peeked out from its other side. “You’ve seen obsidian steel before?”

She nodded, the turn to her lips going down again as she approached him. “In the infernal mountains, yes, but I’ve never seen it shine like this.” The glow of his arcana fell over her pale features, warmed with every careful step she took. Celeste raised a hand, fingers tentative but not surrounded by dark magic.

Reeve gripped his hilt tighter as she reached out for the blade. The golden shimmer reflected in her eyes, no fear there despite how close she was to what could easily be her doom, just a quiet sort of wonder. The luxerna surrounding the blade did not bend, but she stopped short an inch away from touching it, head slightly tipped, just staring.

“Sid’s not really supposed to glow,” said Reeve, suddenly too conscious of a woman reaching out for his sword. He gave in to the urge to spin the blade artfully through the air, and she pulled back at that. “He actually gave off shadows when we met.”

“Sid?”

“Formally known as the Obsidian Widow Maker,” said the sword, and Reeve made an effort to hold him as reverentially as possible even though he still hadn’t really figured out which way was up.

Celeste’s eyes widened. “Ukara called you a widow maker? I’m sorry she intended for you to take people from their families.” Few spoke to Sid directly with such ease, but she looked on the sword as if he had a face, her brow bent sympathetically.

The sword made a few nondescript noises, and without features they were hard to place. “It was indeed a harsh enchantment. She crafted me to manipulate the depths of someone’s darkest desires to suck out souls, stuff like that, but Reeve broke the curse.”

Her eyes flicked up to Reeve’s, and he was suddenly very warm despite that the hearth had not been lit in some time. “Well, Father Theodore and the others broke the curse, I just overcame it long enough to bring Sid home when I found him in the Charred Caverns of Malifort.” Despite his humble words, she was still looking at him with a little too much interest for his liking, and he squinted, running his light back over the shop. “Now, where is this evil maybe-man, maybe-not thing we’re meant to cut down?”

“I assume he’ll be attracted to the arcana in the forge since he’s eaten up all the arcana in the village’s lights.”

Reeve gestured to the unlit hearth with Sid’s tip. “What arcana?”

“It’s still here,” she said, going back to the stone chimney and pressing a hand to it. “It’s just dormant. Perhaps if we wake it up, we can lure him out?”

Reeve admired how her fingers tapped against the stone, impressed she could feel the dormant magic that he could not, then realized she was actually asking his advice, not something terribly common in his experience. “Ah, yes?”

Celeste made a thoughtful sound, a gentle hum as she walked along to the front of the forge. It was like an oven, though its opening was much bigger, an artful arch built into the stones raised on a slab of a platform. Celeste bent at the waist and put a hand on either side of the opening to peer inward. Reeve watched her upper half disappear into the darkened forge, his light still falling over the back of her and the way her dress’s hem climbed up past the bend of her knees. His arcana flared unconsciously through the sword, brightening the interior.

“Thanks,” she called back.

Reeve’s throat was too thick to respond, but Sid snickered. He wished the sword would avoid reading into his desires every time he held it. In fact, that was a desire, wasn’t it? I want very much for that tingle to be ignored, he thought as loudly as he could.

“There’s something here, like a sigil,” she was saying, her voice echoing up the flue.

Reeve murmured out a noise, trying to keep the light steady and look anywhere but at her backside as she leaned further in. There were some tools angled up against the forge at her feet, not terribly interesting, but he would make do. A set of tongs, a rusted chisel, and something else, a stick of some sort with carvings along it. Now that—that was slightly interesting. There was an armory in Bendcrest, one he’d visited enough to be familiar with a blacksmith’s typical tools, but this he had never seen.

“I don’t know if noxscura will work,” she was saying, “but I’ll try tracing the sigils. My finger fits in the grooves carved into these stones here.”

His gaze floated up to her again because it was polite to look at someone when they spoke to you, even if they were sticking their behind in your direction. She lifted a foot off the ground as she bent further, and he had to swiftly look away again to focus on the strange, carved tool. It was long like a cane but too thin for support, only about as wide as a finger.

Reeve realized almost a moment too late what the tool was for, but that was better than not at all, and he was fast. He sprang forward, Sid dropped to the dirt floor and his glow going out, but there was plenty of fire to replace it.

Light flared up just as Reeve grabbed Celeste by the hips and yanked. She yelped as he swept her out of the forge, and the hearth burst into arcane life. The chamber blazed with heat, a pulse so intense that he was momentarily blinded, and then it dulled to a normal glow.

But the heat remained.

Hands were on top of his, but they didn’t fling him off, they only squeezed his grip on her hips tighter. Celeste’s back pressed to his chest, and she was breathing hard and fast, but that was to be expected—she had almost set herself alight in a fire meant for melting metal.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and it came out a rumble, his voice low as her ear was so close to his mouth.

Celeste said nothing, but he could see she was not on fire, the forge’s glow falling over her front. She wasn’t even singed, thank Valcord, but her chest was heaving, a bead of sweat running down her neck. He watched the droplet make an unholy creep toward the shallow valley between her breasts. If he dared to lie then, it would probably not be his arm that got lobbed off.

“Well!” Reeve gave her a push away, a bit more aggressively than he meant. “Apparently, that stick is for lighting the forge from the outside. The big, arcane ovens at the temple are like that too.”

Celeste stumbled but remained upright. “Oh, that would have been a smarter way to do it, huh?” She combed through her hair with her fingers in quick succession as she turned away.

Reeve stared into the newly lit forge, the fire dancing inside bright and…odd. Fire always moved as if it were alive, but this—this was different. At its heart, this flame was almost entirely rounded and looked as if it would spring back like jelly if he poked it.

A clearing throat from down by his boots tore his gaze away from the hearth. He scooped up Sid, checking the blade for nicks despite knowing there would be none. “So, now we wait?”

“Yes.” She picked along the smithy and then pointed. “Maybe back here would be best?”

There was enough space behind the hearth for the two to sit, backs against the sooty wall and hidden from the wide entrance. The arcane fire crackled in the quiet that batted at the inch or so between their shoulders, a struggle for Reeve to maintain while remaining obscured.

The silence spread between them as the night grew, and Reeve thought on a few occasions of something he might say, but it was always only half of something. If she would pick up the other half, he was unsure, but it was better not to risk—if they succeeded in catching this thing, as she was insisting they would, there would be no use or time for words after, only vanquishing.

And yet, Reeve was not good at sitting in silence when someone else was around, a fact he knew about himself because he had been told—many times—so he gave in because he could not be perfectly virtuous all the time.

“May I ask you a question?”

Celeste was only momentarily startled though he had kept his voice low, and then she nodded.

“What is a nox-touched?”

“Well, it’s a me,” she said quietly, fingers tapping on her knees with a nervous laugh. “There aren’t a lot of us. Actually, I don’t know if there are any more now, I haven’t spoken with another one since my sister, but, um, I’m really just a human—or, I was—but then I was exposed to noxscura and now…” She wiggled her fingers, and the darkness in front of them shifted slightly.

He sat with the answer a moment before he decided it did not clear things up. “May I ask you another question?”

She nodded again.

“A demon or a dominion must have been involved in granting you this power, yes? Or you learned it through study, surely?”

At this, she shook her head, wrapping a hand around her locket. “I don’t create arcana. It doesn’t come from inside me like it does for a mage like you. I can just manipulate it if it’s already around.”

Reeve took a deep breath and mumbled, “May I ask you one more question?” He was used to admitting he didn’t know things and requesting answers, but he also knew most people had their limits on how many answers they would give.

What he was not used to was the way Celeste looked up at him and nodded in exactly the same way she had done the first and second time, no hint that she would suddenly turn sour or deride him.

“Well, I have been exposed to noxscura. Many people have. Perhaps everyone in the realm, one way or another. You say you were born human, so…”

“It wasn’t noxscura like you’re thinking.” She plucked at the material of her dress. “It was pure noxscura.”

He furrowed his brow, looking down at her for the truth but unable to see her face as she’d tipped her head toward her lap. If that were the case, it just…well, it didn’t seem possible. Pure luxerna was dangerous, even the priests said, and exceedingly rare to boot, but pure noxscura? Those who had seen that didn’t live to tell the tale. “You mean you touched it? And you survived?”

“Unfortunately.”

Reeve scoffed. “There is nothing unfortunate about life.”

The hollowness to her silvery eyes as she gazed back up at him made him remember Father Theodore’s warning that one’s first thought was not always one’s best thought, and it wasn’t always made for the ears of others.

“That is, um, survival is a gift, and…” He cleared his throat. “Fine, so you are human, and this is your true form?” It would make sense that he could not suss out anything hidden with his divine arcana if that were the case.

“Sorry to disappoint.” She gestured to herself. “I’m not hiding anything exciting or beautiful beneath this.”

Compliments were chivalrous, but it wasn’t chivalry that made him want to correct her, rather it was his incessant need to tell the truth. “I didn’t mean to suggest…um, otherwise…I simply feared something more like a wolf or an ogre hiding under your skin.” Reeve pursed his lips. “And you chose to do this? You sought out pure noxscura to become—”

“No!” She gasped at the volume she had used and bit her lip. “It wasn’t like that, but don’t you know? Do the Holy Knights of Valcord and Osurehm not work together?”

“Holy Knights of Osurehm are…” Bullies, to put it plainly, but Reeve had been taught not to speak ill of others unless they deserved it. However, those who were deserving, in his opinion, sometimes differed from those his teachers believed deserved derision. “Overzealous,” he finally said, borrowing the word she had used when they met.

She made a small noise, neither agreement nor disagreement. “Well, I was only six when it happened, and it definitely wasn’t my idea.”

Reeve did not know what holy knights had to do with anything, but he could tell from her tone that there would be no more questions, and he finally managed to sit in silence beside her as the night wore on.

Reeve’s eyelids were heavy when he finally sensed it. The arcana in the hearth shifted, the light dimming, and the sleepiness was chased out of his mind. Beside him, Celeste’s head bobbed dangerously close to his shoulder. There was really no way to rouse her soundlessly without touching her, and so he carefully placed a hand on her arm.

In the darkened light of flickering arcana, Celeste tipped her head up, silvery eyes blinking. That frown she kept wearing was gone, and Reeve wondered if he understood anything about evil at all.

Well, it was there with them, creeping around the flue, that was for certain.

He jerked his head toward the hearth, and like she’d been struck with an arrow, she jolted straight, hands scrambling for her bag. The ceramic of the jar clanked against itself, the fire in the forge froze its pulsing, and with their cover blown, Reeve jumped to his feet.

Divine arcana flooded into the Obsidian Widow Maker as he took the hilt in two hands, darting around the forge with a quickness. There in the light stood a shadow. Shadows didn’t stand, of course, they were much more passive than that, but this one moved independently, and it set its eyeless sight on the knight.

Reeve struck out, but the shadow was fast. He sliced into the place it had been as it dispersed, and there was Celeste.

She shrieked, hands up. Reeve could not call back his spell though he tried, the luxerna arcing out of Sid’s tip, and noxscura bloomed to life between them. Their arcana clashed, and there was a burst like a lightning strike that knocked Reeve onto his back.

Metal tools rained down from the rafters as the beam above cracked. A hammer landed an inch from Reeve’s hand, and by the sound of Celeste’s cry, she was not so lucky.

Laughter filled up the smithy, circling them from on high. Reeve was on his feet again, and he called up more arcana into his weapon. Celeste had at least not been knocked unconscious, standing as well, but she limped as she took a step toward the wall to brace herself, the jar teetering in one hand.

The shadows above thickened and swept downward. A shadow wasn’t supposed to do that either, but slicing up its middle with divine light should put an end to it. As he swung, there was another flicker from the corner of his eye. Apparently, Celeste had the same idea, and she called out his name as if he were unprepared for what bore down on him while she too cast.

The odd concern bursting from her throat threw Reeve just enough to hesitate, but his spell was still released, once again colliding with hers. A bolt of light arced through the smithy and cracked into the wall over his head. Bricks dislodged, smashing the crate beside him.

Celeste was glaring at the shadow as it swooped toward the open hearth and then disappeared inside.

“I’ve got this,” said Reeve, calling up another spell.

“Don’t you need the apotrope?” She pressed against the wall, arms extended with the urn.

“No, just stay back,” he told her, intent on obliterating the thing with a slice and his most powerful spell the moment it emerged from the forge.

But the flame went out, and they were plunged into darkness with only Sid’s glow for light. It was enough to illuminate the chamber, but the sudden change was jarring, and Reeve grunted with his next step forward. There was a rumble, a moment too strange and brief to be reacted to. Reeve did not have the experience to guess what was coming next, and really, how often do chimneys actually burst into broken bricks and lethal shrapnel? At least once in a holy knight’s career, apparently.

Sid was abandoned again because enchanted swords do just fine under flying rubble, but women, be they witches or nox-touched or otherwise, do not. Reeve’s chivalrous nature overtook his shock as he dove for Celeste. He tackled her, and the chill of one of her spells burst behind him.

Bricks slammed into the walls as the forge shattered, the sound deafening and in every direction. The dried-out wood of abandoned crates splintered as metal tools were flung through them, the entire smithy a field of flying debris, but nothing pummeled Reeve’s back, the cold arcana of Celeste’s spell a barrier there. The arcane fire was doused, and the Obsidian Widow Maker had none of Reeve’s magic left to glow, but the chamber filled with dust and soot so thickly it wouldn’t have mattered.

For the second time in almost twice as many days, Reeve lay atop a woman. It was his best record and also probably his worst. Celeste groaned, and he attempted to ask after her wellbeing but sucked in a lungful of dust. She too coughed from beneath him, but he knew from the protective spell she’d flung that neither had been hit. Crawling off of her in the rubble to feel about for Sid and give them light, he tried to clear his throat as a breeze swept past his face that felt eerily similar to the spell Celeste had conjured.

But without light, he could do nothing, so he called out and followed Sid’s answer. Somewhere behind him there was shuffling against the wall and a whispered voice. When his hand finally found the hilt, the weapon jumped to life, and he spun, illuminating where Celeste stood.

A shadow blocked her, in its center an orange glow so similar to the strange life the fire in the forge had. And then it was gone, but the terror in Celeste’s eyes remained as she stared through where it had been. Plastered against the battered bricks, the woman’s fingers dug into the crumbling mortar, shoulders drawn upward and mouth hanging open.

Then she coughed, grabbing for the pendant that hung from her neck, her head darting about like a bird again, searching for the shadow. With no sign of it in what was left of the smithy, she dug into the pack hanging from her shoulder. She pulled the still-intact jar out and sighed.

Reeve sucked a breath between his teeth as he stood—at least she had tucked the apotrope away before he’d thrown them both to the ground. But that had probably been wise, in the end, by the looks of what was left of the smithy. Piles of stone that had once been the flue had dented the walls, the platform to the forge was cracked down its middle, and a streak of moonlit sky was visible through what had once been a roof.

“Do you…do you think anyone heard?” asked Celeste in a whisper that suggested if she kept her voice low now that would somehow reverse the cacophony of the blast.

“Maybe not if the foxes are loud enough.”

“We need to go,” she said, pushing off the wall and immediately losing her balance.

Reeve offered her a steady arm, and she grabbed on, her only option to keep from tumbling over.

“I’m all right,” she insisted, pushing away from him and limping toward the ruined entry.

“You don’t look all right,” said Reeve, hurrying after and sheathing Sid. They were dropped into darkness again, but there was light beyond the smithy, both moons bright in the clear sky.

Celeste was glancing up and down the empty road, and then she turned for the way opposite of Briarwyke. “We completely lost him, didn’t we?” She hobbled toward the woods.

“It seems so. Where are you going?”

“Back to the temple.” For being injured, she was moving quickly.

Reeve peered into the forested outskirts of the village. The temple was due north but through heavy woods. “You’re going to have a very hard time going that way. The road will be easier.”

“What if someone sees us?” Celeste maneuvered herself around a thorny bush and then tripped right into an oak.

That was typical of evil, always wanting to skulk about in the dark, yet there was no devious cast to her voice, only fear.

“Then we explain,” said Reeve even as he hurried after her and offered his arm again.

She pushed herself back to standing and hobbled forward without his help, dodging between the trees and using them for leverage. “That’s not a good idea.”

Rarely were Reeve’s ideas deemed good, so he was unsurprised, and had to focus on keeping up. He took a slightly different path between trees set wider apart, gracelessly snapping twigs as he went. He might have lost her had she not been such a pale figure in the dark. “Well, then I suppose we will suffer through the woods and hope we are not gored to death by an infernal boar before finding the temple.”

“There aren’t infernal boar out here,” she hissed, tripping once again with a yelp.

Reeve pushed between two narrowly growing trees, offering his arm so aggressively it barely counted as chivalry. “According to Father Benjamin’s illustrations in that field guide you left me, a tear in the planes occurred during a new moon two hundred and twenty years ago right in the center of this town, and a whole pack came through from the Abyss. They’ve been breeding ever since.”

She had come to a stop, taking deep breaths against a tree, and looked up from under her lashes at him. There was perhaps anger there but mostly resignation. She mumbled gratitude as she took the elbow he again offered, and the two continued deeper in.

The forest was thick and dark, filled with nighttime noises. They frightened something large that skittered through the brush, but Celeste barely reacted to the disturbance, all that fear she had before gone. “He collected the arcana from the forge just like with the lamps, didn’t he?” she finally asked, voice quiet and distraught. “I’m afraid it’s making him stronger.”

“If you hadn’t disrupted all of my blows, I could have destroyed him.”

“I was using arcana to herd him toward you. Why were you even swinging?”

“I’m a knight,” said Reeve as if it were plain. “I stab things.”

“But the urn,” she said, shaking her bag and then stumbling before taking his elbow in both hands.

“I told you I don’t know what to do with that thing.”

Celeste huffed, her hands tightening on his arm, and though it was in annoyance, he didn’t really mind—at least she was holding on. She squinted into the darkness. “Well, we’re going to have to figure it out.”

CHAPTER 10
THE FALSE SECURITY OF RAISING ONE’S VOICE

C eleste had definitively and unequivocally fucked things up. The blacksmith shop had blown up—blown right up—and it was all her fault. She moaned into her hands, then ran fingers down her face as she stood in the entry to the temple. Dirty puddles, dried thorns, and at least one bucket of bloody water greeted her, and even under the gentle shimmer of the arcane lights she’d finally gotten working, it all looked so shameful. Everything was truly a mess.

The villagers would find out about the smithy’s chimney, and then when they went asking after what happened, they would discover they had an evil entity besieging the town, one that Celeste had set free to do all that besieging, and she would be in trouble. Not just the get-shouted-at kind of trouble, or the locked-in-your-chamber kind of trouble, or even the beaten-until-you-stop-crying kind of trouble, but the kind that gets one burnt at a stake like a witch.

She went for the bucket, and her leg screamed in pain, her groan devolving into a hiss, but she kept moving.

“What are you doing?” The knight was standing near the unlit brazier in the center of the temple’s main chamber, watching her with the same shrewdness he’d been intermittently casting her way all evening. There were moments when it would let up, and those were nice. It was almost like he’d changed his mind about her, especially when he offered assistance through the uneven wood, but that contemptuous look always came back.

“Cleaning up.” She couldn’t fix Briarwyke at the moment, nor could she fix the temple, but she could at least empty that stupid bucket. She lifted it, and her leg throbbed, the weight throwing her off balance.

“Aren’t you tired?” He was suddenly right behind her, and she gasped, moving too quickly and feeling the ache in her muscles.

“I can’t sleep at a time like this.”

“Well, you can’t do this either.” He grabbed the bucket out from under her. “What is this?”

“Oh, it’s just some old blood,” she moaned, ignoring his horrified look. “I didn’t draw it from anyone, I don’t even know whose it was, not that you’ll believe me.”

With a quickness, he took the bucket back out the way they’d come, holding it as far from himself as possible.

With nothing to occupy her hands, she hobbled to the broom sitting in the corner. At least she could lean on the thing while she swept up the new leaves that had fallen in through the broken windows above.

What in the Abyss could she do now? She had lit the arcane forge to draw the shadowy entity out so he could be caught—it was meant to be simple! Convincing a holy man to use his divine arcana to help was supposed to be the difficult part, and yet she’d actually accomplished that. In fact, he hadn’t put up much of a fight at all—he’d even made an oath not to hurt her despite being a stubborn and overzealous knight.

But instead, she had only managed to feed the much-more-complicated-than-she-thought darkness, and if the feeling she had gotten off of Syphon just before he left told her anything, he was getting stronger.

A hefty sigh came from the entry where the knight stood sans bucket, hands on his hips. He was staring at her, his typical suspicious disgust replaced with pity. Her insides squirmed, and she tried doubly hard to push the broom across the floor.

“You’re injured,” he said, as if it weren’t glaringly obvious to them both. “You should rest.”

“I can’t until I figure out how to catch that thing.” Celeste spied another leaf and shuffled after it.

“Perhaps sit and think about it then.” He crossed the temple in a few long strides and wrapped a hand around the broom.

She did not loosen her grip. “I can’t—moving helps me think.”

“It does?” His lip curled up on one side as an eyebrow sank. “I can’t think and do anything else at the same time.”

Celeste snorted, but before she let fly the cutting words that would tell him she was unsurprised, thought better of it. That kind of quip would only be an echo of something Delphine would cruelly say anyway. It was an admirable admittance, she supposed, and maybe he didn’t deserve derision after shielding her from so much rubble.

But things had gone so poorly! “I’m just worried the entity is going to use that arcane fire I let him get a hold of to hurt someone else.”

His befuddled look softened, and he gently tugged on the handle. “You think, I will do.” When she relented, he used the broom to point. “Sit.”

Celeste allowed herself to fall into the nearest chair, and even though it was cushioned, another stab of pain ran through her body. By the light in the temple, she could finally inspect what was vexing her and lifted the hem of her dress on one side. There was a speckling of blood beneath her skin, beginning just beside her knee where the mystery tool had whacked her from on high, and as she drew back the linen, the marks only worsened.

Skirt gathered at her hip, she pressed a finger to the fleshiest part of her thigh, and it was like being stabbed. It would be a bruise in less than a day, an ugly, blotchy thing, but at least her leg was not broken. With a whimper, she dropped the hem and collapsed back into the chair.

The knight was still standing before her, and if his grip went much tighter, the broom would snap in two. His wide eyes were locked onto her legs, now covered. She hadn’t even thought about the fact he was there, but she hadn’t shown him that much, had she? Surely he’d seen a bare leg before, his own at the very least. But then maybe holy knights weren’t supposed to see bare anything? Wonderful, now she’d offended the gods too—could she get nothing right?

A blur of maroon wings landed in her lap and broke the man of his unblinking stare. Celeste caught Plum before he tumbled right off her knees, and the wyvern nibbled gently on her fingers in greeting.

The knight mumbled something nonsensical, missing whatever dirt he attempted to sweep up, mumbled a little more, and then just stood still so he could scratch at the back of his head. He really couldn’t think and do at the same time, and that at least made Celeste quietly chuckle. But when his hand swept through that wavy, chestnut hair, and he frowned deeply at the chamber, the laughter stopped. Her fingers twitched in her lap, and Plum pounced on them.

“It spoke to you,” the knight said finally, looking up.

Oh. That.

When she had pulled herself up against the wall after the flue exploded, Syphon reappeared, running something like a finger down her cheek. “This time he just said thank you,” she admitted, leaving out the part where he told her he would repay the favor. “Crickets, I hope he doesn’t really think we were helping him.”

“This time?” Intrigued, he went to the chair across from her, pulling off his baldric and leaning his scabbard and the broom against the arm. Intrigue was better than plain old suspicion, but she wanted neither from him at the moment. “What did he say before?”

Celeste sank deeper into her seat. No, she couldn’t tell him any of the things Syphon had said. Not only would the holy knight think the worst about the entity saying the two were the same, the rest of it had been a little—no, a lot—embarrassing. “Nothing.”

He didn’t believe her, sitting forward with elbows on knees. “If you’re really as concerned about this as you say, you’ll share everything you know.”

“I am concerned,” she insisted, sitting forward herself and wincing. “I’m concerned it may attack a villager next. What if it hurts Kori or Halfrida?” She gasped. “Or one of the children?”

It would be her fault, all her fault, and then? Celeste had so desperately not wanted to hurt anyone. This was not how things were meant to go.

He cocked his head, his face smudged with ash, lines of dried sweat running from his temple to his jaw. There was that penetrating, judgmental look again that questioned everything and made her feel as if maybe she really were lying. Celeste snorted and glared back—why in the Abyss were holy knights so awful?

Though she was lying to him, at least a little.

Celeste swallowed back her frustration and the growing chill in her chest, averting her eyes and stroking Plum’s wings. “When it first spoke to me, it said—he said he was taking back things that were his. I asked his name, and he told me it was Syphon.”

“It has a name?” The knight sat back and blinked. “So, it is a man?”

She shrugged. “As much as he can be, I guess. He said the name was given to him. And he said…” She urged the words out with a groan. “He said he could give me things. He was only trying to trick me, I’m sure, because I told him he had to go back in the jar. He doesn’t want to be locked away, and I really don’t blame him, I wouldn’t want to be locked away either—”

“But evil things should be locked away.”

She looked up into the holy knight’s amber eyes. So sharply they peered back at her, that word, evil, stabbing like a sword and reopening the frigid anger in her heart. “He may be evil, but nothing likes to be imprisoned. You didn’t.”

“I’m not evil.”

“Says you.”

The knight did not take kindly to that. “Says Valcord.”

“Oh, does he?” she snapped so loudly that Plum took flight from her lap, talons digging in as he leapt away.

“Yes, of course.” He was sitting across from her with a confidence she wished he could see because surely arrogance was not a virtue of his god. Then he shrank slightly. “Well, Valcord doesn’t really say anything to me directly, but—”

“But cruelty in your god’s name is just fine, isn’t it?”

The knight’s brow furrowed. “I would never be cruel in the name of Valcord.”

She leaned forward, pressing a hand to her knee where the skin stung from Plum’s talons. “But your temple tells you what to do and think, and you just do it, don’t you?”

His mouth opened, but no words came out. Apparently, the gods hadn’t given him an answer yet.

“Did your god send you here? Did he tell you to take back this temple?”

His eyes flicked to the stone floors. “I prayed for guidance, and Valcord responded through Father Theodore.”

“And you’ll do whatever Valcord asks of you through your priests, won’t you?”

“Well, I…I am in service to them—to him.”

“If he asks you to charge blindly into battle?”

“He has.” His eyes snapped back up. “And I gladly have the scars of that service.”

She scoffed, the anger she had tried to suppress swirling like a blizzard in her lungs. “What if Valcord asks you to tear this temple down?”

Reeve recoiled but snorted. “If he did, he would have a good reason.”

“What about the temple of some other god? Would you burn down the homes of those who belonged to it? Murder the people who believed in something different from you?”

He sneered at her as if it were so outrageous. As if it hadn’t happened. As if she hadn’t seen it.

“And what about stealing away their children? Imprisoning them in your temple? Experimenting on them?”

The knight remained momentarily mute, no doubt in the name of his god. She waited, watching him grasp for an answer from Empyrea until he shook his head. “I don’t think Valcord would request—”

“But you don’t think, you do, you said it yourself! You follow your god’s will even if it means locking away children that you call monsters for the very things you did to them!” Celeste was standing, though she didn’t remember coming to her feet. Her chest was so frozen it burned, and when she pressed her hand to her heart, the locket thumped back like an animal clawing at the bars to its cage.

Her next words caught in her throat as she clamped a hand over her mouth, and she fell back into the chair. Tears pricked at her eyes, body frigid. She had never—never—shouted at someone like this.

What is wrong with me? Celeste held her breath, held everything, as she willed the noxscura that hammered at her skin to stay put. Eyes shut, she focused on the pain in her thigh, the pain that was real.

“I would not do those things.” Reeve’s soft voice broke through the icy pall that had trapped her in her own thoughts.

There was still a brief inkling inside, one that wanted to shout back that he had been cruel to her, he threatened her, hurt her, still planned to kill her, but when she opened her eyes again, she saw the absolute look of sincerity on his face, and it struck her like a falling hammer. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

He was shaking his head, brows drawn together, hands splayed out and empty. There had never been a time in her life when she felt safe enough to scream at someone, and for gods knew what reason, she had chosen now and chosen this man to risk the retribution that would surely come from daring to raise her voice at a holy knight.

But Reeve wouldn’t even shout back. He simply sat there and took it, looking to be at as much of a loss as how she had always felt.

Celeste shook her head as a wave of exhaustion swept over her. “You’ve been awfully quiet about all of this,” she said to the sword propped against the arm of the chair.

“Why would I interrupt?” quipped the sword. “You could cut the tension in here with a me.”

Celeste rubbed at her eyes, the heat that flooded her face still awful but was at least better than the cold that had been threatening to freeze her heart completely. “Oh, your horse!”

The knight glanced about the temple as if the giant creature would suddenly gallop through, then snorted. “He was being well taken care of. I think he will, uh…forgive my broken vow and won’t lament another bucket of fruit scraps and a night in the warmth of the stables.” There was weariness in his voice as he glanced up into the darkened ceiling of the temple.

“We’ll collect him tomorrow,” she insisted, clearing the emotion from her voice. “That is, if you intend to sleep here?”

His mouth opened, eyes flicking over to the stairs then back. “You need an eye kept on you.”

He only means he’ll kill you if you make a wrong move. She really didn’t want anyone’s eyes on her, even ones that were so warm, but it would make things easier if he stayed. “Is the chamber upstairs still suitable?”

“Uh, I, well…if it…I suppose, but is that not your chamber?”

She shook her head, then her face flushed again—gods, did he think she was suggesting they share? Did he think he had to? And after she yelled at him? “No! I have a different chamber just down there.” She pointed vaguely to the library and its attached corridor, then tried to rub the warmth out of her face, eyeing the soot smudged on her palms. “The plumbing is in good order, so please feel free to use it, to use anything here. I suppose…I suppose it is sort of your temple.”

“This is Valcord’s house,” he said, and then looked around warily. “Well, it was.”

Celeste watched the way the knight’s face remained gentle as he took in the shattered windows, the disorderly vines, the broken reliefs carved into the columns. He could have been angry, but there was only a quiet sadness layered atop the weariness of a man who, while a holy knight, was probably a few other things too since everybody was, more or less.

Reeve turned tired eyes back to her. “You’re not going to make an attempt on my life in the middle of the night, are you?”

Celeste huffed. “Of course I won’t. You’re not going to kill me in the middle of the night, are you?”

He held his hands out as if it were preposterous. “I vowed not to.”

Since he’d already had multiple chances in a very short amount of time to run her through, she simply sighed. “We will reconvene in the morning then,” she said, standing with a wince.

“Let me help you—”

“No.” Despite the pain, she straightened. “It’s actually feeling much better.” Which was a lie, but there was no point in keeping track anymore.

Celeste didn’t look back as she hobbled herself through the small study room and then into the bathing chamber at the head of the acolyte’s hall. She locked herself inside, knowing the knight would do the same upstairs.

Warm water fixed a number of problems, and though those problems were her smallest ones, it was nice to see the soot and sweat washed away. Celeste kept every move in the bath quiet, listening for footsteps, telling herself that Reeve was too big to be properly sneaky. He certainly was not lumbering down the hall, carrying that cursed sword at his side, preparing to lob her head off in the bathtub of all places, though the cleanup would be easy.

Except the sword, Sid, wasn’t cursed, not since it had been cleansed by a holy knight and the priests of his order. That was no small thing no matter how humble he had been about it. Ukara was ancient and powerful, and her curses were not to be trifled with, but to hear the sword himself tell it, Reeve had just picked him up and carried him away.

It would be nice to be picked up and carried away…

Celeste splashed her face and snorted. That doesn’t actually happen to anybody, she told herself. Well, not to people who don’t deserve it, people like you. You were just so mean, for darkness’s sake.

The bruise on her leg would agree. It was what she deserved, for not being fast enough, clever enough, skilled enough.

And for the lying.

For releasing Syphon.

For considering, even for a moment, accepting that dark entity’s offer.

Celeste pressed the tender flesh with her fingertips again and squeezed her eyes shut against the self-inflicted pain, sinking beneath the water.

CHAPTER 11
THE DELICATE ART OF NOT ASKING QUESTIONS

T he afternoon sun was far too bright. Celeste shielded her eyes, shoulder protesting as she raised her arm. Though her limp was gone, waking had been painful, and even with clean skin, it seemed the night before had not been entirely washed away. The aches and the bruises remained, and so did the dreadful feeling that bad things loomed on the horizon with the dawn.

After waking that morning surprised to still be alive and only slightly sorry for it, she managed to totter down the acolyte's hall and through the library to the main chamber of the temple. Bleary, sore, and embarrassed at how late in the morning she’d risen, she had found the holy knight sitting with his legs crossed and eyes closed at the head of the temple, just before the altar and that nasty, crescent-shaped divot.

Only it wasn’t exactly an altar anymore, it had been modified into a sort of throne from which Delphine had once liked to hold court. Celeste had silently grimaced, a vision of the other thing Delphine liked to do there flashing into her mind, and then she stifled a laugh at the thought that poor Sir Reeve was praying to what had been used for debauchery rather than divinity.

But the holy knight was apparently in better shape for it regardless. Reeve strolled toward Briarwyke at her side as if Valcord himself had floated down from Empyrea and kissed him on the forehead. Chin up and chest out, he betrayed no hint that they had been bested the night before nor that she had reduced all he stood for and believed in to blind, dumb faith. In fact, he had greeted her with a smile when he sensed her staring at him that morning.

Celeste had no idea how to respond to that, so she hadn’t, darting away into the shadows.

His bright demeanor, though, was better than having him stalking at her back or scowling, especially when that smile came with such a cute dimple. It was also nice to walk beside someone since Celeste was normally towed along behind and half-forgotten. But as they ambled down North Road, the knight’s gaze intermittently flicked to her, a reminder that those eyes—those warm, amber eyes—were scrutinizing her for future vanquishing.

Right, comfort, don’t start feeling that.

The forest thinned closer to the village where the buildings began to pop up, and at the place where Briarwyke’s first lamppost stood, there also stood Geezer, skinny arms moving through the air in animated story-telling as his sleeves billowed. Baylen listened, amusement drawn on his wide mouth as he used his considerable height to fix a new globe to the top of the lamppost. Within the glass sphere was a small, arcane stone, the kind that dotted the temple for light—a replacement for the magic that had been consumed by Syphon.

Celeste’s stomach lunged. She said a quiet plea that they were not discussing the destroyed smithy and putting the pieces together already, that Geezer was not espousing about the stranger whose bad magic had spilled ink in his home, and Baylen had not just regaled him with a tale of an ugly and off-putting girl who had been to the Accursed Wastes and didn’t even have her own chickens.

“Afternoon,” called Baylen in his drawn-out way, one of his long ears flicking. Nothing in his voice conveyed mistrust, but then she wondered if it even could.

Reeve returned the greeting brightly, and Celeste’s stomach flipped in the other direction. His tone was so friendly, and he was smiling with all of his nice teeth, and why in the realm did he have to be so handsome and cheery at the same time?

Geezer spun, spry for an old man, and his pale eyes fell on Celeste. “Just who I wanted to see!”

Crickets.

Baylen’s hand came down on Geezer’s shoulder. “I’m headed back to the shop.”

“Sure, sure, lunch is on me, Horns.” He waved him off, and the minotaur-man gathered a hefty bag and traipsed away ever-so-slowly. Celeste grit her teeth as Geezer started in, but Baylen never turned to listen, his tail swishing as he left. “I did a bit of a big think after we met the other day,” he said, excitedly clapping hands together, “about these very lights, and the ink, and what you said about the apotrope.”

She smoothed down her skirt and bit her lip. “I think it was you who said things about the apotrope.”

“Was it? Well, I thought about the saying of it anyway, and I think—have we met, holy man?” Geezer’s eyes shifted to Reeve. The knight was wearing his surcoat, the rising sun emblazoned on it in gold. Celeste had tried to avoid looking directly at that.

“No, sir.” Reeve dipped his head and introduced himself.

The mage’s eyes bounced from the top of Reeve’s head to Celeste’s blanching face. “This is your—”

“Associate,” squeaked Celeste, recognizing the look Geezer had that said he would guess at their relationship and embarrass all of them with what he assumed. She quickly explained to Reeve that Geezer was the mage who identified the apotrope.

“Right, well, Holy Man, your associate Midnight here inspired a reading frenzy that I only just finished up a few hours ago when Baylen came knocking with the new globes.”

“Midnight?” She blinked, then shook her head—he had said he was bad with names. “You haven’t slept since we met?”

“Not a wink. It’s a sieve.”

Celeste and Reeve traded quick glances, and he looked as confused as she felt, which was a small relief. “What is?”

“The apotrope’s previous tenant!” Geezer looked absolutely thrilled.

“There was a colander in that jar?” asked Reeve.

“No, an arcane sieve,” said Geezer as he pulled out a scroll of parchment and a reed from pockets hidden in his scarlet robes. The scroll unraveled itself all the way to the ground, already covered in scribbles and calculations, but he found a blank spot and pushed it up against Reeve’s chest, using him as a surface to draw. “They look a bit like that,”—that being an amorphous shape that really told one nothing—“Sieves aren’t commonly used nowadays, they can be quite dangerous since they’re rather chaotic, but a couple centuries ago they were one of the core ways non-arcane folk got by. A gift from the elves long, long ago. There were three kinds, fire ones, water ones, and earth ones, and they were even color-coded.” He gave Reeve’s surcoat a tap with his reed. “Very cute, I imagine!”

Cute was not how Celeste would have described the entity that had caused so many things to shatter and had spoken to her so darkly.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve seen one of those,” said Reeve, staring down at his chest and the scribble Geezer had made.

Celeste eyed him. “You have?”

“Last night. The fire in the f—”

“Forgive me, Geezer,” Celeste shouted, interrupting Reeve, “but I’m not so sure you’re right. The thing from the apotrope didn’t look much like that.”

“Ah, yes, your apotrope—now, that’s where it gets interesting!”

She was terribly afraid he was going to say that.

He rolled up the parchment with a quickness, words tumbling out even quicker. “So, sieves naturally pull the arcana out of the air—because magic’s all around us, all the time, in teeny, tiny, itty bitty, unseeable pieces—and they distill that magic into its most potent, usable parts. It’s like what a mage does, only with a lot less direction and thought because sieves don’t really direct or think, they just gobble, expel, and move on. There’s actually a theory that mages have sieves inside them, which I find interminably fascinating—do we absorb this sieve or are we born with it? Does every creature have one lying dormant inside of them, and if so, how can they be tapped into?”

“Maybe they’re granted to us by the gods?” The holy knight’s eyes went wide.

“Maybe!” Geezer whacked Reeve with the rolled-up parchment to absolutely zero effect. “And how are there some existing outside of us? Can we produce more? Contain multiple?”

As Geezer rattled off questions and Reeve nodded with wide, unblinking eyes, Celeste listened to them theoretically wander further from the topic at hand. Her fingers tightened on her bag, the jar inside. “You said the apotrope was interesting?” she cut in.

“The apotrope! Yes! So, the way these lamps burst is classic out-of-control sieve behavior—one travels about thoughtlessly, finds a concentrated amount of arcana, absorbs it, and then tries to distill it until the very plane around it shatters. If the thing that came out of your apotrope is the thing that’s giving us all this grief, then I can only think that thing is indeed a sieve, and stopping a sieve is rather simple: one can just trap them in any old jar meant for containing arcana until they calm down. Unless that sieve is so advanced that it could only be contained by a much greater power.”

“Advanced?” The word tasted anxious on her tongue.

Geezer turned from them and began toward town. “Yes. You see, most sieves have just one function, and they take an awful lot of maintenance, hence why we just don’t use them anymore. However, I did find writings that suggested sieves could absorb one another and become more. I stumbled upon a theory that if you had one that had been fed properly on other sieves, that you could run an entire household, a palace, a city even, on a single sieve just filtering in all of the chaotic arcana around it and producing clean water, and perfect crops, and lighting that comes on when one claps their hands.”

They were hurrying after him, deeper into the village, and Celeste wished he would keep his voice down.

“But plenty of mages can make fire with a snap,” said Reeve.

“Sure, mages can, but what about other folk? Arcane stones eventually lose their glow, and they’re expensive to begin with. We’re lucky that Baylen has a supplier who owed him a favor for these things.” Geezer gestured to one of the new lamps as he passed. “But there’s more. You see, in all the elven writings about wild sieves, they’re incredibly simple things. I wouldn’t even call them creatures, really—they don’t think, they just do—but the theory about combining sieves goes on to say that if a fourth kind of sieve could be found, or made, that it could perhaps manage itself.”

Celeste groaned. “You mean, like, it would come to life?”

“Sieves are alive, they’re just not as self-aware as me or you, but if they could be? Oh, I suppose it’s only a theory, but that apotrope of yours was crafted so meticulously, and the Ouranic on it translates to, for the siphon, which is just another word for sieve, after all. So perhaps our menace is more than just an unthinking, unspeaking magic-gobbler. Perhaps it indeed was one of these advanced sieves, one that ate others of its kind and required a much more advanced vessel to be contained.”

“Oh, it can speak and definitely think,” said Reeve. “And that’s its name, isn’t it? Syphon?”

Geezer came to a halt, his pale eyes shining. “It speaks?”

They were both staring at Celeste, and though she didn’t want to at all, she nodded.

“I have more reading to do!” The old man threw his hands up so swiftly that Reeve had to lean away to avoid being knocked in the nose. Geezer took off, and Celeste was left there with Reeve at the northernmost point of Briarwyke’s circle feeling sick to her stomach as a set of hens pecked around their feet.

“So, a sieve,” Reeve finally said, dropping his hands onto his hips and jutting out his chin as if they hadn’t just been told that very thing was a danger to them all.

Celeste rubbed hard at her eyes, blocking out the town’s center and the few who were milling about it. “Apparently. And a formidable, cannibalistic one too.”

With all the confidence in the realm, Reeve spoke, “Then we shall seek it out. Sir, how fare thee? May I have a moment of your time?”

In the seconds it took for the stars to clear from Celeste’s eyes, Reeve had made his way across Briarwyke’s center and gone straight for a tall, blond man with a bow and quiver of arrows over his shoulder.

“Have you seen a sieve mucking about in or out of town?”

“A what now?”

“A sieve. It’s a—ah!”

Celeste sprinted right into Reeve and grabbed the back of his surcoat, all she could think to do to shut him up. When he tried to turn, she did her best to hold him in place, just peeking out from behind his elbow to address the stranger, “We’re doing some baking!”

The knight lifted an arm and glared at her beneath it. “No, we’re looking for—”

She gave his surcoat another hard tug and cleared her throat. “We need lots of fine flour for tea cakes, and we need a sifter. You know how it is.”

The stranger gave them both a dubious look, but then grinned at Celeste. “Well, if you’re looking for anything, Baylen’s either got it or can get it for you.”

She wanted to hide herself fully behind Reeve but couldn’t risk what the knight might say. “Thank you so much, sir.”

“I can take you there, if—”

“No, we’re fine, and we can see you’re busy.” She yanked at Reeve again, pulling him in the opposite direction the stranger had been headed.

There was a moment, brief and painful, that the blond man stared down the two. When he finally continued on his way, Celeste was tempted to thank Valcord on behalf of them both.

Reeve pulled himself free to round on her. “Is there nothing you will not lie about?”

She held up a finger to his lips, urging him to stay quiet. “You just can’t mention the sieve, all right? Not to anyone.”

“What? Why not?”

Celeste looked about, shushing him harder. “We don’t want to cause a…a panic in the village. We’re protecting the people by not letting them know.”

Reeve’s brow softened, and she hoped he would believe her. It was at least a little bit true, she did want to protect them, it just so happened that keeping the sieve, and the fact she released it, a secret protected her too.

“She might have a point,” spoke Sid from Reeve’s hip, and they both jolted at the voice.

“See?” Celeste gestured to the pommel. “Your very good sword agrees with me.”

“My opinion of you is only barely tempered,” said the sword. “I just know my wielder can sometimes be impulsive and a little too honest.”

Celeste snorted—marginally good sword then.

Reeve’s jaw ticked, and she was sure it was at them both. “Then how are we supposed to find out anything?”

“We have to ask without asking.”

Reeve crossed his arms and jut out his lip which was annoying, but it was a fair bit better than looking like he wanted to throttle her. “How, pray tell, does one ask a question without asking it?”

“Well, you just…you know…oh, look, you’re good at asking questions, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She took him by the elbow and tugged him toward the Dew Drop Inn.

“I am good at asking questions,” he conceded and allowed himself to be pulled along.

It wasn’t until she pushed open the door that Celeste realized she had wrapped her hand around his arm a bit too familiarly. Like the night before in the forest when, after some internal protesting, she’d let herself lean on him and momentarily feel something like safety, she was giving his elbow a rather intimate squeeze. Her hand didn’t go around his arm very far, and it was much too thickly muscled for her to do any damage, but she was squeezing him. A simple glance at his surcoat’s symbol, however, was enough to make her pull back, instead running fingers through her hair to tug it between them like a shield.

It was quiet inside the tavern, but that only allowed Halfrida to hone in on the new arrivals. “The courageous soldier returns! I knew you wouldn’t abandon that horse, not that Eliot would be disappointed if you did.”

The kitchen door swung open behind her, and the young boy’s head popped out.

“We did worry, of course, since Briarwyke’s got no other inn.” The keeper’s eyes narrowed, lips curling devilishly. “You found a spare bed though, eh? What did you get up to, I wonder?”

Reeve turned to Celeste, looking for permission to answer and clearly upset about the fact she wasn’t going to grant it. She only made a small noncommittal noise and shrugged.

“Well, I bet you’ve worked up quite the appetite.” Halfrida bustled into the kitchen, shooing Eliot out.

Reeve moved toward a table, gesturing to the closest seat. Celeste scurried around and plopped herself into the chair across from him, head still bent. When he didn’t sit, she looked up to see his brow furrowed yet again.

“What? I didn’t lie to her—I didn’t say anything. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not—” Reeve glanced down to the chair he’d pulled out, then sat into it himself. “I suppose you did not lie. This time.”

She rolled her eyes. Too often had Celeste been on the receiving end of someone’s ire for things she could not control, for simply delivering a message containing an inconvenience she had no part in. Clearly, Reeve did not understand that lies were necessary, even in the most mundane situations, when telling the truth earned one only punishment.

“I think we need to define what a lie actually is, if withholding the truth counts, because—oh, hi there.” Celeste’s gaze fell on the young boy who had silently slipped across the tavern to hide behind the next table and peek at them.

He said nothing, but continued to stare, specifically at Reeve.

“He likes your sword,” said another voice. From beneath their table, the little girl who had fed Celeste potatoes poked her head out. How she’d gotten there was anyone’s guess.

“Oh, of course.” Reeve unsheathed it from his scabbard, and though he’d done it many times, the Obsidian Widow Maker in the hands of a seated wielder in the domesticity of a tavern made it seem much bigger. “Would you like to hold it?”

Celeste thought she should protest—it was a very big sword and a very little boy, comparatively, but Reeve turned in his chair, laid the blade carefully across his arm, and offered the hilt up in such a way that it seemed nothing like a weapon at all. Eliot stared at the obsidian steel for a long moment and didn’t move.

“Eliot doesn’t talk,” said a third voice, and the dark-haired girl Halfrida had called Charlie appeared from the shadows at the other end of the tavern. At least that was all of the children, Celeste thought, unless she had counted wrong the previous night.

“It’s so shiny!” The littlest girl came racing around the table to look. “Is it heavy? Do you kill bad guys with it? How much blood comes out when you stab ‘em?”

“And Willow talks enough for everybody,” said Charlie, going up behind the boy and putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Eliot, if you want to.”

Eliot took tentative steps forward, and with one more glance back at Charlie, he held his hands out.

“It is heavy.” Reeve offered up the sword. “And, yes, it is used for vanquishing evil, and there is often quite a lot of,”—he glanced at Celeste quickly, then cleared his throat—“well, it takes care of bad guys.” When Eliot’s hands were firmly around the hilt, Reeve pulled back, and immediately the tip of the blade fell to the wooden floor with a thunk. Eliot gasped, but Reeve only chuckled and shrugged. “I told you.”

A cautious smile spread out on the boy’s face as Willow burst into adorable giggles.

“I couldn’t hold something like that up when I was your age either.”

