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When Nona recalled herself, the timing was utterly and completely inconvenient. So inconvenient, in fact, that she nearly fell backwards off a light pole, which would have ended in several broken bones at best, and being trampled to death at worst. Thankfully, Hot Sauce had good reflexes and held her up.
The bones in Nona’s body felt like they were pudding, and she didn’t like the hands that were touching her because she’d never liked being touched at all, but she barely even registered what was going on around her. There, on the screen, was the woman from her dreams.
The other prince had called her Kiriona, but something at the back of Nona’s mind yelled, swelling to a sound that she was unable to ignore, even if she’d wanted to. “Gideon,” the back of her mind chorused, and Harrow’s entire body swayed with it. Gideon was just as dead as the last time she’d seen her, bleeding profusely onto the crumpled Canaan platform from where the iron railing had pierced her heart.
“Gideon,” Harrow wailed, and it came out as something unrecognizable for anyone who wasn’t herself, and then she leaned forward and threw up. That seemed to be the only thing she was good at ever since becoming a Lyctor, Harrow thought grimly.
Hot Sauce looked genuinely apologetic as she held her, and Harrow desperately wanted her to let go, but she didn’t say it. Her position on the pole still felt terribly unsteady.
The entire way back home was a blur except for the fact that she threw up three more times, and that one of these times happened in the back of a car.
She took the elevator, which was a mistake because it got stuck between stories twice, one of them lasting fifteen minutes, which was long enough for Harrow to notice how utterly claustrophobic the elevator was and nearly have a panic attack. She elected to walk the remaining ten flights after that.
Harrow stumbled home in a haze, nearly falling up the last flight of stairs and crawling afterwards. Down and up had decided to switch places, and her limbs weren’t working right.
She felt like she was moving so loudly that she got scared someone might come out and shoot her, and find the right place to shoot through sheer luck, but the only person who ever came for her was Camilla.
There was a hand on her again, and Harrow hated it less than she had hated the child’s hands, but it still made her tense.
“Nona? What happened?” she asked gently, offering her a hand up.
“Gideon,” Harrow wept quietly, the name still barely understandable through her tears and her thick lips. “Ianthe has Gideon’s body.”
Camilla paused momentarily, Palamedes’ eyes widening a fraction. “Harrow.” This one wasn’t a question.
She was pulled to her feet, which made her feel so unsteady that the world blurred and went in two different directions, and the only functional reaction she could manage was to lean down and throw up again. She wasn’t even sure how she had anything left in her to throw up.
Camilla held her hair back. Harrow wanted to be embarrassed. Her face was naked and her hair was so long that it almost touched her legs, and here she was, finally recalling herself, and the only thing she could think to do was throw up onto the carpet in front of their apartment. But she found that, after months of dressing in front of Camilla, of letting Camilla help bathe her and Palamedes help feed her and Pyrrha do her hair, she had no embarrassment left in her, so she only offered a weary “thank you.”
“We owe you one,” was all Camilla said in return, and then she helped her inside.
Harrow passed out so fast and so suddenly that she didn’t even notice Pyrrha was missing until Palamedes informed her of it in the morning. With a sting, she remembered her treatment of them, back in her amnesiac Lyctor state, and she apologized profusely to both until Camilla told her no apology was necessary, that that was what the letter had been for, and that she needed to eat, and needed to rest.
After she had eaten and rested, they made a plan. Harrow was still a necromancer. Maybe more than one, though she didn’t feel much like a Lyctor. There was a gaping hole where Gideon’s soul was supposed to be latched in her chest. Wasn’t this what she had wanted? If Gideon wasn’t there, at least she hadn’t destroyed her soul. Wasn’t this what she had taken apart her mind and body to achieve?
But now that she remembered, the emptiness was almost worse. It felt huge and all-encompassing and it swallowed her whole. There was a gaping hole in Harrow’s soul where Gideon Nav was supposed to be. And that meant she was gone. Fully and truly. Harrow was still failing her, even now.
When they met Ianthe’s terms, the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus was seething with rage.
