Chapter 215

Nyssira's latest journals were troubling.

Though, if I was being honest, everything about Nyssira was troubling.

She was a goddess who had brokered a bargain with the Myrddin. Even now I couldn't comprehend how she had managed it. The Myrddin didn't negotiate. They consumed. Corrupted. Erased. Yet somehow she had convinced them not to destroy her, not to infect her mind, and to serve a purpose in a plan only she fully understood.

Then she had secretly absorbed the aspects of half a dozen gods, accumulating more Faith than any living being should possess.

She murdered Urzan-Brak, god of carnage. That death had served two purposes.

The first had been to draw attention away from her activities and focus it squarely on me. She framed me for the murder and the High Witan swallowed the lie whole.

The second had been to pressure the mortal nations. If war erupted, armies would gather. And when she eventually unleashed the Myrddin upon the world, those armies would already be assembled and ready to fight them.

She genuinely believed she could save the world.

That was the terrifying part. She looked at Arthyr rallying the world against the Myrddin centuries ago and decided she could do the same. Only she intended to create the disaster first.

Because she held all the cards at the time, she maneuvered every major power into gathering at the exact place she planned to release the creatures. Then, amid the chaos, she absorbed another half-dozen gods.

In the span of a single battle, she became the most powerful being on Annwn.

I still couldn't fully wrap my head around how I'd beaten her.

She stabbed me with a necromium dagger - a weapon designed specifically to kill gods. As my body and Faith burned away, they generated enormous quantities of mana. I threw every scrap of it I could into spells.

Mana was weaker than Faith. Mana stretched reality. Faith rewrote it. And somehow, despite that difference, my mana outlasted her Faith.

Eventually she exhausted herself.

When she did, I used what little remained of my Faith and mana to bind her.

The battle should have killed me.

Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure why it didn't. My Faith burned away faster than my body. I spent a while missing an arm. As my Faith recovered, the arm slowly returned.

I still didn't understand why mine came back when Clo's ear hadn't.

Maybe it was Faith. Maybe it was identity. Maybe it was something else entirely.

For more than four years Nyssira had remained imprisoned beneath the keep in a containment facility built specifically to hold her.

I'd tried talking. Treating her like a person. Rewards. Consequences. Books. Activities. Stories. Conversations. Patience.

She still hated me. That part I understood. She remained aggressive. Violent. Unrepentant. Every interaction seemed to reinforce why releasing her would be a catastrophic mistake.

And throughout all of it she had been suffering her own simplification.

I hadn't even known simplification was possible until Myrrakai mentioned I was undergoing it myself.

In retrospect it made perfect sense.

And her imprisonment probably accelerated the process. The boredom. The isolation. The endless self-reflection. No growth. No distractions. No new purpose.

Just time.

Time to decide what parts of herself were truly her. Time to discard everything else. And that possibility terrified me.

If simplification worked the way I feared, the Faith she rejected wouldn't simply disappear. It would return to the world. Uncontrolled.

The moon shattered when the moon goddess died. Wildfires consumed entire nations when the god of fire fell. The world entered an ice age after the death of the god of winter. The dead rose when the god of death was slain.

Those disasters had unfolded over five to ten years during the First Silent War.

What would happen if Nyssira unraveled? What happened when the accumulated Faith of a dozen gods was suddenly released all at once?

The first set of journals she'd given me were nearly useless.

She had shredded them. Burned them. Defaced them. The only thing I'd learned was that she felt deeply betrayed by the loss of her privacy.

The second set had been written specifically for me. Every page dripped with hatred. Threats. Insults. Promises of future violence.

And yet, despite herself, pieces of the real Nyssira slipped through.

She missed Elyndra. Not in the way one misses an enemy. In the way one misses someone who had occupied a permanent space in their life.

They were rivals. Sisters of a sort. Perhaps the closest thing Nyssira had ever had to a friend.

She respected Urzan-Brak. Not because she liked him. She clearly thought he was impulsive, violent, and frequently stupid. But she respected his honesty.

She hated wine. Loved candied fruit. Collected stories. Asked questions about everything.

The woman hidden beneath the monster was endlessly curious.

This latest set of journals was different.

Erratic. Disturbing. The handwriting shifted constantly. Entire conversations unfolded across the pages in different scripts, as though multiple people were ing the journal back and forth.

I wasn't even certain she ed who she was writing for anymore.

Some entries seemed harmless.

{letter}

‘Seth visited. Blue shirt. His hair was ridiculous.’

‘The boy lacks ambition. He has resources. He wastes them.’

‘I spent several hours listening to the wards. There are seven repeating harmonics. Or six. I counted seven yesterday.’

‘Debts must be balanced. The boy owes us.’

