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When Hunter is fifteen years old, there is a breakout.
There is an attempted breakout, at least. His uncle seems unperturbed at the prospect, even though they’ve already made it to the courtyard- he simply hands Hunter a crossbow, tells him to go up to the parapets, and shoot down the basilisks.
And so he does.
.
The first time his uncle brings him to see the basilisks, he is eleven, freshly named the Golden Guard. He doesn’t explain beforehand, calling Hunter to the throne room early in the morning and telling him there is something he wants him to see.
Hunter thinks they trek down more stairs that morning than he’s walked in his entire life until then. It’s probably only a little bit of an exaggeration. The dungeons are set deep, deep into the ground- they have to be, his uncle explains; the things he holds there are highly dangerous, even caged in stone, and have to be kept isolated from any potential sources of magic.
Which is also why only he and Hunter are allowed down here. The Emperor is strong enough to resist their attacks, and Hunter’s lack of innate magic will protect him.
“What are they?” he asks tentatively, mentally shuffling through his knowledge of the creatures of the Boiling Isles, trying to come up with anything that could possibly be able to- to steal magic, like his uncle is implying. The only thing he can come up with are-
“Basilisks,” his uncle says, and they hit a landing. The narrow stairwell opens up into a large room, the walls cut from the raw bedrock that surrounds them. Cages line the far end, lit only by a handful of flickering lantern charms. Belos lifts a hand, and a ball of light sparks to life above it, casting stronger shadows across the room. It’s enough that, if Hunter squints, he can see the indistinct figures curled in each of the cages.
At the sign of the light, they start moving, lifting witchlike heads and uncoiling serpentine bodies. Basilisks, Hunter mouths to himself, wide eyes fixed on cages. He’s lucky his face is hidden behind his mask- if his uncle witnessed such a plain show of emotion, he’d surely be punished for it.
“Fascinating beasts,” Belos says, striding across the room to lean down in front of one of the cages. The basilisk inside hisses, but he doesn’t react. “Extraordinarily dangerous, extraordinarily evil. Nearly a witch’s intelligence, some adults can display a rudimentary grasp on language- but they’re magic eaters, devouring witches and demons indiscriminately to grow their power.”
Hunter dips his head in acknowledgement, but doesn’t move from where he stands by the stairwell. He’s never, ever been grateful he doesn’t have magic before. But if it protects him from these- these things, he’ll take it.
His uncle doesn’t say anything to him after that, going about what seems to be common business for maintaining the basilisks. Feeds them, waters them, writes down a few observations in a notebook resting on a desk.
There’s a table off to the side, lined with instruments and bindings which Hunter is choosing not to pay too much attention to, but it goes unused.
From then on, at least once a week except for when Hunter is away from the castle on a long mission, his uncle takes him down to the dungeon with the basilisks. He never asks him to do anything but watch, standing sentry by the stairwell, but he’s there all the same.
.
He’s a very good shot. He’s good at most things, really- has to be, in his position. He lines up basilisk after basilisk in his sight and puts a bolt in each of their backs, just to the side of the spine. It won’t kill them- won’t even hurt them that much, relatively speaking. Basilisks have heavy muscles lining their spines that’ll stop his bolts before they hit anything vital. But the arrowheads are laced with a strong sleeping nettle extract, and it’ll give the scouts on the ground enough time to gather up the bodies and return them to the dungeon.
His uncle pats him on the shoulder, when all is said and done. He preens under the approval.
.
When he’s thirteen, he’s given command of a routing- the Emperor has received word of an alliance of wild witches collecting on the far southern coast near Deilbraught.
It’s not expected to be exceedingly difficult- the alliance is yet small, and this mission is mostly to nip it in the bud. He takes a single contingent of scouts and travels quietly, off the main thoroughfares; he doesn’t want word of their travel to run off ahead of them and the wild witches to go underground.
The direct commander he sends into Deilbraught proper with a handful of men to meet with the detachment stationed in the city. They’ll know more about the city and its goings-on than him, and it’ll look less suspicious than the Golden Guard himself showing up in a random little city on the fringes of the Isles.
Instead, he has his scouts bed down outside the city, and leaves them with strict instructions to not go into Deilbraught and seek him out if anything happens.
Then he sets off into the wildlands to search for any sign of the wild witches himself. It doesn’t take long- they’re not even trying to hide.
About three miles from the edge of Deilbraught, he comes across a small settlement- ramshackle houses cluster around what appears to be a meetinghouse. The roads are bare dirt and the structures, bar for the central one, look a strong wind from blowing over.
And it’s inhabited. He slinks up into a tree, tugging his hood far over his face to hide the glint of his mask, as witches suddenly spill from the meetinghouse and scatter across the settlement. Some immediately reenter houses, some make their way to gardens, some exchange with what must be guards posted around the perimeter.
Now that people have appeared, they don’t disappear again- Hunter watches for nearly an hour, though nothing particularly interesting happens. He concludes pretty quickly that he’ll easily have enough overwhelming force to scatter these witches and burn the place.
Finally he slips off back into the woods and makes his way on foot back to the camp. He’s gone entirely unnoticed.
.
“I knew a witch at the Deilbraught settlement, did you know,” the Owl Lady says mildly, apropos of nothing. Hunter tenses. They’ve barely exchanged formalities, amid the chaos of everything and with the Day of Unity looming perpetually overhead.
But it’s a quiet moment now, in the thin hollow hours of the morning when everyone should be asleep. He thought he was the only one awake, pacing restlessly and keeping some sort of watch.
But here’s the Owl Lady herself, standing in what passes for a kitchen and mixing… something, into what might be a tea-adjacent liquid. And talking about knowing someone at the Deilbraught settlement.
The routing, he remembers in a flash. The only major one he’d led personally- they don’t happen very often, and there hasn’t been another since.
“Did you,” he says carefully. He can’t tell whether this is supposed to be a biting but ultimately harmless jab, or an actual threat. He’ll have to be on guard, just in case.
“I did,” she nods. “A few, actually, but only the one that made it out.”
Hunter doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing. Titan, does he want his mask right now. “I’m sorry,” he tries, because he’s found apologizing straight out is a pretty good way of heading off any violence coming his way.
The Owl Lady tips her head. “Do you know what she said? She said the Golden Guard, in the midst of it all, saved her life.”
Breathe in, and breathe out. Steady, Hunter.
(Your one mistake. Your one mistake, and the Owl Lady of all people knows.
Why couldn’t you just leave her to die? )
“I don’t think anyone ever believed her. I sure didn’t,” the Owl Lady continues. “Not at the time. But now that I’ve met you, now that I’ve known you…”
She sips her drink, slips past where Hunter is standing frozen in the doorway. “Now I’m not so sure.”
.
