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Chapter Text

Angwyn and Arianwen start a new life. Adaine meets a boy.   

or. Even the strongest of us still yearn for home.

~~~

Adaine was five years old and about to leave the only home she’d ever known. She still didn’t know why, only that Mother and Father had been whispering to each other as they packed trunks of clothes, spellbooks, and furniture into an entourage of horse drawn carriages. She caught a word every once in a while, ones too big for her to understand yet––though her tutor in Fallinel always said that she was very clever and so she bet she’d get it soon––words like diplomat and promotion and Solace. She pestered Aelwyn about it, sometimes, when Aelwyn decided that she liked her again and was pleasant enough to answer questions, but even she was lost on where they were going and why. 

They took everything important, like Mother’s papers and the books from Father’s study and Aelwyn and Adaine’s school notes. They left the servants, Adaine’s tutor, the first blossom from the garden, Aelwyn’s old spellcasting components, and Adaine’s only toy doll. Her mother, upon watching Adaine’s chin wobble at the realization that it could not come with them, had knelt in front of her and tapped her cheeks–hard enough to sting a little but not enough to truly hurt. 

“Adaine,” she’d said, voice softer than Adaine was used to, “You’re going to need to be a big girl from now on, and big girls are too old for toys.”

Adaine had sucked in a quivering breath, set the doll back on her bed, and that was that.

Soon, Aelwyn was shoving her elbow into Adaine’s stomach on the bench of the carriage, climbing over her to peer out at the expansive ancient woods of Fallinel. Adaine managed to stick her face underneath Aelwyn’s armpit, strands of her blond hair muddying her vision, and watched as the old-growth oaks turned to valleys and the air took on a distinctive fishy smell. She watched elven boys push wagons stuffed to the brim with fine silks as stalls of clothing and food began peppering the pathway.

Adaine’s mouth watered at the sight of flaky pastries dusted with sugar and honey. She was only allowed sugar on her birthday, in the form of a single fluffy dough ball drizzled with honey. It had melted like fresh cream in her mouth and she’d spent the entire night licking the trace remnants of sticky sweetness off her fingers. Every other day of the year, sugar was not allowed. Her mother always said she had enough energy as it was, there had been no need to add to it. 

Eventually, Aelwyn was gripping their mother’s hand tightly, with Adaine’s fist twisted firmly in the cloth of Aelwyn’s sleeve, as they boarded the ship. Adaine felt the wood of the plank dip lightly with their bulk as the weightlessness of being on the sea engulfed them. The change in noise was deafening. Adaine’s house was quiet. Her parents were quiet, Aelwyn was quiet, and Adaine needed to be quiet too. It was how Angwyn preferred it. Here, the sound of the waves slapping against the boat mixed with the breeze ruffling through the mainsail, swooping like gull calls beneath the steady drum beat of conversation.

Adaine let go of Aelwyn’s sleeve, and neither she nor her mother looked back as the two disappeared into the lower decks. Adaine watched her father speak with the Captain, a tall elven man in a crisp sailor’s uniform who looked as serious and boring as her father, while unseen servants carried trunk after trunk onto the deck, where a crew of oh my gods, not elves picked them up and carried them down a large set of stairs in the center of the ship. 

Adaine looked around and realized that her family and the Captain might have been the only elves on the boat. Several humans ran around, each off to perform what Adaine assumed were sailor-y duties.

She spotted a gnomish woman in a different outfit, a large coat covered in buttons and buckles, pulling a large parchment sheet out of her pocket as she spoke with a half-orc man. She looked up and saw large ocean birds swooping around an Aarakocra that kept swatting at them with a bat of some kind. Adaine giggled. A shudder of excitement wiggled its way through her. 

The gnomish woman with the parchment turned towards her at the noise and grinned wolfishly. Adaine saw a flash of gold poke through her lips. She squeaked, her face reddening like a tomato, and scampered down to the lower decks, ready to show Aelwyn everything she’d found. 

She barreled through the interior of the ship, bumping into crewmates and Unseen Servants on her way, a half-hearted “Sorry!” her only penance, until she heard her mother lecturing about something in one of the cabins. She slowed as much as her excitement would allow and stepped inside. She locked eyes with Aelwyn, ramblings about the brief things she’d seen ready to balloon out of her lips. 

“Oh, there you are,” her mother interrupted, tone clipped. “Really, Adaine you can’t just run off. There are all sorts of vagrants on these types of vessels.” Her adrenaline deflated in her chest. “And, dear, if I put in the effort to braid your hair, the least you can do is keep it together.”

Adaine tugged at a strand that had fallen out self-consciously. She didn’t correct her mother that it had been Aelwyn’s hair that she’d braided. A servant had done hers, as they always did. Aelwyn caught the mix-up and huffed under her breath. Adaine couldn’t tell if she was laughing at Mother or at her. 

Mother did, however, waive Adaine forward and twist her head around to start weaving the strands together, droning about the importance of remaining presentable at all times and reputation. Her lessons had included a lot about that lately. She hadn’t learned much but she knew that their family was old. In Fallinel, old was the same thing as important. Still, she paid her mother’s words no mind, instead focusing on the feeling of her hands carding through Adaine’s hair. A rarity in Adaine’s life. Rarer now as she got older. 

“You’re a big girl now, Adaine,” her mother would say, pushing Adaine’s arms away when she said good morning or scraped her knee or lost something or went to bed, “such frivolity is beneath you.” 

Yes, it was important to pay attention to rare things. 

When Arianwen was finished, she guided Adaine away and sat her next to Aelwyn on a cot pushed against the wall of the cabin. It was a cramped thing, with one cot just big enough for Aelwyn and Adaine to squeeze into together and another on the opposite wall for their parents to use. Arianwen had brought a satchel of their study materials, which sat next to another stack of what Adaine assumed were her and Father’s important work things. A small circular window sat at the edge of the cabin, where cerulean blue waves crested into view over a quickly pinking horizon. 

“I want you girls to stay here,” Arianwen said, Adaine’s hopes of adventure dwindling like a dying ember. “There are still many things to do before we get to Solace, and I expect nothing but your utmost attention to complete them.” 

More things to study, Adaine thought bleakly. At least Aelwyn, too, had the decency to look similarly displeased. 

~~~

Adaine still managed to sneak to the top deck occasionally. She had been right; her and Aelwyn’s days were spent hunched over books and sheets.

In the morning, her usual lessons continued. Arianwen would dump a short book in her lap or make her complete sums or, her favorite, read about the basics of spellcraft. Adaine was not yet old enough to practice magic, that was a treat reserved for her sixth birthday, only a year away now, but her parents insisted she learn the basics of spellcraft in the meantime. She poured over diagrams of spell components, forcing herself to deconstruct how each layer of spellcraft came together. It was like a puzzle, almost, each component slotting together in the exact right place. Adaine liked puzzles. 

In the afternoon, she learned about Solace. Her mother explained to her and Aelwyn the basics of Arcanotech, letting them marvel at drawings of machinery unlike anything they’d ever seen before.

Then, she started teaching them Solesian. Like maths and spellcraft and everything else in life, Aelwyn took to it like a fish in water. Her mouth formed perfect rounded Solesian syllables. She recited sentences back to their mother, performed perfect conjugations, wrote out the alphabet in crisp, clean, disjointed letters. 

Adaine, like maths and spellcraft and everything else in life, stumbled through every step. No matter how many times she was asked to repeat it, she never got the hang of Solesian’s clunky syllables. The clashing, sharpened sounds clattered in her ears, never finding purchase in meaning. By the end of the afternoon, Adaine felt as exasperated and annoyed as her mother looked. 

The rest of the afternoon, until Angwyn retrieved dinner from the kitchen, was dedicated to Aelwyn’s spellcraft lessons, under Arianwen’s careful eye, and her father would spend that time quietly reading in his cot.

Adaine disappeared to them then and she was able to make her escape. She much preferred the cool sea breeze and salt spray of the ship’s deck. She never spoke to anyone, just deposited herself in a nook between two crates and watched the bustle of keeping a ship afloat. Sometimes, she’d wander to the deck’s edge, and stare out at the sparkling blue sea, the sun creating gemstones in the lap of waves. Most of the time, though, she spied on the gnomish woman in the cabin at the front of the ship. 

The woman spent a lot of time looking at maps, and talking with the half-orc man, and finding Adaine spying on them, each time poking her head around to find Adaine with owlishly wide eyes staring at them. Each time, similar to the first, she’d startled and then run downstairs, just barely sneaking back into the cabin before her Father looked up from his book to notice her again. 

Today, however, the half-orc was taking the lead. The two had a sprawl of jewels and other trinkets littered across the table in the middle of the cabin. The gnomish woman leaned against the wall, her arms crossed, as the half-orc closed his eyes and began chanting. Adaine recognized the watery swells of Sylvan arcane incantations immediately. She watched the ritual intensely, she’d never seen anything like it before, Aelwyn still on cantrips and her mother and father never bothering to cast ritual spells around her. At the end of it, the table glowed a soft deep-blue and the contents on top of it vanished. When the half-orc opened his eyes, he nodded to the gnomish woman and Adaine stumbled in. She hadn’t noticed she’d been leaning forward, drawn like a moth to a flame until she tipped over, regaining her balance with the awestruck look on her face never leaving. 

The two sailors stared at her, the gnomish woman chuckling lightly. Instead of running away, this time, Adaine straightened, clasping her hands behind her back and bowing deeply, as her mother had taught her to do with all Elven nobility. 

“Hello,” she said in accented Solesian. “My name is Adaine Abernant.” She peaked her head up and flushed proudly, the only sentence she knew coming out exactly as her books intended. 

The gnomish woman nodded seriously at her, a string of meaningless Solesian flying at her. Adaine stared at them, befuddled, before the woman seemed to realize she couldn’t understand them. 

“Hello, Adaine,” she said. The swooping, feather-light touch of Fallinese Elvish taking on an accented gnomish coo. “I see you’ve finally decided to grace us with your presence. I hope your previous excursions have been well enjoyed.” 

Adaine ignored the playful jab. She wandered to the table, her head barely poking above it. “What kind of spell was that?” She asked, hands gripping the edge of the surface. 

The half-orc man began gathering all that was left on the table, an array of purple-painted playing cards. “A divination spell,” he said. “Are you interested in spellcraft, young lass?”

Adaine nodded vigorously. “I’m going to be a wizard! Mother is going to start teaching me in just a few months. What’s divination?”

The gnomish woman whistled. “That’s early. How old are you, lass? Seven? Must be a right kind of genius to become a wizard that young.”

Suddenly bashful, Adaine held up five fingers. “ Five?” The half-orc exclaimed. “Why, you must be a super genius!”

Adaine giggled. The gnomish woman kneeled in front of her. “Divination wizards look into the future,” she whispered, like they were sharing some great secret. “A divination wizard can do anything, if they find the right timeline for it. See Tyrion here was checking the weather for us. There are clouds on the horizon, and he makes sure we’re ready to weather the storm.”

Adaine drank every word. Seeing the future sounded much more fun than whatever Mother and Father did. If she could see the future then she could figure out how to do things before Aelwyn could and get to know everything her mother and father refused to tell her because she wasn’t old enough yet. 

“Are you a divination wizard?” She asked the woman. The woman tossed her head back and guffawed. 

“No, no, deary, never had half a mind for that complicated spellcraft. I’m just a pirate,” she said. “Now my friend here. He’s a divination wizard and a pirate.” 

Adaine’s mouth dropped into a small “o” shape. The half-orc grinned at her, all sharp teeth and facial piercings. Adaine was about to explode with questions of how and why and when and how again when her Father burst in, ire seared into the pinch of his brow. 

“Adaine,” he said, tone forever placid and neutral, though Adaine was well attuned to the wrath that laid just beneath the surface. “There you are. You know your mother doesn’t want you up here.” 

He snatched her wrist, hand twisting her skin to an uncomfortable pinch. “Ah, so the young lass is yours, Ambassador,” the half-orc said jovially. 

“Yes,” Angwyn clipped. “I hope she didn’t bother you from your work too much. The child has no sense of proper decorum.” 

He dragged Adaine out of the room before she even had a chance to thank them. He pushed her back into the cabin and for the next hour she had her parents’ full, undivided attention.

That night, after being thoroughly scolded, she laid down in her cot, staring at the wall. Normally, she would spend this time whispering about her adventures in Aelwyn’s ear, the nightly ritual the only hint that being cooped up in this room was getting to her. But Aelwyn never liked to talk to her when she was in trouble, so Adaine stewed in silence, the storm the gnomish woman warned of crashing outside. Still, she was not afraid. Her last thought before she drifted off to trance was that she was going to be the best divination wizard ever, so she’d never get in trouble again. And a pirate too, just because she could.

~~~

Adaine was grounded. She spent the rest of the trip under the watchful eyes of her parents, spent Aelwyn’s spellcrafting lessons sitting in a corner, staring at the wall, not allowed to speak or move. She didn’t see the gnomish woman or the half-orc man again, not even when they finally deboarded in Solace.

Adaine could feel the change immediately, the heavy churning of gears that she had begun to associate with Solesian. The many different faces that littered the port. Fallinel had still been primarily elvish, even at the hub of travel. In Solace, Adaine couldn’t pick out a predominant face. 

The Abernants loaded into a machine that she vaguely recognized as a car from her mother’s lessons, and began the long journey to Elmville. Adaine, overwhelmed with the new sights, smells, discoveries, and still nursing her wounds, hunkered in her seat, not emerging until they were inside the new Abernant manor. The manor was so much different than their family home. In Fallinel, the only enclosed rooms were bedrooms and kitchens, everywhere else open to the sprawling woods and gardens, protected from the elements by long-standing wards. Here, outside and inside were two distinct places. It was strange. 

Adaine remained grounded even after they finished unpacking and Adaine settled into her new room. Her mother had her on lockdown, and she spent hours everyday studying the Solesian that she just couldn’t seem to grasp. Her parents had taken to speaking only in Solesian in the house, leaving her floundering to understand what they said, words running into each other, while they spoke to Aelwyn in slow, patient syllables. Aelwyn tried to translate for her, once, when Adaine was on the verge of tears, trying to figure out something her mother had said, her mother’s expression one that made Adaine feel wholly and entirely stupid. But Arianwen had shot her sister one raised eyebrow and Aelwyn’s mouth had snapped shut. 

Weeks passed with Adaine locked in the house, following her family like a ghost. Her lessons and the constant Solesian around her did begin to work eventually, and, ironically, it was only as she began to understand the rapid Solesian in her house that her mother, at the breakfast table, finally said in crisp, easy Elvish, “Aelwyn, Adaine, after lessons today we have been invited out to tea.” 

Aelwyn merely nodded and returned to her breakfast as balled melons and poached eggs, but Adaine thrummed in her seat. Going for tea, leaving the house, no afternoon lessons. It was already shaping up to be a good day. 

“The Lomenelda family is as old as ours, and even if Hallariel did marry a human, it’s important to still treat their name with the respect it deserves,” her mother said, words halting over human like it was something shameful. 

Lessons passed in a blur, none of their new Solesian tutor’s lectures sticking in Adaine’s eager brain––now that they were settled in, Arianwen would not endure the shame of teaching her own child––with the exception of the divination chapter of “ A Beginner’s Guide to Wizardry” that her mother had been having her work through, with the promise that once she was finished with it, she could start finally learning cantrips. 

Finally, Arianwen loaded them into the car, and they made the quiet drive to the Lomenelda manor. As they crested a hill, and Arianwen pulled into the driveway of a sprawling pirate ship , just like the ship they had sailed to Solace on, like what she imagined the wizard on that ship to be on right now, Adaine decided that these were her favorite people in Elmville. 

Adaine trailed behind Aelwyn, who trailed behind their mother as a door fashioned in the front of the docked pirate ship opened and a tall elven woman with long silver hair and a purple silk robe appeared. 

“Ah, Arianwen, come in, come in,” she said, voice languid and dripping with honey. “When I heard that Angwyn had been chosen as the new ambassador I almost didn’t believe it. I mean, what has it been, twenty-five years?” 

The three were ushered inside as Arianwen responded, “Almost fifty. That means you have yet to meet my daughters, haven’t you?”

They were led into a tea room tucked into a remodeled cabin. Arianwen shed her coat as Aelwyn tugged Adaine forward. 

“Aelwyn Abernant. A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Lomenelda,” Aelwyn said in a graceful bow. 

“Adaine Abernant. How do you do?” Adaine echoed after. 

Hallariel clapped her hands together and gasped excitedly. “Oh you precious dolls! Arianwen, they are the picture of perfection.” Adaine flushed deeply. “But I must correct you, I have been married for a time now. Hallariel Seacaster.” Mother’s smile thinned for just a moment and Adaine watched, gloriously, as Aelwyn apologized. 

The adults fell into easy conversation, catching up on each other's lives and affairs, while Adaine snacked on small cucumber sandwiches brought to them by a smiling halfling maid who pinched Adaine’s cheek as she passed. Occasionally, Hallariel would remember them and coo over their hair or skin or outfits and, strangely enough, she seemed much more enamored by Adaine than Aelwyn. 

Eventually, Adaine heard a clattering from outside, like a china cabinet falling down stairs, and Hallariel’s eyes lit up.

“Oh my goodness, I had forgotten,” she said. “My darling Fabian, he is just Adaine’s age. Oh, they would make great playmates, you must meet him.” 

Arianwen raised a brow and hummed. “Adaine could use someone to study with.” Adaine flushed, grip tightening around the fine ceramic plate in her hands. She didn’t need help, she could figure it out, whatever it was, on her own. Hallariel beamed and bent down to grab Adaine’s hand. Hallariel dragged her away, her mother and sister trailing lightly behind them. Aelwyn, in a charitable mood, looked sorry for her.  

The two rounded a corner into the ship’s main hull, which had been fashioned into a kitchen and expansive dining room. There, a young half-elven boy, with white hair like Hallariel’s, was sword fighting a real life pirate. The pirate was dressed just like the ones she had met on the boat to Solace, all large coats and gold seams. The boy was dressed in clothes that Adaine assumed were usual Solesian garb, loose flowing pants and a plain sleeveless shirt. Adaine watched with wide eyes as the pirate backed the boy up into the dining room table, leveling a wooden sword at his chest. 

Hallariel took this moment to interrupt, clapping wildly and descending into quick Solesian. Adaine tried to keep up, picking up on the occasional word, friend, Fallinel, Adaine. Adaine bowed deeply when she heard her name, determined not to show her miserable comprehension. 

“Why, hello there, lass,” the pirate said, words jumping on the air like a ship at sea, “The name’s Bill Seacaster, greatest pirate who ever lived or ever will live.” 

Adaine mulled the sentence in her head, carefully translating each piece. She fiddled with her fingers, shaping each word on her tongue as she formed a response. 

“I’m going to be the best wizard pirate too,” Adaine stated as simple as fact, because it was. She watched the boy’s face contort, each feature twisting into variations of disgust, befuddlement, and astonishment. 

Bill Seacaster guffawed, stomach heaving with effort and louder than any noise that had ever graced her home.

“Well you’ll just have to battle my darling boy to the death for the title,” he said. The boy cooled his features to smug acceptance, as if his father’s words were, too, as true as fact.

Adaine pieced together a sentence that vaguely meant: Fight, boy, die, book? She assumed it was something rude anyway, her assessment of these new Solesian pirates already dwindling. Adaine, under the watchful eye of her mother, mouth pinched into a frown already, debated if punching him was an acceptable alternative to spellcraft. 

Chapter Text

Fabian’s universe expands. The other shoe drops.

or. Like inevitably attracts like. 

~~~

Fabian Aramais Seacaster liked many things. He liked sword fighting with his Papa, Cathilda, and kisses on the forehead from his Mama. He liked kippers, painting with elven ink, and tales of Papa’s life as Captain of the Hangman. He liked summer trips to Leviathan and the house staff and the press of his Papa’s arms when he swept Fabian up into a soaring hug. 

Fabian did not like Adaine Abernant. Or any of the Abernants, really. They were rude and huffy and spoke to Mama in the crisp Elvish Fabian was still learning. And they always looked at Fabian like he was somehow beneath them, something Papa said was reason enough to skewer them through, but Fabian wasn’t allowed yet to fight with metal blades so he just had to stew and deal.

Adaine was the worst. Every Saturday, Mama forced him to stop his sword fighting lessons with Papa to “play” with her and Adaine. The first time, Fabian thought they might get to play pirates. What would happen instead was this: 

Mama would fetch Fabian from the upper decks where he’d be forced to leave his wooden sword (though Papa said he would be able to upgrade to a steel blade soon) with his Papa, who would shoo him away as soon as he saw Fabian’s Mama coming. From there she’d squeeze him into a tea time outfit and brush his hair, despite Fabian’s constant squirming against the stiff fabric, then he’d be forced to sit across from Adaine while they ate round crackers with slices of cheese on top, because, apparently, the Abernants didn’t like kippers–which Fabian thought was stupid, everyone liked kippers–and Mama would float between Adaine’s mother and older sister and the two of them, constantly cooing about how precious and darling they (Adaine) were. Occasionally she’d lean down and pet Adaine’s hair or pinch her cheek or cup her chin, some Elvish compliment falling from her lips as Adaine flushed and preened while Fabian’s stomach broiled.

Adaine never spoke a word to him, always nose deep in a book. Whenever Fabian did say something, she would stare at him blankly, fingers tapping some invisible rhythm in the air and lips pursed uncomfortably until she slowly lowered her gaze back into her texts. 

Sometimes Papa would come around and look over Adaine’s shoulder. “Aye, lass, keeping up with your pirate studies, are ya?” He’d brandish his sword, dulled tip level with her chin. “All well and good but nothing beats a battle of blades to better your fighting prowess.” 

Adaine would smile hesitantly and nod while the skin on Fabian’s arms turned prickly and sharp beneath his pressed shirt. Papa would finally turn to him then, “Being a proper host for the young lass then, Fabian?” 

“Of course, Papa.”

“Good. It’s important to keep your enemies close,” he’d clap a hand heavy on Fabian’s shoulder, voice quickly rising to a yell. “Easier later to gut them for daring to cross ya.”

Adaine, infuriatingly, never seemed scared of them. 

Most dreadful was always the last hour of the Abernants weekly visit, when Mama and Adaine’s mama and sister would disappear to god knows where and leave Adaine and Fabian alone. Fabian and Adaine, both stinging with the embarrassment of being left behind, hunkered in their respective seats, staring ruefully at each other. 

Adaine, Fabian thought, did not look like a pirate and definitely did look like a wizard. Papa thought that all spellcraft was a distraction from the only true test of strength, blade slinging, so Fabian presumed that spellcasters weren’t all that special. Not that Adaine didn’t look special, her always perfectly done up hair and pristine outfits setting her and her family apart from all the other citizens of Elmville, but she didn’t look like Papa––big and strong and loud and everything a pirate was supposed to be. 

“Can you sword fight?” Fabian asked. It was the first requirement of piracy. It was why Fabian battled Papa every day, so he could assume his Papa’s legacy as the greatest pirate on the seven seas. If Adaine even had a chance of beating him one day, which she obviously didn’t, she’d have to know how to use a sword. 

Adaine blinked owlishly at him. Fabian’s face felt hot. According to Papa, the greatest sign of respect was someone who listened and obeyed what you had to say. “Why won’t you talk to me?” He jabbed. “You talk to Papa and Mama. Is it because you’re gonna be a pirate? Well I’m going to be the best pirate in the whole wide world and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”

Adaine put her book down, expression bewildered, still silent. Traitorously, Fabian felt tears well up in his eyes. It wasn’t fair. He was a big kid and he didn’t cry anymore (except when he fell and scraped his knee and Cathilda brought him kippers and warm milk), but it wasn’t fair that Adaine got all this attention and he didn’t and she wouldn’t even talk to him. 

“Say something,” he said. “Say something, say something! Is it because you think you’re better than me? Is it because you think I’m stupid? Well I’m not, I’m a pirate .”

Adaine’s face twisted, pale cheeks turning red-hot as she grabbed her book. “Be quiet,” she cried finally, the strange accent her Mama and sister had twice as strong. “I am not stupid. You are stupid,” she spat at him, book pressed to her chest, and Adaine sprinted away. 

Fabian huffed, because even when Adaine was mad she still found a way to ignore him, arms crossed until his Mama reappeared in the door, the Abernants behind her, arms folded primly across her chest. Adaine stood slightly behind her older sister, their hands intertwined. Her face was still red and splotchy, and her book had migrated near her chin. Oh. She had tattled. 

Fabian screwed his face up as his Mama started lamenting to him that the Abernants were guests and that he’d made Adaine upset and that this was unbecoming of him and blah blah blah. The unfairness of it all was giving him a stomach ache. She had been mean and rude to him for weeks and somehow Fabian was the one in trouble. The lecture settled like a dull whine at the base of his skull as a lump grew sharp and painful in his throat. The tirade ended with a resounding, “Go to your room.”

He left as dignified as he could, his Papa’s words that a true pirate walks everywhere with his head held high, even if its off the plank, and it was only when he finally made it to his room that he huddled under his blankets in the furthest corner of his bed and cried. The Abernants were gone by the time he came out, long after his parents had eaten dinner. He risked peeking out of his door when he heard his Papa lumbering up the stairs. They locked eyes as he approached, his Mama always said he had his Papa’s eyes.

“Now, boy, I don’t know what you did to get Miss Abernant all twisted,” he said, stopping in front of Fabian, his presence looming like an umbrella above him, “But just know that a battle of words holds is an honorless one, and I thought I had taught you that already.” And he passed, his coat billowing like a mainsail on the sea. 

No, Fabian did not like Adaine Abernant, in fact, he was pretty sure he hated her. 

~~~

Fabian decided to nurse his wounds with kippers and warm milk, as was Cathilda’s way. Papa had left that morning for Bastion City to “finish some business,” but Mama was still giving him the cold shoulder, so Fabian curled up on the sofa with his head on Cathilda’s knee as he did what he did best: complain. Loudly. 

Even he wasn’t really sure what he was talking about, filling the room with a steady stream of, “it’s not fair”s and “she was mean first”s and “why am I in trouble?”s while Cathilda smoothed his hair and hummed noncommittally. 

“I just wish she’d go away and leave me and Mama and Papa alone,” he huffed, energy finally drained. 

Cathilda paused, hand still twisted in the thick strands of his hair. She pulled him up to face her. “Well, Master Fabian, I don’t know what happened between you and Miss Adaine, but I do know that it must be scary for her to be in a new place with all these new people,” Cathilda said. Fabian blanched, the backs of his eyes stinging––and really he needed to stop crying––because Cathilda couldn’t take her side too. 

“But she keeps ignoring me and she got me in trouble,” he pressed again. She tattled on him, that was the greatest offense anyone could commit.

Cathilda pursed her lips and gathered Fabian’s hands in hers. “Master Fabian,” she started instead. “How did you feel when you first visited Leviathan?”

Fabian remembered first stepping off the boat, the new sounds, colors and sights sending him pressed to the back of his Mama’s leg for the first three days, even if he was enamored with the city by the end. “Not good. But–”

“And how do you feel when me and Mistress Hallariel or her and Miss Adaine speak Elvish?” She cut him off with a raised brow. 

Fabian’s face scrunched. “Annoyed…” Though he didn’t really see what that had to do with anything. 

Cathilda placed a warm hand on his head. Many people in Seacaster Manor did this. His mama, a slow caress down to his chin before shaking it––sometimes affectionately, sometimes when he was in trouble––his papa, rattling his skull around before branding his sword for Fabian to battle him, and Cathilda, heavy, still, steady. She smiled gently at him, as she often did when there were dots he couldn’t yet connect himself.

“Master Fabian,” she intoned. “Miss Adaine is from Fallinel. They only speak Elvish there.”

Fabian blinked. Oh. Oh. His stomach twisted and a feeling, kind of nauseous, kind of hot, settled in it with the knowledge that he hadn’t been very nice. He must have been showing his feelings on his face because Cathilda lifted her other hand to squeeze his cheeks together.

“It’s alright,” she said. “You didn’t know, dear boy, but I think if you try you and Miss Adaine can be great friends, yes?” 

Fabian twiddled his fingers together. He still wasn’t convinced, because Adaine hadn’t even tried to talk to him, even if she was bad at it, and had still tattled on him to his mama and hadn’t even tried to fix it and maybe even if Fabian was nice she’d still be mean. But Cathilda was looking at him with big, round eyes and Fabian wanted to make her happy so badly. He nodded.

She patted his cheeks, pressed the rest of the kippers into his hands, and disappeared back into the kitchen, the cold air of the living room biting the phantom press of her fingers. 

The week passed quickly. His mama had forgotten the events of tea by the time she got home that evening, and instead had a blast ferrying him to the boutiques of Elm Valley Mall. He was starting first grade this year and Mama loved that. Fabian, though he would never admit it to Papa, loved it too.

Papa thought that school was useless for warriors––he had never been, had forged his life on the open sea from the day he was born. It was Mama who convinced him to let Fabian go to Skullcleaver Elementary with all the other kids his age. He liked school, what he knew of it. He liked drawing and writing and every night before bed he read about his papa’s battles on the high seas and when he closed his eyes he imagined himself writing his name on the world in swirling inked letters. 

Mama had never been to school either, at least, that’s what Fabian thought, though she had never told him one way or the other. Having something that neither of his parents had felt . . . nice, he supposed. Even if he had to meet new kids who were probably all really lame and Adaine wasn’t going to Skullcleaver she was going to Hudol College, which, Fabian didn’t even know that kids could go to college, and Fabian still didn’t really like Adaine, though Cathilda kept reminding him that he still had yet to give her a chance and that he was too stubborn for his own good, but it would have been nice to at least have had a familiar face in class.

He figured he would do what Papa had always done, and become king of the school and make all those kids fear the Seacaster name or something. 

He secretly liked going to the boutiques too. It was different from the hard pressed linens that were his nice day clothes at home, those scratched at his skin and pulled at his joints and never let him raise his arms above his shoulders.

The ladies here would pinch his cheeks and stuff fancy, soft outfits into his arms and in the dressing room his Mama would gently pull the sleek shirts and ribbon sashes onto him while Fabian tried to rub the smooth, silken texture into his skin. Then she’d place a hat on his head, or tuck a feather behind his ear, inspect his face intensely, her silver eyes moving over every inch of his face, before placing a chaste kiss to his forehead and ushering him out to employees that cooed and gushed at how cute he was. The imprint of his mama’s lips lingered softer than any satin. 

By Thursday, his papa was back, and with him was a new sparring sword and a renewed battling vigor. That afternoon, the two fought until long after the sun had gone down. When Fabian stumbled into bed that night, after a long, hot bath drawn by Cathilda, he was comforted by his aching muscles and the absence of the heavy stare that had followed him last he’d seen Papa.

By Saturday, Fabian had gained seven new outfits, more notebooks than were necessary, a new calligraphy set, a whet stone (even though Mama knew he wasn’t allowed to fight with a real blade yet), and a small tin of iced cookies, of which he was allowed one after dinner every night until they were gone. 

He lingered outside the door to the tea room, his mama had already gone back inside, immediately enamored by whatever conversation she and Mrs. Abernant were having. Fabian crinkled the napkin he was holding in his fingers, careful not to crumble the cookie inside it.

He took a deep breath and pushed inside, ignoring Mrs. Abernant and Adaine’s sister to barrel up to Adaine. Adaine looked up from her book, startled, from Fabian’s vantage point he now saw it was filled with magic diagrams and pictures. A blond strand fell in front over her nose, a line of gold between glacier blue. 

He thrust out his arms, presenting the single cookie to her as his ears burned bright red. Then, in an Elvish that he and Cathilda had spent all morning practicing, “I am sorry. You are not stupid. Do you want a cookie?” 

Adaine’s face pinked in return, and Fabian found that she looked much more pleasant without the perpetual knit in her brow that he was used to. A hesitant hand reached up and took the cookie from his grasp, and with a furtive glance at the trio across the room, Adaine took a small nibble of the treat. Her face lit up, and quickly, the entire cookie was stuffed into her mouth.

Fabian watched her as she sat there, mouth full, for an uncomfortably long time. He was sure that the dough was getting gross and soggy in her mouth, but Cathilda had warned him about being rude and he couldn’t be mean again already so he waited, shoulder rising with each passing second before she finally swallowed, fingers wiping on the napkin. She seemed to remember he was there again and smiled, white teeth flashing, as she started rambling in crisp, fast Elvish. 

If this was how she felt all the time, Fabian could see why she had been off-put before. “Stop!” He said. “I can’t understand you.” 

Adaine froze, mouth stilling into a soft ‘o’ shape. Her mouth scrunched and twisted as she bit the inside of her cheek and glanced around. It was a familiar sight. Fabian waited, shackles haunched like a rabbit ready to run. Finally she said, “My name is Adaine. I am sorry for shouting you.” Then she opened her palms. “Want to watch?” 

Fabian nodded and slow, hesitant sparks of purple and blue and white and green danced out of her palms. He had forgotten that she was a proper wizard. The sparks flew up and looped in the air, landing softly on Fabian’s nose. They weren’t hot like he would have expected, just a fuzzy prick, like bubbling rock candy. Fabian giggled delightedly.

He grabbed her wrists and held them to his eye level. Above her palms, blue eyes reflected the echo of her fireworks. The corners of them scrunched into a smile. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t that bad.

“Again! Again!”

~~~

Adaine figured that Solace was an accurate name for the country that housed Fabian Seacaster. She knew that the country was named that because it was supposed to be a “solace” for the peoples that had escaped persecution from High Court and Fallinel, but that didn’t really matter to her. What mattered was that even after six years of knowing each other, the comfort that lived in the halls of Seacaster Manor never abated.

At first, it was nice to have a friend. Adaine would show him cantrips from her book and complain about the other kids at Hudol and explain over and over again that Hudol was not actually a college that was just its name. In turn, Fabian would regale her with tales of his playground conquests and help him with his Elvish homework and let her watch his sparring matches with Mr. Seacaster. Sometimes Fabian’s father would even let her join, claiming that, despite her lack of dexterity with a blade, a true pirate must know the basics of how to wield one. 

Eventually, Fabian’s company turned from mildly enjoyable to safe harbor in a storm. Home was. . . well, Adaine simply supposed it was. Her parents snipped and Aelwyn blamed everything on her even if it wasn’t her fault and when Adaine brought home scores less than perfect or didn’t know the same spells Aelwyn did (which wasn’t fair because Aelwyn was older so of course she knew more spells) her father would level her a long, silent glance, and Adaine would feel terribly, terribly small.

Their mother no longer braided their hair, both her and Aelwyn much too old for childish pleasantries, but sometimes Adaine would watch her pass a hand over Aelwyn’s shoulder as she her passed in the kitchen or correct the somatic motions for her spells with a gentle press to Aelwyn’s wrist and something keening and tense would snake its way through her joints (for her seventh birthday, Mrs. Seacaster had gifted her and Aelwyn small wands to use as arcane focuses. Aelwyn, like their parents, believed that practical casting was lazy and did not use hers. Adaine did. This, somehow, meant that Adaine would never need her mother’s help with spellcasting again). 

When she was ten and had finally learned feather fall, Adaine, after a day of silence and punishment and knuckles that still ached from the thwap of a ruler from her father, braved her pounding heart and the whisper in her mind that said, this will make everything worse, to float to the ground and run to Seacaster Manor.

That night she had almost given Fabian a heart attack when she started throwing rocks at his window, but when he let her up and she sat on his bed, shoulders pressed together as he read her a book of Mr. Seacaster’s adventures, the keening abated. 

