What She Called Love

"You could have sent a letter," I said.

Seraphine stared at me.

It was not the response she expected. I was glad of that.

"A letter," she repeated.

"Your name. An explanation. Something that didn't involve entering my sleep or freezing the door shut."

Her gaze shifted toward the lock. The frost withdrew, though the shadows remained.

"You wouldn't have read it."

"You don't know that."

"I know what happens when I come near you."

"Then stand farther away."

She did. One step. It seemed to cost her more than the wound on her hand.

I kept my blade raised.

"Tell me who you are to me. From the beginning. No riddles."

Seraphine looked at the old doll.

"You found me in a village after the Sword Council broke my magic core. I had refused to execute people they called corrupted. They decided that made me corrupted too."

I said nothing.

"You were a fox then. You stole food. Badly. You kept bringing me bread full of tooth marks."

My throat tightened for no reason I understood.

"Go on."

"You learned a human shape because you wanted hands to bandage me. The first time, you fell over your own feet and accused me of laughing."

"Were you?"

Her mouth trembled.

"Yes."

She described the life oath, the search for remedies, the years in ruined places. She spoke of the vest without looking at it, of how the crooked seams caught against her shirt, of the wine I pretended not to taste while making it.

Details struck against the sealed place inside me. They did not open it. They made it hurt.

"Were we lovers?" I asked.

She closed her eyes.

"Yes."

"Then why do I remember you calling me a familiar?"

She did not pretend surprise.

"Because I said it."

"Why?"

Her face lifted. For the first time, she looked less like a queen than someone brought before judgment.

"I became powerful enough to sense another presence in your soul. Something foreign. I asked the oracle what it was."

"The Wayfarer."

"I didn't know its name then. The oracle said it would take you away as soon as you completed your passage. It said you had never truly belonged to our world."

I tightened my grip on the knife.

"And you believed it."

"I had felt you begin to slip from your body after a storm. You denied it. I thought you were protecting me from the truth."

"Maybe I was protecting myself from you."

She accepted the words without looking away.

Lucien, she told me, carried the oracle's blessing. He offered a purification that would separate the foreign presence from my soul. The body had to burn. The life oath had to break so the foreign thing could not strike through it. The familiar seal would obstruct the new binding.

Afterward, she was supposed to take me beyond the veil, still conscious, still myself, unable to be carried elsewhere.

"Bound to his sword," I said.

"Temporarily. He promised to transfer the sword to me after the ascent."

"And if I refused?"

Silence.

"That's why you didn't tell me."

"Yes."

The word was small and ugly. I preferred it to an excuse.

"You thought hurting me secretly would be easier than hearing me say no."

She bowed her head.

"I thought surviving your hatred was better than losing you. I thought I could explain when it was over."

"Was there anything you wouldn't have done?"

Her answer came too slowly.

"I believed there was. Then you were gone, and I saw what I had allowed."

She told me about the broken furnace, Lucien's confession, the oracle speaking through his mouth. My soul had never been meant to survive. It was fuel for the chosen hero's ascent.

She killed Lucien. She tore down the sanctuary. She pursued the presence behind the oracle until it surrendered a path through the veil.

"That doesn't bring my body back," I said.

"No."

Crossing had nearly destroyed her. For centuries she wandered between the empty roads connecting worlds and the hostile provinces of shadow. Fifty years earlier, she killed the ruler who tried to use her search against her and took his throne.

"Then you began taking foxes."

"Searching their souls. Not killing them. Those who couldn't return safely were given homes within the shadow territories. The stories about their skins are lies."

"The soldiers I saw were not asking permission."

"No."

Again, that honest, inadequate word.

I looked at the jars she had repaired.

"Did putting them together make you feel better?"

"No."

"Then why do it?"

"Because I let them break."

For a moment, I understood her grief. I could see the centuries in her face, not as age but as exhaustion she refused to acknowledge.

Understanding did not make me safe.

"You found me," I said. "Now leave me alone."

Her hands curled at her sides.

"Your vessel wasn't holding you. The fourth seal had to open, or you would have come apart again."

"You could have told me that."

"The Wayfarer's defensive seal reacts to me. You felt it in the reef. In dreams, the remnant of our oath allowed me to approach without triggering extraction."

"So you used the one place I couldn't shut a door."

She flinched.

"Yes."

"Was the duskfruit yours?"

"I placed it where your guide could find it."

"And the injured creatures?"

"I wanted to know whether you were still—"

She stopped.

"The man who would ruin himself saving you?"

Her eyes shone.

"The man I knew."

I laid the doll on the table.

"You should be relieved he's gone. He sounds easy to destroy."

She came forward then. I drove my blade against her chest, stopping her. Blood spread beneath the point.

She did not move back.

"If you want power, I'll bring it. If you want the courts broken, I'll break them. Tell me what you need."

"Distance."

She looked at the knife, then at me.

"Anything else."

I pushed her away with my free hand.

"You still don't understand."

Outside, the dragon bells began ringing. Aurelia's voice sounded beyond the door, commanding the guards to surround the room.

Seraphine turned toward it, her grief hardening into something I recognized far more easily.

"You won't marry her," she said.

"You have no claim on me."

Her shadow spread across the floor.

"I know," she whispered. "I don't know how to bear it."