He really doesn’t mean for it to go the way it does.
It’s supposed to be clean, simple- his scouts scatter the wild witches, drive them from their houses and yards, and then burn it all. In that order. They don’t have word to kill- it’s supposed to go in that order.
Later, he’ll interrogate half the scouts, but he never does find out who set the fire. One minute, he’s storming down the settlement’s main road, calling as loud as he can manage for everyone to evacuate the buildings. He’s flanked by the commander and six more scouts, three on each side- the rest of the contingency is breaking doors that stay stubbornly shut in order to usher the wild witches out.
And then, in the space between breaths, there’s a whoosh of displaced air and the meetinghouse is on fire.
As Hunter watches, the fire consumes much of the drywood structure in seconds, before jumping to the houses near it.
Someone starts screaming.
Hunter takes a deep breath, reorients himself, and makes a plan.
It doesn’t actually change his priorities all that much. He still needs to get everyone out, get them as far from the fire as he can- it’s just that his timeline is suddenly so much faster.
He yells at the commander to have his men split off, join the scouts entering houses. Go through every one- make certain they’re empty, of people and palismans and pets. The houses are all wood, probably all as dry as the meetinghouse, and they’re going to burn hot and fast. They don’t have very much time.
Hunter himself turns on his heel and flies toward the meetinghouse. It’s behind them, fortunately, and odds are everyone had already exited the houses nearest to it.
There’s only so much he can do. There isn’t time to thoroughly search each and every building, but he hadn’t seen anyone go into the meetinghouse itself.
When he tries the door it’s locked, and he doesn’t bother trying to pick it, raising his staff and blasting it off its hinges. It’s a huge structure, with what looks like it used to be a wide open floor and a stage at the front, but half the ceiling’s already come down, scattering it with burning debris.
He scans the room for- there.
There’s a stairwell off to the side of the building, probably leading down to a basement. Hunter can see into the top landing, just enough to spot the shadow of a person pressed against the far wall of it, as far as they can get from the flaming rafters that’ve come down in front of it.
Smoke billows from the stairs, which means that the whole basement is probably airless by now. The witch is trapped.
As he watches, the pillar next to her cracks. The licks of flame leap to it from the debris on the ground.
In an instant, Hunter knows exactly what is going to happen next: the whole corner of the meetinghouse is going to collapse, burying the witch with it.
He’s halfway across the building before he even realizes he’s moving. A blink, and a blink again and he throws himself into the witch, encasing them both in as strong a shield as he can manage as he shatters through the far wall. In the same moment, the pillar gives and the rest of the roof comes tumbling down, exactly where they had just been standing.
The two of them roll to a halt, and Hunter detangles himself from them in order to look back up at the meetinghouse. It’s rapidly collapsing in on itself- if there was anyone else in there, they’re beyond saving.
The witch- the wild witch- the wild witch he’d just saved, oh, Titan, what has he done- the witch shifts, blinking up at him. Her face does several things in rapid succession, none of which he can follow, and then she promptly flinches away from him, scrabbling to her feet.
He follows, rising as gracefully as he can. “Run,” he says. “Run as fast as you can and never come back here.”
She doesn’t move, staring at him with wide eyes. “You saved me,” she says, something like shock in her voice.
Hunter doesn’t know how to respond to that, because it’s true. He tips his head back, staring her down.
She finally blinks, nods sharply, and disappears into the night.
Some time later, he watches from the woods as the last of the settlement collapses to the ground. The fire’s mostly burnt itself out, and the sun is peeking over the horizon.
“Put it out,” he murmurs to the commander, standing behind his shoulder. “And then we fly.”
.
There is a series of assassination attempts when he’s fourteen. Lilith Clawthorne is the first- from her report, she woke in the dead of night to find someone creeping in her window. They threw a knife at her the moment she started moving, and then a string of increasingly violent spells. When Clawthorne batted them all away and began to mount her defense, they quickly fled.
The would-be assassin is never identified.
.
When Hunter mentions this casually to Lilith, years later, her reaction is not what he expected. Her face goes red and she buries her head in her hands, and Eda drops the mug she’s holding.
When Eda’s cursing finally quiets, she spins on her toes to stare at her sister with a wild expression. “You almost got assassinated? Why didn’t I ever hear about this? Why didn’t anyone ever hear about this?”
But Hunter’s already shaking his head. “It was kept pretty tightly under wraps. First because the investigation was in progress, and then when the other attempts started happening, we had reason to believe there was an insider, a rogue spy in the castle- it wasn’t, but we didn’t know that for months.”
.
Three weeks later, there’s poison dropped in Darius Deamonne’s tea. The only reason it doesn’t kill him is because he’s distracted, pulled away from his morning routine by some underling causing a ruckus- and by the time he returns, the tea has gone cold and the stink of rot filled his quarters.
The rest of the covenheads are promptly put on high alert. If the Clawthorne incident wasn’t just a one-off, there’s someone out for blood in the House of the Emperor.
Unfortunately, there’s no tracks to follow. Hunter takes time to read through Deamonne’s and Clawthorne’s reports of their respective incidents, but nothing stands out.
His uncle retreats from public life, for the time being. It’s nothing particularly out of character- there have always periodically been spans of time where he practically disappears from leadership of the Isles, leaving it to his covenheads and his Golden Guard.
Hettie Cutburn finds the firebomb set rigged below her floor before it goes off, but Adrian Graye isn’t so lucky. His recovery goes slowly but smoothly, fortunately. It wouldn’t have been so easy if Cutburn had also been out of commission.
(Everyone knows. It hangs over the castle like cobwebs for the two weeks Graye is on bedrest.)
There’s a quiet period, after that. A month and a half where everyone in the castle is tense and prepared for anything and everything, and nothing happens. Hunter can feel himself getting shorter and shorter tempered with his subordinates- multiple times has to bite back a snarl at some scout that just had the misfortune to be assigned messenger duty.
He takes to haunting the castle halls like a ghost most nights. He does his best to keep the nights he actually sleeps the whole six hours random, so no one can get a pattern on him.
The scouts actually on patrol duty don’t say anything, when they pass him, just nod politely and move on.
So he’s exhausted but alert when he realizes he’s being trailed.
He’s making his way back toward his quarters at the very top of the castle when the world suddenly comes into focus and he knows, from nothing conscious at all, that there is a person about twenty paces behind him and entirely invisible.
He doesn’t change his body language and doesn’t change his path. This is an opportunity- he doesn’t want to scare them off.
They stay the same distance from him the whole winding way up the castle. He’s not entirely sure how he’s aware of them, considering they’re invisible and don’t seem to be making any noise, but he most certainly is.
Then he opens the door to his quarters, and they move.
