Chapter Text
He awoke shivering. Waves nudged the soles of his sollerets. He forced open his eyes, sealed shut as they were with salt and sleep, only to be greeted by a cold and merciless sun.
An ache bloomed in his left hand. He lifted it to his eyes and blinked his palm into focus. The tanned skin of his wrist faded to a chalky white that extended to his fingertips. Pain exploded in his fingers when he tried to curl them into a fist.
I'm alive.
He drew in a breath and forced himself upright, groaning as his body resisted the movement. The waves came up to his knees now. If he stayed here the tide would take him.
Don't die.
He crawled toward the cliffs that loomed in the distance, barely visible through the low, thick fog. Something was moving further up the shore. A person? No, more. How many were there? It was too bright; the white sand surrounding him crept into the edges of his vision and swallowed the figures. Were they calling to him? Did they see him?
I have to get home. His mind was frantic, desperate. I promised. Promised what?
He tried to shout but his voice caught in his throat, desiccated and hoarse. A violent cough tore through him and stained the sand with blood. His limbs buckled. It was too heavy, this armor.
And then, darkness.
–
“Wait - you're saying Clive is alive?”
Jill pinched the bridge of her nose. “I never said that he died. I never said anything at all.” Her eyes burned behind her swollen eyelids and the ache between her shoulders crept up her neck and wrapped around her temples.
“But you—”
“I know,” she said sharply, cutting Gav off. She didn't need—or want—to be reminded of the despair and panic that consumed her when the Metia dimmed. It weighed on her like chains and turned her blood to ice. She took a breath to steady herself. “I couldn't sense the aether of his eikon anymore, so I assumed…” her throat tightened. “But my powers are also gone.”
“And the stolases aren't taking any messages.” Otto joined them in the mess, his brow furrowed. “Nobody's got a clue what it means. Whatever those three did up there is unlike anything this realm has ever seen.” He lifted his head to the empty sky where Origin loomed just hours earlier. “You lot really don't do things by halves, do you.”
The three of them stood in silence. Without stolases they were completely cut off from the world beyond the Hideaway. Any missives or messengers would take days, even weeks, to arrive. They were alone.
Jill closed her hand around her petrified wrist. “Could magick really be gone?”
“I reckon there are only three people who can give us an answer,” Otto said. “So we’d best get to finding them.”
She shifted uncomfortably where she stood, wondering if she should tell them the truth: that two of the three people who’d left for Origin were not going to come back. And the third…
She wanted to believe he had survived. She wanted to believe there was a chance worth searching for, but a thread of relentless grief wound tightly around her, pulling her back when she dared to wonder. Was it a friend, trying to save her from cruel and futile hope, or was it fear masked as pragmatism?
Torgal nudged his head against her hip. He hadn’t left her side since she’d collapsed in the Mess hours earlier, helpless under the crushing weight of her sorrow. She ran her fingers through his fur, the warmth a balm to her cold hands. She wasn’t sure what to make of his quiet stoicism. After Cid died he would whine and look over his shoulder, his eyes mournful and his tail between his legs, but he was nothing like that now. He sat silently beside her, gaze fixed eastward. There must be something out there worth looking for; some clue that might explain what happened to the realm.
And to Clive.
“So when do we leave?” she asked.
“Soon as you like,” Gav said.
She nodded. “The let’s get—”
“Hold on a minute, Jill.”
She turned to Otto, his arms crossed and his brow set, immovable as an adamantoise. “What is it?”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Fire rushed to Jill’s cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”
“When was the last time you fought without magick?”
“I assure you I’m quite capable of—”
“When was the last time you slept?”
“When was the last time any of us slept?” she said, nails digging into her palms.
“You’re more use to us here than you are out there,” he said, feet rooted to the ground. “Missives will start coming in from our contacts in the field before long. I need people here who can make heads or tails of them. Besides,” he added, “people are afraid. They need reassurance.”
“What reassurance could I possibly offer them, Otto?”
“They look up to you, whether you like it or not. If they see you carrying on with your head held high they might be inclined to do the same.”
Jill closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. He wasn’t wrong. The Hideaway needed her more than Gav did, even if the thought of sitting still made her seethe. This wasn’t the time to be reckless.
“So be it,” she said. “But take Jote with you. I’m sure her skills will prove useful, and I can’t imagine she’ll want to stay cooped up here.” The last few words came out more bitterly than she’d intended.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Otto said, ignoring her tone. “I’ll talk to her.”
“No.” Jill’s voice suddenly softened. “No. I…it should be me.”
—
Jote was predictably hard to find. She’d fled the infirmary in favor of solitude and found it in the rear stacks, tucked amongst a pile of crates. Jill would have missed her if not for a smudge of dark hair against the sandy wood.
