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Iselmyr was ready for a brawl. Aloth was still stuttering his apologies, but she could smell the blood on the air. She could feel the fluid warmth of adrenaline loosening her limbs and she grinned with anticipation of a good fight, though scholar-lad pushed her far enough back that it never showed on his face. That's okay. She could wait. Tempers would flair and he'd need her and then it would be her turn to shine.
A small woman stepped in front of them in a swirl of curls and placation and her presence hit Iselmyr like a punch in the gut. She reeled, causing Aloth to take a step back, both mentally and physically, and she took advantage to worm her way to the fore. Iselmyr ignored the lass—she had to, or she risked getting them both killed—and instead threw insults at the drunken louts that stood against them. She needed that fight, now more than ever. Needed to get the blood pumping to get herself back on steady footing.
It was over disappointingly fast, but Iselmyr couldn't be mad about it. It had been centuries since they'd fought side by side, in different bodies, different skills, different lives, but the soul remembers. Like muscle memory, but deeper, immutable. Their enemies didn't even get close enough to throw a punch.
Iselmyr retreated to the back of Aloth's mind as he turned to speak to the lass. She kept her thoughts to herself for fear that her opinion would sour him against her.
She remembered a lass on the run, made of fire and ice, with black hair like silk fanned across their bed and porcelain skin marred with scars from lash and blade and brand. She remembered the taste of her skin, the feel of sword-calloused hands in her hair, the sound of her desperate, gasping cries.
Two thousand years later and she's still on the run, her fire tempered by layers of niceties and courtly manners. She's... smaller this time around, or maybe Iselmyr, or rather Aloth, was just taller. Her hair was a sunset-colored riot and her sun-kissed skin was covered in freckles as far as the eye could see. Iselmyr wanted to study the paths of them, to memorize every last one, to see how they tasted.
It's that last part she finally voiced to Aloth, and he stuttered mid-sentence, face flushing. He bit his lip hard until Iselmyr settled back and stopped pushing. That's okay. He'd remember it. Sometime, someday, in the wee hours of the night he'd find himself thinking of this lass and her freckles.
She said her name was Kai, but Iselmyr knew her once as Ren. The stutter, the hesitation over the family name, though—that was all too familiar.
Kai turned to leave and Iselmyr panicked. It was too soon to lose her again. She kin hulp ye fin' yer gods-damned Keys, it was the first excuse she could think of.
But Aloth was already asking her to stay, to travel together for a while. He didn't know the lass, couldn't see into Iselmyr's memories, but the soul remembers. They were meant to be side by side, Kai and Aloth, Ren and Iselmyr, and she could see in her eyes that the lass felt it to.
Someday she'd tell him, if he earned it. Tell him all the ways he already knew this lass, this Kai. Tell him that Gilded Vale was the first good idea he'd ever had.
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Kai was nothing like Ren, in the same way Aloth was nothing like Iselmyr. Soft where the other was hard, charming where the other was brash, brave where the other cowered.
They were both Watchers, the only common thread between the two. Maybe she always was, or at least had the potential to be, on every turn of the Wheel. Ren was never tormented by it like Kai was, though. It had taken years for Ren to even admit to her gift; Kai had told them about it on that very first night.
Their differences didn't stop Iselmyr from falling as hard and fast as she had the first time.
Aloth fell slower, fighting it tooth and nail. And all she could do was watch. He resented her enough as it was; if she pushed him too hard toward Kai he'd lock himself down and that tentatively kindled flame of want would gutter and starve. So she just watched as he spent restless nights trying desperately to talk himself out of going to Kai and laying all his secrets out at her feet to peruse at her leisure. He was a man made of secrets, twisted and twined together from years of suppression and fear, but the skein was unraveling faster than he could bind it back.
Better tae do it oan yer ain terms, said Iselmyr.
Not yet, said Aloth.
But Iselmyr had always lacked in patience or caution, in this life and the last, and patience and caution were Aloth's blood and bone.
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They were deep underground, a forgotten catacomb full of faceless acolytes. Aloth's fear filled their lungs, burning with every breath. Fear of being discovered and rejected, or worse, of being recognized.
Iselmyr's own fear fed from his until she was drowning in it. She'd watched Aloth suffer under the thumb of these Keys for decades now, his own will suppressed by them and their gods-damned scheming. He never listened to her, but maybe Kai would, maybe she could at least save one of them.
So Iselmyr fought and clawed and forced her way out. "These hooded fyndes are nye to be trusted!" she screamed before his iron will reasserted and she was pushed back, as far back as he could send her. That's okay. She'd said her piece.
They couldn't hide anymore, after that.
Words careful and cool to hide the storm of emotion beneath, Aloth told his oldest secret, told Kai about Iselmyr and how she Awoke. Iselmyr waited like a coiled snake, ready to strike. It didn't matter how fond she was of Kai. Aloth had suffered enough, and she was through sitting back and watching it happen. Beasts take anyone who wished him more harm.