They’re on top of him in the time it takes to blink, a dark blur now visible- he only barely responds fast enough to get his staff up to block the blade headed straight for his heart.
Huh, he thinks absurdly. They’re taking a more direct approach this time.
And then they’re into it, a lightfast dance of blade-to-staff. Hunter’s assailant is larger than him, not much taller but broader-shouldered and stronger, and he can feel it in the sheer strength behind their blows- but he’s faster. He has to be light on his feet and quick enough they can’t catch an opportunity to use magic, because if they get that opportunity, he’s screwed.
They manage to get past his guard first, swiping their blade over his leading shoulder and opening a cut from collar to elbow. He hisses, low and acidic, and redoubles his attack.
He gets a good few blows in with the heel of his staff, but they’re mostly at a stalemate, trading swipes and shots.
And then Hunter sees an opening- they leave their flank unshielded just an instant too long, and they know it too. Their eyes go wide as he shoots under their guard, and then he hooks the wing off his staff around the hilt of their sword and twists.
The sword clatters to the ground and Hunter doesn’t waste any time kicking it down the hallway. Then he’s on the offensive, slamming them over the head with his staff and knocking them to the ground with a well-placed blow to the knees.
He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t gloat. He’s won, and that’s all that matters.
He spins his staff around to align with his arm, pointed straight at his assailant’s face. In an instant he sees them under the hood, eyes wide and frightened, and then he shoots them in the head.
It’s a quick death, a painless one. It’s all he can afford them.
.
He isn’t even the Golden Guard yet, the first time he kills something.
His uncle says it’s for the best- his uncle says better to learn a strong stomach young. He’s got a bright future ahead of him, the Titan assures it, but leadership comes invariably with blood. There’ll come a day it can’t be avoided.
So he’s covensworn for two weeks at most, tired from training and with a mind racing through all the things he’ll have to recite back perfectly tomorrow. The messenger intercepts the bundle of new recruits he’s walking with back to the barracks, informs him that the Emperor expects him at the throne room in ten minutes.
Hunter does his best not to wilt at the prospect. He’s so tired, he’d been looking forward to a cold shower and maybe even a nap.
But he won’t disappoint his uncle. He bows out of the conversation and shuffles off in the direction of the central throne room, tucked away deep in the labyrinthine corridors of the Emperor’s castle.
(He doesn’t drag his feet. He doesn’t.)
But when he gets there, there’s no one there.
“Uncle?” he calls tentatively, slipping quietly into the room and closing the massive door behind him as lightly as he can. “You asked for me?”
“Hunter, boy,” comes his uncle’s voice from somewhere unseen. “Behind the throne, the door.”
The door he finds is small, unassuming- the least grandiose thing he thinks he’s ever seen in immediate conjunction with his uncle. But it’s propped open, and through it he can see a tall figure shuffling around in the lanternlight.
He clicks his heel once to announce his presence and settles beside the door to wait for his uncle to call on him. It’s only moments before he beckons for Hunter to join him at the side table he’s hunched over.
He stretches up on his tiptoes as much as he can, but he’s not tall enough to see atop the table. His uncle chuckles softly upon seeing Hunter’s struggle, and slides a stepstool over with his foot from somewhere behind him.
Hunter hops up high enough that his eyeline is around his uncle’s shoulder, and inspects the table. It’s wood, dark sealed, lined with various tools and blades.
Under his uncle’s hand, in the middle of it, is a hawker’s rabbit.
His uncle hands him a knife. It’s a short straightknife, the kind Hunter’s been handling but not allowed to keep for years now. He turns it over in his hand, presses a finger against the line of it to feel its sharpness. It’s honed to a vicious edge.
“When I was young, weapons had to be ritually consecrated before they could be named. Prey animals were favoured, and they would then be eaten so not to waste blood. It’s a sin against the Titan and his grace, of course.”
Hunter nods vigorously, looking away from the blade and up to his uncle. “Here. Put the knife down, and look for the pulse in its throat.”
The rabbit is limp, alive but unconscious, and his uncle moves his hands away so Hunter can press his fingers to the side of its throat.
The pulse is quicker than any witch’s, pattering away in an uneven three-beat that feels foreign against Hunter’s own double-step heartbeat.
“When you are older, you will be able to snap the neck of an animal this small with your hands. But it is too large for you yet, and there are some things for which that is never practical. Where you feel the heartbeat- that is where you want to aim the point of your knife. Do you understand?”
The rabbit’s pulse hasn’t changed, but Hunter’s has quickened. He nods.
“Good. You’ll learn, in time, how to map that pulse point onto any other creature- be it rabbit, griffon, or even witch.”
It’s like electricity, the idea of it, the idea of finding a witch’s heartbeat with a knife in hand.
(He’s not so sure it’s a good electricity.)
His uncle turns his head to look directly at Hunter. They’re both still masked, so he can’t see any of his face except for the faint blue light of his eyes. “Go ahead. It’s a single motion- be careful, because one day, you’ll only have the one chance.”
Hunter blinks, recoils slightly. “You want me to… to kill it? While it’s asleep?”
His uncle tips his head ever so slightly, and when he speaks again, there’s faint amusement in his tone. “Well. Everyone has to start somewhere, don’t they?”
.
He didn’t miss. He didn’t miss, because he’s a very good shot, and maybe that’s the worst part.
He knows- he knows the basilisk is worth more than a random scout. That’s how it goes, that’s how it’s supposed to go. There are many scouts, and only a handful of living basilisks.
But-
-and there’s always a but, isn’t there?
But he recognizes the notch in that mask. But he knows the line of that cape, but he knows that scout. But their name is Deim, and they stood next to him when he was announcing patrol duties last month and trilled softly when he made a jab at Kikimora under his breath. But they slipped him a piece of chocolate as they were leaving with a low I know you don’t get out much, and he’d never had chocolate before.
But they’re cornered by the basilisk in his sights, and the sleeping nettle doesn’t work that fast. And.
Well.
He moves before he realizes he’s moving, a minute twitch of steady hands and he is a very good shot.
The bolt slides cleanly between the basilisk’s ribs. To anyone else it is a lucky shot, but Hunter knows exactly what he did- it pierces straight through its peripheral air sacs and buries in its upper heart. It is a fatal shot.
He does not have time to consider it. Deim flees, hopping over the collapsed body and returning to the fray. Hunter lets his attention follow.
When all the basilisks are caged again, there are only two missing.
.
He sharpens his straightknife when he’s anxious. The repetitive motions are soothing, and it gives him something to do with his hands so he’s not picking at the stitching of his cape or gloves.
He has better weapons, of course. He’s competent with nearly every blade, bow and staff under the sun, but it’s the little straightknife, with its blade hardly as long as his hand, that he’s had for the longest. It’s also the only one he always has on him- even when he’s not carrying his staff.
