Work Text:
Shadowheart was halfway through her third bottle of Arabellan Dry before the ache in her hand began to ease. Of course, numbing the Mysterious Wound in this fashion came at the cost of her vision, balance, and mental faculties, but that was a trade she was desperate to make after nearly a tenday of relentless pain.
She set the bottle down on the bar top, careful not to tip it, and leaned back in her stool with a reedy moan of relief. She held up her right hand, inspecting the blackened, charred wound centered on its backside, grimacing at the pink-tinged pus that oozed from it sluggishly when she flexed her fingers, or made a fist.
The pain had abated. That’s what mattered.
The tap room of Last Light Inn was vacant; she hadn’t started the night drinking alone but even Tav had begged off after a few hours, claiming a need to rest up before their planned final push to the Thorm family mausoleum tomorrow. The tiefling refugees had bedded down in the common room with the off-duty Harpers, and Shadowheart’s companions had set up camp downriver—within sight of the inn but too far to walk in the state she was in.
She’d be sleeping at the bar.
If she slept at all.
Ambient sounds filtered into the taproom through the inn’s wide doorway—patrolling Harpers making brief exchanges as they passed each other during their rounds, the more muted din of supply crates being shifted about, stacked and sorted. It all faded and melded into a sort of buzzing drone, and Shadowheart giggled to herself as she imagined her skull being slowly filled with swarming bees.
She didn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs, didn’t see the figure rounding the corner from the wine storage behind the stairwell into the taproom, didn’t register the presence of another person until a slender bottle heavy with wine was plonked down alongside her growing collection of empties, followed a moment later by a gleaming pewter goblet.
Shadowheart snorted at the goblet, because who in the hells would bother with—
“Oh,” she said, eyes darting up through the curtain of her black fringe to see who’d joined her at the bar. She felt her nose wrinkle in unveiled disgust. “I didn’t realize the moon princess was allowed out of her chambers.”
Isobel was dressed casually, had traded her moon-motif cleric’s robes for a rough-spun shirt and draw-string trousers that looked to have been lent her from an individual much larger than her in both height and frame. Her feet were bare, and her hands. Her white-blonde hair was damp from a bath, and her face was freshly scrubbed. Not the grimy, smeared mess it typically was.
“They even let me drink sometimes, if you can believe it,” Isobel said in that crisp, airy tone of hers. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper as she added, “Alcohol.”
Shadowheart made a grab at the bottle the other cleric had selected, scowling when it took three attempts before her hand successfully closed around it. She blinked blearily down at the letters swirling across the cracked label before sneering.
“Tyche Pink?”
Isobel gently prised the bottle from Shadowheart’s lax grip and popped the cork out without fanfare. “Not to your taste?” she asked mildly as she filled her goblet with a generous measure of the fragrant wine.
Shadowheart scoffed. “Red or white. I think a wine ought to be one or the other.”
Isobel wafted the goblet under her nose, inhaling deeply, her pale, almost colorless eyes growing hooded and soft. “I find the blending of two elements makes for a richer experience.”
How pretentious, Shadowheart thought. She reached for the Arabellan Dry and drank from the bottle, hardly marking the flavor anymore, focused more on the welcome numbness spreading through her limbs and mind.
“How pretentious,” she said aloud.
Isobel shrugged. “More for me, I suppose.”
Shadowheart’s grip tightened around the neck of bottle. Tightened until her knuckles turned white and the wound on her hand split open anew. She hissed, irritated at the bright flash of pain that pulsed through her in spite of the effort she’d made to dampen all sensation, and cautiously set the bottle back on the bar top.
Isobel noticed, and frowned prettily, blinking for a long while into her goblet. “Can nothing be done about it?” she asked at last, staring pointedly at Shadowheart’s hand.
I can be more obedient. Have stronger faith. Stop fucking up my mission.
“It’s just…” Isobel went on, when Shadowheart held her silence. “It seems to be bothering you more, of late. Every time I see you, you’re never… not in pain.”
Shadowheart experienced a dizzying moment of unwelcome clarity—a cleric of Shar and a cleric of Selûne, drinking wine together at a bar. It sounded like the start of one of Gale’s insufferable jokes.
