Chapter 1: A Dream
Chapter Text
Ardghal Ferrorum awoke, as he had dozens of times before, with an incorporeal, mistlike body, and felt the faint tickling sensation sprouting from his back - not quite the pins and needles that came from a sleeping limb, but something close - that let him know that he had wings. Real wings. Not the illusory ones he could summon in the waking world. As he gained his bearings, he tried to glean information from the landscape around him as it dripped and swirled into existence like blots of ink in water. His head began to spin. The ringing of chimes thrummed in his ears, first beautiful and melodic, then overwhelming, overlapping, cacophonous. His true-wings moved on their own, lifting him up into a newly-born sky full of clouds, looking down from miles away at an indistinct city below him.
He was dreaming.
He was in heaven.
And God , was he angry.
“Stop!” Ardghal screamed, though his voice felt paper thin through the fog of the dream around him. He thrashed against the invisible force that held him aloft, as if he could shed his wings and fall back to the ground if he tried hard enough. “No more!”
The dream continued. From dizzying heights, he glided down as if driven on a rail; a passenger in his own body. The chimes grew louder, though now their frequencies were shorter, more exact, less like music and more like a mosaic of pitches that nearly emulated the way the world should sound. The details were coming into focus. He was somewhere dark. Narrow. Limestone walls surrounded him, and a long corridor was up ahead. His feet were still not quite touching the ground. He began to drift forward.
Incohesive images flashed past his eyes. A stormy island. A snorting bull with fiery eyes. A black banner. A golden hammer, striking a wall. A white rose next to an overturned bottle of wine. A swarm of robed men in golden masks, marching towards… something. So, so, so much blood.
He was back in the hallway. He was nearing the end. There was a knife in his hand. He gritted his teeth.
“ENOUGH!” he shouted as loud as he could–
—and someone listened. In an instant, the landscape was gone. Silence surrounded him, now, and a barren, empty white landscape that stretched onward forever.
And then, someone was there with him - first only a silhouette, but details slowly filled themselves in as the stranger approached. He could not tell how big or small the person was, at first, or how far away they might be in the directionless space, but he whispered with absolute certainty that they would hear him, “Haven’t you put me through enough already?”
And the stranger had the gall to cluck his tongue at Ardghal.
“You really are a piece of work, you know.”
The stranger finally came into view. It was a masculine figure no taller than Ardghal, but with a body that looked as though it had been carved into being by the loving hands of a master sculptor, and that each muscle and tendon had then been cast in liquid silver. Iridescent hair flowed down his shoulders. He wore no tunic, but a long loincloth of shimmery gold, over which sat a belt, upon which had been fastened dozens of wax-sealed scrolls. From the man’s (if he could be called such a grounding, mortal word as “man”) back bloomed a magnificent, equally golden pair of wings much larger and grander than Ardghal’s own, and his eyes blazed white with the radiant, blinding intensity of the sun. He was the most beautiful thing Ardghal, or perhaps anyone, had ever laid eyes upon. Ardghal wanted nothing more in that moment than to break his neck.
“Is that all you have to say?” Ardghal challenged through gritted teeth. “Ten years, I have done this. For ten years, I have followed your commands. I have championed your cause. I have diligently studied, recorded, and heeded every vision you’ve forced into my psyche. I have prayed to you. I have killed for you. I have nearly lost my life, year after year, for the endless slew of tasks you force upon me, without so much as a day’s break to wash the blood off of my clothes.”
The angel before him tilted his head, narrowing his brilliant eyes, and asked in a voice that sounded far too human for such an otherworldly creature, “ And you believe your existence to be… misfortunate , because of this privilege?”
Ardghal was so shocked, he almost laughed. “ Privilege?” he fulminated. “What in Sarenrae’s name could be counted as a privilege about this life?”
It had been the wrong thing to say. Barely anything changed in the angel’s expression, but Ardghal suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of malice fill the air around him. The not-quite-stranger’s eyes flashed brighter for a moment, and the world around them did as well. Ardghal cried out as the flare singed his skin, the burning penetrating deep into his body, as if he were being roasted from the inside out. He fell to the ground and gasped, trying to expel the agonizing heat from his body. Barely a moment later, the feeling was gone.
“ I will not permit you to misuse the name of Her Most Holy Radiance in this place,” the angel said.
“I’m sorry,” Ardghal said shakily, still recovering from the shock.
“You were chosen to serve your goddess personally at the moment of your birth, because fate foretold that you would be strong enough to handle such a challenge. Your existence as an aasimar,” the angel explained in an accent that led Ardghal to realize they were not speaking the common tongue in this dream, but some celestial language, “ can be attributed entirely to the faith that Mount Celestia has placed in you. It is a privilege of the highest degree. Do you mean to imply that the gift bestowed upon you was a mistake?”
A trick question if Ardghal had ever heard one. Had he still been fourteen years old, as pious as he was impressionable, he would have been awestruck and ashamed, and apologized again. Had he been twenty one, riding out the high of victory from surviving the Kahsran civil war and coming out the other side more powerful, he might have argued further, inciting again the rage of his celestial patron and further enduring his admonishing flames for the sake of pride. But Ardghal was twenty four now, and years of mistakes had made him wiser than most men of his age, so instead he said,
“My wife is pregnant.”
He did not look up at the angel as he spoke, so it was difficult to interpret the tone in his voice when he replied,
“ We have had knowledge of this for seven months.”
Ardghal sighed, with no need to exaggerate the weariness in his voice. “I’m about to be a father. I have a family to care for. I have a city to care for now. What will become of them, if I die on a mission?” When he was certain he would not be struck down again, Ardghal rose to his feet. “I’ve never told a soul about the things my goddess has asked of me. No one would know what became of me if I were to be captured, or goddess forbid, lose my life.”
The angel did not speak, so Ardghal continued.
“I trust that you, or if not you, then fate itself, is responsible for the fortunes that I have come by. I am Lord Ardghal Ferrorum, Duke of Eastern Kyi’nin, the marble city that has served for centuries as a monument to Celestia, and for three years as a monument to Sarenrae, blessed goddess of the Everlight. I do not take this responsibility lightly. I have made every decision in my life so that I might be able to wield the power I have been granted in a way that brings my country to glory.”
“ You have grown complacent in your fortune. You have ignored our calls.”
Ardghal pressed on. “Five months ago, I found out my wife was with child. I have been hard at work to prepare our home for the presence of an infant. It is no small task. I have kept up with my duties as a Noble Lord of Kahsra, I have continued to push for reform and balance in a still very new government , and I have served my emperor, the foremost mortal arbiter of Celestia’s will , without question or pause. I beg your forgiveness for putting abstract visions of futures that have not yet been set in stone on the shelf while I try to juggle the many moving parts of my waking life.”
He knew he was pushing it, but this might be the only chance he got to speak to his patron face to face.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“ My name…” the angel looked perplexed, “is Ayan. What relevance does this hold to you?”
“Well, Ayan,” Ardghal answered, “now that we are on a first name basis, I would like to plead to you on a personal level.” He gestured to his still-wispy body, which felt like a mere puff of smoke in the wind when compared to Ayan’s overwhelming corporeality in this corner of heaven. “I’m getting older. I no longer have the freedom to sneak off in the night as I did as a boy,” when I was far too young to be holding a weapon, he did not say, because he knew it would not matter to the angel. “I have seen the visions you have been sending to me, and I entreat you to remember that I am mortal . I am tired. I do not wish to make my yet unborn child an orphan, or my wife a widow, and I live in fear that that is the inevitable conclusion I will face if you continue to send me chasing after criminals and heretics each night. The war is over. Our goddess has won. I would like the chance to live in the world I worked so hard to help her create.”
He considered ending with a reverent bow, but the tiniest string of untamed spite tangled up in his will kept him standing, meeting Ayan’s blazing, unblinking eyes.
“You would dare defy the will of Her Eternal Light for personal satisfaction?” Ayan asked. The more he spoke, the more his proclamations sounded repetitive - and the less Ardghal feared him.
Too late to back down now.
“If it means the chance to sleep fully through the night again, then yes, I would.”
The silence in the air hummed with possibility. Ardghal thought he could hear the faint sound of a chime.
“ Very well.”
At once, the world shifted again. Ayan vanished from view and the swirling scenery came to life again.
“NO,” Ardghal demanded. He waved his arm through the nearest still-forming image. It dissipated back into mist. He looked up at the still-white sky. “If you have something to say, you will say it to my face. I will not tolerate any more of this esotericism.”
The vision froze, halfway formed; still blurry. Ardghal heard footsteps behind him and turned around, meeting Ayan’s stony face.
“ You are in no position to make demands, ” he criticized, “ but I will acquiesce.”
With a flick of his hand, the fluid room zoomed by them. Ardghal found himself back at the end of the dark limestone hallway again. Lanterns lined the walls. No other light was visible. Surprisingly, Ayan still stood by his side.
“ You will be released from your divine service, to live the rest of your life in idle monotony- ”
Ardghal resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“ - if , and only if, you complete one final task.” Ayan walked down the illusory hallway, the vision rippling around him as he did so, and stopped at… what could not be exactly called a door. From where Ardghal was standing, it appeared to be an iron grate. “ There is one name on Celestia’s list that has not yet been crossed out. You will serve as the nib of the pen.”
By this point in a divine dream, Ardghal usually would have seen and endured the omens of disaster yet to come, and begun compiling information; clues about who his target might be, where they could be found, how they could be killed most efficiently. Anything to prevent the predicted future from coming true. This time, however, he found himself impatient.
“I don’t…” Ardghal spoke up, “I don’t need to know who I’m going to kill.”
Ayan cocked an eyebrow.
Ardghal amended his statement. “I don’t want to know, alright? I’ll do it.”
“If you are to complete the task-”
Ardghal hated the detachment in the word: task .
“ -you must be given direction. I suppose I shall provide this.”
He nodded, feeling a certain resignation settle into his chest.
The vision began again, though this time, Ayan did not disappear. He pinched two fingers in the air and released them, and suddenly Ardghal could see that the hallway were standing in was a dungeon, lined with iron-barred prison cells. Ayan strode to the door of the last cell (Ardghal did not follow him) and pointed at it, saying,
“ You will find what you seek beneath the Holy Citadel, in the western prison wing, in the furthest cell from the light. A great evil lies within, and it must not be permitted to grow, lest the sun itself and her people perish in its shadow. An opportunity will come soon.”
“How soon?” Ardghal asked.
“ Soon, ” his guardian angel repeated unhelpfully. “Your mission must be carried to completion.”
Ardghal let out a puff of breath as acknowledgement, but could not help himself from additionally asking, “And what if I do not complete the mission? What will happen then?”
