Chapter Text
I felt you fall. I fell with you.
The chains around my arms became brittle, and with a sharp tug, they splintered and came apart. The ice melted and fell away in a bloom of water. You didn’t even allow me to feel the relief that comes with freedom. I was immediately pulled down into the River with you.
When I landed, I was home. The blackened, moldy walls of Drearburh were around me, like an embrace from an ancient, hateful grandparent. I knew this room, though the last time I had seen it, the ceiling had almost bowed in from the weight of three adult bodies hanging from the rafters. Two of which were suddenly alive, and standing in the room with me, which was really the last thing I needed at that moment.
Harrow, where the hell were you? You let me out of my box and then dumped me back in Drearburh - with your parents, no less. Were you really that pissed with me?
The Reverend Father was pacing furiously, a display of nerves that I’d never been privileged enough to witness when he was alive. Its fucking unnerving, in all honesty.
“Priamhark,” I said, because saying nothing and allowing this scene to unfold on its own was somehow so much worse.
“She will never cease ,” he snapped, and long-buried instinct was the only thing that kept me from flinching. That man always had a terrible temper. “Her birth was the Ninth’s most paramount mistake, and her life our cardinal failure.”
“The Ninth will suffer for this solitary act of compassion,” added the Reverend Mother. I’d never noticed before, how much you looked like her. Beneath her vestigial paint, she really was very pretty. Then she said, “We should have smothered Harrowhark before she could speak,” and ruined the effect entirely.
“She has not earned such mercy,” corrected the Reverend Father. “She could have devoted her life to serving her House. She could have prostrated herself in front of the Tomb and bled herself dry. Instead she demands recompense, as if we have not sacrificed enough at her depraved altar.”
If I had to listen to another minute of this, I was going to open up all my veins in front of the Locked Tomb.
I was going to give them what-for. I really was. But when my mouth opened to say hey , fuck you guys, I liked you far better when you were dead , what came out was, “Nigenad doesn’t stand a chance against her. He’s an awful excuse for a cav, but he doesn’t deserve to die. Allow me to take Harrow as my cavalier to the First.”
And that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever said.
Apparently, the Reverend Father and Mother agreed with that sentiment, because they looked at me as if I’d just sprouted a second head. Which I may as well have, for how bizarre this whole thing was. You were no cavalier. Watching you attempt to carry my sword all those months had been borderline painful for me, and likely gave you a painful case of scoliosis. I would have laughed, but I had no control of my vocal chords.
“Harrow Nova will not represent the Ninth House,” said Pelleamena, and if I hadn’t grown up beside you, Harrow, that voice would have scared me shitless. But she didn’t hold a candle to you, my penumbral queen, so I wasn’t that impressed.
“I am not a Nona,” came my voice, and I felt oddly like a ghost haunting myself, going no shit . “But I will represent the Ninth House as its adept and heir.”
This was news to me. Hearing you described as a cavalier hadn’t produced the idea of myself as a necromancer, despite being the most obvious train of thought. I had enough control of my body to look down, to take in the vestments I was wearing. I could see the faintest hint of paint where my peripheral vision caught sight of my nose. When I moved, I heard the faint, familiar din of bones clacking together. I did not like this.
Priamhark’s face curls into a sneer, and it is the most unattractive thing I’ve seen in a very long time, which is quite a feat, as I’d been staring at Ianthe’s awful face through your eyes for almost a year. “And that justifies sending a heretic in place of a cavalier to the House of the First?”
Would they have been this pissed about you taking me as your cav, Harrow? The thought cheered me up a bit, I’ll admit. I almost wished they’d lived to see the day you called me Gideon the Ninth.
Through sheer force of will, I forced the anger I felt into my tone, and it seeped through my words like blood through fabric. “You are terrified of her. No amount of subjugation has been able to break her. She was born nobility, and you stripped her of her titles and rendered her a slave. She retrieved the chain of Samael Novenary, and you whipped her back to bloody ribbons.” My body shivered at that, and it wasn’t at all disingenuous. “She proves herself a better cavalier than any heir Mortus can produce, and you still deny that she has a place in her House.”
I understood, then. You’re me, Harrow. In this fucked up reality drummed up by the River or your subconscious, you took my place. Harrow Nova is who you would have been, in the event that the massacre of Ninth children had failed to make you a necromancer. And in your head, you truly believed that your parents would have held you responsible for this. Perhaps the kindest they had ever been to you, was when they helped you tie the rope intended to kill you.