“It’s constant,” she spat. “The pain. It used to flare up when I was in need of correction, but it never stops now. Not since you laid your filthy, so-called blessing on me.”
Gods, the rage of that violation was as fresh as ever. Shadowheart had already been protected from the Dark Lady’s shadow curse. Unlike the rest of her companions, she’d had no need of Isobel’s meddling. The comfort she’d felt upon entering these lands, upon realizing that Lady Shar valued her—loved her!—enough to keep her safe from the cursed darkness… it was gone now. Overlaid in an instant by Selûne’s treacherous interference.
Shadowheart felt the moon witch’s silver light blistering across the underside of her flesh even now, the warmth of it unwanted and wholly redundant.
Dark Lady forgive me, Shadowheart had muttered as she’d felt the blessing take hold.
But Shar hadn’t. Had been angry, instead. And the wound on Shadowheart’s hand had not once stopped aching since.
“I am sorry about that,” Isobel said. She took a careful sip of her pink wine. “I’d meant to exclude you, and bless only your companions. But the Moonmaiden’s light... as it left me- Would you believe it leapt to you first? Of all your companions. It felt so eager. Joyous, even.”
Not to me, it didn’t.
Still. Shadowheart hadn’t expected an apology. She eyed what remained of the Arabellan Dry, tipping forward on her stool, listing sideways, catching herself on the edge of the bar top.
“Take it back,” she slurred. “It hurts.”
Pain is sacred, she tried to remind herself, but the thought fell away like the tangled filaments of a spider’s broken web.
Isobel was watching her closely, something pitying at play alongside the wariness in her gaze. “I think you should get some rest.”
Shadowheart let out a sharp burst of disparaging laughter. “Are you cutting me off?”
“You can take the bottle upstairs with you, if you like.”
Shadowheart felt her face crease in confusion. “Upstairs?”
Isobel lifted her goblet again, took a longer draught this time. “You won’t make it back to your camp like this, and I… don’t sleep much. You can use my bed.”
Shadowheart wondered then, briefly, if the pain would lessen if she killed this upstart Selûnite. Isobel’s hideous blessing would vanish and Lady Shar would forgive Shadowheart, and the wound on her hand would settle to its usual level of itchy discomfort.
“You had your chance for that,” Isobel said softly, and Shadowheart realized she’d said her inside thoughts out loud again. “You could have gone along with Marcus when he came for me, but you fought to protect me, instead.”
“Didn’t,” Shadowheart insisted sullenly.
Isobel’s smile was infuriatingly placating. “No? But it was your sanctuary spell that kept me from harm after I’d been paralyzed, wasn’t it?”
Shadowheart snatched up her wine bottle with trembling fingers and tipped her head back. The wine was sour going down, and her chest heaved, acidic bubbles churning in her throat as bile rose from her gut.
“It wasn’t- I didn’t- Jaheira said the moon barrier will fall without you.”
“It will,” Isobel confirmed. “It requires constant maintaining, I’m afraid. Which of course contributes to the trouble I have with sleeping.”
“Then, if Marcus had taken you, Last Light- It would’ve…”
Isobel gaze was dour and direct. The lack of pigment in her irises was deeply unsettling. “Last Light would be consumed by the shadows without the barrier, and all of its inhabitants would fall in a matter of moments to Shar’s terrible curse.”
Except for me. Nearly three bottles of wine sloshed about in Shadowheart’s belly as she staggered from her stool. “Except for me,” she said petulantly. “Lady Shar protects me.”
Shadowheart decided then that Isobel looked a bit like the stupid moon she worshiped so dearly. With her round face, so pale and bland, those craters she had for eyes and… and lips that were far too plump and hair like spun silver, actually, when it was clean.
“Yes,” Isobel agreed. “Except for you.” She refilled her goblet. The Tyche Pink really was fragrant—lime blossoms and apricots with an after note of something faintly resinous. “Regretting your decision to save me?”
Am I? Do I?
