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“You really need to fix the inner guard schedule,” Amity informs Hunter, eschewing a proper greeting.
Because she’s being really nice, though, she also slides a dangerously caffeinated beverage across the table as she sits. I’m not even picking a fight with you. See?
Hunter is off duty, currently, pretending to enjoy a rare moment apart from his Empress. She’s too busy gallivanting around with the Owl Lady inside an impenetrable fortress to need her Golden Guard at the moment.
So he’s tucked himself into a little warded study in the castle library that should be impervious to outside observation. Amity just happens to be really good at both finding library hidey-holes and finding Hunter. He’s unmasked and uncloaked, dressed in light armor. Which means Amity gets the full force of his unimpressed glower. He does not seem to appreciate the peace offering.
“Thanks for watching my back last night,” Amity adds, grudgingly.
This garners a slightly more favorable response. Hunter snorts and kicks his chair back on two legs. Instead of asking why she’s breaking into his inner sanctuary, he says, “What’s wrong with the inner guard?”
“You seriously don’t have enough bodies to cover her door?”
Hunter pushes his chair back further, loses his balance, flails spectacularly, and just barely manages to right himself with a slam.
Brushing his arms off like a cat pretending it totally meant to do the stupid thing, he says, “Hello?”
“You’re taking watch twice a week, sometimes. You shouldn't need to guard her door when she's sleeping. You need more bodies.”
Hunter sniffs at his gifted beverage, then unshoulders his staff and aims a spell at it, presumably to detect poison or threatening magic. Amity tries to be offended that he has to check, but they have sort of threatened each other’s lives in the past.
It’s a mark of how much better they’re getting along that Hunter tries the drink at all. Satisfied that it’s safe, he takes a contemplative sip. “Wow,” he says. “This is actually good. Did you pay real snails for this?”
Amity chooses not to disclose her supplier, because she might need good coffee to gain Hunter’s favor in the future. It’s way too easy to persuade Coven Head Raine to do a simple kindness.
“Once a week, minimum,” Amity says. “It’s been four out of the past fifteen nights.”
Hunter’s brow creases. He busies himself swigging his drink, because that’s how he stalls, by pretending to be interested in whatever object is in front of him. When he speaks, it’s more cautious than usual.
Good. He knows Amity means business.
“Hey,” he says, “go figure, you needed a place to crash on all four of those nights. And none of the others.”
Amity shrugs.
“What are we doing here, Blight.” Hunter runs a hand through his hair. “Is this a leadup to you asking for a job?”
“No.”
“Because you know, the last time I offered you a job, you didn't seem too happy about it.”
This is a joke that might double as a threat, or possibly a threat that doubles as a joke. Hunter's idea of a job offer had been hey, how does your actual worst nightmare sound? I think your actual worst nightmare sounds super fun, and had included, word-for-word, I will make your life a living hell.
In fairness, he’d been going through a rough patch. Amity had not been very nice about it.
“The last time you offered me a job,” Amity says, biting down on a tiny grin, “Luz kicked your ass.”
Metaphorically, anyway. For some weird reason, the Empress hadn't been happy about her guard dog rabidly and randomly biting her allies. It’s almost like she doesn’t want her closest guards to be miserable pawns with ample reason to hate her and want her dead. Wild.
“It actually would be really helpful,” Hunter says, “to have you around.”
Amity bristles.
“No, no, I’m not being an ass,” he adds quickly, setting down his coffee and holding up his hands. “I know I was a bitch about it last time. But I’m serious. That teleportation magic you have–”
“You can teleport, too.”
“Only with a staff.”
Amity pinches the bridge of her nose. She has no rebuttal for this, which is probably fair payback. She’s rubbed the half-a-witch status in his face way too many times to pull some faux-cheerful tooth-rotting, Oh, no, I’m sure you’re super special and magical in your own special non-magical way nonsense out of nowhere.
“Can you teleport other people with you?” Hunter asks. “I know Darius can, but he’s been at it for decades–”
“Would it make a difference?” Amity taps her fingers against the table, an anxious little drum. “Let me guess – if I can hypothetically teleport Luz out of danger, then you have to take me away from Lilith?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
“No. Has anyone ever told you that you’re a walking headache?”
“Almost everyone I ever meet.”
Hunter heaves a sigh. He really does look tired. More tired than the late watch can explain, even. The kind of tired where Amity might be able to soundly win a fight, if they happened to pick now as a good time to spar.
“It would literally just be logical and practical to have drafted you into her guard already,” Hunter says. “So if I was gonna do my job the way I should, this conversation wouldn’t even be happening. You don’t have anything to worry about. I’m being bad at my job about this one specific thing.”
Amity reminds herself that she didn’t come here to pick a fight with him. She reminds herself of this several times. She reminds herself that she can’t set his boots on fire in the middle of a library. She reminds herself that she can’t tie his laces together after she went to all the trouble of getting him coffee.
