Completed A Residue of Sympathy

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso stopped, his hand coming to a halt on his opposite arm.

For a second he looked at Everleigh with deadly intent, fully intending to kill her right here, right now. Yet before rashness could achieve its end, reason intervened. Somehow, she knew of what happened in the Blackwood, and there were only three people she could have learned it from: Kimble, Jenna, or Zael. It seemed ludicrous upon reflection however that she might be in league with the first two, this for a whole host of reasons, but primarily because it appeared in the aftermath of everything that Kimble and Jenna were neither with the Republic nor with the Rogues, that they cared only for their own ends. And Everleigh wasn't a part of those ends, given that, according to the patchy stories about the Graduation Caeso had heard, Kimble had very much tried to kill her too.

So that left Zael. Why he would have possibly told Everleigh of all people, the one person no one should ever reveal anything remotely approaching a secret to, Caeso couldn't know. But here it was. She knew.

Despite the killing intent departing from his gaze, the hard line of his lips, still Caeso maintained a high degree of defensive posture. His muscles were tensed, and slowly, even while squatting, he was assuming the best stance he could to offer a competent counterattack. He was sharply aware of the location of his swords. The cold was now the furthest thing in his mind.

Rational was not high up on the list of descriptors he would ascribe to Everleigh. There was no telling what she would do, no telling what her true purpose was here. But one thing was clear: she brought this up here, now, not in her office in the Proctors' Building after he had been summoned, but while they were far from the Academy, alone save one another, during a mission, and with little care as the object of said mission steadily flowed away from them. It had all the hallmarks of a setup...just like with Proctor Malaneaux and Quinctus.

Level like a sheet of volcanic rock, Caeso responded, "He didn't tell you why we were out there. Did he."

She knew who he meant by he.

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

There was something appealing about the look Caeso had given her. It wasn’t because she saw it as a challenge to overcome— Caeso was formidable and would always be formidable. He was, in her opinion, a boring and by-the-book fighter. He lacked creativity, as she witnessed in Death Lotto, which was a shame. Even with his magic that Vel Anir touted as better than hers, she was certain she’d bring him down.

In fact, she was certain she could bring him down without killing him.

So that gleam in his eyes didn’t bother her. She was certain she would be mirroring it back if she dropped her mask again. Instead, Everleigh focused on keeping her face neutral. Her eyes wouldn’t tell Caeso how much she hated him, her mouth would still be upturned as if this wasn’t a serious, pivotal moment between the two of them.

“I’ve known for months now that you went out there for a duel.” Everleigh said. She had been silent for so many reasons after she spoke to Zael. She had been angry, but she wasn’t a fool. Zael had confirmed Caeso wasn’t with Kimble, in fact, when he spoke of Caeso and their duel, he hadn’t sound angry whatsoever. It was odd, she knew it, for her to harbor so much hatred for Caeso when Zael probably didn’t.

“I’ve thought about why for a long time, you know. Thought maybe you said nothing because you didn’t remember. But I couldn’t check.” Asking Marianne would be like admitting her loyalties lied elsewhere. And if Everleigh could do anything for Zael, she could at least protect him as best as she could— even if it wouldn’t really make a difference for him in the end. “I know you have no ties to the rogues. I don’t think you’re a traitor. But I think you’re a coward. Because that’s the only way for me to understand why you let him get taken when he would’ve kept fighting for you.”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso's entire retort, that they were only out there because Zael had come to him, was swept out from beneath his feet suddenly and completely, for Everleigh had unwittingly struck right at the heart of the reason Caeso had kept silent.

"Let him get taken...?"

Shame. Pure and simple. For all his strength, all of his progress at the Academy, all of the glowing projections on his stature after graduation, none of it had meant anything in that moment when Kimble caught him unguarded, exhausted, and effortlessly froze him solid. Did he like Zael? No. Not initially, no, but he had come to respect him after their fight, and maybe even in the aftermath there was then something approximating the word like in that regard. And maybe, as well, if Zael hadn't gone Rogue, that tepid like could have developed into an actual friendship somewhere along the road of the future. Despite whatever remaining criticisms and detractions Caeso had for him, he didn't wish for him to be dragged off to Kress-knows-where by that disgraced Proctor and his pet traitor-nurse.

