“It may be true that the only thing worse than war is what comes after.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

How many days had passed? Enough that the moon was no longer dark at night, but bright enough to light the water that fell in the empty window of Silver’s room, and to illuminate the mosses in the trees outside. Enough that her world, at first fuzzy and incomprehensible when she opened her eyes to the stinging brightness of midday and the voices and faces of the people that passed in and out of her room, had become clear and distinct once more.

Cara told her she had slept for most of a week. Sori, Hiyein, and Ren came to her room so soon after she woke up that she was sure the dragons must have called them. They told her that everyone had begun to doubt that she would ever wake up. They were not joking. There were shadows under Sori and Hiyein’s eyes. In Hiyein’s case, shadows accentuated by a lengthwise scar that puckered the edges of his lip and nearly cleaved his face in half; shadows that deepened when Ren had to help lift him to bear weight on what remained of his left leg. Sori laughed sadly. Too many farewells, she said. Too many tough decisions. Too many friends that they would never see again.

“Thank the keliarn’s stars,” Sori had said, hugging Silver so tightly she was afraid for a moment that her ribs might break again, “at least one of you made it through.” Only Ren seemed to see that Silver was not quite sure if she was thankful or not.

Illian was dead.

He was dead because of her.

But somehow, Silver could not bring herself to cry with three of her friends in the room. She also could not bring herself to smile, either, so she remained in a strange, halfway state, a stranger looking in on conversations that never made it quite as far as her heart. That did not change after they left. The wolf was her specter, always by her side, and she could not look at the beast without understanding how much it would have hurt for Elorian to lose her. It was the same for Seijelar, the same for Bek, when he came to look in on her. There was a look in his eyes she did not understand, but he did not question her immediately. That may have been because Cara shooed him away when Silver started to pale and sway.

So she was left in silence with the wolf, trying to digest everything that had happened without sharing her struggle. She was petrified of remembering the moments leading up to Illian’s death, and horrified by the thought of forgetting them. He had died so she could live. She should have been grateful. Overjoyed. There should have been a radiant sense of triumph buoying her up above the atrocities she had committed to stay alive.

Instead there was a cold, empty lump. Guilt. Disgust.

Which of them, exactly, should have lived? Cevora needed Illian. Silver had needed him, to return to her own time. Who, exactly, needed her? How many lives had Illian saved? Maybe just as many as she had taken. It was with a sense of morbid duty that she conjured up the crystal-clear images of all she had done while the searing magic coursed through her veins, her fingers wrapped around Izathral’s hilt, and her heart beating in time to her movements.

How many people died?

The words echoed in her mind, again and again as the images replayed.

How many people did I kill?

The question haunted her as she dozed, clawing up from the depths of unconsciousness time and again amidst images of blood and black smoke, surrounded by the ring and clash of metal, and by voices that deafened her in the silence. Nightmares or reality; Silver was not sure which she preferred.

That first night, she drove the wolf out. She told Seijelar to turn away anyone who came to see her. For a while, she wanted to be alone, because she was too exhausted to hide her tears or her disgust. That was what she told herself, at least. The truth was that she still did not cry. She sat, rigid, in the darkness, staring at the little bit of moonlight that crept in through the open window. Being alone brought her relief because it forced her to remember everything she wanted to forget. It was punishment enough to detract a bit from her guilt.

Come morning, she rose, dressed, and washed, meeting Cara and Elorian at the door to the room in silence. The normally cheerful girl looked haggard, and Silver’s expression did not help things. Cara chatted at her a bit as she ascertained that Silver was healing well, but Silver could not bring herself to say anything in return.

The daylight hours, it turned out, were torture. Whenever the sun reflected off of anything, Silver recalled crimson flames and skies heavy with black smoke. If one of the dragons happened to pass by, she recoiled from the gleam of their scales. When people called to one another, even in the distance, she jumped and felt her magic tingle through her. And as soon as she felt that magic, even the faintest inkling of it, she became terrified, and banished it to the deepest, darkest corners of her heart.

So, she did her best to leave it all behind.