So he has it with him, at Hexside. It’s next to the only thing he’s got left, beside the clothes on his back. But he’s been so anxious, so placeless, so scared, though he’ll never admit it to anyone but himself and Flapjack- the straightknife is honed to a perfect edge, these days, and continuing to sharpen it would only wear it pointlessly.
He’s just- spinning it, idly, trying his best not to think, when Flapjack’s whistle and the sound of footsteps catches his attention.
He only just barely catches it and tucks it away into its sheath against his side before Gus appears in his sightline.
.
Adrian Graye is careless and doesn’t have his throat protected. Hunter considers it briefly, a hand hovering over his knife, and decides against it.
.
It’s not like he hasn’t known death.
(But Flapjack-
Flapjack-)
.
The traitor is brought before the Emperor in the middle of the night. Hunter had been called to the throne room furtively, the birdlike little figure of a message-spell slipping under his door and rousing him with its bright glow settled on his chest.
He squints against the light, spilling out of bed the moment he realizes what it is. His uncle only uses message-spells when the situation is particularly delicate, and he can’t risk any information getting out by sending a common scout.
The spell catches itself, flutters in the air for a moment before Hunter reaches for it. “Speak,” he whispers.
There’s not a lot of detail- just an urgency, and a call to report to the throne room in full dress, and to come armed.
It’s like cold water down Hunter’s spine. He throws on his armor and sheathes a pair of closeblades at his hip, then snatches his staff and rushes out the door, still pinning his cloak over his shoulders one-handed.
His uncle is standing alone in the throne room, also in dress. Hunter doesn’t ask questions, just kneels briefly in respect and then takes his place at his Emperor’s side. Shortly after him, the covenheads shuffle in one by one, forming a loose semicircle around the two of them.
There’s still a noticeable gap where the Oracle covenhead, Juriah Seph, is meant to stand when the Emperor begins to move. He lifts a hand as if a signal, and the doors to the throne room slam open.
And- well. Hm.
Two scouts wearing the crest of the Prisonkeep drag in a snapping and thrashing Juriah Seph, bound in iron chain and magical rope alike. They bring him to a halt about ten feet from the dais, and he remains on his feet, shaking where he stands.
“Kneel before your Emperor,” Hunter announces, as is his duty. Seph looks at him, something dark in his eyes.
“I have no Emperor,” he hisses. “I bow to no man.”
Hunter leans forward, lifting his staff and pointing it at Seph. “The Emperor is above men. Kneel.”
The Prisonkeeps yank his chains to force him down. He snarls, fangs on full display and ears pinned flat to the sides of his head.
“Brought before you is a traitor to the throne,” the Emperor hums. “He has forsaken his sworn duty and, two nights past, made an attempt on my life. You are here to witness justice.”
Someone behind Hunter shifts on their feet, but there are no objections.
“You monsters,” Seph spits. “You will stand by this man, this yet-mortal man, you will abide his crimes and his cruelty? Have you no conscience? Have you no honor?”
“Silence!” the Emperor booms. “My Guard, my Golden Guard. You speaker of my will, you my hands and my eyes. Do as you must.”
Hunter knows, unspoken, what he is called upon to do. The whole rest of the world slips away as he carefully steps down from the dais and crosses to Seph. His hands are gone cold.
The former covenhead’s eyes are wild and seer-bright as he watches Hunter approach. “What are you?” he breathes. “What violation of death, what crime against nature? You dead thing, child, you dead thing-”
Hunter’s hand shoots out to grip Seph’s hair. He forces his head back to bare his throat, hums, and makes a decision.
Seph is still watching as Hunter hands his staff off to one of the Prisonkeeps, and reaches under his cloak to pull out one of his closeblades.
He could find a witch’s pulsepoint in his sleep, these days. But he holds the closeblade backward anyway, presses two fingers to Seph’s throat. This is a show as much as it is an execution, after all.
His hands do not shake.
When the fabric of his glove brushes Seph’s skin, the man stops breathing. For the first time, a flicker of fear appears in his eyes.
He does not draw it out anymore. He’s not cruel. In a single motion, Hunter swings his hand back, flips his closeblade up and slices Seph’s throat open jaw to collar.
His hands are bound and he cannot reach up to cover the wound. But he jerks anyway in an attempt, thrashing as he falls forward. Hunter steps smoothly aside as he does, watching the man bleed out.
One last time, as he lay dying, Juriah Seph looks up at the Golden Guard, his executioner- looks him in the eye and mouths you dead thing.
It is years before Hunter understands.
.
The first time Flapjack perches in his hands is the first time it strikes Hunter just how much blood is on them.
They aren’t Flapjack then, of course- just a little cardinal palisman he doesn’t want anything to do with. But they went and hopped right up to him, sat in his hands like he hadn't snapped the neck of things much larger than them a thousand times before. Like Hunter couldn’t just… end them, right then and there, and it would be so easy.
(Maybe that’s why he didn’t, he’ll muse, much later.)
But the human is long gone, and there is only him in the high reaches of an Emperor’s castle- there is only him, and a bird.
Their feathers are crimson-like-blood, he thinks, and then realizes he’s wrong. It’s too bright. They’ve got visible wear- most of the vanes missing on the tips of the wings and patches where the feathers are half-broken off entirely, but their coloration is still a strong, sharp red-and-black.
They shift, chirp and cock their head, as if asking what Hunter’s thinking. He hums, smiles, a little bitterly.
He’s yet to face the consequences of his recent failure. It’s going to happen soon, but for now it’s just hanging heavy over his head, and here is the proof- the living proof of all his inadequacies.
“I should hand you over to my uncle,” he says quietly. “Maybe it would win me a bit of forgiveness. Maybe it would help his curse not be so bad.”
Palimans can understand witch speech, even if only their witch can understand them. But the bird doesn’t flee, just chirps again and nudges their head against the heel of his palm.
“I’ve given him a lot of people’s palismans,” he tries. “Killed some of those people, too. One more would make no difference.”
Even that doesn’t faze them. “You aren’t scared of me,” he marvels, and. Huh.
The thing is that- even the people who hate him, they’re scared of him. He knows that, and it’s warranted. He’s done a lot of horrible things. Necessary things, but horrible all the same. The only person he’s ever known who’s not scared of him, in any capacity, is his uncle.
Now it is his uncle, and a small red bird.
The bird chatters, and flits from Hunter’s hand to his shoulder. They nudge at his cheek, then run their beak through his hair.
He huffs and flicks an ear, because it tickles. They keep doing it, though, flickering around his head and playing with his hair. Their antics get him to laugh a little bit, draw a crooked smile in the few minutes before there’s a heavy knock on the door.