Yet there was nothing he could do. Caeso knew nothing of Kristen Pirian's kidnapping, yet if by some strange chance she were to confide in him that, and Caeso to confide in her this, they would see revealed that the exact same despair had befallen the both of them. They had despaired of hope, each victims of malicious designs, watching helplessly as seemingly the whole world proceeded to transgress upon their wishes, and beneath reality's cruel heel were they then equally crushed. Utter powerlessness had descended upon them both like a crow upon a paralyzed person to pluck out their eyes.

So a shame which, in Caeso's view, the like of which the pompous Everleigh would never feel had stayed his tongue. Seduced by the pitiful consolation of "He's a dead man," Caeso had kept quiet of the whole affair to spare himself the confrontation with his own weakness—that which he, who preached often to others that they must "secure their own strength", abhorred. Then Ganfarred happened, Zael was confirmed to be alive, and the mirror which revealed to Caeso his failing in the Blackwood was now ceaselessly before his eyes, the shame reflected back inescapable, his every step forward from that moment feeling more and more a façade. It was near intolerable. Yet with Zael now as a Rogue, how could he ever...say that he was sorry?

Suppressed rage was a poor mask for all of this, but it was the only thing which Caeso had. Though his body trembled for reasons other than cold, his eyes, ever the truth-teller, revealed the deep wound which lay beneath that mask of anger.

Coward, she had called him. The problem was...that she was right.

"You...weren't...there."

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“I wish I was there. I wish I had been there instead of you.” Everleigh said evenly. “Because I get it. You were frozen. You couldn’t move. I understand that. More than you think I do.” She didn’t know the specifics of how long Caeso was frozen or if it was like anything Lumen had done to her. She didn’t know if his mind had stopped like hers did. She didn’t know if it was all of him or only some of him. But it didn’t matter.

“I couldn’t do anything at all when Lumen attacked. I wasn’t even aware she had. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do no matter how much you want to.” She coughed. It was a slippery slope if she used her own experience to make a point, especially something that showed how much she lacked as a proctor, maybe even a Dreadlord. She cleared the lump out from her throat, a disgusting sound that echoed around them like the dying croak of a toad.

“But when I came to, I gave it my all— even if it wouldn’t have been enough. But you. You couldn’t even report to the Academy that a fucking traitorous rogue and fourth level bitch fooled the Academy and attacked a dreadlord of Vel Anir. Regardless of what he is now, months ago he was your comrade. So yes, you let him get taken because… because I don’t even fucking know why!”

The mask broke then when she shouted. Somehow, Everleigh returned to smiling, but grief had planted a sinful seed of wrath and rage while loneliness served as its nursery. Her eyes were wild, ablaze with the feelings she kept swallowing back, like a deadly snake that had made a home in her stomach and was now climbing up her throat.

“So tell me. Tell me why you did nothing or should I just believe that Diemut men have pebbles for balls?”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

All distinction between himself being an Initiate and Everleigh being a Proctor was gone. Not even during the worst sessions of torture had this happened before. The sharpest blades often cut from within, not from without.

Caeso couldn't anymore give one ounce of care for the orb, the object of their mission, floating away beneath the ice. Couldn't anymore give one ounce of care for the cold, the dampness, gripping him below the waist, gripping even what Everleigh would come to call the "pebbles" of his loins. Couldn't anymore give one ounce of care for anything outside this current sphere of emotion. Caeso was locked in, as though caged in a prison cell with flood waters slowly rising to the roof.

It was like Quinctus all over again. If he but had the strength to resist Proctor Malaneaux's implied order...to subdue Quinctus without killing him. But in the end, Force solved all. To his eternal dismay.

Here? How would this end? Everleigh's shouting, her swearing, suggested the same. He had to be ready to defend himself, to kill her, and to then bear forever the weight that he had brought it all on himself through his own lack.

An appraisal of what he thought: Everleigh's analogy with Lumen wasn't even remotely close to what happened with Kimble, and to Caeso it thus felt flimsy and fell flat. All that came after it—but you, you couldn't even...—stabbed as cleanly as a mailbreaker through the riveted hoops of the armor it was designed to defeat.

Yet the last thing he was going to do was admit his shame to Everleigh of all people, that cruel and venomous deceiver, that capricious and conceited viper. It was beyond her understanding; beyond her capacity, should she even have any, to empathize; and she would only turn it like a weapon upon him as surely as if he had offered her now a dagger and his open, undefended breast.