She fled to the outskirts of Libertia, far from the crowds and the noises at its more modern heart. The wolf and Seijelar both curled up protectively at her back, silent in the way of the beasts. They did not speak to her. They did not force her to speak.

Ren and Sori came to find her, eventually, and neither of them spoke right away, either. They simply stared down at her, and Silver back at them.

“Avalone said we would find you here,” Sori finally observed, staring at her warily. Silver stared back, feeling the ebb of an insidious apathy. “I was—” the woman started to say something else, but Ren put a hand on her shoulder, shaking his head slightly.

“Let us join you, Silver,” he said simply. It was less of a request than a statement, but Silver did not care. He seemed to take no answer as good enough, settling in the dirt nearly a foot from her, with his back up against Seijelar. For once, the crimson dragon made no protest. Sori sat on Silver’s other side, following Ren’s lead, and set a hand on the wolf’s lean back.

Silver did not look at either of them.

There was nothing she wanted to say. The people she wanted to see most in the world were beyond her reach, and Illian was not there to fix the mess she had stumbled into. He would have known what to say to make things right. Now, there was no one left in the world to speak his words to her.

Now, all she wanted was for the silence to drown out the voices in her head.

And for a long while, it did. Neither Sori nor Ren said anything. They simply sat with her, staring into the distance just as she did. Maybe that was why she did not mind too much when Sori finally broke the silence.

“How much do you remember…from when you were unconscious?” When Silver did not respond immediately, the woman tilted her head down, apparently deep in thought. “Bek was looking for you earlier today.”

“I told Seijelar that I don’t want to talk to him,” Silver interrupted before Sori could say more. The woman’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the ground, but Sori did not seem surprised. “I know Ami is dead,” Silver continued, her voice flat, “Ibald was killed in an explosion. Estir lost an eye to the fighting, and Holtson is barely holding on under Sara’s care. Hiyein has been scarred hideously, and our healers’ magic was not enough to save his leg. You will never regain all the dexterity in your right hand. I remember more than I want to, to be honest.”

Sori closed her eyes in pain, most likely thinking what Silver already knew; Libertia had become a city not only of lost souls, but of broken ones.

“It would have been worse if you hadn’t been there,” Sori said after a long moment, “We would have lost so much more.”

For the first time since Sori and Ren had come, Silver turned to look at the woman.

Her world…her heart…overnight, it seemed, everything had uprooted itself, shifted and realigned until nothing made sense anymore. The stars lit up on the ground at night, the sky was red, the moon cast shadows rather than light. She was evil in the eyes of hundreds of people. In an instant, she had ended their lives. No amount of self-hatred, guilt, or remorse could change what she had done. There was no going back. Time could not be rewound, this time, and even if it could, she could not erase the crimes she had committed against herself. And the worst part of it all was that Silver did not feel guilt over killing those people. She felt guilt over losing Illian. Over being alive when he was not. That was it. If anything, she was angry. If only those people had been stronger, if only they had not chosen to stand in her way, she would not have to live with their blood on her hands. It was their weakness that had killed them, and that was something she could not forgive. Not in them or in herself.

“Please, Silver, don’t make that face,” Sori said softly. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, bright in the light of the winter sun. “I’m serious. We were all there. We’ve all done things we might regret for the rest of our lives. But if it wasn’t for you and Cevora and Illian, so many more people we care about would have died before the war ended.”

“You weren’t required at the majority of the meetings between the captains and generals,” Ren said from Silver’s other side, drawing her eyes, “but Sori’s right. Illian had planned for it to take us weeks to take the port city, even if Cevora managed to take the castle. We had contingencies for the king fleeing east, having to hold Altiannia and march through lands held by the king and his allies. At best, we hoped to achieve our peace by summer. If you had not done what you did, hundreds more of our brothers and sisters in the Juran would have been killed before then, to say nothing of the sacrifices of the beast kind. You fought once, for one day, but some of us…have lived so many of those days, and will live so many more. It’s not over, now, but it’s close.”

Silence fell once more, and Silver knew that they were both waiting for her to break it. She did not.