Adaine still went to “tea” on Saturday afternoons, though now she went alone, her mother so unbelieving that Adaine could find enjoyment in Fabian’s company that this one solace was left untouched.

Adaine was not used to good things lasting. The Aelwyn of her childhood was gone, comforts from her mother fleeting, and her relationship to her classmates oscillated between nonexistent and actively hostile. But sometimes, in the quiet of the Seacaster Manor library, her pinky overlaid with Fabian’s as they read silently next to each other, she allowed herself to feel relieved. Every other moment, she knew it was too good to be true.

In October of her sixth year at Hudol’s lower school, Adaine’s mother was called back to Fallinel.

Her father was tightlipped about it, and Adaine knew it was serious when even interrogating Aelwyn, who, despite her many, many faults, was still a valuable source of information, yielded no results. One day, her mother was there, sipping imported Elvish tea and reading students’ papers and then she was gone, her only warning a note on the dining room table. 

In the first week, Adaine enjoyed her freedom like a glutton at a feast. Her mother watched her, her and Aelwyn both, with sharp eyes and a leaden tongue. Her father, on the other hand, made Adaine wonder if he remembered she existed when he wasn’t looking at her. She spent every day that week at Seacaster Manor, chatting with Mrs. Seacaster and Cathilda, sparring with Mr. Seacaster, practicing magic and playing games with Fabian. So long as she reappeared in her room before dark, her father didn’t seem to care. 

The second week, Adaine began to worry. She knew her mother was a capable wizard, but even still, she wasn’t a practical caster like Adaine was or a pirate like Mr. Seacaster and at night scenarios played through her mind when she tried to trance: her mother, captured by bandits; her mother, the ship home sunken by a storm at sea; her mother, killed by assassins; her mother, tired of her family, of Adaine, disappearing.

Fabian had begun to worry, nudging her knee when she zoned out as they both worked on homework around the kitchen island as Cathilda piled kippers for Fabian (which she still didn’t understand how he liked) and mango slices for her onto their snack plate. Her father, too, had tightened his leash. A sharp request that she be home for dinner the first words out of his mouth when she returned home Monday night. 

The third week, Arianwen Abernant returned in the middle of the night. Adaine heard the door creak open, her having taken to trancing late and waking when non-elves did than the other way around, which the rest of her family was more partial to. She slipped out of her room, creeping down the long hallway until she could just barely peek over the railing that spilled into the living room downstairs. 

Arianwen hung her coat and placed her bag on the sofa. Alarm bells rang in Adaine’s head. Nothing had ever been out of place in her home, and her mother always kept her bag, filled with books and spellcasting components, in her study. She sat primly on the sofa before leaning forward and placing her head in her hands. Then, quietly, to the point Adaine could barely hear, Arianwen began to talk to herself.

Adaine couldn’t make anything out, but she recognized the familiar waves of Sylvan conversation. Goosebumps trailed down her arms. All spellcasters learned Arcane Sylvan and Arcane Elvish. Because the Abernants went above and beyond, they learned conversational Sylvan as well, even though it was a dead language only spoken by the monsters in the Nightmare King’s forest. Something heavy settled in Adaine’s stomach, imbued with the sense that something was horribly, horribly wrong. 

Her mother stilled, even the slight tremor in her hands freezing before she whipped her head up. Adaine ducked out of sight, pressing her back to the wall and trying to maneuver as quietly as possible back to her room. She slipped inside, grateful, suddenly, that her door was not allowed to be closed, and quickly crawled into bed. She heard the heavy footfalls of her mother lumbering up the steps and Adaine, childishly, foolishly, dove under her blankets and prayed her only crime would be trancing improperly. 

Through her sheet she saw a sliver of light from the hallway pour in before being blocked out by her mother. Her heart roared in her ears and she hoped her quick breathing wasn’t as loud as she thought it was. She stood there for what felt like hours. A tear welled up in Adaine’s eye. A quiet part of her mind that had never truly left the comforts of her childhood in Fallinel wished to go home.  

In Sylvan, “Perhaps, perhaps not. Still, it could be useful.” Then, graciously, the footsteps receded. Adaine laid there, heart stuttering, breath puffing in short, uneven syllables, until morning came as she ran through every possibility of what kind of ghost could have replaced her mother.

Chapter Text

A ghost in the rafters. Fabian goes on an adventure. 

or. A child raised in a powder keg will always explode.

~~~

Adaine was not afraid of ghosts. At least, not practically. The ghosts of stories and myths and legends were scary, she could admit that, but they weren’t real, they couldn’t actually hurt her. Real ghosts were simpler. She understood the science, both the arcane and physical, of what actual ghosts were and what they could really do. 

She knew that the soul was as corporeal as the body and that just because the body had been destroyed didn’t mean the soul had been too. She knew that it took tremendous effort to stay in the mortal plane and that, practically, most ghosts were not powerful enough to enact anything on the physical world around her. She knew this because, despite whatever her family might believe, Adaine was especially clever, because she helped Fabian with his homework and even though she wasn’t perfect, not like Aelwyn, she was still top of her class at Hudol, and she understood that there was no reason to be afraid of ghosts. 

Still, Adaine was petrified of the one in her house. It started just a few days after the run-in with her mother, who Adaine was still unconvinced had not been replaced with a monstrous amalgamation of her, with a scratching at her door. At first, Adaine had watched the bottom of the wood for shadows, for the offending creature to move into her line of sight as she wished desperately that her door had a lock on it. It wasn’t until four nights in that a fleck of white paint floated to the ground and Adaine realized that whatever was doing this was inside her room.   

Every night she watched harsh lines get dragged across her door, her walls. Always too close for comfort but too far away to pose a real danger. She’d just had to watch, frozen, from her bed and pray that the scratching didn’t come any closer.

She had not been trancing lately.

Fabian had been worried about her. She knew she was not handling this restlessness particularly well. She’d become broody and snippish in ways that made the space in between her joints contort in uncomfortable ways. She always felt bad the second the words left her mouth. A voice in her head that sounded distinctly like her mother’s always followed, this is not how proper girls act. Straighten up, Adaine. The snapping of her tendons kept her from apologizing.

Her mother had begun to end afternoon tea short. The past few weeks she had appeared at Seacaster Manor’s doorstep, eyes alight with a new hunger that had followed her back from Fallinel, to pluck her from whatever she was doing––these days, sparring with Mr. Seacaster (Captain Seacaster, he kept having to remind her) as she was too keyed up to do anything else really––and bring her home. 

That was the most unsettling part, Adaine thought. Her mother watched her now. Her mother had looked at her before, a disinterested, appraising gaze, flitting between her and Aelwyn and finding what she found in Adaine to be distasteful; a cursory look, dismissive before Arianwen even found the words to scold her. But never like this: long stares at the breakfast table, studying every strand of hair out of place from her braid, every fine line in the growing shadows under her eyes. Scrutiny after school, when she and Aelwyn were relegated to private arcane study, Arianwen looming over the books in Adaine’s lap, the diagrams scribbled into parchment on the table. Sometimes, she even helped. Something was terribly wrong with her mother. 

It took five weeks for Adaine to reach her limit and, really, she thought she deserved to be applauded for holding out that long. She had been feeling like a taut wire for days, every brush enough to make her snap back, a whiplash of targeted words and spells with reverberations just as violent. At home, this was directed towards Aelwyn, as they always pointed their anger towards each other, long since having lost the ability to sand down each other's rough edges. 

She’d only managed to embarrass herself at Seacaster manor, one wayward comment to Cathilda of all people and the stern look that followed enough to send the tears that simmered below the surface, too afraid to spill over while the ghost dragged its talons across her walls, cascading down her cheeks. 

At school she’d recoiled like a snake. Her relationship with her classmates at Hudol was tenuous on the best of days. This was not entirely her fault, it simply was the nature of her status. The Abernants had always been off-putting to the other Hudol students: too proper, too rude, too smart. Hudol had always been a poor approximation of the magic colleges in Fallinel, where centuries could be spent studying magic and still there would be more to know, but the Abernants were real High Elves, plucked from the capitol city, Stellemere, itself. 

For Aelwyn, this manifested as untouchability. Her sister had been blessed with a magnetism that made people stumble over their own feet to impress her, even if they knew it would still not endear them to her. For Adaine, this manifested as disdain. 

Adaine was sure that she had charms, but she was still the same girl in the pirate’s quarters on the ship from Fallinel, refined and honed in the walls of Seacaster Manor. Adaine knew how to bite. Most of the time they left her alone, but sometimes they pushed, egged her on, donning aggression like an overgrown jacket. 

She wasn’t really paying attention to what Brixelby Timmons, a human boy who lived a few blocks away from her, whose parents were adventurers or worked for the Council of Chosen or something else important that made Brixelby think he was important too, was saying. It had something to do with how stuck up she was and how much her family must hate her, nothing new. It was true, which meant it wasn’t hurtful. Things that were real simply were in Adaine’s experience. If she allowed them to be hurtful, she’d be in a lot more pain than she was now. But she was tired and so scared it enraged her and it felt good, at least for a moment, to twist that ire back towards someone else.

She looked up from her book where she was sitting on a bench in the Lower School’s main courtyard. Late fall had fully settled in, and a harsh cold breeze ruffled the pleats of her skirt. Brixelby was alone, but she could see his cohort of similarly self important friends farther behind him, all listening in to see if they could take some credit in knocking Adaine down a peg. She set her hand beside her, smoothing her palm on the grey plastic.

“I think,” she said coolly, rolling the words on her tongue and feeling awfully like Aelwyn in this moment, “that you try to put down others to cover up that feeling in your gut that you are nothing and will amount to nothing. Perhaps if you focused more on your studies you wouldn't have to bully people into making your mommy and daddy love you.” 

Upon reflection, there was no “feeling” about it, she’d taken that one from her sister word for word. Surprisingly, it hadn’t been directed at her. 

Guilt ebbed at her as soon as Brixelby sprinted towards the school doors, his eyes already reddening as he left to go tattle. That was okay––for better or for worse the staff at Hudol preferred to let their students air out their differences amongst themselves––Adaine had not cast a spell on them, never needed to, so she would be fine. She did not actually like hurting people, despite how easy it was, just that under her skin was a roiling current as unforgiving as the sea and sometimes it just . . . spilled out. 

That guilty feeling pulled at all her skin like rubber through the rest of her lunch period, well until she sat down in her seat for her Intermediate Abjurative Theory Class. It wasn’t until an exam was pressed face down on her desk that her concentration was startled.

Only then did her mind helpfully supply that the test her professor had droned about was today and not next week and really, all she could think about was the irony of the situation. Because of course it was an abjuration exam. 

Adaine didn’t get abjuration the way that her sister did and no one in her life let her forget it. It didn’t matter that Aelwyn was as close to useless as was acceptable in their house in divination magic, just that Adaine’s lopsided, half-baked understanding of shields and protections was a failing and Aelwyn’s was not. 

She opened the booklet and didn’t even have a chance to try and understand the questions before her vision started swimming and her face started getting hot and her mind ran on the same loop over and over again.

1. A Mage casts a spell using somatic, verbal, and material components. Three gold coins are––

Her eyes slid over the question and it refused to stick in her brain. She was painfully aware of her body––the feeling of the rough speckled plastic chairs muffled through the fabric of her skirt, her hand pressed into her desk, the prickling roughness pulling at the soft planes of her palm. She shook her head.

1. A Mage casts a spell using––

Adaine often felt there was a wall in her mind, and sometimes, when it really hated her, that wall slammed down and didn’t let anything in or out. Her breath rattled in her chest. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, leaving a hot patch of condensed sweat on her desk.

1. A Mage––

A strange keening sound was distracting her. Low, hunted. Her breath quickened. She couldn’t think, all she could focus on was the chant of failure failure failure and the punishment she knew was waiting for her when she got home. 

A hand was laid on her shoulder and Adaine flinched so violently it almost threw her from her chair. The sound stopped and she realized, mortifyingly, it had been coming from her. Her own gasping thundered in her ears, blocking out whatever the professor was saying, thinning to a dull shriek, sounding dreadfully like the talons that scratched and clawed and taunted her and––

The rest of the day blurred.

She came to herself in the back seat of her mother’s car. Aelwyn was nowhere to be found. Adaine peeked out the window, the streets of Elmville rolling past them, the pink sunset tinged blue by the tinted windows. She must have needed to be picked up late. Her mother noticed her shifting and her gaze shot to the rearview mirror. Her mother’s eyes were a deep blue, darker than the near glacial ice of Adaine’s and her father’s, like Aelwyn’s if Adaine squinted. Adaine shrunk under its weight. Now this was familiar: discontent and disappointment. In a way she was relieved. 

The silence stretched around them as Adaine tried not to look away. It would be easier if she faced her head on. 

“You’re grounded for a month,” she said, in Elven to make sure that Adaine really understood. That was the worst part of moving to Solace, that Elven had become the language of punishment. “You have disappointed this family greatly today, Adaine. I hope you’ll use this time to reflect on your failings and stop, well, really, Adaine, stop throwing tantrums.” 

Adaine bit her lip so hard she felt the soft flood of iron in her mouth. She nodded.

“If you did not have the foresight to study for an exam, you should have faced your failure outright, rather than crying and hoping you’d get your way,” Arianwen admonished. Adaine’s hands twisted over her seatbelt. She had pushed herself into the small space between the seat and the door, pulling the seatbelt across her neck like a shield. “Which you won’t. I spoke to your professor, even if your manipulations swayed him, your grade will be the one you earned.” 

She hadn’t even thought about the possibility of making her exam up, the dream birthed and killed in her mother’s mouth. She nodded anyway before finally breaking eye contact. The car was warm, buffeting the encroaching winter air. 

“Can I–– Can I still study at Seacaster Manor,” she ventured, words stilted. It was a shot in the dark but it was necessary, those few hours in a place where the walls were not riddled in tears only Adaine could see. “I only ever read there and I can make sure the maid keeps you updated on my studies and––”

She caught her mother’s eye once more and her voice died in her mouth. Arianwen looked hungry, her pupils blown wide and a little wild. Her mother tilted her head to the side. Adaine had made a mistake, shown her hand, proved that Seacaster Manor was something that mattered, that was worth taking from her and gods above her parents loved to take from her. 

“No,” she said. Arianwen’s tongue flicked across her lips, leaving the glint of sharp canines in its wake. “In fact, you will stay with me.”

~~~

Fabian Aramais Seacaster was not a hero. This was not anything special. He was still only eleven and even his papa said he was going to write his name upon the world, not that he was ready to. What was special was that he did not want to be a hero. 

He wasn’t like the other kids in his class, whose parents read them bedtime stories where good always won and knights in shining armor rescued princesses from dragons. Actually, Adaine had been scolding him lately about always having to be the princess. So maybe princesses in shining armor rescuing other princesses from dragons. Or knights in shining armor who happened to be women rescuing princes from dragons. 

No, Fabian was raised in a home that knew the truth of the world: only the strongest survived and neither good nor evil had a say in that. His papa certainly wasn’t good. Fabian was still a kid but he wasn’t stupid––he knew the tornado made of gold and guests with more scars than unblemished skin were criminals, even if they showered Fabian with affection and brought him toys and trinkets from their travels. He knew from the way some of the kids in his class gave him a wide berth, their uppity parents warning them that he wasn’t safe to play with, that his papa had done bad things. 

Papa certainly wasn’t evil either. He loved Fabian and Mama and Cathilda and in his own strange way he loved Adaine too. He gave Fabian anything he could want and then some and told him, every day, that Fabian would be great, better than great, even. 

But Papa was strong and that was why he was still alive and so many of his enemies weren’t. That was what mattered. Papa was strong enough to survive and kill and protect those he loved or deemed worthy and it didn’t matter if he was good or evil he just was . 

Fabian did not wish to be a hero because one day he was going to be a pirate. He was allowed to fight with real swords now and in his free time he studied battle strategy. Adaine taught him Blooming Blade and Green Flame Blade and the two worked out their energy or arguments or just plain had fun in matches that ended with them both exhausted, sweaty, and bloody. And one week out of every year his papa took him to Leviathan to get a taste for the sea and every time something in Fabian’s chest thrummed, a tenor of anticipation. He was going to be a pirate one day. 

Despite that, he wished, now, that he were a hero. If only so it didn’t matter that he wasn’t strong enough yet, he could fix whatever was happening to his best friend. 

Fabian knew, in the loosest of terms, that Adaine’s parents did not treat her the way his parents treated him. It was why she came alone every week, long before Cathilda thought she was old enough to do so, and why conversations about them (and after one blow-up fight when they were eight, Aelwyn) were off limits. To Adaine, and by extension Fabian, the Abernant name only existed outside the hull of Seacaster Manor.

Fabian made it a rule not to pry, mainly because it made Adaine sad, and Fabian had never known how to fix that, the duality of which twisted something sharp in his stomach. Partly because Adaine’s sadness always eventually became anger and Fabian had experienced the unpleasant development of Papa teaching her how to hit things firsthand. And a little bit because Ms. Abernant was still a close friend of Mama. Supposedly. 

But he didn’t know how to fix this without prying. The volatility had been one thing. It smarted, yes, that the Adaine who leaned on his shoulder after a match and explained the more complicated questions he had quietly and slowly had shrunken away, but Fabian could deal, it was only temporary. Adaine could be mean, but it didn’t set him off how it normally would, not when he could see just how sick his best friend looked. Besides, Fabian was mean too, and had a playground rap sheet to back it up, so when she started snapping randomly at him, they fought it out like they always did and by the end, it felt like her bristled exterior had loosened just a notch and that everything would be okay eventually. 

Even if it was tense, and Adaine had cried after yelling at Cathilda and her visits ended with them both bleeding more often than not, her absence, Fabian surmised, was decidedly worse. She was still his best friend. She’d taught him magic. They played together all the time. He missed her. Adaine hadn’t been to Seacaster Manor in three weeks and Fabian was almost to the point of knocking on the Abernant door just to get confirmation she was alive. 

He knew that was silly. Of course she was alive, she was a kid and the daughter of a pretty important diplomat, and if she was dead, if she was even missing, her name would be all over the news before Fabian even had a chance to wonder if something was wrong. But that was still where his mind jumped. He even made Mama send a note to Ms. Abernant, asking if she was sick and when she’d be coming back. 

Silence. 

He waited, impatiently, every week for a knock at the door that wouldn’t come. Even his parents seemed concerned, Mama fretting over whether or not Adaine had decided she didn't like tea time anymore and Papa musing if she'd gotten herself jailed for her exploits yet, and they never worried about anything, ever. So the next day at school, Fabian hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, and while his classmates ran onto the concrete during lunch and his teachers broke up a fight, he slinked away towards Hudol College. 

He was old enough to know that Hudol College was just its name and it wasn’t an actual university. Sometimes he still teased Adaine for it, because she was the smartest person ever, which always earned him a swat at the elbow, not hard enough to hurt just enough to be there, but he knew it was just a way for a fancy private school to seem fancier than it was. Adaine said wizards were just Like That. 

Hudol College did, however, look like a college. He’d seen a few on fantasy TV on the rare occasions he and Adaine decided to watch a movie, something she was not allowed to do at home, apparently, and they looked eerily similar. Tall stone walls, spiraling towers, arched doors and windows that reminded him of the cathedrals across town. Fabian loitered across the street from the main entrance and watched crowds of students from the Upper School spill on to the main lawn. 

The Upper School was let out a full half hour before the Lower School, Adaine’s school, was. Aelwyn was a first year in the Upper School this year. Fabian briefly debated tracking her down. Aelwyn was, at her core, a ruder, worse Adaine, but Fabian didn’t really mind her. He hadn’t seen her in a few years, not since Ms. Abernant stopped coming by the manor, but Fabian remembered that she was funny. He wondered if she cared enough to make sure Adaine was okay for him. He didn’t like that he didn’t know the answer. 

Instead, he ducked behind a car parked on the side of the road and waited for the Lower School to get out. Through the car’s window, he watched Upper School students mill about and felt his heart stutter every time there was a flash of blond hair. 

When he finally spotted Adaine, one of the last lower students to trail out, her book bag slung haphazardly over her shoulder, his heart did not stutter. It threatened to stop. 

Her hair was loosely braided over her shoulder, a display or plaits and twists too complex for Fabian to follow. It was a holdover from her Fallinese upbringing, she’d told him once, where braids were indicators of status and care and family. She missed Fallinel more than the rest of her family, he thought. It was apparent in the way her face lit up whenever they spoke Elvish together or the times Cathilda did her hair. Her Hudol uniform was neatly pressed, not a wrinkle out of place. 

She looked as she always did, perfectly put together. Pretty. But Fabian knew Adaine better than anyone else. He had seen her happy more often than not, at her best practicing a spell or breathless after a fight. He had seen her angry many times, over her parents or sister or classmates. He had even seen her sad a few times, funneling into sharp words and picked skin. 

Adaine looked haunted. Her skin was sallow, pulled taut over her cheekbones. Dark bags sagged under her eyes, which were sharpened to a point, darting across the main lawn. 

Fabian was running over to her before he knew what his legs were doing, barreling across the street and onto the freezing grass.

“Adaine!” He called, stuttering to a stop in front of her. He swayed for a moment, arms raised slightly at his side before he rushed into her, squeezing her tight against him. Her clothes were cold, the frigid chill of the December air seeping into the fabric, but under that, she was warm.

Instead of returning his embrace, like she normally would, like she was supposed to, Adaine flinched violently, like Fabian’s skin was on fire. He let her go, something sharp pressing against the walls of his throat. Her expression was wide eyed and petrified. “I’m sorry. Are you hurt or something? I just––I hadn’t seen you and I was––well I wasn’t worried but Cathilda was and––”

Adaine’s face collapsed and she sprang at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his chest, her torso trembling slightly. Fabian gingerly cradled her shoulders, his breath tight in his chest. He didn’t know what to do. He was not good at emotion, never had been. Part of their connection was that Adaine was not either, they both stumbled over their words and relied on what was unsaid to keep them going. He didn’t know how to fix this. 

“Are you okay?’ He offered lamely. 

Whatever had allowed Adaine to collapse disappeared. She froze in his grasp and straightened, pushing a curly strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Yes, I’m––” she licked her lips, glancing around nervously. “I’m fine, Fabian.” 

Fabian knit his brows. He grabbed her hand. “But––” 

She wrenched it away. Her breathing quickened as she backed away. “I’m just grounded. I need to go.” She craned her neck around his head, he followed her gaze and recognized the sleek black of Arianwen Abernant’s car. 

“Adaine, what’s going on?” He pleaded with her. All he needed was something, then he could go get Papa or Cathilda or someone who was strong and powerful to do something. 

“I’ll see you soon, I promise. Please don’t come back.” Adaine sped away, throwing herself into the back of the car, which peeled off immediately, Fabian left breathless in its wake. 

He wandered home, defeated, a few minutes later, the interaction replaying over and over again in his mind. She had been right there. He tried to think of what his papa would do. Kidnap her, probably. Skewer Ms. Abernant’s heart where she stood. Hell, even Cathilda would have grabbed Adaine’s wrist and dragged her back to Seacaster Manor herself. It was Fabian who couldn’t do that. Who’d stood there, uselessly, while Adaine trembled in his grasp and remained frozen when she escaped. 

A hero would not have frozen. A pirate would have ended the whole ordeal then and there. Fabian stood outside the front door to the manor. He gripped the hilt of his blade, freshly sharpened, painfully aware it had never been in a real battle. He wasn’t a hero, wasn’t a pirate. He was just Fabian. 

He’d have to change that.

Chapter Text

The new normal. Fabian makes a promise. Adaine receives a gift.

or. First rule of being captain: you’ll never save everyone.

~~

Adaine found it grossly ironic that Kalina wasn’t the worst person in her house. That title was reserved for her father, and sometimes her mother when she was feeling particularly spiteful, but never her. She wasn’t like Aelwyn either, whatever unspoken truce they had right now as fraught as an old rope. No, in the almost year and a half she had known Kalina, or at least had been able to see her, she and her had come to, well, a sort of understanding. 

Kalina would not snitch to Mother about her late night trips to Seacaster Manor––which she took anytime being in her bedroom made her chest tighten and constrict like Kalina’s talons over her throat, which was more often than not, really––so long as she was back before sunrise. Kalina hated the sun. 

Nor would Kalina trip her anymore. She had long since lost interest in petty things like sending Adaine sprawling in the hallway or making her skip the last step on the stairs, always a chance she would collapse completely and twist her wrist. Though Adaine suspected her mother’s annoyance at having to heal her that had prompted Kalina to stop rather than any semblance of goodwill Kalina had towards her. 

Kalina was even helpful, sometimes. She whispered in her ear when her classmates tried to cheat off her school notes. When she and Aelwyn got really mean with each other, she’d lay a hand on Adaine’s wrist, honeyed threats dripping off her tongue. She’d even started pushing Adaine out of the way when a hit from Fabian or Captain Seacaster was coming, which Kalina insisted was because she didn’t want the boys roughing up her favorite plaything. 

Adaine would always bite back that she was nobody’s plaything, which she knew wasn’t true, but it felt good to put up a fight. She never disputed that she was anyone’s favorite anything. 

In exchange, Adaine did whatever Kalina and Mother wanted. 

Their agreement worked and it made Adaine’s life much more pleasant than it had been, which still made her hands ache if she thought about the first few months of her and Kalina’s relationship too hard. It also meant that she woke from her trance, which she had been able to do lately, thankfully, to Kalina perched on her chest, yellow eyes boring into her. 

“Hello,” Adaine said.

“Morning, kiddo.” Kalina’s long tail thwacked gently against her stomach. 

The nickname was strange. She knew, logically, that ‘kiddo’ or ‘kid’ or ‘squirt’ or whatever Kalina had taken to calling her was supposed to be nice. Affectionate. She’d watched enough fantasy TV at this point to know; she’d seen what it was supposed to entail––a hand on her head or shoulder, ruffled hair, a soft hug after a long day. She’d never been that before. She’d only ever been Adaine. Really, Adaine and Little sister, Adaine and Mistress Adaine . She wasn’t anything affection worthy for Kalina either. 

Still. “Happy birthday,” Kalina said after the silence had stretched long enough for it to settle over them. 

Adaine didn’t dignify her with a reply. Instead, she pushed Kalina off, the woman landing softly next to her, and went downstairs. Kalina was being mean, Adaine knew it, she wanted to make sure she said happy birthday first so the entire day was focused on her. 

Father was already in the breakfast nook, a cup of steaming Elvish tea in his hand as he lazily skimmed the newspaper. Mother was gone again, on an errand she refused to tell Adaine the nature of. Which, as infuriating as it was to be kept in the dark, Adaine supposed was gift enough. Instead, streams of morning sunlight settled on her empty chair. April meant it was warm enough now to keep the windows open in the morning, which Adaine knew her parents were still partial to, with how much they complained about missing the open fields of their villa in Fallinel. 

Her father glanced up at her briefly as she sat down before returning to the paper as an unseen servant placed a plate in front of her: two hard boiled eggs cut in half, five melon balls, and a thin slice of buttered elven whey bread. Adaine bit her lip, a flash of irritation settling at the base of her skull. She didn’t even like melon. 

She picked at her breakfast in silence, trying not to let chalky bits of egg yolk touch the sheen of melon juice on her plate. Adaine stared at her father, or, well, she stared at the paper in his hands and tried to imagine his expression underneath. 

Adaine heard the sound of light steps prancing into the nook, then, “Good morning, Father,” Aelwyn said pleasantly, kissing their father on the cheek as she took the seat across from Adaine. “Good morning, Adaine.” 

“Aelwyn,” Father greeted, lowering the paper. He didn’t smile, but it was a close thing. Adaine set her fork down, her egg suddenly tasting like dust on her tongue. 

The morning settled into routine; Father spoke aimlessly about the news and Aelwyn’s studies. Father did not, as was achingly familiar, give much thought to Adaine. And really, it took all her willpower to bite her tongue and not cast Ray of Sickness on him. Kalina smirked beside her, whether laughing at her misfortune or suddenly able to read her thoughts, Adaine didn’t know. That bitch, she thought, hoping Kalina could hear her. She wouldn’t put it past the tabaxi, at this point, anything seemed possible. 

It’s not that Adaine had been expecting anything grandiose. Birthdays were not celebrated in her home, even Aelwyn’s, they simply passed. They had been an afterthought even when she was a kid stuffing sweet dough and honey into her mouth, a blip on an otherwise uneventful day. Elves grew to be so old, counting the years was rather useless for them. Still, they had never outright forgotten. Not yet, at least. 

It took longer than she cared to admit to notice Aelwyn’s gaze on her, too busy trying to explode her father with her mind or make him put down his newspaper and pay attention to her. Aelwyn, too, looked at their father occasionally, interspersing his monologue with an opinion of her own when she saw fit. Aelwyn was allowed to do that. 

When Aelwyn knit her brows, forming the tiniest crease in her forehead, Adaine put the pieces together. Aelwyn knew it was her birthday and had decided not to say anything. Bitch. Adaine’s expression soured so thoroughly that Kalina tilted her head at her, expression amused. Adaine glared at her, then Aelwyn. Adaine hated being made fun of and she could only get back at one of them.

Adaine cast Ray of Sickness on Aelwyn from under the table. 

Father rounded on her then, his full attention finally on her, and her plate was whisked away, her stomach whining pitifully as her half eaten whey bread disappeared into the kitchen as her Father scolded her about playing nice and not resorting to such immature tactics . 

Later, as she passed Aelwyn wiping vomit from her shirt in the bathroom mirror, halfway out the door to walk to school as punishment, she realized, unhappily, that she didn’t feel much better at all. 

Kalina didn’t end up going to school with her. Usually, Adaine preferred it this way. Kalina was distracting in every situation. She tugged at Adaine’s sleeves and whispered in her ear and generally delighted at drawing her attention away from class, which always ended with Adaine breathless in her seat as she tried to force understanding of whatever she’d missed. She was better now, really. She was perfect . But she did not have Aelwyn’s ability to be perfect without trying. 

But it was Adaine’s birthday, and while she felt pitiful for it, she wanted someone there who at least pretended to care. It was still only Tuesday, which meant she had four achingly long days until she could go to Seacaster Manor, where Cathilda had promised her as much cake as she could eat and whatever else she wanted, which, really, was just a day with Fabian. Her late night escapades didn’t really count, as they rarely ever spoke during them and Adaine was always gone before Fabian woke up. Besides, while Kalina may have promised not to snitch, Aelwyn certainly had not, and her sister was deceptively hard to sneak around. 

At lunch, Adaine finally checked her crystal, a gift from her mother for good behavior. Nothing from her parents, still. Nothing from Aelwyn either. She rubbed her chest, trying to knead the tight feeling away. A ping from Fabian:

Fabian Aramais Seacaster (12:32PM)

(birthday_cake.gif)

(image.png)

Happy Birthday! See you soon.

She smiled at the image of a small wrapped box. She’d never doubted, but Fabian had remembered. 

The buoy in her spirits carried through the rest of the day, her afternoon cut with brief text exchanges. A picture of her Intro to Transmutation project, a review of Cathilda’s new cookie recipe, making fun of her Magical Theory teacher’s voice. 

“Chatting with your boy toy during class?” Adaine flinched, immediately dropping her crystal into the folds of her skirt. Kalina leaned on her desk, head laying languidly on her forearms. She looked like the girls at lunch, teasing each other about their crushes and planning sleepovers and study sessions. Adaine flushed. “After all you’ve complained about how distracting I am. I’m hurt, Adaine, truly.” 

Adaine clenched her jaw. There was only a few minutes left of class, then she could go home. If her mother wasn’t back then she might be able to cajole Kalina into leaving her alone for a few hours, at least until she could finish a book or two. Perhaps her father would remember her birthday by then and there would be something nice for dinner. 

“I’m teasing, you know,” Kalina drawled. Kalina had not been great for Adaine’s social standing. Not that it had been great to begin with, her meltdown from the year before having decidedly categorized her as a freak, and the few times Adaine had spoken to the empty air had only solidified it. “I know you’d never go out and replace me, especially with that kid.” She lifted a lazy paw, picking at her teeth with a sharp claw. “It’d be pretty unfortunate if you did, though.” 

She dug her nails into her palm. The last condition of her obedience: Fabian. 

Adaine had known frightening people her entire life. Her mother. Her father. Bill Seacaster, she knew, was one of the most violent and prolific pirates there had ever been, even if he was Fabian’s dad and her sword fighting instructor. But nothing he or her parents had done could compare to how frightening Kalina was. She didn’t need it spelled out for her, what Kalina would do if Adaine hinted that something was wrong. And horribly, terribly selfishly, Adaine wanted permission to keep seeing him. 

“I’m messing with you, Adaine,” Kalina huffed, blowing a strand of her black hair out of her face. “You’re so dramatic, kid. I’m not actually going to kill him.” True, her mind supplied unhelpfully. But it would be worse. 

The bell rang and Adaine was up in an instant, books dumped into her bag as she slung it over her shoulder and rushed outside. Kalina would wait for her there, just as uncomfortable as Adaine was with the crowd of students that poured out of Hudol’s classrooms. 

Adaine rubbed the back of her neck, trying to cool the sweat that had pooled there. It was that strange time of year where the weather couldn’t decide if it was still winter or the middle of summer and for some reason Hudol’s lower school was not outfitted with a temperature regulation spell, so Adaine had sweat through most of the day. Kalina rarely made that better. 

The spring breeze was a welcome addition then, the air like a cool stream against her flushed skin. Her relief was short-lived when she saw Kalina sitting on the hood of her mother’s black car, tail flicking excitedly behind her. Dread pooled in her stomach. Kalina only got excited about a few things, each one more unpleasant for Adaine than the last.

Adaine pushed her way to the car, classmates giving her a wide berth when they realized who was shouldering past them. She slid in, swinging her bag between her feet. Adaine was not allowed in the passenger’s seat so she nestled in the seat behind her mother as Kalina followed close behind, pupils narrowed to hungry thin slits. 

“Mother,” Adaine greeted politely. “You’re back soon.”

Arianwen glanced at her through the rearview mirror.  

“Just running an errand, Adaine,” Arianwen said, her tone leaving no room for questions. 

Adaine sat on her hands, waiting for her mother to speak up again. Adaine knew she had been busy with whatever errand she was running and that she had more on her mind than plain old her. But, she thought traitorously, Arianwen was her mother. And maybe last year or the year before it would have made sense. In the game of chess she and Aelwyn played for their parents' affection, Aelwyn always, always won. But now Adaine was Arianwen’s helper. They had spent more time together in the past year than they had in Adaine’s entire life. Arianwen was her mom. 