There was no rejection though, no pity, just understanding and acceptance. It threw Aloth off balance for days after. In all the time she'd known him, been trapped at the back of his mind, Iselmyr had never seen anyone just accept him. Kai had taken their measure and found them adequate, sufficient, enough, and neither of them knew what to do with that.
-------
They sat in a madwoman's laboratory and for the first time since she Awoke someone met Iselmyr's eyes and called her by name. She and Aloth snapped and pushed at each other as they always did, but this time they had an audience.
The animancer woman cackled and danced in the background, useless except for the space she'd loaned them. For all that they disagreed on, they both knew that it was Kai and not Bellasege that directed the flow of their exchange.
Time rewound briefly and they were in Aloth's childhood home. The bruises on his ribs, the blood in his mouth, the satisfying crack of Father's bones when Iselmyr first emerged, were as real as they'd been fifty years ago.
It was a gentler touch that brought them back. The weight of Kai's hand in Aloth's was the first thing Iselmyr noticed, steady and reassuring. The second, Kai's fingers in his hair, brushing it back and away from his sweat-damp forehead. It was a comfort Aloth had never been afforded before and he was too busy fighting the memory of his father to fight the urge to lean into it.
She next noticed Kai was speaking to them, low enough that Bellasege couldn't hear, a constant litany of "you're okay, I'm here, you're safe." If he'd been safe, he'd have never needed Iselmyr, and she said as much, but Kai just smiled and said "you're safe now."
Finally, she noticed how much less contained she was. The walls he'd built to hold her back were still in place, but the foundation wasn't solid and cracks and holes were starting to form.
When it was over, they stood on new but strangely stable ground. They watched Kai flex her hand, saw the bruises already purple across her knuckles in the shape of his fingers. They watched her pull down her sleeves to cover it up and that careful, tiny flame Aloth carried grew and sparked.
Kai met their eyes as they reached for the animancer's notes, working together for the first time in their shared memory; she nodded and stepped in front of them, drawing eyes away so they could do what they needed to. She smiled at him as they left, and that spark flared, caught, ignited. Iselmyr laughed and thought I tellt ye so, and for the first time Aloth heard it.
-------
With every passing week Kai remembered a little more of her Awakened past. Iselmyr hoped, selfishly, that one day she'd wake up and remember her. That of all the lives she must have lived, it would be Ren that woke up.
After a while, though, she stopped hoping and just wanted it to stop. Kai was no longer sleeping for more than an hour or two at a time, would stare off into nothing for long periods, would sometimes not answer when spoken to. Iselmyr wasn't used to problems she couldn't fight, couldn't break, and sitting and watching was torture.
As the weeks passed Aloth started to open up as well. He spoke to her more, let her speak out more, even came to her for advice. It was a fragile thing, this truce, but more progress than they'd made in fifty years prior.
Every day the walls got a little thinner, the cracks a little wider. By the time he finally came to speak to her, the walls holding her back were almost gone entirely.
I feel I owe you an apology, said Aloth.
Nye ye dinnae, lad, said Iselmyr. Ye wyr protectin' yersel the only wey ye ken.
You are not my enemy. You have never been my enemy. It's time I stop treating you like one.
The walls came down all at once, and Iselmyr could feel again after half a century wrapped in gauze. His thoughts filled her mind and hers filled his until she could no longer fully tell where she ended and he began. For the first time, they were two minds as one, one body, one soul. It was invigorating.
Let's go, lad. I'm wit ye. She grinned, and felt it mirrored on his face too.
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In the end, after Thaos lay dead and broken and the cries of children rang through the Dyrwood again, Kai remembered. Remembered being Inquisitor Iorena ix Ensios, remembered running away and becoming Ren, remembered Iselmyr. Kai wasn't Ren, but that's okay. Iselmyr wasn't the same person either. She was Aloth.
He asked her, once, if that was why they were together, if Iselmyr had been trying to rekindle an old flame.
Nye, she said. If I'd ne'er Awoke 'n' she'd ne'er become Watcher 'n' ye met at some prissy court pairtie, ye'd aye hae ended up 'ere.
In a keep in the Dyrwood? he joked, but she knew his fear. He's a lad not used to being wanted, being allowed to want. He'd get used to it. They had time.
She loved ye lang afore she knew aboot me. Ye loved her afore ye knew aboot Ren. Ye wyr meant tae be, lad.
You're right. He'd never said it before. She liked the sound of it.
I'm always richt, lad.
They laid in bed dozing, head on Kai's chest, listening to her heartbeat and the rain on Brighthollow's roof. It's peaceful in a way they'd never known before, but they'd earned it. All of them had earned it.