“You’re not alone, Silver,” Sori finally said, letting out a gusty sigh. “I just want you to know that. When I was your age, I thought I was. I’m not trying to belittle you now, I just want you to understand; none of us are strong enough by ourselves to handle something like this. We need each other. Hiyein would have said it if he were here instead of off acting as an escort for our srinn.”

Silver also reached for Elorian, catching the thick fur in the wolf’s ruff. The beast breathed onto her arm, reassuring.

“Sori, Ren, I want to tell you the truth,” Silver said slowly, “about why Illian valued Bek and I so highly. The reality is, we’re not from Atlantis—”

“I knew it. Now we can collect from Hiyein, eh Ren? The two of us were betting Illian had lied—” Sori stopped, glancing sheepishly in Silver’s direction. Silver shook her head slowly. Any other time, she would have smiled. Not now.

“Illian lied for us. Seven hundred years from now, Bek and I will walk into the castle you know as the Grand Castle of Altiannia. We’ll be chasing after the shadow of Zarius, Illian’s dragon, the Zara who tried to kill me multiple times,” Silver said bitterly, “somehow, we’ll survive, badly wounded. And somehow, when we leave that castle, we’ll be here.”

“Here,” Sori repeated, staring at her, “you mean…”

“You are icthuria, time wanderers,” Ren finished for the other woman, giving Silver a hard stare. “It’s so improbable that I want to think you’re lying, but there’s no point in that now.”

“No,” Silver agreed, “there’s no point now. Illian had promised to help us return to our era in return for joining the efforts of the Juran. You see, in our age, there is no Alti. It’s like a myth, a legend that few people even know about. In our past, there’s something called the Great Divide, the moment the beasts say Alti vanished.”

“Surely that was because of the war,” Sori pointed out.

Silver shook her head again, staring straight ahead, towards the heart of Libertia.

“The earthquakes, Sori. The Ruveris Plague. The land of Alti itself is crumbling.”

“But you—” Sori protested.

“Neither of us, Bek nor I, really know the full story behind what happened. We’re also fumbling in the dark, as much as Illian would have liked to believe otherwise.”

“You think this is inevitable,” Ren said heavily, “like the vampires. They’re convinced that Sendelphon’s use of the Stones for his research has doomed us all.”

Silver said nothing. What was there to say? Standing stiffly, she looked back at the two of them. Elorian had risen with her.

“Leave me alone for a while,” she said, trying to care that what she said was probably harsh. “Seijelar…remember what I said about Bek. Don’t tell him where I am.” The dragon blinked at her, and after a moment, turned its great head away.

Neither Ren nor Sori said anything else. They let her go, back towards the gradually darkening city streets, with Elorian trotting along behind her. Somehow, the entire day had passed her by. Silver looked up between the blue-stone buildings to either side of her. There was no dramatic sunset tonight, just a sickly green tinge to the clouds. A chilly breeze filtered down from above, making her shiver.

“There she is.”

Silver froze, hearing the voice she least wanted to hear. Her head jerked forward, staring down the narrow street. Cevora was walking towards her, flanked on one side by Hiyein – his gait made strange by some sort of copper prosthetic that ended in a blunt hook - and one of the captains of the guard, and on the other by Vespar.

“I see you’ve healed well enough,” the new queen said as they drew nearer, stopping several meters away. “Even the scars on your neck are gone.” Silver stared at her mutely, and Cevora fixed her with a diamond-hard, sea green stare. “I have business with you.”

Silver began to take half a step forward, and was surprised when the captain and Hiyein both shifted in front of Cevora. They looked tense, Hiyein refusing to meet her gaze. Silver could tell his gait was not the only thing changed by his new leg; his balance was ungainly as well.

Everything really had changed. The world Silver knew had evaporated with the scarlet fire of her eyes. Now she was a monster.

Elorian growled softly, the sound too loud in the settling evening.

“You have my sincerest thanks, Silver, for everything you have done. When the council has again convened, you will be brought before the court to be honored for your contributions to the Juran and to our peace with the beasts,” Cevora informed her. Silver wanted to say that the two people standing rigidly between them made Cevora’s thanks seem anything but sincere, but she knew when silence was her best option. “You will be extended the honor of joining the kivgha, the most renowned warriors in Alti. They answer only to their srinn.”