Immediately, all amusement drains from him. “Just a moment!” he calls, and reaches up to catch the palisman from the air.
“You need to leave,” he whispers, hopping over to his window. “You can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”
The palisman just chirps and nudges his hand. “You need to leave!” he repeats, pulling his window open and placing them on the sill. They watch him without any sign of leaving. “Go!”
Hunter growls low in his throat. “No. You know what, it doesn’t matter to me. Do as you will.”
He turns away from the strange palisman, grabs his mask from its shelf and answers the door. (If he’s careful to keep the door shut enough to block the view of his window- well. There’s no one to bear witness. No one that matters.)
“The Emperor calls for you,” the scout tells him. He nods, and dismisses them, the message expected. He breathes for a moment to center himself, takes his cloak, and goes to face his failure.
.
He spends the week after Juriah Seph doing paperwork to prepare for his successor’s induction. Osran is steady and loyal, and will be a good covenhead.
He does his best to forget the fact that when he turned back to the Emperor, blood on his boots- his gaze flickered over his shoulder, against Hunter’s will.
He does his best to forget the fact that Darius’s eyes were closed.
.
He’s had hawker’s rabbit before. Lots of times, it’s an easy prey to keep. Wild is always stronger, of course, though the blood is the same. But his uncle is right. It tastes better when you’ve done the work.
After the rabbit is dead, he walks Hunter through skinning and gutting it, then lights his fireplace. “You don’t necessarily need to do all of the preparation,” he rumbles as they watch it cook. “Witch stomachs are strong enough to take the skin and organs. But if you have the time and resources, it’s easier to cook and tastes better.”
Hunter nods, doing his best to commit his uncle’s every word to memory. He watches the rabbit intently, trying to figure out how he’ll know when it’s ready.
“It’s the kind of thing you have to learn by experience,” his uncle says, answering the unasked question. “You’ll get better at it.”
Hunter bites his lip. He has to be good now, though, he has to be the best or he won’t be worth the bright future his uncle says the Titan has planned for him. He doesn’t voice these thoughts, though.
The silence sits warm between them until his uncle lifts his head. “You can take it off now. It’s ready.”
“How did you know?” Hunter asks, amazed. His uncle smiles.
“Like I said,” he hums. “Practice.”
.
“Actually, you might know,” Amity muses. “Even my mother never did, and she’s an Oracle herself. Whatever happened to Juriah Seph? He was covenhead for so long, and then one day just kind of… disappeared, and Osran replaced him silently. Was there an accident?”
Hunter goes still. Behind Amity, Luz’s eyes widen. She doesn’t know the details- no one does, no one but the people who were there, but she’s good at putting pieces together. She knows enough.
“Oh, yeah, I always wondered about that. I don’t think there was ever a clear answer? But I wasn’t really paying attention to the business of the Oracle coven,” Willow says, so focused on the strange human plant she’s trying to coax into growth that she’s oblivious to the sudden tension in two of her friends.
Vee sees it, though. She lifts her head from where she’s drowsing on the couch, narrows her eyes at Hunter. “You were the Golden Guard,” she murmurs. “Hands and eyes.”
He’s not sure how she knows that bit. It was a formality, a corollary to his title, used only in official business and only ever spoken. Written, the Golden Guard carried enough weight on its own.
But she does, all the same. She knows, and that’s the end of it.
“Juriah Seph,” he starts carefully, quietly. “Committed a heinous crime. He was… removed. Quietly. It did not need to be public business; he was due to retire within a few years anyway.”
Amity blinks. “Somehow that raises so many more questions than it answers.”
“I killed him,” Hunter says flatly. No use hiding it. They already know he’s a murderer. “He was brought before the Emperor a traitor and duly sentenced to death. In cases of betrayal at the highest ranks within the Emperor’s castle, it is the Golden Guard’s duty to carry out justice.”
“The Emperor’s executioner,” Vee bites out. “A killing dog at his heel.”
“Vee,” Luz says, though Hunter takes the jibe with only a twitch of an ear. She’s right, after all.
“Hunter, that was almost five years ago,” Amity says, so soft it’s nearly a whisper. She’s looking at him with that odd expression he’s learned is a combination of shock and pity. “How old were you?”
He shrugs. “I hadn’t been Guard all that long at the time. Twelve, maybe?”
Willow breathes out, long but tightly controlled, and all of a sudden everything is too close to Hunter. He has to get out of this house, he has to get away from all their terrible pitying eyes. He did it on purpose, don’t they get it? He was proud of it, don’t they understand? He’s not the victim, in this part of his history. He was exactly the monster all the stories painted him as.
He stands, sharply, shuttering his expression. “I’m going up to the roof,” he says because they panic when he disappears without warning, every word full of thorns. Then he flees.
.
You dead thing-
You dead thing-
You dead thing-
.
Sometimes he thinks about- Darius called his mentor a great witch. And now that he knows the truth about. The truth about the Golden Guards.
Hunter never did have the guts to ask whether that Guard before him had magic. Whether he used the same artificial staff his whole life that Hunter grew up with, whether he didn’t need it, whether it’s a Grimwalker thing or still, still, still, just his own inadequacy.
(Does Darius know what became of him? He can’t imagine. His uncle- the Emperor- Belos always kept instances of betrayal so close to his chest. In hindsight, Hunter is surprised the other covenheads even got to know about Juriah Seph, much less witness it. When it’s the Guard himself, even if it was something expected-
-and isn’t that its own monster, lying in wait?-
-he would have handled it privately. Odds are, Hunter’s predecessor just kind of, one day, disappeared.)
Briefly he thinks about using his artificial staff again. He could find it, he’s sure, tucked away somewhere in the castle still. As awful a taste it always left in his mouth- he’s next to useless without it now. No palisman, no magic, after all.
(Except you know that’s not quite true.)
And in that brief period between- in that brief period before Stringbean, there were six of them to three palismans, and he could tell having them all fly with double weight so much was wearing fast.
Yet it’s the very want that keeps him from getting it. There’s no way for him to get to the castle alone, and he knows full well anyone with a palisman would hard veto the whole idea.
So he just trails after Luz and her friends, deadweight, worse than. He’s snappish and short-tempered and they are putting up with him, and really, he’s lucky they haven’t realized he’s more a liability than he’s worth and put him down.
Titan knows if this was a coven scouting party in hostile territory, he’d have been disabled and left for dead a long time ago. He’s actively tried to kill his team once. It could happen again.
And yet they just… let him be.
He’s sure they just have more important things to worry about.
.
“Mija,” Camila says, looking at Luz with something haunted under her expression. “Vee has told me… stories of the demon realm. These horrible monsters in charge of it.”
