3. I look in people’s windows, transfixed by rose golden glows.
Isolation | candlelight | found family
@serpenthyne requested Vela, who is a very tough gal but also? A pack animal. I haven't written her in so long that I had to reread the original datefriends challenge with @witchoil.
*
There was an in-between stretch of the woods where it felt quiet despite the wildlife. Not the fey places Willow took her, where the wind whistled mocking music and laughter, and there were always eyes somewhere. But too far from concrete and city lights to hear or smell any trace of people. A big, empty space, tangled with roots and shadows to make it seem infinite. Vela kicked her way through it, teeth bared. She scraped against the bark of trunks in the dark and ripped through briars.
The forest parted for her when she was with Will. Or maybe Will just knew how to wind through it. It was the city Vela could navigate with her eyes closed, cutting through alleys and dodging traffic. She wanted to find her way by the hues of streetlights, the smells of the most raucous restaurants, and the murmur of distant conversation. She wanted to pass through the woods like a thief in the night with Will’s hand loosely in hers. Instead, this place bit at her. Her hands were dry and raw from feeling out the way forward, visible only by a sprinkling of moonlight.
She could have stopped for the night, but she was too angry and didn’t want to lose her direction. She might not know where she was exactly, but a straight line would get her out of the woods again, no matter how long it took. Vela marched doggedly onward. She growled wordlessly, but no more than that. She didn’t speak. She didn’t want to hear her own voice get swallowed up with no echo, knowing it would never reach anyone.
Someone to call. Someone to ask for directions. Someone minding their own business in the middle of nowhere. Anybody, so she’d have a point of reference—
Vela zeroed in on a golden flicker in the distance. It was stark as neon against the dimly moonlit shadows. Her shoulders squared toward the sign of anything else being out here, and she pushed toward it.
She crashed into a clearing. Willow was already standing, the light of a few candles reaching up to glow in his eyes. Vela’s body almost didn’t stop, so accustomed to resistance. “You couldn’t bring a flashlight?” she croaked at last.
His lips parted in a smile. “I was asking for some help finding you,” he explained. “I guess it worked.”
She stepped closer, around the candles. He touched her hair. She grabbed his arm. It was their usual way, to fall closer and end up in an embrace. He smelled of herbs, and his hair brushed her upper arms. Above her head, Will said, “Let’s go home, Ve.”
Many thanks, friend! I love my gender equality ttrpg character.
35. filthy
When Celeste caught her grumbling, the older tiefling said delicately, "I believe that's what you get for traipsing around the world barefoot."
"Yeah, yeah." Char sat with one ankle propped on the opposite knee. The pick in her hand was meant for horses. She hadn't used one in ages. She worked it behind her hoof and scraped out, somehow, yet more caked mud. "I didn't miss this part."
"Would you like your boots back, dear?" Celeste asked. Her tone communicated that she knew the answer and wouldn't have asked otherwise.
Char gave her a wry look. "Nah, you need them more." She shook dirt off the pick, sighed, and got back to it. "Anyway," she allowed, "it's worth the trouble."
47. crave
Alyona could take the vitriol. She deserved it, for one thing. And Julian's stubborn, rash temper had the strange effect of making her more staunchly determined to go through with this.
But his grief was so much harder. He had nightmares, sometimes, and woke up crying out. He was just a little kid. Alyona would come in to turn a lamp on and tell him he was safe. Once (later, when they almost had a routine), she put an arm around his heaving little shoulders.
Julian batted her arm away with all his might and shoved at her. "I don't want you!" he shouted. "I want Faryn." He began to cry, pressing his fists and tangled bedcovers into his face. "I want Faryn back."
Alyona sat on the edge of the bed without reaching out again. She wasn't Faryn; not even close. She left him to his tears, but she left the lamp on.
8. Oh horror, oh horror, what did you see?
Self-inflicted injury | held at gunpoint | dissociation
Something for Eravin "maybe if I carved my heart out my friends would actually be convinced that I love them" Glenmere. Very well-adjusted bloke with NO complexes.
*
“It’s really very simple,” said Obeciel. His voice was light and friendly. His grip wasn’t. One hand was pulling Eravin over backwards by the hair; the other held the knife. “That tablet you’re holding—break it. Snap it in half, smash it on the floor, stab it to pieces, whatever you like. Then turn around and walk through the doors. It couldn’t be easier.”
