Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

Meridian, 13th age, year 23

Elyon looked up at the sky, her hands clutching the edge of the balcony - a balcony she still couldn’t figure out whether it was made of some kind of blue-green glass, or of a strange stone they only had in Metamoor and she didn’t know the name of. Her gaze followed a white cloud that had appeared in the sky. After all these years, she still didn’t know whether she liked it or not that the weather in Meridian was connected to her mood. She liked it sometimes, as she thought that it was fair that everyone in her city knew when she was happy and could enjoy a sunny day. Other times, she would have preferred to keep it for herself that she was having a very bad day. 

Today, she knew that the clouds would multiply very quickly if Alasse did not shut up and let her think for at least one minute about what to do with her problem. 

“It’s been five months, Elyon,” Lady Alasse said, following her to the balcony. Elyon had allowed her to call her by her name when they were alone, and she was not sure she liked this, either. Alasse was still an enigma, but whenever she was near, Elyon could perceive the strong bond that still connected her to Weira, and how that bond resonated within Elyon to the point that if she did not pay attention, she would end up calling her ‘aunt’ instead of Alasse. 

“I know,” Elyon said. “But it’s difficult for me to help you if I don’t understand what’s making your land die and your citizens fall ill.”

“My people are not just falling ill,” Alasse corrected her. “They are dying. And when reuniting with the Light, there is no sparkle. You know what this means, right?”

Elyon stilled. She didn’t even want to think about it. 

“Something is absorbing magic from my land and from my people,” Alasse said. “I have already seen something like this once. I suppose there’s no need to tell you when.”

Elyon sighed, suddenly feeling tired. Over the last nine years, since she had confined him in his prison and  started visiting him regularly, Elyon had come to love her brother, something she would have never expected to happen. Even more unexpectedly, Phobos seemed to care about her deeply in return, exactly like a big brother would. And yet, even after all these years, Elyon had to carry the weight of being his sister and of the mess he had left behind. 

“Nine years ago, I accepted to help you with your dilemma only because of my friendship with your mother,” Alasse went on. “But now you need to take responsibility for the consequences.” 

Thanks for the reminder, Elyon thought. She turned to face her and laid a hand on her shoulder, making her turn towards the inside of the room. “I will send someone, I promise,” she said as she guided Alasse towards the exit of her parlor. “I just need to select the right person for that.”

After Alasse left, Elyon went to prepare tea. She could have called one of her maidens or a pageboy for that but, from time to time, she liked to do things on her own, too. She went outside to the balcony again when the tea was ready. The clouds were now covering the sky, which was not blue anymore but rather gray - dark and grim, just like her mood right now. 

She wondered what her mother would have done in her place. Would she go to Hoel herself to show Alasse that she cared so much that she was willing to leave all of her commitments to run to her aid, even though she didn’t even know what was really going on? 

She doubted that. Weira was very close to Alasse, but she was at least as busy as Elyon was. Even more, actually, since Weira did not delegate as many decisions to her closest members of the Council as Elyon did. She had seen this in Cedric’s memories, those times she’d asked him to show her the previous Queen. 

Elyon had always thought that people were exaggerating when they talked about Queen Weira as if she was a Goddess, but when she’d seen her for the first time in Cedric’s memory she’d had to change her mind. Weira’s presence was so majestic, so powerful, that it was not surprising that the citizens thought she was a deity. Elyon had felt so small when looking at her in the throne room, and had felt as drawn to her as all the people in the room, who were leaning towards her as if attracted by a supernatural force. 

Elyon had already studied Metamoor’s history and the Escanors’ records carefully to know more about her family and about the previous Queen’s ruling, even before she started to live the times of her mother’s reign through Cedric’s memories. But after she’d seen her with her own eyes, she had instructed the scribes to provide her with everything they could regarding Queen Weira, so she could study her ways and carry on her legacy with her head held high. She didn’t want people to think she was any less worthy than her mother. 

The most interesting pieces she had acquired were Weira’s diaries. Elyon had read them back to back many times, and she had her own notebook where she’d collected notes about the possible meanings of some of the diaries’ pages. Weira had started to write her thoughts some time before she’d married Zayden, and the first chunk of pages had given Elyon an idea of how human Weira was at that young age - she was only eighteen, when she married Zayden, which was very early for Metamoor standards. She was insecure, back then, and scared at the idea of marrying someone she had spoken to only a few times during official events.

Weira’s diaries did not chronicle every single day, and there were breaks of several years between some of the pages - as if Weira was only intermittently keeping a diary in those moments when she felt she needed to annotate her thoughts. Nevertheless, her personality as the future ruler emerged from those pages, and Elyon could see how quickly Weira matured, until Queen Deulara - her mother - abdicated and gave her the crown, on the day of Weira’s twentieth birthday.

The pages that surrounded Phobos’s birth and childhood, many years later, were nothing like Elyon had always expected from the Queen of a dynasty that treated the women of their family as goddesses, while relegating the male members to secondary roles, without ever giving them a choice on what to do with their lives.

Instead, Weira’s diary was where she poured all her unconditional love for her son - perhaps because she was not allowed to let anyone else see how much she really adored him. Elyon was sure that Phobos had never seen those diaries, since he always talked about Weira as if she had never cared about him and even despised him for the mere fact that he was a man.

It was in the last one of Weira’s diaries that her writing started to become confused and cryptic, as if she had suddenly been scared by something to the point of losing her mind about it. Paranoia bled from those inconclusive sentences, and Elyon had not managed to crack the code yet. She promised herself to spend some time creating a copy of these diaries for the dimension where Phobos lived, so he could perhaps help her deciphering what had scared Weira so much that she seemed to become crazy while being pregnant with Elyon. She had not found the time to do it yet - or perhaps, it was her way to cope with the fact that Phobos had known their mother for twenty-two years and had her all for himself for all that time, while all that Elyon had of her was this pile of notebooks.

Either way, from what she knew about her mother,  she was sure Weira would not go to Hoel herself - at least not yet. She would send someone trusted, someone powerful enough to be able to take care of the issue on their own if it did not require the intervention of the Light of Meridian. 

Cedric would certainly be the right person for such a task. Elyon would have never admitted aloud that Cedric was one of her trusted people, but she could not lie to herself anymore - she would have probably made him First Advisor if she didn’t have Miriadel, and he effectively did act as such from time to time, when Elyon wanted to hear a second opinion. He knew Metamoor and Meridian like the back of his hand and had memories and experience of many decades of its history, having lived both under Weira’s and under Phobos’s reign. Although Elyon knew it had been a gamble to give him the position, he had turned out to be an excellent Commander - not to talk about his powers. He could be an asshole and had done awful things in the past, but nobody in their right mind would not take advantage of the abilities of a shapeshifter trained to use the Light in so many different ways and to fight in the Basiliadean way. 

But as she looked at the view from her balcony, down at the city that extended under her palace, doubts overlapped one another in her mind. She was not sure it would be wise to send him away from Meridian and leave the Champions without a Commander, even if temporarily. They were good but Cedric had the bad habit of not delegating anything to any of them - not even to his Vice - so it was impossible to know if they were ready to be on their own. Whether he did not delegate because he didn’t trust them, or he didn’t want to put any weight on them so they could enjoy their lives while they were still so young, Elyon didn’t know. She hadn’t really checked Cedric’s thoughts and memories in a long time, other than when he showed her his memories of Weira. 

What Elyon was sure of was that Cedric’s habit of taking all responsibilities on himself was taking a toll on his private life, assuming that he still had one.

Cedric’s marriage is not your business, Elyon kept telling herself. And yet it was her business, too, because if it didn’t work out, she would pay a high price. Orube would likely go back to Basiliade, and Acheri would have no personal tie to Metamoor anymore. While the alliance was beneficial for both planets, Elyon wouldn’t have been surprised if Acheri would slowly start to question whether he really needed it. 

But most of all, Elyon would lose Cedric as a loyal servant. She didn’t even need to listen to his thoughts to know that the only reason why he was kneeling in front of her and calling her my Queen was that he didn’t want to go to prison, and that the only thing that pushed him to avoid imprisonment was Orube. If he lost her, he would likely walk himself to the prison and close the lock with his own hands - but not before having done something spectacular and having spread terror in Meridian for one last time. 

No, Elyon could not afford Cedric’s marriage to Orube to crumble into pieces - not now that Meridian’s population had started to accept her decision to make him Commander. 

Elyon went back inside and dropped onto one of the padded chairs of the parlor, leaving the tea cup on the small glass table. She glanced around the room and suddenly felt lonely. It was a familiar feeling, this kind of loneliness - the one that assaulted her whenever she realized that even though she had advisors and trusted people, at the end of the day, she was on her own when it came to making every single decision. None of her trusted people understood. In moments like this, she would have liked to be able to speak to her mother, who had once been in the same position. But Weira had decided to leave her to it - Elyon was sure that if she had wanted to, her mother could have found a way to stay around as a spirit. So Elyon had turned to the only other person who knew what it meant, being alone in these walls: her brother. 

Phobos had warned her many times of the risks of making all these decisions alone, and had equally warned her that Cedric was loyal only as long as he had something to win. With Phobos, it was mostly power. With Elyon, it was the freedom to live with the woman he loved. 

If only she had a General to send to Hoel in Cedric’s place, so he would not need to leave the Champions, his wife and - most importantly - her… The vacancy of the General’s role was just one of the numerous problems that kept following Elyon wherever she went, and that she had not found the time to solve, yet. The previous one had decided to leave his wife for a woman he’d met in Brandis and had resigned six months ago, and Elyon had felt too progressive to force the man into a position he had never really wanted anyway - at least according to what Caleb said. The only reason why he had been named General when Caleb and Elyon had married was that there was nobody else, who had been in the army for long enough to take up the role. 

The Captain was just a boy and Caleb was firmly of the view that he would not make a good General either. Of course, Caleb pretended not to listen whenever Elyon mentioned that he was just a boy himself when she’d named him General. And since Elyon did not want to have a marriage crisis either, she had postponed the naming of a new General to after more pressing matters would be taken care of. Only there were always more pressing matters, and the result was that Cedric had taken up the tasks that would normally belong to the General as well. 

“Let me guess, the General?” 

Caleb’s voice made her jolt on the chair. Her husband was the only person allowed to enter her rooms without knocking, and he always used it to scare the hell out of her. “For Imdahl’s thunders, Caleb!” she exclaimed.

He chuckled and came to sit on the settee. “I love it so much when you curse in Metamoor,” he said. “So, where was your mind at? The General or Cedric? Or Alasse?”

Elyon sighed. “All three at the same time.”

Caleb patted the settee, inviting her to sit next to him. She stood up from the chair and then dropped next to him. He circled her shoulders with his arm, drawing her closer. “For the General, you know my proposal.” 

Elyon grunted. Before she could rebut that, he hastily added, “I know, I know. The Consort should not take up any role other than… well, being the Consort. Not that I’m complaining. I like being pampered by a team of maidens and being a full-time husband, but I could help and still be an excellent Consort,” he raised an eyebrow, grinning at her in a way that made her blush a little. But even his allusion to how excellent he was as Consort did nothing to lift the weight from Elyon’s chest. 

She rested her head on his chest, wrapping an arm around his waist. Hearing Caleb’s heartbeat always calmed her down. “You know I would make you General again in no time, it’s just…”

Caleb stroked her hair. “I know. Not appropriate. Anyway, about Cedric… I think sending him to Hoel with Orube would be a way to kill two birds with one stone. The two just need some time alone.”

Elyon hummed, considering his words. She knew he was right, but she also knew something she was not ready to admit aloud - that she was not ready to be without a Commander in the palace. 

“I will think about it,” she said. 

“Speaking of time alone…” he cupped her cheek with the other hand, making her look up at him. “When can I have a private hearing with the Queen?” 

Elyon pursed her lips, pretending to mentally scan her schedule. “Hmm, you know the Queen is very busy…”

He smirked. “I have popcorn and a fully charged cursed board with that movie you like so much - what was that new tool of the devil called?”

Elyon gasped, her eyes widening. “You went to Earth without telling me?” Elyon liked to collect terrestrial items to keep in her quarters, and as technological progress was always moving forward on the planet, she tried to put her hands on the new things that would allow her to keep some sort of connection to the culture she’d grown up with. While, at first, her favorite gadget had been her walkman, now the device she could never live without was a thing they had invented after she’d left - a thing called iPad that was basically a laptop screen without a keyboard, which she could use to listen to music and watch movies. She only had to send someone to Earth from time to time to recharge it and get some new albums and movies to watch, as she had not yet found a way to solve the electricity issue with magic. 

“I need to occupy my time in some way,” Caleb said. “But don’t worry, I took Aymon with me and I stayed only for a couple of hours, the time to recharge the thing and buy popcorn.”

“Alright, you’re forgiven,” Elyon said. In theory, she had to approve any travel from and to Metamoor beforehand, but she could definitely make an exception for Caleb if he was just going to their home in Heatherfield to recharge the iPad - especially if it meant that they could spend the evening in bed watching Beetlejuice. 

Caleb pressed a light kiss on her lips, then he stood up. “I’ll leave you in peace, I know you have another meeting now,” he said, then he bowed theatrically. “I’ll make sure that everything is perfect for my Queen’s return.”

Elyon chuckled. She was nearly bursting with love for the man who always managed to bring a smile to her face, even when her mood was so dark that it made the sun disappear behind the clouds. “Oh, did you answer the invitation to the wedding while you were there?” she asked when Caleb had already opened the door and was about to leave. 

“Of course I did,” he said. “I’m an excellent Consort, as I said.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

The sky of Meridian was annoyingly moody today. It started out sunny, then some white clouds began to float, and then it was suddenly so dark and grim that Orube thought an apocalypse was about to start. 

She had not interrupted the training with the younglings, knowing that Elyon’s mood was rarely so bad that rain would start to pour but for a moment, she thought it would. And then, the clouds parted and the afternoon sun came back. 

“Your Queen must be having one hell of a day,” commented Shoshan after the clouds had disappeared and they had finished wrapping up the session with the younglings. Shoshan had been staying in Metamoor for about two weeks now and was helping Orube with the training. 

Orube invited other Masters from Basiliade to help her out regularly, so that the apprentices and the Champions could practice with someone who had a different fighting style and used a different weapon. For the seven named Champions, the training was now individual - they each had a slot once every two days when they trained one-on-one with either Orube or the visiting Master. The apprentices only had group training, but daily. Whoever came to help also took care of Cedric’s one-on-one training, since he had to train with a Master as well, just like the other Champions did, but he and Orube had decided that he should do it with someone else to avoid conflicts. If there was anything they did not need right now, it was definitely the risk of taking something that happened in the arena too personally. 

The visiting Masters usually did not stay for longer than one week, but Shoshan had made herself available for an indefinite period of time. Orube was glad to have her there, as she felt she needed someone to talk to who was not Cedric's peer. At the same time, she couldn’t help but worry about the reasons that were pushing Shoshan to stay away from Basiliade. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she got along with her so well lately - that they both had issues with men. 

“So where are we going tonight?” Shoshan asked while they headed to the armory to put back the training sticks they were using that day. 

Orube shrugged. “I guess we’ll go somewhere close by, perhaps Lanidel’s, if Cedric comes. I don’t think he would want to go too far from the palace.” She felt Shoshan’s inquiring gaze on her. She didn’t want to look directly at her when Shoshan was studying her like that - even though they were not related, Orube saw too much of herself in her eyes. Now that they both kept their hair at shoulder length, many people even mistook them for sisters. 

“Do you think he will come?” 

Orube put away the sticks in the armory without looking at her friend. “He promised. I know he means well and that he really believes he will make it, but I bet there will be something coming up.”

When she turned to look at Shoshan again, she found her smiling encouragingly at her. “Well, if he doesn’t come, that's his problem only - we can spend the evening drinking ale and trashing these important men who don’t know what they’re missing out on.”

And there it was, the reason why Shoshan was staying away from Basiliade. The thought and the worry must have been painted on Orube’s face, because Shoshan lifted her index finger as if to warn her. “Ah-a, no talking about men unless I have a pint of that exquisite Metamoor ale in my hand,” she said, then headed to the door of the armory. “See you later, with or without your husband!”

Orube closed the armory of the arena for the day and walked towards the palace in a grim mood, as if the clouds that had reflected Elyon’s mood earlier had left a trace in her, too. She was fairly certain that Shoshan would not really want to talk about her problem with men later, even with a beer in her hand. The reason she was staying away from Basiliade was to distract herself with something else to do, and perhaps even with someone else, in the hopes of forgetting about what was happening with Acheri in their homeworld. Nothing physical had ever happened, Shoshan had sworn that, but after her investiture as Master things had started to change between the two of them. Orube was not surprised by that - she had been waiting for this to happen for years, as it was always clear to her that Acheri was making an effort to be a father figure to Shoshan, but their difference in age was too small for it to be the case. The main issue was that both of them were too stubborn and too proud to talk about why they were immediately at each other’s throats whenever one of them looked at someone else - which was mostly the case with Acheri, who rarely spent a night alone. 

Not that I’m much better in this regard, Orube thought as she entered the palace. There were many things she wanted to tell Cedric, which she was keeping for herself. Granted, there were not many opportunities to talk to him in the first place, as they basically only saw each other if they crossed paths in the arena and in the evening, when they went to bed - and not even every evening, since he had night shifts sometimes. He rarely had an evening free that he could spend with her, having dinner and just being together like a normal couple, and Orube never felt like ruining those occasions by telling him that he should start delegating things to others, so he could live his life. Whenever he was there, it was almost as if time had never passed and they were still on a honeymoon - they talked, they laughed, they bantered, and sex was mind-blowing. Every time she was lying in bed, naked, with her legs intertwined with his and his head resting on her chest, her fingers lazily combing through his hair, she barely remembered that she wanted to tell him that she suffered when he put his armor on the top of his priorities. 

Later, she was almost ready and was putting her favorite earpieces on - a pair that Cedric had gifted her - when Cedric finally appeared in their quarters. 

“I’m here!” he exclaimed when he opened the door, as if it was an achievement. He came to the bedroom where Orube was getting ready. He was panting a little and still wearing his armor. “I’m not late, right?” 

Orube couldn’t help but smile at him, at least for the effort. “You’re late, but Shoshan can wait.”

Cedric scanned her from head to toe. She was not wearing anything special, just a blouse, a dark red jacket with golden swirls and leather pants tucked in boots, since they were just going to the pub and not to a fancy place, but when Cedric looked at her like that, she always felt as if she was a sparkling jewel. 

“You look so beautiful,” he breathed, and crossed the room to come closer and give her a kiss. 

She still couldn’t believe that he was really there and was about to spend the evening with her, even when he started to unlock the fasteners of his armor. 

“Is Nerel covering for you?” she asked. 

“No,” he said while he went on unlocking the clamps one after the other. “But everything seemed quiet and the paperwork I have left is not urgent, so I could leave.”

Orube hummed, following his movements with her gaze. Her enthusiasm faded. She had heard this sentence many times before, and she knew well what was going to happen now. Her gaze dropped spontaneously onto the small round stone encased in a silver ring around his left wrist. 

Three… two… one… she counted mentally, and then, right on time, the stone lightened up, glaring with a golden light. That was Aymon. Each one of the Champions had their own color of the light, so Cedric would know who was looking for him. The Queen had her own channel to call him directly in his mind. 

“Oh, come on,” Cedric said, looking at the stone. 

“Shouldn’t your Vice or the third in command take over for these things?” Orube asked, and she felt bad for how annoyed she’d sounded. 

“Not when it’s about the army,” Cedric said grimly. “There was a… misunderstanding among the soldiers today in the barracks. I left Aymon there, but these guys are difficult to handle for one person alone.”

Orube pressed her lips into a thin line. There were seven of them - seven fuckin’ Champions - and a Captain of the army. And yet he had to go to tell those brutes to calm the fuck down? 

When Cedric looked up at her, he at least had the decency of looking as if he was mortified. Good, you should be, she thought. 

“Fine, go,” she said in the end. Cedric quickly closed the clamps of his armor again and pressed a kiss on her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Say hi to Shoshan from me, alright?”

Orube answered with a grunt.                                                                         

“Oh, look at this foam!” Shoshan exclaimed, looking at the foam bubbling from her pint as if it was the first time she’d ever seen it. 

The tavern was loud and crowded, and Orube almost regretted having chosen this place instead of going somewhere quieter and a bit more elegant. As the thought crossed her mind, she realized how pissed she was at Cedric - Orube didn’t really like fancy and expensive places and always preferred a tavern, but tonight she just felt like spending a huge amount of money out of spite.

Orube looked at Shoshan from above her own pint. “So, did you hear from him?”

Shoshan raised her index finger to stop her, like she’d done in the afternoon. “Not before I started to drink!” she said, then gulped down a long swig. She made the mug clash against the table and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, like she had seen everyone else do in the tavern. “Now. No, I haven’t heard from him. He’s probably busy, either playing politics or sleeping around. But that’s fine, I’m here to think about something else, not to mope around because I’m in love with the First Grand Master and he doesn’t even see me anymore.”

Orube frowned. “You know that’s bullshit, right?” 

“What, that I’m in love with him? It took me a while to admit it, but it’s like that. Shame on me.”

Orube shook her head, taking a sip of her beer first. “Not that. And there’s no shame in that, I already told you. You are not the first ones and you won’t be the last ones. But it’s not true that he doesn’t even see you. He’s crazy about you, only he’s too stupid and too stubborn to make a move.”

Shoshan rolled her eyes. “And how should you know?”

“Because he’s my stupid brother,” Orube said. “Do me a favor and contact him tomorrow, alright? Just to tell him that you’re fine.”

Shoshan snorted. “Will do, but it’s easier to talk to the Oracle of Kandrakar than to find him. And what about your busy man?”

This time it was Orube’s turn to snort. She drank again. “Something in the army, apparently he’s babysitting the soldiers as well now, in addition to his Champions, the Queen and the Consort.” She bit her tongue after she said that, but then she remembered that nobody around them understood the language she and Shoshan spoke. 

Shoshan reached out to squeeze her hand on the table. “Hey. You’ll figure it out. I mean, he’s an idiot, clearly, but he really loves you, and you love him - right?”

“Right,” Orube muttered. She did love him, more than ever, but she was also angry at the circumstances they were in that made them miss out on their life together. 

“Maybe you only need to tell him clearly how you feel. Perhaps he feels the same.” As Orube opened her mouth to rebut, Shoshan stopped her, “Yes, yes, just like I should do with your stupid brother. But tonight we have fun, alright?” 

They made their mugs clash and laughed. Yes, they definitely deserved some fun. 

“Good evening, ladies!” a male voice speaking Metamoor made them turn. Two men were standing next to their table, each with a mug of ale in their hand. The one who had spoken was tall and lean, with fair green skin and dark green freckles all over his face, bright yellow eyes and long dark hair kept in a bun and shaved at the sides, revealing two long pointed ears. The other one was shorter and more muscular, with emerald green skin, auburn dreadlocks and brown-green eyes. 

“Mind if we join you?” the tall man asked. 

“Yes,” said Orube, exactly at the same time while Shoshan said, “Not at all!”

Orube’s head snapped at her. “You don’t even speak Metamoor,” she hissed in Basiliadean. 

Shoshan kicked one of the chairs out, inviting the two men to sit. “I understand and speak enough for what I need tonight,” she replied, then turned her attention to the red-haired man, who sat down next to her. The other one took a seat closer to Orube. 

“Cheers,” he said, making his mug clash against hers. Orube answered with a grunt. 

“Radji,” he introduced himself. “And that one is my cousin, Folwin.” 

Orube glanced at Folwin, who was seemingly captured by whatever Shoshan was trying to say with her hands. 

“I was hoping to catch you in here at some point, Master Orube,” Radji said, after she did not give any sign of wanting to speak to him and simply kept sipping her beer. 

“And why would that be?” she asked, looking at the gesture conversation between Shoshan and Folwin in front of her. 

Radji shrugged. “I’m just curious to get to know you better, you know. You are… very intriguing.”

Orube sighed and put down her mug, then turned to look at him. “Alright, let me ask you right away. Do you really think it’s a good idea to flirt with the Commander’s wife, who happens to have a dagger attached to her belt?”

Radji’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, you two are still together? My bad, I didn’t-”

Orube frowned. That was unexpected. “Why shouldn’t we be?”

Radji raised his palms defensively. “I mean, I heard you were- Well, never mind. I’ll leave you in peace.” He pushed the chair back, motioning to stand up. 

“No, wait,” Orube stopped him. “You won’t leave me here to watch these two, right?” She nodded at the other two sitting at the table - Shoshan apparently very interested in a conversation with Folwin that had to be heard at a distance of one inch from his mouth. “Let’s just talk like two civil people,” Orube offered. 

Radji glanced at the two as well, then he took his seat again. “Alright, but if anyone asks, I never tried to hit on you, right?”

Orube smirked. “Sure.”

It took Cedric all of his willpower to refrain from turning into the naga and incinerating the idiots who lived in the military barracks. It was the third time this month that they started a riot in the barracks over nothing, and Cedric was damn tired of it. One of these days, he would probably turn into a monster and burn the place down. The Queen would not be happy about it, but at least he would have some peace. 

The army needed a General, and as soon as possible. Cedric was not cut for it, and most of all, he didn’t have the time to babysit an army of thousands of idiots. He already had enough on his plate with his Champions and the apprentices. Not to talk about the Queen and her husband, who liked to pretend that they were such a progressive and independent royal pair, but in the end they were just as needy as Queen Weira and Phobos had been. Luckily, they had maidens and pageboys who took care of picking their clothes and serving their meals, or Cedric would have ended up doing that, too. Every time there was a council meeting, Elyon would call Cedric and Miriadel to fill her in with what the meeting was about and what the other council members said about it. Whenever she did not understand something from the reports of the Master of Coin, she called Cedric instead of the author of the report. The head of the merchants had pissed her off? Cedric would have to go and talk to him. A strange noise behind the walls that could be some terrifying threat? Cedric had to take care of that, too, and reassure the pair that nobody was attempting a coup. One of her trinkets from Earth needed electricity to function again? Time for Cedric to go to Heatherfield and maybe make sure that Elyon Portrait was not being chased for tax evasion since he was already there.

After he was done in the barracks and things had finally quieted down, Cedric had gone back to the palace to check what the others were doing. It was late and perhaps Orube was already back in their rooms, so it didn’t make sense to go look for her at Lanidel’s. He had found Jezil and Rhes playing cards in front of the Queen’s quarters. It might not have been really Champion-like, to spend the night playing cards in front of the Queen’s door, but Cedric had to admit that the night shifts could be extremely boring, and playing cards was the only way to stay awake the whole night. 

Rhes and Jezil had greeted him with questioning looks, as if they couldn’t figure out why he was there when it was not his turn for a night shift. Cedric asked himself the same question as he turned away from them and walked towards his quarters. 

His Champions were good, he had nothing to complain about. Nerel was an excellent Vice - she did not miss a single thing on their schedules and the one of the apprentices, and she was the only reason why Cedric did not forget anything he had to do and was never late to any appointment. She teamed up with Rhes very well, and Cedric couldn’t help being a little jealous when he saw how much time they could spend together while, at the same time, fulfilling all their duties. He did not have the same privilege - it was either being a Commander or spending time with his wife, and he did not have a choice. He knew that his Champions were all eager to take up some of his responsibilities, like scheduling and training  the apprentices, or drawing up and checking the weekly plans and reports on the security of the palace, so that Cedric would only need to sign them off without spending too much time on paperwork. But they were young, and Cedric knew that putting too much weight on their shoulders would take away from them the good years, during which they could still enjoy their lives. 

He opened the door quietly, just in case Orube was already asleep, knowing that it would be useless - her hearing was too advanced and she always woke up, even if he thought he’d been as silent as a cat. 

The rooms welcomed him with a familiar citrus scent mixed with cinnamon. Not his choice - this was Orube’s doing, but he liked it. He liked everything she did to the rooms and left her complete freedom every time she wanted to redecorate, regardless of the cost, as long as she would stay there with him - something he had started to doubt lately. The fear of finding her side of the wardrobe empty and all her belongings gone assaulted him from time to time. As he saw that Orube was not in bed, that fear came back. But her things were still there - all her weapons at the wall, her book on the bed stand. The clothes she had been wearing earlier were on a chair, so she had to be in the other room. 

He took the armor off and quickly got ready to go to sleep, then crossed the study and saw that the fairytale book was turned around - a confirmation that Orube was on the other side of the loophole. He pushed the bookshelf and it turned, and then he was in his old room in the servants’ quarters. 

There she was - lying on the couch, curled up on herself and facing the wall, turning her back to him. His heart squeezed. He missed her so much. He shifted to his native form, taking off the human mask. Tonight he felt like he needed to feel her closer, with no masks in between. 

Cedric took the blanket that was lying at Orube’s feet - a blanket she had crocheted with her own hands - and drew it on them both as he lay down behind her on the couch. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pressing his body against hers. 

He closed his eyes, his cheek resting in the crook of her neck, savoring the warmth of her body against his real skin, with no barriers in between them, other than the clothes they were wearing. He received confirmation that she was awake when she interlaced her fingers with his and drew him closer, clutching his hand at her chest. 

They stayed in silence like this for a while, just feeling each other. It felt like going back home after a long journey, and Cedric wished he wasn’t tired and it wasn’t late in the night, and that he did not need to sleep to survive - he would have wanted to stay awake the whole night. He was already missing out on so much of their lives, he didn’t want to miss the few hours of the day he could spend like this. 

“Did you have fun?” he asked after a while. 

“A guy tried to hit on me,” came her answer. 

His head snapped up. “What? Who?!”

“It doesn’t matter. Not my type.”

He lowered his head again and pressed a kiss on the side of her neck before resting his head on the pillow. 

“But he said that people think we are separating,” Orube said grimly. 

A knot tied in Cedric’s throat. He knew these rumors too well, and called himself an idiot for not doing anything about them. At one point, he was even ambushed by Serën, one of his old acquaintances among the Queen’s maidens, and it was as if she’d suddenly decided to invade his personal space a little too much. At his protest, she’d said that she thought he was still wearing the ring only out of habit. 

“Are we?” he asked in a whisper. He was not sure he was ready to hear Orube’s answer. What if she said yes? What if she was so unhappy that she wanted to leave, perhaps go back to her planet, or to Earth? He felt as if he was falling into the darkness at the mere thought. 

Orube turned around to look at him. Her eyes widened a little at seeing him in his real form. He noticed they were gleaming with tears, and it broke his heart. 

“You tell me, Cedric,” she said. “I’m always here. Where are you?”

I’m literally looking at you in my real skin, he thought. How can you even doubt it? “I can’t live without you,” he breathed, and there was nothing closer to the truth. Yet, when a tear crossed Orube’s cheek, the thought of making her suffer was even more terrible than a life without her. He wiped the tear away with his knuckle. “But if you were unhappy, I would not stand in the way. I would let you go.” And then I would ask Elyon for a place in her dungeons, he thought. If Orube was not there, a dungeon was the only place where he would be willing to live. 

She held his gaze for a few long moments - long enough that he started to fear that she would get up and leave. Instead, a corner of her mouth lifted and she shook her head. “Don’t even think about it,” she said, then she took his face between her palms. He was holding his breath when she spoke again. “I love you, Commander.”

He exhaled with a relieved chuckle, pressing his forehead against hers. “And I love you, Master. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

What they figured out in the next two weeks was literally nothing. 

Although Orube felt relieved for having opened a communication channel with Cedric, and for having confirmed that they were both still there, still loving each other, everything went back to the usual erratic routine soon after that evening. That night, they spent hours whispering sweet nothings and making love. It had been fantastic, of course, and Orube loved when he remained in his true form during sex. It was a sign of how much he really trusted her, and she always felt honored by that. 

But then, despite his promise of working on their relationship, things had gotten busy again, because the council of the towers was getting closer and they had to vote on the annual distribution scheme of the Light, as well as the tributes that the cities had to give to Meridian. It was a very important decision for Elyon to make, as the different distribution of Light and request for tributes dictated which cities she considered more in need, if any, and which ones had to pay more taxes in view of their income. The consequences of such decisions could be very dramatic, if not considered carefully. For this, the inner council was meeting almost daily to discuss and help Elyon outline a balanced strategy that would make everyone happy, and this only added to Cedric’s already impossible schedule. 

They had barely seen each other, and Orube was trying hard to remain patient and understanding. Cedric was not responsible for the schedule of these meetings, and could not back down from taking part in them. Where he could back down, though, was everywhere else - and still, he didn’t. It annoyed Orube, but she did her best not to be too harsh. Once this tower council was done, things would get better. 

She was brushing her teeth one morning, thinking of how much she preferred the roots they had in Basiliade to the Metamoor versions of terrestrial toothbrushes that Elyon had introduced on the planet, when she heard the entrance door open. 

“You’re early,” she garbled with the toothbrush still in her mouth as she saw Cedric crossing the door of their bedroom. He was coming back from his night shift, but usually he arrived later and they only managed to cross each other paths while she was leaving for the day. 

“The Queen wakes up very early these days, so we change guard earlier,” he said, and he started to unlock the clamps of his armor. She leaned against the doorframe of the washroom, watching him take the armor off. Sometimes she found herself wishing that he would never put it back on again. 

She left him to his task and went back to the washroom to finish brushing her teeth and wash her face. When she stood up again, drying her face with a towel, she almost jolted at finding Cedric right behind her, looking at her in the mirror. 

Cedric embraced her from behind, pressing his body against hers. “You have no idea how hot you are when you stand there, brushing your teeth in this robe,” he said, his voice low. She was wearing a rather simple bathrobe, but the textile was so thin that one could see her nipples underneath if they peaked like they were doing now. 

“I think I’m getting an idea of it now,” she purred, feeling his arousal pressing against her ass. It had been nearly two weeks, and the feel of his cock against her back made her almost quiver. 

Cedric kissed her neck, then her shoulder, and his hands trailed up her stomach, to the cleavage. He parted the two edges of the bathrobe, making her breasts spill out. Orube let out a moan when his hands cupped both her breasts and he started playing with her nipples. 

She plunged her fingers in his hair and turned to kiss him deeply, their tongues dancing with each other, and he moaned as well while he kept grinding against her ass and kneading her breasts. 

As the throb between her legs became almost an ache, she took one of his hands and guided it down, opening the lose knot that kept her robe together, and then placing his hand between her folds. He rubbed circles around her sensitive spot with two fingers and she moved with him, setting up the pace. 

Cedric parted from her mouth and looked at her in the mirror. “Here?”

She leaned back against him, lifting the back of her robe so she could feel his cock against her legs. “I don’t care, I want you to fuck me anywhere,” she breathed. 

He groaned against her neck, biting her jaw and moving his fingers faster around her clit. Her climax was just starting to bubble up, when Cedric suddenly froze. She glanced at him in the mirror when she realized he’d stopped moving, and saw that his eyes had rolled back into his head. That was what happened when the Queen called. 

“Not now…” he whimpered when his eyes came back to normal. 

He reprised moving his fingers, and with the other hand he fidgeted with his pants, then he guided himself close to her entrance. Is he… saying no to the Queen?, Orube thought, a wave of excitement shooting through her as she felt his tip inside her. 

But then he froze again, his eyes rolling back once more. 

He withdrew quickly after his irises came back. “Shit,” he cursed, setting his pants again. “Can’t even give my wife a decent orgasm here.”

Orube just watched him resetting his clothes. She wrapped her robe around her body again, then followed him in the bedroom and sat on the bed while he quickly put the armor back on, the throbbing desire washing away and leaving space to a strange sadness. For once, she was not annoyed or angry that Cedric had to leave right when they had started to get busy. Her heart cracked in two as she saw his face, this time, and how tired he looked. When will he sleep, if he had to do stuff now? She suddenly realized she didn’t even know if he was eating or having any breaks during his crazy days. 

When he finished resetting the armor, he came closer to give her another deep, hungry kiss. “I’m sorry,” he said on her lips. 

“Don’t worry.”

“Tonight,” he whispered, and he kissed her again. “I want you to ride me until I can’t walk anymore.”

Orube smiled quietly. She doubted he would stay awake that long that evening. “I look forward to it,” she said nevertheless. 

At least the meeting with the council was not too long this time, and Cedric could steal almost one hour of sleep in the common room before midday. He was hungry, but he knew that if he did not take the chance now to close his eyes, someone would find him on his way to grab something to eat and ask something of him, and he would never have a break until that evening. He was still too annoyed by having been called right when he was finally having a moment to spend with Orube, after almost two frantic weeks without feeling her touch, and he really wanted to be awake that evening so they could pick up from where they had left. 

Later, he passed by Vathek’s cottage to see if he had baked anything that he could steal that could resemble a meal, and he was still chewing a slice of fresh bread with butter when he headed to the military barracks. He realized midway that he was not too far from Alborn’s and Miriadel’s home. It had been a while since the last time he’d visited Alborn. Cedric had gone to see him gradually more and more often after his appointment as Commander, and while at first Alborn had been rather cold, he’d thawed over time and had made himself available to help him out when he needed some advice on how to do his job. 

As he saw Alborn’s house from afar, Cedric was hit by a sudden awareness that he might need advice from his old mentor once again. He was not sure Alborn was willing to help him out with this, but there was no loss in trying. 

“Look who remembered to come see this old man,” Alborn greeted him when he opened the door. 

“I’m sorry,” said Cedric. “I’ve been busy.”

Alborn stepped to the side, inviting him in with a wave of his hand. “I know, I know. Come in, I just finished preparing a new charge of coffee beans.”

Since he retired, Alborn had taken up gardening and grew all sorts of weird plants in the back-yard. One of these happened to be terrestrial coffee, which he was able to grow in the Meridian climate only thanks to magic. 

Cedric followed him inside Alborn and Miriadel’s home. It was a small and simple home, which did not reflect how rich Alborn and Miriadel actually were, since they were an ex-Commander and a First Advisor, who also happened to be the Queen’s adoptive parents. Yet they had decided to live in a simple two-rooms cottage with a huge garden in the back. The only thing that gave away that the owners were wealthy was the fact that every piece of furniture was made of finely carved blue wood - not the kind of wood that was turned blue with magic, but the wood from real blue trees, that cost ten times as much.

The strong smell of roasted coffee beans suddenly hit Cedric’s nose so hard as he entered the cottage, that he had to blink. “Woah, are you planning to open a Starbucks in Meridian?”

Alborn chuckled while he headed to the free counter of the open kitchen, where a dozen jute bags were amassed. “No, I’m enjoying my retirement too much. But a coffee shop in Meridian would make a lot of money. That’s one of the things I miss of Earth.”

Cedric only hummed, joining Alborn at the counter and sitting on a stool. He followed Alborn’s movements as he took a big spoon and stuffed it inside one of the bags. The spoon came out full with small black beans. 

“So, what’s the problem?” Alborn asked while he transferred the beans into a box that looked like a home-made coffee grinder. 

“How do you know I have a problem?” Cedric asked. Alborn’s next chuckle was covered by the terrifying sound of the coffee grinder that he activated by making a lever rotate on its side. 

Cedric covered his ears with his palms. “For Imdahl’s sake, you have to work on that…”

When the coffee grinder stopped hammering against Cedric’s eardrums, Alborn opened it and transferred the black powder on a cone that sat on a crystal jug. “You only come to see me when you have a problem, that’s how I know. If it’s about the right timing for new trials, I already told you it’s too early. You have already enough apprentices and your Champions are all very young, so there’s no need for a new generation for the next five or even ten years, unless you find a child who is too talented to be left behind.”

Cedric cleared up his throat before speaking. The last time he’d gone to Alborn to ask for advice on a personal matter, he’d been just a teenager. Many years had passed since then and while he was now on good enough terms with Alborn that his former Commander would accept giving him advice on how to do his job, he was not entirely sure he’d be too keen on talking about something more personal. “It’s not that. It’s, uh… a private thing.”

Alborn stopped bustling with the coffee filter, raising his eyebrows at him. “Oh?”

“I mean, if that’s alright with you.”

Alborn reprised preparing the coffee. “Sure, go ahead. Although I have a suspect where the problem may be.”

“Oh, you do?”

Alborn turned to the counter of the kitchen that stood against the wall and took a kettle. With the other hand, he generated a halo around it to fill it with water and bring it to the right temperature, then he started to pour it on the coffee filter. “I retired from court, but I still have a wife there and my adoptive daughter happens to be the Queen. I know what’s going on in the palace and what the latest rumors are.”

Cedric did not answer. It stung that even Alborn was aware of the rumors about his marriage. 

“If your question is how did I manage to keep my marriage standing, the answer is… I did not,” Alborn said, and his words were like a punch in Cedric’s stomach. 

“But you’re still together,” Cedric objected. 

Alborn finished pouring the hot water on the fllter and watched with fascination the black liquid drip from the bottom of the cone into the jug. “We wouldn’t be, if I hadn’t stepped down in Phobos’s favor. And even then, I was still so entangled in the order that Miriadel was about to leave me.”

“What?!” Cedric’s jaw dropped. He had no idea Alborn and Miriadel ever had any crisis and had always thought they were the happiest couple the palace of Meridian had ever seen. 

Alborn looked at him seriously from behind the coffee jug. “I was never there and my armor always came first. She did her best to understand, after all she was the Captain and had her responsibilities as well, but she did not understand why I was doing everything on my own instead of distributing some tasks to my Vice and my third, that is, Phobos and yourself.”

“We were too young for that,” Cedric murmured, and he realized it was rather a justification for himself. 

“That’s what I told her,” Alborn said. “Then, when the Queen died and we were warned about…” his face distorted in a painful grimace for a moment. “Well, about what was going to happen to Phobos, I was in pieces. Miriadel did not have the heart to leave me in that state, and she stayed with me.”

Cedric lowered his gaze. He always felt uncomfortable when the topic of what happened to the Prince came up with Alborn, knowing how much he’d suffered, seeing the downfall of the man he’d raised as his own son. 

Alborn poured the coffee into two mugs and made one slide on the table towards Cedric. “Black, no sugar, right?”

“Yeah,” Cedric said, still keeping his gaze low. 

“What really saved us was leaving Meridian,” Alborn went on. “On Earth, I could recover and spend time with her. And we had this new project, learning how to live on Earth and raising this babygirl together, something where we were both equally clueless.”

Cedric sipped the coffee in silence. He had to force himself not to grimace. The coffee really sucked and had nothing in common with a terrestrial one. 

Alborn must have interpreted his silence as a reaction to the mention of a babygirl, because he hastily added, “I mean, I’m not saying that a baby is necessary, I really didn’t-”

“It’s fine,” Cedric cut him off. If there was anything where Cedric and Orube were both fine and never had a conflict over, it was about not having kids. Or at least he thought she was fine with it. Not that they had any choice - they didn’t even pay attention to the two months a year anymore, because after the battle she had never had a heat cycle ever again. 

“Even without Elyon, it would have worked out,” Alborn said, and sipped his coffee as well. He hummed with satisfaction at the taste. “Mmmh, this one is really delicious. The point was that I was there, and she did not feel like I was putting her second.”

Cedric drank the coffee again. He confirmed it was really disgusting. “But I don’t have a choice, you know that.”

“I know, yes,” the other said. “As long as you wear the armor, that piece of metal will always come first. I know it’s not the kind of advice you were hoping for, but that’s all I have.”

Cedric hummed, lowering his gaze. It was at the same time disheartening and reassuring, to learn that it was not only about him, but that this was a problem that other Commanders had in the past. He wondered if it really had to be like this, though, and if there was really no way out. For him, the choice was not between being Commander and staying with his wife. He needed to be the Commander such that he could be with his wife. But if this was pushing her away from him… 

“Alright, I should go,” he said, standing up. “Thanks for the coffee - I owe you a drink.”

He felt Alborn’s gaze on his back while he headed to the door. 

“You know, sometimes I wonder…” Alborn said behind him. Cedric turned. “If it would have changed anything, sharing some of that burden with you and Phobos.”

“They are too young…” Cedric repeated. 

“I agree with you, and I always thought the same of you,” he said. “But Phobos was apparently not too young to take control over an entire planet all on his own. Perhaps it is not a matter of them being too young, it’s rather a matter of letting go. You, like me, just can’t let go and will always put that armor above everything else.”

Cedric looked away from him. He was definitely not ready to acknowledge whether this was the truth or not. Deep inside, he knew it was. “Thanks again for the coffee.” 

The coffee was disgusting, but at least it helped keep him awake for the rest of the day. It was not an easy task, as the paperwork he had thought was not urgent the evening prior had suddenly turned out to be at least a bit urgent, and he also had to train the younglings in the afternoon. They always managed to wear him out. 

He realized how late it must have been only when he entered his quarters and he saw a probably cold dinner hidden under a cloche on the small table that they had now in place of the heavy desk. The table was there with the purpose of having dinner together sometimes, but they had managed to do it only on rare occasions. Orube must have brought something upstairs for him to eat - and now she was nowhere to be seen. The turned fairytale book suggested that she was in the other room. 

He was hungry, but he decided he needed to wash himself up first, so he headed to the washroom and hoped he would not just fall asleep in the bathtub. 

Orube’s ears twitched when she heard the clack of the door on the other side of the loophole. She had left the bookshelf slightly turned on purpose, so she could hear when Cedric would come back. Judging from the darkness outside the window and from how high the moon was in the sky, it must have been quite late. She put away the piece she was crocheting, put down the fireplace and went to the other side of the loophole. 

The dinner she’d brought upstairs was still there, untouched, and the door to the washroom was closed. She assumed Cedric was in the bathtub, and she briefly considered joining him there and picking up from where they had left in the morning. The throb between her legs had come back more than once during the day when she remembered about their encounter. 

But he was probably devastated, and who knew if he’d had anything to eat today. She wanted to take care of him, to make sure that he was fine. So she went to the table and looked at the cloche under which she’d put the dinner. After she was done with the younglings that day and had a few spare hours before her one-to-one training with Aymon, she’d gone to the bakery that Naexi’s parents had opened close to the palace to buy some bread. Naexi had recommended her more than once to go visit them, as excited as she was that her father had decided to move closer to the palace and to do what he did best - baking delicious pastry and bread, but this time for the entire city and not only for the Escanors. Naexi’s parents were not the youngest anymore, but they had a small group of young apprentices they had hired among those servants of the palace who did not want to stay and become maidens and pageboys, so they would have a job opportunity outside the castle. The bakery was really cute and had tables outside, with a beautiful view on the landscape of Meridian beneath the hill of the inner city. Orube was certain that Cedric would love to have breakfast there - the only thing the place was missing to become a perfect terrestrial coffee shop was… well, coffee. 

Then, when she was done for the day, she went out again and to the butcher, who also prepared cooked dishes. They were a little expensive, but by now Orube and Cedric had accumulated so much money that they didn’t really know what to do with it, since he didn’t have the time to spend it, so she liked to use it in the city to support any cook or baker or artisan that inspired her. She also liked to bring something to their room that he would find when he came back. While she had always hushed Irma when she joked about her cat-like tendencies and asked if she ever brought dead mice to Cedric’s doorstep, she had to admit that she indeed found a certain satisfaction in bringing him some food she thought he’d like. She had bought a piece of roasted kagrath, which she knew was one of Cedric’s favorite dishes, but because of the price it was not served often in the kitchens of the palace - only when there was some leftover from a banquet of the Queen. 

She was about to bargain with the Light to heat up the dinner, when she froze with her hand mid-air. No - she didn’t want to bargain with the Light this time. She hadn’t told Cedric - she hadn’t found the right moment yet, and anyway she felt there was nothing remarkable to be shared - but she had been training for a few months by now on how to use her own fibers of magic. She had carefully observed Cedric when he trained the younglings on how to channel their Light to open the shields, and she had decided to try to do the same with the few threads of innate magic she knew she possessed. The threads had grown in size, just like muscles would do with constant training, and now she felt ready to use them for something other than just lighting some sparkles on her palm.

She focused on her warm threads of magic that intertwined with her bones and with her muscles, and tried to make them extend towards the dish on the table, closing her eyes in concentration. When she felt warmth beneath her palm, she reopened her eyes.

The cloche closing the dinner was warm. She smiled - this was a step forward! But she didn’t want to tell Cedric yet - not until she could do something more, something that would surprise him for real.

After she’d heated up the dinner, she prepared some tea and tidied up the rooms. She was trying to convince Cedric to hire one of the maidens to come clean their rooms - at least those on this side of the loophole - but he insisted he didn’t want any of those gossip girls in his spaces. But now he did not have enough time to take care of the rooms himself like he used to do before, so Orube had picked up the task - and secretly paid Nagadir and Naexi to come help her to clean from time to time without Cedric knowing. They were so eager to stick their noses into Cedric’s affairs that they said they would come to clean even for free, but the truth was that Orube did not really need someone to clean those few rooms - rather, she enjoyed their company and had fun turning the rooms upside down with them.

She took a comic book from the bookshelf - one she had brought from Earth - and went to sit on the bed, waiting for Cedric to come out of the washroom.

He jolted when he opened the door and found her in the room.

“Works every time,” she chuckled. One thing had never changed: how much she enjoyed scaring the hell out of him by appearing without him noticing.

Cedric smiled weakly. Gods, he looked tired. “Did you sleep at all today? And did you have anything to eat?” she asked.

“I managed to sleep one hour or so,” he said as he tied his hair. “And I stole a piece of bread from Vathek, had some disgusting coffee at Alborn’s and a piece of cake.”

Orube stood up and went to take his hand, pulling him to follow her to the other room. “Come, I brought something.”

His face lightened up a little when he saw what she’d brought him for dinner, but it was short-lived. While she told him about the bakery she went to and recollected her day, she could see how his attention was drifting off and he barely had the energy to finish eating. 

Only until the tower council is over, she thought. This was not sustainable. Not only for their relationship, but also and most importantly for his own survival. 

They got ready to go to sleep and Orube thought it was a miracle that Cedric was still awake when she snuggled against him under the blanket. 

“I know I promised you a ride,” he said in the dark, while she was drawing circles on his chest with her finger, her head resting on his shoulder. “I have thought about it the whole day…”

She hushed him. “It’s fine. You need to get some sleep - the tower council is tomorrow.”

She heard him sigh. “Yeah. At least it’s at midday and I can sleep in.”

“What about going for breakfast?” Orube asked. “You should really see that bakery.”

He clutched her closer to his body. “That sounds like a lovely idea.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

The next morning, Cedric woke up with a gasp, making Orube jolt awake. 

“Is everything alright?” she asked, jumping to sit on the bed. 

“Shitshitshit,” he cursed, pushing away the blanket and jumping out of the bed. “I forgot the Queen wanted to see the inner council before meeting the nobles.”

Orube blinked, trying to make up what he was talking about. “Now?”

Cedric hurried to wear the under-armor clothes, then started to assemble the pieces of the armor on his body. “Soon. But I have to go and check that the guards are all at each entrance as planned. The nobles will arrive soon.”

Orube tightened the blanket around her body, following Cedric’s movements as he went on closing one piece of the armor after the other. “Can’t… Nerel do that?”

Why are you even asking?, she told herself. 

“It’s better if I do it,” he said, and those words ignited rage in her chest, as predicted. It was his standard justification for when there was anything his Champions were obviously able to take over. Checking that a handful of soldiers were standing in the right position at each door before the arrival of the nobles was something that even the child apprentices could have done. 

“We can have breakfast tomorrow, I should have nothing planned,” he said. 

“But I do…” she murmured. Sometimes Cedric forgot that she had a job as well. And because of the shifts of the Champions, sometimes she had to put the slot for the individual trainings at dawn. 

“Right, tomorrow you have Vala… What about dinner tonight?”

Orube crossed her arms around her knees. “Aren’t you supposed to stay at the banquet while the Queen entertains the nobles?”

Cedric clamped the blue and purple spaulders to his shoulders, the last pieces of the armor. “I can… take breaks,” he said, looking at her with a little too much malice in his gaze. 

She was not in the mood for flirting. “Fine, I’ll be around.”

That was what their life was. Stealing time from breaks and having steamy encounters in the stockrooms of the palace. While Orube had always found it exciting and arousing to have his head between her legs in a dark stockroom, or to blow him behind a curtain, now she did not like that this was all she could get. 

She swallowed a bitter knot while he kissed her and then turned to leave. 

She went to the bakery with Shoshan and stared angrily at the landscape that extended beneath the hill. 

“At least he’s not sleeping around,” Shoshan said, chewing a half-moon filled with red jam. “Can you imagine trying to contact him and finding yourself talking with a half-dressed woman who picked up the amulet? Because I do.”

Orube shook herself. Shoshan was right - at least he was not cheating on her. “I’m sorry about my stupid brother,” she said. “I’m so going to kick his ass the next time I see him.”

Shoshan shrugged as she took a sip of brewed barley - the only thing in Metamoor that came close to coffee. “There’s no need to, I mean, he doesn’t know I care. And I’m having fun, too. Tonight I will meet Folwin again.”

Orube’s eyebrows shot up. She knew that Shoshan had spent the night with Folwin two weeks ago, but she didn’t know it went beyond that one-night stand. “You didn’t tell me you were still seeing him.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I just go to see him when I feel like. That’s the cool thing about men who grew up in a matriarchal city, they are always there to please.”

Not all of them, Orube thought. She took a sip from her cup of barley as well. “I found it cool at first, too, but then I realized that this society is just as unequal and unfair as any patriarchal one. I know that Queen Elyon means well and would like to make this world a little more progressive, but it will take some time. Basiliade has its issues, but now that I live here, I started to appreciate that even in the old order women and men were treated alike when it came to positions of power.”

Shoshan hummed, turning serious. “However, that’s only as long as women are not mated,” she said. “I wonder if-”

“Acheri would never want you to stay at home and knit blankets the whole time,” Orube cut her off. She didn’t want to believe that Acheri would be so old-fashioned that he would force his mate to step down from her position as Master of the Citadel. Even less so if it was a Master he’d trained himself. “And younger people are not really doing that anymore. Look at Rehu and Maut.”

Shoshan chuckled. “I think Maut would make Rehu regret the day he was born, if he dared.”

They went to train the younglings, like every morning, and the session in the arena did nothing to lift Orube’s mood. She felt bitter and disappointed, and was not sure if there was anything that could have erased that feeling, other than seeing Cedric running to her and telling her that he told everyone else to go fuck themselves and he was free for the day. 

Perhaps a night out could help. She’d told Cedric she would be around during the banquet, but he would be available for maybe a couple of short breaks, and she was certainly not going to sit there like a dog waiting for his owner. Shoshan accepted enthusiastically, saying that she was supposed to meet Folwin late in the night so she had time for a drink. 

After she was done with the trainings, and after having grabbed something for lunch, Orube went to the palace to look for Naexi. Although Naexi and Nagadir only spoke Metamoor, they would probably make it work with Shoshan, and they would not say no if they were free of their duties and Orube made her case that she was annoyed by Cedric. Those two would move mountains to make themselves available for an occasion to bitch about Cedric.

On the way to the maidens’ stockroom, which the girls used as a break room too, she stumbled upon the last person she wanted to see that day. Or ever. 

Please, don’t see me, Orube thought, silently changing direction. 

She froze as a pair of obsidian eyes landed on her. “Oh, Orube. What a pleasant surprise!” said Lady Alasse, walking towards her followed by her silent High Priestess. From the tone of her voice, it did not really sound as if it was a pleasant surprise. 

Orube quickly bowed her head. “Milady,” she addressed her. 

Alasse waved her greeting away with her hand. “Oh, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Alasse? You’re family, after all.”

Orube suppressed a grimace that threatened to distort her mouth. Alasse had never done anything to her, but she just couldn’t sympathize with her. 

“Speaking of family,” Alasse said, and Orube almost rolled her eyes. Here we go, she thought. “Where is Cedric? I was hoping to find him outside the council room, but he doesn’t seem to be there.”

Orube shrugged. “He might be in the military barracks. And later today he has his training before the banquet.”

Alasse hummed, sizing Orube up with her eerie eyes. Her irises expanded a bit. Perhaps she’d caught the annoyance in Orube’s voice. “I’d say he’s hiding from me,” she said in the end. 

“Hiding?” Orube asked. Of course he is, she thought. And now I have to find an excuse to tell you that-

“Perhaps you could tell me why you haven’t yet visited us in Hoel, after all these years,” Alasse said. “Now would be the perfect time for a visit, we just had a beautiful snowfall.”