They pulled into the driveway silently and Arianwen led her down the familiar route to her home research study. She said nothing as she nodded for Adaine to sit in the middle of the room and grabbed the worn down chalk sitting on the table. The only words for the rest of the evening were incantations and as spellcraft wrapped around Adaine, sucking the heat from her stomach and making Kalina’s ever-present hand on her shoulder more solid, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed. 

~~~

Fabian had never been the cleverest person in the room. It wasn’t that he was dumb by any means––he got good grades and he knew how to win a fight and Adaine, because she was the biggest nerd he’d ever met, forced him to solve the crossword with her enough times that he was halfway decent at them now. 

Fabian was fine; he was smart, even! But he wasn’t clever, not in the way that Adaine was, because of the aforementioned nerd qualities. He didn’t have her knack for finding connections or parsing through riddles or understanding what the hell those old wizards who first studied magic were talking about.

But he had to try because Adaine, his best friend in the entire world, needed someone clever.

Fabian gripped his backpack strap where it was slung over one shoulder. The Elmville Public Library was, unsurprisingly, an unassuming building. Shades of dark rust and maroon dotted the brick walls, leading to two double doors and a sign denoting the building’s title above it. A breeze ruffled its way through Fabian’s hair, sending a light trail of goosebumps down his arm. 

It was not that he found the library intimidating . . . well, he did, but it wasn’t because it was a library. He had been there a few times with Adaine while she found supplementary reading for her classes or checked out a new piece of fiction to tear through, but he had never really looked at anything himself. He didn’t like reading, the energy that always thrummed beneath the surface, crackling like lightning in the confines of his joints, was too restless to properly sit down with a book. He preferred drawing or sparring or having things explained to him while he occupied his hands. He was out of his depth by a long shot. 

Fabian pushed through the door. According to Adaine, the library itself was rather sad. Elmville was an adventuring town at its core, which was the reason Papa had moved their family here after retiring from piracy, so there was little effort spent on maintaining things like the public library when there were dragons to kill and worlds to save. Adaine had groaned about it on multiple occasions, complaining that the Hudol library was good for magical theory and not much else. Fabian didn’t know if that was true or not, he’d only ever been to one library. 

The scent of parchment and disinfectant hit him as Fabian was presented with rows and rows of books. Directly in front of him were a few tables and plastic chairs, with some comfier looking lounge chairs dotted by the walls. It was pretty empty, which Fabian thought was odd for a Tuesday afternoon on a school day, only the librarian behind her barrier, attention focused on something on her computer, and a small goblin boy hunched over a spread of papers and books.  

Fabian flexed his hands in front of him. He’d come here with a mission: find out whatever was wrong with Adaine. He’d had this mission for over a year now, ever since Adaine first started acting weird and disappearing. 

He hadn’t had much luck so far. First he’d tried brute force––needling to get her to tell him herself, which only resulted in Adaine clamping her mouth shut and ignoring Fabian for the rest of the day. Then, espionage, leading to a very confrontational conversation with Aelwyn Abernant that left Fabian with a stomach ache for a week. Then, careful conversations with Papa about any weird things he may have seen during his pirate days, which, while always loved to listen to his Papa’s stories, proved rather useless. Once all of those efforts had yielded nothing he turned to his last, and worst, option: reading. 

He swept his gaze across the room. He didn’t really know what to do. Whenever he’d come here with Adaine he had followed her through the rows, prattling about whatever he’d gotten up to in the past few days until she found something more interesting to draw her focus. He wished he’d paid more attention to her.

Okay, Fabian, he thought. What would Adaine do?

He rounded on the librarian, a mousy halfling woman with bangs and large round glasses. She was standing on a step ladder behind the computer, her cardigan trailing at her ankles. She looked painfully like a librarian. “Hello,” he said, gripping the edge of the counter. “Where can I find a book on things that make people act weird?” 

“Act . . . weird?” The librarian blinked owlishly at him. It reminded him of how Adaine looked when he said something particularly bizarre. He grimaced. She pressed her lips together. Then, slowly, “Well, a lot of things can make people act weird. Um.”

She looked at him expectantly. Fabian opened and closed his mouth, little half starts of an explanation growing and dying on his tongue. How could he explain the way Adaine constantly looked over shoulder, like she was searching for an attacker only she could see. Or how her shoulders hunched to her ears when her mother came to pick her up. Or how sometimes she snuck into his room like a ghost, silent and cold and always gone by morning. 

“Like, uh––different,” he settled on. “Like someone did something? Maybe.” 

The librarian took a deep breath and nodded, humming in understanding. “So a magical effect.” She turned to her computer as Fabian nodded vigorously. “Unfortunately we don’t have too much in the library about magical effects, you’ll have to head to Aguefort for that. Are you––?” She paused. “Nevermind. What we do have is in the 680s––which you can find in that aisle right there––though it may be a bit complicated. There are a lot of magical effects and without anything to narrow it down you’ll be reading through a lot.” She pointed to the aisle directly in front of him, next to the goblin kid. 

Fabian grimaced but nodded, calling out a quick thank you as he made his way down. He passed under small signs which labelled the mini sections: Engineering, Transportation, Cooking, Medicine, Practical Clericy, Arcanotech, and finally, Magical Diseases and Effects. 

Fabian blanched as he looked at the selection. He didn’t even know what half of these titles meant. A dull ache settled at the base of Fabian’s throat, Adaine was so much better at this. He shook his head and rolled his shoulders––he needed to buck up and do this for Adaine. Fabian combed through the spines, eventually settling on an older introductory book on harmful magical effects and historical magical diseases. He clutched it to his chest as he wavered in front of the section. Fabian grabbed another chunk of random texts just in case and hurried back to the main area. 

He dropped his books on one of the tables with a thud, earning him a sharp glare from the librarian. Fabian flushed and quietly sat down. What would Adaine do? 

Fabian pulled a notebook and pen from his bag, flipping to a random blank page. He wrote and scribbled out different titles before finally settling on a simple, Notes , in blank ink. Fabian pulled the introductory book off the pile, as he figured that was the best place to start, flipped to the front page, and got to work. 

Three hours later Fabian realized that “getting to work” was more complicated than he thought. He felt a sudden appreciation for all the wizard stuff he had deemed boring before, if this was what research was like then he understood why the rest of Adaine’s family was so prickly. 

Fabian was stuck because of several problems: 

1. There were just too many magical effects to deal with. That realization dawned on him as soon as he opened the table of contents, which was so long Fabian thought it needed its own table of contents. So far he had concluded that Adaine had not triggered an alarm spell, had not been hit with an antimagic ray, and was not being charmed. Charmed, by the way, was used loosely, as there were fifty entries in that section alone, and he had only gotten through the Allies condition. From how she had been acting, Fabian thought it was safe to assume that whatever or whoever she was dealing with wasn’t her friend.

2. He wasn’t sure he’d know what magical effect Adaine was dealing with when he got to it because he didn’t really know what was wrong with her. Yes, she had been standoffish and cold and scared but that wasn’t endemic to any one effect, or even any twenty effects. Hell, she might not even be dealing with a magical effect at all.

3. Even if there were only a few effects to choose from and he did know exactly what Adaine was dealing with he was just too stupid to fix it. The book had already done Fabian the favor of explaining how to cure or dispel every effect it listed, but Fabian had realized early on that the text was written for wizards. He didn’t understand any of it.

He wished Adaine was here. She would have known exactly where to look, probably wouldn’t have even needed to start with an introductory book of all things, and would have solved the entire mystery already. He swallowed roughly. If Adaine were here then there wouldn’t even be a mystery to solve. 

One of the pages of his notebook crinkled under his tight grip. Fabian wasn’t cut out for this. He was a fighter. He wasn’t cut out for this.

A shadow passed over him. Fabian jumped, his train of thought broken, and looked up to find the goblin boy from before. 

“Hi,” the boy said loudly, quickly being shushed by another stern look from the librarian. “Hi,” he whispered. 

Fabian frowned. “. . . Hi.” 

“What are you doing?” The boy asked and Fabian’s frown quickly turned into a scowl. 

Adaine was private. Both as a person and to him. He knew she didn’t have many, if any, friends at Hudol to talk to, just Fabian. Fabian himself had a little entourage of classmates who thought his Papa was cool and by extension thought Fabian was cool, but they weren’t friends, not really, and Adaine had always been too important to talk about with them. If he hadn’t told those kids about his best friend he certainly wasn’t going to tell this one. 

“None of your business,” he said curtly and pulled his notebook closer to him. He didn’t have much yet, just a few crossed out theories and an empty column for his eventual discoveries. 

The goblin didn’t seem to notice Fabian’s tone, or elected to ignore it, as he sat down and stuck his face into Fabian’s personal space to keep spying on the notebook. 

“Is that––? Are you solving a mystery?” A thin tremor of excitement snaked into his tone. The boy took his hesitation as a yes. “ Amazing. What’s the mystery? Is it a crime? Is someone in trouble? Oh! Do you have any clues yet?” 

Fabian, in a frankly astonishing amount of self control, decided not to punch the kid. He wanted to, if it meant he’d go away, but that would almost certainly mean getting kicked out and maybe banned from the library. He needed this place. Besides, Adaine would be disappointed if he did. 

“I’m not solving anything.” And maybe that was a little more pointed than Fabian had meant it to be, but he was frustrated and this goblin boy was annoying. 

“Oh,” the goblin said, looking slightly taken aback, before he pulled out one of the other chairs at the table and sat down next to Fabian. “I can help with that.”

“What––?”

“I’m––oh I guess I never introduced myself.” The boy straightened in his chair and pulled a small card from his back pocket. He held it between his pointer and middle finger, presenting it to Fabian for the taking. “I’m Riz Gukgak, private eye.” 

Fabian took him in now, properly. He was wearing suspenders over a dress shirt and slacks in a public library on a school night. Awkward tufts of dark green hair stuck out around his ears from under a newsboy cap. Fabian plucked the card from his hand.

Riz Gukgak

(un)Licensed Private Investigator

Oh my god it was a business card. Fabian, in a––pretty standard actually––lack of self control, burst out laughing.

Riz shrunk back as the librarian sent a third withering glare their way, quickly cutting Fabian off. He almost made to apologize to Riz, but, well, he had been making fun of him and he wasn’t particularly sorry. 

“Your marketing is abysmal,” he said instead. 

Riz bristled, his lips pulling back to reveal a row of sharp teeth. Fabian made a mental note not to make him too mad. “You don’t need marketing to solve crimes.” 

Fabian rather thought you did, at least to be hired to solve crimes. Fabian doubted he’d ever be on that side of the law, but he was his father’s son, so he at least knew how money moved. “I’m not even solving a crime,” he said. He didn’t think so, at least. 

“What are you solving then?” Riz’s standoffishness disappeared as soon as he caught a glimpse of what Fabian was researching. Fabian narrowed his eyes, his hand drifting to cover the page he was on. 

“You don’t have to tell me details,” Riz said hurriedly, waving his hands in front of him. “I just thought you needed help and this looks interesting. Those are about magical diseases, right? Has someone been poisoned?” 

“I don’t know,” Fabian said before he could catch himself and Riz cocked his head to the side, long ears drooping slightly. It was true, he didn’t know if Adaine was being poisoned and he definitely didn’t know enough to fix it if she was. Riz was still rambling half-baked theories that honestly weren’t too bad and, perhaps, if Adaine couldn’t be here then he could settle for the next best thing. 

Fabian stumbled through a rough explanation of the past eighteen months of his life. He spoke about those late night visits and the clouded look Adaine got sometimes and the shock that went through him sometimes, like he was being hit by something that wasn’t there. He left out any mention of Adaine’s name or other identifying information. Riz was practically vibrating in his seat, obviously desperate for more information, but, thankfully, didn’t push. When he finished, Riz lit up, pulling one of the books towards him. 

“No, we can definitely figure this out,” Riz said. “It’ll be harder since we aren’t in Aguefort yet, man, I wish we were there imagine everything we could get done ––”

“Aguefort?” Fabian asked. He knew of the school, everyone did. It was an adventuring school and step two of his (and Adaine’s, even though she didn’t know it yet) plan to become the greatest pirates to sail the seven seas. 

“Yeah, Aguefort,” Riz said. “It’s, like, every aspiring detective’s dream school. They teach you how to investigate and fight monsters and the library there is huge and has so much more information but we can make do with this, it’ll be fine––”

Fabian let Riz keep talking. Aguefort. He’d forgotten about it, honestly. School was so low on the totem pole of Fabian’s problems he hadn’t even given it a second thought. If what Riz was saying was true, then maybe, if Fabian hadn’t fixed everything by then, the school could help them out. 

He twirled his pencil in his hand. Oh, he thought as the realization occurred to him. Aguefort wasn’t just an adventuring school, it trained heroes. 

He could work with that. 

~~~

Fabian wasn’t surprised when the window to his room shimmied open that night. He’d stopped locking it almost a year ago, having gotten to the point that if anyone who wasn’t supposed to there managed to climb in he could dispose of them quickly. 

It wasn’t a thief tonight, however, just Adaine, and a knot Fabian hadn’t noticed tightening over the events of this afternoon loosened at the sight of her. It didn’t loosen fully, though, and the release of tension was quickly turned to dread as he noticed how slow her movements were. 

Ah, ghost Adaine was back. That was the best way to describe it. The ghost of Adaine Abernant only ever appeared at night, silent and distant and barely an echo of his best friend. They never spoke about it during the day, or, Adaine never spoke of it and resolutely rebuffed any of Fabian’s questions regarding the matter, and Fabian rarely got a word out of the spectre when she was here. 

Fabian scooted over in his bed wordlessly. It was routine at this point. Still, after a slow moment, a pained look crossed Adaine’s face before she climbed in next to him. 

That was the first symptom: the sluggishness. That afternoon, he and Riz had decided the magical poison theory had the most merit, and had told Fabian to start documenting its effects. Adaine was usually quick, astoundingly so, putting ideas together before Fabian even had a chance to comprehend one. Tonight, Fabian knew that every action would take twice as long and any indication of understanding on Adaine’s part would draw out far too long. 

She pressed against him, sending a trail of goosebumps down his arms. The second symptom: the cold. Normally, Adaine ran feverishly hot, having to be pushed to the other side of the couch whenever they had movie days in the summer to prevent Fabian from overheating. She felt colder than the dead. 

With the cold came the third symptom: the softness. Fabian knew that wasn’t the right word, but it was the best he could describe how Adaine felt fuzzy on the edges, like static on an old movie screen. 

“Hi,” she whispered. She laid her head on his shoulder, her hair billowed into a pillow over his chest. It wasn’t braided, though Fabian could see a few forgotten strands that hadn’t been brushed through crossing over each other. 

“Hello, Adaine.” Fabian felt the sudden urge to grab her hand. He swallowed, settling instead for placing his fingers over her pulse, just to remind himself that she was alive. Belatedly, he added, “Happy birthday.” 

And, horrifically, Adaine started crying.

Adaine hadn’t cried in front of him since those bizarre thirty seconds back on the Hudol front lawn and Fabian had most definitely not gotten better at comforting people. In fact, he’d argue he’d gotten worse. 

He turned to face her, her head falling until it pressed against his chest and Fabian felt warm tears soak into his pajama shirt. He grabbed her forearms. 

“Wait, Adaine, I’m sorry. Are you––? Fuck .” He glanced around, hand flexing uncertainly over her skin. She was still ice cold, her pulse a distant, jackrabbit hum. His gaze settled on his bag hanging off his bedpost, still holding the books he’d checked out from the library. “Listen, I–– I met this guy today––and oh my lord what a weirdo, you’d love him––but he kept going on and on about the adventuring school.”

Adaine looked up, red-rimmed eyes boring into him. The night light dulled her light blue eyes to a gray-ish color. She opened her mouth.

“I know you’re going to Hudol’s upper school,” he cut her off. “But just–– just think about it. You can still be a wizard at Aguefort, you could be an even better wizard at Aguefort. And we could figure this ,” he gestured vaguely at her, “out. We could go back to normal, Adaine.” His voice felt small, all of a sudden. “Please. I promise we can fix it.”  

Adaine searched his face slowly. Her gaze traced his expression, though Fabian was clueless to what she found. She looked off and behind Fabian, her expression much too pointed for Fabian to write it off as being lost in thought. Adaine’s face twisted briefly and Fabian feared she’d start sobbing again before Adaine hesitantly nodded. 

Fabian chose to believe she was nodding at him. 

They sat there, Fabian with his hands resting on Adaine’s arms, Adaine leaning silently against him as the show Fabian had been watching on his bedroom TV before she arrived played softly in the background, until Fabian remembered it was still Adaine’s birthday, and he had a present for her. 

“I, um, I need to grab something,” he started lamely, his face flushing uncomfortably. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” 

He scurried away before Adaine had a chance to reply, bounding down the stairs to his study room. He opened his desk drawer, grabbing the small box wrapped in brown paper. A piece of twine was tied in a bow on top of it. 

Fabian couldn’t do much beyond empty promises, but he could try and make Adaine feel better, at least for tonight. He’d meant for the hair pin just to be something simple; Papa’s old bladesmith had come to visit last month and taught Fabian the basics, it was coincidence that the end product was pin-shaped. After that it was easy to twist some gold wire around it into a design he thought she’d like. He knew how much she loved doing her hair, it was only natural. 

He fiddled with the rope as he made his way back upstairs, suddenly feeling nervous. He rolled his shoulders, it was just Adaine . He was being silly, she’d like his gift no matter what. And with luck it would shake her from whatever funk had spurred her breakdown earlier. That assurance did not make his heart pound any less. 

Fabian took a deep breath as he pushed his bedroom door open, eyes trained downwards. 

“I got you something,” he started. “I know I was supposed to wait until Saturday, but I thought, hey, it’s your birthday today, so. I don’t know, I hope you––”

He looked up. The room was empty. A breeze billowed through his open window, curtains rustling like a dust tail in Adaine’s wake. 

~~~

Awareness did not return to Adaine, exactly. Instead, the world slowly saturated and noises that Adaine hadn’t even noticed were muffled rang loud and clear and she was back without really realizing that she had been gone. 

It never got any easier.

Adaine blinked, just noticing the shadows of her skirt in her lap, where she’d pressed her forehead to her knees. She twisted her hand in the blanket beneath her. She was in her room. That was new. She vaguely remembered being at Fabian’s, watching TV on his bed, and––

Adaine flushed. If she cried in front of Fabian one more time she was going to melt into the floor. 

Her hot face was a welcome distraction from her stomach ache, which she admittedly didn’t worry too much about. Her stomach hurt more often than not these days, whatever spells were cast on her choosing to wrap twisting, gnawing tendrils of nausea around her abdomen.  

She peeled her face from her knees, blood immediately rushing to fill the imprints of her skirt pleats on her forehead. Adaine blinked. Her light was off, though Adaine presumed that was probably because she hadn’t bothered to turn it back on when she came in. Her window was still open and the pale face of the moon poured through, casting just enough light into her bedroom to make out the silhouette of her furniture. She rolled her shoulders, trying to shed the stiffness from them. She wasn’t sure how long ago she’d snuck back in, but from the tense coil of her shoulder blades Adaine assumed it had been a few hours. 

Adaine leaned over to her bedside table and turned on her lamp, casting just enough light to flood her bed in a yellow glow, illuminating Kalina’s long tail hanging over the side. Adaine followed it up to Kalina’s full body on the other end of her bed, one leg crossed in front of her, the other a perch for her splayed out arm. 

Kalina watched her silently as Adaine reacquainted herself with reality, stretching her hands and trying to pinch blood flow back into her limbs. She’d told Adaine that she found this part fascinating. Adaine didn’t know why, didn’t really know anything about Kalina besides the fact that she could see her and almost everyone else could not. Nothing in the public or Hudol libraries had any information about her or something like her that Adaine had found. Any other time, this fact made her so mad her face burned, now she tried to rub any semblance of warmth back into her freezing chest. 

“Scale of one to ten, how was your birthday?” Kalina quipped, lip pulling into a ghost of a smile. Adaine froze. It took a second for the sentence to sink in, sinking through molasses in her mind. She shot Kalina a withering glare. “Jeez, kiddo, it’s a joke. Sensitive. ”

“One,” she said honestly, there was no use lying to Kalina. Even if Arianwen could also see Kalina, it had only ever been Adaine and her. Adaine was lucky like that.

“Even after visiting your boyfriend?” Kalina asked and her voice dropped. “Yeah, if I heard someone was poking around where they weren’t welcome, I’d be upset too.” 

Adaine stilled, anger finally, comfortingly, simmering in the pit of her stomach. She kicked a leg out at Kalina, only for it to pass right through. She’d never been able to touch the tabaxi on purpose, but sometimes hoped that if she was pissed enough, Kalina would materealize just so Adaine could punch her lights out. 

Kalina narrowed her gaze and rolled her wrist. Adaine noticed that her first was clenched like she was holding something. 

“You know, I really shouldn’t if you’re going to be like this,” Kalina said, rolling her eyes. “But I am the mature one here. I have a present for you.” 

Adaine clenched her jaw. Logic dictated that whatever was in Kalina’s hand was not to be trusted, could only hurt her, and she definitely should not accept. Especially something offered after Adaine just tried to fight her. “What is it?” She asked instead. 

Kalina smirked and opened her palm. In the center of her hand was a single gold coin. It was larger than the gold pieces used for Solesian currency and an open book design was etched on its face. “Just a coin,” she started. “It’s decorative, honestly. You can’t buy anything with it. But it’s from a dragon’s hoard, which seems like the kind of thing you’d be into.” 

Adaine swallowed roughly. She was only twelve––well, thirteen, now––but even she knew that anything from a dragon’s hoard was bad news. “Why?” She asked. 

Kalina raised a thin eyebrow. “What?” She drawled. “I can’t give my favorite kid a birthday present?” 

Adaine huffed. Her chest hurt, a knot slowly twisting its way through her lungs. She wished she’d gotten a birthday present. A hot lump nestled in the back of her throat and Adaine forced herself to swallow around it. Fabian was bad enough, she refused to cry in front of Kalina. 

“Why? ” She demanded.

Kalina sighed like she was some long suffering martyr to Adaine’s childishness. Adaine hated her. “I’m serious,” she said slowly. “It’s a coin from a dragon’s hoard. It’s for you. It’s your birthday. Forgive me for thinking we could bond.” 

Adaine bit her lip. Every logical part of her screamed that Kalina wasn’t to be trusted. Except, Kalina had never really lied to her before. And it wasn’t Kalina who cast spells on her or teased her at school or ignored her in the breakfast nook. And it was Kalina who let her go to Fabian’s and who told her when people wanted to cheat off her tests and who was there when Adaine woke up every morning. 

It was her birthday, and maybe she was childish, but she had wanted someone to get her a present. And if it had to be Kalina, so be it, it was always Kalina lately. She grabbed the coin before she could convince herself otherwise. Kalina grinned as Adaine tucked the coin into her pocket, lip curling back to reveal sharp fangs.

Hours later, when Adaine laid down, it was sleep, not trance, that overtook her, and the panic at that loss was promptly overshadowed by despair when Kalina appeared in her mind, the cat’s laugh bouncing in her skull like an echo in an empty hallway.

Chapter Text

Adaine takes a test. 

or. What was always destined to be. 

~~~

Adaine watched the sun slowly rise through the square of her window and wished she were a powerful enough wizard to push it back down and stave off the day for a little while longer. Small rays of morning light squeezed through gaps in the tree branches in her backyard and settled uncomfortably over her eyes. Adaine blinked down at her desk, small blue static spots blurring her notes. She squeezed her pen where it was mid-sentence on the page, the pressure sending a jolt of ink through her illegible scribbles. 

She’d been working there for hours. Adaine had, at first, tried to trance, or sleep––she was never really sure which one she’d get until she was unconscious––but after two hours of tossing and turning to the point that even Kalina had gotten sick of her and left, she’d cut her losses and decided to expend her energy doing something productive. 

Granted, she hadn’t actually been all that productive. The combination of her exhaustion and the pit in her chest just below her stuttering heart caused the writing in her textbook to swim and her own ideas to lose meaning before they could empty onto her notebook page. 

Sometimes though, it was just the action that counted, any movement she made enough to drain some of the acrid fear out of her fingers.

For not the first time, Adaine let some of her anxiety turn to anger at the Hudol curriculum. She pressed her lips together, biting harshly on the inside of her mouth. She didn’t draw blood, though it was a close thing, but the jolt lessened the tension in her shoulders for a moment. 

Adaine thought, frankly, that the wizards at Hudol were fucking stupid. Hell, she thought all the wizards in Fallinel and anyone else obtuse enough to think that theoretical study was better than practical casting was stupid too. 

They sure thought they were important and smart and better than everyone else, saying that all spellcraft was useless if you didn’t understand how it worked, if you had not dissected every magical formula, had not seen how the overlays of spell circles aligned with Leumond’s Theory of Arcane Interactions. Adaine bought the argument conceptually, agreed with it too, but all her theory meant nothing if Adaine couldn’t hold her own in a fight, if she needed three hours and 100 gold worth of components to cast a first-level spell. 

She’d been fighting with spells for years now, Captain Seacaster of the opinion that you either fought with every weapon you had or you laid down to die. Adaine knew that, in battle, it didn’t matter how much arcane calculus you could do or whether or not you knew the prime spot in the Meridian Tangent that maximized realism in illusion spells. What mattered was how you hit and how hard you hit and who went down first. 

This was, of course, a completely unbiased opinion that was not at all influenced by the fact that Adaine was amazing at practical casting and abysmal, as much was allowed at least, at theoretical spellcraft. 

Adaine ran a hand through her hair. Her palms were sweaty, and the perspiration mixed unpleasantly with the building oil at her roots. She felt gross. She hated sitting in her anxiety-ridden cold sweat. Adaine’s mother had sent her for quiet study when she’d returned home from school, as she had for the entire week––both a reprieve to prepare and a warning––and Adaine had gone straight from the parlor room table to bed that night without showering beforehand. 

“Arianwen wants to see you,” Kalina said behind her. Adaine startled, her pen jumping out of her hand and rolling under her desk. Adaine was surprised to see the tabaxi. Kalina grew bored of mundane things like homework and reading quickly, so Kalina had been blessedly absent for most of the week. 

A familiar roil began bubbling in her stomach. As frustrated as it made her, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to face Kalina completely stone-faced. Shame, fear, relief, hatred; all tied up in Kalina’s whiskered face and thin black fur. Or, in Adaine’s case, a hollow chest and aching stomach. 

“When doesn’t she,” Adaine sighed, kneading her knuckles into her thighs. Sometimes she missed when she was just the failed second Abernant daughter. She still wasn’t a success by any means, but at least then she was just a problem to ignore. 

Kalina smirked, her face pulling away from where it was resting on her fist. She was lounged in Adaine’s bed, her other hand tapping restlessly on the sheets. She’d remarked, a few months ago after a particularly pointed barb at Kalina, that she was glad Adaine ‘was funny now.’

“Just get going, kiddo.”

Adaine pushed her hair behind her ears and quickly primped her pajamas. Mother never settled for anything less than perfection. 

In the breakfast nook, Aelwyn was already seated, eating and chatting idly with their mother while she tapped at her crystal under the table. Adaine narrowed her eyes. Crystals were not allowed during mealtimes. She debated the merits of tattling. She doubted Aelwyn would get in trouble, there was always some kind of excuse for her misgivings, and Mother would probably scold Adaine for trying to get her sister in trouble in the first place. Aelwyn, unlike Adaine, had the uncanny ability to get away with pretty much anything.

Arianwen read over a stack of papers, presumably her students’ final exams––anything of real merit was kept locked away in the research study for her and Adaine to deal with later––and idly snacked on a plate of grapes. She looked up as Adaine came in, eyes tracking the lines of her form as Adaine sat in the chair in front of her. She brought her legs up to cross them, eager to escape the chill of cold linoleum tiles on the soles of her feet. 

“Good morning, Mother,” Adaine said, neatly folding her hands on the table. Aelwyn tilted her head at her, eyebrow raised. It was a dare, Adaine knew, to see if her general ire at her sister was enough to merit the scolding she would get if she was not ‘pleasant company.’ Adaine bit the inside of her cheek. “Good morning, Aelwyn.”

With that, whatever Arianwen found was acceptable and she set her papers down to wave an unseen servant over to give Adaine her breakfast. Elven whey bread, jam, slices of cured meat. Adaine furrowed her brow. It looked good, delicious even. Her father had been on a stint recently, obsessed with these disgusting imported curd spreads from High Court and Adaine was ready to start a hunger strike just to get rid of them. Her mouth watered.

She ran through a list of possible catches. Arianwen always did things with a reason, and pleasantness for pleasantness’s sake was never one of them. Food, like sleep and good health, was simply fuel for more important things like spellwork and nefarious dealings (which was what Adaine had started calling Arianwen and Kalina’s plans in her head). 

Her exam was crossed off, Adaine would pass it simply because she was supposed to. It was not something worth dangling in front of her. Arianwen had plenty of carrots for Adaine: Kalina, freedom, Fabian. There was no need to add another. 

Failure had never been an option for her anyway. 

Kalina, while less present than she had been in the past, was in good spirits. This was a bad thing overall, but a boon for Adaine. She had never been told what her mother and Kalina’s ‘nefarious dealings’ were, but she had picked up enough pieces to assume that it certainly wasn’t anything good. She figured it made her selfish, then, to find comfort in their prosperity, but Adaine was not immune to creature comforts like that. 

“You wanted to see me?” She asked, figuring it was better to just ask outright rather than make a fool of herself with some half-baked guesswork. Kalina hadn’t followed her downstairs and Aelwyn was present so Adaine did not mention her. The cat was a forbidden topic outside of Adaine’s bedroom or the research study. As far as she knew, Aelwyn and Father couldn’t see her and Mother had no interest in changing that. 

“Yes, eat, Adaine, please,” she commanded. Adaine picked up her knife and spread the jam––some kind of berry by the tart smell of it––over her whey bread. She took slow, methodical bites, turning the grain to mush in her mouth. It was, expectedly, delicious, but Adaine couldn’t bring herself to enjoy it yet, not when Arianwen wanted something from her. 

Aelwyn looked inquisitively between them. She was not ignorant to the strange relationship Adaine and Mother had. It was one of Adaine’s few joys in life that Aelwyn’s ignorance and her knowledge of that ignorance annoyed the shit out of her sister. 

“I’ve received an invitation from Hallariel for you.” Now this caused Aewlyn to perk up. Aelwyn loved knowledge, she was a wizard, all wizards did. It was one of the few things Adaine and Aelwyn shared. Her family had many secrets and Fabian was one that Adaine had been able to hoard all for herself. “The Seacasters are going on holiday this summer and would appreciate your attendance.”

Adaine’s hand stilled on its way to her mouth. The jam sparkled in the morning air, ready to drip off the slice of bread and splatter like blood on the table. 

Holiday with the Seacasters. 

She’d heard about them before, Fabian’s adventures on the pirate island, and she was not a good enough liar to hide her jealousy. He always returned from those trips a little more starry-eyed, a little taller, a little stronger and smelling of sea salt and pride. When they were kids, Fabian used to entertain the idea. He had entertained many ideas, all of them ending with Adaine at Seacaster Manor permanently. 

Those dreams had dwindled as they’d gotten older, reality a heavy drug, but sometimes, when Cathilda commanded Fabian to pack his things because they were “leaving tomorrow and your room, dear boy, is a right mess,” Adaine hoped. 

The Abernants did not go on holiday. Her parents returned to Fallinel for one week every year so the Court of Stars could review Father’s performance as Ambassador and Adaine and Aelwyn would just so happen to be there too. 

“I didn’t know that,” Adaine said. 

She imagined, for just a moment, going. She could taste the ocean air on her tongue, run her hands through salt-caked hair. She saw herself going to Gibbity Square with Captain Seacaster and Hallariel, her sword at her side, quiet mornings with Cathilda, and days spent with Fabian, the summer sun glinting off his silver hair.

Aelwyn pointed her fork at her and scrunched her nose. “The Seacaster boy? Really, Adaine, I can’t imagine you tumbling around with those martial classes,” she said in a tone that implied she absolutely could imagine Adaine in that situation. “I just don’t understand how you can be so entertained by him. He’s dreadfully obtuse.” 

Adaine clenched her hand into a fist and debated how long she would be grounded for if she stabbed her sister. “He’s––” Kind, wonderful, handsome, brave, awesome . Arianwen leveled a heavy look at her. This was a test, then, of her civility and obedience and how important Fabian was to her. How he could be used against her. “Useful. Nicer than you, anyway. We study together.” 

The jab meant nothing, no one in her family had ever been nice, as far as Adaine knew, and niceness was not something to strive for. But Mother’s lip twitched, not into a smile, never a smile for Adaine, and it was pleased enough for Adaine to know she passed. 

“Regardless,” Arianwen said, not breaking eye contact with her. “I don’t see why you can’t go. Consider it a reward for good behavior.” 

Adaine’s heart stilled and slowly, like pieces of a puzzle, everything slotted into place. Breakfast, the week of no spells, the invitation. Adaine was being rewarded . That was new. 

“I–– Thank you , Mother.” 

Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth and she was sure the shocked expression on her face made her look like an idiot but she was too excited to care. Holiday. With Fabian . Alone. She thought of watching that wonderstruck expression grow on his face and sparring with him on the deck of a ship as ocean mist kept them cool. Her cheeks reddened.

That was new too. 

An unseen servant whisked her mother’s plate away as the woman stood up, lightly dusting her pants with her hands. “No need to be sentimental, Adaine,” she said and Adaine shrunk back. “And do remember, please, to freshen up before your exam. We can’t have you leave the house looking so unkempt.” 

Adaine pulled on a strand of hair subconsciously as Arianwen swept out of the room, leaving her and Aelwyn alone. She had meant to clean up more before joining breakfast, really, but there was no keeping her mother waiting, even if her hair was dirty and her palms were sweaty.

Without anyone else to act as a buffer, an awkward blanket settled over Adaine and Aelwyn. She didn’t know where she stood with Aelwyn most days. Aelwyn, to her, had always been a surgeon with a scalpel. She cut deep and knew where it would bleed the most. Aelwyn was precise in her cruelty, and while that didn’t lessen the pain or rage, it did garner her a level of respect.  

Adaine looked over to her, blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. For someone so cold, she had the warm, golden glow of their father’s family. It garnered her no small amount of attention. At school, the boys in her class would ask about her, what it was like to live with Aelwyn, and how Adaine could ever be related to her. Those tiffs often ended with the boys sprawled on the floor, but if anyone asked, she had nothing to do with that. 

Now that their mother had left, she was leaning with her elbows on the table, engrossed with whatever was on her crystal. 

In the past few years, Aelwyn had dulled. Perhaps not in her blade, but where she aimed it. Instead of deep cuts, Aelwyn wielded shallow taunts and empty words. Or perhaps Adaine simply had a thicker skin now. It was hard to truly be hurt by Aelwyn when Kalina waited for her everytime she closed her eyes. 

But then Aelwyn would say something particularly cruel, or she would renew the abjurative wards Aelwyn set up around her room again and it was like they were eight and eleven once more, slashing and clawing at each other until someone bled out. She didn’t know what they did, her Identify still too rough to get an understanding deeper than “abjurative ward” and “alerts the owner to things that pass it”. 

Aelwyn sighed and flitted a glance at Adaine. “ What, little sister?”

Adaine pinked and looked away, suddenly becoming very interested in the floor. “Nothing,” she mumbled. 

Aelwyn huffed. “You’re staring at me for some reason,” she said and placed her crystal face down on the table. “Out with it then.”

Adaine schooled her face into a decent enough scowl. “Nothing,” she emphasized, clearer this time. Even if her and Aelwyn’s relationship had cooled, her sister certainly wasn’t nice and Adaine definitely didn’t want to talk to her. 

Aelwyn rolled her eyes and returned to her crystal. “Fine, if you want to be a bitch about it.” 

They ate in silence then, until Adaine’s nerves couldn’t tolerate anything else. She stood up. Third years at the lower school did not have class today. All the professors were busy proctoring exams, so Adaine had a few hours to shower and freshen up before Arianwen would drive her to school. 

As she passed Aelwyn, a thin hand pressed into her arm. “Wait,” Aelwyn said. She looked at Adaine, deep blue eyes travelling along the lines of Adaine’s face before settling to the side. Then, quieter so Adaine had to strain to hear. “Good luck today.” 

Adaine bristled. “Oh, you think I’ll need it?” 