“He can barely do it now,” said the sword, and all three children shrieked.

“No weapons indoors!” Halfrida came bustling back out, two bowls in hand, and it was a mad scramble. Reeve caught the hilt as Eliot abandoned it, and the children scattered.

“Yes, ma’am,” barked Reeve, as he rushed to sheath Sid and sat straight. “Sorry, ma’am.”

Halfrida set the bowls before them. “That’s better. Now, I’ll go to seeing what kind of work needs done so you can pay.”

Still pin straight, Reeve stared down at his bowl and nodded.

Celeste had been watching the careful way he handed off the sword, then his quick reaction at Halfrida’s chiding, and it stung in a strange way at her heart. “I don’t think you’re actually in trouble,” she whispered, picking up her spoon.

“Oh.” Reeve’s shoulders relaxed. “Of course, I just…”

“Like to follow the rules. No swords at the table, no lying to strangers. I know.” She took a bite, nodding. The stew they’d been given was thick and savory, filled with mushrooms and carrots and onions. It warmed her throat and loosened the tenseness she’d been carrying about in her neck.

“No lying to anyone,” he said, pointing at her with his own spoon.

Celeste watched him take a bite. Anyone included her, she supposed, which would be a nice change. There always seemed to be someone telling her some falsehood, though they often insisted she just hadn’t understood or misremembered. Celeste did understand though, and she remembered quite well.

Reeve, however, didn’t seem like he would insist her interpretation of a situation was wrong even though he also seemed quite firmly planted in his own beliefs. It was funny to think she was meant to trust a man who wanted to kill her, and a holy knight besides. Her gaze slid down to the rising sun on his chest, and she frowned. “Is being habitually honest one of Valcord’s rules?”

Reeve’s brows drew together. “We have a code, and we are to be virtuous.” He took another thoughtful bite. “My brothers and I each define that a bit differently.”

“You said you have a brother from Clarriseau, didn’t you?”

“Gable.” He glanced down at the table and swallowed. “He is a good man, but he definitely defines virtuousness uniquely.”

“How is that possible? You belong to the same order, and you were taught by the same people, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but if it had been Gable you trapped, he would have probably slain you once released despite making an oath. I imagine he would say something like, swearing by Valcord only counts if you really mean it. I don’t agree with that at all, but I also wouldn’t make an oath I didn’t intend to keep.”

Celeste’s next swallow burned her throat. “Well, I’m glad out of all his knights, Valcord picked you to come here then.”

Reeve’s next bite halted halfway to his mouth, those amber eyes of his finding hers in earnest. “You are?”

The door to the tavern swung open with a flourish, which wasn’t something doors normally did, but the entrant had a peculiar sway over the wood. Wearing the same long, violet coat as the evening she’d met him, the handsome, older man with the goatee strode into the Dew Drop Inn. Gaspard’s grin widened when he eyed the two, sparkling teeth on display, and he pulled a chair away from another table and gracefully deposited himself at theirs.

“Hello there,” he said to Reeve with all the charm he’d laid before Celeste’s feet a few nights before. “Have you had a longer think about my question?”

“Oh, yes!” Reeve nodded, placing his spoon back down. “Unless you remember going to the temple yourself and doing it, I don’t think it’s possible.”

Gaspard clasped him on the shoulder, and a spark of a laugh came out of him. “Well, thank the gods—yours especially—for that. This one gave me quite the scare,” he said, turning to Celeste as he gave Reeve a shake, and then he stood and called for the children, declaring that it was “arithmetic day” and they couldn’t hide from it no matter how unbearable it was to all of them.

Celeste wondered at the oddness of the interaction, but spied Kori across the tavern. She’d come in at some point, or had perhaps always been there, leaning against the end of the bar. When they made eye contact, the woman pointed at Reeve with one of her daggers and then mimicked dragging it across her throat, brows raised with inquiry. Celeste shook her head and quickly looked away.

“What is the plan?” asked Reeve, unaware how imminent his assassination had almost been.

“Hmm? Oh, well…” Celeste watched Gaspard herd up the three children and lead them outside. There were a few other tables with seated patrons, villagers Celeste had not met and who did not seem terribly interested in making anyone’s acquaintance. “I think what we should do now is listen.”

“Listen? To?”

She gestured with her elbows at the rest of the tavern.

Reeve leaned in, finally lowering his voice for once to a whisper. “To the people? You mean eavesdrop?”

She chuckled at his utterly scandalized look. “I mean inadvertently overhear.”

Reeve said nothing then, eating in silence with a grimace that she regretted inspiring especially since the mundane gossip being traded was largely useless. A few noted that Geezer and Baylen had fixed the North Road lamps, and a younger man mentioned the smithy blowing up, but his drunkenness only made the others half believe the story. There was no talk of anything else odd happening at all unless a set of triplets being born to one of the goats at the dairy was noteworthy.

As boredom won out, Celeste thought to strike up a conversation with the knight—anything to wipe that disapproving look off his face—but things were awkward enough sharing a meal in front of other people. It was more than a little mortifying when she caught Halfrida and Kori whispering to one another at the bar, smirking and pointing at their table. Celeste was unsure what was worse: whatever Halfrida thought the two were up to, or Kori telling her a version of the truth that included Reeve being bound up in Celeste’s bed chamber.

But Reeve solved all of that for her. “I know I am not meant to be asking questions, but may I ask you something?”

Celeste froze with her spoon in her mouth, and then she nodded.

He blew out a long breath as if he had thought on the importance of what would come out next for an interminable time. He placed down his spoon and splayed his hands flat on the table. “How old are you?”

She nearly answered, but the number caught in her throat. “Why?”

“I am curious as to if you are an ancient human capable of something akin to eternal youth.” Then he squinted ceiling-ward as if he did not want to admit it but forced the answer out anyway, “And also you said you were from Clarriseau, and my brother Gable, who is twenty-eight, told me stories about the island, and—”

“I am the age I look. Why did you become a holy knight?”

He stared back at her, properly interrupted. She was not answering whatever would come next when he puzzled out that she had lived through the horrible things that happened in Clarriseau twenty years prior, and he seemed to accept that.

“I was called into Valcord’s service.” He took a bite of bread and then mumbled around it, “and I also failed the priest exams.”

“A lot of reading,” the sword piped up.

Reeve grunted and swallowed.

Celeste held back her laughter, which was much better than the panic she’d just had, but ignored the sword. “You wanted to be a priest? But they’re all grumpy, old men, and you’re not two of those things.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t really want to be a priest, but we all take the exam, just in case.”

“What, you mean everyone in your home city takes a test to enter into the clergy?”

“Everyone in Bendcrest?” He grinned and shook his head like the idea was preposterous. “No, but anyone who shows skills with divine arcana does. It means we have some heritage of dominion blood, and the temple identified me early on.”

“So, those were your only two options? Priest or holy knight?”

He nodded as if it were obvious, though she’d expected him to argue back. At least he was properly distracted from asking about Clarriseau.

“You never wanted to do anything else?” She collected the last of her stew for a final bite. “To be someone else?”

Reeve’s spoon hung out of his mouth as he stared dumbly back at her. He looked as if he’d been told the gods weren’t really gods at all but only fae playing at the idea. Finally, he shook his head, but it was labored and odd.

“All finished?” As though she’d heard the scraping of the bowls, Halfrida appeared over Reeve’s shoulder. “Oh, good! You loved it, I can tell, no need to shower me in compliments, and you don’t have time anyway: I’ve got a job all lined up for the two of you.”

CHAPTER 12
SAYING BOTH NO AND YES

R eeve stood before a cottage in the woods utterly covered in flowers. It wasn’t sunny enough in the hollow nor was it warm enough in the season for so many blooms, but there was buttery-colored jasmine climbing up the walls, a bed of daisies covering the roof, and lavender wisteria draping itself from the eaves.

Neither he nor Celeste had known the cottage was tucked away just off North Road so close to the temple, but Halfrida assigned them a task in trade for her meal, and a cranky, short woman called Kori was told to take them there despite being keen not to. When they arrived, the hollow smelt of the floral sweetness of spring despite the chill hanging in the air, clearly arcane in origin.

Kori went ahead up to the arched door and knocked, more sprawling blooms lining either side of a stone path. She carried more daggers than she could have possibly needed to finish off an entire army and had declined all of his questions about what they were being sent to do. He’d caught Celeste snickering at each of Kori’s dismissals, but instead of upsetting him, he found he preferred her to be amused rather than how anxious she’d been in town. It ate at him, the way her eyes darted around as if expecting the worst to happen—he was right there, so it wasn’t like either of them would be ambushed by some solitary rogue with a knife.

Reeve was, however, a little perturbed that his question for Celeste in the tavern had gone unanswered—that is, he was perturbed only then, when he suddenly remembered he had asked at all. She may not have been a witch nor an immortal, but she was certainly sneaky and had distracted him away from asking about Clarriseau.

But being granted permission to ask a question did not mean one was entitled to the answer, Father Theodore would have reminded him. The priest would have also advised that some things are not necessarily appropriate to ask. Gable had only shared the turmoil of his childhood after years of friendship, the secret worship of a dark goddess in his village, fleeing the burning island of Clarriseau without his parents, and coming ashore alone in Bendcrest before the temple of Valcord took him in. Expecting Celeste to divulge anything similar over stew with a stranger was perhaps…overzealous.

Beside him, Celeste stared unblinking up at the cottage’s facade and made a noise, a squeak mixed with a sigh that told him she was overcome with the place. Kori’s curtness on their walk out of town had done nothing to eclipse her awe. “Crickets,” she said, barely more than a whisper, “it’s beautiful. Keep the temple, I’m staying here.”

Though there was no falseness in her eyes, Reeve knew it had to be a joke, yet she was truly enamored of the place, strange for a creature so twisted up in the darkest of magics to yearn for something so light and cheery. “Valcord would be pleased,” he said then grunted. If she left, he would be alone in the temple, and then what?

There was a munching at his other side, and he tugged on Earlylyte’s reins. The horse looked up at him guiltily, sprigs of clover sticking out of his muzzle. He could hardly be blamed, clover being his favorite, but Reeve shook his head tightly, encouraging the horse to hold himself.

When the cottage’s door opened, an elf answered, which should not have been a surprise. “You brought friends,” she said to Kori, face drawn serenely as kind eyes swept over them. Tall and slender, she had delicate limbs, hair as golden as the first rays of the morning sun, and skin the color of rich soil. Reeve did not need Flint or Gable to point out that she was gorgeous, though he was sure they would anyway had they been there, and then they would probably make asses of themselves. Elves were beautiful—it was just a fact, he supposed, so it was a thing he knew.

Her eyes fell to Kori with the earthy tenderness he remembered seeing in a priestess called Tressa who had found a way to enrapture Gable like no other woman. They spoke in hushed tones, and then her placid smile grew just a bit as she invited them all inside.

The elf introduced herself as Ima’riel, significantly friendlier than Kori. Her home had spongy moss covering the floors and a tree stump in the main chamber’s middle set with a delicate teapot and cups. A small hearth at the back had bread baking on an interior shelf, the stone a shimmering, arcane red. Through an open window, a set of blue birds flitted in and then out another, but no one paid them mind.

Though the place was overfilled with distraction, including soft draperies that blew in the breeze and the curling tendrils of mysterious plants, Reeve’s attention was drawn back to Celeste when Ima’riel asked after her injuries.

The elf skillfully removed the bandages from Celeste’s arm, and Reeve watched, unease prickling in his veins despite the serenity of the place. Beneath, Celeste’s skin was raised, though the wound did not appear as fresh as only the day or so she’d had it.

“Healing nicely,” said Ima’riel, voice flowing with approval, and she gave her a pat that had to be filled with arcana as when it came away, the skin was even less marred.

It would be unfair, he supposed, to engage Celeste in battle if she were not in top form. Villainous even, and Valcord would not like that. Reeve would not like that either. He had been annoyed she’d barred him from asking after the sieve, but if they had found and caught it, then their deal would be done, and battle would resume, but he couldn’t battle her like this. No, that would not be at all virtuous.

“You’re okay with having visitors?” asked Kori, eyes locked onto Ima’riel. “With them? Here?”

The elf gave her a single nod. “I’m feeling much better today, and I’m grateful for the help.”

Kori snarled with begrudging acceptance, and the elf led all three out a back door into a clearing.

Behind the cottage, a house of glass stood, catching the sun and glittering like the river that snaked through Bendcrest. She led them inside, and the chill of early spring was shut out by the pleasant warmth within. Greenery climbed up trellises on either side of the door, thick pea pods growing unseasonably early and in large bunches. Tiered boxes were angled toward the glass walls sprouting bunches of leafy greens, and long lines of beds filled with root vegetables ran down its center. Ropes hanging from the ceiling supported other plants that had roots exposed to the air, tightly coiled around the braided lengths and bearing fruits and flowers.

Reeve did not need to reach inside himself to seek out the magic all around, elven arcana obvious in every growing thing. Bees buzzed amongst the blooms, one particularly fat and fuzzy one coming to hover just before Celeste’s face. She grinned as it inspected her and then allowed it to flit away without even a protective swipe.

“This is where some of the food for the inn comes from,” Ima’riel told them.

“Uh, almost all of it, actually,” Kori interjected.

The elf’s lips twitched, face humbly dipping downward. “Well, I would like to produce more, if I can, but you can see I’ve run out of room.” She took them through the overburdened space and out its back door to a patch of grass where a table and chairs sat surrounded by brittle thorns much like those that covered the village itself.

There was a second greenhouse behind the first, but this one was in very ill shape. The door was missing and a few of the panes were shattered, but inside was worse. Every corner was filled with gnarled, dead plants. Long before they’d dried, the vines had climbed up over the walls and ceiling so that only the faintest lights shone through. There was little room to move, but a narrow walkway ran the length of the glass chamber with a clear spot in the middle where they all gathered.

“I’ve tried for quite a while, but these plants cannot be saved.” Ima’riel sighed, the first hint of a frown on her face as her hands came together. “I will need builders to repair the glass, and then I can prepare the soil and nurture more plants, but first I need someone to clear it out.”

Ah, so that was the job. Reeve shrugged. “That’s all? We can just burn this away.”

“We did consider that, but the brush is so dry, I fear it will be too difficult to contain.”

“Yeah.” Kori crossed her arms and gave him the kind of look that someone might give a child. “Fire’s dangerous.”

“Of course it is, but I can control it.” He gripped the pommel of The Obsidian Widow Maker in one hand and turned up his other palm. Warmth spilled forth from his chest and through his arm until a yellow spark ignited in his hand.

“Divine light.” The elf nodded, pleased.

Reeve glanced to Celeste. She was watching the arcana he held with a quiet interest. He snuffed it out when he was sure she had gotten a good look.

“We’re going to be roasted alive in here,” muttered Kori.

Ima’riel placed her fingertips on Kori’s elbow without looking at her. “You may go about this in whatever way you wish—I am thankful for the assistance, and I am sure that Halfrida would not send someone here incapable of the job. Kori, I have a separate task for you, if you’re willing to help me again today?”

The woman’s eyes widened, and she nodded silently. If Reeve thought she was capable, she might have blushed beneath the dark fall of hair she let hide her face.

“Then we shall leave the two of you to it.”

As they withdrew from the greenhouse, Kori called back, “Don’t let him set the forest alight!”

Reeve drew in a deep breath and let it go. Perhaps it was a bad idea, even if he could use Sid to channel his naturally occurring arcana. “So, how should we do this?”

“Uh, well?” Celeste poked at a plant so shriveled it was unidentifiable, and a leaf crumbled to the greenhouse floor. “It is very dry, so what exactly is your plan?”

Reeve straightened, surprised she too didn’t immediately dismiss the idea. He brought his hands together, then pulled them apart quickly, making a sound he thought might mimic flames.

There was a long and quiet moment while Celeste stood before him in the shadows of the dead plants, just staring.

“We burn it,” he said in case she didn’t understand and then shrugged. “It would be quick. Fun too. But I know it’s dumb.”

Celeste grinned. He had been expecting that, or rather, expecting a sarcastic, condescending smirk. But the smile that spread out on her face was…well, it was lovely. Reeve rubbed the center of his chest, an odd feeling there as if divine arcana were conjuring itself and filling him with warmth.

Reeve rarely came up with plans, and when he did, others often gave him a pitiful look and moved on, much like how Kori had done. But the smile Celeste gave him instead was kinder than that, no hint of condescension or frustration.

“You’re right, it would be quick and fun.” At this, her eyes narrowed on him, and that kind smile deepened into a playful smirk. The warmth in his chest dropped down to his stomach, and that felt…funny. “Do you mind if I help?”

Reeve pressed a hand to his gut so he could focus. “You can control fire too?”

“Not like you,” she said, touching the locket hanging around her neck, “but I can smother it. The last time we tried to work together, it was sort of a disaster, but maybe if we go slower—”

“And aren’t being threatened by an evil sieve.”

“And that,” she said, snorting, “this might work. Start small, okay? And I’ll stay behind you so nothing else catches.”

“This is divine fire.” He lifted his hand again and called up the smallest flicker of it in his palm to show her. “It’s not meant to be smothered in the same way regular fire or even arcane fire can be. It’s meant to burn for the gods.”

“Well, this is noxscura,” she said, and she flicked at her locket. A shadow alighted the tip of her finger and wiggled like a flame itself. She brought her finger to his hand, and the shadow leapt off, encircling his arcana and squeezing.

Reeve could feel the grip of her magic around his, watching the way she curled her fingers and feeling the noxscura follow along. He could flare his own in response to hold it off, but in the moment he didn’t quite mind the snugness, and then his fire was snuffed out.

“It’s meant to destroy…everything, I guess,” she said, pulling her hand away just before their fingers touched.

“Fair point.”

“Dangerous point too,” said Sid, but Reeve chose to ignore him.

It was smoky at first. In the haze, they coughed out apologies for not keeping up with one another, making several attempts at a controlled burn that only seemed to produce more smoke than fire.

They let the greenhouse clear out and began again. After a few moments where all seemed well, Reeve pushed on, and then there was a burst of fire that jumped quickly to the ceiling. He tried to call it back, but Celeste’s noxscura had already glommed onto it, twisting around and dragging it downward to crash into a pile of dried out wood.

With more fuel, the fire flared on its own, and the noxscura answered in kind. As their magic fought, the two took a step back against the brambles and watched for a too-long moment before realizing they were capable of putting an end to things and finally did.

“It was a bad idea,” Reeve coughed.

“No, it’s not—it’s working, see?” She waved, and the noxscura gobbled up the smoke to reveal a bramble-less spot in the greenhouse. “Let’s give your idea one more try.”

Whether it was the surprising vote of confidence or the concern that it would be his fault if they were burnt alive, things went smoothly after. Reeve learned he could not simply set the whole place alight, and if Celeste remained close, they were able to move along steadily without choking themselves or causing more structural damage. But Celeste did have to remain close, and there was quite a lot of heat between the divine fire and the glass and the sun, but something about her shoulder brushing his really brought the sweat to the surface.

When they took a break, Reeve removed his surcoat, placing it on a stump just outside the greenhouse’s door but making sure to keep Sid strapped to him so he could properly channel his arcana. As he reentered, he took stock of the work they had done, tugging at the open neck of his tunic. Half of the building was clear, sunlight streaming through, and only ash lay where there had once been a tangle of brambles and death. He pushed the sleeves of his tunic up over his elbows and wiped sweat off his brow. “We’ve made quite the dent, haven’t we?”

Celeste stood in the middle of the greenhouse, sunlight falling on half of her, so bright it turned her black hair an intriguing shade of blue. The shadows of the dead tangles fell on her other half, hanging and gnarled and waiting to be burnt away. She had her arms wrapped around her middle as if she were cold, odd since a bead of sweat ran down her neck.

“Hmm?” She blinked. “What?”

“Halfway there,” he said, gesturing to what was left.

“Oh, yes!” As if she’d forgotten, she turned swiftly to the shadowy side of the greenhouse, her skirt swishing around her legs. She was wearing another of those dresses that ended just below the knee, and he lamented she had no layers to take off when she was likely feeling just as warm. Well, she could, probably, women usually wore something beneath dresses so light in color, otherwise they would be completely see-through and…Reeve shook his head—thoughts like that would undo all the hard work they’d put into focusing their magic to work together.

Reeve didn’t have the experience to know that thoughts like that could actually entangle magic in all sorts of interesting ways, but he would eventually find out.

Together, the second half went quicker than the first. They remained close, and Celeste’s elbow brushed him a time or two. Reeve tried very hard not to react to the touch, but his arcana did falter once, and one of the glass panes melted entirely. Nerves, he thought, with so much noxscura around, though it was funny—he hadn’t been worried about the darkness he was allowing his own skill to be entangled with at all while they worked.

“Well, she said she needed to get builders out here anyway,” offered Celeste, and then she cleared her throat. “But we will tell Ima’riel the truth about it, that it was our fault, and see what she has to say.” Perhaps not everyone needed to lose an arm like Walter the Weathered to earn a bit of virtue.

When the work was complete, they presented the empty greenhouse to Ima’riel who heaped praise on them in her singsongy voice, didn’t care at all about the lost window, and then invited them inside for bread slathered in butter and tea that smelled of cherries and rain.

Kori sat herself away from the others on a stool in the corner, watching shrewdly as the three sat around Ima’riel’s tree stump table. A chipmunk skittered in through the window and up onto the stump, offering an acorn to the elf.

“Fourteen days?” she asked as she took it and looked it over.

The chipmunk shrugged a shoulder then reached out little paws.

Ima’riel handed the creature a crust of bread, and it scampered back out through the window. She placed the acorn in the table’s center. “I think we’ll go with fourteen days, but I could be off by up to three.”

“Thank the gods.” Despite her words, Kori didn’t actually seem all that thankful. “You’ve been exhausting yourself between all this gardening and those flowers.”

“They’re more than just flowers,” Ima’riel corrected but smiled delicately over at the other woman. “They’re Kvesarian sweetbriars, and there are more in Briarwyke than anywhere else I’ve ever seen.”

Kori leaned back against the wall, glaring out the window. “Whatever they are, they’re not worth hurting yourself over.”

“They only grow in very special places outside the Kvesari Wood,” Ima’riel told them. “We didn’t even have them in the Gloomweald. Unfortunately they fell dormant here about forty years ago according to Halfrida, but Geezer and I are determined to bring them back.”

“Do you mean the thorny bushes growing all over town?” Celeste took a sip of her tea.

Ima’riel nodded. “They’re elven and meant to bloom yearly, when the sun rises on the first day of true spring, though I fear this year’s date may be thrown off by that eclipse we had last fall. Last year we managed almost a dozen blooms on one bush, but then it fell dormant again.”

“Yeah, and Geezer said that last year you were so tired, you couldn’t stay awake to see them open with the sunrise.”

Ima’riel chuckled at Kori’s derision. “Well, it’s much more important that it happens than I get to see it. We’ve done about all we can do, now we just have to wait and see.”

Kori was glowering, but Reeve could feel more concern than anger radiating off her.

“You said the sweetbriars are elven magic?” Celeste asked carefully. “Is there any other unique arcana in Briarwyke?”

Ima’riel’s head tipped. “I’m not sure, but the village is cursed,” she announced with a smile.

Reeve tried to swallow a too-big piece of bread, and it caught in his throat. As he choked, the elf gave him a tap on the back, and suddenly he could take a full breath again.

“Perhaps I should not say cursed,” she chuckled. “I came here five years ago during the sickness. The villagers were in dire need of healing and unfortunately many had already passed. I lost a fair few more, but we managed to eradicate whatever it was plaguing them. But then the strangest thing happened—they all went on living their lives as if it were not quite the tragedy it was. It was as if they were, you know, used to this sort of thing. And then I discovered, indeed, they are.”

“It’s like they just accept their bad luck.” Kori snorted.

Celeste traded a glance with Reeve. “Halfrida said something similar.”

“I never could find the origin of the sickness that took so many.” Ima’riel looked pained then, strange on her normally serene face. “Nearly every family was broken. Most of the children were orphaned and live with parents who lost their own. Halfrida’s sister, Willow’s mother, I really thought I could save her at the least, but I lost her too.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kori stood and came to the table. “She isn’t fully recovered, even now, and look at all the work she does for the village still. I’ve only been in Briarwyke for a season, but I know Ima’riel’s essential to this town surviving.”

“Thank you, Kori.” The elf gazed up at her with another one of those earnest looks that said much more than her words.

Kori swiped a piece of bread and hurried back to her corner to watch them as if a fight might break out at any moment, and she had to be prepared.

Ima’riel sighed, but her smile didn’t falter. “Perhaps if we can get the sweetbriars to bloom again that will offer a little help—they are a source of great elven magic. If nothing else, there will be a festival, and that will most certainly bring the village a little joy. But I do feel as though Briarwyke’s unfortunate history is all somehow bound together. They have illnesses and floods and attacks as if…I don’t know. It is like misery is drawn to this place.”

Celeste dropped her gaze to the tree stump after that, staring into her half-empty cup. She didn’t finish her tea.

Evening was upon them when they left. Ima’riel had insisted they take a basket filled with vegetables and a jar of seeds. There were storms coming, she said, but after, the ground would be perfect for planting and they should have their own garden. Neither corrected her that any garden planted would not be theirs.

They returned for the temple as they were already north of the village. Earlylyte was given free range of the courtyard, and the two dragged themselves inside, more tired than either seemed to expect.

“We didn’t find the sieve,” said Celeste, voice weary.

“But we didn’t cause any disasters either.” Reeve sighed. “And we helped.”

“We helped,” she repeated quietly, looking up at the darkening sky through one of the broken windows on the temple’s ceiling.

When they parted ways for their respective bed chambers, Reeve watched Celeste go down the narrow hall off the study room. This temple was similar to his home one in Bendcrest, but it must have been different enough—a hall like that usually housed students, and the chambers along it would be tiny.

Up in the chamber she’d given him, Reeve stripped off his baldric, surcoat, and tunic and fell onto the bed. He imagined there must have been a great number of similar chambers if Celeste allowed him the comfort of this one.

He gazed languidly across the breadth of the room and frowned at the back of the skull on the mantle. He’d turned that around so he wouldn’t meet its eyeless stare, but maybe stuffing it under the bed would be better. Then again, the thought of that too-wide, smiling jaw lurking beneath where he slept made him shudder.

No longer stuffed under the bed, though, was the book he’d been left with, pages once again gathered and put in proper order. Reeve picked it up off the side table and turned to where he had last left off. The story had been getting good, and despite his heavy eyelids, he wanted to know what happened next.

CHAPTER 13
IN WHICH THE AUTHOR CIRCUMVENTS PROPHECY WHEN SHE REMEMBERS HOW FRUSTRATING IT IS

C eleste woke early, but Reeve was not sitting before the broken altar like she’d found him the day before. I win, she thought blithely, stretching and noting that her body, while still bruised, was feeling much better.

Plum sailed down from his nest in the rafters to land in her outstretched hands. Pointy jaws unhinged as he yawned right in her face with the terrible morning breath she’d come to be fond of if only for its regularity.

“Let’s go check on Sir Sleepyhead’s horse, shall we?”

Plum croaked and took off, sailing ahead to perch on a candelabra beside the doors in the temple’s antechamber. She grabbed a carrot from the basket Ima’riel had given them and pushed outside with some effort, a chilly breeze meeting her. There was a bright swatch of something on the edge of the temple’s portico, colorful against the stark, white stone steps. Plum half-scurried, half-flew to it, snuffling hard when he came upon a ruby-colored feather stuck to the fabric. The wyvern pounced and lifted the bundle by a knot, flapping hard to bring it to hover just before her face, the parcel hanging from his talons.

It had the heft and shape of a book, tied in a colorful silk that Celeste recognized from the mess that was Geezer’s illusion-filled home. Plum remained flapping before her when she accepted it, black eyes wide and hopeful. “Yes, good job.” She gave him a tickle along his throat. “You certainly helped deliver this, didn’t you?”

Adequately praised, the wyvern swooped away to stretch his wings in the morning air.

Celeste blinked out into the courtyard, and though things were still a mess, in the streams of gentle morning light, it was pleasant enough. A bird twittered in one of the trees beyond the fence, and the air smelled fresher than it had the day before, as if flowers were beginning to bloom in the mud’s stead.

Reeve’s horse was helpfully eating a patch of something overgrown, his blond tail swishing and no worse for the extra day in the stables. Earlylyte was an imposing creature, bigger and more thickly muscled than most horses, though he had a splash of white across his chest, down his front legs, and all over his muzzle like he’d been dunked in a barrel of milk. That was an amusing enough thought to make his gargantuanness a little less daunting, but she was still nervous about approaching him—horses were often skittish around noxscura even if it was locked away inside an arcane vessel.

She tucked the package into the crook of one arm and brought the carrot over her head with the other, winding back to chuck it at the animal in offering and run back inside. But as she measured the distance, her plan was brought to a halt when her last sweeping gaze over the courtyard fell on the figure of Sir Reeve.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise she missed him, he was holding that still, but when she let her gaze linger, she wondered how overlooking him had been possible at all. Under the rosy lights of early morning, he was sitting cross-legged on the earth just at the center of the courtyard. Eyes closed and face tipped up into the sun’s rays, sweat glinted on the bare skin of his shoulders and chest, both broad and solid with finely detailed muscle. Celeste squeezed the wrapped up package from Geezer against her, and her grip tightened painfully on the thickness of the carrot. Reeve had…well, he had nice skin, that was for certain.

Gods, that is a ghoulish observation, she thought, one she was embarrassed of without even saying it aloud. It was only that having the normal kind of lewd thoughts about men usually led to disappointment, which was perfectly fine and expected, but having those same kind of thoughts about Sir Reeve, Holy Knight of Valcord, would lead to much more awful things.

She’d decided this the night before while lying on her cot and indulging in some of those dangerous thoughts, the pleasantness of cleaning Ima’riel’s greenhouse alongside him, how he had proposed the work would be fun as he smiled in his careless way and showed off that dimple of his, and the…well, yes, the sweat. Because he’d done just the right amount of it to not really need to remove his tunic, a thing she’d lamented while she lay alone in the dark, but she hadn’t minded the removal of his surcoat, or the looseness to his neckline, or the rolled-up sleeves.

Dark gods, the rolled-up sleeves.

And that evoked image had done it, pushing her to take care of the tingle between her legs or else she’d never sleep. He wasn’t a holy knight when he wasn’t wearing that symbol, he was just a man, and maybe it was pathetic, but she was lonely, and no one would know because it wasn’t like she were some character being written about in a book.

But while basking in the relief of her frustration—because after always came with embarrassing clarity—she’d decided that even the smallest bit of pining after Sir Reeve wasn’t just a waste but a danger. Even if he didn’t hate her for desecrating his god’s temple, he would never look at her like she was a woman. A witch? Yes. Some disgusting creature hiding its true nature under a person’s skin? For certain. But not just a woman. The few men who did look at Celeste like that always had ulterior motives anyway—a desire for control, a desire to get to her sister, or simply because she paid them to have desire at all.

Yet as she was staring at just the thing she’d imagined, a bare-chested Reeve who appeared righteously satisfied, she could not look away despite admonishments running through her head, telling her disaster loomed just behind his broad shoulders and repudiation boiled beneath his tanned skin. It was one thing to find a man handsome who would never be interested—that she was used to—but when he intended to vanquish her, it would be lethal. One too-long glance could find her impaled in the exact wrong kind of way.

She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that when she opened them again, he would look somehow unappealing, or at least would have put on a shirt.

But he didn’t, and he hadn’t.

Reeve was facing the temple and consequently her, powerful shoulders rising and falling, a swirl of mist before his face with each deep breath, but he was lost in whatever was going on behind closed eyelids. If she sneaked backward and slipped inside, he wouldn’t know she had been doing so much staring, and so she placed one foot behind the other and began to creep away like the little wretch she was. But because she was trying to be quiet and apparently the gods hated her, the temple decided to make a racket as she backed directly into the visiting bell.

“Really, Valcord?” she hissed, hands already full as she tried to silence the ringing fracas with an elbow.

One of Reeve’s eyes popped open and found her like a homing raven. She froze, but a holy knight was not a dragon, it saw you even if you didn’t move, and he inclined his chin in greeting, rose from the ground, and strode over to her in all of his sweaty, shirtless, smiling splendor.

Oh, that stupid smile! Why did it make her feel like honey on a steaming tea cake?

He stopped at the foot of the temple and stared blankly up at her. Crickets, had he…had he said something? Surely!

“Here!” She unceremoniously shoved the carrot at him.

“Uh.” He looked down to it then back up. “Thank you?”

“It’s for your horse,” she said quickly, wiggling it about so that he would take it.

Reeve’s confusion easily slipped right back into that too-pleased grin, and he clicked his tongue against his teeth so that Earlylyte would come trotting over.

Expectantly, the horse’s ears flicked when it arrived, and though she stood on the lifted portico of the temple, Earlylyte still towered from his spot on the ground. Reeve hadn’t taken the carrot, and Celeste could feel a whine wanting to break out of her throat, but she fought the urge to lob the vegetable across the courtyard and send the animal chasing after it and away from her.

Celeste extended her arm but leaned away. The horse tipped its head dubiously, and for fear the knight would see the animal shun her, she quickly turned back to Reeve and distracted him. “You’re up early,” she observed, voice cracking.

“I train each morning and then sit in prayer and greet the sun.”

Lucky sun. “And, uh, only half dressed?” Her eyes flicked down the muscled length of him to his taut stomach. Even the old linens from her sister’s bed would come clean washed against that. But so much closer, she could see his skin, still glowing and nice, was covered in a fair number of scars raised in silver against his tan.

Reeve shrugged. “Dawn’s out, brawn’s out.”

For a moment, Celeste thought she could not have possibly heard right, and then she was broken of her near petrification by a burst of laughter.

He rubbed at the back of his neck and grinned uncomfortably, and she was sure he meant to look embarrassed, but the swell of his bicep as it flexed made the laughter cut itself right out of her throat. And then the carrot was snatched from her hand, and she recoiled as the horse trotted off, munching happily.

“That’s just something my brothers say…” Reeve seemed to notice none of her awkwardness, too engrossed in his own. “I see you got your delivery. I was going to bring it inside for you when I was finished out here. What is it?”

Celeste worked at the knot in the silk, further relieved to have another distraction, eyes darting up only once to see Reeve retrieving his tunic and pulling it on, which was a relief if an unfair one. When the colorful material was removed, there was a book in her hands called Ancient Arcane Anomalies and a place inside marked with a bit of parchment covered in Geezer’s slanted scribbles.

“Dearest Midnight and the Holy Man—oh, my, we sound like a bardic group,” Celeste chuckled as she read aloud, “I’ve found the research on sentient sieves right in between the pages about sibyls and skeletons comma army of. Did you know a skinless undead horde is superior to a fleshy one as they’ve got no organs to be impaled, and—crickets, it sure goes on like that for a while.” Celeste flipped the parchment over. “Okay, here: note the part about feasting and fasting and how sieves consume arcana. There is more research to be done, but I’ve been inspired and must make the trek to my tertiary library, so I will be indisposed for a few days. Talk when I’ve reemerged, if I can remember the path. Geezer, S.D. Well, let’s hope he leaves a trail of breadcrumbs to find his way back.”

“Breadcrumbs?” Reeve climbed the steps to stand beside her on the portico. “Won’t they be eaten up? Or attract ants?”

“No, I mean—” Celeste’s eyes narrowed on him, but she stifled her grin when she saw he was being earnest. “Are you familiar with the story of Alphonse and Alise and the Everdarque?”

“No. Is it a tale of great bravery and…baking?”

“Something like that.” She finally grinned then. “It’s only a fairytale, though, and you’re right—the breadcrumbs don’t even last. Hopefully Geezer draws himself a good map instead. Oh, look, there’s a postscript: I don’t know where those initials came from, but it only took me twenty-two minutes this morning to find my glasses instead of thirty-eight, so perhaps it’s all a sign of remembering. Huh, I didn’t even know he had glasses.” The parchment with Geezer’s note marked the place he had referred to, an entry about sieves that went on for a few pages. “Feasting and fasting,” she murmured to herself, running a finger along the lines.

“There,” said Reeve, hovering at her shoulder to look down at the book. He pointed to the spot, and Celeste became all too aware of his warm presence so close in the chilly morning air.

She read on, “If a sieve is exposed to too much arcana in a short time, it will require recuperation. If it is not kept in a fixed location, it will retire to a nest, somewhere dark, quiet, and undisturbed by time. This recuperation may last only a few days but can go on as long as a full moon cycle. Sieve nests are notoriously difficult to find and extraordinarily dangerous to disturb, but will be abandoned when the sieve again hungers for arcana.”

“If this is true, then maybe we won’t hear from this entity for some time.” Reeve’s voice was low, but he was even closer, bent slightly to read along beside her.

Celeste nibbled on her lip. “And if we do hear from him, that means Syphon is probably something else. Which reminds me, you told Geezer you saw a sieve? Did you mean the fire in the forge?” She looked over her shoulder, and his face was just beside hers. Gods, it was such a pretty face.

He nodded, brow furrowed as he scanned the page in her hands. “It wasn’t normal fire, it was like a living thing. His picture and explanation—it just made sense.”

When Celeste had traced the sigils in the hearth and pumped noxscura into them, she had felt something in the stones crack just before the fire flared up. “I wonder if it was trapped inside, and I let it out just to get eaten.” She groaned. “That’s becoming a bad habit.”

“Should we look for this nest? Attack when it’s vulnerable?”

“This says they’re dangerous, and I wouldn’t want to risk another explosion in town. Maybe we should wait to ask Geezer about that.”

“Fair. We are lucky no one else was injured at the smithy. What will we do in the meantime?”

For a moment she feared he would propose they battle, and she stiffened, but when he turned to look into her eyes, he was just waiting expectantly, as if ready to be put to task like an eager herding dog.

Well, why not?

Of course, the first task that came to mind made her blush, and the second only deepened the color in her face to scarlet, but then she had a less fun but more respectable idea.

“There’s still a lot of cleaning to do around here. Um, would you be willing—and it’s okay, you can say no—but maybe we could do what we did at Ima’riel’s here? Clear out some of the dead things in the yard and some of the vines inside?”

Reeve was already placidly grinning, but his lips ticked up on one side even more at the suggestion, dimple forming in his cheek. “That sounds like a very productive way to spend the day.”

Celeste nodded and turned away quickly. Why did he have to smile like that? Why couldn’t he just agree begrudgingly and make her feel like the burden she knew she was?

It is his god’s temple, she reminded herself as she placed the book from Geezer in a safe spot. He’s doing this for Valcord, not you.

Burning out the weeds and the dried out briars was faster with practice at their backs. In fact, without the mishaps, it was even more amusing than the day prior. Out in the sunshine of the morning, Celeste found herself snuffing out Reeve’s divine fire once on purpose, giggling when he looked back at her perturbed, but then he laughed himself when he realized it had been done in jest. He retaliated later with a flame she struggled to overcome, and when she glared at him, about to call out a reminder to be careful, he only grinned in the cheekiest way she’d seen yet and doused the blaze with the snap of his fingers.

It was, of course, the very definition of playing with fire, which is a bit on the nose, even for this kind of book, but sometimes metaphors just work themselves out like that.

When they’d burnt enough away, they uncovered what was left of Tempest. Reeve marveled at the great skull of the wyvern, hands on hips. “And what were you intending to do with this?”

Celeste chuckled. “Probably pick it up and put it somewhere else if it weren’t so big.”

Reeve peered at her from the corner of his eye. “Very funny.”

She would have corrected him that it hadn’t been a joke, but he was already going for the skeleton.

“Wyverns fly with arcana, not because their bones are hollow,” she cautioned, following. “The pieces really are quite heavy.”

“Well, I’m quite strong.” He heaved one of the longest bones up onto his back with barely a grunt.

Celeste watched effort briefly pass over his face. Feeling a little pre-swoony, she gathered her hair up in one hand and fanned at her neck as he centered the bone across his shoulders.

“So…where does it go?”

“Oh!” She hadn’t thought of that and wished he’d asked before picking it up. “Well, there’s a graveyard out back?”

He turned, and the length of his burden swept through the air. Celeste ducked to avoid being knocked to the ground, then picked up a talon and hurried along behind him. They chose a corner spot, and Reeve carried a number of the larger bones, Celeste calling on noxscura to help where she could.

The knight was wearing himself out, but he was hiding his exhaustion until he dropped a chunk of broken rib right onto his foot. She could tell he wanted to swear but instead bit his lip and mumbled out a request for Valcord to forgive whatever unacceptable words he only thought instead.

“Tempest is a pain even in death.” Celeste waved him away from the remaining bones and urged him to take a break. Reeve relented and leaned up against the temple wall, sliding down to sit on the ground. Sweating again, he pushed up his sleeves, and Celeste found herself entranced by the exposure of toned forearms. Perhaps he was the witch, able to drain every thought from her mind and replace them with downright indecency.

Plum returned then, shooting over the fence and diving for Celeste. At the last moment, she threw up her hands and caught him. He carried a flower in his fangs, once covered in yellow petals, though only half had survived the trip.

“Is this for me?” she asked, grateful for the interruption to her enthrallment, and Plum nuzzled her thumb. “Oh, thank you.”

“I’ve never met a wyvern in battle before. I assumed they were destructive, not so friendly.” Reeve looked dubiously at Plum and then the massive skull. “What kind of gifts did that big one bring you?”

“Oh, goodness, nothing at all.” Celeste chuckled as she sat herself on a stump across from him. “I couldn’t get Tempest to like me no matter how many dead rats or fermented slugs I offered. He was only loyal to my sister, but she could get him to do anything like chase me all over the courtyard. But you’re so much sweeter, aren’t you, Plum? Yes, you’re my very sweet boy.”

“That thing used to chase you?” Reeve choked on the word.

“Well, he never caught me,” she said as Plum flopped onto his back in her lap for his belly to be rubbed.

“And it was your sister who told it to do so?”

She focused hard on giving Plum the best scratches she could. “It was sort of a game, I guess?”

“Your sister,” he said, voice going careful. “You mentioned her before. She’s like you?”

“If you mean was she also nox-touched, then yes.” Celeste’s eyes pinged toward the back of the temple and where the graveyard would be, remembering then that Delphine’s plot was still unmarked. “She’s dead now.”

“Ah, I am sorry for your loss. You must have been close.”

She waited for him to call them both witches, but the admonishment never came. “She protected me, especially when we were little, and then we got older, and…” Celeste felt squirmy and cleared her throat. “Well, you said you have brothers, so you know how it is.”

“I did say that. I have sisters too, but…” Reeve pursed his lips. “But I don’t. I mean, I do, but they are the others in service to Valcord, not blood relations. I hope that did not mislead you. I grew up with plenty of other children at the temple, but most found their place in the realm elsewhere before they even came of age.”

“Oh.” Celeste cocked her head, things making more sense then—his surname, how he could have a brother from Clarriseau, a place he’d never been, and the exchange with Gaspard was probably identical to her own, about who his parents were, ones he apparently didn’t know. She licked her lips and decided it might be all right to say a bit more. “I grew up in a temple too.”

Reeve pointed over his shoulder at the building.

“Not here. Not a temple to Valcord at all, but one of Osurehm’s.” She swallowed, going on slower. “It wasn’t one of the temples that are open to the people for prayers; it was for study. There were a lot of other children there too. At first.”

“Wait, you’re an orphan?” There was such a brightness in Reeve’s question that Celeste was sure she had not heard right.

She stared back at his wide eyes and high brows and the eager crook to his lips and finally nodded. “My sister and I both.”

“So am I!”

Celeste almost laughed at the excitement in his words. Yes, obviously, she had figured that out, and he probably should have inferred the same about her, and really it was nothing to be jubilant about, nor was it all that unique. Yet his reaction was entirely unique—no one spoke of being left behind in such a cheerful way, and it should have put her off, but it didn’t. In fact, it made her heart flutter that he was so approving of this experience that they shared.

He cleared his throat then, drawing brows together. “May I ask you a question?”

He already had, but she thought there would be little use in pointing that out. Chuckling, she nodded.

“Is this the reason you’re evil?”

Celeste’s astonishment stuck in her throat with a squeak. Reeve was still looking at her so earnestly, as if he had no idea how cutting what he’d just said could be. Plum could even sense the tension and took off from her lap, but his flapping wings disturbed neither of them.

Then Reeve’s look faltered, like he was slowly latching onto his own words and hearing them for the first time. She knew he was about to take it all back, to stumble over an apology and walk away from the conversation, but she didn’t want him to. “What would you say if I told you that it was?”

Reeve brightened again, then hesitated. To be fair, she had laid out a trap, but the only way for him to figure it out was to trigger it. “I would say that’s not, um…I wouldn’t condone it, but it might make some sense. I know that it can be difficult when you’re not…well, when no one really needs you around.”

Celeste twirled the flower Plum brought her between her fingers, wanting her hands to be busy. No one needed her now, it was true, but then did anyone ever? She glanced away from Reeve to see Earlylyte still munching along the fence line, a lone horse in an abandoned temple’s courtyard, then back to the single knight sent to recover the holy place all on his own. “May I ask you a question, Sir Reeve?”

Though there was fear in his widening eyes, he nodded.

“Why exactly are you here?”

“I was sent here,” he said simply.

“Right, by your god and your temple.” She was more careful, not wanting to sound as accusatory as she had been before. “But you came by yourself. Were you ordered to make a new life? To leave behind your family and friends?”

Reeve’s face twisted, struggling more than with the heft of the wyvern bones. “Well, no, I wasn’t ordered, this was my choice. I sought out the Denonfy Oracle to discover my purpose, and they said, well…they said a lot of things about a broken house and murky starlight and, um,”—he mumbled through the next word—“manhood, but it was all very confusing. Father Theodore helped me understand when I returned though. He discovered that no one had heard from Briarwyke’s temple in well over a decade, and so we decided that this was what the oracle must have meant, that I was to come here, vanquish a great evil, fulfill my duty to Valcord, and find my purpose.”

“Huh.” She kept staring at him, the strife on his face lost, replaced with a pleased determination. “So, it’s just that simple? You went to the oracle looking for your purpose, and they told you?”

He nodded, no hint of mockery.

Celeste sometimes wondered who she might have been if things were different. But as for purpose, that had always been what someone else told her to do. Now that there was no one to give her orders and expound on all the ways she was screwing up, she supposed she too was purpose-less.

“Well, I’m not evil, not because I’m an orphan or because some oracle said so.” She huffed and stood, tucking the half-dead gift from the wyvern behind her ear. “Now, would you like to move more bones or should we go inside the temple I helped desecrate and set a few more fires?”

CHAPTER 14
OF OFFENSIVE HANDS AND THEIR SEVERING

R eeve had said something wrong, but it was harder to tell with Celeste than with others. Gable and Flint were always quick to correct him when his words came out offensively, and the acolytes and priests were not terribly good at controlling their facial expressions, though they were a bit politer.

Celeste, however, was only quietly taken aback, like she didn’t want to offend with her own offense. She didn’t shout at him again nor did she treat him like he was a complete idiot, which he would usually argue that he wasn’t, not completely, thank you very much, but in this case, perhaps he had been.

And perhaps shouting would have been appropriate. Because he had done at least a little wounding despite not meaning to—he saw it on her face and in the subtle change to her voice’s tone. He’d not wanted to be hurtful. He was eventually going to have to hurt her, of course, but not with words, and not now.

He would find a way to make it up to her, though, and kept the task in the back of his mind as they continued to restore the temple over the following days. There were many heavy things to pick up and put down elsewhere, but Reeve was an expert at that, and in tandem, the gardening and rebuilding were easy except for the persistence of the thick thorns that spread over everything.

The greying tendrils of the Kvesarian sweetbriars were slightly pliant, which warned that they were not entirely dead as Ima’riel had suggested, but the thorns themselves had a familiar rigidity and were massive. This gave him an idea, and while Reeve’s ideas were usually questionable, he reasoned he was having a lucky streak and followed through.

Using his whittling knife, he collected some of the longest thorns and found they were easier to work with than fish bones, hardening nicely once severed and taking on the shapes he carved, forgiving of mistakes. When Celeste asked after what he was doing, he told her nothing—it didn’t count as a lie if the intention, in the end, was meant to be a benevolent surprise. At least, that’s what Gable would say, and he couldn’t always be wrong—even a villain did an accidental good deed once in an eclipse.