As if I wanted to come there and freeze my ass in the snow. Orube had never had much interest in visiting Hoel, but Cedric was even more adamant than her that he absolutely did not want to go. He’d been there already when he’d accompanied Weira back in the day, and he said it was so damn cold that his armor felt like a piece of ice every morning. 

And now he was hiding somewhere exactly to avoid having to answer his mother’s question, leaving Orube to the task of making up an excuse why they were not visiting. Granted, he couldn’t know that Orube would stumble upon Alasse in the palace, but he had to expect that at some point his mother would ask her to see if she would have better luck. 

Orube was so annoyed that for a moment she thought it would be exactly what Cedric deserved, if she said yes to Alasse for just this once. 

“You know what, we’ll come,” her words left her mouth before she could think twice. 

As Alasse’s irises expanded, covering her whites entirely, and even the High Priestess behind her straightened her posture, Orube understood she’d just made a gigantic mistake. 

What the fuck was I thinking?

“Excellent!” Alasse joined her long-fingered hands in front of her. “Oh, isn’t that marvelous?” she asked her High Priestess. “We shall contact Beléra at once, and tell her to order our staff to prepare a room for our guests.”

“Of course, Milady,” the High Priestess said. 

Oh crap.

  “You won’t believe it, but for once even I agree with your dear husband,” Phobos said, swirling the contents of his goblet. They had met in his parlor this time, as outside in the prison it was raining. Elyon had allowed him control over the weather of his cage, so he would stop complaining that it was always sunny even when there was nothing to be happy about. 

“So you think I should send Cedric to Hoel?” Elyon asked. 

“Cedric and his warrior just need to have a nice, long fuck,” he said. “And Hoel in winter is the perfect place for love birds like them. Have you ever seen Alasse’s guest rooms?”

Elyon shrugged and sipped her wine. “I’ve seen the one she has for me. It’s beautiful, yes, but I wouldn’t say spectacular.”

Phobos chuckled. “She has some rooms that literally call for sex, I tell you. She definitely knows how to make her guests come back.”

Elyon grimaced. “Fine, I’ll send him. I already said yes to Alasse, anyway. But let’s talk about something else, I beg you - I don’t want to know how you found out about the perks of Alasse’s guest rooms.” 

“Like the real reason you came to see me?” Phobos said, and Elyon could feel his piercing gaze on her. 

Of course she did not come to see him to talk about Cedric’s love life. Elyon lowered her gaze to the red liquid in her goblet. “Tell me the truth, Phobos. Do you have anything to do with what is happening in Hoel?”

In the corner of the eye, she saw him stiffening. “Look at me,” he said, his tone low. 

She obeyed. 

“I don’t,” he said, his eyes not leaving hers. “There’s no way I can leave this prison, and no way I can get control of my body again. And it’s not for lack of trying, I’m sure you remember what I did at the beginning.”

Elyon let out a soft snort at the memory of how hostile Phobos had been at the beginning of his imprisonment and of how he had indeed tried to convince her to give him back some magic. She believed him, now. He was still the same asshole he’d always been, but she knew he really cared about her and would not try to put himself between her and Metamoor again. He was clearly unhappy and lonely in this prison, despite all the visitors she allowed to come regularly - herself, Naexi, Cedric, and some visitors from the brothel Elyon had found out he’d financed for years. But he was not plotting against her, she was certain about that. In some way, despite everything they had managed to become brother and sister. 

“I would not hurt you again, even if I could,” Phobos went on, perhaps taking her silence as a sign that she was not believing him. “I would definitely hurt everyone else, of course. But not you.” 

Elyon leaned back against the chair. “I know.” She paused, then cocked her head, looking at him again. “Do you ever think that it was all mom’s plan from the beginning - disappearing and never coming back so in the end we would reunite in some way?”

Phobos leaned back as well, chuckling. “That sounds like a bitch move. Definitely something mom could have done.”

They sipped the illusory wine in silence for a while, likely both thinking about how credible it could be that Weira had orchestrated everything just to have her kids behave like siblings in the end. 

“I hope Cedric will come back with some answers,” Elyon said in the end. 

“And with a limp because his warrior spanked him too hard.”

Orube didn’t have much to do that afternoon, and it made the wait for a moment when she could speak with Cedric even more unbearable. She went to the arena when she knew his session with Shoshan was at the end, and went to sit on a bench at the outer rim. 

Shoshan was going down pretty hard on him, perhaps as revenge on Orube’s behalf. While until earlier that day Orube would have enjoyed the sight of Cedric getting his ass kicked by her friend, now she felt even worse because of what she was going to tell him. 

Perhaps he could find an excuse not to go, after all. He was always so busy, it should not be so difficult to find something that kept him in Meridian. And the Queen had to approve anyway. 

She waited until Cedric and Shoshan were done and he saw her. He came towards her and he was panting a little when he stuck his spear into the ground. His smile dropped immediately as he saw her face and how she was wriggling her hands together. “What happened?”

Orube bit her lower lip. “I uh… I may have done something…”

He frowned. “Did you break something while using magic? I can fix that - just tell me where-”

“I told Alasse that we’ll visit Hoel,” she said all in one breath. 

Cedric gaped at her with his mouth open. “No you didn’t…”

“I’m sorry,” Orube whimpered, “I really don’t know what got into me - I was pissed, and I didn’t know what excuse to make up, and-”

“Are you out of your mind?!” Cedric barked, and he started to nervously pace back and forth in front of her. “Do you even know the mess you just put me in?!”

“She was looking for you, and I didn’t know what to say!”

“Of all the things… why did you have to say that!” he exclaimed. “She’s a fuckin’ noble, I can’t just go there and say ‘actually no, we’re not coming’. And I’ll have to ask for a leave, but I can’t leave Meridian!”

“I said I’m sorry!” Orube repeated, raising her voice as well. “I’m sure the Queen can find a reason why you can’t go…”

“Not after this council, she can’t displease Alasse now,” he said. “For Imdahl’s sake, Orube…” he passed his hands on his face. “It was better if you didn’t speak Metamoor at all!”

Orube gasped in outrage. “How dare you!” she growled. After all the effort she’d put in learning his culture and his language so she could stay with him… “You take that back now!”

He threw his hands in the air. “Why should I? If you never learned Metamoor, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Orube let out a low growl. “Don’t you dare accuse me of a mess you created yourself! I have left everything behind and learned your stupid language so I could adapt to your world, and all for what? For sitting alone in a room while people around me say that we are separating and that you fell back into old habits!”

“And what am I supposed to do? Resign?” he almost yelled.  “I do what I do so I can stay out of prison, and the only reason I want to stay out of prison is YOU!” 

She bared her teeth and hissed. Her ears flexed and the tips pointed backwards. 

“Yeah, you, even when you hiss at me like a cat!” he snarled. “Otherwise I’m sure I’d live a better life behind bars. Maybe I could have a prison with a beach like Phobos!”

Another low growl rumbled from deep in her chest. She couldn’t control these reactions when she was angry. She opened her mouth to retort, but Cedric’s eyes rolled back into his head. 

She grunted in frustration. 

“I have to go,” Cedric said when his irises came back, his tone calmer now. “Maybe I’ll ask the Queen if there’s a room in Phobos’s prison, so I can leave you alone.” He took his spear, turned on his heels and walked away before she could say anything, leaving her with the unpleasant feeling of the ground crumbling under her feet. 

“Come in,” Elyon said in the direction of the door. Then to Alina and Serël, who were still bustling with the edge of her skirt, “It looks fine, thank you.” 

“My Queen,” Cedric said when he entered her quarters. She did not have the habit of receiving anyone in her private quarters, but the Champions were an exception. 

“Leave us,” Elyon told the two maidens, who curtsied and quickly left the room. She studied Cedric’s expression. His gaze was lowered, and his face was drawn. Whenever she called him through the bond, she could perceive some scraps of feelings and emotions, depending on what he was doing at that moment. Most of the time they were neutral feelings or a slight annoyance, a sign that he was simply around in the palace or in the city doing his job. Other times it was some stronger feeling that made Elyon understand she was interrupting something pleasant with Orube. And this time, it had been a mixture of rage, frustration and deep sadness. Three emotions that were now still painted on his face. 

Had it been only rage, she would have thought she’d called him while he was trying to calm down a riot in the barracks. But that sadness… No, she’d caught him in the middle of something more important - he had an argument with Orube. 

The pang of guilt that Elyon always tried to ignore nudged again in her chest. She really detested feeling even slightly responsible for the hard times Cedric and Orube were going through. But hopefully her next task for him would solve the situation - even if it meant that she would be without a Commander for a while. 

“How can I help you?” Cedric asked, pulling her out from her thoughts. 

She shook herself. “I uh- Right, Lady Alasse came to see me after the council.”

Elyon saw a twitch in Cedric’s jaw. Maybe that’s what they were arguing about… “She told me you’re going to Hoel,” she went on. 

“I apologize, my Queen,” Cedric said, and he sounded really annoyed. “There was a… misunderstanding. Of course my priority is staying here with you and-”

“No, no,” she interrupted him, and she started to pace in the entry hall. “It’s actually a fortunate coincidence, I was going to send you there anyway.”

His gaze snapped up at her. 

“There’s a… problem in Hoel,” she explained. 

“A problem?”

“Something is absorbing magic from their land, the crops are dying and now the citizens have started to fall ill as well. That’s why I insisted on not raising the taxes for them - but I also did not concede any more Light for the time being, as it would only go to waste.”

“That’s… terrible,” he said tentatively, and it sounded as if he had to look for the right word to describe what he had to know was exactly Phobos's signature magic. 

“There’s no need to walk around it,” Elyon said. “I know you’re thinking about Phobos.”

Cedric studied her for a few moments. “I don’t think you would send me there alone if you thought I had to deal with Phobos.”

She nodded. “You’re right. I can assure you that Phobos is doing nothing but drinking cocktails on his beach and getting his hair braided by Naexi.”

Cedric only raised an eyebrow as an answer. 

“You need to investigate and come back with some answers, so I can evaluate if I have to intervene myself.” She stopped pacing and looked him seriously in the eye. “And perhaps take it as a vacation with Orube. I sense that you both need it.”

He lowered his gaze immediately. “I will do what you ask of me, my Queen.”

When the Queen finally retired from the banquet and Cedric could go back to his quarters, he felt drained. His stomach had been clenched in a knot since his argument with Orube. He’d seen her in the crowded hall, flanked by Shoshan and, irritatingly, by Naexi and Nagadir. But instead of coming to see him during his breaks, she had disappeared with them. She hadn’t even glanced his way, despite the imposing presence of the Champions in the reception room, all in full armor and ceremonial mask, since all the nobles of Metamoor were present. 

They’d had arguments in all the years they’d been together, but it had never been as hurtful as this time. Mostly because this time, this argument was just the surface of something that went much deeper. 

He wasn’t angry anymore. Actually, he wasn’t even sure he had been really angry when she’d told him about Hoel. He dreaded the thought of spending days in the same palace as his mother, but it was also an opportunity to catch a break and perhaps reconnect with Orube, since he would be far away from all the mess that always surrounded him in Meridian. When he remembered what he’d said earlier that afternoon - that it was better if Orube had never learned to speak Metamoor - he just wanted to curl up on himself and cry. How could he be so mean to someone who had done so much, just to be with him? 

When he opened the door of his quarters, it was semi-dark. There was only a faint blue light in the bedroom from the small fireplace. He tried to cross the study as silently as he could, knowing that he would wake her up anyway. His heart squeezed when he saw her silhouette in the bed. He wanted to run to the bed, kneel at its side and beg her to forgive him for what he’d said earlier. 

Instead, he quietly approached the bed and sat on its edge, looking down at her. Her eyes opened immediately. As he looked at her more carefully, he noticed that there was something different. 

He gasped as he realized what it was. “You cut your hair.” 

Orube raised to sit on the bed, revealing that Cedric was not mistaken - her hair was now cut in a straight bob with full bangs, like she used to keep it years before. She passed a hand on her nape. The hair was slightly shorter there and fell longer on the front. “I just… missed things as they were before,” she said. “So I asked Naexi to help me.”

He realized he was still wearing the mask, so he took it off to see better. He reached out with a hand towards her face and brushed her cheek with his knuckles, following the direction of her hair strands on the side. 

“Do you… like it?” she asked. 

Cedric had to swallow a knot that had tied in his throat before answering, his voice thick with emotion. “I fell in love with someone with the same haircut… Of course I like it.”

“And then what happened?”

“I’m still crazy about her.”

She clutched his hand against her face. “I’m sorry about Hoel.”

“That’s alright. At least Alasse will stop bothering us after this. I should have said yes at some point - you did the right thing.”

She kept her gaze low and fell silent. 

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” he whispered. “You have no idea how grateful I am that you learned my language.”

“I know,” she whispered back, and he saw a half smile on her lips. 

He watched her in silence for some moments, realizing how grateful he was for everything she did and everything she was to him. 

“How many insults did Naexi find for me tonight?” he asked after a while. 

She chuckled. “She called you an ukbas. I have no idea what it means.”

He hissed through his teeth, but he could not hold a smile. “That’s a low blow, even for Naexi.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

Orube had no idea of what she was supposed to bring to Hoel. Everyone kept talking about this incredible cold, and Orube owned nothing that she believed would be suitable for the situation. They were supposed to leave in the evening, so on that day she had some time after she was done with the younglings to go to the city and look for something appropriate for a freezing hell. Shoshan offered to accompany her, as they didn’t know when they were going to see each other again. 

“For the last time, I will be fine here!” Shoshan protested, while they came out of a tailor shop where they had finally found some clothes that looked like they were made of heavy wool. Orube had bought a coat for Cedric as well, just in case he had not thought about it.

“But you barely speak the language,” Orube rebutted. “And at some point you’ll have to go back to Basiliade and, you know…”

Shoshan huffed. “Look, I’m not ready to go. The Champions speak a bit of Basiliadean and I get along well with them. And someone has to stay here and train these people, or they will become lazy piwkras!”

Orube hummed while she eyed another shop that seemed to sell clothes as well. Shoshan was right - Orube’s first thought was for her apprentices and the Champions. She didn’t want them to lose any of the progress they’d been making. 

“Fine, but when I come back, we’ll have a serious talk. You can’t hide from him forever,” Orube said as they entered the new shop.

Cedric didn’t show up until evening, so Orube had started to prepare their trunk on her own. She didn’t know for how long they were going to stay in Hoel, but she decided to keep the trunk light. She was already annoyed enough that she had to prepare Cedric’s stuff on her own and she decided that if anything was missing, they would buy it there.

When Cedric finally arrived, she had just closed the trunk. “I was starting to think you were hiding somewhere so you didn’t have to come,” she said.

He glanced at the trunk. “I wish I could. There were too many things to set up before I could leave. Did you prepare everything by yourself? Also for me?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Had I waited for you, we wouldn’t leave until tomorrow. But I have to warn you,” she pointed her index finger against him. “I’m a warrior, not your maiden. And this,” she waved at the trunk, “this is why I keep telling you that you need a maiden. Or a pageboy, I don’t care.”

Cedric raised his palms in sign of defeat. “Alright, alright,” he said with the same tone of when he surrendered just to avoid having a discussion.

Orube realized how harsh she must have sounded. “I’m sorry. I think I’m a bit… nervous.”

Cedric sighed. “Me too. There’s so much stuff I’m leaving to its destiny here, and who knows what’s really happening in Hoel… and there’s the Hoel family…”

He pronounced it in a way that made Orube think of that famous fictional family on Earth, the one with a particular taste for dark and creepy things and that always dressed in black no matter what. She snorted a laugh.

“What?” he asked.

“I was just picturing them as the Addams family, you know, the one from TV on Earth.”

Cedric looked at her with his eyebrows raised, perhaps connecting the dots.

Then they both bursted into laughter.

They met Alasse and her entourage - namely her High Priestess, a maiden and a pageboy - in the throne room as planned. Alasse had come by carriage, but Cedric had managed to convince her to teleport back to Hoel so he would not need to travel for two days and stay away from Meridian for even longer. 

Since Cedric’s mirror only allowed to teleport between planets, the Queen had to send them to Hoel herself. 

Orube listened in silence as Cedric listed all the things the Champions had to do in his absence. Judging from the annoyed expressions on their faces, it had to be at least the third time he repeated this list. 

Finally, the Queen arrived, followed by three maidens. The Champions made their usual choreographic display, while everyone else simply bowed. 

“Yes, yes, stand,” Elyon said. She sounded as if she was in a hurry. “Are you ready?”

“I was just finishing telling the Champions what-” Cedric started, but he was cut off by Nerel. “Please, my Queen, would you be so kind to teleport him away before we violate Rule 3 of the Code and kick the Commander’s ass until he arrives in Hoel?”

The Queen looked amused, a sign that she was used to Nerel’s bluntness, while Alasse lifted an eyebrow. 

“I apologize, Milady,” Nerel said in her direction, bowing her head slightly. 

The group that had to be transferred to Hoel formed a straight line in front of the Queen. Elyon closed her eyes and lifted her hands to the height of her chest, the palms facing each other without touching, and a small light sparkled in between. When she reopened her eyes, her gray irises were gleaming with the same silver light of her magic. It was the last thing Orube saw before the light expanded and surrounded them. She made it in time to clutch Cedric’s hand next to her, before the Light of Meridian swallowed them all and Orube lost contact with the floor under her feet. 

Cold. 

Of course, cold was the first thing Cedric felt when the light dimmed and he felt the pressure of a floor against the soles of his boots again. It was not the terrible cold of Hoel he remembered, though, and when he opened his eyes he understood why: the Queen had teleported them to the entry hall of the obsidian palace instead of making them land with their legs buried in snow. 

Gods, this place is creepy, he thought as he took in the surroundings. 

Everything in this entry hall was either black or white, except for a few splotches of sparkling silver, such as the flowers of the decorative plants that grew from pots close to the walls, and a few dots of scarlet red from some details and decorations of the furniture or paintings. 

The floor was of a hypnotizing black marble with silver and white swirls drawing a pattern as if an artist had gone through the liquid material and messed around the three colors with a stick. 

Cedric glanced at Orube next to him and saw that she, too, was gaping at the surroundings with her mouth open. His attention turned to the open archway at the end of the entry hall facing them, when he heard steps approaching and echoing in the high halls. 

A group of about ten people was walking towards them, all dressed in black, led by four people on the front line. Cedric recognized them as the Hoel Consort, his daughter and Cedric’s half-sister Beléra and her little daughter, Alès, together with a man he didn’t know but he assumed was Beléra’s husband, Narbeth.

Beléra and Narbeth had been married for many years, but Narbeth had always stayed in Hoel when Beléra was travelling to Meridian or to other cities to participate in court events. Cedric had never understood if it was simply Hoel’s custom, to leave the husbands behind, or if it was because Beléra was still feeling uncomfortable around Phobos for how things had ended between the two of them, and didn’t want to give Phobos any chance to make fun of the man she’d married after she had called her engagement to the Prince off. Not that Phobos ever gave a damn about Beléra and her husband, since the reason why she had called the engagement off was that he had dishonored her by getting caught while making out with one of the stewards during the celebrations for Princess Elyon’s presentation to the realm. 

Had he not known that Beléra was related to Alasse, Cedric would have barely noticed any resemblance. She seemed to have taken nearly all physical traits from Xaltor, Alasse’s husband. Next to each other, and surrounded by the dark colors of these halls, she and her father looked like they had been taken from some other world and implanted in the obsidian palace as an experiment. The certainty that Beléra was at least related to Alasse came when looking at her daughter, Alès, who seemed to be a miniature copy of her grandmother, only with shorter hair cut at chin-length. 

The four nobles were followed by a small group including a few maidens, page boys and two guards dressed in black. Their uniform immediately made Cedric think of the vision where he’d seen the man who sired him, who was wearing the same type of uniform. 

“Welcome, my dear brother,” Beléra addressed them with a bright smile, widening her arms. Cedric had to suppress a frown at hearing the words dear brother. He didn’t feel anything remotely close to a fraternal bond with the woman who was now walking towards him with the clear intention of hugging him. 

He let her grab his shoulders with her hands and touch his cheek with hers, first left and then right, mimicking the action of kissing him on the cheeks without actually doing so. 

Beléra then turned to do the same with Orube, and Cedric didn’t miss how she took a little step back before Beléra managed to grab her. 

“Mother, we have been missing you,” Beléra said when she moved to stand in front of her mother. They greeted each other in the same way. 

“The palace is always in good hands with you, I’m sure people didn’t even notice,” Alasse said politely, and Cedric was completely sure she didn’t mean a single word of it. Alasse was evidently not the kind of leader who left anything in the hands of anyone else, unless it was strictly necessary. As Cedric formulated the thought, a much more terrible realization struck him. Was this a trait he had inherited from her?

Beléra’s voice pulled him out from that frightening thought. “You already know my daughter,” she was saying, and reached out with an arm to invite the little girl to come forward. “Come forward, Alés, don’t be shy. Say hi to your uncle and aunt.”

Cedric saw Orube stiffening next to her at the words. Again, a title he didn’t feel connected to at all. He had barely seen the girl a few imes, and now she looked as if she was perhaps eight years old.

The girl went to Orube first and took her hand while curtseying, then she did the same with Cedric and with her grandmother, who looked down at her with a pleased smile on her lips. Alasse definitely looked proud of this little version of herself and Cedric was sure it was not a coincidence that she was given a similar name to hers. 

The Hoel Consort was the next to come to bow in front of Orube and Cedric. The only time Cedric had ever spoken with Xaltor was at his wedding, when Xaltor had come to congratulate him and Orube before following Alasse to her private meeting with the Queen. From what Cedric had understood, the marriage between Xaltor and Alasse had always been a marriage of convenience, and as far as he recalled from his previous visits to Hoel with Queen Weira, the two even lived in separate quarters in the palace. This explained why Xaltor had never shown any sign of resentment or hostility towards Cedric, who was the result of his wife’s relationship with another man. Cedric observed with curiosity how Xaltor and Alasse greeted each other. They both smiled politely, perhaps even affectionately, and Xaltor bowed to her, taking her hand and kissing its back. 

Finally, Beléra indicated the man who was accompanying them. “And this is my husband, Narbeth.”

Narbeth only bowed, smiling gracefully.

“These are the maidens and pageboys who will be at your service during your stay,” Beléra said, waving at the two young women and the two young men behind her. Then she laid out a hand and one of the two pageboys promptly placed two medallions on her palm, which she handed to Cedric and Orube. “All you have to do is press the stone when you need anything, and they will come find you.”

Cedric eyed the medallion with curiosity. Of course, it was in silver and the stone was a faceted black crystal. 

Beléra looked as if she was about to say something else, when Alasse spoke and took a step forward, then flanked her and turned to face her guests. “Thank you, Beléra. I suppose now we should make some plans for the evening. Are the rooms ready?”

Cedric didn’t miss the sequence of emotions on Beléra’s face. Annoyance first, when Alasse took the word before she could speak, and then her polite smile took a smug turn. “Everything is ready, Mother. I had the guest room in the south wing prepared.” She looked at her mother eloquently, and Alasse’s lips curved up in a little smile. “And since I assume you will all be tired and that our guests will certainly enjoy a private dinner, I thought we could have a short tour while accompanying them to their room.”

Cedric observed Alasse’s reaction. The little smile was gone and for a moment, it looked as if she was annoyed that her daughter had already thought about everything and that she, indeed, was a perfectly capable Lady of the castle. But then she smiled politely again. “What an excellent idea,” she said. She turned to Cedric and Orube. “You will forgive me if I leave you with Beléra. I have quite a few things to attend to before the end of the day, but I will certainly see you tomorrow at breakfast.”

After they’d said their goodbyes for the night, the group separated and Cedric and Orube followed Beléra in the opposite direction as the others. 

As they crossed the hall and entered yet another black corridor, where the flowers decorating the walls also served as sparkling lights, Cedric saw Beléra relax her posture. “And now you saw a slice of how it is to live with your mother, dear brother,” she said. 

“She seems proud of you,” Cedric commented. 

Beléra let out a snort. “I was supposed to go to this council, she had promised she would let me take this one,” she said. “But in the end she said what she always says - that I’m too young and I should enjoy my life while I still can.”

Cedric could almost feel Orube rolling her eyes next to him. Don’t you dare say it, he thought. 

“If she keeps waiting, at some point my daughter will be old enough that I’ll have to step aside and let her become Lady,” Beléra sneered as they entered another hall mostly occupied by a majestic staircase. Hers was a valid concern, Cedric thought. Beléra was only a few years younger than Cedric and Phobos, and he remembered her visiting Meridian when he was still a pageboy. This meant that she was well into her sixties, which did not make her old in absolute terms, but she should have been named leader of the tower already a while ago. The fact that Lord Lathai of Grendal took his mother’s place when he was far younger than her, must have been very hard to accept.

As they started to climb the stairs, Beléra shook herself and smiled brightly again. “Anyway, we’re not here to stir family drama. If anything, you’re here to solve the drama.”

“Right,” Cedric said, “do you have any idea of what’s happening outside?”

Beléra looked at him with eyebrows raised as they kept climbing the stairs. “Outside?” then she seemed to understand. “Oh! Outside! No, I have no idea what’s happening there, but it must be something really nasty. Luckily it did not seem to reach the inner walls of the city yet. I was not talking about that - I was talking about the fact that she complained the whole time that you two had not visited yet.”

“I’ve been… busy,” Cedric muttered. The room that waited for them at the top of the stairs was… not a room. It was completely open, only delimited by a silver handrail and two walls that continued on the two sides, as if it was a sort of giant terrace inside the palace. The starry sky looked at them from above, and some lights of the city of Hoel extended towards the horizon beyond the silver handrail. Cedric could see the shapes of mountains reaching the sky along the left side of the city, a sign that this terrace looked East. The tower was in the northern part of Hoel and the city was surrounded by mountains that started from the East and then delimited the whole North border. What was beyond those mountains was unknown, as nobody had ever managed to venture there. All around them in the terrace there was snow, except for the paths where they walked, which were untouched and of a perfectly clean black marble. The terrace was illuminated by sparkling spheres that hung in the air, and they could see the shapes of tables and benches under the snow. 

What was really striking about this terrace was the temperature, which was the same as in the rooms where they’d been before despite the fact that it was completely out in the open and even surrounded by snow. Cedric glanced at Orube and his heart leapt as he saw the wonder in her eyes. She gaped at the snow as if it was the first time she’d ever seen it. He took her hand. 

“It’s wonderful!” she whispered in English. 

“Have you ever seen snow before?” he asked. 

She shook her head. “Not really - it snowed once in Heatherfield, but it was very brief and it didn’t even stain the ground. It was nothing like this.”

“The temperature is controlled by magic, of course,” Beléra explained, perhaps ignoring the exchange between the two in a language she didn’t know. “The snow is just an illusion and will stay only for as long as it stays in the city.”

Beléra walked towards the wall that delimited the terrace on the left and guided them to another staircase. They crossed other rooms and corridors and Beléra briefly explained what those rooms were for - mostly parlors, tea rooms or dining rooms. Everything was always dominated by black and silver. Some rooms and corridors were admittedly very elegant and it was clear that whoever had decorated them had some taste. Others looked very grim, with elements that reminded Cedric how the Hoel nobles had always dabbled in occult and communication with the dead. Now that he thought about it, Orube had not been so wrong connecting the Rhaeleth family to the Addams family. 

“Alright, here we are,” Beléra announced as they reached a black door with silver decorations. “Your trunk should be already there, and so should be your dinner.”

“Are you sure Alasse is fine with us not joining her?” Cedric asked. “She insisted so much for us to come here, I was a little surprised that she just left like that.”

Beléra smiled mischievously. “Oh, she knows you will probably not want to leave the room until tomorrow morning once you see it,” she said. “And don’t worry, the walls are quite soundproof,” she added with a wink, then she pulled out a key from a pocket in her skirt and threw it in their direction. Orube caught it while Beléra turned to leave before they could ask for an explanation. “Have fun!”

Cedric and Orube exchanged a questioning look. “Do you have any idea of what she was talking about?” Orube asked. 

“Not at all,” he said, although the rumors he had heard about the guest rooms in the Hoel palace came back to his mind. “Only one way to find out.”

Orube shrugged, then she inserted the key in the lock and opened the door. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

If Metamoor had five-star hotels, the rooms that Lady Alasse and Beléra had offered to Cedric and Orube for their stay would probably have been on the cover of their catalogs.

Orube ventured into the room with her mouth open, feeling as if she’d just entered the royal quarters. If these were just guest rooms, how did Alasse’s quarters even look? 

The spaces were, again, dominated by black and white. The floor was of white marble, while the walls were covered by ebony wood. A smell that reminded her of vanilla hit her nose and made a pleasant sensation bloom in her chest. 

She didn’t even know where to look first. Her attention was first caught by the wall on her left, which was barely a wall - it was a series of arches contoured by scarlet red curtains, beyond which she could see an enormous terrace with-

“A pool on the balcony - I didn’t see that coming,” Cedric completed her thought, walking into the room and going to peek through one of the arches. “Oh, and apparently our dinner is out there, too.”

Orube joined him and had a look outside. The terrace was half-occupied by a pool and they could see waves of heat radiating from the surface of the water. On the other half of the terrace there were plants, a settee and two padded chairs around a low tea table, as well as a small round table with two chairs, set with dishes, something that must be their dinner hidden under a cloche, crystal chalices and a bucket containing a bottle surrounded by snow. Silver lights were floating in the air in the terrace, and it almost looked as if the balcony was in the middle of a starry sky.

“How much magic do they need for keeping the temperature at bay?” Orube wondered. “I thought they had a shortage of it…”

“Well, this thing that absorbs magic has not entered the main city and reached the walls of the fortress yet,” Cedric said, still looking at the details of the terrace. “But yeah, if it comes here, they’re gonna have a problem - since they seem to like to pretend that they’re in Idier, with all these terraces and archways.”

They turned to the inside of the rooms and went on exploring the surroundings. Their truck was waiting for them next to the door, where two more padded chairs surrounded by decorative plants were. A stand for the armor had been placed there, too. In the middle of the wide open space after the entrance there was another round table and a bowl made of obsidian stone and full with fruits with strange shapes sat on it. “Those can only come from Idier,” Cedric commented. “No way they can grow that stuff here, even with magic.”

The fruits were unknown to Orube, but they were brightly colored and looked indeed as if they could only grow in warm places. “How does the weather work here?” she asked as she looked around. “Doesn’t Elyon control it?”

“No,” said Cedric as he walked in the room and went to the white marble fireplace that stood against the wall facing the entrance door. On the floor in front of the fireplace there was a carpet and a neat architecture of pillows and folded blankets. It looked really cozy. “Elyon’s influence on the weather is limited to Meridian. Everywhere else, the weather does what it wants.”

On the right side of the open space, a massive wooden door with silver details and surrounded with a white marble arch separated a room that Orube supposed was the washroom from the rest. Another set of arches separated the open space from a smaller circular room where a four poster bed with red covers seemed to catch all the light that came from strategically placed candles. There was also an elegant dressing table and a drawer. 

“It’s incredible how they manage to be creepy as hell and have such taste at the same time,” Cedric commented. 

Orube chuckled. “I think Alasse is trying to butter you up and convince you to move here.”

Cedric hummed, then headed towards the corner where the stand for the armor was and started to remove the pieces of the armor he was wearing. “As if she didn’t know that Champions are bound for life…”

Orube leaned against the frame of the arch that separated the main room from the bedroom, watching him take off the armor. She was not sure how to feel about the slight resignation she’d heard in his voice - as if he would have quit if he could. 

“Can you believe you have nothing to do for the whole evening?” she asked. 

“No,” he said. “I give them two hours before Elyon teleports me back.”

Orube studied him while he went on removing the armor, cocking her head. She had two options - either she followed him into this wave of frustration, or she had to try to stir it into something more enjoyable for both of them. 

She detached from the wall and leapt towards him smiling brightly, taking his arm as he put the last piece on the stand. “Not if I keep you here, even if I have to pull you by the legs.”

Cedric let her take his arm and followed her to the terrace. 

“I would not underestimate them too much, anyway,” Orube went on, as they both took a seat at the table. She had to choose her words carefully, as she didn’t want to sound as if she was doubting his judgment on his Champions. “They are eager to prove that they are capable, and I think Elyon will let them play around for a while before calling you back.”

Cedric only hummed an agreement, then they revealed what was under the cloche. Orube’s eyebrows shot up as she took in the dishes. She had no idea what they were - there was a bright orange soup, some bread and something that looked like a main dish made of… vegetables? Meat? Both? Or could it even be some type of fish they had in Metamoor? 

She glanced at Cedric for confirmation that it was at least not fish. The fact that he had not turned green was a good sign. Orube liked fish, but she had no interest in spending the evening holding Cedric’s hair up while he threw up his soul.

He was studying the plate as well, and only spoke when he saw that Orube was looking at him expectantly. 

“I have no idea what that is,” he said in the end. “But I’d like to think that my mother did not insist for years for me to come here so she could poison me and my wife.”

Orube stifled a laugh at the thought. Cedric frowned, as if he was reconsidering his own words. “She wouldn’t, right?”

“Well, Elyon wouldn’t take it so well,” she said, taking one of the small bowls with the soup. “If anything, because she’s very territorial as to who is allowed to murder you beside her.”

Cedric hummed in that grumpy way as he always did when he thought the world was a horrible place. They started with the soup, and at the first scorching hot spoon, it was simply impossible to understand what it was.

“So you have never been guest in any of these rooms, even if you visited Hoel more than once?” Orube asked, waiting for the soup to cool down to a more bearable temperature.

“No, I always stayed in a common room with the other Champions. It was rather a stock room, if you ask me, and it was just as cold as outside. Only Phobos had a guest room.”

While waiting for the soup to become more manageable, Orube took the bottle of wine out of the ice and looked through the glass against the light. The wine was strange - not red or dark purple like the wines they had in Meridian. This one was clear, and bubbly. She opened the cap and poured some in one of the two glasses, and gasped in surprise when she saw that it was really golden and bubbles ran upwards, to the surface and then above, becoming sparkling silver glitter before disappearing in the air.

“We didn’t get any of that, either,” said Cedric, also looking at the magic of the wine. “But Phobos definitely had enough of that for all of us when he was here.”

“I can imagine how much he bragged about it,” said Orube, as she poured some of that magic wine also in the other glass.

“Yeah, kind of…”

She looked at Cedric, his gaze on the bubbles of the wine, for a moment lost thinking about one of his ghosts. Perhaps she had touched a topic she didn’t want to hear about - the time when Cedric and Phobos both were on duty was also the time when they had been the closest, and perhaps something had happened in this castle that had made Cedric suffer somehow. If she remembered correctly, that was also the time when Phobos was engaged to Beléra, although unwillingly, and perhaps it had something to do with that.

She took one of the two glasses and decided to stir the conversation towards something else. “Did you ever think that you would be here one day, as a guest, and as a Commander?”

He seemed to come back to the present, and his eyebrows shot up as he took his glass as well. “Honestly, I thought I’d be dead by now. And I was right - but for once, that fool of a Prince did something useful and brought me back, so I can finally drink this… thing with a splendid woman.”

Orube made her glass clink against his. “Then I suppose we owe the fool Prince at least a toast, don’t we?”

Finally, he smiled again, as if he’d finally chased away the ghost. “I guess we do.”

The dinner was actually delicious. Even after eating, they still couldn’t identify what the soup was made of and what was in that mixture of roasted pieces of the main course. Orube was convinced it had to contain something like mushrooms, but Cedric insisted that there were no mushrooms in Metamoor and speculated it must be some other spongy plant they had somewhere in the mountains.

After they were done eating dinner, Orube went to wash herself up quickly before leaving the washroom to Cedric, who apparently was very much looking forward to testing the curiously shaped bathtub. It was triangular and sunken in the floor, with silver swirls coming out of it and extending around it on the floor stones, forming a decoration that Orube found very elegant, but also very useless. 

While waiting for Cedric to come back, Orube went to make some tea - there was a teapot and cups, all in black and again with silver swirls as decorations, and a box with a selection of teas. Then she took the bag with yarn that she’d put in the trunk and went to sit on the carpet in front of the fireplace. Years ago, she would have never imagined that she would grow so fond of knitting and crocheting one day. It just never looked like something that could interest her or even fit her. In Basiliade, knitting was a common activity for those women who never became warriors or who had been trained as such but then had stepped out of the warrior life after they’d married another warrior. Orube had always connected knitting with something she would have never wanted for herself - being forced to step down from what she’d dedicated her life to. 

Now, she saw it as something different - it was something she had learned from Cedric and for a while, at least before his appointment as Commander, they had even done it together from time to time. Orube knew that Cedric did not really enjoy knitting or crocheting, but he was happy to do it with her. 

She had brought some yarn with her and a couple of hooks, with the idea of starting a new project if there was time. Apparently, the evening was still long and she did have some spare time. 

Cedric came back when she was already a few inches into this new project. He came to sit on the floor as well, right behind her, surrounding her legs with his and embracing her from behind. The vanilla scent made her smile. 

“What are we making?” he asked, his mouth close to her ear as he peeked from behind her to see what she was crocheting. 

“We?” Orube chuckled, as she went on with the work. “You haven’t been doing this in ages, do you even remember how it’s done?”

Cedric’s arms flanked her sides and his hands overlapped with hers, then he took the piece and the hook from her and went on with the stitches. “I think this damn skill will stay with me for as long as I live. That French lady I accidentally copied it from has marked me for life.”

Orube laughed, as she did every time he mentioned the story of how he’d learned how to knit and crochet. “Hey! You’re ruining my pattern!” she protested as she noticed that Cedric was just adding stitches, but not in the way she’d planned in her head. 

“Oh am I, now?” he said, letting her take hold of the work again. “Then I should better do something else with my hands.” His hands trailed along her thighs, then up her stomach until they reached one of the buttons of the loose knitted jacket she was wearing. She had changed into one of her favorite night gowns from Basiliade - she had many by now - but it was very light and had just two thin shoulder straps, so she’d snuggled in a knitted jacket that Cedric had made back when he still had the time for such things.

She slowed down her work on the crochet piece when Cedric opened the jacket and lowered it, exposing her shoulder, and then lowered a shoulder strap. 

“Don’t mind me,” he purred, then he pressed a kiss on her shoulder. “Go on, please.”

She smiled and made a few more stitches while Cedric’s hand moved to the cleavage of the gown and lowered it enough to expose one breast. His other hand went down, trailing again along her thigh, while the first one teased her nipple. 

Orube threw the crochet work to the floor, feeling a blissful heat spreading from between her legs as Cedric’s hand slowly - too slowly - went under the fabric of the gown and moved up on her thighs. 

“Too distracting?” he murmured on her lips when she turned her head, leaning back against his body. 

“You talk too much,” she said, and she plunged her hand into his hair, drawing him closer and crashing her mouth against his. It was a raw kiss, their tongues immediately starting to dance around each other, and the throb between Orube’s legs only intensified as she felt Cedric’s arousal pressing against her lower back. 

His hand left her thigh when it was just about to touch her where she wanted, and went instead to cup her other breast and pull down the other side of the fabric edge. The throbbing desire between Orube’s legs became almost an ache while he played with both nipples, making them peak despite the close heat of the fireplace. 

“Isn’t it romantic?” she teased him between kisses, “Candles everywhere, snow outside, this fireplace… and playing with my tits?”

“I couldn’t ask for more,” he breathed, grinding against her back. 

She kissed him again, and took one of his hands, guiding it down her stomach again and then under her gown. “Remind me again - where were we the other day, when we were interrupted?” 

She felt him smile against her mouth. Finally his fingers landed on her clit, sending a wave of pleasure through her body. “I think somewhere around here…”

Orube opened her legs, crossing his, and he took the chance to kneel and lift her with him, so she would kneel on the floor with her legs spread apart. His hand moved deeper, touching her slick entrance while his cock was grinding against her ass. She rolled her hips against him and against his fingers, moaning in his mouth. 

“And then?” she asked, and her hand went to his pants, lowering them down to free him - just like the other day. 

“You seem to remember quite we-” his words choked off when she guided him inside her and they both inhaled a sharp breath. It felt to her as if it had been years since the last time she’d felt him inside her. Gods, it felt good. 

His fingers rubbed circles around her clit while they moved against each other, thrust after thrust. He left her mouth only to kiss her jaw, then her neck, his other hand still on her breast. She contracted around him as a pleasant tension grew, and he moaned against her skin every time she clenched him in. He nibbled her earlobe, making her almost shutter in a million pieces. 

“Give me an order,” he whispered, and she loved to hear the plea in his voice.

“I thought you were the Commander,” she said, panting a little with each of his thrusts inside her. They played this game often, and she enjoyed it each single time. 

She heard his smile in his voice - he enjoyed it, too. “Not with you…” he was panting as well. “Give me an order, Master.”

Orube put her hand on his, adding some pressure to her clit, and drew him closer with the other hand. “Come with me,” she moaned, her climax already bubbling from deep inside her core. 

He pounded deeper, his breath hitching against the skin of her neck, filling her completely. Pleasure shot through her in waves, and the tension that was building up broke. He groaned with her as she came with a soft cry, and when she could feel the present again, she enjoyed the feeling of his throbs inside her as he found release as well. 

When the waves of her climax washed away completely, she turned again to kiss him softly. “You still owe me a ride,” she whispered on his lips. 

“Oh? This was not a ride?” 

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Usually you’re tied to the bed when I ride.”

Cedric kissed her jaw, letting out a low growl. “Good that the night is still young.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 7

The next morning, Cedric woke up with sore muscles nearly everywhere. It had been a while since the last time he’d spent part of the night tied to a bed while Orube disposed of him as she pleased. 

It was worth every single inch of burning muscles, though. 

He turned to look at her - she was lying beside him in bed, turning her back to him. The sight of her nape, now that she had short hair again, together with the memory of the night they’d just spent, was enough to send a flush of heat through his body, leaving him with a prickling arousal between his legs.

The location only contributed to making his thoughts wander towards sex at all times. This suite had nothing in common with the dark and humid room where he had to spend the night chattering his teeth from the cold when he used to accompany Weira back then. This was the first time Cedric was staying in one of the famous guest rooms, and now he could finally say that the rumors about Hoel were true. Starting from the ambience of these rooms, that seemed to be made for intimate encounters, to the welcome package that Cedric thought was only something Phobos had made up and instead had found next to the bed the evening prior - a small box with ribbons, blindfolds, samples of various kinds of smears with curious scents, and the famous shivering loops that made everyone in Meridian blush when talking about Hoel. Not that such toys did not exist in Meridian, only they were certainly not offered as a gift to the guests of the royal palace. 

It was true that people here had their ways to make their long winters much more entertaining, and they were very open about it. 

Cedric rolled to his side, wincing a little at the strain in his back muscles, but he welcomed the sensation as a pleasant reminder of what had reduced him to that state. He plastered his body against Orube’s, savoring the warmth that spread through his body at the contact. 

This. 

This was how he would have liked to spend eternity. With sore muscles after a night of pleasing this beautiful woman, the pleasant sensation between his legs reading him to do it all over again, and her body glued to his. 

“Oh, so you can still move,” Orube teased. 

He pressed a kiss on her nape, then on the side of her neck. “I can do much more than this.”

He could almost hear her grinning as she moved against him to feel him closer. “Do you think they’re waiting for us?” she asked. 

Cedric glanced over her shoulder, towards the arches of the terrace. “It’s still dark outside. As far as I know, people here take it rather easy in winter. Besides, I assume someone will come to call us when it’s time.”

Orube stretched against his body, letting out a vibrating sound that reminded that of a feline’s trill. Although Orube did not like to be compared to a terrestrial cat, her kind had undoubtedly many things in common with felines, such as the way she hissed and growled when she was angry, or the sounds she emitted when she was relaxed, and that made Cedric lose his mind every time. 

He embraced her more tightly, letting out a soft moan against her skin. She reached back with her arm, wrapping it around his neck and drawing him closer, moving against him in a way that made him quiver. 

Orube made him touch the stars another time that morning, and they had already gotten dressed by the time a pageboy came to call them. By then, the darkness had left space for a gray sky, and they noticed that the snow was falling in thick flakes outside, at times in silent and posed lines, and at times in a violent blizzard. 

Cedric did not wear the armor, thinking it would be a little too much for a breakfast with that question mark that was his family, but he wondered if the armor was enough to avoid freezing to death later, when he’d eventually have to go out and start investigating Hoel’s problem with magic. 

The pageboy guided them to an elegant yet creepy dining room. It looked like a ballroom ready for a Halloween party on Earth, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, portraits of stern-looking pale people dressed in black, and pedestals around the walls, each presenting a different statue that must have been sculpted by an artist with a fascination for skulls and roses. 

“They’re creepy and they’re spooky…” Orube hummed on the notes of the opening tune of the Addams family, making Cedric stifle a laugh while they entered the room. 

“Good morning!” Beléra’s voice rang like bells as she greeted them cheerfully. She was sitting at a huge table set with a breakfast that could have fed an entire village. Next to her, her husband smiled politely. At her other side, her daughter kept her gaze low, staring grudgingly at her empty plate as if it had just offended her deeply. 

Beléra nudged her, whispering something. Alès glanced at Cedric and Orube for just the time to mutter, “Morning, aunt and uncle,” then she went back to her staring contest with the empty plate. 

Beléra gave them a tight smile. “She’s just a bit sour because she cannot go outside to play with her friends.”

“And why is that?” Orube asked as they approached the seat indicated by the pageboy. 

“Oh, but that’s because of the blizzard, of course,” Beléra said. “It’s very dangerous to go outside when the weather is like this.” As Alès opened her mouth to protest, Beléra hushed her. “Yes, even for you - as long as the Blight is out there, it’s not safe for us either!”

“The Blight…” Cedric murmured. 

Beléra shrugged. “Well, we had to give it a name.” Then she clapped her hands together. “So, how did you find your rooms? Was everything… satisfactory?”

Cedric did not miss the smirk on Narbeth’s face. 

“Everything’s perfect, thanks,” he said. “Your guest rooms are certainly up to the… fame of this place.”

Beléra’s smile widened. Before she could comment, though, a more authoritative voice came from the other end of the room. “And what fame are we talking about?” asked Alasse, advancing in the room at the head of a group composed of herself, her husband and the High Priestess. 

Beléra’s smile dimmed immediately. Cedric studied the group, surprised to find the High Priestess with them, and even more surprised to see Xalthor arriving with Alasse, knowing they lived separately. 

Cedric glanced at Orube, sitting next to him. Her ears twitched and her nostrils flared, a sign that she was studying the situation with her sharpened senses. Sometimes her nose and ears could perceive truths Cedric couldn’t grasp, even if he entered someone else’s mind. From the way Orube pursed her lips when the group was closer and from the glint of interest that flashed in her eyes, Cedric understood that the three shared the same scent - a sign that Alasse and Xalthor were not living too separately, and that the High Priestess had a say on that, too. 

He turned to face Alasse, before the silence would become too long. “It is known in other cities that being a guest in Hoel is one of the best experiences in Metamoor.”

Alasse hummed, taking her seat at the head of the table. She leaned towards her left to stamp a kiss on Alès’s temple. The High Priestess and the Consort took a seat at her other side. With a wave of her long-fingered hand, Alasse indicated the food on the table. “Please, help yourself.”

Everyone else did as she said, taking something from one or the other dish. Cedric and Orube both studied the table first, trying to identify something they knew. Even Cedric found himself lost again, as the only thing he could name was, in fact, bread. Everything else looked like alternate versions of dishes he knew from Meridian or other cities in Metamoor, but with different colors or textures. He went for bread and something that looked like jam, although it was scarlet red instead of the usual blue or purple of Meridian’s spreads. Orube was braver than he and went for something that looked like terrestrial scrambled eggs - only Cedric knew that eggs were not edible in Metamoor, so the Gods only knew what that stuff was. 

“Can I go outside to play, grandma?” Alès asked Alasse soon after everyone was already busy eating. “Mother says it’s dangerous, but I can protect myself from the blizzard! You taught me!”

A corner of Alasse’s mouth lifted as she went on spreading one of the strange confitures on a piece of bread. “Oh, sweetheart. Your friends cannot protect themselves, so you would be alone. And with the Blight… it’s not safe even for you.”

“That’s what Mother said, but-”

“No buts,” Alasse cut her off. “The Blight is to be taken seriously. So seriously that the Queen has sent us her most valuable Champion.” She indicated Cedric with a nod. “Your uncle.”

Most valuable Champion… the words felt strange. Cedric was so used to being addressed as Commander, that he’d lost touch with the meaning of that word - other than being a pain in the arse for all the stuff he had to do. Hearing Alasse’s words suddenly reminded him that there were only two ways to become Commander - either being a man in the Escanor lineage, or being exceptionally good. He suddenly felt insecure, wondering if he had been chosen for the role because he had been so close to Phobos he’d merely taken his place as a male Escanor, or if it was because of his talents. 

“What’s so special about the Champions, grandma?” the girl asked. 

Alasse reprised spreading the confiture on the piece of bread. “They are chosen among the most talented mages and fighters in all cities, and they are trained to become the most powerful warriors we have,” she explained. Hearing what becoming a Champion meant filled Cedric with a certain pride. “And the most powerful of them all becomes Commander. The Queen is taking a huge risk by sending him here, as he cannot be in Meridian and protect her.”

Alès turned to study Cedric closely, as if she could not believe that Cedric was as powerful as Alasse had just said. Cedric was not so sure about it either. He did not know what Alasse’s powers entailed exactly, but he was certain that the heads of the Metamoor towers were much more powerful than he was. 

“He doesn’t look like he can protect the Queen,” the girl said, earning a pointed look from her mother. Cedric only raised his eyebrows. 

Alasse chuckled. “Oh, he can.” The way she pronounced the words suddenly made Cedric wonder if Alasse had planned this course of events all along, since the day she’d started pulling strings to make him become a Champion. He shook the thought away, though - Alasse could not have known about Phobos’s fate and that he would not keep the Commander role for long. Had she known, then Weira would have known as well, and Cedric couldn’t bring himself to believe that Weira had planned everything from the start - her disappearance, Phobos’s tyranny, his fall… and all for what? For having her son entrapped in another dimension, drinking tea with his sister? 

Alasse’s voice pulled him out of a spiral of thoughts that was oddly becoming much more credible than he would have expected. “And even he will not go out today,” she was saying. 

Cedric frowned immediately. “I won’t?”

Alasse glanced at him from under her long eyelashes. “Of course not. My guards have already patrolled the city and have reported that the Blight seems to have its origins in the heart of the mountains. During blizzards, it’s impossible to reach it, and even if you do, you won’t be able to see anything.”

“But the blizzard won’t last the whole day, I suppose,” Cedric objected. 

Alasse merely looked at her daughter. Beléra’s black eyes expanded, covering her whites completely. She stilled for a few seconds before her irises shrank to their normal size. “It will last until tonight,” she announced, then turned her attention to the food on her plate again, as if nothing had happened. 

“See?” Alasse said. “It won’t change much if you enjoy your stay here with your wife for another day, and tomorrow my guards will accompany you to the mountains.”

Frustration snapped inside Cedric’s chest. Of course, it mattered if he had to stay another day. It was already a miracle if nobody had called him back yet. “I don’t think it’s-”

“Are you contradicting Mother?” Beléra snapped. 

“Well, my duty is with the Queen, and I-”

“As long as you’re here, and in the absence of the Queen, you’re under our jurisdic-” Beléra started, but Alasse raised a hand. She shut up immediately. 

“Children,” Alasse said quietly. Cedric had to fight not to sneer. Don’t call me a child, he thought. “The Queen will certainly not want to risk her valuable Commander to get lost or injured in a blizzard while trying to help us, even if this means that you will need to stay here for one day longer.”

Cedric opened his mouth to retort, but Orube spoke first. “This sounds very reasonable. We’ll stay here today and go out tomorrow when the weather is more bearable.”

We? It took a while for Cedric to squeeze Orube’s hand back when she took his under the table. He had certainly not planned to bring Orube with him to a potentially dangerous mission. 

Orube’s words managed to at least set the atmosphere back to a lighter tone. Cedric and Orube listened in silence while the others talked about Alasse’s and the High Priestess’s stay in Meridian, and then Alasse demanded a report from Alès on what she’d learned in school while she was not there. 

After they were dismissed, Cedric and Orube went back to their room. Luckily, one of the maidens appeared from nowhere to accompany them, or they would have likely lost themselves in the dark corridors of the obsidian palace. 

“So, who slept with whom?” Cedric asked with a grin when he closed the door behind him. 

“All three together,” Orube confirmed, walking into the room. She whirled to look at him again. “I already knew that she was sleeping with the High Priestess, but I didn’t see it coming from Xaltor.”

“Wait, you knew about the High Priestess and didn’t tell me?” he detached from the door and ventured towards her to grasp her waist - but she laughed and ran away from him, heading to the terrace. “You keep gossip to yourself!”

“I didn’t know you were interested in gossip.” She chuckled, moving swiftly through the arcs that separated the room and the terrace while he followed her, as if they were children playing tag. 

“I’m a member of the Council, they infected me.” This was a lie - he had stopped paying attention to Meridian’s gossip many years ago, as soon as he had started to be the main subject of said gossip. But he was enjoying chasing after Orube and the way she kept dashing away from him. “What else did you keep from me?”

“Oh, let’s see… Did you know that Lord Lathai sleeps with one of the Queen’s maidens when he’s in Meridian?” she asked as she whirled away from his grasp once again. 

He cocked his head, halting for a second, then reprised chasing her. “Who?” She laughed, and before she could answer, he hastily added, “No, wait, let me guess.”

They kept dancing around each other while he tried to guess which maiden was sleeping with Lathai, until Cedric finally caught Orube - or more likely, she let him catch her on the balcony. He trapped her between his body and the handrail of the balcony and claimed her mouth without giving her the time to slither away. 

Her arms thrown around his neck, she pressed her body against his while she eagerly responded to his kiss. “It’s Alina, by the way,” she said, parting from his lips. 

He smirked. “I knew it - I saw her sneaking out of his guest room at dawn the last time he was in the palace and I had the night shift.”

Her frown was delightful. “Then why did you pretend not to know?”

Cedric drew her body closer to his and gave her another kiss, biting her lower lip. “Because I like it when you make me run after you.”

She hummed with satisfaction. “Duly noted.” 

He let her turn and look at the landscape in front of them outside the balcony, embracing her from behind and resting his head on the space between her neck and her shoulder. 

“That’s a lot of snow,” she commented. He took in the landscape, too. The snow was still falling in chunks, but at that moment, the blizzard had calmed down, and the view was clear. It was as if the city was covered by a thick white blanket. From that distance, they could barely see the paths that people had created in the snow with shovels so they could still go outside and take care of their errands, and the ground looked like a uniform layer of snow, from which the walls of the houses emerged and were covered by more snow on their roofs. The mountains that stretched from the side were completely white as well. 

Although everything was completely covered by snow, Cedric couldn't help but notice that where there should have been vegetation and trees, there were only bent scraps of thinned branches and trunks. This was not the normal winter slumber of trees, when they lost all their leaves and were left bare, but still proudly standing. No - these were dead trees. Cedric’s gaze searched the landscape, looking for any form of vegetation that still showed some sign of life. 

There was none. All trees were bent, many were stretched on the ground, and covered by the carpet of snow. 

“The trees…” Orube murmured, echoing his thoughts. “Is this the Blight?”

“It seems so,” he said. 

They watched the landscape in a heavy silence for a while. Doubts and questions started to crowd Cedric’s mind, as he realized that the problem that he’d been sent to solve in Hoel was a real thing - and that it was likely dangerous for him and for Orube as well. What if he went outside the next day and the Blight attacked him directly, absorbing his magic? What if it didn’t, but they could not solve the problem, and it expanded to other cities - what if it came to Meridian and attacked the Queen? How was he supposed to do his job and protect the Queen from something that seemed to feed from his magic? 

He clutched Orube closer to his body. What about her? She did not have a reservoir of Metamoor magic like everyone else, but she did have Basiliadean magic. A type of magic that made her very attractive to the Light of Meridian, who was always very eager to bargain with her in exchange for a bead of her warm magical energy. Cedric could certainly not risk exposing Orube and her intriguing magic to this Blight. 

“I think this is the reason why Alasse is not leaving her throne to Beléra,” Orube said, her tone low. 

“What do you mean?”

“Beléra doesn’t care about what’s happening outside,” she explained. “It was clear from how she reacted when you asked. She only cares about this palace - that the Blight doesn’t come here, but she doesn’t care about the people of Hoel.”