Her hair had been shaved back down to the appropriate length, and she was wearing a cloak, a sacramental skull painted in her own blood covering her face, but this was little relief in the light of Prince Ianthe Naberius’ sick satisfaction when she greeted them.
“You’re in a far better state than I’d assumed to find you, you know,” Ianthe drawled as she led them into the bunker. She seemed delighted to see her. Harrow did not share in that feeling. “I thought at the very least you must be utterly mad by now, with the resurrection beast so close. But then again, you’ve always been mad, haven’t you, Crazycakes? Maybe that’s what saved you.” She grinned like a shark, and it was completely her expression on Tern's face. It was distressing. “I told her you’d come for her, you know.”
This was more than enough to make Harrow snap.
“What are you doing with Gideon’s body? Where is she?”
“Still such a lovelorn child over the shattered soul of your pathetic little cavalier,” Ianthe drawled. “You ought to have gotten over her by now. She really wasn’t that interesting.”
“Your worthless opinion on the matter was neither inquired about, nor is it appreciated,“ Harrow spat venomously. “Gideon was an- she was a marvel of a cavalier. She was a marvel of a human being. She deserved better in life than I could ever give her, and the only thing I now have to give her is a worthy death. A burial deserving of the hero she was. She is not a dead dog that you can keep dragging around on its leash as you please. She is—she was—the only good thing in my life. At least let me give her this. Please. I just want her to finally be at peace.”
Harrow had known before she’d started speaking that this would lead her nowhere. It would stroke Ianthe’s ego, at best, and provide the distraction that Palamedes needed, but it would bring her nowhere in terms of actively recovering her cavalier’s body. This did not matter. Harrow just needed Ianthe to believe her… and so she’d spoken directly from the black hole locked tightly in her chest.
“Oh Harrow, this groveling is so totally and completely pathetic. I’d hoped you’d at least threaten to spear my heart through with my own ribs, or something equally Ninth. Now that would’ve been hot.”
So Harrow changed her approach. She was good at pretending when it came to emotions, but there was no need to pretend here. She just needed to let herself feel.
Grief and agony and righteous anger at the fate of Gideon Nav rushed over her all at once, threatening to drown her. She let them.
“I have tried it with niceties as courtesy, in acknowledgement of the favor you’re owed.” Harrow bared her teeth. “In equal acknowledgement of said agreement, you were not to let any harm come to Gideon the Ninth, or the favor would be rendered null and void. Do you think me an imprudent idiot, Tridentarius, not to have pre-planned for the inevitability of you honorlessly betraying our pact when it is convenient for you?”
“Oh, please. She’s already dead. Nothing I do could hurt her now.”
“Honor our agreement, Tridentarius, or I promise you losing the favor I owe will be the least of your worries. Hand. Over. My. Cavalier,” Harrow hissed through clenched teeth. The newly liberated bone studs sprang into skeletons by her feet. “I will not ask again.“
“There’s the Harrowhark we all know and love.” Ianthe widened her disgusting grin, sliding her tongue over her lips, which looked thoroughly strange as she was using Tern’s body to do it. “But I can’t do that, sorry to say. She’s God’s kid. I can’t just hand her over because you asked politely. He’d be really displeased about that.”
That startled Harrow. “She’s- what?”
“The broadcast wasn’t a lie, Harry. She’s his kid. His daughter and Wake’s.”
Harrow steadied herself, fists clenched. “What, so because he’s her father, he thinks it is his right to change her name without her consent? To parade her around like a hunting trophy?“
“Ah, but isn’t that a little hypocritical, coming from you? And besides, he’s God. He can do whatever the hell he wants. Who would stop him?” Ianthe snickered to herself. “Isn’t it hilarious? Goblin? God’s kid? Her?”
“Her name was Gideon.”
Ianthe rolled her cavalier’s eyes. “You called her Ortus for the better part of a year. Sue me for forgetting.”
A shard of bone extended from Harrow’s hand, growing fast and sharp until it speared through Tern’s collarbone. Ianthe didn’t even wince. She dissolved it into bone dust, the wound sewing itself together in an instant. “Oh Harry, there’s no need to be so difficult. Let me take you back to God. He can fix you, you know. And maybe, if you ask very nicely, he’ll let you borrow his dead daughter to relieve some stress. You look like you need it.”
