#c2e128

It’s a sluggish, painful process, but with his aid, she inches herself to the wall and sags against it. Aside from the blood, there are no signs of injury on her body. Unfortunately, a lifetime of inflicting wounds both visible and not means that Eadwulf’s imagination can take the reins quite easily without a visual aid, and images of what their master must have done to her fill his mind unbidden. He swallows back another curse.

“Does he know we warned them?”

“No.” Uncertainty flashes across her face. “He… didn’t mention it. But I doubt he would leave me here if he knew.”

True enough. Desperation makes Ikithon merciless. If he knew, the both of them would have been interrogated and killed for turning traitor without even a moment’s consideration for the waste of Empire investments.

Eadwulf lets out a harsh breath that does nothing to ease the coils knotted in his chest. He reaches out to push sweat-soaked locks out of Astrid’s face, perfunctory enough to be practical, but he can’t help brushing his thumb against her cheek. Astrid waves him away, eyes downcast. He knows that look. The pain is only part of it. Worse is the way Ikithon strips them of their dignity even now, the way he will never let them forget that they are his creations, the children that he plucked from obscurity.

She takes another sip and wipes at her mouth, leaving an angry streak of blood on her sleeve. “How long do we have?”

“Perhaps an hour. Maybe more.” After Ikithon had finished with Astrid, he’d exited the tower, halted the senseless perimeter search, snapped an order to smooth things over with the Zhelezo, then departed.

He will summon them back to Rexxentrum eventually, but he will no doubt take some time to… reevaluate how best to snare Bren. The goblin downstairs is charmed, the Nicodranan wizard is trapped in his own mind, and no one bothered to break the wards of this tower, which are strong enough that the Assembly’s eyes and ears won’t breach. For the moment, at least, they’re alone.

“You don’t know where they went?”

She hands him back the bottle. “No. But he had a tuning fork. I believe they planeshifted.”

“Somewhere pleasant, I hope,” he mutters before taking a swig. After all, wherever Bren and his friends have fucked off to, Volstrucker will be sent to follow. “They can’t keep this up for long.” He tastes iron on the rim of the bottle.

“It’s Bren. He’s resourceful.”

Eadwulf shakes his head. “Perhaps, but the others?”

Astrid has always liked to claim she is the least sentimental of the three of them. My stupid boys and their stupid hearts, she used to say. Even when they’d fought over her meeting with Bren in the dance hall, she’d emphasized the chance they could seize when—and she was convinced that it was a when—Bren made his move against Ikithon. An opportunist through and through, and Eadwulf will go wherever she leads, but he knows that heart of hers better than anyone, the one she buries beneath the brilliance and ruthlessness and strategy. He fears for it.

He thumbs the pendant at his side. He has his way. It’s difficult to argue with her when he knows the political games are her way.

“Besides, he’s gotten worse over the years,” he tries. “Don’t know what the fuck he was thinking, breaking into Vergesson of all places and then just taking off.”

Astrid’s expression flickers—not quite a wince, but enough to give him pause. He shoots her a look, eyes locking on hers until she glances away, furtive.

“You’re the one who directed them to Vergesson.” It’s not a question. It doesn’t need to be. Really, he shouldn’t be surprised. For fire may be Bren’s, but Astrid has always danced in the flames. And Eadwulf, Eadwulf, fool that he is, will rush in after them every time they get burned.

He sighs and shifts, propping his head on the wall with a dull thud. Astrid sinks into him, fitting against his shoulder the way she has a thousand times before. Their fingers entwine, automatic. He didn’t notice it earlier, but with her pressed to his side, he can feel her nerves twitching every few seconds, a lingering reaction to whatever punishment she faced.

Matron. They should never have gotten caught up in all this. But perhaps the notion that they ever had a choice is just another lie. The three of them, they were molded to shape the future together as one, but Bren was left behind in the past. Is it any wonder he’s come back to haunt them?

Every time Eadwulf has watched him—across a room, over a dining table, from miles away through a snowbank—it has been a stranger puppeting Bren’s body. But there are still tantalizing glimmers of the old Bren, of their Bren, in the way he cocks his head and smiles when he’s bested someone, in the practiced way his fingers trace somatic components in the air. In the devotion and fierce protectiveness brimming in his eyes when he watches his companions.

It matters not. They will move forward, the way they always have; they cannot keep dividing their loyalties like this. It’s the Empire or Bren, and they made that choice long ago when they left their boy wailing half out of his mind in front of the burning remains of his home, when they passed his cell in Vergesson every day afterwards.

“You know that we cannot help him anymore,” Eadwulf says quietly, switching into their native tongue. “No more of these… calculated risks.” His mouth twists. But Astrid doesn’t react to the echoed phrase, doesn’t answer at all. “Astrid.”

She exhales, shaky, slow. Though he can’t see her face, he knows her eyes are closed, defeat etched in her brow the way she only allows when it’s the two of them alone.

“Yes, fine. You’re right.”

Under different circumstances, perhaps he would nudge her or gloat at the rare concession. But he hears the hesitancy thrumming beneath her words, and that part of him that formed in his youth, the part that decided he would do anything for his two geliebten, is screaming, screaming that he cannot lose another.

He turns to face her, ignoring her grumble at him jostling her off of him.

“Astrid, look at me. Please.” She drags her gaze up to meet his, and it's terrifying how she’s allowing him to see her cracking from the seam running through her eye. “Bren is lost.” They’ve known it, he’s known it since he saw Caleb Widogast that first time in Rexxentrum, flanked by new friends and a new name. It still stings like acid to say aloud, and it sounds more broken than he intends.

He almost hates how it’s this that transforms the weariness in Astrid’s eyes into something firm. She lifts her chin and lifts a hand, gripping the side of his jaw and setting her own. “All right.” Her voice is coated in steel, and if they both pretend hard enough, they can tell themselves it isn’t a mask. “Bren is lost.”

—————