Aelwyn’s face twisted. “What––? No. I––” She paused. The fingers on her arm tightened, Aelwyn’s nails digging uncomfortably into soft skin. “I can’t wish my little sister good luck on an important exam?”

“ You can’t.”

Aelwyn’s expression soured thoroughly before smoothing to something more relaxed, if Adaine knew any better she’d think it was sad. “Well,” she said, tone the most sincere Adaine had ever heard it be. “I am. Good luck, Adaine.” 

Adaine blinked, the bizarreness of the interaction blowing her eyes wide. She fled before she had to respond, flying up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door shut behind her. 

She stood in the middle of the room, flexing her fingers at her side uncomfortably. Aelwyn was just so weird . 

Adaine didn’t know how to feel about the situation or Aelwyn in general, so she did what she always did and picked the easiest emotion to settle into: annoyance. And she was rightly peeved. Her entrance exam was today, it was right up Aelwyn’s alley to try and get in her head. 

She let her anger simmer deep in her chest, crowding out her anxiety long enough for her to shower and change and braid her hair with minimal nausea before she and Arianwen were pulling up to Hudol and Adaine had her hand on the car door. 

“I will return at the end of your exam window,” was all her mother said before Adaine was standing on the lawn, her previous momentum gone, and her heart stuttering through jumping jacks while the day continued around her, blissfully unaware of Adaine’s distress. 

Kalina appeared then, her hands in the pockets of her black robe and her hood down. A warm breeze tousled its way through her hair. It was late spring now, and the summer wind was the first hint of the approaching season. 

“Are you going to head in?” She asked, pointing with her shoulder towards Hudol’s front door. 

Adaine closed her eyes and pressed her wrist to her chest. “Mhm,” she hummed. “Just––give me a minute.” 

Kalina, thankfully, obliged while Adaine wrestled herself back under control. She was grateful she had been too nervous to really eat breakfast that morning, if there was anything left in her stomach she would have vomited it up by now. 

She breathed deep, holding her breath until the hammer of her heart, so heavy and powerful she could hear it, slowed enough for her head to clear. 

Swallowing tightly, she walked inside. 

A few students milled in the hallways, some on their way out, faces ranging from tentative satisfaction to grim acceptance, others sat on benches along the walls or paced in short lines, all looking about as nervous as Adaine felt. 

She approached the front desk. A half-elven man sat behind it, his leg was crossed over his lap and a clipboard rested on top of his thigh. “I’m checking in for Abernant,” she said, then as an afterthought, “Adaine.”

The man looked at a list in front of him, littered in different students’ names. He crossed one off and passed Adaine a small notecard. 

“Fill this out before you head in and give it to your exam proctor,” he said. “You’ll be in room 107 for the written exam and room 349 for the oral one.” 

Adaine nodded tightly and passed him. She still had almost forty-five minutes until her exam, but early was on time and on time was late, so she and her mother tended to arrive in advance to events like these. Besides, she needed time to reacquaint herself with things like breathing and coherent thought. 

Room 107 was on Hudol’s east side, nestled at the edge of the Transmutation and Conjuration wings. Only one other student was there, a gnomish girl Adaine vaguely recognized from her Advanced Divination class. The girl smiled at her hesitantly as Adaine sat on the bench by the door. She was nice, if Adaine remembered correctly, one of the few who regarded Adaine as neutrally as she tried to regard everyone else. Adaine smiled back.

She pulled out the notecard and the pencil in her pocket and began filling the paper out. It was just basic information: her name, date of birth, and student ID. Kalina reappeared as she scribbled her name in neat, looping characters and lounged over Adaine’s shoulder. Her whiskers tickled Adaine’s neck. Loathe as she was to admit, the pressure was soothing. 

The girl sat on Adaine’s other side. Her uniform was much more unkempt than Adaine’s was, her shirt untucked from her skirt and tie hanging loosely around her neck. The girl gripped the edge of the bench in the corner of Adaine’s eye. 

“I like your pin,” she said, leaning back to peer at Adaine’s hair. 

Adaine jumped, hand flying to the back of her head, where Fabian’s pin secured a few of her smaller braids in place. She wore it as often as possible, this small treasure. It was . . . comforting, Adaine supposed, to always have a piece of him with her. Adaine needed all the comfort she could get. 

“My friend made it for me,” she said, fingers resting on the gold wiring. He had followed it up a few weeks ago for her birthday again with a matching necklace, whose pendant was a small locket with a picture of the two of them inside it. 

She wanted to talk to him. Fabian had this uncanny gift for making her feel better without trying and she missed it. Missed him. Adaine had been pretty unresponsive this week; she’d told Fabian she was just busy studying, and she was, but really it was because Adaine was avoiding him. 

She didn’t want to. But talking to him would mean talking about Hudol which would lead to talking about Aguefort and Adaine really didn’t have it in her to pretend for him anymore. 

Adaine remembered that moment in Fabian’s room, his desperation at her distress, his plea for her to follow him to Aguefort. He’d sprinkle it into conversation sometimes, what their life as adventurers would be like at the Adventuring Academy, and Adaine would nod along, even add to the dream if she was feeling particularly inspired. 

But it was never an option. All Abernants went to Hudol, so Hudol Adaine would go. 

The girl seemed to take Adaine’s short reply as the dismissal it was and settled next to her, letting the skittish air wash over them. Other students slowly filtered in, and by the time the previous exam finished, about fifteen other kids were loitering with them.

The students who had been testing before them exited the room. Adaine tried not to let their distressed faces rock her too much. One of the proctors, her Biological Transmutations professor, waved them in. 

Adaine sat in the back, always calmer with her back covered. Kalina settled in at the front desk. Between the two of them, the entire room was surveilled. Some small, tense knot in Adaine’s shoulder released. And when the proctor told them to begin, Adaine could breathe unburdened.

It happened, sometimes, when Adaine’s anxiety dulled to a lapping wave, curling at the edges of her fingers but not yet overflowing. Something would click for her, and the world would melt away until it was just her and her mind. Adaine had always been especially clever.

Two hours later Adaine felt, well, good. She’d turned in her exam early, and revelled in the not small amount of satisfaction she felt as classmates she knew tried to copy off her throughout the year eyed her jealously as she walked out. 

She couldn’t even be too upset at any mistakes she did make. The entrance exam was the only test Hudol would ever administer that was Pass/Fail. Her mother would never know of any failures in that room. 

Adaine risked a look at her crystal. There was a message from Fabian, not a ‘good luck’, he had already told Adaine she didn’t need it, but a picture of his most recent drawing. It was a winding, abstract tree with drooping branches. Adaine realized, happily, that it was the design etched in her necklace and echoed in the wires of her hair pin. 

Adaine rolled her shoulders as she climbed the steps to her oral testing room. For once, the next few months looked clear. She would enroll in Hudol’s upper school and later that summer she would go to Leviathan with Fabian. Sure, she wouldn’t get to go to Aguefort with him, but she would hear about his adventures every week and, most importantly, he would be far away and safe from everything about Adaine that could hurt him. 

It took a few wrong turns to find her second testing room, but eventually Adaine was able to settle just outside it. The delineations of Hudol’s Upper and Lower School were literal as much as they were figurative. The third and fourth floors were for the Upper School only, so she had never been there before.

Adaine wondered, briefly, if Aelwyn was in one of the rooms she passed. The Upper School students were on an altered schedule today to accommodate the entrance exam and it was still early enough in the day that classes hadn’t let out yet. She imagined herself in just a few months, wandering these halls as Aelwyn’s little sister. 

That thought left a sour taste in her mouth. 

Even though all her classmates knew of and admired Aelwyn, she was Adaine’s much cooler and much prettier older sister, rather than the other way around. The last time she had been Aelwyn’s little sister at school, they still kind of liked each other. Adaine could only imagine what Aelwyn had said about her since, if she’d even deemed Adaine important enough to talk about at all. 

The oral exams were structured differently than the written exams. They were shorter, for one, with only twenty minutes to convince a small panel of professors that you knew magic well enough to study at the best magical school north of Bastion City. 

Aelwyn, the bitch, had been tight-lipped about what questions were asked for this exam. She claimed it was because they changed from test to test, year to year, but Adaine couldn’t be sure if that was true or if Aelwyn was just trying to screw with her. 

Unlike before, there was already a crowd of students waiting when she arrived. That crowd ebbed and flowed as students arrived and others left. The lull in time and thrum of nerves from those collected allowed her buoyed spirits to settle and the dread from earlier creep back in. 

She reached a hand up to fiddle with her necklace, the metal warm where it had been pressed against her collarbone all day. Adaine closed her eyes and tried to steel herself, repeating you’ve got this , in her head over and over again. It half worked.

“Ms. Adaine Abernant?” A voice called. 

Adaine stumbled forward at the startle, and the proctor smiled and waved her forward. She did not recognize this one, most likely a professor at the Upper School. 

“Right this way, please.” 

The room was mostly empty, all the desks pushed to the side to leave the center of the room clear. Adaine saw streaks of water across the floor and the tell-tale signs of chalk residue closer to the desks. She pieced together the point of the exam quickly. 

All spells, regardless of complexity or level, had a spell circle. When you cast one, you activated the circle and funneled in enough arcane energy to fuel it, like providing electricity to a computer to run a code. For ritual spells, you drew the circle yourself. For practical casting, a combination of the somatic, verbal, and material components, as well as your own energy acted as the ink for the circle. 

The point of theoretical magic was to study these spell circles, regardless of whether or not you could cast them. 

At the front of the room was a wall of moveable chalkboards. They were arranged in a three-by-three grid, several hidden from view behind the one above or below it. A hook leaned against the wall to allow whoever was writing easy access to move the boards up and down.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Abernant,” a second proctor said. Adaine looked up. There were three examiners in the room, all wearing the familiar robes of Hudol staff. She didn’t know any of them personally, but she recognized one, an older elven man, as much as elves could look old, that she’d seen at a few professional dinners Mother had taken her and Aelwyn to. 

“Good afternoon,” Adaine said. Her voice felt small and it struggled to push its way out, but Adaine didn’t want it to get back to Arianwen that she had been rude. 

The proctor ran her through the test. Nothing unexpected. She would be presented with a series of questions and would have to explain her answers. Five minutes per question. As much detail as possible. 

That was doable. Adaine could do this. 

“Are you ready to begin?” The third proctor, the friend of her mother’s, asked. Adaine nodded. “Alright, let’s begin.”

The first proctor pulled one of the chalkboards down, revealing a circle for some kind of Evocation spell. 

“Please explain how you would change this circle to cast an Enchantment spell and draw the altered circle on the floor.” 

Adaine looked across the circle. She eyed the points of intersection, where each arcane node was located, which sigils lined the outer rim. She thought back to her Enchantment notes. Enchantment was the school of charms and people, manipulating minds and emotions. She had to––

She had to––

She was drawing a blank. 

She watched Kalina, having taken a similar perch from the previous exam behind the proctors, raise a brow and lean forward, eyes alight with intrigue. She was well attuned at this point to Adaine’s distress. 

Adaine opened her mouth. “I––” Her tongue felt heavy and dry. “ I–– ”

No . She could still do this. Her heart felt hollow, like if it jostled too much it would into loose shards in her ribcage. She saw her Enchantment notes clear in her mind, felt her hand as she had written them. She just had to––

The page blurred in her mind's eye. Her real ones watered unhelpfully. 

“I would––um. First, I’d––”

Her voice was shaking pitifully. Adaine’s fingers buzzed, fizzling with static-popping adrenaline. She felt dizzy, like all her blood had left to go pool in the center of her chest, which was achingly hot. 

“Take your time, Ms. Abernant,” one of the proctor’s said kindly. “It’s only the first question.” 

The words had the opposite effect. God, she was so pitiful even the professor’s were noticing. Her stomach twisted into little knots. Her heart thundered in her ears. 

She needed to think. She needed to say something, anything they could grade her on. Kalina’s tail swished in the corner of her eye. She needed the cat to go away immediately. 

“I’d change the––the arcane nodes to––um.” She gasped, her lungs constricting into shrivelled sickly versions of themselves. Her whole body hurt. 

That familiar wall slammed shut in her mind, the only thought allowed to circulate the ever growing think, think, think, think. 

Distantly, she felt the tears in her eyes boil over. 

She was crying again. 

She pitched a sob, hand moving uselessly to clutch at her necklace. 

“I need to–– I can’t–– I––” 

She felt like she was going to faint. Her head hurt and her chest was tight and her heart was pounding so loudly she thought it was going to burst out of her body at any second and everything felt too cold and too hot at the same time and she couldn’t breathe. 

She saw Kalina hop to her feet, her form muddied by Adaine’s tears. Adaine only sobbed harder as she realized Kalina was laughing at her. 

“I didn’t even have to––” Kalina sighed and her expression dropped as made eye contact with Adaine, her yellow eyes narrowed, lazy and chilling and absolutely terrifying. “I’d run now, kiddo, while you still have some dignity left.” 

Adaine, the failed second daughter, knew better than to disobey Kalina, so she fled the room.

She felt like a prey animal, wild and hunted and oh gods the other students were looking at her. Adaine could hear herself, the pained, wet noises she was making. The hallway zoomed in on her. She ran. 

Her braid slapped against her back, chunks of blond escaping and flying haphazardly around her face. Adaine ducked into the first empty room she found, some unused classroom for the day, and wedged herself underneath one of the desks. 

She pushed her fist to her mouth. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods. She drew in another staggering breath. She couldn’t––

She didn’t want––

She needed––

She screamed against her hand as she rocked back and forth, butting her forehead against her knees as hard as she could. The pain was sharp, but a welcome comfort from the searing ache across her torso. Her other hand travelled to her scalp, tugging uselessly at her hair, like she could pull out the horrible keening pain that wiggled its way into the space between her joints.

She needed to get out . Whether it was this room or this school or this life or this body. 

She sat there for what felt like hours and wailed and failed to breathe. Not even Kalina dared to witness her. 

Adaine had managed to wrestle her most intense impulses under control when the door creaked open. She was still crying, curled into as tight a ball as she could manage, more upset at the general wrong feeling she had than the wild terror that had gripped her earlier. 

Pitifully, she mourned her Holiday. Adaine knew that she had failed; she hadn’t even answered the first question. She also knew that whatever punishment was waiting for her at home would be unbearable, yet she found herself aching most of all for Fabian. 

She wished he was here and she could press her forehead to his chest, now solid with the muscle that had grown up over the bone of their youth, and let him wrap his arms around her shoulders and listen to the thin cadence of his voice. 

Aelwyn had remarked, once, that she thought his voice was annoying. Adaine didn’t get it. She suspected he’d always be soothing to her. 

Instead, whoever it was sat next to her, a silent, steady presence in the dark. Adaine sniffled and wormed her stiff fingers out of her mouth and hair to curl at her ankles. She heard a shifting and felt the faint radiation of body heat next to her. 

Before they could touch her, Adaine whipped her head up and Aelwyn froze. 

Adaine looked from Aelwyn’s hand, hovering inches above Adaine’s shoulder, to make eye contact with her sister. Her expression was tight, but not laced with the venom Adaine was familiar with. She didn’t know what it meant. 

Adaine was sure she looked horrible: tear tracks down her cheeks, snot crusted on her upper lip, puffy eyes, blotchy skin, hair frizzy and skewed and sticky on her sweat-slick neck. She tried to twist into some kind of version of herself that could bite back at whatever teasing was about to come out of Aelwyn’s mouth. Adaine found nothing.

Instead, Aelwyn retracted her hand and leaned back. She maneuvered until she was crouched in front of Adaine, ready to spring but still at Adaine’s level.

“Come on, little sister,” she said and her voice was so soft. Adaine was reminded, suddenly, of those few nights aboard their first ship to Solace, when she’d recount her days spent exploring the deck of the ship to Aelwyn’s awestruck expression, before they had twisted into gnarled, sharp versions of themselves that only knew how to slash and bleed. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Text

Fabian waits. Aelwyn sets a plan in motion. Riz receives a message.

or. Preparations are made. 

~~~

Fabian considered himself a person of action. He was impulsive, reckless, fidgety. He preferred when his problems had solutions that he could hold onto, something he could literally sink his teeth into––or stab, dealer’s choice really. He’d been that way as long as he could remember. 

His teachers thought this made him a nuisance. 

His report cards were always littered with the same phrases: “Excellent test scores but too rowdy in class,” “A bright boy but too distracting to his peers,” “Must get his behavior under control.”  

Neither he nor his parents gave them much mind. It wasn’t Fabian’s fault the nobodies at school hung onto his every word. It wasn’t Fabian’s fault either that the lessons were so boring it was all he could do to not burst out of his seat from restlessness. 

Mama thought this made him tiring.

Fabian didn’t like to hold this against her. Mama didn’t have much energy most days, always tucked into her sensory deprivation egg with a glass of wine by noon. It wasn’t Mama’s fault she could only be around his bursting energy for small stints at a time. He tried, at least, to calm down when she was around. It worked sometimes. 

Cathilda thought––well, Fabian supposed Cathilda loved this as much as she loved anything else about him. And no matter how she felt, Fabian still found a plate of kippers on the kitchen table when he got home from school every day. 

Papa thought this made him a good pirate. 

“I was just like you, my darling boy,” he’d said once, Fabian tucked in the crook of his father’s elbow, the man’s metal hook digging painfully into the top of his head. “It’s a good warrior who’s always ready for battle. It means no one can ever get the drop on you.”

Fabian had preened at that, being just like his papa. He ignored how sharp the hook was and the tiny bit of blood streaked through his hair. 

He liked being able to do things and make things and battle with Papa and garner tiny morsels of praise like grain from a field. 

He hated feeling so useless. 

Fabian knew that he wasn’t particularly clever or heroic or much of a pirate yet. But he figured, as was true of most things in his life, if he tried and trained and practiced and didn’t let up, he’d succeed. 

But Riz wasn’t answering his texts anymore. Riz’s frustration at their lack of progress over the past few months had been palpable. 

Fabian had, perhaps, overestimated the goblin’s investigative abilities. It’s not that he truly believed Riz was as capable as a real investigator, but he went through the effort of printing business cards . Fabian still had his, tucked into the drawer of his desk next to a small dagger Adaine had gotten him for Moonar Yulenear. Maybe it was expecting too much, but he hoped for more progress than they had made. 

That progress, of course, was almost none at all. 

Fabian and Riz thought that Adaine, though Fabian had still not divulged Adaine’s name, could have been reacting to of any of the following: a charm spell, an illusion spell, a domination effect, a magical poison, a non-magical poison, blackmail, bribery, or, most unhelpfully, nothing at all. 

In Riz’s words, exasperated after months of dead ends, his hand running wildly through his stringy dark hair, “They might just be weird, dude.”

It was an uncomfortable thought.

Despite that, Fabian hadn’t expected Riz to just . . . give up. In the time Fabian had known him, Riz was tenacious and unyielding in his pursuits. It was what, despite Riz’s general dork-ish vibe and unsettling personality, had garnered him a level of respect. Fabian, too, was tenacious and unyielding. So was Adaine, and anyone like her couldn’t be too bad. 

But just a few weeks into the summer, Riz had snapped. 

“I can’t solve a mystery I know nothing about, Fabian,” he’d yelled, slamming his notebook shut. They had been sitting around Riz’s kitchen table, where they met once a week to investigate, while Riz had, not for the first time, tried to pry more information about Adaine from him. 

What are they like, Fabian? When did this start, Fabian? Is anyone out to get them, Fabian? What’s their name, Fabian?  

“If you don’t help me I can’t do anything ,” Riz had pleaded. “So either get talking or get out. I have other mysteries to solve, and at least I know the people in those ones are real.” Riz’s eyes had watered then, and Fabian recognized that spring-coil tension in Riz’s features. 

He could have spoken then, given them both a boon, made his only other friend––acquaintance? He wasn’t sure what he and Riz were––feel better when he needed it. 

Instead, because Fabian was terrible and horrible, he answered nothing. Adaine needed help, he knew that, anyone who bothered to look at her for more than a minute knew that. But Fabian knew, somehow, that if he betrayed her trust, she would never speak to him again. So he kept silent.

What did that say about him?

He scowled and grabbed his jacket. “Fine,” Fabian growled. “I don’t need your help anyway.” And had stormed out the door. 

Riz had been ignoring him ever since. 

Worse, though, was that Adaine was ignoring him too. 

His damnation sat in a text box on his crystal; two gray messages before a sea of blue:

Adaine 🙂 (May 15th, 7:08PM)

I’m going to Aguefort.

(May 15th, 7:21PM)

See you then.

And he was selfish for it, a horrible, selfish friend, because he knew Arianwen Abernant, so he knew Adaine was having a very bad time, but when he got the messages, he was relieved. 

Honestly, he hadn’t thought she would follow through. Adaine was, and always had been, many things: brave, beautiful, funny, frustrating, clever. She was also stubborn, to a fault really, and she had always said she’d go to Hudol’s upper school eventually. 

His relief was quickly overshadowed by the revelation that he wouldn’t see her until then, which spurred him to send message after message demanding an explanation. But he had remained unanswered and when Saturday rolled around, no one darkened his door. 

So, with no leads and nothing to do, Fabian did what he always did: fight. 

He fought with Cathilda: tiny pushes when he thought he could get away with it, snippish commentary, ignoring her when she tried to pin him down after meals calling, “Master Fabian, why don’t we have a chat.” 

He fought with Mama: staring ruefully at her sensory deprivation egg when she went into it, knocking into her shoulder when a glass of wine was in her hand. 

He fought, really fought, with Papa: blades bared, ready to draw blood. 

Rain or shine, Papa and Fabian would spend their afternoons in the Manor’s home gym. In the aftmost side of the room, sturdy foam mats were laid in a rectangle to denote a sparring space, with racks of different wooden, dulled, and steel blades lined up at the edge.

This was Fabian’s favorite part of the day. Fabian, like Papa, had learned young how to speak the language of blades, of violence. He felt, like small tremors running up and down the soft gooseflesh of his arms, the difference between the tenor of a friendly spar and the adrenaline of a battle that would not end until someone was bloodied or dead or both. 

He liked these battles because Papa did too and because Fabian suspected Papa spoke the language of violence better than he did anything else. Fabian was a Seacaster, the son of Bill Seacaster, it only made sense that he took to it like a fish at sea. 

That understanding was how he felt when his own blade tipped over that edge, frustration and anger and loneliness bubbling up through his muscles and into the steel as though it were another limb. 

Papa, in a show that proved, frustratingly, that Fabian was still miles and miles beneath him, twirled faster than Fabian could track and suddenly his sword was flung across the room, clattering hollowly on the wood floors. Papa levelled his sword at Fabian’s throat, the tip pressing uncomfortably against his trachea. If he leaned forward, he would be skewered through. 

“None of that, boy,” Papa said, his voice a rumbling warning. “There’s no worth in changing the terms of a duel mid-battle. Not against someone more skilled than you” 

Papa didn’t care about much besides Fabian and Mama and Cathilda, but Papa cared about being a pirate. 

The rules of piracy, or lack thereof, were simple: live to fight another day, murder anyone who dared disrespect you, and make loads of money. Fabian had put all three of those rules in jeopardy with his stunt and that wouldn’t do at all. 

“Yes, Papa,” Fabian said, swallowing roughly. He tried not to wince as the action drew blood, a single warm drop sliding down the staccato edges of his neck. 

Papa lowered the sword and entered a battle-ready position again. He lunged forward.

“Now, what’s ailing you, my boy,” he asked as Fabian parried, the metal screeching as it slid off Fabian's sword. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you acting all amiss.” 

“It’s nothing, Papa.” 

They traded blows. Papa lunged, Fabian sidestepped. Fabian tried to disarm him, Papa wrenched Fabian’s arm behind his back. 

As he rolled to the side to avoid another jab, springing back to his feet as quickly as possible to avoid a swipe that would have sliced his head off his shoulders, Papa said, “Ms. Adaine’s not been around here lately. She’s got a keen eye, that girl.”

Papa may have well said he loved her. 

Fabian grunted and lunged forward. “She’s grounded, I think.” 

The blade sliced clean across Papa’s forearm. A spray of blood shot across the floor, speckling Fabian’s face. A bead of sweat dropped down to his mouth, salt and iron seeping between his lips. 

“Don’t think, boy, know. ”

In a rush, Papa returned the blow. He swiped at Fabian’s shoulder, vaulting over Fabian to land behind him. The sharp sting of the cut registered for just a moment before pain erupted as Papa whipped the sword around and jammed the hilt at his back. 

Fabian stumbled to his knees, his hand scrambling feebly at his shoulder. 

“I don’t––” he paused, his breath stuttering in short gasps and his face twisted tight, trying to hold his pain in the furrow of his brow. “She’s not allowed to be here, or something. It happens sometimes.” 

Papa rounded and knelt in front of him. Fabian kept a close eye on his blade in case he was ready to spring back into attack, but Papa laid the sword gently on the ground. 

“You know, I care about Ms. Adaine almost as much as I do your mother or Cathilda or you,” he started and sighed. Papa fixed his gaze over Fabian’s shoulder, his eyes glowing like gold in the shadows of his face. “But she’s not my crew, she’s yours, yes?”

Fabian nodded, “Yes, Papa.”

Adaine would probably kill him if she heard. Adaine was his crew, yes, but she wasn’t his crew , not in the way Papa wanted. He’d have one like it, one day, so he too could write his name on the world, but it wouldn’t be her. 

Papa focused back on Fabian. “When the Hangman was still a sea bearing vessel, I murdered anyone who dared to mess with me and mine. That’s the kind of Captain I was.” 

Papa spoke often about the type of Captain he was. The kinds of exploits he went on, who he pillaged and stole from and all the ways he made a name for himself. Fabian always figured he would do the same one day, become the next Captain Seacaster and continue his father’s legacy. 

Papa’s big burly arms bracketed Fabian on either side. The bleeding in his shoulder had slowed. It was graze, only meant to startle rather than really hurt. Fabian’s palm was sticky against the flat planes of his back. 

“Yes, Papa.”

“You’re growing up, my boy,” Papa said. “It’s time to start proving what kind of Captain you’ll be.”

“Yes, Papa.”

Papa smiled, then, and two meaty hands gripped Fabian’s cheeks gently. 

“I love you more than all the stars in the sky and creatures in the sea.” He pressed a kiss to Fabian’s forehead. “I know you’ll make the right choices.”

“Yes, Papa.”

Papa stood up. He loomed over Fabian, bracketed by the afternoon light filtering through the windows. Fabian wondered if this was how he looked at sea, this image the last his enemies saw before they met their end. 

The Captain of the Hangman, Bill Seacaster, lumbered back into the main manor. His son, Fabian, sat on the arena floor, alone. 

~~~

Aelwyn Abernant was not a nice person. 

This was not entirely her fault, she thought. She just didn’t really know how to be one. Aelwyn was a wizard––she acquired skills with long and meticulous study as all wizards did and refused to show anyone until she had perfected it. 

She had never studied being nice, nor had Aelwyn ever had any examples. She didn’t have friends; Aelwyn found her classmates at Hudol boring and slow and pathetic most days. And the thought of Mother, Father, or Adaine being nice was laughable. 

Niceness, beyond simple pleasantries and High Fallinese politeness, was not a valued virtue in her home, not when she could be clever instead. 

Aelwyn wasn’t particularly kind either. There was a difference, of course, between the two. While Aelwyn was not good at either, she had become incredibly adept at telling the difference. 

Her little sister, foolish as she was, was delightfully kind. She was also a fucking bitch. Adaine had inherited their parents’ leaden tongue and quick wit, just like Aelwyn. This did redeem her in Aelwyn’s eyes, sometimes at least, until Adaine started to feel bad about whatever she’d said or done and ran the danger of crying about it. 

Aelwyn was not equipped to deal with anyone crying, much less Adaine.

Penelope, the evil, vapid cunt, was nice enough until you spent more than thirty minutes with her or got on her bad side or happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then she was incredibly, incredibly cruel. Truly. She made Aelwyn look like a saint, which was a feat in and of itself.

Penelope was also, quite possibly, the closest thing Aelwyn had to a friend. 

It was Penelope who had approached her, Aelwyn loitering at a Hudol party, liquor bottle in hand, snuff powder on her upper lip, debating the merits of snogging the host just so she’d have something to do.

“This place fucking blows,” Penelope had said. Leaning against the wall, brown hair cascading down her shoulders and the silhouette of her sharp nose bracketed by the soft purples of the host’s dancing lights spell, she’d offered a hand out to Aelwyn. “Want to go do dusk moss with me?”

Aelwyn took it. 

Aelwyn had since learned many things about Penelope––observant as she was. Penelope was dating some Auguefort junior that Aelwyn found positively grotesque and wholly unintelligent. But Penelope was mildly entertained by him so Alewyn put up with it. 

Penelope’s best friend was this water genasi girl who drank with them sometimes, on the few occasions Aelwyn came over. The girl did not seem to like Aelwyn, but who did, really? 

Penelope cycled through people like slots on a wheel. Aelwyn had lasted longer than most, longer than everyone except the water genasi actually. Aelwyn paid it no mind, because Penelope wasn’t actually her friend and when she eventually tired of Aelwyn then she’d say good riddance, she supposed. 

Penelope was also kidnapping girls. 

This was not an egregious offense on its own. Aelwyn didn’t care what Penelope did in her free time––who hadn’t kidnapped someone at least once in their life? It would be hypocritical for her to begrudge Penelope that.

Except––

Penelope was enamored by Aelwyn’s unseen little sister. When Penelope first heard of the younger Abernant, she had been enraptured. She hounded Aelwyn for every detail, begged to meet her, as if Adaine were better company than Aelwyn. 

Aelwyn was not nice or kind or good in any sense of the word. But she was not stupid. She was an abjurative wizard. She would protect what was hers. 

If that meant diverting Penelope’s attention to another girl, then another, then to her own best friend, then so be it. If that meant preparing Modify Memory every day and putting more wards around her mind than there were stars in the sky, then so be it. If that meant warding her sister’s room on the off chance that if one day she did not come home someone would know, then so be it. 

Adaine had enough to worry about and, well, Aelwyn might have been the only Abernant who could be bothered to stop it. 

Sure, Mother paid attention to her sister, but not in a way that would ever protect her from Penelope, if it came down to it. And that smarted. Aelwyn was no fool––she knew the singular ravening focus that had overtaken her mother in the past two years. A focus that had shifted from Aelwyn to her mother’s project and then to Adaine. 

Her mother, when she caught Aelwyn watching, would tut a little, a prim hand cupping Aelwyn’s jaw. 

“This is nothing to worry about, darling. Focus on your studies. Focus on making us proud.” 

Adaine certainly did not make their parents proud, that much Aelwyn knew. So perhaps, then, her mother’s focus was a punishment. Perhaps they had finally decided the second daughter was worth fixing. 

Weeks later, Penelope complained that they needed the Elven Oracle if her and the dragon’s plan would ever work. Aelwyn figured she may as well kill two birds with one stone. 

Aelwyn knew, as well as she knew when someone crossed through her wards and that she was the pride of the Abernant name and that Tasha’s Hideous Laughter was a first level spell and that Adaine could only cast it twice before she was forced to back off, that Adaine would become the Elven Oracle because she was the greatest diviner of their generation. 

She also knew that it would take Penelope’s attention off her sister, if she became Aelwyn’s problem once more, and that, perhaps, if they were lucky, it would give Adaine enough foresight to get their mother’s attention off her too. 

Aelwyn killed the Elven Oracle the night before her senior year at Hudol’s Upper School. Adaine had gone to bed early. She was always tired these days, whatever punishment Mother had inflicted on her for failing her entrance exam had left her exhausted all summer. 

Like clockwork, Aelwyn would watch Adaine vanish behind the door of her mother’s study in the morning before Aelwyn left to meet Penelope under the guise of “studying with a friend.” She would not reemerge until late that evening, long after Aelwyn had returned, before disappearing to her room until the sun rose again. 

Aelwyn pulled her model of the Harpy from under her bed and placed it in the center of the room, where she had drawn out her ritual circle in clean, white chalk lines. The model was simple, all wood from the original boat’s hull to make the magic more potent. Aelwyn rested her finger on top of the carved wooden mainsail, keeping it upright. It was important to simulate what she wanted as accurately as possible. 

She glanced at her closed door. If Adaine was trancing, her parents almost certainly were too. Father was, at least. Aelwyn could never be sure with Mother. Some nights it was how her family was before: Mother and Father together, her and Adaine in their respective corners. Other nights Aelwyn would hear Mother climb the stairs long into the night. 

So if she left her door unlocked, where her parents could barge in and see everything that she had done if they bothered to look, well, that was between her and her spell circle.

Careful not to smudge any of her runes, Aelwyn grabbed Adaine’s divination notes from her desk. The one benefit of Adaine being gone for so many hours a day was that it made it significantly easier to steal from her.

Aelwyn would give it back come morning, and she normally prided herself on her superior maturity, but even she relished the satisfaction of messing with her sister’s stuff sometimes. 

She laid the book next to her own sheet of incantations, cross-referencing her own work with it. When she was positive she would remain undetected, which she would, because this was Adaine’s divination, she placed her hands at the edges of the circle.

She opened her mouth, the high Elven Arcana spilling from her lips like second nature. Aelwyn was good at languages like that, it made her especially adept at magic. The circle began to glow, a bright harsh blue that Aelwyn had long since begun to associate with the gleam of Adaine’s magic. 

Something skittish in her chest settled. Yes, Adaine would be the oracle. 

The light died down and a thick, heavy, magical weight settled over her. She huffed, just loud enough to be audible, and heard the muffled sound return to her ears. Even if someone had enough foresight to come looking, they would not find her. 

Aelwyn pushed the divination notes away and pulled her incantations closer to her. This was more familiar, the blend of transmutation and abjuration that would make her magic here in her room real for the Cerulean at sea, and even though Aelwyn was not the Elven Oracle, she was still a genius in her own right, and this magic was as easy as breathing. 

Aelwyn chanted again, resting on her knees as she bent forward to spread some of the arcane chalk on the pads of her fingers. The circle changed from blue to soft purple, the color of Aelwyn, and the center of the circle began to move. 

The Harpy lifted slowly into the air as Aelwyn spoke, the after-images of distant crew and Fallinese escorts white silhouettes on the deck. Quietly, almost gently in its violence, beads of water materialized into waves, then into a storm, then into a whirlpool. 

The silhouettes on the deck started running. One climbed up the mainsail to the crows nest. Aelwyn watched it tie invisible ropes before it was knocked off by wind or sea or ship and it disappeared into the depths below. 

She kept chanting. A new silhouette appeared as the first large waves crashed into the side of the ship, a wall of water pouring over the deck. A handful of lights snuffed in an instant. The new silhouette stood in the center of the deck, spinning in a slow circle as the boat rocked dangerously from side to side. It gripped the middle mast to keep itself steady and its empty white face looked up. 

If Aelwyn didn’t know any better she would think it was looking at her. 

Aelwyn reached the climax of her spell and watched three large waves form. The first slammed into the port side of the vessel. Those who were not already holding onto something solid were washed away. The second came just as quickly, flooding onto the deck and sending water careening into the lower decks. The boat tilted almost ninety degrees. The silhouettes that were left, as few as they were, clung to railings and masts as they hung uselessly over the dark ocean. 

The third wave, funnily enough, was the smallest. But it was still enough. It swept over the Harpy’s prone form and when it disappeared beneath the waves, it did not resurface. 

Aelwyn breathed heavily as the lights of the people and circle died down. She straightened, rolling her shoulders back to let her hands hang limply at her sides. She felt hollow in the way she always did when she burned through too many spell slots at once. 

