Chapter 16 - The Forgotten Fire

I wake up, and he is still here.

Theron is lying on his side, one arm heavy across me, and there’s a small smile on his face. My heart flutters, not from fear or anticipation. Instead a warmth blooms in its place. There are no cold sheets or empty pillows this morning.

“You are staring,” he says, gently tucking a lock of my red hair behind my ear.

“You are still here.”

“It is my bed.”

“I know, I just—”

Theron's eyes crinkle as he chuckles. “Is my wife, perhaps, feeling a bit shy? You did not seem so shy last night.”

I take a pillow and gently swat him with it as he laughs. This is the second time I have ever heard him laugh and I can’t help but just stare.

“What is it?” He asks, seeing me stare at him.

“You did not leave,” I blurt, unable to contain it. “Last time, you left.”

Something in his face gentles. Then he grabs me and pulls me close, rolling me beneath him. I blush, my own blue eyes meeting an endless gold. My hand goes up to touch his face gently. He leans down and kisses my forehead.

For a moment there is no empire at all.

The knock, when it comes, is soft and apologetic.

Theron's hand lifts, lazily, and the shadows come. They pour up off the floor and the corners and gather over the bed in a dark canopy, a wall of shadow drawn close around us both, hiding me from the door before it has finished opening.

That’s when I realize I am still naked.

I blush heavily and pull the blankets up and for once am grateful for Theron’s shadow magic, which now hides our bodies from the view of the servant.

“Speak,” Theron says with a flicker of annoyance.

“Your Majesty.” The servant keeps his eyes down. “The council requests you. There is word from the watches along the borders of the mountains. More movement of the dark beasts, worse than the reports from Sabine. They say it cannot wait.”

“It can wait long enough for me to get dressed. Go.”

The door closes. The shadows melt back into the ordinary dark, and Theron sighs.

“You will rest today,” he tells me, rising. “The household can turn without you for one morning. Do not let anyone hand you a ledger.”

“I am not tired.”

“No?” He looks back at me, and there is something almost wicked at the corner of his mouth, and his gaze moves, deliberately, to my throat, where I can feel the marks he left blooming warm against my skin. “You wear a great deal of my company this morning, wife. I would not want the empress to exert herself further, especially after last night. It might be remarked upon.”

I feel my whole face go hot. “That is your doing, not mine.”

“It is,” he agrees, entirely unrepentant, pulling on his shirt over marks of his own that I put there and am not at all sorry for. He crosses back to the bed, tips my chin up, and kisses me once, unhurried. “Rest. I will find you tonight.”

And then he is gone and I am alone.

Still, I lie in bed a moment longer. The smell of him lingers warm against the sheets, and for one bright, dangerous hour, I am happy.

-

Aodh is waiting in the library, curled in the window seat, and he lifts his head as I come in, his nose scrunches and wiggles. I watch understanding cross his small sharp face.

“Ah,” he says, “So that’s what you have been doing.”

I blush. “You don’t need to say it out loud.”

“Technically, I have said nothing.”

“You are smelling me. Stop smelling me.”

“I am a fox. Smelling things is the greater part of what I am.” He settles his chin on his paws, insufferably serene. “You need not color like that. It is the oldest thing in the world, what you did. Older than your empires. Older than me, and I am not young.”

“So what,” I say, hot-faced, dropping into the seat across from him. “So what if I slept with my husband, it is perfectly normal.”

“It is, and it is nothing to be ashamed of.” He says before idly rubbing his nose against his own paw. “Though it is a strange thing to think about. How our kind once tangled up in the same sheets. Your kind and mine.”

I go still. “What do you mean, my kind and yours?”

“Exactly what I said.”

“Aodh.”

“There was a time,” he says, examining a paw, wearing a slightly bored expression, “when the beasts and the humans were not so separate as they are now. When a beast might wear a human's face if it pleased them to. When your people and mine met, and did not always fight, and sometimes what came of the meeting was, well.” He flicks his tail. “Children.”