Ayan did not answer him immediately – only bored into him with those inhuman eyes, simultaneously calm with indifference and hot enough to kill. Eventually, he said, “Such things must not be spoken of. ”
Before Ardghal could argue, the dream ended. When he next opened his eyes, he was lying in his bed, wife sleeping peacefully beside him, and he wondered until morning whether he had made the right choice.
Chapter 2: Determination
Chapter Text
Weeks went by. Supplies were gathered. Information was scouted out and recorded. Bribes were made. Eventually, a plan was formed. Ardghal, despite his ongoing misgivings with Elysium, found himself praying in the moments when his mind wandered – God, let me survive this, and let me put it behind me.
He never specified which god, in his prayers. The god his father had taught him to pray to had gone out of fashion with the last revolution, and the current national goddess en vogue felt less to Ardghal like an old friend, and more like a celebrity everyone had heard of, but no one could know personally - not to mention the dozens of other household gods worshipped with kitchen-table shrines and neighborhood temples throughout Kahsra - so he invoked no name, hoping that the open window would leave space for at least one god to hear him.
Perhaps even Ayan, if no one else.
The preparations for his grim mission culminated on the first new moon of the Harvest Month, as Ardghal leaned over the desk of his home office by candlelight and wiped down the freshly-honed blade of his concealable dagger with a potent poison he’d acquired from Kyi’nin’s underground market shortly after sundown.
“Ardghal?” a familiar voice said, from behind him. Without flinching, Ardghal resheathed the dagger out of sight and slipped it into the cracked-open drawer in his desk, before turning around to greet his darling wife.
Bridget was a comforting sight in the warm candlelight of the hallway. Glossy brown-black hair tumbled down her shoulders; a sharp contrast from the creamy white nightgown that flowed over her body, loose everywhere except her round belly. Pregnancy had changed Bridget’s body a decent amount over the last few months, leaving her feet swollen, her face puffy, and the curve of her spine pronounced when she walked. She leaned against the doorframe to rest her legs as she watched him, and Ardghal was struck, as he had been every day for the last eight years since they’d met, by just how beautiful she was.
“You’re really working this late?” she asked gently, with a hint of a smile.
He smiled in return. “You know how it is sometimes. More petitions drop on my desk every day, and I’m running out of ways to politely deny them.”
Bridget cocked an eyebrow. “Such as…?” She trailed off.
Ardghal fully rotated his chair to face her, and said, “Just yesterday, I received a letter from the musicians’ guild, requesting that certain tax revenue be allocated to be used for the construction of a new opera house atop the ruins of the last one.” He laughed breathily, spreading his arms in a hapless gesture of bewilderment. “An opera house! Can you imagine , at a time like this, that that’s what the people want to be done with their taxes?”
“What did you tell them?” Bridget pressed, engrossed in the story now.
“Well I wanted to say ‘piss off and go to hell’-”
“Ardghal!”
“But that would likely not go over well with my constituents. What I did remind them of, is that priority is currently being given to rebuilding and expansion of the city’s aqueducts, so that we may provide the Sand Basin neighborhoods with drinkable water, and rehousing efforts for the copious amount of homeless orphans we now have on our streets, and that recreational projects of such a scale will likely have to wait until after more pressing issues have been dealt with.” He shook his head. “Truly unbelievable. It’s like they’ve all forgotten there was a war here.”
“I could never juggle the amount of balls you’ve got in the air.” Bridget shook her head. “The stress would kill me.” She took a step into the room and winced as she did, no longer close enough to the wall to take the weight off her feet. Ardghal took the opportunity to stand up and meet her where she stood - careful not to let her see the bottle of wyvern poison peeking out of the still-open desk drawer.
“Stress wouldn’t be very good for our son, either,” he said, taking Bridget’s hands in his.
She cocked an eyebrow. “You seem pretty confident the baby’s a boy.”
“I have a feeling,” Ardghal smiled, and kissed her on the cheek. “The Ferrorum line has fathered firstborn sons, without fail, for generations. I suspect ours will be no different.”
She sighed with a playful smile. “What a shame. I always wanted a daughter.”
Ardghal kissed her again, this time on the lips, and placed a hand over her stomach. “Perhaps our second one?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself, mister.”
The sound of their laughter carried out of the room and into the hallway. When it finally died down, Ardghal and Bridget stood there together, barefoot on the tile floor of their home, and held each other for a moment. Bridget was the first to pull away.
“Do you think you could put down the work for tonight? I’d like to go to bed.”
A rotten, crushing feeling spread through Ardghal’s chest. He hated lying to Bridget. More than that, though, he hated just how good he’d gotten at lying to her.
“Can’t,” he apologized. “It’s going to be a late night for me.” He patted her on the back, and gently steered her back towards the door. “You go on to bed, though. I’ll join you when I’m done in here.”
For a brief moment, Ardghal caught the slightest hint of what looked like suspicion on Bridget’s face. “You always say that.”
“And I’m always there with you when you wake up in the morning. I’ll come to bed in a while.”
“Alright,” Bridget conceded. She looked at him one last time, with her sharp, thoughtful brown eyes. “Good night, Ardghal. Don’t stay up too late.”
“I promise you, I’ll come in as soon as I can.” He smiled at his wife one last time, shut the door, and began to equip everything he’d need for his mission.
After tonight, I’ll never have to do this again. Ardghal couldn’t say whether the silent reassurance was meant for Bridget’s sake, or his own.
He moved through the night like a driving horse with blinders on - both figuratively, and in the literal sense. Gone were the fine vestments of a nobleman, substituted for the night with a much more practical outfit. He’d donned a tightly-fitting tunic that concealed every inch of his skin from the neck down, as well as his hair, which had been tied back with a ribbon of rawhide and neatly tucked under a hood. Atop it sat a gambeson overcoat that came down to his knees - thicker than leather but just as effective against weapons, and twice as quiet - a scarf over his mouth and nose, and thin suede gloves that left his fingertips exposed, to allow for a better grip on the sheathed dagger currently sitting flush against his chest, tucked away in a concealed harness. Most importantly, the whole ensemble was plain in both material and color. Ardghal had learned after mission upon mission that the most effective camouflage he had at his disposal, even in the dead of night when darkness was his friend, was to look unremarkable. Were he stopped on his way, he would be more likely assumed to be a tradesman’s apprentice than an assassin.
It felt odd, given Ardghal’s day job, to find himself so underdressed in the Holy Citadel. He felt the compulsion to bow his head, every time he passed by one of the many golden banners with the symbol of the goddess hung high from the central palace’s sprawling arcades. It was a simple symbol - an abstract feminine figure, with a distinct halo above her shoulders but no face, ascending into the sky with raised arms. It was said to represent the moment her soul had risen up from the flames of her funeral pyre into the heavens, after a life of diligence and sacrifice, where the other gods of Mayrin had welcomed her with open arms to serve alongside them for eternity. Her image had wings, just like Ardghal’s. Some claimed Sarenrae had once been an aasimar, too. Ardghal didn’t like to think on the story too much.
He did his best to ignore the inherent holiness of the place, and kept his eyes trained forward. Nothing could distract him from his mission. He wouldn’t allow it.
He’d very intentionally not brought a map. To carry a map would be to risk losing it, to risk its confiscation if he were caught, and to risk undue attention from the sound of crinkling paper. Instead, two weeks prior, he’d paid a visit to the administrative offices within the citadel and waited until the clerks in the imperial architect’s office had all stepped away, then slipped inside and got his hands on a copy of the palace’s interior diagrams. He hadn’t dared to take it with him, instead committing as much of it to memory as he could, and then going home and sketching it out to the best of his ability. He burned his homemade copy that night, noting where the gaps in his memory were, and then went into the city the next day and did it again. So this continued for two weeks. He’d spent hours upon hours studying every door, staircase, and wing on the map to plan his entrance and escape route, practicing what he could by daylight; finding every excuse to come to the citadel on “official business” and staying late to wander the halls aboveground, until he felt confident he’d memorized the publicly accessible parts of the palace’s ground level inside and out.
The lower levels, oddly enough, worried Ardghal less. Though he hadn’t been able to find an excuse to physically survey the entry and exit points of the dungeon in his waking hours, he’d held tight to the brief fragment of his dream from Ayan, when he’d gotten the chance to traverse them himself. He knew, from his studies of the maps, that the citadel’s high altitude - built into the side of Kyi’nin’s oldest mountain - meant that all the lower levels were carved directly into the stone itself. He also knew, from the inky shapes of his dream, that the corridor his target was being held in was lined with windows. He’d be right next to an external wall. The steepness of the mountainside meant that bars were likely unnecessary to deter prisoners from escaping, but that meant little to Ardghal. If he couldn’t exit the way he’d come in, he could climb out the window and fly to safety. On top of that, the low height of the ceilings in his vision meant he’d likely be exiting from a lower basement floor, meaning a shorter distance to the ground outside. He wouldn’t have to pass a single person on the way.
No map, no escort, and no torch. As Ardghal crept down increasingly steep and narrow staircases, the darkness began to unnerve him. His vision was much more acute, even in dim light, than most people’s, but something about the lower levels of the citadel seemed to attract shadows in every corner. The lower he went, the older the architecture appeared to be, and the more had been spared from the Everlight Dominion’s initiative to scrub every trace of the previous emperor’s touch from the citadel.
Emperor-emeritus Jacques Carolingian III and his family, who had lost their crowns as well as their heads at the close of the civil war, had long favored the color red. Fitting , Ardghal thought as he continued his silent trek further and further into the mountain, for a line so characterized by bloodshed. The few windows on this level had not yet been refinished with the frosted mosaic glass favored by the church of Sarenrae. Those that were still intact were tinted that same deep red Ardghal remembered seeing on the flags and uniforms of the Carolingian army only a few years before. Many, though, were broken. In some places, the shattered glass on the ground had not even been swept up, and in the moonlight pouring through the empty window frames, the tiny shards looked like glistening droplets of blood.
Ardghal kept looking forward. It was too late to turn back. He was so close .
As he trudged ever-further downward, Ardghal hadn’t dared to walk directly through any of the occupied prison corridors to avoid detection. He’d initially been thankful to have seen so few guards working the night shift. But now that he was three (four? five?) levels below ground, the utter silence permeating the air was downright unnerving. Less and less voices, less sounds of human life, until he eventually reached a point where the cells seemed sparsely, or perhaps entirely, unpopulated.
How dangerous must this person be, to be kept so far away from any other prisoners?
Even more unusual, he realized, was the complete and utter lack of any armed guards.
