Vessel Of The Sorcerer Queen

[Celerius]

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Chapter 1: Rain And Gold

​

​

It all began with her death.



Water came down through the night in a light drizzle, slowly kneading the streets outside into mud. Aksel stood in the orphanage's kitchen, right against the window, knowing everyone else would be too busy with dinner to pay any attention to his absence.



Outside, lights flickered around the village by the dozen. The sounds of music, laughter, and clinking metal broke the usual evening silence.

Mirren was a border village. Visitors were rare, and for the most part, openly unwelcome. So when a hundred soldiers had marched in that morning, led by a sorcerer of the Order of the Sword, the panic had been immediate and short-lived.



They'd come from the capital, they said. Headed for the outpost two days west, simply as a precaution. And with Regenia on the other side of that border, a country so backward its name made the villagers spit, nobody had questioned it for long.



Now their tents and supplies lined the outskirts, as if Mirren had suddenly grown a massive limb that twitched and spasmed with the contagious energy of human activity. It was a night of abundance and celebration, for a decade of peace well lived, and the next one they had yet to live.



And Aksel stood, in silence, behind the window, and worried.



"Hey."



Selenne had entered the kitchen with the casual grace of a black cat. Her familiar voice almost made him jump.



"Thinking about going out?" She sat down on a barrel, right by his side. "I told the Mother Superiora you've been on the shitter all day, and that I was going to check whether you were still alive… that should keep them off your ass for a while."



Aksel's eyes remained on the window.



"Any good news?" He finally asked. "It's only been two weeks; they might still summon us."



Selenne gave him a defeated smile. "If our invitation was supposed to arrive at all, this marching band would have been the perfect way to deliver it."



Aksel took a deep breath. "You turn sixteen next month. They've been trying to get rid of us for years and—"



Selenne hugged him, pressing her head into his back. "Of me. They've been trying to get rid of me for years. But you weren't this worried last night…" She whispered. "Talk to me, Aksel."



He leaned back into her, fingers still white against the window's frame.



"When was the last time we saw so many soldiers march into the front?"



"Never?"



"Exactly. You don't mobilize this many people unless you are expecting something, and you don't give them enough food and wine and coin to share with half the village unless you need those men to stay wherever you send them until they learn to call it home."



Selenne grabbed his face, forcing him to look at her, and lowered her voice. "What are you saying? An invasion?" She looked deeper into his eyes. "…war? Aksel, there has not been a single war since before most people in the village were born, and you're telling me everything is going to shit now, the exact same month we are supposed to leave for the capital?"



Aksel stared back at Selenne, at the only person who had been there as long as he could remember.



And he saw it.



He saw the fragile, not-quite-there smile. The clinging, dying hope she tried to pass as optimism, and below it all, he saw the slight cold on her shoulders pressing down on any spark of that characteristic fire that usually defined her.



She was scared. He'd never seen her so scared.



"No, of course not," he said, turning around to hug her properly. "I'm just nervous, that's all. Never thought the masters of magic would have trouble delivering an admission letter on time… but I guess that's what we get for living in a shithole."



Selenne laughed. "It's just two weeks. Who cares? We're going to be sorcerers. That's already more than most people can say. We shouldn't be crying rivers because our invitation got a little tardy. Half the bathroom is flooded already."



Aksel gave her a kiss on the forehead and did his best to smile, then pushed himself away and grabbed his already dirty cloak from the table.



"Still going out?" Selenne asked, wide-eyed.



"I won't do anything stupid. I promise."



"Fine…" She whined, turning around the same way she came. "Just… be back before midnight, okay? And… don't take any risks. I don't need money, I need you here, with me."



Aksel just nodded, putting on that cocky expression he wore when he wanted her not to worry.



It never worked.

❖

​

Walking down the street was about as pleasant as shoveling shit with your feet.



Aksel had never seen so much water. The rain had settled in about ten days before, and he had seen it grow sharp and violent and then quiet and pleasant, but not for a moment had it stopped.



Standing there, still in front of the orphanage's street, he took off his hood and looked at the sky for a moment. There was no moon or stars, only clouds that momentarily flashed with soft bursts of white or purple light.



He had always liked the rain.



When he breathed there, with the water running down his face, it felt as if the moment expanded along with his chest. It centered him, gave him focus, each drop washing away any semblance of doubt or worry.



He put the hood back on and kept walking down the street, his boots sinking with each step.



Aksel had never seen a hundred men pass through Mirren in a single night, but he had seen far more pass by through the course of his life, enough to recognize the nature of man.



The laughter carried far in the rain. Every door he passed was open, every hearth shared. A generosity that, any other week, these same people would have called stupidity. But nobody could keep their guard on forever, and deep down, every human soul wanted to believe in tales of knights in shining armor.



The next time the boy stopped, he was in front of a vertical ladder hidden between two of the village's larger houses. He climbed, the wood groaned, he cursed, same thing every time.



On top of the ladder, above one of the houses, there was a little camp. Four planks of wood holding a heavy rug high enough for you to sit under it, the perfect middle point between having a big tent and being bare naked.



And that night, as every night, sitting there among empty cans and sacks full of whatever caught his attention that week, was a man. A tanned, sickly thin old man, someone who had lost most of his rotten teeth before Aksel was born.



"Uncle Itch," Aksel called, approaching the vagabond. "May I?"



The veteran turned around, panicked, pretending not to have heard the boy at all.



"Aksel! Winds! Give an old man a warning, you're going to kill me one of these days!"



"If you don't put on a shirt, this damn rain might beat me to it."



Aksel crouched near the edge of the house, his eyes following the older man's stare down the block and right into the center of the party. Midnight was still far away, and wine had a way of keeping the bodies warm, even in the rain, so the dance hadn't stopped at all. The same soldiers who had come to seek some refuge from the open sky now invited girls to join them, as if defying the climate to stop this simple night.



"They look happy."



"Because they are, some people are good at that." The old man, Itch, said. "You could join them."



They both laughed.



Itch grabbed a can of the few that were full. "Smoked pork?"



"…how?"



"Men either have fun or keep an eye on their stuff, but never both. And you know every rat in this village owes me a favor, so things have been… rollin' off the table tonight. In fact, you're the only one so far who has come empty-handed."



"What do you mean?" Aksel smiled. "I brought someone useful."



"Anyone can be useful…" Itch reached out with one of his long, thin arms, bony fingers closing atop Aksel's head. "If they just know where to look."



There it was.



A single man, sneaking deeper into the village through the back of a poorly lit garden, doing his best to hug the walls. Amateur. Heels too heavy, head turning too often, constantly looking over his shoulder as if waiting for a wolf to pounce, the kind of caution that draws the eye rather than avoiding it.