The black glass tablet was only the size of one of Riven’s hands. Her grip on it turned white-knuckled for an instant, then twitched loose again. Afraid to so much as put a crack in it. The double doors behind her scarcely muffled the crowd’s raucous cheers outside. It sounded like a roar, drowning out the faint sound of Delethil’s voice. Eravin could see Riv’s thoughts whirling. “Is that what ya threatened Da with?” she demanded. Her voice was fiery, raspy with heat. Her grip flexed anxiously over the tablet for an instant. “That ya could break my glamour any time ya wanted?”
“We never had to say it outright,” Obeciel replied conversationally. “I doubt he knew there was a concrete failsafe, but he probably guessed.”
Eravin swallowed. It stung. Normally, he would have tried to tussle his attacker, no matter the knife to his throat. He was surely stronger than a born and bred politician. But Obeciel was no fool relying on brute strength or empty threats. Eravin was already bleeding freely down his shirt. The tip of the knife was wedged into an open gash, ready to sink into something vital at the smallest nudge.
“Your leverage is gonna bleed out,” Riven said. She was borrowing a bit of Del’s lightest, most dangerous tone. “At least do somethin’ for the bleedin’. Then we’ll have somethin’ ta talk about.”
“As soon as you do what I’ve asked, I’ll be happy to see him healed.”
But she couldn’t. Eravin’s thoughts were racing as fast as Riv’s. Out there was a whole street packed with already riled-up Aerenthians, all looking up at Delethil. To see a drow appear behind their leader would turn them into a frenzied mob. She could try to play it so that Delethil didn’t look complicit, but it didn’t matter. If the rest of the world went after Riv, Del would die trying to defend her.
Riven’s eyes darted between them. “How do I know ya won’t kill him anyway?”
“No,” he rasped. “Riv—”
The knife didn’t drive deeper, but it twisted. Eravin stiffened with pain. “No opinions from the sidelines,” Obeciel cautioned. To Riv, he said easily, “Because once you’re done, I won’t have to kill him. Why would I bother?”
Riven’s terror and anger knotted together into frustration. Her eyes shone with it. She loved this place—her family, this country. Del. Even if they survived her revealing herself, they could lose everything that mattered. Despite craning his neck, Eravin could see the shift in her expression, the slow lowering of the tablet in her hands. She met his frantic stare. Her lips formed his name. Erry.
Eravin’s hand shot up and gripped Obeciel’s wrist. He pushed outward with all his might. Obeciel had the better angle, more leverage, and the advantage of all his blood, but he still had to put serious weight into keeping the knife close to Eravin’s throat.
Eravin couldn’t let Riv do this. But he’d never had the guts to put a blade in himself. So he let Obeciel’s struggle make the distance he couldn’t: when Eravin let go, the knife sank in.
Obeciel cursed in his ear. Eravin dropped to the floor with a crash that he heard more than felt. The only thing he could feel was a pain so stark it bypassed panic to fill him with blind dread. He sucked in a thin, bubbling breath. He could hear, though it took everything he had to make any sense of it. Screaming. A struggle. Doors opening or closing? He was drowning.
Eravin was rolled onto his back. He gasped shallowly and tried to focus on the sight above him. Del’s face, mostly upside down. He was pressing something over Eravin’s throat. “Look at me,” Del snapped. “Ya do nae get ta die on the clock, ya bastard. Keep breathin’.”
I’m tryin’, Eravin thought, but he couldn’t get it out. There beside him, holding his hand close to her chest—Riv, unhurt, still looking all surface elf. He smiled in relief. He wished he could feel her holding onto him. He opened his hand so that the backs of his fingers just touched her jawline, but he couldn’t feel that, either. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she was whispering. “Erry, I’m so sorry. I don’t—I don’t have any potions. Del?”
“Not here in the tower,” Del answered. Eravin caught Delethil’s wrist with his free hand. He found Del’s eyes blazing down at him. Eravin’s lips moved. He didn’t know what he was trying to say—maybe it’s alright or I had tae do it. Maybe just Del. Delethil’s mouth tightened. “Hold on, mate.”
He held onto them: one hand in Riv’s, the other on Del. Even though he was going numb. Even when the sight of them faded. The last thing he heard was their voices, calling for him.
Please don't cry.