Before he could stop to dwell on the thought for very long, Ardghal stepped out of the claustrophobic stairwell, turned a corner, and realized he’d arrived.
The hallway looked exactly as it had in his dream. Limestone ceilings and floors, iron-grated cells, and somewhat oddly… well-trimmed, still-burning lanterns. Ardghal made note of this in his mind. If the lanterns were lit, then someone would be coming down to re- light them eventually. He was on limited time.
Thirty seconds , he decided. That was all he would give himself to prepare. He took a single deep breath, and stepped into the light.
Thirty. Twenty nine. Twenty eight.
Ardghal crept carefully, his cloth boots leaving no sound as he crept down the hallway.
Twenty two. Twenty one.
He reached between the buttons of his overcoat and wrapped his hand around the hilt of his dagger.
Nineteen. Eighteen.
He locked his eyes on his destination. Last cell on the left. He breathed quietly, briefly adjusting the scarf over his face to dampen the sound, and gripped the keys he’d swiped from a room several floors above in his free hand. He’d get one chance to do this. If he failed….
Ten. Nine.
He stopped, right before reaching the cell door, and steadied himself. It was built differently than the other ones on the floor - the door looked to be recently installed, and rather than the gappy iron grates sealing off the other cells, this one was completely solid, save for a small window, perhaps only an inch or two tall.
Five. Four.
Who - or what, Ardghal wondered, could possibly require this much security? With a shaking hand, he shoved the key into the door and twisted. The sound of metal-on-metal made a terribly loud clang noise that reverberated down the hallway.
Three. Two. One.
Nothing in the world could have prepared him to find himself face to face with a wide-eyed, terrified child.
Chapter 3: A Decision
Chapter Text
Seconds later, a realization shook Ardghal. I know this boy.
In the year 492 Death, when Ardghal had been fourteen years old and the public unrest in Kahsra had not yet escalated into an internationally-recognized war, the entire nation celebrated an unexpected holiday. The Holy Emperor and his wife had just announced the unexpected birth of their third child, sixteen years after their second, Prince Leon IV, and twenty years after their firstborn, Crown Princess Matilda I. There was a nationwide festival, mandatory religious services throughout the month, and Lords and Ladies all over the country were invited to the Citadel to pay tribute to the imperial family. The festivities that followed might have been considered in poor taste, only weeks after civil riots in the northern territories had turned into massacres at the hands of the army, if it had not been for one very special detail: the infant prince, who had been given the name Isaac, had been born an aasimar.
Ardghal’s family had not been prominent enough at the time to be invited to the emperor’s palace, where the blessed child was often paraded about or seated on his father’s lap, as living proof of the Carolingians’ divine right to rule, but he still remembered the royal portrait commissioned that year, hung in Town Square for all to see: the little prince, swaddled in the empress’ arms and surrounded by family. Special care had obviously been taken by the artist to highlight his angelic features: a metallic coppery sheen to the fine hairs on Isaac’s head, the healthy glow of his cherubic cheeks, and a pair of brilliant, sparkling eyes; the color of a sunrise.
Six years later, the war ended. The foolhardy prince Leon was skewered on his own sword in battle, and his wicked sister Matilda met her fate at the guillotine beside her mother and father. The name Isaac was hardly ever mentioned again. But Ardghal remembered those eyes.
They were the same bright-burning eyes that Ardghal now found he could not tear his gaze away from, as the little boy in the cell clung to his blanket and quaked in fear.
Hee noticed several odd things about the cell. Though the inside was indeed dark and cramped, a good deal of effort had been made to furnish it like a bedroom. The cold limestone floor had been covered with a soft woven rug. A solid wood bed, built for a child, was pushed up against the wall. A dresser and a mirror had been installed, and atop a small bedside table sat an untouched holy book, visibly collecting dust. Even the boy’s clothing looked less like the sackcloth prison uniforms he’d caught glimpses of on the upper floors, and more like the white muslin robes of the imperial household staff and the High Temple’s novitiate priests — and all of it had been hidden from sight, behind a solid iron door and a shuttered window.
But Ardghal noticed none of these things. All he could focus on was the little boy in front of him, and he thought, You don’t belong here. The look in the boy’s eyes told Ardghal that he was thinking the same thing.
He did not delude himself that he might have made a mistake in coming here. Ayan’s directions had been crystal clear. If this was who the dungeon had led Ardghal to, then this was who heaven had intended to die.
Still, Ardghal could not bring himself to take a single step closer. His hand was still tucked into his coat, wrapped around the hilt of his dagger, but when he moved to unsheathe it, he found that he could not summon the strength.
I’ve done this before, Ardghal forced himself to remember. His first kill, seven years ago, when he himself had been hardly more than a boy, was a young man just entering the prime of his life. He’d ended a mother before. An elderly woman. Noncombatants, almost all of them; people who had no hope of fighting back, and he’d gotten himself through it by remembering that it was all for a good cause; all for the greater plan…
But he could not stop thinking of Bridget, sleeping soundly back home, still carrying Ardghal’s own child. He’d whispered to his unborn son before; promising to protect him always, to love him, whoever he might grow up to be, and to raise him in a brighter world.
Ardghal stared at the soft-faced boy before him and thought, Is this not also someone’s son?
It was the sound of footsteps coming down the staircase at the other end of the hall that broke him free of his indecision. He hardened his heart, pulled the knife from its sheath, and lunged toward the defenseless boy. The child opened his mouth to scream, but the sound was prematurely muffled by Ardghal’s gloved hand. He swung the knife, not at the boy’s throat, but at the hinge on the bolted window shutters. With a quick prying motion, the left hinge was destroyed and the shutters fell away. There was no time to re-sheath the weapon. The sound of the window breaking had already alerted the guard coming down the staircase, so Ardghal let the dagger fall from his hand and clatter to the ground, and used both arms to lift the child up onto the windowsill. With a desperate prayer and the whisper of an activation word, he summoned his radiant white wings, wrapped the child tight in his arms, and jumped.
The boy wrestled against Ardghal’s grip and screamed into his fingers as they plummeted down, but a moment later, Ardghal unfurled and beat his wings and they soared back up into the night sky.
Someone will see us, he realized, but somehow, he could not bring himself to care.
As they flew away from the mountain, taking off into the clouds, Ardghal continued to wrestle the child, holding tight to him even as he struggled so he would not fall. He heard the fading noise of hubbub and shouting from the open window of the prison floor, growing farther and farther away. Avoiding the city skyline, he instead glided out over the ocean, which was barely a kilometer away. The Ferrorum Manor – the new one, rebuilt after the war, where Ardghal and Bridget now lived – was an old military watchpost on the outskirts of the city. He’d never flown home before (summoning his wings took great energy, and he could only keep them out for very short spans of time), but from up so high, he could see the isolated mansion just past the shoreline, waiting for him. Kyi’nin looked beautiful at night. Someday, under better circumstances, Ardghal decided he might have to try flying up there again.
Eventually, the boy stopped thrashing. He'd worked himself to exhaustion and fell limp in his escort’s arms. Ardghal removed the hand muffling his mouth and cradled the boy’s head against his chest protectively. Moments later, he guided them down onto the balcony just outside the glass door to his office and landed as gently as he could. Almost immediately after, his wings dismissed themselves, dissolving into mist. Ardghal fell to his knees in exhaustion, using the last of his strength to lay the child (who had fainted some time during the impromptu flight) down on the floor of the balcony, and then falling flat onto his own back a few feet away.
It took him a long time to catch his breath. When he did, he rolled onto his side and examined his abductee. Despite the distance between the present and the last time Ardghal had seen him, memorialized in another commissioned imperial portrait several years prior, there was no doubt that this was the missing prince. He had a short, fluffy cropping of brown hair that very faintly sparkled in the moonlight. His skin was unmarked in any way and his face perfectly symmetrical, in the way that aasimar tended to be. His features had begun to mature in a way that made the boy’s face unique, but carried within them an echo of a much younger version of the deceased emperor; and though his eyes were now closed in gentle sleep, Ardghal still remembered the vibrant orange they’d been, seeming almost to glow in the dark.
He, himself, could have passed out right there, but he knew he could not afford to rest yet. It would be only hours until the sun rose, and less before the city guards would begin looking for the prince. It was too late to turn back, and he could not, would not, harm the boy. Even if he did return him, Ardghal’s heart ached to think of the tiny, lonely cell he would be placed in. There was no guarantee Celestia would not send another assassin, either.
He made a decision. Gently, so as to avoid waking him up, Ardghal rolled back over to the sleeping prince and got up on his feet, picking the boy up in his arms like a baby and carrying him into the house.
Isaac was bigger than Ardghal had realized while they were flying. His face was still chubby with youth, but his limbs were long and sturdy and his ribcage broad – someday, he would grow up to be tall and mighty. Kingly, even. For now, though, he was still young, and his future was not yet determined. As Ardghal carried him into a guest room and laid the boy down on the bed, fluffing his pillow and draping him in a throw blanket, he hoped – no, knew, that if nothing else, he had bought this child a little more time to see that future.
Chapter 4: What Have I Done?
Chapter Text
He awoke the next morning to the sound of shattering glass.
He sat up in his bed with a gasp, nanoseconds away from jumping up and running out of the room to find the source of the sound, when he realized that Bridget was still asleep.
She groggily rolled over to face Ardghal and mumbled, “Hm? What is it?”
Ardghal held his breath for a moment, but heard no more noise. If something had happened, at the very least, the morning staff would have heard it and someone would have come to check on the couple in the master bedroom. He finally allowed himself to let his guard down.
“Just…” he thought for a moment as he reached down to stroke Bridget’s hair, “just a bad dream, honey. Go back to sleep.”
Bridget nodded, eyes still closed, and said no more.
Ardghal could not relax. He tried to remember if he’d dreamt at all. He got the sense that he had dreamt of something, and that the noise he’d heard had been part of it, but the memory was fading fast. All his mind could grab onto was a residual feeling of unease.
No. It was hatred.
Ardghal's heart squeezed, as if someone had their hand wrapped tightly around it, and he suddenly felt very afraid of what he would discover if he tried to go back to sleep. Instead, he chose to get up as quietly as he could and check on the boy stowed away down the hall.
Aside from the bedroom in which he and his wife slept, there was a room right across the hall being set up as a nursery, a large bedroom on the first floor for the (very) occasional far-traveling guest, and an extra, much smaller room on the same level as the family’s quarters that was a guest room in name only. It was equipped with a double-sized bed, but in practice served as a storage space for extra sheets, boxes, and picture frames that did not fit in the attic. It also, notably, locked from the outside, and did not have an external-facing window. It wasn’t an ideal solution - there wasn’t anywhere in the home that servants were guaranteed not to wander through, save for perhaps the attic or the trick-door closet in Ardghal’s office, but it had felt wrong not to give the child a bed to sleep in.