Valcord’s temple was looking much better after a week of labor, and Celeste too was looking better—not that she had not looked good to begin with, but Reeve noted that she smiled more and walked about with her face tipped up, shoulders no longer hunched and her limp healed. If the fear and despair had been an act, she’d completely dropped it, and he was glad. She said she wasn’t evil after all, and he had almost replied, I know, before realizing he supposedly already knew the exact opposite.

Knowing was funny like that.

She had asked him a little more about his life in Bendcrest, and he told her of the men and women he called his brothers and sisters and the man called Father Theodore who actually had no children. He was surprised when she urged him on for more details about learning to wield a sword and ride a horse alongside the others as if she enjoyed him prattling on. If she truly did, she’d be the first.

She was much less keen to answer questions about her own sister and the temple they grew up in, so he tried only once every day before letting it be. Valcordian temples were known for taking in orphans, but Osurehm was the god of honor, not new beginnings, so why she and her sister had ended up at a temple known for martial pursuits was a mystery.

But he did get little details here and there, especially when she was distracted kneading dough. When the evening came and there could be no more outdoor work done, they took to working in the kitchen. She’d been repeating the instructions for fluffy loaves for the third time, his first two coming out crumbly, and he slipped in a question about her friends since he had run out of stories about Flint’s mischievousness and Gable’s brilliance.

“Friends?”

She had said the word like it wasn’t Key, so he tried to explain it, “Someone who knows you well and who you’ve spent a lot of time with.”

Celeste perked up at that, rolling her dough into a smooth ball. “Oh, there was this man I lived with for a while.”

“A man?” Reeve didn’t mean the harshness to his voice, but it came out anyway as he squished his unbaked loaf.

“Try not to be so rough,” she said, sprinkling a little fine flour over his pummeled dough. “I don’t know if I actually should call him a man, he was more like a spoiled, little boy, but I would say we knew a lot about each other once, and we had to spend a lot of time together on account of the abduction.”

“You abducted him?”

“No, he abducted me.”

Reeve punched down into the dough and flattened it completely. “Celeste, a man who abducts you is not a friend. Where is this loathsome cur that forced himself on you, so I can—”

“Oh, no, no, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t touch me at all. I mean, he propositioned me a lot, but I know he wasn’t really interested, he just wanted something from my sister—someone, actually—but I was the best he could do.” She wiped at her cheek and smeared flour over it, the color blending with her skin. “He was exceptionally cranky, though, and probably doesn’t like me much because I did some annoying things to get away.”

Reeve had stared at her after that as she inspected the ugly mound under his hands, still stuck to his fingers. He should have asked first if she was willing to answer, but the question came falling out of his mouth on its own. “Has anyone ever just been nice to you?”

Celeste pulled back, her wide eyes peered off into the distance, and then she blinked. “Kori gave me advice once, even though she really didn’t want to. That was nice.”

Reeve frowned. So nobody’s been nice to her then, he thought as she eased the dough off his fingers and tried to fix his mess. Not even me.

Sid spent the days in his scabbard, leaned beside the temple’s door. The sword had no complaints about the downtime, claiming to not see, not in the way others did, but he still saw. Sid could read the desires of his wielder, but only if his hilt was handled for long enough. Reeve was getting quite good at not holding onto the Obsidian Widow Maker’s pommel for too long.

The knight lay in bed one evening, whittling at the thorns he’d collected. The day had been long but felt short, the work pleasant and the bread they baked together filling. “I’ve been thinking, Sid.”

“Dangerous,” said the sword, unsheathed and laying across a chair. It felt a bit more like talking to a person that way.

“What would you say to allowing Celeste to wield you?”

Sid was silent, but had the sword a throat, it would have probably choked.

“Not for long,” he clarified.

“You would sever our bond?”

Reeve pressed a hand to his chest, Valcord’s light inside him flaring protectively. “Well, no…”

“You said wield, not hold.”

Reeve placed down the thorn and knife and sat up. He hadn’t thought the idea through.

The sword remained unmoving because that was all it could do. “That’s a big risk, bud.”

Reeve felt the heaviness in his words like steel in hand. “I know.”

The Obsidian Widow Maker was bonded to Reeve. It was the sword’s original nature to attach to its wielder, meant to feel and manipulate their desires to turn them to darkness, to the murkiness that pooled in every person’s essence. But since being cleansed by Father Theodore and the others, the sword had none of that intent anymore. Instead, it still read Reeve’s desires, but only used the knowledge to protect him.

I know you want to burst through this locked door, but perhaps give a listen at its keyhole first.

Yes, that big furry dog-looking thing seems like it might be soft, but it could be a werewolf, and it would be very embarrassing to scratch behind the ear of a creature as it turns back into a man.

Don’t eat that—yellow snow is rarely lemon flavored.

But the holy knight was not stupid despite a bit of evidence to the contrary: that protection extended to the sword itself. If the sword went evil again, it would be destroyed—an oath that the Valcordian priests and knights knew and kept. There were other artifacts the order had cleansed, and each was cataloged and shared with the entirety of Valcord’s clergy across the realm. Even though Sid could speak, he wasn’t exempt from destruction if he was no longer benevolent. If Celeste’s handling of him overpowered the bond that Reeve and Sid shared, it could be a death sentence for the sword. Well, Reeve was unsure swords could actually die, but they could definitely be melted down, and it seemed to him that being whole and rigid was probably better than being a puddle.

“So, you really think that witch isn’t evil, buddy?”

It struck Reeve then that he wouldn’t risk the sword if he thought otherwise, and yet he still wanted confirmation. If Celeste were evil, and if she picked up the sword with Reeve’s ties severed, she could bond with it and possibly overcome its cleansing. And she had been interested in how Sid worked, hadn’t she? It was a tricky question that Reeve was having a hard time answering.

“She tried to bed you, didn’t she?”

“What? No!” Reeve started, eyes pinging across the room. The suggestion sparked a thought, one of her knocking coyly on his chamber’s door, but he dashed the vision away. “Why? Did she…did you see…something?”

“I don’t know,” the sword murmured. “Did I?”

Reeve often had difficulty picking up on those cues. There had been a woman once he thought had just been a pickpocket. When he threatened her with the city guard, she’d called him an idiotic waste of fine muscle before storming away. It took rehashing the tale with both Flint and Gable for him to understand it was not his coins she was after.

If Celeste reached into his breeches in the same way, he had no idea what he’d do, but she didn’t seem like the type to call him cruel names to his face if he misinterpreted things. Nor to his back, if he really thought about it.

The sword shed no light on what he’d observed and only sighed heavily.

“You’re right—it’s a bad idea.” Reeve picked back up his whittling knife and the dried-out thorn and tried to not think of Celeste, but it was impossible. How would he know if he were accidentally slighting her without Gable and Flint around? They had tried to teach him how to flirt with women, but now he couldn’t recall a word of what they’d said about confidence and eye contact and smiling versus smirking. Would she give him another chance if he got it all wrong? Gods, he was going to get it all wrong even if he did ferret out the signs because he had never—

Reeve nicked his thumb with his knife and grunted. Why was he even concerned about reciprocating? He should be preparing to reject her if she…well, what would she do? He placed down the knife again and stuck his bleeding thumb in his mouth. Celeste wasn’t terribly forward, but what if she surprised him with one of those actions in that book—the very book she’d left for him?

A metallic taste coated his tongue as his mind wandered wickedly. What if she placed her hands on his…on his chest? Or climbed atop him while he was praying in the grass and sat on his…his lap? And what if she pressed her lips to his—

“I’m going for a bath.”

He would have sheathed the sword before leaving, but he didn’t want Sid to know what he planned to do while he was locked up in the bathing chamber with thoughts of Celeste trying to pickpocket him in his mind.

Reeve woke before the dawn the following day, as always, rigorously worked out, and then sat. It was usually easy, emptying his mind. Frankly, it was one of the easiest things he ever did, and after a short prayer to Valcord, he set to it, but no emptying happened, unlike the night before.

Instead, Reeve was filled with anticipation. He popped open one eye and set it on the temple door. There were beams of sunlight coming from behind the building as a new day dawned, but the door was not yet open. Of course it wasn’t, Celeste never appeared quite this early, but he still thought to check.

He closed his eye again and sighed. Nothing. Think of nothing. Not the sound of the temple door creaking open, not the way the breeze would catch the hem of her dress, not the figure that would be standing there to greet him and begin his day. He popped his other eye open this time.

“Damn it.” Reeve groaned. “Apologies, Valcord.” Swearing wasn’t disallowed, but of all the times to do it, morning reverence was probably the worst.

With eyes closed again, the nothing still wouldn’t come. Instead, it was only thoughts of her. Her lovely face, her lovely hair, the lovely way she’d climbed atop him and—well, that hadn’t happened, but he’d imagined it in detail so many times now that he could barely imagine anything else. Even as he sat in what should have been prayer, he could only think of what he would do if Celeste were suddenly there, crawling into his lap.

And what he would do was stiffen right up because he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

“Crickets,” he muttered, and there again, a reminder of her.

So Reeve fidgeted, he scratched at his shoulder, he wiggled his toes. The breeze gave him a chill, yet the rising sun felt too warm, and time passed at such an interminable pace that he wondered if he were being punished by Empyrea for his debaucherous thoughts by trapping him in eternity.

The holy knight eventually gave up, resigned to being forsaken by his god, but when he opened his eyes a final time, there was Celeste, standing out on the portico and looking even lovelier than he’d imagined. She was wearing another of those dresses, a pink one that hugged her waist and danced around her knees in the breeze, and her hair was pushed back behind her ears so that her wide smile went unhidden. He swallowed thickly and was glad he’d left Sid in the antechamber that morning.

Perhaps he had not fallen from Valcord’s good graces just yet.

The day went on in much the same way as the others, though he was keener to look for signs she might be trying to seduce him, for nefarious reasons, of course. Each day grew warmer, so he could not decide whether the way she lifted her hair off the back of her neck was meant to be as sensual as he found it. And they were doing manual labor, but he was especially confused when she bent over or reached upward and exposed more leg than he ought to see, because Celeste might not have been showing him, she naturally just had long legs. Very long legs. Legs that would take an awfully long time running his hands up before reaching—by all the gods of light, what was wrong with him?

He came to the conclusion that he could not really come to a conclusion, both because it was confusing and because his brain was clearly not working at full capacity when his manhood demanded so much attention. By late afternoon, he attempted to put some space between them by clearing brambles from the fencing on his own. If nothing else, being pricked by unruly thorns calmed things down in his trousers.

When his mind refused to let him not think about Celeste despite that she was only a few yards away, once again bent over and humming sweetly, he focused on the arcana inside him, requesting Valcord assist in cleansing his mind. It would be weaker without Sid to help him focus, but instead of his own magic, he was hit with a disturbance beyond the bounds of the temple. The traces of divine blood inside him allowed him to arcanely feel the places that the sun touched, which was much less helpful when he tried to find something in the shadows of a forest, but a murkiness moved amongst the trees beyond the fence.

“What is it?” Celeste was suddenly at his side, peering into the forest, her shoulder grazing his arm. He must have been standing there longer than he realized.

His arcana felt her too since she’d come close. It could sense the noxscura she kept in that locket of hers, but it wasn’t as heavy as before. In fact, it almost felt friendly—or, at least, familiar.

“A disturbance,” he told her, “out there.”

“Syphon?”

He grunted. “I’m not sure, but there’s something dark.”

“I’ll get the apotrope!” Celeste fled over the courtyard and into the temple too quickly to be stopped on those too-long legs of hers. He followed, but lost sight of her, and his nerves tensed. The temple is a safe place, he told himself and slung his baldric and Sid over his shoulder. Celeste reappeared only slightly out of breath with her own bag strapped to her chest. “Let’s go.”

He nodded though he wanted to tell her not to follow, queasy at the thought there was danger in the forest and he was leading her into it. But Celeste was far from helpless, she’d proven that many times over the last few days, and as much as he tried to forget, she had almost killed him, so together they left the gates of the temple for the heavily wooded outskirts of Briarwyke.

The forest was livelier, as if spring had come early under the branches of the trees, the mossy floor thick with ferns. They were quick to go deeper in, but the light was scant, and the disturbed feeling was gnawing at Reeve’s insides as he continued to cast, his arcana searching what little sunlight filtered through the trees.

“Oh, my goodness.”

Reeve swung around, throat thick, but then he saw what Celeste had whispered at, not a danger at all.

Hiding betwixt the trees sat a cottage. Somewhat similar to Ima’riel’s, it was small but disheveled. The window boxes had once been expertly crafted but were broken now, shutters fallen off and piled on the porch, and the thatched roof was collapsed on one side, the whole thing in a sad state. Yet Celeste was grinning at the place like she’d spent a moon sleeping on the road in the dead of winter, and it was the most luxurious inn in town.

His senses were pinging it though, and the sunlight glittered over the place like a spell. Had Valcord brought him there? It radiated the warmth that he would expect when under Valcord’s urging, but also there was a warning, an alertness he felt pressed to keep up. Perhaps the cottage was inhabited with someone evil, and if Celeste was so smitten with it…

He shook his head and touched her arm so she would stop her slow approach. “Wait.”

Reeve went ahead, drawing Sid and using the sword to push open the door to the cottage. The front room was empty, a hearth and mantle central to the space, and at its back a set of stairs leading upward. A shaft of light coming through the broken ceiling illuminated the steps, still in good shape if slightly damaged by the elements. There were additional rooms beyond the front one, but the doors were open and nothing appeared to be lurking in the shadows there. That tingle within Reeve intensified though, and he searched for the murkiness he had originally felt.

“Can you sense it?” he asked the sword.

“Not really,” said Sid, voice taut. “It actually feels…good?”

Reeve wandered to the cottage’s center, and Sid was right: there was nothing maligned about this place. In fact, it was the opposite, the single shaft of light drawing him toward the stairway. It fell on the post at the end of the banister, and within the light, the glinting metal of a key.

A shriek pulled Reeve back out of the cottage. He burst through the door and off the deteriorating porch, collapsing a step as he went. The underbrush shook as something barreled toward Celeste, but she cast, a wall of shadows blotting out the dim lights in the wood. The growling rattle of some creature tore its way through the darkness she conjured just as she fled from the spot.

Reeve bolted toward the wall of noxscura as it fell. He called a spell up through the Obsidian Widow Maker and struck out. A mass of fur and tusks and squealing anger propelled itself at him.

There was a terrible shredding sound, a splatter of blood, and the force of something into Reeve’s arm as he dodged out of the way. The boar was nearly the size of Earlylyte, but much less agreeable, and while a slice up a horse’s belly would have surely brought it down, the boar was still on four legs, thrashing through trees between where Reeve and Celeste stood as if unstoppable.

But then it did stop, and it turned. Angry and covered in blood, it dipped its head and stampeded again, its innards toppling out of it as it ran. Reeve pulled back to swing, arm searing with pain, calling another spell into the blade. Any divine spell should have taken down a boar, even that size, but something kept it alive.

As the thing ran, a black haze rose from its wound. Reeve lowered his weapon even as he stood in the way of the beast, mesmerized. The boar slowed, squealed, and with a choke of blood and bile, it fell into a massive heap. The hazy magic gathered above the body and then shot right for Celeste.

Reeve sprinted for her as the arcana swarmed, ensnaring her limbs, her body, her face. He shouted her name and abandoned his blade to grab and pull her close. Reaching into himself, he called to his divine sense to cleanse her of the darkness that was swallowing her, but then the haze cleared on its own, drawn to her chest. No, to the locket she wore.

Celeste sucked in a shocked breath and stared up at him, stiff in the hold he had on her.

“Are you all right?” He struggled to keep his voice from shaking.

“Uh huh.” She nodded gently, eyes flicking down to his hands wrapped tightly on her upper arms, and to the nonexistent space between their chests. “Are you?”

No. No, he wasn’t. But he couldn’t bring himself to say so, only to stare down at her, wondering what in all the planes he would have done if she’d been hurt.

CHAPTER 15
SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS AND HOW TO DRESS THEM

Y ou’re looking pale, buddy,” said Sid from the place he’d been abandoned on the forest floor. “Better than impaled though.”

The dead boar was splayed out beside the sword, a trail of gore behind it and blood covering one of its tusks. The murky disturbance Reeve had sensed was no more.

Celeste remained within his grasp—he couldn’t seem to let go. Her wide eyes were equally pale, and she gasped. “You’re bleeding!”

That shook him of his iron grip, and he released her. “Huh? Oh, no, I don’t think this is mine.”

But she was hearing none of it, pushing up the ripped sleeve of his tunic and twisting his arm to look it over. There indeed was a gash that ran up to his elbow, clear it was not only the boar’s blood splashed across him.

“Oh, this is awful,” she said as she gathered up her skirt and ripped.

Reeve reeled as she tore off a long swatch of pink linen, shocked at how easily it came away, but then she grabbed his wrist, and he couldn’t step farther back. The linen was tied around his arm, but it didn’t cover the whole of the wound. Reeve had been injured far more times than he could count, and by his experienced eye, this was mostly surface and would be fine with a little cleaning and care, but Celeste was going for her skirt again to dress it further. He grabbed her wrist only to stop her, afraid both that she’d be naked if she kept going and that he would be too pleased if she ended up that way.

“Reeve, I’m trying to help—”

There was another crashing through the woods, and both spun toward it. Reeve was quick to retrieve Sid as Celeste’s fingers went to her locket, but there was a human voice this time calling over the breaking branches. “This way!”

Reeve straightened, but Celeste sidled herself so close to him that she was half hidden by his arm. His heart beat harder, chest swelling. He would have sheathed Sid, but if she were looking for protection, if she suddenly needed him, he was going to indeed protect.

From the depth of the forest came a small group of men, bows and spears in hand. The man in the lead quickly took in the scene, and then he grinned widely at the two. “Our work’s been finished for us, gentlemen. Marvelous take down,” he said with a sincere lilt as he came closer, then grimaced, “if a little messy.”

Reeve noted the arrows then, at least half a dozen already sticking out of the boar’s back. “You were hunting this creature?”

“Sure were. And now we’ll feed the village for a week, provided the meat isn’t sullied.” The blond man gestured to the others. “Got the rope? We might have to hack it up to get it back to Halfrida’s.”

One of the other men pulled out a knife from his satchel, and the rest gathered around with weapons and twine. The blond man stepped away from the butchering, and Reeve followed, Celeste staying so close she bumped into his back.

The hunter’s smile wasn’t unkind, but there was amusement in it, perhaps too much for someone who had so recently been pursuing such a deadly creature. Light eyes took in the two of them. “How did the, uh…the baking go?”

It was then Reeve recognized the man from the circle, the one he’d asked about the sieve and Celeste had, predictably, lied to. “My last loaf of bread was deemed light and fluffy,” he said so flatly the man didn’t seem to know how to respond.

“Well, all right then. It seems the two of you are sticking around Briarwyke, eh? Name’s Edwin Fitzroy, but you can just call me Fitz, everyone else does. I must say, fine job you did there, sir, though you’ll have to admit we weakened it a bit. The Briarwyke hunting brigade would be pleased to have you.” He held out a hand to Reeve.

“I didn’t kill it—she did.” Reeve jerked his thumb over his shoulder where Celeste had made herself as small as possible.

“Did she?” Fitz’s too-pleased smile shifted subtly, brows raising. “Well, mighty fine work, my lady.” He pulled back the hand Reeve had ignored. It wasn’t terribly polite to ignore a handshake, but Reeve’s chivalry was occupied elsewhere.

The man’s gaze slid downward, lingering on Celeste’s exposed legs through the messy tear up her skirt, and then he gave a small bow of his head. Reeve was run through with the sudden desire to sever that head from his shoulders. Sid pulsed in his hands, and he sheathed the sword. He forgave himself the impropriety of not shaking Fitz’s hand, and instead congratulated himself on his own restraint.

“I only distracted it,” said Celeste, her voice small, and Reeve felt one of her hands press into his back as if asking him to say no more.

“Well, I hope the two of you will join us tonight at the Dew Drop. By sundown I’m sure Halfrida will have cooked up something superb with all this meat, and you’ve both more than earned your share. Might want to clean yourselves up a little first.” He winked, and Reeve wanted to pluck out his eye.

“We will,” Celeste chirped, and that hand on Reeve’s back gave him a gentle shove.

They were moving back the way they’d come, quicker than Reeve expected, but he glared over his shoulder to get a last look at Fitz and grimaced. He had never felt animosity so quickly and ardently for someone who showed no signs of being villainous. By Valcord, he thought and rubbed at his face, forgive me. But when they were out of earshot, he still felt the urge to say something unkind. “Did you sense additional danger? Something amiss with that man?”

Celeste shook her head.

“Then why are we rushing away?”

She gave him that look, that one that said, you know why, dummy, which vexed him. “Reeve, you’re bleeding.”

And then that vexation quickly ebbed. “Oh.”

She continued with her gentle pushing, her other hand coming to his elbow as she led him back to the temple as if he could not do so on his own. The cut really wasn’t that bad, but he said nothing, instead listening intently to the anxious muttering she did under her breath. This was always how it began every time Reeve was worried over by someone else, and he steeled himself for the chastisement he was about to receive.

It was not a long journey back, especially with her urging, and Reeve allowed himself to be turned swiftly away from the main hall and through the temple’s library. Beyond it, there was what looked like an acolyte’s hall full of small bed chambers, but it couldn’t be as it was the place Celeste retired to each night. She brought him to the bathing chamber at the corridor’s head, the tiled room somewhat familiar to the one he and his brothers shared at the Bendcrest temple.

Celeste called up water through the arcane faucet and rinsed her hands before hurrying around the cramped space and collecting linens, a basin, and a jar of oil. Her face was creased with unease as she wordlessly guided him to sit on the edge of the bathing pool. Cleanliness was important to Valcord, so acolyte baths always had an overly large tub, and the chamber smelled of the medicinal herbs he was used to. But even with the homey scent, he couldn’t relax, knowing he was in for it.

Celeste uncorked the jar she found and filled his senses with mint. It stung at his nose and his brain, a sharp reminder of every scrape and the scolding that came with their treatment. She put the jar aside and lifted his arm to carefully peel away the makeshift bandage, her muttering injected with gasps and groans, and she dipped clean linens into the water.

He looked up at her face, her deepening frown and her pinched brows. There was none of the exasperation that usually laid itself over the features of whoever tended to Reeve’s wounds, nor were there any of the sharp words telling him to think for once in his life before barreling into danger. Instead she was whispering things like, “oh, dear,” and, “poor thing,” and it took him a too long moment to realize she meant him—he was the poor thing she was concerned over.

That was, of course, all wrong—he had made a mess of himself, he was wasting her time, and she should be chastising him for it all. But Celeste did none of that. She only worried and with such sincerity and eyes so glassy that it pierced his chest deeper than any priestess’s words about being clumsy and stupid and a danger to everyone else.

Guilt overcame him so quickly that Reeve dropped his free hand onto her wrist. “You needn’t worry. This is only a shallow wound.”

She froze under his touch, her tenderly working fingers going still as she peered up at him with big, unblinking eyes, silver in the dim light of the bath chamber. “You don’t want me to…”

He did. He wanted her to so fiercely, despite not even knowing what it was, that he didn’t have the words to tell her.

“Of course you don’t want me to touch you—what am I even thinking?”

Celeste tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip on her wrist. “No, I do.” The admittance cracked in his throat as he kept her from slipping away. “I do want, um, for you to…please help?”

When he released her, Celeste hesitated. “You can’t heal yourself?”

He shook his head. “That’s the part of the priest exam I was worst at, actually.”

She picked up a new linen, eyes flicking from his face to her clean basin of water, and then returned to tending to the cut along his forearm. She focused on the delicacy of her work and did no harsh rubbing, nor forced him to stay still as she told him he deserved the pain. She only washed the wound with abject tenderness as her other hand put a reassuring pressure on his flying pulse. By Valcord, make it slow or she’ll pull away.

Celeste didn’t pull away.

Reeve had grown up under the watchful eye of many priests and priestesses. A few, like Father Theodore, he had known his entire life, but most were transient, coming and going from temple to temple as they were needed. He was always surrounded, be it by other orphaned children or the Valcordian clergy, and when he was older, he served whichever holy knight needed a squire until he became a knight himself. It was difficult, learning so many different mannerisms and staying out of the way while remaining helpful, and he had never really learned to do either. But Reeve had never gone without because there was always someone there—usually a short-tempered but well-meaning someone whose expectations were high and patience was thin—but the temple provided.

Yet it felt often like there was no one.

And that was not a fair feeling to have, he knew, because even on the rare occasion he did find himself alone, there was always Valcord.

But Valcord had never spoken to him with words, had never said his service was needed, and the god had certainly never pressed a warm cloth to the wounds Reeve earned in his name.

Reeve had not been a child for many years, and he was sufficient at taking care of himself now—he was still alive, after all. He watched the backs of his fellow knights, and in return, enjoyed their protection. But their commitments to one another had limits—Flint had been sent to Eirengaard that winter, Gable to Elderpass the year prior, Rory to…well, and now Reeve was the one sent far from his brothers. What might life be like if there were someone constant? Someone who did not see him as only a necessary stop on their rotation, someone who did not plan to move on and leave him behind, someone who perhaps even preferred his company.

Sort of like how Celeste seemed to, smiling when she stepped out of the temple to greet him each morning.

Her fingers grazed over his skin again, and instead of pain, a shiver ran up his arm. And then he remembered the noxscura.

“That was an infernal boar, wasn’t it?”

“Hmm?” The tenderness blinked away from her face. “Oh, yes, I think so. You were right—I should have believed you when you first said.”

“No, I don’t mean to—” The oil stung his skin as she applied it, and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Oh, sorry, sorry, just a little more, and then I’ll be done with it,” she whispered. Despite that it hurt, he didn’t want her to be done with it. She could stab him for all he cared at the moment, as long as she was touching him.

He cleared his throat and pulled back his shoulders. “Won’t the dark arcana leach out of the infernal boar’s meat when they go to eat it?”

She was wrapping a new bandage around his arm. “There’s no noxscura left in that thing.”

Her tone was level enough for him to no longer worry about the villagers being infected, but what about her? His gaze slid to her locket. It looked so normal, nestled against the soft, pink linen of her dress, and he reached out for it with his unwounded arm. When he took it up, there was only a tingle in his skin that told him magic was near, not that evil simmered under the surface of the metal. “You gathered it all in here?”

She nodded, lip caught between her teeth.

“And it didn’t hurt?”

“No. Not this time.” Her hands had stopped moving over his arm, but she was still touching him, the bandage cruelly between the warmth of her fingertips and his skin. “I didn’t, um…” Celeste swallowed, eyes darting away. “All of it’s in the locket. It’s not in me.”

He wrapped his hand around the locket, holding it and feeling it pulse. “I know.”

“I just don’t want you to think that I’m…like that.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, stepping back and tugging the locket from his grasp. “Well, we were invited to town, weren’t we? It would be rude not to go, but we ought to get all this blood off first.”

“Oh, right.” Reeve stood from the edge of the tub and started to pull off his tunic, but it got caught in his baldric.

Celeste squeaked. “Uh, I didn’t mean here. Not together.”

Eyes wide, he rushed to tug his tunic back down.

“Unless, um…it hurts too much to move?” She eased on an awkward grin. “Do you need help taking a bath?”

Reeve’s body stiffened, every inch of it, and she could not see that. He barely shook his head before backing toward the door, stuttering out something that sounded like an apology and a plea, ran into the wall, and then scurried down the hall as if being pursued by a whole pack of infernal boar.

When he was locked in the bathing chamber upstairs alone, he rested the back of his head against the door.

“You see? Trying to bed you.”

Reeve’s eyes popped open. “A bathtub is not a bed,” he insisted, stripping the baldric from across his chest. “She was just being nice.”

“I’m sure she wants to be very nice to you,” said the sword with a smirk in its voice that wasn’t nearly as accusatory as it felt.

Reeve rubbed his face. He would have like that, his body, his brain, even the twinge in his chest told him that he wanted Celeste to keep being nice to him, and he wanted to be nice right back, and yet he ran from her.

Coward, he thought, and began to undress alone.

CHAPTER 16
FIBS AND LONGING IN THE DEW DROP INN

G aspard Longfury was on his third ale and his fifth story, and each was progressively frothier. His latest tale was being told directly to their table, and Celeste watched Reeve attempt to hide behind the mug of milk he’d requested over ale, though it was impossible with shoulders so broad.

Rosiness bloomed across the holy knight’s cheeks and all the way down his neck when the bard’s account of a tense meeting between an elven smuggler and a high priest came to its inevitable conclusion: Gaspard made peace between all three and then made love to them both at once. Celeste, Ima’riel, and Kori broke into laughter, Reeve turned an adorable shade of scarlet, and Halfrida, who caught the tail end and had little Willow trailing behind her, threatened cutting the bard’s tongue out with her cleaver. It seemed her objection to coarseness did not extend to violence.

The innkeeper had worked wonders with the tough meat, and it seemed the whole village had piled into the Dew Drop Inn for a dinner of shredded boar in a blueberry sauce over roasted yams and carrots. When Celeste and Reeve arrived later in the evening, the tavern was buzzing, and Fitz, already tipsy along with the other hunters, immediately pointed them out and requested the assembled cheer for their assistance in taking down the main course. Celeste was quick to pat Reeve’s arm and whisper that it was all him, hoping the attention would be off of them quickly. Relief came when Ima’riel had waved the two over to join her and Kori at a somewhat secluded table pushed up against the stairwell.

When Gaspard recovered from Halfrida’s threat, he moved on to another table, strumming his lute and murmuring out questionably salacious lyrics about a group of ex-corsairs who had traveled to the Kvesari Wood in search of a phoenix. While finishing up their dinner, Celeste asked after the greenhouse, and Ima’riel detailed her plans, excited that she had already managed to sprout some chives and potdemiel fruits which apparently grew underground.

“She’s exhausting herself between that and worrying about the sweetbriars,” mumbled Kori over the edge of her stein.

Ima’riel’s light eyes would have rolled, Celeste thought, if the elf ever allowed herself to do such a thing. Instead, they just looked deeply into a speckled stone she brought out of an unseen pocket. “If my calculations are correct, only eight more sunrises until they bloom.”

“They bloom with the dawn?” asked Reeve. It had taken him some time to recover from the bawdy tales, but he was still pink along his collar. Celeste wondered how far down the blush went.

“Yes, it’s the elven cleansing magic of shaking off winter and welcoming spring, and it occurs on the day when the sun and moons share equal time in the sky, so the whole village will stay up the entire night to welcome the sunrise.”

Kori placed down her mug, hands falling beneath the table to her lap. “And no one’s going to be disappointed if they stay up all night just to see, like, one bush bloom?”

“Oh, they don’t really mind what happens so long as they can eat and drink.” Ima’riel chuckled then brought up a slender hand to cover her mouth as she politely yawned behind it. “Only Geezer and I are really concerned with the sweetbriars, but the rest of them love the festival that comes along with it. I’m not sure they even remember it’s supposed to be about the flowers.”

Celeste looked about. “Is Geezer here tonight?”

“Baylen says he’s missing.” Kori took a casual drink despite the heft of those words.

Ima’riel shook her head. “He always turns up once he remembers where home is. His memory’s been addled by magic, even I can’t fix whatever’s happened to him, but there’s something inside all of us that draws us back to the place we belong once we’ve found it.”

Celeste pressed a hand to her chest as if the elf’s words would suddenly spark that in her. She listened intently for some pull to another place, but there was nothing.

“So, you two haven’t killed one another yet.” Kori leaned forward, spearing a last carrot with her fork. “What’s the hold up?”

They traded glances, and of course Reeve immediately opened his mouth. “We’ve made an oath to one another.”

Ima’riel’s eyes widened, and her mouth fell open in a broad grin. Kori, on the other hand, totally screwed up all of her features in utter confusion or perhaps disgust, they looked much the same on her.

Celeste kicked the knight beneath the table. “Not like that,” she said.

“Yes, it is.” He reached down and rubbed his leg, giving her such a pained expression that she wanted to throw her arms around him and apologize. “We vowed not to battle until—” Finally, a torch seemed to light behind his eyes. “Until the temple is restored.”

It wasn’t a lie, not really, but she could tell he felt it was close enough that he’d probably be doing twice the prayers the following morning.

Ima’riel made a subtly disproving face. “Humans,” she said and then smiled weakly as if they were all children, and another yawn caught her totally by surprise.

“You’re worn out.” Worry creased Kori’s features.

“I’ve got at least another hour in me.”

Kori threw back the last of her ale and banged the empty stein on the table. “You’d be a better liar if you weren’t so tired.”

“Maybe Halfrida will let me nap upstairs—”

“No, no, it’s way too loud. Let me take you home.”

Ima’riel grinned a little wider with her sleepy eyes fixed on the table and then set her face serenely again. “All right, but one more thing.” She reached for Reeve’s arm and placed slender fingers on his bandage. A stab of jealousy flared in Celeste, and then she rent it right back out—the elf was only healing him like she had done for her own wound. The spell made her eyelids flutter, and Kori clicked her tongue, insisting the elf wish the two of them goodnight and hustled her outside.

When they were left alone in the busyness of the tavern, Celeste turned swiftly to Reeve and pouted. “I’m sorry I kicked you.”

“Oh, I hardly felt it.” He grinned from the side of his mouth, that dimple creasing his cheek adorably, and she noticed a blotch of pink on his neck that might have been new.

Over his shoulder, the villagers were carrying on in the Dew Drop. The tavern was exceptionally warm and noisy, but their table was pushed up against the stairwell, hemming them into a cozy corner. Through the windows, it was clear night had fallen, the firelight on the hearth glinting orange over everything. Gaspard’s lute and his velvety voice wove its way through the crowded room, and the smell of spiced boar meat was heavy in the air.

“Kori has probably told Ima’riel…things, but they don’t know about Syphon, so thank you for not saying anything. I know that was difficult.” Since she had dressed his wound, her hands hadn’t cooled down, fingers still hot and itching to touch him again. It was stupid, dangerous, and would lead to even more wounding, she was sure of it, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from scooting a little closer to him. “If you get in trouble with Valcord for lying, I’ll make it up to you.”

Reeve’s grin fell off, his amber eyes warm in the candlelight. “How would you do that?”

Celeste’s throat went thick with every indecent act she knew, and a few she made up on the spot just for him. He was genuinely asking, surely, not hinting at any of the things that suddenly filled her mind, chiefly her on her knees and not in prayer.

“I need the privy,” she said, shooting to her feet.

She hurried to the back of the tavern, but the door didn’t give when she pushed, though she did hear retching behind it. Flustered, she just needed to be out of the overly warm tavern and went for the door beside it.

The little room beyond was cool, but it wasn’t a privy, though there was a hole in the ground, one that had a ladder sticking out but boards laid over top. Celeste’s hand on the doorknob tightened, her muscles tensing without her permission. She squeezed the locket about her neck, and it thumped back.

Wind blew past her ear like a whisper, curling around the back of her head and returning to speak into the other. Come to discuss your reward?

“Celeste, dear, be careful, you’ll topple into nowhere.” Halfrida bustled behind her, clusters of empty ale steins in both of her fists.

“Is there…is there someone down there?” Celeste heard herself asking, her own voice sounding far away as she stared into the darkness peering back up from between the boards on the ground.

“Goodness, no, the basement’s been off limits since that great flood we had decades ago. Most of ‘em in the town are completely useless now, it seems only Baylen’s has survived mold-free, but nobody’s ever not had the heebie jeebies down in mine, so we just boarded her up.” She gestured with her overly full hands. “Come on, now, out you come.”

“Sorry,” Celeste mumbled, stepping backward against the pull that was keeping her there. “Someone’s in the privy.”

“Oh, that’d be Carson. He’s had about seven too many ales, and the plumbing’s already been giving me enough difficulty down here. Geezer needs to turn back up and set the arcana in the pipes right.” Halfrida rolled her eyes, then pointed for the stairs. “There’s another loo up there, dear, just to the right.”

With one more distressed look as she shut the basement door, Celeste scurried off, passing Reeve engaged in conversation with Willow and Charlie, who had taken Ima’riel and Kori’s seats. Ascending to the tavern’s second floor was like being lifted away from the fray, the quiet of the narrow hall and many empty rooms flushing away that overheated, overwhelmed, over-everything feeling she’d had under Reeve’s eyes.

Tending to his wound had reminded Celeste that Reeve was just a man who was capable of being injured, and while it was exciting, it was equally terrifying. The thought of Reeve being run through by that infernal beast filled her with a sense of loss she couldn’t fathom being entitled to. But when she wiped down his arm and applied ointment to it, there was the other part of being a man that presented itself, palpable beneath her fingers, all taut skin and hardness.

Reeve had older scars too when she’d inspected his muscled arm. She wanted to run her hands along each one and then up to his chest to examine the marks she’d glimpsed before, to feel if he was similarly damaged everywhere. He certainly didn’t act like a damaged man, but his body told her otherwise.

She knew for sure, though, that he was just as solid all over because he had dragged her up against him back in the forest, calloused fingers digging in and holding her close, but the moment was so brief and bewildering it had practically fallen right out of her head. And that was a good thing because none of those thoughts were appropriate when he was hurt, for goodness’s sake. The blood helped, and the split skin too, but thank the dark gods and the light gods and all manner of cricket that he’d not agreed to her other offer. What was she thinking? Do you need help taking a bath? Her whole body flashed with heated embarrassment all over again.

I mean, I would have done it, she thought ruefully as she left the bathing chamber in the lightless upstairs of the tavern and inn, and I would have gone straight to the Abyss for taking advantage of him.

Celeste’s experience with men was fraught, only meeting them through her sister. Delphine had a rotating retinue of minions willing to do the dirtiest of work, but rarely would they look at Celeste as she skulked in the shadows, especially when Delphine was so beautiful and commanding. There was one, however, who possessed a nice enough face and an even nicer voice that said some complimentary things at opportune times.

Tarquin would playfully creep up on Celeste and make her heart race by grabbing her about the waist and pinning her to a wall. She wasn’t sure she liked that, but she did like the attention. He, however, didn’t like when she grew comfortable with his touches and asked to be treated less like a secret. Celeste often didn’t know they were in an argument until after her eye was blackened, but the worst of it had resulted in the breaking of her arm.

Delphine dismissed Tarquin after that—didn’t kill him, it was important to note, though her sister slit throats for much less. It just wouldn’t do to have a minion around who was distracted by her sister regardless of if he were bedding or beating her.

Celeste did better when she could buy companionship. It was too mortifying to admit to Delphine, but the men who worked at Yvlcon were discreet, and there were a lot to choose from: men who could act like Tarquin, dominant and good at inflicting pain, and some that even encouraged Celeste to try to play that role herself, though she was awful at it. Eventually she discovered what she liked, and it wasn’t all that exciting, it was just someone who was kind, or at least, someone who was pretending to be kind because she paid them to be.

She felt hollow afterwards, but less hollow than before. Mostly.

“Yeah, but isn’t she your wife?”

Celeste was pulled out of her melancholic thought by little Willow’s all-too-inquisitive voice floating up from the table below.

“No, no, I don’t have one of those.”

The noise of the tavern was a mostly muffled mess from where Celeste stood on the inn’s second floor, but the conversation taking place at the bottom of the stairs was funneled right up to her.

“But you’re together all the time,” said Willow, and Celeste leaned over the railing, concealed in the dark. The ginger girl had her elbows on the table and her knees up on the chair, absolutely interrogating the knight. “You come here together, and you leave together, and you sleep together.”

“No, we do not.” Reeve waved his hands through the air. “By Valcord, you should not even be asking—”

“She means you sleep in the same place, in the same home,” said Charlie, the girl’s deep voice full of amusement as she leaned back in her own chair, arms crossed. “We know because Halfrida said that you’re fixing up the old temple together, and you sleep there instead of sleeping here.”

Eliot stood at the table’s end, head pinging between them as they spoke, nodding along.

Reeve grunted and finished the last of his milk. “We have an agreement, yes, and it is only meant to be for a brief time.”

“Well, you should get married.” Willow’s voice was run through with a thrill. “Then it can be forever!”

Reeve brought his stein of milk back to his mouth, mumbling something unheard into it, though it didn’t sound agreeable.

Celeste’s fingers tightened on the banister. Don’t, she said sharply into her mind, You cannot feel bad about a thing you already know. Yet there was still a sinking in her chest, and while she should have shut herself back up in the privy to avoid any more of it, she realized it would do her good to hear, to dash away all of the over-indulgent, fanciful thoughts about the holy knight that she kept failing to overcome.

“Why not?” Willow was pouting. “Is it because she keeps saying no?”

Reeve squeezed his eyes shut and groaned.

“Because Auntie Frida keeps telling Gaspard no too, but he says he’s never going to give up asking her to be his wife because Auntie Frida is the prettiest lady he’s ever seen. Don’t you think Celeste is pretty?”

Celeste’s stomach flipped over twice. She knew she should thunder down the stairs as loudly as possible and put an end to their collective misery he didn’t know they shared, but she’d already committed herself to the torture of hearing him say it and couldn’t seem to move.

One of Reeve’s eyes popped open and found Charlie. His face creased with a frown as if begging the girl to help him.

Charlie only shrugged. “Well?”

“That’s really not—I mean,” Reeve grunted and took another drink. “I have not asked anyone to marry me.”

“But why not?” Willow’s voice dragged the word out as she threw her head back dramatically.

Clearly at a loss, Reeve stuttered out a string of nonsense words that amounted to neither the answer Willow was looking for nor any answer to any question at all.

“But you think she’s pretty, right?”

Reeve dropped his stein down and sighed. “Yes, of course I think Celeste is pretty.”

The twisty burning in Celeste’s stomach suddenly soared into her throat, and her heart came to a stammering halt. What the fuck?

“I think she’s very pretty, and she has lovely hair and beautiful eyes and these long, gorgeous legs that,”—he coughed—“well, she has legs too, and that’s…normal.”

“Then you should kiss her!” Willow lifted her arms high over her head and squeezed her little fists, shaking them. Eliot laughed silently behind his hand.

The world beneath Celeste shifted, and it felt as though there wasn’t floor under her anymore, there was just air and light, and she was floating on nothing but words and imagination. Gods, she would love to be kissed by Reeve. Even if it was stupid and dangerous and would amount to nothing, to be held in his strong arms for even a fleeting moment and to be kissed would just—

But then she crashed back down, gripping the railing so tight it could have splintered. No one ever said those things about her—not about her stringy hair or her spindly legs and especially not about her ghoulish eyes. Since he had stopped calling her a witch, Reeve had revealed himself to be kind, one of the helpful holy men as Kori had suggested, or so Celeste thought. Yet he was being so needlessly cruel with his deceptive words.

At the table below, Reeve took a deep breath, face going stoic like how he looked first thing in the morning, sitting still in the courtyard. “You cannot just kiss people because you think they’re pretty, Willow. You have to at least ask them first. I think.”

“So ask her.”

“I—” Reeve sat back, head tipped down. “I can just ask her?”

“Yes! And then you can kiss, and then you’ll be married.” Willow had all the enthusiasm of Plum spying an unguarded piece of fruit.

“That’s not how getting married works,” Charlie said with the kind of sigh an all-knowing child has, and Eliot nodded at her side in silent agreement.

Reeve shook his head as if breaking out of some trance. “Yes, see, listen to her, she knows. It’s more complicated than that…isn’t it?”

“You actually have to kiss a lot before getting married,” Charlie went on, “and hold hands, and have a couple arguments too, and before all that, you have to at least tell the other person you’re in love with them. And that’s really scary.” She turned her eyes on Reeve, and even from a story up Celeste could see the challenge in the girl’s face.

Willow let out a huge, wistful sigh and draped herself over the table. “Gaspard always sings about being in love with Auntie Frida! ‘Specially when he drinks lots of ale.”

“Uh huh, but that’s because he’s not afraid. Not like Sir Reeve.” The older girl delivered the honorific with none of the respect it should have held.

“Afraid?” Reeve’s nostrils flared, and he leaned toward her over his stein of finished milk. “I am a holy knight in service to the God of the Dawn, I have fought infernals on a veil-shredded battlefield, stalked the Charred Caverns of Malifort, suffered a dagger to the gut and the spilling of my innards to save my fellow knights, and for over six years I’ve been the temple’s designated spider-catcher.”

Willow gasped. “You squash spiders with your bare hands?”

“Valcord’s Radiance, no, I use a copper cup and put them outside, but the point is, I am afraid of nothing.”

Charlie, however, did not flinch, just as fearless in the face of all that Reeve had proposed to be, and the two glared at one another.

Before the children could bully him anymore, Celeste finally got a hold of herself and stomped down the stairs, the racket impossible to ignore.

Reeve stood the moment he saw her, knocking his chair back, eyes wide. “I, uh, have to…” He turned swiftly and went for the bar.

Willow’s little mouth opened much wider than it should have been able to, but Charlie clamped her hand over it and hauled her off the table. “Come on, let’s go dance with Baylen.” Eliot followed, and Celeste found herself alone.

CHAPTER 17
INEVITABLE INEBRIATION

C eleste sank into her seat and gazed out at the Dew Drop Inn. Many of the families had left, their little ones in tow, but there were still plenty of Briarwyke’s villagers filling up the tavern. Most were gathered around Gaspard who was standing atop a table and singing about those ex-corsairs again, half the imaginary group replaced with other fictional figures as they quested in the name of the realm’s king.

Baylen had Willow up on his shoulders, and she held onto his unbroken horn as he swayed to the music. Eliot and Charlie were laughing at some of the very drunken hunters who had taken to dancing in pairs, but were fighting to lead one another. A few younger women were at a table close by, calling out pointers. The hunters quickly gave up on each other and pulled the women to their feet.

Celeste shrank deeper into the shadow of the stairwell. She swept her hair forward to curtain her face and tucked her too-long and too-pale legs under the chair. The urge to disappear hemmed in, and her locket thumped against her chest.

Why hadn’t Reeve just kept it simple? He could have appeased the children with one lie and moved on, Yes, I think Celeste is pretty—now, do you want to hear about the river monsters in Bendcrest? Of course they would, who wouldn’t want to listen to him? Celeste herself loved all of his stories and the enthusiasm with which he told them. But, no, he had to keep going, had to yammer on falsehood after falsehood. Why did he have to be so specific with his lies? Why couldn’t he just—

But Reeve didn’t lie, did he?

“I fear we’ve not been properly introduced.”

Celeste sat up straight at the voice suddenly so close. While she’d been wallowing in her thoughts, the blond leader of the hunters, Fitz, had taken the seat beside her. She stuttered out her name when asked, mind jumbled and heart racing. She’d been terrified in the forest that one of the men had seen her leach the arcana out of the infernal boar, but Fitz said nothing about that, instead mentioning only that he was impressed she had been the one to take it down.

“Dangerous work, boar hunting.”

“It was all luck.” Celeste shrugged uncomfortably, wanting to change the subject. “Halfrida’s the one with all the skill.”

Fitz laughed and agreed, a pleasant, casual sound as he flashed her a smile. He was handsome with a slender but strong build, hair he kept cropped short, and a trimmed beard. By all rights, he really should have been carrying on across the tavern with the young women, dancing along to Gaspard’s music and not slouching in the shadows beside her.

“You have…striking eyes,” he said, leaning close with a furrowed brow as he agonized over the right word. He only smelled a little of ale, but it was enough to give him the confidence to speak without thinking yet not enough restraint to hide his curiosity. Bringing himself so close, he had no doubt caught the awkward, liquidy movement in her eerily colored irises.

She mumbled an odd thank you and dropped her gaze to her lap.

“Are you settling down in Briarwyke or just passing through?”

That was a good question. “I don’t, um…I’m not sure.”

“Well, we can always use more hunters, and your husband would—”

“Reeve isn’t my husband,” she said with a bite.

“Oh, well, isn’t that interesting?” Fitz chuckled under his breath. “Speaking of the divine…”

Celeste turned to see Reeve standing at the head of the table.

“I brought you this.” He thrust a mug of ale into her face and took the seat beside her, pushing himself much closer than he had been before. She took the stein, noting he had his own, also full of ale instead of the milk he’d been drinking.

“Your friend,”—Fitz gestured to Celeste—“says she may or may not be remaining in Briarwyke. What about yourself?”

“My intention here is to return Valcord’s glory to his house.”