Cedric hummed, considering Orube’s words. He had not given much thought to Beléra’s reactions to the discussions about the Blight, but now that he thought about it, Orube could be right. 

“So you think Alasse is focusing on her granddaughter instead,” he said. 

“She’s trying to make her become like herself, yes. Alasse is strange, but she does care about her people.” She turned, facing Cedric again. The worry on her face echoed with his own. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go out there without knowing what it is?”

Cedric let out a sigh. “It’s not like I have a choice, I was sent here for this - to understand if the Queen has to intervene. But I’ll be careful.” He had not forgotten that Orube had said “we” earlier. But before she could protest at his choice of words, he took her face between his hands. “Let’s think about it tomorrow, shall we? It seems I have an entire day off, so maybe we should take advantage of it.”

She shot him a look that promised a huge discussion the next day if he did not let her come with him. But it was only for a moment before she smiled at him. “Alright, let’s see if you still remember how to spend a day with nothing to do.”

It was strange, not having anything to do for an entire day and night, but it was certainly something Cedric could get used to. 

They spent the day mostly in their rooms, meeting the Rhaeleth family only for meals, and Cedric found himself torn between wishing that the blizzard would never calm down, and wishing that it would vanish as soon as possible - so he could complete his task and go back to tidy up the chaos that was likely reigning in the palace in his absence. Towards the end of the day, realizing that nobody had been looking for him from Meridian, he realized he would have preferred the first option. 

Spending an entire day with Orube without having anything to do other than giving her his complete attention was something he hadn’t had the chance to do in a very long time, and he now regretted the time he had lost without being around her. He eagerly jumped into anything she wanted to do, from testing out how warm the water of the pool in the balcony was to starting a crocheting project together - she said it was a blanket, and the idea was to crochet many squares and then join them together, so he could make some as well. He detested crocheting, but he liked to do it with her. 

And of course, they made love. Many times. Nearly everywhere in the rooms. And that night, when they were panting and spent in bed and falling asleep, he was still not tired of it. He fell asleep, making a mental note to find a way to do this more often, once he was back in Meridian. Perhaps not all Commanders were doomed to a failed marriage. Perhaps it could be different for him if he were smart and he tried. And for her, he was definitely up for the challenge.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8

The next day, while he put the armor on, Cedric called himself a fool for his hopeful thoughts of the night before. With each piece of the armor, he was reminded of how impossible it was for him to catch a break unless it was forced by external circumstances, like now. And with the last two pieces of the armor, his blue and purple shoulder plates, he was suddenly reminded that he still had to tell Orube that he didn’t want her to come with him. The sudden realization made him flinch. 

He turned to look for her in the room and found her rummaging in the trunk. She emerged with a second cloak for herself - the first one already waiting for Cedric on the chair next to the door. 

“Do you think this will be enough?” she asked, examining the garment. 

“I… I will go with the guards alone,” he said. 

She just kept checking the cloak. “No, you won’t.”

He clenched his fists. He didn’t care if this whole mission would turn out to be useless, and he wouldn’t find a way to stop this Blight. He didn’t care about the people from Hoel. He didn’t even care about the people from Meridian. And the only reason why he cared about the Queen of Meridian was the stupid bond that prickled in his chest every time he thought about leaving the planet and never looking back. That, and the prospect of finishing his days in prison. But Orube… he would never expose her to something that could be even more dangerous for her than it was for him. “You’re not coming with us, Orube.”

Her gaze snapped at him. She frowned at his serious look. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’m not.”

Her nails dug into the wool of the cloak. “And why is that?”

He crossed the room, coming closer to her. “I don’t know how that thing will react to you. We know it wants Metamoor magic, but we also know that the Light itself is intrigued by yours - I won’t risk it.”

Her upper lip curved, baring a canine. “You’re telling me that I’m in more danger than you?” She snorted. “You are going out there with your baggage of magic that screams ‘free food’ to that thing, and you think it will care about me, not having an ounce of that magic?”

He clenched his jaw. This would hurt… but he was not willing to risk her safety. 

Her eyes widened. “You’re serious.”

“I am. You’re not coming with us.”

She backed one step away from him, looking at him with something between disgust and rage. “And you’re deciding for me?”

His chest tightened. He didn’t want to play this card, but it was the only way. “Yes, and that’s… an order.”

Orube’s mouth opened. She looked at him with surprise for a second, then the rage came back to her face, and her pointed ears flattened. “An order,” she growled. 

Cedric straightened his back, raising to his height. “Yes, an order,” he said firmly. “You are Master of the Champions, I’m the Commander. You are part of our ranks, and you respond to me.”

A low growl rumbled from her chest, and she bared her teeth, showing him her sharp canines. “You said you don’t give orders to me.”

He almost let out a groan of exasperation. He grabbed the cloak he had taken from the trunk earlier and swung the door open. “What happens in our bedroom is a different matter. In a mission for the Queen, I give the orders. You’re not coming with us.”

He stormed out of the room before she could rebut. He knew he would pay for this later, but she would understand. She had to understand. 

Surprisingly, she did not follow him outside the room, nor did she appear behind him when he met with the guards who were going to accompany him. Perhaps she had already started to understand. He would need to postpone these thoughts to later, though - now it was time to finally get this assignment done and gather some information to give to Elyon. 

Outside it was fucking cold. 

It was still snowing, but today there was no sign of a blizzard, and the snow was slow and silent in its falling. Hadn’t he been so nervous because of the tension with Orube, perhaps Cedric would have even enjoyed it. But now, he could only curse under his breath against this whole task, the snow, and the entire city of Hoel. All he wanted was to get it done, go back to the guest rooms, and take the blow of Orube’s rage, hoping that letting her growl and hiss at him with her claws out would be enough to solve the issue. 

He had been given a horse and had been riding in the snow already for a handful of minutes when he realized he hadn’t even glanced at the three guards who were riding with him. 

There were three of them - two young men who looked like they had joined the guard yesterday, and one who looked as if he had forgotten that he was supposed to retire at some point. 

Great, he thought. Two children and an elder, what a perfect team. 

He noticed their uniform again - always the same black uniform he’d seen in the vision where the Goddess Lunja had shown him his father, only they were wearing a cloak on their shoulders. 

From time to time, Cedric had wondered what had happened to the man who sired him. He remembered seeing him in that vision, when the High Priestess had announced that Alasse’s boy was stillborn, and from the look on his face and the way he’d left the room, it had seemed as if he had believed that his son was indeed in the bundle of blankets that the High Priestess was carrying away. 

Had anyone ever told him that his son was alive instead? 

Lunja had told him that one of his parents was still alive. Alasse was alive, so perhaps this meant that his father was dead. 

It was only after the first hour of riding in silence that he decided to try his luck. 

“May I ask you something?” he said, aiming at none of his three companions in particular. 

“Of course, Commander.”

Now, how could he put this? “I uh. I was wondering - there was someone I used to know, in the Hoel guard. I don’t remember his name - it’s been… many years.”

“I’ve been in the guard only for a year, Sir,” one of the two young men said. 

“And I have been for five years,” said the other. “But I was a pageboy in the palace before. What did he look like?” 

The older one did not say anything. 

“Uh… Green skin, white hair, and the eyes-”

“Like yours,” the old man said. 

Cedric turned to look at him. “Yes… like mine. Do you- do you know him?”

The old man looked straight ahead, but his gaze seemed to cover a longer distance than the white path ahead of them. “I knew your father, Commander.”

Cedric nearly fell from the horse. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times like a fish, unable to rebut that. 

A corner of the old man’s mouth lifted, perhaps amused by Cedric’s reaction. “When Milady revealed that Lord Cedric of Meridian was her son, those of us who had been in the palace for long enough to have met Vandil could connect the dots.”

“Vandil…” Cedric murmured. Of course, he knew his father must have had a name, but hearing it pronounced by someone who had known him suddenly made him… real. 

“Yes, Vandil Eladan,” the man confirmed. “A good boy, I saw him grow up. He was still very young when he left, right after… Well, after you were born. I don’t remember well, it’s been some years - what are you, seventy?”

Cedric winced at the man’s bluntness, asking his age. Nobody ever asked so directly about someone else’s age in Metamoor. “Give or take,” he muttered. He had no idea of his precise age, having spent time on Earth, Kandrakar, and Basiliade, where time flew at different paces. “Do you know what happened to him?”

The man shook his head. “No. As far as I know, nobody ever saw him again. He had his ways to make himself… impossible to find.”

Cedric frowned, looking straight ahead at the snowy path. He had his ways… What if he were a shapeshifter like him? 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he joined the rebellion,” the man went on. “I can’t imagine him sitting on his hands and becoming a farmer, he liked throwing fists too much for that.”

The rebellion… A sudden dread assaulted Cedric as the thought of having arrested him crossed his mind. What if he rotted in Phobos’s prison because of him? Or even worse - what if he was among those rebels that Phobos had turned into roses for his garden, or sent to the Silverhold? 

There it was again, his past coming back to bite him in the ass. It had happened less and less often in the last few years, but it still did, occasionally. It did when someone in Meridian still scowled at him. It did when a drunk patron in a pub decided it was time to try and punch him in his face, and realized only too late that it was not a good idea. And it did when Cedric found out that he’d arrested or ordered the arrest of many more people than he’d thought back then. Now, he’d just found out that he might even have arrested his father. 

He was not in the mood of asking more questions about Vandil after that, so the rest of the ride went on in silence, the three guards exchanging a few words among them from time to time, observing how here and there there was supposed to be a scrap of forest that now was lying dead on the ground. 

As they approached the foot of the closest mountains, Cedric, too, noticed how vegetation became even ghastlier than it was in the city. Everything was covered by snow, but one could see that the ground was covered by the remnants of trees and bushes, and that these had fallen and dried a long time ago already. 

“For how long has this been going on?” he asked. 

“The first signs appeared in the city about five months ago,” said one of the younger guards. 

“But here… who knows?” said the older man. “We have started patrolling only after we noticed that something was off in the city, but here it could have been like this for a year.”

They dismounted from their horses when it was time to embark on the narrow, winding paths that went uphill and then inland through the mountains to reach the heart of the mountain chain, and they left them well in sight on a clearing. When Cedric asked if they would be fine with the cold, the guards reassured him that the horses in Hoel were tempered for their winter and could withstand days outside in the snow. 

As they walked the paths towards the inside of the mountains, Cedric noticed that the snow gradually faded out and that it was not falling from the sky anymore in this area, as if even the snow didn’t want to go there. The light dimmed, and after several turns, it was as if they were walking at dusk, and not in the middle of the morning. As they went deeper, it became so dark that they had to light up a torch with a blue fire. 

“There seems to be nothing here,” Cedric commented after an indefinite time of walking the dark path. No vegetation. No animals. No sounds at all. It was like being in a graveyard surrounded by the walls of the mountains. “What made you think that the source is here?”

“This,” one of the young men said, lifting his torch and nodding at the space in front of them. 

Cedric looked and had to hold a gasp. 

Trees. Bushes. And thorns. So many thorns. 

In front of them, the path was blocked by what looked like the remnant of a forest, the trees still bearing green leaves as if it weren’t even winter. All the trunks and branches were surrounded by thorny vines that enveloped them in spirals, closing the access to the forest. 

“What the hell is this?” Cedric murmured. 

“We don’t know, but we figured that-“

The sound of a lash cut through the air and cropped the guard’s sentence. Cedric’s head snapped in the direction of the forest. He didn’t make it in time to see what exactly was going on, and what was that lash - another one cut through the air, and in the blink of an eye, his throat was clenched by a thorny vine.

He grabbed it with his hands, digging his fingers through the space between the thorns and the gorget of his armor, pulling away from it, but the vines clenched, and clenched. It was useless, though, as they could not bend the silver of his gorget. 

Finally, this armor proves itself useful. 

He didn’t have the time to rejoice about the usefulness of being covered in silver, as another vine lashed from the inside of the forest and joined the others, and this time it landed on his skin, on the small space between his jaw and the gorget.

He gasped for air, and the thorns cut into his fingers as he tried to free himself. The choked gasps he heard around him told him that his companions were in the same situation. Thorns dug into the skin of his neck. The pain was sharp at first, then it was numbed by how many thorns were punching his flesh all at the same time, fusing into a wave of pain that blinded his sight for a moment. Liquid started to trickle along his skin and inside the armor.

Magic, use magic.

A beam lit around his fingers. Perhaps he could burn them away-

NO!

Terror washed over him as he saw the beam of his magic disappear into the vines, as if they had eagerly swallowed it. He could only watch, his vision blurring, as the vines grew in shape, as if absorbing his magic had just given them what they needed to become stronger.

And they kept closing around his throat, cutting air from his lungs-

Transform into something small, he told himself. Or something with claws… It was his only way out. It was not a way out for his companions, but he had to think about himself first. 

Something small…

His thoughts were starting to overlap in confusion as he desperately gasped for air, but he managed to think about a small creature - a small snake that could slither away from the grasp of the vines. Eyes closed, he hazily commanded his human mask to leave the space for that serpent. The scales of his shapeshifting powers closing on his human mask felt like freedom. 

A weight crushed against his chest as all the air was sucked out. He reopened his eyes and saw with horror that he was still wearing the human mask, while the vines had lightened up and were now glowing.

My magic…

They were glowing and pulsating with a green light. His Light. 

No… not again…

His sight faded, and he wanted to cry, to shout, to tell that thing to keep its filthy vines off his precious magic, that he wouldn’t allow anyone else to take it away from him ever again. 

No sound came out. 

He couldn’t shout. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t use magic. What was he, without any of this? His hands kept trying desperately to free his neck from the hold of the vines, but all he could do was gather new wounds. 

He had known that whatever was absorbing magic from Hoel had to be something dangerous. But the thought of dying today had not crossed his mind for a single second - until now. 

What the fuck are you?

The gasps for air of his companions faded, covered by a sudden loud wind. The wind became louder and louder, and Cedric wanted to cover his ears, so he could at least die in peace. 

Dying…

In the fog of his mind, a pair of orange eyes looked at him. His heart cracked in two at the thought of not seeing her ever again, and after how they had parted earlier… 

His eyes widened when he realized that the sound he was hearing was not wind. He tried to ignore the horrifying sight of his green magic pulsating through the vines and disappearing in the forest, trying to focus on what he was hearing. 

These were whispers. 

“The Master is near…” the whispers said. 

“Who…” he choked out. He tried again to loosen one of the vines around his neck. “Who… is… y-your Master…”

“And you even have to ask, Lord Cedric?” the whispers sneered. A burst of laughter filled the air and lifted a gust of wind. And with that, it was as if someone from inside the forest had pulled the vines, and the hold clenched, blinding him again. 

Phobos…

Of course, it had to be- 

The sound of a blade cutting the air.

The slashing of something hard and an ooze gurgling out of it. 

And the vines released his neck so fast he found himself gasping and coughing, his lungs desperate for air.

What…

A blinding flash of orange light forced him to close his eyes. 

It was warm. Scorching hot, as compared to the cold wind of just a few seconds ago. 

He realized his legs had given up only when his knees hit the ground, made harder by the cold. Clutching his throat, his fingers finding the slick of running blood, he commanded his legs to move again. 

He couldn’t. Only then did he realize how much magic he’d lost. 

His sight still blurred, when the orange flare disappeared, he raised his gaze to see what had just happened-

He crawled backwards as his eyes landed on a known silhouette - blurred, but unmistakable to his eyes. 

“Orube, what-”

“We have to hurry up!” she said, coming to lift him, her sword in her hand, dripping a green ooze from the blade. “I took this thing by surprise, but it will come back!”

With her help, he could start walking again. He glanced left and right. “What about the others?”

“They’re already running back; they did not lose as much magic as you did,” she said. “I told you, you have free food written on your forehead.”

Cedric’s sight abandoned him again from time to time, and when he felt the cold of snowflakes on his face, he realized he had no idea how he’d managed to run the way back there. 

He blinked at the daylight, and with that, his knees gave up again, and he fell into the snow. Dark red dots started to pop all around his knees in the snow. 

“You’re losing too much blood,” Orube said, crouching in front of him. “You have to close the wounds.”

He let her take his hand, also covered in blood, and place it on his neck. He clutched her shoulder with the other hand. 

“You can do it,” she encouraged him. He could only hear now - images were just a mess of white, red, and a splotch of brown where she was kneeling in front of him. 

Cedric still felt the human mask on, so he couldn’t have lost so much magic. He could still breathe, and his heart was still beating. He focused on his hand, trying to channel his Light there so it could close the wounds on his neck. 

Panic started to rise when he realized that his Light was not moving from his core. And the more he panicked, the more his Light even seemed to retreat, as if it was too scared to come out. 

Please…

He gasped as something warm surrounded his hand. 

Warm and orange. 

“Take it,” Orube whispered. 

Orube’s magic was the same color as her eyes, and it felt like basking under the Twin Suns. It was sweet and spicy at the same time, and it filled him with a blissful warmth as if he were drinking a hot tea after having been outside in the snow for an entire day. Something in his chest burned as he took her magic in and used it to close his wounds. He couldn’t quite place what was that burning sensation, but it was at the same time painful and pleasant. 

When Orube took her hand back, his sight focused again. His breath had come back to normal, and the wounds around his neck and his hands were not pulsating anymore. Three dark figures were standing around him and Orube, looking at them with concern in their eyes. 

Blood was clotted around their necks, but it didn’t seem to be as much as the blood Cedric had lost, and their wounds rather looked like small scratches. As if the creature had purposely targeted him.

His legs trembled when he stood up, still leaning against Orube’s shoulder. “How- what did you do?” he asked her. 

Orube glanced behind him. “We should put some more distance between you and that thing first.”

She took his hand and they started walking the rest of the way that they’d done on foot earlier. 

“That was a shield…” he murmured, thinking about the blinding orange light again. 

“Did you think I came to see you teaching the kids only because you’re handsome?” 

Cedric frowned. “Well… yes?”

They found the horses where they’d left them. Orube had followed them on foot, so she mounted the horse together with Cedric on the way back. While riding back, Cedric clutched her close to his body, tiredness starting to take over. He had lost quite a lot of blood and magic and needed to reach the obsidian palace soon, where the Light was still flowing strongly enough to restore his own. 

As they kept riding, his thoughts became gradually less fuzzy, and he started to put together the pieces of what had just happened. 

The whispers… Phobos… but what did not give him peace at that moment was rather what Orube had done - not only had she followed them, taking a huge risk for herself, but it turned out that she had even trained to use her source of magic without ever telling him. 

They remained in a heavy silence the whole way back. He didn’t know how to feel. Annoyed because she’d ignored his order? Hurt because she had been hiding something so important from him? Or full of admiration for what she’d been able to learn by just watching him teach a bunch of kids how to use magic that had barely anything in common with hers? 

Cedric managed to dismiss Beléra when she came towards them in the palace, convincing her that he could not meet Alasse while he was still soaked in blood and snow. Alasse was certainly no stranger to blood and battles, but Beléra was seemingly able to read the room well enough to leave him and Orube some space.

When he closed the door of their room behind him, he launched towards Orube, enveloping her in a tight embrace. She held him in return, while his hand plunged through her hair, holding her against his chest. 

“There was a reason why I told you not to come,” he said in a whisper. “That thing… You could have died there!”

She lifted her head, looking up at him with a frown. “You were there when you were about to die, and I saved you, right?”

He took her face between his palms, brushing away some strands of hair from her cheeks with his thumbs. “I gave you an order…”

“Well, you should be more precise when you give orders,” she said, peeling his hands off her face and parting from him. “You said I could not come with you. So I came on my own.”

He clenched his fists, a knot tying in his throat. “But it was fuckin’ dangerous out there! What if it did to you the same it did to me… And why didn’t you tell me you could use Basiliadean magic?”

Orube waved her hands in the air in frustration and took off the cloak, then the sword from her belt. “And when was I supposed to tell you? Uh? You’re never there, Cedric! And I’m not a damsel in distress who needs to be protected. I’m a warrior, and I do what I’m supposed to do - I fight. I protect myself and those I love.”

“I just-” he hesitated. He knew she was right. He was missing out on everything she was doing, never being there with her, and having barely the energy to pay attention when he was present. And he knew it annoyed her when he forgot that she was not a damsel in need of protection. But the risk she’d taken to follow him… “I just can’t even think about what could have happened…”

She sighed and came closer to him again. This time, she took his face between her hands. “And do you ever think that maybe it’s the same for me? I have already lost you once, Cedric…”

He closed his eyes, leaning forward until their foreheads touched. “I know… You’re right.”

She pressed a light kiss on his lips. “And my magic works differently from yours, you should know that. It’s not as bad as it is for you, if it gets absorbed.”

Again, she was right. Basiliadeans had some fibers of their magic in them, and some natives were more talented than others in training to use it. For them, learning to use their magic was just like training their muscles - the more they trained, the more magic they could use. It did not sustain them, though - it did not make them breathe and it did not make their heart beat, like it did for Metamoorians. 

“You are… amazing,” he said finally, thinking again about the shield she’d opened, and the warmth of her magic flowing through his fingers. 

“Well, I do my best to keep surprising you,” she said, parting from him again and giving him a smug grin. “But I felt something strange when I passed you some of it. Like… something in my chest. It… burned.”

Cedric hummed. “I felt something like that, too. Usually, I feel the bond with the Queen there. Perhaps it’s the clash between my Light and your magic. I’m not sure if they were ever supposed to meet.”

Orube gave him a dazzling smile as she started to help him take off the armor. “We were probably not supposed to meet either, and look what happened.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 9

Hoel, 12th age, year 106 (46 years ago)

Hoel sucked.

It was fucking cold, it was creepy, and there were way too many people and banquets for what only had to be a private visit. Of all the friends Mother could have chosen, Phobos had never understood what she saw in Lady Alasse, the creepiest creature that Metamoor had to offer.

And they want that witch to be my mother-in-law…, he thought as he walked yet another eerie corridor - hopefully one that would bring him to his guest room. How rude was it that no pageboy or maiden showed him the way? Just because he was wearing armor, it didn’t mean he was not one of the royals, and that he had to do anything on his own. But apparently, giving him a guest room instead of making him stay with the other Champions in a cold and crowded common room was as far as his privileges as a Prince went. Funny how his privileges had already started to fade even before the realm was made aware that they would never see him on the throne. By the time they’d be back in Meridian and Mother would share the big news, they’d probably start to make him pay rent for having a room in the palace.

That stupid baby girl…

“You look a bit lost,” a female voice said, pulling him out of his thoughts. He lifted his gaze and found a familiar figure leaning against an obsidian column.

Phobos didn’t care to conceal his irritation at the sight of his likely-soon-to-be-fiancée. “Beléra, what a lovely surprise.”

Beléra detached from the column and went towards him. She was tall, like her mother, and her eyes were just as creepy as Alasse’s, but that was as far as the resemblance to the Lady of Hoel went. She was admittedly intriguing, though, with that air as if she always knew what everyone was up to and could anticipate everyone’s moves. Catching her unprepared seemed to be an impossible task, and Phobos respected anyone who knew well what was going on in their court.

“Let me escort you to your rooms, Vice Commander,” she said, and she looped her arm around his.

“I suppose we should start to get rid of titles, don’t you think?” he muttered. He was completely sure that Weira had already told Alasse that she was expecting a girl. And if Alasse knew, then Beléra knew for sure, as nothing ever escaped her ear.

The prospect of marrying that woman was just as pleasant as the idea of having a kagrath’s fangs around his neck.

The problem was not even her - she was a noble and was no stranger to arranged marriages in which each spouse was allowed to live their own life, so he was sure she wouldn’t even bother him that much. But marrying a woman meant accepting his role as a man in the Escanor family. He would be allowed to become Commander, perhaps, but he would still be a tool. An accessory. Only useful as long as he could sire a girl. Nobody would ever consider him for his talents, for how good he was in mastering his powers, or in acting as a Commander. All that mattered was what he had between his legs, and only if he could put it to good use and bless Metamoor with another Lady of Hoel.

“That’s what I’m here to discuss,” Beléra said as she stopped in front of a black door decorated in silver. He recognized it as the door to his guest rooms.

“And that would be?”

Beléra nodded at the door. “How about a drink first?”

“So you think they’re already discussing our engagement,” Phobos said, coming out from behind the paravent. He’d removed the armor and changed into robes, while Beléra told him her guesses on what Alasse and Weira had been discussing earlier that afternoon.

Beléra handed him a crystal chalice filled with one of their bubbly wines.

Imdahl bless Naexi and Cedric for that potion the other day, Phobos thought, taking the glass. His heart squeezed at the memory of his encounter with Cedric two nights before, and of his longing looks during the journey, and then today in the banquet hall.

“I don’t think they are. I know,” Beléra said. “They’ve been discussing it since we were children, and now they can finally plan the wedding.”

She looked at least as annoyed as he felt at the idea. Phobos found himself slightly disappointed at her look. He had all good reasons to be against marrying a woman - he preferred men, for a start, and for him, marrying into another matriarchal family only meant a life of being an ornament. But she… why was she even disappointed? She was going to marry a Prince, and as far as he knew, one that women found quite charming.

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic about the idea,” he commented as he took a seat at the small table, facing her.

She sipped her wine before speaking again. “Well. You know what needs to be done if we get married. Your mother is going to know if the girl is not yours.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line. It outraged him that she could imply something like this. “Are you saying you don’t think I’m able to give you a girl?”

She shrugged. “Let’s be honest, Phobos. We don’t like each other in that way. I’m willing to marry you, but I will not do it without a guarantee that we can do what we must. If this is not going to work, I need to know.”

A shiver ran along Phobos’s spine as he suspected where Beléra was heading. The memory of two nights prior came back to haunt him. His memories were fuzzy and vague, but he remembered Cedric’s scent, so close to him, when they were sitting on the floor. He remembered his thoughts while Cedric was removing his armor. And he remembered what he’d told him, how he begged him to stay, and how Cedric had refused.

He swallowed. “What is your proposal, then?”

Beléra put her glass down and stood up. She walked around the table until she was standing right in front of him, and she leaned forward towards him, her hands on each armrest.

“Let’s see if it can be done,” she whispered, almost on his lips.

The way she’d said that made his stomach churn. Not with annoyance, as he would have expected. As he looked at her lips, so close to his face, an impossible connection formed in his mind. Her lips had the same shape as Cedric’s. It was certainly a trick of his mind, but he could see his mouth pronouncing those words. His gaze never left those lips as Beléra’s hand trailed on his chest, then down to his stomach, and stopped between his legs. And then her lips - Cedric’s lips - moved again, as she whispered, “Just think about him - whoever that is.”

Phobos gulped down the entire content of his glass and pressed his lips against hers.

Meridian, 13th age, year 23 (present day)

Elyon took a deep breath as the connection with Cedric faded. 

She was in a meeting with the High Priest when he called, and it had taken a considerable effort to keep listening to the High Priest’s arguments why he needed more funding for the temples while the green light of the orb on her desk was on. The Champions could not contact her by directly intruding into her mind like she did with them, but they could activate their light in her orb to let her know that they had something to tell her. Each one of them had a different light color, and Elyon had been patiently waiting for two days for the green light to turn on. 

Granted, patiently was not the word Caleb would have used to describe the way she’d spent the last two days. Not having the Commander around in the palace had thrown her into a state of unrest. The other Champions were doing their best to coordinate everything such that Cedric’s absence would not weigh too much on the palace, but it was undeniable that certain things were being neglected. It was only now that he was not there and the six remaining Champions had to split all his tasks among themselves, that everyone realized how much he took over on his own.

But Elyon had been patient - she didn’t want to intrude on his stay in Hoel, knowing that he was either outside investigating the problem in Hoel or taking his deserved break with Orube.

The relief she’d felt when she saw the green light was quickly replaced by unrest again, after she’d listened to Cedric’s report.

It had been a close call - without Orube, Elyon would now be left without a Commander for good. What Orube had been able to do was impressive. That woman never ceased to impress her. The few times she could watch Orube teach the kids or train the Champions from the window of her private study, Elyon was always fascinated by the way the Basiliadean warrior moved. She’d promised herself many times she would ask Orube one day to teach her how to fight, but she never had found the time. Not that she even needed to learn how to fight in the Basiliadean way, but she liked the idea of looking as badass as Orube did. When Orube had learned how to handle the Light to the point of opening a loophole, it had made her jaw drop. And now, it turned out Orube had trained on her own to learn how to tame her Basiliadean magic, and she’d been able to save Cedric from certain death.

The issue in Hoel was a serious one, and what the thing had said… The Master is near. It could only mean one thing. 

It had something to do with Phobos. It could not be a coincidence that a beast able to absorb Light had awakened exactly in Hoel and mentioned that its Master was near. 

Because if the Master was Phobos, then he was indeed near. 

It all made sense… Phobos was behind all this in some way. Not necessarily now - Elyon could not believe that Phobos was able to orchestrate something like this from where he was now. He did not have access to magic. And he would never do this to her. 

Or maybe he would… 

The pang in her chest was impossible to describe. Betrayal? Sadness? If Phobos was plotting against her, she would lose the brother she’d reconnected with in the past years. The brother she had slowly and carefully allowed herself to love as the last living member of her family. 

A knock on the door of her parlor reminded her that she had yet another meeting to attend to - one with the head of the merchants. And with that, she was reminded again of how much Cedric took upon his shoulders. Elyon hated the head of the merchants and always delegated speaking one-to-one with him to Cedric, since Miriadel did not want to deal with him either. Cedric could not refuse the order to go talk to him in the first place, and anyway Elyon suspected he enjoyed representing her when he had to give bad news to that douche.

The Hoel issue would need to wait until the evening. Deep inside, she already knew what she was going to do. And she already knew that Caleb was not going to like it at all.                                                                

“No way you’re going there!” Caleb exclaimed, starting to pace in the living room of their quarters. 

Elyon crossed her arms at her chest, straightening her back, but remained seated on the couch - a couch that, like nearly everything in the royal quarters, was too big for just the two of them. “May I remind you that I am the Queen and I decide what I’m going to do with an issue that concerns my realm?”

She didn’t like to play the Queen card with Caleb, but she also did not like it when he tried to impose something on her. 

Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “I know, I know… of course, you decide. But did you understand what happened to Cedric? That thing went crazy when he was there, what do you think it will do when the Light of Meridian in person is in front of it?!”

“Well, first, Cedric was taken by surprise. Second, he is powerful, but he is not the Light of Meridian. There can be no creature in Metamoor that the Light itself cannot defeat. The Light creates life on this planet, but it can also take it back.”

Caleb seemed to consider her words, but then his brows knitted in a worried frown. He came closer to the couch. “And what about Phobos?” He cupped Elyon’s cheeks with his palms. “Oh Gods, if he’s planning something, I swear I will kill him with my own hands…”

“I’m sure it’s not him,” she said, and she wanted to mean it. But the doubt was now impossible to ignore. It had grown during the afternoon, and while she kept telling herself that Phobos had no way to act against her, she still could not chase away the thought. 

Caleb brushed her cheeks with his thumb. “I think it’s a mistake, and it was a mistake from the beginning, keeping Phobos where he is now… There must be another way to solve this. Call Cedric back.”

Elyon peeled Caleb’s hands off her face and stood up, pushing him away. “Are you questioning my choice of keeping my brother alive?”

When she turned to face him, she saw the muscle twitch in his jaw. The one that appeared every time he clenched his jaw because he wanted to say, yes, you should have let him die, but felt he could not say it. 

“He’s my brother,” she answered the thoughts that were painted on his face. 

“And he’s going to harm you. Again. And none of us can defend you,” he retorted, his tone cold. 

“I don’t need protection, Caleb.” She waved her hand in the air in frustration, turning towards the door of her private study. “The Champions are just a formality, you know that. And Phobos is completely powerless where he is now.”

”The Champions are not that much of a formality,” Caleb said, moving some steps to follow her. “I’m not blind - you are lost without the Commander.”

She whirled to face him again when she was just in front of the door of the study, outrage burning in her chest. “How dare you talk to me like this!” she snapped. “That thing wants the Light of Meridian, and I’ll show it the Light of Meridian. I don’t need the Champions, and I certainly do not need to be lectured by you on this.”

She stormed out of the living room before Caleb could rebut and went to her private study. 

Her private collection of portraits of the past Queens decorated the wall in her small study, and she immediately met the gaze of two portraits in particular. 

Her mother’s. And her brother’s. The only painting that had been spared when he’d ordered the destruction of all his portraits. Elyon had found it in a drawer of his quarters, together with a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray full of annotated translations into Metamoor in the page margins. 

“And don’t look at me like that, you two!” she snapped at the two paintings as she stomped towards her desk and let herself fall into the chair. 

She knew she had been too harsh with Caleb - he was only worried for her. It was to be expected that he would blame Phobos. Nobody but her, Naexi, and, perhaps, Cedric knew who Phobos had become during his time as a prisoner. To everyone else, such an event could only be connected to the evil Prince trying once again to dethrone his sister. 

Was there another way? 

Elyon took her head in her hands, leaning on the desk with her elbows. She didn’t have anyone else to send in her place - she had already sent her strongest piece of the chessboard. If he hadn’t managed to control that beast, then she had to intervene and try to cut any connection the beast had with the Light and which kept it alive. 

Elyon had never done it, cutting the Light source of any Metamoor being. But it was in her power to do so. A terrifying power that came with being the Light of Meridian. Luckily, Phobos had never had such a power, although of course he had found his ways to murder people - by slowly absorbing Light until they simply faded away. 

Phobos…

Again, the sense of betrayal burned in her chest. It could not be him… and how? He had no fucking way to reach the real world from the prison. 

But the outside world can reach him…

Elyon inhaled a sharp breath as a terrifying thought crossed her mind. 

Naexi… Cedric… the people from the brothel. 

Elyon had allowed people to visit Phobos - people he’d once been close to. 

The people from the brothel certainly had neither the interest nor the ability to help Phobos in such a grand plan. And Naexi was full of resources, but she was not powerful enough with magic to help Phobos in anything other than providing him with books and supplies, which were completely useless if he did not have access to his magic. 

Cedric, on the other hand… 

Oh Gods…

Her eyes widened as she considered this terrible possibility. Cedric was one of the most powerful mages in Metamoor at the moment. Perhaps the most powerful after her, since the High Priest was a good teacher, but was not that strong in practicing what he taught the apprentices. And none of the Champions were Cedric’s equals in experience and skill when using the Light. 

He had access to nearly everything he wanted, being the Commander. He could go to the scribes and order the search for any book he desired. He could go to Cassandra and have any concoction prepared without her questioning the reasons for it. He could even order the Champions to do some legwork for him. And Elyon had not checked his memories and thoughts in so long, he could have definitely done something shady at least in the last months. 

But why would he even care about helping Phobos? In the past few years, Cedric had opened his memories to Elyon, to allow her to see Queen Weira, and this had given her access to more than just seeing her mother through his eyes. On those occasions, she had seen Phobos, too, and had witnessed how the relationship between her brother and Cedric had changed over the years. The way they had used and destroyed each other after Weira’s death, and the final drift in Kandrakar, made it difficult for Elyon to believe that Cedric would ever really switch to Phobos’s side once again. 

Yet, Elyon knew something that Cedric would have never admitted, not even under torture. He had really loved Phobos, deeply and unconditionally. He had been hurt badly by him and probably saw it as his punishment for having fallen in love with him so blindly, but he had cared. 

‘I would throw myself into a fire for him, Naexi.’

These were words Elyon had heard Cedric pronounce - not in his memories, but in Naexi’s. She had checked her memories, too, once the curiosity of seeing Phobos under a different pair of lenses had made her restless. 

The image of Orube suddenly crossed her mind, allowing her heartbeat to slow down a little. 

He would never do this again. At least because of her, he would remain loyal to me. 

Cedric had loved Phobos, there was no doubt about it. But nothing could compare to the way he loved Orube, and to everything she meant to him. She was the reason he kept playing by the rules, and as long as they were together, he would never betray her, let alone in Phobos’s favor. Their marriage was going through a hard time, but it was not yet in such a downfall that Cedric would turn his back on her to help the Prince in something that would only mean certain imprisonment for him. 

A faint knock pulled her out of her anxious thoughts. 

“Ellie…” came Caleb’s low voice. Her heart squeezed, like it did every time they had an argument, and Caleb retraced his steps, coming to knock at her study and calling her Ellie. 

“Come in.”

Caleb’s silhouette appeared on the doorstep, backlit and with his shoulders drooped. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Of course, you decide what is best for you and Metamoor.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have snapped like that.”

He came forward, approaching the desk and coming under the light of the torches of the study. Elyon couldn’t help but smile a little, looking up at him. She just couldn’t get used to how handsome he was, even after all these years. 

“But if you go…” Caleb said tentatively, “If you go, please, take some soldiers with you, together with the Champions.”

Elyon’s eyebrows shot up. Taking a handful of soldiers was not a bad idea - they could help. But there was one major problem… “And who should be in charge? The Captain boy?”

Caleb lowered his gaze, casually trailing his index finger along the edge of her desk. “Well, if you’re looking for someone who can lead these soldiers and would protect you with his life…”

Oh, how she would have wanted to name him General again. He was a perfect General for the army; the soldiers loved him, and if he were to take the role again, it would take away some additional weight from Cedric’s shoulders, which would hopefully help maintain his marriage and, therefore, the alliance with Basiliade in place. And Caleb would feel useful again, and not reduced to the role of an accessory to the Queen. 

But naming him General meant going against the rules. Not that it was officially written anywhere, but the Consort was not supposed to have any public role or a job other than… well, being the Consort - looking handsome, smiling, being the perfect example of court manners, and, eventually, producing a new Queen. Caleb was amazing in the first three tasks, but for the latter… while traditionally the Consort had always been blamed for a delay in the arrival of a new Queen, deep inside Elyon knew that the new Queen would only arrive when she was ready and the Light would make it happen. 

Naming him General meant doing something that would make it clear to everyone that Elyon was not Weira. Her mother would have never named Zayden anything. 

Yet she could not bring the soldiers without a leader, the Captain had to make himself useful in staying in Meridian with the rest of the army, and Cedric would already be busy enough with his Champions and the task of protecting her. Having Caleb there would make things easier. 

Perhaps… perhaps she didn’t need to officially name him General to make him come to Hoel and act like one. 

“So…” Caleb started, making her realize she was hesitating for longer than she thought. 

“You’re right,” she said. “You’ll come with us. As my husband, though. What you will do while we’re in Hoel will stay in Hoel. Deal?”

The smile he gave her would have made her knees buckle if she’d been standing. That dimple… 

“Deal,” he said. “When are we leaving?”

Elyon pursed her lips, considering what she had left to do before leaving. “Hm, I have to announce my departure to the council, warn Alasse that I’m coming with a team of people, tell the Champions… I suppose we can wait until tomorrow.”

Caleb shot her a grin. “Then Cedric can have some more hours of honeymoon, I guess.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 10

”These things…” Orube exhaled through staggered breaths, moving up and down on him and dictating the pace of his thrusts inside her, “…you knew about… these and… you never told me?”

Cedric dug his fingers into the muscles of her thighs, accompanying her movements and letting her clash against his hips, taking him all in. “I uh-“ a moan escaped his mouth as she clenched her muscles around his cock. “I didn’t know you were… interested.”

He had never thought about hunting down trinkets such as the shivering loops in Meridian because they were not as easy to find as they were in Hoel. He certainly did not have the time to go to the black market and get one. They were not illegal, but the people who manufactured them sold them only there.

It was a shame that such things were not popular in the capital. They looked like simple beads and at the contact with his shaft they immediately turned into spirals that whirled around the base and vibrated in a blissful way that had already sent Orube over the edge twice since when he’d crawled out of bed and had found her sitting on the carpet in front of the fireplace, and he had thought she was too hot to use those gorgeously clawed hands for a crocheted piece. 

The only reason why he had not yet given up and let loose of any restraint so he could spill inside her was that he was aiming at making her come a third time. 

“Well…” she breathed, her clawed hands digging in the skin of his shoulders while she kept riding him, “now I’m interested.”

Gods, those claws… The pressure that built between his legs as she kept bouncing against him and squeezing him in was starting to become an ache. The shivering loop vibrating around his base certainly did not help. He was not sure he would make it until she came again-

A knock on the door made Orube freeze against his hips, his cock buried inside her. 

“Was that a knock?” he panted. 

“Commander?” came Nerel’s voice from the other side of the door. 

Cedric’s eyes widened, but he did not move from lying on the carpet, and Orube didn’t either. The only thing that moved was the damn shivering loop between them. 

“They’re already here?!” Cedric whispered.

”I just came to report that we all safely arrived with the Queen…” Nerel went on. 

“Cedric…” Orube murmured, her breathing rhythm quickening. “The thing… I think I’m about to-“

Beyond the door, Nerel went on with her report, but Cedric could not pay attention to what she was saying - not when Orube was starting to clench around him, and she rolled her hips against his like that. He rose to sit, clutching her against his body and clashing his mouth against her skin between her breasts. “Then come…” he breathed, “Come for me.”

Orube rolled against his hips, plunging a hand in his hair to draw him closer while he moved his head to the side to tease her nipple. She quivered and jerked around him, moaning in his ear. That was all he needed to finally let loose of his control. 

“…Commander?” came Nerel’s voice again after a moment of silence. “Are you still there?”

”I’m… coming in a second,” Cedric said, and he was not sure what he was talking about while his orgasm crashed against him like a wave and carried him away for some moments. 

When he came back to his senses, he was panting against Orube’s chest. She took his face between her hands, making him look up at her before claiming his mouth in a deep kiss. He was still inside her, the shivering loop still doing its job. If they did not part soon, Nerel would have to wait for a long while. 

“I guess you can’t hide here with me forever, right?” Orube said on his lips when they parted. 

“I think the Queen might let it go, but I confess I’m a little scared of Nerel,” he said with a grin. 

Orube let out a chuckle and then freed him. She peeled the loop off him, and the trinket went back to its bead form. With a groan, he stood up and went looking for clothes. In the corner of his eye, he saw she was heading to the pool outside, completely naked, making him have second thoughts on whether he really had to go. 

He opened the door after he had managed to find his underarmor shirt and pants and had put them on. Nerel flinched when he opened the door, as if she’d been waiting for so long she’d almost forgotten he was supposed to come out of the room. 

Cedric glanced at Orube above his shoulder. She was inside the pool, her head resting on her arms crossed on the edge, looking at him with a satisfied grin on her face.

“Come inside and repeat everything you said,” Cedric told Nerel. Then he turned to start picking up the pieces of the armor. 

The good news was that a handful of soldiers had joined, and that Caleb was going to coordinate them so that Cedric didn’t have to act as a General. The bad news was that the Captain was taking care of the rest of the army in Meridian, and they’d be lucky if, upon their return, there would still be an army. Hopefully, Elyon had ordered the Annihilators to take action in case things got too much out of hand. 

Much worse news was that Elyon was determined to go outside and face the Blight herself. And as they all stood in Alasse’s council room - Alasse, Beléra, Orube, the Champions, the Queen, and Caleb - it seemed that Cedric was the only one who thought that going to face that thing was a huge mistake.

And the worst news was that of all the maidens Elyon could have brought with her, she had chosen Nagadir and Naexi, who were scowling at him from behind Elyon’s back. 

“My Queen, if I may,” Cedric tried again, but Elyon interrupted him. 

“No, you may not, Commander,” she said. “I understood your point. The Blight is dangerous and wants Light, and I am the Light. If you are too scared, I give you permission to stay behind, but I’ll go even if I’m alone.”

Cedric flinched, suddenly feeling outraged by Elyon’s snap. The bond inside his chest twitched, as if it felt insulted, too, at the mere idea of letting the Queen go alone to face a monster that fed on the Light of Meridian itself. Had it been only for Cedric, he might have accepted the Queen’s suggestion, taken Orube, and teleported to Earth or Basiliade instantly, away from that thing that reeked so much like Phobos. But the bond did not allow him to move an inch away from the Queen. 

“The Champions will, of course, defend you with their own life, my Queen,” he said, and he did not care that it came out as a snarl. He turned to survey the six Champions in silver armor around him. “Right?”

They all straightened their backs. “Always,” they said in unison. 

Good kids, Cedric thought, and he complimented himself for the way they had instantly reacted. 

“And that includes myself,” he added, and this time it was definitely the bond talking.

They reached the mountains on horses, since Elyon did not know where the creature was hiding exactly and could not safely teleport everyone to the exact place before having seen it. She was admittedly scared, but for at least the first half of the trip, she couldn’t help but rejoice at the feeling of finally having a good excuse to wear pants, something that her status as the Queen very rarely allowed her. She did wear her favorite terrestrial jogging pants from time to time, when she was alone with Caleb in their private quarters in the evening, but every time she left her private rooms, she had to wear a gown. And not a simple one, like those that her maidens wore - of course, the Queen’s gowns were complicated puzzles that only Kealar and the maidens tasked with taking care of her wardrobe seemed to be able to solve. 

Luckily, Nagadir was one of those maidens, so Elyon would not need to get acquainted with one of Alasse’s helpers invading her personal space. Of course, there was a reason why she had picked Nagadir and Naexi, and it had little to do with how good they were at taking care of her wardrobe and her hair at all times. She had not formulated a clear plan yet, but something in the back of her mind kept telling her that she would need Naexi for a specific task here. A terrible one - one she didn’t even want to think about, but that she knew was almost inevitable. She only needed some answers first, a certainty about what this creature was and who was behind it. 

“How does your magic work?” she asked Orube after they’d dismounted the horses and had started to walk the narrow path towards the inner side of the mountains. She had managed to grab Orube and pull her close to her just in time, before the Champions closed a compact circle around them. Sometimes, having a group of personal guards bound to her so tightly could be a little suffocating.

Orube shrugged in her cloak. It was strange to see her wear Metamoor garments, but the cloak she was wearing evidently came from Aymon’s wife’s atelier and was manufactured with a dark red fabric from Idier, so it still fit with her usual tones. Elyon envied her for the freedom she had in choosing the colors of her clothes. As a Queen, Elyon had access to anything she wanted and to the most expensive fabrics and jewels of the entire planet, but people would have deemed it inappropriate if she wore anything other than blue and purple hues. Certainly not something Weira would have ever done. 

“I’m not an expert,” she said, “but it was just like training for anything else. The more I tried to use it, the easier it became to find it inside me. It grew, and it became just like the weapons I bring with me. When I need it, I take it out and I use it as if it were my sword.”

Elyon pursed her lips, her gaze distractedly taking in the landscape surrounding them. Not that there was much to see other than the white snow covering everything. “And what is the price you pay?” 

Again, Orube shrugged. “The same I pay when I use my muscles and my weapons. Physical energy. It’s funny that physical energy is the same price that your Light asks me in exchange for its help. Perhaps it knows that this is the way my magic works.”

Elyon just hummed in acknowledgment. Her eyes landed on the back of the Commander in front of her, his blonde hair striking against the dark blue cloak he was wearing on his armor. Part of her wanted to thank Orube for ignoring his order to stay behind and saving him from certain death. As Elyon had always said, nobody but her had the right to decide whether Cedric had to live or die. And until now, she had concluded that he was too useful and had to live. 

Another part of her was starting to be scared of the shapeshifter, though. What if he was indeed working for Phobos behind her back? She had thought about it over and over since the doubt had first appeared in her mind, and she’d always concluded that the facts spoke against it. But there was still that small part of her that remembered what Cedric had been capable of, and what he had done to her when she was a girl. If Phobos had given him something to win, something to pursue that was better than what he had now… 

What could Phobos possibly offer Cedric that was better than what he already had? He had a position of prestige and power, the population tolerated him enough not to throw stones at him, he was again one of the richest people in Metamoor, and he had a wonderful wife. But if that wonderful wife was considering leaving him… 

Elyon glanced at Orube in the corner of her eye. She did not look as unhappy as in the last weeks before Elyon had sent the two of them to Hoel. Upon her arrival, Elyon had spoken with Alasse and Beléra in private, and they had confirmed that the two had spent quite some time in their rooms, which was a good sign. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by the Champions halting their march, forcing her to stop walking to avoid stumbling against Cedric’s back. 

Cedric moved to the side, opening the view to what looked like a forest. Elyon had been so immersed in the conversation with Orube and then in her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed that in this area, there was no snow on the ground anymore. The trees were remarkably alive and green, but the nest of thorny vines that closed the passage between them like a labyrinth did not promise anything good. 

“It’s… here, my Queen,” Cedric said, looking at the forest. 

“I don’t see anyone,” Elyon said. She also did not perceive anything. 

“I suppose it hides inside the forest, but I wouldn’t-”

“Then we go inside the forest,” Elyon cut him off, and took a step forward. Cedric immediately put himself in the way. The other Champions tightened the circle around her. 

“Your Highness… I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said, his tone low. 

Elyon put her hands on her hips. “Are you giving me an order, Commander?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he seemed to exhale an exasperated breath. “No, I just-”

“I agree with the Commander.”

Elyon whirled in a snap, turning to face Caleb. He was behind the circle formed by the Champions, followed by the ten soldiers who had followed them from Meridian. Seeing him wearing armor again was odd, but at the same time familiar, as if it belonged to him to wear such a thing. 

He took a step forward, coming to stand between Jezil and Vala. “If this thing attacked Cedric from inside the forest, it can certainly do the same with us. You can connect to it from here and cut the link to the Light without having to search for it in that maze of thorns.”

Jaw set, her gaze hardened on Caleb. She didn’t like to be contradicted in public. Granted, this was not happening in public - it was only a handful of soldiers, the Champions, and Orube, but still, it was not in the privacy of their private apartment. But most of all, she didn’t like that her instinct was telling her to listen to them. Both Cedric and Caleb had more experience than she in dealing with threats and monsters - if they thought it was safer to stay outside and only go inside if it was necessary, they were probably right. 

She was just about to give up when a sinister cracking came from the forest behind them. They all turned, and Cedric immediately ordered, “Shields!” to the Champions. Before Elyon could even realize what was happening in the forest, a blue glassy wall surrounded her, Orube, and the seven Champions like a dome, coming from each of their arms. 

The vines were moving, slithering on the ground and each other like the coils of a nest of snakes. Something tugged inside her chest. She didn’t recognize what it was at first, until it nudged again. 

It was her connection to the Light. Something or someone was pulling from its other side, the one that connected her to the center of the planet. 

Dread washed over her. What if this thing could breach her defenses and get to the source of the planet’s magic through her? 

She considered grasping her thread of connection with the Light and pulling away from the thing, but perhaps this would only make it try harder. The blue shield of her Champions was still intact - a sign that the Blight was not trying to absorb their magic to get to her yet, so she closed her eyes and searched. With the eyes of her mind, she saw the lights of everyone surrounding her. The flames of each of her Champions were burning bright all around her, and she could see the thin luminous thread that connected them all to her. Metamoor natives’ lights were always white in their cores, but they could be distinguished from each other by the different shades of the sparkles that buzzed around their edges. Their sizes were also different from each other, depending on how generous their wells of Light were. Cedric’s flame was surrounded by emerald green sparkles and towered over all the others. 

A sudden source of warmth on her left caught her attention. There was an odd orange light burning next to her, with no white core, and she recognized it as Orube’s. It was not a burning flame, like the Light of Metamoor natives. It was an intricate pattern of luminous threads, enveloping the shape of her muscles along her entire body like an armor of copper swirls. Strange, she thought, intrigued. She didn’t know she could detect magic coming from people from other worlds. 

Outside the circle formed by the Champions, other white flames were lit, albeit smaller - the soldiers that had formed an outer rim around them. And in front of them, a bigger Light surrounded by a warmer green than Cedric’s. Elyon’s own Light hummed when her inner eye landed on Caleb’s Light, as if responding to a call. Many people weren’t aware of it, but this was a pleasant side effect of sealing a bond with another person.

She looked beyond Caleb’s Light and aimed at the forest. The trees had their Light as well, but it was static and undaunted, like the Light of every plant. It did not have flames that waved and twitched in the air like the Light of a person or an animal. 

Her inner sight ventured into the forest, and for a while, she found nothing but the frozen flames of the trees. Where was it hiding?!

Queen… Elyon…

A whisper made her gasp. Her mind’s eyes looked around frantically, searching for the source. Another whisper overlapped with the first one, and then another one, until it was a choir of a dozen voices blowing in her ears.

The Light of Meridian… Queen Elyon… Daughter of Weira…

“Who are you?” she said - or she thought, it didn’t matter. She kept looking and looking, but it was only the trees looking at her from their immovable Lights. 

Yes… He brought you to us…

“Who?!”

The whispers laughed, and for a moment, they were not whispers anymore. They became voices, sneering and laughing at her question. The name that they whispered then made her blood freeze in her veins. 

Lord Cedric… He wants to be one of us, but the Master has other plans. 

“He is loyal to me!” she protested. 

Nothing ever changes.

One of the whispers felt closer to her ear. She looked in that direction. 

Finally, there it was - a brighter Light, fused with the static one of a tree and surrounded by a blue sparkle. 

Her stomach churned as she recognized the shade of blue. She had seen it once already - that day of five years ago, when she’d connected to Phobos and had confined him in his prison. 

She tried to focus her inner sight on the details of the body that overlapped with the flame in the real world. It was difficult to see both worlds at the same time, but if she focused on it for long enough, she could see what the creature looked like. 

A face… long hair… the body seemed to be fused with the tree. By the looks of it, it could be a half-formed Murmurer. And thorns, so many thorns and vines surrounding it. The creature’s eyes snapped open, making her flinch. 

They were gray, like hers. And like her brother’s. 

Lord Cedric is only loyal to the Master, the creature growled. 

Elyon’s first instinct was to retreat and come back fully to the real world, far away from that creature that seemed to look into her soul. But she could see its Light - perhaps this was the best shot she had to look for its vital connection to Metamoor and cut it. 

The Prince is near… soon he will triumph!

A terrible image crossed her mind, distracting her from her search for the life source of the Blight. 

Her brother, standing behind her, holding the Crown of Light just above her head, ready to put it on her forehead and to absorb her magic for himself. The Elyon she was looking at was not really herself, but she did recall seeing the scene from afar and just wanting to cry in front of the evidence of Phobos’s true colors. 

Focus, Elyon, she thought, and she tried to concentrate on the Blight’s flame again. But another image from the past made her knees buckle. 

My name is Cedric, girl. And I know everything about you. This was Cedric’s voice. His aquamarine eyes, surrounded by a pink mask, were staring at her. Charming, handsome, intriguing. Those had been her thoughts back then, when she was only a teenager and she thought she’d caught Cedric’s attention because she was special. And he’d made her believe that she was unique and that she could brag about hanging out with a handsome young man to catch the attention of the Guardians, who were growing closer to each other, leaving her out. He’d made her believe that she could use him to make Matt turn to her direction. 

Again, she chased away those memories and turned her attention to the Blight. 

There, the root!, she thought as she distinguished a sort of rope amidst the creature’s Light, shining more brightly and connected to the ground. She was extending her claws towards it when the thorny vines that surrounded the creature lashed out. 

And they gripped her claws, blocking them. 

She gasped, her air leaving her lungs all at once as the creature’s vines pulled and burned around her claws. 

“Elyon!” she heard someone shouting from the real world around her. A male voice - perhaps it was Caleb. 

“Orube, cut it off!” came another shout. 

Elyon pulled away with all her strength, but the vines advanced along the arms of her mind that she’d extended towards it. With every inch they gained, the burning sensation intensified. Something trembled under her feet, and then she felt the usual prickle of the Light coming from inside the planet and crossing her body, as she always did when she connected to it. 

No… You can’t take it! she protested, and she pulled again to free herself. 

“Our shields are broken!” one of the Champions cried. 

“Orube!” This was Cedric’s voice. 

“I’m trying!” came his wife’s answer. 

A burst of Light crossed Elyon’s body and shot through her arms, her claws, and she watched with horror as it clashed against the Blight’s flame. The clash generated a blinding explosion, and when the blinding light faded, the flame was doubled in size. 

Elyon did not have the time to cry in horror, as another explosion blinded her - but this time, it was an orange light. Warm, almost hot, making her skin flush. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking at the real world. Precisely, she was looking at her own hands, digging her fingernails into the ground, surrounded by the white halo of the Light. There was no time to sigh in relief at the evidence that the Light was still there with her. She immediately visualized the ample entry halls of the obsidian palace and used the Light that surrounded her hands to quickly envelop everyone around her. 

Before anyone could react, they were in the palace. She was still kneeling on the ground, this time her hands touching the cold marble of Alasse’s entry halls. 