“The strong need answer to no other,” the wolf rumbled at Silver’s side. It was probably for the best that no one else understood, except maybe Vespar. His green-tinted eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

“Thank you, Cevora srinn,” Silver finally said. The silence that fell then was palpable. Maybe, she thought, it was just that rare for her to call Cevora by her proper title.

“If you wish to retain Izathral, you will be required to accept.”

For some reason, Silver felt herself smile mirthlessly. So much irony. There was a part of her that would be overjoyed to return the instrument of her torture to the Altians. She never wanted to look at it again. When she started to say as much, however, her breath caught in her throat. Cevora continued regardless.

“Since you were with him at the time of his death, I must ask you, Silver, if Illian made any final requests.”

Silver’s heart sped up, her mouth going dry. That moment was crystal clear in her mind, the rattle of his breath a roar in the narrow, cobbled streets. Hiyein looked desperate to say something to her, but Silver only nodded, squeezing her eyes shut as if that could block out the images in her mind.

“He asked for me to run away, and to tell you he did…something…because of the curse.”

Again, the silence, but it was different this time. When Silver looked into Cevora’s face, she knew that the woman understood Illian’s words.

“Because of the curse…” Cevora repeated, growing pale. “Did he explain, Silver?”

“No.”

There was a part of Silver that wanted to describe how little time there had been. He might have explained, if he had not died before her eyes first. Whatever she felt, though, it had to be a thousand times less than Cevora. She held her tongue. Vespar stepped in for her.

“From what we saw, my srinn, Illian passed quickly. He would not have had time to say much.” Cevora was nodding, carefully expressionless. After a moment, she looked at Silver again.

“You said that you would be my sword, Silver. Can you swear to me that will never change?”

The question caught Silver off guard. “No.” The word was out of her mouth before she had the chance to think about it.

Cevora’s expression darkened. There was no space between them, somehow, for an explanation. Silver should have cared, but she was beyond that already. The two of them were from different times. Ships passing in the night, never to meet again.

“Be careful, Silver. Illian isn’t here anymore to protect you,” Cevora warned.

They stared at one another, Silver with the distinct sense that Cevora wanted to do more than stare, but was not sure if she had the ability to do so. Finally, the new queen turned away. The others went with her, back down the narrow streets. Only Vespar glanced back, his gaze thoughtful.

When they had turned a corner out of sight, Silver slammed the side of her fist into the stone wall beside her, startling a crow from its nest in the abandoned building. The more she loved, the more she destroyed. The more she cared, the more pain she felt. The more she was kind, the more the world rebelled against her.

Zien had been wrong. Silver had been wrong. There was not always light in the deepest darkness. Sometimes, there was just dark and more dark, all the way down to the rotten heart of the world.

“Come on, Elorian,” she muttered, following in Cevora’s footsteps, but carefully taking a circuitous route towards the center of the city. She had a destination in mind, now, but she was a long time in getting there. By the time she began to near the more habitable portions of Libertia, moonlight flooded the cobbles until the seams between them looked as broad as fissures, the cracks like black lace on the trailing skirts of some vampiric apparition. The sky was black as pitch, the moon once more growing fat and full as a dragon’s egg.

But the city came alive around her. There was music, chatter, words that hummed ceaselessly, lost in the background noise of everyday life. The scent of food hung tantalizingly around every corner, thick with spices that no longer felt foreign to her. Time and again, Silver turned down alleys she knew as well as her own home, crossing several of the many water conduits running through Libertia, and passing at least two people, vampire or human, slumped in sleep on the hard cobbles. Soon, she and the wolf roamed the main roads of Libertia.