Harrow pushed forward right into Ianthe’s chest, and she did not have the time to try and grow Tern’s ribs through his heart (he was already dead, so what good would that have done) but she sharpened her nails into knives and cut into the skin, deeper and deeper. “Do not speak of her this way. You don’t have the right.”
“Your obsession with dead women is truly tragic. Someone breathing not good enough for you?”
Harrow realized her mistake of getting so close to Ianthe too late. A second later, the Lyctor had a hand on her shoulder, slowing her heart so significantly that Harrow could barely breathe anymore, collapsing into a heap on the floor. Her skeletons collapsed with her.
“Hilarious as that was, I think we’re done here.”
“Wait.” Harrow choked out between heaving breaths. “I- offer-”
Ianthe cocked Naberius’ head curiously, releasing her grip on Harrow’s heart. Harrow gasped as the oxygen flowed properly into her lungs again.
She took a moment to breathe, to nurse her tortured respiratory system.
“I want to fight you. No necromancy. Just our weapons.”
“You want a cavalier duel?” It took a moment before Ianthe managed to stop laughing. “Harry, you throw up every time you touch that damn sword. You’re still a broken baby Lyctor, and even assuming you spent the last six months training, you would be no match for Babs. Really, it would be merciful of me to explode your head instead.”
“She can have my rapier,” Corona offered. “It was Gideon’s, anyway.”
“Oh, how I adore that idea,” Ianthe agreed, starting up again. “Not even her cavalier knew how to use it.”
“I agree to those terms.” Harrow slipped out of her bone corset, removed the remaining studs from her ears and the bracelets from her arms. The teeth at her neck were carefully slipped over her head, and all of this was dumped in Camilla’s arms. It made Harrow feel terribly exposed.
“Someone’s very eager to embarrass herself. What do you hope to win if you beat me? Not that there’s even the slightest chance that you will.”
“If I win-” Harrow started, and was promptly interrupted.
“What, I let you walk out of here with Gonad’s body? I knew you were crazy, Harrowhark, but by the Emperor. I’ve already won. Why would I risk that?”
“If I win,” Harrow repeated, aggravated, “you let me see Gideon’s body. Just once. You let me say my goodbyes. Afterwards, I will let you bring me to God, without protest.”
“And what do you have to offer me? What happens when I win?”
“I come with you now. I will renew my vows to you, in spite of you breaking our terms. You get to execute Camilla in front of me, if you feel you wish to torture me more.” She gritted her teeth. “Either way, you get what you want.”
Ianthe grinned. “Alright, I’ll humor you. For old time’s sake. Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.” She looked over to her sister. “Corona, baby, give Harry your rapier before her arms break off trying to hold the longsword, will you?”
Corona handed her the rapier, and Harrow nodded before giving Gideon’s precious two-hander over to Camilla as well. If she was struggling under the weight of everything, she didn’t show it in the slightest.
“I’m ready.”
“This won’t even be a slightly fair fight,” Ianthe said with full satisfaction, “but I’ll go easy on you. Here, I’ll even let you pretend you have an actual fighting chance.” She pulled a purple handkerchief from some hidden pocket and placed it in one on her chest, halfway sticking out. “You can’t hurt me in any way that matters, so let’s say if you can take the handkerchief from me, you win. Not that it will matter.”
Corona read out rules that did not matter, they took several paces back, and began.
Harrow knew within three seconds that she stood no chance. Even as someone with very minimal knowledge of rapiers, she knew Naberius Tern was a master of his art, and having his own body to work with let the remainder of his soul use this even more perfectly than Ianthe could in her own body.
Gideon had been a marvelous swordhand, unstoppable with her longsword and unbelievably excellent with the rapier that she’d only had a few months to learn. But Harrow didn’t have Gideon by her side for this. She just had her own poor sword knowledge, no bones, and an opponent that was vicious and intelligent and not holding back. Within the first ten seconds, she earned a deep cut into her shoulder, and even if she was more than a regular necromancer, no lyctoral healing ever kicked in for her.