Defiantly, his chin raised up ever so slightly. Where Everleigh was loud and tumultuous, Caeso was quiet and firm (even if this firmness was just barely being held together): "Think what you will, and persist perennially in error."

What business was any of this hers, in any case? Why did she even care so much as to shout and curse, as to go to these lengths to set all of this up, this entire confrontation?

Regardless, Caeso's expression took on a harder character and he said, "But you are right about one thing. I should have said something."

His nostrils flared, and he made ready mentally for what violence might come.

"Then we might have found and killed Zael before he could suffer the true disgrace of what he has become."

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

The mask that Everleigh had worn so many times before shattered into small pieces that could never be put back together. Deep within her heart the string that had held back the greasy evil of her true nature unraveled completely before it snapped in half. Inwardly, there was a shelf unable to hold itself up on a wall and could only fall down; and with it, the few dear treasures she held dear. They broke upon a sticky stained floor of blood and gristle and became soaked in poison.

In paralyzing horror, Everleigh witnessed everything fall apart: the goodness, the memories, the promises to do better and be better, hope and love— everything that had made her feel human again.

Staring into Caeso’s dark eyes, she saw her reflection alone in a dark void. The same dark void that had dissipated from Zael’s undeniable warmth and radiance now returned to wrap itself around her. Her chest was tight like the wind had been knocked out from her; was she even breathing now? Anxiety and loneliness had plagued her these past months, becoming Everleigh’s rhyme and reason. Both her heart and head had been heavy, and once again, she was faced with the truth of it all: no one in this world ever loved him except her.

Then we might have found and killed Zael….

We? Some part of her understood that Caeso wasn’t saying that they were to find Zael and kill him. She understood is as a beseeching word to share a sameness, a goal even. But Caeso might as well have been telling her to go off on her own to find Zael and submit to the heavy hand of Vel Anir by murdering the person she loved.

Deep down inside Everleigh knew she couldn’t do such a thing. She couldn’t kill Zael. Her traitorous heart would fight for him, kill for him, die for him, even stop killing for him. But what she didn’t know is what would happen if by unlucky circumstance she was out with other initiates on a mission and came across Zael. It was a fear that became more apparent after the strange coincidence of having to work alongside Gilram’s band of rogues on a mission gone awry.

She had been with Henk and Lumen then. When she had charged against the rogues all she could think at the time was how lucky she was that Zael wasn’t with them. Then the nightmares of being burned alive started, prompting her to go back to the Blackwood and lament at the spot Sieglilly had died. When Zael killed Pensworth, had he also shared a similar sentiment of relief that it wasn’t her there?

If she came across Zael with innocent initiates or comrades, what would she do? Attack Zael alongside them to keep up her appearance of a “good Dreadlord” or kill her them to protect Zael? The worst of it was how she teetered on the decision. Some days she knew she’d keep Zael safe if that were the case; yet on the days when she taught the little ones how to keep their guard up in a fight or fixed their stance when throwing knives, she wasn’t sure if she could sacrifice them for him.

She wasn’t sure if he’d want her to do such a thing. What he was doing was for them, wasn’t it? It wasn’t about him or her, but all the dreadlords now and in the future. He had left her behind for what he believed to be the greater good, right?

Her thoughts and emotions were churning around into a frenzied clamor that felt like it had gone on for ages but only a second or two must have passed. Because still, here she was, staring down Caeso and every fiber of her being was ready to destroy him. She wanted nothing more in this moment to blame it all on Caeso because the other truth of her predicament was that she couldn’t hurt Kimble and Jenna.

What had she wanted from Caeso in the first place? An explanation? An apology? A scapegoat? Why had she even brought it up? To make Caeso regret his actions? To prove to Caeso he was wrong in his decision? To prove something to herself? To prove her silent devotion for Zael to herself? She wouldn’t ever utter aloud her feelings, not to protect Zael but because she was terrified of the consequences and punishments.