She thought of Mattis and Silfy and the other tiefling children. She didn’t care much for the plight of orphans, on principle, but had found it oddly endearing when the young siblings had offered to sell Tav such fine treasures as a ‘ring of being really invisible’ and a ‘decanter of nearly endless water’. She thought of Dammon—who was probably still fussing with his make-shift forge out in the stable, sleepless and anxious and so soft-spoken—and how Karlach might already have succumbed to the explosive nature of her infernal engine without his knowledge and ingenuity.
In a tumble, one after another, her mind twisted through other names and faces—Rolan, Cal and Lia, Alfira and Lakrissa… little Barcus Root and his exasperating adoration of that fucking asshole of an Ironhand gnome… even some of the Harpers they’d met and worked with since arriving in the Shadowlands.
All of them—all of them—would be dead now, had Marcus’s mission been successful.
“We need allies,” Shadowheart mumbled. “That’s all. Lady Shar hasn’t begrudged us that. She’s even… she’s allowing Halsin to dismantle her curse, because doing so requires the death of that vile traitor, Ketheric Thorm. And the necessity of his death is something everyone can agree on.”
Shadowheart watched, shocked, as Isobel drained her goblet in one go, looking utterly miserable. Then she reached up and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with the back of her wrist, and she was blinking rapidly in the way people often did when they were holding back tears.
“Yes,” Isobel said at length. “Ketheric Thorm has done enough harm. He has to be stopped. No mercy.”
Shadowheart smirked. “I don’t think mercy was on anyone’s agenda.”
Isobel lowered her chin and considered the bottle of Tyche Pink. She plucked it up gingerly, like she expected it to shatter, and tipped it over until the bottle was empty and the pewter goblet filled near to spilling.
Not to be outdone, Shadowheart seized hold of her own diminished bottle of Arabellan Dry. “Here’s to putting Ketheric Thorm back in his grave,” she toasted with false solemnity and genuine spite.
She felt the full weight of her long plait, and the delicate chain keeping it neatly contained, as she threw her head back and drank.
Bliss.
Her vision was spotty when she opened her eyes, colors bleeding together, greying out at the edges. More importantly, she couldn’t feel her hands at all. Beneath the layers of her armor and clothing, her body was finally and fully numb.
She set the empty bottle on the bar top, clumsily, not caring when it clattered onto its side and rolled dangerously near the edge of the bar. Peering sidelong at her unlikely drinking companion, she was pleased to note Isobel hadn’t managed to knock back nearly as much of her own wine. A few sips, maybe. The goblet was still practically full.
“Need some help with that?” Shadowheart offered benignly, her fingers crawling across the bar top toward the wide base of Isobel’s goblet.
“You don’t like pink,” Isobel reminded her placidly. “And you’ve had enough, besides.”
Rage flared in Shadowheart’s chest, and she grabbed at the goblet in a surge of seething lucidity—because how dare, how dare this moon bitch presume to know her limits?—and lifted it to her lips.
The Tyche Pink tasted like it smelled. Fruity and herbaceous. It coated the inside of her mouth, lingering in a way red wine never seemed to, and she almost fancied she could taste something of Isobel in the mix too. Something with the bitter saltiness of tears.
Or maybe that was just her own stomach, threatening upheaval.
Shadowheart experienced a vague sensation of falling as her vision narrowed to a single jagged beam of flickering light. She couldn’t feel the floor beneath her, but that could possibly be due to the slender arms she felt pressing in around her ribcage, and the soft warmth of another body melded to her side. She caught fleeting glimpses of white-blonde hair and flashes of narrowed eyes the color of creamy silver, heard a steady stream of inventive complaints in a voice that sounded as though it had been crafted of moonbeams and starlight.
“Your voice sounds like starbeams,” Shadowheart said.
“I thought you’d be a mean drunk,” the other voice answered. “But you get a bit silly, don’t you.”
There were stairs—which Shadowheart navigated with wooden feet, relying almost entirely on the person tucked in beneath her arm to remain upright—and a scattering of small round tables and warped, rickety chairs. There were other people, as well. Dressed like Harpers, making rounds, keeping watch. Words were exchanged, and a name floated through Shadowheart’s dimming mind.
“Isobel,” she muttered.
“I’m here.”
“Moon bitch.”