Exhaustion washed over her, and the voices around her were muffled. She heard the clash of metal of the Champions’ armors while they surrounded her. She heard Caleb’s voice, calling her name. But those two images were still haunting her mind. Her brother… Cedric… she could not afford being tricked by Cedric again. She could not believe he would - she could see the tip of his boots while he stood next to the other Champions around her, and she could hear him commanding them to surround the Queen. He was bound to protect her. He could never… but she needed to be sure. 

I know everything about you.

She had lowered her guard too much, and it was time to take back control of the shapeshifter. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

“The Queen,” Cedric ordered when he could feel the floor under his boots again. “Surround the Queen!”

The Champions moved like one, and in an instant, the wall of silver was again closed around the Queen. The soldiers and Caleb took positions around them, and Cedric felt Caleb’s worried look on his back. 

Cedric kneeled and reached out with a hand to the Queen. Elyon was kneeling on the floor, her breathing labored. 

“My Queen…” he touched her shoulder. “Elyon, are you alright?”

As soon as Cedric touched her shoulder, Elyon shoved him off. Her gaze snapped at him. “Hands off, Cedric!” she snapped, making him flinch. 

She stood up, her hard gaze never leaving him. He stood up as well. Something was wrong…

”Leave us,” she told the room.

The Champions hesitated. 

“I said LEAVE US,” she thundered. The soldiers walked away first. Caleb and Orube lingered a few moments, but they probably knew better than to stay when Elyon ordered everyone to leave like this. Then the Champions also turned to leave, casting puzzled looks at Cedric. 

“Not you, Vice Commander,” Elyon said, without looking away from Cedric. Nerel froze in place. “You stay close to me and take him down if he tries to do anything.”

Cedric’s heart was thundering in his ears as confusion took over him. Had he done something wrong? Was she… going to demote him? And why did she need Nerel to stay and take him down if he did anything? He had warned her of the danger of facing the Blight…

He searched Elyon’s eyes to understand what her next move would be. Her eyes were wide, her jaw set, her fists clenched at her sides. It was not only anger and fear - there was something else that Cedric couldn’t quite place. 

When the doors locked, it struck him. 

Betrayal. That was the look of betrayal. 

Only Cedric had not betrayed the Queen - at least, not that he knew. She believed he was siding with Phobos and causing the Blight… it had to be that. 

Elyon raised a hand, palm facing him, and he instinctively took a step back. 

“Don’t you dare!” she snarled, and from her fingertips five strands of white light lashed out, curling around his throat and then creeping up on his skin, until they reached his mouth and his nose. And then, his sight abandoned him and he found himself in his own memories. 

“Why are you doing this?” he whimpered. He couldn’t see Elyon, but he knew she was there, inside his head, while he relived his arrival in Hoel, the tour that Beléra gave them the first day, the breakfast and the discussion with the Rhaeleth family, and then the first exploration outside when he nearly died because of the Blight. 

“I need to be sure,” came Elyon’s answer. 

“Don’t you see that the thing tried to kill me?!” 

“I know how far you would go for one of your schemes,” she hissed.

And then she went backwards in his memories, checking everything he’d done since the last time she’d been there. 

Cedric knew that Elyon still had the power and the right to do this, but she hadn’t done it in a long time and he was convinced she would never do it again. Now, it felt… humiliating, having to bare his mind to her again. 

The feeling of humiliation only sharpened and became an ache in his chest when he understood that she was heading to more remote memories of his past - memories that had remained locked behind a closed door even when she had wanted to see Weira. 

“Please… don’t go there…” he pleaded, as the door to the one and only memory he didn’t want to live again was creaking open.

“I need to know everything before I can trust you, Cedric,” Elyon said, her tone grave. “I want to see it just as much as you do, but I cannot fall inside a trap.”

And then he was in Phobos’s quarters, the night the Queen died. This was the only memory that Elyon had always avoided to look at. Cedric didn’t know what Elyon was hoping to find in there - perhaps the last piece of the puzzle to understand what happened the night everything changed between Phobos and him. She knew about when they were friends, before that night. She knew about what happened later, about how they came to hate each other while still spending nights together, how Phobos had become Cedric’s addiction and nightmare at the same time. But she didn’t know when and how the crack had started to form.

“I swear I have nothing to do with the Blight,” Cedric whimpered again, while the dialogue with Phobos in his memory escalated. 

He was looking at Phobos through his own eyes - it was him, standing up and yelling at the Prince, AND YOU STOOD THERE AND DID NOTHING! But he could not control his actions or his words, other than those that he thought in his head and told Elyon. He could not take a step back and run away now, preventing everything that happened next. 

“Don’t talk to me about being faithful, Cedric,” Phobos said in his memory. “I had only you my entire life - I still have only you, yet I always have to share you with Vathek, your first choice. And now, apparently, also with those idiots you call companions. But they cannot give you any power now, only I can. You think you’re so much better than me, but you are nothing without me.”

You are nothing without me. 

Those words had hurt the first time, and they were hurting even now, after all these years. Because, again, Cedric knew that it was the truth. Back then, Cedric was nothing without Phobos, and he would have done anything for him, just to receive his attention and feel like he was worth something. 

His mind of today told him to turn and run away, but his body of back then stood there, facing Phobos and fighting the urge to do what the Prince was about to do himself. He remembered the need to either punch him in his face or crash his mouth against his, and in the end Phobos made the choice for him. 

Elyon did him the favor of skipping through the events of the next few hours, at least, when she understood that they were leading to the bedroom and not to useful information. When she skipped such events, it was as if the memories became blurred and Cedric couldn’t see them either, only knowing that there was some sort of intimacy involved. 

He was almost sighing with relief and expecting Elyon to retract her cold claws from his mind soon, when she suddenly froze on another memory of that night. 

“No… not that one…” he pleaded again. He would have almost preferred being seen while he fucked her brother, than showing her this memory. 

Cedric’s head was spinning when he woke up in the dark. His eyelids felt as if they were glued together and his stomach was protesting against the poor choice of its owner to fill it with wine instead of food. He wasn’t even sure he’d opened his eyes, as he saw only dark. When he distinguished some edges under the light of the full moon that came from the window, he told himself he must have opened his eyes somehow. Yet he was not sure he was really awake. His thoughts evaded him. One moment he was remembering where he was and how he’d ended up there, in Phobos’s chambers, and the next he was drifting off to sleep again and was suspended somewhere between that bed and the ceiling, spinning around. 

It was in one of those awake moments that he distinguished Phobos’s silhouette next to him on the bed, giving him his back. He remembered seeing Phobos’s back for the first time a few hours - or was it minutes? - earlier. They’d known each other for almost twenty years, and Cedric had no idea that Phobos’s back was covered in extensive red markings, drawing a pattern he didn’t know the meaning of. Cedric slid on the bed towards the other. After they were done, earlier, there had been no other interaction. Neither physical, nor verbal. They’d just lay there, next to each other in the dark, each drowning in his own fuzzy thoughts until sleep took over. 

Cedric wasn’t sure if Phobos would ever allow him to touch him again, let alone to show affection. But it was perhaps the drowsiness, the uncertainty whether this was real or a dream, or the alcohol that still flowed in his veins, that made him reach out to the Prince, plaster his body against his and draw the blanket on his shoulder. 

As Cedric draped an arm around Phobos’s waist, the Prince shifted. Cedric braced himself to be shoved off, perhaps even insulted by that man that had so little left in common with the Phobos he’d always known. Instead, Phobos clutched his hand and pulled him closer, bringing the hand to his chest. Cedric sank his nose through Phobos’s hair, taking in what remained of his lavender scent. 

He was almost drifting off to sleep again, when Phobos moved and turned to face him. Cedric’s heart squeezed as he saw the edges of the Prince’s face under the moonlight. He could recognize his expression now. Not the rage of the night before, not the delirious gaze, not the look of someone who was drowning in a grief-induced power trip. 

For a brief moment, he saw Phobos again. His Phobos. The boy he grew up with. The man he would have loved with his entire heart, if only the law had allowed it. Maybe they were both asleep and he was just dreaming. But Cedric knew that, real or not, this was the last time he would see that man he used to know so well. He knew that Phobos was going to kill that man, and he would do that before dawn broke. Phobos had already started to kill him, slowly, day after day since he had learned that the baby was a girl. And now, with the Queen’s death, Phobos had that man pinned at the wall, begging for one last second of mercy, before crushing him forever. 

Cedric’s throat was clenched in a knot and his eyes burned with tears, knowing that it was time for him to say goodbye to that man he had hoped so much to love one day. And yet he was grateful that he was still there, at least one last time, looking back at him. He silently prayed that Phobos would not annihilate that man completely, and that somewhere, deep inside his soul, he would store a piece of who he was before. 

Before letting him go, Cedric took Phobos’s face between his hands and closed the distance between them, his mouth melting against Phobos’s in a kiss. That kiss had nothing to share with the way they’d ravenously eaten each other’s face just a few hours ago. This was a soft kiss, one they both would have wanted to share many times before, when everything was alright and Phobos was still just Phobos. 

Phobos did not recoil. He kissed Cedric back in the same way, only dipping his tongue through his lips tentatively, softly. A tear escaped Cedric’s eyes, tasting that kiss as a goodbye. 

From tomorrow, I’ll kneel to no one. I’ll bow to no one. 

Phobos’s words from earlier echoed in Cedric’s mind as they shared that first and last sweet kiss, reminding him that from tomorrow, his Phobos would be gone forever. As he brushed his thumb on Phobos’s cheek, he realized it was wet. Phobos was crying too. Cedric wiped those tears away, while still kissing him softly, caressing his tongue, lightly teasing his lower lip. Was Phobos crying for the Queen, his mother? Or was he also mourning the other Phobos, the one he was murdering to make space for that scary and unhinged version of himself he wanted to put on the throne? 

Cedric didn’t know, and he didn’t want to ask. With an effort of will he parted from Phobos’s lips. Before the Prince’s expression could mutate again into rage, into that new unapproachable version of himself, Cedric put a hand on the other’s nape, the other arm enveloping his shoulders, and pulled him against his chest. He held him tight as Phobos’s back was shook by a shudder. The old Prince, Cedric’s friend, was dying with those tears that wet his chest. When Phobos clung to him, his arm circling Cedric’s rib cage and his hand desperately grasping him between his shoulder blades, it broke Cedric’s heart in two.

Phobos wept quietly, occasionally shaken by a sob, as did Cedric. He held the Prince tight to his chest until his breath calmed down and the sobs stopped. Purple lights had started to filter through the window when Cedric silently said goodbye to his old friend and closed his eyes. His last thought before drifting off to sleep again was for the Queen. 

Wherever you are, he thought, perhaps you can help him keep a piece of my friend alive.

With that thought, the Queen’s claws finally retreated and Cedric’s sight came back. He was not surprised to feel tears across his cheeks. What was more surprising was seeing that Elyon was crying, too. Nerel was standing close to her, looking at both of them with wide eyes. 

“Was this… what you needed to see?” Cedric asked in a whisper. 

Elyon wiped away her tears with her palm. “I’m… I’m sorry. I was scared, and… well, I took it too far.”

“I understand,” Cedric said, lowering his gaze. The pain of the memory of that night was still sharp in his chest. He had not forgotten that memory, of course, but when he recalled it, it was just a distant memory of something that saddened him, but was bearable. But living it again, through his own eyes, and feeling those emotions as if it was the first time… that was a different matter. 

“I… don’t know what to do,” Elyon murmured. 

Cedric inhaled a deep breath, trying to recompose himself, and wiped away the tears from his face. He straightened his back again. “I think that this is the kind of threat that requires a call for help, my Queen.” 

Calling her my Queen after the way she’d just violated his mind made bile rise up his throat. 

“What would you recommend?” she asked. Despite the humiliation he’d just received, a hint of satisfaction sparkled inside him. He knew what had brought Elyon to attack him like this - she must have thought that he was in league with Phobos in some way, or perhaps the Blight had convinced her of that. He had gone so close to losing the Queen’s trust - and he had won it again, even if the price to pay was living one of his saddest memories once again. 

“It pains me to suggest this, but I fear you will need to request a meeting with Kandrakar.”

Cedric left Nerel to guard the Queen and left the halls, heading to his guest rooms. Before the other Champions could surround him and assault him with questions, he quickly ordered them to join the Vice, telling them he just needed a moment to sort something out, and went on his way. 

It was the first time he ever abandoned the guarding of the Queen and left it to the others without it being dictated by their shifts. But right now, he couldn’t bring himself to stay there, in the same room with her. The bond in his chest protested heavily, prickling and pushing him to turn around and go back to see if the Queen was really alright. She did not seem alright when she’d lit up with the Light and the thorns were absorbing it. Luckily Orube managed to lash out a burst of her magic and could interrupt the connection, or the Gods knew in what doom they would have fallen.

Orube…

She was nowhere to be seen as he crossed the corridors, and he desperately needed to see her and let his stone mask crumble in front of her, the only one he would let see him in that state.

He felt as if he’d been torn into pieces. He had failed to protect the Queen - not that it was too surprising, knowing that they could not use magic against that thing, but it was still a heavy blow on his pride as Commander. And then, the Queen had doubted him and had thought, even though for just a brief moment, that he’d gone back to plotting against her. After all these years of showing her his loyalty, she had dared to doubt him. He had done nothing but play by the rules, even though so many times he’d thought he deserved more than being sent like a package across universes when he was working as her ambassador. He had done literally everything the Queen had demanded of him. Thinking back on it, he had been even more compliant with Queen Elyon than he had ever been with Phobos. With Phobos, he had at least ignored a couple of orders - when he’d given a shitty armor of the military to manufacture the Crown of Light instead of using his own, and when he’d gone against him in Kandrakar first, and in Metamoor later when Phobos had come back. 

How could Elyon still doubt where his loyalty was? Sure, it was not really his moral fiber to keep him attached to the current monarch, but rather his stupid bond and the prospect of rotting in prison, far away from his wife, but it was still crystal clear that he would never do anything to lose what he had now. 

By the time he reached the door of the guest rooms, he was bubbling with rage. He’d worked his ass off in the past five years to nurse the Queen and her husband and do not only his job as Commander, but also as a General, and was always ready to answer any of their whims - and this was how the Queen showed him her appreciation.

His rage immediately faded away and left place for exhaustion when he opened the door and Orube whirled around to face him. She was waiting for him there, standing in the entry hall of the rooms. His anguish must have been painted on his face, because she crossed the space between them and immediately took his face between her palms. 

She searched his eyes, as if to try to understand what happened by just looking at him. And she seemed to succeed, because the worry in her eyes was replaced by a frown and then by pure rage. “What did she do to you?” she growled. 

Cedric lowered his gaze. Orube’s protectiveness sometimes filled him with warmth, but he felt as if this time there was nothing that could warm him up ever again, after the cold claws of the Queen’s mind had dug so deep in his memories and emotions. “She just… checked again.”

Orube bared her teeth, letting out another low growl from deep inside her chest. “How far?”

‘You are nothing without me.’ 

The image of that last look he’d exchanged with Phobos - the old Phobos, his friend - came back to haunt him. A sob escaped him. “Too far. But she understood it was not worth it.”

He let Orube envelop him in her arms and her warmth surrounded him. He knew he had to go back to the Queen and to his Champions and discuss what to do next, so he could not do what he desired now the most - take off the armor, shift into his real skin and bask under his sun’s light. But he stood there for a while still, holding her back and taking what he could, reminding himself that this warmth was the reason why he should not give up and do what the Queen had just accused him of. It hurt his pride, but having a place to go back to, where Orube was waiting for him and could hold him like this, was worth all of it. Even the deepest  humiliation meant nothing, if he could still go home.

Chapter Text

Chapter 12

Elyon’s mood was grim while she walked the grovel path of the palace of Meridian in the prison she’d built for her brother. The sky above was blue and there were only occasional and small white clouds scattered in some corners, a sign that Phobos was in a rather good mood. Usually it was the other way round and when Elyon visited, the sun was shining in the real Meridian while on this side it was dark and gray. 

Maybe the Blight was telling the truth and it was all another plan organized by her brother to finally defeat her, and this blue sky was Phobos’s way to laugh at her because everything was going as he wanted. 

It cannot be…

Elyon already had her doubts that Phobos would ever try to hurt her again, and after what she’d seen in Cedric’s mind, she was nearly sure. Phobos had not always been the unhinged bundle of obsessions he was when she’d first met him. The look in his eyes in Cedric’s last memory of his old friend was not unknown to her. It was the same of the person he’d become while staying in this prison and getting to know her better.

And yet the only explanation behind this monster that was threatening Metamoor was that Phobos was the cause. 

She opened the gate of her brother’s garden with a heavy weight lingering in her chest. She didn’t even know how to address the issue… 

Phobos was tending his roses, as usual, when she entered the garden. He turned to look at her and smiled first, as he nearly always did when she visited now, but the smile was immediately replaced by a frown. 

“You suspect me,” he addressed her immediately. It had to be painted on her face. “And you tortured Cedric because of this.”

The clouds in the sky moved, expanding and eating up the blue, and they gradually darkened, until there was no sign of a clear sky anymore - only the same gray as in Phobos’s eyes. 

Elyon let out a snort. “It seems I’m spending a bit too much time in here.”

Phobos did not seem too amused by her joke. “How can you even suspect me, after all this time, and after I-” He waved his hands in the air in frustration, starting to pace in the garden. “I wouldn’t even know where to start, if I wanted to attack you in the real world! And it’s bloody humiliating to even admit that.”

Elyon took a few steps into the garden, coming closer to him. “I know you’re not responsible for this… at least, not now. But if you know anything about this… you have to tell me.”

Phobos kept pacing back and forth like a beast in his cage. Elyon waited patiently. He had made significant progress in the past few years, but he still had occasional moments of frustration, when he was reminded of his situation and of the fact that he would never see the real world again. 

He spoke again only after a while and after he’d slowed down his pacing. “As a matter of fact, I do know something. I had time to think, you know - that’s what I’m here for after all, isn’t it?”

Compassion flushed through Elyon for a brief moment. And yet this time it was not the usual pity that bloomed in her chest every time she thought about how her brother must have felt in his prison, alone for the rest of his days. This time, there was some excitement prickling somewhere in the back of her mind - if Phobos confirmed what she already suspected, perhaps things could change…

“It’s a Murmurer,” Phobos interrupted her thoughts. “One of the first ones. But they were… malfunctioning, and yet I did not have the guts to kill them.” He turned to the roses, taking one between his fingers. “The Murmurers were my creatures… my masterpieces…”

It was the first time she ever heard Phobos talk about his Murmurers. She didn’t know he addressed his creatures as they instead of it. “So you left them here, in Hoel?”

He kept looking at the rose. “I was there at the time, so yes. I thought they would regress to a plant once I left the city.”

Elyon hummed, thinking of the shape of the Murmurer, nearly fused with the tree. “I think they did. But perhaps something has made them come back.”

Phobos let out a bitter chuckle. “Of course something made them come back. The Light of Meridian came back to shine. Don’t underestimate the surge of power that you generated the day your feet touched our land, little sister…”

Elyon flinched as Phobos’s words sank in. “Did… did I cause the Blight?”

The rose still between his fingers, Phobos’s gaze snapped at her. “The Blight? Is this what you call them?” He shook his head, letting the rose go. “You certainly contributed to waking them up. And then I came back… and, well, even when I was defeated, fate brought me very close to them.”

“You mean I brought you very close to them,” Elyon muttered. She may not be entirely responsible for the Blight, but she had definitely contributed more than she would have liked to admit. “How can they know that you are close? You are…”

“In a coma?” Phobos paced again in the garden, but more calmly now. “Yes, I cannot interact with them, but the bond is still there and they probably feel it.”

Elyon had the impression of feeling ice freezing the blood in her veins in the real world. The bond… “What did you do…” 

Eyebrows raised, Phobos turned to look at her. “What, the bond? Well, I had the right to have bound creatures, too,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I was the regent, but I didn’t have a single soul who would blindly obey me. The Champions didn’t - I’d turned them into soulless monsters, but they also did not have a brain, so I left them to Cedric, so he could feel powerful. I wanted to have my own bound creatures, and so I created the bond with the Murmurers. The Blight, as you call them, only responds to me - just like any Murmurer did. The ones that Cedric created respond to you only because he allowed it.”

He stopped pacing abruptly, his eyes widening as if he was suddenly struck by an idea. “All Murmurers are bound to me…” he murmured. 

It took a while for Elyon to understand where his mind was going. When it struck her, she gasped. “No, you’re not saying that-”

Phobos shook his head, waving Elyon’s words away with his hand. “No, Caleb cannot respond to me anymore. He turned human, and on the top of that he has a marriage bond with you. Many people think it’s just a matter of wearing a ring, but if only they knew what that ring can do… But the Blight will not respond to you.” He chuckled. “Well, unless you marry them, I suppose.”

Elyon clenched her fists at her sides. The idea that there were creatures bound to Phobos was terrifying. Yet one could have said the same about the Champions - was the idea of the Murmurers being bound to Phobos’s will so much worse than that, after all? If anything, Phobos had created them from plants, all on his own and from scratch. They never had free will before becoming sentient humanoid beings, while the Champions were once free people, who suddenly became subject to someone else’s imperative will, if needed, and lost their independence without even having a choice. 

“What can I do to stop them?” she asked. It was better not to dwell too long in the moral implications of being surrounded by bound Champions. 

Phobos brought a hand to his chin, still pacing in the garden, seemingly thinking about a solution. “Clearly you have to cut their root.”

“I understood that much, yes. But I can’t get close to them - they will absorb my Light.”

Phobos hummed, still pensive. “I suppose you need to find a way to bend them to your will.”

There it was - the sentence Elyon was waiting for. Not that she’d expected the Murmurer to be bound to Phobos, but she did expect that the solution to this problem could only be with her brother. Not the projection that she was looking at - but her brother in the flesh, in the real world. Something deep inside her nudged to remind her that this was not what she’d expected - it was what she’d hoped for. 

Phobos stopped pacing and slowly turned to look at her. Recognition flashed in his eyes after a few moments. “No - you don’t want to do that, do you?”

Elyon did not answer. She only held his gaze. 

He did the same, eyes wide, as if they were both considering the implications of bringing him back to the real world - from different points of view. 

“Is there another way to control them?” Elyon asked. She hoped Phobos would be honest - if there was another way, he had to tell her. This was probably the craziest gamble she’d ever done in all her years as the Queen of Meridian. 

“Not that I know. I told you, the Murmurers were my masterpiece. I made no mistakes in creating them - especially with the bond.”

Silence followed again. She was really doing it - she was really going to revive her brother in Metamoor, willingly, and bring him close to a creature that had been created to absorb the Light of Meridian. But it would take time to do it, especially now that his consciousness had spent so much time separated from his body. She first needed to create a barrier - a veil - to protect Hoel and most of all herself from the Blight while she worked on waking up Phobos from his eternal sleep. 

“Is… is Naexi with you?” he asked after a while. 

Despite the heavy tension that her decision had created in her imaginary body, Elyon smiled. “I wouldn’t let anyone else touch you.”

Sitting on one of the black padded chairs around the Council table, her arms crossed over her chest, Orube was livid while she waited for Elyon to come outside the study next to the Council room. She observed how the others behaved while they waited for the Queen. Alasse was sitting at her place at the head of the Council table, whispering closely to the High Priestess seated on her right. She did not betray any emotion, as usual. The only thing that gave away that she was concerned about the situation outside was the fact that she had asked for help. Other than that, there was nothing on her face suggesting that she even knew that the Blight had just attempted to absorb the Light of Meridian directly from the source. 

Beléra was nowhere to be seen. So much for being so eager to take her mother’s place, if she wouldn’t even show up to see if anyone had been hurt by the menace that loomed over her own city. 

Orube didn’t really care about either of them. The only one she cared about was Cedric, who was with the other Champions in front of the door that separated the Council room from the study where Elyon was right now, after having insisted that she had to be alone for a while, to consider what to do. For a moment, earlier, Orube had almost believed that Cedric would quit - right there, right now. After how Elyon had violated his mind and forced him to relive one of his most painful memories about Phobos, without even having a good reason to do so, Orube had really thought he would resign. 

Instead, he’d gone back to full Commander-mode in just a matter of minutes. One moment he was nearly crying in her arms, and the next he’d put that stone face on again and had said he needed to go and check if the Queen was alright, leaving Orube speechless in their room. 

Bonds are nasty, Miriadel had once told her. Orube did not have much to do with her, but she had occasionally found herself alone with the former Captain of the army, and in the last two years, she’d found out that the two of them had much more in common than she could have ever thought. 

As she looked at Cedric, as tense and vigil as a dog waiting for his owner outside a shop, Orube couldn’t help but recall one of the last conversations she’d had with Miriadel, just a couple of weeks earlier. 

“It will always come first,” Miriadel’s voice made her jolt. Orube turned to see Miriadel coming to sit next to her on the bench outside the arena. 

Orube turned to look in front of her again. Cedric was in the arena, teaching the youngest kids how to sparkle a light on their palms. He was not supposed to teach them today - Vala was taking up this part of the basic magic training of the kids. It had surprised Orube, when Cedric had told her that he was starting to delegate some of the training hours to the others. And yet there he was, teaching them how to do this basic spell, because Vala was having a fever. He had promised Orube he would be free at lunch time, so they could eat something together, but of course, it did not happen. And apparently, nobody else but the Commander in person could replace Vala to teach the kids how to sparkle a flame. 

“What do you mean?” asked Orube. 

In the corner of her eye, she could see that Miriadel was looking at the arena as well. “The armor will always come first. I’ve been there, I already told you. And my offer still stands.”

Orube looked down at her hands on her knees, wriggling them together. “I was… not in myself, that day.” 

Some months before, there had been a Council with Basiliade, followed by a banquet - and Acheri had brought way too much wine for a simple hospitality feast. That day, Orube was particularly pissed at Cedric for having ditched her once again for something that Nerel and Rhes were perfectly capable to do on their own, and in the fumes of alcohol had found herself talking one-to-one with Miriadel about stuff that was so personal she would have never revealed to the First Advisor, had she been sober. 

“But I know that what you said is the truth, Master,” Miriadel said. “I’ve been observing you for a while. What I’m seeing is not new to me, that’s why I offered you my ear, if you need it.”

Orube’s claws dug in the fabric of her pants, on her knees, as she looked at Cedric in the arena again. “How did you do it?”

“I did not,” she said. “I was going to leave him. I had already packed my things and I was going to stay with Galgheita for a while. But fate was… on our side. Because the Queen died that night.”

Orube turned to look at Miriadel, frowning. 

Miriadel curved her lips in a half smile. “I mean, of course it was a tragedy. But I understood immediately what the Queen’s death meant. We all knew that Phobos was going to lose it, and Alborn above all knew that his pupil needed support. I could not drop this on his shoulders. I decided to wait - to give him some time and wait until things were stable again. Unfortunately, Phobos really lost it, and when it became clear that he was beyond hope, Alborn was a broken man. He thought it was his failure, and I wanted to help him. Because I still loved him so much.”

Orube’s heart squeezed. Miriadel’s words hit very close to home - she had indeed considered leaving, just for a while, to see if she could be happier if she were to go back to her world for some time. But the idea of staying away from him made the ground crumble under her feet. ”And then?” she asked. 

“Then Phobos became worse and worse, and when the Priestess of Hoel told us what she’d seen in the future… we had to do something, so there was no time for personal matters. We had to bring Elyon somewhere safe. In the end, this new project on Earth brought us closer, and the armor was not between us anymore. I realized that that piece of metal was the thing that was ruining us, and once it was gone, I had my husband back.”

Orube lowered her gaze again. Miriadel’s case was so similar, yet so different from hers. Alborn was not a felon, for a start. There was no dungeon cell with his name on it, while Cedric’s fate without that armor could only be behind bars. The only one who could grant them a future without the Commander’s spaulders between them was Elyon, and she’d be very stupid to let such a powerful piece of her chessboard go. 

They had to make it work, somehow. Orube was willing to fight. She was a warrior, a master, and she could fight for their happiness. 

But as she watched Cedric teaching the kids, how it looked as if this was what he was made for, she wondered if he was willing to fight, too. 

A sudden movement in the room brought Orube back to the present. The Champions grouped in front of the door of the study as it opened, and everyone else stood up as the Queen entered the Council room. Orube reluctantly stood up as well. 

“Commander,” Elyon called Cedric. 

He promptly took a step forward. “What can I do for you, my Queen?” he asked, making bile rise up Orube’s throat. 

“I need you to contact Morven,” the Queen said, walking into the room and coming closer to the Council table. Orube had to make a considerable effort not to bare her teeth as she realized that the Queen was heading towards her. “We need help from everywhere we can,” Elyon went on, now looking directly at Orube, although she was speaking to Cedric. “We need to ask Acheri to send someone - and their mage must be there.”

Cedric glanced in Orube’s direction as well, before bowing his head. “Of course.”

”Orube,” Elyon finally addressed her once she stood in front of her. “May I have a word with you?”

A low growl escaped through Orube’s gritted teeth before she could stop it. At least it was so low that nobody would hear it - except Cedric, perhaps, who was more used to this kind of sounds Orube and her kind could use to communicate their emotions. ”Of course,” she managed to say, knowing that she sounded more hostile than she should. 

At the Queen’s request, everyone else left the room, leaving only the two women in the black and white Council room. Orube clenched her fists at her sides, digging her nails into her palms. 

Whatever she says, do not attack her, she thought, and she cursed the alliance between Metamoor and Basiliade with all her heart. It was only because her title as Master of Basiliade made her a representative of the planet, if her claws were not already around the Queen’s throat.

Elyon came forward, until she was standing close enough that Orube had to look down at her. And then, the Queen dropped her proud and regal upright pose, bowing her head and making Orube widen her eyes in awe. “Thank you, Master, for saving my life earlier,” she said. 

Orube did not speak, and just kept looking at the Queen in confusion. She had never seen Elyon bow her head to anyone - not even to the Oracle of Kandrakar. 

“And for saving my Commander yesterday.”

”He’s my husband,” Orube said, suddenly finding her voice again. “Of course I saved him.” She realized only too late that she’d not addressed the point of having saved the Queen at all, as if she didn’t care much. Right now, she indeed did not care and was not so sure she would do it again. 

“Well, it would be a great loss for me, too,” Elyon said, then she lifted her head again to look her in the eye. “I know you already did a lot, but I would need to ask you one more favor.”

Orube swallowed the irritation at this request. “Yes?”

”I need to… contact Kandrakar.”

“I thought every leader of every world has at least one official way to contact them.”

Elyon lowered her gaze and cleared her voice, hesitating for a moment before speaking. “I do, yes. But I already know that the Oracle is not going to accept my request so easily. He would listen to Yarr, though. And Yarr would listen to you.”

Orube pressed her lips into a thin line and broke into pacing in the room. It was most likely inappropriate to do so in front of the Queen, but she didn’t care. Not only had she treated Cedric like shit, breaking him into pieces with just one single peek into his mind, but now she even asked her to use the intimate bond between Yarr and Himerish to convince the Oracle to make an exception to Kandrakar’s rule of impartiality. 

“I know you don’t want to do it,” Elyon said, and Orube liked the slight pleading note in her tone. “I… I assume you’re angry at me for what I did today.”

”You bet I am,” Orube spat. 

Elyon blinked, as if she was taken aback by being addressed so directly by someone who was beneath her. “I’m sorry. I already apologized to him. It will never happen again.”

”Of course it won’t,” Orube said. “It’s not like there’s much more left to dig out.” Unless you’re into voyeurism, she thought, and she managed not to say it aloud.

”Orube… this is for Cedric, too,” Elyon said. “If we do not stop the Blight, he’s in danger as much as we all are.”

Orube stopped pacing. The fog in her mind dissipated a little, leaving some space to the fear of losing Cedric. The image of the day before, when the thorns were pulling him towards the forest and absorbing his magic, came back to her mind. 

She didn’t want to help Elyon. Not now, and maybe never again. 

I’m a warrior, and I do what I’m supposed to do - I fight. I protect myself and those I love.

Her own words from the day before echoed in her mind. And then another voice overlapped with them. Miriadel’s. 

He thought it was his failure, and I wanted to help him. Because I still loved him so much.

She would not do it for Elyon, she decided. She was going to fight against this Blight, whatever it was, and whatever the cost - she was also going to convince Yarr to persuade Himerish to send help. She would do it for Cedric. 

“Fine,” Orube said in the end. “I’ll contact Yarr right away.”

Phobos was hypnotized by the transformation of his hands. It was not magic. Well, given that nothing in his prison was material - not even that strange potion that Naexi had brought with her - there had to be some magic involved. But if what Naexi said was true, in the real world that potion really existed and could do that miracle.

As Naexi painted the last nail of his right hand and leaned back against her chair again, Phobos lifted his hands from the desk of his study and wiggled his fingers mid-air in front of his eyes. Each of his fingernails had a perfect symmetrical shape, as always when Naexi took care of them, and they were painted with a black shiny varnish.

“And you say Kendrel Naeyre can make that potion in the real world, so they stay like this?” he asked again.

“Our alchemist is full of resources,” Naexi said, closing the small bottle with the magic varnish. “She can also make hair dye.”

“Had I known she could do such things, I wouldn’t have sent her to travel worlds for me.”

Naexi shrugged. “Well, Earth is where she learned how to make this stuff. Do you like the color?”

Phobos couldn’t look away from his hands. “It’s perfect for Hoel. Make sure you find an appropriate robe, too. The one they gave me is probably an outdated pile of rags by now. I have to be perfect.”

Naexi stood up and went to the small table in the corner, where a tray with a tea service had appeared, together with a small plate with pastries.

“Tell me about Hoel, how do you find it?” he asked while she came back to the table with the tray.

“Cold,” she said. He watched her as she poured immaterial black tea into two cups. Sometimes, doing normal things in that prison felt like having a tea party with dolls and pretending to pour a liquid into cups that remained empty. It was pathetic.

“I remember that. Is Alasse still sleeping with the High Priestess?”

Naexi did not answer, and she clearly pretended to focus on the task of pouring the fake tea.

“Oh come on, Naexi. As if the first thing you and Nagadir did when you arrived was not speaking with Alasse’s maidens.”

Naexi took her seat again. She did not speak, but a corner of her mouth lifted in a smirk.

Phobos gasped theatrically, guessing what Naexi had learned. “The Consort is back in the game… with them!” Naexi gave him a satisfied grin and took a sip of her tea. Phobos clasped his hands together. “That’s a very good one. And what about our lovebirds? Did they… solve their problems?”

“Are you concerned about them?”

Phobos took his tea cup, but only looked down at the dark liquid inside. “As a matter of fact I am. You see, despite everything, I do care for Cedric. He looks better when he’s happy, and I have only seen him happy after he found her. So yes, I am, in fact, concerned.”

It was, surprisingly, the truth. Phobos always observed very closely the people who visited him in his prison. They were the only real people he ever saw, and he observed every single detail that made them different from the other inhabitants of his fake world. With time, he had learned to spot those differences that told him whether his visitor was having a good day, a bad day, or some worries in their mind. His sister was now an open book for him. And Cedric… Phobos had always thought that he knew everything about that man, having known him since they were children. They grew up together, they were close friends, and then something more. But when Cedric started to visit him in his prison, Phobos noticed that there was a part of his childhood friend he’d never had the chance to see: the part that could be happy. At first, Cedric had been rather hostile, so Phobos did not notice it immediately. But then, the shapeshifter had started to thaw again, to call him Phobs, and then he could not conceal his happiness in the real world behind a scowl anymore. Cedric was in love with that woman for real, and love looked good on him.

Naexi shrugged. Phobos knew she was just pretending not to be interested in Cedric and Orube - she was always the first one to know if they had an argument. “I think they will sort it out. But Orube deserves better.”

“She sure does. But the heart wants what it wants - and sometimes what the heart wants is a broody shapeshifter.”

He felt Naexi’s skeptical look on him while he sipped his tea. “What?” he addressed that look. “I’m not talking about myself. If I had to choose now, I’d definitely go for Aster.”

Naexi gave him a malicious smile, and they went on for a while drinking tea and talking about Aster - according to Naexi, he asked her about him every time he saw her, which made Phobos smile with delight. If there was anyone he wished to ever meet again in person, that was probably him. But as they went on chatting about this or the other person from the brothel or from the castle, Phobos was reminded that there was yet another person he wanted to talk about. He needed to make sure that Naexi was safe, and that a certain old acquaintance was not having strange ideas. It had been his first thought when Elyon had told him that his maiden was with her in Hoel.

He took the chance when silence fell after they’d both burst into laughter. “You haven’t told me about her.”

Naexi lowered her gaze to her empty tea cup.

“Naexi…” he reached out with his hand, taking hers. After all this time in this prison, he got used to the fake touch of other people’s hands. And he could tell that it was fake, just like everything else. “Did she do anything when she saw you?”

She shook her head. “No. Actually, she completely ignored me. Perhaps she didn’t recognize me in the Queen’s maidens’ uniform.”

He let her hand go, straightening back against his chair. “Good. But be careful. Beléra can be…” he searched for the right word to define her. “…well, you remember her.”

“She seems rather harmless,” said Naexi. “Nothing like back when you were engaged. Maybe motherhood changed her.”

Phobos inhaled a sharp breath at the new information. Motherhood. So Narbeth, that appendage she married, had proven himself useful. “Oh, so she finally managed to have a daughter. Good for her, I guess. Or… not.”

Naexi shrugged. “Lady Alasse has the girl under her protection. The maidens say the girl will be Lady next, as soon as Alasse will deem her old enough.”

Phobos cocked his head, studying Naexi as if it could give him more insight on what was going on in the Hoel family. If what Naexi said was true, Beléra had to be extremely pissed. She wanted to become Lady of Hoel so hard, that she’d even considered-

No - Phobos shook himself. Everyone could change. Even he had changed a little. He was not trying to murder his sister anymore, for a start. And he appreciated the company of the people he admittedly cared about. If he could change, so could Beléra.

Naexi stood up from the chair. “I should go now. Are you ready?”

Phobos blinked, taken aback by the question - but then he reconnected with its meaning. He smiled at her. “I’ve been waiting for years, my dear.”

“Then I’ll see you soon on the other side,” Naexi said, and her image started to falter.

“Oh, Naexi,” he called after her while she was still visible. “If I have a beard on the other side… let’s keep it, you know - for a change.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 13

”They should be here anytime now, right?” Cedric said in English, looking around in the entry hall. They’d been standing there for a while now - Orube, Cedric, Jezil, Vala and a handful of guards, including the three, who had accompanied him to the mountains two days before. Elyon, Alasse and the remaining Champions were in the Council room, waiting for the Guardians of Kandrakar. It was better if the portals opened in two different parts of the castle to avoid incidents. 

Orube looked at him. He looked either nervous or excited - or both at the same time. “Sounds like you’re almost excited to see them.”

He made a few steps in place and was shaken by a shiver. “I’m always excited to see them - it’s our family. But I’m freezing in here, so I would appreciate it if they'd hurry up.”

Orube cocked her head, studying his expression. He didn’t even sound sarcastic. That was a surprise. She knew that Cedric liked her brother, Shoshan, Maut and Rehu, but she had never heard him talk about them as family.

”What the hell does that guard want?” he muttered after a while, and she followed the direction of his gaze. He was looking at one of the three guards from two days ago, the youngest one. He didn’t have any particular traits that stood out - yellow eyes, short green hair, and pale green skin. He was staring at them and hastily looked away as soon as Cedric and Orube turned to look at him. 

“What about him?” she asked. 

“He’s been staring at you for two days now.” Orube didn’t miss the slight annoyance in his tone. 

Is he… jealous?!

She shrugged. “Maybe he’s just curious. I’m pretty sure they don’t have many visitors from Basiliade around here. Wait until he sees Rehu.” In the corner of her eye, she saw that the young guard was looking at them again. “Or maybe he’s interested in you, what do you know?”

Cedric just let out an irritated grunt. His next words were interrupted by the sound of something frizzing in the air, the sound of a crack, and then a blue light in the middle of the hall. 

The portal opened, blinding the room for a moment, and then five back-lit figures appeared inside. As they crossed the portal and the luminous orb started to shrink, Orube recognized Morven, who was holding the amulet in his hand, and Chefren, wearing the robes and carrying the staff of the Kyalvaas. She gasped when she realized that Acheri had decided to come personally, and was accompanied by Maut and… 

“What is Shoshan doing here?” Cedric completed her thoughts. 

Shoshan was keeping some distance from Acheri in the group, but she was looking around with a bright smile on her face, studying the new environment. “Well, you know her, she wouldn’t miss something like this for anything in the world,” said Orube, and she went towards the group. 

Orube greeted the group in the way of the warriors, and they did the same to her. 

Cedric flanked her and greeted them with the formal gesture for non-warriors. “Grand Master. Kyalvaas. In the name of the Queen of Metamoor, we are honored and extremely grateful that you both came to our aid,” he said in Basiliadean. 

A wave of heat crossed Orube’s body at Cedric’s formal tone. She did hate that armor and the Commander role from time to time, but when he spoke in the name of the Queen of Metamoor like that, he never failed to make her knees buckle. 

He was just so good at all this. From this kind of formalities, to training kids and teenagers and up to the coordination of everything that happened in the palace whenever the Queen moved. If Orube wished sometimes that this role was not between the two of them, she could also not deny that this position had his name printed on its description. 

She focused her attention on Shoshan and Maut, leaving her brother and the Kyalvaas to Cedric. “I hope you left someone in Meridian to train those lazy piwkras,” she told Shoshan. 

She gave her a wide smile. Too wide. “I left Rehu with them, they will be fine.”

Next to her, Maut snorted. “Hopefully you’ll still find the arena when you go back.”

Orube smiled at them and hugged her sister. She was not worried at all: Rehu was the Head Master of the Citadel - the one in charge of the coordination of the Gardens. She could only hope that the apprentices would behave respectfully and show appreciation for the honor they had, being trained by him even if for just a couple of days. 

After she let Maut go, Orube searched Shoshan’s eyes, asking her a silent question and hoping to receive a smile as an answer. Instead, Shoshan lowered her gaze, shaking her head, then she walked away to look at the decorations of the hall more closely. 

Orube met Maut’s gaze. She gave her a knowing smile. “Why do you think our brother insisted on coming here himself instead of sending Kilubi? To see the Queen?”

Orube shook her head. “They’re both so stubborn.”

The Guardians arrived with Elyon and Alasse a few minutes later. After having disappeared the whole day before, Beléra had decided to show up. She looked tense, though, nothing like her usual careless attitude of someone who only cared about organizing the preparation of rooms for her guests and decorating a spooky ballroom. 

Orube decided that this was not the right time to think about what was wrong with Beléra - perhaps she had finally understood that there was indeed a threat outside the doors of her palace and that she was at risk as well. 

She turned to see the Guardians instead. It did not surprise her that they all looked as if they would have preferred to be anywhere else but here on a mission. Orube’s contacts with the Guardians were more sporadic, now, but she knew that they had been discussing the terms of their resignation with Himerish for a couple of years. The Oracle had promised them he would look for younger Guardians, but there was still no sign of a new generation. 

“I wonder for how long they’ll keep coming,” Orube commented, joining Cedric’s side again.

“I just got used to them, I’m not ready to get accustomed to a new set of annoying girls,” he protested.

Orube elbowed him. “They’re not girls anymore. We even have to go to a wedding soon!”

Cedric turned to look at her, confused. “Wedding? Who’s getting married?”

“Oh come on, you signed the answer to the invitation three weeks ago.”

He shrugged. “I sign a lot of stuff, doesn’t mean I read it.”

Orube snorted. Cedric was a good liar, but not with her - he didn’t delegate anything and compiled every single piece of parchment on his own, so there was nothing for him to be signed blindly. “I should go, I’ll tell you later about the wedding. In the meantime you can keep guessing.”

A touch on her hand kept her from going towards the Guardians, who were joining the Basiliadeans and the guards to get ready to be teleported to the mountains by Elyon. She turned to see Cedric close to her, suddenly turning serious. 

“Orube…” he whispered. She let him cup her cheek with his palm. 

“I’ll be careful, I promise,” she said, as an answer to the concern in his gaze. 

“I know…” He took her face between his hands, tilted his head and claimed her mouth in a fierce kiss. “If things get out of control…” he whispered on her lips. 

“We run, yes,” she said. “This is no Basiliadean battle. Everyone wants to go back home.” She broke their embrace and winked at him as she walked backwards to join the others. “See you later, Commander.”

As she stood next to Maut and in front of the Queen, she glanced at Cedric again. They only had to build a barrier at the feet of the mountain, without venturing deep in the core of the Blight’s nest. It was not a dangerous mission, and they would be back in no time. But as she crossed gaze with him one last time before Elyon’s light blinded them all, she could again feel that burning sensation in her chest, like the other day, when she’d passed him some of her magic. And right before everything around her disappeared, she caught a glimpse of Cedric frowning and bringing a hand to his chest, as if he was feeling the same.

The pain faded away quickly, leaving Cedric looking with puzzlement at the empty space of the hall where the Guardians and the Basiliadean warriors were standing a moment ago. That burning sensation again, right there, next to the bond to the Queen… 

“Champions,” the Queen called, pulling him out of his thoughts. The Champions promptly formed their ranks in front of Elyon. “I have some work to do. I’ll use the study next to the Council room - make sure that nobody interrupts me. Morven,” she turned to her ambassador. “Did you bring what I asked for?”

Morven came closer and bowed to the Queen, presenting the bag he was carrying with him. It looked heavy, perhaps it contained books and supplies of some kind. Cedric followed the scene carefully as at the Queen’s nod, Zharel took the bag. Did Elyon have any plan against the Blight that involved some tricky magic? It was unlikely - Metamoor magic would never work against this monster. 

The Queen turned and headed towards the corridor leading to the wing of the palace where the Council room was. Nagadir and Naexi quickly joined her, coming from the side of the entry hall where some other servants were waiting for orders, and Cedric moved with the other Champions to follow her, with Caleb flanking them. Cedric was doing his best to stay neutral about the fact that Caleb was acting as General again, but he had to admit that he felt a certain relief when the Consort had showed up wearing armor the day before. It was probably the first time in the entire history of Meridian that a Consort lifted a finger to do anything other than touch the Queen, and a small tradition-bound part of Cedric felt it was wrong. But who was he to judge anyone for stepping out of Metamoor traditions? After all, there had never been a Commander with an infamous history like his own, and married to a foreigner no less. 

“Your Highness, if I may,” Alasse called from behind. The Queen stopped, and the whole group halted with her. 

“Yes?”

Alasse came closer, her head held high as always, even when she spoke directly to the Queen. “I would like to have a word with my son, if you’ll allow it.”

Cedric wished he could just disappear - maybe be struck by lightning or swallowed by the ground, either would do - while Elyon looked at him first, and then at Alasse again. He didn’t particularly enjoy being in a position where he had no say in what he wanted to do. After all, wasn’t it the dream of every man in Metamoor to be a decorative object passed from hand to hand? Such was the glorious fate of being both the servant of one matriarch and the son of another. Sometimes he wondered if he wouldn’t be better off on Earth, where the imbalance of many societies tipped in the opposite direction and, lucky him, he might actually end up on the benefiting side. Now wouldn’t that be a plot twist.

“Of course,” Elyon said, waving her hand to dismiss them, and then she turned again and reprised walking away. 

Alasse guided Cedric to a room he hadn’t seen before - a parlor, or a tea room, or both. It looked just as spooky as the rest of the rooms of the palace, dominated by black and white, with occasional scarlet dots here and there. It looked like the tea room of a vampire. 

“What did you want to talk about?” Cedric asked, sitting on the padded chair indicated by his mother, while she took a seat on the opposite chair. A tea table made of black marble was between them, and a black-dressed pageboy came to serve them tea in elegant silver cups. Cedric’s stomach churned as the strange feeling of being at the wrong side of the table washed over him. He looked at the pageboy and how he poured the tea, and he wondered if he had a family or if, like him, he lived alone in a small room at the very end of the palace. 

Alasse dismissed the pageboy with a wave of her hand. 

“There is a lot you don’t know about family bonds,” she said when the pageboy had left the room. “And it’s my fault.”

”I made myself a family, I know enough,” he said dryly. 

“That pain you felt earlier - I saw it.” Alasse reached forward to take her tea cup and took a sip. Cedric did the same out of politeness, although he was definitely not in the mood for such a conversation over tea. “That’s the bond you have with your wife,” she explained. “Once you become aware of it, you will always feel it.”

Another bond… Cedric did his best to hide his surprise at this new information. Nobody had ever told him that marrying someone meant sealing a real bond with that person, like the one he had with the Queen. 

“What happens if-“

”If you break up?” Alasse completed the question for him. She sipped her tea again, then she looked away from him. “It hurts. Badly. But it won’t happen to you. I see how you two look at each other. You are not going to let that thing break the bond between you,” she nodded at his armor. “She’s willing to fight for you. The question is only if you’re willing to fight for her.”

”I literally died for her,” he said through clenched teeth. “I would do anything.” He thought he really meant these words, and yet they felt like a lie. He would die again, if it meant saving Orube. He would do despicable things to have her back, if she was taken away. But the armor… he had thought so many times about quitting or finding a way to step down, and yet he’d never done it, never even tried. He thought about delegating stuff, and yet he kept postponing the day he would let the others take over some tasks. The armor, those spaulders, all the responsibilities he took, all belonged to him - they were what he was good at, and he could not let them go. 

“You will figure it out,” she said. “You won’t make the same mistake as I did.”

”It seems to me that you are still much closer to Xaltor than the newspapers in Meridian ever said,” Cedric commented. 

She chuckled. “Oh, I’m not talking about Xaltor. I’m talking about your father. He left because I could not give him what he wanted - my time.”

Cedric stiffened. “I thought he left because he thought I was stillborn.”

Alasse’s gaze drifted from him again, looking far away in time and space. “He left some time after that. I had promised to marry him. I had a good reason to leave Xaltor and it wouldn’t have been a scandal, as we’d been married for more than ten years and he hadn’t given me a heiress yet. But I was never there, because I did not delegate anything to my Council, and my political strength in Metamoor was too important - especially after the High Priestess saw what would become of Weira’s boy.”

Cedric’s jaw dropped. “You… you knew about Phobos?”

”Althea’s visions were only vague directions, and they did not show the complete picture back then. She saw the Prince on the throne, and we assumed that it was because Weira was never going to have a girl. Visions change over time…” she paused, lowering her gaze for a moment. A shiver ran through Cedric’s spine. He wanted to know what Althea had foreseen… and yet he was scared to hear it. Alasse shook herself, as if she decided not to reveal what was already on the tip of her tongue. “Anyway, at the time of your and the Prince’s birth, I interpreted Althea’s vision as the end of our society as we know it. If Meridian was not ruled by a woman anymore, Hoel would soon follow. I needed to secure my position, since I did not have a girl either.” 

Cedric took a sip of tea just to have a reason to close his gaping mouth. Something did not feel right. He couldn’t quite point at it, but his gut feeling told him that the High Priestess did not foresee what happened to Weira and Phobos. Had she seen it, Alasse would have certainly warned the Queen and they would have taken precautions. No… Althea must have seen something else, something that scared Weira in a different way. He decided to go back to the topic of his father. He was not ready to hear the confirmation of something he’d started to suspect over the last few years - that Weira had acted deliberately and that maybe she didn’t even really die. “Do you know what happened to my father after he left?”

She sipped her tea as well. “No. He was a shapeshifter, you know. Your kind is… special. If a shapeshifter doesn’t want to be found, they won’t be found. Not even if you have a Seer as your First Advisor.”

”Your Seer found me, though,” he remarked. He remembered the visions that the Goddess Lunja had shown him - when the High Priestess was looking for him and told Alasse that he was alive and on Earth. 

Alasse smiled at him. “Oh, but you wanted to be found. Maybe you never realized it, but what you always wanted the most was being found by your family. Did you ever think about the reasons why you wanted to become a high-ranked Champion? Or why did you become the Prince’s right hand? Those are all positions that make you famous and known in the whole realm, for good or bad reasons. It was the best way to be seen, remembered, noticed. You were always easy to find in Althea’s visions, at least until you and Orube found each other. From there on, it was as if you had found your family and did not need to be seen by us anymore.”

Alasse’s words felt like a punch in Cedric’s stomach. He opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out. That couldn’t be true… could it? He hadn't thought about it like that. How was it possible for his mother, who had abandoned him when he was merely a day old, to know so much about him - how could she know things about himself he’d never even realized until she mentioned them, and they suddenly made sense? 

He forcibly went back to the original topic. “I spoke with a guard, the other day. He said my father might have joined the rebellion.”

Alasse leaned back on the chair, turning thoughtful. “Hm. I have never considered that. I always thought he moved to Idier, you know. He was cold-blooded, like you, and always dreamed of living in a warm place. I suppose that’s something else I could never give him - the Lady of Hoel has to stay in Hoel.”

”Even when she retires?” Cedric asked, and regretted it immediately after he’d pronounced the words, as Alasse’s irises expanded and covered her whites for a moment. 

You really can’t mind your own business, uh?, he told himself. 

Alasse’s voice turned into ice. “Even if she retires.”

The sound of quick steps coming from behind Cedric interrupted the heavy silence that followed. 

Alasse’s gaze turned to look in the direction of the steps and her eyes softened instantly. “Sweetheart,” she said, her tone again soft - affectionate, even. “What are you doing here?”

Cedric turned to see Alès. The girl slowed down her pace as soon as she realized that Cedric was there, and was cautious as she went closer to her grandmother. 

“Uh… I was just…” she gave Cedric another uncertain look before turning to Alasse again. “I would like to go outside to play with my friends. I can’t find Mother, so I thought… maybe you could give me permission.” At Alasse’s expectant look, the girl curtsied. 

Alasse’s lips curved in a satisfied smile, but it was only for a second. “It’s too dangerous, my dear. We already talked about it. But our friends from Basiliade and Kandrakar are now building a barrier and perhaps it will be safer soon.”

Alès lowered her gaze to her feet. “Mother said that we could tell my friends to come here, so I don’t have to go outside where the Blight is. Can we?”

Alasse’s irises expanded and her eyes became two wells of darkness. The room seemed to darken with them, and a shiver ran along Cedric’s spine. 

“How can she be so selfish!” Alasse hissed. “There’s a curfew, I gave the order so we can keep our people safe. And she wants to expose them like this!”

The room darkened, and darkened, and despair started to grow inside Cedric’s chest. He could hear something - no, remember it - his own younger voice calling for someone in the dark, unanswered. A flicker of Orube’s laugh twisted into a scream. He was scared, almost panicking, and yet he could not stand up and run away from that cursed room - as if Alasse’s power was generating that sense of fear and helplessness with her darkness, while keeping him anchored to the chair. All his fears seemed to resurface at once, from the most recent ones to those that went deep into his soul and that he had forgotten. The fear of losing Orube. The fear of failing at protecting the Queen. The fear of being abandoned and forgotten, that used to assault him when he was a teenager in his old room. Cedric had never really interacted with Alasse’s powers, and he had no idea that she was capable of dominating shadows and fears like this.

“Grandma…” the girl called her. She looked concerned, but not as affected by Alasse’s darkness as Cedric was. “It’s alright, I will wait. But you’re scaring uncle Cedric.”

The shadows vanished instantly and the room returned to its former light, as if nothing had happened. Alasse’s eyes also went back to normal, and the panic that was overwhelming Cedric faded away with the shadows.

Alasse cleared her throat and lowered her gaze. Although she had calmed down, Cedric could see the signs of anger on her face. “Please accept my apologies, Cedric. My daughter doesn’t seem to take this situation as seriously as the Lady of this castle should.”

“I… I noticed,” he said when he found his voice again.

“She has always been like this,” Alasse explained. “But she has gotten worse since… well, since she knows you’re her brother. It’s almost as if she has to prove that she’s good enough, and yet all she does is proving that she doesn’t care about this city at all.”

“I care about the city, grandma,” Alès intervened, wriggling her hands. “I will wait until the Blight is gone and everyone is safe, I promise.”

Alasse’s eyes softened at her granddaughter. “Of course you will, sweetheart.” Then she turned to Cedric again. “See why I am still the Lady?”

A tug in his chest kept Cedric from answering. It was the bond with the Queen. He straightened his back and turned towards the door right before the Queen opened it and entered the room. Her small figure was backlit and flanked by two taller silhouettes, which Cedric recognized immediately as Aymon and Zharel.