“You’re going to bring clergy back to that old temple?” He sucked a breath over his teeth. “Well, they’ll probably be better than the last priests—those guys were useless. No wonder they disappeared, they wouldn’t even keep the kids after the plague orphaned them. Good thing Halfrida’s got all the extra rooms and at least a little motherly instinct.” He pointed to the three children scrambling around Baylen. “Better than them being out on the street; Briarwyke’s got enough trouble.”

Reeve took a hearty gulp from his mug. When he pulled it away, his face twisted as if someone had just punched him in the gut. Celeste took a small sip of her own ale, but it didn’t taste off.

“Say, if you’re a holy man, does that make you a priestess?” Fitz’s gaze slid back to Celeste, who shook her head. “Oh, good, that would be such a waste.”

She felt herself blush deeply, already hot tucked in between the two men.

“There is no waste in serving that to which you are bound.” Reeve’s voice had gone low and cold, though he repeated the words as if they were something he’d been taught long ago.

“Now, that is where we agree.” Fitz reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, and it looked friendly enough, but Reeve only took a deep pull from his stein, eyes shut.

Fitz was undeterred and kept attempting to befriend with amicable conversation. His family had been in Briarwyke longer than any other, so long that probably just about everyone already had a little of his lineage in them somewhere, though all of his direct relatives had passed, and he was left alone in Fitzroy Manor. “That’s the estate across the circle. Can’t leave,” he said, smile wistful. “Father wouldn’t like it, and even though he’s dead, I did promise I’d stay and take care of the place.”

Reeve sat forward at that. “You intend to keep this oath?”

“Eh? Gets harder every sunset. Most leave or die off, and very few ever come to stay.” He raised his own drink to the tavern with a sigh and then asked after from where they’d come. Celeste answered in the way she’d learned from a captor years ago, half lies and half untruths, but Reeve was forthcoming enough for the both of them.

The knight told Fitz about his home in Bendcrest, and Celeste listened with a curl to her lips, finding it easy to imagine the river that ran through it and the ships leaving port in the spring. The two fell into a conversation about weaponry and how training was all the same in the end: strike early, hit your target, and stay alive.

After Reeve was plied with two more steins by Fitz, he was convinced to tell the tale of slaying a hydra on the coast of the Maroon Sea. The details poured out of the knight much more easily than all the rest, which had begun rather tight-lipped and surly, and Celeste was glad he seemed to finally be having a better time.

Reeve stood then as his mug was empty again, but he wavered, catching himself on the table. Celeste sprang to her feet beside him. “Are you all right?”

His eyes glistened, blinking too slowly as he grinned at her. “No, you’re fine, why?”

She placed her hand on Reeve’s broad back, and he straightened under it, then swayed again. “Uh oh.”

“Be back,” he said, and they watched him wander to the privy where he knocked on the open door and waited.

“Go on in,” called Fitz with a laugh, and Reeve staggered inside, thankfully remembering to shut the door behind him. “Didn’t think it was possible for him to have too much.”

Celeste gnawed on her lip, wincing at the bang that came from beyond the door. Reeve was big, but size mattered much less when one’s tolerance was non-existent. When he again opened the door and attempted to leave, he stopped short, squinting at the ground. He took a step forward and then staggered back again. It became quickly apparent to Celeste that the Obsidian Widow Maker’s pommel was catching on the edge of the door, but the fact was lost on Reeve. “Oh, dear,” she murmured and pressed a hand to her heart.

Fitz laughed. “Maybe you ought to send him back.”

“You’re right, we should return for the night.” She hurried across the tavern to help.

“No, no, send him back.” Fitz followed after. “You should stay.”

Celeste made it to Reeve and placed a hand on his chest. Startled, he looked up at her, and then he grinned in a dopey way and slurred out her name as if surprised to see her at all. She managed to maneuver his bulk out of the little privy chamber without catching his sword again, though Sid quietly groused about trying to sleep.

“I think we ought to head back, don’t you?”

“Whatever I want.” Reeve hiccupped, and the combination of milk and ale on his breath was…a lot. “You don’t have any objections.”

Celeste gave Fitz an apologetic look that she didn’t entirely mean and kept a hand on Reeve’s elbow as she led him out of the tavern. He didn’t tip over, but he didn’t do a very good job of getting to the door either. Empyrea help him, he certainly tried, but still ran into the wall. He seemed to barely feel it, though the wall might have groaned.

Once they made it out into the cool night air, the noise and brightness of the tavern shut away, Reeve took a deep breath and straightened. Celeste thought he might have recovered, poking himself in an eye but successfully running a hand through his chestnut waves nonetheless. She released him, and into the darkness they began through Briarwyke’s circle to the North Road, but it only took about three steps before one of the jagged cobbles sent him staggering almost to the ground.

“You don’t have a lot of experience with ale, do you?”

“It tastes, uh, not good. I don’t drink it,” he said, pinched his eyes shut, and then hiccupped again.

“But you did tonight.”

He shook his head and made little disagreeable noises that set Celeste to laughing quietly under her breath. Then he took off sideways, and despite her attempt to help, he knocked them both to the ground. “Oh, no, sorry, sorry, you gotta be more careful,” he said, perhaps to her, perhaps to himself. He was fumbling to help her up and stuttering out apologies, but none of it was working. “I think you’re gonna have to carry me home.”

Well, she certainly couldn’t do that, but before she could balk at the suggestion, she was struck by what he’d said. Home.

She sat there on the ground, grinning back at how helpless he’d become. “I don’t think I can carry you.”

In another attempt to give her help she didn’t need, Reeve’s hands landed on Celeste’s waist. She inhaled sharply under his touch, but he didn’t seem to notice.

She supposed if he wasn’t going to notice, then she wouldn’t either, difficult as it was with his fingers tickling at her hips as he fumbled to pull her closer. “Reeve, if you wait here, I can try to coax Earlylyte into the village, and then he can carry you back.”

“Oh, no, no, no, you don’t—not that. I’m ‘sposed to. I’ll do the carrying.” His grip on her tightened, and he hoisted her upward.

She squealed, tossed over his shoulder like a wyvern’s femur. “Reeve! What in the Abyss are you doing?”

“You’re taking me home, I thought?” Reeve staggered with her extra weight but seemed to be getting the hang of the whole walking thing.

“This is you taking me,” she said, stifling laughter as her stomach bumped against his shoulder.

“Mmm, same thing.” He continued down North Road, wrapping an arm tightly around her legs. “Don’t drop me, ‘kay?”

She truly giggled then, relaxing against him. “I’ll do my best. I guess even if you’re drunk, you’re still as strong as two Earlylytes.”

“Thanks!”

Celeste was trapped, but she couldn’t complain. She’d had two ales herself, and with the stress of the crowd behind them as the Dew Drop’s torch faded into the distance, a contented sleepiness took her. They were headed home.

Home.

Reeve’s arm was tight around her knees, he was drunkenly humming into the night air, and she was being picked up and carried away. Her insides went all mushy, churned slightly by his staggered steps, and then he almost fell again, which made her dinner topple over.

But he only asked her to be more careful, which made her giggle harder. When he righted himself, he shifted his hold, shouldering her hip up against his head and wrapping his hands around her thighs. That cut Celeste’s laughter off, replaced with a burning in her face that traveled swiftly through the entirety of her body to settle both comfortably and not between her legs.

By all the jumping and singing crickets!

His hand only needed to slide a few inches northward to have her absolutely writhing with frustration—or bliss, she supposed, depending on where his fingers ended up. As she bounced along, the threat of both only intensified. She would have told him to stop teasing and just get on with it, but he clearly had no idea what he was doing so deep under the ale’s influence. All Celeste could do was shift her weight along with how he staggered to keep them both upright and endure the mostly delightful torture of where his thumb almost was until they made it back to the temple.

Reeve triumphantly carried her up the portico’s stairs, set her down in the darkened antechamber, and all too sincerely breathed a heady, “Thank you,” over her face.

There was no use in pointing out that he had done all the carrying, and instead she just assisted in maneuvering him through the temple. After Reeve stopped to do some indiscriminate hand movements toward the desecrated altar and drunkenly request courage from Valcord for reasons Celeste couldn’t identify, they took to the stairs. There was more laughter and at least one dangerous moment when Plum swept by, but she eventually succeeded in delivering the big, drunken knight into his bed chamber.

Moonlight streamed in through the blue stained glass, the night clear of clouds. Though dark, the room was much less daunting without the noxscura lurking in each of its corners.

Reeve pulled off his baldric and pushed his sword into Celeste’s hands. “Try not to touch the handle for too long.” Then he fell onto the bed.

She hugged the scabbard tightly, watching his chest rise and fall, arms splayed out to either side. He might have been big and burly and a holy knight too, but why did he also have to be so cute?

“Don’t even think about it.”

Celeste gasped, Sid’s voice slightly muffled against her chest. “Think about what?”

“Let’s just say,” the blade warned, “I should be the only length of steel you clench down on tonight.”

She scoffed and held The Obsidian Widow Maker at arm’s length, glaring at the pommel’s golden gem. “He’s drunk,” she hissed. “You can think of me in whatever villainous way you want, but I take full offense at that.” With more care than the sword probably deserved just then, she carried him off to the far side of the room to prop up in the corner. “And why shouldn’t I touch your handle?”

The sword was silent, and Celeste frowned at him.

“Nothing to say? Not even another jab?”

At that, Sid snorted through an invisible nose, and she clicked her tongue, sweeping across the room to draw the curtains so there would be no blinding light in the morning. She made sure there was nothing along the pathway to the attached bathing chamber that could be stumbled over and considered lighting a fire in case it got chilly, but decided against the risk.

As she crossed the room a final time to leave, Reeve sat up. “Celeste?”

She stopped at the foot of the bed, wondering if he could even see her in the dark, but he didn’t look away from where she stood. “Do you need something?” Don’t say a bath.

“No, I just—” He grunted and fell backward again. “I feel funny.”

“That would be the ale.” She eased around the bedpost and leaned on it. “You’re drunk.”

“You’re drunk.”

Not enough. “You’ll be okay in the morning. Well, no, you’ll probably still feel funny, but it will be a different kind of funny.” No use in upsetting him now with the fact he would probably feel awful.

“Mmm, well, I don’t wanna go to sleep.” He lifted a hand and gestured.

She didn’t need much more to be convinced he was calling to her. With a quick squint at Sid over her shoulder, she crept closer. He caught her hand and tugged her down to sit on the bed’s edge.

“I need to, um…” He pushed himself up again, this time slower. “May you ask me something?”

She snickered. “Oh, sure.”

“I wondered if maybe…” One of Reeve’s eyes blinked and then the other mimicked the first, which was rather funny, but then he looked at her too sincerely, and Celeste couldn’t wait for whatever else he was going to say.

“You need to sleep.” As she tried to stand, he took her by the wrist and kept her there, but managed to fall backward again. His grip on her was loose, but she didn’t want to pull out of it. “You don’t need me here. I know you’re not afraid of the dark. You’re much braver than that. You fought a hydra.”

He rolled his head to the side, grinning. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t really as exciting as I said.”

“You…you lied?” Celeste swallowed—was he being so honest in his drunkenness that he was finally admitting that he could lie? About anything? Even about who he did and did not think was pretty?

“No, no, no, not a lie. Valcord says not to, but also I don’t do that because it makes me feel so bad. It’s true, we did it all, the cutting off of heads and all that.” He released her and used that hand to wipe at his forehead, a frown creasing his face. “There was just sad stuff too. But you can’t tell people about that, like about how Rory died. No one wants to listen to the sad stuff.”

In the dark, a sorrowful shadow laid itself over Reeve’s face. She had seen him angry, Abyss-bent on destruction even, as well as melancholic when he looked out on the disrepair of the temple, but not once had so much gloom settled in his features. And he had never mentioned this Rory before, yet he’d delivered the name with such anguish.

“I would listen,” she whispered, pressing her hands into the mattress and leaning forward. “If you need to talk about it, you can tell me.”

“I know you would.” Reeve reached out again, his fingers curling around the ends of her hair. “But you’ve been smiling, and it’s so nice. I don’t want to make you sad, not like I did before.”

Celeste’s chest went tight around his words. The way he smoothed the strands of her hair between his fingers made her believe everything he’d said that night, drowned in ale or not.

“May I ask you a question, Celeste?”

Her lips broke apart, and a small sound came out, something like, “Yes.”

“If you were alone in this temple, would you…what would you do? Would you stay?”

She cocked her head. She hadn’t thought about being alone in the temple since he’d shown up. It hadn’t been very long, not even half a moon, but it felt natural, having him around. She wanted to say that, to suggest neither of them had to leave, but that was…well, it was inevitable that one of them would, wasn’t it? In fact, they’d vowed that only one of them would survive their meeting. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“It’s hard, huh?” Reeve snorted, then he sighed. “Flint is leaving for Eirengaard’s temple. Says he likes it more there than in Bendcrest, and they need knights who can heal. I’m happy for him.” Even though he sounded anything but, she knew it was true. “And Gable and Tressa will be married. They might have even already run away and done it.”

“Oh, is that against Valcord’s rules? You’re not allowed to marry?”

“No, no. They’re just romantic like that.” Reeve rocked his head and chuckled but then settled into another pensive stare at the ceiling. “I’m happy for them too,” he announced suddenly. “I want them to…to figure out where they belong.”

“That’s kind of you, Reeve.”

His hand released her hair and dropped with a thunk. “No, it’s not. My heart feels…not kind about it. It’s selfish, but I don’t want them to go because then I’ll be alone.”

She watched his head tip back and eyes squeeze shut with the admittance. She laid her hand on his chest. “You won’t be alone,” she assured him. “Wherever you go, you’ll belong there. Your heart could belong anywhere.”

Reeve lifted a hand and placed it atop hers, squeezing lightly, eyes still closed. “May I ask one more question?”

“Yes, anything.”

She endured the next moment with held breath as his heart beat steady and slow beneath her palm.

Celeste leaned closer. “Reeve?”

He opened his mouth, and then he promptly started snoring.

“Well, crickets.”

It felt interminable, but it was only a short while later that Celeste found herself tucked into her own cot, alone. She pulled her blanket up to her chin and stared into the darkness of the low ceiling, mind foggy and on the verge of losing wakefulness. The day had been long and the night…strange.

She would pick some sailor’s fennel in the morning from the big patch that grew wild behind the temple to treat Reeve’s inevitable headache and fetch one of the old concoctions from the kitchen if his ailment required more. That…that was a good thing to focus on as she tried to will herself into sleep. Not his words, not the drunkenly slurred ones, not the melancholic ones, and not the ones he’d stuttered out to the nosy children in the tavern.

But as her eyes closed, she could see his face behind her lids, how he’d looked in the forest when the noxscura had cleared. He had been there, right there, so quickly, and he had been scared. She hadn’t seen that before, not actual fear on the holy knight’s face, and never had she seen someone scared for her.

She could still feel the warmth of his hand on hers, the bump of his shoulder against her belly, the pressure of his fingertips on her thighs. Her body melted into the stiffness of the cot, but the image in her mind dissolved into murkiness.

“You’ve had a busy night, pet.”

Celeste’s eyes flew open, heartbeat pounding. There was only darkness in the little room, darker even than it had been a moment prior, but she was alone.

Just a dream, surely—she hadn’t heard him.

“Do you still have time, I wonder, for me?”

No, that voice was unmistakable.

“Syphon?” Celeste sat up, limbs heavy with ale. She blinked, but there was still nothing, though it was a stranger nothing, not even the shadows of furniture in her chamber.

“I’ve not been sleeping that long, and yet it is almost as if you’ve abandoned me.”

Sliding her legs over the edge of the bed, it was like dragging herself through murky water, her eyes refusing to adjust to the darkness. “Are you here?”

“Yes. I’ve come, as I said, to discuss your reward.”

There was a tickle at her face and across her knees.

Celeste pulled back from the nothing before her, ungraceful and slow in the disorienting dark. She pressed a hand to her locket, but it was immobile under her palm. There was a brief moment of dread with the noxscura inaccessible, followed by a brief moment of relief—had he already given her what she wanted?

“You were clumsy in that forge. Your command over the noxscura is too hesitant, too weak. You have much room for improvement.”

Celeste knew this, yet to hear it was always painful even when it was delivered with something like affection.

“I can make you better though. I can give you the strength you require. And then your power will be limitless.”

“Limitless?”

“That’s what I do.” Syphon’s presence was suddenly upon her like a cloud, settling in every direction, and it weighed her down.

She shook her head and curled her toes, scrabbling for the stone beneath her feet. She needed to get the apotrope, needed to catch him, stop him, but the world about her wasn’t real enough to muddle through, and she couldn’t stand let alone run.

“But of course you are afraid,” the voice said, the familiarity of disappointment in it thick. “Just as you are afraid of all things.”

It was true—she was afraid. “I don’t want more power,” she admitted, heart racing at the thought. “I want less.”

Syphon did not move away in the silence after her utterance, but she was emboldened by his lack of a response. Perhaps he would actually consider it? She wasn’t worthy of what she could do as it was.

“I don’t want to be like this,” she continued nervously.

“Of course you don’t,” he hissed. “But I cleanse things, make them better than they were. You feed me that which is imperfect, and I perfect it.”

“You’ll make me better?”

“Better? Pet, I will make you unstoppable.”

Celeste’s heart raced as she scrunched in on herself. Unstoppable—that was a thing that Delphine had always wanted to be, and it had never once sounded virtuous. “I don’t want to do bad things again.”

Laughter echoed through the bizarre room she was trapped within. “A trivial concern, but who put it in your mind, I wonder?” Syphon’s voice was just in her ear and held her to the spot, dashing away all of her other thoughts. “That man, surely.”

Celeste’s grip on her locket tightened, though it did not react to the touch. Don’t, she thought, lacking the courage to actually say. Don’t you talk about him. But her silence said enough.

“Yes. Him. Another weakness.” Syphon’s presence pressed in on her. “You would disillusion yourself into believing a man like that is capable of caring for you when, in truth, he loathes creatures like you. Creatures like us, forever tainted by the infernal plane.”

Celeste’s next breath was shallow, chest refusing to expand under the weight of his words. “I don’t think Reeve loathes me,” she whispered.

Syphon’s laughter rumbled deeply, the sound traveling from one of her ears to the other. “Do not tell me you are pathetic enough to think he loves you.”

Her next breath would not come at all. “No,” she struggled against the restraint. “It hasn’t even been long enough—”

“Love doesn’t take that long,” Syphon bit back into the dark, and hands gripped her shoulders, cold and wet. “If he doesn’t already, he won’t. Time does nothing for love, you’ve learned this—you’ve known people for years and never been loved by them, haven’t you?”

The pressure in her chest bloomed into pain, words falling out of her mouth against her will. “My sister?” It was a question, of course, because she was never really sure.

The hands that had formed from the mist that was Syphon squeezed, and it was almost a comfort. “Perhaps she did, because she had to. It is a difficult thing, love, especially when the object is so wretched.”

Celeste didn’t need to be told what she was to know, but to hear it so plainly? A sob caught in her throat.

Syphon’s fingers trailed over her collarbone and down her arm. The place where she had been cut when the lamp’s globe burst pricked with his touch. “Such a shame you got yourself injured. If you had been more careful or if you were stronger, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened.” There was a body against her back then and another hand slipping up around her throat.

Celeste had forgotten about the apotrope and she had forgotten about her locket, all of her thoughts replaced by the truth that she was as wretched and weak as he said, and the tightness closing in around her neck had been earned.

“You aren’t yet worthy of the gifts I’d like to bestow upon you,” Syphon said into her ear, “but you will be.”

The pulse in her throat pounded up against his grip. Instinctively she clawed at his hand, but her fingers slipped through, his flesh only smoke.

There was a prick of light ahead in the darkness of the chamber, something that hadn’t been there before. Completely caught in his grip and lungs refusing to fill, she was pushed forward, and the light came nearer.

A deafening drip echoed into the room and the dampness of the earth pressed in on her skin. No longer on her cot in the acolyte’s chamber, she knew somehow she was underground, pitched into the darkness with only that silvery glow as it crept toward her. Her hand was lifting, and she was reaching out until she felt the freezing burn on her skin.

Noxscura.

Celeste sucked in a breath of cool but stagnant air, blinking eyes open, heart pounding. She was in her little room in the temple again, and she could see in the faint moonlight the outline of the wardrobe, her dress laid across a chair, the table that held her hairbrush and copper cup.

She touched her throat. Her skin was cold, the ghost of fingers still pressed into her neck, but she was alone.

“No,” she said to herself and squeezed her eyes shut, “just a dream.”

She knew of things that came from the infernal plane, things that enjoyed tormenting the minds of others and had the magic to play with dreams, but this was surely just her own weak mind frightening her.

Her fingers trailed down to her locket, and inside, the noxscura thrummed like a heartbeat. It was still there, still hers, and for perhaps the first time, she was grateful.

CHAPTER 18
A COWARD SWEATS EVEN IN WATER

R eeve had never felt worse. Well, there was that time he’d been stabbed. And that time his soul had been sucked out of him for a bit, though that didn’t really hurt, not like this. This was more like the stabbing. But somehow, in the moment, the headache exceeded a rent belly.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed was even painful, so he stood immediately, thinking that would help. It didn’t. He stumbled barefoot to the window to pull back the curtain.

Oh, the fucking sun. Did it have to be so bright and blinding and—

“Shit, Valcord, sorry,” he mumbled, and his own voice made his brain feel like it was clawing to get out through his ears.

He had certainly missed the dawn. Hopefully, his god would forgive him, the torture of waking up enough of a punishment. He pressed his forehead against the cool stained glass and closed his eyes. Valcord, give me the strength to—

“Finally rose to the occasion, bud?”

Reeve rocked his head in the direction of the sword propped up in the corner. “Don’t remember putting you there.”

“You didn’t.”

That could only leave Celeste, of course. There was little Reeve could remember of the night before except her. She had looked exceptionally pretty, smiling and laughing under the candlelight of the tavern. He had been sitting close to her, and it had been quite warm, and there was something else warm that he had touched. Her…thigh?

Reeve straightened, the movement so quick it rattled his brain. No, surely he had only thought about doing that.

Carefully, quietly, achingly, Reeve trudged himself across the room, down the hall, and to the stairs. It was an arduous journey, perhaps even worse than through the Charred Caverns of Malifort, but a reward awaited him when he peered down into the temple.

Celeste sat in a beam of sunlight in the main hall, twisting her hair into a thick braid. Her fingers moved with an easy quickness, black strands catching the morning’s sun to reflect a blue iridescence. He had touched those strands, hadn’t he? Perhaps it had only been a dream, but it was as if he could still feel them, silky on his fingers as he watched her.

She sat surrounded by the fullness of her skirt and a number of books laid open, a small stack of parchment and a reed beside. The sharp planes of her face were drawn tight as she studied the words before her, fingers working absently to the end of the braid where she tied it off with a ribbon. A long, slender arm reached out and turned a page, and then her hand went to Plum’s head and gently pet the wyvern as he destroyed a bowl of berries at her side.

Since Reeve had come to Briarwyke, each day began with increasing pleasantness, provided he overlooked his current hangover, and while he stood still at the head of the stairs and watched her, his headache was a simple thing to forget. The thought passed temptingly through his mind that every morning could be just like this, waking to seek out Celeste. Or better, waking up together because they had not been apart in the night.

His grip on the banister tightened. Even the worst headache of his life hadn’t ravaged the previous night’s desires, though what had actually occurred was a woozy, muddled mess. He remembered…remembered a dirty story or two, and he remembered being smitten, being jealous, being called a coward. Reeve snorted, continuing down the stairs with heavier steps. He wasn’t a coward, and he would prove—

“You’re awake!” Celeste was as surprised about it as he, but quite a bit louder.

Reeve groaned, rubbing his head as he reached the temple’s main chamber. Blinding light dappled through the broken windows above unhelpfully.

Celeste popped herself off the couch and swept up to him, holding up a wad of something green. “Chew it,” she said. “You’ll feel better in a bit.”

“Did you?” She was awfully awake, eyes wide and unblinking as she stared up at him.

“Didn’t need to, but Delphine used it a lot. Trust me, it will work.”

He sniffed the bitter bundle of herbs, the smell reminiscent of poison, but Celeste would never poison him. He stuck the clump of green in his mouth and immediately changed his mind.

“Keep chewing,” she ordered, taking her hand to his chin and closing up his mouth before he could spit it out. “You need to be in top form today.”

Reeve nearly swallowed, eyes darting down to her fingers before she yanked them away from his face. He wished she’d left them there a moment longer. “You have more heavy things for me to carry?”

“No.” She clasped her hands and spun toward the stacks of books she’d been studying. “Something worse.”

Reeve didn’t know how going to Briarwyke’s general store was worse than continuing to clean up the temple, but he was grateful to be standing in the Horn of Plenty and not lugging around bones since his own felt too heavy to properly cooperate. The bitter root had mostly cleared his head, but that came with another problem: remembering.

Or rather, muddled recalling. Because there were things that Reeve said and did, or wanted to say and do, had thought very hard about saying and doing, but wasn’t quite sure if they actually came out of his mouth or were indeed done.

Reeve was growing increasingly mortified at the possibility something had occurred and he’d forgotten. Celeste’s awkward and somewhat cold demeanor wasn’t helping.

“Afternoon.” Baylen waved with his tail from behind the shop’s counter, a book open before him. “Did Halfrida send you to help out with the plumbing while Geezer’s away?”

“Yes!” Celeste beamed at the shopkeeper.

It was the first time she’d truly smiled that morning, and while Reeve was glad to see it and his stomach fluttered like it had the night before when she’d been so cheery with the others, dread crept in right behind the bliss. Had he done something to keep her from smiling at him?

“We just need to get into your basement,” she said, squeezing the strap of her satchel, the apotrope inside. There—there was her anxiety, bubbling under the surface. She must have made some bargain with Halfrida the night before to do this job, and, like many things about the night, Reeve failed at recalling the conversation.

Baylen tipped his horned head, and an ear flicked slowly. “All right, but if you see anybody down there, best to just tell them Skulltail sent ya and let them be on their way.”

“Skulltail?” Reeve’s own voice brought back a thump in his head.

Baylen vaguely pointed to himself then lifted his finger to his lips.

Celeste was nodding, the corners of her mouth still curled but filled with fidgety eagerness. Reeve chalked up his lack of understanding to the half-melted way his brain felt, and a few moments later they were standing at the bottom of a steep set of stairs in a cool, dark chamber beneath Baylen’s shop, sans the keeper but surrounded by crates.

Reeve took a deep, grounding breath. The sooner they were finished with the task at hand, the sooner he could puzzle out what had happened the night before. A series of pipes ran along the closest wall that gave off an arcane pulse when he raised his hand to them. “The water looks like it comes from here.” Reeve called up divine arcana into his palm, and the pipes vibrated angrily. “And something’s definitely wrong with it.”

“We’re not really here for the plumbing.” Celeste had darted to the other side of the room, pulled open a crate, and was sticking her head inside.

But they were, weren’t they? Well, she wasn’t—she was looking for something. Reeve’s heart sank. “Did you lie to Baylen?”

“I didn’t intend to,” she said, pulling out a soft-looking, blue cloth from the crate and marveling at it with an appreciative noise before shaking her head and dropping it back in. “I was just going to ask if we could go into his basement, but I didn’t know how I was going to answer any of his questions about why, and then he set me up with the perfect reason, so I had to lie.”

“That’s a terrible excuse.”

She continued to poke along the wall, moving things on shelves and lifting lids. “Well, if we do end up fixing the plumbing, maybe it’s okay?”

“No, it’s definitely not.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, the headache coming back with vengeance. Maybe now was not the best time to chastise her when he was queasy with the thought he had done something disgraceful himself.

“Still feeling bad, huh? Here, have this.” As she crossed the room, she offered him a small vial. He didn’t bother to ask what it was, just uncorked it and threw it back. She hustled to the other side of the basement. “And if the worst thing I do is bend the truth a little, then maybe I’m not so evil after all.”

“Celeste, I don’t think—” He cut himself off as an arcane tingle ran down his throat. Clarity, at least a bit of it, washed over him, and then the very stark memory of the night before when he had decided he was going to kiss Celeste. Oh, by all the gods of light, had he?

“I knew it!”

Reeve spun to find her pulling back a tarp, revealing a tunnel into the deep darkness of the earth. She was smiling broadly, and it was such a nice smile with lips that he wanted to press his own to…for the first time? Or again? By Valcord’s Radiance, had he even asked?

He meant to ask—Celeste, may I kiss you, it was that simple, certainly—but if he’d failed, or she said no, she would definitely be angry at him for pouncing on her anyway. But gods, no, no, he would never if she declined. Yet the desire had been so strong, and as much as Reeve strove to be virtuous, he was not perfect, he knew, he’d been told many, many times…

“You look upset.” Celeste frowned.

Upset was one word for it—upset at himself because the point of drinking all that ale that now made him feel so wretched was so he could work up the courage to ask, and he’d been fairly sure she was going to say yes, especially the more he drank. There were things he remembered plainly, the feel of her skin, touching her hair, speaking so softly and asking…asking something. But if they indeed kissed, why could he not remember that?

Valcord, take pity upon me and let me remember.

The god was silent, which wasn’t really different, but it especially stung in the face of his desperation.

Reeve swallowed, too many terrible possibilities swirling in his all too slowly unraveling mind, and whatever the truth, it was not good. No wonder she was acting so odd, though it probably didn’t help that she was speaking to him, and instead of responding, he was having a silent theological crisis.

“Okay, hear me out.” Celeste held up her other hand, fingers splayed. “I had a thought this morning—well, a bunch of them, actually—so I did some reading about arcana and dreams and the history of the town. Apparently, Briarwyke did used to be run on sieves, sort of how Geezer was saying it could be done, but they just stopped using them a couple hundred years ago. Something went wrong, but the journal only said that they sealed up the sieves and moved on.” She swallowed hard. “Halfrida mentioned last night that the buildings in Briarwyke have basements, but most haven’t been used for years, so that means there are many places that are dark, quiet, and undisturbed by time beneath the village.” Well, if something had happened between them, she wasn’t saying, but she was filling up the void with a lot of other words.

Reeve cleared his throat when he realized it was his turn to say something. “Under the village. Right. And that’s a place we want to go?”

“Probably not, but a sieve in need of nesting would.”

Oh, right, the sieve. The sieve they were meant to be catching. The danger he should have been focusing on instead of his own moral failings.

Reeve strode toward the opening behind the tarp, cooler air hitting him. The edges were roughly cut into stone and earth, but it was more than wide and tall enough to be passed through. “I thought we weren’t going to disturb his nest. At least not until Geezer showed back up.”

“Well…” Celeste looked away from him and down the tunnel, shadows covering most of her face. Something was wrong, but she wouldn’t say, and he knew he should ask, but maybe with time he would eventually remember and not have to betray the entire breadth of his failure. Or he could get a moment alone with Sid and try to persuade the sword to reveal the details.

It was a little bit like lying, he supposed, but hadn’t Celeste herself suggested that holding back the truth wasn’t exactly the same? His stomach twisted, but if he was to fall interminably through the Abyss for this, there would be plenty of time to worry about it then.

Reeve held onto his pommel with one hand and closed the other fist, casting into it. When he opened his fingers, a small ball of light lifted out of his palm and hovered over them. “At least we’ll be able to see where we’re going.”

When the tarp fell behind them, Reeve’s spell was all that illuminated the way. The tunnel advanced and turned, the echoes of their footsteps scuffing along the uneven ground. Around the bend, there was a sharper jag, and the tunnel split in two.

“I didn’t think we’d have to make a decision so soon.” Celeste squinted into the darkness far ahead of them.

“This way leads east.” Reeve pointed down one side.

“How do you know?”

“The sun.”

“But there isn’t any—” She shook her head. “Okay, well, that would take us out of town then, and it looks like someone’s been coming and going that way.” She pointed out a torch jammed into the cavern wall, still in good shape. “It’s probably how Baylen gets all of his rare goods.”

Reeve willed his light to illuminate the western way instead, narrower, more jagged, and somehow darker. “So, you want to go that way, don’t you?”

“Yes, please.” She grinned, and even though it wasn’t exactly for him, he was too relieved seeing it to say no.

Except it didn’t matter what Reeve was willing to do after a few more yards at a steady decline, there was nowhere else for him to actually go. The tunnel had narrowed itself down, and though Celeste was having no problem, his arms were starting to scrape.

She turned to her side, leading with a shoulder, but was getting too far ahead. Reeve’s heart hitched when he noted how his light was failing to shine on her. He reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her to a stop.

Celeste looked back, the golden glow of his spell warming her face but not her silvery eyes.

“We don’t know what’s ahead,” he said, voice low.

She looked down at their clasped hands. “No, we don’t.”

“Would you allow me to go first? Just in case?”

Celeste nodded, awkwardly flattening herself against the tunnel’s wall and shimmying by as he attempted to take up less room and failed. They rubbed against one another, and Reeve flicked his gaze upward to avoid looking into the low neckline of her dress—he didn’t need that, not with the feel of her body pressed to his.

“Ah, uh, Reeve?” She’d stopped right in front of him, and it was just the worst place she could have chosen.

He continued to stare at the tunnel’s low ceiling. “Yes?”

“I can’t get past your, um…”

His gaze dropped, but she was only pointing to The Obsidian Widow Maker. The sword had wedged itself at an angle as it hung from his baldric. He fumbled with it, and Sid clicked a nonexistent tongue at the rough handling and banging of his scabbard. He apologized, not sure to whom, and with one more nearly unbearable rub, they successfully switched sides.

Both blew out long breaths they were quite aware they’d been holding, and Reeve focused on his light, which had gone momentarily dim. He pushed it ahead into the narrowness of the tunnel as they continued. It reflected back on the close walls until it broke free of the tunnel and cast out over a wider area.

The only problem was that wider area was just past the narrowest.

Reeve was already going along sideways. It didn’t seem impossible to fit at first, only difficult, but then he tried to wedge himself through and changed his mind.

“You can do it.” Celeste touched his arm which didn’t at all help to make him any smaller.

Reeve cleared his throat and emptied his lungs of air. He eased in another few inches, but it wasn’t enough. “I’m trying to suck it in, but it’s not working.”

“I don’t think you can suck in your muscles.” Celeste’s voice was closer, and when she giggled, her breath tickled his ear. Not only did that also not help, it was making things much worse. With both hands on his arm, she gave him a push.

Once, long ago, Reeve had gotten himself lost. His sense of direction was now immaculate, but that time in the forest surrounding Bendcrest when he had become so turned around that he wasn’t sure he would ever see the temple again came back to him all at once in a panic. He was again five-years-old, and he was lost.

“Come on, big boy,” Celeste said, giving his arm a rub and then pushing her whole body into his side. “Only a little more.”

He remembered then, when Mother Mariesa found him, he had only been about twenty yards away from the forest’s edge.

“You can do it,” Celeste urged, his elbow cradled between her breasts, the length of his arm pressed against her belly, and if he wiggled his fingers… “Just squeeze.”

The narrow tunnel finally let Reeve go, but momentum being what it was, the freeing was actually quite violent. Coupled with Celeste’s shoving and how she was significantly smaller, all of it added up to a rather large tumble for the both of them.

Reeve rolled so he would land on his back and caught her before she met any damage against the rocky earth. Celeste clung on, her gentle laughter threaded with apologies, though he barely registered what she was saying at all with her laid out atop him and his arms wrapped tightly around her.

He wanted to slide his hands along her body, to tangle them in her hair, to cup her backside, to pull her mouth to his, and then he remembered he very well might have already, and by gods he should really just ask her, but maybe he was a coward after all because the thought of doing any of that was terrifying.

Celeste gazed down at him, her nervous smile falling away from lips he couldn’t stop imagining the taste of. She tipped her head, the tail of her braid tickling him, and her fingers did something near his collarbone that almost made him forget where they were. Tingles bombarded his skin, and if he didn’t separate them soon, he wouldn’t have to say a word, his cock would do all the telling for him. He opened his arms and rocked onto his side, and Celeste slid to the ground with a thump.

Reeve was quick to get to his feet, then offered her a hand. He pulled her upward with so much force he almost tossed her back in the opposing direction. With a muttered apology, he turned away to survey the space they’d found and think about death and dismemberment so any evidence of his arousal would shrink away.

The cavern opened up into a chamber, rocky walls that glistened with wetness under Reeve’s spell lining either side. Before them, the wider tunnel continued to decline until it met a pool that reached across the width of the chamber. As Reeve’s ball of light hovered out over the water, it illuminated the way ahead, which narrowed again and turned, nothing more to be seen from where they stood on the underground pond’s bank.

“Can you swim?”

“I’m from Bendcrest, of course I can—oh, Celeste, really?”

“Maybe it’s not that deep.” She was slipping off her shoes and hitching her skirt before he could suggest otherwise, and then she began to wade in. “I might be wrong about the depth,” she finally said when it reached her knees and didn’t look to be stopping. “I wouldn’t normally suggest this with that cut on your arm, but the water is shockingly clear, and I bet we can at least see what’s around that bend without too much trouble.”

“I don’t like the cut of this place’s jib at all,” said Sid.

Reeve agreed with a few grunts as he took off his baldric. “You believe the nest is up ahead?”

Celeste stood calf deep in the water, silvery eyes shimmering at him in the dark with that pre-panic look he recognized from his brothers and sisters just before being struck by some evil thing’s fangs. She nodded and shrugged at the same time like she thought so but hoped not.

“Do not go on without me.” He hurried to unlace his boots.

She returned to the water’s edge and removed her satchel, then began running fingers through her braid, pulling her hair free of the ribbon. “We should probably take our outer layers off and carry them in the bag so we have something dry on the other side—if there is another side. Do you think you could dim that light a little?”

“You want to see less?” Even with his light, the cavern was made up almost entirely of creepy shadows.

She cleared her throat and bundled up her hair atop her head, retying it with the ribbon. “Well, no, but I don’t want to show much more.” She plucked at the bodice of her dress.

Reeve’s eyes widened, and then the light went out.

“We do need a little light.”

He cast again but turned away. So, she was still happy enough to touch him but not to get undressed in front of him, which told him…absolutely nothing about what might or might not have happened the night before.

As he pulled off his tunic, he listened to the shuffling at his back and did his best to not imagine her skirt rising over her thighs, her dress slipping off over her head, Celeste standing there naked in the low light. He tried so hard, in fact, he completely forgot he was shedding his own clothes down to just the tight and short braies he wore beneath his leather pants until he turned back.

The outline of her bare feet was right beside the satchel, but he didn’t gaze upward to see where her eyes fell. That might have told him something, but his whole body flushed too deeply for him to think properly.

Once her satchel was fully stuffed and they had both very awkwardly moved about in the dark, not looking at what they were doing, Reeve finally retrieved Sid and stood beside Celeste, gaze still cast down. The ground was terribly uninteresting, but it would have to do. She carried the satchel, and they waded in as he continued to not think about how her skin was about to be soaking wet and slippery and she would be cold—

No, freezing.

Any fear Reeve had that his thoughts of Celeste’s nakedness would grow obvious solidified into ice and shattered as he sank slowly and painfully into the water. “How in Empyrea did you walk into this?”

Celeste made an inquisitive noise. “Oh, I’ve been in colder.” Though the light was dim, it bobbed over them both, the pale outline of her neck and shoulders bare with only the thinnest strap of lace laying against her skin.

Reeve squeezed Sid’s scabbard tighter, focusing on the weight overhead and the slight pulse of pain in his arm. Ima’riel had healed the skin nicely, but the internal ache was a good distraction, as was the rising water. Once the still surface hit him mid chest, it seemed to go no deeper.

Poor Celeste was up to her chin though, and he grabbed away the satchel as it teetered overhead in her struggling grasp. Hands laden, he was glad she was hidden underwater, but a glance downward told him it was so clear it didn’t matter.

She wasn’t naked, which he supposed he should have expected, though he had no idea what women’s underclothes were like. It occurred to him that, at his age, he really should. His eyes lingered on the thin, white-turned-translucent fabric and then darted away. “We’re not wading into Briarwyke’s drinking water, are we?”

“Oh, no, are we?” Celeste turned to him, and then she ducked below the surface.

“Celeste?” Reeve lunged forward to where she had been. “Why would she—” The pond’s floor disappeared below his feet, and a rushing current dragged him under.

CHAPTER 19
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

R eeve was a perfectly fine swimmer, he was from Bendcrest after all, but there was no swimming to be done. The current swept over and under him, and he lost all sense of direction. He thrashed, sucked in a mouthful of water, and then there was an arm snaking around his waist.

The pull at his middle was strong, and he broke the surface to land gracelessly on his hands and knees. Shadowy arcana slithered around his midsection, not an arm at all but warmer than the water had been, squeezing him with a tightness that wasn’t as horrifying as he thought it probably ought to be. Reeve sputtered as he tried to call out for Celeste, but when he lifted his head, she was right there in front of him.

“Breathe!” There was a hard slap against his back, and he coughed up a lungful of water right onto her lap.

“Oh, gods, sorry,” he choked, not that she could have gotten any wetter.

Celeste was sitting on the ground, absolutely drenched. Her hair was plastered to her head and outlining her frame, one hand on her locket, the other on his bare shoulder. A very thin layer of silky, soaked material suctioned right up against every contour of her body, the modest fullness of her breasts, the peak of each nipple, the valley between her thighs, even the indent of her bellybutton. Thank Valcord he was still freezing, but with all of that in front of him, he might just be able to overcome the cold and rise to the occasion.

“Reeve, are you breathing?”

He remembered how to inhale then, looking everywhere but at her, surprised he could see at all since his spell had been doused along with them, but they had come up in a place that wasn’t pitch black—it was blue.

The walls were the rocky, dark stone they’d traversed before, but rivulets of teal water ran in the cracks and crags, illuminating the space. Clusters of mushrooms giving off their own glimmering hue dotted where the walls met the ground. They were kneeling not on rocks but sand, and when Reeve lifted his hand, the grit fell away with its own luminescence before shifting back to black.

“Are we in the Everdarque?”

Celeste sat up straighter, and he was glad for her closeness. She cast from her locket and used noxscura to pluck the satchel from the water’s edge. “I don’t think so since my arcana is working correctly.” The satchel slipped and splashed back into the water. “Don’t worry, that’s normal.”

Reeve grabbed Sid from where he washed up on shore beside them. “You all right?”

“Don’t need a whetstone anymore, that’s for sure.”

Reeve flipped the scabbard upside down, water pouring out. “Last time Sid and I were in the Everdarque, he spoke in a different language, but this place still feels fae.”

Celeste leaned toward a grouping of mushrooms. When she touched one, it vibrated, and its light went out. “I think we’re still beneath Briarwyke, but I’ve heard that even when tears in the planes close up, remnants of other places can be left behind.”

With Sid in hand, Reeve recalled the field guide to Briarwyke he’d read and its author’s claim about a fissure more than two hundred years prior. “Is this what you were expecting to find?”

Celeste stood and squeezed her hair, her ribbon lost, silvery eyes darting all over the chamber and catching its teal glow. “I’m not sure. I was reading Geezer’s book about sieves and cross-referencing it with some of the Valcordian texts in the temple’s library, one about how apotropes are made and another about how life itself is created.”

Reeve also stood, rooting around in the satchel. Most of their things were soaked, but nothing was missing, the apotrope safely nestled in the bag’s bottom. “Valcord is the god of new beginnings, but not life. He doesn’t do birth or, you know, how babies are made.”

“That’s what it said, but also that a new beginning is similar to a new life, and if Valcord grants you that, it’s like having your soul cleansed, so I wondered if a sieve could gain something more that way.”

Reeve watched the back of her as she went to the cavern wall, her hips and thighs painted with sheer fabric that hugged her the way he longed to. The blue luminance was lost as she trailed fingers into the liquid that slid down the cavern’s clefts. His own fingers twitched, demanding to trail over her contours, to learn every dip and dune of her body, to…to press together in prayer and plead for absolution—now was not the time, they were lost for Valcord’s sake!

Reeve pulled his pants from the satchel and gave them a forlorn look. “You think Valcord gave that sieve life?”

She glanced upward, her voice sounding far away. “I think the priests thought they could.”

Reeve had failed the priest exams, but even he knew that wasn’t possible. Or at least it wasn’t wise, playing at being a god. Sort of like pulling on leather breeches when they were soaking wet. “No,” he said, conviction stabbing at his chest, “they wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Geezer theorized that a sieve could be made into something more, and the Valcordians believe that being touched by divinity makes a being more advanced—like you, with your arcana. If that’s true, maybe being touched by darkness does the same.”

He grunted. “Valcordian priests don’t dabble with murkiness.”

“There was another book, a journal kept by someone named Father Charles. It was troubling.”

“Celeste, I don’t believe—”

“Regardless of how it happened,” she cut in, “I think a sieve might have been exposed to something, and now that sieve is Syphon.” She touched the wall again and cut off one of the streams of water, and it was only then, when he looked at it instead of her, that he saw the water was running up and not down.

More rivulets led out of the shore chamber they’d surfaced in and into a narrowing tunnel. Celeste moved toward it, and Reeve’s heart shot into his throat. Theology and exploit be damned, he had a more important conversation to have.

Hopping after her, Reeve finally pulled his wet breeches up and caught her hand before she disappeared into the darkness. “Celeste, wait, please.”

When she turned back to him, she was blinking as if just waking from some dream. Her bleary eyes sparkled, trailing down him, then back up. There was such sadness in her features—and considering the potential lethality of where they’d ended up—he could wait no longer to ask.

“Last night,” he said, tugging her closer and squeezing her hand, “did I…did I ask if I could kiss you?”

Celeste reeled, then buried the fingers of her free hand into the wetness of her hair, tangling them as she looked away. “N-no.”

“Gods,” he groaned. “Did I just kiss you without asking at all?”

She shook her head tightly. “No, Reeve, you didn’t kiss me or ask to kiss me.”

Warm relief spread through him against the frigidness of his still-dripping skin. “Oh, thank Valcord.”

But Celeste jerked her hand out of his, and he went cold all over again. Her lips fell into a deeper frown, brow narrowing. “Yes, thank all the gods of light for that,” she muttered and turned, quickly slipping into the tunnel.

Wait—she was glad he hadn’t? But he had thought, expected, hoped—oh, oh no.

“Celeste!” He caught her arm this time, but she wouldn’t turn back to him. “I don’t mean…that is, I’m not happy that I didn’t, that we didn’t…I only thought that I had finally worked up the courage and then forgotten, and if you’d allowed me to kiss you, I would never forgive myself if I couldn’t remember.”

Carefully, she peeked over her shoulder. “Oh.”

Reeve cleared his throat. “Celeste?”

“Yes?”

“May I ask you a question?”

When she turned to him this time, she stepped closer, and his hand ran up along the back of her arm. “Yes, Reeve.”

His gaze flicked down her body. “May I touch you like this?” He gently pressed a hand to her waist.

She gave him that nod again, the kind one that said, please ask as many questions as you’d like.

“And may I step closer?”

She answered by closing the space herself.

“May I kiss you, Celeste?”

“Yes,” she breathed, and her mouth was on his.

Serving Valcord had never felt wrong. Indeed, it had only ever felt right. But kissing Celeste? It was righter, if that were a thing.

And it was, righter, it just didn’t sound correct, but language is funny like that, and feelings even funnier. Or more funny. Though none of that mattered, it just felt, because he knew, and knowing was the funniest.

Their slippery bodies pressed together, heat between them chasing away the frigidness of the air. Celeste’s lips yielded softly, the noise she made even softer, and everything in Reeve wanted to climb inside that softness and stay. It wasn’t what he’d imagined, not filled with the messy ferocity his brothers spoke of, or the heated urgency of the book he’d been reading, the only fire a gently glowing one in his chest. The kiss was, in fact, much, much better than all that.

But it was fragile too, suspended between them, easy to crush or sever with the wrong move. Reeve held himself still even as Celeste’s fingers pressed to his collarbone in the way that he liked, then the warmth of her palm as her hand slid slowly down his chest.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is neither the time nor the place!”

They pulled back from one another, Sid’s voice like a pry bar, and the moment was shattered into such fine pieces that it was lost in the sands at their feet. Silvery eyes stared into Reeve’s, Celeste’s skin blue under the rivulets of arcane water. She was just so pretty, and he wanted to tell her that, to tell her how full his chest felt but that he didn’t know if it was joy or fear or some other, unknown emotion there, but really, Sid was right—these strange caverns were not the place for confessions that would take him too long to understand before he could even begin to muddle through an explanation.