Lamb to the slaughter | ceremony | beg for forgiveness
Starting off this fine Whumptober early with some characters from an original work nobody else knows! Enjoy!
*
The stone was cold, its chill palpable even from the cot. There was a barred window in the door, through which the hallway’s torchlight emphasized jumping shadows more than it illuminated anything in the cell. The air was still, breathless. It was the catacombs again.
Mirae did not sleep. She was too sickly frightened. Gone were the tender ministrations of the priest; her foot had been set and bound, just enough that she shouldn’t go lame from a badly healed break. It was doubtful she would live long enough to find out how well it healed. When she closed her eyes, the pain in her foot seemed to rise and fill every sense. Sometimes she managed to drift into an uncertain half-consciousness. Nightmares of the catacombs chased her into the twilight, waking her again with heavy footsteps and phantom death rattles.
The arrival of the temple guards was no relief; it only put her heart in her throat again. She had to hold her wrists out to be manacled. They would not touch her, except when it became clear she could hardly walk. Then one guard each took her by the upper arm and dragged her along. Mirae looked like a madwoman taken from the streets: one foot bare but for its splint, dress filthy. Her hair was stringy and white from her roughshod bath. Upon discovering that dye was running from her hair, the guards had continued dumping cold buckets over her until it had all washed out. She would have given anything for her spectacles. They would have made her feel more human and less defenseless. But the guards’ mouths had a grim set, and their grip tightened painfully whenever she made a small sound of distress. She knew better than to ask.
The main chamber blinded her. Mirae blinked into the blazing white, tears spilling over. Echoes folded in on one another until she couldn’t make out the original sounds. At last, she wiped her eyes on her shoulders and looked up. She stood in a high, long audience chamber. The vaulted ceiling was shot through with glass windows to give it the feel of an open courtyard. Above her to either side, shadowed figures looked down from railed walkways. Before her stood three priests—her eyes caught on Lihar—and a minister wearing the king’s colors. Great silver stars hung behind them, shining in the sunlight.
The minister folded his hands in his sleeves. “Mirae Sabek,” he began. She felt a chill despite the sun. Where had he learned the name she used? So few people knew her. She resisted searching the audience on either side of her. The minister stared at her remorselessly. He was not tall, but nonetheless he was daunting in his immovable air. “Two days prior, in Lodestar Night, a captured revenant was released. The temple guards present were murdered. And a second revenant was summoned through the forbidden working of necromancy.” His gaze did not waver. “You stand accused as the sole perpetrator of these crimes.”
Mirae’s mouth was dry. She stared dumbly. Out of necessity, she had lived an evasive life, riddled with omissions. But she had never prepared a lie to this scale. Perhaps one did not exist that would save her now.
“This is your one opportunity to defend yourself,” the minister said. He looked her over in disdain. “Though you may decline.”
“I…” Mirae rasped. “I’m not… I’m ordinary. I work here. I live in the wall district….”
“Explain the events of Lodestar Night. Why were you found fleeing the temple district?”
Her face crumpled. She found herself looking to Lihar. He watched, frozen in something like resignation. “I was frightened,” she managed. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Didn’t mean to what?” the minister pressed.
Her mouth moved for a long time. Then she said: “Summon a-anything.”
The whispers on both sides grew to sharp murmurs. “A bold lie,” intoned the priestess nearest to the minister. “No spirit returns to this world naturally or willingly. Necromancy requires ill intent and great resistance to overcome the order of life and death.”
This revenant had been all too willing. His gratitude could have buried her. It had buried the two temple guards, cut down by his ready devotion. Stronger, she insisted, “I never meant for that to happen.” Lihar’s brows drew together fractionally, putting a grim and weary weight on his expression.
“Why do you look to the priest?” the minister asked.
Mirae’s eyes darted back to the king’s man. “He was kind to me.”
“Brother Lihar?” the minister prompted.
The elf stirred. Slowly, he said, “I found her that night. I believed at first that she had been attacked.”
Mirae willed him to show that same sympathy now. She was still frightened, injured, in danger. He had been so gentle that she had almost, for the first time in her adult life, felt safe. His gaze rested steadily on her and revealed nothing.
“Did you know this woman before that meeting?”
“No,” Lihar answered, and then, “we crossed paths for the first time earlier that day.”
“When?”
Sounding out each damning syllable, he said, “As we returned to the temple with the captured revenant.”