It wasn’t a permanent solution, but he was about to figure one out.
Or…
“Master Ferrorum?” came a voice from behind Ardghal, just as he placed his hand on the knob of the door to Isaac’s hiding place.
Perhaps not.
Ardghal hadn’t been caught yet. He could still salvage this.
He dropped his hand slowly, sliding it back into his pocket, and masked the feeling that his heart was about to climb up out of his throat with a mildly surprised smile as he turned around to greet the head of his household staff. “Good morning, Devon,” Ardghal said with a quick nod. “I apologize for my state of dress.” He pinched the shoulder of his nightshirt and tugged on it gently with a touch of faux-humility. “I was unaware of the time, and did not think you would arrive for another hour.”
“Shall I fetch your valet, to help you dress?” Devon offered, unruffled.
“Perhaps in a while.”
Both men waited. Neither one moved. Ardghal’s discomfort deepened. Having been appointed to the duchy of eastern Kyi’nin at only twenty one years of age, Ardghal had gotten very used to being the youngest person in the room. He seldom let it bother him, having learned early on that in order to be respected, he had to exude unflappable confidence, and be sure that any proposals that came from his mouth must be twice as succinct, twice as informed, and twice as persuasive as those of his elders.
Devon, in comparison, should have posed no threat to Ardghal’s authority. He was a short, slight man of halfling heritage, not even four feet tall, and though receding hairline and the lines around his eyes belied age greater than Ardghal’s by decades, it was Devon who worked on the Ferrorums’ payroll; Devon, who addressed Ardghal as “master”; and Devon, who followed Ardghal’s orders without complaint or dissent. So why , in this moment, did Devon’s knowing look make Ardghal feel so hapless?
“I had hoped ,” Devon said with polite intonation but clear intent, “to fetch fresh linens for the beds in the servants’ quarters.”
Ardghal’s back against the door remained the only barrier between Devon and perhaps the greatest mistake of his life.
“May I pass you by, Master Ferrorum?”
Ardghal’s mouth went dry. He froze. Laughed. Fell silent. Shrunk under the pristinely neutral gaze of his butler.
Eventually, he admitted defeat.
“There is…” A quick dart of his eyes down either direction confirmed that there was no one else in the hallway to hear them. He lowered his voice, regardless. “ There is something I wish to speak with you about, in my office.”
For the first time in nearly five years, Isaac Carolingian awoke to the feeling of sunlight warming his skin.
The events of the previous night were like a very confusing, very scary dream. It had happened so quickly, he’d had what felt like only a few seconds to be afraid before the entire world around him flipped on its head. There had been a man… An Angel?
No. Angels were meant to be kind. They did not wear dark coats, or shroud their faces in shadow like corpses, or creep into children’s rooms with knives. But someone had been in his room, and the someone had stolen him away, and he’d faced the horrible, horrible fear that he was going to die.
But he was alive.
It still made no sense.
The place he was in did not look like another cell. It had windows, and the windows were sunny, and made of a shiny clear glass Isaac hadn’t seen the likes of since…
Since before.
But neither did the room look anything like his nursery had. The blankets were all wrong. The walls were painted, not papered. The floor was tiled blue and white with no rug laid on top, and there was barely any room to walk between the crates and boxes littered everywhere, and the door-
The door.
He did not know what was on the other side of the door.
When he looked out the window, all he could see was another stone wall, ten or twenty feet away. It did not look like part of any other building he could remember. The only things that felt familiar at all about this place, wherever it might be, were that the world beyond the walls was silent, and he knew that he would not be able to leave.
Isaac felt helplessness well up inside him, and he suddenly wanted to cry. He knew it would not save him, but at least in the other place, if he cried, someone would come to check on him. He ran up to the door and raised a hand to knock, to pound, to summon the guards or the priests or whoever was his keeper now, but his fear of what the consequences might be if the person on the other side did not like hearing him stopped him short.
He collapsed on the floor and pressed his back against the wall, hugging his knees and rocking and biting his lower lip to soothe himself; anything to hold in the noise. It wasn’t working. The bad feeling started to well up in his lungs. He held his breath and trembled.
No, no, no, no, NO!
But before the room could suffocate him, Isaac was startled out of his panic by the sound of the door creaking open behind him.
A tiny, fancily-dressed man with hazel-green eyes and flat combed graying hair stood in the doorway.
“Hello, young man,” he greeted. “May I come in? I understand you must be terribly frightened, and I’d like to talk with you.”
Ardghal flattened himself against the wall to avoid being seen and strained his ear to try to listen to the conversation Devon was having with the boy. Unfortunately, the interior walls of his own home were eight inches of solid stone, so all he could detect were the faintest murmurs drifting out from under the bedroom door.
Internally, he was flagellating himself for having acted on his impulses. Even as he’d explained his actions on the previous night to Devon, he’d felt like an utter fool for even thinking that going off-plan, and bringing the child home with him , had been a good idea. There was no way to keep him here. Someone was bound to find out, sooner or later, and then Ardghal would go to prison for treason, and the little prince would be recaptured, and it all would have been for nothing.
It had, perhaps, been the best luck in the world that the person to discover what he was hiding first had been his butler. Devon had known Ardghal longer than most people ever had - even longer than Bridget. Back then, he’d served Ardghal’s uncle Sebastian as a housekeeper, and had occasionally been placed in charge of supervising Ardghal – who had then been addressed as “ young Master Ferrorum”, as the only youth bearing the family name – when his father was away on business.
They’d never spoken of where Ardghal had gone on the nights he did not return home; but Ardghal knew that it was Devon who had washed the rust-red stains out of his clothes each and every time.
There was no one in the world Ardghal could trust, if he could not trust Devon with this; which was why he’d elected to send him in to handle things, rather than trust himself with the task. For security, if nothing else, it was better if the boy never saw his face.
An eternity seemed to pass by, before the bedroom door once again opened and his butler emerged.
“What did you say?” Ardghal asked quietly as they walked back down the hall towards his own bedroom.
Devon kept pace with him. “I introduced myself as the head of staff in this household.” He paused to look up at Ardghal, and upon seeing the way his brow furrowed in concern, added, “Do not worry, I did not share my name. Nor did I give him yours.”
Ardghal nodded. Devon continued.
“I told the child that he need not worry about being harmed for as long as he is to stay here, but that his safety can only be ensured if he is patient and willing to remain hidden. I promised that his needs would be taken care of, that his comfort would be seen to as well as can be provided, and that if anything were to change, I would let him know well in advance.”
“Anything else?” Ardghal asked.
“I asked for his favorite food,” Devon answered softly.
Ardghal could not stop the tiny smile that crept onto his lips.
“And what answer did you receive?”
Devon shook his head. “I’m afraid I could not get the boy to talk. You understand, if his prior living conditions truly were as you described them, he is likely to be very hesitant to trust anyone at all, for a very long time.”
“I am aware, yes.”
They arrived outside the door to Ardghal’s bedroom. Devon pinched his lips.
“May I speak… candidly, Master Ferrorum?”
“You may.”
He looked up at Ardghal again, and reached out a hand to place it on his arm very lightly as he said, “I do not believe this can last. It was good that you were able to remove the child from the circumstances in which you found him, but this home is not a place for him to live and grow.”
Ardghal felt the sudden urge to protest, but did not. He did not know where the feeling had come from.
“All that said,” Devon continued, squeezing Ardghal’s arm gently and dropping his hand back to his side, “I do intend to make good on my word. For as long as it may take to find alternate arrangements, I will tend to the boy’s needs, and you may rest assured that no one but I shall enter that room.”
“Inform the rest of the staff that a structural flaw has been discovered in the storage room floor, and that it will be unsafe to move through the space until a construction team can be called to repair it.”
Devon smiled. “That, I shall do.”
He bowed to Ardghal from the waist, and then turned on his heel to walk back the way they had come.
Chapter 5: Back To Work
Chapter Text
It was just Ardghal’s luck that the very next day, he would find himself recalled back to the Holy Citadel – though this time during the day, and on much more legally sanctioned business. It had begun the way it always had: early in the morning, thankfully once he was already out of bed, he’d been startled by the sound of ringing bells (and had almost poured coffee directly into his lap). The noise was, of course, in his head. It was a magical command some cleric in the emperor’s court could cast, and was always followed by a brief message from an oddly stilted voice. This time, it had been “ YOU ARE SUMMONED FOR AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE MINISTER OF DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, BEGINNING IN TWO HOURS. WE WELCOME YOUR PROMPT ARRIVAL.”
In Ardghal’s opinion, whoever’s idea it had been to move the palace’s communications from a mail invitation system to that should be bashed over the head with a hammer. Nevertheless, the warning left him with just enough time to write a few notes, make himself look presentable, ask the stablehands to harness the horses to the carriage, and set off on the winding road that would take him down the coast and up the slow incline of the ancient mountain upon which the palace sat.
The whole ride, he could do nothing but think of the child in his house. Is he safe here? What is Devon doing for him? What if he is discovered? What if the guards saw me that night, and send investigators to my estate? What if I am to be arrested myself?
He knew the last possibility was unlikely. The myrmidon police of Kyi’nin did, technically, serve under Ardghal’s authority. The emperor himself had investigators, inquisitors, and soldiers, but from a pragmatic perspective, there were much more efficient ways to arrest Ardghal than making him drive nearly an hour to turn himself in. No, this was certainly going to be business as usual. The Minister of Domestic Affairs, an old, frowning man by the name of Maurice Darville, liked to conduct periodic check-ins with the Eastern Lords (and much more occasionally, those from the western and northern territories, who had to sometimes cross hundreds of miles of desert to reach the capital city). Ardghal, as the head of House Ferrorum and custodial owner of the eastern half of the Kyi’nin region itself, was called to these meetings nearly every time.
The citadel, with its chapels and courtyards and gardens and vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows, was a beautiful district in the daylight. The citadel sat at the highest inhabitable point of altitude in the entire country, and therefore was seen as the closest point in Kahsra, even in the entire world of Mayrin, to touching heaven. The tips of the buildings there grazed the clouds, and the marble ground was always dappled with sunlight. The water from the streams that ran down the mountain was known to have healing properties for those who bathed in it. Throughout history, whichever god the Kahsrans chose to worship (and they had worshipped many, over the millenia) was always said to have made their home at the top of the mountain. Scripture claimed it was a gateway to Mount Celestia itself.
It had not yet been forty eight hours since Ardghal had leapt from the side of the mountain in the darkness of night and committed the greatest crime of his life.