Aksel tracked him to the corner where the shadows pooled together, watched the man's shoulders drop as he convinced himself he was invisible in front of a closed window.



"I'll take care of—"



Before the boy could finish that phrase, the old man held onto his arm, pulling him back down firmly.



"No. Sit down. Watch. Learn."



The thief, a soldier most likely, who had decided to leave behind his armament when trying to blend in on a village where most people could identify their neighbor by smell alone, stood around for another minute before forcing the window open.



Aksel's blood boiled, but he did not let it show. Instead, he said nothing, and watched.



Annie came through the front door not a minute later. The girl was a card shark, and a good face in a pinch.



And that was not her house.



The kid who actually lived there, Tomas, appeared only a moment later, along with five other guys who had, of course, been close enough to hear Annie scream and immediately came to her aid.



"Been runnin' that scam all night, that bunch," the old man said through a proud grin. "Talkin' up the soldiers, getting them drunk and stupid, whispering about some family heirloom made of gold. They're smart kids, you could make a lot of money with a crew like that."



Aksel frowned. "You know I can't."



"Yes, I know, I know. You and that girl of yours…" Itch leaned back, sighing tiredly. "She's gonna be the death of ya."



"It's not her fault half the village hates her."



"Maybe," Itch shrugged. "Life doesn't really care one way or the other; it's not about looking for someone to blame. Eventually, you've just gotta learn to close your mouth and take care of… whatever the winds brought that day. Beggars can't be choosers."



Itch grabbed another can, extending his free hand to let the rain wash it for a moment before scraping the bottom clean with his bare fingers.



"Look," Aksel shook his head tiredly. "I appreciate you trying to look out for me, but what I need is-"



"Yes, yes. I know what you need. That little escape plan of yours failed, and now you're trapped in the same hole as the rest of us." The old man made a pause, mulling over his words. "I'm just sayin', kid, maybe you should get used to the idea of not having a miracle waiting around the corner to bail you out. I don't care what color blood you got or what you think you're owed, until any of that starts putting food on the table, you need to stop dreaming and start living like the rest of us, boy."



Turning around, Aksel walked his way back to the stairs.



"Fine, fine!" The old man yelled. "If you still want to risk it all on faith… I might have something for you."

 

[CrazyDarkstar23]

Interesting enough start, let's see where you take it.

 

[Celerius]

It is said that everything, eventually, must meet itself at the point where it started.



So Aksel stood in front of a closed window, head turning too often, convincing himself he was invisible.



The rain helped. The drops came down hard and cold, punishing the orphanage's thin roof like a thousand tiny fists. Enough noise to cover a lot of sins.



He grabbed the window frame from the top and bottom and pulled.



All the orphanage windows opened the same way, but this one hadn't been opened in a long time. The latch was designed to bend inward, not outward, and the metal was thick enough to fight his grip. But the wood around it wasn't. A sad, dry crack, a breath of dust and old splinters, and the two panels tilted forward just enough for him to reach through, find the latch, and unlock the whole thing from inside.



He was through in ten seconds.



The Mother Superiora's studio looked different at night. Smaller. The once-white rug had gone grey years ago, and the chandelier above the desk held candles that hadn't been lit in longer than that. During the day, when you were summoned here to be sentenced for something fairly stupid, the room carried a kind of borrowed authority. At night, with only the rain and the faint glow from outside, it was just a room where a tired woman did her paperwork.



Aksel moved behind the wide desk and opened the last drawer in the cleanest-looking wooden cabinet. Itch had told him exactly what to look for, and Aksel had an instinct for knowing where people kept their secrets.



The old man had told him, with that grin of his, that the orphanage had a long history of forgetting certain documents existed by the time their owners came of age. A convenient way of turning inheritances into donations and children into unwitting benefactors who didn't know they were owed anything at all.



Inside the drawer were the records of every orphan in the house. Most were little more than a single sheet of paper, half a page of text if that. There were very few matters of importance in the origin of a child abandoned by everyone but the winds.



Unless its parents were sorcerers.



Aksel found his file and Selenne's immediately, for they were the only ones relevant enough to merit an envelope. He set his own aside for a moment, unsure he wanted the weight of knowing, and opened hers instead.



It was lighter than he expected. A single formal report, the handwriting small and rigid, the kind of script that the sisters used when they wanted the document to feel official, when they knew it would be copied and mailed and read and evaluated by their higher-ranking peers in the capital.



The official seal of Solstice marked the bottom, signaling everything on the page as truth.



Selenne had been delivered to the orphanage fifteen years before, on the second night of the Third Wind Month, by a Regenian woman who had not given her name to the sisters before abandoning the village.



A Regenian woman.



Aksel read the word again.



Regenian.



He sat down slowly in the Superiora's chair, the parchment flat on the desk in front of him, and for a long moment he didn't move.



He thought of Selenne at seven, coming back from the market with a bruise on her jaw and no explanation. He thought of her at ten, sitting alone in the dining hall because the other children had been told she was not to be spoken to. He thought of her at twelve, standing in front of this very desk, being told she would not be joining the others on the harvest hunt, for her own safety of course, always for her own safety.



Alone, always alone, pressing her face into his back, trying to sound brave.



Fifteen years of silence. Fifteen years of hatred that felt, to them, as random and senseless as weather. And the people who had the answer, the one sentence that would have at least let her understand, had kept it locked in a drawer.



Her mother had been born on the wrong side of the border, and as she passed through on some desperate attempt at an escape, she had left Selenne behind.



Aksel folded the parchment carefully, slid it into his coat, and stood up.



The report also mentioned a fund, left for Selenne's coming of age. Ten Golden Suns. Supposedly, gold was the least valuable thing a sorcerer could leave their offspring. Aksel tended to disagree.



He opened drawer after drawer until he heard it, the dull rattle of metal against leather. A small pouch sat at the back of a compartment deep in the desk's belly. He loosened the cord and counted. About twenty-five Golden Suns, seven Silver Clouds, and a handful of Copper Drops. More money than what the orphanage would see in a very generous year, the savings of every orphan who had come of age and left without knowing they were owed a thing.



Aksel took Selenne's ten.



He had the pouch halfway back into the drawer when the door handle rattled.



Everything moved at once. Pouch in, drawer shut, Selenne's file back in his hand as if he'd been reading it this whole time, and then the Mother Superiora was standing in the doorway with lamplight behind her and a face that cycled through surprise, recognition, and exhaustion in about two seconds.



"Should have known," she said.



She closed the door behind her and walked to the desk with the unhurried steps of someone who had already decided this wasn't worth her energy.



"Found what you were looking for?" She settled into the authority of the room the way she always did, even at this hour, even in her night clothes. "If you think there's anything I am hiding in order to keep the two of you stranded here, I can assure you, nobody would want to see that girl finally leave this place more than I do."