Lights illuminated the darkness of this street, cleaving the night from below with a series of glowing channels and constantly burning torches whose flames she knew to be magical. Shops had thrown open their shutters to the night crowds. Clerks and sellers leaned out of the recesses in their walls to wave cheery welcome to their customers. Silver did not really understand the Altian economy, but she still admired the brightly colored overhangs the shop owners rolled out in the night, the lights that hung between buildings, shimmering with magical fire, and the other-worldliness of the people who walked with her. She was surprised that more than one of them, whether she knew them or not, called out to her. Silver was too afraid to actually talk to them - either that they would see some evidence of her crimes somehow visible in her eyes, or that they would shy away from her the way Cevora had. Instead, she waved awkwardly and hunched her shoulders, walking faster.

Finally, her booted feet carried her to a building whose window opened onto a shop lined with phials and bottles, buckets, potted plants, flowers, leaves, dried and preserved somethings, charms and generally a great many assorted things that she had rearranged a thousand times.

Sara’s workshop.

It had not been here to begin with. The vampires had moved the old witch after it became apparent that her work involved too many unusual odors, mostly of a kind that kept people awake at night, for her to remain where people slept. Silver recalled Ibald leading a tirade against the woman, one that quickly split the refugees from the outpost when Sara scathingly replied that smoke, oil and charcoal were hardly the perfume of any city. Once, the memory would have made her laugh. Today, Silver nearly choked on it. She was two steps away from the doorway of the shop when she found something else to choke on.

“Dried skunkweed,” she observed.

Elorian seemed less concerned about the smell than she was, but still rumbled blackly, “A thing with such a scent would kill long before it healed.”

“Agreed,” Silver muttered, stepping inside. The sound of bells greeted her; tens of them, strung up along the windows around the shop. Sara turned sharply, glancing first at her, then at the bells. After a moment, she raised a wrinkled hand. Silence fell. Silver raised an eyebrow questioningly, and the old woman clucked her tongue.

“Pay them no mind, Silver. I see our srinn must have found you.”

“How did you guess?” Silver asked dryly.

“Years of worldly wisdom, child, how else? Cara told me you were up and about this morning, and also,” the woman snorted, “that you had better things to do than come see me, hmmm? Can’t imagine you were doing something useful. Now, hmmm, come over here and take a seat. Let’s have a look at that neck of yours.”

“You’re the second person to mention my neck today,” Silver said a bit defensively. Even so, she did exactly what the old witch had demanded of her.

“Tea?” Sara asked, never looking at her.

Silver scowled. “Tea,” she agreed.

The wolf settled beside her, and they both watched as Sara moved from the clay pots of dried plant matter on one side of the shop to a shelf of cups on the other. Surprisingly, she reached to the back, revealing two small, silver cups Silver had not seen before. Silver eyed them as the woman set them out.

“Ibald made these for you?”

“A few weeks ago, yes. Part of an old promise.” Silver met the old woman’s crinkled brown eyes, but Sara merely smiled. “We’ll let that steep a moment, hmmm. Let me see.”

The witch’s cold fingers touched the smooth skin of Silver’s throat, gentle and quick.

“Only a day ago, there was still a nasty wound here. Adrian and Esmi were puzzled by it. Did someone try to strangle you?”

“Definitely not,” Silver said, reaching for her neck herself as Sara moved away, back to the tea. Silver had met the two vampire healers only briefly, but she knew it was rare for them to be puzzled by much of anything.

“Is that so?” Sara said.

Silence fell between them. When the tea was done steeping, Silver held it in her hands, the warmth seeping through the silver cups. They were beautiful in every way. Some of Ibald’s best work, and possibly some of the only work he had ever done outside of weaponsmithing. Sara seemed to read her mind.

“Ibald had a fancy to work with finer metals, once upon a time. Now, Silver, why did you come here tonight?”

“Do you remember what you said to me before, that day when we watched the dragons practicing their flight?”

“Yes, child, I do. A few months could hardly make me forget, hmmm.”

“And yet you know what happened,” Silver said. The witch looked thoughtful for a moment, eyes turned toward a dusty corner of the workshop. After a long moment, she nodded slowly.