Harrow just bled, like the pathetic mortal she was.
The fight never improved after that.
“Oh Harry, we both know you can’t keep this up,” Ianthe taunted her what might have been ten minutes or might have been a myriad later. She made another deep cut, this one placed right across Harrow’s clavicle. “I am a Lyctor, you sad, broken experiment. You could have been the best of us all, and you would have done it with ease, with your head held high. But you were too busy poking holes in your brain for someone you were never going to get back. And now look where that’s gotten you. You can’t even figure out how to use your rapier.”
Harrow’s clothes were positively soaked in her own blood by now. She could have fixed the cuts manually, as she’d had to do every occasion of healing manually since becoming a Lyctor, but Ianthe didn’t give her the chance to breathe that she would have needed to do it. She could barely keep herself upright at this point.
But Harrow had not been surviving on nothing but the desire to spite people who assumed her failure to let herself fall victim to something as pedestrian as blood loss. “I’m not down yet, Tridentarius,” she spat, tasting blood.
“Oh please, the only thing you’re achieving here is embarrassing yourself further. You don’t know when to admit defeat, we get it.” Ianthe rolled her eyes, launching into another strike that Harrow dodged more through coincidence than skill. “You haven’t touched me once this entire fight, and you look like you’re about to bite it. We’re done. You lost. You just need to admit it. I might even have enough mercy to give you back the blood you left all over the floor.”
Harrow knew Ianthe was right. She was sporting several deep cuts, and had already lost a whole bunch of blood. So she took the only out she could see, pathetic as it was.
“What, so I’m supposed to just give up?” she hissed, going over the plan quickly before she got to work. “Are you so afraid I’ll defeat you that you feel the need to taunt me into admitting defeat?”
She registered Ianthe was saying something, but she didn’t actually hear what it was, concentration entirely elsewhere.
Harrow opened and heightened all of her senses, the way she had when she’d asked Mercymorn how to keep herself awake, heaving herself not away from the resurrection beast, but into the agony it gave her. Her body spasmed, she spat blood and went down screaming.
“Hnghhh.” It was worse than it had been on the Mithraeum. The resurrection beast was close, and it was furious. Harrow couldn’t stop screaming if she tried, curling helplessly into herself instead.
“Oh, you poor, useless baby. I knew it had to be affecting you, too. Pathetic.” Ianthe snickered, leaning down so she could get a better look at her. Seeming mostly satisfied with what she saw, she sheathed her rapier. “Oh, she’s going to punch me for hurting you, but your stubborn insistence on a sword fight was way too good to pass up. You’re so reckless and passionate when you’re angry. I like that in a woman.”
“One of these days,” Harrow hissed through clenched teeth and heavy breaths, “I am going to use your bones to detach your limbs one by one, starting with your intact arm.”
“Oh, you’re adorable,” Ianthe said, still snickering. “Now be a good girl and let me take you back to God. Call it, Corona.”
And Camilla said, “match to the Sixth.”
Tern keeled over without another word.
Harrow spit more blood, she was dizzy and her lips were split, but she was grinning when she heaved herself breathlessly back to her knees. Tridentarius never had been of Sextus’ caliber. She’d told her as much.
Harrow felt complete and total satisfaction when she looked down at Tern’s crumpled form. “Pathetic.”
“That’s a little rude, don't you think?” said Palamedes, and she could hear the grin in his voice before she saw it on Tern’s face. “Apologies, that took significantly longer than I’d intended.”
“You’ve lost pretty decent amounts of blood,” Camilla remarked pointedly in Harrow’s direction, looking at the puddles on the floor. Then, she kneeled down next to her necromancer, pressing her forehead to his.
Harrow turned away in embarrassment.
“I’ve had worse.” She closed her cuts one by one, separating the blood from the dirt particles on the floor before directing it back into her veins. “I may be a broken Lyctor, but I am not so broken that I can’t put my own blood back into my body. Tridentarius has always been prone to the gross underestimation of my skills. Don’t make that same mistake.”
Palamedes outright laughed at that. “Emperor Undying, how I missed you, Harrowhark.”