Cedric jumped to his feet. “My Queen.”

Elyon walked into the room and barely glanced at him, her eyes fixed on Alasse instead. “I need the key.”

Cedric looked at the Queen first, then at Alasse. He had no idea what Elyon meant by the key.

Alasse slowly stood up as well. “Of course.”

They all followed Alasse and Alès in the eerie corridors of the palace, until she reached a tall arched door in a black and white marble hall. Cedric winced as he suddenly recognized it. He’d seen it in the vision - this was the door to Alasse’s private quarters. The rooms where he was born.

While they waited outside the quarters for Alasse to bring the key - whatever that was - Elyon came close to Cedric. “You’re probably wondering what the key opens.”

“It’s none of my business,” he lied.

“You’re becoming worse and worse as a liar, you know,” Elyon said, standing next to him and looking at the door of Alasse’s quarters. “It opens his cage.”

Cedric kept his look fixed at the door as well, but his body stiffened. “His… cage?”

Elyon slowly turned to look at him. “Seriously? You haven’t understood yet?” She clicked her tongue, giving him a disappointed look. “Your mind is really somewhere else, lately. I hope it’s somewhere pleasant, at least.”

Cedric frowned, trying to make sense of her words. A cage… a key that only Alasse had… and which Elyon needed now, while they were trying to figure out how to defeat a beast that seemed to have been created by-

Cedric closed his eyes for a moment as the piece of information finally clicked with the others. “Phobos’s body is here,” he said in the end. “And you’re going to revive him.”

“Bingo!” she said in English.

“With all due respect, my Queen, that’s the worst idea you ever had after your decision of making me Commander.”

Elyon crossed her arms at her chest. “I think making you Commander was an excellent idea after all.”

The door of the Lady’s quarters swung open and Alasse came out of the rooms with the energy of a fury, making them all startle. Elyon took a step towards her. “What happened?”

Alasse’s face was distorted by rage, and her irises expanded, covering the whites. “The key is gone.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 14

“I thought Elyon had control on the weather around here!” said Cornelia, rubbing her hands together.

“At least you have leggings. I don’t even have those…” Hay Lin whimpered, tightening the cloak she’d received from Alasse’s maidens around her body and stepping in place to move her legs. The Guardians had all received an identical black cloak, but Orube could imagine they were freezing, as they were wearing their uniforms beneath which did not really look like they were fit for winter.

“We should have asked Kandrakar for four-seasons uniforms!” came Irma’s complaint. 

“We should have asked Kandrakar to send someone else, I tell you,” Taranee blurted. An orange halo surrounded her hands, that she was rubbing together and warming up using her power.

“Girls,” Orube went towards them, “the sooner we start, the sooner you can go home.” She waved at the landscape in front of them. Elyon had teleported them at the foot of the mountain, where they had left the horses the day before. “Chefren, are you ready?” she asked the young Kyalvaas. He nodded.

Orube glanced at the others, who had accompanied them: her brother, her sister and Shoshan were likely freezing, but they did not show it. Four of the Hoel guards had accompanied them, too. Among them was the young guard, who had accompanied Cedric the other day and who seemed to have a particular interest either in her or in him.

“Alright, let’s start.”

The task of building a magical barrier was taken up mostly by the Guardians, but Chefren and Orube - being the only Basiliadeans capable of using magic - were adding threads of their own magical force that intertwined with the Guardians’ colorful labyrinth that formed the wall. The others were forming a line right behind them, their weapons drawn, ready to help in case a threat would come out of the mountains. However, there was no sign of the Blight.

Orube had the impression that about one hour, perhaps two, had passed when they reached a considerable length with the wall. Of course, they could not build a wall that went from the border to the unknown north down to the border with Grendal. They tried to follow the profile of the mountains and at least close access to the paths that went to the core of the mountain where they had found the Blight.

Orube and Chefren worked mostly in silence, while the Guardians discussed their own things - by now, Orube had barely an idea of what they were talking about most of the time, but at the moment their main topic was, of course, the upcoming wedding.

“Hey, we haven’t had a chance to talk much lately, are you… uhm, alright?” Will asked her at one point, when they had found themselves close to each other.

“Of course I’m alright, why?” Orube answered, without looking away from her work with her magic. She was starting to feel some tiredness, but she clenched her teeth and went on creating orange threads.

“Well… I remember you mentioned something with Cedric, the last time you came to Heatherfield.”

Orube shrugged. “He’s just busy.”

“Do you need us to give him a lesson?” Irma chimed in from behind Will. “He might be Commander of Whatever here, but we can still kick his ass for old times’ sake.”

“My parents had the same problem when I was little,” Cornelia intervened from Orube’s other side. “My dad was always working at the bank, and my mom had to take care of me and of the house on her own. She did not like it - I mean, she liked to take care of me, I guess, but she didn’t like that my dad put his job above everything else.”

Orube turned to look at the threads they were building to form the wall, clenching her jaw. “Your dad had a choice. It was not either his job or prison. We do not have a choice.”

“Well, but he has the choice as to how much his job can take away from his life,” Taranee commented, and Orube didn’t like how the girls were managing to twist the knife in the wound, as if her thoughts and feelings were so blatantly painted on her face.

“I appreciate your concerns, girls, but life here is different. There are different priorities, different dynamics… I don’t want to talk about it. Rather, tell me about the wedding preparations,” Orube said. The girls exchanged a look, but then seemed to get Orube’s message and went back to talking about the upcoming wedding. It didn’t take long for Orube to zone out, and she soon found herself detached from the group as she went on adding her magic threads in the nest of lights created by the girls.

It was only then that she noticed a pair of yellow eyes fixed on her. She turned to see the young guard, who was staring at her again.

“Is there a problem?” she blurted.

The guard shook himself and gave her an embarrassed smile. “No, Milady, uh… I’m sorry, I didn’t want to stare.”

“It seems you’ve been doing that a lot, lately. And I’m no Milady.”

“Apologies, uh… Master. It’s just… I have never met anyone like you, and I-”

“There is plenty of us here today, you can go stare at the Grand Master. He won’t mind, he likes his popularity,” she shoved him off. She realized she was being rude, but the discussion with the girls had put her in a very bad mood, she was tired by the extensive use of magic, and the last thing she wanted was Cedric to make a scene because he was jealous of some curious guard.

The guard’s eyes hardened for a second, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. A sudden sense of déjà-vu struck Orube, as if she’d seen that light in someone else’s eyes already, and the same movement of the jaw. She studied the guard for a moment, assessing his features. He did not look like anyone she knew, and she was sure she’d never met him before. It was only when the guard turned and walked away that she realized who the guard had reminded her of.

It can’t be, right?

She moved a few steps towards where the guard had been standing a moment ago, and sniffed the air, trying to capture the scent of that guard.

That’s impossible, she thought. The scent was also familiar. Her mind raced, making connections. She did not have enough information to confirm this - to be sure that this guard reminded her of-

A sudden shake of the ground beneath her feet made her lose her balance. A loud rumble followed, and then the ground shook again, so much that Orube feared it would tear apart.

“What is this?!” cried one of the Guardians.

“Is this your magic?” asked Acheri from somewhere behind her.

“Look! It’s beyond the wall!”

Kneeling on the ground to keep herself steady, Orube glanced up, towards the breach in the wall that they were closing.

She met two gray eyes that made her blood freeze in her veins.

Meridian, 12 th age, year 108 (44 years ago)

Phobos had taken part in many court events designed solely to waste his time. He was born in the royal family, and had been trained as a Champion then - without anyone ever ask him if he agreed to it - so his time had been wasted in such events since he was merely a child.

But nothing - nothing - could ever compare to the waste of his precious time caused by the presentation of the Heiress to the realm.

People had started to come to Meridian the week before the event, as everyone was taking the official presentation of sweet Princess Elyon as an excuse to travel to the capital and spend all their money at the numerous taverns, restaurants and shops that the city had to offer. Phobos couldn’t even rejoice about that anymore - more visitors in Meridian meant more income to the city, and more income meant more taxes and money to the royal family. Yet Phobos felt like he was barely part of the royal family anymore, since the little cockroach was born.

Now that everyone could sigh in relief that no law had to be changed and Metamoor would never suffer the reign of the ‘pouty Prince whose only political interest is the state of his hair’ (so was the latest description of him on the Meridian observer), Phobos was nothing but the almost-Commander of the Champions, and everyone was waiting for him to finally marry Beléra and do something meaningful with his life.

The chants of the people acclaiming the Princess during the first three days of celebration kept repeating over and over in his ears even while he walked back to his quarters, to finally get rid of the armor for the day and forget about this torture until tomorrow, when he’d have to stand there again, in full armor and stupid mask, witnessing Metamoor’s jubilation for a baby who didn’t even know where she was.

Hail to the Queen!

Hail to the Sire!

Hail to our Princess Elyon!

But no hail to the Prince. Never hail to the Prince.

Even Zayden was having his moment of glory, where his existence was finally being acknowledged on the account of having finally managed, after no less than one hundred and nine years of marriage, to produce a girl. Nobody in the history of Meridian had ever taken that long, and now even he was celebrated and revered as the Sire, since he’d ultimately sired a child worthy of being acknowledged.

And yet Phobos did not envy him. To the contrary, Phobos found it quite sad that the only way for Zayden to be noticed was by reflection, and for something that literally any other man with functioning genitals could have done. It didn’t matter whether Zayden had a personality of his own (which he didn’t have anyway), it didn’t matter if he even wanted to have that girl, or to marry Queen Weira in the first place. He would only be remembered as the father of the thirteenth Light of Meridian, and only because there must have been a father, so he had to be included into the records.

Phobos did not want to be included into the records for being the nameless father of a baby girl. If he had to be remembered, it had to be for something that only he was capable of doing, and nobody else.

Before entering his quarters, he reached out with the tentacles of his mind, searching for a familiar, feeble Light.

She was in the alchemists’ lab. Rage bubbled inside him, as he saw that her Light was close - too close - to the Light of that idiot alchemist. Phobos detested that Naexi had to sell her body to that nullity to have access to the potions she procured for him. Yet another injustice of being just the Prince: he could not just give the order that the locks of the alchemists’ cabinets had to stay open for him any time he wanted. Because he was not the Queen.

Naexi, he called her. Her Light flinched, and immediately parted from the alchemist’s.

Health to the Princess!

Wealth to the Princess!

Long live our Princess Elyon!

The chants kept echoing in his mind and made him burn with rage as he closed the door of his apartments behind him. The first thing he did was removing the stupid mask and throwing it on the desk of his study, then he started to remove the armor.

Joyfully now,

to the Princess we come,

bringing gifts and all good wishes, too,

we pledge our loyalty anew!

Pledge their loyalty… to an infant. That bloody babygirl, all smiley and with those puffy hands always touching and grabbing everything around her, and those giggles… Of course everyone was completely raptured by the cockroach and turned into disgusting amasses of dumb smiles and weird voices when seeing her. Even Cedric, that traitor, had broken into a smile at her the other day, while accompanying Mother and the infant for a walk.

But not Phobos. He would never allow that girl to bewitch him.

Phobos cursed all the Gods he knew under his breath, one for each piece of the damn armor that he stripped off. He was trembling so much with rage, that his fingers slipped on the clamps.

“Come here, give me a hand - unless you want to miss the armory crew again,” he said when he heard the door click, groaning in exasperation as the bloody spaulders did not want to come out. He heard quick steps approaching, and Naexi’s tiny hands were taking over. He glanced at her. Her brows were knitted in a concentrated frown as she opened one clamp after the other. How lucky he was, to have such a dedicated servant, who never questioned his orders.

After three days of receptions for Princess Elyon’s presentation to the realm, his armor needed to be polished and had to be ready the next day again, and the last thing Phobos wanted was for Naexi to spend a night polishing it on her own like had happened a few months before.

A knock on the door made them both stop. “Go send them away,” he told Naexi.

Naexi didn’t need to hear it twice and quickly went to the door, while he tried to get rid of some more pieces of the armor.

“The Prince is… busy, Milady,” he heard Naexi saying.

“Oh, but I think he can find some time for me,” came the answer. He recognized the voice instantly, and sighed. Of course, he could not escape Beléra.

She was the last person he wanted to see right now. Well, the second last person. He would have rather seen his fiancée than the grin on his baby sister’s face that always seemed to laugh at his fate. Yet he could not send her away so easily, and he knew he had to tell her he was not going to marry her, at some point.

“Let her in,” he said, raising his tone to be heard by Naexi in the entry hall. With a wave of his hand and a small burst of magic, he made the door to his bedroom close shut. He could accept Beléra to enter his quarters and his study, but she would never be granted access to his bedroom and his dressing room.

Beléra entered the study a moment later, followed by Naexi. With his hand he invited Naexi to come closer again and help him out with the armor. Beléra followed the maiden with her gaze, an eyebrow raised. “Does she have to stay?”

“She doesn’t go anywhere,” he said through clenched teeth, while Naexi reprised her work on dismantling the armor and putting the pieces on her cart.

Beléra sized her up, humming. “No mask anymore? What a pity. I like the deer.”

Phobos snorted. He hated wearing the mask. “That’s going to be the first thing I’ll erase in the Code as soon as I’m Commander.”

He didn’t like the knowing grin on Beléra’s face. “Anything else you’ll change in the Code?”

Phobos looked away instantly, pretending to focus on removing the vambrace. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Naexi slowed down in her opening the clamps for a moment.

“I can’t change that rule,” he said.

Beléra came closer, her arms crossed at her chest. “Then it seems you’re still stuck with me.”

He exchanged a look with Naexi. As if answering his thoughts, the maiden hurried up removing the last pieces of the armor, put them together with the others in the cart and curtsied before quickly leaving the study. He was left alone with Beléra in the room, wearing the under-armor clothes. He didn’t like to be seen wearing those, but Beléra had already seen much more than just that, and he could make an exception.

“It’s not going to happen,” he said, holding her gaze.

Her eyebrows shot up. “Uh? I thought we had an agreement. We agreed we’ll make it work. As far as I’m concerned, if you manage to get that rule crossed out, you can have blondie in your bed as much as you like. And if not him, then anyone else. I really don’t care, as long as you give me a girl.”

Frustration snapped in Phobos’s chest. “It’s not about that. I can fuck you, if it worries you so much. With or without a man in the room.” It had taken wine, some of Beléra’s strange trinkets and a lot of imagination, but they had found a way to make it work for both of them. And judging from Beléra’s squeals and moans when he’d fucked her, he was quite talented in the role of a Consort. The problem went far beyond mere sex.

“And what is it, then?” Beléra asked. “Marrying someone in Hoel is the best that can happen to you. We are not bound by monogamy. You can live your life as if I didn’t exist. My father has a team of mistresses and my mother even invites them for tea. Hoel is different from Meridian.”

Phobos shook his head. “Hoel is different, but not that different.”

Beléra did not speak for a while, and she studied him while he paced in the study. Then, realization crossed her dark eyes. “Oh, I see. Well, that is not going to change. I will be Lady of Hoel. And our daughter is going to be Lady after me. Or, who knows - perhaps she will be Light of Meridian, if your sweet sister won’t bless us with a Heiress.”

His head snapped at her. “What did you just say?!”

She crossed her arms at her chest again, looking at him with her chin up. “You heard me well. Your daughter will have a claim to the throne, if your sister was to tragically die without an heir.”

Phobos stopped pacing abruptly, his jaw dropped.

Beléra’s idea was indeed brilliant. And dangerous. And… completely useless. Where was his gain, even if his daughter had a claim to the throne? He would still be a tool, his greatest accomplishment merely being generating that girl. No, he could not accept that. Yet Beléra’s brilliant idea was exactly the kind of leverage he needed to convince her to side with him and sabotage this engagement.

“So you are suggesting we murder my sister,” he purred.

Her eyes widened for a moment and her lips parted, as she realized what she’d just confessed. So that was what happened once you managed to catch Beléra Rhaeleth of Hoel off guard.

Beléra shook herself and replaced her astonishment with a charming smile. “Of course not. Actually, on a second thought, I do respect your mind and I don’t want to reduce you to the role of a handsome painting in my castle. I know men who are more keen to become ornaments than you are, so I’ll listen to your ideas.”

He waved his hands in the air in frustration again. “You see, you’re taking it for granted that we will be in Hoel. I’m supposed to become Commander of the Queen’s Champions, that’s my birthright. I trained too many stupid children to have it taken away from me now. My mother will not send me to freeze my ass in Hoel. Your mother, on the other hand, could send you to keep an eye on Meridian.”

Beléra clenched her fists at her sides, frowning. “But it’s my birthright to become Lady of Hoel!”

He went closer to her and leaned forward, their noses almost touching. He grinned in defiance. “Then our mothers have a problem to sort out, and the only way to solve it without my mother to give yours an order - which Alasse is not going to like - is if we do not marry. I’d say that’s a win on all sides.”

“And what if I don’t agree?”

His grin widened. “Then it’s too bad that my maiden has been standing behind that wall the whole time and can testify that you’re conspiring against the sweet Princess.”

He glanced at the doorway of the study room. He knew that Naexi had understood what to do, but he needed to be sure that she was still there. He saw the edge of her cart and smiled.

Beléra did not turn to check. She sighed, as if she’d expected all along that Phobos would have found a way to force her to collaborate. “Fine, how are we supposed to do this?”

Phobos chuckled. “You’re the woman. Just tell your mother that you saw me make out with one of the guests and I dishonored you. My mother is going to be pissed, but she won’t make a fuss out of it, if anything to keep it from becoming Meridian’s gossip. She doesn’t like to read what people write  about me on the newspapers.”

He felt her gaze on his back as he headed towards the door of his bedroom.

“Let me guess, I can say you were making out with anyone but him, right?”

He stopped in front of the door, his hand on the handle. “Anyone but him.”

The Blight was nothing like Orube had imagined it.

Elyon had been very vague as to what she’d learned from Phobos, but it was clear that this Blight was his own creation. Orube had never seen Murmurers, but she knew the Annihilators, who were supposed to be the deadliest warriors that Phobos had ever created. She imagined the Blight to look like them - man-sized, with green skin and smelling like plants.

This thing, however, was damn huge.

Its gray eyes mirrored Elyon’s and her brother’s. Other than that, the creature barely had any resemblance with a human. It had a head, arms and legs, but they were enormous and disproportionate, as well as covered in wood, leaves and thorns. The thorny vines lashed out of his hands and from behind its back. Its long hair also morphed into vines and moved with the creature, snapping forward-

Orube shook herself when she realized the thorny vines were lashing right towards her, through the hole in the wall they were building. In a second, she drew her sword and cut both branches just before they touched her.

“The wall! We need to close it!” she shouted to the others. Hay Lin was flying mid-air, while the others were forming a half-circle around the opening in the wall and lightening up beams. Chefren joined them and hurried to add his own magic to the branches created by the girls.

Another set of spiked vines lashed out and cut through a hole in the wall. It was cut by Maut, who was the closest, just in time to keep it from piercing Will. Another lash was cut by Acheri’s sword.

As the Blight came closer to the wall, the Guardians had managed to almost close the last gap. The Blight touched the luminous barrier, and its face was immediately distorted in disgust. It took a step back.

Begone, monsters!

“What is it saying?” asked Will. The creature was whispering in Metamoor.

The Master… he will take care of this!

“Your Master is gone!” Orube said in Metamoor.

A gust of freezing wind hit them, and with it, the air was filled with a thousand laughing whispers.

The Master is coming… The Lady will bring him back, she promised us. And together, they will bring a new Light…

“A new what-”

“Orube! Watch out!” came Shoshan’s warning. Orube turned. She flinched as she found herself in front of a green humanoid creature, right where a piece of the thorny vine she’d cut was lying on the snowy ground. It looked just like an Annihilator, but was not wearing a cloak.

“What the fuck are you?”

“They are growing from the ground where the vines fell!” Maut shouted.

The creature’s arm morphed into a pointed spear - just like Orube had seen the Annihilators do during the Battle of the Planes.

“Not these things again…” she heard Acheri complain.

Six creatures were now looking at them, and they turned immediately to the Guardians and Chefren, aiming at them with their arms turned into weapons.

“Come on, we have taken down many more than just these, and they look disoriented!” Shoshan incited them, and launched forward with her saber drawn, aiming at the one closest to her. She cut through its flesh as easily as if it was made of butter.

Another one was looming on her from behind, but Acheri was between them in a second. He severed its head with a movement so fast that only a Basiliadean could have seen it.

Orube only made it in time to see Shoshan smile at him, when she saw yet another one raising its deadly arm on Taranee. Orube darted forward, her sword drawn, but the girls closed the wall just in time and Taranee turned, shooting a fire beam directly to the center of the creature’s chest. The monster dropped on its knees, a burned hole now devouring its torso, and then fell face first in the snow.

They got rid of the remaining monsters in no time, and soon were left with only their corpses surrounding them in the snow, and the wide-eyed looks of the guards, who had accompanied them.

“Is the wall done?” asked Orube.

Will looked at the wall. It was an amazing spectacle - a luminous barrier running along the mountain, gleaming and sparkling in all the colors of the Guardian’s magic, and the thin orange threads of Basiliadean energy. “We did all we could, now we can only hope that it will hold.”

Meridian, 13 th age, year 14 (9 years ago)

Phobos knew rage. He’d been thriving in rage and obsession for most of his time alive, and he considered himself an expert of using it to his own benefit.

When he realized that Cedric had left the Council room, he expected that rage to come back, explosive, and to give him the strength he needed to pursue his conquest and win this war against his sister with even more energy than before.

Instead, he felt nothing.

The frozen stone that he felt now where once his heart was beating did not even tremble. He should have known that Cedric was not going to remain loyal to him this time. His mind was too caught up in between the legs of that Basiliadean warrior, and it was only a matter of time until he’d ultimately run back to her.

As he limped in the corridor towards his quarters, Phobos did feel something. It was frustration, and tiredness. Once again, he was alone in his plans. He had a decent ally - Sir Itham - but he was not there, and anyway he was so obnoxious that Phobos had gladly left him in his lands to guard the Annihilators, who were at the East border waiting for an order.

He couldn’t trust Naexi either. He was as happy as ever when he’d found her, but he had seen in her eyes that she was not the same. She had suffered, when she thought he was gone, but then she’d managed to move on, and it was clear that she was having doubts as to whether it was a good idea to serve a walking corpse.

And how to blame her? His body was a mess. It was nothing like the magnificent artwork that he’d thrown off the cliff of Kandrakar. He had managed to restore it well enough to be recognized, but his limbs hurt with each movement, he couldn’t see colors and he had to use magic to make blood flow and muscles move. And the eyes… he just couldn’t stand the sight of them. Pale. Dull. Dead.

Who would ever want to admire such a dreadful sight? Who would see him as a God ever again? He needed his sister’s Light, and she had to give it to him willingly, to help him, or he would be trapped inside this broken body forever.

He realized that someone was in his rooms as soon as he opened the doors. He went to the parlor, ready to annihilate whoever had dared enter his quarters, and he let out a gasp when he recognized the figure.

Tall, handsome, wearing that wonderful golden robe that highlighted his magnificent purple eyes, his green tattoos all visible on his naked arms. He couldn’t see those colors, but he knew he was wearing that robe, just for him, and that he looked wonderful.

“Aster,” he breathed, taking in the sight of one of his favorite lovers from the brothel.

Aster beamed at him. “My Prince,” he said. “Naexi came to find me. She told me you were back and that you might use some distraction and-”

“Shhh,” Phobos hushed him, and he closed the distance between them. He had to take back all his previous thoughts about Naexi. Bless that girl, he thought.

Aster took his face between his palms. The look in his eyes was exactly what Phobos needed right now. Admiration. Desire. Even in front of those dead eyes. “I missed you, Your Majesty.”

The sound of someone clearing their voice behind him made Phobos freeze just before he could kiss Aster.

He let out a grunt as he recognized the presence behind him without even turning. “I could kill you for having entered my rooms like this. What do you want?”

“Oh, me?” Beléra answered. “Don’t mind me, I’m just enjoying the view.”

Phobos turned to see her. He was not surprised to see that she looked identical as the last time he’d met her. Creepy eyes, knowing grin, and that cloud of sparkling hair that certainly did not fit someone with such a black heart like her. “I’ll ask once again. What do you want? I’m already having enough of a bad day.”

That knowing smile widened. “Let me guess, Cedric betrayed you?”

Phobos did not answer. He debated whether incinerating her right now, or sending Aster away first. It would probably ruin the atmosphere if he’d murder someone in front of him before they even started - some of the men from the brothel seemed to enjoy such power displays, but Aster had always given him the impression of being a good person.

“You should have summoned me for the Council, instead of my mother,” Beléra went on. “She has a… soft spot for Cedric.”

Phobos frowned, cocking his head. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

Beléra blinked at him, as if she was surprised by the question. Then she shrugged. “Well, who doesn’t?”

Phobos narrowed his eyes. She was hiding something. He decided it was not important - he had more pressing matters to take care of, and the first one was the handsome man, who was standing behind him with a visible bulge under his robe and who was waiting for him to get rid of that vixen. “Was that it? You just wanted to come here and gloat because Cedric left me? Well done, I’ll spare your life if you leave at once.”

Beléra smiled gracefully and instead of heading to the door, she came forward in the parlor, approaching him with slow, deliberate confidence. “You see, not many missed you while you were gone, my old friend.”

Her eyes flicked toward Aster, then slid downward along his body in a glance that lingered just long enough. “He was definitely one of them. But everyone else?”

She turned to look at Phobos again and dared touch him, cupping his face with her palm and making him turn to look at her. “Your sister thrived on the ashes of your realm. Cedric was busy conquering the heart of his warrior. Even your dear Naexi had something better to do than cry for the Prince.”

Phobos’s gaze dropped to her lips. Those lips… they still looked identical to Cedric’s.

“But I…” she whispered, “I waited for your return. Everyone thought you were gone, but I never doubted you’d rise again. After all… You are a God.”

Those words made triumph burst in his chest. He didn’t like Beléra. He wasn’t attracted to her. But hearing those words… Validation. Admiration. Worship. He was suddenly hungry to hear more of those words coming that mouth that otherwise he would have preferred to stay shut.

Before he could gather his scattered thoughts, Beléra’s hand reached out to behind him, pulling Aster closer until the warmth of his body pressed hard against Phobos’s back. She leaned into him from the other side, pressing her body against him, caging him between the two of them. His body, as broken as it was, reacted instantly to their touch.

“You asked me what I want,” Beléra whispered against his mouth. “I want you, me and our handsome friend to celebrate. For old times’ sake.”

That celebration was worth every ache his broken body could endure.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15

Someone was in the prison. Phobos regrettably did not have a single thread of magic anymore, but he always knew when someone from the outside world entered his dimension. He lived in a sort of painting, where everything was utterly static and boring, and it was easy to feel the slight shift in the still life of his castle when someone who did not belong there came to see him. Usually, he understood who was about to appear in front of him before even seeing them. His sister was the easiest to anticipate, because her presence echoed with something inside him - if one could speak of an inside, since he didn’t really have a body anymore. He also understood when Naexi was coming, and when she was bringing company.

The presence he was feeling now, while he was in his beloved garden, taking care of his roses - if there was anything positive about this prison, it was that his roses never died - was yet a different one. He closed his eyes, focusing on the shifts in the energy surrounding him. He could feel someone’s Light coming closer. He knew that Light - it was familiar. He’d been close to that Light in the past - very close, in an intimate way. His first thought was Cedric, as this Light somehow reminded him of the shapeshifter, but Phobos would have recognized Cedric’s Light among millions. No, this was someone else, it had to be-

“What a lovely nest you have made yourself!” Beléra’s voice forced him to open his eyes.

His gaze landed on Beléra’s projection in front of him. He couldn’t say how much time had passed since their last encounter - it could have been days, months or an eternity - but he was not surprised to see that she always looked the same. Even her black dress seemed to be the same he remembered she was wearing when she’d visited him in Meridian. “The same dress twice? Is there a shortage of tailors in Hoel?”

She glanced down at her dress. “This? I think that’s just what you want to see. I never wear the same dress twice, you know that.”

Phobos snorted. “If this prison made me see only what I wanted, you wouldn’t be here at all. I can’t say I’ve been missing you.”

She grinned, coming closer to him. “Oh, really? I thought our last encounter left you with at least a fond memory of myself.”

Phobos grimaced, and turned to give his attention to his roses. “What do you want?”

Beléra came to stand next to him, looking at the roses as well. “Always asking what I want. Right now, I have almost everything I want. Your sister is right where I want her to be.”

He pretended to still focus on his roses, but a sudden feeling of dread expanded where he was supposed to have a chest. “Do you have anything to do with-”

“With the Blight?” Beléra chuckled. She took one of the roses between her fingertips. Phobos looked at her hand with disdain. How dared she touch his roses! “Of course I have something to do with it. I have tried to play by the rules, you know, after you forced me to call our engagement off. I tried to show to my mother that I could be the best Lady the castle will ever see. But my mother was never happy with anything I did. When I married Narbeth, I did everything I could to delay the arrival of a girl - I could not afford giving my mother a replacement for myself. I thought she was going to give up and retire, until…”

“Until you learned about Cedric,” Phobos completed the sentence for her. If there was anything that always made him relate to Beléra - enough to reluctantly consider her a friend - it was that they were both a constant disappointment for their mothers. He was a disappointment for the mere fact that he was a man, and when Weira was still alive, Phobos nurtured that disappointment by constantly worrying his mother - either by disappearing for entire nights and spending a fortune in a tavern, or by scaring her with the extent of his powers, or by walking the thin line of Rule 24 of the Code with Cedric. But at least, he knew why he was a disappointment for his mother.

Beléra, on the other hand, had no idea of what it was that made Alasse always ask more of her, until she learned that her mother had a prodigy kid, and it was not her. Learning that her brother was Cedric, the orphan shapeshifter who climbed the ranks of the Champions first, and then became the most powerful person in the whole planet after Phobos himself, must have been a hard blow for her. And even after Phobos’s first fall, Cedric had kept surprising Metamoor with his heroic deeds. It had to be hard to keep up with a brother, who was even able to defeat Kandrakar’s magic to unlock his own powers.

“When I learned that he was the model I had to stand up to, everything finally made sense,” she confirmed. “I had to do something, or my mother was going to start to consider changing the laws of Hoel to make him Lord of the castle.”

Phobos glanced down at her with an eyebrow raised. “And how is destroying your city with my Murmurer going to help your case?”

“The deaths were a… side effect. I did not plan to have people killed, I swear.”

Phobos chuckled and left her side, heading to the table in the center of the garden. “Too bad. It seems you still have a lot to learn before you can call yourself a villain.”

Beléra turned to follow him with her gaze, her fists clenched at her sides. “I’m not a villain. I only fight for what is my birthright.”

“So did I, my dear, and look where I am now,” he muttered as he took a seat. A glass of wine appeared from nowhere in his hand. With a wave of his other hand, he made another glass appear on the table, and he invited Beléra to sit. “How did you find my Murmurer?”

Beléra took a seat at the table, but did not touch the wine. “I found it by chance years ago.”

“Them. You found them by chance years ago,” Phobos corrected her.

“Fine. I understood they were your creation. They looked harmless and more plant than human, so I did not tell anyone about them, and went from time to time to talk to them, and to give them some water. I was honest when I told you that I missed you while you were gone, you know?”

Phobos couldn’t hold a faint smile. He didn’t care if Beléra was honest when saying that she’d been waiting for him to come back. But the fact that she took care of his neglected Murmurer made him respect her at least. “And then?”

“Then I learned about my brother, and after you were defeated, my mother accepted to keep you here, in Hoel. I had to do something, and your Murmurer was the key. All I needed was to prove to them that you were back. It only took a strand of hair and your creature went crazy.”

Phobos’s head snapped at her. “You touched my hair?!”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I touched much more than that when you were around.”

Beléra was right, of course, but the mere thought that anyone other than Naexi would touch his body when he was defenseless, or even see him while he was in that state… it made rage bubble inside him. He wished he had his magic back, so he could make her regret the outrageous breach into his personal space.

“How is all this going to make you Lady of Hoel?”

Beléra reached out to her glass and took a sip. She frowned slightly - she probably did not expect the wine to actually taste like real wine. “The original plan was to weaken the land. I promised your Murmurer to make your sister bring you back, and in exchange for that, they were going to give the Light back to the city, and I would take credit for it. The deaths were not planned, but I suppose they are a price that needed to be paid. If anything, the fact that people died and that my mother was not able to avoid it will only make her look worse and force her to give me the castle.”

Phobos sipped his wine, considering Beléra’s plan. There was something off - or maybe something missing. “Did you forget that part where your daughter is your mother’s favorite? Even I have heard of it from here.”

Beléra gave him a dazzling smile that did not promise anything good. “I have better plans for my daughter. I already told you once. If the Light of Meridian was to tragically perish before giving birth to a heiress… one would have to see if there’s another Escanor, who could inherit the crown. And then, everyone would get the title that belongs to them.”

Phobos stilled, letting Beléra’s words sink in. Another Escanor… He slowly put the glass back on the table, and did not look at her. He stared at the engraved decorations in the silver stem of the goblet. “How old is your daughter?”

He could feel Beléra’s black eyes on him, and he heard the grin in her voice. “How old do you think she is?”

Impossible. That was absolutely impossible. When they met last time, Phobos’s body was broken, only held together by magic. There was no way he could have sired a child.

“No way,” he blurted. “And you cannot prove it.”

“It’s your word against mine. And with one witness, just like when you threatened me to turn your maiden against me,” she said. “I’m pretty sure that Aster still remembers that night.”

Phobos bursted into laughter. He’d definitely underestimated that woman. “So let me get this straight. You tried to marry me so you could have your Escanor daughter - and it didn’t work out. You tried to get your spot as the Lady of Hoel with good manners, and it didn’t work out either. Then, you found my Murmurer and decided to use them to finally murder my sister while making your mother look like an incompetent fool for having let my creation destroy Hoel. And you used me just at the right time so you could have your girl, or at least make it look like she’s mine, so she could take my sister’s place and leave the Lady’s spot to you.  Where’s my role in all this? Why are you even here, wasting my time?”

Beléra gulped down the rest of her wine and stood up. She went towards him and leaned forward, her hands on each armrest, just like she’d done that day, many years before, in Hoel. “Your sister is fool enough to revive you. I know it. You know it. My mother knows it. The only one who’s going to be surprised is your dear Cedric, whose mind is too hazed by hormones these days - I made sure of that. All I ask of you is to do nothing. When the Queen  brings you back, just don’t do anything, and the Blight will take care of everything. It will remain loyal to you, and it will not touch me and Alès. It promised.”

“They! They promised,” Phobos corrected her again in a snarl.

“Whatever. Just stay out of it, and Alès will become the Light of Meridian. She will restore your body completely, and you will be her only guide in Meridian. Her First Advisor. You will have uncontested power, and I will become Lady of Hoel. I won’t stand in your way, and you will always have Hoel’s vote for anything you’ll propose to the Council.”

Phobos held her gaze first, studying those eerie eyes and her black irises that were now expanding, slowly covering her whites. Such a remarkable ability, yet one that Beléra was not able to master as well as her mother did. All Beléra could do with those eyes was look creepy and predict some events, like the weather and who was going to pay a visit to their castle. Alasse, on the other hand, could make one regret the day they were born by making them drown in their own fears.

Beléra’s proposal was nothing new - she’d already mentioned the option of murdering his sister and putting her - their? - daughter on the throne. Back then, Phobos had other ambitions for himself, and none of these involved his offspring. He thought he could still be something more than just a seed donor, that he could be respected for his talents and for who he was beyond the mere ability of generating children. Now, things were different. He had tried so many times to prevail, to show that he mattered, both in a good and in an evil way. And he had always lost.

He’d come to terms with it, after so much time spent in the prison, alone with his thoughts. Understanding that there were people who loved him nevertheless, like his sister and his maiden, had helped bury the hatchet and realize that there was a way for him to be serene - happy was too much of a stretch. And now that witch came to disrupt his serenity with a proposal that today looked way more appealing than when he was overwhelmed by his ambitions.

“So, are you in or not?” Beléra pulled him out of his thoughts.

What if that girl is really my daughter?, he thought.

He needed to see her. He was sure he would understand immediately if the girl was his - if not by her looks, he would feel it through her Light. If what Beléra claimed was true, nothing would stand in the way between him and the palace. He would be  First Advisor, and the girl would be completely in his hands. He would need to think about what to do with a certain Commander, but Cedric would still be bound to the new Light of Meridian, and if Phobos had control on the girl, then he had control on Cedric as well.

He could have all this - a rightful position of power and a talented Commander - and all he had to do was allow the murder of his sister…

Phobos did not expect the feeling that washed over him at the thought of his sister. Wrong. He felt it was wrong, to murder Elyon.

He chased that feeling away. This was not the time to have a moral fiber. He matched Beléra’s grin with an equally vicious smile.

Beléra’s image faltered before he could speak. Her eyes widened, and then her face was distorted in a frown, and then in pain. Phobos reached out with a hand - knowing that it was pointless - and ended up grabbing the air in front of him.

Beléra was gone, and he was alone with his roses again.

Cedric was glad that Aymon and Zharel had followed them when they ran to the room where Alasse was keeping Phobos, because as soon as they’d opened the door, he lost the ability to move. He was frozen right after the doorstep, incapable of speaking and of moving his legs, and he watched in astonishment while Elyon sent Beléra to clash against the wall with a flick of her wrist, interrupting Beléra’s connection with the body inside the glass coffin.

Two guards, who Alasse had picked up on the way to the room, were now holding Beléra still, waiting for her senses to come back, while Aymon and Zharel were flanking the Queen, who was now leaning on the casket and checking that the body was still there and unmoving.

Cedric felt a wave of nausea coming up at the sight of the body in the casket. He’d visited Phobos many times in the last few years, in the alternate dimension where he lived. He had accepted that he was still alive, and had even acknowledged that he was showing some progress in becoming less of an asshole and more of a decent being. But seeing his body… it made the whole thing real, but in a twisted way.

The Prince’s body was lying in a glass coffin decorated in silver vines - of course, these were thorny vines nested with roses. Inside the coffin, he was lying on a purple velvet cushion, and he was wearing one of his brocade robes. The body, however, showed the signs of having spent almost nine years in a coma. From Cedric’s position, he could see that Phobos was extremely thin, the bones of his skull were sharp and his hands resting on his stomach were skeletal. He could see a full red beard covering the hollow of his cheeks.

“How could she do this to me…” Alasse murmured, next to Cedric, forcing him to stop staring at Phobos’s shell.

A movement of Beléra’s head told them that she was coming back. Alasse was at her throat in a second. “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME!” she snarled as soon as her daughter opened her eyes. The room started to darken.

Beléra’s eyes widened in shock, but only for a moment - then they hardened and she looked at her mother in defiance. “She’s his daughter. He had to know!”

“Liar!” Alasse growled, and the darkness pressed in. The old and new fears started to overwhelm Cedric’s mind.

What if Orube doesn’t come back…

“It’s the truth! She’s not Narbeth’s.”

What if I can’t protect the Queen…

“Enough, Alasse!” Elyon’s voice thundered in the room. The darkness dissipated immediately and everyone turned to look at the Queen.

Elyon advanced towards Beléra, her head held high, and her eyes unforgiving. “You should have known that I can see everything that happens in that prison.”

“Then you can confirm that what I say is true,” Beléra said. Cedric’s bond made his fists prickle with the need of attacking her for the defiant tone she’d used with the Queen.

“I can confirm that you are conspiring against the Crown, and that you are trying to take my brother with you,” Elyon said, her tone grave. “You will be given a fair trial, but I cannot take the risk of having you around in such a delicate moment.”

Elyon raised her hand and two beams of Light hit Beléra before she could even move. The two beams each went to one of her wrists. Beléra gasped at the touch with the two luminous discs. “My magic…”

She looked around in the room with wide eyes, blinked once, twice, three times… Cedric couldn’t help but feel a hint of compassion. He knew what she was feeling. He knew what she was seeing. He would never forget the suffocating feeling of having his magic locked and how the world lost its colors when it happened.

“Take her away,” Elyon ordered the two guards.

A stunned silence remained in the room after Beléra was taken away.

“Is it true?” Alasse asked her after a while. She looked at the coffin. “Is Alès… his?”

Elyon glanced at Phobos as well. “I don’t know. She could be. But that’s something to be addressed later. We have to get him ready.”

Finally, Cedric found his voice again. “My Queen… Are you still planning to bring him back? What if he-”

“He won’t,” Elyon cut him off. “And in any case, what’s the alternative? I have no power over that creature. He’s the only one who does. I’ll bring my brother back - and that’s not up for debate.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 16

There were aspects of his job as Commander that Cedric did not like. There was paperwork - so much paperwork. There were decisions to be made that only seemed to exist to waste his time, like approving the expenses for the mallow vinegar they used to polish the armors, or signing the request to the kitchens for the food rations the Champions and the apprentices had the right to during their duties. 

Yet Cedric was glad to do all this. They were part of a much bigger picture - a picture he liked a lot. 

But there was one thing he really detested, and it was having to tolerate the Guardians while he was doing his job of guarding the Queen’s rooms. 

The Queen had retired in her guest rooms with Caleb, and Cedric, Nerel and Vala had taken the first shift to guard her door. Instead of doing the same and retiring to their guest rooms, the five Guardians had decided to take this as an occasion for pestering their favorite lizard, as they had declared earlier. And since they were the Queen’s guests, Cedric could do nothing but clench his teeth and tolerate their presence and their constant chatter.

Looking at them, though, Cedric knew that they were still scared by what had happened in the mountains, and they were having doubts as to what Elyon was about to do the next day. 

After the turmoil with Beléra, Orube and the Guardians had come back from their mission running and panicking, and had told them what happened in the mountains. It was unsettling to know that the Murmurer had transformed into a real monster, and the fact that Annihilators rose from his leaves and vines only made Cedric hope that this ordeal would be over as soon as possible. 

And we have to rely on Phobos for this… he thought, shuddering. He was sure that the Guardians were having the same doubts. He looked at them, as they were sitting on padded chairs disposed around small glass tables in a corner of the halls outside the Queen’s guest rooms. Cedric and the Champions were sitting on marble benches closer to the doors, but they could hear their voices all too well. 

“This place looks like the Addams family house,” Irma was saying, looking around in the halls decorated with the same taste as everywhere else in the castle - skulls- and roses-heavy statues, chandeliers, unsettling paintings and climbing plants that looked as if ready to detach from the wall and strangle the first person who dared coming too close. 

“Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that it belongs to Cedric’s family,” Cornelia commented. 

Hay Lin glanced at Cedric from the corner where she was sitting. “Yeah, it explains a lot.”

Next to Cedric, Nerel leaned to her other side to whisper to Vala, “My English is not very good - but are they mocking the Commander?”

“I thought we were the only ones allowed to do that,” Vala whispered back. 

Cedric turned to look at both of them with a frown. “For the record, if there is anyone who is not allowed to make fun of me, that’s you. But I’m very generous, so I close an eye on it.”

“Are you talking about us?” Irma asked in their direction. 

Cedric almost bared his teeth in a snarl. “Yes, they were saying you’re very disrespectful, and I told them it’s the price to pay when the Oracle deems it appropriate to pick his Guardians among human teenagers.”

“Hey! We’re not teenagers anymore, one of us is getting married!” Will protested. The others echoed her words with a series of outraged remarks. 

Cedric threw his hands up in the air in frustration. “Is anyone ever going to tell me which one of you has found someone crazy enough to marry her?” 

The five humans gasped in unison, looking at each other in disbelief. “You were even invited! And you sent the participation letter back with your signature.”

Cedric pinched the bridge of his nose with his index and thumb. “I already told Orube - I sign a lot of stuff, it doesn’t mean I read it.”

“Well, that’s not true, Commander,” Nerel intervened, speaking Metamoor. “The stuff you sign is written by yourself.”

He was just about to retort and ask his Vice if she was on his side or not, when Cornelia’s next remark made blood freeze in his veins. “I think he forgot, because we’re Orube’s friends and therefore we don’t matter.”

Cedric’s head turned to the Guardians again in a snap. “What did you just say?!”

The Earth Guardian crossed her arms in front of her chest, sinking back in her chair and looking at him with disdain. “Oh come on, lizard man. Do you really think we don’t know what’s going on between you two? I don’t even know why she’s still with you.”

Before he could even realize he’d done it, Cedric found himself standing and crossing the space between the bench and the chairs where the Guardians were sitting. Cornelia scanned him from head to toe with defiance as he towered over her. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about, human girl.”

“You can bet I do, scale face. I’d keep my eyes open if I were you - she’s a beautiful woman and deserves better than being forgotten by her husband. I’m sure there’s a queue of men from various worlds waiting for her to open her eyes.”

Cedric’s hand reacted without him giving it a command, and a green beam was glowing around it, ready to hit the Guardian like in old times. Cornelia jumped to her feet and her hands beamed as well. 

The others stood up as well and ran to block her. “Cornelia, calm down!”

Cornelia’s head snapped at Taranee, who had spoken. “Why should I? He’s doing exactly what my dad did to my mom. Taking his wife for granted.”

Both their beams crackled around their hands. “Mind your business, Guardian,” Cedric growled, and was not surprised to hear himself talking in the naga’s voice. That people were gossiping in Meridian was one thing. But the human Guardians daring to reprimand him and judge his marriage? No way. Perhaps he’d gone too soft with them over the years, and he was looking forward to giving them a reminder of the monster behind his mask. 

Cornelia made a movement as if to strike, but Taranee put her hand on hers, neutralizing her magic with her fire. Cedric was just about to take the chance to hit her with his beam, when four hands grabbed him by the arms, pulling him back. 

“We’re here to guard the Queen’s rooms, Commander,” Nerel said to his ear, “not to wage war against Earth in front of her door.”

Nerel’s words somehow managed to make him turn off his beams and call back his scales that were starting to change his appearance, starting from his fangs. 

He forced himself to take a breath, clenching his teeth and swallowing a burst of old rage against his old enemies. 

It’s not worth it, he told himself. With the Guardians, it’s never worth it.

As he kept talking himself out of incinerating the five brats, the Guardians were walking away from him, carrying Cornelia with them. She seemed to have calmed down as well, the only residual sign of hostility being Irma, who turned to look at him once while they were walking away, and made a gesture with her fingers, indicating her own eyes and then him as if to tell him I’m keeping an eye on you. 

“What the hell was that?” Vala asked when the Guardians were out of earshot. 

Cedric passed his hands on his face, trying to recompose himself. “The Guardians and I… we have history.”

“We know, we did not grow up in a cave,” said Nerel. “But this is not about nostalgia for the past, right?”

“No, it’s not,” he muttered as he turned and headed back to the benches. “Come, we still have two hours in our shift.”

Two hours… What always felt like a very short time in his shifts, now felt like an eternity. Two hours with nothing to do other than thinking about how he’d almost turned into the naga and attacked Cornelia, who had done nothing but told him the truth - something so blatant that even five women, who lived at the other side of the universe, could see. 

Two hours to think about how he could have chosen to skip this evening’s guard and leave it to his Champions, and yet he’d chosen the armor once again over his wife, even after she’d come back from a mission where she’d risked her life.

The city outside the large windows of the reception room looked as if it was asleep. Even from afar, though, it did not look like a serene night of sleep. It looked like a grieving slumber, as if the city was quiet and empty because it had lost hope and now lived in fear. 

Orube could not blame the city of Hoel if people were scared. After what she’d seen earlier that day, they had all the right to be scared. 

The luminous wall was a beautiful and at the same time unsettling spectacle. It was impressive to see the length of the distance they’d managed to cover - a distance that now Orube felt in the muscles of her arms, her core, and her legs, as if she had trained too much. 

“You could have told us that you were training with magic,” Maut’s words seemed to catch her red-handed right when she was thinking about the consequences of using her magic. 

Orube looked down at her hands on the window sill. “I didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to tell Cedric first. Magic is something we have in common, and I wanted it to be a surprise when I felt ready to use it. I… I didn’t think I’d have to use it to save his life.”

Shoshan came to stand at her other side in front of the window. “How have things been here?”

Orube looked at the luminous wall again. “Amazing. Except the part where he almost died. But before that, it was just the two of us, and it was again… well, us.” She turned to look at her sister. “Don’t you ever feel like you need to be just you two, with Rehu?”

Maut shrugged. “Rehu is Head Master, and I’m just a General. Neither of us has a position that has to be put above everything else. It’s not as erratic as being Grand Master.” She inhaled a sharp breath as she pronounced the words, and glanced at Shoshan over Orube’s shoulder. “Sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Shoshan waved her words away with her hand. “I know what I’d be getting into. Good that it’s not going to happen, I guess.”

“Where is he, by the way?” Orube asked, glancing around in the reception room. “I barely spoke with him today.”

“He’s with the Kyalvaas, he’s…” Maut hummed, searching for the words. “Well, he’s spending a lot of time meditating with him, lately.”

In the corner of her eye, Orube saw Shoshan’s ears twitch and a splash of red tinting her cheeks. She frowned, looking at her sister again. “Is there something I don’t know about? He’s never been the meditation type.”

Maut sighed and glanced at the ceiling. “If you ask me, the reason why he’s so restless that he has to meditate is standing right next to you.”

Shoshan waved Maut’s words away with her hand, and turned to walk away from the window. “He’s probably just under stress. He left Basiliade without much time for a warning - he’s likely just worried about all the things he left behind and that he should be taking care of.”

Maut scoffed, a clear sign that she disagreed. Orube cold empathize with Shoshan, though - she would say the same if it was Cedric. 

“Would you be happier if Cedric resigned?” Shoshan asked from a few steps behind her. Orube turned to see her while she was studying the intricate swirls on a marble column. 

She took a deep breath before answering. The answer was not the same as it would have been until a few days ago. “I thought I would be. But when I see him doing what he does… I would never want to take it away from him. He worked so hard to be where he is now.” She walked away from the window as well, pacing in the room and looking at the decorations - the paintings, the statues, the flowers. “The three of us all come from families with at least one Master. I’m not saying that we are not good or don’t deserve the position we have,  but our paths were laid out for us.” She stopped in front of a vase from which a thorny bush of silver roses formed an intricate path of twists and swirls, and she took one of the roses between her fingers. She’d never seen silver roses before. “He comes from nothing - even if his mother is the Lady of this castle, and she made sure he’d be found in the orphanage, he had to work all his way up to where he is today.” She turned to look at Maut and Shoshan again. “Did you know that nobody had ever become Commander without being an Escanor or coming from a noble family? Alborn was one of the few non-Escanors to be made Commander, but his father was the General in Brandis and uncle of the previous Lord of Brandis. Before him, Weira’s brother had been Commander for almost a century.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Maut. 

“I’ve been doing some research. I wanted to understand more about what it means, to be him. So I went to the scribes a while ago and asked to help me find the records about the Champions. I found out that he’s the first one to have become Commander without it having been printed on his forehead since he was a child. And that’s only because he’s too good at it - so good that it didn’t matter for Elyon that he was nobody and that he’d made mistakes in the past. That must mean something, right?”

The look that Maut gave her was a mixture of sympathy and worry. “It doesn’t mean that you should be unhappy in your marriage.”

Orube sighed. “I know. We’ll figure it out.” 

Of course, Maut was right. When she’d gone to the scribes a while ago, she had not put the information she’d learned into perspective. She had only acknowledged that the position of a Commander was historically reserved for Escanor men - the last two having been Weira’s brother, Prince Reunan Escanor, and her son, Prince Phobos Escanor. Back then, she was so annoyed by the whole situation that her first thought was that this was only one more good reason for him to resign and throw the armor outside the window. 

Now, after the last few days… she was not so sure anymore. She had seen what it meant, when the Champions were not only the Queen’s shadows while she was safely wandering in her own castle, but they were actually protecting her with their bodies and with their magic. She’d seen how he coordinated the others so they could move like one single body, and how the others looked at him with respect and admiration. 

She was not sure anymore that taking it away from him was the right thing to do. 

As neither her nor Maut and Shoshan felt like going to sleep, they later decided to walk around in the palace for a while. Orube was just as lost as they were, so they spent probably an hour wandering in the creepy halls and getting jump-scared every time they turned a corner and they found a statue of a knight with a helm that looked like a skull. 

They found the Guardians in the corner of yet another reception room, and they did not look happy. They were sitting on the floor around a very upset Cornelia, and at Orube’s request for an explanation, they insisted everything was fine, making her understand that it was not the right time to join the conversation. 

“What do you think was wrong with them?” asked Shoshan after they’d reprised walking the eerie halls of the castle. 

Orube shrugged. “I don’t know, but one of them is about to get married and humans tend to freak out when they’re close to their wedding. They probably had an argument with each other.”

“Is it the blonde one?” asked Maut. “The one who gets married?”

“No, actually it’s-”

Orube’s words died in her throat when she realized where they were ending up. In front of them, was the entry hall to the Queen’s guest rooms, and close to the Queen’s door, Nerel and Vala were sitting next to Cedric, who looked exactly as upset as Cornelia. 

“Do you have anything to do with why the Guardians look as if the Oracle had just told them to work some extra time?” Orube asked when she was close enough. 

Cedric jolted at the sound of her voice. Nerel and Vala looked at each other with wide eyes. He stood up and went towards Orube, a tight smile painted on his face. “Hey… Well, you know - if I spend too much time in the same room as the Guardians, some… divergence of opinions will be inevitable. Just the usual, nothing to worry about.”

He took her hand as they walked towards a corner with some padded chairs and low tables. 

“Where’s your brother?” he asked, and Orube knew he was just trying to change the topic. 

“Meditating.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Meditating? Are we talking about the same person?”

Orube shrugged, taking a seat. Maut and Shoshan did the same. “Apparently, that’s what he does now.”

She studied Cedric as he, too, took a seat on the chair next to her. Each of his movements looked forcibly natural, and his smile also looked artificial. He was definitely wearing a mask - one that could fool everyone else, but not Orube. 

Something must have happened with the Guardians - something much more personal than their usual bickering about his scales and their wings that did not work - and Orube suspected that it had something to do with her, since the girls had brought up the subject of their relationship earlier that day. Maybe they had called him out for always choosing the armor over her. 

And again, Orube found herself acknowledging that until a few days ago, she would have appreciated it. Even agreed with it. She would have thought he deserved being called out. 

Today, she did not feel like he deserved it. She was annoyed by how he’d put his own dog leash back around his neck even after the way Elyon had treated him. But now, she couldn’t help seeing that he deserved to wear that armor with the blue and purple spaulders - he deserved all the prestige that came with it, the money, the decisional power. She understood it now - she didn’t need or even want him to leave everything behind for her. All they had to do was to meet halfway, and for that, she was willing to take the first step. 

“Is… everything alright?” Cedric asked her after a while, switching to English. “Why are you here this late, by the way?”

Orube reached out to take his hand again. “Well… Maybe you could use some more company during your shift. You always say it’s deadly boring. And you know us, we don’t sleep much.”

Cedric squeezed her hand in return, and Orube’s heart leapt as she saw the relief wash away the mask he’d been wearing on his face. 

A first step to meet halfway, she thought. 

Orube, Shoshan and Maut stayed with the Champions for the rest of their shift, until Rhes and Zharel came to take their places. 

Naexi was with them when they arrived. “What are you doing here?” Cedric inquired. 

Naexi lifted her chin and looked at him with the usual defiance. “The Queen sent me to prepare him. I’m here to tell her that he’s ready.”

“But the Queen already retired, she’s-”

“Thank you, Naexi,” Elyon’s voice made everyone turn to look at the door of her room. Elyon was standing on the doorway, flanked by Caleb. She was holding a globe in her hand - one similar to the device the Champions used to contact her. Orube didn’t know she had one for her maidens, too, but it made sense. 

“How is he?” the Queen asked. 

“All in one piece, my Queen,” Naexi said. “But likely very weak. And his leg… he was limping already when he came back - now he will need a cane to walk, and he won’t like it.”

“He won’t like anythig about this.” Elyon seemed to inhale a deep breath, straightening her posture. “Get some rest,” she said, looking at Orube, Shoshan and Maut, and at the three leaving Champions. “We don’t know for how long the wall will hold. At first light, we’ll wake up my brother.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 17

At dawn of the next day, when Cedric found himself with his boots half-buried in the snow, standing in front of the luminous wall that the Guardians and Orube had created the day before, he knew he had to give up the hope that the Queen would ever listen to his opinion on this matter.