“I told you that you would lose dear, dear people, Silver. Illian—”

“I could have saved him, Sara,” Silver interrupted sharply, “I could have, but I was afraid. I hesitated. He died in that moment. Just a second of weakness, and I lost him. Even then, I think I could have—”

“You can’t raise the dead, child.” Sara’s reply cut her off cold, gravelly and harsher than any she had heard from the woman so far. “No one can.” But there was something in her eyes that Sara could not hide, after their months working together. A tiny lie, but it was a lie that filled the workshop. Silver’s eyes crept to the copper bells when one of them tinkled softly, swaying back and forth in the still air of the shop. “Silver,” Sara drew her eyes back breathily, “you can’t.”

“I know I can’t now,” Silver snapped. “I trusted him, just like you said. He died to save me, and I…I can’t forgive that. This world took him from us and I should have stopped it.”

“Drink,” the old woman demanded, lifting her own silver cup to her lips and taking a slow sip. The last thing Silver wanted to do was take a sip of her tea, but the wolf’s cold nose pushed up under her hand, and she glared at the beast as she did so. It did make her feel better.

“Now,” the witch continued, “forgive yourself. We all have moments of weakness. Illian was a strong man, a trained kivgha almost from birth, and the kivgha of our srinn, no less. You dishonor his memory thinking that you could have saved him from his brother, or that he would have wanted you to. If he wanted saving, hmmm, he would have saved himself.”

“So, you’re saying he wanted this instead,” Silver asked, gripping the tiny tea cup a little tighter.

“I’m saying the world turns, with or without us. Not every moment is ours to do with as we wish. And now, Silver, you are a hero to the Juran. We all know you made sacrifices for us,” Sara stated carefully.

“What I was doing was just destroying. Mindlessly,” Silver stated coldly, “Destroying anything because I wanted to get rid of everything. I didn’t care about right or wrong or being a hero. I just wanted…I don’t even know what I wanted.”

“I know.”

Silver paused at the woman’s calm acceptance. Sara slowly lifted her cup of tea to her lips again, and gestured for Silver to do the same. Silver did so grudgingly. Again, she wanted to continue telling the old woman how wrong she was, not drink tea.

“The blood you spilled will stay with you, the way all great and terrible things in our lives stay with us. But you don’t have to live with guilt. Every one of the people you killed knew they put their lives on the line for their srinn. Some knew it better than others, of course, hmmm, but they all knew,” Sara informed her.

“That’s just it, Sara. I don’t feel guilty. I don’t care about them at all. I didn’t care in the moment, and I don’t care now. For the beasts, for the wolf,” she set a hand on Elorian’s broad skull, “it’s normal. But I’m not a beast. For me it’s just…evil.”

“Evil is a tricky thing to define, and I’d say whatever evil you’ve done is, in my mind and the minds of the people in Libertia, subsumed by the greater good. Since you came for my advice, take it to heart, Silver,” Sara wheezed, “Even if our intentions are good, they are selfish. Wishing to save a life or a nation, or to spread our ideals as we did when the Juran overthrew the old kingdom – all of it. Your wish to avenge all those who you have failed is also selfish, but it is a kind of justice, and a kind of heroism, possibly purer than our queen’s desire to have the throne. None of it is evil. You say you’re not a beast, but men were beasts once. As one of the nerske, you know that best of all. So, what are you moaning about, hmmm?”

“I can’t ever erase what I did,” Silver finally said, more softly.

“And why should you? Don’t try so hard to paint the world in shades of black and white. We can’t all be saints. You’re human; nothing more, nothing less.”

“Are you so sure about that? The human part, I mean?” Silver asked uncertainly, leveling her gaze with Sara’s and wincing when the woman burst into a fit of wheezing laughter.

“Oh my, I forget what it’s like to be young. Humanity is a quality of the soul, child, not the body, so I’m quite certain. As sure as I’m a witch and Olrier a vampire, and neither of us the less human for it. Hmmm, now,” the woman coughed softly, “I’ve taken the occasion to meddle.” She turned to look towards the doorway of the workshop, and Silver looked past her. Cara stood just inside the shop. Bek stood in the doorway beside her, clearly having just arrived. He turned to stare into the shop, and Silver’s gaze met his.

“He saved your life. Not for the first time, from what I gather,” Sara said under her breath, collecting Silver’s tea cup with gnarled fingers. “We live too fast to succumb to fear in moments like these.”