No wonder why Zael hadn’t asked her to go with him. He knew she was weak, didn’t he? And yet he still loved her. That thought alone was enough to keep Everleigh still: Zael who rebelled at graduation, who felt guilt over killing Sieglilly, who was willing to die for his beliefs— the man that was synonymous to the sun had risked his life to see her and could still love her despite her weaknesses. Even with so many miles and time apart, the memories of their time together was enough to keep the lethal indiscriminate beast that the Academy bred at bay.

Yet, it still wasn’t enough to abate the hateful intent towards Caeso or keep Everleigh’s mouth shut.

“What a mediocre, ordinary, boring declaration.” Everleigh hissed through quivering lips. “It fits a coward who brags about his lineage while his brother rots in the ground.” A bitter laugh of disbelief echoed all around. “I bet you want me to attack you right now, don’t you? I bet you wish I had moved even a centimeter so you could use that magic of yours you love so much.”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso said but four words:

"Do it. Or don't."






Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“You…” there was no word to describe Caeso, nothing that could encompass what she felt and encapsulate how she saw him in this moment. Nothing that sounded profound or educated— two things that would surely appeal to the Diemut heir. Instead, all Everleigh could come up with was shouting: “pigheaded brat!”

Her hands were in fists and suddenly Everleigh turned her body around, slipping onto her hands and knees before she stood up. Her back was towards Caeso.

“I won’t.” She wasn’t certain if her body trembled from rage or the cold. “No matter how insufferable you are, no matter how arrogant you are, no matter how much I think you deserve it: I won’t be like them.” She’ll be worse if he so wished it.

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso felt almost that his shame had been eclipsed by the juvenile display put on Everleigh—though her shamelessness inured her to any of it. The shouting, the cursing, the petulance and raw emotions left to run rampant, all of it was unbecoming, but worse it diminished the stature of the rank she held. How was this sorry creature before him a Proctor?

Worse still, the proximate cause of this whole baffling ordeal was still shrouded in mystery.

"Then why are you even here, doing this."

Those warming salts were discarded, his torso was dry as it would be, but still he did not begin the work of putting on his shirt and armors, even though her back was turned. A part of him still didn't believe her and vehemently asserted mistrust toward her words.

"Zael is a Rogue Dreadlord. He is the enemy. It makes no sense why—"

Caeso froze as realization, delayed by the dizzying heights of emotion, came slamming into him. His sentence, interrupted, would have went: it makes no sense why you should be so concerned with him. But as it happened, another thought, arising at the same time, parallel, came to the fore and was indeed the stronger of the two. The thought had in fact occurred to him before, as he was pondering how Everleigh could even know about this, but it's true impact just now struck him.

Flatly, with all the shock of sudden realization, he said, "—you're in communication with a Rogue Dreadlord..."

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

He didn’t go for the bait, perhaps it was too obvious or maybe he was no longer angry. Or maybe it was the same reason why Everleigh couldn’t attack him despite the war that had raged on in her head in those two seconds: fighting each other was stupid so they could nothing but try to look bigger and yowl like two alley cats trying to scare the other off.

Even when he called Zael the enemy, reminding her of the demarcation between them now, there was something that held her back. Even with his poorly phrased realization and all the implications with it.

Slowly, Everleigh began turning her head towards the initiate, looking down at him over her shoulder.

“If you think I’m still in communication with him then you’re even dumber than I think you are.” She scoffed. Everleigh turned her body towards him, the quintessential smirk of a gambler with either a really good or a really bad hand. “You should rephrase what you just said. You’re the one who was in the Blackwood and Ganfarred Keep. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but if it were to happen a third time? It wouldn’t matter if you call him ‘the enemy.’”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso stood up to his full height, and now it was he who looked down upon her.

"A specious argument in the extreme, and a paltry attempt to foist accusations of treason upon me. It stinks of rank desperation."

A man with a caved-in skull could've come up with a better attempt to frame him than Everleigh. Why, by her logic, anyone who by chance encountered the same Rogue (or any Rogue, if you truly wanted to stretch it) on three occasions would be eligible for a traitor's death by torture. Caeso almost wanted her to put forward her asinine theory to some authority, that she would thus be laughed out of the room in which she voiced it. And, as an aside, this absolutely proved Everleigh's venomous character: for she had quite literally told him a moment ago that she knew he had no ties to Gilram's, that she didn't think he was a traitor, and yet she would fabricate a ruinous capital charge against him for, what...revenge, malice, sadistic pleasure? It was good that her malevolence outstripped her capacities to see it realized.