Without the glow of the ritual, her room was comfortingly dark, a deep blue that came from long nights, wholly different from the blue of a relentless sea. The only sound in the house was the creaking of her floorboards as Aelwyn stood up. 

The wooden Harpy laid on its side in the deactivated circle, still damp with magic. Aelwyn swept it under her bed and went to work Prestidigitating the chalk off the floor. 

It was well into the night when Aelwyn was finished. Father would be up soon to do his morning study. Mother and Adaine would spend the hours before breakfast in solitude, whatever they were doing beyond Aelwyn’s knowledge. 

As she laid down to rest, Aelwyn glanced at her door again, unmoved. She tranced in fits until morning. 

~~~

Riz Gukgak could admit, painfully, that perhaps he wasn’t the best private investigator. He had two mysteries, neither solved, and somehow even fewer clues, at least ones that were useful to him. 

He was staring, as he did every night, at his mystery boards. Riz was of the opinion, much to his mother’s chagrin, that the hard work, the good work, never stopped. So even when he quite literally had nothing, he would kept working the case anyway. 

His mystery boards were mounted on his bedroom wall, with well-worn cork littered with thumb tack potholes and stray paper mulch pressed into the soft material. 

The Case of the Sickened Seacaster , as he assumed whoever Fabian’s friend was, they were someone very close to him, family, if not Fabian himself, was by far the more elaborate cork board. 

It had a picture of Fabian in the middle that he had managed to take one day while they were investigating, his face blurry as he looked down at his notes, mouth still open from where he had been talking to Riz. 

Beneath Fabian were two sticky notes, one with Magical Effect????? Scribbled on it in Riz’s borderline unintelligible chicken scrawl with a red arrow pointed to the second note which read, strange behavior. 

These two notes both pointed back to Fabian with a series of question marks next to them. They also both pointed to a blank silhouette of someone, one large question mark over their face, next to Fabian, with Fabian and the mystery person connected by a single red line. 

Of these, exactly one was a clue, the strange behavior, and it was barely one at that because Fabian was infuriatingly vague about whoever this person was and what was happening to them (which was a ding in the “the sickened Seacaster was Fabian the whole time” column). 

He liked Fabian. Fabian was cool and strong and cared about this mystery as much as Riz did, even if he teased Riz a little too sharply sometimes. But there was only so much Riz could do. 

And, well, Riz didn’t know this mystery person. For all Riz knew, they really were just a blank face in a photograph. Penny, though? Penny was real. 

His other corkboard, the Case of the Girls: Gone (the title was a work in progress) was in even worse shape. Penny’s photo sat at the top of a small circle of photos, the other girls who had gone missing, with Antiope Jones, youngest daughter of the illustrious Jones family, the newest addition. 

There was only one thing really written on the board, a line from each photo––Penny and Antiope and Katya and Danielle––drawn to the center, where Aguefort Adventuring Academy was circled in thick, black ink. 

Aguefort was a clue, even if it was a broad one. And starting tomorrow he would be able to investigate it, really investigate it, not like the half-jobs he was able to do with a library card and sneaking into his mom’s office. 

Maybe, when he got to Aguefort, his adventuring party could help. Fabian would, if Fabian even wanted to be in a party with him, once he figured out whatever was wrong with his friend. And if Fabian was in his party, then Riz would bet that loads of other people would want to be in their party too. Fabian was charming like that. 

He gnawed at the cap of his pen. Riz couldn’t fail them. Any of them. Not Penny, not the other girls, not Fabian, not his friend either. They were counting on him. Fabian had trusted him. 

If Fabian wouldn’t tell him who his friend was, then maybe Riz would just have to figure it out himself, consequences be damned. 

Riz grabbed a notebook off his bedside table and sat, his tail tapping restlessly on the hardwood floor. His coffee was long cold by now, but he sipped on it anyway, more craving the familiarity of the action than the caffeine. 

Riz gathered in his lap a small stack of papers that were scattered on the floor near the boards. It was research on magical diseases, newspaper articles from the missing girls, copies of police reports. He’d already scoured every word and found nothing, but maybe if he looked again, and again, and again, he’d find something. 

His mom was working an overnight shift, Riz would have until morning. 

At some point in the night, long after the sun had set but before the familiar burn of an all-nighter settled behind his eyes, a breeze rustled through Riz’s hair. He could have sworn his window was closed. Riz shook his head, he would deal with it in the morning. 

He kept his face buried in a passage on illusion magic, until a second rolled through. Riz scrunched his nose against the tickle of stray strands brushing his face. He started to get up, the chill would only distract him and he needed to focus. 

Riz looked up and froze.

His window was locked. 

Riz circled around slowly, the breeze still worming its way through his clothes. His papers ruffled but did not float away. 

Riz opened his drawer and rifled through it blindly to grab his gun. He held it out in front of him as his gaze swept the room, darting to each dark crack or corner. He realized, distantly, that his hands were shaking. 

“Who––” His voice cracked. He swallowed and tried to act how his mom would act. Braver this time, “Who’s there?”

The soft howl of the breeze was his only reply. Riz gripped the handle of the gun harder, his fingers a pale green from the strain. He opened his mouth to speak again when a pair of yellow eyes appeared in a dark shadow of his room. 

His dresser cast a long shadow over the wall, right next to the boards, and in the darkness of it a sharp gaze stared back at him. Riz could not see what or who they were connected to, if they were connected to anything at all.

He jerked his hands in the shadow’s direction, staring down those bright eyes over the barrel of his gun.

“Who are you?” His bravery did not carry over, each word quivering in the air. 

There was a tutting sound. “Well, hey there to you too, kiddo,” the voice said. “Kinda rude way to introduce yourself to a guest, don’t you think?” The voice was feminine, smooth, with an undercurrent of danger. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly how he knew but he did know that whatever was here could hurt him greatly if they felt so inclined. 

Riz squared his shoulders. “Guests are usually invited. Who are you?”

The eyes narrowed, considering him. Riz tried to breathe around the rapid-fire pace of his heart. Then, the eyes widened, it almost looked like they were pleased. 

“I don’t know why I expected anything else, honestly. You’ve got spunk, kid. I like that,” they said finally. “I’m a, hm, I’m a concerned citizen, I suppose. You’re looking into a lot of private business, people don’t usually like that.” 

He swallowed. “Well, if they’re kidnapping girls, they deserve to be looked into,” he guessed. The girls were high profile, widely sympathized. Riz figured if there were any mystery where prying eyes would be unwelcome, it would be here. 

The voice, however, laughed. 

“I don’t really care all that much about those girls,” they admitted. “Look, don’t look, I doubt you’ll be able to change anything either way. But the rest of it is, well, it's pretty inconvenient, kid. Dangerous too.”

“Are you––?” He licked his lips. “Are you the one making Fabian’s friend sick?”

“Fabian––? No, I'm not making anyone sick.” The voice sighed and rolled their eyes. “I’ll be frank with you, I’m not going to tell you what to stop looking into because that would blow up my whole spot, but I’m also going to kill you if you keep going. So, really, the most logical option here would be to throw everything away altogether.”

The voice fell silent, black pupils narrowed to thin strips. Riz’s arms had lowered, the strain and confusion having mottled his aim. 

Was the voice connected to Fabian’s friend? Surely they were, if they weren’t involved in the missing girls case. But what if they were? What if whoever took the girls was working with this voice and if you found the girls you found them? What if Fabian’s friend took the girls––?

“I like you, kid,” they interrupted. “So I’m gonna warn you just this once. You have too many people you care about to be sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong. Shut it down, Riz. For your own sake.”

The eyes faded from view. 

Riz stood there a while longer, until his heart rate calmed and his muscles quivered not from nerves but from exhaustion. Under it all, a thrum of fear: When did he give them his name?

When he could move without shaking, Riz set his gun down, on the table this time instead of in the drawer, moved back to his spot in front of the boards, and sat again. 

The smiling faces of the missing girls stared back at him, Fabian and his mystery friend too. He drummed his knuckles on the floor. If whatever was hidden in these pages was enough to send a hitman after him, then that was definitely a mystery worth solving. 

Riz cracked his knuckles. There was still more work to be done. 

Act 1. Fin

Chapter Text

Adaine stops a fight. Fabian proves his mettle.

or. The beginning begins.

~~~

It went like this:

A girl crept down an empty hallway. Her blonde hair fell listlessly over her shoulders, which sunk low into the weight of her posture. Her arms were rigid, clutching something tight in front of her. She lurched, gait unsteady. In pain? You figured she must be in pain.

A noise rattled out of sight. The girl whipped her head around and––

A boy laid on the ground, a heavy axe at his side. The sound of battle raged around him. To him, though, it was muffled. His torso ached, that much you were sure of, red-hot and throbbing. His hand loosened from its grip on the axe, falling into something warm and slick on the linoleum floor. Blood, he thought. Did he get hurt? When did he get hurt? 

He stared at the ceiling, black sclera and white irises reflecting an industrial lamp above him. Slowly, slowly that light began to dim and–– 

You are scared.

A man was trapped. He had been trapped for some time, stuck in the deep ruby red that he was sure at this point had seeped into his veins. Voices floated in and out around him––gruff, unyielding––but he could not see them. He busied himself with what he could, his petty little revenge, and waited. 

Finally, a girl’s voice––oh, his girl ––drifted above him. He reached, reached––

A room was in disarray. A boy plunged his sword into a man’s chest. Your heart ached for them, you thought. But gods above, the man was so proud. The boy heaved, standing above the man, blood spackled on his silver hair. The man couldn’t wait to––

A light built in a gaping maw, growing brighter and brighter around thick drops of saliva and pointed fangs. It was hot––

The edge of a forest. Fractal spellcraft. Skin turning gray and shrivelled before your eyes. 

You are scared.

A looming tree. A cat. A knife at your throat. Warm sticky red spilling onto your hands.

You are scared.

A deep ocean. Water in your throat, lungs, blood. Pain.

You are scared.

You are––

Adaine lurched forward with a gasp. 

She clutched at her neck, the phantom feeling of water filling her chest blocking any air she tried to suck in. Adaine curled forward, letting her head droop towards her thighs as she tried to breath.

A strand of her hair dropped into view and she flinched. The images from her––dream? She wasn’t sure actually––were rapidly fading, but she remembered that first girl clearly. 

Adaine had tranced last night, she was sure of it. Mother and Kalina had not bothered her much yesterday. It was not a reward or kindness of any kind this time––Adaine had caused her mother enough shame, and she would not risk Adaine incurring anymore. 

Instead, they had kept a watchful eye over her while she studied. Mother had gotten her some books on practical casting, which was an oxymoron, but Adaine had still made her way through them. She had already failed Hudol; failure at Aguefort was not an option.

Adaine did not dream when she tranced, not usually. She only dreamt when she slept, when Kalina could reach her. This was something deeply wrong with Adaine. Elves weren’t supposed to dream, period. Dreaming was a symptom of sleep and elves weren’t supposed to sleep either. But Adaine was already special in that sense, so what was one more thing?

She glanced around. She was alone, which was odd. Kalina liked to be around when she dreamt. She’d interrogate Adaine for every sensation she felt, every touch or feeling or instance that occurred in her mind, even though Adaine was sure Kalina was there to witness it. 

Adaine mulled over what she could remember. It wasn’t much, the sharp edges of the faces she’d seen blurring into each other. But that girl––Aelwyn, perhaps? She doubted it. Aelwyn would never look so low. 

The second boy was almost certainly Fabian. Adaine would recognize him even if he was just a silhouette on concrete. Whoever he was fighting was a mystery. Adaine didn’t recognize anything else. The ruby, the forest. She pressed her finger to her throat. That ocean. 

It still could have been a dream. Kalina was meticulous, but she didn’t know everything and Adaine’s reactions to Mother’s spellcraft always surprised them both. Or, it was something else entirely.

Adaine hated being in the dark. 

She rolled her shoulders and swung out of bed. It was another mystery, another horror to add to her long list of problems to solve. But there was nothing she could do about it before school. It was, after all, just a dream. Or, not a dream. A vision? Something. 

Adaine got ready quickly, pressing the fold lines of her old Hudol uniform smooth. It was her final humiliation, Adaine supposed, to be forced to relive one of the worst days of her life every time she caught her reflection. 

It was just Aelwyn and Father in the breakfast nook, Father’s face deep in the caverns of his newspaper. Adaine furrowed her brow.

“Where’s Mother?”

Father did not look up from his paper. “Is that any way to greet your family, Adaine?”

Adaine rolled her eyes. Father had been taking more trips to Fallinel recently and spent every moment he was at home grumbling about the added pressures from the Court of Stars and demanding perfect politeness from her and Aelwyn. 

“Good morning, Father. Good morning, Aelwyn,” she gritted. Adaine pressed a light kiss to Father’s cheek. He smelled of some floral cologne and his skin was rough beneath her chapped lips. It was an uncomfortable gesture, always had been. “Where is Mother?”

Aelwyn pushed a strawberry around her small fruit bowl and shrugged. Father flipped another page. Adaine looped around the table and sat down.

“Away. She’ll be back tomorrow, I think.” Father pressed further into the page, volume dying with each word. “Oh my, ghastly business. This will certainly be a chore to deal with at the next council meeting. Dreadful, really dreadful.” 

Father didn’t elaborate after that. Adaine squirmed in her seat, taking slow bites of her breakfast to try and keep herself from speaking. When it seemed like Father’s response would never come, she burst out:

“What happened?”

“Adaine,” Father said and primped the page. “It is rude for children to speak before they are spoken to.” 

Adaine bit her lip. “I just––I hate when you do that!”

Father sighed, that long suffering sigh he reserved exclusively for Adaine, and set his paper down to entertain her. 

“Do what, Adaine?”

Adaine dug her nails into her palms. Her stomach hurt a little bit. It always did when she spoke with her father because he didn’t like her very much and she always somehow ended up in trouble. 

“When you––” She took a deep breath. “You say something is dreadful then you won’t tell us what it is.”

Many things in Adaine’s life were dreadful. Kalina, Mother, Father, even Aelwyn still sometimes. If something else were to be added Adaine wanted to know about it. 

“Do you want to know?” Father tilted his head towards her. Adaine casted a glance at Aelwyn, urging her silently to say something. Her parents liked Aelwyn. They listened to her. Aelwyn ceased picking at her fruit and stared silently at Mother’s empty seat. 

Adaine couldn’t help but feel betrayed. She hadn’t seen much of Aelwyn this summer, if at all. Instead, she had spent her days with Mother and Kalina and them alone. The last real interaction they had was that awful afternoon after her entrance exam. 

It was quick, quiet, just like how their walk back to Mother’s car had been. Adaine had returned to her room, fresh from a scolding and now with plenty of time to dread her summer-long punishment. 

She ran into Aelwyn by accident, the girl turning the corner of the hallway smelling of sweat and sickly sweetness. Aelwyn’s hair had been mussed, her lips parted. They stood there. Adaine waited for Aelwyn to do something, and Aelwyn waited for Adaine to do the same. 

Then they passed each other and that had been that.

“I don’t know,” Adaine responded. “I could, but you’d need to tell me.” 

Father started droning about “inquiring minds” and the inferiority of practical casting and Adaine retorted back, her courage emboldened without Mother there to quiet her. But her gaze remained on Aelwyn.

She looked up as Adaine finished her sentence. Aelwyn bit her lip and Adaine watched her choose their parents again as Aelwyn’s expression twisted. 

“Well, I get the paper on my crystal,” Aelwyn started, taunting, preening. Father sent an amused brow her way. “Do you not?” 

The betrayal curdled in Adaine’s stomach, pushing at the buoyed confines of her throat. She replied and Aelwyn bit back and their words were just reflex really, honed after years and years of this same exact fight. She casted ray of sickness on Aelwyn. 

When the buzzing in her ears subsided, Father was speaking again.

“If you must know, Adaine, the Elven Oracle has died in a shipwreck.” Adaine did perk up at that. She knew of the Oracle, every elf in Fallinel knew of the Oracle. When she was little, Adaine had wished she would be the oracle one day, as proof to her parents and sister of how talented she was. 

Then they had moved to Solace, far away from the Court of Stars and Adaine had come to terms with her own mundanity. 

Adaine didn’t say anything about that, instead, she said the first thing that came to mind, “She can’t have been a very good Oracle if she didn’t see the storm coming.”

Aelwyn stifled a snort, which only served to send more vomit down the front of her uniform and she gagged at the sight. Father yelled a harsh, “ Adaine .” 

Breakfast concluded quickly after that, a prestidigitation from Aelwyn having removed the sick smell from her. Father disappeared with a brief mention for Aelwyn to take the car and Adaine to figure it out, which Adaine figured would be the case. She had walked to school many times as punishment over the course of her education. 

Adaine was quick to follow when Aelwyn motioned for her to stay back. 

“The vomit was a mean trick, you know,” she started. “I never cast spells on you.”

“Yes you do,” Adaine fired back. “All the time.”

“Yeah, well mine are funnier.”

A hot flash of anger surged through her and then a Tasha’s Hideous Laughter was sailing through her wand. She didn’t know why Aelwyn made her so angry. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t slot Aelwyn into the box Mother and Father lived in, painful and horrible, but calm. The spell bounced off the air in front of Aelwyn, hit Adaine, and she doubled over laughing. 

“See?” Aelwyn said, the laughter bright in her words. “I just said my spells were funny and now I've turned your laughter spell back on you, which is both ironic and funny, which are the two things that I said my spells are like. ”

Adaine glared at her through her guffaws, finding the dexterity to flip her sister off. Aelwyn just stared at her. She bit her lip and seemed to be mulling over something as Adaine rode out the effects of the spell. It faded and Adaine composed herself, pushing a strand of hair that had fallen out of her braid behind her ear. 

“Look,” Aelwyn said. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry at all but Adaine let it slide. “And it’s awful that you got kicked out of Hudol––”

Adaine punched her sister in the face. And because Adaine had been sparring with Fabian for almost ten years it hit and hit hard. It was worse that Aelwyn had seen her indignity, and even more so that she oscillated between the girl at the table and the girl in that classroom all the time. Aelwyn reeled back, her face immediately brightening into a sharp red. 

“ Adaine, ” she barked. “I’m trying to do a nice big sister thing. Can I do that?”

Adaine huffed a breath. Her face was flushed and the bottom of her ribcage churned an acrid, burning feeling. “Can you?”. 

“I––” Aelwyn started, her face tight. She flexed her hands on top of the tablecloth. “Aguefort doesn’t work like Hudol, all right? They don’t care about grades or tests or exams, it's all topsy turvy there. The best way to stand out is to, well, do something insane. Like, I heard that one of the best ways to get into an arcane society was to steal a book from the restricted section of the library on your first day.”

Adaine frowned. “That’s ridiculous. Stealing a book?”

“I don’t know, it’s like some kind of adventurer’s initiative or gumption or something.” 

She crossed her arms, the wand Hallariel had given her all those years ago poking out from her elbow. “You want me to, and let me repeat myself, steal a book from the library on my first day? ” Adaine was going to kill her sister so fucking bad. 

“Well, when you put it like that.” Aelwyn rolled her eyes. “Listen to me or don’t, Adaine. I was trying to be helpful. I do have friends who go to Aguefort, you know.”

“ You have friends?” The disbelief in her voice wasn’t even meant to be mean. Adaine had thought Aelwyn was incapable of such a feat. 

“Yes, I have friends. Why would you think I wouldn’t have friends? What, you think because you see one brutish boy all the time that you’re somehow more sociable than me––?”

Adaine cut her off by sing-songing a, “meh, meh, meh.” Which was childish, but Fabian was a sore topic for her on the best of days, much worse now. 

Gods, she was excited to see him. 

Aelwyn stood up sharply. “Fine, pair up with your Seacaster or some barbarian and then get killed on your first day, see what I care.”

“Good, I shall.” And Adaine breezed away. 

~~~

Aguefort was both more and less grand than Adaine was expecting. 

In terms of architecture, Hudol took the cake by far. Hudol’s attempt at high elven impersonation meant that the school was an effigy of pillars and high marble arches. Aguefort was just . . . well, a school. A single brick building with ‘Aguefort Adventuring Academy’ written across the top of the front door.

The people, however, were a different story. Hudol was, without a better term, pretentious. Its students were picturesque carbon copies of each other: blue uniforms, books in hand, ramrod postures. Aguefort was an explosion of individuality. Adaine saw students with huge heavy weapons slung across their backs, small cliques with skateboards or instruments or sports jackets or anything else. 

No one looked at her as she approached. Adaine supposed that was a small win. The Abernants were not infamous here. 

Adaine stopped near the front steps and craned her neck. She was early and still had about twenty minutes before she would have to head inside for freshman orientation. She was sure Fabian would arrive soon. 

She had not spoken to him in months, having gotten her crystal taken away as part of her punishment at the start of summer. Adaine hadn’t risked a trip to the manor either, as Kalina, too, was upset with her and Adaine did not want to see if the cat’s promise to keep her mouth shut would hold up.

She had gotten her crystal back, finally, though it was only allowed to send and receive messages or calls. Mother said it was so she could send for Adaine if she needed to. Adaine accepted the gift quietly, even though she knew if Mother really needed her, Kalina was a much better form of communication. 

But that meant she had been sorely missing her friend. Fabian was all the things her parents and sister weren’t: kind, happy, warm. She missed sparring with him and eating Cathilda’s snacks and spending summer afternoons sticky with sweat and laying on the manor’s front yard, trying to let the damp earth and wind cool them down. 

Adaine looked over the crowd. Fabian didn’t blend in easily. His silver hair was a rarity outside of Fallinel and he held the same easy confidence Captain Seacaster did, like the whole world was just waiting for him to enter it. 

Sometimes Adaine thought it was. At least, that’s how it felt for hers. 

Her stomach roiled uncomfortably as she raked her gaze across the crowd and didn’t see him. Fabian was the only thing she was really looking forward to at this school. Adaine loved practical casting, that was true, but her attendance here was, first and foremost, tangible proof of her failures. Not to mention that the concept of forming an adventuring party with a bunch of strangers who weren’t her best friend was abhorrent.

Adaine was of the opinion that anyone who wasn’t Fabian or the Seacasters probably wasn’t worth knowing.

Besides, Adaine was sure the guilt of putting even more people in danger with her presence would eat her alive. 

Then: 

“Hey, how you doing buddy?”

Adaine whipped her head around. On the front stairs, Fabian stood a step below a half orc boy. Her heart lurched into her throat as an image of her dream flashed in her mind. The boy was hunched, shoulders hiked to his chin as he loomed over Fabian. 

Fabian leered up at him. He looked different. His hair was shorter now, Adaine noticed, falling just above his eyebrow instead of his ear and swept over to one side. He was wearing a bomber jacket of some kind, which made his shoulders seem even broader than they were, those his whole frame was still dwarfed by the half-orc. His back was arched, and Adaine recognized the predatory recoil in his torso. She had a bad feeling about this. 

Adaine took an involuntary step forward. She wanted to talk to him. She selfishly wanted to savor the sound of his voice, tinny and song-like, with vowels that stretched five or six syllables. She wanted to link pinkies, the most she would allow herself when surrounded by so many people, and feel the rough skin of his calloused palm against hers. 

The boy opened his hand towards Fabian, which held something that Adaine couldn’t see at this distance. They had a brief exchange and Adaine watched the recoil pull back before Fabian clocked the half-orc square in the face. 

Fabian looked out to the crowd as Adaine ran towards him. He yelled, “I am Fabian Seacaster, son of Bill Seacaster, and I’m here to be––” 

“Fabian!” Adaine yelped. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Fabian whipped his head around, and he looked like he was seeing a ghost as he made eye contact with Adaine. Her chest twisted tightly. 

Behind him, a human girl with red hair and a tie-dye shirt was kneeling next to the half-orc. She floundered over his face as the half-orc’s expression twisted back and forth between anger and hurt. 

Adaine tried to smile. Something that said she was sorry and grateful and happy to see him and that she missed him so much all in one expression. 

The half-orc got up and lumbered towards Fabian’s turned back. Adaine opened her mouth to warn him as the boy clobbered Fabian in the back of the head. Fabian stumbled forward and turned around. The students surrounding them formed a crowd in front of the steps. Some gnomish boy started chanting, “Fight, fight, fight, fight.”

Fabian cracked his neck and pulled his arm back as Adaine sprinted forward and grabbed his wrist. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said to the boy, who seemed to be shocked out of his murderous demeanor upon her arrival. “We’re so sorry. He’s not––He didn’t mean to. Fabian––? Let’s just go, we’re so sorry.” She started pulling Fabian with her, who was staring bewilderedly at her. 

“No, I’m––” The half-orc shook his head and the last of his anger bled out and back into his timid stance. He grasped his elbow tightly and looked down to the side. “I got too mad. He hit me.”

Adaine’s face reddened. “Yes, absolutely, I’m so sorry again, um, what’s your name?”

“Gorgug,” he said.

“Sorry, Gorgug,” she said. “He won’t do it again. Right, Fabian?”

She looked at him expectantly. Fabian frowned at her and Adaine saw the familiar prickles of her friend who hated apologizing for anything. In any other scenario it would be more endearing. 

“Right,” he grimaced. 

“‘Right’ is correct, students,” a voice boomed. Pushing through the crowd was a hulking red dragonborn in a pinstripe suit. “Now, what is the meaning of all this? Explain, quickly .”

The half-orc fiddled with what he had been holding, which looked like a small metal flower now that Adaine was close enough. 

Fabian shrugged her off and crossed his arms. 

“I needed this guy to know that I wasn’t going to take any of his shit.” Fabian over enunciated every syllable, the way he did when he was trying to impress his father or convince Hallariel to stick around and watch them duel.

Adaine was going to kill him. 

“Shit––?” The dragonborn looked between Fabian and the other boy. “He’s holding a flower.”

“You can still have it, by the way,” the half-orc said and held the flower out. “I’m sorry for hitting you.”

Adaine took a deep breath. The girl who ran up earlier was kneeling on the ground behind them. She was––she looked like she was praying––? 

Aguefort so far was fucking weird . 

“Don’t give him the flower, kid,” the dragonborn said off-handedly as Adaine plucked it from Gorgug. 

“Yes, thank you,” she said. “We’re very sorry, again. He won’t hit you anymore. We’ll be going now.”

She grabbed Fabian by the elbow, grip tight even as he tried to shrug her off. Adaine managed to drag him fifteen feet away before the dragonborn seemed to catch his bearings. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” he called. “Get back here! You got into a fight. It’s the first day. This is a school. Immediate detention!”

The two turned around to a red slip that was being pushed into Fabian’s face. Adaine saw a similar slip in the half-orc’s hand, who was being comforted by the praying girl. The boy looked over the dragonborn’s shoulder and mouthed an ‘I’m sorry’ at the two of them. 

“Were you fighting too?” The dragonborn looked pointedly at Adaine. She shook her head profusely, the intensity of his presence focusing on her cowing her into silence. “Fine. No detention for you.” The ‘ yet’ hung heavy in the air, “But please, behave , and I will see you––” He pointed at Fabian. “––in detention after school today.”

The human girl led Gorgug away as Adaine pulled Fabian to the front door. Once they made it inside, Adaine ducked around a corner and pulled Fabian in front of her. 

He looked pissed, a steady wrinkle inlaid in his brows. His mouth, usually in a comforting half-smile, was pulled down. His hands were half raised, almost meeting Adaine’s, as Adaine swatted his upper arm. 

“What were you thinking?” She scolded. “Just punching some random kid on the first day? Not even the first day, the first minute. What did he do to you––?”

“Adaine.”

“And getting detention? You do know we’re supposed to form adventuring parties right after school. Now I’m going to have to convince someone to take both of us or I’m going to have to be in a party alone and then this whole year will be dreadful––”

“Adaine.”

“But you didn’t think about that at all, did you? No, you just had to be the biggest guy in school because of––I don’t even know. What even happened this summer––?”

“ Adaine! ”

Adaine froze, her sentence dying in her mouth. Fabian had placed his hands on her shoulders. His mouth parted slightly. He rocked back and forth, caught in the moment between action and inaction.

He crushed her into a hug. Fabian smelled different. He still carried that scent of ocean breeze and salt mist, but beneath it was something headier, like pine or oak or deep earth. 

He’d gained muscle too. Fabian had always been physically stronger than her––Adaine knew her way around a sword but she wasn’t actually a fighter––but before this summer it hadn’t been that noticeable. It was just something that sharpened into view when they fought or when Adaine noticed a denser give of his shoulder when she leaned on it. Now, it was decidedly sturdy and rock solid. Cautiously, Adaine wrapped her arms around his middle. 

She had changed as well. Adaine had cut her hair. Its previous length near her waist was too much of a hassle to take care of, especially on nights where she could barely remember where she was at all, so she’d chopped it to just below her shoulders sometime in June. It was still long enough to braid, just barely, and Adaine had taken to putting it in twin plaits or letting the bottom half of her hair lay loose. 

She’d gotten frailer too, her days spent sitting in the research study had left her so exhausted that she slept through as many meals as she took. 

Fabian released her, his grip on her shoulder tensing and releasing, like touching her was burning him and like it would be impossible for Adaine to get out of it. 

“Where were you?” He accused. His expression was twisted and, for once, Adaine thought she could spot the thin sheen of tears in his eyes. 

“I––”

“You didn’t text once. I had no idea if you were okay or anything.” 

Adaine brought a hand up slowly to rest on his wrist. His pulse was quick, jumping beneath her fingers.

“I was grounded. I couldn’t be on my crystal.” 

Fabian searched her face and Adaine’s stomach flipped at the realization that he was looking to see if she was lying. Fabian didn’t trust her anymore. That hurt. Even though she had lied to him, had been lying to him since she was twelve and Mother had first made her drink a drop of blood from her finger, but she had never lied about wanting to see him.

“I missed you,” she said instead. 

That seemed to assuage him and he didn’t smile, but his muscles relaxed and the vice-grip on her shoulder blade released. “I missed you too.”

Adaine squeezed his wrists and pulled them off her shoulders. The tension surrounding them dissipated, falling away as easily as it always did. They fought hard and fought often, but they always made their way back to each other eventually. 

Adaine led them into the hallway. She needed to find her locker and first class. Through careful experimentation she had found that a schedule was the best way to quell the constant anxiety that curled in her gut. Fabian followed dutifully.

She rounded a hallway filled with other freshmen, all of them holding paper schedules in their hands, looking between the number on the paper and the numbers on the lockers. Adaine counted, 607, 608, 609 . . . 

“Were you really that worried about not being in an adventuring party with me?” Fabian asked finally, his voice lifting in a teasing lilt and Adaine knew they were back to normal. She shoved into his shoulder.

“Shut up,” she said, her face flushed. “Yes, Fabian, you should feel very proud that I find you tolerable.” 

She stopped in front of 617 and looked back down at the combo that was written on her schedule. Fabian leaned on the locker and crossed his arms. He had grown too, towering a solid five inches above her now. Her vantage point gave her a prime view of the curve of his jawline. 

“Just tolerable? That’s so mean, A-daine-uh,” he said, doing the thing she loved where he made her name into three different words. Fabian leaned his head on the wall, the fabric of his jacket, which was new, bunching up to his ear. 

Adaine hummed. The jacket was red and white, with an owlbear head on the front pocket. She’d never seen it before. 

“Yes, very. Your life is so hard, Fabian.” Adaine’s hand slowed as she slid the lock into the final number and popped the door open. “You know,” she said after a moment, refusing to look at him, “you don’t have to be in an adventuring party with me if you don’t want to. Like, you can get your own and I can find one at orientation later.”

Fabian’s face twisted. “No, of course I want to be in a party with you.” The shadow of the locker door fell over the square of his chest. “I’d rather be in a party with just you than a bunch of randos. I––Seriously, we can do whatever we want. It can be just the two of us or we can find a bunch of nerds to form a party with and then drop them as soon as possible.”

Adaine took a deep breath and let the static ball beneath her lungs dissipate. “Just us?”

Fabian presented his fist for bumping. “Always.” Adaine bumped it. 

They fell into easy conversation after that as Adaine began organizing her locker. It was nice, Adaine thought. Everything with Fabian was nice. She’d worried, for a bit there, that the distance would have been the final straw for him and that Kalina would have taken just another thing from her, but as she followed Fabian to his own locker so he could establish his claim too, she was glad to know she’d been wrong.  

“What are you wearing?” She asked as Fabian slipped a textbook in the bottom rack into his bag. 

Fabian looked self-consciously at his outfit. “What is something wrong with it?” 

“No, the jacket. Where did that come from?” 

He grinned. “Ah, this!” He swept his arm out. “This is my Owlbears Varsity jacket. For when I’m on the team.”

Adaine’s brows crept to her crown. “You have a jacket for a team you’re not on yet?”

“Yes, Adaine, of course I do,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Tryouts are later today and I’m going to crush all those Aguefort jocks and join the team. Well, Papa helped a little,” he grimaced at this. Adaine frowned. Fabian loved everything his father had ever done. “But it’s just a contingency. We all know I’m leagues above those other players.”

Fabian grinned at her, recovering from his slip quickly. “It’s step two of my plan to take over this school.” 

Adaine huffed a laugh. He was ridiculous. “And what was step one? Punching out random students? It’s a foolproof plan, Fabian. Honestly, I’m impressed.” 

“You just don’t get it,” he complained. 

She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure I don’t.”

“Fabian––!” A new voice said, excitable and high-pitched. Adaine tilted her head at Fabian before glancing behind her. 

She noticed the green hand first, which was jutted above the crowd of students. Adaine followed it down to a short goblin boy with a wide eyed expression. He was wearing a newsboy cap, which was pushed low on his face, smushing tufts of dark green hair to his forehead. His white button up was wrinkled, obviously too big for him, and ballooned out from the edges of his vest, which had a skinny tie tucked into it. He lugged a briefcase in his other hand, which kept bumping into the students around him as he pushed forward. 

Behind him was Kalina. She weaved through the spaces in his wake with a familiar deftness, her hands shoved into her pockets. She raked her gaze through Kalina’s posture. Languid, a small smile on her face. Adaine relaxed slightly. Kalina’s presence was never a good thing, but whatever she wanted, Adaine knew she wasn’t in trouble, at least. 

The boy stumbled to a stop in front of them. “Fabian,” he said again, out of breath. “Hi.” 

Kalina peered over the boy’s shoulder. “Hey, kid,” she said. Adaine swallowed. 

Fabian’s face reddened. “Riz,” he yelped. “Hello.” 

“Dude, I was looking for you,” Riz said. He hadn’t seemed to notice her, or didn’t care to acknowledge her yet. “I––uh––I’ve been working on a new mystery and, okay, it’s not going well but, like, it’ll start going better and I could really use your help and, like, I know I was upset and promise I didn’t forget about––”

“Okay!” Fabian cut in. He pushed off the wall, waving his hands in front of him. Riz clamped his mouth shut and finally looked at Adaine. “That’s cool, Riz. We can talk about your mystery thing or whatever later.” Kalina narrowed her eyes at Riz and took a step back. 

Riz turned fully from Fabian to face Adaine. He peered up at her, scrutinizing eyes looking her up and down. She leaned away, the back of her head pressing into the cold metal wall. “Who are you?” He said.

“Looks like someone else has got your boyfriend’s attention,” Kalina said, a smirk dancing across her face. Adaine flushed and pointedly did not look at Kalina. She’d taken to commenting on little bits of Adaine’s day. “Gotta keep myself entertained somehow,” she’d said. Adaine did her best to ignore her most of the time. 

“Adaine,” she said to Riz, a little breathless, but she didn’t stutter, which was an accomplishment. “Who are you?”

“Riz Gukgak, private investigator,” he said and fished his hand into his pocket. He grabbed a small square paper and held it out to her. “I’m a friend of Fabian’s.” 

Adaine looked down at the card and frowned. It was a business card, which was somehow not the strangest part of the interaction. The kids at Hudol would never have done this, sure, but Adaine had also spent the last three years spending most of her waking time with Kalina. A business card was not the oddest thing she’d seen. 

What was odd was that this boy was claiming to be Fabian’s friend and Adaine had never heard of him. 

“Friend,” she repeated slowly. “Where did you guys meet?”

“The library,” Fabian responded, standing uncomfortably in the middle of her and Riz’s staredown. 

“The library?” Adaine loved Fabian, but he had never willingly gone to the library independently in his life. He would go with Adaine, sometimes, when she needed to study for an exam or work on a project, and would spend that time scrolling idly on his crystal and checking in every thirty minutes to whine to Adaine about when they were going home. 

Kalina grinned. “Someone’s jealous,” she sing-songed. Adaine wished, not for the first time, that Kalina was corporeal enough to hit. 

“Yeah, I was––” Fabian looked around awkwardly, hands fiddling with the hem of his Owlbears jacket. He licked his lips. “I was researching a couple spells.”

Something prickly and hot settled at the base of Adaine’s heart. 

“You could have just asked me,” she said. She’d taught Fabian a few spells. Easy ones, cantrips, good for battle. It made their fights more fun and it was just a tiny thing Adaine could give that would begin to make up for everything Fabian had done for her over the years. 

“I––” Fabian started. The six inches between them seemed miles long. As quick as it left, the tension returned and Adaine was left scrambling for her friend. 

Kalina sighed. “As much as I would love to watch this soap opera, we do have business to get to.” Kalina spun on her heel and looked over her shoulder at Adaine. “Come one, kid, I’ve got a job for you.” 

Adaine twisted her hands together, fingers sliding roughly over clammy skin. She tried to beg as silently as she could for Kalina to leave whatever it was alone, at least for a little while longer. 

“It was the middle of the week,” Fabian said. He puffed his shoulders up. “I didn’t want to bother you. I don’t know.”

Kalina shook her head. 

“I need to go,” Adaine said. Fabian’s expression fell. Adaine swallowed around the sharp lump in her throat. “I just remembered I have something to do.”

Riz tilted his head. “Oh, what?” 

“It’s nothing,” Adaine said. “Just––I have to do something for my sister. I’m late, I gotta––”

Adaine pulled away from their triangle. Fabian frowned, catching the lie immediately, but choosing to let it lay. Riz, however, levelled his too sharp gaze on her, making Adaine feel stripped bare.

“I’ll come over after school?” She asked Fabian. 

“Yeah, definitely,” he said and straightened. “Wait, Adaine, hold on a minute before you––”

“I’ll meet you after detention then. Nice to meet you, Riz.” 

“You too,” he said slowly, looking between Fabian and her. 

Adaine scurried away. Riz looked at her like she was a puzzle to solve. Adaine didn’t like it. 

Kalina turned town the hallway, her black tail swishing pleasantly in her wake, which was never a good sign. Adaine steeled herself. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be too bad or take too long. She had school today, and as bad as Kalina was, she never tried to stand in the way of that. 

Her stomach twisted painfully and Adaine took a steadying breath. She would do whatever Kalina wanted and after school she would see Fabian, alone this time, and Adaine would fix whatever was different about them now and everything would be fine. 

Oh! 

Adaine spun around. The hallway was beginning to empty as students began to make their way to the orientation assembly. 

“Fabian!” She called down. He looked at her, his expression picking up as he recognized her voice. Glacial blue met gold. “Crush tryouts today.” 

“I will,” he promised. Fabian grinned wolfishly at her. This Adaine was used to. Boundless confidence, relentless determination. Randomly, she thought it made him look good. Goosebumps trailed down her arm and heat crept up her neck. She turned on her heel and ran after Kalina.

The cat bit her lip. 

“Shut up,” Adaine said before Kalina could get a word in.

“Okay, okay, I’m feeling nice today.” Kalina put her hands up in mock surrender. “Now, want to go get your library card?”

Chapter Text

Fabian takes one for the team. Kristen makes some new friends.

or. An exploration of faith and faithlessness.