“That is not possible.”

“You keep telling me what is not possible,” Aodh says mildly, “You would think after meeting a talking fox, and being the only one to hear a strange song, that you would begin to accept that not everything is as simple as it seems. You should give up your assumptions on what is the truth, child. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Beasts that took human form.” My mouth has gone dry. “That had children with people. Aodh, what happened to them? The children. What became of—”

“And there it is.” He smiles, revealing rows of sharp teeth. “A question worth asking, but unfortunately, Bree, I cannot answer that for free. You must do something for me, first.”

“What do you want?”

“Help.” He sits up, all the play gone out of him at once. It is unsettling, how fast he turns from playful to old and grave.

"You forget I originally came here to learn something too, though I do enjoy your company," he says. "I’m here to investigate what happened to the beasts. Specifically, the ones who came out of the trees mad and headed towards the crowds, noise, and people. Normally our kind keeps to themselves, since the great war. Yet now, it seems the beasts are heading into town with a mindlessness and unnatural frenzy. Something is getting to them. I know the shape of what it is, though I do not know its name in the common tongue."

"Then what is this sickness?"

"A thing you have not yet earned." He flicks his tail, and I notice the light on the tip of his tail gutters slightly before returning. "I need you to locate it for me. To touch it, and follow it where my own senses cannot go. Your kind can walk right up to infected dark beasts without risk. Mine..." He stops. "Mine cannot. That is all you need to know. Now, will you help me?"

"I will help you," I say slowly, "but first you must tell me. What do you mean by my kind? You keep saying it. My kind, as though I am something other than a woman. As though I am something like you."

Aodh goes quiet, and I feel a small, rare satisfaction. If he wants to deal in trades, so will I.

"You would bargain with me?" He sounds amused. "Hmm, very well, but I will not answer your question until you assist me in the woods. That is non-negotiable.”

I huff. “That’s not really negotiating if you are unwilling to budge, now is it?”

Aodh laughs and it's an odd noise. A mix of a fox's yip and something vaguely human.

“I suppose not. But I will tell you this much freely, because I have grown rather fond of you.”

I scoot closer to him as he jumps from the windowsill and into my lap. His flaming fox tail idly curls around himself as he looks up with curious eyes.

“You are not what they told you you were.”

“Explain.”

“Child, the people here keep calling you hollow. From my understanding, that is someone born without magic, yes?”

I nod.

“Well, they are wrong. You are not hollow. You never were.” He holds my gaze. "There, I have answered one of your questions, now you must take me to the SIlva Woods."

I am shocked.

“That’s…. not possible.”

Aodh huffs again and jumps off from my lap. “There it is again. Not possible. I swear child, you really need to open your mind a bit more. The world is full of possibilities.”

I still have a hard time processing this. Everything I am, everything I have ever known has always been around me being hollow. I even tried to learn alchemy because I inherited no magic. Yet Aodh is telling me I do have magic? I want to press. Every part of me wants to ask a million more questions, to seize him and shake the whole truth out of his small infuriating body. But all that leaves my lips is the need to verify this.

“Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive that I am not hollow? Are you certain?"

"I am certain."

“How do I know you're not lying?”

Aodh looks offended at this and gives a slight toss of his head. “You should know that magical beasts cannot directly lie. We are unable to.”

I sit with this, still processing, as Aodh heads to the library door.

“Come, come. You said you would help me. It is time to keep your end of the bargain.”

I get up and follow him out of the library. Then the thought hits me. “Aodh, what would happen if I didn’t keep my bargain?”

He hums thoughtfully. “Very bad things. Bargains and oaths are the same where I’m from. Bound in ancient magic. You would likely become very ill.”

As I follow Aodh down the hall, past the servants who bow and past the servant quarters, a sense of dread fills me. I had made a bargain, a deal, that I cannot go back on without repercussions.

Luckily Aodh looks around every corner and helps me to take pathways with fewer servants.