If he could keep a cool head, and stay on task, nothing would happen. He would be fine. All he had to do was get through the day without letting thoughts of his unplanned houseguest overtake him.
It proved to be an impossible task.
The meeting took place in an antechamber to the throne room. The minister had not yet arrived, and the other Eastern Lords buzzed and debated about zoning laws and reciprocal tariffs against the northern kingdom of Rucira while they waited for him, and it all seemed so unimportant. How could he possibly think about anything so abstract when he still hadn’t dealt with the boy yet?
“And have you picked a name for the boy, Ardghal?”
Ardghal immediately jerked himself back out of his thoughts and whipped his head around to whomever had made the comment. “I beg your pardon?”
The group looked at him expectantly. All familiar faces. Duchess Morgana Montfort of Q’in; the gray-haired widow of Gaspard the Brave, who had died a national hero after four battles and twenty five duels in support of the Everlight Army during the war, and whose family now governed a massive but sparsely inhabited patch of prairie. A prestigeless emissary filling in for Duke Basil Ontclair, who rarely left his native island of Innu (Ardghal had once heard something about the duke’s distaste for boat travel, which he personally thought was a lousy reason to cast aside one’s duties to the government). Cyrus Valmont, the uppity aasimar duke of Bas’et, whose gleaming white teeth and habit of long-winded public speeches had given Ardghal more reason to scrutinize than trust him. And, leading the pack: the stout Duke Aculeo Lamara, who owned the western half of the Kyi’nin region and had a penchant for stepping on Ardghal’s toes. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Aculeo was the first to speak up. “Lady Morgana was just wondering whether you’ve picked a name for your newborn yet,” he clarified in a good-natured tone, unfortunately delivered in a gratingly nasal voice.
Oh, Ardghal remembered. Right. Somehow, in the stress of… well, everything, he’d somehow forgotten about his own coming child. The realization abashed him.
“It takes time,” Aculeo continued with a smile that should have been reassuring, but somehow was not. He glanced around at the other Lords, and Ardghal was reminded once again just how much younger he was than anyone else in the room. “I think we all know that. When my youngest was born, it took Atella and I nearly two weeks to find an appropriate name.”
Tertius, Ardghal remembered the boy had been called. The third one. Very original.
“My wife is still a month from her due date,” Ardghal said flatly.
An awkward quiet befell the group, until Morgana picked up her previous line of questioning again. “Still another month until the baby is born? I could have sworn I’d heard you referring to it as a boy.”
Ardghal used the opportunity to repair the tension with an affable smile, and a wave of his hand. “The Ferrorums have always fathered firstborn sons. I suspect I won’t be the first to break the trend.”
“You’ve certainly broken other trends,” came the smooth treble voice of Cyrus Valmont. “I don’t recall that shade of blue being a signature feature in any of your line’s prior portraits. Do you think the child will be born aasimar like you?”
And there it was: the inevitable mention of Ardghal’s eyes. He had less traits that marked him as visually different from other people than most aasimar did, but the robin’s egg blue his irises had been since birth - brighter than natural pigmentation could account for - drew attention wherever he went, without fail. He wanted to dispute Cyrus’ implication. Ardghal wasn’t a member of the firstborn patrilineal Ferrorum line. His uncle Tristan, not his father, had been the previous duke, but Tristan had died childless in a premeditated house fire and nearly every heir after him had subsequently fled the country, leaving Ardghal first in line for the duchy.
He held his tongue. As good as it would feel to argue with Lord High And Mighty, the satisfaction wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. There was already enough scrutiny over Ardghal’s appointment, besides, and adding technicalities to the mix would not serve his claim to legitimacy.
“Can he truly be sure of that?” the Ontclair representative asked quietly, but still loud enough for Ardghal to hear him. “I’ve heard it’s heritable from both sides. Even if the father is an aasimar, isn’t the lady of the house a…”
He trailed off, realizing how many eyes were on him. Something told Ardghal the word he was going to use wasn’t as benign as “human.”
“Nonsense,” Cyrus dismissed. “My Blanche is of solely human pedigree, and our son was born just as divinely blessed as we knew he would be.” He grinned. “Lovell takes after his father. Good blood breeds good blood.”
The minister arrived before Ardghal could consider more seriously the idea of punching someone.
“ Good morning, one and all ,” Minister Darville began in a droning voice. Everyone in the room bowed as he entered and took his place at the head of the table. “ I acknowledge and apologize for my belated arrival. His Holiness called for an emergency meeting this morning, and it has only just concluded.”
“Oh, dear,” Aculeo supplied. “Is it a matter of urgency?”
“Anything that affects our stations?” the Ontclair emissary inserted.
Minister Darville raised an age-spotted hand in a stop gesture. The group went silent. “It is a matter that, at this time, our emperor wishes to keep confined to his inner ministry. If the situation is to change, you will all certainly be informed.” His eyes scanned over his colleagues, and the frown on his thin lips deepened, though not at anyone in particular. He looked… worried.
So he knows, Ardghal thought.
Rather than press the issue further, though, he walked over to stand behind his usual seat and waited for the minister to find his. “Shall we begin?”
The meeting was, blissfully, almost entirely predictable. Lamara shared information about his districts’ respective crop yields. Montfort proudly reported a new training ground for the imperial knights in Q’in was almost complete, and announced plans to begin building barracks to house them in. The emissary read a pre-written message from Ontclair asking for permission to increase local taxes, but floundered when asked in any more detail what the extra revenue was for . Valmont derailed the discussion for nearly twenty minutes with a rant about the “godless people these days” and unfurled a scroll full of statistics about record low worship attendance rates. For his own part, Ardghal read off a detailed, but concise report he’d drafted the week before in case of a meeting like this, with to-the-dollar accurate calculations of what it would take to finish reinforcing the safety barriers on the damaged portion of the canal, as well as a projected timeline for finishing the hiring process for the new local postmaster and dock maintenance supervisor.
Somehow, no matter how prepared he came, Ardghal always got the sense that no one was fully listening to him. Except, perhaps, for Lady Morgana. Despite her advanced age, she seemed to have a sharpness that most of the men at the table lacked, and asked deep-cutting questions designed not to disarm or embarrass, but to challenge Ardghal to rework and improve upon his proposals until they were indestructible. Working with her was a grueling mental exercise, but it was making him sharper.
Today, he also seemed to have attracted the notice of the minister himself. In fact, as everyone filed out at the end of the roundtable, Minister Darville said,
“Lords Lamara and Ferrorum, may I request you stay for a minute longer?”
Ardghal bit his cheek to keep his face from revealing any emotion. He nodded, and sat back down, untucking his dark hair from behind his ears so that he felt minutely less exposed. Aculeo took the seat right beside him. The minister stared both of them down.
“There was an incident,” he said, “two nights ago, in the capital prison.”
“What sort of incident?” Ardghal asked, voicing just the right amount of concern and no more.
“Evidently,” the minister replied, “an escape attempt. Based on details surrounding the location of the cell and the identity of the inmate, Knight Commander Rafati predicts the search radius should not extend far past city limits.”
Inmate, Ardghal’s thoughts echoed. What a funny little epithet for him.
Ardghal’s fellow duke opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted almost immediately by Minister Darville adding, “I regretfully am not authorized to answer any questions about the security breach, and the Emperor asks that you do not write to either himself or Commander Rafati for more information at this time, unless you are contacted first. There is no projected risk to any of your citizens; the reason you are being given this notice is so that you are not caught by surprise at the increased authorized military activity around the city in the near future.” He pulled out two sealed, stamped scrolls and handed one to each duke. “Additionally, you are hereby instructed to instate a mandatory curfew from sundown to sunup, and pass this information to all myrmidon captains within your territories. With all hope, this search will not be particularly time consuming, and public life shall return to normal within the next several days.”
Lord Lamara frowned in such a way that the mustache on his upper lip looked like a contorting caterpillar. “Sir, with all due respect, a curfew would drastically shorten the hours my farmers have to plow their fields, and the melon harvest is still ongoing. Plants could rot in their fields if-”
“The melon harvest will simply have to wait,” Minister Darville interrupted again. “This is a matter of national security, and His Holiness’ word is law.” He turned to Ardghal. “Are there any concerns you wish to submit at this time?”
“No, sir,” Ardghal said.
The minister stood and started towards the door. “You are both dismissed.”
Ardghal could feel Aculeo’s displeased stare on the back of his head the entire way out of the building.
Ardghal used the open afternoon to meet with the guard captains of each city district and disseminate Minister Darville’s orders. He started from the Oasis District nearest to the citadel, and worked his way west through the bustling Grand Bazaar and the plebeian Sand Basin, where much of the city’s working class lived.
It was the Captain at this very last stop that said something interesting to Ardghal. She was a middle-aged woman of broad build, with sun-darkened skin and a solemn face. When Ardghal had mentioned that there would be more knights in the city, she’d pursed her lips and asked, “Which kind?”
“It was not made entirely clear to me by Minister Darville,” Ardghal answered, apologetically. “Perhaps both. But considering the order came at the guidance of Commander Rafati, I’d assume that you’ll see more of the ground forces than the wyvern-riders.”
She sighed. Ardghal rolled his eyes in sympathy. The Everlight Dominion had an unusual security structure, in that the national guard was divided up into three distinct cohorts: the Myrmidons, who served as local law enforcers, security, and investigators; the Wyvern Knights, the oldest and most uniquely Kahsran branch, who patrolled the edges of territories and the wilderness between on the backs of wild-tamed, flying serpents; and the Imperial Knights, whose structure was still so new that they had only recently acquired a unique designation of their own beyond “knights.” Under the last emperor’s rule, dukes had been permitted to maintain private troops of knights and squires and use them however they saw fit. In light of the revolution, the new emperor saw fit to centralize Kahsra’s knightly ranks, for efficiency and easier distribution of resources… and to be able to keep a closer eye on them. It did not take a wise man to see why the leader of a government founded upon revolution would not trust the nobles beneath him to control privately hired armies.
This did, however, present the issue of what to do with all these heavily armed and newly united knights, now that there was no longer a war going on. Ardghal had noticed a discomfort among his myrmidons whenever the knights got involved in city activity, or otherwise “stepped on their toes.” He chose to play to the myrmidons’ sympathies whenever the ministry made him their messenger, with just enough calculated complaints and eye rolls to say I’m on your side.
“We’ll manage,” she said, though not without a hint of irritation.
“I’m sure you will,” Ardghal responded. “I suspect this will be over very soon, and your forces will be able to resume normal operations. I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you in the meantime.”
“And this was for… what, an attempted prison break?” the captain said.