"Mother." Aksel nodded, keeping his grip on the parchment visible, making it look important by context alone. "I'm only looking for what's rightfully ours."



And it was true.



For the most part.



The Mother Superiora studied him for a moment, then rolled her eyes. "Like I said. I have very little interest in either of you, and even less in trying to appropriate whatever your sad lives could offer. All I ask is that you take said lives far away from me. Which is not an unreasonable price for all my years of effort."



She extended one of her calloused hands.



Aksel looked at the parchment. He had already memorized the only part that mattered, but he attempted to hold onto it anyway, acting as if the simple note was his only source of warmth, making sure he pinned her attention there and no further. Then, with a carefully exaggerated sigh, he finally handed it over.



His feet wandered towards the door, then stopped. "Why didn't you tell us? That she's a—"



"I know what she is."



The words came clipped and final, as if she had rehearsed them, or maybe she'd just been waiting years for someone to ask.



"Maybe I should have told you," she continued, her voice lower now, almost private. "Might have kept you away from that animal. But winds forgive me… sometimes I can't help being kind. I really did try to give that damned girl every chance I could to be something else, but at the end of the day, a Regenian is always a Regenian."



The Mother Superiora took a deep breath.



"Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I was too kind with you lot. If it were up to me…" She paused, chewing on her words. "Straight as an iron bar, I would have forged you."



The room went very quiet.



Aksel felt something rise in his throat that wasn't words. He thought about what it would feel like to say what he wanted to say. To ask her what kind of kindness lets a child grow up hated for something she doesn't even know about herself. To ask what kind of woman takes a girl's inheritance and calls it charity. To ask whether she had ever, even once, looked at Selenne and seen a person instead of a pitifully unaborted monster who had managed to crawl its way across the border.



He didn't say any of it.



Instead, he offered a small, polite smile, and nodded.



"Good night, Mother."



He closed the door behind him.

❖

​

"Selenne!"



Aksel pushed the door open, breath heavy. It hit the wall with a soft thud. Good, that meant she wasn't behind it. Wouldn't be the first time.

He fell to one knee and checked under the bed.



Where could she possibly—



A sharp weight crashed onto his shoulders and they both went down, Selenne rolling off him before he'd even hit the floor, already laughing.



Confused, he looked up at the top of the wardrobe and realized a person could, in theory, fit up there, as long as she was thin on her side and didn't have much going on upstairs.



"Why?"



"Why? It's past midnight, Aksel. And I'm not getting punished because your dumb ass forgot the way home." She was already picking herself up, circling toward their bed with that strange elegance she knew how to slip into even right after acting like an asylum patient. "So I figured I'd get some practice in."



"Practice."



"You never know."



She sat on the edge of the bed, legs crossed, expectant. She already knew he had something important to say. Of course she did.



"We need to leave."



"Leave?"



He reached into his pocket, turned it inside out, and let the coins fall. They hit the stone floor one after another, heavy and deliberate, each one catching the low light from the window.



Selenne dropped to her knees. Her fingers moved with inhuman speed, sorting, stacking, counting. The playfulness bled out of her face one coin at a time.



"Aksel… this…" She picked one up, turned it over. "Gold." Another. "Gold." Her voice climbed. "Nine… ten… Aksel, this is all gold."



Then she went still, quiet.



She looked up at him, and all the warmth was gone.



"Who did you kill?"



"What?"



"How many? Are they buried? Is someone coming for us?"



He laughed. He couldn't help it, the sound broke out of him before he could stop it, and he shook his head, pressing a hand over his face.



"I should be asking you that." He let himself fall forward onto the bed, face-first, then turned just enough to see her still frozen there, kneeling among a small fortune. "Apparently, that's what your mother left with you, in case you ever needed it. The sisters just… forgot to mention it."



Selenne blinked. "My mother."



"Whoever she was, she left ten Golden Suns with your name on them. The Superiora's been sitting on it for fifteen years, you know how she is, likes to keep things safe." He propped himself up on his elbows. "Who knows? You've got the temper of a noble. Maybe you're the daughter of a king, some lost dynasty nobody remembers. Most families of sorcerers are important, I'd imagine. Even the Regenian ones."



Selenne's mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes moved sideways, fast, the way they always did when she was doing math that didn't add up yet.



"Winds…" She pressed her palm against her forehead, still kneeling. "Do you have any idea how much money this is? We could…" She stopped. "Regenian?"



"We could find someone to take us to the capital and never look back." Aksel sat up, holding her gaze, focusing her. "And everything we don't take with us dies here."



The silence that followed was different from every silence that had come before it. For the first time, they were looking at a door, and it was open, and the only thing on the other side was whatever they chose to make of it.



Selenne stood up slowly, coins still in her hand.



"Help me pack."

 

[Celerius]

The rain had dwindled, which was a relief. Without a case to pack, bedsheets had made for bags.



They ran down the street as if someone was chasing them, which was both probably not true and the only proper way in which they could process the situation. Selenne laughed first, jumping over a puddle. At the absurdity of it, of not having to care about a single thing in the world, of knowing that they could go as far as they wanted and the only thing that could stop them were their own aching legs.



She was fast, too fast, even for Aksel. A fact they both commonly forgot and did their best to keep hidden. But for once, he simply coasted behind and allowed her to run free, watching as the lights of the ongoing celebration inched closer with each muddy step.



Aksel felt the half-drunk voices filter in one by one.



"Oi, Greg! Bring me my good boots, the cards are speaking to me tonight!"



"Has anyone seen Billy? That pisspant was supposed to be watching our wine."



"Ah, let the lad go. With a bit of luck, he'll be emptying more than his pockets right now."



The party hadn't shrunk, nothing even close to that, for it wasn't even midnight yet and there was nobody hoping the night would be short. But it had settled, the wonder starting to fade as the people grew tired and rounded, comfortable enough to let themselves rest against each other with the intimacy of any well-fed animal.



Selenne slowed to a walk as they reached the edge of the crowd, pulling the bedsheet higher over her shoulder.



"So," she said, not even winded. "What's the plan? Please tell me you have a plan."



"We need a ride east. Someone heading for the outpost only for the day, or not even that. Supply carts, higher officers, squires, a blacksmith, anyone who doesn't plan on sticking around after the soldiers are settled on the border."



"A ride. From these people." She looked sideways at a soldier who was teaching a village girl how to throw a knife at a barrel, too drunk to aim. Selenne took a step back. "Wonderful."



Something small and fast darted across Aksel's boot. He glanced down in time to see a Stormisk, one of the cloud-furred little bastards that came out whenever there was too much noise and not enough supervision, sprint under a bench with a candle in its mouth, its tail dissolving into mist behind it, a brief crackle of purple light marking its path like a tiny, self-satisfied lightning bolt.