My stomach drops.

I really am going to head back to the Silva Wood?

“Is it safe?”

Aodh huffs. “The beast from last time is dead. Your husband saw to that so there is nothing to fear. The wood should be quiet now.”

“Should be doesn't mean it will be. Besides, Theron told me to rest. I feel awful, sneaking out after he asked me to rest.”

“Then don’t tell him.” He tilts his head. “You are very good at not telling things. You told me so yourself.”

And that, gods help me, is the sentence that decides it.

I will not go venturing into danger unprepared, let alone unarmed. I head back to my room to change and take Mikli’s dagger from my dresser drawer and sheath it at my side.

I touch the sapphire hilt, cold and familiar in my hand and am suddenly hit with an intense homesickness. I hope he and Mealla are doing okay. I also take a short sword from the training yard when no one is watching, and I dress in the plainest, darkest things I own.

Together, Aodh and I slip out. He darts ahead, peeking around each corner to be sure the way is clear, and I follow, steering us by the routes I have learned. I know this fortress now the way I once knew its ledgers. I have spent weeks learning its hours, which gates experience the changing of the watch, which corridors the staff leave empty and when. No one is looking for the empress to leave through the servants' gates like a thief.

“This is madness,” I tell Aodh, as we make our way to the stables.

“Yes,” he agrees cheerfully, trotting ahead. “Most worthwhile things are.”

The hay crunches under my boot the second I think I've gotten away clean.

"Empress." Tomas, the stable boy, doesn't look up from the bridle he's mending. "You're meant to be resting."

"I am resting," I say as I saddle up a horse named Starlight. "Just horizontally, and later.” Aodh leaps up onto the saddle before me. The stable boy opens his mouth to argue, then stops, studying my face.

"If the emperor asks for you?” He asks.

"Tell him I had a prior event to attend that could not be rescheduled.”

"My lady, I don't think that is wise—"

"And that doesn't matter. This is urgent. Or do you dare to defy your empress?"

He sighs. "Very well.”

I nod, feeling under pressure as I lead the horse out.

“If anyone asks, just say you saw a raccoon."

“A raccoon?”

"Yes, a raccoon. It's very specific.”

"Lady Bree."

"Yes?"

"Please, just be sure to come back before nightfall."

I nod.

"Very well, before nightfall." I click my tongue and Starlight steps forward. And then I'm gone, hoofbeats fading, and I ride for the tree line.

When Aodh and I arrive at the Silva Wood, it feels wrong.

It is too quiet. Not the quiet of a wood at rest, but a held quiet, a wrong quiet, as though the whole place is a room where something terrible has just been said and no one dares be the first to speak. The horse will not go past the tree line. I leave her tied, and I go in on foot, and Aodh goes ahead of me, low and bristling.

“Listen,” he says. “Tell me what is here.”

I take out the crystal.

I press my thumb to the cold blue stone, the way I did at Sabine, and I reach for it, for the far sight, for anything, and I get nothing.

Silence.

A dead weight of stone in my hand where the power used to answer.

“It is not working.” Panic scrapes up my throat. “Aodh, the crystal, there is nothing, it is empty, I cannot—”

“Put the stone away,” says Aodh quietly, “and touch the wood.”

“What?”

“The tree, Bree. Your hand. The stone was always a crutch and you have never once needed it. Touch the tree.”

I do not understand him, but I am frightened, and his voice is certain, so I put the dead crystal in my pocket and I lay my bare palm flat against the trunk of the nearest tree.

And the world opens.

It comes up through my hand and into my arm and behind my eyes all at once, no crystal, no far-off borrowed sight, only this, direct, total and mine.

The wood pours itself into me through my own skin. I feel the trees. I feel the roots laced under the soil like veins under a wrist. And I feel the sickness in them, the blight, black and cold and wrong, threaded through the living wood like rot through a wound, and it is not everywhere at once. It runs in a line, a long sickly crack spreading vein by vein through root and stone, and I follow it in my mind the way you follow a thread through the dark, north, and down, and deeper, under the hills, under the far mountains, toward a source I cannot see but can feel the size of, vast and old and sleeping and sick, and—

It feels me.