Hunter is only watching out of the corner of his eye. Most of his attention is dedicated to Gus, who’s most of the way asleep against his side, and Willow, sitting stiffly at the table, hands folded in her lap and eyes unfocused.
He trusts Willow to take care of herself, most of the time, but even the strongest leader needs someone steady at their side.
(That’s what he was for his Emperor, after all. He can be that again for his Captain.)
“Emperor Belos is dead,” Luz says hollowly. “It’s… it’s a really long story. And not everything is fixed. But he’s dead.”
Camila takes that in, visibly slotting it into the rest of her limited knowledge of the Isles. The basilisk at her side shifts, tension loosing from its- from her shoulders.
(When all the basilisks were caged again, there were only two missing. One he killed. The other-
Hunter’s uncle told him that basilisks were evil all the way down to their core. But Hunter’s uncle told him many, many untrue things, and this basilisk looks healthy if stressed, and neither Luz nor Camila seem worried. So. So.)
Then. “And what about the- the Golden Guard?”
Hunter stills.
Luz opens her mouth. Closes it again. Looks away.
Amity, at Luz’s side, takes her hand. “He isn’t a threat anymore,” she says, steadily. There’s no shake in her voice, and if Hunter didn’t know better, he’d almost believe she’s not lying. “It’s. Complicated. But he’s not a threat.”
The basilisk narrows her eyes at Amity. “So he’s alive.”
“...he is.”
Camila purses her lips. “Vee told me about the day of her escape. How he shot down all the others from two hundred feet up. Luz, honey, how could someone like that stop being a threat? How do you know he won’t just keep hurting people?”
“Because he won’t!” Luz bursts out. She looks next to bursting into tears, Hunter realizes, and- he has to stop this.
“Do you know him?” the basilisk asks, shock lacing her voice. “Well enough to say something like that? Luz, you don’t know what he’s done. He’s a monster, just as much as his Emperor.”
“Don’t say that,” Luz whispers. Amity puts her arm around Luz’s shoulders, tugs her into her side. “Don’t- don’t say that.”
Hunter stands, suddenly. It knocks Gus from his place and he makes a low, confused noise, but Hunter can only feel bad about it for a moment. He stumbles to Luz’s side.
“Hunter, don’t,” Amity starts. “You don’t have to-”
“I owe you all this much,” he interrupts dully. Because he does. Because the basilisk is right, and if nothing else, he owes her this much.
(There’s a word for the last surviving member of a species. Endling. And Grimwalkers aren’t a species, not really, but. There’s something to be said for it, all the same.)
Flapjack is nested with the other palismans alop a shelf across the room. They’re all sound asleep and out of reach, and he hopes at least being among Luz’s friends will protect them from what he’s about to do.
He looks her in the eye. “I was the Golden Guard.”
For a long, terrible instant, nothing happens.
Then several things happen at once.
First: the basilisk moves. She is lightquick leaping from her coiled position, and Hunter respects her reflexes. He could dodge her, of course, easily, but that’s because he expected this. Without that advantage it would be much more a toss-up.
Second: Luz starts yelling. Hunter can’t make out her words, just her voice. She’s not the only one, but she is the loudest.
Third, if it counts: Hunter does not move. He allows the basilisk to slam into his chest and throw them both to the ground. It knocks the breath from his lungs and instinctively he wheezes for air.
He does not defend himself. He does not try. He keeps his hands open at his sides and does not reach for the straightknife burning against his ribs.
She curls over his torso, using her full weight to pin him to the ground. She’s got one hand braced beside his head and the other resting over his throat, fingers curved into vicious claws. And yet- there she pauses, hesitating to tear out his throat.
“...please, don’t, Vee, he’s different now, he’s changed, you don’t need to do this.” The world comes back into focus with Luz’s pleading voice somewhere above him. The basilisk- Vee, really, he can have the decency to at least call her by her name- hisses, low and rattling. Hunter suppresses the responding growl that rises in his chest.
“You killed her,” Vee snarls. “You shot them all down and you killed Izzy, you murdered her!”
The basilisk that had Deim cornered, he thinks vaguely. “I did,” he rasps, but his acknowledgement doesn’t seem to help.
“Are you not going to defend yourself? Justify your crimes, stop me from tearing out your throat?” she asks, something Hunter can’t identify threading into her voice. “Do you want to die?”
”No,” Hunter hums. “But you want me to. And I don’t have the right to stop you.”
That does- something. Vee flinches. The weight of the heel of her palm at his collar eases, and her fingers slide away from his throat.
A dark shape appears beside them, and Luz crouches down. She’s saying something Hunter can’t track, and pulls Vee off of him. He’s left breathing on the ground, mostly ignored, while Luz comforts a shaken Vee.
Hunter sits up, slowly, quietly. He finds Willow watching him from across the room, expression frightful and ears pinned tightly to her head.
Are you okay, she mouths. He blinks at her. He feels carved out hollow, like his ribs contain nothing but ghosts and the memory of violence. He’ll be okay. He’ll always be okay eventually. He’s good at that. He doesn’t want to scare her. She doesn’t need more stress.
He nods.
.
Camila does not want him to sleep in the basement alone with Gus. She does not say it, but Hunter can see it in her eyes and the tension around her mouth. Gus, predictably, insists it’s fine.
It doesn’t really matter. After Gus falls asleep, Hunter silently rises from his bedroll to pace the house, noting all potential locations of entry and security flaws. It’s full of them.
So he’ll have to keep watch most nights and patrol regularly, unless he can get permission to patch the faults. It’s unlikely, and probably too high a task for one person anyway. That’s fine. He’s used to functioning on little sleep, and it’s not like he’ll need to keep Flapjack awake all the time. It’s an acceptable sacrifice for the safety of his- for the safety of the other people in the house.
.
He knows how the stories go, of course. He’s the prime feature of a lot of people’s nightmares, and that carries into the warnings they give their children. The monster in the dark is shaped like him.
Be good, or the Golden Guard will come and carry you away, mothers whisper in their childrens’ ears. Don’t bother him or he’ll take you to the castle and no one will ever see you again. They watch him with wide eyes as he passes, fear and awe in equal measure. It’s a reputation he’s inherited, but one he knows he’s lived in too.
.
Luz finds him in the kitchen in the thin hollow hours of a November morning.
“Hunter?” she mumbles, squinting at him. “What’re you doing up?”
“I could ask the same of you,” he replies.
Luz snorts, but it sounds more like a strangled snuffle than anything else. “Couldn’t sleep. But if I know you, you’ve been up all night.”
“I’m keeping watch,” he says simply, not even trying to deny the accusation. It’s true. “This building isn’t very secure. Do you know how many ways there are a hostile party could potentially enter unnoticed? It’s a lot.”
Luz blinks at him, opens her mouth, pauses, sighs. Then she pads around the kitchen table and nudges under his arm, resting the side of her head on his shoulder.