“You can just say Luz won’t let you,” she says, because this is one of the several strange and precious promises Luz has made her over the past few months. “You don't have to pretend like you care.”
Hunter shrugs. He at least has the decency not to pretend to be a good guy, even if he won’t admit aloud that it’s only because of Luz.
Amity reins in her temper, with great effort.
“So, speaking of Luz,” she says, “why haven’t you fixed the schedule?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
One of the best things about Amity and Hunter’s precarious truce is the ability to just… say things. The rest of the Coven requires constant political double-talk and subterfuge, but here…
“She can’t sleep without you,” Amity says.
Then, amending, “Well, she can, but from where I’m sitting, it’s sort of worse than not sleeping at all.”
Hunter stares at her.
Impatience makes her snappy. “This cannot be news to you.”
It’s not the first time that Amity has found herself as the only third party who knows what’s happening with the Empress and the Golden Guard, and it probably will not be the last. She sometimes sleeps on Luz’s floor, for reasons that are completely normal and fine. She’s seen Luz sleep with Hunter in her bed, and she’s seen Luz sleep without Hunter in her bed, and the difference is… striking.
Luz apparently has chronic nightmares, is the thing. When Hunter is lying beside her while she stirs, he can sometimes wrap an arm around her waist and murmur into her hair and settle her without waking her at all, a ritual that always feels somehow indecent to watch. Amity has always felt weird watching them together in private. It's allowed, she’s allowed to see it, they wouldn’t be so casual in front of her if she wasn’t allowed. But it makes her stomach hurt.
When Luz is in the room by herself, at some point she’ll always reach out for a person who isn’t there, blindly fumbling around the covers without ever waking.
And then she’ll curl in on herself and cry.
Amity can’t do the whole thing Hunter does, the whole thing where Amity would have to crawl into bed with their world’s closest tether to the divine, press her entire body against this potentially-wrathful god-queen’s, and hold her until she’s a little less unhappy. Amity can’t think about doing that and shouldn't think about doing that and doesn’t think about doing that, even during the nights when Amity can’t sleep herself and just watches Luz breathe instead, because there’s something fascinating about her human physiology and her warmth and the way her cheek curves against her pillow. Amity shouldn’t let Luz get this far under her skin, shouldn’t memorize the shape of her mouth, shouldn't miss the careful offer of her hands, because one day Luz will use her power to hurt Amity and there will be nothing anyone can do about it, because Luz will always be the Empress before she can be anything else.
Luz will always be the Empress. This fact seems to be killing her.
She’s so kind it makes Amity feel sick. Suspiciously kind, relentlessly kind, and the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet. It’s possible that Luz’s intentions truly are good, and it’s only circumstance that will tear them apart.
In another world, maybe–
Ha. In another world, what? Luz would be a normal human girl and Amity wouldn’t be a soldier? And somehow that would translate to a dynamic where they’d actually enjoy each other’s company, where either of them could find peace? As if. Amity knows herself too well for that. She’d ruin everything before it even began.
It doesn’t matter. Amity can’t use Hunter’s methods to care for Luz.
She can, however, shake Luz awake from the dreams.
And she can come back every night that Hunter isn’t there. Because the alternative is to know that in a room across the castle, in a comfortable bed and a picture-perfect life, Luz is crying for help.
Not that Luz seems to appreciate being woken. She’s brushed Amity off every time it happens, firmly reinstating their dynamic – I’m your queen, not a pretty girl to play with. Stop acting like a lovesick idiot. She’s been very kind not to rebuke Amity openly, always quiet and reserved and polite. But Amity knows how to take a hint.
It’s fine. Amity isn’t anything to her. Luz is kind to everybody, and she allows Amity this close as a favor to Hunter, because she’s exceedingly permissive with him. Amity gets it. She wouldn’t want a random soldier poking around in her own nightmares, either.
Hunter knows all of this. Hunter knows Luz better than he knows himself. Hunter is devoted to her in a way that scared Amity shitless, once upon a time, back before she’d gotten to know Luz a little better. Nowadays the devotion just makes her chest and throat ache, like she swallowed glass. It’s hard to deny the appeal of being a kept thing when Luz is the keeper.
Amity needs to get a fucking grip.
Hunter leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. The wards should prevent eavesdropping, but he lowers his voice like he doesn’t trust them. “I haven’t changed the rotation in a long time,” he says. “I’m worried it’ll send the wrong message.”
“What, you’re worried people will figure out she can’t sleep without you? Oh, the horror, castle gossip that’s actually true.”
He closes his eyes.
“You’re overthinking it,” Amity tells him. “Dude. She’s exhausted. They’ll talk even more if she falls over in the throne room. Sync your sleep schedules. Everyone thinks you’re a couple anyway, it’s not like it’s gonna surprise them.”