A delicate sigh. “A little mean, then. Here we are, though. Let’s get you to bed, yes? Doesn’t sleep sound lovely?”
Shadowheart heard the dull wooden scrape of a door closing, felt the prickling heat of a fireplace, and then there were hands on her armor.
Working alone, it took Shadowheart something like ten minutes to don and doff her own armor. With Isobel’s help—what help, she’s doing it all, I’m just standing here—the process took significantly less time. The Selûnite’s fingers were deft and sure, flittering over buckles, tugging on straps.
“You’re good at this,” Shadowheart admitted in reluctant admiration.
Isobel’s smile was tight, her eyes shadowed. “I’ve had practice.”
“What, ripping women out of their armor?”
“Yes. Though it was… just the one woman. And it was a long time ago.”
Shadowheart swayed on her feet. She felt blessedly light without the weight of her chain shirt, like she might float away toward the ceiling. Isobel helped her out of her boots but left her in her under clothes, and then she was being steered toward the wide bed in the corner of the room. The sheets were cool and surprisingly soft, and moonlight shone in angled beams through the diamond paned windows.
Not real moonlight. It’s Isobel’s barrier. Holding back Lady Shar’s darkness.
She wondered at the power contained in that little Selûnite cleric, that she could do something like that.
Shadowheart’s senses faded further. She dozed, but fitfully, waking what felt every few minutes. She registered bleary imagery of Isobel seated at her writing desk, scratching a quill across parchment. Other times she was stood on the far side of the room, staring silently at a marble bust of some elven man. Sometimes she wasn’t in the room at all, but Shadowheart heard her voice filtering in from the balcony, reciting an endless litany of strained prayers.
Reinforcing the moon shield.
Shadowheart felt sick. Not because of the wine sitting sourly in her belly, but because Isobel’s prayers soothed something fraught in her flesh, and the false moonlight was beautifully cool against her overheated skin, and it was different… so different, to how she’d felt upon entering the Shadowlands. Lady Shar’s protection had felt cold, prickly like nettles, a constant stinging in her spine and chest. It had felt so empty, had filled her with a vast hollowness that unraveled the edges of her mind. She’d felt herself growing fanatical in ways that were deeply frightening, but which she could never express.
And then Isobel’s blessing had struck her, and muted the overwhelming love of the Lady of Sorrows. And Shadowheart’s wretched anger had in no small part been fueled by traitorous relief.
She slept, waking from a blurred parade of nightmares to a chilly hand on the side of her face and a low, soft voice.
“There now, you’re all right,” Isobel told her softly. “What a frightened thing you are.”
Shadowheart grumbled mutinously, and burrowed deeper into the blankets. She realized she was lying curled on her side, that her circlet and hair cuff had been removed and that her head was resting not on a pillow but a warm, narrow lap. Cold fingers brushed over her mussed fringe and trailed along her hairline, and Shadowheart couldn’t swallow back the thick moan that rose in response to how sinfully good it felt.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. There was an urge within her to push up, to storm away, but it quietened more with every pass of Isobel’s fingers.
“I was a bit tired,” Isobel said. “I thought I’d have a lie down, and there’s just the one bed.”
Shadowheart was frustrated, but not frustrated enough, it seemed, to put a stop to whatever nonsense Isobel was working with her hands. She didn’t know how much time had passed—long enough for the more desirable effects of all that wine to have waned somewhat, leaving her with a dastardly headache and a horribly dry mouth. The pain in her hand was no longer muted, the wound stinging meanly, but Isobel’s skin pressed to hers was proving an effective distraction.
“No- Not that,” Shadowheart whispered. She could hardly begrudge the other cleric the use of her own bed. “The… this. Your hands. You’re petting me.”
Isobel paused. “Should I stop? I only- You were crying in your sleep. I thought I should- You stopped crying when I touched your hair.”
Shadowheart sniffed. She could feel the filmy residue of dried tears on her cheeks, the itchy crust of salt in her clumped eyelashes. “You don’t have to stop,” she said sullenly.
Isobel resumed her slow, careful caresses. She focused primarily on Shadowheart’s hair, but her fingers drifted at times to trace along the contours of Shadowheart’s cheekbones and jaw.