“Save the courtesies for later, Sextus. We need to find Gideon, and we’re hard-pressed for time.”
Gideon’s body was kept behind a number of particularly nasty necromantic wards, the worst one an application of the Avulsion trial.
But Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, who was an entire generation of her house, had been breaking the nastiest necromantic wards the Ninth had to offer since she was nine. She had successfully concluded the Avulsion trial before she’d had even an ounce of Lyctorhood in her.
Harrow was the greatest necromancer of her generation. Not the promise of certain death, not nearly bleeding out all over the floor and certainly not Ianthe Tridentarius and a few necromantic wards would keep her from Gideon Nav.
‘The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part thee and me,’ she thought to herself, and got to work.
Harrow had broken into a heavily warded tomb before, and she found that this one wasn’t much different, except that which lay within was familiar this time.
It took her a while to puzzle out the method, but like the rock that had rolled away for her in the end, the wards crumbled away for her. Even as a broken Lyctor, as barely more than a regular necromancer, this was easy for her.
“Good work, kiddo,” said Pyrrha Dve, like she either didn’t understand or didn’t care that the overfamiliarity she’d grown so accustomed to over the months of Harrow’s amnesia was an entirely inappropriate way to interact with the Reverend Daughter.
“Thank you,” she said nonetheless, finding no reason to be cruel to the woman who had taken care of her for months, despite this incorrect form of address. “I would like to have a moment alone with Gideon.”
“Of course. We’ll be right here if you need anything,” Palamedes offered, almost insultingly gentle.
Camilla just nodded.
Harrow braced herself, taking a deep breath before she entered the freshly opened section of the bunker.
The first door Harrow opened led to an utterly uninteresting storage room. The second revealed a bedroom.
And there she was. Gideon looked almost peaceful, like she’d just laid down to close her eyes for a moment and fallen asleep in the ridiculous uniform they’d put her in. But she wasn’t sleeping. Her chest didn’t move an inch, no matter how long Harrow willed it to.
She kneeled down by her cavalier’s corpse, hands clasped together in silent prayer.
“I’m sorry, Gideon.” The tears came unbidden. “I’ve never been able to get anything right. I wasn’t a good necromancer to you. I was a worse Lyctor. Now the stakes are impossible and I am lost on what to do. I’m not sure I have any of your soul left in me. I think I lost it. And I feel it so… so wholly. You’re really, truly gone, and there is nothing left of you. A part of me hopes that it means at least I didn’t destroy you. I couldn’t do it, even though you asked me to. I hope it means you found the peace in death that I could never grant you in life. I’ll find a good resting place for your body. Somewhere with a good view, and fresh air, where lots of people are. There’s a few spots here that I would have loved to show you, that I think you would have liked. I-”
Harrow had so much more to say, but she couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat. What she wanted to say most of all was ‘I miss you’, but it wasn’t coming out. She buried her head in the mattress and sobbed relentlessly for what might have been a minute and might have been ten thousand years. She imagined the ribbing Gideon would have given her if she’d been here to see Harrow crying over her, and held onto it until she felt like she could breathe again.
“Gideon-” Harrow swallowed, hard. “You know I don’t give a damn about Lyctorhood, right? You know I only care about you. If you hadn’t forced my hand, I never would have done this to you. I would have gladly died for you to live, if only you had let me. You deserved so much, Gideon Nav. You were so much kinder and so much more forgiving than I deserved. I wish there was anything more—anything at all—that I could give you in remorse and in kindness than an appropriate burial. I ought to find a world to place at your feet, and it would still never be enough. If-”
“Okay, Nonagesimus, that’s enough, this is getting seriously embarrassing,” said a voice from the bed. “And please stop calling me Gideon so much. It’s weirding me out.”
Harrow’s head snapped up. Sitting there on the mattress, sporting a thoroughly smug expression, was the unbreathing corpse of Gideon Nav. Without even thinking about it, Harrow shot up, punched her and went to sit on her chest, wrist bones shaping into a knife that she pressed against Gideon’s throat.