Dread certainty closed over each expression. Mirae could feel it pouring over from the walkways. “No,” she protested.
“Mirae Sabek,” the minister began again, a note of cool recitation in his voice.
“No, I’m sorry—”
“You have confessed to summoning a revenant responsible for killing two soldiers of the temple.”
“I’m so sorry, I never meant—”
“Regardless of any premeditation or involvement with the first revenant, the use of necromancy alone is sufficient.” The minister turned away from her pleas and bowed shortly to the priests. “In the king’s name, I authorize and bear witness to the church’s sentencing.”
The priestess bowed in return. “Guards,” she commanded, “take this necromancer to be executed.”
Mirae began to cry, and she had not cried in earnest in so many years. “I never wanted this,” she pleaded. She stumbled and fell into the guards’ iron grip. They hauled her backwards off her feet. “I never meant to do this. Help me, please.” No one moved. They looked away, except for Lihar. She shouted, “Help me!”
The chamber doors opened. She sensed the wrongness in the air just before the guard to her right fell. Hot blood washed over her arm and face. The sense of a sudden death so near was incapacitating. A second death shot through Mirae, and she collapsed.
A steel gauntlet caught her. Cold and sonorous, inhuman and familiar, the revenant’s voice said: “I am here, my lady.”
6. No grave can hold my body down.
Caught in a net | medical restraints | pinned to the wall
@zacksfairest asked for Char, and you know what? I think she got off veeeery lucky with the purgatory crime lord.
*
Char’s hands were long since numb. All she felt from the elbows up was the occasional jolt of phantom pain, her body’s attempt to tell her something was wrong. She already knew that much. Her throat was achingly dry. Her gut—it was impossible to tell what was hunger and what was cracked ribs. It all mingled together into one big agonizing throb. It would have been easier if she could have fallen unconscious. Hell, if she died, she would at least get a break before Topar brought her back.
She had no doubt that no matter how she briefly escaped, she would wake up back in Topar’s dungeon. His freezer or whatever. Char had told her colleagues to forget about her if anyone recognized her. None of them were about to turn down a guilt-free excuse to stay out of danger.
A door opened at the top of the stairs. Topar’s voice asked a question so low it was a rumble.
“The usual,” Barnes replied. His voice was higher, clipped. “Still being stoic for now.”
Char didn’t think she had been stoic at all. She’d done a lot of growling and cursing. She’d bitten one man, not that it had done much good.
“I can speed things up,” Barnes offered.
“There’s no rush.” Topar’s voice became clear just as he arrived at the bottom of the stairs. His gaze found Char immediately and remained here as he strolled over, just as unhurried as he claimed. Char stared back blankly, putting all her will into avoiding a glare—especially when she saw they each had a glass of wine.
They stopped several paces from the wall where she was chained up. Both dwarf and human examined her silently like she was a curiosity, a stopover after dinner. Finally, Topar asked, “Thirsty, Alyona?”
Char unstuck her mouth. “Yeah,” she croaked resentfully.
Topar considered her. “I see what you mean,” he told Barnes. He handed the man his wine and stepped closer. “Have a little water brought tomorrow. Half a glass.”
“Yes, sir.”
Topar was nimble for being stout as he was. Char didn’t even see his weight shift before he was putting his fist into her stomach, digging knuckles into fracturing bone. She wheezed out one of the few strings of infernal she knew by heart. He hit her again, harder, and she lost her breath. Topar made a thoughtful noise and didn’t look impressed. He took his wine glass back. “Have it your way, Barnes.”
Barnes didn’t smile. Instead, his eyes gleamed mirthlessly. He left to continue further into the underground, out of sight.
Topar stood and sipped his wine. After a few moments, he said, “Do you know why you’re here, Alyona?”
Char tried to inhale around a shooting pain up and down her side. “Because I inconvenienced you,” she answered.
He shook his head once. “I’m not petty the way Fade was. This is business.” Barnes’ quick, even footsteps returned. “You have a questionable history. I simply need to make sure that my organization makes a certain impression.”
Barnes reappeared with bright eyes and a metal club. Char gritted her teeth. “What If I told you I got the message?”
Topar subtly made way for Barnes without taking his eyes off Char. He swirled his glass. “I don’t believe you,” he replied, “yet.”