~~~

Fabian’s Ten Step Plan to Take Over The School was not actually a plan to take over the school. Really, it was Fabian’s Ten Step Plan to Save His Best Friend and Maybe Also Write His Name On The World While He’s At It, but that was too long and he couldn’t very well tell Adaine about it so taking over the school had to do.

This plan also did not have ten steps. It had three. The rest, he presumed, he’d figure out along the way. Adaine was more of the planner than he was and Papa believed that all plans fell apart eventually so there was no use making one in the first place. Fabian figured that splitting the difference was the best of both worlds. 

He’d come up with this plan approximately three days ago. 

He and Papa had been talking more this summer. At least, talking about things that mattered. They spoke often, but it was about adventures and drugs and amorphous things like enemies and crews and family. 

But recently he had been talking about legacies and power and honor and everything that lingered at the edge of their conversations, until now never reaching the surface. 

It seemed like it was finally Fabian’s turn to create his own legacy. He figured rescuing his best friend was a good place to start. 

Step one was easy, though Fabian did have to admit that it was to take over the school. This step had several sub-steps, which included punching that half-orc boy (Junebag? Gorlug? He couldn’t remember, honestly) and getting on the Owlbears team, but he didn’t think it would be too hard. He was Fabian Aramais Seacaster. Really, the team had been waiting for someone like him to show up and shepherd them all to victory. 

Step two was a lot harder: actually solving the damn mystery. This was where most of the improvisation would come into play. He was loath to admit it, but he hadn’t made any progress since he last saw Riz. Asking for the goblin’s help again, especially when he was still mad at him, made Fabian nauseous to think about. He knew if his Papa was here, he would have figured everything out already. 

Step three wasn’t supposed to be difficult, but Fabian had made a fatal miscalculation. Adaine could never know and Fabian had introduced her to Riz Gukgak. 

Despite Riz’s whole, well, everything, he was whip smart and had known Fabian for over a year. He knew something was off. Knew enough to look between Fabian and the hole Adaine used to occupy like they were meat meant to devour. 

“Is Adaine the mystery friend?” He said finally. 

Fabian grimaced. Riz was always intense. Normally, he didn’t mind it. It was charming in its own strange, unhinged way. Now, though, his bluntness was like a sledgehammer.

“What? No! No way,” Fabian lied. “Adaine is–––Adaine’s, um––” He flushed.

There weren’t enough words in the Solesian dictionary to properly describe Adaine. She was his sick friend. His best friend. Someone in trouble. His favorite person. His crew, his family. His––

“Oh. Oh ,” Riz said. His face flushed, deep green spreading across his pointed nose. His voice jumped up an octave. “That’s fine. Yeah, I totally––um––I totally get it. I, too, have . . . friends like that.” 

Fabian opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. Oh. Riz meant that he thought that Fabian . . . And Adaine . . . 

Huh. 

He ducked his head, trying his best to seem like he’d been caught red-handed. Riz thinking Fabian had a crush on Adaine wasn’t ideal, per say, because there was always a chance Riz would let that slip instead and Fabian would sooner jump into the Celestine Sea than have that conversation with Adaine, but it was acceptable.

He’d pretend Adaine was the love of his life if it meant keeping her secret safe. 

Besides, it wouldn’t be that hard to pretend. Adaine was amazing and cool and incredibly brave. Fabian could even acknowledge that objectively she was very beautiful; all cool tones and sharp lines and a small dimple that only appeared when she truly smiled and little snorts she tried to cover up when she laughed and eyes that reflected bits of starlight when the light hit her reading glasses just right and fine hands that were as adept at skewering a man through as they were destroying them with spellcraft. 

He could pull it off. 

“No, seriously.” Riz was still talking. He did that. All that grim seriousness and sharp wit crumbled as soon as he spoke for too long. “There’s a Baron,” he paused, a deep frown etched itself into the lines of his jaw, “from the Baronies and I just—I like them so freaking much, dude.” 

It was truly one of the worst lies that Fabian had ever heard. He wondered, briefly, if they’d keep doing that forever, him and Riz and Adaine, lying and lying until someone broke down. 

Fabian hummed and they stood there, staring at each other as the students around them flowed by. They were going to be late for orientation, Fabian observed idly. If they stayed there, they’d miss it entirely. 

Fabian opened his mouth, “I––”

“Do––” Riz started at the same time. Riz raised his eyebrows and Fabian took a deep breath.

“I still need help,” Fabian said. A hot, shameful feeling crackled its way up Fabian’s spine. Papa would have never suffered this indecency. “I won’t––I can’t tell you everything. But you gotta help me out anyway.” He puffed out his chest. 

After a long moment, Riz responded, “Do you want to be in my adventuring party?”

Fabian froze. 

“What I was saying earlier, I mean it. Something’s going on at this school and we’re going to figure it out.” Riz’s face hardened as he fixed his gaze just below Fabian’s eyes. “And I think it’s connected to your friend.” 

Fabian swallowed. Though he’d never considered it, it made sense that there was something bigger than just Adaine and whatever was making her sick. Adaine was the strongest person he knew, it had always seemed odd that she had not punched out whatever was hurting her herself. What could she have gotten herself into? 

“Well you’d be joining my adventuring party,” he said because grandstanding was what he knew how to do best. “But I suppose you and I could form a party.”

And Adaine, his mind supplied unhelpfully. He hoped she wouldn’t be too mad at him. 

Riz grinned and pumped his fist. “ Yes , man.” And the dork he knew was back. “Come on, dude, let’s go gather some clues.”

~~~

It was barely noon and it was already the wildest day of Kristen’s life. 

Seeing all those new people and experiences and potential future shepherd’s of Helio’s light had been exciting enough, but then she’d seen a real, straight out of the movies she watched when her parents were out of town on the living room computer, bonafide schoolyard brawl . 

That had to have been more exciting than anything Kristen could have seen at the Highcourt Girls School her parents wanted to send her too.

Now that had been a struggle, trying to convince her parents she could do more good spreading the light at Aguefort than Highcourt. She’d been offered a scholarship because of her divine connections, something Pastor Amelia had grinned about as she told her with her hands clasped around hers. 

When she instead said she wanted to go to adventuring school and risk her life with a bunch of nonbelievers, her parents had almost fainted. They were protective of her, the whole parish was, honestly, so Kristen understood where they were coming from. A little bit, at least. 

She was sure her mom and dad would be having a heart attack if they were here now, though. Principal Aguefort was waxing poetic about adventuring and violence and arcane magic and Kristen couldn’t help the excited flutter that shivered its way through her rib cage. She clutched her Bible tightly and tried to press the thrill out of her body. 

The principal finished his impassioned speech to a small applause led by a goblin freshman and instructions to head to class. 

This was, perhaps, what Kristen had been dreading the most. 

Kristen loved Helio, she really really did. He was more than just her god and she was more than just his chosen one. He was her best friend. She also loved her church. She spent every Sunday in the pews and led a youth group on Thursday nights and was always ready to be there if her congregation needed her. 

But—

It was strange, almost, how lonely it got sometimes.  

She knew a few of the clerics in her year, other followers of Helio she’d grown up with. They were split pretty evenly into the two categories of people in Kristen’s life: those who loved that Kristen was the chosen one and those who hated it. 

Neither were ever vocal about it, but Kristen, while a bit dense at times she could admit it, was not stupid. She could feel the fake sweetness that possessed people, who saw her only as an avenue to heaven and not as Kristen. She also knew that some people’s expressions dropped once she was out of view, and could feel the undercurrent of passive aggression in each snide comment at bible study. 

She was not excited to see that extend outside the parish. 

Her cleric class was small, all things considered. There were others in different years and homerooms, but all ten of them fit comfortably in the small room, where their teacher had rearranged their chairs into a circle. 

Their air genasi teacher sat at the front of the class, one leg crossed over her lap and cloudy hair billowing in mists over her shoulders. 

“My name is Professor Yolanda Badgood,” she started as Kristen slid into her seat. “I’ll be your cleric teacher for the next four years.”

To her left was one of the girls she grew up with, Emmaline. She fit solidly in the ‘too nice’ category. Kristen supposed it wasn’t her fault, her parents were convinced that the end times were coming and that Kristen would guide them all to Helio’s corny gates. Kristen would be nice to herself too. 

To her right was an ice genasi girl slouched in her chair with a large sweater that fell in thick rivulets around her waist. 

The rest of the class was a smattering of different races and religions. Kristen fiddled with the leather edge of her bible. Some of her classmates didn’t even have bibles. 

“Clericy is, as all divine paths are, unique in that they are wholly individual,” Professor Badgood continued. “Unlike wizardry or martial arts, there is no ‘normal’ way to be a cleric. Each of you will have to figure out your own way to be a cleric.” 

Kristen squirmed in her seat. Maybe for other gods, lesser gods, that was true. Not for her. Kristen had always only had one way to be. 

Some of the other kids looked similarly ruffled and Professor Badgood smiled and continued on. “That is not to say that I won’t be there to guide you on your path, merely that your faith will not and should not look like your peers,” she said and leaned forward, folding her hands on the desk. “But this class will have an agenda because there is one thing that all of you, regardless of your divinity, have in common. Can anyone tell me what that is?”

Another boy she recognized, Drew, raised his hand. “We all follow a god, even if it's not the true one.” Drew didn’t particularly like her. Drew liked to be the first at bible study and spend the most time at the church’s soup kitchen and overall seemed to think that Kristen could do with being a little bit more like him. 

Professor Badgood smiled, a little condescending but not unkind. “That’s true, but not what I was looking for. Paladins also follow a divinity, so do some warlocks. Some follow a divinity without being granted any spells at all. So,” she looked at Kristen then, hand still resting solidly on her bible. Its gold lettering was still in perfect condition even after all these years. “Why are you a cleric? ” 

Kristen bit her lip. “I––” She was Helio’s Chosen. Before she was born he knew her. What else was there to be? “I love my god,” she said. “And I’m not a very good fighter.” 

Professor Badgood pursed her lips but didn’t push further. “That’s your first piece of homework, then. Give me and ‘why’ so we can find a ‘what’ and then figure out a ‘how.’”

Kristen was sure her cheeks were burning as bright as her hair. Drew smirked while Emmaline nudged her ankle sympathetically under the desk. 

“Alright, everyone, let’s open up our textbooks. This week we’ll be covering the first planetary pantheon.” 

Kristen opened her book and let the lecture wash over her. To consider so many questions at once felt almost sacrilegious. She tried to focus on the warmth that always lived right below her heart that told her not to worry too much about it. 

Today, it wasn’t working. 

~~~

Professor Badgood stopped her while she passed at the end of class. 

“Don’t put too much pressure on what I asked you earlier,” she’d said, the corners of her eyes crinkling like small wings as the ghost of a smile danced across her face. “The right answer will come when it needs to, so long as you look for it.” She squeezed Kristen’s shoulder, tight, solid. It made Kristen want to both lean into it and run as though she’d been burned. 

She hummed tightly and hurried out, which she figured was the next best thing. It was only then that Kristen took her first steady breath since the beginning of the day. 

She’d been told, before she came to Aguefort, that there would be trials; people and places and things that would try and make her stray from the true path of God. Perhaps this was one of them. 

But she was Kristen Applebees, personally chosen of Helio, plucked from the corny fields to champion his word. She only needed to have faith and everything would work itself out. 

Kristen shrugged her bag on her shoulder, gripping the crook of her staff in between the strap. She’d gotten it for her birthday last year, once she finally convinced them to let her go to Aguefort. What better way to spread the word than go to where it is not? 

She rounded a corner, intent to wander a bit and clear her head before heading off to her next class when she bumped head first into another student, sending them both sprawling to the ground. 

“Shit,” the other student said as Kristen pulled herself to her knees. 

“Helio, gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to knock into you,” Kristen said as she pushed forward, beginning to gather the scattered papers and books that had fallen around the other student. She looked up as a pale forearm came into view. It was the blonde girl from before. The one who was friends with the boy who punched Gorgug. “Oh, hey again.” She smiled. 

The girl nodded curtly at her. “Hello,” she said. Her voice carried a strong fallinese lilt to it. She’d met a fallinese elf once, at a sleepaway camp in Highcourt. Before his family had been run off for betraying the faith, he’d been nice. “It was my fault. Don’t worry about it.” 

Kristen rose to her feet and brushed herself off, holding the girl’s belongings out to her. “Nah, it was all me. I’m such a klutz sometimes, you know? But, hey, we all gotta stumble sometimes to know we can be lifted up.” 

The girl stared dumbly at her. Kristen’s smile tightened. Okay, perhaps preaching like she would at bible study was a bit too strong. “How was your morning? I know it was crazy when we first got here, what with your friend and the whole . . .” 

Kristen huffed and waved her hands in front of her. She still wasn’t sure what his whole deal had been. 

“Um,” the girl snatched her stuff from Kristen’s hands and clutched it tightly to her chest. “It was fine, thank you.” She leaned around Kristen, looking down the hall. Kristen got a perfect view of the side of her things. A wand was poking out from the books, along with a bunch of titles that sounded way too fancy for Kristen. 

“Woah, are you a wizard?” She asked. “That’s so cool. I’ve never been friends with a wizard before. Do you normally have that many books?”

Kristen leaned down to poke at the book spines. The girl took a large step back, a frazzled look taking over her face. 

“Yes,” she said and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her icy blue eyes were growing more pronounced with the steady red flush that was climbing her neck. “And no. Well, kinda. I’m supposed to––”

“I can’t imagine learning all that fancy spell stuff,” Kristen laughed. “I get my magic from my god, Helio. Have you ever heard of him? He lets me do stuff like this.” 

Kristen casted light on the girl’s stack of books. Which was pretty thematic, she thought. Bringing God’s light to someplace new just like she was bringing God’s word to this girl. Pastor Amelia would be proud. 

Instead of being awed by the holy light, however, the girl started hyperventilating as the glow caught the attention of a few other kids in the hallway. She started to back away. 

“Woah, are you okay––?”

“Aw, yeah, that’s awesome. Liven up that nerd shit.” Another girl, a tiefling with light red skin and a wolfish grin, poked her head closer to them. “Oh, I remember you,” she looked at the elf, “I saw what you just did there. That was rad as hell.” 

The girl squeaked. One of her hands rubbing harshly on her arm. “ Shit,” she said, all the blood from before rushing out of her face. “You saw that? Fuck , please don’t say anything.” Kristen tilted her head. 

“Saw what––?”

“Very nice use of the light cantrip, young lady!” The Vice Principal appeared behind her. Kristen decided he looked much less intimidating when he wasn’t handing out detention slips or breaking up fights. Kristen grinned. It was always cool when she showed off Helio’s gifts. 

Goldenhoard looked between the three of them before zeroing in on the elf. The blonde girl’s face fell. She looked a little like she was about to be sick. “Are you alright, young lady?”

“I––” she swallowed. She was visibly shaking. “I found this book.”

Goldenhoard narrowed his eyes. “You found a book?” He crossed his arms. “What, it just walked out of the library?”

“She’s covering for me, I stole it, Goldenrod––” The tiefling girl leaned forward in front of the elf and smiled slyly at the Vice Principal. 

“No I didn’t––she didn’t steal it. I––I’m sorry I stole it. I’m new here, I’m so sorry.” The girl’s breaths were coming out now in short puffs. Her hands were white around the still glowing books. 

Kristen laid a hand on her shoulder. “We all fall short of the grace of God.” 

“Oh that’s not––That’s a little extreme, young lady.” Vice Principal Goldenhoard leveled a heavy look at Kristen, who shrunk back. Her stomach twisted. Everyone did fall short of God's grace. Kristen did everyday, it wasn’t a big deal. “What you’ve done isn’t appropriate, you understand that? What’s your name, young lady?”

“Adaine Abernant.” Kristen saw a thin sheen of tears in the girl's eyes. 

“Alright, Miss Abernant. I am going to have to give you detention. So you’ll be staying late after school. Understand?” The girl, Adaine, nodded and a tinny hum escaped her. Goldenhoard sighed heavily. “This is not fun for me. There’s obviously some medical stuff going on that I don’t know about. But I’ve already said it and other students have heard––”

The tiefling girl jumped back in. “Yeah, I heard it all,” she winked. “Hi.”

Goldenhoard coughed harshly. “Hey, Miss Faeth? We’re not going to do this. We don’t have a thing. You think we do, but we don’t. You have a thing.”

“Who’s running detention?” 

“Alright,” he barked. “Detention for you too. Good grief .” 

Goldenhoard produced two red detention slips for the other two girls. Adaine gripped hers tightly while the other girl looked like she was seconds away from bursting out laughing. He turned to face Kristen. 

“Now, can you escort Miss Abernant to Principal Aguefort’s office to return this?” He pointed at the stolen book at the top of Adaine’s stack. Kristen nodded. “Okay, I’m going. I will see you two later.” He pointed at Adaine and the other girl. The tiefling girl’s eyes sparkled. “In a completely normal way because I am the Vice Principal!”

The tiefling girl grinned at them as Goldenhoard’s silhouette lumbered away. “Classic Goldenrod, right?” Kristen doubted that but she nodded anyway. “Adaine, that was, like, really cool. Don’t let the establishment get you down.”

Adaine cleared her throat. “Yeah, no, sorry. I just, um. Yeah.” 

The tiefling waved her hand. “No worries. I’m Fig, by the way.”

Adaine nodded. Kristen waved. “Kristen.”

“Rad.” Fig produced a skateboard from seemingly nowhere and dropped it to the ground. “I’m going to bounce because going to the Principal’s office seems like the most boring thing ever, but I’ll see you in detention later, Adaine. See you around, Kristen.” 

Kristen had barely opened her mouth to say goodbye when Fig sped away. The two girls stood there shocked for a moment before Kristen regained her bearings. 

“I’m sorry for getting you in trouble,” she said. “Even if you did need to repent for your sins, that should come of your own volition, not mine.” 

Adaine’s face twisted. “Thanks, I guess,” she said, tone rough and harsh. “Look, let’s just return this and get out of each other’s hair.” 

Kristen faltered. “Okay.” She felt the urge to apologize again. She didn’t know what for this time. Kristen knew not everyone would be receptive to Helio immediately, but, perhaps naively, she thought it’d be easier. 

The two walked in silence towards the Principal’s office, Adaine’s shoulders hunched to her ears. Kristen kept glancing at her, like she could dispel the tension between them with just her eyes.

Even as withdrawn as she was, Adaine carried herself with uncanny grace. Her posture was stick-straight, and the waves of her blue private school uniform barely moved as she walked, which was odd, Kristen was sure Aguefort didn’t have a uniform. A gold pin held a loose plait of her hair together, the rest falling in perfect waves over her shoulders. Her parents would have been complaining already, Kristen thought, whispering to her about how high elves were always so “hoity-toity.” 

Finally, they reached the hallway Principal Aguefort’s office was in. It was a lot emptier now, most of the students having dispersed to other classes or study periods. Only two kids remained, upperclassmen by the looks of it, who were in a quiet discussion before perking up at their arrival. 

“Oh, great, freshman!” The first student, a girl, said. She reminded Kristen a little of Adaine, perfect features and a hard to discern expression. Though this girl, unlike Adaine, had a dazzling smile as she approached them. “Hi, would you like to vote to reinstate prom king and queen?”

Adaine paused. “What?” 

The girl’s expression didn’t waver. “Prom king and queen. You know? The Dance at the end of the year? ” The girl presented a clipboard to them, which had a long line of student signatures down its page. “I’m Penelope Everpetal and this is my boyfriend, Dayne. We want to bring it back.” She gestured to a burly boy wearing a red Owlbears jacket next to her. He nodded at them.

“Oh, sure,” Kristen agreed as Adaine cut in. 

“What does that mean? Being king and queen?”

Penelope’s gaze narrowed, so slightly Kristen was sure she was imagining it. “Well, before the dance, if enough students want it back, they’ll vote on a queen and a king. Then at prom those two will get a special dance and it’ll be super fun.” 

Adaine glanced away for a second. She seemed to focus on nothing as her expression hardened. “They just get a special dance? That’s it?”

Penelope’s wide smile thinned until just her lips were visible. “You know, I think I recognize you now. You’re Aelwyn’s little sister, right? From Hudol?” 

Adaine stiffened. “Yeah. You know Aelwyn?”

Penelope nodded. “We’re like best friends. Anyway, I just wanted to give you some advice because I can’t leave a friend’s sister hanging, but like, you’ll have a much easier time here if you ask less questions.” Adaine shrunk back, a sheet of her blonde hair blocking her side profile from view. “I’m sure you’ll find things will become more clear over time––”

“Fewer questions,” Adaine whispered. Kristen flushed. 

“What?” Penelope asked. 

“Nothing. I’ll vote, it’s fine.” Adaine took the clipboard from Kristen, who had just finished scrawling her name, to sign her own. 

“It’s ‘fewer questions,’” Dayne piped up, the same stern look on his face. “‘Less questions’ is wrong, grammatically.”

Penelope huffed. “Fine, Dayne. But, yay, thank you.” She took the clipboard from Adaine and tilted her head at them. “Let’s hang out soon. Aelwyn’s told me, like, absolutely nothing about you. I'd love to get to know you more.” 

Kristen grimaced. She’d heard that fake sweet tone her entire life. Adaine curled in on herself. “Sure.”

Something hot surged in Kristen’s chest. “We, uh, we have to go to Aguefort’s office now. Important business from the Vice Principal.” She pulled Adaine past them. “Thanks though. I hope you win prom queen.” 

Aguefort’s office was unlocked, so Kristen shut the door behind them, her knuckles white around the edges of the book . 

Kristen set the book down on Aguefort’s desk. He was gone, leaving the explosion of items to their viewing. The walls were lined with books and strange arcane drawings. Kristen couldn’t make heads or tails of them. The desk was no better. Beneath the book, random papers were scattered across it, along with small hunks of metal, pens, gears, and crystals. 

Adaine straightened, no longer under Penelope’s eye, and turned to her. “Thank you,” she said quietly. The ghost of a smile danced across her face.  

Kristen released a breath. “No problem.” 

She had come to Aguefort, first and foremost, to make friends. Real ones. Maybe Adaine could be one of them. 

Then later she died and also met God and, well, making friends didn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore.

~~~

Fabian and Riz ended up skipping orientation. Fabian wouldn’t have called it his smartest move, considering everything else he had going on and the fact that Adaine would be peeved at him for skipping, but investigating with Riz was fun.  

He couldn’t help the little flutter in his chest, one that was still eleven years old and desperate to be a hero, as they spoke to Penelope and Dayne and stole tea from the principal and got Riz detention and snooped on the guy on the motorcycle and sent the dwarf girl to spy on Penelope and her friend. 

It almost made him forget that he had detention later or that he’d have to explain to Adaine that he’d accidentally invited Riz into their adventuring party or that bloodrush tryouts were in five minutes. 

Fabian closed one of the lockers in the changing room and grabbed his jacket. He wasn’t worried, of course. That would be like admitting that he wasn’t sure if he was up to snuff with these bloodrush players. Which would be absurd. 

Fabian would excel here as he excelled at everything else in life: with grit, talent, and if that didn’t work out, five hundred gold pieces. 

It was rare that he ever actually had to use money to get what he wanted, because of the aforementioned grit and talent. But Papa was of the belief that it was your prerogative to use every resource available to you no matter what. If Papa liked it, Fabian figured it was okay. It was not very heroic but it was quintessentially pirate-like. 

One day, Fabian would figure out which creed was better.

Though, as tryouts progressed, it looked like he wouldn’t need to use Papa’s money after all. He was demolishing these players. A grin spread across his face. The sport was like sparring, almost. Defend, attack, defend, attack. Fabian knew battle like he knew his own name. It was natural, then, to fall into the routine of catch, run, tackle . 

The ball was in his hands. He was supposed to throw it, Coach Daybreak had given it to him to see how Fabian threw. Dayne was open further down the field, his left hand high in the air to signal to him. Fabian cocked his arm back––wait.

There. A line, right down the left side of the field, no defenders, straight to victory. 

Fabian sprinted towards it.

When he reached the other end, breathless, he placed the ball down and turned back to the team. They looked confused, which struck Fabian as odd. He’d scored and that was what mattered. On the high seas, all anyone cared about was how much treasure you had at the end of the day, not how you got it. Maybe they were just surprised that a freshman was this good. He approached the other boys, punching Dayne’s shoulder good-naturedly once he was close enough.

“Hey, good game, everyone. Loved those plays.”

“What play?” Dayne scoffed. 

Fabian laughed. “ My play. I thought it was best to just break through instead of risking a throw. It was the right call to score.”

Dayne stared blankly at him. None of the other boys on the team were making eye contact with him. Dayne’s little bruiser, Ragh, he thought his name was, knocked into him. “It wasn’t cool, bro. You have bad thoughts about what to do.” 

Fabian pushed him away. “What––?” 

“Fabian,” Daybreak said. He was standing near the sidelines, clipboard in hand and arms crossed over his chest. His mouth was set into a hard line. “Hit the showers.” 

Fabian’s stomach tightened. “Alright,” he said and took a slow step towards the locker room. “I’ll meet you guys there.” 

Fabian took another step. The rest of the team didn’t move to follow. 

“Guys?” He asked. After a second, “Coach?”

“You’re not on the team, Fabian,” Daybreak said. 

“What?”

“You’re not,” Daybreak stepped towards Fabian and placed a large hand on his chest, “on the team. You didn’t make it.” 

“But I––” Fabian swallowed. He scored. He outdid them all. It didn’t matter how you got them, so long as there were points on the board. “I ran faster than everyone else. My father––You’re just going to take the money?”

Once Daybreak accepted payment, he’d made a promise. The ocean was a lawless land, the only true currency was your honor. 

“What did you just say?” Daybreak’s expression dropped. It was unnerving, staring into Daybreak’s icy expression, the hand on his chest veering on the edge of a clawed grip. Fabian pushed through.

“You can’t just take the money if I’m––”

“Shut your mouth,” Daybreak barked and in one rough motion sent Fabian sprawling backwards. “You don’t know what you’re talking about there, boy. You’ve got a big mouth and no heart. You’ll never be an Owlbear.” 

Fabian’s face twisted. His elbow was damp in the soft grass where he’d propped himself up. He glanced at the rest of the team. Dayne and Ragh had their shoulders hunched like predators ready to pounce. A few of the other boys looked equally hostile. Even those that weren’t were staring at the ground, like the scene in front of them wasn’t even happening. 

Fabian snarled. “Alright, yeah, okay, that’s fine. If you want to kick the best player here out then maybe I don’t want to be on this team.” His face felt hot. “And I don’t need this or any of you. Because, Ragh, your jokes aren’t funny. I didn’t like them and no one else laughed. And Dayne, prom is lame as hell and you,” he rounded on Daybreak, “You would take a bribe and then not follow through. Fuck this. Fuck all of you.” 

He heard Ragh crying behind him as Dayne tried to comfort him. Good. If Ragh wanted to talk how he did, he needed to be able to take as good as he gave. Daybreak’s face turned bright red. 

“That’s detention for you,” Daybreak said and threw a red slip at Fabian. His second one. Papa would be so proud. “And I never want to see you on this field again, you hear me? You can have all the moves in the world, but it means nothing if you can’t play on a team. You’ll learn that the hard way.” 

“Oh, I’m sure I will.” 

If he couldn’t be on a team, he’d find a crew. Maybe his mistake was trying to be anything except what he was always meant to be. 

Fabian stalked off. He let his anger pull him into the shower and didn’t let it fizzle out until he was stepping back out into the changing room and dumping his clothes into a heap on the bench in front of him. 

Fabian laid his head against the lockers. The lingering drops of water from his shower sat cold and damp and uncomfortable across his shoulders. He could have toweled off already, changed into something warm and dry. He sat in it until the air left him shivering and sticky. 

Step one was experiencing some minor setbacks, but that was alright, Fabian supposed. So they didn’t want a Seacaster on their team, fine. Not many did. Fabian would do what Seacasters did best: crush those who underestimated them under his boot. 

He pushed up off the locker and shook his hands out. The rules were different here, not piracy or heroics, but Fabian would learn them if he had to. 

Fabian changed quickly and headed for lunch, leaving nothing but the echo of his boot in the changing room. He thought he heard the voices of the other Owlbears reentering the locker room. He faltered a step. Against his wishes, he found himself wishing to join them. 

He hurried towards the cafeteria instead. 

All the freshmen had the same lunch period, which today would precede making adventuring parties, or in Fabian’s case, detention. Adaine would be there for lunch at least, before she had to mingle with the rest of their class for the afternoon. 

The lunch room was crowded, with students already forming their groups, little clusters of similar people. He found Adaine almost immediately. He’d memorized the shape of her silhouette, how her hair settled on her shoulders, years ago. 

She wasn’t alone, which was odd. Adaine, self admitted, didn’t really like people. She’d said many times over the years that Fabian was a rare exception. But next to her was a human girl with bright red hair. Fabian vaguely recognized her as one of the onlookers of his fight with the half-orc that morning. 

Fabian sat on her other side. “Adaine,” he greeted. 

Adaine jumped and swatted at his arm. “Fabian, gods, don’t do that.” She’d always been easily startled. “Hello,” she said once she’d calmed down.

The human girl leaned around Adaine. “Hi, I’m Kristen. It's nice to meet you. Again.” 

Fabian looked between her and Adaine cautiously. Adaine gave him a small nod. 

“Fabian Seacaster, son of Bill Seacaster,” he said. 

“Oh, I know,” Kristen said. “I saw your fight this morning, which was crazy by the way. What an introduction to adventuring school, you know?” She laughed. 

Fabian grimaced as she continued to prattle about her day and Aguefort and how different it was from her church, because apparently she was a cleric of Helio. 

Fabian supposed if he was allowed to invite Riz to their adventuring party, Adaine was allowed to make a new friend, even if that friend was a hyper-religious nut. 

“How were tryouts?” Adaine asked in a break in Kristen’s steady stream of conversation. 

Fabian’s mouth thinned. “ I crushed it,” he said and clenched his hands around the table’s bench seat. “But I don’t think it’s going to work out.” 

Adaine furrowed her brow. The sound of microphone feedback cut in before she could press further. It was Aguefort, announcing that the schedule for the day was finished and that the student body could start forming parties after lunch. 

“Except for those with detention,” the Vice Principal said, leaning in front of Aguefort to press into the microphone. “Please gather here,” he pointed to an unoccupied table closer to the front of the room, “with me to discuss your schedule for the day.” 

Fabian gathered his stuff and stood up. He turned to say goodbye to Adaine, only for her to start walking over with him. 

“See you later, Kristen,” she said. The tips of her ears were red and she wasn’t looking at Fabian. Kristen nodded at her and waved them off. 

“What happened?” He whispered to her as they crossed over. 

Adaine squeezed his wrist, her shoulders bunching up to her ears. “Nothing.” She pushed into the far side of the new table, in the seat tucked into the corner of the room, as boxed in as she could get. Fabian slid in next to her. 

“Nothing? Come on, Adaine.” 

A tiefling girl in a leather jacket and plaid skirt leaned against the wall, flashing a rocker sign at the two of them as she lit a clove. The half-orc Fabian had punched that morning sat across from them, scrolling idly on his crystal. Across the room, Fabian could see Riz scurrying his way over. 

Adaine grimaced. “I listened to fucking Aelwyn.” 

That was all he would get for now. He was used to it, always being kept in the dark. He could have pushed, see how far he could get before Adaine snapped back. Demand to know more, to understand what she was doing. 

Instead, “I didn’t take you for the religious type.”

She elbowed him hard in the stomach. 

“ Fabian, ” she scolded. “Kristen’s nice. If you ignore all the Helio stuff.” 

At their previous table, Kristen was in a heated discussion with Coach Daybreak. If Kristen was fighting with him, she automatically moved up in Fabian’s regard. Above the low-level noise of the lunchroom, “bearing false witness” floated towards them. 

Fabian raised an eyebrow. 

“It’s a lot of Helio stuff,” Adaine admitted. “When did you meet your new friend?”

Fabian flattened his palm against his pants. His hands were a little clammy. “Last year.” Adaine hummed softly at him. “I told him he could be in our adventuring party. Sorry.” 

Adaine stilled. He felt the soft pressure of her rib cage against his arm as she took a long breath. A chunk of her blond hair fell forward. It was loose now, the pin he’d gotten her those years ago doing a poor job at keeping everything contained. 

“Okay,” she said. 

Kristen ran towards them, waving a red slip in her hands. 

“Hey, you guys,” she grinned. “I have detention now. I bore false witness.” 

Fabian looked incredulously at her. “To who? You can get detention for that?” 

Kristen seemed nonplussed. “A higher power, I guess. It can get pretty complicated. Uh, actually, what did all of you guys do?”

The half-orc looked up. “We punched each other.” Fabian nodded along. Technically, tryouts were the true offense, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk about them. 

“Ghost steak,” the tiefling said solemnly. 

“I stole a bunch of tea,” Riz chimed in. Technically, Fabian was involved in that too. 

“I stole a stupid book because my stupid sister told me too because apparently I’m stupid too,” Adaine grumbled. That wasn’t like her, listening to Aelwyn or breaking the rules. Fabian grabbed her hand and pressed his index finger to her pulse. 

The tiefling introduced herself as Fig, then complained about being hungry, then said she had to introduce them all to her best friend. Fabian couldn’t even find it in himself to be surprised when the best friend turned out to be the lunch lady. 

Fabian looked down ruefully at his tray of potentially, the jury’s still out actually, tuna. Adaine patted his shoulder in faux comfort. He did what a true pirate would do, barter, until Kristen jostled into him. 

Fabian looked up and saw that Ragh had her bible in his hand, which he immediately threw across the room. He was yelling. “Don’t bear . . . whatever you did, dude. It’s not cool. It’s not.” 

“What the fuck, man?” Kristen yelped. She whipped her head wildly between the vat of corn and Ragh, her face twisted up tight. 

“Think about it,” Ragh said instead. 

“Who even are you?” 

Fabian stepped forward until he was flanking Kristen’s shoulder. “Don’t bother with him. He’s a fucking oaf.” He narrowed his eyes at Ragh. 

Adaine had casted mage hand in the meantime, and a corn-logged bible floated towards Kristen’s waiting hands. The half-orc, Fabian was almost positive his name was Gorlug, passed her a stack of napkins. Everyone took a moment to help Kristen clean off her bible before surrounding her as they went back to their table, a physical barrier between her and Ragh.

As they sat down, Riz let out a nervous laugh. “You know, he stuffed me into a trash can earlier.” 

Fabian and Adaine snorted in unison, which set off Fig, then Kristen, then Gorlug and soon all of them were cackling at the strange turn of events. With the undercurrent of tension between them, born of unease and unfamiliarity, broken, they ate lunch in casual conversation. It turned out the half-orc’s name was Gor gug , which Fabian figured he’d been close enough before, and Fig and Kristen both thought Adaine was super cool for stealing the book, though for different reasons. 

Eventually, lunch ended and the six of them were escorted by the Vice Principal to an empty classroom, where a stout, serene gnomish man who introduced himself as Mr. Gibbons was sitting at the head of a circle of desks. He folded his hands on the desk and looked slowly at each of them. Fabian squirmed in his seat. 

“So how do we all feel about what we did?”

Oh gods . 

Fig and Gorgug both blushed and looked away. Fabian suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Fabian did not talk about his feelings. He stabbed people. Adaine and Riz, at least, looked about as pleased as he was. 

“I technically have diplomatic immunity,” Adaine said, picking at her thumb. “So, uh, do I have to be here?” Fabian wondered, briefly, if he could back-end the laws of Leviathan and pull a similar excuse. 

“I feel bad!” Gorgug jumped in and everyone zeroed in on them both. Good grief. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad.”

Mr. Gibbons looked expectantly at Fabian. He gritted his teeth. “I punched you, but––ugh. It wasn’t worth it. And I’m not supposed to be here anyway. It’s not a crime to be too good at bloodrush.” 

“No, punching someone is definitely a detention worthy offense,” Riz offered unhelpfully. Fabian casted him a withering glare. 

“Wow, wow wow wow,” Mr. Gibbons intoned. “These are some big feelings. How’s everything at home, guys?”

Unbidden, Faian glanced at Adaine. She had sunk so low in her seat Fabian had to look down to catch her expression. Her face was carefully blank, a look Fabian had seen numerous times over the years. Mr. and Mrs. Abernant were not a discussable topic.  

“Are you crying?” Kristen asked and Fabian looked up to see Fig’s face scrunched up as she roughly dragged her wrist across her eyes. 

“I don’t know. I guess you tapped into something,” she said. As much as it was mortifying it was also lucky. “Maybe home isn’t great, you know?”

Adaine grabbed his hand beneath the desk. She slipped her pinkie in his. 

“These are big feelings,” Mr. Gibbons repeated. “But I’m here to talk. If you have any problems, about anything, I’m right here.” He placed his hands over his chest. Fig nodded vigorously. Fabian wanted to throw up in his mouth. 

“Can we just do lines?” Adaine burst in. 

“ Please, gods,” Fabian said. Even Riz looked ready to agree. 

Before Mr. Gibbons had a chance to respond, a blood-curdling scream erupted from down the hall.

Fabian was standing before his brain had caught up to what was happening. He was a warrior. He had learned to wield a blade before he even learned how to read. Adaine had shot up with him, hands raised, spread out in the tell-tale sign of spellcraft waiting to take shape. Her pupils were blown wide as she whipped her head around. 

“What was that?” She asked. 

Riz dashed forward, always more concerned about others than Fabian was. But Fabian was still right behind him, hand resting tensely on the hilt of his sword. 

A flash of blond poked in the corner of his eye. Adaine’s sharp gaze trained on the cafeteria doors, where a light crackling sound, like the hum of magic or electricity, rumbled beneath the screams. 

“Wait!” Kristen and Mr. Gibbons shouted in unison from just behind the classroom doors; Kristen as she, Fig, and Gorgug barreled forward and Mr. Gibbons as he tried to corral them back. 

Riz wrenched the cafeteria door open and the six of them stumbled to a stop. 

The lunch lady stood hunched with her back to them, her uniform drenched in sweat and her shoulders heaving. 

Further in, the pot of creamed corn from before had overflowed, and lumps of sweet smelling gunk bubbled on the ground. If Fabian didn’t know any better he’d think it was moving towards them.

“Doreen—?” Fig asked hesitantly. 

The lunch lady stilled and slowly, slowly straightened. She leaned her head back, casting a malevolent look over her shoulder at them. 

“Oh, hello, dear,” she said, voice low and raspy. Adaine tensed beside him.

“This is bad,” she whispered to him. “Be ready.” 

“I’m sorry,” Doreen said and turned around fully. Dark runes traced up and down her arms. “Lunchtime is over. You’ll have to be removed from the premises. Forever .”

She raised her hands and the corn exploded upwards and Fabian and Adaine, in lockstep, flew into battle.

Chapter Text

Adaine shows her true colors. A mother’s love.  

or. Blood is decidedly thicker than water.