Shadowheart found she lacked the energy to feel anything but soothed.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted after a time indeterminate, feeling fretful and unmoored. “Why you’re being like this. Doing this.”
Isobel hummed. “Is it really so strange?”
“You called me a ‘nasty little terrier’ the first time you ever met me.”
“Ah.” Isobel’s movements faltered only briefly. “I suppose I did. Sorry about that. I think we both came off a bit strong that day, but that’s no excuse. I’m sorry, truly.”
Shadowheart pulled the blanket to her chin. “Why are you being nice to me? I really- It’s very confusing. You know—you know—we’re… meant to be enemies.”
Isobel’s laughter was dark, and without humor. “If we’d met a hundred years ago, in this place, we’d have killed each other already.” Her voice gentled. “But that time is not this time, and we needn’t contribute our petty squabbles to an issue much larger than either of us.”
Shadowheart fell silent, considering. Making concessions against her own faith—her mission—was all she’d been doing since the nautiloid. She’d taken up with strangers simply because of their shared infection. She’d risked herself to save bloody orphans and refugees, lent her strength toward the destruction of the goblin camp and Grymforge… hells, even that damned githyanki crèche.
And she’d fought to save Isobel from the forces of the Absolute intent on kidnapping her. It had nothing to do with her mission, and everything to do with the lives of those made safe at Last Light solely as a result of Isobel’s moon barrier.
The wine must have still had a greater hold on her than she’d thought, because she couldn’t stop herself from musing aloud, “I’m not a very good Sharran.”
Isobel was so quiet, for such a long time. “Should I commiserate, and confide to you what a terrible Selûnite I am?”
“No. I hate being lied to, and I hate being patronized, and what you’re suggesting is tantamount to both. And while I’d be duly impressed by your capacity to infuriate me, I’d also feel compelled to murder you, and honestly I can’t be arsed about it right now.”
Isobel hesitated. “For the best, really. I’m a fantastic Selûnite. Just disgustingly pious.”
Shadowheart didn’t even have the energy to manage a derisive snort. Her stomach felt tight and loose in turns, like it just couldn’t decide how badly it wanted to expel or keep hold of the wine she’d expended such effort in consuming.
Her gaze drifted, and she spotted her armor laid out neatly on a wooden chair next to the wardrobe. That surprised her. She thought Isobel would’ve let it fall to the floor as she removed it, and left it there in a crumpled pile.
“Who was she?” Shadowheart found herself asking. “The woman with the- You mentioned something earlier, with the armor. That you’d had… practice.”
Isobel had been tracing the blunt edge of Shadowheart’s fringe with the tip of one finger, and froze now above her right eyebrow. “When I was a girl,” she said slowly, “and my mother was trying to help me talk through something difficult, there was a game we would play. For every question she asked me, I got to ask one of her, and both of us had to be honest in our answers.”
Shadowheart felt her face crumple in annoyance. “That’s not a game. That’s just… conversation.”
“Will you play with me?” Isobel’s voice was strangely intense.
“Will I have a conversation with you? I suppose I can stomach that much.”
Isobel nodded somberly. “Her name was Aylin,” she said, with a jerky gesture toward Shadowheart’s armor. “She was my angel, and she’s- I lost her. Now it’s my turn to ask, and remember the rules. You have to tell the truth.”
The heaviness of Isobel’s mood was beginning to press at the center of Shadowheart’s chest. She waved Isobel’s hands away and pushed herself to a sitting position, the bed creaking beneath her. “Go on, then,” she muttered. “Ask. But you’re a fool, asking for honesty from a Sharran.”
Isobel’s gaze was piercing. Shadowheart almost fancied she could feel it—the weight and force of her attention—burrowing into her own face, settling in her brain somewhere next to that horrifying tadpole.
“What makes you think you aren’t a good Sharran?”
Shadowheart blinked. Scowled. She felt herself tipping away from Isobel until her spine butted against the wall.
Remember the rules. You have to tell the truth.