“Allegedly,” Ardghal said, repeating the exact story he’d been given and staying careful to add no more detail, “there is an escapee somewhere within city limits, there is little to no risk of harm to common people, and yet until this individual is found, no one is to be outside past sundown.”
The captain nodded slowly and furrowed her brow.
“I wonder if this has to do with the whole ‘Shadow Dynasty’ thing.”
“The… what?” Ardghal had never heard the term before.
“Ah, yeah.” The captain walked over to her desk and unlocked a drawer, from which she removed a folded black piece of cloth. “There’s this fringe movement spreading around – people who don’t agree with the church of Sarenrae’s leadership.” She unfolded the cloth to reveal that it was a small flag, upon which had been stitched a symbol in red. It almost looked like the red-and-gold swirling sun of the Carolingian Dynasty, derived from the church of Pelor, but… not quite. It was sharper; more geometric, and the center of the sun was missing, like a rudimentary eclipse. “We’ve seen this symbol graffiti’d on a few public structures, especially in certain lower neighborhoods. A few residences my men have searched for unrelated charges have had flags like these, hung on interior walls.”
“Pelorian nationalists?” Ardghal asked.
“No,” the captain responded. “Not as far as we can tell. It might have started that way – the imagery is certainly there – but we’re not exactly going around arresting people on their way out of Pelor’s temples, are we? The faith isn’t illegal. The church has no reason to hide.”
“Then what relevance does this hold to the current… fugitive?” Ardghal ignored the guilt he felt, saying the word.
“Well,” she said, looking down at the flag laid out on the desk, and then up at Ardghal, “these… ‘Shadow’ dynasty affiliates, based on the information we know that isn’t just hearsay, largely seem opposed to theocracy in general. It’s a reactionary movement. Our prison system isn’t all too connected to the imperial one, but I could very easily imagine the palace dungeon, which currently houses every war criminal on this side of the country, becoming a breeding ground for that kind of radicalization. No one has openly claimed allegiance to this… group, and no crimes have been committed in its name yet, so we don’t have the grounds to do a formal investigation, but it’s still something I’ve got my men keeping their eyes on.”
She stopped, as if finished with her theory, but the way she bit her lip and her eyes darted around made Ardghal think there was something she wasn’t telling him.
“And what do your men know in the way of hearsay ?” he asked, with a layer of casual disinterest he hoped didn’t read as performative.
“There are whispers,” she said. “Rumors that some of the Carolingian loyalists, the ones who got away, are behind all this. Some say they’ve got a hideout somewhere past the desert, where they’re continuing some of the old practices. Perhaps our fugitive was trying to find their way there.”
“I see,” Ardghal nodded. “Is there any more?”
She shook her head no. “Not that I would present to you as fact, your lordship.” She bowed to him – a deep gesture of reverence, bending from the waist. He gave a shallow, but intentional, bow to her in return.
“The curfew goes into place tonight. Do you think your men can handle this?”
“Of course, sir.” She began to fold the flag back up and tuck it back into the drawer. As Ardghal turned to leave, the guard captain said, “May the Everlight bless you and your path.”
He mumbled a response, but his mind was elsewhere.
Ardghal had the beginning of an idea forming in the back of his mind.
Chapter 6: It All Falls Apart
Chapter Text
When Master Ferrorum had asked Devon to cover for his absence while he went out into the city in search of information on “The Shadow Dynasty,” he hadn’t known what to make of it. It sounded like the name of a conspiracy theory, which seemed very unlike Ardghal to take interest in. At the same time, Devon knew he would get no more explanation on the subject than Ardghal was willing to give. The young duke, despite his public-facing role and eloquent, confident persona, was immensely private with his inner thoughts and plans – he always had been, for as long as Devon had known him. Watching him grow up from an introverted, introspective nervous boy into Lord Ardghal Ferrorum, Duke of Eastern Kyi’nin , had been like watching in real time the process of a caterpillar cocoon itself and emerge as a moth: still made of the same substance, but entirely, irreversibly different from what it had been before.
Every so often, though, Devon would catch glimpses of him alone, guard down in the privacy of his own home, and think, Ah, there’s that caterpillar. The crease that formed between his eyebrows when he was thinking; the sound of his slippered feet pacing the halls at night when he was too restless to sleep; the delight and care he took in little tasks like decorating and organizing his books. Some things never change. Which is why Devon knew, whatever Ardghal was planning, he was not doing so lightly. Best not to interfere.
He’d been making progress with the child. Isaac (as Devon called him in his head but never dared to say aloud) was beginning to relax in his presence. Devon had a certain skill for reading people; he’d picked up that young Isaac had a habit of coughing when he was startled, and sucking his thumb when anxious or bored – a habit peculiar for a child of his age (by Devon’s calculations, about the age most children could recite multiplication tables and attend temple services without a chaperone). In more ways than one, Isaac seemed developmentally stunted. Devon did his best not to think about the restrictive conditions that might have led to such a delay. But every time he brought food in for the boy, delivered him freshly laundered clothes (most of which had once belonged to Devon’s own children), or escorted him on a quick trip to the washroom, he could sense Isaac’s guard coming down, bit by bit. He stopped flinching every time the door was opened. His nervous tics settled down. On the seventh night, he’d even spoken briefly.
Devon had been making the bed (a job usually designated to one of the younger house maids, but circumstance required him to do himself) with fresh blankets just after sundown, and Isaac had been watching him silently from his place on the floor in a far corner near the room’s singular small window, when unexpectedly, the boy said,
“Can you tuck me in?”
It was so faint, Devon had wondered for a moment whether he’d imagined the voice outright, but no; when he turned around, little Isaac was looking up at him expectantly with those bright sunburst eyes of his.
“Into bed?” Devon clarified. Isaac nodded.
He couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face. He patted the pillow and gestured for Isaac to lie down, which he did with surprising enthusiasm. This is progress, he thought. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and began to crease the edges so that the young boy would be wrapped snugly in his cocoon, when the door creaked open behind him.
“ What in the world– ”
Lady Bridget Ferrorum stood at the door, with a look of utter shock in her eyes.
The moment Ardghal Ferrorum arrived home, he knew he was in trouble.
Not the normal sort of trouble that chased him home and sat restlessly in his lungs for hours after he’d locked the front door behind him, nor the kind of trouble that began with the sound of tinkling chimes and the swirling of clouds behind his eyes when he closed them for bed, but a very real, very tangible kind of trouble that came to him in the form of his wife’s very angry hands grabbing him by the shoulders and steering him toward the stairs that led up to their private quarters.
“Bridget!” he exclaimed, “what’s gotten into y-”
“You have a lot of explaining to do,” she hissed into his ear as they reached the landing of the staircase.
“You shouldn’t be walking so much,” he protested. “Not in your current state. Here, if you have something to discuss we should do it down-”
“I’m fine .” She cut him off once again. The tone in her voice told him that there was no point in arguing further. Wordlessly, he let her lead him up the stairs and into their bedroom, and shut the door behind them.
Ardghal had suggested they talk in his office. Bridget had refused. Aside from the fact that his work office only had one chair, and like hell was she going to stand while she was carrying around an extra twenty five pounds from her very imminent baby, Bridget felt the unshakeable urge that she had to maintain control if she was going to get a serious answer out of her husband. He had a tendency to only answer Bridget’s questions with as much information as he deemed was worth her knowing; this was true of everything from household renovation plans, to letters he was writing to the imperial minister he talked so often with, to trip itineraries when they traveled.
For the longest time, Bridget had accepted this as the way things were. She’d never been married before, of course, and especially had never been married to a noble lord. Her family had owned a little tailoring business in the southwest of Q’in - the sorts of people who never would have brushed elbows with anyone from the ruling class. The world Ardghal had lived his whole life in was utterly foreign to her, and she wanted, truly wanted to believe that leaving the affairs of the political sphere would mean she didn’t have to make as many adjustments to her life, and could sleep free of worries. Ardghal would handle everything. He’d promised her.
It had only taken her five years to realize how wrong she’d been. Their picturesque seaside mansion was far enough away from town that it was impossible to travel there on foot, and whenever Ardghal was using the carriage, she’d be left home alone. With cleaning and cooking staff to handle the household affairs, her days felt long and empty. She had few friends to write to, didn’t connect well with the other duchesses and wives of Ardghal’s associates, and her parents had moved far enough north that traveling to visit took two days at a minimum. Despite living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, and sharing the same hours, Bridget felt like she knew less about her husband’s life than she had when she’d met him. He worked late hours, but never gave her more than a basic sentence or two telling her what he was doing. He never consulted her or asked her for advice on anything, personal or professional. He’d encouraged her to just take care of yourself; you don’t need more stress when we’ve got a baby on the way. But somewhere, something had shifted. In the last month, he’d been quieter than usual. In the last week, he’d been almost entirely absent.
She’d hear him coming in the front door long after she’d gone to bed, and he’d be gone again by the time she woke up. On the scant occasions when they were both home, he flinched whenever her footsteps approached. If she tried to enter his office, he’d meet her at the door, blocking her entry. If he was holding a book, he’d snap it shut the moment she approached. This was more than normal work stress; it was beginning to feel like she was sharing her home with a stranger, and Bridget would be damned if they had this conversation in his office – his domain.
And so, they’d ended up in the bedroom. She’d locked the door behind them, and sat down on the edge of the bed so she could rest her legs. Ardghal chose to take a seat on the upholstered stool near Bridget’s vanity, perching somewhat uncomfortably and not meeting her eyes.
She waited for him to start talking. Perhaps predictably, he did not. She huffed impatiently, and said,
“Ardghal?”
He looked up at her, then, with a guarded expression. Still, he said nothing.
“Would you care to explain to me,” Bridget continued, “why tonight I found Devon in our guest room, playing nursemaid for a child I have never seen before ?”
“Well, why were you in the guest room?” he deflected. “I’m quite sure I had the entire staff informed that the floor was faulty, and no one was to enter until I could call for a stonemason to repair it.”
“ Answer the question, Ardghal. ”
He sighed. “Bridget, I-”
“If you’re about to tell me I ‘shouldn’t worry,’ don’t, ” she snapped.” I’m sick of being left in the dark!” She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, biting her tongue to keep from yelling at him further.
She expected Ardghal to argue. Deny. Laugh it off, and wave the whole topic away with his hand. What she didn’t expect was the way that his shoulders dropped, and his expression shifted to one of… sadness?
“You’re right.”