~~~

Adaine was six years old the first time she held a real weapon. This was not, of course, the first time Adaine had wielded a weapon. The first weapon she’d ever used was her mind, or so her mother told her. Her family were wizards who believed that a clever mind, one capable of trickery and spellcraft and manipulation, was the most useful tool you could have. But, in Adaine’s opinion, a blade was different. 

The nature of spellcraft was powerful, but it was complex. Her childhood had been spent learning the intricacies of resistances and counterspells and the numerous ways that you could lessen a spell's effects, even just a little bit. And spell slots, in the end, were finite. A hot commodity, sure, but not endless. 

The only thing that limited how many times you could stab someone was the existence of your arm and, even then, there were workarounds.  

Adaine had been so excited then. Sword-fighting fascinated her. Adaine had watched Fabian and Captain Seacaster spar for months. The two were like characters in the stories she read, echoes of the immortal dancers she’d watch back in Fallinel. Adaine, still hanging on to her childish dreams of taking her magic back out to sea, had been buzzing with the anticipation of joining them.

But she had been relegated to practicing her form on the other side of the Seacaster’s home gym. The blade was an extension of your arm, Captain Seacaster had said, Adaine had to train her body first to be able to handle it. 

Finally, after weeks of careful diligence, Captain Seacaster had kneeled in front of her and placed a solid, real sword in her hands. He had pressed her palm flat against the steel, gentler than her parents had ever handled her, so it could rest unflinchingly in her palm. The metal was cool, the rough leather hilt carrying that heady smell Adaine associated with carriage rides and adventure. 

It was not the blade she would fight with that day. She and Fabian would fight with wood until they were certain they wouldn’t kill themselves with the effort of metal. But Fabian’s father thought it was important they feel the weight of a true weapon and never forget it. 

Captain Seacaster had placed his hands on her shoulder then. They were rough, holding the calloused weight of a seasoned adventurer. But warm. Adaine imagined they were what her father’s hands should have felt like, if Angwyn cared for anything beyond his courtly duties. 

He held her gaze for a while, his expression serious but kind. Adaine gripped the hilt of the sword harder. 

“Now in a battle, a real battle, my dear lass, you must remember three things.” He moved from her shoulders and grabbed her wooden blade, holding it tight between the planes of his palm. He lifted it in front of the steel one in her hands. 

“First, always be aware of your surroundings. All the skill in the world means nothing if you are skewered from behind.”

Adaine jumped back, narrowly dodging a slash from one of the corn monsters in the room. She was used to Fabian at her back, the two of them acting as each other’s second set of eyes. But Adaine still thought she had everything under control so far. 

Fabian had charged off with Riz towards the main monster. It was a smart move, she knew. Fabian was a great fighter and as long as that thing was standing, more corn gremlins would keep appearing, but she couldn’t help the way her stomach dropped when he ran off. She was used to the comforting weight of a blade, the security it offered, and the knowledge that her dueling partner was there to cover her blind spots. But there was none to be found and Adaine, when all was said and done, was just a wizard. 

Instead, she had Kalina, who was perched idly on one of the tables. Adaine presumed she found this whole situation more amusing than anything else. Occasionally, she’d deem something important enough to warn Adaine about.

“On your left, kid,” she called. Adaine drew her arm up at the last second as the claw of one of the gremlins came down on her. She yelped as a large gash was torn into her forearm. Blood dripped onto the floor in thick drops. That hit had been coming for her head. 

Stay focused, Adaine, she thought.

Fig was down. The lunch lady had bludgeoned her with the ladle. Adaine could see the growing bump on her head where she had collapsed to the ground. Gorgug stood above her, facing down a gremlin that had been focused on her unconscious body.

Fabian was up close with the corn ooze. Her heart stuttered as a monster that emerged from its maw slashed at him. He would be alright, he had to be. Riz was behind him, shooting at it from afar. Smart. 

Kristen was facing off with the lunch lady. Adaine watched a spell from the ladle sail through the air. She barely had a chance to scream out before it was being buffeted back at the lunch lady by an aura of holy light. Oh. When Kristen said she was the chosen one, she hadn’t been kidding. 

“Second, prepare as much as you can. You never know when a battle will break out, so go into every day like you’ll be fighting for your life by the end of it.”

Adaine was out of spell slots. This was a problem. 

She cursed Aelwyn for making her spend her stupid spells on her stupid sister for a stupid effect that hadn’t even worked. She cursed the corn gremlin she’d wasted her last spell on, just a drop in the small army that was advancing on them.

Adaine couldn’t do much. She had no weapon, she wasn’t very strong, and she wasn’t very hearty either. If that gremlin had hit her fully, she would have been unconscious for sure. But if she had just one more slot, Adaine could help. 

Spells, even though they weren’t blades, were powerful. One more Magic Missile could lessen the crowd of monsters that were slowly closing around Fabian. One more Witch Bolt could push the lunch lady, who was leading the charge, away from him. 

“This isn’t looking good,” Kalina said unhelpfully. Adaine tried to ignore her. 

Her heart was thundering in her chest. A gremlin slashed at Gorgug. He’d taken so many hits––his arms and chest were all stained red. A flash of red and black and white sclera and cold metal resting on someone’s chest overtook her vision. She stumbled and blinked and Gorgug was back. 

Adaine wasn’t supposed to be here. It was only the first day of school, they weren’t supposed to be fighting yet. She didn’t know this would happen. 

Adaine came to the sobering realization that she could die here. The door was locked. She had no spells. 

Kalina seemed to sense her distress. She pushed off the table and appeared at her side. 

“Can’t do anything without my help, can you?” She grumbled. “Alright, Adaine, look alive.”

She pushed Adaine forward, narrowly missing a slash from one of the gremlins. No one else was paying attention to her. Kristen leaned over Fig. Fabian was now pressed back to back with Gorgug, fending off the lunch lady. 

She needed to think. 

The lunch lady was possessed by something . But what? The gremlins, the ooze. The corn . . . What about the corn? Ragh. Kristen. Oh. Oh gods. The bible . 

“Kristen!” She shouted. “Your bible!”

Kristen looked up from where she stood over Fig’s unconscious body. Her bleeding had stopped. Kristen tilted her head confusedly at Adaine. But ten feet to the left, poking his head back into the action, Riz nodded.

“I got it,” he called and sprinted faster than Adaine could keep up with straight into the ooze. 

Any chance of relief Adaine could have felt disappeared in an instant. What was he thinking? They were all definitely going to die here.

A scream startled her. Fabian twisted his shoulder right as the lunch lady cleaved into him. A streak of arcane energy surged from the ladle across his back. He stumbled to his knees. 

Adaine’s hands were raised before she realized what was happening. The lunch lady needed to get away from him . Instinctually, the ladle soared into her hands as her Mage Hand fizzled into nothing. A real weapon. A real weapon.  

Fabian looked over at her, shock and gratitude plain across his features before he turned his attention to the disappearing end of Riz’s tail. 

The lunch lady turned her attention towards Adaine. “Oh, dear-y,” she said, crazed-eyes wide and her mouth split into an eerie smile. “It’s not polite to steal.” 

“Finally, never ever underestimate your opponent. You don’t know who will win a fight. Let your guard down and you’ll find you won’t be meeting the next morning.”  

Adaine had never fought this hard in her life. Not against Captain Seacaster, not against Fabian. Never against her mother or Kalina. And yet, they were still losing . 

In the corner of her eye, a gremlin slashed Gorgug across the chest and he crumpled to the floor. It was a lot of blood. It was too much blood. The bright lights overhead were dreadfully familiar. Two down. 

Riz was still gone, lost in the depths of the ooze. She had no idea if he was even alive or not. Three down. 

Kristen looked as frazzled as Adaine felt. Her head whipped wildly between the prone forms in the room and the lunch lady advancing on Adaine and the gremlins around them all and the ooze. Kristen didn’t move. Four down. 

Adaine squared her shoulders. Her hands were buzzing, like they were tendrils of static playing at limbs. She wasn’t sure she’d breathed once this entire fight. Her mind narrowed to a single thought stay alive stay alive stay alive . The lunch lady radiated demonic energy. 

Adaine did the one thing she’d always known how to do: hit and hit hard. 

The lunch lady stumbled back, her nose two inches to the left and bleeding heavily. She looked dazed, hands floating by her head. 

And then for a flash she was gone and there was––Aelwyn? Aelwyn’s face bleeding, Aelwyn clutching her nose, rage and pride and glee all emanating from her and they were on a roof somehow and whose house was this and what were they doing here––?

Adaine looked up wildly to the sight of the cafeteria once more. What was happening to her? She locked eyes with Fabian right as the ooze wrapped its hot putrid arms around him and stuffed her favorite person in the whole world down its throat. 

Adaine screamed. 

Adaine had screamed before. She’d screamed in anger at her sister, at herself. She’d screamed in fear, in those lonely nights in her room before she knew what Kalina was. She’d screamed in pain, in spars at Seacaster Manor that went too far and in the research study when her mother forgot that there was only so much Adaine could bear. But never like this. 

Five down. Just her. 

She gripped the ladle. Her focus narrowed in on the lunch lady right in front of her. Who’d cast this spell. Who had hurt her new friends. Who’d hurt Fabian. 

Adaine brought the ladle down. She was scared. She felt too far away from her body. The entire room smelled like putrid iron. Fig and Gorgug could be dead. 

Adaine brought it down again. The lunch lady’s blood splattered across her face. Human flesh was denser than she’d thought it would be. It did not give as easily as it did to a blade. 

And again. The lunch lady fell to her knees.

And again. A white shiny tooth sat like a pearl in the ocean on the floor. 

And again. 

And–– 

A gurgle. Clear eyes. Adaine gasped. She felt cold and hot all over. 

“Don’t trust––” The lunch lady coughed. “The––the faculty. They did this.” 

Adaine’s hands were shaking. The sound of corn splattering to the ground caused her to look up. Kristen was staring at her horrified. Adaine wanted to throw up. But more importantly, covered in cream, Fabian spilled forward, one arm braced on the ground and the other still in the ooze grasping onto Riz’s pale green wrist. 

A tinny sob escaped her. He was alive. One of the gremlins swung down on her from above. She ignored Kalina’s warnings and took it. 

The lunch lady gurgled again. “Why did you––?” She looked terrified of Adaine. “ M-monster. ” And then she stopped coughing and stopped gurgling and stopped breathing. The fear and accusation on her face became eternal and unyielding. 

Fabian yanked Riz out of the ooze, who was coughing up corn violently. 

Then, several things happened at once: 

Riz thrusted his arm out, a slip of paper covered in creamed gunk in his hand. “Kristen!” He shouted between heaves and threw the corn-logged slip of paper into the air.

A gremlin, perhaps smarter than the rest, turned to stop Riz in his tracks and Fabian, her stupid, idiotic, selfless Fabian twisted around the goblin and took a deep cut right across his back. Adaine was sure she would remember the sound of his body hitting the ground for the rest of her life. 

Kristen, finally stirred from her shock, lifted her staff into the air and took a step forward as a sharp corn claw burst from the center of her ribcage and her expression fell like the blood cascading down her torso before she was unceremoniously thrown to the ground. 

Adaine was out of spells. There were several gremlins around her. She could not break through them all. Her back was bleeding. Her stomach hurt. She looked at Kalina, impassive as always, picking at the dirt beneath her claw. 

“ Do something!” She screamed at the tabaxi. Adaine wondered, briefly, if she were so inconsequential that not even Kalina would care if she died. 

A gunshot rang through the air. All the corn around them dissolved into slop, revealing the smoking end of Riz’s gun.

A beat of silence. Two. 

“Fabian!” They both yelled in unison. Adaine scrambled forward as Riz knelt over him, grabbing a roll of bandages from his pocket and frantically pressing them against the still bleeding gash in Fabian’s back. 

Adaine wrapped her hand around his wrist. Fabian’s pulse, while thready, was still there thank the gods. She felt feverish. She couldn’t fill her chest all the way. She looked to her left. Gorgug stared lifelessly at the ceiling. Adaine swallowed the bile threatening to climb its way up her throat. 

“Hey, kid,” Kalina said behind her. Her voice was a distant hum compared to the ringing in Adaine’s ears. “I know you’re worried about your little boyfriend, but you can’t help him. Time to bring in some reinforcements.”

This, she could do. She had been following orders, obeying instructions, all her life. It was easy. Adaine nodded. She cast Message , saying something incoherent to Mr. Gibbons about needing to get the principal and the nurse and help. Riz shook like a leaf as held pressure next to her, but he was a solid presence. 

Adaine was sure they made a horrendous sight, covered in red and surrounded by their dead classmates, the floor a soup of blood and sweet cream. 

The door burst open. Mr. Gibbons and Principal Aguefort ran in. They both stopped in the middle of the room, finally taking notice of the carnage. The color drained from Mr. Gibbons face as Aguefort did a slow circle in place. His face was grim, but not devastated. Aguefort was a powerful wizard. Adaine was sure he could do something.

Aguefort took a deep breath. “Death is a part of life,” he said. Adaine’s face crumpled. Gorgug and Kristen were dead. If Fabian died too, Adaine didn’t ever think she’d leave this place. “It’s a part of life and waits for us all.”

“What are you doing?” Riz said, his voice haggard. 

Aguefort looked at them. “Actually, except for you, young lady, elves are immortal. And, actually, gods are immortal and undead creatures exist. Really it’s a fucked up system if you think about it––”

“Please, help us,” Adaine begged. Her whole body felt like it was about to cave in on itself.

Aguefort smiled at them, wild and kind. “But there are times like these when great magic can work wonders. A life for a life, eh, Mr. Gibbons?”

“I’m sorry, what––?” Mr. Gibbons asked as Aguefort whipped out a gun from his coat and in two quick movements, shot Mr. Gibbons and himself in the head. 

She and Riz froze as Fabian lurched forward with a gasp.

~~~

Adaine sat on the curb of the school parking lot bracketed by Fabian on one side and Kalina on the other. 

She was cold. Adaine had showered, scrubbed every speck of blood from her body until her skin was red and raw and in danger of reopening her wounds. She’d pulled her hair back so it sat in a damp mound on her neck, giving the late summer breeze ample opportunity to draw any last remnants of warmth from her. 

Fabian was no reprieve in this. His arms were moist and clammy, forcing Adaine to press further against him to reach a familiar wave of body heat. 

Kalina was warm, almost uncomfortably so. Kalina had not always been like this, but over time she had grown warmer and warmer until Adaine couldn’t be sure if she wasn’t sucking all the heat from Adaine and keeping it for herself. 

They were the last ones left without a guardian. Fig and Gorgug were already gone, the former a red-faced mess over her lack of involvement in the battle and the latter being fussed over incessantly by gnomish parents a third his size. Riz was talking animatedly with his mother, who kept trying to shush him as she ran her hands over his head and shoulders. 

“He compartmentalizes well,” Kalina observed. Her tail swished around Adaine’s ankles.  A prickly sense of shame crawled through her chest. Unlike you , went unsaid. 

That wasn’t fair, Adaine wanted to bite back. He didn’t––Riz didn’t kill anyone. Riz was not a murderer. 

Instead, she hummed and gripped Fabian’s wrist in her hand. She pressed her palm carefully over his pulse, a steady thrum that kept her from disappearing completely. 

Fabian placed a hand on her knee. “Are you alright?” He asked quietly. He brushed a comforting thumb over the hem of her high socks. Perhaps a bit hysterically, Adaine wondered if stuff like this ever happened at Hudol. 

Adaine snorted. “I’m okay, I think,” she said and tangled her free hand in Kalina’s fur so she was anchored to this place on all sides. “Just tired. And wet.”

Fabian laughed. “Me too.” 

A minivan pulled into the lot and Kristen hurried past them. She’d been alone while they all waited for their parents to arrive, her Bible clutched in her hand as she picked tiny chunks out of its holy pages. She’d been like that since she came back to life, a million miles away, only answering after the third time you called for her. 

Adaine reached out and tapped Kristen’s arm. She startled to a stop and turned to them wide eyed. 

Adaine’s mouth clammed up. “Are you—uhm. I’m sorry, I––” Adaine swallowed. She’d never had a friend besides Fabian and only three hours after she’d made one that friend died. “Are you feeling better?”

Kristen let out a high pitched laugh. “Yeah! Definitely. Feeling super alive , now. Thanks, Adaine,” Kristen said and looked back at the minivan in the lot. “I gotta go but I have you all on Prayer Chain now so I’ll message you guys tomorrow. Probably.” 

Adaine nodded and Kristen hurried away. The echo of her horrified expression when Adaine beat Doreen to death followed behind her. 

Adaine gripped her elbows tight to her stomach. Doreen was dead and Adaine killed her. This was a true fact. Kristen and Gorgug died and were brought back to life and in their place Principal Aguefort and Mr. Gibbons were dead instead. This too was true. Adaine killed someone and it still wasn’t enough to save Kristen and Gorgug. This was the reality. 

Adaine had always dealt in realities that were and those that weren’t. She filed them into neat groups so she could understand them better, so she could make sense of the horrors she lived with.

Adaine was a murderer; Adaine preferred rapiers to scabbards; Adaine’s parents did not love her like they did Aelwyn. Reality.

Adaine’s “temper tantrums”; promises made by her father; kindness from Aelwyn. Not reality. 

Wherever Adaine went violence followed. Cold, unwavering reality. 

A white car rolled in front of them, the bumpers rimmed in gold and windows tinted pitch black. Captain Bill Seacaster exited the passenger side, the shadow of Cathilda’s concerned face in the driver’s seat behind him.

Captain Seacaster knelt in front of them, his face bursting with pride, and gripped Fabian by the shoulders. 

“My darling, boy,” he cried and shook Fabian, hard but controlled. Fabian reddened, ducking his head into the crook of his neck. Then, noticing Adaine. “My darling, girl.” He cupped her cheeks, fingers wrapping around the soft point of her neck. It was the greatest show of trust for a pirate, Adaine had learned, to allow one so close to the most fatal parts of you. 

“Papa,” Fabian said, quieter than normal. 

“Hello, Captain,” Adaine said with a small smile. She had not seen the Seacasters in months. She missed them. 

“I hear you both dominated the battlefield,” Captain Seacaster said, tightening his grip just an inch. Were it anyone else, Adaine would have been afraid. But the Seacasters always loved intensely, she had long since learned that Bill would never truly harm her. “Fabian, my boy, did you cut down that monster single handedly?”

“Well, actually, Papa, I had help from––” Fabian started. 

“Aye, it’s no matter, I’m sure you dealt the killing blow.” Captain Seacaster grinned wide, plunging a phantom sword through the belly of an imagined beast. “And Adaine, lass, slaying that mage. I always told you violence would trump the arcane arts.” 

He laughed heartily and Adaine’s shoulders hunched. “Yes,” she said, suddenly feeling very much like she was fourteen years old. “You did.” 

Captain Seacaster sobered quickly, taking in the curled parenthesis of Adaine’s form. “Lass, there is no shame in killing for a purpose,” he said seriously, his voice low and heavy, forcing Adaine to take in each syllable on its own. “If you had let her live, would your allies be alive right now?” Adaine shook her head. “Then you did what you had to do. You fight with honor, lass, you fight like a pirate. Never be ashamed of that.”

“Yes, Captain.” 

He patted her cheeks. His hands were roughed, calloused. They were a killer’s hands. Perhaps, in time, her hands would become like his. “That’s a good girl.” 

“Now, let’s go celebrate,” the captain crowed, he slapped a hand on both of their shoulders, knocking them harshly into each other. “For surviving your first real battle. How does ice cream sound? Shall we go get some ice cream?”

Fabian’s face was pinched. “Actually, Papa, I’d rather just go home.” He had wrapped his pinkie tightly around Adaine’s. She felt the tremor that had escaped him. “Can we go home?” 

Captain Seacaster’s face fell, just a fraction. “Oh, alright, my boy, we can go home.” Fabian’s shoulders had risen to his ears. “Lass?” 

She wanted to go with them. Adaine always did. She knew what would happen. Captain Seacaster would regale them with tales of his pirate days and boast how they would soon make stories of their own and Hallariel would preen over them with effortlessly gentle hands and Cathilda would press warm glasses of milk and cookies into their palms until the blood of the day was just a distant memory. 

Behind Cathilda, a sleek black car with its headlights bright and blinding, stood like an omen, like a duty. 

“Actually,” she said and stood up, Kalina’s hand resting solidly on the small of her back. “I need to go home.” 

“That’s my girl,” Kalina echoed. 

“It was nice to see you, Captain,” she said politely. “I’ll try to come around this weekend.” 

Captain Seacaster frowned but didn’t press. “Alright, lass. You’re always welcome.”

Fabian looked more troubled. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” He asked hesitantly. 

Kalina nodded. “Yeah,” Adaine said. “Tomorrow.” 

And Adaine slipped away from them, sliding into the Abernant car like sand through a grasping palm. 

~~~

“I heard you bludgeoned your lunch lady to death with a ladle.” 

Arianwen said it matter-of-factly, as though she were recounting the weather. And perhaps, to her, it was like she was. Adaine did not pretend to understand her mother, who viewed cruelty and violence and warmth and love with the same disinterest she viewed everything else. 

They were sitting at Arianwen’s desk in her office; Adaine with her hands folded neatly in her lap, Arianwen glancing over a stack of papers. Her reading glasses rested on the tip of her nose, elongating her mother’s sharp gaze. Kalina sat on the edge of the desk, her hind paws resting on the arm of Adaine’s chair. 

“I did.”

There was no use lying in her house. Between Dominate Person , Kalina, and regular keen insight, everything tended to be revealed eventually. If something was worth hiding, it was better not to mention it at all.

Her mother hummed contemplatively. Adaine tried not to squirm in her seat. She knew that violence was not her crime here. She had spent the last three years under the careful eye and tutelage of Arianwen and Kalina, she may not understand them, but she knew them. Violence was simply another means to an end. Effectiveness was most important, not how one got there. 

Brutality, however, was a crime. 

Arianwen, Adaine knew, was a pragmatist first and foremost. It was the way of all Abernants to be precise, efficient, and clean. What Adaine did was not precise. It was slow and it was messy. She knew it, so did her mother. 

“It’s because of those brutish pirates, I know,” Arianwen bemoaned, “That you behave this way.” 

Adaine kept her lips pressed to a thin line. This happened all the time. Her mother or father or Aelwyn would complain about Fabian’s influence over her until they remembered it could keep her in line and then they left it well and good alone. She was used to waiting it out. 

“You mustn't do anything like that again,” Arianwen warned. Adaine nodded. “You are an Abernant. Spellcraft is your weapon.”   

“But,” Kalina interrupted, her claws gripping the desk sharply, talons threatening to rip the oak wood to shreds. “These instincts are useful. I find you useful.” 

Adaine stifled a sharp breath. There was no love in her home. She had spent her childhood waiting for four hour respites with a family that was not hers yet cared for Adaine more than hers ever would. Adaine knew her parents did not deal in love the best of anyone in her house, better, even, than Aelwyn. They dealt in tolerance. In usefulness. It was, perhaps, the closest to love you could get.

She pressed her palm to her sternum, trying to rub out the warm preening feeling that, against her better judgement, wanted her mother to be proud of her. Adaine would not give them the satisfaction of knowing they had more power over her. 

Instead she said, “You’re home early, Mother.” 

Arianwen looked up and quirked an amused brow at her. “My business took less time than expected. Your father was busy when the school contacted us, so I had to come fetch you.” 

Adaine wondered if her father would have paused his work for Aelwyn. She shook the thought away as quickly as it appeared, Aelwyn would never have been in a situation like that in the first place. 

“I see,” she said. “Did it go well?”

Her mother tilted her head and put her pen down. She traced Adaine’s outline with her gaze. Adaine would have given anything to know what her mother found when she looked at her. 

“Kalina is right,” she said finally. Adaine flexed her hands across her thighs. “While your methods were distasteful your instincts were not wrong. Behavior can always be fixed, dear.” 

She stood, her hands flat on the desk. The dark blue of her Hudol jacket, one given to all professors, rippled like an ocean over her shoulders. Adaine could see the pitiful echo of her face in her mother’s, like a diminished reflection. 

“Come,” her mother said. “Let’s have a chat.” 

Arianwen led Adaine down the familiar path to her research study, tucked into the basement of the Abernant manor. Unbidden, Adaine’s stomach dropped. Even though she knew there was no spellcraft coming her way tonight, her body did not. 

Instead of pointing her towards the stool that sat permanently in the spell circle in the middle of the room, Arianwen gestured to a small table tucked against the wall, where journals filled with notes about the results of their experiments lived. Adaine sat, picking at the frayed wood, while Kalina tucked in next to her, laying against the wall with her leg pulled up against her. Her mother took a seat across from them. 

“You are an observant girl,” Arianwen started. The praise felt more sinister in this room. Though, Adaine supposed, nearly everything did. “What is our companion and what do you think she is here to do?” 

Adaine stilled, laying her palms flat against the rough wood grain. Kalina was her greatest mystery. She was a constant, steady presence in Adaine’s life, yet Adaine didn’t really know the first thing about her. 

“I don’t know what Kalina is,” she started. Still, she had observed some. “But I know what she isn’t.”

Kalina was the most dangerous being Adaine had ever met. She had allies and partners in all places. If Adaine ever stepped out of line, Kalina would have no issue getting Fabian killed. 

Yet, Adaine had never been able to touch her. And even though Adaine could physically feel her, her talons had never broken skin, and nothing she did ever seemed to last past when it dipped out of eyesight. 

“Real. You aren’t real.” 

Arianwen smiled. Shame and pride trickled through Adaine’s chest in equal measure. 

“Pretty close, kid,” Kalina said. “I’m not real, at least, not in a way that matters.”

“Do you want to become real?”

Kalina waved her head and hummed. “In a sense.”

“How?”

Kalina grinned, white teeth gleaming beneath black fur. “So many questions, kiddo. Gotta let me keep some things to myself.” Adaine swallowed roughly. Kalina sat up, her paws falling into her lap. She leaned forward, greenish-yellow eyes like pools of poison staring straight into Adaine’s. “You know, when I first met you, I really didn’t think you’d amount to much. You were this tiny, snivelling little creature. I’ve never liked children, I’ll be honest, but you, you little miracle, have grown on me.

“What makes me incorporeal is centuries old, tied up with a bunch of divine rules and arcane laws even I can’t seem to change,” Kalina said and waved her hand. “But Adaine, despite being just a girl, you may have made these rules possible to break.” 

Her blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

Kalina’s tail waved lazily over Adaine’s legs. “I am incorporeal, this is true. I rely on contacts to impose my own business on this plane. But there are . . . actors who make that tiresome. You got rid of one. I believe, and your mother believes, you’re ready for some more responsibility.”

Adaine twisted her fingers together to squeeze the tremor out of them. Her mind flashed to the cold bodies of Principal Aguefort and Mr. Gibbons, their heads reduced to puddles of brain matter and bone shards. What else could she give? What else was left?

“There is an artifact in your former principal’s office that is of special interest to me. I can’t touch it, but you can.” A sharp talon picked between Kalina’s teeth. “I want it.” 

“I see.” 

And she did. Her years of torment, the cold feeling in her bones that never seemed to go away, the times when the entire world lost its color and it was just her and Kalina, the way the pressure of Kalina’s fur on her body kept getting heavier and heavier, all to become a tool. A weapon, solid and real. 

“I won’t lie to you, kiddo. It’s heavily cursed and dealing with it in any capacity will probably hurt like hell. But it’s powerful.” Kalina reached a paw up and held Adaine’s chin. It was tight, possessive. Adaine grimaced against the sharp feeling of Kalina’s talons digging into her skin. Kalina moved her face around, looking impassively at all the lines of Adaine’s features. “You could be too.” 

Adaine’s chest stuttered. Pain and power. She knew what it was like to hurt, but strangely enough, the usual fear and nausea and tightness that came with knowing that yet another thing in her life would harm her wasn’t there. Instead, there was only an empty curiosity as she turned from Kalina to her mother.

“What do we have to do with this?” 