Another one sat on top of a wine barrel nearby, watching the crowd with the focused intensity of a creature trying to decide what to steal next.



Past them, a cluster of Eye Drops had gathered near a rain barrel at the corner of the street, rolling over each other in the downpour, their wide glassy eyes blinking at anyone who stepped too close. Selenne accidentally pressed one with her foot. The elemental gurgled and rolled away, offended.



"Cherubim are out tonight," she muttered, looking down the street. "That's a lot of them."



"Free food, free warmth, free chaos. I guess we're not so different after all."



Aksel scanned the crowd. Most of the soldiers had settled into clusters around fires and card games, their weapons leaning against walls and fences, close enough to reach but far enough to forget. Some villagers moved between them like the rain itself, refilling cups, laughing too loudly, enjoying the one night of the year when strangers were useful. Others, younger ones mostly, had settled among the trained warriors as if they had all arrived together and had no intention of saying goodbye.



Aksel looked deeper.



Somewhere in this mess there had to be a soul who wasn't enjoying itself. A diplomat sent to oversee discipline. A courier. Some commander assigned to personally deliver a letter to the outpost captain, who could not imagine spending another week in countryside mud after a lifetime in the capital. Anyone going back east who could be convinced, paid, or tricked into taking two extra passengers.



"We're looking for someone who's already thinking about tomorrow," Aksel said. "Someone who wants to leave this place at least half as badly as we do."



He found it almost immediately.



In theory, any armed fighter who served in the kingdom militia was a knight.



This man was a Knight.



He sat alone at a small table, comfortably surrounded by people who did not pay him any mind. There was a bottle on that table, but he did not drink. There were cards, but he did not play. His hands were focused on the massive blade across his lap, polishing the metal with the mindless precision of someone who simply needed something to do with his fingers while his mind was somewhere else entirely.



He wore a heavy furred cloak over ornamented armor pieces that made him seem larger than anyone around him. Almost bulky, present in a way that made the space around him feel like it belonged to him even though he would not bother to claim it.



Aksel's feet slowed before his mind caught up.



Something about the man's stillness. The way his posture carried no tension, no vigilance. He wasn't watching the crowd. He wasn't watching anything. He sat in the middle of dozens of armed soldiers the way a wolf might rest among dogs. Not because he didn't notice them, but because noticing them had never been necessary.



"Follow my lead," the boy said, and walked forward.



There was a moment, not of silence exactly, but of eyes pretending not to look, as he sat down across the small table. Selenne stood behind Aksel, close, back to back. They were still very much surrounded by strangers.



The Knight looked at them both, without impatience or surprise. Then he slipped a silver gauntlet inside his coat and set two coins on the table.



"Two Silver Clouds?" Aksel asked, genuinely confused.



"One for your time, and one for mine." The man appeared to be in his early thirties, though the silvery, almost pearly locks around his cheeks made it difficult to say for sure. His voice was quiet, unhurried. "I've seen some of your peers working the crowd tonight. Surprisingly talented. But I'd rather save myself the effort, so take this as a token of my appreciation. You're the first one who's dared to approach me, which tells me you might need the money rather desperately."



The man smiled, and his face, stone-cut and cold until that moment, softened into something honest and exhausted.



Aksel opened his mouth.



Then closed it.



And did something rare for him. He looked again.



Whoever this man was, his eyes carried something heavy, the kind of weight that doesn't come from a single wound. The armor Aksel had initially read as full was less than he'd thought. Plates along the chest and limbs, gauntlets and boots, each decorated with intricate carvings molded into the platinum, the occasional flash of a crimson gemstone, each piece carefully settled into the pristine, heavy outfit beneath. Enough protection to get in the way. Not enough to get in his way.



The thought formed without a single shadow of doubt.



This man was a Sorcerer.



"We need your help," Aksel said, too quickly, honesty bleeding through before he could shape it into anything more careful. He reached into his pocket and placed two Golden Suns on the table. "And we won't waste your time."



For the first time, the Sorcerer's attention shifted fully. The polishing stopped. He looked at the pair with as much concern as interest.



"My name is Aksel. I am sixteen years old, and both of my parents were, as far as I know, of magical lineage."



The man lifted his eyes, past Aksel, beyond him, to Selenne. A question.



Aksel nodded, placing his few belongings on the table so that the sheets wouldn't meet the ground. "Her mother. She'll be sixteen next month."



"Sorcerers," the man said, his voice clear now. "The both of you."



"Yes."



"Orphans."



"We are."



"And you're here." He gestured vaguely at the celebration around them, at the mud, at the rain. "Instead of there."



"Our admission letters never arrived. We were told to expect them before the Second Wind Month. It's been—"



"Over two weeks." The Sorcerer's hand stopped mid-polish. He set the cloth down slowly. "Yes. I imagine they would be late."



Something in his voice had changed. A door, closed shut.



"My name is Altair. I am a Royal Captain among the Order of the Sword. And my job, as it stands, is to escort these men to their destination safely, before making my way back to the city of Solstice."



"Then you can take us with you," Selenne suddenly stepped in.



Altair looked at her for a long moment. Then past her, at the soldiers, at the fires, at the village pretending to celebrate.



"Tell me," he said. "What do you think all of this is for?"



"The border," Aksel answered. "Regenia. A show of force, precautionary, in case—"



"In case of what?" Altair's voice was patient in the way a teacher's voice is patient when the student is close but not there yet. "What would change, after three… mostly uncontested decades of peace, to make a hundred soldiers necessary where yesterday there were none?"



Aksel felt the ground shift under him. Not physically, but in the way a conversation shifts when you realize the other person isn't asking questions, they're leading you somewhere.



"Something happened," he said slowly. "Something in the capital. You don't think they'll attack, you're sure of it."



Altair said nothing. He picked up the cloth again, ran it once along the flat of the blade, and set it back down as if he had only needed the motion to buy himself a breath.



"The Academy has no director," he said. "The kingdom has no queen. Lady Adeleide Elissandre Silvermoon is dead."



The words arrived simply, almost gently, the way Altair did everything. But they landed in Aksel's chest like a rotten stone in a frozen lake, and for a moment the ripples were all he could feel.



The queen was dead.



Lady Adeleide Elissandre Silvermoon.



The most powerful user of magic the world had ever known, a woman more ancient than Fiore's ancestral bloodlines, a being so primal she'd had the time to fund a city and then watch an entire kingdom blossom around it.



Was dead.



"She died in her sleep. Peacefully, they say, though I'm not sure what that word means for someone who had been alive for two hundred and twenty-three years." Altair folded his hands on the table. "There has been no official announcement. There won't be, for some time. The people making those decisions are very busy making other decisions first, as you can see."