He disagreed with nearly everything she had done in the last couple of days. He disagreed that coming to Hoel in person was a good idea in the first place. He’d been strongly against Elyon’s decision to come to the mountain and face the Blight two days ago. He was absolutely horrified by the mere idea of bringing Phobos back, especially knowing that he’d been speaking with Beléra - and the Gods knew what kind of ideas his ex-fiancée had been able to put in his mind, especially if it was true that Alès was his daughter.

And most of all, he thought that moving the whole group, including the Queen and the coffin where Phobos was resting, right in front of the wall was a terrible, terrible, idea.

But no matter how many times Cedric had told the Queen that they should wait until Phobos was awake, Elyon had been adamant that it was better for them to go towards the Blight, rather than waiting for the Blight to eat up that wall and cross the city to reunite with his Master.

We have created the problem, and we will solve it. The city must stay out of it, Elyon had said.

As Alasse seemed to agree, and neither Caleb nor the Basiliadeans and the Guardians had protested, Cedric could do nothing but accept that they had to walk directly into the lion’s den and hope that it wouldn’t bite.

The guards who had accompanied them moved Phobos’s coffin where the Queen had indicated, as far away as they could from the wall, while still being in sight of the Basiliadeans and the Guardians who were supposed to be on the front line.

Naexi was with her - yet another terrible idea. Not that Cedric cared about Naexi’s safety at all, of course, but exposing her to such a danger just so that Phobos wouldn’t freak out as soon as he opened his eyes…

Well, actually it’s not such a terrible idea, he thought, as with his gaze he followed the Queen and Naexi, both wrapped from head to toe with a dark blue cloak, while they approached the coffin and kneeled in the snow next to it.

The last thing we need is Phobos to freak out and lose it… again.

He moved on to look at the guards, who were now taking their position surrounding Alasse. He recognized the three, who had accompanied him on the first day in the mountains.

That’s definitely some real commitment.

If they survived, they probably deserved a medal or at least a promotion.

Caleb and his soldiers took their positions as Cedric had agreed with him - just outside the compact barrier formed by the Champions in front of the Queen. And further away, closer to the wall, Acheri, Shoshan and Maut were standing with their weapons drawn, while the Guardians, Orube and Chefren were forming a front line closer to the wall.

Something burned in Cedric’s chest as his gaze lingered on Orube in that front line. He recognized it now as the bond that connected him to her, giving him a nudge to tell him that its other end was in danger. But his other bond prickled as well, planting his feet to the snowy ground right where he was standing, because the Queen of Meridian was in the greatest danger - in the middle between a creature that wanted to absorb her Light, and the fool who had created that monster.

Cedric glanced over his shoulder at the Queen and Naexi, both kneeling over Phobos’s coffin. Naexi was giving him her back, while he could see Elyon’s face and her eyes rolled back inside her head. She’d already connected with her brother, then, and the Gods knew how long it would take her to grasp his soul and bring it back to his body.

“Should we open the shields, Commander?” Rhes asked next to him.

Cedric surveyed once again each group in their positions, and shot a glance at the wall and at what he could see behind it. Everything was unmoving, as frozen as the ground under his boots.

“Not yet. We should save our Light for when that monster shows up. Our shields won’t do much against them, but at least they’ll give them something else to feed on.”

The silence of his Champions filled his heart with pride and sorrow at the same time. He was proud of how they were not protesting against the idea of sacrificing their Lights and, likely, their lives to protect the Queen. They knew this was what they signed up for. But it broke his heart that six valuable warriors would perish like this, so young, and all because of a mess that Phobos had created.

As time passed by and everything remained still, the cold prevailed on every other feeling and sensation. It became more and more difficult to stay focused on every single sign of movement behind the wall, when he couldn’t feel his hands and his legs anymore. He certainly did not envy the Guardians and their ridiculous uniforms.

He looked back at the Queen from time to time. She was still in a trance, unmoving. He wondered if she was freezing too, or if she couldn’t feel the cold. Naexi was always kneeling next to the Prince, holding his skeletal hand. She had braided his hair with rings in the usual way, and changed his robe and headpiece into a black one, but had not shaved his full beard. It was weird, seeing Phobos wearing black. The only time he’d seen him in a black robe was when Weira died and everything started to go downhill. Hopefully this was not a sign that things would soon go downhill again.

As the mountains behind the wall remained silent, hope started to bloom in his chest. Elyon could not be that far away from completing the transfer of Phobos’s soul back into his body, and maybe… maybe they could get out of this without anyone getting hurt. He looked at the front line again, at the Basiliadeans all standing like statues, while the Guardians showed signs of suffering from the cold.

How he looked forward to going back home with Orube, and working on starting a new chapter in their lives! One where they could meet halfway, where he would find a balance between what he had to do and what he wanted to do. She had taken the first step - he’d understood it immediately the night before, when she’d taken his hand and told him she’d stay there to keep him company during the night shift. It had never happened before, and it meant everything to him, that she was willing to be part of this aspect of his life.

His heart burst with love for that woman, and his bond with her pulled him towards her, to grab her and bring her far away from that wall, but the other bond had started to pull him back now, towards the Queen, as if the danger was getting closer and closer as Phobos’s soul was crawling its way back into his body in the real world.

Of course the danger was closer… and it did not lie with the creature that was hiding behind the wall - no, it lay with the skeletal man resting inside that coffin. Waking him up was a terrible idea, and Cedric blamed himself for having been so blind during his stay in Hoel. It was obvious that Beléra was behind all this. Beléra - Phobos’s former betrothed, the one who had managed to manipulate him, to lure him into her bed and conceive a child she could put on the throne… She had likely manipulated him even now - Cedric could imagine what she had promised him: his daughter on the throne, and him as First Advisor. Perhaps she had even promised him the leash around Cedric’s neck - after all, if Elyon died and Alès was the last girl in the Escanor line, the reins of his bond would simply pass on to her and to her puppeteer.

Great, all these years trying to erase the public enemy label from my forehead, only to circle back to-

Suddenly, the ground under his feet shifted, and everyone around him lost balance too. A loud rumble broke the eerie silence of the mountains.

“What’s that?” one of the Champions asked. Beams lit up in the palms of those standing next to him.

Cedric looked up at the wall and then beyond it, at the mountains. As soon as the rumble quieted down and the ground stopped shaking, everything was as still as before.

He raised a hand to halt the Champions. “Keep the lights off, guys,” he said. “We have to save them for as long as possible.”

“Is everything clear?” Caleb asked to the line in front of the wall. The former General and his soldiers were forming a line in front of the Champions, as a second level of protection for the Queen. In front of them were Alasse and her guards, then the three Basiliadean warriors, and finally the Guardians, Orube and Chefren - the only ones who could actually do anything against the Blight.

“We didn’t see anything move beyond the wall,” came Hay Lin’s answer. “Maybe it was the snow in the mountai-”

Hay Lin’s words were covered by another rumble, this time louder, and another shake of the ground.

Cedric glanced at the Queen behind him. She was still unmoving, like her brother. Naexi turned to look at him with terror in her black eyes. “What’s happening?”

“We don’t know,” Cedric shouted above the noise, “but you’ll be safe.”

Of course she wouldn’t - if this was the Blight, none of them was safe.

It was only when he turned to look ahead of him again that he noticed it.

At first, it was just a flicker, and he thought he’d imagined it. But then he looked down and he saw it.

His eyes widened with dread as he realized he was looking at a green strand of Light, flashing away from the sole of his boots and flowing through the snow, towards the wall.

“No…” he murmured.

“Our Lights!” Nerel cried next to him.

That’s how it starts, then, he thought. The idea of having his magic taken away again made him want to burn the world down to ashes, but the bond with the Queen did not leave him any choice.

“Shields!” he ordered to his companions. “If that thing wants the Light of Meridian, they will have to go through all of us first.”

That’s the most stupid thing you ever did, a voice inside him sneered. Take Orube and run away from here…

He shook his head and instead opened his shield, which merged with the others in forming a shell that surrounded them and the Queen.

Even if I wanted to flee, Orube will not allow it - it would dishonor her in front of the other Masters.

Caleb gave the same order to his soldiers and they opened a shield as well. Soldiers only received a very basic training with magic, and their shields were as thin as paper as compared to the impenetrable globes that the Champions formed around the Queen, but at least they’d give the Blight something more to attack before getting to the Light of Meridian.

Alasse’s shield was a wonder to look at. It was white and sparkling, but what was really stunning was that she alone was able to create a barrier that would cover all of them, from her position on the front to where the Queen was kneeling on the ground in the back.

Another shake made all of them stagger to keep their balance.

This time, they also heard a loud bang, as if someone was hitting something hard with a hammer. Cedric tried to ignore the luminous threads that started to wave in the air detaching from the surface of their shield, as if attracted by something beyond the wall. This was not the right time to think about their magic being absorbed, or he would panic.

He focused his attention on the wall instead. Another blow, and another shake in the ground. A colorful barrier appeared between the first line and the wall - this was the Guardians’ doing.

“What are we going to do if the thing gets past them?” Vala asked, voicing Cedric’s fears.

“We fight,” came Nerel’s answer. “Rule one of our Code - we protect the Queen, no matter the cost. Right, Commander?”

Cedric’s eyes were fixed on Orube on the first line. She was adding her own orange threads of magic to the Guardians’ barrier.

We protect the Queen, no matter the cost.

What if the cost was Orube?

“Commander?”

Cedric shook himself. “Yeah. No matter the cost…”

“Are you alright, Commander?” Rhes asked him from his other side, his voice low.

“Our shields are starting to evaporate, the Queen is lost in some limbo with her brother’s soul and my wife is directly in front to a wall that is about to be torn into pieces by said brother’s minion - never been better.”

He felt Rhes’s free hand on his spaulder, and turned to look at him. His third in command gave him an encouraging smile.

“Master Orube is tough,” Rhes said. “The Blight is going to piss itself from fear when it will come out and finds her there.”

His words made Cedric almost give in to a smile. “I hope you’re ri-”

Another deafening blow made them both turn to look at the wall again.

“I guess we’ll find out now,” Nerel commented, as they all looked at a breach that cracked the wall in two.

It was not the Blight to come through the breach, though, but a hoard of what looked like Annihilators without cloaks.

“Those must be the creatures that grow from its leaves and branches when they touch the ground,” said Aymon.

“They look much weaker than our Annihilators,” Zharel commented.

“Yeah, but they are still too many…” Cedric murmured as he lost count of the creatures that came out and ran against them.

The Basiliadeans behind the first line took a fighting stance. “I see we’re up for another round with these things!” Cedric heard Shoshan say.

“Try not to make me have a heart attack this time, alright?” Acheri shouted at her above another rumble.

Master…

The whisper that cut the air next to Cedric’s ears made him wince.

It was echoed by tens of other whispers repeating Master… he’s near!, while in front of him, the Guardians and all the Basiliadeans fought against the Annihilators. They were soon joined by Alasse’s guards, while she still held her shield up.

Cedric looked at the Queen once again. No changes.

“You’ll have to keep the shields up for a while longer!” Caleb’s voice made his head snap in his direction. It was his voice, but the accent was unmistakable and it was not his - it was Elyon’s accent. Caleb was turning his back to the fight between them and the wall, and his eyes were rolled back into his head. “His soul is still too far away - I need some more time.”

When Caleb’s irises came back, he looked confused for a moment, but then he shouted, “Did you hear the Queen? We have to hold on for a little longer!” and then he turned again to face the battle and to hold up the soldiers’ shield.

“That was damn creepy,” Jezil commented.

Cedric barely listened to the others’ comments, his attention divided into too many things at once. The light threads were still flowing away from their blue shield, but it still looked as sturdy as it was supposed to be. The soldiers’ and Alasse’s shields were also still intact, although Alasse was giving signs of exhaustion. Beyond them, the Guardians and the Basiliadeans were getting rid of Annihilators one after the other with ease, but there were more and more creatures coming from the other side of the wall.

An unsettling crack made panic flush through Cedric’s body. He immediately scanned their blue shield to see if something had hit it.

“That’s the Lady’s shield!” Vala shouted.

Two thorny vines had lashed out from beyond the breach in the wall and had now pierced Alasse’s shield - their tips now pointing at them from each of her side, one missing her by just a few inches.

Go away… Cedric thought, looking at his mother. From the two points where the vines had pierced the shield, cracks were expanding and forming a network of fractures, as if ripping through glass. But Alasse didn’t move and a flash of white light beamed from her hands, repairing some of those cracks.

Please, run away…

A third vine lashed out from beyond the wall, this time aiming directly at her. The Guardians and the Basiliadeans were too busy with the hoard of Annihilators coming from all directions, while the soldiers and the Champions could not leave their post.

Cedric felt powerless. He could only look at his mother, knowing that this vine would not miss her.

The horrible sound of flesh being cut through made him close his eyes for a moment. Then he heard a gasped cry, and the sound of glass shattering in a million pieces.

He reopened his eyes when he felt somewhat ready to see his mother pierced by that deadly vine, but-

She was still standing, still whole, with her palms still up, although the shield had broken.

The tip of the vine that was destined to her was at mere inches from her chest, from what Cedric could see, but a dark cloaked figure was standing in front of her, passed from side to side by it.

Cedric couldn’t see who had taken the blow for her, only recognizing the dark cloak as one of her guards’. The vines fell on the ground with a loud thud as Acheri and Maut cut them with their blades.

The guard who had taken the blow fell with the vine that had hit him, and Alasse tried to catch him, falling to her knees in the process. As she shifted to the side and freed the view for Cedric to see what was happening, he realized it was the youngest guard who had accompanied him on the first day - the one who was staring at him and Orube the whole time.

The young guard raised his hand to touch Alasse’s face. That was quite a bold move - even on one’s death bed.

But Alasse’s gasp made something feel off. And when she turned to look behind her back - directly to him - his stomach churned.

As new Annihilators approached them, Alasse and another guard quickly lifted the young guard up to his feet, and they headed back towards the soldiers’ shield.

“Let me through!” Alasse thundered, and the soldiers did not need to hear it twice. They opened a breach in their shields to let the three pass, and they guided the young guard, who was now spitting blood from his mouth, towards the back.

As they passed in front of the Champions, the young guard managed to lift his gaze towards Cedric.

“No…” Cedric murmured, as he met the guard’s eyes.

Not the purple eyes that had been staring at him and at his wife.

The guard’s eyes had shifted into aquamarine - the exact same color as his.

Cedric didn’t even have the time to say anything, and Alasse and the other guard had already moved on and taken the younger guard away.

Vandil…

It had to be him - his father. This explained the stare… and of course Cedric hadn’t recognized that the young guard was wearing a mask - only true shapeshifters could craft masks that would convince other shapeshifters, and Cedric’s father was one of his kind.

Another rumble and shake of the ground forced him to come back to the present - to matters that forced him to set aside his feelings and his shock for having discovered that his father had been there the whole time.

New vines lashed out from the breach in the wall, and this time they could see the origin of them.

“This… this is the Blight?!” Zharel stuttered.

“Crap, that’s really HUGE,” added Jezil.

Cedric lifted his gaze to take in the whole creature that was advancing from behind the wall towards them, making the ground shake at each of their steps.

They looked more like a tree than like a humanoid Murmurer, but one could recognize that they were one of them by looking at their face. Androgynous, with gray eyes like their Master’s, and long, long hair that turned into thorny vines swaying at each movement.

Master…

Before a set of new vines could lash out, a new barrier raised on the front to block them. It was orange, and Cedric’s heart skipped a beat as he saw Orube and Chefren, standing alone between the soldiers’ shield and the battlefield where the other Basiliadeans and the Guardians were still fighting the Annihilators.

The vines clashed against the orange barrier, but did not pierce through it.

A flicker of white light crossed his blue shield, making him blink. He turned to see that Alasse was standing next to him, between him and Nerel.

“What are you doing here? My father-”

“I have a responsibility towards my people,” she said, her tone cold, and her gaze fixed ahead of them.

“But you can save him with your powers!” Cedric protested. He would have gone himself, if only the bond with the Queen allowed him to move…

“I am a leader, Cedric,” she snapped. “And leaders do not have a choice. My city will always come first. You, of all people, should know that.”

Cedric clenched his jaw, and he saw that she did the same. He turned to look in front of them as well, and his eyes landed on Orube, who was struggling to hold up that huge orange barrier with Chefren - a barrier that was the only thing between them and the Blight.

Does my armor really always come first?

A sudden new feeling washed over him. This was all wrong. He should be next to her, helping her with that barrier, and not this far away, unable to help her if-

Another deafening crack, and the wet sound of flesh being passed through made him flinch.

And his heart stopped when his brain recorded what he was looking at-

A giant thorny vine… cutting through Orube from side to side.

The sunset was an unexpected, but marvellous view.

In all the years he’d spent in this prison, many of which with this beach at his disposal, Phobos had never understood how to catch the right moment for a sunset. The time when the sun decided to go to sleep was always random, as it was nearly impossible to keep track of the passing of time in his prison, so he’d often found himself going to the beach, expecting to see this red and purple spectacle of lights, and the sun was still high in the sky instead, or it was already gone.

Today was one of those rare occasions, when he managed to catch the sun right before it set and disappeared beyond the horizon. He wondered where did it go, since this prison was only a reflection of the world, and there was nothing beyond what he could see. Or was there? Who knew - this was his sister’s version of the Silverhold, and there could be an entire population of prisoners scattered in each corner of this imaginary land. After all, his sister was not that different from him, and she even admitted it.

He followed the sun with his gaze as the last half-moon of intense red light disappeared below the line of the sea, leaving him in front of the last rays of purple and red that extended in the sky.

Phobos closed his eyes as the sun disappeared. He knew why the prison had granted him the sight of the sunset today. He was not sure about what was happening outside at that moment, but somehow, he knew that today was his last day inside this cage - at least for a while.

Or maybe forever…

No, he shouldn’t be thinking about this. He promised himself he would think about his future only after this ordeal with his Murmurer was over. Thinking about it now would do him no good and only stir unrest and cloud his mind. He needed to stay sharp - only in this way he could make the right decision, once Elyon pulled him out.

When Phobos reopened his eyes, he was surprised to find himself surrounded by white. This was not the beach anymore - and it was not any room or corner of his prison either.

This was… nothing. And yet he recognized that he’d been there before, once. This was the space between realities - between his prison and the real world. The last time he’d been there, he was surrounded by darkness instead of pure white. Funny how this dimension pocket seemed to have bought the story that he had changed and become a ray of sunshine during his time in prison.

Well, he had changed. But not so much to become a caricature of himself - Gods forbid that! No, no - he was still himself, or at least this was what he kept telling himself. The same person, with the same ambitions: never becoming an accessory. The only thing that had changed was that he was not dreaming of killing or absorbing or torturing his sister in his attempts of not becoming an ornament. His sister had turned out to be a relative he didn’t have to be ashamed of, since she was powerful, smart and with that tiny hint of malice that made them tune on the same wavelength, and he did not wish to get rid of her anymore.

They took her away…

“What?” he asked to the nothingness, turning around to see if the source of that voice had a face. It was his voice, though, so it must be a projection of his own consciousness.

They have a plan…

“Been there, done that. No need to remind me of that old story,” he answered his own thoughts of many years before. The last thing he wanted to think about was how Alborn had betrayed him, thinking that he was going to abuse his power as regent - which he did, eventually, but it was certainly not the plan back then. Had they stayed quiet and behaved, leaving his sister where she was supposed to be, perhaps things would have been different. He would have stayed sane, been a good ruler, so good that his sister would have given him the throne herself without putting up a fight.

You are not enough. You are not the Light of Meridian.

“Oh, shut up!” he snapped. What was this? A test he had to pass to be granted a way back to the real world, where he indeed was not the Light of Meridian?

You should have married that woman… lived in Hoel, happily ever after… without that Rule of the Code…

Phobos rolled his eyes, and he started to walk forward in the nothingness that surrounded him, if anything to have something to do. Marrying Beléra… He had thought about it a few times, in his weakest moments, when he felt he was not powerful enough to rule on Metamoor with his own forces. And just recently, when Beléra’s scheme had come to light, he’d found himself thinking he’d underestimated the woman. How many things they could have accomplished together!

And now it’s your chance again.

Indeed it was…

First Advisor… a new Light… a daughter under your control… and Cedric at your service, where he belongs.

Phobos kept walking, the landscape surrounding him unchanged. He wondered if he was even walking somewhere, or if he was just pacing in place. First Advisor…

All you have to do is…

“Nothing,” he completed the sentence. “All I need to do is nothing. And Metamoor will be mine.”

He smiled when a slash opened the infinite white in front of it as if cutting through a cloth, and a hand - his sister’s hand - reached out to him, inviting him to follow her.

Phobos took her hand, and eagerly let her pull him out.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18

A burning pain slashed Cedric’s own chest, as if that trunk had pierced him instead of Orube. But it was not a vine - it was the bond, pulling him towards her, towards his wife, to save her - to do everything it took.

He couldn’t breathe. The voices of his Champions and of his mother around him were muffled. He knew they were talking to him, but he couldn’t hear them.

Even the shapes around him were hazed - he could only watch, as the orange barrier shattered, the vine that had slashed Orube slithered back, and she collapsed. Now there was nothing between them and the Blight, and Cedric found out he couldn’t care less.

It was only the bond with the Queen, shaking furiously in his chest now that the Blight was so close, to keep him standing there and making him hold on to his shield. But it was as if this was just one version of him - the one tied to the Queen by that bond, while the other version of him was becoming feral, pulled by the other bond towards his wife who was now bleeding to death, her crimson blood staining the snow on the ground.

“What the fuck are you still doing there, Cedric!” a voice, speaking Basiliadean, stood out from the muffled sounds around him. It was Maut. She had abandoned the battle on the front, leaving the Annihilators to her brother and to Shoshan, while the Guardians tried to slow down the Blight from eating up the soldiers’ barrier, and she was now kneeling next to Orube, lifting her up and trying to take her away from there.

“You have to help her!” Maut cried.

“I…” Cedric tried to speak, but the words did not come out. I can’t. His feet just wouldn’t move. His shield wouldn’t turn off. The Blight was too close to the Queen, and he had to stay there - no matter the cost.

The cost…

All that blood… all because of that stupid Rule one and that bond that was keeping him rooted to the ground.

“We have it under control,” Rhes shouted. “We will protect the Queen, go and save the Master!”

Finally the words came out. “I can’t…”

“We can take it!” Nerel cried from the other side. “You have to go, Cedric!”

In a different situation, he would have snapped at her for having called him Cedric instead of Commander. But now… Nerel’s words made the other bond pull him towards Orube. And yet he couldn’t move. Frustration made him want to turn into the naga, as if it would solve anything.

“MOVE YOUR ASS and save your wife!” Caleb’s voice, speaking with Elyon’s accent, made him wince. He looked at the Consort, his heart thundering in his ears. His eyes rolled back into his head, Caleb went on speaking for Elyon. “We won’t lose our Master’s life and my Commander’s mind today, go and bring her back now!”

Finally, the wedding bond snapped and made his legs move. Cedric bolted forward, pushing his way through the soldiers, and joined Maut, who was carrying Orube away from the battlefield.

“It took you a while,” Maut said. “If you don’t save my sister, I’m going to kill you with my bare hands.”

When they reached a more isolated spot on the sides, they both kneeled on her. Under her cloak, she was in a blood bath.

Not again…

She was wheezing hard, and her eyes were losing their light. Her lips were quickly turning blue.

He took her face between his hands, now smeared with blood. “Orube… Mjë Sharjàn… stay with me!”

As an answer, she coughed and blood spurted from her mouth.

He placed a hand on her torso - there wasn’t need to look for a wound, as that bloody trunk was huge and the thorns had slashed her nearly everywhere - and he summoned his magic.

Green light flashed through his arm and his hand, but it slithered away immediately, as if it was attracted by something else behind his back.

“Shit!” he cursed, realizing that there was no way for him to use magic as long as the Blight was near and sucking away all the light they found on their way.

“What’s happening?” Maut asked, panic creasing her voice.

“We need to get away from here!” He scooped Orube into his arms and stood up. “Don’t give up, just hold on for a little while…”

But Orube’s head fell backwards, and he realized after just a few steps that she had stopped losing blood.

“Come on, you said we have to get away from here!” Maut called him from a few steps ahead.

“I can’t teleport…” he murmured. “And she’s not going to make it to the city.”

He whirled to look at the group that was facing the Blight, searching for… he didn’t even know what. But he searched, looking at them one by one, as if anyone of them could be the key - the solution to save Orube. The Guardians could only teleport when they were all together, and they were the only hope to keep that thing away from the Queen. Chefren’s magic could help, but he was, like the Guardians, too valuable against that thing.

“I… I can’t save her,” he murmured, and the realization made him sway. His legs gave up, and he fell on his knees in the snow, with Orube laying unconscious in his arms.

“No!” Maut cried, “You cannot give up like that!”

His sight blurred, hazed by tears. He put a hand on Orube’s stomach again and summoned his magic one more time, in a last, hopeless effort. The green light flickered, and then flashed away. “You see? I can’t.”

The ground seemed to crumble under his feet as he could only watch Orube fade away in his arms. His body was frozen in time and space, while Maut took her head between her palms, crying and calling her as if it would wake her up.

“Orube… stay with us!”

Maut’s words were far away and nothing else mattered.

What is all this power for, if I cannot use it to save the only one that really matters…

It took him a while to realize that there was another hand on Orube’s body, next to his. One that did not belong to Maut.

He lifted his gaze, and through the haze he met Cornelia’s blue eyes.

“I’m useless against that thing,” she said. “My power cannot hurt plants that much. Let me help you save your sun.”

Air.

Real air was in his lungs.

And it bloody hurt.

He did not remember that having a nose and a pair of lungs was so painful. And his head… oh Gods. It felt as if Elyon had just blown a hammer against his head to wake him up.

He couldn’t see anything. Did they forget to give him his eyes back? And it was cold… freezing, even. Where was he?

Slowly, he felt the presence of something at each side of his burning nose. Eyes! He had eyes! He tried to open his eyelids, and it burned even more than the frozen air that was devastating his lungs.

But then… he did it, and his mouth betrayed him by gasping a sharp charge of frozen air that nearly killed him. Lights… so many lights, and they were all whirling around him. He found out he must have a stomach, too, since something threatened to come up in a wave of nausea.

Two shadows loomed over him, partially covering the wild lights. They came closer… and closer… and he instinctively retreated, pushing back - and finding something blocking him, as if he was… lying somewhere. Or inside something. He didn’t feel any magic flowing in his veins, and he didn’t like the idea of lying inside a box, powerless, with two unknown shadows looming over him.

“Phobos… it’s alright, you’re back.”

He knew that voice…

His sight sharpened, and now he could see that the two shadows were two hooded figures. One with long straight hair coming out of the hood. He couldn’t see colors, but he could have sworn that the hair had to be red. The other figure… he gasped again as he saw the jewel shining under the hood.

The crown…

“It’s us, Phobos…” another voice he knew said.

Finally, his sight could focus on the features of the faces under the hoods, and faint colors started to tint the shapes he saw in front of him. He met two pairs of eyes he knew. One that mirrored his own, and one that knew him better than anyone else ever did.

“Naexi…”

“Yes!” Naexi exclaimed. He realized only then that she was holding his hand. He looked down, and saw that his hand was nothing but a mass of bones with barely any flesh around them.

“What happened to me…”

“We don’t have much time, Phobos,” Elyon urged him. She dove her hands somewhere next to him inside the box where he was lying  - was it a coffin?! - and then took his other hand, curling his skeletal fingers around… a cane.

“A cane? Seriously?”

“Please, Phobos, you have to stop that thing,” Elyon said, and together with Naexi, she lifted him up to sit.

It took him a while to distinguish the figures that were moving around them. Silver armors… and beyond them, a mess. There were many people, some in blue armors, others in black uniforms, and-

“Ugh, the Guardians…”

“There’s no time, Phobos!” this time it was Naexi. They helped him stand up, and he grudgingly leaned on the cane. His legs hurt like hell and could barely keep him standing.

“So inelegant…” he muttered. He looked around again. His sight was not at its best yet, and all this movement was confusing him - there was something huge moving somewhere far away from him, and a swarm of people moving chaotically, but he could see enough of his immediate surroundings to understand that someone was notably missing. “Where’s Cedric?”

Naexi and Elyon kept pushing him forward, forcing him to take a trembling step outside his coffin, and then another one. Gods, it hurt.

“He’s… fine,” Naexi said, with a tone that could only mean that he was not fine.

“Only a few more steps, then you should be close enough…” Elyon said.

“My Queen, we cannot let you through!” a female voice said. Phobos looked at the person who spoke. A girl - perhaps in her twenties, lean, with green skin, white braids and… “You are the Vice Commander?!” Phobos blurted, as his eyes landed on the spaulders.

The young woman distorted her mouth in a disdained grimace, and she looked at him from head to toe. “And you are the terrible Prince Phobos?”

Phobos gasped in outrage. “How dare you!”

Elyon put herself between them. “There’s no time for this!” She grabbed Phobos by the shoulders and forced him to turn and look at the field in front of them. There was a sort of glaze between him and the people fighting in the space between them and the broken wall that separated them from the mountains - he assumed it had to be the shield of the Champions.

As Phobos finally looked at the monster that was fighting against the Guardians, a wave of pride crossed him. His creature… they were so huge! So powerful!

The Murmurer froze in place, leaving the Guardians and those savages - seriously? Those Basiliadeans again?! - looking up at Phobos’s masterpiece in puzzlement.

“What now? Did your roots freeze?” the Water Guardian blurted. Phobos noticed only now that one Guardian was missing - the blonde one.

Master…

Phobos stood upright - as much as he could, at least - and smiled at his creature. Everyone turned to look at him. Some of the soldiers gasped and took a step back. Caleb - his brother-in-law, Phobos realized now in horror - bared his teeth.

Tell us your command… and we shall oblige.

Oh, those words felt good.

Tell us your command…

Phobos closed his eyes and searched. He searched within himself, somewhere in his chest, where he knew there was a bond… There was more than one - and both were stiff, dampened by something that felt like a blanket of wilderness that had grown around them. With the fingers of his mind, he touched one of the two bonds, deliberately ignoring the other one that was giving signs of wanting to wake up. He shook the bond he wanted to pull, and then he felt it lighting up.

When he opened his eyes, the Murmurer’s eyes were wide open, and glazed. Their mind was bare to him, and with it, also the root that connected them to the Light.

Tell us your command…

Everyone was still, all eyes on him, waiting for him to decide what command to give to his creature.

Their root was there, clearly visible to him, running along their throat. All that Phobos had to do was tell the Murmurer to bare their bark open, so the Guardians or the Basiliadeans could severe it. He could not snap it himself without magic.

And he could not order his creature to bare his life root either. They were his creature, his masterpiece… and his key to Metamoor.

Phobos inhaled a deep breath, his eyes not leaving his Murmurer while everyone else seemed to hold their breath instead.

But right before he could give his Murmurer the command to absorb all the Light that surrounded them, a voice inside him spoke. That annoying voice that lately always reminded him of what the right thing to do was.

You cannot let them do that.

Phobos let out a grunt, knowing that the voice was probably right.

Fine, he thought. Then, directed to the Murmurer, Do it. He couldn’t believe he was ordering his own creature to open their bark and expose their life root to the blades of those Basiliadeans…

As an answer, the Murmurer reached out with their hand, and shot a beam that devoured the Champions’ shield in the blink of an eye, hitting the Queen of Meridian right in her chest.

“NO!” Caleb cried, and hurried to try and cut the beam that connected the Murmurer to the Queen. He was instantly bounced away. The Champions broke their formation and all went to form a line in front of the Queen, absorbing the beam in her place.

What are you doing?! Phobos asked through the bond. I told you to let go! Show your root!

The Murmurer did not give any sign of lowering their arm and kept their eyes fixed on the Queen next to Phobos. The beam shot through the Champions, who slumped one after the other to the ground, and then hit Elyon. That’s not the order you gave us, the Murmurer whispered in his mind. The bond shows us your true will.

“No…” Phobos murmured, and turned to look at his sister. She was enveloped in a blinding light, gasping for air as the Murmurer’s beam lifted her from the ground. The soldiers and Caleb tried again to hit the beam, then the Guardians and the Basiliadeans tried to hit it as well - even the man who did not look like a warrior, but rather a priest, shot an orange beam against it and only made it falter for a second. It was too late - the Murmurer was connected to the Light of Meridian, and the magic of a Basiliadean priest alone would not be enough to stop them…

Wasn’t this what he wanted, after all?

All he had to do was… nothing, and his sister would be soon completely absorbed by his creature, and then her Light would pass on to the next one in line… which had to be either his daughter, assuming that Beléra had told the truth, or himself.

“Don’t even think about it, young man!”

Phobos had barely the time to turn to see who had spoken, and a white beam hit him, paralyzing him. The beam was immediately absorbed by the Murmurer, but his body remained frozen for long enough to force him to look directly into Lady Alasse’s dark eyes, expanded to cover the whites completely. Oh, he had forgotten how scary the woman could be.

She advanced towards him, a hand raised, the palm facing him and threatening to shoot another - in these circumstances fairly useless - beam. “You have always been such an arrogant, presumptuous, insolent brat!” she hissed.

He snorted. “And to think that you wanted me as your son-in-law.”

“The only reason why I agreed to that was because I’d become family with your mother, who was a sister to me. Now be a good lad and do something reasonable for once - call your beast back.”

Phobos couldn’t help but grimace with disdain at Alasse’s order. How dared she! “Or?”

She bared her teeth, and a white glow surrounded her hand.

“No!” another voice shouted, and a tiny figure stepped between him and the Lady.

An uncomfortable sensation in his chest made Phobos inhale a sharp breath - it was his heart, squeezing as he recognized Naexi, facing Alasse’s wrath for him.

“Please, Milady,” she pleaded, “this is not the way.”

Alasse widened her eyes, but the beam in her hand faded as Naexi turned to look at Phobos with pleading eyes. “Phobos… why are you doing this?”

Her eyes were dark pits just like Alasse’s, but not even nearly as scary. They were concerned, puzzled and confused - because this was not what she expected from the Phobos she’d been talking to in the last years, almost every day.

Something clicked as he looked at the concern painted on his maiden’s face. His gaze shot at his sister, floating mid-air, her eyes closed and her head falling to the side.

She was defenseless.

So vulnerable.

As he formulated the thought, a memory flashed through his mind. It was brief - merely a second, but long enough to leave a mark and make something move - hurt, even - where his heart was beating.

“Come on, Phobos,” his mother scolded him. “I don’t care what you think. You will not stand in the throne room with that disgusted face while your sister is presented to the realm. You owe us at least that.”

Phobos snorted and poured a generous amount of wine in a goblet, turning his back to Weira. “I don’t owe you anything. My presence at the celebration is already enough.”

He was not looking at her, but he could have sworn that she was now standing in front of the large window of her living room, her figure backlit, and she’d just whirled to look at him with outrage disfiguring her features, crossing her arms at her chest. “Your presence is part of your duty, Phobos!” the snapped, and Phobos loved how her irritation made her voice almost squeaky. Oh, how he enjoyed pissing his mother off!

“Are you forgetting that you will be Commander soon?” Weira went on, anger still creasing her voice. “What kind of Commander do you plan to be, if you don’t even spare a glance for your future Queen?”

Phobos finally turned to face his mother. He did not make any effort to hide the smirk that surfaced on his lips as he saw her face - the wide eyes, the eyebrows knitted in a frown, the lips pressed into a thin line. Everyone said that Weira Escanor was the most beautiful woman in Metamoor, but they had no idea of her true colors, those that she only showed to him when he was making her lose her (little) patience.

He leaned against the table of the small bar behind him, turning the goblet around its stem between his fingers and looking at the decorations engraved in its silver. It perfectly matched the silver of the armor he was wearing. “I don’t have to look at the Queen to protect her. In fact, I don’t even need to want to protect her - thanks to the fantastic bond you tied me to.”

Weira’s gaze hardened on him as he sipped the wine for emphasis. But then, her expression faltered and she closed her eyes for a second. When she reopened them, Phobos felt uncomfortable. He didn’t like when she looked at him with concern instead of frustration or anger. It was always a sign that she was going to speak to him with an open heart and pretend to actually care for him.

She took a few steps in the room, approaching the crate. Phobos forced himself to keep looking at his mother, and never at the blue wooden crate, decorated in silver swirls and an amount of blue and purple frills that made him cringe. Yet he saw the movement - the tiny and puffy hands emerging from inside the crate, reaching out for Weira, and he heard the disgusting giggle.

“This is not just your future Queen,” Weira said. “This is first of all your sister. And I- I would like you to meet her and see her as such.”

Phobos raised an eyebrow at her. “I already saw the baby. What else do you want from me, mom?”

“Just-“ she started, but then broke her sentence, looking down at the crate. Then she seemed to change her mind on whatever she was going to say. She looked at the other side of the room instead - at the couch. “Come with me, Zayden dear,” she said.

Phobos turned to glance at his father, who was sitting on the couch, browsing a book as if he hadn’t even noticed that there was someone else in the room. Sometimes, Phobos had to remind himself that the man was even there and was not part of the furniture. Such was the destiny of a man in this royal family.

“Let’s leave our kids alone for a moment,” Weira said, and gestured to Zayden to follow her outside their quarters. Zayden lazily raised his gaze from the book, did not seem to make any effort to understand what was happening and simply followed Weira outside without protesting.

Phobos groaned in frustration as they closed the door behind them. “What does she think is going to happen now?” he muttered, putting down the wine glass and pacing in the room. “That I look at the cockroach and fall under a spell?”

He let out a snort. Yet he cautiously approached the crate, and leaned forward to have a look inside, with the same wariness as if he was looking inside a grave and expecting to see a disgusting mess of rotten flesh.

He grimaced as he met the baby’s eyes. “What do you have to grin at like this?” he blurted as he was met by a pair of big eyes of the same color as his own, too big for the little puffy face surrounding them. The baby was looking at him with curiosity, but he saw the little grin curving her tiny mouth and he hated it.

When she giggled, he felt as if he’d just been challenged to a duel.

“Oh, so you think I’m not worthy enough to be your brother, uh? I’ll show you!”

Grimacing in disgust, he dove his hands inside the crate and lifted the baby, then scooped her in his arms in the same way as he’d seen his mother and the nannies do. The baby broke in a giant smile.

“See? I can pretend to like you. I just don’t want to.”

This time, when the baby giggled and squealed in delight, his body froze. Something had happened inside his chest, and he did not like it. It was a small wave of something… something irritatingly pleasant that had shot through him, and was now pulling the corners of his mouth to make him smile back at the baby. He managed to remain serious and keep scowling at the infant.

He was just about to put the baby down, to avoid the risk that she would really cast a spell on him, when the little cockroach reached out with her ridiculously small hands and touched his chin, cackling at the touch of his beard.

When Phobos tried to fight that wave of strange feelings that shot through him again, it was too late. He was smiling.

He hurried to put the baby down and took a step back, as if the crate was made of fire.

“This proves nothing, Elyon,” he spat, then he stormed out of the room.

He realized only later, that evening, that he had called his sister by her name.

The Champions, the soldiers and the Consort were helplessly trying to interfere with that beam that connected Elyon to the Murmurer, and were stunned every time they even touched it - and yet they tried again, because that’s what they devoted their life to… protecting his sister, and not only because she was the Queen, but because she was worth it.

The Basiliadeans and the Guardians were still fighting the Annihilators that defended the Murmurer, but the young woman that was with them was climbing on the back of the Murmurer, her sword drawn.

“You love your sister more than you crave the power she has,” Naexi said - she was now standing next to him, looking at Elyon as well, and grabbing his arm. “You will never admit it, but I can do it for you. This is not what you want!”

He was so close to winning, for once… and yet, he knew that Naexi was right - she always was, after all. He looked at the Murmurer again - in their trance to absorb the Light, they seemed to be unaware that the young Basiliadean was now kneeling on their shoulder.

When Naexi took his hand in hers, he squeezed it back before closing his eyes, and grab his end of the bond. He’d never killed one of his creatures before. Even when he’d found himself face-to-face with Caleb, the only one who had ever betrayed him, he had not found the courage to murder him.

I cannot let you hurt my sister, he told the Murmurer through the bond. And I cannot let you destroy what she worked for, to undo what I did. Bare yourself.

And this time, the Murmurer listened.

All Annihilators froze in place, and the beam that was holding Elyon vanished, making her slump to the ground. Caleb caught her in his arms, and the Champions who were still standing surrounded them immediately.

Phobos didn’t know if his body allowed him to cry in his current state, but he did feel something clenching his throat and his eyes prickling, as he watched his creature expose their neck, and open the bark.

A luminous rope was pulsating beneath - once, twice, three times, and then, with a movement so quick that Phobos didn’t even realize how she’d done it, the Basiliadean warrior slashed it with her copper blade.

“You did the right thing,” Naexi whispered, as they watched the creature drop to their wooden knees, and then start to crumble into pieces of bark, leaves and thorns, the Annihilators crumbling with them. The warrior jumped down right before the Murmurer fell, and was immediately enveloped in the male warrior’s arms.

“I hope it was worth it,” Phobos said, and turned to look at the wall created by the Champions around his sister.

It was dark and cold. It was a different cold from the freezing hell of Hoel’s mountains. This was a cold that came from inside, from the place where the core of Elyon’s Light was supposed to beat.

Where was her thread of Light - the one that connected her to the center of the planet? She’d been missing it only once before, that time during the Battle of the Plains, when she’d given it to Caleb… and she remembered the cold.

This meant that she’d lost it.

The Murmurer had won.

Phobos had won.

She didn’t even know that she was fighting against her brother again - or at least, she hoped that they were not fighting, and she’d just been a fool. All these years spent believing that Phobos loved her as a big brother would do, thinking that their mother would be happy, wherever she was now, knowing that her kids were getting along… and now, she lost the only thing she ever got from her mother - her Light. Was it already with Alès, if she really was her niece? Or was it with Phobos, now? Or was it… lost?

Elyon didn’t know if she had knees, but she felt like dropping on them on the floor, and she wept. Or at least, it felt like she was crying.

How could she be so naive!

Everyone had warned her about getting too close to Phobos - Caleb, Miriadel, Alborn, even Cedric had been wary… but she’d never listened to them, because she desperately wanted him to be part of her family.

She was such a fool!

I cannot let you hurt my sister.

Phobos’s voice echoed in the dark surrounding her, making her eyes snap open. She looked around, searching for the source of these words. But all she could see was darkness.

I cannot let you destroy what she worked for, to undo what I did. Bare yourself.

It took her a while to understand what was happening and that these were really her brother’s words.

He’s doing it!, she thought, triumph blooming in her chest. Then he did care!

A tiny voice warned her from the back of her mind, reminding her of the risk she was putting Metamoor in, having her brother standing there, in the flesh, at freedom.

But he cares!, she protested.

A blinding light and a weight that slammed against her chest suppressed whatever that voice - the voice of her reason, she knew - was about to answer. When she could see again, she was looking down at the ground of Hoel, where she was kneeling in a mixture of snow and mud. Shadows loomed on her - the shadows of many people surrounding her. Her sight sharpened and she could see the tips of pointed boots in dark metal, which she recognized as belonging to the Champions. The slightly different boots, with a rounder tip and made of dark blue leather, surely must belong to Caleb’s General uniform.

“Elyon!” her husband’s voice called her. He kneeled in the mud and took her face between his gloved hands, looking at her with concern mixed with panic. “Are you alright?”

“I… I think so.” Her attempt to stand on her feet ended with her swaying and being caught by an excessive number of arms. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” she said, wiggling to get rid of at least some of the hands that were trying to help her.

Her head was spinning as she looked around, past the wall of Champions that were surrounding her. The Guardians were panting, but they all seemed whole - all except Cornelia, who was not there.

“Cornelia is with Cedric,” Caleb answered her silent question, suddenly reminding her of what had happened to Orube earlier - Elyon could only see some shadows of the real world while she was connected to Phobos, but she had felt Cedric’s panic very clearly through the Champion bond.

She didn’t have time to think about Orube, now, although she hoped she would make it. She quickly glanced at the Basiliadeans, who were checking each other to see that they were alright, and looked for her brother… until she met his eyes.

Phobos was standing not far away from her, with Naexi holding his hand, and the corners of his lips curved in a small smile under his beard.

Your Light was almost taken, because he hesitated, the voice of her reason came back, reminding her of what had just happened.

Her throat was clenched in a knot and she wanted to cry and hug her brother, for real, for the first time ever - but the crown she wore on her head and the responsibilities towards her people and her planet did not allow her to do it.

She closed her eyes instead, and searched within her for the bonds that connected her to all her Champions. She touched them one by one, with the fingertips of her mind. They were like threads extending in an array from the center of her inner Light to wherever they were now.

Cedric. Nerel. Rhes. Aymon. Jezil. Vala. Zharel.

An eighth thread, less luminous, belonged to Alborn.

And then… she found the ninth thread - it was not shining like the other ones. Its light was dimmed, old, rusty, untouched for many years… but it was there.

She pulled that bond, making it light up, and opened her eyes. 

“Don’t move,” Elyon ordered.

Phobos winced, confusion painted on his face first, then surprise. But his body froze in place.

I’m sorry. I have to do this, she told him through the bond, while a luminous pair of handcuffs appeared and closed around his wrists.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19

It took Orube a while to understand where she was. Or where she might be, since she didn’t know this room. 

Everything was black and white - here, with a slight predominance of white - so it must be still the Hoel palace. 

The ceiling she was looking at was made of archways, each highlighted by silver twirls that joined at the top and formed an intricate decoration that looked like a bush of leaves and flowers. There were no chandeliers on the ceiling, but the room was well-lit. 

She turned her head to look around, and pain shot through her entire body, making her groan. 

“Easy, sister,” someone said. She recognized her brother’s voice before she saw him, sitting next to where she was lying. He did not look as if he just came from a battle. He was wearing clean clothes, and did not have mud and green ooze smeared on his face like when she’d seen him at the feet of the mountains. 

“How… what happened?” she asked. Where’s Cedric?

Acheri smiled at her. “This was a close one, sister. You’ve been asleep for three days, but now you’re fine. Good thing that I and my precious blood were here - you’re welcome.”

She pushed on the bed with her elbows, trying to sit. Acheri helped her and moved the pillow behind her so she could rest her back against it. 

“That blonde Guardian is really impressive with this kind of stuff,” he went on. “But I’m glad the humans are gone, they’re so damn loud… they really can’t stop talking, can they?”

Orube fought to find a comfortable position, and looking down she saw that she was wearing a loose linen robe, and that bandages were covering her entire torso. She looked around in the room again. There were other beds, and tables with cloths, ampoules and bowls. It must be an infirmary, but she was apparently the only injured person staying there. 

“Where’s Cedric? What… happened outside?”

Acheri leaned back against the chair, crossing his arms at his chest. “The Prince did his part, if that’s what you want to know,” he said. “Cedric hasn’t left this room for a minute until now. I convinced Elyon to use her creepy connection to order him to go out and get something to eat, before he collapsed too.” He sighed. “Some things never change. It was just like all those years ago - I’ve never seen a man as desperate as him, and it’s always when my sister has a huge slash in her guts and has to steal my blood to survive.”

Orube lowered her gaze to her hands on her lap, feeling her cheeks blush for some reason. “Thank you for helping me again,” she muttered. “What about the others?”

“Oh, the others are all fine. It was Shoshan to cut the root, you know?” he shook his head. “She scared the hell out of me. Again.”

“Did you two speak?”

Acheri lowered his gaze to his hands, just like Orube had done a moment ago. That was a no. 

“For how long do you plan to go on with this play?” she asked, leaning down to try and look at him in the eye, but her movements were too limited by the tight bandages. 

“Tell me, Orube - honestly.” He looked at her again, and the light in his eyes was different from the usual confidence he always put up in public. At that moment, he was looking at her as her little brother. “Is this wrong?”

“No,” she answered without hesitation. “You would not be the first ones. And you don’t even have to search much to find someone else who went through the same - look at Yarr.”

Acheri hummed, turning thoughtful. “Maybe you’re right. Well, you’re nearly always right.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Nearly?  I’m your older sister!”

He grinned at her, standing up and leaning towards her to give her a kiss on her forehead. “I say nearly , because if Maut hears me saying that you are the one who’s always right, she’ll come kick my ass.”

Before he could turn and leave, Orube halted him by taking his hand. “How long are you staying? Will I see you again before you leave?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been away for too long… Yarr and Raziya didn’t even want me to come here, and I insisted only because… well…”

“I know why you came. Now take them back, and promise me you’ll talk to her,” Orube said, holding his hand with both her hands. 

He gave her a little smile. “Fine, I promise. I’ll tell Cedric you’re awake, if I see him.”

Once she was awake, the recovery was much faster than she’d have expected. The last time Orube had gone through a wound of that kind, it was during the battle of the Citadel. The days after the battle had been a nightmare, and she didn’t even remember for how long she hadn’t been able to walk or do basic things without seeing white from the sharp pain. 

This time, she spent the first day in bed - admittedly enjoying Cedric’s complete attention for her - and on the next day, she was already walking, although she felt unbearably slow in every movement. It was not that painful anymore: she rather felt as if her muscles were tired after a very intense training, and she understood why when Cedric told her what Elyon and Alasse had been doing the whole time after the Blight had been defeated. They’d been using their Lights extensively to heal Hoel’s land, and with that, they probably contributed to healing Orube and the other soldiers and guards, who had been injured in the fight. Rhes and Vala had been injured as well, although not by one of the Annihilators’ arms turned into blades or by the Blight’s thorns. Like the other Champions, they’d put themselves between the Blight and the Queen when she was attacked, and they had been hit so hard that they’d collapsed right after the Blight had been defeated. 

And yet, even with two Champions injured, Cedric was spending all these days with her in the infirmary. That should mean something, shouldn’t it? 

“Are you sure you want to come?” Cedric asked as they slowly walked along a corridor, holding her by her arm to support her. 

“Of course,” she said. “I’m healed. I just feel as if I trained too much, it’s probably all the magic I used. But I want to be there today.”

They reached an area of the castle that looked different from the rest. It was very silent and illuminated by candles, decorated with statues that Orube recognized as depicting the main Gods and Goddesses of Metamoor. They went past a door and found themselves in a small room, also lit with candles and decorated with similar statues, with one more imposing statue depicting Imdahl at the other end of the room. A small group of people was facing the statue in solemn silence, and coming closer, Orube could see that a body was lying on an altar between the group and the statue. 

Vandil…

When Cedric had told her that the young guard had turned out to be his father, and that he had been fatally injured while protecting Alasse, all pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The way the guard had been looking at her, his questions, his little movements and facial expressions, and of course, his scent… of course it had to be his father. 

And now, he was lying on the altar, his eyes closed, wearing a completely different skin. His hair was white, and the shape of his nose and of his jaw did remind her of Cedric’s. But other than that, he did not look like him - and was not green-skinned, like Cedric had recollected after he’d seen him in a vision years before. His skin was orange instead, with freckles sprayed all over his face. 

The people standing in front of the altar and paying their respects were just a handful of guards, and Alasse stood among them. Cedric and Orube went to stand next to her. 

She greeted them with a polite nod, then she took a step forward, towards the altar. She raised both hands in the air and her voice echoed in the chapel. “Let the Light shine in you, Vandil Eladan of Hoel.”

The small crowd repeated her words in a somber choir. 

“Let your Light shine in everyone who loved you.”

The choir of voices repeated Alasse’s words again, and when she lowered her hands, a white halo expanded around Vandil’s body. 

Orube had to force herself to close her gaping mouth. She had never witnessed a Metamoor funeral, and had no idea that this was something to expect. The white halo shifted in color, and turned emerald green for a moment, before exploding in a million sparkles in the air. 

The sparkles lifted in the air, and then shot in the room, hitting each and everyone of the guards standing in the crowd. Other sparkles left the room, shooting against the walls and disappearing within them, perhaps floating somewhere else. Two bigger chunks of Light hit Alasse and Cedric, too, leaving Orube looking at the scene with wide eyes. When she looked at the altar again, Vandil’s body was gone. 

This was apparently all that the ceremony was about, because the guards soon turned away and started to leave the chapel. 

Cedric must have noticed Orube’s confusion, because he explained in a whisper, “When we turn back into Light, we do not go back to the core of the planet. Our Light splits into sparkles, and they each join the Light of the people we loved and cared about, wherever they are. In this way, we will always be with them.”

Orube’s throat suddenly clenched in a knot at the fondness in Cedric’s smile while he explained this part of his world. Not necessarily fondness of his father, whom he had never known, but of something so pure and beautiful that was part of his identity as a Metamoor native, and that he was now sharing with her. 

“That’s… wonderful, actually,” she said. 

“It is.” He pressed a hand to his chest, where the Light had hit him. “It never happened to me before.”

“Oh? Not even when Queen Weira died?”

Cedric frowned, looking ahead to the altar. “Actually… No. I never thought about it. I remember feeling the bond snap. But the Light… Hm.”

As Alasse passed them to head to the exit of the chapel, Cedric turned as well, and Orube did the same, walking next to him and the Lady. 

“Alass-” he started, but then he corrected himself immediately. “Mother. Did you… feel Weira’s Light, when she passed?”

Alasse seemed to come back to reality from a world far, far away. Her eyes widened for an instant, but then she let out a small chuckle. “Why of course. She was my best friend, and I carry her Light with me every day.”

Cedric hummed in the same way as he always did when he spotted that someone was lying.

When the Queen announced that she was ready to go back to Meridian, almost one week after the Blight was defeated, Cedric almost couldn’t believe it. He was looking forward to going home since when he’d arrived in Hoel, but between Orube’s injury and the Queen’s quest to help Alasse healing the land, he’d lost track of time and was almost settling with the thought that he was going to be stuck in Hoel forever. 

The bad news was that Elyon did not want to teleport - she said she was not feeling strong enough to teleport everyone while keeping her brother shielded from the huge burst of magic she would generate when doing that, and that he may or may not try to use to his advantage - so they were going to travel by carriage for a couple of days. And traveling by carriage meant, for the Champions, that they would have to take turns riding next to the carriage to escort the Queen. Had he known he was going to ride for long, he would have found a way to bring Freckles over. The Gods knew how grumpy he was going to be upon Cedric’s return, if he smelled the scent of another horse on him.

Right after the events at the mountains, Cedric had been too preoccupied with Orube bleeding to death and had not even asked about it until later in the evening, when Cornelia and the healers had stabilized Orube, and Nerel had come to see him. He knew they had made it - otherwise, he would have certainly felt something horrible happening through the bond - so it did not surprise him that Nerel’s report was along the lines of “the Prince is an absolute asshole, but he did his part”. 

Then, when Orube had started to show signs of recovery, Cedric had asked for more information about what happened and where Phobos was now, and he had learned that it had been a close call. Phobos, that devil, had almost let his sister be absorbed by the Blight. Did it surprise Cedric? Of course not - he knew it from the very beginning, that Phobos was going to stir some drama as the first thing he would do upon his return. But did it make him want to tear his old friend apart for this nevertheless? Most definitely. It had taken the entire group of Champions to stop him from going to the room where Phobos was now kept prisoner and making him regret coming back to the world of the living’s.

He promised himself he was going to avoid seeing him until they were in Meridian. Elyon had decided to bring him there, and that he would be granted a trial for everything he did in the past. Everyone knew that he was going to be found guilty, and the question was only which punishment Elyon would deem appropriate. Sending him back to the alternate dimension, or keeping him locked in a tower for the rest of his days? 

But this was tomorrow’s problem for Cedric: today’s problem was that Elyon had, of course, ignored his protests at her plan of travelling in the same carriage with Phobos, saying that if there was anywhere Metamoor was safe from the Prince, it was where she could knock him out any time. Knowing Phobos, he was probably going to try to do something questionable for the sake of pushing Cedric to react because of the bond. Although, now that Elyon had revived the Champion bond that still forced Phobos to follow her orders…

As he walked the eerie corridors of the Hoel palace, hopefully for the last time for a long while, Cedric shook these thoughts away. He would think about Phobos’s situation when there was a situation to actually think about. Right now, all he had to do was say goodbye to his mother, pick up their trunk and finally leave. And perhaps be grateful to whatever Gods put some sense into Elyon’s mind when she decided to allow Caleb to coordinate the soldiers, so Cedric didn’t have to take care of the tedious management of a long travel with a delegation of people. It was always surprising how much stuff had to be organized when traveling for days with a Queen, her insane brother, her entire group of personal guards and a small platoon of soldiers. 