I wanted to break their necks. I could do it; I was a necromancer now.
“You do not understand,” began Priamhark, but I did not allow him to finish.
“I understand that Harrowhark will not stop until she has destroyed every obstacle in her way of achieving a proper place in the House of the Ninth.” The Reverend Father and Mother deflated a bit at this, and that brought me no small amount of joy. “So either you allow her to take Ortus’ place as cavalier primary…”
Nothing could have prepared me for what I was going to say next, Harrow.
“Or you allow me to marry her.”
Shock momentarily broke through the mask I’d been provided, but it snapped back in place as your father advanced on me. Let me tell you, I had never missed my sword more than in that moment.
“You wish to pledge yourself to the very death of your House! You would damn us all!”
“She is the last in the line of Anastasia,” I reminded him. “Pride and shame blind you, Reverend Father. I, at least, understand my duty to our House. And if binding myself to Harrow Nova will ensure our success in the First House, and produce an heir that may continue the legacy of Drearburh-”
Suddenly the pressure inside the room seemed to evacuate all at once. Somewhere in my peripheral, in the doorway, peeked two familiar teenaged heads that quickly disappeared as I turned toward them in a state of shock. There were plenty of the dead in Drearburh, but these particular dead had never come anywhere near the Ninth House.
Before I could run after them, Mortus stepped through the doorway, in the same way a rat might shimmy through a door fitted for a mouse. If he had caught sight of the terrible teens, he made no mention of it. “Aiglamane has informed me that she was forced to send Marshal Crux to deal with Nova. Any real cavalier would know not to bare your weapon at the altar.”
My body was my own again, though as I moved with it towards the door, ignoring the cries of “ Reverend Daughte r” from your parents, I could feel the difference in how I carried myself. I was not weighed down by any weapons, which was probably a good thing, seeing as walking suddenly took more effort than it ever had previously. I was suddenly glad for the layers of black fabric that obscured my body - my biceps were probably pathetic, and I had enough weighing on my mind.
I remembered every crack in the walls like a yellowing bruise, every shadow as if it were an old friend. I made my way through the halls, robes dramatically flailing in my wake - which was admittedly very fun - and took in every detail in gratitude as it brought me to you.
It would bring me to you, Harrow. Drearburh always led back to you.
Even as I continued on, I noticed the discrepancies. There were no more Fourth teens peeking out from behind corners, but a door was missing a hinge that had been repaired years ago. The door to the library was left slightly ajar, which was something you never would have stood for. I’d done it more than once just to get a rise out of you, and you had eventually banned me from it entirely.
The unsavory sound of Crux’s voice racketed down the hallway. “Go rush to your cuckoo’s side!”
You could tack Lord or Lady onto my name and bury me under penitents and prayer bones, but that particular tone of his was reserved for me, and me alone.
“Choke yourself,” he continued. “Burn yourself! Bury yourself! If you have the bottle to tell that cockerel what I name her, I will think the better of you for it!”
That cockerel was well on her way to telling Crux where he could shove it, but then he said your name, and I paused in the doorway.
“Be gentle with your weapon,” he was telling you, his withered but hulking form blocking you from my view entirely. “And do not make it naked before the altar. There are pilgrims here, even now. It would be pretty to apologize.”
Even here, even now, you could not bring yourself to imagine Marshal Crux being anything but kind to you. It did not warm me toward him, but it tempered the desire I felt to push him out of the airlock for the time being.
After a moment, you stepped towards the back of the chapel, and I saw you. Harrow, I had been looking through your eyes for months, and you so rarely looked in the mirror. You actively avoided yourself, rarely giving your appearance enough thought to warrant looking. It had been so long since I had seen your face, and suddenly there it was, your messy crop of hair curling at your ears, your clothes dark and tattered, your paint only slightly messed.
You were fuller, and rounder in places that distractedly drew my eye, but I didn’t have enough time to process this, before you shouldered a large ebony chain and sheathed your rapier in a scabbard that had seen many better days - perhaps better lifetimes. When you moved, you moved like I had, but with the same imperial dominance you always held, and I had never mastered. You were something to behold.
I hadn’t paid the visitors any mind, and they had not noticed me at all. I still stood, dumbfounded, at the entrance as a familiar face emerged from her dark hood. She smiled at you, in a sad and motherly way. Her husband ran his hand over his newly-shaven head as if it were fascinating to him.
“This isn’t how it happens,” said Abigail, and we were falling again.