She shuffled away before Silver could say anything. Silver settled for frowning at her retreating back, then rising slowly. The wolf came with her.

“Hey,” she said awkwardly as she approached Bek, gesturing towards the open door and hoping he and Cara would get the hint. The last thing she wanted was for Cara and her witchy mentor to eavesdrop on their conversation.

Bek let Silver pass him, glancing back to flash a half-hearted expression of gratitude at the other two. Then he fell into step beside her on the busy streets, still saying nothing. Maybe, like Silver, he did not know quite how to break the silence. Silver could not tell him he was the one she least wanted to see because he knew most acutely how much she had changed. She could not explain that, for the first time, she was not sure that she wanted to return to their time…a whole world of people who knew nothing about a place that had changed her so deeply she could never go back. There was no way she belonged there anymore.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Bek finally said, startling her from her thoughts, “but I do think I know why you avoided me all day.” She glanced at him, daring him to continue. He continued to stare straight ahead. “Nothing about you has changed. From the outside, you look exactly the same. Everything you went through is invisible to anyone who never saw it, and when we leave here, there will be no one left who knows about it. No one will have seen. That hurts, doesn’t it?”

Silver stopped abruptly, and it took Bek half a stride to do the same. He turned to look at her, so confident in what he had said that there was no inkling, in his expression, that he could be wrong. And of course, he was right – so right that she knew he had to feel the same, or have felt the same at some point.

“Why would that make me avoid you?” she asked, though she already knew the answer. He exhaled slowly, looking away from her again.

“I remind you that, no matter what, you have to go back. I remind you that every one of us is alone in the things we’ve suffered, and that for the two of us, that is truer than for anyone else in the world.”

“We’re not alone in anything, Bek.” He half-smiled, and she had the sense he was humoring her. “You want to know the rest of the reason I avoided you?” she asked a bit wearily. “I was afraid you would treat me differently than you did before. Like Zien, after I saved Biarn. Like Cevora, as soon as she saw me.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, bronze eyes narrowing.

“Like you were afraid.”

“Of someone who can’t even put their clothes on properly?” She looked down at her shirt, sucking in a frustrated breath when she realized one of the ties was backwards. “Did you return Izathral?”

Silver fell silent for a moment as she fixed the tie, long enough for them to draw curious glances from a few passersby.

“You couldn’t,” he said for her. Silver did not look at him, unsure what to say, and started walking. This was also something she did not want anyone eavesdropping on. “Why, Silver?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s—”

“I don’t,” she swallowed. “When the time came that I could have returned it, I couldn’t say anything.” And Cevora had misunderstood, in the end. Silver could not continue to fight for her because some day, she and Bek would disappear again. There was no way of knowing when that would happen – intentionally, or by accident.

“Magical artifacts are dangerous things, Silver,” Bek explained carefully, “people lose their minds to them even in our era. Every one of them is different. They draw their victims in myriad ways, but no matter what, in time, make it difficult for those who hold them to differentiate what they want from what the artifact makes them want. The more powerful the artifact, the faster that happens.”

“What I want hasn’t changed,” Silver said.

“Really?” He looked hard at her. “I thought you wanted revenge on the Zara?”

“I already have it. The Zara is Zarius, Illian’s dragon. I know that now. I really did take everything from him, one way or another. It’s sickening,” she said with a grimace.

“Then how can you say what you want hasn’t changed?” Bek pressed.

“Because I’m just starting to remember what I want.”

“That’s not something you start to remember.” He had grabbed her arm, stopping her. Silver glared at him, eyes shadowed.

“I don’t know how much I’ve forgotten. How can you say I can’t start to remember what I wanted once?” she demanded.

“You were a child, Silver. I wanted a marble set when I was seven – what you wanted back then doesn’t mean anything. And I told you, the memories you’ve lost can’t be very—”

“Do you really believe that?” Silver fixed him with a harsh stare, feeling the wolf press up against her; the beast did not like when anyone grabbed her. “I don’t think you do. You know, I was home schooled for three years after my house burned down for the first time. Everyone I know I met in middle school or afterward. I never looked back and wondered how normal any of it was, Bek, until now. I feel like I have to. All the little things have meaning. Why did I spend so much time being afraid of everyone around me? I can tell you, after the fire I was always looking over my shoulder. Why have I always left this space between myself and everyone I meet, waiting for them to betray me? Who betrayed me, Bek? I can’t remember. All I remember is thinking…this isn’t how I remember the world working. Why do I feel like there was more magic once?”