Reeve reluctantly released her and retrieved his weapon from the bank. “Thanks for that,” he mumbled.

“Oh, you’re welcome, Sir Holy Knight,” the sword obliged with a volume and cadence meant to fill up the whole cavern.

Celeste was still standing a foot or so into the tunnel, hands fidgeting with one another as she stared down at her bare feet in the sand. Her face was as red as he assumed his was. “Um, well, thank you?” Her voice shook, and then with a deep breath, she turned and trotted off into the dark.

“I hope I did that okay,” he whispered, strapping his baldric over his chest followed by the satchel.

“I’d be a fair bit more worried about these dark chambers than hers,” said the sword, and Reeve wished Sid would just support his decisions, dumb or otherwise.

The kiss had felt okay to Reeve, anyway. Very okay. So okay that there was a headiness rising in his chest reminiscent of the night before when he’d only had an ale and a half.

He hurried after where she went, the tunnel narrow, but when he squeezed through it, Celeste’s hand slapped against his chest with none of the tenderness she’d just had.

“Don’t go near it,” she hissed, fingers splayed over his heart, nails digging in to hold him at bay.

The next chamber was much larger, massive really, and Reeve could barely believe what he was seeing. Arcana could defy the natural, it did every day, but he had never seen a lake turned upside down.

Above them, water spread out like a sky, a small ring of light flickering in the center of the gentle waves like a far off sun. The arcanely suspended pool lapped at the edges of the cavern some twenty feet overhead, and the rivulets of teal funneled upward into it, presumably continuing to the surface.

The walls of the new chamber had many tunnels boring away from it, too many openings to choose from and explore, their ceilings not quite reaching where the pool was suspended. At the chamber’s center rose a basin from the rocky earth. It was set far from them and only a few feet across, but it loomed there in the midst of the wide, empty space like an unspoken threat. A shield surrounded the anomaly, glinting with golden light that ran in scars as it sparked, magic agitated by what was held within.

Celeste was paler than Reeve had ever seen, the blue and golden lights washing out the color that had so recently been in her cheeks. Her eyes were unblinking, fixed on the chamber’s center.

“What is it?” Reeve’s chest thrummed. He wrapped a hand around his pommel, but he didn’t have to cast, the divine arcana from the chamber’s center reaching out on its own to meet him. The familiar magic worked ferociously to contain what was trapped beneath it, and Reeve could feel the touch of other Valcordians gone past.

“It’s noxscura,” said Celeste, stepping back and pulling him with her.

He had no idea why she was so afraid, even he wasn’t unnerved by hearing the word any longer. “But—”

“It’s not like this,” she husked, eyes brimming with tears as she squeezed her locket. Tendrils of smoky blackness spread out from her fist, and at first, Reeve’s instinct was to cut through them, but as he watched them wrap around her limbs, he saw that they were there to protect her from this thing that made her tremble.

Reeve brandished the Obsidian Widow Maker and took a wide stance, eyeing the basin and the dome over it. There was familiarity in that dome, but beneath it lay something else, something murky, and when it splashed up to beat against the shield, it was alarmingly silver. If it frightened her, endangered her, even if she simply did not like it, he would destroy it.

“No, don’t,” Celeste whispered, eyes finally flicking away from the basin and to him, or rather, to Sid. “I think you have the only thing that might be able to break through, and it can’t be let out.”

Muscles tense, Reeve was not keen to put down his weapon, but the noxscura from her locket was moving again, slipping away to crawl along the cavern wall behind them. They watched it snake away, Celeste equally interested in what it might do as if she were not commanding it at all. It pressed itself into the crevices until a pattern formed.

“More sigils?” Celeste was unable to move.

Reeve kept Sid aloft but took her hand from his chest, guiding her toward where her arcana had converged and keeping himself between her and the basin. Her noxscura painted itself into the circular symbols on the wall, in the center, a deeper crack, teal glowing from inside.

“That’s another sieve,” said Reeve, instantly recognizing the movement of the thing through the fissure in the stone.

“Like in the forge?” Celeste’s voice was small, eyes darting between the far-off basin and the sigils just beside them.

Reeve nodded. “It looks like it’s trying to get out.”

“They locked them away…”

Reeve watched her reach out for the creature trapped in stone. Well, not a creature, Geezer had said it wasn’t that, but it still seemed to have a will, sloshing up against the wall as if it longed to be free.

Her noxscura moved through the sigils until they were filled, and Celeste brought the tip of her finger to the wall. It was only when the stone cracked loudly into the cavern that a pit of ominousness dropped into Reeve’s gut.

A rush of wind at their backs sent them both crashing into the wall just as the stone shattered. The two were flung away from one another, and the sieve was free. The glowing, blue blob bounced to the edge of the alcove it had been trapped in, and as it teetered there, a familiar black haze coalesced before it.

Reeve was on his feet again and swinging. He sliced through the amorphous form coming together, and a scream roared through the cavern as the smoke split in two. A fiery glow was revealed through his slash, and he knew it was the sieve from the forge, but it was swallowed up by the haze again, faster this time to come together, and then there was a face, a thing that could only be Syphon.

A wall of fire burst into life before Reeve. He stumbled backward, away from the flames, searching for Celeste. She had to be on the crackling wall’s other side, but the flames rose all the way to the water above and were headed for the cavern’s middle and the basin.

He tightened his grip on the Obsidian Widow Maker, and his own flames jumped along the blade, glinting with the golden light of divinity. The cavern rumbled, and he sprinted along the outer edge of it, intent on reaching Celeste as he dodged the rocks dislodging themselves from above.

The line of fire cut itself over the dome in the cavern’s middle, though it did nothing to disturb it, the divine power there too strong. Reeve ran faster, flames licking at him as he slid past, just managing to trap himself on the same side as Celeste.

But Syphon was there too, and he was whole again, only this time his body had cobbled itself together in a plainly human shape. Reeve raised his sword pulsing with his arcana, the distance futile when he had a spell to fling at the entity, but from across the cavern, Celeste raised her hands. “Don’t hit the shield,” she called with a desperation that broke through his chest and stopped him short.

Syphon casually glanced at Reeve and then turned wholly to Celeste. “Pet,” it said in a voice that rumbled with pleasure, “I called, and you came.”

She backed herself into the cavern wall shaking her head, hand going to her locket, and her noxscura attacked. A cloud of dark arcana descended on the smoky creature, and the scene was lost on Reeve, shadows overcoming all as he raced past the silvery liquid trapped beneath the dome.

Light sparked inside the shadows, the glint of orange so like the fire sieve from the forge, and then there was a second, teal and blinding, and the darkness was dispersed all at once as more fire burst in Reeve’s face and sent him flying off his feet.

Once again cut off from Celeste and Syphon, he was laid out on his back, the lake suspended above. Reeve could conjure divine fire, but it wouldn’t put out arcane fire. He would need water for that, and there—so much water.

Without even bothering to stand, Reeve tore the Obsidian Widow Maker through the air before him, releasing every scrap of divine energy he had conjured, and the golden light arced upward. It carved into the pendulous pool, and the arcana holding it back was rent, a cascade pouring downward through his slash and dousing Syphon’s flames.

It was an utter triumph, the fire snuffed out as if it were nothing more than a candle wick, and not even smoke filled the air. Reeve took a heaving breath, arms splayed, shocked at how drained he suddenly felt, but then Syphon roared, and Reeve was on his feet again.

The shadow entity had turned away from Celeste—good—its face twisting to look both more human and not in its abject anger as it advanced. Reeve readied himself beside the cascade he had created but didn’t move. He wanted to draw Syphon away from Celeste, and it was working, but a terrible groaning from above brought him to a stop.

“Might wanna head for the exit there, bud,” politely suggested the sword.

Reeve sheathed Sid and sprinted for Celeste who had seen before the rest of them and was already running toward him. They collided into one another, and then, cold.

Reeve didn’t let go, though the water did everything in its power to try and force them apart. It crashed on them all at once, and as water was wont to do, it filled up the space in an instant, sweeping through the cavern and taking everything with it.

Darkness swallowed them, and Reeve clung to Celeste. The rushing current dragged them blindly away, and stone slammed against his back, but his grip did not relent. Reeve’s lungs burned without air, his vision gone, and there was only an excruciating pressure threatening to tear him apart—threatening to tear them apart—and then nothing.

Reeve was floating.

And then he was sinking.

With a kick, he was headed upward, dragging his baldric, a woman, and the weight of a heavily laden satchel strapped to his chest. None of it could be discarded, but the surface seemed impossibly far, the dimmest light overhead, and that light fading.

But Reeve had his own light.

His free hand found his pommel, and without even a prayer, help came, pushing the lot of their weight toward the surface.

Air filled his lungs, and though it wasn’t enough, breathing could wait. Celeste’s mass of black hair pooled beside him on the water’s surface, but her head didn’t rise. With another kick, his feet found muddy ground, and he dragged her into the shallows, sweeping her hair from her face.

He called her name and shook her, but her head only lolled heavily to the side. “Valcord, please!” he shouted, pressing a hand to her chest as he dragged her frigid form against him, but Reeve had never been able to heal no matter how fiercely he prayed, and no light shone under his palm.

The noxscura was there, though, and its cold touch wrapped itself around his hand and encircled her chest. There was a squeeze greater than even the pressure of the water in the caverns, and Celeste’s body jolted. She coughed, and more water than her lungs could possibly hold showered him right in his face.

“Oh, thank the gods,” he muttered, hugging her to him as he knelt in the shallows. Or the Abyss, he thought, not caring where the help came from, only that it came.

“Reeve?” she croaked from over his shoulder. “You’re all right?”

He mumbled back that of course he was, shifting her in his arms to inspect her face. Her bewildered eyes searched where they’d ended up, and when it was clear she was breathing normally, he too bothered to look around.

The sun shone on them, though it hung low in the sky. A breeze blew over the field to the west, and somewhere a goat was bleating. It was far too calm for what had transpired, but the only shadows about were the ones cast by the trees at the edge of the wood.

Reeve recognized the lake they’d surfaced in as the one just south of town. A small boat drifted at its other end, an older man inside it, his fishing rod hanging into the barely moving pool. “Don’t let me bother ya,” he called and shifted his back toward them. No one else was about.

“We have to go,” coughed Celeste, and she tried to stand, but her limbs refused to cooperate, and she fell right back into his arms.

The water at the lake’s edge was only knee high, but they were both worn, shivering, and near naked. He was unsure he could stand either. “Wait,” he said softly. “Breathe a moment.”

“No, someone will see. Someone else,” she wheezed, scrambling against him and failing to stand again, freezing fingers pawing at his shoulders in a feeble attempt to pull him along. “They’ll ask questions. They’ll find out.”

“Celeste, please, wait.” He took her more firmly by the waist, and she finally fell still, but her drenched features showed no sign of relaxing. Reeve took a steadying breath, chest still burning. “He’s gone now, but Syphon is clearly stronger. Perhaps it would be best if we did tell someone. We could use help and—”

“No! No one else can know!”

Gods, for someone who wanted to keep a secret, she sure was being loud.

“But why?”

“They’ll learn it was my fault,” she cried, so pale her veins were running blue as she trembled in the shallow water. “I’ll be in so much trouble. They’ll call me a witch, and—”

“But you’re not a witch.”

“Aren’t I?” She dragged in a ragged breath. “I caused all of this, I let out another sieve, and I’m just making everything worse! It’s all my fault, and when they find out, they’ll know that I’m no different than Syphon.”

“You’re not like Syphon,” he hissed, but she was hearing none of it.

“Please, please don’t tell them,” she begged, tears streaming down her already drenched face. “They’ll want to lock me up, it’s what always happens, I make mistakes, and I have to run away. You can’t tell them, you can’t explain it away. No one will believe that I didn’t mean it. Even you think I’m evil and want to kill me, and—”

“I do not.” Reeve crushed her to him, holding her tightly with his numbing arms. “I won’t say anything to anyone, Celeste. I swear it to Valcord and to Earlylyte and to Sid and to Plum. Not a word.”

They remained there in the lake’s shallows, and her shaking didn’t stop, but it lessened. Slowly, her arms came around his back, and she sobbed into his shoulder.

“No one will hurt you,” he vowed. “With credence that the sun will rise, the whole of the realm will have to cut through me before it touches you.”

CHAPTER 20
UNTOLD TALES AND OTHER GREAT AGONIES

S yphon was correct about one thing: love didn’t take that long.

Celeste knew that what she so often felt was not truly love. It was longing or loneliness or infatuation, and sometimes it was enough like love to trick her, even afterward, making her heart ache at its loss. But never had those sentiments, hungered after alone in the dark, brought her happiness in earnest.

Yet when Celeste opened her eyes and felt Reeve’s thigh under her cheek, she was happy.

And then she was terrified.

Oh, Crickets, how did I get here?

She remembered being soaking wet. She wasn’t anymore. She also remembered trudging through the forest because she insisted on avoiding the road into town. Reeve had obliged without complaint. Their feet had squished uncomfortably in their boots, and leaves and twigs had stuck to them on their march. Now, her feet were bare but warm beneath a blanket, and fingers moved through her hair without catching on forest debris.

I should say something, but…

Celeste’s hand was resting just above his knee, and heat radiated up into her cheek and under her palm. Beneath the rest of her, the sofa cradled the achiness in her limbs. The temple was dark with early night, but low candlelight flickered nearby, and a page turned somewhere over her head.

She remembered collapsing on the couch, still in her chemise, though her embarrassment at being in it alone was gone. It had long since dried on their return journey through the wooded outskirts of Briarwyke. Reeve brought her a blanket, encouraged her to lie down, told her to close her eyes. Then he had said something…something sweet. What was it?

“You can sleep, Celeste. I’ll be here when you wake up, I swear it.” If there ever was a time to trust a holy knight, it was when they swore.

No, love didn’t take long at all, it just took whenever it wanted to, and it held on, and it refused to relent.

A gentle tapping began somewhere in the temple. It lulled Celeste back into sleepiness, and she let her eyelids fall closed again, curling fingers loosely around Reeve’s knee. An earthy freshness filled her lungs with her next breath, and then the smell of rain.

“The windows,” she murmured, sitting up. Plum yawned, curled up against Reeve’s other side.

“Hmm?” Reeve’s eyes were heavily lidded as he looked down on her. His face was so near, she could have easily leaned up and kissed him. Again.

Instead, she sat back and surveyed the temple. As she expected, water was trickling in near the altar. Pushing up from the sofa, she stumbled toward where she stored the bucket for cleaning. Reeve was following after, trying to convince her to stop, but she evaded him easily without her own excessive injuries this time. Presumably because she was too insistent, Reeve trotted off, found a vase, and lugged it over to place beneath the other broken window. The rain echoed into the vessels, the sound filling up the temple as the water was caught, but mixed with the pattering on the roof, it was far from unpleasant.

Celeste wrapped her arms around her middle, suddenly very aware of her body in the chill of the early spring night. “I’m sorry I kept you up. You should go to bed.”

“Oh, actually…” Reeve scratched his head, his wrinkled tunic hanging from him loosely. “I was just looking over those books of yours and wanted to show you something. But if you’re still tired…”

She gazed at the couch and Plum perched on its back, the small stack of tomes, the flickering candle on a side table, and, most invitingly, the thick linen blanket. What would it hurt, just a little bit of extra research?

They returned to the sofa, and Reeve flipped through the pages of the journal he’d been reading. It was an exceptionally old one, preserved with the slightest bit of arcana in its binding. She had found it hiding behind other books lined up on the library’s shelves. “This is the one you were reading this morning, isn’t it? The one that made you think to go underground?”

She nodded, though she didn’t say it was more than just the books that had inspired her.

Reeve’s brows knit while he ran a finger along the cover’s edge. “There are some troubling things in here, but some good things too. Father Charles held a record at the temple for most eggs eaten in one sitting, and he has a recipe for plum pie that sounds pretty good.”

At this, Plum croaked, and Reeve pet him with assurance he didn’t mean to bake up the wyvern. He rambled on a bit more about benign entries in the journal, and Celeste watched the way his lips formed the words, looking just as soft as they’d been against hers. The kiss felt like a lifetime ago, a shock it had happened at all, and then the experience was washed away as quickly as the two of them had been through the caverns. Maybe he wouldn’t bring it up again. Probably, he wanted to forget.

Finally, Reeve took a deep breath and flattened the Valcordian text to a specific page. “Murkiness,” he said as he pointed to the word, “means something specific to followers of Valcord. It is not just darkness but a muddying of the light, something good that’s been altered. I’ve read this passage about ten times, trying to understand it, or maybe trying to not understand it. But I can’t stop thinking that when Father Charles writes about murkiness invading the temple, he means that they…let it in.”

Celeste knew the passage he spoke of. It was starkly different from the others, the tone heavy and odd, and the words much more ambiguous than when the author wrote about the best dates for planting new berry bushes or how to most easily dig a grave in the spring thaw.

“I didn’t want to believe it, but I think you were right. I think the priests found that rift in the planes two hundred years ago, and they experimented on a sieve with whatever was left behind after it was closed. I want to believe they had good intentions, that whatever they made was supposed to help the town. When they realized it was too dangerous and tried to vanquish the evil, they found they couldn’t—it could only be contained like in that…that well beneath the water. The well of silver.”

Celeste shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The noxscura swirled in her mind again, terrible and real. Plum saw and crawled down into her lap from the back of the sofa, careful this time with his talons on her skin.

“I’ve never seen noxscura like that,” said Reeve. “But you have, haven’t you?”

Celeste nodded, not looking right at him. “It kills almost everyone who touches it,” she heard herself saying. “Not always right away, but eventually.”

He angled himself toward her on the sofa and closed the book, listening.

“Delphine and I were lucky, they said, because we survived. I thought we were lucky because we used to live in a big manor and always had good food and warm clothes and anything we wanted, but then we were taken away by the Holy Knights of Osurehm. They said it was because our parents hired mages to do bad magic and to serve dark gods, and we weren’t allowed to go back home.”

Her gaze flicked up to his, worried he would hear that and assume the worst, but the sleepiness had been lost from Reeve’s warm eyes, and he only looked on her with a deep concern.

“Our mother and father were executed. A lot of people in Clarriseau were. Delphine and I went back many years later, but the manor was burnt to the ground, and no one would touch the land because they said it was cursed. They even said our name was cursed, and they made it obvious they didn’t want us around. At least we were able to leave there again—that was easier than leaving the temple.”

“Why weren’t you brought to one of Valcord’s temples after your parents were…ah, after they died?”

Celeste bit her lip. “Well, we weren’t…good, not after the noxscura, but we weren’t useless either.”

“When you say noxscura, you mean like what we found in the cavern, don’t you?”

“Yes. There was a place like that under the Osurehm temple, but it was much bigger.” Celeste let out a long, slow exhale, and she leaned fully into the sofa, hugging Plum to her chest. She’d told the story very few times before, once met with sympathy and once met with intrigue, though she left out many details because they were sordid. This time, however, even the worst parts came tumbling out as she told Reeve of the long walk deep into the earth surrounded by men in armor and carrying weapons, the screams of other children, the bodies left to rot, discarded, not even buried.

Why didn’t they at least bury them?

She hesitated before she finally told him it had hurt. Delphine always sniped that she had been too precious about the whole thing. She might have been six-years-old at the time, but for darkness’s sake she was an adult now, so there was no need to recall it so pathetically.

But Celeste could remember being thrown into the pool no other way, the deep, icy stabbing at her innards, the blood that had forced its way to the surface and spilled out of every cavity, the way her skin peeled off for days and how infection had set in. When she woke beside that silvery pit of noxscura, she’d been left for dead and languished for days, alone. But then, like magic, her ailments had suddenly cleared. And also like magic, she could do new and terrible things.

She almost got away then, but the holy knights found her and brought her back to the temple. Her only relief had been seeing that Delphine too had survived. But it was not a relief to survive, not really.

“I think they wanted us to be like you, in a way, to defend against infernal things. They summoned these little creatures from that plane, imps, and they made us hurt them. Well, they made us make them hurt themselves.” At the memory of the infernals shrieking in fear at lifting blades to their own throats and then gurgling on their spilled blood, she squeezed Plum a little tighter, and he nuzzled her neck. “They said the imps were evil, but they didn’t deserve what was done to them. Not the first time, and especially not every time they were brought back. Nothing deserved that.”

Reeve’s features had drawn down, no sign of his dimple, and she wondered if she’d revealed something too dark, too evil, but then he moved a few inches closer, and she knew she could go on.

“It was never going to work because they thought we were just as bad as the things they wanted us to guard against. If you want something to fight for you, you have to be able to trust it, but they never did after we became nox-touched. They hated us and kept us in these arcane cages that made you feel like you were constantly being squeezed and couldn’t take a whole breath, but I don’t know if that was the magic or I was just afraid of being alone.” She swallowed, eyes flicking down with embarrassment, and she went on quicker, “They forced us to use what we’d been given by the noxscura—cursed with, more like. Not everyone was good at it—me especially—but Delphine helped because if I didn’t prove worthwhile, they’d get rid of me back in that pit, and I really would be dead with all the others.”

It felt like a long time, explaining, because Reeve had many questions, but he asked them gently, voice low, and Celeste answered them all. There had been use once in keeping her secrets, but now as they spilled out of her, it felt just like when they had finally broken free of that temple years ago.

Delphine slipped away one day and returned to the pool of noxscura below the temple. She risked sacrificing herself, allowing the pure arcana to swallow her a second time, something no one had done and survived. Celeste had thought she’d lost her, she knew twice was too much in the noxscura, even for Delphine Delacroix. But then the girl had risen from the silvery pool again, and the arcana hadn’t even weakened her but made her a terrible, relentless thing.

There was death—murder, really—and a lot of it as they razed the Osurehm temple to the ground. That death followed them back to Clarriseau, north to the Infernal Mountains, through The Wilds, and eventually to Briarwyke. They never stayed in any one place for more than a few years, and Briarwyke wasn’t meant to be any different, but then Celeste had broken herself away because Delphine’s antics had finally become too much.

“It was my fault she died,” Celeste whispered. “And so here I am. And here you are too, come to fix the mess we made of this place.”

Reeve stared at her for a long time, and she was afraid of what he would say because his eyes had gone dark and his jaw was clenched. “You must be very angry.”

Celeste blinked. Angry? She felt around inside herself, but she couldn’t find ire, not now. “Delphine was always angry enough for the both of us. I’m just…” Celeste supposed she was many things, wretched amongst them, but none felt right to say. “I just wish things could have been different. But you know, you must also wonder sometimes what it would have been like.”

He tipped his head like he didn’t understand.

“If your parents were alive, I mean, your life would have been different too.”

“Oh, they’re alive.”

“They are?” Celeste was suddenly struck with curiosity, sitting up straight. “You mean your father wasn’t…wasn’t a soldier who was run through on a battlefield defending some great honor?” When he shook his head, her eyes only narrowed, more intrigue chasing away the sorrow. “Your mother didn’t die giving birth to you or something equally tragic and noble like that?”

“Nope. They gave me away.”

His words were so simply said, presented with no ill will, that Celeste could only stare at him, hoping he would go on.

“They thought I was possessed.”

She stared harder.

“I wasn’t!” He held up his hands as if she were accusing him herself. “I could just do arcana from the very beginning. I mean, that’s what I’m told. Doesn’t usually happen, I guess, and babies don’t really have self control, so I…did things.”

Celeste felt a grin play at her lips. “You mean there was a little version of you swinging around a glowing stick, Abyss-bent on defeating evil?”

Reeve chuckled awkwardly. “Well, not exactly. See, my parents ran a dairy south of Bendcrest, and when I came along and did things, they took me to the Temple of Valcord to have me exorcised. I don’t remember any of it, I couldn’t even walk yet, Father Theodore just told me when I was old enough to understand. He explained to my parents that I wasn’t possessed by a demon or anything, that it was actually a blessing, but they decided not to take me back home. They already had four sons, so they didn’t really need another.”

“Oh, Reeve.” Celeste touched her chest, the amusement falling away along with the imagined vision of toddler Reeve whacking his own shadow. “I’m sorry.”

But he looked unbothered. “Apparently, I caused a lot of problems. I even blew up a whole barn. Still feel pretty bad about all the cows. There was apparently very little left of them after, not even enough to eat.”

Celeste grit her teeth. “And this Father Theodore, he told you all that? Even the exploding cows part?”

“Honesty is a Valcordian virtue.”

“Right.” She fiddled with the deep neck of her chemise. “So, you’ve never tried to find them?”

“No, and I don’t think I’m supposed to. I was meant for the temple, Valcord just had a kind of strange way of getting me there. Though lately…” He didn’t seem like he was going to finish the thought, but he had gone somber, staring out across the worship chamber at the reliefs carved into the pillars, chipped and dented. Then he shook his head. “But that’s easy for me to believe because I wasn’t mistreated. The priests and priestesses, they were good to me, not like what happened to you. People that should have taken care of you were cruel, and you deserved…”

Celeste was shaking her head, and his voice trailed off. No one should have done anything—she wasn’t deserving, not now, and not then, but she swallowed those words down.

Instead, Celeste bit her lip. “I am sorry about the cows,” she said.

“And I’m sorry about the…everything.”

Her eyes fell to the books still sitting between the two, and she grabbed up one from the pile. “Would you like to hear the story of Alphonse and Alise and the Everdarque?”

He grinned. “I think I would.”

CHAPTER 21
WHEN THE CONJURED BIRD FLIES

A ruckus woke Celeste from her decidedly comfy spot on the sofa. A scarlet feather floated through the air just before her much too serenely for the noise being made, a wailing screech met with a gurgly hiss, and she sat straight up.

“Oh, Crickets, stop that!” Celeste hopped off the couch as Reeve roused beside her. She had been leaning on his shoulder, and it had been the nicest leaning she’d ever done, but of course it was upended by the chaos of Plum wanting to tear Zak’s wings to pieces.

Geezer’s bird swooped toward Celeste, and a piece of folded parchment dropped from its crooked beak. Before the page could land, Plum swooped behind and caught it, darting right back for the bird at a frightening speed.

“Plum!” she shouted, and the wyvern stopped short just before it plucked out his nemesis’s tail feathers.

With a last screech, the scarlet bird navigated the hanging vines to dart through the broken windows and out of the temple. Plum glided down to Celeste as if none of it had even happened, offering up the letter.

“You don’t have to be so territorial,” she said gently. “I know you’re the best mail carrier around, no proof needed.”

The wyvern dropped the parchment and then landed right atop it in her hands, rolling himself over to his back for belly scratches.

Reeve yawned with a stretch from his spot on the sofa. His tunic rose and exposed a sliver of taut stomach, and Celeste thought about giving him a scratch too before quickly averting her eyes. First thing in the morning? What is wrong with me? She plopped down beside him but left plenty of space. “I’m sorry you missed the sunrise.”

“It’s expected after a battle.” He rubbed at an eye. “We tore into Syphon yesterday.”

“But we didn’t catch him.” She eyed the satchel sitting across the chamber, the apotrope inside still empty. At least he hadn’t visited her in her dreams again—that would have been exceedingly awkward while she slept beside Reeve.

We slept next to one another.

Celeste blinked about the temple in the gentle morning light. They’d read out of the book of fairytales and discussed the improbability of children surviving a trip to the Everdarque, told one another of their own visits to the plane and harrowing escapes, and then, at some point, fell asleep. Celeste hadn’t ever woken up beside a man before—they always sneaked away in the night.

Well, it wasn’t like that anyway.

After giving him a good rub, she set Plum between them and opened the folded parchment, reading the letter from Geezer aloud, “Dearest Midnight and the Holy Man,”—she snorted out a laugh—“I’ve returned from the depths of my dwelling and found something I must show you. I’ve actually found a number of things including two mummified trow, a deck of cards much too large and strange for gambling, an assortment of candies that change taste rapidly, wait,”—she flipped the parchment over—“it’s very much a lot of rambling until…here: Please visit at your earliest convenience, Geezer, S.D.”

“That was a lot of words to say very little,” Reeve observed and then stood with another muscle-flexing stretch. “Shall we?”

She stared at his middle guiltily before tearing her eyes away. “Now is as convenient as it will get.”

After dressing and brushing out her hair, Celeste took a long look at herself in the bathing chamber’s glass, eyes darting from deficiency to deficiency, though she ran out of time before she could pick out them all. It was a useless practice since there wasn’t much to change about her too-big eyes or spindly limbs or sallow skin, but it was a good reminder that Reeve’s affection likely came from a place of pity rather than attraction. She had told him everything, and while it had been a comfort, his sweet nature wasn’t to be confused with anything lasting.

They had kissed, but they had also been underground and under the influence of torn planes and potential death, so it hardly counted. Sleep could often clear one’s mind, and Reeve had probably decided the kiss was a mistake anyway. Maybe it was even an affront to his god.

On the walk into Briarwyke they discussed neither the night spent beside one another nor their traded histories, and the kiss? Unsurprisingly, that did not come up either. There were plenty of strained words exchanged about the greenness of the trees though, and the fresh quality to the air with the passing of the night’s storm.

Reeve had not yet been to Geezer’s illusion-filled home, and while it wasn’t mundane to Celeste in the least, watching the holy knight cross the threshold into the over-stuffed front room was delightful. He touched everything, asked question after question and barely waited for the answer—ones which Geezer couldn’t really recall anyway—and he caused three times the mishaps with his curious prodding, none of which Geezer commented on, only righted with that strange, sourceless magic.

Braver with Reeve at her side, Celeste finally asked Geezer how he did arcana without relying on some element.

But Geezer predictably shrugged. “I think I just forgot the source, so I don’t use it anymore. I’m sure it’s locked in my brain somewhere, and maybe someday I’ll remember, but for now my arcana just sort of happens.”

Celeste was correct in thinking that, at the very least, some sort of illusion was necessary to hide the source of a mage’s arcana, but it would have to be a very big illusion, and Geezer so effortlessly cast, that she couldn’t imagine he was keeping up anything permanent. But just because she couldn’t imagine it didn’t mean it wasn’t real

Regardless, Celeste was eager to see Reeve’s reaction to the gorge they would have to cross, but when they went through the archway, the open bridge over the mountain pass was replaced by a humid and heady swamp. Reeve’s instinct was to immediately attempt rescuing an overturned cart in a tar pit, but Geezer assured him it was all an illusion, and the knight reverted to having his fun there too, marveling at the bubbling waters and the eerie outlines of creatures floating within.

He wasn’t deterred when they ended up in the sitting room, this time outfitted with three chairs rather than two when Geezer snapped his fingers. Reeve didn’t make use of a chair though, instead poking at a row of arcanely suspended hourglasses as Geezer rooted around in a massive rucksack.

Zak swooped in and landed on Reeve’s shoulder, and then the bird proceeded to flap his wings and peck at Reeve’s ear as if he were defending the place from an intruder. He flailed, hand knocking into one of the higher shelves, and a crystal was dislodged from a spot well above his head. Reeve scrambled, but caught it just before it smashed to the ground, and the bird took off, scooping up a small stack of parchment from under where the crystal had been as he went.

They both watched the creature circle the room, squashed up parchment in its beak, then fly to one of the hanging tapestries and claw at it. At a loss, Reeve looked to Geezer, who was still rummaging in his bag, ignoring the ruckus. The bird, however, was having none of it, and again attacked Reeve, herding him over to the tapestry by way of flapping and clawing.

Celeste hopped up from her seat and hurried over, pushing the tapestry to the side, the only thing she could think Zak wanted. Still carrying the parchment in his beak, the bird ran headlong into the door revealed behind.

Reeve handed the hefty crystal off to Celeste and pulled open the door, and then the bird flew itself right out of the room and into the jungle revealed beyond.

“Ah, here it is!”

Reeve swung the door shut again, and the two spun around guiltily as they plastered their backs against it.

“Right under the pinecones and beside the ice pick.” Geezer was cradling a small box and staring at it adoringly.

“We let your bird out,” Reeve blurted. “It was an accident.”

Celeste elbowed him, but he didn’t budge.

“Hmm? That’s all right, Zak needs to stretch his wings on occasion. Come, sit, sit.”

The two traded glances and returned to the seats, Celeste still carrying the clear crystal. She gave it a long look over, a red leaf suspended inside with intricate veins and pointed tips. It was beautiful, but also torn in half, so a strange choice to preserve in a gem. She delicately placed it on a side table where it sat like it belonged.

“I didn’t always not remember,” said Geezer, still reverently staring at the box, “at least, I think I didn’t always not used to. It’s just that right now I don’t—remember, that is—and there is evidence to suggest that the not-remembering is a bit on purpose. Now, I don’t share this with many, but I think perhaps you might understand it best, Midnight.”

Celeste was passed the box, the heft of it ordinary, but its potential daunting. As she pulled up the lid, she hoped she wasn’t opening the second worst container in Briarwyke. But inside, there was only parchment, the edges of it torn like the pages had been ripped from a book.

Of course, some of the most dangerous things in existence are just words scribbled on parchment, but when one is dealing with shadowy entities, paper seems rather mundane.

One page was a recipe, or an attempt at one at least, the ingredient list long and scratched through a number of times with differing amounts, each off by a pinch here and a sprig there. Another was something like a journal entry, depicting a day of research that quickly devolved into a romantic entanglement with a fellow mage, including some anatomy described in the most salacious way she’d ever seen written. She quickly stuffed that page behind the others and looked up to Geezer. “What, um…is all this?”

“So, of all the things I don’t remember, something I do remember is the moment I stopped remembering. It was an early spring morning when I woke, and I was quite surprised to find myself squeezed between two rocks high up on Ashrein Ridge with nothing but my robes, this little knife, a vague sense of arcana prickling at my skin, and those pages. Zak was there too, just staring. He’s followed me around ever since.”

Celeste glanced quickly at the tapestry that hung over the door the bird had escaped through, then back down at the next torn page. It was filled with a list of locations, all but two with a line drawn through them. This she offered to Reeve, and he looked over the crossed-out places, cities with an additional location or name beside. “There are two left,” he said.

“Yes, I’m still on Briarwyke, but I’ve been to all the others.” Geezer cleared his throat. “When I woke in the mountains, the list was full, so I assumed I was to go to the first place, Elderpass, and I did. I asked after, well…myself, but no one recognized me, which was fair since I didn’t recognize myself either, didn’t even have my own name. I went right to the inn listed alongside it, and I scoured the city to find nothing until I accidentally broke a curse on The Jealous Gentleman. That was, oh, twenty years ago now?”

Celeste’s eyes went wide.

“But I gleaned very little, so I moved on. Each place I asked after myself, and none of them knew me just as well as I didn’t know me, but the people all had problems, and I found I was traveling in the wake of a blood mage who had done some despicable things many, many years prior. That, I thought, must have been the purpose of the list, so I sought out the blood mage’s vile deeds, fixed them, and moved on. But then I came here, and I’ve been stuck for almost four years.”

“A blood mage?” Celeste’s fingers curled along the hem of her dress. She knew two rather familiarly, but they hadn’t been committing atrocities two decades ago, at least she didn’t think so. And then she remembered Geezer’s reaction to seeing her manipulation of the noxscura. “Wait, you don’t think I’m—”

“No, no, you’re not the type, don’t nick yourself with every other spell, you don’t even carry a dagger! And you’re too young and too clumsy to be the one I’m after anyway, no offense. I gathered from my travels that about forty years ago, this blood mage was doing research on noxscura, they had a partner, and the two caused mishaps all over the realm. The me that once had all his memories seemed to want the me whose brain was addled to follow in their wake and ultimately to end up here.”

Reeve tapped the page he held. “Well, no, he—er, you—wanted you to end up in M.”

Beneath Briarwyke, a single letter was written at the very end of the list, beside it a drawing that might have been a tree or a cloud or an internal organ, but whatever it was, it looked shorn in two. Celeste didn’t ask since she figured Geezer wouldn’t know.

“Well, you’re right about that, but I worry I might have lost my memories in the midst of writing. There could be a hundred more places to go, for all past me knows! Though it may not matter because I’ve been stuck on Briarwyke, and, you know, I’m pretty old.” With that, he cracked a hard laugh.

“Eugene Fitzroy,” said Celeste, reading the name that was listed beside the village.

“Dead,” sighed Geezer. “Ten years on now. Wife went with the plague half a decade ago too. The son, Blondie, is all that’s left of the family, and the boy knows nothing but how to shoot an arrow straighter than the horizon—not that that’s useless, it just doesn’t help me. He gave me all the information he could when I came to the village, but everything was a dead end, even his father! Blondie let me root around in that manor and all, but he assured me nothing around here even needs fixing.”

Celeste bit her lip. “They’re all really used to their bad luck around here, they hardly notice when something’s amiss, but,”—she gazed over to Reeve and then back—“I am afraid we might have found the thing this blood mage you’re following had a hand in upsetting.”

She explained about the caverns beneath the village and the attack. “Syphon wants the sieves trapped around the town,” she said with certainty because she had thought about it nonstop and the conclusion was easy if uncomfortable to come to. Truly, what Syphon wanted was the noxscura trapped beneath the divine dome, but that bit of information could wait.

Reeve was watching her as she spoke, concern knitted into his brow, but no suspicion or disgust. She sat straighter and waited for the help she hoped Geezer would give them.

“So this Syphon, it is absorbing other sieves?”

Celeste nodded. “There was one in the forge that we let out, a fire one, and then another underground that was blue. He got that one too.”

“Only one left,” said Geezer, eyes going glassy.

“What do you mean?”

Geezer blinked like snapping out of a dream. “He’s got two of the three kinds. If this entity can absorb and use them, we can only assume he’s looking to collect one of each. You may not be able to catch him, even with that apotrope, if there’s that much arcana inside him.” Geezer scratched at his nose. “And by all the gods, don’t let him get a hold of anymore.”

Celeste clutched onto the box, fingers digging in. “I really didn’t mean to, I just—”

Reeve laid a hand on her arm, his touch light but warm. “What’s done is done,” he said resolutely. “What should we do from here?”

“The apotrope you have, it’s made for a single sieve. You’ll have to purge him of the others before you can trap him.”

“We still don’t even know how to use it,” moaned Celeste, “and Syphon’s made to absorb things, not let them go.”

Geezer nodded, thoughtfully rubbing his temples. “This is true—sieves are meant to gobble and gobble until they no longer can. There’s more research to be done on the matter, certainly. Perhaps the two of you can find something more at Fitzroy Manor while I explore my deepest archives.”

Celeste worried the box in her hands before placing it on the small table beside the crystal. It had a carving around its top, vines and blooming roses. “You have to come back in time for the sweetbriar festival,” she said, suddenly remembering. “Ima’riel needs your help, and it’s less than a week away.”

The mage nodded but waved the concern away. “Of course, of course!” But he was already standing and murmuring about dusty books and old parchment.

Celeste wasn’t sure that the answer they got was worth spilling the truth, but it was all they had. At the very least, Syphon would be recuperating again after fully absorbing the water sieve in the caverns, so they had time, though she didn’t know how much.

As they left, they found Baylen repairing the awning over the Horn of Plenty’s entry. He wished them a good afternoon with a lazy grin, commented that he was glad they finally surfaced, and reported that the water was running properly again. Then he asked them to wait a moment while he popped inside the general shop.

It was the smallest reprieve from the heaviness of the day so far, and Celeste nervously grinned up at Reeve when the minotaur went inside. “Maybe we should have told him we were all right after disappearing from his basement. Do you think fixing the plumbing on accident makes up for the lie about going down there in the first place?”

The knight grunted in answer, and his jaw ticked, but he seemed to be fighting a smile rather than a disapproving scowl. Either way, she appreciated what it did to his face, perhaps a little too much, and once again had to look away.

When Baylen reemerged from his shop, he was carrying a small box. Oh, no, thought Celeste as it was handed to her, not a third mystery vessel.

“Chocolate, from Nicosa,” said Baylen when he caught the worried look she couldn’t hide. Then he chuckled. “I told you I can get anything.”

She immediately tore in and was shocked to see he wasn’t playing some heartless trick. She gazed into the tiny box of rounded mounds that smelled just how she imagined Empyrea would, then remembered her manners. “What do I owe you?”

Baylen only shrugged. “We’re square. I know as well as anyone that sometimes, when we’re far from where we thought we belonged, we need a little reminder of that place. Sometimes it says go back, sometimes it doesn’t. You have a good day now.”

When Baylen wandered back into his shop, tail swishing behind, Celeste turned to Reeve. “Why did he do that? He obviously ordered this long before we fixed the plumbing.”

“He's being nice?” Reeve shrugged, just as Baylen had.

“To me? But why?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” He stared at her for a long moment. “Sometimes people just do nice things.”

Celeste glanced up East Road toward the center circle in town and squeezed the box a little tighter.

CHAPTER 22
ANATOMICALLY SIGNIFICANT FRUIT

R eeve was not thrilled to be going to Fitzroy Manor. He hoped the leader of Briarwyke’s hunters might be out chasing some rabbit through the underbrush—and ungraciously he hoped the rabbit got away—but to Reeve’s disappointment, Fitz both answered the door and looked entirely too pleased to have visitors.

And then he very kindly invited them in. The jerk.

Forgive me, Valcord, I know not what I think. Er, I do know, but I can’t help it. Well, I probably can, but I’ll be honest—I don’t want to.

Reeve had never been inside such a large dwelling. Bendcrest had more than its share of overly large manors, and he had even once been hired out through the temple to accompany a very wealthy merchant on the road, but estate owners rarely required the services of holy knights. They almost never got possessed, and if they did, it was usually too late to do anything about it by the time anyone realized their actions were the work of demonic forces and out of the ordinary.

But being alone in a rather big house hadn’t exactly been kind to Fitz. The kitchen was largely unused, dust had collected on the sills and side tables, and curtains remained drawn in many rooms. The emptiness barely filled up all the space.

“Clara comes twice a moon to clean, and unfortunately she’s not due until tomorrow,” Fitz told them, gesturing to a darkened parlor as they passed by. Carson’s head rose over the arm of a sofa inside, nose ruddy. He lifted a hand, but dropped it back down before he finished waving. “Ah, that’s where he ended up. Hopefully, he made it to the latrine before passing out.”

Despite being in the center of town, the manor was fiercely quiet on its inside. Fitz led them to a chamber that was warmer than the rest and brighter too. It had walls covered in taxidermy and high ceilings that were coffered and metallic. The fresh scent of the outdoors swept in through windows that led to a high-walled garden at the back, sprawling and even greener than the heart of the village’s woody outskirts, but it was a mess too with overgrowth.

“Geezer sent you, eh?” Fitz wasn’t dressed for hunting, his tunic untucked and boots off. “Like I told him years ago, my father’s secrets—whatever they were—died with him, but you two are more than welcome to poke around in any corner you like. I spent months with Geezer looking for something back when he first came to town, but we never uncovered whatever it was he was questing after. Would have helped if he knew.”

“Your father never said anything about a blood mage?” Celeste asked carefully.

“Blood mage?” Fitz laughed. “Never. He did sometimes warn against mages in general, not a fan of magic of any sort, to be honest, which I admit was strange, but I always figured he was just sore no arcana got passed down to us.”

The hunter gestured for them to follow to the other side of the room and portraits there. Celeste listened, but Reeve could really only stand at her back and glower at the man as he grinned and spoke about his ancestry. He even elicited a chuckle out of her at some joke Reeve didn’t understand.

Reeve let the two get further ahead, passing into a hall with more portraits while Reeve hung back in the trophy parlor, admiring the decor, or rather scrutinizing it. Unlike at Geezer’s, there was order here, everything with a place and purpose, if uncared for.

“Now, that’s the life.”

Reeve glanced down to his pommel, then looked out at the room once more until he discovered a sword hung up over the mantle. “What, being mounted?”

Sid chuckled. “Well, I guess you wouldn’t know, bud, but I guess neither would I. It does seem nice, though, ya know? I think it’s every sword’s dream to fulfill its purpose. Not that regular swords dream. Abyss, even I don’t.”

Reeve crossed the room to where the longsword was fixed to the wall. “I thought your purpose was stabbing? And, I guess, convincing.”

“It is now, but it won’t be forever. Eventually, if we're lucky, you’ll hang me up over a hearth in a cottage where it’s always warm, and if there’s ever any trouble, I’ll be right there, but you won’t have to carry me around all the time because we’ll both be safe. Relatively.”

“I didn’t know that’s what you wanted.”

“Well, I guess I didn’t either, but since being cleansed I think I’m starting to take on more and more of my wielder’s ambitions rather than trying to stab my own into them.”

Reeve was sure he misunderstood. “But I’m not…I’m meant to serve Valcord, not hang my sword up over a mantle. Aren’t I?”

“Are you?”

Reeve wandered deeper into the room, passing other weapons affixed to the wall, a bow, a shield, a slingshot, and then came upon a pedestal, atop it, broken pieces of metal under a glass dome.

“That’s run through with a vein of obsidian steel, isn’t it?” Celeste appeared at his elbow like a shadow, and he jumped, but at least she was alone.

“Where’s Fitz?”

“Getting us wine. You don’t have to drink it, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Her hand reached out for the covering over the broken blade but then stopped. “Do you think he knows what he has here?”

Reeve’s brow furrowed, only the worst thoughts coming to the surface of his mind before he doused them. He too had a weapon forged in Abyssal fires and made up of malevolent ore. “It’s broken,” he said, “and kept here like a trophy. He’s not using it, look.” There was a layer of dust over the glass.

He was proud of himself for being able to push down his worst thoughts, even when the man returned and urged a goblet of something deeply red and nose-hair singeing into his hand.

The day dragged on into early evening, Fitz escorting them all over the massive manor, but he kept nothing from them, answering all of Celeste’s questions and Reeve’s as well. He was practically Valcordian in his honesty, and Reeve knew he had to respect that, even if he was still vexed by the looks he gave Celeste and the way he could coax laughter out of her.

But by day’s end, she was leaving the village proper at Reeve’s side, not remaining in Fitzroy Manor for the night, and that felt as though it mattered much more except that it suddenly occurred to Reeve the way in which it mattered was still a mystery to him. They walked slowly up North Road, but they were indeed headed for the temple, and, gods, he had no idea what he was meant to do when they got there. And surely he was meant to do something, especially after kissing her.

“I think we should stop at Ima’riel’s.”

Reeve’s eyes went wide, nodding with all the enthusiasm of Plum being offered squishy, overripe fruit. The idea was brilliant—there were probably plenty of people in town who could help him with this problem, but the best one was definitely—“Wait, why?”

“If there’s one more sieve like Geezer thinks, and it’s an earth sieve because that’s the only other kind, it’s probably there.”

“Oh, right.” Well, that hadn’t been what Reeve was thinking at all.

“But…” She twisted her fingers around one another as she chewed her lip. “We don’t want to ruin her garden if the sieve isn’t actually there, and Kori might get upset if we tell her we’ve been hunting something and haven’t invited her along. Also, I still don’t really want to tell anyone else about the whole thing.”

Reeve found himself in the most difficult of moral quandaries. He did not want to lie, especially not to Celeste, and yet the truth behind what he was about to say was blatantly unacceptable.

And then Valcord smiled upon him by inspiring an idea, which was odd considering the god was aiding and abetting bad behavior, but Reeve tried to not think too hard on it.

“If you speak with Ima’riel alone, you can probably word things in a…smart way. I’d say too much, so I’ll make myself scarce.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Celeste touched his arm, and the skin tingled where her fingertips grazed him.

“It’s what Valcord wants,” he blurted out as he pulled his arm away. It was perhaps not a lie, but he had never really used Valcord as an excuse before, and his stomach squirmed.

Celeste frowned and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Well, I guess we shouldn’t deny the gods what they request.”

Ima’riel was boiling a smoky smelling tea when they arrived at the cottage, the air heavy with its drowsy scent. She was pleased to see them, and Reeve politely greeted her before slipping away. As he had hoped, he found Kori in the second greenhouse, far from the cottage where Celeste had been left, though was a little surprised at how she was digging about in the dirt. And with a dagger, of all things.

“I’ve almost got the potdemiel—oh, no, what are you doing here?”

Reeve felt his face fall in the short moment Kori threw him a glare. Of course she wasn’t expecting him, but she didn’t have to look so upset about his arrival over Ima’riel. “Uh, well, I was hoping I could ask for your advice?”

She returned to rooting around in the soil, reaching into the hole she’d made, and her arm disappeared all the way up to her elbow. “Why in all the planes are you coming to me for advice on anything?”

Reeve scratched his neck. “I think you have…experience that I do not. May we speak?”