“There’s not a hostile party, though,” she says, voice low and rough. “Not here. Not anymore. There’s no one trying to break in.”
Hunter shifts where he stands, but doesn’t try to shake her off. “How do you know that? How can you promise that?”
She looks up at him from the corner of her eye. “I’ve lived here all my life, and no one ever has. You’ve been keeping watch every night for, what, three months now? Has anyone tried to break in?”
He purses his lips, acquiesces her point with a dip of his head. “What happens the one night you’re wrong?”
Luz smiles, a little wryly. “You know there’s an expression in the human world? ‘The man who sleeps with a machete is a fool every night but one.’ That’s you.”
“You’re calling me a fool?” Hunter raises an eyebrow, even though he’s pretty sure she can’t see it.
“Maybe a little bit. I’m calling you really, really sleep-deprived. Do you want hot chocolate?”
She pushes away from him, making a beeline for the counter and shuffling through the cabinets before he even answers. She pulls down the tin of chocolate powder with a look in his direction, and he shrugs. Even if he’s not paying so much attention, the presence of both of them should make up for it.
The hot chocolate is good. But it reminds him of the first and only other time he’s had chocolate- and then Deim, and then the basilisks. And then it curdles in his mouth.
He sets his mug back down on the table after only a few sips. He stares at it, a strangled tension winding in his chest.
It’s mourning, he thinks. He’s not sure for what.
.
A week later, when Luz stumbles down the stairs in the dead of night again and offers him hot chocolate, he turns her down.
.
Two weeks after that, she offers him tea instead. He accepts, this time- tea was one of the few luxuries he was ever allowed in the castle, and he’s curious what human tea might taste like.
He’s almost surprised at how mild it is, but the herbal flavor is nice. It doesn’t make him feel ill like the chocolate did, so he keeps the mug in hand, tucked under his chin, while Luz prepares her own drink. The heat is nice against his throat.
Once she’s got it, she tugs him by the wrist to the couch in the living room. He sits gingerly at the end, leaning against its arm, and Luz curls into his side, booking him in.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t raise the familiar anxiety low in his throat that he expects, being surrounded.
“I scared your mother,” he says into the silence. He’s not sure where the words come from. “I hurt your sister, even if it was before you knew me. I’ve backstabbed you and your friends on multiple occasions. I’ve done a lot of terrible things and killed a lot of people. I was made solely to cause hurt, Luz, I’m the Golden fucking Guard, you have every right and reason to turn me out into the night. Why am I still here?”
Luz doesn’t answer for a long time. “There’s no good answer,” she rasps finally. “You didn’t know anything else then and you’re different now. You’re so careful with Gus and even Vee can tell. We know you don’t have anywhere else to go. Mostly-” she looks away. “You wouldn’t like it.”
“Try me.”
“I don’t know what I would do if you were gone,” she says. “I don’t know why it’s you, but it’s you, you’re just- you’re there, and that’s where you’re supposed to be. It’s the same way I turn around and expect Eda to be there, or think of a dumb joke and open my mouth to call for King, and I don’t know if they’re okay or not and you can’t go, Hunter, okay? You can’t go anywhere, because I- because I- oh, god, I-”
Luz’s breath stops in her chest. She covers her mouth with the hand not holding her mug, and Hunter doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t think he could do anything if he tried, while Luz presses back tears. “I don’t know what I would do, okay?” she breathes at last.
(She’s right, though. Hunter doesn’t like the answer. It’s strange, and sentimental, and no one’s ever cared so much for someone who amounts to little more than a weapon in wicked hands. But there’s the truth, lain plainly, the truth he knows in his aching bones and cold, false heart- and it’s the truth he has to live with, that his absence would be missed for else than what he can do.
It’s a different sort of indispensable. It’s heavy, and unwieldy, and he’s not sure if he’s ever going to know how to manage it. He doesn’t know how to make it not go away. He can’t just- perform better, provide more, if he becomes inadequate. And he will become inadequate. He’s the interim, and once Luz has the Owl Lady and her little demon back, she won’t need him so much anymore.
He doesn’t resent her for it, of course. It’s just the way of things. He knows it will hurt then and there’s little he can do.
But it settles something in him now, the little snapping beast that insists he’s a selfish fool for entertaining the notion that he’s allowed to want for more than usefulness, want for companionship simply for its own sake-
-because Luz is as selfish as he is, in this measure. Because he can deal with inadequacy when it comes. Because at least for now, he’s not here out of pity, out of charity, and if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that no one in this house can deny Luz what she really, really wants, not for long. And that’s a sturdier shield than he’s ever worn before.)
The silence stretches between them before Hunter realizes he’s lost his chance to respond. It’s okay, though. Luz doesn’t seem like she’s waiting for one. Her eyes are closed to slits as she finishes her hot chocolate, and Hunter his tea.
He’s so tired. He’s been in motion for months- nothing has been steady, or predictable, or real since he and Luz spilled out of his uncle's mind into the Owl House.
He’s always prided himself on his ability to endure, to stay standing, to keep going. He doesn’t know how much longer he can keep this up.
He realizes his blinks are getting longer. It’s getting harder to keep his eyes open.
There’s a part of him that panics. That sets off the alarm bells, that calls for him to stand up and pace the house, make another round to keep himself awake aware alive. He can’t fall asleep here. It’s so open, so indefensible. It’ll leave everyone vulnerable.
But somehow- terrifyingly- he can’t bring himself to move.
His breath is still caught high in his throat when he falls asleep.
.
He wakes with the dawn. The living room is just beginning to fill with sunlight, pouring in from the eastern sky; it’s warm, and soft, and domestic. He still feels wildly out of place, but it’s… it’s nice. Anxiety hasn’t quite yet woken up, and he takes the opportunity to pause.
Luz is sound asleep, heavy against his shoulder. He plucks the empty mug from her loose grasp and sets it aside, carefully shifting her to lean on the couch back instead.
Then he stands, wincing as his joints protest the night spent leaning crooked against a couch arm. His hip pops when he straightens, and the scar tissue over his right collar and arm pulls as he stretches his arms.
“You sound like an old man,” a voice drawls from behind him. He whips around, instantly wide awake, hand to his knife- but it’s just Vee, it’s just Vee, staring from where she’s coiled at the front of the hallway.
He puts his hand down and, carefully, shrugs. “Lots of damage, over the years,” he says mildly. “Not everything heals quite right.”
“I thought witches had healing magic?”
He hums. “Even the best of the healing coven can’t do everything.”
(He does not say that he did not always have access to the best of healing coven. Even living in the same castle as the covenhead- his uncle insisted, sometimes, that he handle his own damage. And he can do first aid, stitch wounds and set bones and burn out infection, but he’s not a healer, and he has no magic.)