He let her go, expression unreadable.

“Would you be happier if Illian had lived instead of you?” he finally asked. Silver thought the question was harsher than he intended, but Bek did not try to take it back. There was no need for her to think about her answer.

“No. I’m not done with this world yet.”

“Then what did you say to Hess, Silver?” She stared at Bek, saying nothing. He exhaled through his teeth. “Why did you seek him out?”

“I had to,” she said blandly. Bek’s eyes asked the question he could not. “He orchestrated both Illian’s death, and the death of Cevora’s mother. To end it all, he had to die. In the end, though, I failed. I don’t know why he did what he did, or why he killed the king. But you won’t believe me. I see that now. You and Cevora, both.”

Bek shook his head slowly, but Silver was done talking to him. After that, their conversation got no further. Together, they sought out flavorless food and Silver forced it down her throat with water. Seijelar came to her and Skourett to Bek, and she stroked the ridges above the dragon’s eyes and whispered sweet stories that her parents had told her when she was a child, thinking that the dragon was like a child to her despite its massive size. Elorian curled up around her legs, and she knew that Bek listened and did not interrupt. Maybe he even found the same solace in the stories as Silver did; there was not one without a happy ending. Or, as she came to suspect as the night deepened, perhaps he had never heard them.

Eventually, the haze of morning lit the skies above the Issurak. Melancholy proceedings wandered through the cobbled streets; people with strange tools, and with sheets that spared them the sight of those who had fallen in battle. They watched the people pass through the veil of her stories, until finally Silver settled back against Seijelar’s scales and fell deeply asleep.

It was the chill of the descending night that finally woke her. Bek remained nearby, Urias and Vespar cross-legged on the earth around him and his dragon.

“Finally,” Seijelar hissed, exhaling a gust of warm air through Silver’s hair. It was a moment before she noticed that Elorian was comfortably asleep beside her, and that the wolf who sat rigidly at her feet was Faei. Illian’s wolf glanced back at her, flicked its ears in the manner of a cat, and then returned to staring into the night.

“Just like a vampire,” Vespar’s voice carried towards her, and she looked in his direction to find him watching her. Bek and the two vampires stood, dusting themselves off as they came over to talk to her. “Tonight is the burial, Silver,” Vespar said as they approached, “we’ll honor everyone we lost in the fighting, including our allies, the beasts. Olrier sent us to collect you.”

“Stand, little one,” Seijelar said with a snap of her jaws, “It is time.”

Silver stood after a second of consideration, running a hand lovingly over the wolf’s silvery fur to wake it. Elorian sighed. Clearly, guarding her was hard work.

“Dear dragons, would you mind calling the others?” Urias asked, bowing slightly to Seijelar and Skourett.

“It is done,” Skourett rumbled, “they are on their way already.”

“I will carry you this time, fanged ones,” Seijelar huffed so that they all could understand, “You have done me a great service in helping to save this human.” The great dragon’s head came to rest just over Silver’s shoulder. Its breath pressed down over them all, humid and faintly sulfuric.

“You do us a great honor,” Vespar said, bowing. Urias bowed with him, lower than before. Silver climbed aboard Seijelar ahead of them, feeling the beast’s muscles shiver as its spines sheathed.

They did not fly, but walked, slowly, cutting through the tide of foot traffic like great boulders in a stream. People, vampires, or beasts – all made way for the dragon kin.

And so, Silver came to face the burial grounds of Libertia for a second time. Today, there was a bittersweet air to the crowds. Yes, in Alti, they celebrated life in the shadow of death, but even so…the wake of a person’s passing was too much to leave no mark on those gathered at the edge of the magilace trees. Every one of them felt it. Silver was no exception.