He said it quietly, in a voice more meek than she’d ever heard from him before. His eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, looked incredibly weary in that moment. This was not the face of Lord Ferrorum, who she’d watched deliver speeches at galas and parties, who’d signed treaties and been sworn into service before the throne of Emperor Lothair himself – this was an Ardghal she hadn’t seen since they were both teenagers, when they’d received the news that his father had died of a heart attack in the night, leaving him a fortune and the deed to his land, but no guidance on how to move forward, and no chance to say goodbye. Back then, she had wrapped him up in her arms and let him fall into her, distraught and overwhelmed but unable to bring himself to cry. Looking at him now, seeing that same distress, she felt some of her anger melt away and turn into worry. But before she would comfort him –
“I still need an answer.”
Ardghal conjured up a weak smile. “I don’t suppose I could ask you to come to my office, could I?”
“No,” Bridget confirmed, gently but firmly.
He stood up slowly. “I promise I’ll explain everything, right now , but,” he moved to the door and placed his hand on the knob, “it’s a longer story than you’re probably imagining. I need to fetch something, to show you.”
It took little time for him to return. When he did, he was carrying the top drawer of his writing desk in his arms. It was small, but she could hear the sounds of clutter shifting around inside it as he walked.
Funny, I thought he kept his desk neat.
He gently deposited the varnished box on the linen chest at the foot of their bed and pulled his stool over so he could sit right across from Bridget. The first thing he pulled out was–
“Your necklace,” Bridget recognized. Ever since she’d met Ardghal, he’d worn a devotional necklace on a delicate silver chain, tucked into his shirt so that the pendant – a gilded talisman of Sarenrae, with classic characteristic outstretched wings and a circular halo – was hidden from sight. He’d once surreptitiously flashed the necklace to her after she’d cautiously brought up her family’s support of the Everlight army, back during the conflict, as proof of his trustworthiness. She squinted at him, confused. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”
“Did I ever tell you where I got this necklace?” he asked in response.
“From an Everlight temple, I’m assuming.”
He shook his head. “I found it under my pillow one day, after waking up from a dream.”
…Found it?
“When I was around fourteen,” he said. He stopped. Shook his head. Started over. “That’s not the complete truth. I remember the exact moment I found this. I could point to it on a calendar. It was the night before my uncle and aunt died.”
She stopped him, curious, but also impatient. “What does this have to do with the boy-”
“I’m getting there, Bridget,” he interrupted. A beat later, he added, “I’m sorry.”
At least that’s a step, Bridget though. He apologized for something.
“Keep going,” she directed.
“I’ve told you I get… dreams, sometimes,” he said, “that let me predict things before they happen. It’s why I had us move into this house when we did. I knew that if we didn’t establish our claim to my family’s land, the opportunity would be passed elsewhere, and it wouldn’t have turned out well. It’s also why my father and I aided the Everlight rebels in the war.”
“You knew they were fated to win?” Bridget asked.
“I knew that if they didn’t ,” Ardghal said solemnly, “the fallout would be much worse.”
“Divine premonitions?” she asked.
“It comes with the package, for all aasimar,” he answered. “Just like my wings and the limited magic I can perform.”
Once, when Bridget had nicked her wrist on a rotary cutter, Ardghal had placed his hand on the wound and whispered a prayer over it, and the bleeding had miraculously stopped almost instantly. Thinking back, she seemed to remember his other hand reaching for his necklace when he’d done it.
“Every gift I have was given to me to ensure that the future unfolds the way the gods intend it to.”
Something clicked in Bridget’s mind, and a feeling of dread flowed through her.
“Your uncle… was this the one who…?” she trailed off.
“Yes.” Her husband’s face was stony.
She felt terrible, then, for bringing it up, but she had to know.
“You knew it was going to happen, didn’t you?”
Ardghal’s mouth tightened into a thin line as he nodded.
“Oh, love, I’m so sorry.” She reached out a hand to place on his thigh comfortingly, but he stopped her and said,
“There is still more to tell you.” He took her hand in his, and stared at her with such intensity that she began to feel nervous. “But I must ask you before we continue: do you want to know?”
She wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
He glanced at the locked door, then turned back to her and leaned in, lowering his voice. “Bridget, I know at times I have kept things from you, and I want you to know that I have wished every single day that I could confide in you more, but it is a selfish desire. I bear a heavy weight, and once I share it with you, you will not be safe any longer. There are things I will not be able to protect you from, and you will have no deniability anymore. So I am asking you to tell me, do you want to know? ”
She said yes. God, what a fool she had been to do so. Her throat felt tight, and her stomach churned, threatening to send her supper back up the way it had come. No sound was in the air save for the crickets chirping outside in the black of night, and her own unsteady breathing. Ardghal was saying something to her.
“-the last time. And it will never, never happen again, for as long as I live.”
She did not respond. She was too busy looking at the glass bottle she had cradled in her hands, full of a poison potent enough to kill an army. Ardghal, her Ardghal, had used the contents of this very bottle to make half a dozen people disappear, and she had slept through it soundly, none the wiser.
In the drawer, aside from his necklace, were files on every single person he’d been commanded to kill.
Etienne Alsharat , young son of the Sun Army’s top general. His untimely murder had caused the implementation of a citywide curfew and increased military presence throughout Kyi’nin seven years ago, only weeks after Bridget and Ardghal had begun courting. According to Ardghal, the resulting centralization of forces had led to an Everlight victory in the outlands a week later. Zaynab Bennett, a respected merchant on the isle of Innu, whose family had apparently been involved in trafficking of persons to the more fanatical Pelorian sects that still practiced human sacrifice. Henri Darvish , an aging duke whose pockets had been deeper than his morals. Idris Toma , a militia member whose fated desertion would have cost the Everlight forces an ambush, had he lived. Evana Lavoie … oh, God , that had been Duke Lamara’s sister in law, hadn’t it? And there were more – more names than she could keep track of.
It was nearly enough to make Bridget want to push Ardghal out of the room, lock the door to the room, and never leave again.
But then she remembered the little boy, just across the hall.
Ardghal was still talking; something about the knife he’d lost in the child’s prison cell.
“Ardghal?”
“-but I was wearing gloves, so–” he stopped, snapping to attention. “Yes, Bridget?”
“You can stop now.”
Silence. He adjusted himself in his seat.
“Alright.” He reached out a hand to cup her pale face. She flinched as he approached. He seemed to notice, and drew back from her reach.
“I have one more question,” she said, voice coming out thinner than she wanted it to, but the fact that she could get words out at all was a victory she was willing to take.
“I will tell you anything,” he promised.
“What do you intend to do about–” she swallowed, “about Isaac?”
Prince Isaac, she almost said. But it would be wrong to call him a prince, now, wouldn’t it? After all, if Ardghal was truly right about the child’s identity, his family would be dead, and he would have no legal claim to… well, anything.
“I’ve been doing research,” Ardghal said. “There’s a sect of Carolingian loyalists, somewhere in the west.” He took one of the note sheets out of the drawer, flipped it over, and began sketching something on the blank back of the paper. Bridget leaned over, as best she could, to see what he was drawing. It was a symbol that looked like a geometric rendition of the swirling sun from the old Kahsran flag, from the Carolingian era, but with the center fully shaded in - like an eclipse. “They call themselves the Shadow Dynasty , and I have reason to believe they’ve set up a stronghold of sorts on the island of Serataph.”
Bridget did not recognize the name.
“Hold on–” she stopped him. “ Where? ”
“Out west. About thirty miles off the coast.” He drew a rough outline of the Kahsran continent on the paper, and placed a little circle in the ocean near a coastal mountain range just past the western territory of Ojec. “A good hiding place. There are no ports that far south, and nothing but desert for miles and miles. This group… it has adherents as far east as the Sand Basin. Most discuss these things only in private, but some display its flag,” he tapped the sun symbol with his pencil, “in private residences, or graffiti public structures with it in the lower regions of the city. That’s how I was able to find out this much. Most are purely ideological sympathizers, but a few… I suspect I may be able to find a connection back to that island.”
Bridget didn’t like where this was going. Still, she let him continue.
“I’m close, Bridget.” His demeanour had changed. Gone was the hopelessness she’d seen earlier; instead his eyes were bright with energy and conviction. “All I have to do now is follow this trail until I can find someone to come collect the boy, and–”
“No.”
Her interjection stopped Ardghal in his tracks.
“Excuse me?” he asked. It might have sounded like a challenge, were it not for his surprised stutter.
“ No ,” Bridget repeated. “Absolutely not. You admitted it yourself, you know almost nothing about this group – not their ideology, not their operation, not even who might be a member. Ardghal, how can you be sure this offshore loyalist sect, ” she made air quotes with her hands, “even exists? ”
“I…” he hesitated. “I’ve done research, and-”
“Besides, you know what our country was like under Emperor Jacques.” Slavery. Military overreach. Constant, endless, bloody riots. Sacrificial murders. New martyrs every month. They’d both lived through it. The idea that there were people out there, an entire organized group out there, that might want to go back to that… the thought sickened her. She felt irritated, a little bit at Ardghal, but more at the abstract thought of sending a little boy who’d already lived through so much… out to a place like that.
She picked up the paper with Ardghal’s notes in it, and placed it back, face up, in the drawer. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say that there is a government dissident stronghold on a little island on the other side of the country, and let’s say you find someone willing to take him there. We have no way of knowing what intentions a place like that would have with the boy! They might raise him to be their king, but they also might kill him! Or lock him up, or do weird ritual cult things to him, or… who knows? But whatever it is, I doubt he’d get a normal childhood there.”
“Bridget, he’s never had a normal childhood.” He pointed sharply at his own chest. “Might I remind you that I was sent to kill him? If he stays in Kyi’nin, I’m certain I won’t be the last! I’m not trying to give him a normal childhood, I’m trying to make sure he survives. ”
“Would you stop with this I business?” She was shouting.
They both stopped at the same time and looked at the door, realizing that there could still be other people awake in the house, and those people could be listening.
Bridget lowered her voice to just above a whisper and said, “I’m a part of this, too, now. I am not letting you make this decision without me.”
“So what do you suggest we do?” Ardghal hissed.
She considered her options for a moment. Eventually, she landed on,
“I want to talk to Isaac.”
Chapter 7: Night Falls
Chapter Text
When Bridget opened the door, the little boy was gone.
There was, however, a little-boy-sized lump covered with a blanket on the awkwardly placed guest bed against the wall that shifted ever-so-slightly when she stepped inside. A wooden crate with a small glass oil lamp sitting on top had been placed next to it, like a bedside table, and she twisted the knob on the lamp to brighten the room a little bit more.
Having been a babysitter in her teenage years, Bridget remembered every rule she’d learned over the years about interacting with small children. Getting on a child’s level, physically, was important if you wanted to talk to them, so she slowly lowered herself to the floor and sat down. Her back was aching, so she leaned back against the bedside crate for support, and turned her head to address the now eye-level fidgety bundle of blankets.