“Who are you? Why are you taking up her body? Why can no one let her rest?!” Harrow all but screamed the last part. Gideon had known no peace in life, and her body didn’t get to know it in death. It made Harrow furious.
“Wow, okay, ouch? If you had more than, like, three total muscles in your entire body and weight above that of the average sandwich, this might’ve actually hurt. But you just said all those sweet things, so I forgive you.” Gideon’s corpse grinned down at the knife on her throat, and a cold, dead hand closed over Harrow’s. “Relax, Midnight Hagette. It’s just me.”
“But- you- you’re dead.” Harrow’s hand trembled on the knife.
“Well aware, Sugarlips. I’m fine, though. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
Harrow pulled the bone knife away, blood still dripping from her wrist as she pressed both hands into her skull. “Fuck. FUCK! This isn’t real. It isn’t real, you fucking idiot!” Her hallucinations made her feel embarrassed and frustrated with herself when they happened, when she couldn’t tell them apart from reality. Most weren’t bad by nature. This one snapped her heart cleanly in two.
Gideon wrapped her arms around Harrow, the way she had back at Canaan House. Hers was the only touch Harrow had never really minded. And even though it wasn’t real, Harrow let herself melt into the embrace, cold dead arms going all the way around her midsection, head resting on a chest that no longer held a heart.
Harrow just laid there, very still, and let herself sob.
“Hey, have you been working out?” Gideon said suddenly, by a time Harrow was already wondering how long it would take for the hallucination to fade—for someone to come in and find her crying into Gideon’s motionless corpse. “I mean, you don’t look great, like, yikes, what have they been feeding you, I actually think you might have lost weight since the last time I saw you. But your arms do look a little less like noodles.”
“Tell me something I can’t know about you,” Harrow sniffled. “Something that I wouldn’t be able to make up. I need to know you’re not a figment of my imagination.”
“Not exactly how I imagined this conversation going, but here goes, I guess,” said Gideon’s corpse, and smiled at her. “I’m in love with you.”
“What?!” Harrow shrieked. That wasn’t something she’d make up, alright. Not that there wasn’t a small part of her that wanted it, buried and gagged as it had been since the first time it had surfaced. But her imagination wasn’t kind when it came to Gideon. It had never been, and for good reason. She would sooner have hallucinated Gideon’s sword through her neck than a confession like this.
“That good enough for you?” Gideon smiled again. “You reconsidering your romantic interest in me now that I’m dead, you creep?” she teased.
Harrow sunk back into the woman who was a corpse but evidently also not a figment of her imagination, and started crying all over again. “I- I don’t understand. How are you here?”
“My dad is God, Penumbral Highness. He tied my revenant to my corpse once he got a hold of it.”
“But- he’s- he left you with all of these holes? He’s God! Why didn’t he resurrect you? Why wouldn’t he heal your wounds fully?” Harrow protested, completely aghast, because that was easier than wrapping her mind around the fact that Gideon was here, really here. And maybe she was a complete creep about corpses, because a terrible, selfish part of her really just wanted to lean down and kiss her.
This had always been what Harrow had done best, she supposed—breaking into tombs and loving what she found within them unconditionally, beyond reason.
And maybe it wasn’t about corpses at all. Maybe it was just about this stupid yellow-eyed moron and her idiotic crooked smile. The girl that Harrow’s world had revolved around since they’d both been children. The cavalier who had absolved her of her sins and condemned her and saved her, even when it came at the expense of herself. The woman that Harrow had devoted herself to when she’d been without memory, that she’d killed and remade herself to preserve. The only authority she knew above the Body on the ice that she was sworn to.
The woman who, after everything that had happened between them, after everything Harrow had done to her, let her sob wildly into her chest.
Gideon gently stroked her hair. “Maybe fix up your wrist first, because you’re bleeding all over my uniform, and then we can intimately discuss you getting into all of my holes.”
“I really do hate you.”
“Yeah, nice try, but I don’t believe that anymore. What was it you said earlier? That you wanted to lay the world at my feet and it would still never be enough?”
“Fuck. You,” Harrow hissed, not moving an inch from where her head was buried in Gideon’s chest.