Yet Caeso's position to forward his own accusation wasn't any better, even if he swallowed his shame and brought this story up to Academy authority. All it would amount to, in the end, was a "he said, she said" situation, which Everleigh could simply deny; and, backed by the institution of the Academy, she would win. It made sense that she waited for this mission, far away from Vel Anir, to reveal all this: in official channels at the Academy, she would've had to admit how she knew, and thus expose herself.

So it seemed that they were at an impasse. And, likely, only one of them here was intelligent enough to know it.

But there was something else which bothered Caeso.

"Have you even considered why Zael would tell you any of this? That perhaps his aim was merely to cajole you into doing his bidding? To sow discord in the Academy?"

Caeso pinched the bridge of his nose. Muttered, "So much for his talk of 'a better way'."

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

He spoke down to her like she was a child. It was insulting and embarrassingly pathetic all at once. Now, Caeso looked more like a exasperated parent than an initiate speaking to a third-level dreadlord. Last year Everleigh would have been calm despite the pressure, maybe a curse or a taunt thrown someone’s way, but she had never been this emotional before. Marianne had pointed it out, reminding her that an emotional mind was a weak mind.

Everleigh couldn’t argue with her there. It was a sore spot, to insult Zael, like a punch below the belt. Usually it was Marianne who was always quick to remind her how he left her, how he had broken promises, and the only reason why it could be was because Everleigh was weak. Sometimes Marianne would insult Liliana, too, or rather, remind Everleigh what she was to Liliana: a tool. Liliana’s silence spoke volumes: Everleigh had no more to offer.

So she stayed at the Academy, disliked by initiates and peers alike, and found neither happiness nor hope nor purpose. She worked because even as a child she had never been able to sit still. She always had to be moving forward— but right now, Everleigh felt like all she had done was walk in place while she was sucked down by quicksand.

There was nothing she had done as a proctor that was either memorable or remarkable. But Zael was making a mark, whether rightly or wrongly was up for debate. He wasn’t the sort to play mind games like her. He had two reasons on why he came to the Blackwood, both for her but not to fool her.

There was a trickle of doubt, Marianne could be right about Zael not knowing what love was which would make Caeso’s words monumental and Everleigh a fool. But Everleigh knew what she felt that night and what she felt now. Time and distance didn’t matter.

“You’re wrong.” Everleigh said firmly, jaw set in determination as she inclined her chin up at Caeso. “You couldn’t possibly be more wrong in your entire life if thats what you choose to believe.” There was a pause but the ferocity in her eyes didn’t die down. She wouldn’t back down on this. “You don’t know him, you don’t even know how much he thinks of others. At graduation he was the one to fight back against them, without anyone at his side, but he did it anyways and….” She shook her head. “It’s a waste of time to even try explaining it to you. You wouldn’t get it. What’s killing a friend when you’ve split your own blood.”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Again, the one dagger that could slip through his armor: another jab at Quinctus. It was almost as if she were purposefully trying to infuriate him, to make him do something which would prove to be a deadly mistake; Lumen had gotten off very leniently, all things considered, but the chance that he would be made into a grim example to restore military discipline throughout the Academy was high indeed. His blood boiled with brutish anger, and that was one thing which he could not allow to gain sway over him. He couldn't let that happen.

It's a waste of time to even try explaining it to you. You wouldn't get it.

"Then don't," Caeso asserted—the less he said, the better, lest he drive himself into a rage. He squatted down and roughly grabbed for his shirt and started to put it on. And then as an offhand comment he muttered, "You speak as though you're smitten with him."

He made nothing of it, and finished slipping on his shirt.

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Smitten. If only it were that. Strangely enough, the word brought Everleigh to the past, years upon years ago, when her father would come home. He would return and bathe before sleeping. While he slept Everleigh would help her mother prepare all of her father’s favorites and when she asked why they did such a thing, the answer was a simple one. “Because I’m a smitten kitten when it comes to your father.”

It had been a novel idea to her at the time, prompting the then four year old Everleigh to tell her mother she didn’t realize she had such a huge crush on her dad. After all, Everleigh had always thought herself to be her father’s favorite.