“My Lady,” Jote said as she approached. The cold morning air painted a rosy blush across her fair skin. “Have you news?”
Jill shook her head. “I doubt we’ll know anything for some time.”
She leaned against a crate and crossed her arms close to her chest. Both the Prince and Joshua were almost certainly dead, their aether having flickered out like stars fading into dawn. And Clive…even if he were alive after she could no longer sense him, no one could survive a fall from that height. Especially without magick.
The ember of hope she’d allowed herself moments earlier turned to a charcoal black. Hope was that someone would find their bodies. It was the chance that she wouldn’t be cursed to live out her days with this sliver of uncertainty.
The frigid, suffocating panic she felt in the infirmary returned, this time laced with desperate anger. Searching for them was a fool’s errand and Otto knew it. She knew it. Any sound logic pointed to their deaths; all three of them. It was cruel to draw out the inevitable. And yet…
She thought of Clive’s promise to her. She thought of him returning home to find that she’d given up; that she hadn’t even tried to find him. She cursed herself as tears spilled onto her cheeks, bringing a hand to her mouth to hide her trembling lips.
“I didn’t think I had any tears left,” she said with a watery laugh. “Forgive me.” Torgal leaned against her side.
“You don’t think they’re coming back, do you,” Jote said. There was no question in her voice, just quiet resignation.
Jill shook her head. “I don’t know. But…” she couldn’t say it out loud; not yet.
“I don’t think His Grace ever planned to return. He never told me outright, but I knew. You must have as well.”
“I suspected it.” Jill swallowed a sob and pushed the heel of her hand over her cheeks. “His curse was farther along than mine. And he was so clever—”
Was. Her voice broke over the word. She closed her eyes and bit back the emotion.
“There’s no way he didn’t know the cost.”
Jote turned to face the other woman, a line forming between her brows. “Forgive me, My Lady, but why didn’t you go with them?”
“I suppose you must think me quite selfish,” Jill said with a bitter smile.
Jote’s eyes grew wide. “No, not at all! I chose my words poorly. I merely want to understand why…”
Her voice trailed off, but Jill knew the unspoken words as if they were her own.
Why did he always leave?
Why couldn’t she have been enough?
“I wished to live,” Jill said simply. Her voice grew soft. “Even if it meant I’d be alone.”
Torgal huffed and stamped his paws impatiently on the floor.
“Sorry, boy,” she said, offering a scratch behind his ear in apology. “Not completely alone.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. It felt wrong to burden Jote with her sorrows, but in that moment she felt a kind of kinship with the woman she’d never felt with anyone else. There was no pity in her eyes.
“I think I always knew I would lose them,” Jill said. “I never even had them to begin with; not really. It was just a pretty lie I told myself when the truth became too much to bear.” A fresh wave of tears burned behind her eyes.
“It isn’t that you weren’t enough, Jote,” she finally said. “It’s that this damnable realm didn’t give him the chance to choose.”
Jote nodded. Jill knew the hitch in her jaw and the way her teeth ground together to keep the tears from brimming in her soft eyes. She knew the way her brows knit and how the corner of her mouth dipped into a frown.
“What will you do?” Jote asked. “If he really is gone?”
“I’ll travel to the North.” Jill wished she hadn’t thought about it; that she didn’t have an answer so readily. She was ever the pragmatist, though. “I want to see if there’s anything left of my home. And then I’ll leave,” she said. “I don’t know where I’ll go, but…” her voice faded to a broken whisper. “There’s nothing left for me here.”
Clive was the last thing tying her to Valisthea. The realm already took everything else: her homeland, her innocence, her freedom, her body, her family, her joy. It took her past, and now, her future. What more could she give? What debt could she possibly owe that she hadn’t paid a thousand times over? She didn’t survive all these years just to wither in the Hideaway for the rest of her days, alone in his bed, seeing his ghost around every corner.
She shook herself free from her thoughts. “And what of you, Jote? What will you do?”
Jote shrugged one shoulder. “My orders were to return to Tabor if anything befell His Grace.”
“Is that what you want?”
She huffed an uncharacteristically dry laugh. “There was only one thing I ever knew I wanted.”
And he gave his life so she could answer that question. There was no one who understood the infuriating irony better than Jill. Laughter bubbled in her chest, as dark and vile as the blighted lake water.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It isn’t funny.” She glanced at Jote, who fought the smile tugging at her lips. Jill sighed. “Perhaps sleep would do us both some good.”
“It seems so.”