Unlike all the other goons and even Topar, when Barnes swung, he went straight for the side of her ankle. It snapped, black and red dazzling her vision. Char howled. He moved on to her knee, no matter that she tried to jerk out of the way. It didn’t break on the first try. She couldn’t lash out or shift her weight. She certainly couldn’t avoid the club. She shrieked when she felt her knee splinter at last.
“That’s better,” Topar noted. He turned to leave. “Barnes. Leave her alive.”
Barnes’ hair was out of place, and there was sweat at his hairline, but his expression remained precisely neutral. “Yes, sir.”
10. There’s nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do.
Without consent | secrets | lips sewn shut
Halion gets his wish: the new wood elf regime lets his uncle out of the dungeon <3
*
“This is it,” Halion announced in a thin voice. It sounded like, This is the end.
Or perhaps it was, This is all that’s left. Halion loved his little house. In the weeks to himself, he had filled it with herbs and greenery and also Bandit. It had become entirely his. Now, from the doorway, Vasion’s shadow darkened the sitting room, turning it from a haven into something small and cramped and unforgivably messy. “What of our family’s estate?” Vasion asked. His resounding baritone had turned gravely in the same way his right hand had become gnarled over months of torture.
Halion straightened a clay pot currently growing fennel, rounding his shoulders. “They took it,” he mumbled.
There was a long, awful silence behind him. At last, Vasion bit out with precision, “What else did you let them take?”
Halion bowed his head slightly. He didn’t know whether his voice was audible. He rather hoped it wasn’t. “Uncle, please. You’ve only just been freed….”
“To be placed under house arrest,” Vasion seethed, “with the knowledge that my own home has been ransacked and made a wood elf den. Halion, look at me when I speak to you.”
Halion turned around with dragging reluctance. Even fresh from Lunhaven’s deepest dungeons, Vasion had an untouchable regality. His surroundings were shoddy by comparison. They matched Halion neatly: small, embarrassing, and not quite right for anybody.
As if he were stupid, too, Vasion said slowly, “Tell me that you understand how unacceptable this is.”
“I do,” Halion rushed to say, “really. B-but couldn’t you stay here just for a little while? Just long enough to regain your strength? I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”
Vasion surveyed the room. His distaste faded quietly to weariness. In a few modest steps, he had come as far as he could into the sitting room without dodging furniture or plant life. “We are certainly being watched,” he said sourly. Halion let out a breath at this sign of tacit acceptance, which was easily revoked but would probably last as long as Vasion’s tone of voice stayed even. “Will we be disturbed here?”
“I don’t think so,” Halion answered slowly. “Riven shouldn’t—er, come here.” He successfully avoided saying anymore or now that you’re here.
Vasion seemed to hear it anyway. Coolly, he asked, “Has she been here? How often?”
“Just—sometimes.” Halion fidgeted.
Vasion’s eyes gleamed, pensive. “Perhaps she’ll return,” he mused. “This… could work to our advantage.”
“No,” Halion blurted out, surprising them both. He leaned backward. “I mean, she’s already released you from the dungeon.” He didn’t add that she really, really hadn’t wanted to do that, and they probably owed her more than they could repay. “I really think she’s done all she can.”
“All she is willing to do,” Vasion corrected darkly. “But there are several spells with the capacity to change that.”
Halion knew very well what his uncle thought wood elf usurpers deserved, and he paled. “They’ll notice a spell, won’t they? You’ll get caught. They’ll put you back in the dungeon. Or worse—”
“Halion!” Vasion barked. His lip was curled in disappointment bordering on disgust. “For once in your life, have an ounce of courage!”
Halion shrank back, as uncourageous as he had ever been, and fell silent. After a moment, Vasion’s voice was calmer, but edged with steel. “Charming does little on elves. It would be difficult to compel her. But there is an illusion which would put her at my mercy. When she visits next…”
“No,” Halion said tremulously. “You can’t. I won’t—”
He didn’t get the chance to figure out whether he could force himself to say I won’t let you. Vasion struck him. He kept his feet despite the shock. The pain was clarifying: it reminded him to stand very still and quiet so that it might not happen again. Vasion gripped his shoulder painfully; unexpectedly, after another moment, the hand fell from him.