“Hi, Isaac,” she said warmly.
No response.
“Is that your name?” she asked.
The faint movement stopped, and the little lump held its breath. Bridget turned her head so that she was facing the wall, trying not to intimidate the boy, but kept his hiding spot in the corner of her eye.
“It’s alright if you don’t want to talk. I just wanted to meet you and tell you a little bit about what’s going on.”
A set of pudgy fingers emerged from the blanket and pulled it down, only a centimeter or two. In her peripheral vision, Bridget could see an orange eye peeking out at her. She held back a smile, and continued looking ahead.
“My name is Bridget. My husband and I own this house,” she explained. “You haven’t met him yet, but we’ve both been very worried about you. I heard you were living in a place that wasn’t very good to you before this.”
She ventured out. “Is that true?” The moment she turned her head to look at him, the boy disappeared beneath the blanket again. He did not speak.
“I’m sorry that no one has told you anything,” she said. “That must feel very scary. But I promise you, you don’t have to go back there.” As the words left her mouth, she regretted them. How could she guarantee a safer future to the child? Ardghal would be imprisoned, or worse, if she offered to take him home. She could ask if he had any extended family, but that might be just as much of a dead end. And the alternative Ardghal had proposed…
I won’t allow it.
“You’ve met my butler. His name is Devon. He’s the one who was making your bed earlier tonight. Devon is a kind man. I know he wants to make sure you’re safe and happy. Just like me.” The child stayed silent. Bridget tried a new tactic. “Isaac?”
And the blanket receded. When she looked over, she saw those brilliant eyes again, and there was no mistaking the spark of divinity in them. This time, there was no fear; only curiosity.
“Is there anything I can do for you, right now?”
She watched as he bit the inside of his cheek, eyes darting around, before saying, “Can I use the bathroom?”
“Did…” Bridget cocked her head. “Did Devon not bring you a chamber pot?” Has this little boy been locked in the room all night without a bathroom break?
He nodded, but then shook his head. “It’s not… comfortable. I want to go out of here.”
Ah, Bridget realized. That’s what this is about.
She tried to stand up. It took a while. She was so close to her due date that it felt like she was carrying a bag full of bricks wherever she went, and her back and hips never stopped hurting. Eventually, though, with the assistance of her hands on the bed, she got up and offered a hand to Isaac. Tentatively, he took it, crawling out of the bed.
He was wearing one of Ardghal’s nightshirts. It fell down over his feet and trailed on the floor behind him, but not as much as Bridget would have thought. She’d assumed he must have been seven or eight, based on his demeanor, but his body was more appropriately sized for a child two or three years older than that. The white pajamas, tailored for Ardghal, who despite his height and square shoulders was not very broadly built at all, were just under a foot too long on Isaac, and only a few inches too wide.
As they walked toward the door, Isaac put his thumb in his mouth. Bridget cracked the door open and saw Devon still standing watch outside.
“How may I assist, mistress?” He’d never gotten out of the habit of calling her that, even after she’d insisted Devon just use her first name like he did for everyone else in the house.
“I’m going to take our friend for a bathroom stop, and then we’re going to take a little walk. Can you ensure the grounds are clear, Devon?”
He looked the slightest bit concerned, but nodded. “I’ll see to it right away.”
Bridget walked the little boy down the hallway to the private bathroom used only by herself and Ardghal, and waited outside the door for him.
Has anyone given him a bath yet? She worried. His hair had seemed fluffy and dry, though perhaps a bit oily as well? There was a sort of sheen to it that was very unusual. She decided she’d have to take a better look in the morning when there was more light. For now, though, she waited against the wall until Isaac returned, and then took his hand again and crept down: down the spiral staircase that separated the third floor bedrooms from the guest entertaining areas, down the grand staircase from the second floor balcony to the ground-level foyer, down the flight of marble stairs out the back door of the house, through the hedge garden, and onto a bench by the stone pavilion near the ornate fountain they’d installed several years prior, where she and the child could rest in the warm night air.
“How are you feeling?”
The boy was speechless. He was looking up at the sky as if he’d never seen it before, entranced by the constellations flickering in and out from behind wispy summer clouds.
All at once, Bridget wanted to hug him, to guard him, and to leave him be, so that he could appreciate the wonders of the free, open sky, for as long as his heart desired. She sat still, letting him drink it all in. It made her heart feel warm and she could not help the smile that crossed her face.
Then, the baby kicked. It wasn’t the first time, far from it, but the sensation made Bridget bring a hand up to her stomach and rub it gently, feeling a momentary connection to the little boy or girl she had yet to meet.
The motion made Isaac look over at her.
“What’s wrong with your belly?” he asked, staring openly at her baby bump.
“Oh,” Bridget explained, “I’m pregnant.”
He looked confused. It made Bridget want to giggle. She held out her hand to him, and he let her guide his little hand onto her stomach. His eyes widened as he felt the flutter of the baby’s movement through her dress.
“I’m going to have a baby soon,” she explained. “Sometimes I can feel my baby moving inside me. It makes me excited, because it means I’m going to meet them soon.”
Isaac looked concerned. “Does it hurt?” he asked in a meek voice.
“Not at all,” Bridget said. Not in the way you think, she thought. The weight had altered her posture, and her lower back was sore more often than not. Sometimes she still threw up in the mornings. It was hard to get comfortable while she was sleeping, and she often woke up feeling sticky with sweat, and her feet were swollen enough that her normal shoes felt uncomfortably tight. On top of it all, the stress of her child being so soon to enter the world, right in the middle of a very unexpected conflict with her husband, and when another child was right there who also needed her care and attention, made her heart ache terribly. She was worried. She expected she’d be relying on the grace of the Goddess to get through the next few weeks.
But what she said to Isaac was, “A child is a wonderful thing, and children are meant to be loved. And when I feel mine kicking me,” she squeezed Isaac’s hand gently and then let go, “I like to think it’s my baby saying I love you too.”
Isaac looked very deep in thought. After a nod, and a few more moments of thought, he said, “How is your baby going to come out here?”
That did make her laugh. “Why, the same way your mother had you."
She regretted it the moment she’d said it.
“Or,” Bridget tried to save herself, “um, I don't know if she ever... told you... before...” She faltered, awkwardly, about to apologize, when the child said-
“No.”
And then he spoke again.
“My mama died.” His face was totally blank, but as he sat cross-legged on the bench, he began rocking back and forth.
“Oh, honey…” Bridget pulled the child into a hug. Isaac hugged back, gently, as if he was afraid Bridget might be hurt if he held on too hard. He did not cry, and he said no more after that, but despite being just a little bit too big to fit there easily, he sunk into Bridget’s arms and let her rock him back and forth, whispering words of comfort and humming soft lullabies, until the world felt still and everything seemed like it might be alright.
Upstairs, Ardghal watched. When Bridget had gone to speak to their unplanned houseguest, he’d left the living area entirely and had gone upstairs to his office, hoping to distract himself by re-filing the papers he’d left strewn across the bedroom. Once that was done, he set about cleaning up his desk. Reorganizing his filing cabinets. Worriedly wondering whether he should have installed locks on the cabinets when he’d bought them. Eventually, he devolved into a feedback loop of stress, as he did on occasion when he had a lot of backed-up problems to solve and very little avenue to act on them. Usually, Bridget got him out of the loop. Tonight, he’d just have to figure something else out.
He stepped out onto the balcony to get some fresh air, and noticed the shape of his… his wife? Out in the back garden, walking back towards the house. Panic struck him when he saw that the child was with her, out in the open air, but he filed that away to be dealt with later. Any more stress, and he thought his soul might fly right out of his body.
Ever since the incident in the citadel, Ardghal had felt odd. It wasn’t guilt; that he knew. He’d done all he could, and didn’t entertain for a moment the possibility that he should have acted any differently. Uncertainty wasn’t right, either. Nor was anger, fear, or any of the other abstract emotions that he knew were swirling beneath the surface of his anxiety, where he could see but not touch them. Something just felt… off, deep in his chest, and he couldn’t shake it.
He decided to take flight. Ever since he’d first gotten his wings as a teenage boy, gifted by his divine patron just after his first mission (one so gruesome he dared not think of it, let alone speak of it aloud) had concluded, Ardghal had grown a love of being airborne. He could only fly for a short time before the magical exertion of maintaining corporeal wings forced him to rest and dismiss them, but it was a beautiful thing; being aloft in the air. The rush of wind against his face; the endless, open sky around him; the comfort of knowing that he could just get away if he ever felt the urge to, until he felt grounded enough again to return home. Once, on the day they first were engaged to be wed, Ardghal celebrated the surge of joy he and Bridget both felt by wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her up into the clouds, free-falling as they kissed and wept tears of joy, and ultimately landing softly back on the ground, with a heart that felt light as air.
His wife-to-be had shrieked the entire time, and later, she had told him she was dreadfully afraid of heights, and they both had laughed as he promised to never make her fly with him again. She’d kissed him, and had promised in return that there would be many more good days to come for them both, safely on the ground.
The memory still made him feel warm.
Ardghal climbed up onto the railing of the third-floor balcony, balanced on the balls of his feet, and prepared to take off. Just for a little while, he told himself, just until I’ve cleared my head.
He placed a hand on the Everlight pendant strung around his neck and willed his misty, white-feathered wings into being. The faint light of summoning magic dappled across his skin as he prepared to launch. He flapped them once, twice, and-
KSSHHHHHH!
A sound like shattering glass erupted behind Ardghal. A glimpse of something in his peripheral vision that looked like a shower of hail made him whip his head around instinctively. Shock rippled through him, and he lost his balance. His whole body wobbled. His arms flailed as he struggled to keep his footing. The ground beyond the balcony below him was so, so far down below him. He was going to fall.
Just before he plummeted over the railing to his death, Ardghal threw himself backward and toppled, instead, back onto the balcony.
CRACK!
The back of his head hit the stone floor, and the pain of impact knocked the wind out of him. All he could do was lie there and gasp for air. When his vision stopped swimming, Ardghal rolled onto his side, and saw that the balcony was littered with discarded feathers, slowly disintegrating back into mist. And his wings… oh, his wings…
They were nothing more than bone.
Spudserific on Chapter 1 Tue 22 Jul 2025 02:27AM UTC
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halfd3af on Chapter 3 Sat 30 Aug 2025 04:15AM UTC
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halfd3af on Chapter 4 Sat 30 Aug 2025 04:20AM UTC
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halfd3af on Chapter 6 Sat 30 Aug 2025 04:38AM UTC
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