Kori’s teeth were bared, something like, “No,” coming out with a frustrated grunt as she tugged.

He couldn’t be sure he’d understood her. “Do you want some help?”

This time, Kori’s “no” was significantly clearer.

Reeve lowered himself to the greenhouse’s dirt floor across from her. “Please?”

She heaved a sigh, the muscles in her arm untensing. “Please, you want to talk, or please, you want to help?”

“Both?”

Kori rolled her eyes and went back to tugging, face going red with the effort.

As that was not another, definitive “no,” Reeve took a deep breath and blurted out, “Celeste and I kissed.”

“Oh, ew.” Kori snorted, falling forward. “Why would you tell me that?”

“Well, because I’d like to do it again. And, uh…more?”

Her face scrunched up before she quickly turned it back down to the earth. “You don’t need my permission.”

“I know, I need hers, but once I’ve got it, I’m not sure how to…er, the thing is I haven’t,”—Reeve squinted skyward through the panes of green glass and wrapped his arms around his knees—“well, there was this one time, but I don’t know if it counts because it wasn’t exactly all of…it. You know?”

Kori had stopped pulling at whatever was underground, twisting her head back up to him and staring. “No, meathead, I don’t know what in the Abyss you’re talking about.”

Deflating, Reeve rubbed his palms over his face. “I’ve not been with a woman, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Kori sat back onto her feet with a huff, her arm covered in dark, rich soil. She was giving him that look people so often did, the one where she was about to say something incredibly obvious. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t have a cock. Not only that, but I have zero experience with them, so…” She held out her dirt-covered hands.

“Ah, well, I know. I mean, I assumed as much.” Reeve sat a little straighter, eyeing her. “But you make Ima’riel very happy, so I thought you could teach me how to not disappoint Celeste.”

The woman blinked so slowly, he thought maybe she was attempting to mimic Earlylyte and fall asleep sitting up. “You, uh…you picked up on that, huh?”

“It’s fairly obvious, the way you look at one another. Of everyone I’ve met in Briarwyke, you two are the most deeply in love.”

Kori went red again—apparently capable, and not because she was struggling with whatever was buried in the earth. She shook her head and shoved her hand down the hole again, muttering, “Elves look at everybody that way. It’s not like she thinks I’m anything special.”

“But you had your hand on her thigh at the tavern. I didn’t mean to see, but all of her dresses have those slits up the leg—”

With a spray of dirt and a cry, a mass of earthy spheres came bursting from the ground as Kori went flying backward. Reeve steadied himself, ready to attack or defend, but Kori just sat right back up with a lap full of strange fruits all clustered together. “Well, holy man, if you’re that observant, you probably don’t need my help.”

“No, I do.” Reeve sat forward, nodding so that she would see he was sincere. “Please, Kori, Ima’riel looks at you like you make her the happiest elf in the world, and I want Celeste to look at me like that, but I’ve never made a woman, you know, happy like that.”

Her arm slowly lowered along with her lips, but it wasn’t a disgusted frown, just a resigned one. “My gods, you’ve really never slept with anyone?”

He grinned back. “We slept beside one another on the sofa last night.”

Kori ran a dirt-covered hand down her face with a sigh. “Okay, well, that’s not the only way to make someone happy. You have to, you know, woo her too.”

“Right, yes. Woo her. Got it.”

“Before you do any fucking.”

Reeve winced. “Can we not call it that?”

She picked up the dagger she’d been using to dig, and with an assortment of mumbles and grumbles about terminology and appropriateness, she severed one of the spheres from the vine she’d extracted and put the rest aside. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do with that,”—she gestured to his crotch with her dagger, and he pulled a knee up to shield it—“but I have some tricks that I’m only telling you for Celeste’s sake, not yours.” Kori sliced into the strange fruit and handed over half of it to him.

Reeve nodded, eager to hear them all, and went to take a bite.

“Not like that!”

His gaze darted to the fruit in his hand. “What am I supposed to do with this besides eat it?”

She took one of those breaths, the kind that said a person’s patience was thin yet they were willing. “Just pay attention. It’s weird enough I’m showing you this at all, so I’m only doing it once.”

CHAPTER 23
THE MANY MEANINGS OF BROKEN APART

A nother largely unsuccessful day at Fitzroy Manor had passed, and weariness hung about Celeste’s neck like a second, over-filled locket. The days were lengthening and warming, but since meeting with Geezer four days prior, she had almost no new information despite her constant search. Fitz was an open, if substance-less, book, and Ima’riel hadn’t even ever heard of sieves despite being an elf herself, but she was growing a new kind of pole bean that she was very excited about.

Celeste yawned as she fell onto her cot, the stiffness of it against her back making her wince. More carefully, she eased into the blankets and glanced at the apotrope sitting on the small table beside her. Reeve spent the evenings studying it intensely, but she carried it to her chamber every night. Syphon was likely still recuperating from absorbing the second sieve, but she hated to ever be too far from the jar, just in case.

She rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. There were no rooms left in the Fitzroy Manor to explore after the first two days, but it had been another two since, and all she could confirm was that the Fitzroys had indeed been in Briarwyke since before the village had its name. The family too was called something different then, Fhiz’rys, one of the many useless kernels of knowledge she’d picked up from Edwin Fitzroy’s boasting. She also knew of Fitz’s great uncle, an herbalist whose potions were purported to be legendary, and his grandmother who had apparently made the entire duchy’s finest wine from the fruits in the garden out back. And of course Celeste also learned that Fitz himself was a terrible homemaker when left to his own devices, the garden, while lush and alive, overgrown, and the house falling into disrepair under his solitary watch. It was quite a lot, but also nothing at the same time.

Maybe tomorrow Celeste would ask Reeve if he would like to stay at home instead.

Home.

Crickets, no, stay at the temple. The Temple of Valcord, where they kept their things, where Earlylyte and Plum lived comfortably, where they returned each evening and went to sleep. Separately.

It was her favorite part of the day, though, returning. Even when they walked back together empty-handed and no more knowledgeable, it was pleasant and sweet to stroll at Reeve’s side, except that it wasn’t much more than that.

Every time they so much as brushed hands, Reeve would pull away as if saying it really had been a mistake, the kiss, but then he would actually say things like, “I don’t like how Fitz looks at you.” She wasn’t sure how to make him elaborate, afraid that something as simple as, “Why?” would open up an urn of evil sieves she wasn’t quite capable of dealing with.

But it had been three mornings now that had started with him telling her that she looked nice. To that, Celeste had no idea how to reply. No one had ever said such a thing to her, not even the men who had pursued her with ulterior motives. She could only turn scarlet and drop her hair between them like a curtain to hide away, and when she found her voice, insist they were late for whatever they were supposed to be doing that day.

He was strange in other ways too, hurrying ahead to open every door regardless of if she needed to pass through them and pulling out the closest chair whenever he found her standing. Reeve had also taken to regularly flushing as if Gaspard were crooning the sauciest of his tales right into his ears. Instead of giving Celeste the giggles, though, Reeve’s blushing only gave her a racing pulse and an ache between her legs.

And watching him move heavy objects in the manor to explore behind them did not help, the task coming with the tensing of muscles beneath his tunic and quiet groans she could only imagine drawing out of him. It was a relief, finally climbing into bed each evening even though she was regretfully alone, immediately easing that ache. It wasn’t that she was insatiable, she told herself, it was just that as soon as she closed her eyes, her mind conjured up a vision of Reeve standing in the caverns, wet and nearly naked. She could feel his hand on her waist again, his lips pressed to hers once more, and if only they’d had more time what might have happened. Because Reeve would take his time, surely. He would probably ask for permission to touch every inch of her, and she was dying to grant it, he just needed to ask.

But he never did, so it was unfortunately all just a fantasy, if quite a good one. So good, in fact, that it took very little indulging in it to come to a gasping, quivering, if not intended-right-that-moment climax.

Rigid at the surprise, she cried out and then sank back into the linens with a drunk-on-bliss grin. For once, she didn’t feel the intense surge of guilt and self loathing that typically followed. It was still there, of course, but quieter, partially drowned out by her own beating heart. And then all of it, the pleasure, the shame, the contentment, was washed away when she opened her eyes.

Celeste was no longer in her little chamber down the temple’s acolyte hall, not as she knew it. The walls were too far away to scurry toward and cower beside, the ceiling too high to see in the new darkness that had filled up the space. Her few things were gone, the wardrobe, the chair, even the blankets, leaving her nothing to hide behind. There was only the cot on which she lay, suddenly cold, exposed, alone.

Celeste tugged down the skirt of her chemise as tightness wound itself around her ankle. She scrambled to drag her free leg to her chest as she sat up, held to the spot by the other. It wasn’t noxscura, but that smoke she had seen now too many times wrapped about her ankle.

“What were you up to, pet?”

“Nothing,” she choked out, the instinct to lie overcoming the fearful scream in her throat.

A face had formed in the shadows at her feet. It was no one she recognized yet was too familiar, an amalgam of features she had known on the faces that had passed through her life before. Bony lineaments with exceedingly smooth skin and eyes that sparkled like cut citrine were haloed by raven hair. A sourceless light fell across the face in odd, red patches and gleamed on something like horns that rose above sharp temples.

“It’s all right, you can tell me,” Syphon said, dragging a toned torso out of the smoke from which his head had emerged. Another set of horns grew from his shoulders, muscles on his chest settling into place convincingly. Syphon’s grip solidified around her ankle, and though there were maybe one or two too many fingers, he used them to press harder into her skin and hold her still as he dragged himself closer.

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. It was only another dream, just a very bad one.

“There is no point in lying,” she heard him say through her own silent insistence she would soon wake up.

When she opened her eyes, he would be gone, she was sure, but she still found herself whispering, “I’m telling the truth. I wasn’t doing anything. Let me—”

Celeste was wrenched forward by her jaw. Her eyes flew open and citrine was sparkling back at her soullessly but not without utter fury. “Don’t lie to me,” his voice rattled through his hand and into her chin.

Crickets, maybe this isn’t a dream.

She trembled, trapped in his hold, Syphon’s body more real now than it had ever been if…off. The presence of it was imposing, hulking over her in its almost-human shape, both too big yet too thin, clearly masculine yet part beast, and entirely too beautiful. “Please,” she ceded, “don’t make me say it.”

His fanged sneer fell away, and the wide smile Syphon replaced it with verged on comforting. “Don’t be embarrassed, pet.” His touch softened and caressed her cheek, many-fingered hand crawling itself toward her ear and then gently down her neck. “Not with me. Not with yourself.”

Celeste believed him then as his face halted its contortion and solidified into sincerity. The thought had wormed its way into her mind many times, that a sieve plucked arcana out of the world to mold much like she did. And Syphon had been locked away, treated like a monster simply for what he was—what he had been made into. She knew that pain too, and she was only one unlucky spell away from being chained up herself. They were the same, he’d told her himself, so he would understand.

“There,” said Syphon, and he no longer had her by the ankle but had taken her by the arm. “Do you see? No need to hide from me.”

She stiffened and inhaled sharply as he guided her hand back between her legs.

“No?” One of his liquidy brows raised. “You’ve already come undone in front of me, what is the shame in doing it again?”

Celeste tried to rip her hand from his, again shaking her head.

His grip only tightened. “Or is it the subject of your delusions that you’re ashamed of? You were thinking of that knight, weren’t you?”

Even with her gaze averted, she gave herself away with her silence. There was nothing she could do or say, she knew, because he knew.

“He doesn’t want you—he can’t want you.” Syphon’s claws scraped her scalp as he held her still. “Why must you cling to this existence, to being this sad little girl who has to break herself apart every night fantasizing about a man and a life she will never have? Do you not realize what you are?”

Like the breaching of a dam, her heart tore itself in two, and every ugly truth she had always known but only spoke in whispers came pouring out. Tears spilled and a sob broke free from her throat. She knew she had been seeing things that weren’t there, feeling too deeply, but couldn’t she just pretend? Just for a little while? She tried to shrug in her shoulders and hide herself away, but Syphon squeezed her neck and held her blurry gaze, the citrine of his eyes cutting through the tears.

“You’re pathetic,” he barked, pulling her face but an inch from the sharpness of his. “Pining after any holy thing as if the light could ever touch you, look at you, without utter disgust.”

“I-I know,” she stuttered through sobs, “But I-I thought…”

“You thought what? Things would be different now than every time before? What has changed? You are still a needy, miserable wretch of a creature, powerless to properly wield the gifts you’ve been given and too weak to control your own absurd desires.”

It was true, all of it, and Celeste’s innards gnawed on themselves as she desperately tried to pinch in her knees and press her head to them, to shrink herself so much she might disappear completely, but he would not let her. He continued to stare into her eyes, and this time, she didn’t dare look away. She wanted to, she wished she were stronger, but as he said, she was not. Even when he released the back of her neck to stroke her jaw, she remained where she was left.

“I understand what you want now, what you would actually request I do,” he said, a gentle shield to the voice that had just gutted her. “You want to be relieved of this, to have me take it away.” A finger slid down to the locket that hung around her neck, limp under his touch as if empty, all of her empty, unused, without even potential.

Celeste blinked, tears dripping off her chin but no more emerging. “You…you can?”

“Of course I can, but it would take time. I can only suffer so much arcana before requiring rest, and you will accompany me. If this is what you want, you will be bound to my side for moons during the process,” he purred, and he continued to urge her hand between her legs. “And then, of course, you will be so grateful you will remain, and how fortuitous for you, pet, to be offered a place at the side of someone willing to shelter and treasure you. A being that understands your worth and will treat you accordingly.”

She whimpered but didn’t dare interrupt.

Syphon’s squeeze on her wrist dug in then, claws breaking the skin and making her cry out. “But only if you give me what I need first.”

“The noxscura,” she choked. She didn’t need to ask, she had known the moment she saw it beneath the village—he wanted it, but there was no way he could touch it and survive, not like she had once.

Syphon nodded, his nose and forehead brushing hers, his too-smooth skin glasslike. “I can take away that which you believe taints you, but first you must give me the strength to do it. You must break through the shield.” As he turned his head, Celeste followed his gaze.

The chamber was no longer empty, though she wished it were. The pool of pure noxscura churned just beside the cot, a silvery, horrifying mass, alive and moving, lapping at the edges of its earthy basin and sloshing against the dome.

“Very little can destroy what those priests created, but it was damaged before by an inferior weapon. You must be clever enough to know what could finally break through it for good.”

Celeste’s heart was in her throat, thrashing too madly to allow her to speak. She did know, she’d seen the failed weapon and she’d spoken to the one that was capable.

But then it appeared she would have to do nothing as a droplet of silvery noxscura spilled through the crack in the dome, and it shattered. Celeste recoiled from the bursting magic, or she tried, but she was still trapped under Syphon’s grip.

“You will destroy the shield,” he growled into her ear, “and you will absorb it for me.” He pulled her hand from between her legs and pushed her toward the pulsing pool.

“N-no,” she stuttered, breath so caught it burned. “Please.”

“This is the only way. This is what you were made to do.”

As if her body were not her own, it moved toward the noxscura, toward the inevitability that would consume her. She wanted to be free of noxscura, not absorb more, but once the remnants in that pool wormed their way inside her, there would be only misery and pain and death.

Celeste steeled herself—she would not become a harbinger of those things, and she would not inflict those terrors on anyone else.

“No!” She threw herself backward, and Syphon’s grip faltered. He made an animalistic sound that rumbled through her painfully, but she didn’t stop thrashing. “Let me go!” she screamed.

“You must!” The force on her limbs intensified, pushing her to the edge of the cot. “Isn’t this what you want? Freedom for us both? To no longer be so weak, so pathetic?”

Tears didn’t come, but neither did her own arcana, exhaustion nearly overwhelming as she fought. He was right—she wanted freedom, she wanted release from all of the awfulness, yet the price was much too high.

She closed in on the metallic sloshing, and she could feel the blood pouring out of her all over again, the burning of her flesh, the darkening of her mind. “Please, don’t make me,” she croaked.

“You are too afraid to do what is best on your own,” he hissed into her ear as the noxscura lapped at her chin. “You’ve forced me to take on this burden, but you should pity me for what I have to do to you.”

Celeste’s scream was drowned by the thickness of noxscura pouring into her throat, climbing down into her gut, flooding every vein. She choked on her next shriek, fighting as tears, blood, searing hot pain, all melded together and dragged her downward.

She would die this time, surely, and if not? If she survived, it would be so much worse.

Celeste’s arms were no longer held, but she was sinking. She flailed for purchase, limbs crashing blindly around her. There was pain and noise, the upturning of a chair, the shattering of a vase. She grasped at whatever was near, but her arm was again caught and held.

“No!” she screamed, her throat no longer thick with dark arcana, but she was still blinded by the magic.

A voice called to her, the words garbled, but they were not laced with sharpness. Another deception? The touch on her skin was gentle this time, and her own name was spoken kindly into her ear, but it was just another attempt to manipulate before berating her once again, surely. Dark gods of the Abyss, she could not take much more.

“Please,” Celeste shrieked as pathetically as she could, “please, don’t make me, I can’t!”

The thickness and weight on her body was dissipating, but her arm was still caught, and she knew it would push her under again just as she’d been pushed under before.

The voice told her that it wouldn’t, it called her by name instead of pet or witch, and it was trying so hard to sound kind. But would it stay that way?

Maybe…maybe if she could find the right words. Lies, promises, pleas—there had to be something that might allow her to bargain her way out.

“I’ll do better next time, I promise,” she sobbed. “I’ll try harder. Please, just don’t hurt me.”

“Celeste, you’re…”—the voice droned out and then back in—“…wake up.”

All at once she regained control of her body like breaking the surface and taking a breath. There was strength and power and noxscura, and Celeste threw her arms out as she slammed herself backward into a wall, out of her captor’s grip. The familiar shadows of her noxscura surrounded her, utter darkness closing in, all-encompassing and safe.

She wrapped arms around her knees, every breath sharp as they stabbed one after another in her lungs. Eyes wide and head whipping side to side, she saw nothing, but she could sense a figure beyond the shield her arcana made. She was not alone, the silence stretching until a voice broke in.

“Can you hear me, Celeste?” asked Reeve from beyond the shadowy barrier. “You’re having a nightmare.”

The noxscura was slow and deliberate, but it crawled back to her until the only shadow left in the room was the darkness of fully fallen night, moonlight breaking through the single window near the ceiling. Celeste was on her cot, and her chamber was almost as it should have been, though the linens were cast everywhere and the furniture was upended, a total mess in her frantic spell flinging. And, of course, there was a half-naked holy knight standing in the middle of it all looking utterly distraught, sword in hand but leveled at the ground.

“Are you awake?” he asked, but he moved too quickly as he reached for her.

She shrieked, crumpling in on herself as she squeezed her eyes shut into the safety of the darkness again.

In the quiet that followed, there was the sound of metal against the stone floor, and then a touch on her elbow, calloused fingers that didn’t grab or push but only gently rested on her skin.

“It’s me, it’s Reeve.” His voice was close and soft. “I heard you screaming. I thought you were being attacked.”

She lifted her head to see his hand had been allowed through the noxscura. When the shadows again cleared, Reeve was kneeling on the cot before her, the sword abandoned on the ground. His brows were drawn together in worry, and he rubbed her arm.

She loosened her own grip from around her knees, checking the room once again, but there was no sign of Syphon. “A dream,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

Reeve lifted her arm, and she let him, afraid to pull away, but he did nothing coarse with it. Instead, he turned it over slowly and brought the fingers of his other hand to her wrist. The touch was painful, and they could both see the marks where claws had sliced into her skin.

Reeve’s worried brow turned indignant as his gaze slid up to her neck. He touched there too, and again it ached just where Syphon had grabbed her. “Who did this? Are they here?” He didn’t release her, but he swept his gaze over the room, a hand going to the sword on the ground.

“No one,” she croaked. “It was me.”

His eyes snapped back to her, and they had that look, the one that told her he knew she was lying. “How did this actually happen, Celeste?”

All she could offer him was silence.

“Did it happen, or did someone do it to you?” When she didn’t respond, his brow furrowed deeply. “Who, Celeste? Who did this?”

“It happened in a dream,” she blurted out, and then the words just kept coming, pathetic sounding as the world dissolved around her into nonsense, “I don’t know, I’m sorry, please don’t be angry with me, I didn’t mean it.”

Reeve pulled her toward him, and just like when she was panicking in the lake, she was wrenched from that hollow and confusing place in her mind and brought back into the chamber, safe but only because he was there.

“It was a dream,” she whispered into his shoulder, his arms encircling her. “But it was real too. I wish I could explain, but I—oh, gods, no.”

Celeste sucked in a breath and tried to pull herself from Reeve’s hold when she saw the shattered pieces of ceramic scattered on the floor of her chamber.

“Reeve,” she cried, pushing at him, “It’s broken! The apotrope!”

“I know,” he said, placing hands on the sides of her face so she wouldn’t look at the shards. “But it was an accident.”

“I did it?” she gasped.

“It doesn’t matter.” The stillness in his eyes brought her out of her panic before it could worsen. Her breathing slowed to match his, and her shoulders relaxed. “I’m the one who should be ashamed. I broke my vow to you,” he murmured, touching her face. “I allowed you to be hurt.”

She shook her head. “It’s my fault. All of it…my fault.”

His jaw went tight with irritation. “Is this where you always sleep?”

That made Celeste stiffen if only for its oddness. She nodded.

“Why? It’s even smaller than my chamber in Bendcrest.”

Celeste was unsure what to say. “This is where I’ve always been.”

He shifted beside her and the whole cot groaned. “This bed is awful. You should be in the chamber upstairs.”

“I don’t need that much space. I don’t deserve it.” She turned her face out of his touch, and he let her go, but his hands hovered protectively at her sides. “I belong down here.”

“No, you don’t, and there isn’t enough room for both of us in here anyway.” He stood and gathered his sword from the floor than took her hand. She wasn’t sure her legs would work or even if she should let them, but Reeve’s hold was so gentle as it guided her that she didn’t want to pull away, and then they were both leaving the horrid chamber behind.

CHAPTER 24
STOPPING TO THINK AND FORGETTING TO START UP AGAIN

C eleste woke to blue and yellow light dappled across a room that smelled of flowers and warm herbs. She was gripping a soft linen under her chin, and an even softer pillow cradled her head. As the bleariness left her eyes, she focused on the bedside table and the badly damaged spine of a book, the Key on it made illegible. Beside that was a set of copper cups and the kettle normally kept over the hearth, steam curling from its spout.

Two cups, someone else’s bed, and none of the murkiness of her normal chamber. Despite how awful the night had been, it was the second-best time she’d had waking up.

Beside the all too big bed sat Reeve on the floor, hunched over with his back to her. She thought at first he was praying, missing the dawn yet again but holding vigil for his god beneath the temple’s ceiling instead, but he had neither the posture nor the serenity of his morning rumination.

Celeste pressed up to peer silently over his shoulder. Before him was a piece of parchment that had once been a book’s page, its edges torn from the spine, and atop the writing was a symbol drawn with charcoal. Reeve wrapped one hand around the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker laid out on the ground beside him, and he spread his other palm, covered in black soot, over the page. With a murmur, divine arcana emanated under his hand and into the parchment, the symbol lighting up. When the glow dimmed, he placed the page atop a stack of others and then ripped another from a slowly shrinking book.

“Reeve? What are you doing?”

The knight turned, eyes wide but rimmed blue with sleeplessness. “Making wards, or trying to. Are you feeling better?”

She sat up and nodded but winced, touching her neck. It was less painful than the night before, but her skin stung under her fingers. “Did you rest at all?”

“A little. Down here,” he assured her, pointing to the floor, but it only made her wince again at the thought. “No more dreams, or…”

She shook her head. “Did you say you’re making wards?”

He discreetly pushed the pile of sigils behind his back as if to hide them, turning to face her fully. “I’m attempting to, but I haven’t made one in years—Flint was our tent-protector when we were on the road—so mine are a little…ugly.” When he grinned, only half of his mouth turned up, and the dimple in his cheek deepened. “Wards are usually built into temple walls, but the ones here clearly haven’t been kept up. I should have known. I just hope these can help.”

She sat straighter, gaze darting around for signs of more upset. “Oh, no, did something else happen? How did I sleep through it?”

Reeve stared at her for a long moment, and though he didn’t likely know it, was producing the kind of look he so often received, one that gently asked, Has your brain been replaced with a spatula? Then he closed the distance between them, shuffling up to the bed on his knees.

“No, Celeste, nothing else happened, but…” He reached out and took her hand, rubbing a calloused set of fingers over the fading claw marks on her wrist. “These marks are bad enough—I can’t allow anything worse to happen to you. I may not be able to cut through your nightmares, but some wards can defend against unseen attacks. I’ve made enough to line the walls of this chamber. If you’ll agree to continue sleeping here, I can wake you quickly if they fail.” His hands had tightened around hers, warm eyes pleading.

“Oh, you made those…” Her heart pounded as her mind cleared. “You made all of those because of me?”

“Of course he did.” Sid’s voice from the floor made them both start, but it was not quite as brash as normal. “And they’re damn fine wards too, despite what he says.”

Reeve cleared his throat. “Sid helped.”

Celeste watched Reeve’s sooty fingers slide over her wrist with a quality she might call possessive if anyone else had been doing it, but the holy knight’s grip was more of a…a shroud? Or, no, a shield?

Was this what it was to be protected? She had believed Delphine was her protector once, but it hadn’t felt anything like this. Celeste’s messes had always been cleaned up, and she was usually plucked at the last moment from danger, but rescue never came without shouted I-told-you-sos and get-of-my-sights.

Reeve should have been angry about the broken apotrope, he should have left her in the tiny chamber downstairs to wallow alone, he should have been yelling, throwing things, threatening her, hurting her. But instead he was touching her so gently, just like he had the night before and like he had when he kissed her, as if he considered her something worth being gentle with. And his eyes, they weren’t full of pity or disappointment like she expected, but they did burn with a warmth she could feel swelling in her own chest.

“I know you don’t want to involve anyone else, so we won’t if you truly wish not to,” Reeve said with hesitation, his fingers tightening, “but Geezer is already aware of this situation, so I hoped we could visit him, and—”

Celeste slipped from his grip and took Reeve’s face in her hands, leaned over the bed’s edge, and pressed her lips to his. He remained in shocked stillness at first, and she feared she had made a mistake, but then he melted forward and sighed against her mouth, eyes closing.

She slid her palms over his stubble and entwined fingers behind his head, pulling him closer. Reeve was still kneeling on the floor, but she felt the mattress displace as he gripped it on either side of her, following after how she tugged at him. The first kiss he had given her had been so cautious, and this one did not lack the softness of the former, but there was fervor behind it that sparked with the opening of his lips and the passing of his tongue over hers just before he pulled back.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, half out of breath, “I should have asked first.”

“No, no,”—he was shaking his head—“It’s just that I…um, I haven’t properly wooed you yet, have I?”

A laughed choked itself out of her. “What?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out how, but I’ve never…” His gaze trailed down to her lap where the blankets had fallen as he took a steadying breath, then he swallowed as his amber eyes popped back up to meet hers, stalwart. “I have something to give you.”

Celeste was drawn tauter than a bow at how he’d rumbled out those words, heart shooting up into her throat and knees more than prepared to part, but then he slipped right out of her grasp. Reeve hurried to the mantle across the room, and it was all she could do to keep from racing after him. He returned much more slowly, staring down into his hands. Already looking sleepy and disheveled, his worried features made her forget her sudden thrill and stand from the bed to meet him in the chamber’s middle.

“Along the river, it can be windy,” he said, struggling for the words, “and some use cleaned fish bones or narrow sticks to pin up their hair when it’s long like…like yours. On the warmer days, I’ve watched you pick up your hair to get it off your neck, so…”

He extended his hands toward her, and in them lay a spear of wood. It was the grey-brown color of the dried out thorns that covered the town, but it had been whittled smooth and straight at one pointed end. The other end, however, was expertly carved into the shape of a creature’s head with an elongated snout, a set of tiny horns, and the silhouette of a wing.

“Supposed to be Plum,” he said, voice low and cracking.

She took the hairpin carefully, running fingers over every curve and hollow carved into the wood, the piece surprisingly solid and hefty for how delicate it had been crafted. It didn’t glow, and it didn’t burn her skin, but it did thrum with warm arcana, put there intentionally or not, locked away in its core. “You made this? For me?”

He nodded, not looking at her, mumbling about not being an artisan and apologizing for unseen flaws.

“Stop it,” she whispered, calling his attention away from the floor and holding his gaze in earnest. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you.”

Red blotches bloomed from his chestnut curls to his collarbone, and she could have ripped his tunic right off and kissed every blushing inch of his skin, but instead she simply took one of his hands in her own and squeezed.

“Come with me; we have a lot to do today.”

A short time later, Celeste had dressed in something less see-through and bundled her hair into a massive ball, spearing it with her new pin. She met Reeve in the middle of the temple’s worship space after he had papered the bed chamber upstairs in wards.

The Temple of Valcord once had an altar fit for a god. Celeste remembered it despite the years since it had been whole. The flat-topped base was a large white stone with pink veins that glittered when they caught the sun’s rays, and it still remained, but a second much more delicate piece with an intricate relief carved on its face had once been propped up at its back. In Delphine’s redecorating, the stone mural had fallen, breaking into many pieces. Celeste knew where the shards were kept—she was the one ordered to pile them up in a hidden storage chamber.

“I know that maybe we should be further investigating the manor, but today we are going to stay here and fix this instead,” she said as she hesitantly showed Reeve the additional destruction she and her sister had wrought in the knight’s holy sanctuary.

“Oh, it’s like a puzzle!” Endlessly enthusiastic, he lifted up two of the shards and held them side by side. They clearly did not match. “I wonder what it’ll look like when it’s done.”

Together, Reeve and Celeste removed the additional stone and plush seating that had been added to the altar, and then they started in on the original relief. They sat on the ground and laid out the pieces, rearranging them until an image began to form, unsurprisingly that of a rising sun over a field of many clover. The task was arduous—clover really all looked quite similar when it came right down to it—but it was pleasant, and as morning rolled into midday and after a break for tea and salted meat, they were coming much closer to being finished.

The afternoon light was blotted out by heavy clouds, and rolling thunder evolved into heart-startling bursts as rain pelted the roof. But the two were safe inside, buckets still placed to catch water dribbling in through the broken windows, and the company of one another to reassure against the flashes of lightning.

“Tomorrow night is the sweetbriar festival,” she said to Reeve as she tried to find the next right bit of white stone from a dwindling pile of similarly-right-looking white bits of stone. “I have a feeling Syphon will use the distraction to do something terrible. We need to find that last sieve before Syphon does.” She swallowed, the heaviness of her next words almost too much. “We need to make sure it’s locked away for good.”

“We haven’t found anything in the manor, but we never searched Ima’riel’s. It must be there, right?”

“She says she doesn’t even know what sieves are, but I suppose that doesn’t mean one isn’t hidden there without her knowing it.” She didn’t want to suggest deceit to him, but it seemed the only option. “It will be safer to search if no one else is around, and the greenhouses will be empty tomorrow night when everyone’s in the village circle celebrating.”

He nodded, a silent agreement that they would go then despite the questionable morality of the decision. She intended to say no more about it then, letting the quiet be filled with the sound of heavy rain.

They worked for a while longer, piecing together more of the mural in comfortable silence. Sitting on the floor beside one another, Celeste could feel the warmth off his body, her skin painfully aware that Reeve wasn’t touching her, but with so little effort, he could.

When she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, he was intently studying two shards, his tongue poking between his teeth. She could feel that tongue again, briefly passing over her lips with a skill she was fairly certain he didn’t even know he had. She would have given just about anything to coax out that skill, though she wondered if any kind of coaxing would be theologically permissible.

“Valcord is one of the more reasonable gods, yes?” Celeste asked, pretending to be much more interested in the shard she held than it deserved.

“I think he’s very reasonable.”

“Well, you would, wouldn’t you?” She chewed her lip, and there was another crack of thunder that made her gasp and straighten. “I mean specifically with his…you called it a code, I think? One that the Holy Knights of Valcord follow?”

Reeve grinned as he made a choice from the pile and perfectly fit one of the smallest chips of stone into its rightful place. “Yes, we’re meant to be virtuous.”

Celeste tried to hum, but it came out as more of a groan. It was a troubling word, virtuous, for her purposes anyway. “And what does that mean?”

“To be honorable, loyal, kind, to treat each new day as an opportunity and not a burden, to be helpful and honest, you know, those sorts of things.”

“That’s it?” she asked, looking at him fully, noting he had not mentioned chastity. He had drunkenly said that holy knights were allowed to marry, but gods could be strange, and maybe that still didn’t mean what she thought it did. “There aren’t any harsher rules? Things you’re not supposed to…indulge in?”

He shook his head, finding that another piece didn’t fit, then put it aside. “Almost anything is all right in moderation so long as it doesn’t hurt someone else.” Then suspicion creased his features. “Are you asking because you’re interested in joining the priestesshood?”

“Not exactly,” she admitted, attempting to hide her smile and failing as lightning brightened the chamber.

Reeve chuckled. “Then why are you concerned with what Valcord thinks?”

“Well, I guess I’m not,” she said, watching his playful grin falter, “but you are, and I do care an awful lot about what you think.”

Reeve’s smile continued to fall as he sat back, replaced with a softness she wanted, not for the first time, to rub against. But since she wasn’t a cat, and he was looking extra thoughtful, and also because Valcord might somehow consort with the god of storms and strike her down if she dared sully one of his followers, she held back.

“There is one rule for holy knights that could be considered harsh if you chose to believe it so.” Eyes squinted, Reeve was using that voice that suggested he was attempting to be diplomatic. He wanted so badly to be good that even though he sounded hesitant and strained, it made Celeste’s insides go right to mush, as warm and fluffy as Halfrida’s mashed potatoes. “Knights are supposed to be loyal to their cause above all else, and our cause is often linked directly to one another. We’re taught that we must defend each other because we swear fealty not just to Valcord but to the heart of our faith. What we do is dangerous and we would—” His words caught abruptly and then he cleared his throat through it. “Death would come for many more of us if we did not have one another.”

Of course, he was part of a holy order after all, and they made oaths for life. He was drunk when he’d told her, but the death of his brother Rory clearly still weighed heavily on him. And he had already mentioned once that Gable would have broken his oath and killed her. If any of his fellow knights came to Briarwyke, surely he would be beholden—and gladly beholden—to them over everything else.

Celeste shifted from sitting on one of her hips to the other and flipped a piece of mural over in her hands. It was a fragment she’d picked up many times and hadn’t found the right place for yet, not enough of the rest of the picture for it to make sense, but she was drawn to its sharp edges and strange shape. She held it tightly and ran thumbs over the relief work as the sound of rain pelted the roof. She almost allowed the rain to drown out what she wanted to ask, but it had always been too easy to not ask the hardest things.

“I know that your oaths mean everything to you, and it’s not fair for me to make this request, but…” Celeste took a deep breath and worried the shard in her fingers, turning it over and over. “When we finish restoring the temple and Syphon is gone, I’m not going to be able to…to engage in any kind of battle with you. So will you please just let me leave instead?”

“What?” Reeve’s face fell into stark anger. “No.”

As if she’d already been pierced by his uncursed sword, Celeste felt impaled to the spot, though she wanted to flee. How could he still want to vanquish her? To kill her? After everything?

“No,” he repeated, watching her ever-moving fingers on the fragment. “Celeste, I can’t let—please, don’t say you want to leave Briarwyke, that you want to leave…leave the temple.”

As she again turned over the shard, it slipped from her fingers, but she managed to catch it before it hit the floor. “But I don’t want you to kill me.”

“No, no, no!” He leaned forward quickly, grabbing her arms before she could jump up and bolt out of the room. “I don’t want to do that either. Or for you to kill me. I just want you to stay.” He was squeezing her arms so tightly, but then he seemed to notice, grip relenting and hands sliding down to hers. They lingered there for a moment, and then he pulled away, tugging the shard out of her grasp as he went. “I expected to be here with only Sid and Earlylyte, but you…I know it did not begin well, but now you’re like a sister-in-arms. I can’t imagine this place without you.”

Celeste swallowed. Orphan or otherwise, she did not want Reeve to think of her as a sister, and yet she did not want Reeve to not think of her at all.

She glanced around the temple, at the rainwater pouring in from the broken windows, at the columns that would need artisans to carve into something recognizable again, at the divot that still sullied the floor that had so recently been filled with corpses. Celeste held no real love for the temple beyond the last half a moon, but the temple did hold Reeve.

She frowned. “I don’t think Valcord would let me be one of his holy knights alongside you, and I don’t think I’d be very good at it anyway.”

“That’s not really what I mean.” Reeve stared hard down at the fragment he’d taken from her, brow furrowed deeply, and mumbled, “Kori didn’t prepare me for this.” Then he looked to the nearly finished mural, and as if it took no thought at all, placed the piece that she had been toiling with for so long exactly where it belonged. “Celeste, what I’m trying to say is that the oaths I’ve spoken mean something different when I’m with you, like they were only training for the one I want to make now. I’m not sure how to tell you—how to ask you—that I want you to stay here.”

Thunder rumbled, and a lump pushed itself up Celeste’s throat. It was a good thing probably, since she wasn’t sure whether she would laugh or cry or squeal—no one had ever wanted her before.

He glanced up from under a lock of hair that had fallen in his eyes, hands grasping at the emptiness left in them. “Do you…do you want to stay here?” he asked. “With me?”

She met his gaze and nodded because that was the truth, whatever it was he meant. Every bit of her wanted to be there, with him, and find out.

“And you mean that?” Reeve’s voice had that hesitant timbre that was so rare for him, the one that said he was afraid. “I’m not a...a whetstone to you, am I?”

Celeste scrunched up her face, the lump in her throat dropping away. A whetstone? Well, she had thought many times about finding the hardest part of him and grinding up against it.

Wind battered at the temple, and then she laughed, inspired by the memory of how upset he had been when she’d told the falsehood so they could find the smithy. “Oh, no, of course you’re not a whetstone, Reeve. I’ve never thought of a place as home before, until that place had you.”

A smile played at his lips even with his face still fraught, though it was an awfully cute fretting that he did. She wanted to lessen it, but that would be difficult, what with all of her casually spoken lies, unless she could find a way to show him. And perhaps, in showing him, she could find some clarity for herself as well.

“I wouldn’t lie to you about this,” she said carefully. “Just like you wouldn’t lie to me about…well, about anything at all, would you?”

He shook his head so earnestly, just sitting there cross-legged, hands in his lap, only a foot away from her after saying he wanted her. But how, holy knight, how do you want me?

“Reeve, may I ask you a question?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh, something like relief passing over his face at the familiar phrase.

“When you say you want me to stay here, what exactly do you mean?”

“I don’t want you to leave Briarwyke. I want the two of us to be here, together,” came out very quickly, his amber eyes wide. “But you probably don’t want to live in the temple, do you? Most holy knights don’t even stay once they’ve, uh…found…some…one—why-are-you-looking-at-me-like-that?”

Celeste held his gaze. “May I ask you another question?”

“Y-yes?”

She slipped forward onto her knees, hands on the temple floor, and crept closer, careful so she wouldn’t frighten him away. “When you think about us together, how do you imagine that?”

“Um.” Reeve swallowed and sat up fully. “Like this?”

She’d been reaching for him but stopped. “Like this?”

He cleared his throat. “I guess it’s a little different than this.”

“Then how?”

Even as Reeve leaned away, his back hitting the slab of the altar, his voice dropped to a rumble. “You’re usually closer.”

“Like this?” she let her hand fall to his knee but kept her touch light, easy to pull back, to say she didn’t mean it, which would, of course, be a lie. Even with the leather between their skin and the chill of the rainy air, he radiated heat under her hand.

“It starts like this.” Reeve’s chest rose and fell quicker, but he didn’t push her away, and he didn’t move to run.

She licked her lips and gave him a gentle squeeze. “And then what?”

“You come…closer.”

Celeste did move closer, hand sliding up his thigh as the other began a slow ascent over his other knee. “Is that all? Or are you not telling me the whole truth?”

“The whole truth?”

She reached his waist, nodding as she eased her fingers along the lowest edge of his stomach.

“The truth is, that I think about waking up beside you,” he said, and she halted her hands’ exploration. “I think about you all the time, about how you share blueberries with Plum and how you braid your hair. I think about how you’ll hopefully stand close the next time you’re showing me how to knead dough, and about how I can ask you to lay your head in my lap again so I can touch your hair, and about how I wish you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me everything because I would never hurt you.”

“Oh, Reeve,” she breathed, carefully laying hands on his chest. “Really?”

“With credence that the sun will rise.”

Celeste’s fingers curled into his tunic as she leaned against him. It was impossible that he was saying these things because no one—absolutely no one—had ever meant them. But Reeve did.

“Well, actually…” The holy knight swallowed, and Celeste’s heart hitched as another burst of lightning illuminated the temple. “Everything I said is true, but I also sometimes think about you not wearing any clothes.”

Celeste felt the corners of her mouth curl up. “Oh, do you?”

“Just about every night,” he admitted, scarlet breaking out all over his neck and cheeks. “Sometimes twice.”

“I think about you at night too,” she said and pressed her hands into his hard chest. “And sometimes in the morning. And then when I find you in the courtyard, all tunic-less and sweaty, I have to stop myself from running back to my chamber and thinking about you again.”

That made Reeve giggle stupidly and shake his head. “No, girls don’t do—wait, do you?”

She clicked her tongue. “May I ask you one more question, Sir Reeve?”

Mouth hanging open, he nodded.

“Can I show you exactly what I want to do when I think about us together?”

CHAPTER 25
FROM DIVINE LIPS TO INFERNAL EARS

R eeve didn’t give Celeste the chance to show him anything. He grabbed her by the back of the neck with sweaty palms and crushed her mouth to his. It was perhaps not the way he was supposed to do things, but he’d put up a valiant fight to not touch her for as long as he could, and so much of his blood had left his brain that additional strategy was essentially impossible.

Celeste crawled onto him, and for a moment they were both all awkward, fumbling limbs as their mouths devoured one another, bodies struggling to catch up. This—this was the mad scramble he’d been told about and the way he’d imagined her, climbing onto his lap and attacking him not with arcana but with the witchery of her thighs atop his. He lifted his knees, and she slid forward, and the pieces fit.

Crickets, did they fit.

He dragged in a hiss against her mouth as his length was cradled between her legs, and she answered with the kind of whimper he had never heard but still triggered some base, animal instinct that told him it was good, and he should make her do it again.

Reeve leveraged his back against the stone of the altar—which was fine, he thought briefly, since it wasn’t whole yet—and his hands found her hips. He didn’t mean for his fingers to dig in so hard, but now that he’d gotten her, he couldn’t let her go.

Celeste, however, showed no signs of trying to get away. In fact, it seemed she was enjoying his dire grip and the sharp thrust that followed quite a bit. Despite there was no closer she could be, she was vigorous in her attempt. Well, there was closer, he thought in a muddy sort of way, but all of their clothes were proving a complication.

That could be remedied though.

His hand was sliding down her thigh, mostly of its own accord. It was easier to think of it as happening rather than him making it happen, at least. But when it found the bare skin of her knee, his hand remembered it didn’t have the ability to think or do. “Is this,” he huffed between kisses, “is this all right?”

“Gods, yes,” she breathed against his lips then pulled back. “Er, I mean, um…not gods?”

More confidently, his hand wrapped around the back of her knee and began to climb. “The other knights say that the gods wouldn’t give us bodies if we weren’t supposed to use them.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, rolling her hips forward against his shielded length and making him groan. “Well, if that’s what they say.” Celeste tugged at the low neckline of her dress, the soft fabric easily slipping down to reveal the pale, modest swell of her breasts inches from his face.

“By Valcord’s Radiance,” he murmured.

“Hello?”

The rest of Reeve stiffened as much as his cock had, and his grip on Celeste went from that of a desperately lustful man to that of a terrified one. She sat back from him swiftly, and despite the foreign voice in the chamber, he did notice how her breasts took a slight moment longer to catch up with her movement before coming to stillness. Maybe if he held them, that would help…

But the voice called out again, and so Celeste was moving again, which was doubly distracting, but unfortunately she was pulling back up her top and not wiggling her hips against his groin.

She reached over his head, bringing her covered chest right to his face as she stood. She’d lifted her hips from his grip, but he couldn’t seem to let her go, and then she was standing, straddling him. His hands had slipped down the length of her thighs to her calves, and if she didn’t have that dress on, he could do all those things he’d been taught on the potdemiel fruit by Kori, the fear of getting it wrong completely wrung out of his mind and replaced with the desire to run his tongue up the inside of her thigh and—

“Charlie? Goodness, what’s happened to you?”

The terror that clung onto Celeste’s voice tighter than his own hands on her calves made Reeve snap out of the lusty spiral he’d been circling. His cock was slower to react properly, but as he turned and pulled himself up to his feet, he knocked it into the altar, and that took care of things.

“Many thanks, Valcord,” he grumbled, stomach knotting, but then he saw the soaking wet girl in the temple’s entry, blood running from her forehead and her clothes torn, and protective anger swelled in his chest. “Who did this?” he barked, reaching for his sword, but it wasn’t there. “Are you still being pursued?”

Charlie shook her head, black hair dripping as she staggered deeper into the temple. Celeste caught her just before she collapsed, all out of breath. The three met at the couch, and the girl dropped onto it, trying over and over to speak through jagged wheezing, Celeste on one side of her, and Reeve perching ready on the other. His eyes darted to the entry, to the windows pouring in rain, then to the stairs, planning how he would retrieve the Obsidian Widow Maker as soon as he knew who he was supposed to stab.

“Wh-what…” Charlie inhaled deeply, squinting at the altar then at each of them. “What were you doing?”

“Praying,” they answered simultaneously.

Celeste gasped, catching Reeve’s eye over the girl’s head.

He made the symbol of Valcord over his chest and mumbled, “Close enough,” then placed a hand on Charlie’s shivering, soaked shoulder. “What happened?”

“Eliot,” she finally said, the boy’s name breaking out of her mouth with a sob. “He’s missing.”

“Oh, no.” Celeste wrung her hands, biting her lip. “For how long?”

“Right before the storm.” Charlie drew in a ragged breath. “It’s all my fault! I wasn’t expecting him when I was doing dishes, but then I turned around and he was just there, and it scared me. He’s always doing that because he’s so quiet, and I yelled at him.” She sniffled and squeezed her eyes shut. “I yelled so much, and I was so mean! I told him he needed to finally start talking so we know when he’s around, but I was just angry with him, I don’t really think that,”—she grabbed Celeste’s arm and looked at her desperately—“really I don’t! But he ran off, and now he’s gone!”

“It’s okay, we’ll find him,” she told her with certainty she couldn’t have had. “Where have you looked?”

“Everywhere! In all the empty buildings and inside the bramble bush fort and even the attic space he’s usually too afraid to go in. I didn’t tell anybody—Halfrida thinks we’re in the schoolhouse with Gaspard, and Gaspard thinks we’re at the inn, and everyone’s inside because of the storm, and I thought I could just find him and fix it on my own, but the lake is rising so fast, and the roads are starting to wash out, and I didn’t know what to do, so I came here because…” The tears were coming again, her face going sallow as she looked into her lap.

“Does he hide here sometimes?” Celeste asked hopefully.

Charlie shook her head, then peeked up at Reeve. “He can’t swim very well, and if something really bad happened to him, you’re a…a holy knight, right? The gods let you save people?”

Reeve swallowed so hard his throat went immediately raw, but he was not going to tell her that he had failed the priest exams because he could never figure out how to heal someone. “I will find him,” he said instead, and rushed to collect his sword.

Celeste called after about helping, but he asked her to stay with Charlie and tend to the girl’s wounds, assuring them both that Valcord’s light would lead him to Eliot, storm clouds and rainwater be damned. He didn’t know if it was entirely true, but seeing as he believed it, it would have to be true enough.

Earlylyte had no qualms about the rain or still cracking thunder, sensing Reeve’s urgency. Ears forward, he splashed out onto the road, mud caking his chest with each hoof beat. Reeve gripped the Obsidian Widow Maker’s hilt and called to his god, casting out into the pouring rain for the young boy. He had a lot of sodden ground to cover, and he was soaked through immediately, visions of a child face down in the mud hammering at his thoughts.

