When Raeca saw Brendis again, he was dressed in robes from the desert, and for once, he wasn’t bleeding.

On reflex, she went for her growing collection of poisons, and their antidotes. If she couldn’t see what was wrong with him, there had to be something she couldn’t see.

“Raeca, Raeca I’m fine,” he laughed and caught her hand before she could make it to the locked little cabinet. She stared at him, now more alarmed, because ‘I’m fine’ on Brendis almost always meant ‘I’m dying but don’t want to admit it’ and she didn’t want to have to save his life today. “Really! I don’t have anything worse than bruises; I promise!”

Raeca eyed him suspiciously, because the only time she ever saw Brendis was when he was halfway through Death’s door, and she had to drag him back to the living.

He didn’t look injured.

When she cast her magic around him like a net, she discovered several new charms. They ‘felt’ like Haroun, which was surprising, but good to see. Fortunately, it turned out that Brendis really was alright. His bruises were minor at the worst and looked very much like someone had thwapped him with a staff at least once.

Haroun, no doubt.

And to think the pair of them thought they were enemies. Really. Men.

“You really are fine,” she said with some surprise. “Not that I’m not glad to see, you, but why are you here?”

“I brought presents!” he said cheerfully and pulled several small wrapped packages out of his pack. “You’re always taking care of me and you never ask for anything in return.”

Raeca tilted her head and took the presents as he pressed them into her hands. When she pulled away the wrappings, she discovered bottle upon bottle of rare desert herbs and oils. The sort of thing that never came as far north as their own capital, let alone her little village.

“These are worth their weight in rubies!” she yelped when she started reading labels and realized precisely what he had brought her. “Brendis, I can’t accept this!”

“Of course you can,” he said, and took the precious bottles out of her hands to be put away. “You’ve put me back together a dozen times and managed to get me and ‘Roun talking again for the first time in centuries.”

“That was you,” Raeca protested, still staring at the wealth of new components and medicines. “And I’m a healer. I take care of everyone who comes through my door.”

“Indeed you do,” Brendis agreed, smiling softly at her in a way that did something funny to her heart. “But I don’t know anyone who could scold me, and chase Haroun around even knowing who he is, and come out of it having somehow healed the bond between us.”

“The only thing wrong with your bond was you both being stupid,” Raeca told him bluntly as she herded him outside towards her garden and the warm, sweet-scented herbs that grew there. Beyond the garden she had four hives of bees, all buzzing excitedly at the height of summer. “If you stopped to talk it out, you would have settled things years ago.”

“But we didn’t,” Brendis persisted, and held a basket for her as she cut handfuls of herbs for drying. “I don’t even know if we could. It seemed that every time we tried, every time we were somehow on the same side, something would happen to rip us apart again.”

“Haroun says it’s Calliope doing it,” Raeca pointed out, her hands full of heady rosemary and lavender. “I don’t know what to think.”

“I don’t either,” Brendis admitted quietly, and sat nearby as she worked. “I wish I could say I don’t believe him, but there are things… my memories aren’t straight, you know? I remember people, but I don’t always remember when I met them, or which life it was, but Calliope, she always knows.”

“Does she remember before you?”

“Usually. It’s the prophesy that triggers the memories of Before. The first time we hear it, we remember. Because she’s always born noble, she hears the songs and legends before I do. I don’t know about Haroun.”

“He carved a message to himself in the Mage Academy.” Raeca actually knew the answer to that one. She was well into Haroun’s journals. “For when he starts his magical training. Everyone reads it, but the message only means something to him. As soon as he sees it, he knows where to find his journals.”

“Figures that he’s so organized about it,” Brendis complained, but he was smiling. “I should have known. Anyway, I’ve never asked Calliope how she does it. She gets… very uncomfortable when we talk about our prophesy. I learned to leave it alone.”

“That doesn’t seem healthy,” Raeca murmured. “But you aren’t sure? About what he says I mean?”

“It was one thing he said that struck a little too close to home,” he said, and came over to help when Raeca started binding bundles of leaves with string to dry. “About Calliope.”

“Oh?”

“That she’s jealous.”

“Oh.”

That really wasn’t a surprise, honestly. Raeca had seen it for herself in the possessive way the queen talked about Brendis.

He was always hers, and the queen didn’t hesitate to make that point painfully, pointedly, clear.

Even to Raeca. Especially to Raeca, in fact, for all that she came at the topic more delicately than she could have.

It was true that Raeca was in love with Brendis. He was easy to love, especially like this, calm and cheerful in her garden.

“Well,” she said, and let that thought go into the gentle summer breeze. There was no point in hanging up her hopes on a hero who already had a Destined Love. “Can you ask her? I mean, she wants out of your prophesy too, right?”

“I don’t know,” Brendis said quietly, and stole a few more ties for the herbs. “She’s never been… I don’t know. The Temple worships her, and she always seems to hesitate when the prophesy comes up.”

“You think maybe she likes the power?”

“I think I can’t say that she doesn’t and that’s what makes me wonder. She’s killed Haroun often enough, and never showed him mercy, even when she could have.”

“Is immortality that heady?”

That got a snort of laughter out of him, and he shrugged off his long robe. “I don’t think so, but I’m usually born poor, and spend most of my time dying for the cause. You know the oldest I’ve ever been was thirty-four?”

Only six years older than he was now. Barely old enough to settle down and have some peace. “Really?”

“Mm. I outlived the other two that time. It was three— no four, lives ago. I don’t even know who died first. One of them managed to collapse the castle, and they both died before I could get to them.”

Raeca looked down at her herb-stained hands and let herself grieve for them. All three of them. No one deserved that kind of tragedy. “But you lived?”

“I made it eight years,” Brendis said, and smiled fondly at the memories of that life, years long past. “Eight years of quiet. Just hunting monsters. The occasional bandit troop. I built a house.”

“Is it still there?” It had been a long time, but it was possible. “Your home?”

“No.” his smile got sad around the edges again. “By the time I came around again, it was gone. Burned, like all the other places I’ve loved.”

Like death, fire haunted him. Sometimes, especially in their earlier lives, it was Haroun’s work.

Now she was beginning to wonder. Too many things just didn’t add up. If it wasn’t Haroun killing Brendis, it had to be someone else, and there was only one person who had the very long memory needed for that sort of grudge.

There were people in this world who could fight and win against immense odds.

Raeca wasn’t one of those. She was one of the people who helped her hero stay sane while he battled against evil and fought to find some sense of home.

Some battles couldn’t be fought with a sword.

“Come inside,” she said, rather than voice that particular thought. If she said it out loud, it would be real, and if it was real… “I was planning to make soup, but if you go get me a bird, I’ll make us a proper dinner.”