He gestured at the soldiers. At the border. At the careful, quiet machinery of a kingdom trying not to fall apart.



Aksel's eyes moved across the night violently now, flashing inside their orbits. The hundred men weren't passing through. The wine wasn't generosity. The whole thing, the march, the party, the warmth, was a bandage pressed against a wound the village didn't even know was there.



"Here."



Altair took the bottle and poured a glass. Aksel was not a big fan of alcohol. He drank it in one go. The liquid just disappeared, he couldn't tell the taste.



"I do wish I could simply take you east," Altair continued, watching the color come back into the boy's face. "But if what you say is true, someone should already be assigned to collect you. It is not my place to intervene and taking you with me could cause problems you don't need on top of trouble you already have."



"More trouble than standing next to what's about to become an active warzone?" Aksel had managed to wipe the sweat from his brow, and his eyes were sharp again, sharper than before, as if the news had burned away the last of whatever softness had been slowing him down.



Altair tilted his head, conceding the point. "I would need to ask the orphanage for your files, although given the circumstances…" He closed his eyes and took a long breath, his composure settling. "Prove it, then."



"Prove it?"



"Some people believe magic is something you are born for, something the world owes you simply because of who your parents were." His gaze hardened, just slightly, just enough. "I disagree. Prove to me you have even the faintest glimmer of potential, and I will make sure to deliver you to your destination."



Selenne and Aksel looked at each other.



He saw it immediately. The shift in her stance, the weight dropping into her heels, the thumb drifting toward her open, tense mouth. She could do it. Right there, right then, less than a second, and this man would have all the proof he needed.



But what if she had the wrong magic?


Regenian magic.


Aksel did not know what sorcery was supposed to look like, but hers was violent, and raw, and he had spent his entire life watching people look at Selenne and find reasons to be afraid. Her magic was just like the rest of her, fast and fierce and unmistakably other, and showing it to a soldier of the crown, here, tonight, surrounded by a hundred armed men already on edge about the very border she had been born across…



He caught her gaze and held it. Her face contorted with frustration. She stopped.



"I'll do it," said Aksel, with all the determination of a man who learns to swim or drowns.



He placed both hands on the table and closed his eyes.



The sounds came first. Voices, cups, drums, footsteps, laughter. Each layer pressing in on him like hands trying to hold him still. He pushed through them, peeling the noise away one thread at a time until all that was left was the rain. The rain and the strange, stubborn silence underneath it, the one he'd felt his whole life but never been able to name.



He reached for it.



It was like trying to grab water. Every time he thought he had it, it slipped between his fingers, formless and indifferent. He pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and felt nothing but the growing certainty that nothing was going to come, that he was exactly what the world had always told him he was, a boy with borrowed dreams and empty hands.



He pulled harder.



Something flickered. Deep, impossibly deep, like a light seen from the bottom of a well. He couldn't tell if it was real or if he wanted it so badly that his mind had invented it. But he reached for it anyway, because reaching was all he had ever known how to do.



And then.



"Fire!"



The screams came from far away, and then quickly grew closer.



Aksel opened his eyes as if breaking surface, gasping, the world rushing back in a flood of cold air and noise. He turned toward the village, and it only took him one glance to find the source of the flames.



The orphanage was burning.

 

[Celerius]

The orphanage burned as if it had been built for that.



Aksel was running before he understood why, his legs cutting the air faster than his mind could follow. He caught something sharp and chemical beneath the rain, something that did not belong to a night of bonfires and celebration. Selenne kept pace beside him, the bedsheets gone from her arms, dropped somewhere behind them, he didn't know when. And her face had already changed, the playfulness wiped off it by whatever instinct ran deeper than thought at that moment.



The crowd thickened as they reached the main road, bodies pouring in the same direction, voices climbing over each other in confusion and alarm. The smoke came next, a dark column that leaned sideways in the wind, too large for a cooking fire or a clumsy accident.



Then they turned the corner, and there it was.



They smelled it before they saw it, pooling in their lungs. Flames poured through every window, bending outward like fingers reaching for the rain, each one hissing where the water reached them but never retreating. The roof had already caved in on the eastern side, sending a spray of embers into the sky that hung for a moment among the clouds before dying.



The sisters stood in a loose cluster near the road, nightgowns soaked, arms wrapped around children who clung to them with the blank, wide-eyed stillness of creatures who had not yet learned what to do with fear. Most of them were young. Three, four years younger than Aksel and Selenne at least. He counted heads without meaning to, the way he always counted things, and came up short.



He counted again, slower.



Everyone was there.



Then his mind went back to the fire.



Nothing could be done anymore. And this had not been an accident.



The building had walls of stone, heavy and wet from ten days of uninterrupted rain. The hearths were shallow, the candles few, the wood old but damp. A log rolling away from the fire or a tipped lantern could singe a curtain, blacken a corner. They could not do this. They could not make a fire that swallowed stone.



Whoever had done this had nursed the flames with patience, feeding them something they could grow on, something that burned regardless of water, regardless of weather, until the fire no longer needed help.



"You!"



The Mother Superiora parted the crowd with a painful, wounded shout. Her face was wet, but not from the rain. She was crying, openly, loudly, her chest rising with the effort.



Aksel watched her approach the way a rabbit watches a hawk.



He had lived with this woman for sixteen years. He had seen her bury two sisters, handle three floods, and turn away a starving family at the door without blinking. He had never, not once, seen her cry.



She was pointing straight at him.



"I knew it." Her voice cracked, expertly. "I knew it the moment I saw you in my office. Those eyes… I should have called for help right then, I should have never let you walk out of that room!"



She turned to the crowd, arms open, palms up, as if offering herself to their judgment. The rain ran down her face and she let it, let it mix with whatever she had managed to squeeze from her eyes, let the cold and the fire and the night do the work of making her look like a woman who had lost everything.



"This boy broke into my office tonight." She pressed a hand to her mouth, steadying herself. "I found him rummaging through the files. I barely managed to stop him from burning them then. And when I confronted him about it?"



Nobody moved.



"He smiled at me. All teeth and pride."



The crowd, which had been murmuring, went quiet.



She reached into the group of children and pulled Eliot forward by the arm, roughly. The boy's left sleeve was gone, the skin beneath it an angry pink, already blistering. He was shaking. He was six years old.



The Superiora knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other still pointing at Aksel.



"I pulled this child from the fire," she whispered, loud enough for the first three rows to hear, loud enough for everyone. "I pulled him out, and I thank the winds that I reached him in time. But I cannot... I cannot understand..." She bowed her head. "What kind of soul would do this to a child, just to hide the fact that his precious little creature is a Regenian abomination?"



The word arrived the same way it always arrived. Placed, carefully, where it would do the most damage.



