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After her parents die, Shadowheart goes to Lae’zel.
No.
That’s –
After she kills her parents, Shadowheart goes to Lae’zel.
There’s long moments stretching out in between, standing with Wyll before a statue of Selune and wondering. Well.
He chose himself over his father. Maybe he didn’t know that’s what he was choosing at the start, but he turned down Mizora just like she turned down Shar and if he hates her for this, when he had to choose between his soul being bound by an ever shortening leash to a devil or his father’s life, when she was only facing pain – pain she’s lived with for her entire life, then she will shatter like a mirror meeting rock.
It’s hard to tell if he’s looking at her with understanding or regret. It’s hard to know which would be easier to stomach. For better or worse, they have both made their choices now, and there in that abandoned chapel she finds that hers is choking her.
The events come back in flashes afterwards. Wyll, watching her cry, red eye warm with something half sympathy and half pity. Her choice. Her name.
Wyll touching her shoulder. Wyll telling her, quietly, that she has a family. Wyll leaving, and her finally, properly breaking down. She has no bodies to bury. They are with her, she cries, screams, they are the light of the moon and the pale reflection of life! But this is their funeral, this is their mourner in all her state.
Shar is the lady of loss but this loss is not hers: it is not the absence of feeling but the flood of it, every emotion firing at once in relief-desperation-loneliness-hope-agony-hope-hope-hope-guilt-hope.
And when she is done pouring a lifetime of Jenevelle-slash-Shadowheart onto the floor at the moonmaiden’s feet, she crawls her way back to the Elfsong tavern.
She doesn’t know what she’s looking for – not comfort, because Lae’zel is still figuring out how to blunt her sharp edges, and not comfort, because she is all sharp herself and she does not want to make her hurt become anyone else’s.
Blame, maybe? Someone to look her in the eye and call her selfish and say she should have fought, that choosing freedom from pain over her parents was the coward’s choice. The sharran’s choice.
So that’s the answer then. Honesty.
Lae’zel is awake when she comes in, staring at that silver sword Kith’rak Voss gave her. Wyll is nowhere to be seen, presumably in the section of their rooms she, he, Halsin and Jaheira share. The curtains are drawn, though, and she doesn’t want to disturb them and Lae’zel is awake and Karlach shifts, asleep, and Lae’zel looks at her over the edge of a blade with those dark eyes.
She walks into the empty section of the room, the one Wyll sleeps in sometimes when he’s being their fearless leader who must stand apart, and faces the window looking out south. It is instinct more than anything that tells her Lae’zel is following.
“Did I do the right thing?” she asks.
“I do not know,” says Lae’zel. She sounds troubled, and Shadowheart turns. The gith stands further away than she’d thought, by the desk, eyes fixed on her. “You spoke to Wyll. What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
Lae’zel does not move closer. “You should rest. We have much to do tomorrow.”
Two paths lie before Shadowheart. Along the one, she pushes Lae’zel onto the desk and they fight a silent battle of mouths and hands and bodies. It is a road they have walked before, be it by by accident, by intention, by mutual hunger only unearthed in the dark of night and buried deep by dawn. But there is a question unanswered at its root.
If she wants to settle this thing, she will have to walk the other road.
“We never got to have that spar,” she says, lets them both be dragged back to Shadowheart’s knife at Lae’zel’s throat in the dead hours of the morning.
“Tchk,” says Lae’zel. “This is foolish.”
Shadowheart raises an eyebrow.
“Come, then. Back your words with steel.”
They get back into their armour and trail their way out of the Elfsong in mutually never-agreed silence, down to a nearby park. Trees, dark spindly things caught in black and white under the moon, reach up towards the heavens. There is a small pond. Its surface, dappled silver by the light, breaks as a bird takes flight across it at their approach, squawking in nighttime outrage at their intrusion. But there are no people. The streets are empty in the moonlight, the Lower City finally sleeping.
Lae’zel walks across the grey grass, leaving a good few meters between them.
“To first blood?”
“Or first burn.” Shadowheart pulls her lips into a smile and pulls a blast of sacred fire down onto Laezel’s helmeted head. The gith’s sword hums in her hand, and she hefts it above her, its gleam scattering the divine light onto the grass where it sends puffs of dew-steam up into the air.
Then they’re moving. Lae’zel charges in, sword raised high. She plants a foot firmly on the dew brushed grass, launching herself up and over Shadowheart’s head and bringing the blade down towards Shadowheart’s head. Her shield, freshly claimed from Viconia’s corpse, meets it, and she forces Lae’zel back. Lightning sparks from her other hand as she drives it towards Lae’zel’s chest, only for the other woman to twist out of the way. She takes advantage of Shadowheart’s overreach and drives her shoulder under the shield, and she gasps as the air is driven from her lungs. Her foot hits a bump in the ground and slips from beneath her.
But –
She grabs Lae’zel by the edge of her breastplate and drags her weight down with her, sending them both to the floor. Before the gith has a chance to react, she flings herself to the side, pulling Lae’zel with her until they both roll into the pond. The weight immediately catches her heavy plate, soaking the layers beneath it and dragging her down. But she can still summon ice to her palm, and blast it directly into Lae’zel’s face.
“That’s a burn,” she says.
“Tchk,” says Lae’zel. “And that is blood on your palm.”
Shadowheart pulls herself from the shallow pond and looks down at her hand, the one which used to bear Shar’s curse. Lae’zel is right; the sharp edges of her armour have cut through Shadowheart’s glove and there is a shallow cut across the meat of her palm. The gith, sitting in the water, stares up at her.
“You fought well,” she says. “Unsurprising. You would not be so irritating if you were not a skilled warrior.”
“And here I thought we were past you finding me irritating.”
“I confess, I thought this moon goddess would make you… insufferable. I am pleased to see your combat prowess has not dulled.”
Shadowheart smiles. All of a sudden, she is wet and cold and aching and she is very much standing in a small patch of greenery in a corner of the Lower City soaking wet in an absurd amount of armour, with a woman who but a month ago would have made this a fight to the death, and it is exactly what she needed.
There is a future stretching out before her, now. Once they’re done with all the mortal peril and fighting against world-conquering plots. One where she goes back to that chapel, and becomes something in the shape of Jenevelle, even if she will always be Shadowheart. It is not a path she has to walk alone, not always. And she is done with letting go, through with loss, and finished with sacrifice.
She reaches out her bloodied hand and grasps Lae’zel’s, pulling her up out of the moonkissed water and onto the shore.