“The goddess have mercy on me,” Vasion said tightly. “Even now, I cannot treat you as a traitor.” He stepped away. When Halion risked looking up, his uncle’s back was to him. The proud line of his shoulders had bent in a weary curve. “But neither can I let you ruin what small chance remains to us.”
Vasion turned with one hand already raised in a delicate, precise gesture. He intoned syllables, not elvish, but in something older. Halion began scrambling. “Oh, no. No, no—” Vasion’s stare never left him. Halion stumbled over something and heard the shattering of clay. He gained his feet and rushed toward the kitchen, trying to outrun the spell’s final syllable.
A thick cloud descended over his mind. He slowed even while his heart hammered. His thoughts faded. He understood that he was home, and that he was afraid. Everything else was dull and too slippery to grasp.
An elf approached him—family—he couldn’t remember his name. The elf was making sounds. Halion stared wildly at him, uncomprehending, flinching back when the elf took him by the upper arms. The elf was saying—something. His expression was pained, insistent. Halion could make nothing of it. Something terrible was going to happen, but he didn’t know what, or to whom. He could make nothing of anything except animal dread.
22. All the battles I want to win, nothing matters but giving in.
Self-sacrifice | collar | hunted for sport
@zacksfairest asked for Zaresh, and so obviously I hurt my own feelings.
*
Cicecta was built of absences. Nooks, tunnels, waterways, shelters: every space they had was carved out of solid, unforgiving rock. It meant that Zaresh could move unseen, with stone standing always between him and those who sought him. But too, it meant he could not trust that his way would remain open through twists and turns. Anything could lead to a sudden drop, close into a viciously narrow gap—or vanish altogether into a dead end.
Such a dead end loomed in front of him now. Zaresh gnashed his teeth at it. There were footsteps in the air behind him, distant and echoing so many times as to be directionless. Useless. He closed a hand around the circlet, hard enough to bend the bright metal. The dangling jewels tinkled lightly. He should mangle it. Crush it beyond repair and drop it into the deepest parts of the earth.
Far more than that, he wanted to strangle Avenzi with it.
It was all he had to fight her and her most frenzied soldiers. They were armed to the teeth, and he had nothing but the heirloom he had escaped with. An heirloom Avenzi herself never wore and didn’t care for, except that he shouldn’t have it. That was the reason he wouldn’t simply rid himself of it now: decades of sharpened spite.
Try to take it, then, you little mutt. I’ll even give you a head start.
Footsteps again. How many of her soldiers would have guessed he would take this tunnel? Zaresh would have liked to take just one of them by surprise, but more than that he would never survive. There was no choice but to find another treacherous way and hope to avoid them. Zaresh spun around and surged away from the dead in.
He collided bodily with a pursuer.
He stumbled back in an instant of panic. In the next step, he realized that the figure was too tall and broad to be one of Avenzi’s attack dogs.
No, this was her lapdog. His father.
Krelyss held out his hand. “Zaresh,” he said, “give me the circlet. Quickly.”
Zaresh’s lip curled in fury. “You should have had the nerve to steal it yourself, then.”
“She may give up the chase if—”
“If you roll over and give her what she wants,” Zaresh concluded. “Of course. Why not hand me over, too, Father?” He held the circlet close. “No. I want her to rage and howl and do without.”
For some moments, Krelyss stared at him in his hollow way. Then, with sudden alertness, he glanced over his shoulder. He turned back to Zaresh. “Then trade with me.”
He pulled off his outer servant’s robe. Zaresh hesitated between disdain and distrust; then he stripped of the simple short jacket and shirt that were some of his only possessions. He was no official member of Avenzi’s household and so did not have to wear her colors, but neither was he allowed better than commoner’s clothes.
When he had changed, Krelyss pulled the pin from his topknot. “Put your hair up,” he insisted quietly. He moved to help, but Zaresh jerked away and tied half his hair up himself. He had been running for almost two days; it took very little additional filth to cover his tattoos.
Then it was done. A louder pursuit echoed in the distance, armor and mocking voices. Krelyss pressed a hand to Zaresh’s face; Zaresh was so taken aback that he let him. All his father said, in a rough voice, was “Go.” His palm lingered there, long enough for Zaresh to wonder, equal parts resentful and uncertain. Did he think this made up for everything? Was this still some kind of trap? Or… or…?
Krelyss slipped away in one direction. Zaresh went another. Not until he heard the sound of shouting and blades far, far behind him did he believe it.