It passed through the crowd. Bouncing, mouth to mouth, each repetition a little louder, a little less like a word and a little more like a sentence.



Selenne's hand found his. Her fingers were freezing.



"She is not one of us." The Superiora stood again, slowly, weak, tired. "She has never been one of us. And I have spent fifteen years, fifteen years of my life, trying to love that girl as if she were my own. Trying to see past it. Trying to believe that maybe, if I was kind enough, patient enough..."



She stopped. Shook her head. Let the silence do the rest.



That was the worst part. The silence she left for the crowd to fill with their own conclusions. She didn't need to say and I was wrong. She didn't need to say she's dangerous or they're monsters or do something about it. She just needed to stop talking, and look defeated, and let every person in that crowd find the version of the story that made them angriest.



Aksel had never hated anyone the way he hated her in that moment. The cold, measured clarity of understanding exactly what someone is and knowing that nothing you say will make a single person see it.



Because she was good at this. She was better than he was.



The crowd shifted. Not all at once, it started at the edges, where the faces were hardest to see, where anonymity made courage easy. A step forward here. A clenched fist there. The circle tightening the way circles do, the old instincts of pack animals flaring inside human brains.



"Lenne," Aksel whispered, reaching back for her hand. "Can you?"



She was already trembling, and he could feel it, the thing she kept leashed, the warmth that pulsed beneath her skin when she was scared or angry, the thing that had no name and no permission to exist. It was screaming inside her mind, clawing at the door and telling her to act.



"I could," she said, barely a breath. "If he wasn't here."



Aksel looked past the tightening ring of bodies.



Altair stood thirty paces back, at the edge of the firelight. He had not moved. He had not spoken. His arms were folded across his chest and his face carried the expression of a man watching something he had seen before, with the particular stillness of someone who had learned, long ago, that watching was sometimes all you were allowed to do.



His hand, though. His hand had drifted to his side, to the handle of a weapon Aksel had failed to notice up until now, hidden, so out of view he could not really tell if it was really a blade.



Selenne could. That was enough.



Aksel's mind clocked the way it always did when the world closed in, fast, sharp, mechanical. Options. Possibilities. Variables. Outcomes. They had ten seconds, maybe less, before the murmuring became shouting, before the first rock left someone's hand, before any movement they made was read as aggression and answered in kind.



Run, and they were guilty. Fight, and they were monsters. Stand still, and the crowd would do what crowds do when they've been told who to blame.



And Selenne would fight.



If they kept pushing, if the pressure kept building and he could not find an exit, she was going to give them the monster they all came looking for.



Because that was the thing.



In some dark, twisted version of reality, they were right. They were absolutely right. And the only thing they needed to do was put enough effort into it, into shaming and spitting and screaming and kicking.



Until eventually Selenne would open her jaws and snap back.



And that's when they could point at her and yell monster.



So he grabbed her hand and pulled her back from the edge.



"I'm going to need you to get us to the rooftops, both of us."



She was grabbing her head in pain. "I… It's bad. You're going to have to guide me."



"Always."



They both took a single second to prepare, the first signs of movement blooming in the crowd, steps about to rush them from all sides.



And then thunder struck, not from the sky but from the street, from the earth itself, and with it, the sound of hooves.



A chariot rolled out of the dark. Slowly. Calmly. As if whatever drove it had never once been late for anything.



The beast at the front of the impeccable vehicle was no animal and no cherubim. Something third. A creature caught between ram and stallion and larger than both, all long horns and muscle stretched too thin over protruding bone. Each breath it took pushed dark mist from the gaping holes in its hide, pooling low against the mud and not dissolving at all.



Then the chariot's door opened, and somehow everything got worse.



Out came a creature like a man, standing on two long legs that made it look far too thin and tall. It was dressed in impeccable attire, a formal vest so elegant it could have belonged to the head of a noble house, and moved with enough grace to do the cloth justice. Usually, every single person in the crowd would have been immediately charmed by such regal presentation.



But then there was that face.



It was like a mask of pure alabaster bone in the shape of a beaked, avian face. And although there was a single hole where the right eye should have been, what peered out was a flickering red light.



"I must apologize for the interruption." The creature folded into a bow so deep its beak nearly touched the mud. "But I am afraid I have been instructed to take these children with me."



Nobody could find a single word.



The stranger approached, taking a knee in front of Selenne, and produced an envelope from inside his vest.



"My master would have preferred to have me delivered sooner, but the winds of change have been difficult to read, and even the most careful hands cannot sort a storm of this magnitude."



Selenne's hands were shaking, but she managed to cling onto the envelope. She did not open it, could not. Her body was still frozen in that halfway state between panic and anger.



And so, the creature just walked back to the chariot and sat on the driver's spot, waiting.



Aksel moved first, as fast as he possibly could, pulling Selenne along.



And then, finally, that woman found her voice.



"What do you think you're doing?!" The Mother Superiora screamed. "They're criminals, thieves and arsonists, and she… And she! She is a monster, and he is the wretched idiot who would choose a Regenian over his own people! Over actual people!"



The driver simply tilted its head, chillingly calm. "Miss, while I do thank you for your service, as of this exact moment I must regard it as concluded. These children have been accepted into the Silvermoon Academy of the Four Winds, and are, as of right now, considered Aspirant Sorcerers for the kingdom of Fiore. Any attempt at argument against this fact would simply be irrelevant."



As the woman mumbled, stumbling upon her own astonishment, Aksel guided Selenne away from the crowd and into the box.



He placed a foot on the step and turned, just once, just long enough to see the Superiora's face as she lost them. Some villagers gripped stones and torches. Some soldiers held onto their weapons. But nobody, not one of them, would raise a hand against an envoy from the capital. Least of all one that looked like this.



He closed the door behind him, and the wheels started moving.



"Come back here!" The Mother Superiora was running now, nightgown dragging through the mud. "You disgusting, traitorous—"



"I should have drowned you both the day I found you!"



Her voice was breaking from effort, from the simple physics of a middle-aged woman sprinting after a chariot in the rain.



"You can run, but you cannot run from what you are! May your empty souls never know peace!"



She fell. Hard, into the mud, and did not get up immediately.



The chariot kept moving.

 

[Celerius]

The interior of the carriage was unlike anything either of them had ever touched.



The seats were cushioned, properly cushioned, not stuffed-rag-over-a-plank cushioned but the kind of soft that made you wonder which animal had been killed and then harvested for it to be possible. The floor, too. Even the walls had a layer of padding behind the wood, hidden, which Selenne only discovered because she immediately started pressing against everything that could possibly prevent her escape.



The windows, massive panels of glass they had seen from the outside, were blocked by wooden shutters that could be pushed down and out of the way.



Neither of them did.