‘He always asks if I need anything. He already knows the answer. He asks anyway.’

{endletter}

Others were more troubling.

{letter}

‘I don't writing this.’

{endletter}

Halfway through one entry, the writing simply stopped. The next line read, ‘I forgot what I was writing about.’

Another entry said, ‘Someone else is writing in this journal. I must find who it is.’

A few pages later, ‘I found this journal the other day. It was only half full. Perhaps I will add my thoughts to theirs.’

One entire page contained nothing except the same sentence written over and over. Documentation is important. Documentation is important. Documentation is important. Hundreds of times.

{letter}

‘He should have given up on me by now.’

{endletter}

The conversations were the most unsettling.

{letter}

‘The little goblin would like these flowers.’

‘There are no flowers here.’

‘I know.’

{endletter}

{letter}

‘He brought charcoal. Better charcoal than last time. I didn't thank him.’

‘Why would I thank him?’

{endletter}

{letter}

‘Seth visited.’

‘We argued.’

‘He was kind.’

‘He's an idiot.’

‘He is trying.’

‘Stop talking about him.’

‘No.’

‘You like when he visits.’

SOMETHING SCRIBBLED OUT.

‘I do not.’

‘Then why do you keep writing about him?’

‘Because he keeps showing up.’

‘You could ignore him.’

‘He keeps talking.’

‘You could stop listening.’

‘I HAVE.’

‘You wrote down everything he said.’

{endletter}

Several pages had been torn out after that.

There were dozens of similar gaps throughout the journals. Burned pages. Scratched-out ages. Missing sections. Thoughts she had apparently decided no one - including herself - was allowed to read.

I closed the final journal and rubbed a hand over my face.

I was running out of time. And I still had no idea how to fix any of this.

* * *

I sat at the desk in my study, going over the list Amberleigh had given me - people with potential Covenant connections.

Morien sat on my knee while I worked. Or rather, she sat on one knee while attempting to bounce on the other.

We'd recently finished dancing to Mr. Blue Sky for what was probably the third time that afternoon, and she was still burning off the last of her excitement.

Eventually she settled down and leaned against my chest, pushing her white hair out of her face. “Thren?”

“Yes?”

“Someone took a book from the library.”

I glanced down at her. “Who did it?”

“Everyone thought it was Lilae.”

I smiled despite myself. That sounded exactly like the sort of thing people would assume. “Did Lilae take it?”

“No.” She grew quiet for a moment, thinking.

Morien never rushed her thoughts. She turned them over carefully, examining them from every angle before deciding they were ready to share. “The book wasn't missing,” she finally said.

“It wasn't?”

She shook her head. “Someone put it on the wrong shelf.”

I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her a little closer.

“That happens sometimes.”

She nodded solemnly. “Everyone was looking for a thief when they should have been looking for the book.”

I looked down at the list and other papers spread across my desk.

Missing people. Redirected placements. The Covenant.

For a moment, I wondered if my four-year-old had just given me a master class in investigation.

I kissed the top of her head. “That's very wise.”

“Mmhm.” She snuggled against me, warm and sleepy. A few moments later her breathing slowed.

By the time I looked down again, she was asleep.

* * *

Mirri's breath caught and she went silent as I gripped her shoulders and pulled her down as far as she'd go.

My cock twitched and spilled rope after rope of seed deep inside her.

Her small hands locked around my arms as her body seized in the throes of orgasm.

Warm bathwater lapped gently against the edges of the sunken pool and against our bodies.

As my climax faded, I rolled my hips slowly against hers, drawing out her pleasure for a few moments longer. I bowed my head and pressed my lips to her neck, kissing, biting, and sucking at her pale gray skin while she drifted down from the peak.

Eventually she regained enough control to take a shaky breath.

Her fingers still twitched where they clung to my arms. Her velvety walls still fluttered around my length, trying to milk the last drops from me. Every few moments her entire body jerked as another aftershock of pleasure rippled through her.

We stayed that way for several long moments - me seated on the stone ledge that circled the pool, Mirri resting in my lap - simply catching our breath.

Slowly she pulled back and gave me a thoroughly cock-drunk grin.

“Thanks, hero. But we both have things to do today.”

“I could clear my schedule,” I told her.

She laughed. “But I can't. I need to check on Nori's family. And Belli's prize goat isn't doing well. Not to mention Shav broke his leg again. At this point I'm starting to wonder if he's doing it on purpose.”

“To get an appointment with the prettiest shaman in the world? I can believe that.”

She rolled her eyes and stood.

I slipped free of her, still half-hard.

She leaned down and kissed me, then half-walked, half-swam toward the stairs and climbed from the water.

I sighed and followed her.