Hunter doesn’t seem shocked by the news that everyone thinks he and Luz are a couple. In fairness, Amity is still working that one out for herself. The boundaries of their relationship are mysterious and ephemeral. Close enough for them to share a bed like an old married couple, but if they’ve ever so much as kissed, they sure don’t do it in front of her.
“How bad has it been?” Hunter asks, eyes still closed. “You should have called for me.”
“And left her whole door unguarded? For two whole minutes?”
“Blight. I’m not playing. How bad?”
Amity isn’t sure when ‘protecting Luz’ became one of the main things that she and Hunter have in common. The Empress must have grown under her skin like a mold; one day, she'd been the scariest person Amity had ever met, and now she’s…
Well. Whatever.
“It’s just bad dreams,” Amity says. “She recovers fine once she’s up. She hasn’t been… disoriented, or anything like that.”
Hunter exhales sharply. The relief on his face is stark enough that Amity is sure he had, in fact, been worried about disorientation. Which means that whatever is making Luz sick runs deeper than a cruel subconscious.
Amity takes a deep breath and a wild risk. “Hunter,” she says, “hey, level with me here. Is she cursed?”
Hunter sits up straight like he’s been shocked, broadening the gap between them. His eyes are so wide. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because I have very little sense of self-preservation, I guess?”
“I meant–”
“I know what you meant.” Amity plays with one of the purple streaks in the front of her hair, aiming for casual indifference, even though her heart is in her throat. “She wears loose pajamas. The sleeves sometimes ride up. You're the one who dragged me into your whole… your whole thing. You had to know I was going to see it.”
‘It’ refers to a truly impressive map of sluggishly-healing concentric scar tissue on one of Luz’s forearms. It’s not a form of magic that Amity has ever seen before, but it’s definitely something powerful, and it’s also something scary as hell.
Amity can’t imagine being marked by wild magic like that. She doesn't know where Luz got the scars. Her main working theory is that Belos held her down and carved them himself, which would track with every awful thing Amity already knows about him, and which would also explain why Luz murdered him in cold blood.
Titan help her. Amity knows too many state secrets.
“I–” Hunter swallows, hard. “I can’t talk about this with you.”
Amity has done a pretty good job of controlling her temper so far, but now it threatens to flare. She grits her teeth.
“You wanted me to find out,” she says, accusatory. “You took the risk on purpose. I’m in it now, Hunter. So the least you can do is tell me what’s going on.”
“Luz isn’t cursed.” Hunter hesitates just a beat too long before adding, “At least, I don’t think.”
“But something’s wrong with her.”
“Okay, Blight,” Hunter says, “now I need you to level with me.”
Amity regards him warily. “Okay.”
“Have people been talking? Have they been saying there’s something wrong with her?”
This, at least, is easy to answer. Amity isn’t the most plugged in to the castle’s gossip train, but still. “No,” she says. “Not that I’ve heard. A lot of the scouts think she’s weird, but not, like… not wrong weird. Sometimes they say she looks tired, but it’s like, ‘Damn, she must be pulling worse hours than we are.’”
“Well,” Hunter says, “she is.”
Yeah, that tracks. Amity has no problem believing that Luz hasn’t applied any of her sweeping work-reform edicts to herself.
“And you,” Hunter adds, “have you told anybody? About anything you've seen?”
Amity shakes her head.
“Not even Lilith?”
Another shake of the head. It’s not even a matter of distrusting Lilith – Amity tells her mentor almost everything about her day-to-day life, even now. Hiding Luz’s issues from Lilith is less a matter of being sneaky and more a matter of keeping the kingdom from falling apart.
“Why not?”
Amity blinks. “Do you… want me to?”
“No.”
“Well. There you go, then. You’re welcome.” Amity snorts. “Fix her guard so I don’t have to keep pretending this is my job, okay? I have actual stuff to do. And besides, she’s sick of me poking her.”
“She likes having you around.”
“You’re deluded. One of these days she’s going to blast me with her staff.”
“Titan, I hope so.”
Amity laughs and doesn’t even try to hide it. Hunter’s eyes crinkle. A small, companionable silence falls between them.
“Hunter,” Amity starts, and then she hesitates.
“Yeah?”
“Why – why do you trust me?”
“Because I’m an idiot?”
“Well, yeah,” Amity agrees, “but you’re not an idiot about Luz. You… you’re careful with her. With who you trust with her.”
Hunter gives the question a minute of consideration. His answer, when it comes, is as simple as it is surprising.
“The day Belos died, I was losing my mind. You pulled me together. Things would have been worse for Luz if you hadn’t done that,” he says quietly. “So. You're actually a pretty good friend. Even though you're still the worst person I’ve ever met.”
For some weird reason, a hard lump forms in Amity’s throat. She swallows three times to dispel it before managing to reply, “Wow. You still just suck.”
But she does say it with all the affection in the world.