There was no need. A small circle on the roof filled the carriage with light that didn't fall the way light was supposed to. It spread, clinging to every surface like mist, soft and even, as if the sun had been asked to behave itself for once and it had actually listened.



And then there was the warmth.



Every wooden thing Selenne had ever slept inside had been cold. Carts, sheds, the orphanage's basement on a bad night. Wood did not keep the world out. It pretended to, and then the wind found the gaps, and you woke up shivering and wondering why you'd bothered with walls at all.



But not this one.



The air inside the carriage sat perfectly still, warm without a source, comfortable without explanation. As if the box simply did not care what was happening outside of it or if the sun was high or low.



Selenne pressed her fingers flat against the wall and dragged them, trying to catch a splinter, but the surface was so unnaturally smooth it might as well have been carved from a single log, pulled whole from some giant tree that no longer existed, then bent into the perfect shape.



"Here."



Aksel threw her the pouch. Tossed it. Because of course he couldn't just hand it over like a normal person; that would mean admitting he considered everything they owned in the world to be something worth being careful about.



Boys.



It landed on her lap, somehow heavier than the last time she'd held it. Ten Golden Suns. Two Silver Clouds.



One Silver Cloud was enough for a proper meal and then some. Drinks, bread, something sweet. So roughly, if she was doing the math right, they had about five months covered.



Aksel would disagree, of course. He always did when it came to money. He'd start doing that thing with his hands, talking about how everything cost more where they were going, all blobery without meaning she knew he had to be making up half of the time.



And if she ever asked about it, he'd find a way to make all that gibber jabber crash into itself until the numbers meant nothing and everything was fine again. Then he'd insist they needed to be extremely careful in the future, as if economics was a ghost that could attack at any moment but somehow never did.



She finished counting the coins and offered the pouch back, confused.



"What?"



"Keep them. It was your inheritance."



Her brow furrowed in that way it always did, the way that looked angry even when she wasn't, which was a problem because right now she wasn't sure which one it was.



"What are you talking about, Aksel?"



He took a deep breath. "I guess I just… it felt like shit, hustling with your money. Thinking about losing it."



Selenne said nothing for a long moment. A headache passed through her skull like a slow cloud. Then she smiled, and the smile had teeth.



"Oh, poor little you. To carry the heaviest of burdens. What soul could possibly endure the pain of GAMBLING FOR FREE?"



"Selenne."



"DON'T SELENNE ME." Her voice climbed. "You always do this. Every single time things start to look even a little bit good, you find some reason to sit in a corner and mope. What about every time you made money and I spent it on something stupid? Why does it only matter now?"



"It's not the same."



"Why not? Because it's mine? Because it's more?" She slapped her own forehead, hard. "Aksel, I just realized something. Making more money also means we can lose more money. So what if we just stay poor forever instead? Is that what you want? Should we buy two cows and twelve chickens and go back the way we came?"



He rolled his eyes and said nothing, which was his way of choosing not to fight. Which was, of course, its own kind of fighting.



Selenne sat back against the cushion, shoulders tight. She was being unreasonable and she knew it.



Why?



She wasn't mad at him.



No.



She was. She was mad at him.



It was something he said.



Which part?



Selenne picked up the pouch and threw it back. It hit his chest with a dull thud.



"It's our money."



"What?" Aksel rubbed his chest the way you do when a sack of coins hits it, which is to say, like it hurt more than he wanted to admit.



"It's not my money and it's not your money. It has always been our money. Don't change that now. Don't make it weird." She held his eyes. "I don't know what you're thinking about right now, but I can see it starting to form, and I don't like it."



Aksel smiled. That smile. The one that lifted his eyebrows and said you're out of your mind and meant you've got me and I'll never admit it.



She could see the shape of it. Not the details, he'd never give her those, but the outline. Options. Independence. Room to grow, now that they could afford it. This wasn't just about him feeling guilty for spending her money. He wanted her to be able to handle things on her own. Just in case.



In case…



She placed that aside, for now.



"You never told me about yours." She let the words sit for a moment. "Your records. What you found."



Aksel shook his head. "There was no time. Itch wanted me to take all of them, expose everything. I think the Superiora had been afraid of something like that for a while. She didn't even hesitate."



"There was no time?" Selenne asked, slower now. "For your own papers?"



"I own them. I could have asked for them whenever I wanted, so I didn't see the point in rushing for them. Maybe I should have."



Selenne pressed her lips together. "I'm sorry."



"Don't be. The academy should have copies. It's everyone else who got screwed." He closed his eyes and sighed. "I just don't care much for whatever a piece of paper says. And I don't think you should either." He opened them. "And since we're talking about it, you should probably start getting used to the idea of using your magic. A lot."



The pain in her head pulsed again, like something pressing against the inside of her skull. "In the academy full of experts who would recognize it in a second?"



"If they can recognize it, all the more reason to let them see it early. We'll be living at the academy for at least three years. This isn't something we hide anymore. It's something we manage, and how we manage it depends on their reaction."



"And if they tell us to leave?"



He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Then we leave. Quietly. No screaming, no making a fuss. We're still in the capital, and two cows and a flock of chickens is a lot more than we had yesterday. This isn't the moment to start thinking about life like we deserve more than tomorrow."



Selenne's eyes fell to the floor, and her muddy shoes traced the carpet. "Sometimes I feel like all you do is plan around me. Like your life would be so much easier if you were by yourself."



"Yes, Selenne, I would love you if you were Regenian. Please, just let me sleep."



She punched his nose.

 

[Celerius]

Aksel wasn't sure when he'd fallen asleep, or how long it'd been.



He'd tried to reach for the shutters once, just before drifting off, but the conductor's voice had come from the front, asking him not to disturb the carriage's momentum.



But now his mind surfaced, heavy and painfully bored, and his eyes drifted naturally to Selenne's sleeping form. Surprisingly delicate, despite the many fistfights and the dirt that clung to her old clothes. He could tell how tired she was by the way she slept, her face slack, mouth wide open, a strand of drool running down the back of her seat.



She slept like that sometimes.



When she was happy, or comfortable, or too tired for her body to remember its way back into the waking world even if he shoved his hand into her mouth.



She hadn't slept like that for a while now. Maybe since his birthday. Maybe since she stopped seeing herself as a person and became the thing holding them back.



"You might want to take a look now." The creature spoke again from the front. "We will be arriving at our destination shortly, and I'd guess you'd value the chance to appreciate it properly."



Aksel's brow furrowed. So the thing could see them at all times. He filed that away, but the promise of sunlight won out, and he reached for the shutter instead.



It went down smoothly.



He didn't breathe.