* * *

The next person on Amberleigh's list was Bors Vey, a minor noble with outsized influence.

He held land, but not authority over Halemarch itself. That distinction belonged to a middling noble named Owayn Weavelyn.

Instead, Vey oversaw Arvellia's roads, bridges, ferries, toll stations, postal routes, and caravan permits. Everything that moved through the kingdom eventually ed through his office.

Which meant it was entirely possible he was coordinating shipments for the Covenant.

Halemarch sat between Northgate and Crownreach at the meeting of two great rivers. The Frostbarrow flowed south from the mountains of Dumrath Kol-Varn, past Northgate, while the Crown River wound eastward out of the rocky steppe of the Iron Nation. They ed at Halemarch, becoming the Wyvern River before continuing toward Lake Aurel near Kingsward.

Over centuries, the rivers had carved away the surrounding land, creating a broad inland lake known as Threewaters - named for the three rivers that met there.

The city itself was unlike any other in Arvellia.

It still possessed the kingdom's signature walls of seamless white stone, shaped from a single mass of rock by ancient magic. But where most Arvellian cities were circular, Halemarch's walls formed a rough triangle, giving the city the appearance of an arrowhead pointing downstream.

Canals cut through the city like streets.

The first time I saw it on a map, it reminded me of pictures of Venice. Waterways divided neighborhoods. Hundreds of bridges arched over canals and river channels, connecting roads that crisscrossed the city. Gondolas, ferries, and cargo barges drifted through the waterways carrying people, goods, and information from every corner of the kingdom.

Near the city's center rose three slender towers of white stone - the Ledger Towers.

Shipping records were stored there. Taxes collected there. Permits issued there. If something moved through Arvellia legally, odds were there was paperwork for it inside those towers.

Not far away stood the Great Exchange - the largest marketplace in the kingdom.

It wasn't the wealthiest. It wasn't the most prestigious. But it was the largest.

Daily auctions filled enormous plazas. Hundreds of permanent shops lined the streets. Temporary stalls could number in the thousands depending on the season. Merchants from every nation on the continent could be found there on any given day.

I'd never been to Halemarch before, which meant getting there would involve a little trial and error. Fortunately, I could give myself a head start by stepping to Northgate.

I packed what I thought I'd need and started making the rounds.

Elise was preparing to return to Spellmarch.

Archmagus Bellamyre's theories were gaining traction, and with them his political influence. He was beginning to pull ahead of the other candidates for heaster, and Elise wanted to get in front of that before momentum carried him any further.

I kissed her goodbye, wished her luck, and promised I'd check in when I could.

Ashlara was feeding goats and chickens with Briva and Morien when I found them.

Briva was in the process of stalking a goat. At least, she thought she was.

I scooped her up just before she pounced. The tiny growl she directed at the fleeing animal was utterly ineffective.

I blew raspberries against her neck.

Her attention shifted immediately from the goat to me as she shrieked with laughter.

Once she'd recovered, I set her back down and moved over to Morien.

She tossed the last of her feed into the yard and dusted her hands together to dislodge the stubborn seeds clinging to her fingers. Then she turned toward me with a faint smile and raised her arms.

I picked her up and kissed her cheek before carrying her over to Ashlara.

“Good luck, my love,” the warrior said. She kissed me.

I deepened it and slipped an arm around her waist. “You too.”

For a moment we simply rested our foreheads together.

Then I turned to Morien. “Be good.”

She nodded with all the solemnity of a knight receiving a sacred charge.

I set her down.

Serah was teaching the older children when I arrived. She'd just begun discussing the history of the War of Blood and Ash.

“Sorry for interrupting,” I said. “I'm heading out.”

She smiled. It was unfair how easily that smile could affect me. “Be safe, my mate.”

I crossed the room, kissed her, and cupped her cheek.

Lilae immediately made exaggerated gagging noises behind me.

Tib giggled.

Brinja, Mak, and Issa whispered furiously to one another about something I couldn't quite catch.

“Everyone be good and maybe I'll bring home some River Pearls.”

That got their attention. The honey-caramelized nuts were a favorite.

Issa perked up, briefly looking hopeful.

Brinja looked unimpressed.

Tib and Lilae practically started drooling.

“Get the almond ones!” Mak shouted.

I grinned. “You got it.”

I stole one last kiss from Serah before moving on.

I found Mirri kneeling beside Belli's goat.

Her hands were covered in enough mysterious substances that I didn't particularly want to identify any of them.

I bent down and kissed the top of her head. “I'm heading out shortly, my angel.”

She looked up at me and grinned. “Give 'em hell, hero.”

I kissed her lips - carefully avoiding whatever was on her hands.

Then I stepped home.

A short time later, Iolite and I stepped to Northgate and began our journey south.