Arianwen hummed and looked to the ceiling. The sharp lines of her pale face were stark against the dark walls. Adaine had always been told she looked more like her mother, the both of them all cool tones and sharp edges. She supposed it was because neither of them were good at hiding who they were. 

Arianwen was a heavy force, one to be reckoned with, and she made sure everyone knew it. Adaine was quick-witted, leaden tongued, and not particularly good at hiding how unkind she could be. Aelwyn and her father were different. They held a deceptive warmth, one that pulled you in until it could be exploited. 

“Everything,” Arianwen started. “And nothing, I suppose. Truly, I have no interest in Kalina’s goals, as I have always had little interest in the whims of nations and conquest. But I believe she will succeed in them, and I do have interest in securing the stability and power of our family in the future.” 

Adaine bit her lip and Arianwen continued, “The Abernants used to be much more powerful than they are now. Long before you and your sister were born, this house was a great one. I wish to see it restored. Kalina, in exchange for our cooperation, would see that happen.”

Adaine swallowed the sharpness in her throat and looked down at her hands. If she looked close enough, she was sure she could still see traces of blood caked beneath her fingertips. 

“Why me?” 

It came out softer than she anticipated. Her mother, for all her cruelty, had never engaged in any that was truly useless. Her family had always made it clear that she was the back-up, the failed second daughter. Before, she had thought, in some way, this was her punishment for failing their expectations. But Arianwen’s and Kalina’s plans sounded important, and Adaine could not figure out how the failed Abernant was necessary for them. 

Arianwen reached across the table and held Adaine’s hands in hers. Adaine’s breath hitched. Her mother’s hands were warm, soft. A harsh reminder of the tenderness a mother’s hands were supposed to wield. 

“Did you know that I married into this family?” She asked. Adaine shook her head. Her parents had never spoken about their extended family, Adaine always assumed they didn’t exist. “I came from nothing, and I managed to work my way into one of the greatest houses in Fallinel.” She rubbed the top of Adaine’s palm. “Your father does not care much for his family’s fall from grace. He is content with where he landed. He has never feared that he would lose the creature comforts he was raised with. I do. I understand what it means to be powerless. As do you.”

That she did. Always in Aelwyn’s shadow, always afraid of what someone could do to her, could do to Fabian. 

“Your sister is like your father. She was made for politics, for easy strengths and easy comforts. But you, my dear daughter, know what it's like to toil and toil and still fail. When Kalina succeeds with changing this plane forever, it will be you and I who’ll really be equipped to drag the Abernant name back into the light.”

Adaine gripped her mother’s hands in hers. Still, she was the second-born. Still, she was the sacrifice for Aelwyn’s success. But her mother was holding her hand. Calling her useful. And what else could she do? Protest had never helped. Disobedience had only ever caused pain. Maybe it made her a bad person, knowing that Kalina could only wreak havoc upon this world and staying anyway. But, gods, Adaine was tired of hurting. 

And her mother was holding her hand.

“Okay,” Adaine Abernant said, and Mother squeezed her hands back.

Chapter Text

Adaine keeps watch. Fig jumps in.

or. What is left to save.  

~~~

It went like this: 

A boy rustled through a drawer. Just one more clue, one break in the case and he could save them all. The boy startled at the sound of something outside. He snatched the first paper he touched. He crept towards the door. Slowly, slowly–– 

A girl looked out across an open ocean. Her love was fighting, her best friend was hurt. There was more she could do. Oh, there was always more to be done. You watched a pair of bright red wings unfurl around her and–– 

A girl careened down a half-pipe. She laughed, breathless with delight as the wind whipped around her. Her heart, for once, was light. She knew what was waiting for her at the bottom. She shrieked a wild noise and brought her hand to shred on her guitar. Then—

Tree branches pressed in on the hunched body of a girl. It was dark. It was too dark. Who turned out the lights? It hurt––

A boy watched flames lick up the walls. It was hot. Up? Or down? He heard a high cry. Down. A smoldering plank crashed at his heels. It hurt––

A girl looked down. There was a horn where her chest should be. Oh. Not again. It hurt—

There was––

A crash of lightning––

Green eyes––

Teeth––

Heat––

Ocean––

Oh––!

A ghost, or what you thought was a ghost––what looked like a ghost and moved like a ghost and acted like a ghost––played at being a person in a long hallway. They were flanked on both sides by a boy and a girl. Wardens or guardians, you didn’t know. 

They reached the end. You all watched a looming door.  

The door began to glow, brighter and brighter. Flashes of green arcane energy flew off the ghost. The hallway began to fill with light. Green and white and heat so hot you thought your skin might melt encircled you. You could no longer see the girl. You could no longer see the boy. The ghost began to float, up, up. The hallway was blinding, blinding—

Quiet. Cool.

A woman sat cross legged in the middle of a room. You sat across from her. 

Water was up to your ankles. 

The woman tilted her head. 

“Oh, child,” she said. 

Water rose to your hips. 

You felt the sudden urge to cry. 

“There is so much I must teach you,” the woman said. Long ears drooped down. She looked like someone you knew. You knew her. Somehow in your soul you knew her. 

Water rose to your chest. 

“There is so much you must do.”

You were tired of what you had to do; of what was duty. You were tired.

Water rose to your neck. 

“It will be hard but––” The woman laid her hand on yours. She recoiled suddenly, steam rising from her fingertips. “Gods, child, what did they do to you?”

Water filled the woman’s mouth, then your mouth, then it was over your head and the woman was gone. 

Water flooded your lungs. 

It hurt. 

You were drowning.

It hurt. 

It hurt. It hurt. 

It—

Adaine heaved forward, coughing phantom water from her lungs. Drowning again. She gripped her knees. She was okay. She took a deep breath. She was okay. Adaine closed her eyes, trying to grasp onto whatever images from her dream she could muster before they faded to hazy obscurity. 

She was not stupid.

She had stared through Gorgug’s lifeless eyes hours before it actually happened, and watched an entire battlefield melt away to show her Aelwyn. A strange dream she could write off––a side effect of whatever Kalina and Mother were casting on her at the time. A prophetic dream? 

That was worth investigating, however much Adaine wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening. 

“Well,” Kalina said, startling Adaine up to see her sat on the corner of Adaine’s bed, her sharp pupils' inquisitive slits. “That was dramatic.”

Adaine glowered at her. “Were you watching me sleep?” She asked. 

“Your mother was boring me,” Kalina said and shrugged. It was as best an explanation as she was going to get. “Figured there wasn’t any harm in checking in here. There’s always something weird going on with you.” 

Adaine grabbed a pen on her bedside table and threw it at her. Kalina didn’t even bother keeping up the charade of corporealness and let it pass harmlessly through her. 

“So what happened there?” Kalina asked.

Adaine slumped forward, curling into herself until her face was pressed into the soft fabric of her pajamas. “Don’t you already know?” She said, voice muffled. “The dreaming’s your fault anyway.”

Kalina clicked her tongue and hummed. “Nah, actually, not this time.” Adaine felt the warm press of Kalina’s torso as she draped herself over Adaine’s calves. “Now, the sleeping, that’s me. Well, actually, that’s your mother. I just watch. But dreaming? That’s all you, kid.” 

Adaine gripped her sheets. If she concentrated she could still feel the sharp, burning sensation of her entire being filling with water. So this was something even Kalina and her mother couldn’t account for. If it weren’t so horrendous Adaine would probably be patting herself on the back for pulling one over on them. 

Above her, Kalina sighed. “What was it about?” 

Adaine shrugged, pressing further into her legs. She could feel Kalina rolling her eyes at her.

“Aren’t teens supposed to, like, feel better after talking about things?” She asked. “I’m trying to be helpful here.”

Adaine took a slow, deep breath, pushing the air further and further into her lungs until she was sure it was the only material in them. She lifted her head up, crossing her arms over her knees so she could rest her chin on them. Kalina stared up at her, pale green eyes glowing bright. 

Normally, Kalina didn’t actually seem very cat-like. She moved like a ghost most of the time, incorporeal and only visible to her. But she had to admit, it was hard to differentiate Kalina’s current expression from that of a particularly enthused housecat. In Kalina’s own way, as horrendous as it often was, Adaine supposed she was trying to look out for her. 

“It didn’t make a lot of sense,” she started. “Flashes of . . . I don’t know. People? Events? A-and a woman, and a lot of water.” Adaine pushed her face against her forearm. Her arm hair tickled the inside of her nostril. “I drowned, I think,” she finished quietly. 

Kalina leaned forward until their faces were almost touching. Wet, hot air blew against the bridge Adaine’s nose. “Drowned?” She asked. 

Her eyes were bright floodlights in the darkness of the room. It was a look Adaine knew well, where she went from plaything to specimen; a lab rat to be dissected and studied. Adaine nodded slowly and pinched the side of her leg to quell her nerves. 

“Interesting,” was all Kalina said and Adaine was left with the woefully familiar feeling that Kalina knew something she didn’t. Her skin prickled. 

“I need to go,” she said and sat up, the curve of her spine groaning as she pushed Kalina off and swung her legs off her bed to stand up. She had been analyzed and stared at and examined all day. Adaine couldn’t be around it anymore. 

“Aw, you’re no fun,” Kalina said, flopping backwards onto the bed with her arms spread out on either side, though she didn’t move to keep Adaine there. It was a small gesture, but one Adaine was thankful for all the same. “Off to see the Seacaster boy then?” 

Adaine pinked and grabbed her jacket, all gratefulness evaporating in an instant. “No!” She yelped, lifting her window open with suddenly shaky hands. “No, I—I’m just going, um, out.” 

She stumbled through the open window with less grace than she was willing to admit, floating flatly to the ground with a Feather Fall. 

“Use protection!” Kalina cackled as Adaine scurried away, the night wind carrying Kalina’s voice skyward until the only eye on her was the moon. 

~~~

Thirty minutes later Adaine climbed the familiar wooden planks of Seacaster manor and silently dropped in Fabian’s room, the only noise the faint ruffling of the night breeze behind her. It was a strange kind of quiet, like the whole house was holding its breath until morning. Fabian’s backpack leaned against his desk, facing the large TV that still hummed lightly. In the bed pressed to the back wall, Fabian was a shapeless lump of linen and silver hair.

Adaine rocked on the balls of her feet. She’d never come over when Fabian was already asleep. She’d left when he was unconscious, disappearing like a spectre before dawn, but not before. Normally, he’d scooch over and pat the empty space next to him, and the two would watch videos on his crystal until Adaine could forget, for just a moment, whatever had happened that day. 

She didn’t think either of them would ever forget what happened in that cafeteria. 

Still, she tried for normalcy, and wordlessly slid in next to Fabian. She sat with her back straight against the headboard, legs splayed over top Fabian’s sheets. They were luxuriously soft––the finest thread count money could buy. Fabian’s face was relaxed and Adaine could hear the soft snuffles of his breath. 

She suddenly felt alarmingly out of place. Gods, what was she doing? Sneaking into Fabian’s room in the middle of the night like a creep? If anyone found out she’d never live it down. This was a mistake. She needed to go.

Adaine moved to push herself off as quietly as she could when Fabian whimpered under her. She looked down. The relaxed look, the one that made him look so young, that made her feel their age––he was only a few months older than her, after all––that made him look so lovely, pinched. She saw the impression of his eyes darting wildly beneath the lids. His chest twitched forward. 

Adaine froze, her hands hovering above him. He looked like he was in pain. His breath had picked up into short gasps, undercurrents of a high whine beneath each one. Adaine did the first thing that came to mind. Slowly, gently, she laid her palm across his cheek. It was hot, almost uncomfortably so, against her palm. She brushed the skin with her thumb, trying to smooth out the pained wrinkles around his eyes and nose. 

They sat there, Fabian slowly stilling against her, until his eyes screwed tight and popped open with a sharp breath. Adaine wrenched her hand back, clasping them tight in her lap as Fabian surged forward, looking around wildly. 

“What––Who are––?” He said before freezing on Adaine. He slumped, all the tension releasing in a long deep breath. “Adaine. What are you doing here?”

He scrubbed the sleep away from his eyes. One stayed on his face, resting absentmindedly where her hand had been. Adaine twisted her fingers in her grasp, the weight of the day creeping in on her. Aelwyn and the book and the battle and Fabian and her mother and the responsibility of a whole house, a whole nation.

“It’s—“ Her voice cracked. “It’s been a bad day.”

Fabian bit his lip, expression pinched. The soft moonlight from outside cast a gaunt shadow over his face. She wondered if he was still in pain. 

“It has,” he agreed. 

He leaned back against the headboard, slotting his head comfortably in the crook of Adaine’s neck. Coarse coils of hair tickled her skin. Adaine pressed against him until they were flush to each other, one continuous wall of Adaine and Fabian. His hand rested in hers and she could feel the slow thump of his pulse through their wrists. 

“Try not to die next time,” Adaine said in an attempt at levity. 

Fabian snorted. “First of all, I didn’t die. I just fainted. Totally different, Adaine.” He traced small circles into her palm. “But I’ll keep it in mind.”

She missed this, when they could needle and joke and laugh and it’d be fine. “Thank you,” she said. “I think it would have been awfully rude if I didn’t see you for months and then on your first day back you died on me.” 

“My first day back? I didn’t go anywhere. That was all you,” Fabian said. They both stiffened as Fabian stumbled on the minefield that was Adaine’s life. He swallowed audibly. “Where were you?”

Adaine clenched her teeth together. She wanted to tell him everything. The phantom feeling of Kalina’s claws in her back echoed a harrowing reminder. “I told you,” she said. “I was grounded.”

“Yeah, but that’s not––” Fabian huffed. He shifted against her, always restless in his agitation. “You’re always grounded even though you don’t do anything wrong and you never talk about it and you’ve been acting weird and you’re obviously not well and I’m just––I’m worried about you.”

She wished she could see his face beyond the blurred edge of his side profile. Adaine pressed her fingers into her thigh, the dull ache a welcome alternative to the sharp ball forming in the back of her throat. 

“It’s nothing,” she said. Then, before Fabian could protest that it wasn’t, “I just—I can’t say anything so drop it, Fabian, please.” 

Fabian squeezed her hand. “Why not? I could—or Cathilda and Papa, we could help.”

Adaine twisted her head, the jigsaw of their bodies pressing her nose into the top of Fabian’s head. He smelled nice, like cedar. The tang of iron was long gone. 

He couldn’t help. No one could. Even if they tried, Kalina would find a way to hurt them. But if she stayed quiet, if she did what they asked, maybe Mother would reward her. Maybe she could shield the Seacasters from whatever was to come. 

Fabian would never forgive her, but that was okay, she thought, she did not need forgiveness––from herself or anyone else. She just needed everyone to be safe. 

“Could you ever hate me?” She asked instead. Because that was it wasn’t it. Adaine was not heroic or noble or good. She would do whatever mother and kalina asked if it meant Fabian would be okay. 

But she wasn’t sure she’d survive if there was no her and Fabian after. 

Fabian sat up. The cold lingered uncomfortably in the space his head had been. “What? No,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

Adaine fixed her gaze on the far wall. “If I did something really bad,” she said slowly. “Could you ever hate me?”

Fabian leaned forward on his hands. “Are you,” he licked his lips. “Are you going to do something bad? Did your father or Aelwyn ask you to do something?”

Adaine shrugged. They hadn’t yet, but she wouldn’t put it past them. She turned to face him. The dim night should have muffled his edges but with her elven sight she could see every inch, every pore in his face. His eyes were wide and sharp with concern. They were a lovely shade of silver, like crisp metal and bird feathers. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. 

“Even if you did, I wouldn’t,” he said finally. Fabian was always resolute. He was steady. She wanted him to be steady in this. 

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” he said. Fabian cracked a smile. “Unless you started stabbing me and Papa right now. Then I think I might get a little mad.” 

Adaine huffed a small laugh. “I don’t think I could hurt the captain even if I tried.” Honestly, hurting them herself was the one thing Adaine would never be able to do. 

Fabian took a deep breath, his hand creeping to the crook of her elbow. “I’m a pirate, you know,” he said. “I-I’ve done bad things too and so has Papa. Maybe it would be easier for you if we did it together––“

Adaine jerked back, almost careening off the side of the bed. “No,” she yelped. She saw in her mind's eye a horrifying image of Fabian in the middle of that spell circle, gritting his teeth against the pain. “You can’t. That would—you aren’t—“ Adaine took a deep breath. “I was making a big deal out of nothing. Everything will be okay.” 

Fabian studied her with careful familiarity. She hated how used he was to treating her like a cornered animal in these moments. But Adaine would weather it if it meant keeping Fabian far, far away from where Kalina could hurt him. 

“We have an adventuring party now,” he said as a peace offering. It was how these conversations always went, when Adaine couldn’t or wouldn’t share anymore. They would not talk about Kalina or mother or Adaine again tonight. 

“They’re weird,” Adaine said. 

They went back and forth after that. Kristen seemed intense but Adaine thought she was nice. Fabian swore that Adaine would love Riz once she warmed up to him. They both agreed that they liked Fig and Gorgug, though Fabian grumbled as Adaine scolded him for getting into a fight. This prompted Adaine to ask about Fabian’s fighter classes and somehow led to Adaine rambling at length about the practicality of weapon enhancement spells. 

She paused after a while, when she noticed that Fabian had not butted in to complain about her “nerd shit”. He had sunk down at some point, his head pressed into the soft, pillowed flesh of her thigh. His arm was slung over her legs and hung haphazardly over the edge of the bed. 

It was almost like they were kids again, a tangled mess of limbs that came from days spent running through the lawns of Seacaster manor. Adaine had spent many nights in this position, a book in her hands after she finished trancing, waiting for Fabian to wake up so they could play. 

She had said too much tonight. Adaine had let her fears supersede what was truly important: Fabian’s life. She threaded her fingers through his hair. It wouldn’t happen again. 

Adaine watched over him, her hand steady against the nape of his neck, until morning when the rising sun beckoned her home. 

~~~

Fig knew how to fight. This was because she’d had a lot of practice. Between her and her mother, her and Gilear, her mom and Gilear, and sometimes all three of them at once it felt like she was always fighting something. It helped that she took to it easily, filled with this red-hot needling urge to go against whatever was laid out in front of her. But it was still something she had practiced, an art she had refined almost as well as she had her bass. By now, she considered herself a bit of a fighting expert. 

But Riz and Adaine? They knew how to fight. 

“I just don’t understand why we can’t be a little prepared first?” Adaine said, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes, exasperation dripping from every word. It was a stark difference from the trembling girl Fig had met yesterday. She hadn’t known Adaine very long, but she seemed to oscillate wildly, going from strong-willed to meek at the drop of a hat.

“Because it’d be useless,” Riz retorted, shoulders hiked to his ears. Unlike Adaine, Riz’s frantic energy seemed to be constant, his hair sticking out in strange directions from under his newsie cap and dark bags beneath his eyes. They were different from her old friends. Different from the type of friends she thought she’d make at Aguefort.  

It was not a train of thought she liked to dwell on; the pink dresses and cheer captain’s uniform, and curled hair around pretty little elven ears. She wondered what that girl would be doing right now, if she would have laid unconscious on a cafeteria floor while her friends died around her. 

“More useless than chasing down a random girl you don’t know and just expecting her to tell you something?” Adaine shot back. 

“At least we might learn something,” Riz said. “What good could the library do? Do you even know what you’re looking for?” 

Adaine huffed. “I already told you.” She crossed her arms, fingers tapping her elbow. “Maybe the faculty have shady histories or something about Kristen’s god or, I don’t know, the major historical figure that died the morning a super powerful wizard did?” 

“But Penelope is outside now,” Riz cried, taking a step forward. Adaine, almost imperceptibly, flinched back. Fig furrowed her brows. Riz’s face twisted from wild desperation to something sharper. “Girls are going missing. Do you even want to find them?”

Adaine took a sharp breath. “The last time we all ran off somewhere without thinking, Kristen and Gorgug died and the rest of us almost went with them.” She lifted chin and clasped her hands neatly behind her, her face smoothing into a plain expression. “Now, that’s all you’ve been doing. How do you know Biz isn’t working for whoever got those girls? Or Coach Daybreak? Or Penelope? Or anyone, really? So forgive me, Riz, if I want to make sure we’ll all survive until tomorrow.” 

The two glowered at each other while Fig and everyone else glanced around nervously. Gorgug picked at the elbow of his hoodie while Kristen whipped her head wildly between the two, her bible grasped tight against her chest. Fabian’s hands were shoved deep in his pockets, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. 

Adaine took a large breath and turned from the staredown. “I’m going to the library whether you want me to or not,” she said. “Anyone else?”

The rest of them glanced awkwardly between each other. Fig decided to brave it and speak up first. “Actually,” she said. “I think I could really get through to Penelope. You know, girl to girl, so–um . . .” She trailed off as Adaine’s expression tightened. 

“I’m not really the smartest,” Gorgug picked up. Then, he offered lamely, “Sorry, Adaine.” 

Adaine shook her head. “It’s fine. Fabian?” Fabian stared at the ground. Fig couldn’t help but feel like she was intruding on something private. 

Adaine and Fabian were interesting. They were practically attached at the hip, and from what Riz had told her that morning, they’d been friends for years. Fig wasn’t the smartest girl in the world, but she knew people, and there was only one reason for why Adaine looked crushed at Fabian’s hesitation. 

“I don’t think I’d be really helpful at the library,” Fabian said, his gaze still trained to the floor. In the corner of Fig’s eye, Riz straightened. “And I’m cool, I can talk to Penelope.”

Adaine visibly swallowed. Fig saw the visage of the girl from yesterday trying to peak through her graceful mask. 

“I’ll go with you, Adaine,” Kristen jumped in. Adaine smiled, relieved. “Heaven was, um, not great, so I want to do some research . . . or something.” 

“Yes,” Adaine said. She waved Kristen forward, but her gaze remained trained on Fabian. “Let’s.” Slowly, Adaine turned and led the two down the hall as Fabian and Riz stared after them. 

Riz shook himself off. “Okay, let’s, um, let’s go.” 

He sped down the hall in the direction of the student parking lot, where they hoped that Penelope would still be. Fig huffed as she almost jogged to keep up with him. For such a small guy he was fast. Fabian trailed furthest behind, which kept her from fully catching up with Riz and Gorgug. 

Fig stalled until she was shoulder to shoulder with him. His brow was tightly furrowed, his face pinched like he’d eaten something especially sour. “So,” she said, trying her best to be casual. “Do those two always fight like that?” Fabian seemed to be the lynchpin of whatever weird triad they had going on. 

Fabian jumped. “Huh?” 

Fig laughed. “Wow, lover boy, didn’t mean to scare you,” she joked. Fabian blushed. Fig smirked. “What? Like it’s not totally obvious.” 

“I––What’s––Nothing’s obvious,” Fabian spluttered, the red in his cheeks creeping steadily down his neck. Fig rolled her eyes. She clasped her hands together and blinked up at him. 

“Oh, Fabian,” she said, pitching her voice up and taking on a poor Fallinese accent. “Come look at books with me.”

Fabian tried to punch her in the upper arm but Fig dodged and hopped to Fabian’s other side. “Oh, Adaine,” she said, putting on her best impression at Fabian’s overexaggerated lilt. “I would love nothing more but I can’t!” 

Fabian leveled an unimpressed glare at her. “Seriously, nothing?” She asked. “You guys were totally about to kiss or something.” 

Fabian lurched violently, coughing hard as his eyes bulged. “We were not going to––” He took a deep breath. “Adaine and I are just friends.” Fig raised an eyebrow. “Friends,” he repeated firmly. 

Fig sighed. “Okay. Friends,” she said placatingly. She made a mental note to talk to Adaine later. “You guys would be cute, though, just saying.” 

“Shut up,” Fabian said. She decided not to push her luck by pointing out how hollow the sentiment sounded. 

“But, seriously,” she said. “What’s Adaine and Riz’s deal? Because, like, I thought I got mad easily but that was intense.” 

Fabian pursed his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “They met yesterday and it’s not really like either of them to be that hostile.” He paused. “Outwardly, at least.” 

Fig blanched. “I thought you all knew each other already.” 

Fabian shook his head. “I’ve known Adaine forever and Riz for a while too. But they’d never met before school started.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Fig said. She looked at Riz's back. He was still barreling forward as fast as he dared, ready to turn out to the parking lot. Gorgug wasn’t too far behind, walking leisurely with his long stride and hunched posture. Fig blew out a long breath. “Well, this will be fun.”

~~~

Fig, though she would never admit it out loud, had decided that her new adventuring party fucking ruled. 

The honey-sweet taste of her Friends spell still lingered on her tongue, and with it the echo of Penelope’s face as she almost figured Fig out. She did feel bad for Gorgug, though, and made a silent promise to make it up to him somehow. 

Even Adaine and Riz, she thought, were pretty sick. She couldn’t help but grin at Adaine’s smug vindication when they slinked towards the library to have her and Kristen decode Ostentacia’s note, Riz grumbling the whole way but passing it over without fanfare. 

By the time the day was done, Fig was breathless, her heart pounding a thousand miles a minute, as they all piled into the richest looking car Fig had ever seen. Seriously, there were TV screens behind each seat and a drink cooler. A drink cooler. 

Fabian didn’t bat an eye, ushering everyone in with a not-so-gentle reminder to not get the seats dirty. Adaine didn’t seem fazed either and gave the driver a polite, “Hello, Cromwell,” as she slid into the middle seat. Fig, however, made wide-eyed contact with Riz, who looked as wonderstruck as she was. Rich people, man, she thought. 

Riz, Kristen and Gorgug slid in the back, Kristen rambling excitedly to a rapt Gorgug. Riz settled against the window, a long ear pointed in their direction but obviously lost in thought. Fig ended up pressed between Adaine and the door, Fabian on Adaine’s other side. 

Even though the air still carried the leftovers of late summer, Adaine was freezing. Fig suppressed a shudder as the car began making its way towards Krom’s diner. 

“Damn, girl,” she said. “Are you made of ice or something?” 

Adaine jumped and flushed, leaning away from her. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “It’s uncomfortable, I know.”

Fig waved her hand. “Nah, it’s all good. I don’t mind,” she said. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I bet Fabian could warm you up.” Maybe it wasn’t the nicest thing. But, really, could you blame her?

Adaine pinked. “He’s––!” She coughed. “Mhm.” Fig laughed brightly, causing the whole car to turn their attention to them. Adaine sank low in her seat. 

“What’s up?” Kristen asked eagerly. Fig really liked Kristen. 

She decided to have mercy on her new friend and shook her head. “Nothing, nothing,” she said. “Adaine just told a really funny joke.” Kristen’s eyes gleamed and she looked ready to press further but the car rolled to a stop before she could jump in. 

Krom’s Diner was familiar. Fig had spent plenty of evenings tucked into a booth, nursing a cup of hot chocolate and a side of fries while she waited for her parents––sorry, her mother and Gilear––to leave and take the lit fuse that lived in their house with them. She smiled and nodded to a waitress she recognized, Yandi, she was pretty sure, as they found a booth by the window to sit in. 

Adaine and Riz sat opposite each other, both staring unsubtly out the window at Johnny Spells’s garage. Fig wondered how two people who hated each other so much could look so similar. Yandi came by to take their orders, and Fabian ordered a round of milkshakes for everyone. Adaine looked up quickly to jut in and change hers before zero-ing her attention back outside. 

Fabian looked at her, a bemused expression on his face as his mouth twisted to say something. Before he could make a sound he suddenly yelped, his knee bumping into the bottom of the table from below. 

“Ow,” He whirled on Adaine. “I wasn’t going to say anything!”

“Yes, you were,” she said without looking, a smile plain on her face. Fabian, to Fig’s surprise, didn’t look all that upset. Instead, sheepish that he had been caught. 

“Okay, maybe, but that’s only because your taste is positively disgusting.”

Adaine shrugged. “I like sweet things.” 

Riz shifted next to Fig. She looked down and raised her brows. He looked, well, he looked green with envy. Fig filed that information away for later. Their little group was getting more interesting by the minute. 

They spoke back and forth for a bit, the conversation quickly devolving as they watched Johnny and some of his biker buddies slide inside the garage into debating between spying or charging in or sending Fig to do some recon. Adaine frowned at that, head tilting oddly, like she was hearing something they couldn’t.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said slowly. “If you get caught, then it’s you against a whole gang.” 

Riz perked up. “How do you know there's a whole gang in there?” 

Adaine coughed. “Oh, I just––I guessed, you know. It’s a big garage.” 

Yandi returned with their milkshakes, and Fig realized why Fabian had wanted to make fun of Adaine. It looked like pure sugar, with bits of sprinkles blended into the drink. The top had an assortment of different candy treats and tufts of cotton candy scattered over the whipped cream. 

Adaine noticed them all looking and shrunk back. “I said I like sweet things.” 

Riz was still studying Adaine, but it was Gorgug who spoke up for her. “Me too,” he said, stealing a gummy bear off the top of her glass. He turned to her. “And, Fig, you shouldn’t go alone.”

“Go alone where?” Yandi asked, concern etched on her face. Fig had noticed she had a habit of doing that, eavesdropping. She gave Yandi the benefit of the doubt, as she was usually just concerned about Fig yelling at her mother on her crystal in the middle of an empty diner. 

“Oh, I’m thinking of checking out that cool garage over there,” Fig lied. Lying came easily to her, like a second skin Fig could slide on whenever she wanted. It was a comfort, almost, to become someone she wasn’t, even if it was only for a moment.

“Yeah, and we just thought she’d be lonely, you know,” Kristen jumped in. “If it was just her.” Everyone nodded in agreement. 

“Oh, sweetheart, you shouldn’t associate with those boys at all,” Yandi warned. “They rumble hard and that’s not safe for a girl like yourself.”

“Rumble?” Riz asked. 

“Yeah,” Yandi said and cast a withering glare towards the garage. “They do this huge rumble dance and then get into dangerous fights.” 

Fig slung her guitar off her back strummed a quick cord, dripping with magical energy. “I think I can handle them,” she said with a wolfish grin. Fig watched the cord ripple out. She could see the outline of the sound waves as they traveled. Fig loved that about her magic. 

She watched the waves bounce back off the garage as her party continued to grill Yandi for information. That was odd. Normally, they would continue out until the sound dissipated harmlessly. Instead, it sped towards her until it passed back through the diner window and barrelled into her chest. 

The force of it knocked her back against the booth. It felt hot, a burning righteous anger that Fig was deeply familiar with. Beneath that, a thrum, deep in the bass of the cord, echoed through her mind. 

Save me. 

Fig lurched forward. “Guys, we have to go.” 

Everyone turned worriedly to her as Yandi crossed her arms. “You really, really shouldn’t.” 

Unbidden, a sharp, “You can’t tell me what to do,” burst through her lips. She slapped a hand across her mouth. 

Hastily, Fabian added, “We’re just going to get a round of crullers.” He shooed her away. 

Once she was out of earshot, Fig jumped up. “Some just said ‘save me’ through my guitar. We have to go to the garage. Right now.” 

Riz shot up after her, already pushing them all out of the booth. “Was it a halfling’s voice?” He asked. 

“I don’t know,” Fig said. “We just have to go rescue her.” A flash of Doreen, bloody on the ground, zipped through her mind. Did she ask for help, somehow, before she attacked them? Did anyone hear it? Could Fig have heard it? 

Fig and Riz led the charge outside as the rest followed behind them, Fabian dropping a few loose gold onto the table. Kristen was rambling next to them about religion and doubt and frat bros before Adaine cut her off and a warm divine glow wrapped around all of them. 

Riz and Fig almost blew right through the front before Adaine snagged both of their arms. 

“Wait a minute,” she said. “We need a plan before we bust in there.” 

Riz stared incredulously. “There’s a kidnapped girl in there,” he implored. 

“I know that,” Adaine snapped. “But if we go in and don’t know what we’re dealing with then one of us could get hurt. Or they could hurt the girl.”

Riz glared at her, mouth opening and closing, before he deflated. Fig still felt like a ball of energy. Adaine was right, Fig knew she was right, but she couldn’t help the loop of Doreen’s face in her mind, flashing between her and some mystery young girl. 

“Let’s sneak around,” Riz suggested. He gestured to Fabian, Gorgug, and Kristen. “You guys wait here until we signal.” They all nodded and looped just around the corner of the front garage, hidden from view by a gaudy car.

The three of them slunk around, backs pressed to the wall until Riz found a spot by an open window that gave them a clear view into the garage. 

The front was empty, a door to the back cracked open with the clear sounds of dance practice echoing through. In the middle of the room, a workbench sat with various mechanic’s tools. Adaine nudged her and Riz and pointed just to the left of the tools, where a pair of keys, a crate of tea bags, and a pale crystal were all nestled together. 

Another frantic, save me!, burst through Fig’s mind as suddenly a teenage girl, swirling with translucent arcane energy, banged helplessly on the inside of the crystal. Fig lurched forward, but Adaine held her firm to the spot. Her expression was pale as she stared right at the crystal.

“Did you see it?” Fig asked. “Did you hear her?”

Adaine nodded wordlessly. Red hot anger coursed through her. 

“Then why aren’t we––?” 

“Hold on,” Adaine snapped and raised her hands. Separating from her, like a ghostly apparition, a hand identical to Adaine’s own floated forward, crackling with purple streaks of arcane energy. 

The music from the other room shut off. The hand hovered above the items and moved in unison with Adaine as she brought her real one down and grabbed all three of the items on the bench. Slowly, too slowly, they began to float back towards the three of them. 

Fig heard the rustling of bags in the other room. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she begged. 

Then, just as the front door began to open, the items slipped through the open window into Adaine’s waiting palm and all three of them dropped below line of sight, hearts pounding. Adaine turned to them all, wide-eyed and clutching the crystal to her chest.

Riz pointed silently to the front of the garage and motioned for them to follow him. Fig shuffled as quietly as she could across the hard concrete that surrounded the garage. She was hyperaware of every sound that came from inside, anything that would hint that they had noticed the crystal was gone. Every sound from her or Adaine felt deafening, like at any moment the bikers would burst through one of the windows and grab the girl back from them. 

They reached the front of the garage. The rest of their party was crouched behind the car, looking nervously at the gang that was slowly fanning out through the space. 

“Hold on,” Johnny Spells said and Fig’s heart sank. “Someone’s touched my stuff. Boys, the crystal’s gone.” 

Everyone froze. The party didn’t dare breathe. Then, a horrendous stroke of luck, one of the gang members, a frail guy, not much older than Fig probably, rounded the car and came face to face with her, Riz, and Adaine. 

For a second, there was silence. Then he zeroed in on the crystal in Adaine’s grasp and screamed, “Johnny, they’re here!” 

The group burst forward. Fabian tackled the gang member to the ground as everyone else began running forward. Fig looked inside, some gang members had already begun sprinting towards their own bikes. 

They’d never get away on foot. 

Fig locked onto the car. She looked between it and the keys in Adaine’s hands. What if . . . ?

The girl was still banging on the crystal. The echoes of her words pounded through Fig like a distant drum. Save me, save me, save me. Just this once, Fig would do what she was told. 

“Adaine!” She yelled as she broke towards the car. Blessedly, Adaine understood, and Fig snatched the car keys out of the air as she dove into the front seat. 

With shaking hands, she shoved the keys into the ignition. She sent a quick prayer to whatever demonic entity her father might be as she turned the key and the car blared to life. 

“Yes,” she shrieked. She waved the rest of her party forward. “Get in, get in!”

Everyone’s faces flipped as they scrambled towards the car and barely, just barely, the girl’s voice eased. Fig peeled forward, the roar of the transmission echoing beneath her screams of delight. The bikers were ready, following close behind, but in that moment, she was as free as an untamed sun.