“Alasse… please!” 

Cedric halted a few steps from the door of Alasse’s library, where she’d told him to look for her before leaving. The door was slightly open and the pleading whisper he’d just heard belonged to a voice he did not recognized immediately. 

“Why can’t you do it?” Alasse whispered back. “You’re our best Seer, surely you can find out if Beléra told the truth.”

She’s arguing with the High Priestess, then…, Cedric thought, and he flattened his body next to the door, listening carefully. If they were talking about Alès, he most certainly didn’t want to waste the occasion of learning if she really was Phobos’s daughter. A shiver ran along his spine at the thought of being the uncle of his daughter. 

“You’re wrong, Alasse - you are our best Seer!” Althea hissed, and Cedric could imagine her grabbing Alasse’s arms and shaking her to make her see reason. 

A Seer?!

“I don’t do it anymore, you know that…” Alasse murmured, and her voice faded away a little, as if she’d turned to look away from the Priestess. “Not since… then.”

The High Priestess’s steps echoed in the library as she probably walked after Alasse. “What you saw back then… It was terrible, I know. But it saved Weira. It saved Metamoor. We need your Sight, your eyes have remained closed for too long!”

Cedric’s jaw dropped. 

Saved… Weira?! Metamoor?

What were they talking about?

“Why now? Why can’t you just tell me if my granddaughter is also the daughter of that demon?” Alasse’s voice was trembling. 

Althea let out a sigh as if this was the tenth time she explained the same thing to the Lady. “Because your daughter might be not as talented as you are, but she can shield herself from me. Only you can see through her haze - because you’re more powerful, and because you can use blood magic to undo hers.”

Cedric heard a soft grunt, and then steps echoing in the library. Even though he had not spent much time with his mother, he knew well her ways of moving by now - if anything, because they were so similar to his own - and he knew she was pacing in the library, one arm curled around her waist and the other hand at her chin, nervously thinking and struggling with making a decision. 

“But the last time I did it-”

“The last time you did it, you saw what was going to happen to Weira’s kids and to Metamoor. And thanks to that, Weira could prevent something terrible from happening.”

Cedric couldn’t hear what Alasse said next, because his mind was frozen in shock at each single word that Althea had pronounced. 

What did Alasse see about Elyon and Phobos? It must have been something terrible… and it couldn’t have been Phobos’s tyranny. It had to be something else, something that scared Weira to the point that she had to prevent it. 

Althea went on, “Your Sight is a blessing, my Lady, and Metamoor misses its Oracle.”

Metamoor’s Oracle…

Cedric frowned as he heard this new name. He had never heard of an Oracle in Metamoor, but he was not too surprised to hear that Metamoor might have had one in the past. After all, Kandrakar never ever chose anyone from Metamoor to ascend and become one of the legendary Wises, and at some point Metamoor must have chosen someone with the Sight to be elected as its own version of the Oracle. 

This time it was Alasse’s turn to sigh. When she spoke again, directly towards the door of the library, Cedric’s blood froze in his veins. “I know you’re there, Cedric. Come in.”

Cedric obeyed, entering the library with the same feeling as when he was a child and someone had caught him in the kitchens stealing a half-moon that was destined to the royals. “I’m sorry, I did not want to eavesdrop. I was just coming to say goodbye, and you told me to look for you here.”

Alasse made a gesture with her hand, inviting him to come inside. The library was semi-dark, and was perhaps the creepiest room Cedric had yet to see in that palace. He would have never expected to ever be scared of a place full of books. “I know,” Alasse said. “I suppose I owe you an explanation about… many things. But it will have to wait until next time. Now, I guess you are just as curious as I am to know whether you’re about to become tied to that brat for the rest of your life.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t need to be his daughter’s uncle to be tied to him for the rest of my days…” he muttered. 

“Well, you made your own bed,” she said dryly. She took a deep breath, then, and shook her hands as if to try to make them stop trembling. “It’s been… so long.”

Althea took one of Alasse’s hands in hers. Cedric couldn’t see the Priestess’s face, as it was covered by the veil as always, but he could imagine she was smiling encouragingly. “I’ll be here with you. And your son is going to be here, too. Right?” she asked, turning to his direction. 

Cedric opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, the words evading him. “Uh, well… yeah,” he stuttered, and with a gesture that had nothing natural he took Alasse’s other hand in his. 

Alasse let out a trembling breath as she squeezed both their hands and closed her eyes. 

When she reopened them, the black had devoured the whites, and the dim light of the library seemed to be swallowed by their darkness. Soon, her eyes were the only visible thing in the entire room - and Cedric couldn’t explain how it was even possible, that the infinite darkness of Alasse’s black eyes was the only source of light. And yet it was, and it was mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time.

Alasse’s grip on their hands tightened, and her breathing accelerated, as if she was running. Her eyes moved frantically, searching left and right, and she looked and sounded as if she was starting to panic. 

“What’s- what’s happening?” Cedric asked in alarm. 

Althea ignored him and Cedric saw in the semi-darkness her hand going to cup Alasse’s cheek. “I’m here… it’s alright.”

The light flashed away from Alasse’s eyes and shot to the candles, lighting them up again. 

Cedric held his breath as he waited for Alasse to speak, and he could swear that the High Priestess was doing the same. 

“I-” Alasse started, but then the words did not come out. This time, it was Cedric to squeeze her hand. “She doesn’t know either,” she whispered in the end. 

“She doesn’t?” Althea repeated. 

Alasse shook her head. “No, she doesn’t know if the father is Phobos or Narbeth.”

“What will you do now?” asked Cedric. He could barely imagine how Alasse felt now, having just lost Beléra, who was likely to be imprisoned for a long time, and now being forced to live with the doubt that her heiress was the daughter of the most infamous monarch Metamoor had ever seen. He suddenly felt guilty for completing the picture as her disgraced son, who terrorized Metamoor for decades together with said infamous monarch. 

Alasse seemed to shake herself from a dream and stood upright, leaving both Cedric’s and Althea’s hands and shifting back into her usual austere and proud stand. “I don’t care if her father is that wretch. She’s my granddaughter, and I will love her as I always did. As I always loved Beléra, regardless of what she thinks about it. And as I always loved you, even in your darkest times.”

If Cedric had words in response to that, they were choked in the knot that clenched his throat. Ever since he’d learned the identity of his parents, he’d never given much thought to them as being his mom and dad . His mother had abandoned him when he was merely a day old, and his father believed he was dead until a few years ago. He had been angry at Alasse for longer than he cared to admit, for having let him go instead of finding a solution for keeping him close to her in this palace - for giving him a family who could raise him and love him, instead of leaving him to grow up alone, passed from one to another servant who could occasionally take care of him as if he was a package, until he was old enough to take care of himself. And now, hearing these words… against his will, he found himself clinging to them, letting them melt into his heart, dissolving that anger and frustration that had always accompanied him because he had never had a parent who told him they loved him. 

His emotions must have been painted on his face, because both Alasse and Althea were looking at him in puzzlement. 

“I uh- I should probably go,” he muttered, lowering his gaze. “We still have to escort Phobos out of his cell and uh-” 

“Of course,” Alasse said, her tone calm. “I know this visit was not a good start, but I hope it will not keep you from visiting us again.”

“No, Mother,” the words left Cedric’s mouth naturally, leaving him baffled. “I will come back, I promise. But you’re more likely to come find me in Meridian first.”

The shadow of a smile curved Alasse’s lips. “You can be certain of that. You cannot hide from me every time there is a Council.”

Cedric smiled back and bowed to her and to the High Priestess before leaving. As he walked away from the library, he was surprised to feel more serene than when he’d gone there to say goodbye to Alasse, as if some weight had been lifted from his chest. Perhaps, if one tried to ignore the part where Metamoor barely escaped an apocalypse, this stay in Hoel had been worth it after all. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 20

“Just when I thought Elyon couldn’t have any more terrible ideas…” Cedric muttered, as he walked next to Orube down the narrow staircase that led to Hoel’s dungeons. The prison was, like in Meridian, in the underground under the palace, and of course, the staircase that led there was barely broad enough for two people, made of black stone and with creepy skulls looking down at the visitors from holes nested in the stone wall, next to white torches leading the way. 

Orube couldn’t stop looking at each of these skulls, wondering who had the idea of putting them there and why. As a deterrent, perhaps? “I believe she just wants the two of you to talk,” she said. “You know, I start to think that the architect of this place came from Earth. Precisely from Transylvania.”

“Let’s just get over with it,” Cedric grunted, and accelerated the descent to the dungeons. The three soldiers, who had followed them, picked up the pace with them. Cedric had heavily protested at Elyon’s order to send him to pick up Phobos and escort him to the Queen’s carriage, so they could finally leave Hoel. When Cedric was out of earshot, Elyon had asked Orube to go with him - to make sure that Cedric wouldn’t do anything too impulsive, she’d said. 

That won’t be easy, Orube thought, following yet another turn of what seemed like an infinite staircase. It felt like descending into the heart of Metamoor. Cedric was literally furious at Phobos, for how he had almost let Elyon be absorbed by the Blight, and for being the cause of this entire ordeal in the first place. It was probably too soon for him to meet Phobos, but at the same time Orube could see Elyon’s point in wanting them to talk. Cedric, like the other members of the Council, was going to serve in a jury at the Prince’s trial, and an enraged Commander was not going to help anyone make the right decision on what Phobos’s punishment was going to be. 

Hoel’s prison was nothing like the dark pit of mold that Orube had imagined. When they finally reached the end of the staircase, a wide and circular open space extended all around them. The circular platform was surrounded by high walls, and it felt to Orube as if she was standing in the centre of an arena. The walls surrounding them were divided into three floors - the middle floor served as a passageway, where five guards stood post, while on the ground and second floors, huge arched openings faced the center of the open space, each delimited by glowing bars of white light. The prisoners' cells. 

Everything looked just as polished and elegant as the rest of the palace, with the eerie skulls watching over the prison from holes in the columns between the cells. 

“How do we know which one is his cell?” Orube asked, gaping at the cells looming over them. 

“I guess we’ll have to ask,” Cedric said. Then he raised his voice, speaking to the guards on the middle floor. “In the name of the Queen, we are here for the Prince.”

The usual shiver of excitement crossed Orube’s body as she heard Cedric’s formal ‘ in the name of the Queen’ , making her feel like a teenager with a silly crush. The guards did not say anything, and only the one standing in the center, facing the entrance where Orube, Cedric and the Meridian soldiers were waiting, raised an arm. When the guard lowered the arm again, the bars of a cell of the ground floor on the right vanished. 

Limping steps echoed in the prison, approaching the center platform, and a few seconds later, Phobos’s thin figure was standing in the archway, leaning on a cane. He looked a bit better than when Orube had seen him in his coffin, but he was still very thin and pale, and the intense red of his full beard was striking in contrast with his light hair. The beard covered part of his face, but one could see that his cheeks were hollow and that his skin was crossed by thin dark veins extending from his temples like spiderwebs. 

“So nice of you to come to help this poor man,” he mused, limping forward towards the group. “I’ll admit these prisons are not that bad, but the neighborhood is not very welcoming.”

“Shut up, you asshole!” came an answer from the cell opposite to the one Phobos had just left. Turning to look in that direction, Orube saw Beléra standing close to the bars inside the cell, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed at her chest. 

Phobos did not turn to look at her, but his mouth distorted in an annoyed grimace. “Farewell, my beloved.” Then to Cedric, “Shall we?”

Before Phobos could limp forward and pass Cedric, aiming at the exit of the prison, Cedric placed a hand against his chest, blocking him. “You’re a prisoner, remember that?” 

Phobos froze and looked down at Cedric’s hand with disdain. With his free hand, he peeled Cedric’s off his chest as if he was pulling a disgusting layer of dirt from his robe. Cedric didn’t seem to mind Phobos’s scene, though, and produced a glowing beam in his palm instead. 

Phobos grimaced with outrage at the sight. “Seriously? You want to handcuff a poor man walking with a stick?”

“You bet I am,” Cedric said, and the beam transformed into a chain, that went to twist firmly around each of Phobos’s wrist. “And that cane serves you well.”

At Cedric’s sign, they all turned away and started to walk the way back to the upper level of the palace, with Phobos between him and Orube. 

“Why so sour?” Phobos inquired as they walked. “I did what I had to, haven’t I? And your pretty wife is still alive.” He stopped walking and turned to look at Orube. “Oh, actually - I believe we haven’t had the chance to be properly introduced, that one time we met.” 

Orube raised an eyebrow at him. As irritating as he could be, she somehow found the Prince amusing in his audacity despite his current situation. “The one time we met, you threw a hoard of Annihilators at me.”

Phobos blinked with surprise. “Your Metamoor is excellent. About that - yeah, well. That was nothing personal, you know. But it all turned out well, didn’t it?” he gave her a smug smile - one that failed to make her stone face crumble. Then he waved with his hand, indicating himself in a theatrical gesture, for as much as he could within the restraint of his handcuffs. “Prince Phobos Wyrion Escanor, son of Weira, first and probably last of his name.”

Orube’s eyebrows shot up at the dramatic way Phobos had pronounced his full name. “Nice to meet you, Wyrion .”

Before Phobos could snap at her - she was most definitely sure he hated his middle name - Cedric intervened, taking him by the arm and making him turn. “Are you done with this charade?” 

Phobos shrugged, but let Cedric pull him away and reprised following him. Orube couldn’t help but feel slightly bad for him as he started to limp up the stairs. This was going to be a long climb. “I’m just trying to be polite, dear Cedric,” he said. “She deserves that. She has to endure all your bullshit the whole time. And why are you so angry at me? I’m just a limping corpse.”

Cedric grunted and in a flash, he turned and pinned Phobos at the wall by his throat, making everyone else halt the climb. 

“You listen to me, now,” Cedric hissed, and his voice came out rasp, reminding Orube of the naga voice. As he bared his teeth, Orube could get a glimpse of fangs. She considered intervening, but decided against it - Phobos definitely deserved pissing himself from fear once in a while, even though his expression seemed to tell the contrary. His half smile suggested that he found it rather amusing, if not pleasant, to be pinned at the wall and shouted at by a shapeshifter with fangs. 

Cedric secured his grip on the Prince’s neck and his voice was definitely the one of the naga when he spoke again. “You’re lucky I was not there when you almost let your sister die because of your power trip, or you wouldn’t be here playing chivalry with my wife.”

Phobos let out a snort. “Well, good that you weren’t there, then - because I also saved my sister and Metamoor’s ass in the end.”

Cedric’s hand pushed on Phobos’s throat, making him cough. “If you dare lift a finger on the Queen, or on my wife… that’s going to be the last thing you’ll ever do.”

Phobos’s self-confident smile vanished, leaving space to a hard look on his face. “Be careful with your threats. I’m still a royal.”

Cedric’s lips curved up in a sneer. His hand moved up Phobos’s throat, to his jaw, his fingers turning into claws, digging into Phobos’s beard and forcing him to look straight at him. “Oh, are you now? I don’t care if you’re the Prince. I also don’t care that we might be even family now. You are still a Champion of the Queen, bound by a Code - a Code that makes you respond to a Commander. And guess who’s your Commander now?”

Phobos rolled his eyes, letting out a groan. “I knew you would try to commander me.”

“Never forget it.”

Before Phobos could sneer something as an answer to that and make Cedric finally transform into the naga in that narrow space of the staircase, Orube grabbed his wrist and gently pulled Cedric’s hand away from Phobos’s throat. “I think he got the message.”

Cedric grunted a disagreement, but he let Phobos go and turned to reprise the climb of the stairs. The Prince followed him with a resentful look, but then reprised climbing the stairs as well. “At least your wife can talk some sense into you.”

Orube chuckled, following him up the stairs. “Oh, but it’s not him you have to worry about. I’d watch my back if I were you, Wyrion .”

The brief slowing down of Phobos’s pace up the stairs at her words was absolutely delightful.

 “Nobody should make the Queen wait,” Caleb muttered under his breath. “Especially in Hoel when it’s winter.” He had changed into robes, but he was standing next to Elyon, close to their carriage, with the same pose as that of a General of the army, staring at the massive door of the Hoel palace with a hard look. 

“If you knew my brother, you’d know that he’s the only one who does,” Elyon said. “You’d be surprised to know how many times he pissed my mother off by arriving late at one of her receptions.”

“I’m not surprised, but I don’t find it as amusing as you do.”

Elyon sighed, turning to look at the door of the palace as well. “We already talked about this. There will be a fair trial. We all know what the verdict will be, but it will be a panel of judges to say it.”

“With your vote,” Caleb commented. 

Elyon raised her chin up. “Yes, with my vote. And look, here they are - they did not make me wait too long after all.”

The door was opening, and from the inside of the palace, a livid Cedric came out, followed by an at least slightly pissed Phobos and by Orube, who looked as if she’d had enough of the quarrel between the two men. Exactly what Elyon was expecting, but she hoped Cedric had now steamed his anger off and by the time they’d be in Meridian again, he could think clearly. She really needed his vote in the jury for what she was going to propose to the judges. 

When Cedric was close enough, he stopped and bowed as usual. “My Queen, the prisoner - as requested. Are you sure you want him to travel in your carriage?”

“Would you prefer him to travel alone without surveillance?” she said, letting out an exasperated breath. “Or with you?”

“Most certainly not,” Cedric muttered through clenched teeth, then he went to find his horse, leaving her in front of her brother. Phobos stood upright - at least as much as he could, leaning on his cane - a mask of self-confidence painted on his face. He looked better than when she’d revived him. Still sickeningly thin, with hollow cheeks and sharp unsettling cheekbones, but at least his skin tone looked more alive than a week ago, if one looked past the dark veins that crippled through his skin. 

“Are you ready?” she asked. 

“Would it change anything if I wasn’t?” he shot back. 

Caleb took a threatening step forward. “Watch how you speak to the Queen!”

Phobos looked at him with disdain for a moment, then turned to look at Elyon again. “I apologize - would it change anything if I wasn’t, my Queen ?”

Elyon rolled her eyes. She turned and climbed the two steps up to the entrance of the carriage. “That’s going to be a long ride.”

It was indeed a long ride. Elyon had, of course, lied when she’d declared that she did not feel strong enough to teleport everyone, while at the same time keeping an eye on her brother and on how he would react to a burst of her magic. After the encounter with the Blight, she had immediately reconnected to the center of the planet and restored her energies. When the Blight’s root had been cut, all the Light that they had stolen went back to Metamoor’s core, and she could get it back in no time. And about Phobos… he had hesitated, that was true, but Elyon knew he was not going to take his magic back with brute force or try to steal any Light. He was surely planning to convince her to give him some Light back by her own choice, and she had to be very careful in the weeks to come, but he was not going to make any hazardous move. 

They travelled in silence for a long time, and Elyon could feel Phobos’s eyes on her while she pretended to enjoy the view outside her carriage. The vegetation was growing back, and people were now outside their homes, cleaning the streets from the snow, greeting each other, opening the small market huts where they served hot beverages in winter around here. Everyone stopped whatever they were doing and smiled at the passage of her carriage, waving their hands and saluting the Queen. Life was coming back to Hoel, and Elyon was proud of having made it happen. She was proud of her brother, too, for having made the right decision for once in his life. 

Naexi and Nagadir were the only people other than her, Caleb and Phobos in the carriage. Phobos had exchanged a few words with his former maiden, but then the heavy silence had fallen in the coach, and the hard stare that Caleb was giving to Elyon’s brother was likely the reason for it. 

When she felt she had looked at the city for long enough, Elyon inhaled a deep breath and finally looked at her brother, sitting in front of her. She glanced at the glowing handcuffs secured around his wrists. “No hard feelings, right?” 

He looked at the handcuffs as well. “This? Oh, well. I feel more offended by the cane. It makes me look like an old man. You really couldn’t fix my leg, could you?”

Elyon looked outside again, smirking. “I’d like to tell you I’ll ask Cassandra to have a look and see if she can give you something, but I fear she will want to cut your leg off.”

“Hm, right. Your Alchemist… she hates me, like everyone else, I suppose.” In the corner of her eye, she saw that Phobos was now looking straight at Caleb. “Like my new brother , I see. And to think that you owe me your own existence in this world.”

Elyon saw a muscle twitch in Caleb’s jaw. “I am not your brother.”

“You’re not, but we’re family nevertheless,” Phobos purred. “We should at least make an attempt to get along, you know, otherwise the family gatherings will be a pain for everyone. You wouldn’t want to ruin our dear Elyon’s - what’s it called? Christmas, right?” 

Caleb stiffened next to Elyon, and she knew he was making an effort not to jump at Phobos’s throat. Phobos seemed to notice as well, and his little smirk was a sign that it was exactly what he was after. “There will be no family gatherings,” Caleb hissed. “Not after the judges will have decided on your fate.”

Phobos chuckled and looked outside the window of the carriage. From there, they could see part of Cedric’s horse, riding next to the carriage. Zharel was riding at the other side. “You got yourself two excellent guard dogs, dear sister,” he said. 

Elyon had always thought that one of the first things she would do, once her brother was back, was asking him if he thought Weira would approve of her ways, now that he had seen her in the flesh, he had seen her Champions, her soldiers, how she managed all of them. She would have liked to ask him if Weira would think her daughter was a worthy heiress of her legacy. Now that he brought her guard dogs up, she could have stirred the conversation in that direction. Yet she was surprised to find out that she did not care anymore. She knew she was a worthy ruler of Metamoor, and she also knew that perhaps not everything was perfect, when Weira was in charge. 

She had studied the records, seen Cedric’s memories, and carefully deciphered Weira’s diary, and she knew that Weira was not perfect. 

She was charismatic, an icon of her time, but there were shadows in her life, too - especially in her last year, when her diary became more and more cryptic and difficult to understand. She was hiding something, and Elyon was sure that it had to do with the cause of her death, as well as with everything that happened afterwards. 

Elyon was not perfect either, but she tried to be just and do what she considered right, even if it went against a millenary tradition. 

“You also have a good pack of Champions,” Phobos went on, distracting her from her thoughts. “I was right when I told you that Cedric was the right choice. He will never betray you, not even now that I am around.”

Elyon only hummed, looking outside the window. They had left the core of the city behind, and were now riding in a rural area completely inhabited and covered by snow. It felt like riding in the middle of a white sea. 

“That is, unless his wife leaves him,” Phobos added. “If she does, then may the Gods have mercy of us all.”

“I have to agree to that,” said Caleb. 

“See? We can get along after all,” Phobos said, and the irony was sharp in his voice. He turned to Elyon again. “But you need a General. Cedric cannot keep doing that, too. Or his wife will leave him for real.”

Elyon hated that Phobos was right, and that he was, despite everything, the most experienced person alive on how to manage the entire planet. His way of ruling the planet had been questionable, but he did know the problems that came with it, and he had immediately spotted one of Elyon’s struggles at the moment. And yet again, Elyon did not feel like the vacancy of the General’s position was really an issue anymore. 

She’d known from the moment he had seen the armor on Caleb, that there was only one right way to solve her problem.  People would talk about it for months, some would turn their noses up at the scandal, others would see it as a sign that things did not have to stay the same forever and that there was space for everyone’s dreams in the thirteenth age of Metamoor. 

She took Caleb’s hand next to him and interlaced her fingers with his, turning to smile at her husband. “I already have a General. A really good one.”

When Cedric went to the carriage where Orube was traveling, he found her alone, crocheting one of the squares she was making for that blanket. She was travelling in one of the two carriages of the Champions, and Jezil, Vala and Aymon had just left it to take their shift riding with the royal carriage, while Nerel, Rhes and Zharel were in the other one. Their carriages were much smaller than the Queen’s, and definitely less fancy, but Cedric was glad to spend some time alone with Orube in that small space. 

“Freckles is going to complain a lot ,” Orube said as he sat next to her on the bench inside the carriage. There weren’t even cushions to make the travel more comfortable. “He will smell that horse before we even cross the border to Meridian.”

Cedric smiled at her and followed her work with the crochet hook with his gaze. She was very fast, and looking at her clawed hands move quickly and smoothly around the fabric was hypnotizing. Then his gaze trailed up on her, and he looked at her profile, at her smile still lingering there. 

His heart burst with love for that woman. He’d gotten so close to lose her… not only physically, when she was wounded. That was a close call, but one that could be resolved with just enough magic. Cedric had almost lost her way before that, and in a way that could not be saved with magic. 

Never again… , he thought, and another thought immediately followed, reminding him that once they’d be back in Meridian, things would go back to as they were before. 

This was not the time to give up hope - if he didn’t even believe it was possible for him to have a life with her while being Commander, it was never going to happen. Years ago, before he’d even met Orube, he would have definitely given in to cynicism and thought that hopes of happiness were for silly dreamers. But not today. Not when his life next to Orube was the dream. 

“What?” Orube interrupted his thoughts. She had stopped crocheting, and was looking at him with her eyebrows raised. 

He lifted a hand to her face, moving a strand of black hair behind her pointed ear. She was so beautiful, it took his breath away. He closed the distance between them and claimed her mouth in a hungry kiss, as if it had been too long since the last time he’d done it. She responded immediately, parting her lips and letting his tongue caress hers, tasting, exploring. It had to be the millionth time he kissed her, and yet he couldn’t have enough of the hot wave that always crossed his body in a flash when he did it, like the feeling of a cup of warm tea when his body was freezing. 

She beamed at him when they parted. “What was that about?”

Cedric did not let her face go, taking her between both his hands. “I love you, my sun. And I’ll do everything it takes to make it work when we’re back, I promise.”

Her answer was not what he’d expected, but it warmed his heart even more than a simple I love you too. “You’re wrong, Cedric. We will do everything it takes.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 21

Meridian, 13th age, end of year 23

After twenty-three years of living in Meridian, Elyon had adapted to her home world and embraced all of its traditions and ways of living. It had been easy for her, because from the day she’d been brought to Meridian by Cedric, so long ago, she had felt the bond that connected her to the planet and that told her that what Cedric had shown him was, at least partially, the truth. She had resented Cedric for a very long time because of all the scheming, the lies, the way he’d taken advantage of her teenage crush on him, but deep inside she had always been grateful to him at least for having brought her to Meridian and showed her her true home. 

Yet there was one thing she could not get accustomed to. Every time the end of a year approached, she just couldn’t shake away the feeling that it was odd to end a year without being surrounded by winter, snow, hot chocolate, and Christmas lights. Not even the week spent surrounded by snow in Hoel, two weeks ago, had helped. When the last month of the year started, she wanted the Christmas atmosphere to come to Meridian, her city. While she could control the weather to some extent, she could not bring the four seasons to a land that had been thriving since the beginning of time in a climate with only two mild seasons, Aran and Thoron. She just couldn’t impose a cold and unforgiving winter on the people of Meridian, just to satisfy her need for a North American December. She couldn’t even go to Earth during that time and enjoy the atmosphere in Heatherfield, since the time flow was not synchronized on the two planets, and spring was blooming in Heatherfield at the moment. 

All she could do was celebrate Christmas with Caleb, and look forward to the only end-of-year celebration in Meridian that reminded her of the corresponding festivity on Earth: New Year’s Eve. 

A knock on the door of her study suddenly reminded her that there was still one important thing to do, before she could really start enjoying the celebrations for welcoming the twenty-fourth year of her reign. 

The trial. 

After two weeks of hearings and many, long meetings with the Council, Phobos’s trial was finally coming to an end today. Beléra’s trial had been very quick in comparison: it only lasted one day, and she was found guilty of conspiring against the crown. Thanks to her mother’s pledge, however, her punishment had been softened to being confined to her tower without any access to magic, because her daughter Alès was too young for being left to grow up without her mother. 

“I’ll be right there,” Elyon told whoever was knocking at the door to let her know that the judges and the jury were ready. In her years of ruling, Elyon had substantially revised the justice system of Metamoor in an attempt to make it more equal for everyone, and to lift some of the decisional power that had always been put in​ the hands of the monarch. When people thought about the previous monarchs of Metamoor, everyone always attributed the label of tyrant to Phobos, and nobody ever seemed to remember that the previous Queens had just as much absolute power as Phobos ever had. In fact, Phobos had not changed a single comma in the laws of Meridian. He’d gotten rid of the previous inner Council, but he had formally replaced it with a single representative thereof - Lord Cedric. The Tower Council had remained untouched, and he secured the votes of each member through fear or, when fear was not enough, through money. And as far as the justice system went, he had the power to judge anyone on his own, just like Weira and all the previous Queens had. 

When Elyon ascended to the throne, she felt she could not pick up the task of deciding on the punishment of people who were five times her age, and so she decided to bring something from her previous home with her. There were no law schools in Metamoor, so finding a panel of judges had not been a trivial task. After a long and exhausting search, she’d found out she didn’t really have to go too far to find the highest experts in Metamoor law: the scribes of her library were the most knowledgeable people on the planet in that regard. And that was how Elyon had started to set up a new way of judging people for their crimes, first in Meridian, and then in the other cities of Metamoor. 

Now, each city had their own group of judges, as well as other scholars who had turned into counsels who could defend the parties involved. 

It was one of the changes to Metamoor’s traditions Elyon was the most proud of. And thanks to that, even her brother had now had the chance to defend himself - something he had not really taken advantage of, as during the trial he’d just been sitting on his chair, looking bored to death, and pleading guilty. 

The hearings took place in one of the many ballrooms of the palace, that Elyon had turned into a sort of court room - mostly based on what she had seen in terrestrial movies involving legal dramas. When she entered the room from the door behind the judges’ bench, everyone was already there. Phobos’s hearings had been public the whole time, and after the first day, when the room had been crammed with curious people, the public interest had faded and most of them had been witnessed by only a limited number of people. Today, however, people had been queueing at the palace since dawn to get a seat in the room and hear the final judgment of the infamous Prince. 

Phobos was sitting at the defendant’s spot, like every previous day of the trial, and he looked as if he was looking forward to it being over and to being sent back to his beach in the other dimension. 

The jury, formed by the inner Council, was sitting behind a bench on the side, and the five judges were already each in their place. 

Everyone stood up as Elyon appeared in the room - with Phobos being, of course, fashionably late in doing so. 

“Hail to the Queen,” the judge at the center of the bench said. The whole room repeated hail to the Queen in a chorus - the only one keeping his mouth shut being, as expected, her brother. 

Elyon nodded an acknowledgment to the room, then went to sit at her place in the center of the jury. She felt Phobos’s icy stare on her, following each of her movements. She wondered if he suspected what the jury voted for, and how he was going to react if he didn’t.

The jury’s vote was only a guidance to what the judges were going to decide, but Elyon knew that they were not going to contradict what she had voted for. After all, and as it turned out during the hearings, when they’d had to listen to the long recollection of Phobos’s deeds, Elyon had been the main victim of his crimes. The hunger, the poverty, and the arrests were only partially due to Phobos. As far as other cities were concerned, the orders of the arrests and of the channeling of Light towards Meridian had come from his supporters, and not directly from him. Most of the people who had ever been arrested had been freed by rebels or by Elyon herself, and were not pressing charges because they did not want to go through a process that was going to give them nothing back. The people who had been turned into roses had come back, and there were only a handful of witnesses who could list the names of people who had actually disappeared into the Silverhold or had been murdered by Phobos’s direct order. There was simply not enough evidence that could attribute any of these crimes directly to his own hand and not to the hand and will of his supporters, therefore these actions had been all grouped under the umbrella term of crimes against Metamoor. The truth was that nobody wanted to start prosecuting everyone who had supported Phobos in the past, and who had now started over with a new life, because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough space in the prisons of the whole planet to detain all these people - starting from the Commander in silver armor sitting next to Elyon in the jury bench.

All in all, the highest offense had turned out to have been the planning and attempting to murder Elyon, the legitimate Light of Meridian, with the purpose of absorbing her Light and becoming the legitimate ruler. And for that, Elyon’s own vote on his punishment had a certain weight. 

When silence fell in the room and everyone sat down again, the presiding judge sitting at the center of the bench cleared her throat and put on her spectacles, taking a parchment in her hands. She was the oldest of the five judges sitting at the bench, all wearing the same midnight blue robe with a collar in velvet of a lighter shade of blue, and her name was Thaola. She’d been a scribe in Meridian’s library for ninety-five years when Elyon appointed her as presiding judge of her court. 

“I declare today’s hearing open at…” Thaola looked at the astrolabe that towered upon the room, hanging at the wall facing the panel of judges, right above the main entrance door. It was a remarkable instrument that Elyon still could not understand fully today, and it had taken her a long time to learn how to read it, but thanks to its inner mechanism and a sprinkle of magic, it could show the exact date and time. “…at the ninth hour, fifth minute, of the one hundred-fifty second day of Thoron, of the twenty-third year of the thirteenth age.”

A scribe sitting at a small desk facing the jury’s bench, at the other side of the judges’ table, was hurrying to write down each single word that Thaola pronounced, his quill moving frantically on the parchment. 

“The jury has reached a verdict, and the judges have deliberated, but before we pronounce the final judgment, we will give one last opportunity to the defendant to speak for himself.” Thaola looked up from the parchment, and her yellow eyes landed on Phobos, who was looking at her with eyebrows raised, his arms crossed at his chest. “For the last time, how do you plead?”

Phobos rolled his eyes. “For the last time, I plead absolutely guilty, and I thank you for reminding me of all the glorious things I managed to do all on my own. Those were the days.”

Elyon gave him a scowl. He shrugged when he met her gaze. She knew this was all a charade - he was not that proud of what he’d done. A little bit, perhaps, but he at least regretted having made her suffer. 

Some of the judges shifted in their seats, but Thaola did not seem to be affected by Phobos’s attitude. She stood up, and everyone else in the room did the same. Phobos took his time to stand up as well. 

“Phobos Wyrion Escanor, son of Weira, Prince of Meridian - the jury and the present senate found you guilty of negligence towards the city of Meridian and the planet of Metamoor while they were entrusted to your responsibility, as well as of the kidnapping, attempted murder and treason of Elyon Weira Escanor, daughter of Weira, thirteenth Light of Meridian and Queen of Meridian, Grendal, Brandis, Hoel and Idier.”

Elyon felt Cedric wincing slightly next to her. He was surely thinking that at least the crime of kidnapping the thirteenth Light of Meridian should have been left out, since he had been the one to actually do it. Phobos didn’t seem to mind, though, and he listened to his judgment with his chin held high, as if he was listening to a tribute speech to his heroic deeds. 

“Accordingly, you are hereby sentenced to detention for the rest of your days,” Thaola went on, and she put down the parchment. Everyone in the room seemed to exhale a breath. Phobos didn’t falter - he surely expected this sentence, and only because he knew that Elyon had abolished the capital punishment. 

“Now, about the modality of your detention,” Thaola said, taking off her spectacles. “The jury has voted, and the senate agrees to give you a choice.”

Some whispers lifted in the air, as people in the public shifted and asked to their neighbor if they’d really heard the word choice . 

Thaola ignored the buzzing in the room. “You may go back to the prison in a separate dimension, where you spent the last nine years. Or you can stay in our world, always deprived of magic, and locked in a location of Meridian that will remain classified. Only the visitors allowed by the Queen will be able to see you, in either case. What will your choice be?”

At this, Phobos’s smug mask seemed to crumble a little. You did not expect that, uh?, Elyon thought, and had to force herself not to smile sheepishly. Everyone in the Council was convinced that it was useless to give him that choice - Phobos Escanor would never accept being locked in the East tower of the palace, which was the location selected by Elyon should he decide to stay in the world of the living. The only reason why she would not announce the location here, in front of a hundred people, was that it would make Cedric’s and Caleb’s life hell in protecting the palace from any attack by some resentful citizens. Cedric was the first one to say that the last time Phobos had been faced with the prospect of being locked in a fortress, he’d thrown himself off that very same fortress. He would never choose physical imprisonment, he said, if the alternative was having a palace of his own - with a beach. 

Phobos locked gaze with her for a moment - a moment when the arrogant mask was off, and she was looking her brother, the one she cared about, in the eye. From that look, she knew what he was going to decide. 

“I-” he started, and then straightened his posture again, putting the confident mask on again. “I will stay.”

Another cloud of whispers and comments lifted from the crowd in the room - surprise, outrage, worry. 

“He can’t be serious,” Cedric muttered under his breath next to her. 

“I bet it’s because of that guy, Aster,” said Caleb on her other side. 

“But he has a beach in the other prison!” Cedric hissed back. 

Elyon turned to look at him with an eyebrow raised. “Do you want a spot in that prison, by any chance?”

Cedric crossed his arms at his chest, and seemed to consider the option for real. “I wouldn’t mind having a beach. But no, thanks - I’m fine where I am.”

Phobos was escorted by the guards down to the dungeons where he was staying during the trial. Surprisingly, he had not objected much against the location - rather, he had complained that Caleb considered it necessary to have ten soldiers escorting him all the time, while he was just an old carcass walking with a cane . There was a lot to do now - the East wing was the wing of the palace, where Weira used to live before becoming the Queen. It had remained empty since then, and the staff of the palace was going to have a lot of work to do to transform it into the Prince’s prison under Naexi’s guidance. With the preparations for the New Year’s Eve celebrations at the same time, Elyon definitely had to plan for a raise of all the servants’ salaries for that month, or they would start the new year with the wrong foot. 

Caleb followed her as she headed back to her study, closely shadowed by Aymon and Zharel, who then remained outside the door to guard it. 

“This is going to be a huge change for Meridian,” Caleb said as he closed the door behind him. 

“You don’t seem convinced it’s a good change,” she said, taking her crown and headpiece off and putting them on the desk. She crossed the room until she stood in front of a wall mirror, checking that her braids were still in place. Luckily they were - she didn’t even know where to start to fix them without Naexi. 

Caleb joined her and embraced her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I trust you, Ellie,” he said, resting his chin on the crook of her neck and looking at her in the mirror. “But you really like to give people something to talk about, don’t you?”

She smiled at him in the mirror, then turned to face him, his arms still wrapped around her. “I hope I’m not stretching it too much.”

His hand came to cup her cheek, and he brushed her skin with his thumb, the adoration in his green eyes making her knees buckle. “After you named Cedric as your Commander and me - the Consort - as your General, I think letting Phobos live on this planet is almost too boring for your standards. They’ll get over it within a week.”

Her hands trailed up his chest, and with her fingertips she brushed the edge of the gorget of his dark blue armor. “And you… are you still sure you want that role? Or do you already miss the days when all you had to do was trying new clothes on?”

Caleb leaned forward with his forehead, touching hers and drawing her body closer to his. “Elyon…” he whispered on her lips. “When I came back to Meridian, I swore I’d protect you with my own life. And that’s what I want to do, even if you don’t need my protection - or my army’s, or Cedric’s and his Champions’. That’s what I want to do, because you’re my Queen, and on top of that… well, there’s that little detail that I’m in love with you, remember?”

Elyon’s lips spontaneously opened in a smile, her heart bursting with emotion at Caleb’s words. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss on his lips. He answered eagerly to her kiss, plastering his body against hers. As the kiss deepened, warmth filled her chest first, and then pooled in her core. “Besides, you are still an excellent Consort, did I tell you that?” she whispered on his mouth between kisses. 

He lifted her from the ground and blindly headed to the settee. “You bet I am. How much time do you have until the next meeting?”

Elyon chuckled, letting him lay her down on the settee and start to peel one of the thousands of layers of her skirt. “Enough for a demonstration.”

Meridian, 13th age, 24th Year’s Eve

If anyone would have told him, decades ago, that one day he’d be standing in front of a window, locked in his mother’s early apartments, waiting with anticipation to see the magic fireworks of New Year’s Eve, Phobos would have answered with a snort. 

Pathetic. 

That’s what he would have said. 

He still thought it was pathetic of him to stand there, with the city’s celebrations going on for hours in the courtyard of the palace, waiting for the magic fireworks with more excitement than when he was a kid. In fact, he’d never liked those fireworks. 

But now, after he’d come back from a world of fake people, fake touches, and fake colors and sounds, anything that looked and felt alive was addictive to him. When Naexi brought him food - real food - and drinks, he took his time tasting them, trying to dissect every single different flavor that he could distinguish. He observed the colors and the textures of everything that surrounded him, and the greatest joy of his shallow days was taking care of his plants that decorated the living room where he was standing like in a forest. His plants were real, they grew, they bloomed, and they died, leaving space for new ones. 

And most of all, he reluctantly had to acknowledge that he craved the touch of other people. Not necessarily in an intimate way - a brush on his hand when Naexi passed him a cup of tea, or a hug from his sister were already enough to make him understand how immaterial the same gestures were in the prison where he was before. 

Decades ago, he’d thrown himself off a tower to avoid being in the same situation where he was now. 

Today, he knew he was being pathetic, but he wouldn’t want to miss out on the reality of colors, sounds and the touch of people he liked for anything in the world. 

The clack of the door in the entry hall made him flinch. He did not expect visitors tonight, since everyone, who was allowed to enter the prison, was busy in some way with the celebrations - Elyon with being the center of attention, Cedric with standing like a stupid statue in full armor and mask and following her like a shadow, his wife probably enjoying the company of the Basiliadean guests, and Naexi with serving the tables. 

By the sound of the quick and light steps approaching the living room, he understood that it was Naexi and whirled around to see her. “Naexi dear…” he went towards her when she entered the dimly lit room. He was keeping the fireplace at the minimum, because he wanted to see the fireworks as best as he could. 

Naexi’s smile was tight, though, and could only mean she had something to tell him - something he might not like. Of course, it had to be something bad, or she wouldn’t have to interrupt her duties to come tell him. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m… I’m not alone,” she whispered. 

“Oh?” Phobos looked beyond her shoulder, to the archway that opened to the entry hall. It was dark there, but there seemed to be nobody. 

“He’s waiting outside - Elyon has offered to grant him access, if you will agree.”

“Grant access… to whom?” Phobos didn’t like to be left in the dark about stuff that concerned him. He quickly scanned the names of people Elyon might have thought about giving access to his prison to - but she’d already done it with all the people, who could ever have a reason to visit him. 

“You said that if you could choose, you would choose Aster…” Naexi murmured. “So I recommended him.”

Phobos inhaled a sharp breath, his eyes widening. “You did? Oh…” He touched his face with his hands - his sharp cheekbones, the pale skin, the patches with dark veins visible underneath… They were partially covered by the beard - which was the main reason he was keeping it like this - but they were still visible on his cheekbones, on his temples, and on his neck. He was recovering, but he was certainly not in his best shape for that kind of visitor. “But I look-”

“Handsome,” Naexi interrupted him, and peeled his hands off his face. “You have nothing to be worried about. I’ll let him in now, and leave you two alone. Then you can decide, alright?”

“Alright…” 

When Naexi left, and a different cadence of steps started to advance in the entry hall, a rush of panic took hold of Phobos and made him retreat towards the window. He turned his back to the entrance of the living room. He was definitely not ready to be seen in this state by one of his former lovers. 

The steps halted on the archway. “My Prince…” 

Phobos’s hands shot up to his face again, covering his eyes at the sound of Aster’s voice. He felt so pathetic. So ashamed. When Aster had seen him for the first time, Phobos was at the peak of his power. He had everything. He could do anything. And he looked like a God. The last time they’d seen each other in the real world, perhaps he did not look like a God anymore, but he was still in the position of having Metamoor kneel at his feet. And then, they’d seen each other occasionally, in his fake prison, where Elyon had given him his old appearance - no dead eyes, no limping, no dark veins running under his skin.

Now - what was he now? He was a prisoner, a cripple, a recovering corpse. 

He took back all his thoughts of a few minutes ago, and reconsidered how his way out from Kandrakar had been the best choice after all. 

When Aster spoke again, his voice was dangerously close. He felt the heat of his body right behind him, facing the window. 

“I thought… you should not be alone tonight,” Aster whispered, making his throat clench in a knot. “Don’t you want to see me?”

The pop of a firework in the sky outside saved Phobos from looking for the words to say. He looked up at the sky, where light flakes started to pop one after the other and fell on the celebrating crowd like a rain of glitter. The colors… the excitement of the crowd… Aster’s scent coming closer, and the warmth of his body… It was all so real, it made tears pool in Phobos’s eyes. 

So pathetic…

“I… I don’t look the same as I did in the other prison,” he said after they’d remained in silence for a while. He assumed that Aster was looking at the fireworks as well from behind him. 

“Me neither,” came his answer. 

The fireworks went on, adding new lights and new colors as they grew in the night sky, reflecting against Phobos’s hands on the window sill and against his clothes. He desperately wanted to turn and see the lights reflect on Aster’s purple eyes, but he just couldn’t. 

“I don’t care how you look, Your Highness,” Aster said after another while. “Ever since I met you… I could never stop thinking about you.”

An unusual sensation, one he’d almost forgotten the feel of, made Phobos frown. It was his heart, picking up the pace in his ribcage. 

“May I touch you?” Aster whispered. 

“Please do,” Phobos whispered back. He loathed himself when he realized that a tear had escaped and was now running along his cheek. All these treacherous emotions were having the best of him, and he could do nothing against them. 

When Aster’s hand touched his shoulder, heat flushed through him, making him almost sway. He realized he’d finally turned to face Aster only when he met his eyes. 

Aster was one of the most handsome men Phobos had ever met, and that had not changed. He could see in his gaze that he was older, but his skin did not show any sign of the passing of time, except- 

There was a scar. It took Phobos a while to notice its extent under that light, but it ran deep along the entire side of his face,  from his forehead to his jaw, missing the eye by pure chance. It was not there the few times Aster used to visit him in his previous prison, and they talked - because talking was everything they could do, there. Perhaps Aster didn’t want Phobos to see the signs of his life in the real world, and always showed up looking the same as he always had before. 

Phobos lifted a hand and let his fingers brush the scar, and rage bubbled inside him at the thought that someone had dared disfigure Aster’s face. Something like this could have never happened back when everyone feared Phobos’s wrath if anyone dared touch one of his protégés. 

“I had a… disagreement with someone,” Aster explained. 

“I thought you were a good guy,” Phobos said. 

Aster smiled, in that way that only showed a canine and made Phobos lose his mind. “I am a good guy. But not when someone insults my Prince.”

Aster’s words ignited another flush of heat through Phobos’s body. Triumph, pride, excitement all burned at the same time in his chest as he realized that even in his pathetic situation, even when he was merely an outcast with a broken body, there was someone looking at him with the adoration he could see now in Aster’s eyes, up to the point of getting such a horrible scar on his face to defend his name. 

Phobos’s body reacted by instinct, and he grabbed Aster’s face with both hands, drew him against him and pressed his lips against his. 

Aster promptly wrapped his hands around Phobos’s waist, plastering his body against his, and answered to his kiss with hunger, as if he’d been waiting for him for years. 

“I missed you, Your Highness,” Aster whispered on his lips when they parted for a second. 

“Enough with that bullshit. Just Phobos.”

“Phobos…” 

For the rest of the night, Phobos forgot where he was and why, and the feeling of being pathetic did not reach him for a single second anymore. 

And he completely missed the rest of the fireworks.

Chapter Text

Chapter 22

Meridian, 13th age, beginning of year 24

We will do everything it takes. 

Orube had not forgotten those words, and she was certain that Cedric had not forgotten them either. Yet some things were easier to be said than done, and upon their return, Cedric had immediately been swallowed by the frenzy and chaos of the palace of Meridian during the trial of the Prince first, and the preparations of New Year’s Eve then. 

The number of meetings he had to attend that month was more than what a single person could ever bear and still stay sane. Orube had no idea what was there to talk about the whole time - after all, everyone knew that Phobos was going to be found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for life. Cedric did not seem much happier than she was in that regard: he was tired, and although he had started to delegate at least some of the training to the other Champions, there was still a lot of work waiting for him at the end of each Council meeting. 

Orube’s resolution to meet him halfway and try to participate as much as she could in his other life had faltered as well during those months, as she had been absorbed by picking up where she’d left with the training of the apprentices, and then had left them again to join the eclipse celebrations in Basiliade. She wouldn’t have wanted to go alone without Cedric, but Elyon had insisted that someone from Metamoor had to go, so Orube had gone with Morven and Cassandra. It was amazing to see Cassandra’s reaction to her first time in Basiliade, but it did nothing to chase away the melancholy of being there without Cedric, while he was sitting in a Council room for hours listening to the recollection of every single crime that Phobos did - sometimes through his own hand. 

There was one thing that had made her smile in Basiliade, though: when she’d arrived, she’d been welcomed by Yarr instead of Acheri as usual. Acheri was nowhere to be seen that day, and it was only later in the afternoon that Maut had explained to her that someone had finally found their mate, and that not even the commitments of a First Grand Master could keep someone away from that first mating phase. 

When Orube had finally seen Acheri and Shoshan emerge from his room and come to join them for dinner, it reminded her of how grateful she was for having found her life partner in a non-native. The mating bond between two Basiliadeans was for sure very exciting at first, but everyone, who went through that, came out of their room looking as if they had not slept for a week, limping and relieved that the frenzy was going back to a more affordable level of attraction. 

After she came back to Meridian, the night of New Year’s Eve was the only chance she got to spend some time with Cedric, but only after the Queen had retired and he could join her and put down the ceremonial mask - well, or keep it on for her own entertainment. 

Orube thought that after the trial and New Year’s Eve, they could finally take some more concrete steps in their projects, and she knew that Cedric was trying. She was trying, too, and she did spend a couple of night shifts with him, but she soon realized that it was not possible for her to adjust her schedule so she could be there every time Cedric had to stay awake the entire night. After New Year’s Eve, there were other matters to take care of and that Cedric could not leave to someone else - there was a new important event for the Council, namely the Day of the Tributes. This was a day at the beginning of each year when every family was allowed to come to the palace, bring a tribute to the Queen, and submit a request for economical help. Each request then had to be evaluated by the Council, who would then vote on it, and the Queen would finally make a decision on whether to grant it or not. 

It didn’t sound like much work, if one didn’t know that Meridian was the capital and largest city of the planet, and that thousands of requests were submitted every year - which was why the Day of the Tributes actually lasted for more than a week. 

Today was the fifth day of that week, and Orube was hoping to get a glimpse of Cedric when there was going to be a break, but he did not come out of the throne room. That day, Orube was supposed to go to Heatherfield. The wedding was now coming closer and she had promised the girls that she would be there a week before the wedding, and that she would allow them to help her choose a terrestrial dress for the day. She had no idea of what humans wore when they were invited to a wedding, so she was relieved that her terrestrial friends were going to help her choose something appropriate. She couldn’t say the same about Cedric, but she trusted that he’d spent enough time studying humans to know what to wear. 

As the doors of the throne room closed again, she sighed and went back to their rooms. She’d already told Cedric earlier that morning that she was leaving for Earth today, so it was not that much of a big deal if she didn’t manage to say goodbye. After all, he was supposed to join her for the wedding, and with the time difference between the two worlds, it meant that she’d see him again very soon. And yet, somehow, she was hoping to see him today, to tell him that she was still there, still wanting to fight for them to have a life together. 

Gone to Earth. 

Cedric kept turning the note in his hands as he sat on the couch of his old room. He’d found the note three days ago on the desk, and suddenly the rooms had gone cold - just like when Orube had left for Basiliade. 

Never again. 

He remembered his thoughts of that day, when they were coming back from Hoel. Never again would he let his stupid armor stand between the two of them. Or so he thought. There were things, however, that always came in between, and that he could not delegate to someone else so easily. One of these was the Council. He detested spending hours sitting there, listening to whatever nonsense the High Priest had to say, while the evening grew darker and he missed yet another chance to have a real dinner, with the only person he wanted to listen to. 

And then there was paperwork. He’d promised himself he would delegate as much of it as he could, so he would only need to sign the papers, but somehow he was not ready for that yet. The beginning of the new year was always a mess of paperwork - every single apprentice had gone through an evaluation at the end of the previous year, and he had to compile and sign each and every report on how they’d been doing. Since he’d been quite busy with the Blight in Hoel first, and then with the trial of the fool who now inhabited the East wing of the palace right above his head, he had yet to find the time to write those reports down. 

First it was the trial, then New Year’s Eve, then the Day of the Tributes, now these reports… and then what? There was always going to be something. If he didn’t want his marriage to crumble into pieces, he had to do something now , or he was going to be trapped in this loop forever. 

Gone to Earth. 

He crumpled the note and tossed it away. “Fuck this,” he cursed under his breath, and crossed the room to reach the desk. He took a parchment from the drawer, dipped the quill into the ink, and started to write. 

He had just finished putting his seal at the end of the parchment and was about to sign it, when someone knocked on the door - on the door of the old room. 

Cedric frowned in puzzlement - people did not come to knock on that door, but then he remembered telling Nerel that she should come look for him there if he was not answering to the door of his quarters. “Come in.”

“Commander,” she said, entering the room. “You said you wanted to do those reports tonight and you needed my help.”

Cedric went on signing the parchment. “I know what I said - change of plans. I wasn’t there for most of the tests anyway, so it doesn’t make sense for me to write them.”

Nerel looked above his shoulders to the parchment. “Are you… taking a leave? Now? What about Earth?”

Cedric rolled the parchment and closed it with a green ribbon. “That’s where I’m going. I’ll be there for the wedding, but you’ll have to escort the Queen. She’ll be delighted not to have me around to tell her what she shouldn’t do.”

Nerel opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, as if she was at a loss of words. “Uh, of course. But what about those reports?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “What do you think?”

She beamed, her pointed ears pricking up. “You mean… I can write them?”

With a shrug, Cedric passed her and went to open the door again. “You, Rhes, Aymon… I don’t care. Just make them appear on my desk when we’re back from Earth, and I’ll sign them.” 

Her excitement at the idea that she was finally given some paperwork to take care of warmed his heart. He managed to keep some degree of indifference painted on his face, though - she shouldn’t get too used to the idea of writing stuff for him, at least not before he’d checked how she was going to do it. They left the room together, but then he made a turn to walk in the opposite direction. 

“Are you not going to give that to the Queen?” she asked, nodding at the parchment. 

He looked down at the roll he held in his hand. “No, there’s something else I have to do first… actually, why don’t you do it?” 

Nerel took the parchment that he handed her, her incredulous look suggesting that she didn’t even expect him to delegate her something like this. 

“And…” Cedric added, before she could turn and walk away. “Keep an eye on… you know.” He looked up at the ceiling. “He seems to like you, from what I have heard. He won’t mind if you pass by from time to time.”

Lying on the couch, his head on Aster’s legs, Phobos felt almost intoxicated by his scent. He could never get enough of it. While Aster brushed his fingers through his hair, Phobos kept flipping through the pages of the terrestrial book he held in his hands - the only terrestrial book he’d ever read, and that Elyon had found and kept for him. It was old, some pages nearly falling out, but it had all his old annotations and translations into Metamoor of the parts he found the most interesting. 

“And listen to this one!”, Phobos said, as his eyes landed on yet another one of his annotations. “Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.” He chuckled. “Oh, I love this one.”

The acrid smell of magic hit his nose as someone unlocked the entrance door. Ever since Phobos had come back to the world of the living, magic smelled awful. He desired it nevertheless, of course, but it puzzled him how much it stank if one only perceived it from outside as a non-user.  

“I’ll see who that is,” said Naexi, who was in the meantime bustling with the tea pot. Phobos didn’t even look in the direction of the entry hall. There were only a few people who were allowed to come to the tower. Two of them were already there. Other than them, it could only be Elyon, Cedric or one of his dogs. Or his wife, who had come to visit him more often than Cedric had done so far. The esteemed Commander had barely come once with his Vice to check that the apartment was unescapable, and had never showed up ever again, always sending one of his Champions or his wife to check that he’d not thrown himself off the tower.

Another thing that he noticed, since when he’d come back, was that he could not only perceive how awful magic smelled, but also how different it was for each person. He closed his eyes for a moment, while Aster still caressed his hair, and focused on the approaching scent. 

This one was mixed with something else - something sweeter, as if it had been corrupted by a different kind of magic. 

“So nice of you to come pay me a visit, Cedric,” he said, without even turning to look at the door to his living room - that’s what he called the biggest room of his prison, where he usually received his guests. Even in his condition, he did care about his privacy. Only Aster was allowed into his bedroom, and Naexi when she came to clean. 

“Still obsessed with that book?” Cedric asked. “I can bring you a new one from Earth, if you’re into human writers.”

“This Oscar Wilde was most certainly no human,” Phobos blurted, slamming the book shut. He raised to sit upright and glanced at his visitor. “I’ll never get used to seeing you in black, dear Cedric,” he commented, taking in his black robe and the vest, also black, decorated in fine white twirls. “Are you here to finish the job you started in Hoel? It took you a while.”

