Chapter 144: To Hell

Seyari’s voice broke the long silence. “We should leave—take Zarenna elsewhere to recover.”

“They would track us,” Kartania said, a hard edge to her voice. “We will camp here—it’s open enough that nothing will sneak up on us.”

I risked cracking my eyes open. Seyari and Kartania stood up next to me, one to each side. Joisse stayed in my arms, and I felt her breathing slow as she drifted off to sleep.

“Can I stay like this?” I asked the air.

Kartania bit her lip.

Seyari, however, nodded. “Kartania, could I get some time alone with your sister?”

Tania looked down at me and then up at my fiancée. “Fine. I expect to be informed about exactly what happened soon. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll secure the perimeter—is there anything I should be immediately worried about?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

Kartania nodded sharply and strode off, waving for the others to follow her. Nelys and Taava both looked my way, Nelys with a smile and Taava a thumbs-up. Brynna just seemed lost, but followed along after a backwards glance at me and Joisse.

Seyari plopped down on the scorched ground next to me, eyes roaming up and down my battered body. “The dress survived, huh?”

I glanced down. Even now, threads were stitching back in place. “I guess so. Sey, I—”

“Save it.” She sounded tired, and held her handless arm cradled in the other. “For a moment, let’s just have some silence.”

Numbly, I nodded. As we sat and looked at the sun hanging low over the mountains, I tried to organize my thoughts. I could feel the odd sensation of my body regenerating, even as my mana stayed almost fully depleted, whatever I pulled in working hard to bring back my missing arm.

I held the limb away from Seyari as I grew a completely new hand from nothing. Somewhere behind us, Tania and the others set up camp for the evening, and a small trail of smoke wafted up into the cloudy sky.

“What happened, Renna?” Sey asked eventually. “You mentioned Lorelei.”

“She was the one who was watching us—she’s a wrath demon like me now.”

“So I was right about Mordwell.” Seyari sighed. “Fuck. What happened between you and her.”

“She was bound—binding collar and everything. We… shared a few words.”

“What caused all this then? Was she really able to beat you?”

“I…” I choked, voice turning into a whine as I tried not to shout. “Oh gods I fucked up so bad…”

“How?”

I glanced over at Seyari’s stump and keened. Somehow, Joisse stayed out cold with her head in my lap. “I… I tried to break her binding. Sey, I… I couldn’t kill her. Not again. Not after I’d already failed my promise and—”

“Renna.” Sey’s stared into me with hard, sad eyes.

I hiccupped.

“Was it really her?” she asked.

“I… I think it was.”

Seyari groaned. “Fuuuuuck. Listen, Lorelei’s death wasn’t your fault: it was Mordwell’s. Her own great uncle killed her to make a demon he could manipulate. And he just used her to manipulate you.” She looked at her stump then back up at me. “I see you. Stop staring at my missing hand.”

“I’m so sorry, I just—”

“Stop. Pity won’t bring my hand back, Renna. We were ambushed the moment you flew off. We were played, and I think it’s safe to say Mordwell was banking on you trying some kind of diplomacy.”

“But how did he know…”

“He had a binding contract with Lorelei. How do you think he knew what you’d told her the night she died?”

I am so, so stupid. “Shit.”

“Yeah, shit.”

“So all this was from breaking the binding?” Seyari changed the subject, sweeping her good hand around the clearing. “Did Lorelei live?”

I nodded. “Yes and yes. She… she didn’t kill me. The last thing she said was, ‘for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’”

Seyari looked down and flicked a pebbled across the clearing. “Damn. Doesn’t sound much like her.”

“She’s changed a lot.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Seyari leveled an iron gaze at me. “Next time we meet her, you can’t just let her go unless we’ve got Mordwell dead.”

“I don’t know if I can!”

“You need to, Renna. She’s might really be changed—hell maybe even for the better. But her great uncle’s manipulating her, more so now than ever. What do you think she’s going to do when she gets back?”

“Will she go back?”

“She will.”

“How do you know?”

“Think about it, Renna. You’re normally good with this kind of shit.”

“She… doesn’t know how to live on her own, really, does she? Might not know how to live as a demon. But… but I could teach her!”

“Oh, Zarenna…” Seyari leaned in closer, looking up at me with wet eyes. “Could you? Could you ever be sure she wouldn’t turn on you or that she’d accept a contract? Would you even be okay giving her a contract? It’s not so simple as ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ Renna. Lorelei could genuinely have meant what she said. She could apologize even as she takes your head off and mean it. It’s not that simple.”