Or rather, it feels me feel it.

Eyes. Inhuman and wrong.

I pull my hand away from the trunk of the tree, sweating.

Suddenly I feel as if I am being watched. Goosebumps break out across my skin and in the far distance, like a cold door opening in the deep, the song comes.

Distant. Sweet. Wrong. The song, rising out of the ground and the trees, and it is not the same as before, it is not a warning of a beast now, it is nearer to a greeting, a recognition, a thing that has felt me and is calling me closer, and every hair on my body stands up screaming.

“We have to go,” I gasp. “Aodh, now, we go, it heard me, it—”

The wood moves.

The blighted tree wakes. Its branches lower toward me, black and wet and glistening, weeping ichor that hisses where it hits the earth, and they move wrong, they move like the fingers of a drowned hand, curling slow and certain toward my wrists, my throat. Behind them the trunk splits into a hollow black mouth. I stumble back, sword half-drawn, and Aodh becomes something else.

Fire erupts around Aodh as he transforms into a giant fox and tears into a nearby branch with a roar of heat and light. For one instant Aodh is not a fox at all but something enormous, burning, and old.

“Run,” he says, in a voice that is not a fox's voice. “The horse. Now.”

I run. The branches claw after me and I cut through a branch as it tries to grab me. I hear Starlight, my horse, neigh, and run up. I try to knock another branch away, but I am no sword master. One branch grabs my blade and I try to pull back, but it’s no use.

I choose then to let go of the sword. I pulled out Mikli’s dagger and cut the reins where it was tied to a branch. I grab the horse's hair and it runs immediately out of the wood. I turn back but Aodh is still fighting. Dread fills me and I curse.

“Damnit, run Aodh!” I shout and the fox begins to pounce but keeps getting stopped by the attack of branches. I grab the horse's mane and steer it back toward the attacking branches. I see Aodh has been wounded as his size begins to shrink. I reach for Aodh, and as my hand flings out towards him something answers it, a flicker of flame leaps at my fingertips, but is then gone, right before I scoop him up.

He is a small fox again, light in my arms. I attempt to steer the horse back to running away, which Starlight obeys immediately. More branches attempt to stab us as we rush out of the wood, and I see little tendrils of black like smoke coming from the scratches on Aodh skin. We go crashing down the path, the wood shrieking behind us, and I do not look back.

I ride until the trees are far behind us and the fortress rises grey and enormous ahead, and only then, only when the walls are close, do I let myself breathe.

But the song does not stop.

Even now after returning Starlight back to the stable. Even after I rush to my bedroom and nearly knock over a servant. Aodh whimpers in my arms and I cradle him close.

I rock back and forth, a fox pressed silent and trembling against my chest. Not the fear. Not the branches, or the ichor, or the fire I cannot explain. The song.

It doesn’t stop.

It is faint, far, buried under stone and distance, but it is there, and it does not fade the way it faded at Sabine when the danger passed. It has not passed. It rings under everything now, low, sweet and patient. I try to cover my ears but it is threaded into the quiet of my own rooms, into the space behind my own eyes, and it does not let go.

“Aodh,” I whisper. “It is still there. I can still hear it. Why can I still hear it?”

Aodh does not answer.

He only presses closer, his small flame warm and harmless against my heart, and I understand, in the cold dawning way I understand the worst things, that whatever it was that I was asked to find now knows it is being sought.

It saw me. I cannot explain how I know, but I do: it knows the shape of me now, and it is calling, and I cannot shut it out.

Gods. I hope this isn't endless.

I do not sleep. I sit up with the fox and the song, behind the thick walls of my husband's fortress, and I listen to a thing in the dark far under the world sing to me by a name I do not yet understand, but know is mine.