That thought had lingered through her time at the Academy. Passing by him in Arnim and hearing his declaration of not having a daughter had cracked her ego. It made her reconsider and reflect on what was her truth. Much like the rupture Caeso had begun inside her.

She could think him to be arrogant, intolerable and torpid but Caeso had unknowingly caused her to reflect at the worst time possible. Her chest felt hot, cheeks and ears burning. Silence was an answer, an answer she couldn’t give to Caeso; so thickheaded and stolid and unable to comprehend that frightening beauty of loving another.


One day she’d tell Zael again. One day she’d tell everyone. One day Everleigh would scream it out to the world for anyone and everyone to hear. One day “I love Zael Castomir” would leave her lips. Today was not that day.

“Suck my fucking dick.” A weak insult that couldn’t ever compare to the words she actually wanted to say. A insult that was a weak imitation of Zael. But it was easy and came fast. Nearly as fast as her open palm that sought Caeso’s cheek.

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Everleigh spoke her taunt and slapped him hard across the face. Caeso made no attempt to defend himself, raised not a hand nor committed any effort in jerking his head away. The slap rang out in the cavern, Caeso's turned slightly to one side, and then he looked back and down at her.

What scraps of respect Caeso had for Everleigh was in that moment gone. Not from the slap, no. Kress, if only it had been just a slap, a slap and meaningful silence, he might have actually gained respect for her. It was the taunt, full of repellent petulance and peevish impertinence, which effected a crumbling of Caeso's regard. She not only further diminished the dignity of her office as Proctor by acting so, but she diminished the dignity of her own womanhood as well.

She wasn't a Proctor to him anymore, not even in most tepid of senses, but merely a disgraceful girl, older than him in number only, pretending to be one, the fact of this pretense being tolerated by the institution of the Academy one of those bizarre and baffling oddities which could be found in many corners of the world.

"Are you finished?" was all he asked.

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

It didn’t feel good, the slap. Lackluster, half-assed, more empty than full. Everleigh felt no fulfillment from it. Would she have felt better if it was a punch, if she drew blood? Or would she have felt better if she hadn’t done it at all?

Her hand stung. She turned it into a fist as it came to her side.

“No.” Something inside her told her she wasn’t finished. If anything what they had cut open together between them lay like a mutilated corpse of what could have been some sort of reconciliation. But Everleigh couldn’t forgive Caeso even if there was a part of her that had thought it possible, his lack of remorse and explanation had her bubble of anger swell into a ocean of rancor.

“I want to make you hurt the way I am.” The truth broke out from the contrarian cell and she couldn’t stop it. “But more than that I want you to hit me back.”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"No."








Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“Why not? You’ve done it before, haven’t you? Hit someone back after they’ve hit you. You don’t think I’m a proctor, I know it’s not that holding you back. I know you don’t fear me. So hit me— don’t you want to?”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"No," Caeso said. "Because I do not share your vindictive nature."

And then he took one step to the side and bent down to secure his gambeson. Began the task of putting it on.






Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

There was a moment of surprise that flashed upon her face. Vindictive? It was strange, hearing it and realizing the truth in it. She had thought about hurting Caeso in a myriad of ways. The slap was nothing compared to what she had daydreamed. Everleigh had pictured him in the future, graduated and taking on his noble role. She had figured he would be married and have children, after all, Liliana had lamented about such things back in that underground hot spring in Alliria. She could see Caeso bending his head to his father on his deathbed but sure in his ability to hurtle House Diemut into the greatness that was expected of the Virak Minor Houses.

He would forget all about her, a insignificant speck of dust in his timeline at the Academy.

It had been fulfilling when she thought of ruining the vineyards belonging to House Diemut, satisfying as she dreamt of Caeso at a lost for why nothing would grow in the soil, even when asking for those Pirian Storm Singers for help in washing away the blight for it only to return the next day. It would have been the least of his worries when he would come home to find his family slaughtered: his wife, his children, even the family dog if she wanted to.

The acute clarity of his words mingling with her innermost thoughts— surely he couldn’t have suspected her to have thought such a thing— resounded in Everleigh as if she knew everything the entire world. For a moment she knew Arethil’s secrets, who she was, where she came from and where she was going. She knew the invisible master, could see the invisible strings that tied everyone to their own puppeteer.

And with it, an ineluctable truth. A truth that frightened her to her very core. She had her answer. It had always been the same, it had never changed, but it had never been clear until now.

