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The training grounds. One hour.
The summons had been concise, almost curt in its brevity. The chosen parchment had yellowed with age, the edges wrinkled and torn as if it had been thoughtlessly ripped from an old tome. It had been left on her cot and folded over twice, likely to hide the simple message from prying eyes. No name accompanied the words scratched onto the page, nor a wax seal to identify its sender—but it was hardly needed. It never was.
He was already there when Addilyn Theron stepped onto the stone path leading to the training grounds, his long golden hair shimmering dully in the pale light of the moon. Night had long since fallen over the city of Durlyne, the sky dark and clear of clouds. A brilliant display of stars shone unimpeded from the heavens, countless in their number, rendering the lamplights lining the temple grounds superfluous in their placement.
It was little surprise that Lemuel Adelier’s gaze remained skyward as she approached.
“Sir?” Addilyn ventured, watching him. He was hunched forward, leaning against the waist-high stone wall that separated the training grounds from the surrounding pathways, his forearms braced atop the rough-hewn surface. He was still in uniform, though his plate armor had been removed. Odd, considering the late hour. “You asked to see me?”
Lemuel hummed in response, seemingly unsurprised by her appearance. “How was the patrol this evening?”
Straight to business, then. She resisted the urge to sigh. “Fine, sir,” she said, coming to stand alongside him. “Just the usual rabble.”
“Is that so?” he said flatly. His eyes remained fixed on the moon, his features schooled into a mask of cool indifference. “Bloodied your blade on your own bowels then, did you?”
Addilyn cringed, cursing softly under her breath. She’d hoped that more important matters had garnered his attention, but little escaped his notice lately, especially where she was concerned. It made what solace she still found in his presence seem thin and brittle.
“It was nothing, sir,” she insisted, averting her gaze to the ground. “Just an unruly band of Geffie. We put them down easy enough.”
Her skin prickled as Lemuel’s attention finally turned to her, his scrutiny nigh unbearable. She remained silent, unmoving in the face of his unspoken accusation. A Semon’s blood had indeed stained her sword that evening, the man part of a gang of Gefendur intent on burning down a Ssaelit owned market stall. They’d been dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly, but such was the daily life of a Lion these days. Blood flowed easier than water within Durlyne.
And yet a cold dread pooled within the depths of her belly. No one had seen her cut down the Semon, only the crimson gore that drenched her blade in the aftermath. No one had noticed the flash of recognition in the man’s dark eyes as he met her gaze, the realization of who he’d stumbled upon dawning just a moment too late.
Lemuel couldn’t know that the Lioness had slaughtered yet another huntsman intent on her hide. She’d made sure of it, killing the warning shout that sat upon his tongue before it could be given life.
“Addie,” Lemuel said quietly, wearily. “You can’t keep on like this.”
“Keep on like what?” Addilyn rolled her shoulders, all professional pretense forgotten. “It was a routine patrol. You’d have done no differently.”
“This isn’t about the patrol.” He sighed heavily, the shadow of annoyance beginning to creep into his words. He pinched at the bridge of his nose, breathing deeply before he continued, his voice soft and near inaudible. “The wolves are closing in. By God, I can feel them nipping at our heels even now.”
“What are you talking about?” She glanced his way, the familiar claws of trepidation digging into her chest. “Lem, what’s all this about?”
Lemuel sighed again, turning to face her fully. There was a strange look about him; his jaw set, his gaze unflinching. As if he had steeled himself for some long awaited battle. “Have you ever thought of taking the Third Option, Addie?”
“Taking th—?” An incredulous laugh escaped her then, the sound sharp and grating in the tranquil silence. She looked up at him in utter disbelief, waiting for the derisive smirk to take shape, to hear the rumbling chuckle that always accompanied his playful jibes. ‘You’re so serious of late, Theron,’ he would say, his golden eyes alight with mirth. ‘We truly must do something about that.’
But the laughter never came. His lips remained a thin line, the corners dipped downward in the beginnings of a frown, his aureate eyes harder than the stone beneath their feet.
“Y—You can’t be serious,” Addilyn said, her laughter petering out into a pathetic wince. “Why would I ever consider that?”
“The Gefendur still hunt you,” Lemuel said gravely. “They still call for your head. Each time you step outside the temple gates, you take your life into your own hands. And it’s only a matter of time before their demands reach the Lions, then even this precarious haven will have been lost to you.” His eyes softened but a fraction. “It could mean security for you. Safety. Protection under the law from both your own faith and theirs.”
“They’d never allow it.” Desperation clawed its way up her throat, undercutting the otherwise insouciant declaration. He couldn’t truly think this was the right path for her. The only path. “I’m no wright. They know I’ve no talent for spellery. They’d have no use for me.”
“You’re a good soldier,” Lemuel reasoned. He said it with such conviction, such genuine affection. It was enough to cleave her heart in two. “You have fought and bled and killed in the name of Ssael. You know how desperate we are for seasoned Ssaelit soldiers, men willing to hold the line against our impending slaughter. It’s reason enough to push the request through.”
“And what about me?” she snapped. “What would happen to me? You know what the oath calls for, what it would mean for me. For—” She choked on the word. “For us.”
He looked away from her then, his features shuttered once more. “You’ve no protectors left, Addie. That you’ve lived as you have for this long is a miracle in itself.”
“And so I must kill Addilyn Theron?” The words were sharp, venomous, each one a viper’s bite plunged into flesh. “After everything she has accomplished? After everything she has overcome?” She scoffed, forcing the indignation to crush the despair blooming within her. “You’ve always preached how we can’t give in to them, that to do so is to die a slow death under their heel. And now you propose I do exactly that.”