Seyari was right. “Fuck…” I sighed, realizing I’d been absentmindedly stroking Joisse’s mane of spines. They were smooth, and had a little flex to them.

“You have to learn to kill people that are redeemable, Zarenna Miller. They made bad choices, and some of them made those choices without knowing what they were getting into. Some of them might’ve even been completely forced into it. And some could change their tune and become great people. But you can’t go soldier-to-soldier in a war and try to stop the killing. You can’t avoid a battle just because people who deserve better are going to die.”

“I know. I just…” I trailed off and the silence lingered. “It’s hard, Sey. I don’t want to harden my heart.”

“You must, Renna. For both of us. For all of us. You said yourself that you can’t protect everyone; you can’t save everyone.”

Silence reigned for a long, somber while.

“I don’t want to lose myself,” I whispered faintly. “I’m scared.”

“I know.” Seyari placed her one remaining hand over mine. “You won’t lose yourself.”

“But—"

“You’ve already proven you’re not what people think of when they hear ‘demon.’ You’re far, far kinder than most anyone, Renna. But you don’t need to be a saint. No one is asking you to.”

First, I needed to hesitate less. I’d worked through that reality, accepting the risks. Now I had to harden my heart. I looked over to where the others were gathered by the fire, talking in low tones. I would kill to save any of them. I will kill to save any of them. As much as it pained me to admit, I had to place my friends and family above others.

“I’m scared that if I put some people above others, I’ll go too far and stop treating everyone like a person. I’m scared of my power, even still.”

I hadn’t realized I’d said as much aloud until Seyari pulled me into a hug. The soft weight of her arm stump pressing into my back was like a splash of ice-cold water.

“You won’t,” Seyari replied. “You won’t until you lose that fear. I’m not asking you to lose that fear. Gods know I went through hell to gain it back. I’m asking you to act.”

Did… did I never truly get over my hesitation?

“Every time I feel like I’ve accepted all of what I am, I find out that I haven’t. When does it end?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But do you want to find out, or do you want to let your own unsurety fester?”

“I want to find out.” My words had conviction. A ring to them.

“Good. Never forget your feelings. They make you what you are.”

“You sound like me.”

“All I’m doing is telling you back what you’ve told me again and again. You forgive others, Zarenna. I forgive you, even for my missing hand, but that’s not the point. Forgive yourself.”

Seyari’s words broke something inside of me. I didn’t know when I started crying again or that I’d forced her to bear my weight as I slumped to one side, but I didn’t struggle upright. I stayed there, bare, until I felt I could rise again.

***

Camp was a somber affair that evening; Joisse was carried, still asleep, to rest alone in Kartania’s tent while my sister kept watch all through the night. Seyari surprised me by sleeping together with me in our shared bedroll, and I tried not to think about how I’d gotten her maimed through my own stupidity.

The fact she wasn’t punishing me made it worse, and I wondered if that was her point. There wasn’t a way to make this better. No words would, and no actions could undo it. All I could do now was change, actually change.

I thought about Lilly and how she acted. Her kindness was backed by experience as a millennia-old monster. She did what she needed to do, and understood that. I was a sovereign like her. I hated that I no longer shared a contract with my daughter, but the bonds of found family would hold us now.

And while she had been the first, she and Nelys wouldn’t be the last. Mordwell had demons to send after us, and it looked more and more like he was working for, or being played by, Avarice and Envy. Those two had their own external power: connections, wealth, and a near-army of demons.

I had to get something like that. Who I was in private, with my family and friends did not need to be who I was to everyone else all the time. But I wasn’t going to wear another mask. I’d long ago decided I was done with that. No, I needed to be both at once.

I needed to be not just the Sovereign that I was, I had to be the Sovereign that I needed to be to see my goals through. This wasn’t going to stop with Finley, or Mordwell. Avarice and Envy wanted a war.

I would give them that war.

This last incident was a final straw. A final push beyond all my warnings of “final pushes” that I didn’t have the heart to follow through with. I had patience beyond patience, but it had finally run completely out, and I felt hollow inside. This time, I’d been pushed past the last of it.

I was furious.

There was a saying in Edath, and I imagined most everywhere had a variation of the same:

Fear the wrath of the patient woman.

END OF VOLUME 2