“You can share my room, if you’d like. I was going to sleep on the couch anyway.” The thought of sleeping in their bed filled her with dread: to be surrounded by pillows and sheets that smelled of Clive, wondering if that smell would ever fade, terrified that it would…and that it wouldn’t.
“Are you certain? I wouldn’t think to impose.”
“You aren’t imposing. Your company would be most welcome.” Jill said.
“Then I should be most grateful.”
“Oh.” Jill stopped. “I almost forgot why I came. Gav is going to scout the area where Origin fell. I thought you might want to go with him.”
Jote frowned. “Are you not going yourself?”
“Otto thought it best for me to remain here. He’s probably right, loath though I am to admit it.”
“I see.” Her brown eyes drifted into quiet contemplation. “I’ll go,” she said. “I want to find the truth for myself. And for you, too” she added softly. “We both deserve answers.”
“Thank you,” Jill said. “Truly.” Hope had taken many forms this morning, and now it stood before her, as gentle as it was fierce.
She sank into her shoulders, suddenly aware of how deeply, profoundly tired she was. It went beyond a simple lack of sleep or bodily fatigue; no, this weariness had slowly knit itself into her very being over the years until she couldn’t tell where it ended and she began, if such a distinction even existed anymore.
“Let’s get some rest,” she said, speaking to herself as much as to Jote. “I think we’ve earned it.”
—
Minutes turned into hours turned into days, each one more suffocating than the last. Half a moon had passed since Jote and Gav left for eastern Storm. Missives started coming in a few days after the Fall, and every time Jill saw the postman her heart leapt into her throat. She’d tear open weathered envelopes with trembling hands, her eyes darting to the sender’s signature. Doris. Byron. Cole. Martha. L’ubor. Wade. Every name made her want to crumple the damned parchment and hurl it into the lake.
The messages were as she’d expected them to be. Aetherfloods were starting to dissipate and the Akashic hoards steadily decreased. The smaller hamlets were faring well. The siphoning of crystals to the rich and powerful in the moons before Origin fell now worked in their favor, having forced them away from their reliance on magick.
All the letters ended the same way, though.
Any news of Clive and the others?
Have they returned?
What of Clive?
“Here. You read them,” Jill said, shoving a new stack of missives into Otto’s hands. “I can’t.”
“Of course.” His voice bore the same inflection as everyone who spoke to her these days. Soft, uncertain, careful; tip-toeing around her as if she were a sleeping dragon they dared not wake.
“Not you, too,” she groaned. “It seems as though people can’t decide if I’m made of glass or if I’m a coeurl waiting to strike. Which am I to you, then?”
“Now, now. I’m sure they mean well.”
“Don’t patronize me, Otto!” she snapped. She rolled her neck, stiff and aching from spending her nights on that horrid couch. Perhaps she could feign illness to get a bed in the infirmary for a few days.
And then what? Information came in too slowly for her and Otto to spend more than an hour or two strategizing with Vivian each day. Clive had ensured the Hideaway had ample stores before leaving for Origin. She was no use to Mid, who spent her time pouring over schematics that may as well have been written in another language. Without her most troublesome patients to occupy her Tarja had no need for assistance. Hortense let her help with the mending, but it was hardly enough work to keep busy for long.
Even Torgal started to seem restless. He paced across the Mess and pawed at the cuff Cid fashioned for him years ago. He whined now while Jill scowled and ground her teeth, pulling her out of her ruminations. She took a breath and did her best to relax her features. Her head pounded and her jaw ached, and her belt and skirts hung loosely over her hips thanks to the waves of nausea that kept her from eating.
“Sorry,” she said softly. To Otto, who bore the brunt of her frustration. To Torgal, who absorbed her emotions as if they were his own. And to herself, for letting anger and grief consume her.
“No need to apologize,” Otto said. “I’ve been in your shoes before. I remember how it felt. Not well enough, apparently.”
“I feel as if I’m going to crawl out of my own skin.” She rested her hand on Torgal’s great head. “I can’t stay here, Otto.”
Tears gathered in her eyes, blurring the sharp edges of the distant mountains. “Give me some letters,” she said, suddenly desperate to think of anything else.
“Sure. This one’s yours, anyway.” He handed her a stack of envelopes with the top one bearing her name. Torgal sniffed it, his ears pricking curiously. She didn’t recognize the penmanship: neat and precise, devoid of unnecessary flourishes or adornments. And yet, the way the ink dragged between the letters in her name carried an unsettling urgency. Her heart raced. She tore it open and unfolded the parchment inside.
Over and over she read, unsure if the message was real or desperate fantasy. She leaned against the counter in the Mess and handed it to Otto for confirmation. Her body was numb. She pressed her fingers over her eyes, the word still flashing beneath her eyelids.
He’s alive.