Cedric cleared his throat, lowering his gaze for a moment. “No, I’m not. May I talk to you in private?”

Phobos held his gaze for some moments. He was not scared of Cedric - even without his Vice or his wife to keep him from flying into a rage, Cedric would have never done him real harm. He had already had so many opportunities - and he’d gotten very close to that, when he’d stabbed him with that bloody spear - and he’d never really gone all the way through. And now, he had too much to lose, and would not stain his hands with the blood of the dear brother of his Queen. Not anymore. 

He exchanged a look with Naexi and then with Aster, silently telling them to go. Naexi left from where Cedric had come, while Aster went to the bedroom. 

Cedric followed Aster with his gaze and eyebrows raised. “I see you two are serious.”

“It doesn’t concern you,” Phobos said dryly. “But I suppose you’re not here to talk about my love life. What do you want?”

Cedric looked down again, and a muscle twitched in his jaw - a sign that Phobos recognized and that told him he was about to say something that cost him dearly. 

“I’m here to apologize,” Cedric said, and Phobos could swear he was gritting his teeth. “For how I attacked you. I shouldn’t have.”

Phobos waved his apologies away with his hand, and leaned back on the couch, crossing one leg on the other. “Oh, that. You just did what everyone always wanted to do, but never had the guts to. I appreciate the effort to come up here and apologize, though.” He pointed to the tea pot on the low table. “Tea?”

“No, thanks,” Cedric said. “But I meant what I said. You dare lift a finger on the Queen, and I will not respond to my actions. You know it’s the truth - whether I want it or not.”

“Of course I know. You forget that I have that bond, too, and that it’s awake, now.” Phobos waved at the chair next to the couch. “Please, sit - don’t stand there like an idiot.”

Cedric took a seat, and looked around in the room. He seemed to notice the plants only now. Phobos did not have a say on the furniture and the style of the place, of course, but luckily Naexi had coordinated the set up of the rooms where he was going to live for the rest of his life. She was still bringing new plants regularly, so he would have something to do, and had left the portraits of his mother, of the times when she was young, hanging on the walls. There was also a portrait of his grandmother - Queen Deulara, that ugly bitch. Phobos had only vague memories of his grandmother, and they were all unpleasant. 

“Oh Gods… she’s really looking into my soul,” Cedric murmured, his eyes fixed on the painting of Deulara. 

Phobos turned to glance at the portrait, too. Gods, the woman was just as ugly as she was mean. “Yeah… I wanted to take it down and burn it, but I think she would come out of the painting and bite my head off if I touched it.”

Finally, Cedric broke into a small smile. “She most certainly would. Remember that time when-”

“A-ha,” Phobos interrupted him, raising a hand. “We don’t talk about that time.”

They remained silent for a while after that, but the atmosphere seemed to have lightened up. The power of Queen Deulara…

“Why did you choose to stay?” Cedric asked after a while. “You didn’t seem too keen on being surrounded by four walls, the last time it happened…”

Phobos leaned over the small table to pour some tea in his cup. “That was a long time ago. I still loathe being kept here on a leash.”

“Then why stay here? You had a palace all for yourself, your garden - for fuck’s sake, you even had a beach!”

Phobos leaned back against the couch again, sipping the tea. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the taste. This, this was what Cedric - just as anyone else - could not understand. “I thought the same for some time, while I was in that prison. But then… I started to feel the emptiness of everything I touched, everything I drank, I ate, I breathed. And when someone else touched me… that was too much.”

Cedric frowned, as if he couldn’t believe his words. Phobos couldn’t believe them either, as he’d never thought he would ever scoop so low that he would miss anything as materialistic as the touch of a person. “So you… missed the real world?”

“I did not miss the real world per se . Only some parts of it. Some…” He bit his lower lip, suddenly finding it difficult to pronounce that word. “…some people.”

Cedric stilled, studying him closely. 

Phobos’s gaze snapped at him. “Not you, of course,” he added hastily. He mimicked a disgusted grimace. “I certainly did not miss you. And your magic stinks - I think it got infected by your wife’s.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Cedric said, and Phobos did not like the mischievous smile on his face. “I won’t tell anyone that you missed your little sister.” 

Phobos looked down into his tea cup, and he absolutely hated the feeling of blushing that burned his cheeks. He craved real colors, smells, and the textures of clothes, objects and other people’s skins, but there was one thing that topped all these things at once. His sister was indeed the main reason why he had bent and accepted this outrageous situation. 

He hadn’t even protested about the location - he could have requested his old quarters back. But he did not want to risk that the judges would then decide to go back on their word and send him back to the fake prison. It wasn’t even for Aster that he’d decided to stay - he was certainly a very pleasant incentive, but he was not the reason. Not even Naexi was what pushed him to give up on his own dignity and accept this imprisonment. In his past life on this planet, he’d had many occasions to spend time with both of them, to feel them close to him, to speak with the real versions of them. He never had the chance to do this with his sister, as his only interactions with the real her had been anything but fraternal. Now, he was tired of always seeing a mere image of her. He wanted to hear her real voice, so similar to the voice of his mother, and he wanted to lay a hand on her shoulder when she was worried about a decision she had to make. 

He was horrified by how weak all this made him, but he decided he didn’t have to care, for now. 

“Look, I uh-” Cedric reprised after a while, making him realize that he’d been lost in his thoughts for too long. “I actually wanted to ask you something.”

“Hm?” 

Cedric looked him in the eye, and Phobos didn’t like how serious he looked. “Did you feel your mother’s Light, when she passed?”

Phobos blinked, taken aback by such a question out of the blue. “I… No, I did not.” He dismissed the weight of this admission with a wave of his hand. “But alas, we all know she was not that fond of me.”

“Bullshit,” Cedric snapped, making his eyes widen. “You had your disagreements, but she loved you more than anything in this world. I’d say even more than she ever loved your sister.”

Phobos forced himself to keep a cool tone, but Cedric’s words made his heart skip a beat. “And I’d say you have spent too much time with your mommy.” Cedric chuckled, and he stood up. Phobos followed his movement with disdain. “But thanks for the visit anyway.”

“Anytime,” he said, then turned to head to the entry hall. He halted another moment, though. “By the way… Beléra? Your taste in women was really debatable.”

“Some would say the same about my taste in men,” Phobos shot back, and he sipped some tea for emphasis - conscious that he was doing exactly the same as his mother did. 

“Thank the Gods you two never married. I can’t even imagine the apocalypse you would have generated. That, and the fact that you’d be my brother-in-law.”

Phobos put the tea cup down. “I must confess I did regret it for a moment. But I’d still have been a tool, you know. You can put me in a prison in a different dimension, where tea tastes like paper. You can put me in Kandrakar. Or in this shitty tower, with my grandma judging me and scaring the hell out of me every time I enter this room. But at least I’m still me. Nobody will ever make me become an ornament. Ever.”

Cedric gave him a crooked smile. “Indeed. Farewell, Phobs - I have a wedding to go to.”

As he turned and walked away, Phobos asked behind him, “Whose wedding?”

“I have no fuckin’ clue.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 23

“What do you mean he’s not… himself anymore?” Orube asked. The way the girls were only giving her fragmented answers was starting to irritate her. 

Will fidgeted nervously with a strand of fire red hair, avoiding eye contact. “It’s just… you know, although his memory was erased, something left a mark.”

“Or a hole,” said Cornelia. “It’s been a rough year for him. Since he came back, he has been having nightmares.”

“And he’s very… unstable,” said Hay Lin. “Sometimes he just doesn’t leave his apartment for days. Other times, he tries to live a normal life.”

“But the fire department had to let him go,” added Taranee. “Which did not help his mental state. He got the news a few days ago.”

“And how do you even know all this?” Cedric asked. 

“Because the Oracle told us to keep an eye on him, genius,” Irma snapped. Orube heard a low groan coming from Cedric. Those two could never have a civil conversation, not even in such a situation. 

“Alright, so can we see him?” Orube asked. 

“That’s why you’re here. He’s waiting for you in the cafeteria,” said Will. “But perhaps it’s better if you go alone first, Orube. I’m not sure how he will react to… him,” she added, looking at Cedric. 

Orube exchanged a look with him. “She’s right. But I’ll be nearby, I’ll just turn into someone else. If you need me to come there, you just tell me,” he said, and he tapped on his temple with his index finger, making Orube understand that he would try to catch her thoughts. 

The cafeteria had just closed, so only Ashley and Jake remained and they were cleaning up the counter. Cedric had sent Jake to tidy up the back while he took his appearance and was pretending to clean up the place with Ashley. 

Orube found Joshua sitting alone at an isolated table. Her heart squeezed as she saw him bent forward, his shoulders dropped, staring at the inside of a coffee cup as if it contained the answer to why he was so tormented. 

Cedric and Orube were not meeting him just to see how he was doing. It was clear that the reason why his life had been turned upside down and he could not close his eyes at night anymore was that some scrapes of what had happened to him when he’d been possessed by Phobos had remained, and he was having doubts as to what was real and what was not. He deserved an explanation, but revealing the existence of other worlds and of the Guardians of Kandrakar to the humans was against the Oracle’s rules and had to follow a certain protocol. Namely, the person who revealed themselves or the identity of other aliens had to make the human sign a binding declaration that they would never reveal it to other humans, and in case of breach of the declaration, the person who had come out would be equally responsible as the human and respond to Kandrakar. The written declaration had to be then signed by an emissary of Kandrakar, and the Guardians had been entrusted with this - just like they’d been entrusted with the same when Cassandra had revealed herself to Ashley and Jake. Now it was up to Orube and Cedric to decide if it was necessary to reveal themselves to Joshua and give him an explanation as to what had really happened to him. 

“Joshua,” Orube whispered when she was close enough to the table. 

Joshua’s gaze snapped at her. His brown eyes widened in surprise, even though the Guardians had told him that he was supposed to meet her. “Rebecca… You’re- you’re fine!” he said, his voice trembling. “P-please, take a seat.”

Orube sat in front of him at the table. Gods, he looked like a shell of himself. He had lost weight and muscles, his hair was a mess and his beard hadn’t seen a trimmer for a while. She reached out and took his hand on the table. “How have you been?”

Joshua chuckled nervously. “Uh, well, I’ve been great!” he said. He didn’t even sound as  if he was trying to sound convincing. 

“I’ve heard about the fire department…”

He shrugged. “Oh, well… I was just not fit anymore, you know. I’ve been… sick, you know. For a while. Perhaps I need a quieter job.” He smiled sourly. “No more night shifts, at least.”

“What kind of… sickness?” she asked. 

Joshua raised his gaze to the ceiling for a moment, perhaps thinking about what to say, or perhaps asking to some terrestrial God for some strength. “I-I uh… The doctors say it might be a form of schizophrenia… but I don’t know, I don’t believe them. I know what I saw. Or I think I know…” he left Orube’s hand, only to take his head between his palms. “I don’t know…”

A knot clenched in Orube’s throat. She couldn’t leave him in this state. She glanced towards the counter, crossing Jake’s - or better, Cedric’s - gaze. He looked worried as well. 

“I think I can help you, Joshua,” she said. 

Joshua kept pressing his palms against his temples, as if he was having a sudden headache. “How?” he whimpered. “You’re just going to tell me I need to take meds, too.”

“No…” Orube murmured. “I know what you saw,” she said. Joshua looked at her with wide eyes. “But first I need to ask you something. Are you fine with Cedric joining us?”

Joshua frowned for a second, as if he was having troubles even remembering who Cedric was. Orube was not sure if it was a good or a bad sign. Then Joshua shook himself and his gaze was clear again. “Oh, Cedric. Right. You are together now, right?”

“We are.”

“It’s… It’s fine. I made peace with that. It’s perhaps the only thing that doesn’t keep me awake at night,” he murmured, and he suddenly looked incredibly tired. 

Orube glanced at Cedric again and nodded. Cedric immediately shifted look while Joshua was not looking, then joined them at the table. 

Joshua looked at him with no particular emotion on his face. “Good to see you, man,” he said. 

“Hi, Joshua,” Cedric said as he took a seat. 

The three looked at each other in silence for a while, then finally Orube took a deep breath and spoke. “What you saw happened for real.”

Joshua took her by surprise by raising an eyebrow. “You mean I was really possessed by an alien creature and found myself in a place with blue trees making blood rituals to revive the corpse of the tallest man I’ve ever seen? Yeah, sure.”

“It was the truth,” she repeated. 

Joshua’s face was distorted by anger. “You’re just making fun of me now.”

“We’re not,” Cedric said. “The place with the blue trees is Metamoor, it’s my home planet.”

Joshua bursted in a bitter laugh. “Ha! So of course you have something to do with this. And that man was who - your brother?”

Orube could read in Cedric’s face that he was making an effort not to snarl at Joshua. “The man was Prince Phobos, who once ruled on Metamoor. He used you to come back and attempt his conquest of the throne again.”

“That’s bullshit…” Joshua muttered.

“So you think you’re crazy, then?” Orube asked. “I thought you wanted to be believed. We do believe you, because we know that place. I’m not human either.”

Joshua snorted another laughter. “You almost got me, but now…” He made to stand up. “Thanks for the entertainment, but I have to deal with enough doctors who make fun of me. And I’m pretty busy right now - I have to find a new job, you know.”

“Show him,” Cedric told Orube, without taking his eyes off Joshua. 

Orube hesitated a bit, but then she shifted to her natural looks. 

Joshua winced, inhaling a sharp breath. “W-what… what trickery is that?!”

“No trickery,” Orube said. “This is my true looks.”

Joshua shook his head. “No… I don’t believe you.”

“I come from a planet called Basiliade, and now I live in Metamoor with Cedric,” she said. “He comes from Metamoor, he’s a shapeshifter and a mage.”

“And your five friends are what, pixie fairies?” Joshua sneered. 

“Worse - they’re Guardians of Kandrakar,” Cedric said. At Orube’s pointed look, he raised his palms apologetically. “Well, he asked.”

Joshua sat down again, rubbing his temples with his fingers. When he calmed down, they told him more details about what happened to him and why, and that Phobos had been defeated. Slowly, Joshua started to put pieces together. When Cedric showed him that he could take someone else’s look, Joshua asked for a final proof that he knew what he was talking about by showing him the man he’d revived. He broke in a relieved cry when Cedric turned into Phobos. 

“Hey, are you still here?” Joshua asked from behind the counter. 

Orube shook herself. “Oh, sorry. I was just thinking… about how many things have changed in the last few years.”

Joshua was drying a mug with a cloth. “You mean the fact that one of your friends is getting married? Or that this place is covering you and your husband in gold with all the turnover it makes?”

“It seems like yesterday that the girls were just going to school, you know…” Orube said, looking down at the green liquid in her glass. A smoothie, they called it. 

Joshua put the mug down and took another one to be dried. “I know… and it seems like yesterday to me that I was sitting there, having a breakdown over my life and you offered me a way back.”

Orube just smiled at him. 

“I’m not sure I’ve thanked you enough for this,” he said. 

After they’d revealed the truth to him and made him sign the Oracle’s papers, Cedric and Orube had offered Joshua a job in the cafeteria. The place was already booming back then, so Jake and Ashley could have used an extra pair of hands. In the years that followed, the place became even bigger, as Cedric gave up his apartment upstairs and bought the rest of the building with the money they were making. The bookstore was now the biggest in Heatherfield and at least at the beginning, Cedric had personally interviewed each candidate who showed up for the open positions for taking care of the bookstore part. Now he left the major tasks to the most senior employees, but he still insisted he’d have a chat with the new hires after they’d started and before their position could be confirmed. 

Orube was now legally co-owner of the place - if ‘legally’ was an appropriate term for whoever Rebecca and Cedric Cooper were and anything they owned - and her task was supervising the cafeteria side of the business. Unlike Cedric, she trusted Jake and Ashley to make the right decisions for her, so she only signed papers when necessary and gave some input when Jake or Ashley asked. 

“No need to thank me,” Orube said. “You would have made it on your own, we only gave you a hand.”

They kept catching up after that, until Joshua had to tend to some customers, leaving Orube alone with her smoothie while she waited for Will and Cornelia to arrive. The girls were at least half an hour late, but it did not surprise Orube - they’d said they were busy with something that concerned the dress and were both so stressed and confused while talking on the phone that Orube had understood only half of what Will had said. 

“Oh, before I lose you in the hands of two very stressed women,” Joshua told her when he came back, “Ashley gave me some papers for you to sign.”

He rummaged behind the counter and produced a handful of papers and a pen. 

Orube went through the papers quickly to see what they were. Not that she understood much of terrestrial bureaucracy, but she trusted that Ashley would give her papers only if she knew they were safe to be signed, and with time she’d learned which papers she could sign on her own and which ones required the signature of both owners. 

“Ah, crap,” Orube said as she spotted one of said papers. “For this one we need Cedric, too.”

“Is he not coming to the wedding?” Joshua asked. 

Orube hummed. “Hm, he’s supposed to come to escort Elyon, but likely only for that day. I can get this to him and then bring it back signed.”

“I’m here! I’m here!” Will’s voice caught Orube’s attention from behind her. She turned to see her friend, coming almost running to the counter. She panted as she took a seat at the counter next to Orube. “Sorry I’m late, oof!” she puffed. “I thought being the bride would be stressful but let me tell you - being bride’s maid is so much worse!”

Orube looked above her shoulder and at the entrance of the cafeteria. “Where’s Cornelia? I thought you two were together.”

Will looked behind her as well, confused. “She was right behind me, I-”

Both glass doors of the cafeteria were pushed open, and a furious Cornelia stomped inside. She shoved a customer out of her way and then dropped on the stool at Orube’s other side. 

“I’m so looking forward for this wedding to be over,” she blurted, shoving her bag on the counter and rummaging inside to produce a cellphone. She started to type furiously, then she slammed inside the bag again. 

“Did something happen?” Orube asked. 

“I forgot to lock the car and had to go back,” Cornelia sighed. “I don’t want to hear our bride’s complaints if someone steals the placeholders.”

“Who would steal placeholders?” Will asked, rolling her eyes. With a wave of her hand, she called Joshua. 

“I don’t know, but I certainly don’t want to find out,” Cornelia said. “A coffee for me,” she told Joshua when he was close. “Make it big.”

“Make it two,” added Will. 

Orube pushed her smoothie, still almost full, on the counter towards Joshua. “Make it three, this slurpie is not for me. But I’m glad that people are willing to pay seven dollars for it.”

When Joshua disappeared at the other side of the counter, where the coffee machine was, Will turned to look at her, resting an elbow on the counter and her head on her palm. On Orube’s other side, Cornelia had come closer, too, and was looking at her with anticipation. 

“What?” Orube asked, feeling cornered. 

“So? How are things in Meridian?”

Orube ignored the way Will had said things , a clear sign that she wanted to know about her love life, and started from the main public events of Meridian instead. “Oh well. Everyone’s still talking about the trial, but people don’t seem too upset by the idea that Phobos is locked in a tower. Thanks!” she told Joshua when he came back with three giant filter coffees. 

“I hope they took measures to prevent him from escaping using his hair as a rope, like Rapunzel!” Cornelia mused. Will cackled at her words. 

“Like who?”

“Don’t you own a bookstore? Well, whatever…”Cornelia took a sip of her coffee and blew out some air. “Ouch, it’s scorching hot!” 

Orube shrugged and sipped her coffee as well. The temperature did not bother her, and she savored the taste instead. She really wish they could have coffee in Meridian. “He doesn’t seem to want to escape. His maiden, Naexi, thinks that he’s…” she cleared her throat. She couldn’t believe she was about to say this about Phobos. “…in love.”

Two pairs of widened eyes were now fixed on her. “Oh?”

Orube smirked, as the girls’ reaction was as expected. “Yeah, he has a guy. Very handsome, I have to say. For being a Metamoor guy, I mean.”

Will elbowed her, making her almost drop her coffee mug. “Said the one who married a Metamoor guy.”

Orube’s gaze turned down to the inside of her mug, where little beige bubbles were popping on the surface of the dark liquid. “Cedric is… different.”

“How are things between you two?”

“Fine, fine,” Orube answered immediately, and she realized her voice had come out unnaturally high-pitched. 

“That sounded like Ross Geller-fine,” commented Will, earning a puzzled look from Orube. Sometimes, it was as if they were speaking different languages. 

Cornelia hummed, waiting for her to elaborate on what clearly hid something else. Orube didn’t even know what to say. That they both failed at doing anything of what they had planned? That she desperately wanted him to come to Heatherfield and spend some time in the only place they could really call their home? 

“Don’t we have to go shopping?” she asked instead, in an attempt to divert the conversation towards something else. 

Will and Cornelia gave her another inquiring look, but then they seemed to understand. “Fine, but this coffee is still scorching hot, so while we wait - tell us more about this new boyfriend of Phobos’s. Who in their right mind would ever want to be with him?”

Shopping for a dress was exhausting. The girls brought Orube in a place that was definitely too expensive for her taste - but Cornelia said that Orube’s dress had to match Cedric’s and the Champions’ suits, which apparently she had bought by Elyon’s order. Orube had no idea of any of this, but Cornelia told her that one of them - Vala, by the description - came to look for her last month with a piece of paper with all their measurements and Elyon’s credit card, and the explicit order to make them all look as far as possible from a bunch of aliens at a party . 

In the end, a lady who initially treated the three of them as if they’d entered the shop by mistake, made Orube try a series of hideous gowns, assuming that she could only afford the flamboyant pieces she had on sale, until Will snapped, “Excuse me, but do you know who that is? She’s Ms. Cooper, the owner of Ye Olde Bookshop!”. The retailer’s expression immediately morphed and she beamed at her, making one mellifluous excuse after the other on how she hadn’t recognized her - “After all, you don’t see much of the Coopers around here. How’s life in Manhattan?”

After an exhausting hour of trying dresses on, Orube bought the only one that did not make her feel like a shrimp - a long, purple dress made in satin, with the shoulder straps wrapping around her nape and falling in a smooth cascade on her legs, with a slit that showed part of her left leg. It was a simple dress, but the color looked good on her, and she was going to wear her favorite copper jewels at her ears and arms to complement it. 

Right when she was trying it on, Irma  joined them in the shop, making the few snob customers turn when she erupted with, “You’re lucky I’m not the bride, or I’d have to make a fool of myself to get some of the attention away from you!”

When the girls finally let her go home, the sky was darkening and all Orube wanted to do was to wear those absurdly comfortable terrestrial jogging pants, perhaps order a pizza, and crash on the couch, watching whatever nonsense the humans were doing nowadays on TV. 

She had forgotten how exhausting Earth was, if she didn’t have another alien to endure it with. 

She rummaged in her purse for her house keys - she did not envy her friends at all, forced to search for bunches of keys amidst the sea of junk that humans always carried around in their bags, all with one huge bag containing her dress and another bag with a pair of shoes with a heel so high they could be used as a weapon, both hanging on the other arm.

When she finally found the keys and opened the door, she was so lost in her terrestrial frustrations that it took her a while to realize that Cedric’s scent was in the air. 

She dropped the bags to the floor and followed the scent before she even realized that a light was on in the living room. 

Her shoulders dropped when she found the living room desert. A reading light was on and was the only source of light of the living room, but there was no sign of Cedric. Maybe she missed him so much that she was imagining his scent coming closer, and she’d forgotten the light on even though she never-

“Looking for someone?” 

Cedric’s voice made her jolt and turn in a flash, a hiss leaving through her bared teeth as an instinctive reaction. 

Cedric was standing there, wearing terrestrial clothes, and with a triumphant smile on his face. “It took me ten years… and I finally managed to catch you off-guard!”

Orube gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “The last person who ever did it was my brother, and he earned a broken nose from that. You’re a lucky man!”

His smile gleamed in the warm light of the reading lamp. She let him take her face between his palms and kiss her softly. 

“What are you doing here? I thought you’d come only for the wedding next week,” she asked when their lips parted. 

His hands did not leave her face and he looked at her with that look… the one that made her feel as if she was a long-missed treasure. “I left Nerel in charge.”

She blinked. “You what ?”

Cedric smiled at the surprise painted on her face and with a hand he moved a chunk of hair behind her ear, reminding her that she was still wearing the glamour. She removed it immediately, shifting to her native looks. 

“Oh, there you are,” he whispered. “There was nothing to do this week that she couldn’t take over. I had a choice, and I chose you. Orube…” The gleam in his eyes, the softness of his voice, the way he was looking at her and holding her close to him made Orube’s heart pick up its pace. “Sometimes I cannot choose. But whenever I can, I will always choose you. Will you choose me?”

Orube broke in a smile, his genuine worry that she’d say no making her heart burst with love. “Always.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 24

The next five days went by in a blink of an eye. It had been ages since the last time Orube and Cedric had spent more than a single day on Earth, since they only came to Earth when Cedric had to escort the Queen, and Elyon could rarely stay far away from Metamoor for longer than that. Neither Orube nor Cedric had ever been too fond of Earth per se , but spending time there together had a completely different meaning. 

Heatherfield was where they met for the first time. Granted, both of them had already seen the other in some other occasion from afar, but Heatherfield was the place where they had found each other by chance for the first time, in a moment when both of them were wondering what they were doing in that place. 

Heatherfield was the place where they got to know each other, and where they each pretended not to care much about the other’s existence for a while, until it was undeniable that they both did. 

And Heatherfield was where they fell in love, and where they had found each other again, taking their masks off. 

It was a special place, and spending time there filled Orube with a certain nostalgia of the past, of the butterflies in her stomach of that time when she’d gone to find Cedric the evening of the second riddle, and she had acknowledged to herself that she couldn’t stop thinking about the cranky shapeshifter. 

Cedric was still able to put those butterflies in her stomach, every time he acted all formal and in the name of the Queen of Metamoor , or like on one of those three days - when they went to pick up the suit that Cornelia had bought for him, and he’d tried it on. Orube had barely an idea of what a suit looked like, but once Cedric had it on, she decided she liked it very much. 

During those days, they spent some time in the bookshop, taking care of administrative stuff that had accumulated over time, but also just enjoying each other’s company in that place, where they had spent so much time ten years before. It barely even looked as if it was the same place, but there were still some elements that gave away that this enormous four-storey café-bookshop was the same small, dimly lit and dusty store where they used to work together, like the creepy golden peacock at the entrance. 

They even went to the movie theatre - there was one cinema that still showed the new movie from the Lord of the Rings franchise, the one about Bilbo Baggins, and they took the chance to go and watch it. They had different opinions on it, but they did agree on one thing: that Elvenking had the name Phobos printed on his forehead. 

Five days later, Cedric was still officially on a leave, but it was also the day when Elyon, Caleb and the Champions were supposed to arrive and their time alone would be over. Orube didn’t mind, though, and was curious to see how the six Champions were going to behave at a terrestrial wedding. 

It was a beautiful spring day outside, the sun was shining and flowers on the trees were starting to pick up the pace of the season. Orube had already done her morning training session in the backyard, taken a shower and was already about to get dressed when Cedric finally crawled out of the bed upon her insistence - she wanted to grab some coffee at the bookstore on their way to Elyon’s - and he disappeared in the shower. 

Her body wrapped in a towel, Orube opened the drawer in search of some terrestrial clothes to wear for the day. She had always found the fabric and the cut of the everyday clothes of this planet extremely impractical, differently from the garments people wore when doing sports. Those were amazing - a sign that humans could use their talent for solving problems to come up with smart materials even when it came to clothes. As she browsed through the pieces she owned in this house, she noticed the laced black bra that Cornelia, Irma and Will had convinced her to buy the other day, telling her that Cedric will owe them one . Orube was not too keen on wearing this type of underwear, finding it more uncomfortable than useful, and was quite sure that Cedric didn’t care about bras either, but she decided to try it on. 

She put a pair of jeans on, then she went to the bathroom to do her sarsh , while Cedric was still in the shower. Will and the girls called it eye make-up , but for Basiliadeans, the sarsh was more like a traditional symbol of their status. All warriors and masters painted their eyelids with a black liner, which indeed looked very similar to the way some humans drew black lines on theirs. The extent of the sarsh was a personal choice, and Orube liked to draw a thin black line just around the base of the eyelashes on the upper eyelid and curve its outer end up. Others wore it on the lower eyelid, and others only made a few dots at the inner and outer corners of the eye. 

“Showers… humans are utterly stupid, but sometimes they really have great ideas,” Cedric said as he wrapped a towel around his waist and came out of the shower. Orube finished drawing the tail of her liner with the brush, pretending not to notice that he was scanning her attire with a puzzled look. “Where does that come from?”

She shrugged, rinsing the brush. “A not-so-great idea from the humans, but it looks good, doesn’t it?”

The hum of Cedric’s magic echoed with the bond in her chest as he used it to dry his hair in the simple wave of his hand. That was definitely a great idea the humans could be jealous of. 

He was behind her in a second, wrapping his arms around her waist while she put away the brush and the jar with the black dye. “Oh, it does…” A hand trailed up her stomach, while he stamped a kiss on the crook of her neck, and then brushed the lace of the bra and went to lower one of the strips. “You look better without it, though.”

She tried to ignore the small wave of heat that crossed her body at his touch while he pressed his body against her and his other hand climbed up her body until it reached the clamp of the bra on the back. “We have an appointment, you know that.”

“They’ll wait…”

She let out a gasp when he opened the bra with just one hand and without even looking. “How many of these have you opened already?” she chuckled, and she found the idea of him being an expert in human lingerie somewhat arousing. 

The garment slithered off her arms and dropped on the floor, and Cedric’s hands were already replacing it, cupping each of her breasts while he left a trail of soft kisses on the skin of her neck. He looked at her in the mirror with such a hunger in his eyes that it nearly undid her. “Remember that morning, months ago? I think I still owe you that one,” he whispered, and his fingers pinched her nipples, which responded instantly and peaked under his touch. Desire pooled between Orube’s legs, making her pants feel like they were the enemy, standing between her and his body. Her hand plunged in his hair and she turned, clashing her mouth against his. His arousal pressed against her back, and for a moment she forgot about the pants - as he kept playing with her nipples, that hot wave of pleasure started to grow nevertheless, leaving her to soak her underwear without even being touched there. She kissed him hungrily, the wave growing at each clash with his tongue and at each circle that he drew on her nipples. Right before she could shatter, one of his hands left her breast and dove inside her pants, his fingers landing on her already swollen clit. She moaned inside his mouth as he started to rub his fingers against her, and she let go of all restraint, letting her orgasm flash through her body and making her twitch and quiver against him. 

His body, also half-naked from the waist up, was plastered against hers, his cock pushing against the fabric of the towel against her back. She reached out with an arm, wrapping it around his lower back and pushing him against her to feel him. 

“Want some more, uh?” he teased her, his hand still between her legs inside her pants. 

“Oh yes, we’re not done yet.” 

He fidgeted with her pants to open them, then pulled them down together with the underwear, and she kicked them away, turning to face him. With a claw, she got rid of his towel and his cock sprang towards her. 

“How do you want me?” he whispered, his eyes glued to her mouth as he pulled her closer again. She took the chance to curl her fingers around his shaft, and then slid her hand down to his base, and up again, earning a soft moan from him against her lips. 

“Hmm, I have some ideas,” she said, and closed the distance between their mouths in a hungry kiss, searching his tongue, caressing it, biting his lower lip while working him up and down with her hand. Cedric followed her movements, moving against her hand, and his cock grew harder between her fingers, making heat pool again between her legs. 

“If you continue like this, I’ll make a mess here, on this floor,” he rasped between kisses. “Was that the plan?”

Orube grinned on his lips, and then pushed him away from her, forcing him to stagger back towards the open door and then into the bedroom. “Oh, you will definitely make a mess.”

She advanced into the bedroom, towards the bed, her mouth never leaving his, and her fingers caressing his shaft while he staggered back, following her lead. When he reached the edge of the bed, she pushed him again and crawled on top of him. Her claws closed around his wrists, spreading his arms apart and pinning them against the bed at each side. 

Cedric grinned at her, his pupils slightly dilated with desire, matching his cock insistently pointing towards her. “I don’t think we have ribbons here…”

“No need.” 

She’d been wanting to try this for a while, and finally it was her chance to do it. She closed her eyes and summoned her magic from inside her. She was getting better and faster at it, and in no time, a pleasant warmth was beaming in her palms. She modelled her orange magic to form threads, and then twisted them around each other to form two ropes, and then closed them around Cedric’s wrists, sending the other ends to twist around the top rail of the headboard. 

His gasped moan was a delight. He looked at her with wide eyes. “So this is the real reason why you learned to use your magic, uh?”

Pressing his shaft against her skin, she leaned down to brush his lips with hers, while she trailed the clawed fingertips of the other hand on his throat. “Isn’t this a good reason?” 

Where her fingers touched his throat, another rope of orange light formed, closing a collar around his neck, then she raised to sit upright across him and pulled another luminous rope from the center of the collar. 

His hips thrusted upwards, his shaft rubbing against her skin. She curled her free hand around him, feeling him throbbing in her palm. 

“Please…” he whispered, and the begging movement of his hips made desire throb between her legs. But there was one last thing she wanted him to say, before giving him everything he wanted. 

“Please what ?”

“Master,” he hissed, and in a quick movement, she guided him inside her. They both inhaled a sharp breath at the contact, and his hips immediately started to move against her, accompanying her movement as she slid up and down on him, clenching him in, squeezing, and enjoying every single moan that she heard while she rode him, the luminous rope coming from the collar secured in her hand as if it was a rein. 

She let the wave of pleasure grow, starting from her core and bubbling up, to the rest of her body, and it was only then, when she was just about to shatter, that a glare on the bed stand caught her eye. She did not stop riding Cedric, but she looked at it - it was the armband of his armor, and the encased stone was gleaming in blue, Rhes’s color. 

Cedric turned to look at it as well and for a moment, it looked as if he was coming back to reality from a world far, far away. He slowed down with his thrusts inside her just for a few seconds, but then he looked away and reprised with the same rhythm as before first, and picked up the pace then. 

“Not gonna answer?” she asked. 

“They probably just forgot how to turn off the alarm in Elyon’s house… they’ll figure it out.” 

A small burst of triumph added to the heat in her core, and with a grin she called back the two ropes that were tying his hands. As they vanished, freeing Cedric’s arms, she pulled the rope connected to the luminous collar, and he responded immediately by raising to sit, and wrapping his arms around her body, while thrusting deeper, and deeper. When she felt the tip of his tongue on his nipple, her climax crashed against her. She rolled and pushed against him, squeezing him in and forgetting everything else for a moment - it was only the two of them, and nothing else mattered, not even that blinking stone. Clutching her against his body, his breath hitching against her breast, Cedric thrusted deeper and slower inside her, throbbing and finally finding his release while she descended from her own. 

She plunged her fingers into his hair, and he looked up at her, still panting a little. He gave her a devilish grin. “We should have worked on your magic earlier.”

She chuckled, and called the magic that was forming the collar back. “Well, we’ll just have to make up for the time lost.”

“Oh, yes. There’s a lot of lost time I would like to make up for.”

Although they had planned to go to Elyon’s house that morning, and clearly the group from Meridian was already in Heatherfield and having some troubles, they still lay in bed for some minutes, enjoying the last moments they could spend on their own. They were still lying in bed, Cedric’s head resting on her chest and her fingers blindly combing  through his hair, when she heard the clack of the door downstairs. It was very faint, as if whoever was coming in was making an effort to be silent. Her ears twitched as she used her sharpened senses to listen carefully. Cedric didn’t move at all - a sign that he hadn’t heard anything. 

She did not alarm him, though. Whoever was inside had the keys, so it must be either Will or the Champions. Most likely, the latter. 

She heard steps coming closer to the stairs, but then they halted abruptly. 

“Don’t, you idiot!” a voice whispered. It sounded like Vala’s. “He’s still on leave!”

“And they’re upstairs!” hissed another voice. From the accent, it was clearly Jezil. “Do you really want to run into that? Again ?”

“Well, and what do we do now?” a third voice whispered back. Zharel, perhaps. “The Queen said-”

Vala’s voice interrupted him from somewhere closer to the door. “Here! This will do.”

“Right!” said Jezil. “Remember what he said?” He lowered his voice by a tone, then, speaking with an excessively marked Meridian accent. “‘ This is what replaces magic in this shit hole!’” 

The three left, and Cedric still didn’t give any sign to have heard a single word. He lifted his head and looked at her after a while, though. 

“Are you alright?” he asked. 

She smiled. “Oh, yes. But I think we have just been robbed.”

Orube was right - they had just been robbed. After Cedric grudgingly crawled out of bed again and got dressed, he went downstairs to find out that both his wallet and the checkbook, that were on the small table close to the door, were gone. 

There was not much in that wallet, since he only needed it as a complement to his fake terrestrial identity, but it contained the only card that always managed to convince humans to do what he wanted without resorting to magic: the one with  the words American Express printed on the front. Since the card was linked to the bank account of Cedric and Rebecca Cooper, the owners of the biggest bookshop in Heatherfield, who also happened to have some mysterious capital invested in some titles abroad that added quite a lot of money to it every year, there was really a lot he could do with that card. And whenever the card was not enough, Cedric had always managed to get what he wanted by scribbling some numbers and his signature on the silly papers of the checkbook. 

And now they were both gone, in the hands of six aliens from Metamoor for the Gods knew what reason. 

Since Elyon’s house was at the other side of the city and in the periphery, in a residential area, they had to take the minivan. It was anyway a good idea to turn it on and take a drive, since the vehicle was by now more than forty years old. They went to the bookshop first on the way to Elyon’s, to get some coffee - “If they planned to spend all the money that card can afford, they’ve probably already done it, so there’s time for coffee”, Orube had said - and then they headed to Elyon’s old place.

Her house was in a quiet residential and almost rural area, where houses were nested in a small neighborhood and surrounded by fields. Elyon’s house itself was surrounded by an impressive garden delimited by a tall fence, and there was a narrow private road crossing the front part of the garden, that opened in a small plot in front of the house where Elyon’s parents’ car used to be parked. 

When Cedric and Orube arrived with the minivan, they found out that the usual parking spot was already taken by-

“What the hell did they do?!” Cedric parked the minivan on the other side of the plot, then he stormed out of the vehicle. 

“Are you out of your mind?” Cedric almost yelled at the six kids - they were all adults, but to him, they would always remain kids, especially when they did something reckless - while he walked towards them. 

The six were surrounding a car that looked almost as old as the minivan, studying it with curiosity - a deep red and impossibly long car that must have been one of those that rich people used to buy back in whatever terrestrial age this car was from. Cedric was not an expert of terrestrial cars history, but by the looks of it, it seemed to come from the late ‘70s. 

Orube was clearly trying hard not to laugh at the scene. Good that at least she was having fun. 

The Champions hurried to form a line in front of him, between him and the hideous car. “The Queen said that we had to find a way to go to the wedding, and that we could not go with that mint-green carcass,” Nerel explained, waving at the minivan behind Cedric and Orube. At Cedric’s frown, she added, “Her words, not mine. So we found this guy who sold these wheeled boxes for a good price.”

“He said that this old Cadillac still has it,” Zharel added, bumping his fist on the front of the car. The vehicle squeaked in response. 

Cedric sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his index and thumb. “And how is this carcass better than my carcass?”

“I think it looks nice,” Orube intervened, and went to have a better look at the car. “But I don’t think everyone can fit in here… it seems to have six seats at most.”

Cedric approached the car as well. It was longer than the average car that he saw on the streets of Heatherfield, but Orube was right - there was space for six people at most. “And you used my money to buy something that we can’t even use?”

“Actually, we got something for you as well, Commander!” Vala said, and the others echoed her words with big smiles that did not promise well. 

They gestured to him to follow them towards the side of the house, where a garage door was. Jezil went ahead to open the garage door, while Aymon approached Cedric. 

“I tried to stop them, I swear,” he murmured, handing him his wallet and his checkbook back. 

When the garage door opened to reveal yet another car inside, Cedric groaned in exasperation. The car looked, again, as if belonging to at least two decades prior. It was black, and much smaller, with only two seats. 

“For Imdahl’s sake, Aymon - your job as fourth in command is to stop the Vice and the third from doing stupid things like buying a vintage sports car with my money,” he muttered, approaching the car to see it better. There was a plaque on the hood - an emblem with a black prancing horse and a name. 

“‘Por...sk- I don’t even know how to pronounce it,” Orube said, studying the symbol. “This thing must cost a fortune.”

“And what am I supposed to do with this?” Cedric asked, whirling around to look at the Champions. 

“Well, the Queen said-”

“Whatever,” Cedric interrupted Nerel, going back to the lawn in front of the house. He didn’t even want to imagine how much the scrap dealer had charged six naive aliens for two vintage cars, one of which was clearly German. He didn’t even know where exactly this Germany was on this planet, but if there was anything Cedric knew about cars, it was that the ones coming from that land were expensive. 

“Two questions,” Orube said, following Cedric. Unlike him, she seemed rather amused by the situation. Perhaps she didn’t know how much money had just been syphoned out of their bank account. “Who of you is going to drive, and where is Elyon?”

As she pronounced the Queen’s name, a rumble approached from outside the property and on the private road that crossed the front garden. They all turned to look. 

“Don’t tell me that this is the plan…” Cedric murmured as a motorbike approached, generating a cloud of dust at its passage. Two figures with black helmets were sitting on it, Elyon’s braids waving in the wind. She was on the backseat, and the driver could only be Caleb. 

“And about driving, I did what you taught me, Commander,” Vala told him, while they all gaped at the motorbike coming to park next to the Cadillac. “I copied the skill from the guy who sold us the cars. I can also replace an engine now - whatever an engine is…”

Elyon dismounted the bike first. She removed the helmet and shook her head, her bangs and unruly curls taking up volume again. She was wearing her hair in the same way as she did when she was younger, with two simple braids instead of the usual intricate puzzles that Naexi created on her head in Meridian. The Queen smiled in delight, her cheeks flushed, and for a moment she really looked as if she’d regressed to being a teenager again. It made Cedric’s stomach churn at the memory of what he’d done to her back then, when he kept repeating to himself that the end justified the means, talking himself out of thinking too much about his own disgust in grooming a teenager. 

Caleb dismounted the bike next and came to pat him on his shoulder, pulling him away from those dark thoughts about the past. “No need to make that face, Commander,” he said. “If the Queen wants to go to the wedding on a motorbike, then a motorbike she shall have.”

“Yeah, go tell it to Alborn and Miriadel,” Elyon said with a chuckle. 

Orube came to take his hand while Elyon and Caleb went to look at the cars. She squeezed it, as Elyon exclaimed, “It looks like Batman’s car!” while looking at the black car in the garage. 

“Are you alright?” Orube asked, giving him a knowing look. She could read him so well, he could never hide anything from her. 

“Yeah. Just… ghosts. And I suppose I should check that they didn’t sell our house to pay for all this.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 25

“I thought you’d be more surprised,” Orube said, elbowing Cedric as they stood in the crowded room of an old villa that the wedding pair had rented for their wedding. It was a delightful place, actually, if one looked past the fact that getting there was just as complicated as getting to the other side of the pyramids in Basiliade. Apparently, it was nowadays’ trend to have wedding celebrations in old cottages or rural villas in the middle of farms and fields, which had been renewed and turned into businesses for this kind of event. 

The reception room was small, hence it was slightly  too crowded with all the people who came inside to get a flute with sparkling bubbly wine. 

After having asked thousands of times who was getting married, Orube would have expected Cedric to react with something more than just an “Ah, right - her,” when finding out that it was Hay Lin’s and Eric’s wedding. 

“Well, she’s the only reasonable one in that group of imps,” Cedric said, and he sipped his wine. “Of course it had to be her, the only one who could find someone willing to endure her for the rest of his life.”

Definitely not the same reaction Orube had when she was told, three years ago, that Hay Lin was back with Eric. The two had bumped into each other by pure chance in Heatherfield, and oddly in a similar way as the first time they’d met as teenagers. It was immediately love at second sight. They found out they were both living in High Spring, the metropolitan city closest to Heatherfield where the major universities were. Eric was doing his PhD in astrophysics at the time, while Hay Lin was completing her apprenticeship in the atelier of a fashion designer. And of all places, they met in Heatherfield, while Hay Lin was visiting her family and Eric was going to the observatory as a guest researcher to collect some data for his project. 

Three years later, here they were, tying the knot.

At first glance, it looked like a standard wedding on this side of the planet, like the ones Orube had seen in some movies on TV. The way the guests - including her and all the aliens - were dressed, the buffet, the flowers, the organization of the benches and the arch decorated with flowers outside for the ceremony, all reminded Orube of some scenes she had seen on the small screen. 

But there were some elements that clearly were not from here, and Orube assumed they were from Hay Lin’s family’s culture. For a start, her dress was not white, like the dresses of brides on TV. She was wearing a beautiful vibrant red dress decorated in golden swirls, and as she was the only one wearing red, she stood out above everyone like a bright star. There were red decorations here and there, as well as candles everywhere, and two bigger red candles decorated in gold and depicting a dragon and a phoenix. Orube did not know much about Hay Lin’s family’s country of origin, but she supposed that the symbols drawn next to each name on the tables and on the menu of the buffet were the translation of the words into their language. 

The girls were all wearing similar cream-colored dresses, also decorated in gold. They all looked beautiful, and when they were close to Hay Lin, the bride’s red gown looked even more striking. 

Orube had already been to some formal events on Earth, but this was the first time that she was not too occupied with some task to be done or with trying to merge among the humans, and she could observe how terrestrials behaved and how they were all dressed. While for women there seemed to be a wide range of designs and colors, men looked at the same time boring and - at least some of them - intriguing. It seemed that the unspoken rule that nobody should dress in a color that would match the bride’s gown too closely did not apply to men as opposed to the groom: everyone was wearing the same type of outfit as Eric’s, and in various shades from gray to dark blue to black, the only splashes of colors being their ties. 

Eric was wearing a black suit and looked as if he would have been more comfortable wearing his usual t-shirt, hoodie and jeans. 

Cedric and the other Champions had also adapted to the terrestrial fashion, thanks to Cornelia’s help. The Champions were all visibly outside their comfort zone, as they had probably never been surrounded by so many humans before. Cedric said that their glamours to conceal their appearance were horrible to his eye, but Orube found their disguise convincing. Rather, it always baffled her how humans were completely unaware of their strong scent that she could smell from miles away.

Despite the new situation, they all behaved very well. They did look around with gaping mouths from time to time, studying the humans, and Cedric and Caleb had to elbow them to remind them to stop staring at people. 

Except that people were staring at them even more than they did. Although their glamours were good enough that only Cedric could see that they were hiding a different skin, there was something in the looks of each one of them that made them look otherworldly. The men were wearing suits, like everyone else, and they all looked damn good in them. Nerel had also opted for a suit, saying that she never wore gowns in Meridian either and she would certainly not start doing that on Earth, while Vala was wearing a lovely green dress in frills that highlighted her auburn hair. Even though in these circumstances they were not Champions of the Queen, one could clearly see that there was something about Elyon and Caleb that was attracting the group to always orbit around them, as if they were their bodyguards. Caleb looked unsurprisingly stunning in jacket and tie, and Elyon was wearing a blue dress with ribbons and layers decorated with a swirl pattern that somehow managed to remind Orube of her Metamoor gowns.

There was only one person, who was not staring at the group of aliens. It was Cedric, because he was constantly staring at Orube, even while they were outside, under the spring sun and taking their seats on the benches for the ceremony. Orube basked in that hungry look that was warming her skin more than the sun and that she could see through the sunglasses he was wearing. 

During the ceremony, the two of them were sitting in the row behind Caleb and Elyon. A guy Orube didn’t know, but who did not look like a priest or a minister, was doing the speech - apparently, it was common in this world to have a friend officiate the wedding - and he had just started talking about love and the number of broken knees every time these two meet by chance, when Orube felt Cedric’s hand on the small of her back. 

“Do you think anyone will notice if we disappear for a while?” he whispered in her ear. 

“Maybe Hay Lin won’t, but everyone else will,” she whispered back. “Right now, there are five women and two men looking at you.”

He came closer to her face and inhaled, as if he was savoring her scent. His hand trailed on her thigh, moving from her knee, then slipping under her dress. She stopped it by putting her hand on it before he went too high - and before the heat started to take hold of her. “Keep it for later,” she whispered. “I want to see how a terrestrial wedding works. Who knows, maybe we could have a go at it.”

He distorted his mouth in a grimace. “Ew. Good that I made that certificate of marriage appear. Maybe you forgot, but according to the vital records office of this state, Cedric and Rebecca Cooper married on September 12, 2008.” He leaned back against the backrest of the bench, with one arm resting on it and brushing her back with his fingers. 

She raised an eyebrow at his smug face - he thought he was so smart for having made a certificate appear and skipped the troubles of a terrestrial wedding. “We can always have a vow renewal ceremony, that’s something they do around here.”

Orube had no interest in such a ceremony, but at least that was enough to make Cedric shut up and keep watching the ceremony with a grumpy scowl on his face. 

The ceremony was much shorter than Orube had imagined, and in no time Eric and Hay Lin had exchanged rings, their friend had declared them husband and wife, and they had kissed. 

It took a while, afterwards, to finally have the chance to speak with Hay Lin and congratulate her. Cedric, Orube and the other Champions followed Elyon and Caleb as they went to see the bride, and Hay Lin greeted them with a giant smile - a smile that, however, did not hide that she was starting to get tired. Orube could only barely imagine the amount of preparation that such a party required, and how stressful it could be, being at the center of attention for the entire day like this. 

“Follow me, my friend,” Hay Lin told Elyon. As the others all moved as one, following Elyon and Caleb like shadows, Hay Lin gave them a puzzled look. 

“Oh, don’t mind them,” said Elyon. “They just can’t help it. That’s the price to pay for being the Queen of a planet - you’ll always have a pack of seven people on your tail.”

They all followed Hay Lin as she guided them inside the house, and to a room in the back. The room was crowded with wrapped gifts and spare decorations, and there was one person. A woman, dressed like one of the caterers, who was walking among the piled gifts and casting curious glances at the labels. When they entered the room, the woman raised her gaze and smiled brightly, as if she was happy to see them. Orube didn’t know the woman, but it felt as if she was supposed to remember her from somewhere else. 

“My girl,” the woman told Hay Lin, looking at her with emotion in her eyes. “I’m not sure I’ll ever stop crying every time I see you today.”

At the puzzled looks of everyone who had followed Hay Lin, the woman shook herself. “Oh, right.” She passed her hand in front of her face, and her looks shifted immediately. 

“Yan Lin!” Elyon exclaimed as the woman turned into Hay Lin’s grandmother. 

“Queen Elyon,” Yan Lin bowed her head. “I wanted to see you and congratulate myself with you personally.”

“With… me?” Elyon exchanged a puzzled look with Caleb. “I’m not the one who just got married.”

Yan Lin chuckled in that familiar way that made something clench in Orube’s chest. It reminded her of a long time ago, when she was mourning Cedric in Kandrakar and could not bring herself to leave her room, and Yan Lin used to come to see her and bring her something to eat, and tried to cheer her up. 

“Kandrakar is impressed, Your Majesty,” Yan Lin said. “You succeeded where Kandrakar always failed: making Phobos see reason.”

Cedric intervened. “I wouldn’t say he saw any rea-”

“Oh, shut up!” Elyon scolded him. 

Yan Lin looked at him, her head cocked. “Good to see you, I suppose, Cedric,” then to Elyon, “Is he always so negative?”

“Oh yes, wise Yan Lin, and he’s getting worse as years pass by.”

Everyone except Cedric laughed. 

Although Orube had her divergences with Elyon, she was genuinely glad to hear Yan Lin’s words. There had always been some tension between Elyon and Kandrakar in the last ten years, and this was the first time a Kandrakar emissary expressed some approval for something she had done. 

It was a small step, but it was a start. And to get somewhere, one had to start with a step - regardless how small. 

Orube took Cedric’s hand next to her, interlacing her fingers with his. 

Regardless how small.                                                                               

Meridian, 13th age, year 24

The view from the small table outside the bakery was breathtaking, especially on a warm and sunny day in the middle of the Aran season. 

Eight months had passed since the first time Orube had told Cedric about the bakery that Naexi’s parents had opened close to the palace. After they’d come back from Earth, at the beginning of that year, things had really started to change. It was as if that short time away from Metamoor had finally put the wheels into motion and pushed them both to actually take their lives into their hands, instead of postponing all their wishes until this or that commitment was out of their way. 

Since then, Cedric had made it his own personal quest to always be there at least for breakfast. Even when he came back from the night shift. 

Naexi’s parents always kept that table free for them, and always made them find the pastries they knew they would order. 

Orube did not join him in the night shifts as she had mentioned at the beginning, but Cedric was now taking as much of the paperwork as he could to his quarters, so he could take care of that while Orube was around, too. He also delegated a good chunk of it to the others, so he only had to skim through the parchments and sign them. 

Orube was now taking care of his one-on-one training. They had always thought it would create conflicts, but after the first try, they’d found out it was actually fun - and sometimes, leading to more fun later. 

“Today I’m going to kick your ass,” Orube said above her fuming cup, looking at him with that look that made him wonder if she meant kicking his ass in the arena or in their bedroom. 

“I sure hope you will,” Cedric commented. He took a sip from his mug and could not hold a grimace back. “How can everyone like this swill so much? It’s so disgusting.”

She chuckled. “And yet you keep drinking that, too, instead of going back to the barley. Alborn’s coffee has… that something.”

He hummed, and followed her with his gaze as she went back to reading the Meridian Observer, the main newspaper produced by the folk of Meridian. Cedric had never been too fond of that newspaper, since back in the days, a caricature of him or of his naga was nearly always somewhere on the front cover, accompanied by some more or less credible gossip about something he may or may not have done. This year, whenever there was nothing relevant to talk about, the authors of the newspaper focused their attention on making up stories about the latest alleged sightings of the outcast Prince. 

He studied Orube while she smiled as she read the newspaper - right on a page where a caricature of Phobos was drawn. The two of them had come a long way since a year ago, when every time he came back to their rooms late in the evening and did not find her immediately, he was terrified at the idea that she might have left him forever. 

Never again, he told himself when he thought about that time, and now he finally felt like he was doing the right thing, and the armor he was wearing was not going to make her suffer again. 

As long as you wear the armor, that piece of metal will always come first. 

He still remembered Alborn’s words from that day, when he’d gone to him seeking advice, and those words echoed in his mind while he bravely took another sip of his former Commander’s disgusting coffee. His armor did come first, sometimes. It was inevitable. But not when he had a choice - not when he could trust someone else to take up some of the load from him, and not when she could be present in this part of his life, for example by taking care of his training herself. 

“Hey,” he said, putting the coffee cup down and taking Orube’s hand. “About that vow renewal…”

“Hm?” Orube lifted her gaze from the newspaper, looking at him with curiosity. 

“If you want to do it, then I want to do it too.”

Her radiant smile melted his heart. “I appreciate it, but I don’t think we need that. We already honor those vows and what they mean. Every day.”

He closed the distance between them and kissed her, feeling her smile on his lips. “I’ll keep doing that every single day,” he whispered, parting from her for just a moment before kissing her again. 

He’d just started to deepen the kiss, when she gently pushed him away. “You should go now, those kids are waiting.”

He groaned, rolling his eyes. “What did I do in my life to deserve training a pack of kids instead of spending the rest of the day here, drinking disgusting coffee with the brightest sun of Metamoor?”

Orube raised an eyebrow at him and tapped on the paper on the table. “Shall we ask the people who write this newspaper?” 

“Never mind.” He stamped one last kiss on her lips, gulped down the revolting coffee and stood up. 

Orube took the newspaper in her hands again, but glanced at him with malice in her beautiful orange eyes. “Don’t let those kids wear you out too much. I still plan to kick your ass later.”

“I’ll tell them to leave a piece for the Master.”

As he walked up the road to the hill where the castle and the arena were built, he stopped to look at the view again. From that point, he could see the entire west side of Meridian, lit by the morning sun rising on the opposite side. For a long time, the sight of the city of Meridian had caused him mixed feelings - anger, frustration, sometimes fear of the ghosts of his past, and in recent years, remorse for letting his role in that city hurt Orube. The ghosts were still there, and were going to accompany him for the rest of his life. But the remorse for forcing her to stay by his side was gone. He knew now that he and Orube were going to be happy there, and that fighting for her was worth it - as it had always been, ever since the day Cedric had let a stupid alchemist kill him to save her life. 

She had always been worth it, and always would be.