Vee tips her head. Her eyes are strange, like this- bright and covered in a glinting sheen that makes her pupils look paler than her irises. But it’s not like he has much room to talk.
Then her gaze slides downward, to where Luz still sleeps, sprawled over half the couch. She’s got one foot on the floor and the other twisted up in what looks like a remarkably uncomfortable bend of hip and knee. “What did you do, to make her trust you so much?” she asks. There’s a thread of something in her tone that Hunter can’t place- anxious, and wary, and almost envious .
“I don’t know,” he admits honestly. “I really don’t.”
She creeps across the room, bends over the back of the couch to hover over Luz. Hunter watches her closely- he doesn’t think she’s a threat to her, but you can never be too careful. He knows firsthand how fast she is.
“Why did you kill Izzy?” she asks softly, and offers no more. He takes a breath, considers his choices.
He decides to tell her the truth. “She was threatening- someone I knew. She would have killed them, I think, and so I stopped it. I shouldn’t have done it. But all I could see was Deim, and a basilisk trying to kill them, and I- I couldn’t let them die. I should have. They were just a scout. But I couldn’t.”
Vee looks at him, and there’s something different in her expression. “You didn’t say you were defending someone.”
“Does it really matter?”
“It does, I think.” She tips her head. “It doesn’t change anything. But it matters.”
“They’re dead now anyway, you know. They were killed in a skirmish in Latissa not two weeks after the breakout. So now they’re dead, Izzy and Deim both, and nothing’s better.”
Vee doesn’t have an answer for that. She looks down, flaring the frills that frame her face, and hums. “You couldn’t have known,” she whispers, so soft Hunter thinks maybe he wasn’t supposed to hear. He swallows.
She leans forward and rests one taloned hand against the side of Luz’s face. It’s so gentle, so careful; Luz doesn’t even stir. “Did you know,” Vee rumbles, looking at Luz though she’s clearly talking to him. “When I first came to the human realm- I impersonated her. I pretended to her mother that I was her, that I was Luz. And it hurt them both. I didn’t apologize. And they forgave me anyway.”
She looks up at him. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to forgive you,” she says bluntly. “Luz is… Luz is different. And I don’t want you to be waiting for it.”
Hunter doesn’t reply for a long time. “I wouldn’t expect you to,” he says, at last. “I wouldn’t forgive me.”
She watches him with that same indefinable expression. Finally she sags, pulling her hand away from Luz’s face. “I hope you’ll be happy,” she offers, and Hunter cannot detect a single ingenuine note. “No more death, you know? No more misery. For either of us.”
He nods, and dares to offer his hand- gloved still, but open, palm up. She rests hers lightly on it. “Thank you,” he says. “I hope you’ll be happy too.”
.
When Hunter is twenty-five years old, there is a burial.
He hasn’t told anyone where he’s going- he leaves a note that he’s safe, and to expect him back in no more than a week’s time, and then he’s gone in the night.
He knows how to travel off the main thoroughfares of the Boiling Isles, even now; he knows how to cross mountain and river on foot, without any magic to assist him.
The castle is long abandoned. It aches something fierce, deep in his bones that never learned how to let go- because he grew up here, he lived longer here than he’s lived anywhere since by far. Because he was miserable here, and despite everything he still misses it.
But he’s not here for him, not today. He keeps his head ducked as he ghosts through the halls, stepping lightly so his heeled boots don’t click on the cracked stone floors. He knows where he’s going, and he’s only going there.
The staircase is almost as long as he remembers it being. It spirals down, deep, deep into the earth of the Isles- and then it ends. And there they are.
Only bones remain, of course. They’ve been dead almost a decade.
He’s not actually certain what became of them in the end. It’s possible Belos killed them before the Day of Unity, to tie up loose ends- it’s also possible he left them here to rot in their cages, to die the long, slow death of waste. It doesn’t really matter anymore. It doesn’t change a thing.
He gathers them up, one set of remains at a time, and carries them up up up the stairs into the sun. He lays them out in the courtyard in a long line, careful not to break any of the brittle bones that yet remain.
It’s a long, grueling task. The bones aren’t heavy, but there are a lot of them; eighteen sets in total. It’s a lot of walking. When they’re all removed from their dungeon grave, he starts digging.
Three feet deep, six feet long, every one. Without magic, there’s little he can do more than a shallow grave, but he hopes it’s better than nothing.
In all, moving the bones and digging the graves takes him two and a half days. On the evening of the third, he squints up at the sky, and bares his teeth in frustration. It’s the dry season, but there’s heavy clouds gathering all the same- he’ll have to hurry to cover all the bones before the rain corrodes them down to nothing.
The first few drops of rain hit his back as he’s shoveling earth back over the last grave. He hisses, finishes his task, and shuffles under one of the stone archways.
He waits the rain out there, curled on the threshold of a castle he once called home. It pours for six hours.
When the storm finally clears, the sky is just beginning to bleed with sunlight. He pushes himself to his feet, joints aching from the humidity and long toil alike.
(You sound like an old man, Vee once told him. She was right then and she’s right now. He’s never going to move like someone his age, not really; there’s damage that’s never going to heal and scar tissue that’s never going to fade.
He never complains, of course. It’s only what he deserves. These days, the people around him try to tell him otherwise, but he knows the truth. Equivalent exchange: pain for pain. It’s fair repentance.)
In his bag there are nineteen slates- resistant to the acidic rain, the kind that witches use for gravestones and protective paneling. He carved the labels into them over the course of the past six months, quietly and furtively in the dead of night. He knows if anyone knew what he was doing, they’d insist on helping, and he at once desperately does not want that and does not want to explain. This is something he has to do on his own.
The only person who knows where he is right now is Vee. A week before he left, he presented her with the completed slates and asked her if she wanted to be there when he buried them.
It took her a long time to decide. In the end, she carefully handed the slate back to him-
(IX, it read, and below that, Izzy.)
-and shook her head. “I can’t go back,” she whispered. “Even for this. Even for this.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgement, and asked her only one more thing.
Now, he presses the slates into the ground at the head of every grave. Each one is cut with a number, a name, and one word: beloved.
It is all that he can give them. Two days after he and Vee talked, Camila mentioned in passing that she’d locked herself up in her room for a whole day and refused to come out- and he knows it’s enough. It’s enough.
There are two gaps in his line of graves. One is between eight and ten: there is nothing left to recover of Izzy. He turns the ground and presses a slate into it there anyway.
The other is between four and six. Vee is not dead yet, and so he has no gravestone for her; she will not be buried here.
When the task is done, the sun is comfortably above the horizon.
In the clear morning light, he sits on the thin grass of the courtyard, and breathes.