She glared at her own hand before lifting it up for Isobel to inspect. The Mysterious Wound pulsed idly, fizzing with pain she knew would feel worse in the morning. It was blackened at the center, charred at the edges… hideous and constant. “I wouldn’t need this to keep me… to remind me of my loyalties, if I was, was better at- And I helped, at the Emerald Grove. Helped the refugees. I’ve… I’ve helped Halsin with his… with his efforts here. To cure these lands. And I saved you, the most disgustingly pious Selûnite to ever exist.” She squared her shoulders, feeling inexplicably furious. “My turn. You said was. Is Aylin dead?”
Isobel’s pale eyes darkened. “We were separated. I was told she’d been killed, and I… I can’t- I don’t feel her… anymore. So yes, I think, is your answer. Aylin is dead.”
Shadowheart didn’t know if she’d anticipated the sight of tears, or wanted it, but the hardness in Isobel’s expression was certainly unexpected. It made her want to speak in softer tones, but the wound on her hand was really… The pain was building again. In spite of the wine.
“How were you separated? Oh- Damn, it’s… it’s your turn. Sorry.”
Isobel shook her head. “No, I’ll answer. But then I get two questions, next.” Her eyes didn’t seem focused on anything at all. “I had to go away, for a long time. And when I came back, Aylin was… nowhere. Just… gone. And they told me she’d been killed, and I didn’t believe them at first. It’s not so easy a thing, ending the life of my angel. But time passed, and she didn’t return to me, and she would’ve—she would’ve come for me. If she was alive.”
Shadowheart was halfway through realizing Isobel hadn’t really answered her second question at all—that she was cheating at this stupid, ridiculous non-game—when Isobel said, “Why did you choose Shar?”
“Excuse me?” Shadowheart felt her plait snagging against the wall’s rough texture as she spun her head in disbelief.
Isobel still wasn’t looking at her. “Shar attracts worshipers who are drawn to her embrace by bitterness, or pain, grief or loss. What was it for you?”
“I was…” Shadowheart frowned. “Worshipping Shar is all I’ve ever known. I didn’t- It wasn’t a…” Choice. It wasn’t a choice. “It’s just what I’ve always wanted.”
“All right,” Isobel said quietly, pityingly, like she didn’t believe Shadowheart at all. “How long have you borne that curse on your hand?”
Shadowheart looked at it again. The wound. Her one constant. Even in the absence of memory, she knew, somehow, that it had always been there. That she had been a child, crying alone in the dark when the pain of it grew unbearable, and that pain had followed her into adolescence and adulthood, and was with her still.
“As long as- Longer than I can remember,” she answered numbly.
Isobel nodded, and Shadowheart nodded too.
“It’s your turn,” Isobel prompted.
“This is a stupid game,” Shadowheart said. “It’s not even a proper one.”
“We don’t have to play anymore.”
Shadowheart felt the petulance in her own silence as she slowly sank back onto the bed. She snatched up the pillow, willfully avoiding Isobel’s lap, and lay on her side facing the wall. She thought Isobel would sleep, or return to the balcony, maybe. Resume her useless prayers.
But she didn’t. She stayed. Probably was still staring at nothing, thoughts fixated on her dead lover.
“I’m not playing anymore,” Shadowheart said at last. “But I want to know all the same. Why you’re being… like this to me. Why you’re being kind. You never answered me, when I asked before. I asked so many times.”
She felt the mattress shifting as Isobel settled back against the headboard.
“Because I think maybe you’re like pink wine,” Isobel mused quietly.
Shadowheart snorted. “What—indecisive and overbearing?”
“Sometimes, sure. If you like. But not really what I meant. I think you might be a bit of one thing, and a bit of another, and in the end… you’ll come out all the better for it.”
Shadowheart didn’t really know what to say to that, and decided after a while that Isobel’s insipid observation simply wasn’t worthy of a reply. She was exhausted, and her hand was aching, and somewhere in her gut lay a dull sort of excitement that almost felt more akin to dread.
Because tomorrow, she and Tav and the others would be entering the Thorm family mausoleum. And rumors abounded of an ancient Sharran temple buried deep beneath the depths of that crypt, and of a pathway to earn that most venerated of positions in the Dark Lady’s church.
Dark Justiciar.
It had been her dream for so long. Her most fervent desire. It was all she had ever wanted.
Wasn’t it?