Earlylyte galloped along the slick road as Reeve’s arcana pulsed away from him in every direction, but then his spell drew him backward, not to the temple, but to the forest. Sharply changing course, the horse broke through the treeline and into the wood. Earlylyte slowed as he pushed forward through heavy brush, and Reeve struggled to maintain his magic as he dodged low-hanging branches.

Darkness set in, deeper with the falling rain that evaded the leaves overhead, but Reeve urged Earlylyte to follow the source until they came upon a clearing and the small facade of the abandoned cottage he had been to before. This time, the pull to the damaged house was different, and yet it was the same, warmth muddied with stark caution.

Reeve followed Valcord’s urging, dismounted Earlylyte, and rushed in. He held Sid at the ready because that was what he knew to do, even if swords did the exact opposite of healing. He called for the boy, and Sid echoed him through the lightless cottage. Sid’s glow illuminated the mostly empty space and fell right over a huddled mass, shivering, soaked, and, by all the goodness of the gods, alive.

Eliot peeked out from between his arms, and then he ran at Reeve with the kind of speed only a child has after being balled up and half frozen. Reeve sheathed the sword, knelt, and held out his arms, and Eliot crashed into him with a squelch. He was surprisingly strong, arms wrapped tight around his neck, but that strength meant he was unharmed.

There was, however, a brief moment that Reeve wanted to berate Eliot for running off in the first place, for disappearing into the woods during a storm when there was already so much danger in Briarwyke, for not just coming to the temple when he was already so close, but then he remembered when he had been lost as a child.

It was a moment of exceptional stupidity, unable to find his way out of the forest so close to the Bendcrest temple. When Mother Mariesa found him back then, Reeve’s relief had been too quickly doused by shame, and while being dragged back and shouted at, the loneliness he’d felt even as someone held his hand and brought him safely home was deeper than when he had thought he’d never find his way out of the wood.

So Reeve put aside his misplaced anger and just hugged Eliot’s shivering form tighter. “You’re all right now,” he said quietly, throat thick. “Are you hurt? Anything broken or bloody?”

Eliot pulled back and shook his head.

Reeve quickly inspected his face, a healing cut there from some past rough play and mud caked in his hair, but otherwise he was undamaged. “A few hurt feelings, though, huh?”

The little boy’s red-rimmed eyes flicked downward.

“It’s okay, most of the time that’s much worse. Charlie’s going to be happy to see you though, trust me.” Reeve hauled Eliot up into his arms. He took a look around the cottage as he listened to the storm outside, thunder no longer rumbling and the rain pattering lighter, then his gaze landed on the banister. The key still sat there, untouched, and even though Sid’s glow was doused in his scabbard, the metal still glinted in the darkness.

Reeve had never taken anything without permission before, but as if it were not his doing at all, his hand reached out and swiped the key, stuffing it into his pocket as they left.

Eliot was a practically drowned bundle, but the ride back on Earlylyte seemed to make him forget he was wet and cold at all. When they reached the temple, Charlie’s swarming melted any other residual fear. The girl was all apologies and hugs and tears, and as glad as Reeve was to see it, he sought out Celeste instead.

Her eyes had lost their seductive gaze as they stared back at him, replaced with something else, something more tender. Reeve swept wet hair away from his forehead and felt the heat in his face, his chest full, and in his pocket, the key he’d taken thumped against his hip.

The children were loaded back up onto Earlylyte, and the dripping and exhausted band walked into town. The storm had let up, but the clouds didn’t relent, and the sun was already sinking away, leaving Briarwyke prematurely dark. They came upon the circle just as the tavern door burst open, Halfrida and Gaspard’s bickering voices trading blame until they saw the soaked party. There were many more tight, squishy embraces, some unavoidable chastising, and finally Halfrida dragged them all up onto the inn’s porch beneath the eaves and demanded to know the truth.

There was a moment of silence, expectations turned to Eliot, who predictably didn’t speak. Celeste began offering up an excuse, that the two were only playing outside the temple, but Charlie broke in and admitted to everything, yelling at Eliot and making him run, searching all on her own, and keeping the danger a secret until she turned to the temple for help.

Halfrida put on a grim frown, and Reeve’s stomach knotted, but then the woman pulled the girl into another tight embrace. “Don’t you ever be afraid to tell me anything again, Charlotte,” she said, and then, without hesitation, “I love you.”

The innkeeper insisted everyone warm up in front of the tavern’s fire. He tried to decline when Halfrida demanded everyone take a warm bath, but there was really no telling the woman no, and each took turns cleaning up as their clothes were dried out before the hearth—she needed the time to cook for them all anyway. It wasn’t how Reeve expected to spend his evening, but lounging by the hearth of the Dew Drop Inn, ladling buttered peas and potatoes covered in a cheesy sauce down his throat, wasn’t bad.

Evening turned to night, and a lute-less Gaspard took to telling stories that were appropriate for the three youngest in attendance as the bowls were cleared. He spoke in a quieter tone than was normal, the group smaller and huddled together. Willow had climbed into Celeste’s lap, and Halfrida had something like a death-grip on Eliot and Charlie.

Gaspard told another of his traveling mercenary tales, but in this one, there was a terrible battle, and the eldest member was gravely injured. They took respite in a dingy little town’s only inn, the wounded man unsure if he would survive. He held out hope, though, that he would rejoin his troupe of wanderers and see the rest of the realm. Further tragedy struck, however, when he awoke one day and the others were gone.

“It was like a dagger to the chest for the corsair, to find himself abandoned, to know he had only been holding them back all this time. He always had a crew, even when they were replaced one by one, and he did not recognize the youngsters from the originals he set out with some twenty years prior. For the first time in his life, he was frightened.” Gaspard was good at holding a crowd, his gaze always lingering on one listener just long enough before passing to the next, but at this, his eyes fell on Halfrida sitting across the hearth, and there they remained.

The woman was smoothing Eliot’s hair with one hand and had the other arm linked with Charlie, but her light eyes were glassy as she stared back at the storyteller.

“Fear never lasts though, not in the face of love. It is not the most exciting end to a tale, but eventually all heroes find their ending, and it’s far better to go the boring way than the alternative.”

The rain had died off and night had truly fallen before Celeste and Reeve were allowed to leave the tavern. Halfrida tried convincing them to spend the night—there were plenty of rooms and each would have their pick of the abundance of beds—but with coy glances at one another, they eventually freed themselves of the inn’s warm embrace.

Obviously, an inn with more than one bed would have been an unacceptable choice for the night’s end.

Earlylyte had shaken off the damp from his coat in the stable, and Reeve brought him around to the porch while Celeste waited on the steps, staring upward at the sky. She blinked sleepily at the clouds hiding the moons and barely noticed when Reeve approached.

“Earlylyte insists on carrying you home.”

She started as if just realizing the creature was there. “Oh, that’s all right, horses don’t usually like me very—ah!”

Reeve grabbed her about the waist and lifted her onto the horse’s back. She flailed because that was what Celeste often did, but then quickly grabbed a hold of his shoulders, leaning down as if he were pulling her off the mount instead. “You’re meant to stay up there,” he said and held her in place.

“I don’t want to upset him. It’s okay, I can walk, and you can ride.”

Earlylyte stood perfectly calm beneath her.

“You’re not upsetting him, but if it would help, we can both ride.”

Celeste took a breath, glanced once more at the horse’s untwitching ears, and then sat up, carefully pulling her leg over and awkwardly setting her hands on Earlylyte’s mane.

Reeve climbed up behind her, the horse still unbothered. Holy knights utilized breeds that could easily handle two riders—it wasn’t infrequent that a knight would have to daringly rescue someone while at a galloping pace or carry off a fallen warrior at speed—but even the broadness of Earlylyte’s back didn’t allow much room and inevitably the two slid together.

As they began up North Road, Celeste’s unease resulted in her leaning away from the horse. She was slender, and as Reeve reached around her to hold the reins, she was almost completely enveloped by him. Her back gently brushed his chest as Earlylyte plodded down the muddy road, crickets singing into the night.

Crickets, something else was beginning to sing as well.

Celeste seemed unbothered by the hardness that dug into her back, though. Her shoulders lost their tenseness, and she sighed out a noise that didn’t help things calm down at all. He thought to say something, her ear so close to his lips when he tipped his head to the side, but instead he was mesmerized by the way her hair fell, its color deeper than the blackness in the depths of the trees, and as the clouds parted to reveal both Lo and Ero, its strands shone blue under the moons’ light.

Her hair framed the edge of her face, the point to her nose and to her brow, every bit of her pointed and fine, too easily chipped away to leave exposed and jagged. But her lips had been soft—lips he finally knew the taste and feel of, though it hadn’t been enough. He wanted to learn more of her, to study each bladelike edge of her with his mouth, but instead settled for the crease of her cheek.

She started slightly beneath his kiss, then hummed and leaned back fully. The beat of his heart thumped against her chest, and in silence, they returned to the temple.

There was no question that together they would head to the chamber upstairs, but when Celeste crossed the threshold, she froze.

Reeve had just taken off his baldric but kept Sid in hand. “What is it?”

She looked about, and he was afraid to see a shiver and a frown, but instead she clasped her hands in front of her and grinned. “It feels tingly in here.”

“Good tingly or bad tingly?”

She looked on the wards that lined the walls with a fondness he was briefly jealous of. “Very good.”

He nodded and took Sid to the attached bathing chamber. He waited for the sword to comment on the strangeness of being set to rest for the night in a separate room, specifically one with a tub, but the Obsidian Widow Maker was, for once, silent.

CHAPTER 26
ALTERING THE ALTAR AT WHICH ONE WORSHIPS

C eleste was already in the bed when Reeve emerged from the bathing chamber. She’d made quick work of her dress, left only in that thin, white material with lace for straps, but had pulled the linens up over her lap. In the dark, she’d lit a candle on the side table, and its glow was warm over her pale skin, pink when he stared at her for so long from the doorway.

“I’ll, uh, be down here, if you need me.” He quickly looked away and gestured to the floor.

“Reeve,” said Celeste with a firmness, “don’t be silly.”

Hesitation rooted deep in his bones, but he couldn’t deny his desire to climb in beside her. He’d wanted to the night before as well, though then it had been a little different. After her nightmare, he had only wanted to remain close, to guard against anything that dared threaten her. Now, he still wanted to be close, and he still wanted to keep everything else away, but he wondered if he himself should be counted amongst those threats because of the other things he wanted to do to her.

Though the way she was tapping the pillow at her side and hesitantly smiling, it seemed she might want him to do those things. And maybe some other things he didn’t even know about. Yet.

He took a deep breath and finally climbed in. Carefully measuring out the space between, he laid back, folded his hands over his chest, and stared up at the solitary candle’s light dancing over the darkened ceiling. His limbs wanted to fidget and his heart beat so loud he imagined even Plum had to hear it from his nest in the temple’s rafters, but he remained as still as possible.

“You saved Eliot,” Celeste broke the quiet with a voice far steadier than he knew his own would be.

Reeve licked his lips and swallowed the lump in his throat, heat flaring in his face. “He found a dry place to wait out the storm, and he would have found his way back when it was over. He may not speak, but he’s smart. He was just frightened.”

“Well, he would have been frightened for much longer if you hadn’t found him.” The bed displace beside Reeve, and he held very still as he felt Celeste’s presence come near. “Thank you for being so good.” She pressed her lips to his cheek.

It all happened so fast that Reeve barely realized he had taken Celeste by the middle and thrown himself atop her until his mouth was on hers. Celeste squealed with surprise under his lips, and he was reminded of the last time the two of them were in the very same bed.

“Sorry, sorry,” he panted, pushing himself up and away, but her hands had clutched onto his biceps, and despite the thinness of her arms, she was not allowing him to go very far.

“You don’t need to apologize.” She blinked up at him, shimmering silver pools catching the candlelight and holding his gaze in earnest. She ran a hand up to the collar of his tunic. “Do you always wear your clothes to bed?”

Ah, good, an easy question. “No.”

A devious grin spread out over her face, and she yanked the tunic right over his head. It only blinded him a moment, and then she tossed it into the chamber, wrapped arms around his neck, and pulled him into another searing kiss.

Reeve kept himself aloft on a knee and an elbow, a struggle to maintain the sliver of space he felt was appropriate while wanting to cover every inch of her body with his own, but she was lying beneath him with so little on and was so small herself, he knew he’d absolutely crush her. Still, he longed to be free of every stitch of clothing and to press her skin right to his.

But then her hands were fumbling at the waist of his breeches, and despite some awkward wiggling, he couldn’t seem to lower his knee and allow her to actually pull them off.

She instead pulled herself back and let him go. “Actually, this probably isn’t very fair, is it?” And without much more warning, she slipped her chemise off over her head.

Reeve had never been in bed with a woman before, let alone a naked one, but in taking in Celeste’s body for the first time, he finally understood why the others sang the praises of breasts and stomachs and hips so enthusiastically. He expected to be terrified, and his heart indeed pumped like he were engaged in a realm-altering battle, but when he looked down on her, there was nothing to truly be afraid of, no dangerous exploit laid out on the mattress that would consume his soul if he did something wrong, just a person who had chosen to be there with him.

And she wasn’t really naked, she still had on that locket, after all, though as it fell into the dip of her throat, it only seemed to heighten his awareness of every other part of her.

“You’re beautiful,” he said as he leaned down to kiss her again. He’d been thinking it since they met, but the sprawl of her pale flesh against the blackness of her hair had ripped the truth out of him like a prayer.

She winced, and he pulled back.

“Do you think I would lie to you?”

“Of course not,” she said quickly, inching her arm up over her chest.

“Then please don’t make that face like I’ve said something unkind.” He trailed a cautious hand down her neck, her shoulder, her arm, memorizing every point and plunge until his fingertips came to rest on her wrist. “I don’t know why you would believe otherwise or why you want to hide away. Every time I look at you, I want to tell you how beautiful you are, Celeste, especially when you’re smiling and your eyes shimmer like starlight.”

“Starlight?” She bit her lip, but there was a hint of that smile he liked so much. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment coming from a knight of the god of dawn.”

“It is,” he said in earnest, not mirroring her playfulness because he needed her to know. “I’m meant to worship at the altar of the sun, but it’s this light that I would be devoted to, if you would let me.”

Celeste took his hesitant hand and placed it on her waist, and then she moved under it, the curve of her hip sliding easily against his fingers as she pulled him close. Her skin was soft even in the places where he could feel a rib or joint as he ran his hand up and down the length of her side. He had failed to ask after any kind of permission to touch these new places, but she wasn’t giving him the opportunity to speak, keeping his mouth occupied.

She hadn’t objected, so as he raised his hand up again, he cupped one of her small breasts, and she arched into his touch, nipple hardening under the caress of his fingertips. Her mouth came away from his and trailed itself down his neck. Reeve hadn’t thought he could come to any more attention, but the press of her lips to his collarbone made him worry his breeches might just tear themselves right off, and he groaned raggedly into the top of her head, more vehemently squeezing her breast.

“Is this all right?” she asked, and her hand trailed down his stomach to brush over his trapped length.

Gods, yes, it was fucking all right. It was so all right that he couldn’t remember the words to tell her, but as he swallowed the nonsense that almost dribbled itself out of his mouth, another thought occurred to him. “I think I should say, I’m not…I don’t have a lot of experience with…this.”

“That’s okay; I’ve done it lots of times,” she chirped, grinning up at him. “In fact, I’ve lost count.”

His voice hitched as her hand caressed him again. “You have?”

“Uh huh, I—” The grin snapped right off her face, and her eyes went wide as her muscles tensed. “Oh, crickets, can you forget I said that?”

“Why in the realm would I want to? I’m relieved.” He sighed and let his head drop. “One of us needs to know what they’re doing.”

Celeste chuckled as her body relaxed beneath him, but his need to reveal more truth bubbled up.

“I should really say that I don’t have any experience with a woman—er, well, not with anyone.”

“Never?” Her hands came to rest on his hips. “Even though you look like this?”

He shook his head, then squinted. “Well, there was that one time, with the succubus, but I don’t think it counts.”

“A succubus?” Celeste gasped and sat up so fast she nearly knocked her head into his. “How could that not count?”

Reeve’s hand was still cupping her breast, but he pulled it back regrettably as he slipped up onto his knees. He’d been afraid of this, but the truth was bound to come out, so he let it all erupt at once: “Okay, so, the temple had lent a few of us out to guard the Bendcrest prison, and this woman came up to me to ask after directions to the market. She was actually a succubus, but I didn’t know that at the time—that’s sort of how they work, I guess. Anyway, we were just talking, and the next thing I knew…”

Reeve cleared his throat and dropped his gaze away from Celeste’s face, not particularly wanting to admit to the embarrassment, but then his eyes fell on her breasts and they were staring right back at him, daring him to touch them again, so he dropped his gaze lower, and then he was staring at the shadow between her thighs, and that was also doing a kind of staring, daring him to bury his tongue into it. Occupying his mouth would have been a good way to avoid the conversation, but his virtue wouldn’t allow that, and he had no choice but to confess to her face after all.

“And then I found myself in one of the rooms at The Sleepy Salmon with her, and she had me completely naked.”

Celeste didn’t look at all disappointed by his failed morality. Instead, she appeared enthralled. “And then what?”

“Well, that’s the thing—nothing happened. See, she was about to get undressed, and it hit me like an arrow that I didn’t even know her name let alone anything about her. Not like…well, like with you. So I apologized for being too forward and asked her if she’d like to share a meal first, and then perhaps I could meet her parents, if she had them, and then that’s when she revealed the wings and horns and blue skin.”

“Oh, no, you had to kill her after that, didn’t you?”

“Sid was actually outside the room, but she didn’t attack, she just started apologizing for deceiving me, and then she told me I should go back to the jail because she’d been summoned to lure me away so some of the prisoners could be broken out.”

Celeste’s mouth had fallen open. There—there was the disappointment, and he shouldn’t have been surprised, he was bound to wreck something so perfect.

“You’re telling me that a succubus decided to forgo the opportunity to have you and instead outed her fellow infernals because you were so sweet to her?”

Was that how it had gone? Reeve shrugged.

“Well, her loss, and lucky me,” she said and grabbed his face, pulling him into another deep kiss. She slid onto her back again, bringing him along with her, and her hand found his veiled cock once more. Instead of a light brush this time, she groped with urgency and slid up the entirety of his length. “Very lucky me, it feels like.”

Celeste’s husky remark gave Reeve a surge of confidence he’d never known, even when battling evil with the certainty he couldn’t lose with the gods on his side. His breeches were unceremoniously cast off, and finally there was nothing between them. Her hand could truly wrap itself around him, her fingers gliding along his length and making him shiver. Surely she couldn’t expect much more if she were going to keep doing that. He sucked in a short breath and grit his teeth, much too quickly being brought to bliss.

“Wait,” he managed, stilling her hand. “There are things I’m supposed to do first.”

She hummed out an inquisitive noise as he took a deep inhale and thought of blood and gore and death to keep from bringing things to an end too soon.

Reeve quietly thanked himself for committing to so many daily pushups as, suspended on one elbow, he brought his other hand to her belly. She twitched under his touch, and then drew in a slow, breast-heaving breath as he dragged his palm lower.

Her eyelids fluttered, the silvery sparkle there dimming, and her lips parted with a gentle gasp as he caressed between her legs. It was the warmest part of her, and for a moment Reeve thought he had accidentally cast a spell. She’d been so quiet until that point, but as his fingers moved in the way he’d been both shown and read about, she arched her back and clawed at the linens and moaned.

“Did I hurt you?” He pulled his hand away, worried only for a brief moment he’d somehow drawn blood, but was pleased to see that wasn’t the case.

She rocked her head from side to side. “No, Reeve, I just want you.”

“But I barely…”

Celeste giggled. “Well, you said a lot of nice things. Believe me, I’m more than ready.”

Reeve nodded, but all of his earlier hesitation came rushing back with the fear of disappointing her—his cock was nowhere near as limber as his fingers, and how was it meant to reach the important places?

But then she hooked one of her long legs around his hips and smirked up at him, and Reeve’s determination to give her exactly what she wanted won out.

CHAPTER 27
THE STAIRWAY TO EMPYREA GLITTERS ONLY BECAUSE IT’S SO RECENTLY BEEN MOPPED, SO TAKE CARE NOT TO SLIP

I t was clear to Celeste that Reeve had no idea what he was doing, but he was putting his whole heart into doing it.

She let him pursue passage unsuccessfully for only a few moments as he tried both to watch the shadowy space between the two of them and close it at the same time, and then she pressed a hand to his chest, bringing him to stillness.

He grit his teeth, eyes roving up to meet hers, and she gave him the kindest look she could. “Why don’t you lie down?”

“But how am I to…”

Celeste shook her head gently and gave him a push, rolling him onto his back. She slipped a leg over his hips and straddled him, allowing his length to jut up between the two. No wonder he’d had trouble, she thought, running fingers around its crown. His whole body jerked beneath her. Thrilled, she did it again and wrapped her other hand around him fully, gently testing just how intense the ride was about to be.

But Reeve’s eyes had gone wide—too wide. She released him and instead touched his temple, moving a curl away from his face. “Are you all right?”

Reeve nodded, but she didn’t quite believe him, which was an anomaly, but she supposed, if he could lie to anyone, it would be himself.

“We don’t have to do this,” she said, squeezing his shoulder, and she could feel his muscles relax. “We can stop and just—”

He shook his head swiftly. “I just…I don’t want to let you down.”

“I don’t think you could let me down if you tried.” Celeste leaned forward and kissed him, his cock cradled between their stomachs, and his soft lips answered urgently. Hands took her waist and clung on with a need words couldn’t say. When she pulled back, he wasn’t looking unsure anymore, gaze traveling down her body and palms roving along her thighs with the kind of reverence she’d never felt in someone’s touch.

For once, Celeste didn’t feel the need to hide away in a shadow, sitting up fully and gently gripping the base of him. She leaned on his chest as she pressed up and then slowly lowered down to nestle him snuggly inside her, watching his face and listening to his ragged inhale for any sign things were not all right. But, crickets, perhaps it was her that would not be all right—he filled her so fully, she wondered how she would move at all.

Reeve pawed at her thighs as she straddled him and arched her back. His eyes fell shut, breath held. Under her hands, his heart beat wildly in his chest. He was as warm as the rising sun between her legs, and against her own chest, her locket thrummed.

No, not now, she thought, but there were no shadows creeping out to surround them, no protection needed. There was only her own beating heart.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

One of his eyes popped open. “There’s more?”

Celeste grinned and rolled her hips forward, pleased to feel she’d gotten used to him so quickly. “There’s quite a bit more, depending on the strength of your will.”

Reeve weakly raised a hand to his chest and attempted to make a sign with his fingers over his heart. “If that’s the case, I think I’ve been preparing my whole life.”

As it turned out, Reeve’s will proved slightly weaker than he had predicted, which neither surprised nor disappointed Celeste despite his breathless apologies. His conviction, however, was far from faltering, which was both a shock and a much too luxurious gratification. After coming undone and catching his breath, he took her by the hips, and with one swift move, had her on her back.

“What’s happening?” she asked as he shifted backward and knelt between her bent knees.

Reeve’s brows shot up and he grinned as one of his hands slid under her backside. “I can’t wait to show you what I learned.”

And so Reeve finally put all those questions he always came up with to frustratingly good use.

“How does this feel?”

“What if I use my thumb and my palm together?”

“Can you go again? I want to try that with my mouth.”

“’Ow ‘oz ‘his ‘eel?”

“Those aren’t words, Celeste, so how am I to know if—oh, all right, clearly you’re enjoying it.”

Eventually, when his hands and jaw tired out, she took advantage of the return of his will. With his morale higher, he lasted much longer, and then, sweaty and exhausted, they curled up together beneath the linens and finally found stillness.

The candle had burnt down to a flickering nub, and in the darker darkness, Celeste wrapped her arms around Reeve’s neck. Despite his bulk and the scars, his skin was soft like she imagined and pleasantly warm too. She nuzzled her face against his shoulder, then came to an abrupt halt. She hadn’t lied for once when she’d accidentally admitted to being with a…high number of men, but she had never remained with them after, arms entangled and bodies pressed together.

She lifted her head, stricken suddenly that he wouldn’t want her cuddling into him, stabbing him with her bony elbows and hips and rubbing her cheeks on his shoulder. But Reeve only grinned sleepily up at her, his arms resting around her middle, hands spread on her back and hugging her close.

Celeste studied his face. She could ask, and she could get the truth, but then she knew she needed to trust what she saw. And what Celeste saw was a good man who was happy.

“You have a little scar on your forehead,” she said, touching it gently. “And here, on your shoulder.” She’d seen that one in the caves under Briarwyke, but the details of the others that crossed over his chest and his stomach hadn’t been visible in the low light. “This one was deep.” She ran a hand below his navel, tracing a particularly bad injury.

“Mmhmm. That one almost killed me.”

“Thank Valcord it didn’t,” she said, squeezing him tighter.

He chuckled. “Thank Flint, actually. He healed me after we brought down the hydra.”

Celeste listened to the quiet left after Reeve’s words. He wouldn’t remember being drunk, laying in the same spot, telling her about how no one wanted to listen to the sad things. But she remembered.

“You and your friends were brave,” she whispered, pressing her head to his chest, “but bravery is difficult in the face of so much danger.”

She felt him shrug. “We protected the riverfront. It was considered a great success, but…” He made a small, uncertain noise.

“But what?”

He was quiet, but she could feel the struggle beneath her as if he were searching for a way to both lie and not.

“You’re a good man, Reeve,” she said into his chest, “but you don’t have to be brave and strong all the time.”

He lay still for a moment, and then Reeve slid out from beneath her and rolled to his side. His arms remained around her, but he squeezed her into his chest, and she felt his cheek rest on the top of her head. “No one expected it that morning,” he said, voice rumbling quietly into her, “but the call came, and we went because it was our duty, me, Flint, Gable, and Rory…”

Celeste ran fingers along Reeve’s spine as he spoke, his amber eyes dark and solemn. There was very little heroism in his words this time, only a heaviness as he told her the story she already knew. This version was bloodier, more painful, and of course, there was death. A kind of death that he’d not yet experienced, not of someone who he had grown up with and considered not just a brother-in-arms, but someone he had had a deeper kinship with. His friendships with the others were always important, but none had been like his with Rory.

As the heartbreak of the tale tapered off, Celeste felt tears in her eyes but blinked them away. He went on to tell her that he was afraid, sometimes, it would be him next, and he hadn’t really done anything yet.

“But you’ve been to so many places in the realm and helped so many people.”

“Maybe, but when it comes to Rory, no one else really remembers. Or, they remember less, as time goes on, and…well, he was just one of us, you know? And it’s a noble thing to be a knight, honorable to serve Valcord and the temple, but…”

“It’s lonely,” Celeste finished for him, and he nodded.

His voice had gone drowsy, his grip on her a little weaker, and he told her of a different time when he and Gable had been conscripted into the ranks of an eleven-year-old who had lost her cat.

“Scratched me to the Abyss when we found it,” he mumbled between deep yawns, “but it couldn’t be blamed, stuck in a well half the day…”

Celeste chuckled and sighed, the sleepiness in his voice intoxicating. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “You can always tell me anything, even the sad stuff.”

He inhaled against her head, and his hands spanned her back as he snuggled against her. “I love you,” he mumbled into her hair.

“You what?” She lifted her head, but his eyes were closed. “Reeve, you don’t mean that.”

He only murmured back a nonsense word followed by a deep, slumberous breath.

All of the lethargy was beaten right out of her by the flailing of her heart against her ribs. What in the realm had she done to make him think she was worth loving?

She stared at his slack face as he fell into a sleep he had just so unfairly ripped away from her. He couldn’t love her, not something so wretched and weak and dark, despite what he’d said about devotion as they pieced together the altar’s mural or when he gazed into her eyes in bed together. She wanted to shake him awake, make him explain, but she was left alone with her thoughts despite the massive arms wrapped around her and the heavy breath falling over her head and the words that had just been spoken dancing through the chamber, and…well, no, she wasn’t alone at all, was she? Men said all sorts of things when they’d yet to get one in bed, and sometimes even more outlandish things while in the act, but he was still there, after, even if he was asleep.

Celeste lay her head down again and nibbled at her lip as she watched his chest languidly expand. She’d known herself when she woke in the temple after the flooded caverns that she loved Reeve, and perhaps she’d known even before that. Perhaps she’d known the moment they met.

Well, no, that certainly wasn’t the case—not when he was trying to kill her—but maybe that was how love worked. Maybe it decided things on its own and just waited for everybody else to catch up.

It didn’t really matter, she supposed, because it was easy with Reeve, even with the awfulness and complications of the realm around them. But certainly he didn’t feel the same. She was temporary, replaceable, and would be a dark spot in his otherwise bright past, not a shadowy future that dragged him down and away from his duty and his dreams. He belonged elsewhere, some uncursed place where the sun shone, and she belonged…

I belong here. As she lay in his arms, she felt no urging in her chest to run or hide and the surrounding space didn’t push her away. In fact, Reeve’s wards fixed to the walls felt like a warm embrace when she walked into the bed chamber, something she had never once truly felt. Just like the warmth of arcana buried into the hairpin he carved her, it was like being welcome as opposed to begrudgingly tolerated, no longer a burden, but belonging.

When Reeve had gone out into the storm to find Eliot, Celeste knew he would be all right—it was just a storm—yet she’d worried it would be the last she’d ever see of him, and then what would she do?

She had worried about that silently while she cleaned up the wounds Charlie had given herself from scrambling around in the dried-out briars looking for the boy. Once the girl was calmer, she had wandered to the back of the temple and the big windows that looked out on the graveyard.

“They don’t remember,” Charlie had said, voice hoarse as she stared through the streaks of rain into the darkness. “They were babies when their families died, so me and Halfrida are their family now, but…”

A shock of lightning brightened the stones. Neither flinched.

“But you still remember,” Celeste said quietly at her side.

Charlie nodded. “My sister took care of me after mom and dad got the plague. I was useless. I just cried all the time. But then she got sick and died too.”

Celeste’s gaze roved through the darkness, the faint outline of the graves standing against the shadows, and then there was the mound with no marker. My sister died here too, she thought to say, but was unsure if it would be a comfort.

No more tears fell from Charlie’s eyes. She just gazed out into the darkness. “I promised myself I would be a better sister to Eliot and Willow than I was to Isabelle, but I’m worse.”

Celeste rounded on her. “You are a good sister, Charlie.”

The girl glared out at the graveyard. “I’m not even really their sister.”

“Yes, you are.” Celeste took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look back. “You love them, don’t you?”

She nodded, dark eyes wide. “But what if—”

“No, no what if. You just tell them you love them. Tell them because they need to know, if it’s true.”

“Well, it is,” the girl said as if there were no more obvious truth in the realm.

“Then tell them.”

So Charlie did tell them. She’d stumbled through the words over and over when Eliot was brought back to the temple, and at the inn, she’d hugged a sleepy Willow too and said it again even though the littlest girl didn’t understand why and only giggled back. But it was easier for children because they meant it so differently, so purely. They weren’t tainted by terrible deeds and dark magic.

Celeste lay awake, wrapped in Reeve’s arms for a long time after the memory passed. His words, however, remained buzzing around her brain. Had she tricked him? Was she still just trapping him there in that same bed chamber without dark arcana but with some other evil means? Something so good, it couldn’t love something so dark, but perhaps she’d ruined him after all. Or perhaps…perhaps he’d made her better?

“I love you too,” she whispered even though he couldn’t hear, and it felt so real that she believed whatever it was between them could last at least a little longer. Celeste vowed silently then she would protect the goodness that was inside him, buried her face into his shoulder, and finally fell into a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER 28
DESTINED TO SUCCUMB

R eeve had never been happier. He’d also never been stickier, nor had he smelled this way, but if he were being honest with himself—which he had to be, theologically speaking—he could absolutely get used to all of it.

Celeste was sprawled out in his arms, the light of dawn through the stained-glass windows turning her pale skin blue. Her face was covered by that mass of black hair, and he was fairly certain she was snoring beneath, but it was the best sound he’d ever heard. Well, second best after a medley of what she’d conjured up the night before. One of her hands was squished against his cheek, and when he eased the linens down, she had a leg thrown over his hip, gripping like she needed him.

Reeve eased his hand onto her knee, but she didn’t stir. He traced his fingers along the underside of her calf as far as his reach would go, and she only hummed pleasantly, hooking her leg around him tighter. He returned to her thigh, his palm pressed more firmly to her skin, rounding to her backside as he wrapped his other arm beneath her shoulders.

I should tell her, he thought, because the urge to say he loved her hadn’t gone away since the night before when he had spilled everything else into her including those things he never told anyone, those memories and fears he kept to himself, but the words were wobbly in his throat.

Then she was wiggling against him, and every thought left his head as his hands dipped lower and her drowsy morning greetings turned into squeals of delight.

Reeve was only disappointed when they had to get out of the bed, but it was already late, and there was much to do in preparation for the sweetbriar festival. Celeste set to baking and urged Reeve out into the courtyard to, “do those morning things you do. You might be late, but I think Valcord will forgive you.”

He tended to Earlylyte and cleaned off the portico of debris that had fallen in the storm. There were more limbs in the courtyard that he stacked by the shed for future kindling, and a section of fallen fence that he propped back up. Valcord would never be displeased if a follower devoted their time to the care of a place or a person instead of in reverence to him—a thing he’d been told but may not have truly understood until that morning. When the yard was acceptable, he returned to find Celeste had made a massive tray of tea cakes.

“We’ll have to make an appearance at the festival,” she said as she drizzled honey on the crusty edges of the sweets, “but then we can head back for Ima’riel’s when it gets dark. Everyone should be safe in the town center, and with the greenhouses empty, we might have our best shot at finding that last sieve.”

Reeve nodded, listening, but the moment Celeste turned away, he reached for a cake.

“Those aren’t for you,” she said as she pushed a stone into the oven with a mass of herby, risen dough on it.

Reeve pulled his hand back, looking about for a shadow she was using to somehow spy on him. He found nothing.

“But you can have one anyway.” She turned back to him with a grin. “Or two or three or four, if you want, and I think you know why.”

He only took two, not entirely sure what she meant. Reeve could count, of course, but it was hard to keep track when so focused on technique, and in all things, Reeve resolved to not be greedy.

Plum came to land on his shoulder, little talons digging in. Reeve ripped the corner off a tea cake and offered it up, but the wyvern squawked and gestured with its long neck for the rest of it.

“Don’t you know how much smaller you are than I am?” he asked, but there was no arguing with a creature whose brain was also much smaller, so he handed over the second cake and watched the wyvern tear in.

“I need a bath,” Celeste said as she licked at the honey dripping down her fingers. “Do you think you can help me?”

Reeve shoved his cake into his mouth, and got to his feet. In one swift movement, he scooped her up and headed for the bathing chamber with her squealing in his arms.

It was early evening when the two finally made it to the center of town. Celeste balanced the still-large pile of tea cakes as she rode on Earlylyte’s back, and Reeve led the horse. It seemed every family in Briarwyke had brought their dining tables to the circle, and all sorts of delectable dishes had been set out to be shared.

There were lights twinkling from the eaves of the inn and other buildings around the circle, arcane in nature and glittering in every color. More bustling than he’d ever seen the place, and despite the mud and dead thorns everywhere, an air of cheeriness swept through Briarwyke. Finally, the drab murkiness of the village had been washed away, or at least temporarily covered up, and it matched the bliss in his own heart.

Celeste, however, was wary both of the crowds and the impending threat of Syphon. That was what threats did, pend and make one wary, but he whispered in her ear that it would be all right, he would let nothing happen to her, and she looked at him with silvery eyes that said she believed him.

There were villagers he didn’t recognize, and though he couldn’t know them all, one in particular stood out likely because of the bright red hovering so near her. An old woman tottered up from East Road carrying a staff covered in blooming flowers, and atop was perched Geezer’s scarlet bird—a relief to see Zak had found his way back. The woman’s gauzy eyes scanned the festivities, and then she found a quiet place to sit on the porch of the Dew Drop Inn. When Baylen ambled up to her, offering food, Reeve thought no more about her presence.

Geezer himself was running about, accompanied often by Ima’riel, checking on the lights and the thorny Kvesarian sweetbriars, still dry, no spark of magic in them yet. Celeste was relieved to see he had returned from researching in time for the festival, but then he went up to her and told her he had remembered something important. The look on her face said she was both thrilled and horrified to hear.

“All right,” she breathed, “what is it?”

“Oh, I’ve completely forgotten again.”

Celeste looked like she might scream, but she pressed her lips together tightly instead.

“I remembered the important thing while I was in my archives. Treacherous, that place, got so many parchment cuts,”—at this, he showed them his palms, but they appeared unmarred—“but then I realized I would be late for the festival if I didn’t leave, so I hurried back, and in my hurrying, it just popped right out of my head. But I did find this!” Geezer pulled a roll of parchment from one of his scarlet robe’s pockets and waved it about in her face.

Reeve plucked it away before Celeste became too overwhelmed with the whole prospect.

“It’s a ward,” the mage announced, and Reeve could feel before even unraveling it how profoundly powerful it was. “Thought it might come in handy while I try to remember the thing I forgot. I’m sure it will come back when the time is right, though—that’s usually how arcana works. At least, I think so.” Then he left them to again assist Ima’riel.

Geezer was right about arcana’s machinations, an unfortunate if dramatic truth, which is often how these things go.

Gaspard gathered up the children and music broke out into the circle. He’d apparently taught them each an instrument, and though it wasn’t mastery by any means, it was an amusing concert. The cobbles around the boarded-up well were dry enough to dance, and though neither Reeve nor Celeste really knew what they were doing, he convinced her to join him, and together they held hands and laughed and tripped over one another in something like the music’s rhythm.

Celeste was exceptionally beautiful with her hair bundled up and pinned back with the gift he’d given her, every sharp plane of her face drawn into joy as she laughed. It was as easy and wonderful as he hoped it would be, spending time with someone who he knew truly adored his company, and he forgot about the murkiness that stalked the forest until the sun fully dropped away and the moons rose into the sky.

Ima’riel had explained that the sweetbriar festival was meant to go all through the night and the flowers of the thorny bushes would bloom with the dawn if her hard work succeeded. Indeed, it looked like none of the villagers were winding down as nighttime closed in. On the contrary, more food was brought out, and louder music was played, and ale flowed freely. Halfrida kept attempting to tend to the food, but Fitz and the other hunters wouldn’t allow it, instead taking turns pulling her off to dance. Even Kori was having a good time as she broke out a hidden skill, dagger juggling, that Baylen was keen to learn as a close-to-exhausted Ima’riel stood by with healing at the ready.

Reeve and Celeste lingered a short while longer, but eased their way to the edges of where the lights reached, and eventually they climbed atop Earlylyte again and silently returned to North Road.

“That was fun,” said Celeste, though her voice was weary. “I’m sorry we have to leave early.”

“You’re lying,” he teased. “I know you’re actually relieved.”

She chuckled and leaned back against him. “I couldn’t do that every evening, no, but I could be persuaded to make an exception on occasion.”

Reeve grinned, knowing he would be just as content remaining at home in the quiet, provided he was with her.

Earlylyte’s walk was slow, and they reached Ima’riel’s in a darkness that would have been much deeper without the brightness of Lo and Ero. The cottage loomed in the clearing, standing silent and empty, and the two hesitantly went inside. Celeste pulled out a loaf of bread from her satchel and placed it on the table. “Since we are sort of trespassing,” she explained, “and there’s a high likelihood we may break something, I thought I’d apologize ahead of time.”

The cottage was small, and despite their thorough search of it, clearly didn’t contain the sieve. This wasn’t a surprise to either of them—it was much more likely that the final sieve was buried somewhere in the greenhouses, but at least they had the ward from Geezer which they could now use to seal it in once they found it. Celeste insisted Reeve carry it because he was clearly good with wards, but he could see the sadness hidden at the corners of her features at the prospect of locking away the sieve for good.

As there were two greenhouses and two of them, they split the task, Reeve casting his ball of light, and Celeste calling up a black flame that she carried on a stick. How black fire could shine was rough on Reeve’s brain, but he was used to not fully understanding things, happy enough that she would be easy to spot through the glass.

Alone in the greenhouse, Sid spoke up for the first time all day, his low voice cutting into the quiet of the plants, “So?”

Reeve pushed aside the massive leaves of a cabbage to inspect the dark soil beneath. “So, what?”

“I guess you’ll want to plight your troth with her now?”

Reeve screwed up his face at the sword’s crassness, about to sheepishly proclaim he already had, then straightened as he realized what Sid meant, the idea bursting brilliantly in his mind. “Marry her? Well, yes, of course, but I need to ask first, don’t I?”

“You need to think,” snapped the sword. “She touches your cock once—”

“—more than once—”

“—and you’ve gone dumber than you’ve ever been!”

Reeve pushed past a trellis of peas and knocked a vine loose in his frustration. He apologized to the plant as he tucked it back in with its crop. “This is not a matter of thinking, Sid—I know how I feel.”

“Right, how you feel. Is this just like how you felt you needed to investigate the sound of that supposedly crying child in the Sanctuary of the Usurper? Or how about when you felt you should hand feed that griffin cub?”

“I still have all my fingers,” he groaned, “and those times were different anyway.”

“Different from when you brainlessly opened that crate in the Viscardi Crypts and it turned out to be a living beast disguised as a chest with teeth and a taste for exceptionally dim-witted knights? How, pray tell, is this really all that different?”

“Because now I’m in love.” The word came out clearer and quicker than Reeve had expected. He’d never heard himself say it before, love, not like that.

He knew the priests and priestesses loved him, though it was implied rather than said, and he shared with the other knights a kind of unspoken love that was better expressed through manly nods and grunts. But this was simple and unhindered. It should have been complex, made difficult by his duty to his god and Celeste’s ties to dark arcana, but those things didn’t seem to matter when faced with how his heart swelled at just the thought of her name.

“I hate that I have to convince you of this.” He peered through the greenhouse glass to see Celeste’s black flame flicker across the way. “Can’t you feel it too?” As he wrapped a hand around the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker, the sword fell quiet. There was no arcana in his hold, magic unneeded, only the honesty in his heart.

“Fine,” the sword eventually sighed, “but at least let her wield me.”

Reeve grimaced down at a patch of rather ordinary carrots. “Now you want her to do that?”

“No, but I want you to be safe. I do know how you feel, bud, I’ve always known, but the way you feel and the truth aren’t necessarily the same. Look at yourself, skulking through someone else’s property without permission, searching for a secretly hidden, ancient elven arcana you intend to do what with when it’s found? This is not like you, not like a Holy Knight of Valcord.”

“But I am—” Reeve swallowed down the title. A Holy Knight of Valcord was all he had ever been, before that a child, thrown away and unneeded, but now?

He glanced back up through the greenhouse glass to watch Celeste inspect a flowering bush. She so carefully pushed back its leaves, a shadowy arm of dark arcana assisting her with an equally delicate care. As she leaned forward, she spotted something and took away her hand, and the plant’s limb swung back and thwacked her in the nose. She reeled and then was laughing at herself silently on the glass’s other side, and Reeve chuckled quietly too.

“Make her wield me,” Sid cut in. “If I don’t turn, then you’re assured to be safe, but if I do, you can still vanquish her. That ward Geezer gave you will help.”

Reeve’s stomach churned as anger burned in his chest, not just at the sword but at himself for once having the same thought. “I don’t need to test her. I trust Celeste, and you should too.”

Sid said nothing after that, and Reeve wondered if he might never hear the blade speak again.

With vexation muddying his ability to search, he went to Celeste and assisted her instead. Together, they thoroughly went over every inch of both greenhouses, but came upon no suspicious cracks or hidden glows.

“I suppose we can dig up her plants,” Celeste said hesitantly, pressing a hand to the soil and calling back the shadows she had sent out, “but I’m not feeling anything beneath the ground.”

“Neither am I.” Reeve doused his spell, much weaker under the moonlight but similarly telling him there was nothing arcane to feel.

They stepped out into the space between the two greenhouses under the light of the moons. It was quiet, the faint sound of music droning from the southern distance, and the air was warm. Ima’riel had explained that the day and night were equal in length when the sweetbriars were slated to bloom. Reeve was familiar with when the sun would rise dependent on the rhythm of the seasons, winter saw shorter days and summer long ones, but he never thought the day and night were truly anything but equal. They had always seemed like two halves of a necessary whole to him, one needing the other.

Celeste stood at his side, staring up at the sky, brow and lips pinched in thought. He brushed his hand along his pocket to feel the key he’d taken from the cottage. He carried it on him still without thought or reason—known thought or reason, at least—only that Valcord had urged him to that place twice and had not punished him with guilt for taking the key. In fact, Reeve hadn’t felt guilt at all, not for poking around the greenhouse, not for missing morning reverence, not for indulging in every obscene—

A scream pierced the air. It was carried to them on a whipping breeze, and they quickly looked at one another.

“What was that?”

“Not a fox.”

Both ran, bursting through the greenhouse and around the cottage to find Earlylyte already pawing at the ground and snorting as more horrified sounds rose from the village proper. Reeve tossed Celeste up onto the horse’s back, climbed up before her, and at a gallop they raced down North Road.

Mud splattered as they went, but quickly the cries died off. They should have seen villagers scattering if they’d fled some disaster, but the road was eerily calm, the sounds of the panting horse and galloping hooves all that filled the night air. The arcane lights that had been so beautiful as they sparkled over Briarwyke had dimmed, swirling instead with a murky color and throwing twisted shadows along the road.

Celeste gripped onto Reeve’s waist, and she gasped when they saw the vines. They hadn’t bloomed, no greenery or lushness to them, but they had somehow come alive. Thicker and darker than they’d been, the thorny briars sprawled all over town and pulsed with unlife as if a viscous liquid pumped beneath their husks. Where before the briar bushes had been dry and resigned to being buried in shadowed corners and clinging to the edges of the buildings, they were now massive, climbing up walls and onto roofs, twisting around lampposts and enveloping the lights, and, worst of all, entangled about the paralyzed bodies of the villagers.

Still as death, it was apparent they had tried to flee. Earlylyte galloped past bodies sprawled out on the North Road, wrapped in trailing tendril after tendril and fixed to the earth, eyes closed. The vines continued to crawl slowly over them, working away from the center, spreading, then the horse reared back and whinnied. Reeve pulled him to a stop, and Celeste jumped down, Reeve following.

“You have to send him back.” Celeste grabbed onto Reeve’s arm as Earlylyte reared again, a vine crawling toward the horse as if it sensed his presence and meant to ensnare him just like the others.

“Go to the temple,” Reeve called, and the creature darted back the way they’d come.

In the muck and mud, Celeste slid as she sprinted away from the crawling vines. Reeve wrapped a hand around his sword and cast with the other, calling up light. As it shone on the pulsing, blackened tendrils, the plant let out a hiss and recoiled, but it let no one go.

He raised his sword and cut down through the closest vines, severing them plainly as a spray of slimy blackness splattered out all over. The fallen coils twitched where they landed, and then began to move toward the two, the severed ends healing and continuing their assault.

“It’s like the hydra,” Reeve said and began to conjure divine fire along his blade.

“No!” Celeste took his arm and doused his flame with a flick over her locket. “You’ll burn them too.”

Reeve swore under his breath as she pointed at the trapped villagers, all out of options and far too soon, but Celeste was already pulling him toward the circle, deeper into the fray with a bravery he hoped he could manage in himself.

They came upon the circle, unrecognizable from how it had been only hours earlier. The tables were flipped and crushed beneath the vines that entangled the bodies of those who’d been slowest. The very center of Briarwyke pulsed with that murkiness Reeve felt simmering beneath the village when he first arrived. His hand found Celeste’s waist, pulling her close. The briars had taken everything, but they would not take her.

There was a single figure that still moved, standing atop one of the tables that remained upright. The elderly stranger Reeve had identified before was small, but she held her staff overhead like a beacon, a green glow against the murkiness closing in. Vines had captured her ankles but went no higher.

“You?” Reeve called, leveling his sword at the woman.

Celeste stilled his hand, pointing.

Across the circle came another figure, stepping out from the Fitzroy Manor garden. He had never taken the same shape, but there was no mistaking that this was Syphon. As tall as a man and a half, the lanky limbs had filled out, and the horns too had grown. He casually strode with legs no longer just a smoky mass, and in his chest the final sieve was nestled, green, just between the red and blue.

“The manor’s garden,” hissed Celeste, her grip on Reeve tighter. “Oh, I should have known! How else was it blooming so early in the season? And Fhiz’rys? The Fitzroys have elven blood! Of course the last sieve was there all along.”