“You’re right, I am vindictive.” Everleigh said, bending low to pick up the cotton wrappings that Caeso had discarded. Her small act of kindness, a rendition of the kindness that Zael had given to her in Arnim, tossed so carelessly away. Some voice in the back of her head told her how could a man understand what these were for but Everleigh could care less to listen to it.

She had warmed his hands before her own, had used her own clothing (which was a comfort to her more than her tunic and breeches) and for what? Why even waste such kindness on someone she despised? That wasn’t the Dreadlord she was raised to be.

“But I’d rather be that instead of a coward.” She stood tall then, as tall as her height allowed her. “Because being vindictive means I stay in motion instead of freezing up and doing nothing.” She chanted a summoning spell and a white snake was summoned.

It was larger than nature would ever intend and many feet long. With gold eyes and a lavender sheen to it’s scales, this wasn’t the glaucous acidic snake that Everleigh needed her own blood, sweat and tears for. It dove into the water, the icy cold doing nothing to stop it. She scoffed and it was a sudden action that surprised her.

“You would have perished at my graduation. Or if you lived, it would have been because of those like me, not you. The ones who turned that resentment into fuel for survival.” She turned from him. “I made sure the proctor that chased after me suffered. Malaneaux had a long, painful death— more than any of the other proctors. Knowing that feels good.” And if that was wrong, then Everleigh didn’t want to be right.

Now there was the Dreadlord she was raised to be.

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Coward.

Everleigh needed no weapon, no conjured snake nor magic of any description, when this one single word cut deeper than anything else. It brought Caeso harsh pause, his gambeson half on, only one of his arms in the sleeves. He closed his eyes. Remembered some select words from his father Sabian about control and, more to the point, about focused, purposeful violence.

Here, it wasn't so much violence, but a focused, purposeful rejoinder. A verbal riposte meant to cut as deep as that singular word against him. Something that would make her understand, in whatever way she was actually capable, what had happened between him and Quinctus and the horrid aftermath of it, that which he still carried to this day. That, or leave her exposed as an utter hypocrite.

She spoke of Graduation. Of the old way. Very well then.

"If you had been made to fight Zael Castomir to the death," Caeso said, glancing over and down at her, "would you have killed him?"

It was baffling why she was so fixated on him, but he need not know the precise why of it, just that it had driven her to this revealing of emotions, however much she tried—and failed—to suppress them.

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

She remembered Zael’s words when they watched the sunrise. Everleigh was not Henk, she couldn’t imagine being the final piece of the catalyst that Zael needed like Henk was. But she knew Zael’s heart at that time. Would she have been at his side earlier? If it was her in that ring instead of Henk, could she have kept Zael from turning Sieglilly to ash?

“A proctor would have ended me before either of us got to that,” Everleigh said easily. “But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?” With her back towards him, she started the process of binding her chest, now more tedious with keeping her tunic on and under the stiff cotton. The question that Caeso had asked was one she had asked herself back in the infirmary when visiting Zael. It was one she had asked herself in the Blackwood with Zael. It was the question she asked herself in between those moments and the sort she even asked herself afterward.

Wasn’t it much like the riddle of the dreadlord princess and her lover? What door would Everleigh had sent Zael through? She knew what answer Caeso would expect if he knew the whole story.

Everleigh knew her answer. But what would honesty cost her? What would it cost Zael? Already Marianne held it over her head, already Everleigh had lost her peace of mind.

“If I had to fight Zael to the death,” her words had a dreamy slowness to them, “then I would’ve given him my best. Zael loves nothing more than a good fight, and I would have fought him earnestly.” Because it was in her nature to fight even when she didn’t want to. Because it was what Zael deserved: respect and, at the very least, a friend who truly saw him and could match that tenacity. “I’d have made him question his ability to best me. I’d get him to counter and then counter that counter because he was always bad at figuring out when I was doing that. I wouldn’t hold back because if there’s anyone that could handle me, it’s him.

“And when the time would be right, without him realizing that his time was up,” Everleigh turned her head, grinning. Her eyes held a unnerving, crazed ferocity that bordered on unspeakable danger. “I’d smile as he burned me down into a ugly black.” She had finished binding her breasts and now her hands were lax. Fingers twitched. “Because Vel Anir deserves the best of the best. Zael’s worst is my best.”