The sun sat high in the sky, and on that day it shone with a power that made shadows cower across the green fields. The road ahead sloped gently downward, as if gravity itself was pulling the earth toward a single point. And on that point, still at a good distance, past a wide and quiet river, sat a city so vast it borrowed the horizon.



"Selenne." His voice came out wrong, too thin. "Selenne, wake up."



He shook her, and the carriage tilted as the front wheels climbed onto the arched bridge crossing the river. They both tumbled backward off her seat, falling to the floor like clattering baggage.



"Huh. What the…?" Selenne jumped to her feet, fists up, but her instincts clearly lagged behind her drowsy mind. "How long was I…?"



"Six hours, I'd say," answered the conductor.



"Then why—"



Aksel held her by the shoulders and turned her toward the window. "We're here."



"Here?" She looked. "Holy shit, we're here!"



The city grew closer by the moment. The carriage was fast. Too fast. But even that couldn't explain the distance they'd covered. Mirren wasn't just a border village; it was the furthest settlement from the capital in the kingdom. And yet here they were, more than half of Fiore crossed in a single night.



"How?" Aksel asked again. Then a question that now felt painfully late: "What are you?"



"The currents were favorable last night. Calmer, cleaner. Thanks to my master, more than likely. He made it very clear that placing the kingdom's weather back under our control should be the highest priority." There was a small pause, weighted with thought. "And if you're asking for my name, I have been permitted to present myself as Mr. Seven. As for my origin, I do not believe myself a reliable mind for the topic. You should bridge that question shortly, one way or another."



That was, for the both of them, not an answer at all. But then again, there was little room to question a being so eerie yet so polite.



The road that led into the city was wide, wide enough for six carriages to ride side by side, even with the water canal that ran down its center. Marble sidewalks added another lane of space on each side before reaching the faces of the buildings.



And the buildings.



Aksel had grown up in a village where every house looked like it was apologizing for existing. Here, each one stood like it had something to prove. Heavy timber frames in black walnut and cherry and woods he couldn't name held walls painted in colors he didn't have words for, deep reds beside dusty yellows beside a blue so sharp it looked wet. Five or six homes per block, each one different, each one deliberate, two to four floors tall, with glass clinging to every available corner like the city couldn't stand not to see its own reflection for a single moment.



And above it all, a jungle of tiled roofs and working chimneys pressing against one another, fighting for their share of the sky.



Selenne had her face nearly through the window. Aksel wasn't doing much better.



Then the street opened, and the buildings fell away, pushed aside into an open plaza.



It was too large to ever be crowded and too important to ever be empty. A seamless expanse of pale, carved stone that stretched so far the far end of it blurred, crowned at its center by a fountain so tall its peak vanished into mist. Every canal in the city seemed to be born from it, and every single one seemed to come back to die. A thousand people moved through the space without brushing shoulders. A hundred different crowds, flowing past each other like drops in a river, each one impossible to follow, part of something greater.



The carriage wheels rolled on. And then someone, a child, a vendor, it was not relevant and Aksel couldn't tell, recognized what the carriage was and pointed.



The sea of people outside went still.



Then it screamed.



The force of the screams and applause and chants of joy could have shattered a lesser vehicle. If they had rushed forward, no magic would have protected them from the sheer weight of such a rolling, human wave.



But they did not.



Against all expectation, they did not.



Instead, the moment drew and breathed. One woman fell to her knees and wept tiredly, as if suddenly everything was okay.



Selenne opened the door and stood on the threshold, one hand on the frame, her long hair blowing sideways in the wind. Aksel's hand twitched toward her back, but he let it drop. She deserved this.



"Are they… happy?"



"Of course," Mr. Seven answered, tipping his hat toward the crowd. "They are here because of you. The Academy and its sorcerers are the heart of Fiore. Your mere presence brings trade and wonder to these otherwise unremarkable lands. And wonder, Miss Selenne, is worth more than gold."



Selenne snorted, pulling the door shut and dropping back into her seat, though her gaze stayed on the window. "I'd take gold any day."



"You'll hear a million tales of men and women emptying their pockets for a taste of wonder," the conductor said. "But you will never hear one boast of profiting from their own misery."



"But they'll do it anyway," Aksel remarked.



"Indeed. Yet you won't hear about it, for dead men tell no tales. And what is a life of misery but a story of death stretched across many days?" The creature paused, straightening in its seat. "For now, simply allow them to enjoy your arrival. Times of late have been hard on their souls. And do not forget, these people have placed their faith in you. Should any kind of evil ever set its sights upon this city, you would be the ones expected to protect it. After all, those who stand at the top will always be held to the highest standard."



Aksel took one last look at the plaza as they left it behind, holding onto the sound of the whistles and the image of a child jumping into his father's arms.



Then they kept going. Slower now, with the pace of a morning stroll, parting the city leisurely. Until the wide streets fell back and warm sand met them softly.



There was a lake there, immense, regal. Maybe the only lake in Fiore every single child could name. A lake of silver and mist that rose like vapor.



The Glassmother.



Not a single boat dared to touch its surface. But a market still rose at the shore, as far as fishermen were willing to go, because regardless of how sacred the place, the sun kept moving, and lunch would be prepared.



The wheels of the carriage ignored the shore entirely, rolled past it, and met the water.



Aksel's hand found the edge of his seat. Even if the box sank the roof was sealed, that bought them seconds, if they could reach the door before—



But the box did not sink. It moved at the same speed over water as it had over land, ignorant of the surface beneath, uncaring. And so they parted the mists, and the world outside disappeared.



Shapes drifted behind the clouds.



Shadows of creatures both animal and cherubim, some crawling beneath the surface, others watching from just above it. Aksel recognized the Surawes, those long-legged water-spiders that skated across the lake in quick, nervous bursts. But others were stranger, alien. Something he'd mistaken for a swan suddenly unveiled three pairs of wings, each lined with pale, unblinking eyes on the inside, and launched itself skyward in a violent storm of wind and light that rocked the carriage against the waves.



Selenne looked at him. He looked at her. Neither of them had a word for what they'd just seen, so they settled for mutual, silent horror.



Eventually, the mist thinned, and the lake gave way to shore. The transition took less than a second. One moment the island ahead was empty.



Then it wasn't.



A castle of impossible dimensions devoured the view. It was an offense against both logic and architecture, a structure with no regard for gravity or order, that only seemed to grow as one looked up. Towers and wings splitting off each other in such a violent show of force that Aksel tried to make sense of it and found himself dizzy instead, his mind reaching for a shape that simply refused to make sense.



A god crowned in bloody sapphire.



By the time the wheels stopped, the carriage stood before a set of ancient doors. Open, wide open, like a maw.



Waiting.



"I am afraid our journey has come to an end," Mr. Seven said, and suddenly Aksel remembered how to think. "Would you do me the honor of accompanying us for the very last steps?"