“I propose you live.” Lemuel rounded on her, his frustration boiling over at last. Addilyn did not so much as flinch. “And if Addilyn Theron must cease to exist to ensure your survival, that should be a small price to pay.” He loomed over her, the moon’s faint glow casting his face in deep, menacing shadow. “The Geffies will not grant you a swift death. I’ve heard the whispers, the plans they have for you. You’d be tortured, defiled, paraded about for all to see. An example made of you, a promise of what is to come for us all should they achieve their loftiest goals.”
A trickle of fear began to seep into her veins, her blood running cold at the imagery put forth—though she continued to hold his gaze, her chin held high.
“Were you to bleed out in the street with a poisoned blade buried in your chest,” he rumbled, “it would be a mercy compared to what awaits you at their hands.”
“You ask me to die a slow death either way,” she said firmly, undaunted. “That one is seemingly bloodless does not make it any less agonizing.”
“You are a liability as you are, Addilyn,” he spat, pounding his fist atop the stone wall with a dull thud. At that, she flinched. “To both Ssaelism and to Alderode. The Lions have been keenly aware of this from the start. Your only true protection laid in the word of a fucking Copper, and he has remained silent despite the encroaching scourge. The Lions had not dared anger him, fearing bloody retribution, but without his looming shadow there is nothing to keep them from ousting you.”
A beat passed, one in which Addiyn felt an acute sadness settle upon her shoulders. After all this time, after everything they'd endured, she never thought he would be the one to come to her with this.
“You can’t ask this of me,” she whispered, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. It was the only way she could hide how they trembled. “You can’t ask me to throw my entire life away. To kill the woman that I am in the name of survival. I can't live that lie.”
“Think beyond yourself, Addie,” he pleaded, a sudden softness overtaking him. “Civil war looms, and we cannot afford even the smallest crack in our armor when they come for us. We need you, I need you—but not as you are now.”
Addilyn recoiled as if slapped. Lemuel’s brow furrowed in—apology? Sympathy? She couldn’t tell. She didn’t much care either.
“Sacrifices must be made if we are to survive,” he continued. “Ssael asks much of us at His altar in this crusade.”
“And I am to be the sacrificial lamb.” A small, derisive laugh burst forth unbidden, and Addilyn shifted to hunch forward over the stone wall, her palms flat against the rough surface. The stone was cool to the touch, a balm against her feverish skin. Out of the corner of her eye, she would swear she saw Lemuel flinch. “How poetic.”
“Addilyn—”
“If Ssael cannot accept me as I am,” she cut him off, a steely resolve taking root within her, “if His followers cannot see the injustice in this, then what use would there be in such a compromise? If the Gefendur truly want me dead, a pitiful oath will not stop them. And I'll have flayed myself alive for nothing.”
“Don’t be foolish, Addilyn,” Lemuel warned.
“I won’t take the Third Option, Lem.” There was a note of finality to her voice. She could abide this torment no longer. “I won’t bind my chest and tie another unhappy woman into an unhappy marriage. I am well aware of the expectations tied to that oath, as well as the scrutiny that comes in the aftermath. I would drive myself mad with despair, with grief at what I had discarded.” She glanced sidelong at him, desperate for him to understand. “Why add to the weight of Alderode’s boot upon my back when the end result will be the same? It’s heavy enough as it is.”
Silence descended, thicker than even the densest fog. It felt impenetrable, a chasm opening between them. A sharp pang of sorrow twisted at her heart, leaving her vision blurry with unshed tears. She didn’t know what pained her the most: that he had asked this of her, knowing what it entailed, what it meant for her—for them; or that it seemed, even now, she was simply not enough.
Lemuel’s shoulders sagged, an air of resignation about him. He ran a hand through his golden hair, the strands near silver beneath the night sky. His face was unreadable, an emotion she could not quite place crossing his features. It made something within her squirm, an unfamiliar disquiet clenching at her gut.
Lemuel looked toward the training grounds, and there was the slightest crack in that unreadable facade. “This was where we first met,” he said, a sad smile pulling at his lips, a faraway look in his eyes.
Addilyn’s gaze followed his own, falling upon the practice staves and shields littered about the ground. A terrible melancholy fell over her.
“To think,” she began, her voice little more than a whisper, “that you’d still be fighting to be rid of me all these years later.”
Lemuel simply hummed, moving to stand behind her. The air was still and crisp, the bite of a quickly fading winter evident. There was a familiar comfort in this, in having him at her back. Solid, warm, safe.
A hand came to rest at her hip. She could feel each breath, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. She allowed herself to lean back against him, to indulge in this moment. To forget the wolves that sat ready to tear her asunder, if only for this instance.
His lips brushed the top of her head, an uncharacteristically tender gesture. The sensation sent a pleasant shiver skittering down her spine.
And then he spoke, the words soft and entreating—and filled with a grief she’d never once heard pass his lips. “Dan paesabi, da lledeol.”
It happened so quickly. An immense pressure at her neck. The stone wall digging into her pelvis. Lemuel’s weight at her back, pushing her forward. Trapping her. Restraining her.
Addilyn clawed at the arm around her neck, only to be met with the thick leather of his riding gloves, her nails cracking and splintering against the well-tended armor. She could find no purchase on the ground, no leverage to break his hold. Her legs were pinned against the waist-high wall, held in place by Lemuel’s considerable strength.
And it was only then, as her vision began to fade, the dark abyss of unconsciousness rushing forward to claim her, that she realized Lemuel Adelier had betrayed her.