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

The one answer Caeso did not expect, Everleigh gave: true sincerity. In such an admission as the one she gave, there was no advantage to be gained, especially not when spoken to, as Caeso happened to be in this instance, a staunch adversary. Thereby was the truth of it hard to deny.

Caeso almost wished that she had said "Yes," so he could then immediately shut down the conversation in a single, decisive stroke. He wished that she had said "No" and had given some excuse for him to tear apart, or tried to dodge the question, as she almost did by mentioning a Proctor's interference before in fact following up with her straightforward answer.

But the way she did answer disarmed him.

And...

Worse...

He felt within his breast an unstoppable impetus. Building. Gathering strength. He was helpless to stop it even though he was aware of its mounting presence, this as though he were tumbling down a slope without anything to grasp, anything to break his fall. For years he had bottled up his sheer guilt, his poignant anguish, about his brother. And though protestations were loud and powerful in his mind, previous vitriol about Everleigh's character summoned again and put forward in the case against, the inevitable caught up to and overpowered him. That staunchness in his adversity was crumbling. He had to tell someone. And in all those years of bottling it up, there had been no better impetus than that which was at hand now—and this spoke volumes.

Caeso's head rolled back on his shoulders. He stared upward, eyes locked to the cavern ceiling painted in red arcane light.

"I felt much the same about Quinctus."

He closed his eyes. Pressed his lips together into a line sealed by regret.

Spoiler: The Cliff

Caeso stood, exhausted and injured, battered by his own magic by Quinctus's mimicry and disruption. Quinctus stood, equally exhausted and injured, battered by the spells from Caeso that he could not absorb and mimic or cancel.

"Quinctus...don't! Lay down your arms! It doesn't have to end like this!"

"I told you...I won't stop...until I win!"

A final charge, and a final Forcewave.

There came the echo of Quinctus's furious cry, trembling back up from the cliff face as he plummeted.

But he came to say, "And yet..."

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

She saw it, a sight that no one had probably seen before: Caeso Diemut’s eyes softening. His mannerisms limned his thoughts, and while Everleigh couldn’t know the particulars, she did know that whatever it was that he was thinking was not what she thought it would be. She had expected him to lash at her, to maybe call her a bad dreadlord.

“And yet,” Everleigh continued. “You’re here. Not him.” Like how Zael was around (surely, he had to be fine currently? She’d wonder about that later.) and not Sieglilly. Like how Ralene was still alive but not Charon. Like Liliana but not Jaxan. She hadn’t cared about Jaxan or Charon or the proctors that died. Truthfully she had cursed Sieglilly for daring to hurt Zael. As far as she knew, all three of them had chosen the side that they thought would work out the best for whatever desires they had.

“But what else could you have done? Malaneaux couldn’t intervene in time. As a child stuck in the Old Way what was there for you to do?” Her voice was soft because despite her rancor towards Caeso, there was a kinship she couldn’t quite comprehend. It was a question she posed to the proctors when they grilled her for her actions, and she had asked them what she was to do, get an adult? Another proctor? It was the proctors that were murdering them.

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"I do not know."

Malaneaux had gone away from the scene, leaving him and Quinctus only with the strong impression of what he expected. Even then, maybe something could have been arranged. Would Malaneaux have killed them both if Caeso and Quinctus had provided a united front, both refusing to duel? Such a thought seemed pure fancy, and not on Proctor Malaneaux's part.

Because Quinctus was far more given to the Old Way than even Caeso himself. And yet, despite knowing this...

"I only wonder...if he felt the same about me."

Caeso drew in a long breath through his nose. Let it out slowly, exhaling in steady release what small ounce of torment had afflicted him all the years since.

He opened his eyes and turned his gaze then to Everleigh, a numbness pervading throughout his body which the previous cold could not match. He felt as though he were sleepwalking, faculties of reason muted, that unstoppable impetus the sole means by which his feet moved down this path of open admission.

"Zael," he said. Caeso didn't know precisely what was between Everleigh and Zael, but it didn't matter, because the something that was there was strong enough to have prompted this whole ordeal in an underground river cavern here in the Spine. "Do you think...?"

...he would feel for you as you feel for him?

Everleigh Ebersol