Reeve’s gaze darted around at the bodies ensnared in the vines—so many of them, Edwin Fitzroy included. At the entrance to the Fitzroy garden, one of the brick columns was utterly destroyed. Beside it, Geezer’s form looked older than it had ever been, hunched and entrapped as well, a smear of blood across his outstretched hands, the dagger he always wore fallen bloody at his feet. For all the magic that the mage had, he had been bested by Syphon too, a terrifying thought.

“They’re alive,” called the elderly woman atop the table, “but I’m not sure for how long I can hold this back.”

“You needn’t fret, witch,” answered Syphon, his inhuman-human form striding around the well at the cobblestone’s edge, running a hand over twisted vines. “They are simply asleep now, but I’ve no intention of killing them, they’re much more valuable alive. However, taking a few lives is a sacrifice I’m willing to make until I’m given what I want.”

“You’re not touching her,” Reeve growled. He would find a way to protect them all, no life would be lost, but Celeste’s wellbeing beyond survival mattered to him the most. Her grip on him shifted, though, and she loosened herself of his grasp.

She’d always known better, but his heart pounded with renewed fear when he noted how her eyes were locked onto the shadowy man, the silver in them swirling frantically. “He doesn’t want me,” she said and pushed Reeve away from the circle, farther from where Syphon had come to a stop.

Syphon clamped down onto one of the vines with a hand of too many fingers, and there was a terrible snapping and slithering amongst the tendrils as a form was lifted out of the brambles. “I think I’ll start with this one.”

Charlie’s eyes were closed, her head lolling to the side, and blood prickled up on her skin where the thorns had stabbed her. The vines began to squeeze.

“No!” Celeste stepped forward, and of course Syphon called back his arcana—that was what villains did, attacking those who were helpless to manipulate those who would do anything to help—and he left the girl tangled up but still breathing.

Reeve eyed the place he could sever Charlie from the vines. If he was quick and his aim was true, he could release her and fling her from harm’s way, and then—Celeste’s hand wrapped around his atop the Obsidian Widow Maker’s pommel.

There was a coldness then, a faint hovering of dark arcana that weaved through the warm, spring air. Celeste pressed herself up against his side. “I love you, Reeve,” she said, voice too low and solemn for the meaning of the words. He’d longed to hear them, to speak them, yet they were tainted then with a downfall he would do anything to prevent. “Please, remember that, no matter what happens.”

Murky shadows encircled Reeve’s limbs and his chest. Too quick and familiar to be shrugged off, noxscura laced itself between his fingers and tightened, and the sword slipped from his grasp right into Celeste’s waiting hand. In an instant, his arms were wrenched backward and bound behind him.

“Celeste?” he croaked, struggling against the magic he had come to trust, gazing up at the woman casting it on him as it dragged him to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not glancing back. “It’s the only way. I have to give him what he wants.”

Celeste wielded the Obsidian Widow Maker in two hands, gripping the hilt and using all of her strength to hold it aloft. The blade pulsed with a black light, so like her flame in the greenhouse, and Reeve’s chest pulsed in kind. It was still beautiful, that dark light, just like her.

She ripped the blade through the air, and shadows erupted from the obsidian steel, no divinity left within, only noxscura. Cobbles burst in the wake of the arcane blast, Briarwyke’s circle split right in two, and the dilapidated well was completely destroyed. In its place, a hole was left, darkness beyond.

Reeve would have been impressed if he weren’t so terrified of what he knew she was about to do. “Celeste, no, please!”

But she was already running. He struggled against her magic, calling up Valcord’s light from deep in his chest, but he had lost Sid, and she was stronger now than she had ever been.

Then Celeste dove into the darkness and was lost.

CHAPTER 29
KNOWING WHEN NOT TO LET GO

C eleste had never allowed noxscura to take her so fully, but she knew the well’s bottom was quite a long way to fall, and she wouldn’t survive the landing without a cushion. That was one thing shadows were good for, especially when they had been so entangled in her life and learned that she craved soft and buoyant things to see her through.

Because the shadows had learned even if Celeste hadn’t noticed—they were almost as good as she was at absorbing the realm around them, but they were slightly better at bouncing back.

Celeste landed gingerly on the rocky ground, but when her arcana cleared, she was only an inch away from the crackling dome. She knew when she saw the ring of light shimmering above in the caverns, that the noxscura pit was directly under the well in Briarwyke’s center, and when Reeve had sliced through the arcana suspending the water, she knew too there would no longer be a barrier to it, but it was still a shock to be inches away from disaster.

She scrambled backward, the fear that flooded her veins intensifying when she looked upward to see Syphon swooping down the destroyed well. Being followed was exactly what she wanted, but there could be no one else—the risk was far too great when pure noxscura killed almost everything it touched, and she had made a vow. Even if it were only to herself, she would keep her promise to protect.

Ripping her arm through the air, she sent more shadows to the surface, obstructing the hole and sealing herself in the depth of the cavern with Syphon. If her hold binding Reeve didn’t last, that barrier would.

“What in Empyrea do you think you’re doing?” shouted the sword.

“Crickets, you’re heavy,” she grumbled back, taking up the blade with two hands again and watching the tip wobble. The noxscura within her locket went wild.

Syphon coalesced on the other side of the dome. So close, his features were quick this time to fall into place, more authentic than they’d ever been with the divine glow lighting him from beneath. No more was he mostly haze and a collection of maybe-man-like bits, reminiscent of those she’d known, but wholly himself. He had a face now, he had a body, and though it was all too big and monstrous, it was complete, the dull orange and green and blue lights of the sieves he’d absorbed contained within.

But there was still something he wanted, needed even, and only she could give it to him.

“I was beginning to worry,” said Syphon, tipping his head. Raven hair brushed over his shoulders, mesmerizing in its movement, and citrine eyes sparkled with the radiant light below. “But I should have known you’d come—your sister was wrong about your loyalty, you simply place it where it is deserved.”

Celeste’s gaze fell to the dome of crackling arcana, the brightness of the golden light there meant to be protection—a brightness she could feel the ghost of inside herself. Her stomach tightened around that feeling. It had been love that put the protection there years ago, the love of someone who wanted to keep Briarwyke safe.

But the dome had been damaged since, and she understood now: the blade she’d seen in pieces within the Fitzroy Manor had done that, but that weapon hadn’t been strong enough to completely break through. It had been foolish for Fitz’s father to try and access the noxscura with an inferior weapon some forty years prior, probably prodded on by an overzealous blood mage. They had only proved to crack the shield and allowed the dark arcana to leak out, slowly infecting the town ever since.

The curse on Briarwyke was real, the village left to suffer through the poison that was noxscura. Poison that only Celeste could risk enduring. But even if she could seal the shield’s cracks, the pool would be left, a constant, deadly threat, forever sought out by arcane users for selfish purposes. Users like her sister, the secret of why she’d brought them to Briarwyke and toiled for so long now painfully obvious.

“What are you going to do with the villagers?” Her voice shook, but she pushed the words past the lump that threatened to keep her quiet forever. She needed to know because so often things went wrong, and she had surely used up all her luck the previous night when things had, for once, gone right.

“I won’t kill them,” he assured her and then shrugged a single, horn-tipped shoulder. “That would be a waste. They’re much more useful alive.”

“You said you only wanted the town back.”

“And are those within it not part of the town themselves? They may be the kin of those who locked me away, but they are the ones here now, and they belong to me by right. Otherwise who would I provide for? Who would I protect?” His voice was slick on her ears and in her mind, but it didn’t slip past the memory of another voice, so painfully similar, that promised protection but never meant it.

Celeste’s innards went cold. Ice bled into her veins, and they hardened. “They won’t…they won’t stay,” she insisted, sword quivering though leveled. They’re not like me, she thought.

“They will have food and water and warmth—everything they could desire. They will be grateful to be kept safe from the suffering and discomfort of the world. And, eventually, they will love me.” Utter certainty dripped from his words. “But don’t worry: you will always be my favorite—my most clever, my most gracious, my most cherished pet,” he said with such a warmth to his praise.

The hardness in her belly softened. No one had before called her clever or gracious because she’d never been those things, had never earned being anyone’s cherished anything. Proof of Celeste’s wretchedness sprouted all over Briarwyke in the vines meant to bloom with good magic turned evil. If she hadn’t opened the apotrope without thinking, all of this could have been avoided. If she had only said something sooner, those above could have been spared. But Celeste’s life had always been, until recently, a series of disastrous if-onlys and failed virtues.

But someone saw prospect in her now, and she’d had the chance, however briefly, to be loved.

Syphon’s eyes dipped down to the blade as he reached over the dome with an arm so long there was hardly any effort, and his fingers grazed her cheek. She let the glassy touch slide over her skin and didn’t dare to move.

“You will give me what I want,” she said, unsure if it were a question or a demand. “When I break through and collect the noxscura for you, then you’re going to take it all away.”

Syphon tipped his head once more, a hint of pity in the bend to his brow. “I will do this for you, remove your burden and carry it myself, but there are limits, pet, as I’ve told you. You will remain by my side, and in time, we will both be free.” He chuckled, and it filled the cavern, pulling back his too-many-fingered hand and smirking down at her with the satisfaction of already having won. “I knew that you would find a way to free us both, and by tricking that righteous moron too.”

Celeste nodded once, biting the inside of her mouth and holding back the shadows that wanted to lash out.

“Betrayer!” shouted Sid from her hands as he was lifted. “Heathen! Witch!”

Noxscura wrapped around Celeste’s arms so they would not shake. The sword wasn’t wrong—she had stolen him, and she was about to wield him for a terrible undertaking, but couldn’t he see? Couldn’t he understand? She squeezed the hilt in both hands, its heft almost too much. I’m so sorry, Sid.

And then the sword simply said, “Oh.”

There was a lightness that started in her toes. It traveled upward, flourishing in her chest until it reached her hands where the Obsidian Widow Maker became a weightless thing, and the blade that had always been black glowed anew with a terrible brilliance so dark it swallowed up the light of the dome beneath it.

“There’s my good girl.” Syphon’s words made her stomach squirm as he stepped back, mingling with the shadows of the cavern, and Celeste was left alone with the deadly pool below.

She raised the weapon above her head, an extension of herself as if she were born to be its wielder, and noxscura swept along with it. Without hesitation, she spun the hilt in hand and plunged the blade downward.

Divine arcana sparked, shaking the cavern. Magic seared up her arms, defending against the intrusion, hot and angry as it burned her skin. Her shoulders and back screamed as she struggled, but she had practice now with smothering divinity, and the noxscura was unwavering in its aid until there was a terrible crack. Golden light filled the cavern and just as quickly collapsed, snuffed into nonexistence by the darkness.

No longer trapped behind the protective barrier, silvery dread swirled before Celeste. She caught herself before she tumbled in, and there, in the mirror-like surface, was her reflection. Face drawn thin and pale, black hair bundled messily as strands fell free of the knot atop her head, and eyes that were identical to the cursed color before her. Her figure sloshed with the living liquid shifting against the edges of the earthen dome as if trying to crawl out. To touch her. To consume her.

“Quickly,” said Syphon from the shadows, and Celeste nearly collapsed into the pool until she felt the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker grow suddenly heavy again in her hand.

She stepped back and swung, releasing the sword so that it clattered away into the darkness of the cavern.

“What are you doing?” Syphon snapped.

“It would be destroyed inside. The sword can be collected after.” She didn’t look at him, voice already raw as she staggered back to the basin and dropped her hands onto either side of it. Her own, familiar noxscura was wrapped tightly around her limbs, but she remained in control, though she wished the arcana would do it for her.

Syphon urged her on, his words paling beneath the liquid’s sounds and her own beating heart. Unlike in the dreams he’d forced on her, he could not push her under—he was smart enough to know touching pure noxscura was too great a risk. It would have to be siphoned through her, and then?

Celeste snapped her gaze up just once and caught his, hungry and ruinous.

Then he could have it all.

The pain was worse than she had ever remembered, but once she stepped inside, there was no escaping. She squeezed her eyes shut as the deep freeze of the noxscura took her, and in the darkness behind her lids, she saw Delphine. She had done this, suffered the pure arcana twice, once willingly, knowing the potential of death it held. Celeste would never truly know why, if her sister had done it for her, for the lot of the nox-touched children, or simply for herself, but it didn’t matter. Delphine was dead, but this they would always share—Celeste too would survive for at least as long as it would take to protect those she loved.

An unending night sky of bursting stars enveloped Celeste, their lights sharpening into blades that opened wounds over every inch of her flesh. Crimson wept from her limbs, her chest, her face, and then the light shifted, the color all drawn away, and her blood turned silver as it seeped back under her skin with the sting of venom from planes beyond.

Darkness came after, and then relief at the silence and weightlessness that followed. Unsure if she still existed, unable to move or see or speak, she waited, and there was a trickling away from her of pain, sorrow, guilt, shame, and then last, beneath it all, the glint of something small and fragile that had been hidden and left to die. But it was still alive, and even in her chimerical state, to it she clung.

Existence came crashing back into Celeste with a force that knocked the breath from her. Eyes flying open, she knew she had become the things that Syphon had promised, a creature with limitless power that was unstoppable, but it was not meant to last. The blood was already coming, a thin trickle from her nose, and her innards were shuffling themselves around to make room for the magic that would eventually be her undoing unless she gave it away.

She stood in the basin, now dry, lifting a weak arm to beckon Syphon closer. Without hesitation he went, moving with a grace and command that told her he was sure this was as things were meant to be. Hands pressed into her cheeks, and he was as cold as the noxscura had been, claws biting at her flesh. But it didn’t matter. It would be gone soon. All of it.

Celeste was lifted onto her toes as terrible magic pulsed under her skin, trying and failing to find purchase. So strange beside the other noxscura that lived in her locket and so often swam in her veins, the two tussled between her organs, splashed in her bile, gnawed at her bones. She cleansed the pure arcana, and it ate away at her as it changed, and then it heard Syphon’s call.

Gods, could he truly do it? He had told her she would have to remain at his side for moons as the noxscura was slowly bled away, but she hadn’t really expected he would ever allow her the peace of being free. Yet Syphon was already leaching it from her, and the arcana purred in blissful response, happy to go, to leave the hostility coating her innards. Even if it took a lifetime, burning away the shroud she existed under was all she had ever wanted.

I don’t want to be like this.

I don’t have to be like this.

But I am…

Celeste lifted her gaze to meet Syphon’s. The hateful things inside her would always be there, she knew that then, but she was not just those things. Perhaps she had never been just those things. The citrine in his eyes darkened, silver flecks dancing within like starlight. And it was beautiful.

Syphon’s touch on her face faltered, the pulse of noxscura under her skin dwindling.

Oh, no, you don’t.

Celeste snatched Syphon’s jaw, yanking his face down to meet hers. Panic flashed in his eyes, so misplaced coupled with his confidence, yet it only made her clutch onto him harder. The cleansed noxscura reeled, rushing away from her as she forced it out and into him. Silver burst behind his irises, and beneath her palms, he shook. Surely Syphon had never trembled before, and she was flooded with satisfaction to be the harbinger of his first taste of terror.

“What are you doing?” he hissed, clutching at her wrists, but there was no severing the hold she had on that too-perfect face he wore.

“I’m giving you what you want,” she growled, teeth bared, grip tight. “All of it.”

“Too much,” he choked out, a silvery bile erupting from his lips.

Celeste could feel it too, blood pooling at the corners of her mouth and dripping down her chin. It was too much, too much for both of them, but the sieves in Syphon’s chest began to pulse—a protection she didn’t have. He would use them, deplete them completely if he had to, in order to stay alive, and that couldn’t be allowed.

Celeste dug her nails into the carapace that was Syphon’s skin, and it gave under her insistence with an awful crack. She hooked fingers into his jaw as he screamed a garbled sound and dragged him forward to rest her forehead on his. Panting as weakness clawed at her bones, the noxscura was still there, her noxscura, and the shadows lifted one of her arms, guiding her fingers until she found what she sought.

Syphon saw his undoing as she plucked it from her knotted hair. “You will be so much worse,” he husked around the fingers she had wedged between his rows of pointed teeth. “Not even I could pity the wretched thing you will—”

“Shut up!” she screamed and plunged the hairpin into his chest.

Syphon’s glassy skin cracked like a fallen jar, shattering around the makeshift weapon. Through the whittled thorn, a warm and attentive magic thrummed into Celeste’s hand, a last, loving caress before the arcana shifted and attacked the beast she had dug her own claws into.

Three sieves tumbled out of the gaping wound she rent across Syphon’s chest. Blobby, amorphous things, they fell to the cavern floor and rolled away, their glows fading into the shadows, free. The arcana rushed away from her then with abandon, and Syphon lost control of the form he had made. Its shape churned and expanded, the shell atop it cracking.

Celeste tried to swallow, but her throat was too thick, breath no longer coming. She fell to her knees, dragging Syphon’s shifting mass with her, and she thrust the last of the cleansed arcana into him. The light flared and then died, his silvery bile turned black as his shape melted around her hands, and Celeste was left with only the gentle glow of the divine arcana Reeve had lovingly put into his gift to her.

And then, darkness.

CHAPTER 30
STRENGTH, TIME, AND LOVE ENOUGH

E at.”

A bowl of something warm was pushed into Reeve’s hands.

He blinked and discovered Kori was at his side wearing a deep frown.

“Eat,” she repeated, shoving a spoon into his face.

Reeve grunted, taking the utensil only to drop it on the side table and shift away from her in the creaking chair he refused to leave.

Kori clicked her tongue, but then her hand fell onto his shoulder. “If you wither away, she’s not going to be interested in you anymore when she wakes up.”

When.

He had to believe in that when, not in an if, so he picked up the spoon again.

She gave his shoulder a squeeze, and then her footsteps faded down the hall of the Dew Drop Inn.

Reeve ate, one bite and then a second. By the fifth, he could stomach no more, but he continued to watch.

Celeste lay before him beneath Halfrida’s thickest quilt, unmoving save for the gentlest rise and fall of her chest. Sometimes that rise and fall looked to stop, so he had to keep a close eye in order to call for Ima’riel. The elf would come running, but each time she had assured him Celeste was still alive.

“She’s just…empty,” Ima’riel had whispered at some point over the last three days. Reeve expected he was not supposed to hear, but didn’t ask after an explanation because he knew she was wrong. Celeste was not empty—not the woman who had taught him how to knead bread, that being cared for was more than merely an obligation, and that the world was not just light and murk but the complexity of shifting shadows.

If only she would open her eyes again and show the rest of them.

Reeve hadn’t broken free of the noxscura the night of the festival despite his constant struggle, it had abandoned him. It rushed away all at once and descended into the chasm of Briarwyke’s destroyed well. In the same moment that he was freed, the tangle of vines covering the circle had instantly withered. Gasps and groans rose from the villagers as they woke, but Reeve could only stumble forward on hands and knees, disoriented, exhausted, and devoid of his arcana. Just as he reached the fissure, he was caught by a set of bloodied hands a moment before plunging in himself to go after her.

He knew she had killed Syphon, he felt the murkiness vanish from existence. But there too was a dimming in his chest, and when Celeste was retrieved, bloody, barely breathing, and refusing to wake, he knew it would never glow again without the opening of her eyes.

Reeve offered the rest of his stew to Plum who hadn’t lost his appetite. The wyvern kept vigil with his meager heft on Celeste’s chest, head nestled under her chin, and wings spread like a second blanket. He croaked and scarfed what was left, then returned to his duty.

Darkness spread through the room of the inn with the slow creep of coming night, and if Reeve’s count was correct, the sun was setting on his third day without her. He’d sent a written plea for help to Bendcrest, but wouldn’t leave Celeste to deliver it himself. Gods knew how long it would take a Valcordian healer to come or if their skills could even wake her.

Ima’riel was drawn thin visiting nearly everyone in the village daily. Recovery was slow but the rest of the villagers progressed while Celeste remained as lifeless as the sweetbriars. He was not proud that he had begged the elf to forsake the others who were at the very least conscious to tend to Celeste instead, but Ima’riel swore she was doing all she could.

Sleep still came for Reeve whether he wanted it to or not. Many hours later, his eyes opened without his permission to have ever closed, and the fuzzy haze of a new day was blanketing the room. A slant of light carved over the treetops and through the small chamber’s window. He sat back from resting his head on her bedside and blinked down at Celeste.

Even sickly, she was beautiful, the rosiness of dawn’s light warming her skin. How dare it even touch her, he thought, for all the good it otherwise did.

Reeve had pleaded with his god, he had cried, he had prayed, and he had waited. There was only silence in return, the same silence he had always heard, though this time there was no light in his chest, no knowing sense to counter the quiet.

He lifted his head back to the window and then stood. His hands tightened into fists and his teeth clenched as the golden brilliance blinded him. “It was not my destiny to lose her,” he said, going to the window and gripping onto the sill.

The sun continued to rise because that is, after all, what it does—all it does, wings unneeded—and his grip nearly splintered the wood.

“I am finished asking,” he said to his god, to every god, to whoever or whatever would listen. “Give her back.”

There was a flitting shadow in the brightness that spilled over Briarwyke’s surrounding forest. Too fast to track, Reeve lost it, but then it was there again, and when he blinked down at the sill, a chickadee had landed between his hands. It’s little, black-capped head twitched, grey wings giving a flutter, and it dropped something pink from its beak before just as quickly flitting away.

Reeve lifted the pale petal, almost too delicate to hold. He’d seen no flower with petals like it in the town or the forest, but as he stared at its minuscule size in the midst of his palm, he could suddenly smell its source on the breeze as if he were rolling about in a field of roses.

How he’d not seen them before was a thing, like many other things, he could not fathom, but there were suddenly dozens of pale pink buds dotting the side of the Dew Drop Inn. The sweetbriar vines had shriveled in the wake of the festival, barely clinging on yet still shrouding the village, but now were thick with life and budding blooms. Dawn’s light crawled over Briarwyke, and as each bud was struck, it unfurled with a burst of life, and with the rising sun, the village was covered in Kvesarian sweetbriars.

“Oh, hello, my sweet boy,” came a whisper of a voice.

Reeve turned back to the bed, and Celeste was weakly scratching Plum’s neck as he headbutted her chin. Then her silvery eyes fell on him, and she smiled.

“I can’t breathe.”

“Ah, sorry, sorry.”

Celeste took a deep inhale, and it was filled with the scent of flowers, swiftly followed by sweat, but since it was Reeve’s and he was embracing her, she didn’t mind at all. She did mind that he was tearing up though, and that he looked so exhausted. “Are you all right?” she asked, throat as dry as the Accursed Wastes.

He nodded, swallowing hard and pulling her against him again but gently. “Please stay with me, Celeste. Don’t go back to that place you can’t wake up from. I need you,” he mumbled against the side of her face.

She leaned into the warmth of his body from her spot on the bed, still exhausted though she knew she had been asleep for a long time. She’d been trapped in a dream, lying curled up on her side in the midst of a dark and cold nothingness, cradling something precious and delicate and small, but Reeve’s touch made the memory of that frigid, empty place quickly wane. “Of course I’ll stay.”

“Promise me,” he croaked.

“I swear it. With credence and the sun and Earlylyte,”—and then there was a wyvern wedging himself between them, and she laughed weakly—“and I promise on Plum too.”

“Cutting me out?”

Celeste’s gaze traced the walls of the room to find the Obsidian Widow Maker propped in the corner. “Oh, Sid, I’m sorry I threw you,” she groaned over Reeve’s shoulder. “And also for uncleansing you.”

If the sword could have shrugged, it would have. “I don’t have the urge to draw anyone to a tortuous death, so I think I’m okay. Turns out you weren’t evil after all.”

“I told you,” grumbled Reeve, but when he leaned back, he was smiling.

Reeve fussed over Celeste as morning light filled up the room, brushing hair away from her face, fixing pillows behind her back, collecting a cup of stale tea from the side table and urging her to drink it, and asking in about a hundred different ways if she was all right. She gladly answered every question until she had one of her own.

“Is that an imp?”

In the doorway stood a small, red creature, and though she hadn’t seen one in some time, with its leathery wings, its pointed tail, and bulbous black eyes, it could be nothing else.

“Oh, that’d be Zak.” Reeve grit his teeth. “I sort of tried to kill him when he transformed—instinct, ya know? Luckily he’s fast.”

And then the imp proved it by vanishing from the doorway.

“Geezer’s bird, Zak?”

Reeve nodded then shook his head as he shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, scooting nearer to her. “Well, no, he’s not really a bird, but he was stuck as one when Geezer illusioned away all his arcana and memories up in Ashrein Ridge twenty years ago.” He fluffed her pillow a little more, brows drawn down in deep thought. “And Geezer isn’t Geezer either. I mean, he’s the same for the most part, he just looks different. And talks a little different. And has a different name too.”

“Soren Darkmore,” a familiar voice said from the hall, but the man it was attached to was changed though he wore Geezer’s robe. “Turns out I was my own villain all along.”

Celeste pushed herself back into the pillows, eyes wide. “You’re the blood mage?”

“Guilty.” He held up aged hands. “Thought it would be easier to fix my mistakes if I didn’t know they were mine. It wasn’t too bright, using illusions to hide my face and my arcana, not to mention my memories, but I really did think it would take much less time than it did.”

From his side, there was a little grunt, and there stood the older woman from the festival who had kept the vines at bay. She glared up at him, and he gave her a sheepish grin until she returned it.

Celeste remembered the salacious journal entry that had been amongst the recipe and list from the special box kept in the mage’s library. “You’re Maribel? How did you get here?”

“Zak brought Soren’s letters to the Wildwood and showed me where a translocation portal had been hidden away. He’s been writing me and then apparently forgetting to send anything!” She laughed and rapped her blossom-covered staff on the floor. “Call me Em—it’s easier to remember.”

“What about the others?” Celeste asked, breathless as she looked back to Reeve.

“Everyone’s fine, they’re just recovering.” He frowned. “Even Fitz survived.”

She pressed a weary hand to her chest in relief. “That’s good, but please tell me I don’t have to force myself to laugh at any more of his bad jokes.”

Reeve’s grin swiftly returned, dimple and all, and there was a swelling in her chest. She reached out hesitant fingers to touch his jaw, and his hand came around hers, clasping tight. “Celeste,” he said suddenly, face going grave. “I love you.”

Celeste’s heart hitched. “Oh?” she squeaked out.

“You said it and then just,”—he sliced his free hand through the air—“right into the well, and I didn’t get the chance to say, but I love you. So much.”

“Reeve,” she whispered as he leaned in closer, “I love you too.”

“What are you two doing out of bed?” Halfrida’s voice jolted through both of them as she bustled in from the hall, pushing between Soren and Em. “We’ve all been told to rest, and—oh, oh! By all that’s good and bright, Charlie go get Ima’riel! She’s awake!”

The rooms of the Dew Drop Inn were not meant to hold so many people, but Celeste couldn’t bring herself to deny visitors. Reeve did well though, endlessly polite yet firm and imposing as he made everyone take their turn. The moment she began to feel overwhelmed, he ushered everyone out until she insisted it was fine again, happy to see not a single villager had been lost.

The visits persisted through the next few days, and with many cups of peppery tea and bowl after bowl of Halfrida’s potato mash, Celeste regained her strength. Reeve’s attentive care, however, was what she truly needed to take to the stairs and have meals in the tavern, and then she finally asked to return to the temple.

“Actually, that is something we should…discuss,” said Reeve, offering her his elbow.

Celeste took it tentatively, but he led her outside beneath a brilliantly blue and clear sky. The demolished circle had grown over with sweetbriars, pink and white blooms spreading like a blanket over the chasm she had carved with Sid. More vines, lushly green and providing shade and sweet smells, wound their way over the buildings, and the town’s resident hens roosted around them. As it turned out, spring in Briarwyke was beautiful, but Celeste’s heart beat a little too hard for her to truly enjoy it.

Reeve explained as they walked up North Road that he had sent a request for help to Father Theodore in Bendcrest. That she understood, and it made her grin to hear him go on about how much Father Theodore would love her, but not to be put off by him because he just had one of those grumpy-all-the-time faces, but then Reeve went on to say that when members of his temple eventually showed up, they would want to reclaim Valcord’s house in Briarwyke. “Especially since the evil has been vanquished,” Reeve said, “which, by the way, everyone in the village knows was all your doing, so you’ll have to take the praise for it regardless.”

Celeste chuckled warily, hoping that vanquishing one evil was enough to assure clergy that she was not a second requiring destruction.

As they reached the temple gates, Reeve guided her off the road and into the forest instead of to the place she had come to consider her home. Nerves mounting, Celeste reached for her locket for the first time since she’d woken, but there was no cold, thrumming metal to cling to. She stopped short—how had she not noticed it was missing? It had been days, and yet she’d not felt the absence of the pendant about her neck nor had she missed the presence of dark arcana.

“Reeve?” she said, shaken as she tapped at her chest. “Where is it? Where did it go?”

“It broke,” he answered quickly, fishing the chain and arcane metal out of his own pocket and handing it over. “I thought it would upset you to see, but you hadn’t asked so…”

She took the locket, the hinge crooked so that it could no longer close. Not even a vague sense of arcana pulsed around it. Her eyes flicked back up to his.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.”

She leaned on him a little harder as they went deeper into the darkness of the forest. In the wake of their voices, the wood was full of twittering birds and creatures scurrying through the brush. Celeste rubbed the place her locket normally rested, hollowness settling into her chest until they came to a clearing.

The cottage was unchanged from the day they discovered it. Celeste inhaled the sweet smell of the forest around them and released Reeve’s arm, taking a step toward the abandoned cabin. Just like before, she was drawn to something inside, something friendly and kind behind its door. Its window boxes were broken, its roof needed significant repairs, and the steps up to the porch had been smashed, but it was far from a hopeless case, and perhaps with a little help, it could be beautiful again.

“The temple isn’t for us,” said Reeve quietly from behind her. “But this place could be, if you wanted.”

She turned, and Reeve was holding out a key. It glinted in a shaft of sunlight as he offered it to her and lowered himself down onto one knee.

Celeste was struck still standing there in the forest. Amber eyes stared up at her, full of all the things they almost never held, fear and fragility and desperation, but there was that warmth too, that affection he was such an expert at filling her up with.

In the days since she’d woken, Celeste had watched him closely, and she’d wanted him even more than before, but she had to be careful, had to be sure she was protecting them both. Their shared duty was over, and while she knew he would never attack her, she did not want Sir Reeve, Holy Knight of Valcord, to feel obligated to any other oaths he made now that there was nothing that tied them together.

But this—she swallowed the lump in her throat—this would certainly tie them together.

His hand shook as he held out the key. “Celeste, may I ask you a question?”

She grinned so wide that her face hurt, and then there was a shove at her back that made her stumble right into his outstretched arms with a yelp.

Celeste landed in his lap, whipping her head back to see what had pushed her, and there was a black haze flitting where she had stood. She gasped, throwing arms around Reeve’s neck and squeezing, but then the shadow twisted itself as if to ask if she recognized it.

She remained tucked up against Reeve but lifted a hand and flicked her wrist, and the noxscura responded in kind. “You didn’t leave?” she whispered. “Even though I was so awful to you and wanted you to go? You stayed.”

The noxscura spun around her playfully and then dispersed. Celeste rubbed her chest again. Why hadn’t she felt her locket missing? Was it because…because it had never really gone?

She pulled her hand through the air, and Reeve’s eyes went wide, his fingers around her tightening.

A shadow emerged from behind him, and wrapped up in its tendrils was the key.

“Oh, my goodness.” Celeste held out her hand, and the noxscura placed the key in her palm. “That’s a lot better than I could do before, huh?”

Reeve hesitated, still kneeling with her in his lap as the noxscura once again scattered itself in the air around them. “Ima’riel said it should have taken you a whole moon to recover, but it barely took a week.”

Celeste nodded, biting her lip.

“You don’t need your locket anymore to command noxscura, and you were skilled enough to kill Syphon all on your own anyway.”

“Well, that did almost kill me too, and I couldn’t have done it without the pin you gave me, and—”

“No, Celeste, you did that.” He squeezed her, looking earnestly into her eyes before his gaze flicked down to the key in her hand. “You’re much stronger now, and you don’t…you don’t need me.”

Celeste touched the little scar on his forehead, tipping his head back up. “You’re right, Reeve, I don’t need you, but I do want you.” She tucked the key into the front of her dress and threw her other arm around his neck. “I want you more than anything else in the entire realm and every plane of existence.”

It was much nicer to be wanted than needed, Reeve discovered in that moment, and his smile was so wide the hint of a second dimple formed in his other cheek.

“And if you’ll have me, I’d like to keep you forever,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips, and as he picked her up and carried her away, there was no longer a single doubt in her mind—Celeste knew exactly where she belonged.

EPILOGUE
WINK WINK

I should have vanquished you when I had the chance.” Reeve took a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re drawing out my very soul.”

Celeste glanced up from between his legs, lips around his cock. She hummed, tongue doing nothing short of witchcraft along his length, and he dragged in a hiss between his teeth before she released him. “Not yet,” she cautioned, tracing a hand up his thigh.

The hearth’s firelight danced over her skin, painting it with bright bands and twisting shadows as she stood between his splayed legs, dark hair falling all around her like a cloak. Her silvery eyes appraised him, sitting there naked on the sofa just where she’d told him to stay. She’d brought him just to the edge of coming undone, and he was sure he couldn’t wait a moment longer to have her.

Reeve reached out to take her by the hips, but with a flick of her hand, shadows trapped his wrists, stopping him just short of her waist. “You’re going to leave me like this?” he groaned. “Maybe you really are evil.”

She chuckled, turning her back to him and sweeping her hair over her shoulder. “Not evil,” she purred, easing herself onto his lap as she gripped his thigh for leverage and teased his crown with the place he longed to fill. “I’m just getting what I want.” With an agonizing slowness, she slid him inside her and came to rest on his lap.

Celeste leaned her back against his chest and raised her arms to entwine fingers behind his head. The subtle move tightened the already snug hold she had on him, and he groaned, staring down over her shoulder. Her small breasts heaved as she took a deep breath, nipples as hard as his cock and begging to be touched. He flexed his fingers, but didn’t fight the friendly noxscura because he knew she wasn’t that evil—she was the exact right amount of nefarious to bring both of them to Empyrea.

“Go slow, sweetheart,” she said in that gentle voice of hers, fingers playing along his scalp, and the noxscura restraints finally released him.

Reeve cupped both of her breasts and teased out a delighted cry as she arched her back further, hips sliding so that his length was stroked inside her. He ran one hand down her ribs, over the slight swell of her belly, and then dipped fingers between her legs. Celeste moaned louder, and he was glad their cottage was nestled so far out in the woods, though she would certainly be disturbing the chickens in their roost out back.

“Like this?” he asked, nibbling at her ear and moving his fingers in the exact way he had learned she liked.

“Just…like…that,” she panted, and he shifted his own hips then, burying himself deeper and drawing back, each thrust summoning another delighted cry.

Reeve pressed his mouth to her neck, her pulse flying under his lips. “Are you going to come undone with me?” he breathed across her throat.

“Yes,” she gasped, gripping the back of his head as her hips rocked with urgency, the slickness between her legs granting his fingers easy passage, and together they broke apart and collapsed backward into the sofa.

They lay there in a huffing heap, Celeste sprawled across his chest as Reeve slid backward and wrapped arms around her. The cottage’s hearth kept the room warm as the nights had grown longer and the sky threatened snow, but their nakedness would leave them cold. Reeve reached to the back of the couch and pulled a thick linen down onto them as Celeste rolled into the crook of his arm.

“We can’t leave Sid on the porch all night,” she said sleepily. “He’s going to wonder why you didn’t bring him inside and hang him back up.”

Reeve glanced at the mount over the fireplace, empty. “He won’t wonder,” he chuckled, squeezing her closer. “But I won’t leave him all night. I promised Earlylyte an extra apple anyway for being so helpful today.” The village was preparing for coming winter, and he and Celeste lent their help where they could with visits to Father Theodore at the temple then into town where Eliot and Willow demanded a ride on the horse through the circle.

“Can you bring Plum the last raspberry pastry when you go out to the stable?” she asked sleepily, nuzzling into him.

“I was going to eat that.”

“It’s stale.” She chuckled. “But I’ll see what new things Ima’riel and Kori have harvested and make you something fresh tomorrow.”

Reeve took a deep breath and agreed begrudgingly, cuddling her closer.

“You’re not going,” she whispered.

“Don’t wanna.”

“Have to.” Celeste’s eyes were closed, but she was grinning. “I’ll meet you in bed when you come back, and then after we’re finished, we can go to sleep.”

“Finished?”

She blinked up at him. “Oh, did you think we were done?” Her hips rocked against his.

“Everything is meant to be in moderation,” he teased, but he was already rising again to the promise of the occasion, and his hand crept between her legs. “But for you, I’m willing to risk the Abyss.”

Thank you, Dear Reader, I hope this book brought you joy!

Celeste never appeared on the page in the V&V trilogy, but when I was drafting Throne in the Dark years ago, her backstory and character were immediately so vibrant that she stuck with me. I wasn’t ready to leave the realm of Eiren after Eclipse of the Crown, and it was Celeste who truly kept me there, asking me to explore what might happen to her when she had a chance at freedom. I’m so glad she took it.

And because so many of you have asked after Xander (for gods know what reason), please be on the lookout for one last (I swear) V&V spinoff:

Bound and Tide

(I know I often make mistakes with homonyms, but I actually am spelling it that way on purpose, promise.)

I was sure that little shit couldn’t carry a whole novel, but then I started writing a short story about him anyway—just for funsies, I said—and that ballooned into a whole novel, and, well, I guess he’s going to torment me a little longer until his story is told. Check out the first chapter of Bound and Tide on the next few pages, release date to be determined because he’s such a jerk that I haven’t been able to pin down exactly when yet. Also, if you haven’t read the original Villains & Virtues, so, so, so many spoilers on the next few pages. You’ve been warned!

And one last note: all of my work is self-published which means I’m on my own for everything, including being my own hype lady. So, if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review! Reviews are tremendously helpful at getting the work of indie authors seen, and I’m forever grateful for them, and for you, Dear Reader. Thank you!

CHAPTER ONE
OF
BOUND AND TIDE
HOW TO EULOGIZE YOUR MOTHER

X ander Sephiran Shadowhart was vexed. That wasn’t an unusual state in which to find the blood mage, but the length of that vexation was indeed peculiar. To Xander, mood was a fleeting, malleable thing, but this vexation insisted on persisting, and it was wearing him thinner than a piece of parchment that had been pressed beneath a cobblestone for years.

The failing of the Sanguine Tower began, as most things do, as mere inconvenience. Xander had been pacing his study, listening to the hollowness that his footsteps barely filled, and failing to purge his then-mild aggravation. He ran a hand along the smooth length of the ironwood table and the backs of its many vacant seats, languid gaze on the vast emptiness of the Accursed Wastes through chamber-spanning windows. He was surrounded by books he had no interest in reading and artifacts he didn’t care to dismantle and unriddle.

Deepest darkness, was there nothing in the realm that would pluck him from the depths of mild discontent?

The shadow imps were especially quiet that night. Their feeble attempts at pleasing him fell woefully short, even more insufferable than usual since his return from Aszath Koth, so they’d taken to toiling undetected which only proved to annoy Xander more—at the very least this kind of despondency deserved an audience, didn’t it? But then there was movement from the corner of his eye, and a crash spoiled the silence of the chamber.

Xander spun, vexation flaring, only to see a sconce had detached itself from the stone wall and toppled to the floor. There it lay, dwarven craftsmanship and vustrium metal cracked right in two, as if to say, And now what will you do? It shouldn’t have been possible, though it should have been intriguing, but to Xander, the abnormal fracturing was neither, and he just snuffed out the arcane flame with an errant shadow. That should have been that.

But of course, it wasn’t.

The plumbing went next, his bath refusing to run as hot as he preferred—just on the verge of scalding—and then not warming at all. The missing heat had apparently relocated itself to the larder, spoiling the meats and cheeses and turning his stomach with the stench. And then, finally, the walls started to go—a rather big if uncanny deal.

Not even stuffing the shadow imps into the cracks kept the blustery winter winds from driving over the dunes and through the tower’s fissures. If he’d been keeping count, he would have noticed a third of them had vanished, but his further exasperation made him worse at arithmetic than usual.

Instead of questioning the appearance of silvery tears through the plane around him, he only swore that it was impossible to find good help, minions just didn’t want to work anymore, and he promised the emptiness that he would strangle the next infernal wisp he saw. After that, there were no more to be seen.

Surrounded by crumbling stone and failing flames and a constant drip he could not for the fucking life of him find, Xander’s vexation inched ever closer to its limit. Despite his adeptness with arcana, he was falling behind the tower’s deterioration, not to mention falling anemic. Each repair was answered with double the destruction elsewhere, walls were smeared with blood that was not quite as potent as expected, and he had to concede that soon the Sanguine Tower would be naught but a crumbling ruin if drastic measures were not taken.

And then Xander Shadowhart would be homeless, and, basest, bloodiest beasts, wasn’t being motherless bad enough?

Xander flopped about in what was meant to be his most comfortable seat—at some point over the last moon it had lost over half of its plushness in an arcane accident he could neither identify nor mend—and he teetered dangerously into brooding territory.

It was important to note that Xander did not brood—brooding was for melancholic blood mages with black hair and blacker perspectives. He did scheme for revenge, of course, and he reveled in his triumphs, occasionally wallowed when he was unfairly bested, and there were bouts of pouting too, but brooding was not Xander’s style. Increasingly, however, the dread that all of this was a bit too familiar crept into his mind, though he was not entirely ready to embrace just how much worse things appeared to be presently than they had been the time before when his arcana went awry.

But there was one truth that there was no avoiding: Xander’s mother was no longer on the same plane of existence as the Sanguine Tower, and the gods-forsaken place was falling apart. Her essence being trapped in an occlusion crystal had been bad enough, but a younger Xander had eventually overcome the block to his magical patron after some embarrassing displays out in the desert, and the tower recovered. This, though, was not that. Since Bloodthorne’s human mother had banished Birzuma back to the infernal plane, things were swiftly headed to the Abyss in a handbasket.

Xander should have been working on a summons—that was what blood mages were for, after all, to serve and salvage their demonic sires when they were banished or otherwise indisposed. But summoning a demon was nothing like summoning an imp, an ubi, or any other kind of infernal: it took a gathering of rare ingredients, just the right celestial setting, and moons of preparatory magic—magic Xander was discovering he might not exactly have in reserve at the moment, especially not so soon after the events of Eirengaard.

And even if he was capable? He brought a hand to his cheek. The claw marks had been deep but were healed, though he could still feel them. Well, he wasn’t entirely sure if he…if he wanted to…to take the risk of summoning his mother again until he had somewhere else to live that wasn’t reducing itself to rubble around him. Birzuma was hard enough to keep happy, but her displeasure would be paramount if she were summoned into such a mess.

There was, of course, Aszath Koth. He’d spent a few days there recovering after his mother was forcibly returned whence she originally came. There was inevitability in the discomfort that would come of sharing a roof with the woman he’d killed—and also resurrected—and the family he’d been on the brink of wrecking forever, but Bloodthorne was so infatuated that it made Xander ill, and his kitten wasn’t at all as angry as she should have been about being murdered, which was confusing. Diana’s doting on all of them was suffocating, and Zagadoth clearly didn’t want him around anyway, so after his wounds had healed, Xander quietly sliced into the plane and popped back to the Accursed Wastes. No, returning to Bloodthorne Keep wasn’t a true option—it had only been a moon since he’d left, and going back now would make him seem…lonely.

And he was not lonely because to be lonely was to be pathetic, and Xander was not pathetic, he was just in a frustrating predicament, and he only thought of the bustling halls in Aszath Koth because he was bored. Really, he just needed someone to bounce ideas off of. At this point, he would have even accepted the company of that tremulous priestess and her stuttered suggestions to be good over the monotony of what he was enduring alone. But Pips had chosen some other life over returning to the tower with him. As if rebuilding the temple to whatever goddess she followed in that hamlet south of the capital was somehow more fulfilling than being in service to an actual blood mage. Preposterous!

She was lucky her company was so unsatisfying, otherwise she would be there regardless, probably crying about being abducted and wanting to go home and…well, no, actually, that didn’t sound very good to him either. Though it was the exact kind of thing he ought to enjoy, to revel in, to really get his villainous blood pumping, he loathed the idea of taking a prisoner. He could clearly recall enjoying his last abduction, but now just the thought of some distressed detainee offering him baked goods for a whiff of freedom made his guts all mushy—bad mushy, specifically. It wasn’t meant to be a confusing feeling, but blood mages were notoriously shit at identifying guilt, and so he just assumed his last meal wasn’t sitting right.

Xander huffed and wiggled about, trying and failing once more to find comfort in the lumpiness of his seat. It creaked beneath him as if in protest, and in response, he threw himself back hard. This was, apparently, the final straw, and the bottom of the thing actually fell right out, dumping Xander to the floor in a heap.

“Can you not hold it to-bloody-gether long enough for me to have just a little sulk?” he snapped at the tower.

The brazier in the chamber’s center went out.

“Of fucking course.”

Then, with a great crack, a stone dislodged itself from the ceiling and came crashing downward.

He swiped a hand through the air to cast the rock away before it crushed him, shadows blurred his vision, and the rock…kept coming.

Xander sucked in a breath, scrambled, and escaped only a sliver of a moment before the dislodged masonry landed.

The blood mage panted from the spot he’d withdrawn to on the floor, eyes wide and transfixed on the pile of splinters that had narrowly been his end. “That would have been a messy way to go,” he mumbled, then examined his hand. It was the same as it had always been: deeply tanned skin, slender fingers, well-manicured nails, but it certainly felt different. And that was not good.

“Fuck.”

If Xander’s vexation had been a potion, barely surviving a falling rock would have been the final ingredient before the elixir exploded in his face. This was not a simple complication that he had to wait out, but potentially life-altering and lethal. Fortunately, it had a sort of solution, but after avoiding that solution for nearly thirty years, he thought he knew it would never come up again.

Knowing was funny like that.

He sprang to his feet and marched through the Sanguine Tower with more determination than in all the previous weeks combined. Expending what arcana he could muster, he collected the most remarkable of his belongings and used a specialized translocation portal to tuck them into a cavernous trove on the border of the planes—if the tower really did come down, at least something would be salvageable when he had the power to call it back into existence.

He then packed what he believed were the absolute necessities, annoyed to discover that constituted three trunks, five large satchels, and too many hip pouches to be worn and remain fashionable. As he contemplated how he might parse things down, he narrowly missed being sliced to shreds by a bursting window, so he gambled on just two of the satchels and the most stylish of the pouches and finally swept down the winding stairs into the Sanguine Tower’s basement.

There would be a loose cobblestone exactly eight paces from the right corner behind the staircase. He took a steadying breath before counting off the steps. Noxscura tickled at his palm as the ceiling above rumbled. There was no time to be dramatic about it, which was as unfortunate as it was insulting—little in Xander’s life deserved more dramatics when he really thought about it, but thinking about it made him want to give up on the plan entirely, so he didn’t.

Instead, he allowed the magic that itched at his skin to call up a shadow and pry the cobble from the dirt. In the grit beneath lay a piece of parchment, delicately folded and looking crisp and new. A part of Xander had hoped the elements had ruined it, but his past self had been too precious with the information, his own protection spell too good to have failed.

A shadow lifted the parchment and deposited it into his hand as Bloodthorne’s words danced in his mind: Don’t you ever wonder…

No, he did not wonder because Xander Shadowhart had always known, he had just never planned to seek and find. Until now.

ALSO BY A. K. CAGGIANO

Standalone Novels:

The Korinniad - An ancient Greek romcom

She’s All Thaumaturgy - A sword and sorcery romcom

The Association - A supernatural murder mystery

Vacancy
a contemporary (sub)urban fantasy trilogy:

Book One: The Weary Traveler

Book Two: The Wayward Deed

Book Three: The Willful Inheritor

Villains & Virtues
a fantasy romcom trilogy:

Book One: Throne in the Dark

Book Two: Summoned to the Wilds

Book Three: Eclipse of the Crown

Villains & Virtues Spinoffs:

Bound to Fall – Celeste’s Tale

Bound and Tide – Xander’s Tale

For More, Please Visit:

https://www.akcaggiano.com