Chương 23: What I Want

POV: Evelisse Ardentia It was early morning. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling while the early light pressed thin and pale through the curtains. I felt... empty. Ywain's Hero ceremony would be tomorrow. Held in private, I had been told. Perhaps a kindness from the Church, a little room to adjust before the public learned of my failure. A quiet mercy. This should have been good news. Either I would be freed of my duties entirely, or folded into the new Hero's party as a member.

Either way, the heaviest weight would no longer be mine. I was tired anyway. That was what I told myself. Nothing had gone right this past week. My resolve had thinned; I couldn't bring the Mooncleaver down on Milo when the moment came; I kept being shortsighted, never thinking far enough ahead and never careful enough, as with Shauna. I was in no state to be the Hero. Keeping me would only drag out the danger the Dark Lord—that Milo, would bring. So I should have felt relieved. Unburdened at last.

And I did feel that. The gladness was real. But underneath it sat something else. Something I couldn't name. Fear and worry and uncertainty and disappointment and frustration, all pressed together into one shapeless ache. Did I want to stay the Hero, or didn't I? Was I just unable to let go of the recognition, the meaning of it? Or was I only worried about what Ywain might do to Milo once he— A knock. I sat up. Another knock followed. I slid off the bed, crossed the room, and went to the door.

"Evelisse, it's me." The voice was muffled through the wood. Ywain's. I opened it. There he stood in his light armor, the morning sun catching here and there along the polished plate.

"Morning, Evelisse. Sorry to bother—" The sentence dissolved. His gaze had dropped, sweeping down over me. I glanced at myself. Heat climbed up my neck and into my face; I was still in my sleepwear. The loose white shift, my hair down and unbound. I had opened the door without a single thought to how I looked. I stepped back and slammed the door. Hard.

"S-sorry," I managed, from behind the door.

"N-no, it's fine. You look great. I mean…it's, uhh, it's okay." On the other side, his composure had clearly come apart too. What is he even doing here this early? I thought. As if he had heard it: "I just wanted to talk. About a few things, including the Hero matter." Right. Of course. He had come to console me.

"I'm…fine with it," I said.

"It's for the best. You being the Hero, I mean." Silence. I thought of myself these past few days, worn down to the bone, and set that image beside the girl who had been named Hero three years ago. I had not been happy then either. But I had been glad. Glad the training had amounted to something, glad to have a place in vanquishing evil.

"Um," I said.

"How do you feel about it?"

"The Hero thing?" A pause.

"Mostly like I've got a lot more work ahead. Not that I'm ungrateful, since this is what the Church raised me for. It feels like my purpose, you know?" Purpose. The word lodged somewhere and stayed.

"It's just a bigger responsibility now. Starts tomorrow, officially. But you know what I mean." Another small quiet.

"Anyway. Sorry for turning up so early. If you'd rather have the day to yourself, I'll just—""Give me five minutes," I blurted. I crossed to the washbasin, splashed the sleep from my face, and stepped into my room. The white shift came off. In its place I pulled on the sleeveless black top with its high collar, then fitted the silver chest plate over it, the metal catching the light as it settled into place. The pleated skirt and the boots came last.

I gathered my hair and tied it up into a high ponytail, the way I always did before heading out. Mel would probably complain if she were to see me going out with Ywain looking like this again. But, Ywain was in his light armor, too, so it should be fine. As I turned to go, my eye caught the bottle on the dresser. Maiden's Yearning. The perfume from the shop Mel had dragged me through yesterday. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"They say there's a scent that makes you smell like a maiden in love!" Mel's voice, bright and certain, surfaced out of nowhere. I looked at the bottle for a few seconds. I decided to ignore it. Then I stepped out and opened the door. The Church Garden sat tucked behind the cathedral, walled off and quiet. Roses climbed the trellises in deep reds and soft pinks, and along the borders the morning glories had just begun to open, pale blue throats turned toward the light.

The air was cool and faintly sweet, lavender somewhere underneath it all. We walked the winding paths in no particular hurry. Ywain talked as we went. About his dormmates, how they envied him for landing a place in my party; how respected my name was, back in the halls where he had trained. About the things he had been hopeless at, early on; footwork drills, mostly, and a particular instructor who had despaired of him. It loosened something in me.

I found myself offering pieces in return: I told him I had been worse; I had been quick but reckless, and an instructor named Halvard used to make me run the practice yard until I could barely lift my arms, all because I kept overcommitting on the lunge and leaving my guard wide open. It took me months to stop. I still caught myself doing it under pressure, even now.

I told him about the time I had frozen during a live-blade assessment and taken a shallow cut across the forearm rather than parry, because some part of me had not believed the strike was real until it landed. About the nights I had lain awake convinced they had made a mistake choosing me, that some other candidate deserved the Mooncleaver more. I had not said any of it aloud before to anyone except for Mel. It surprised me, how easily it came out here, in the quiet, with him.

The path opened onto a canopy at the garden's heart.

"I turned it down, you know," Ywain said. He rested his hands on the rail and looked out over the spread of color.

"Being named the next Hero. I refused, at first." I stepped up beside him.

"What? Why?"

"Because I didn't think I could live up to you. Not yet." I stared at him. Live up to me? I barely managed a thing against the current Dark Lord.

"I'm not someone you should be looking up to," I said.

"Everyone looks up to you, Evelisse." He said it plainly, like a fact he was tired of having to repeat.

"Top of every combat class at the Church. One of the youngest Heroes they ever named. You put down the last Dark Lord." I let the silence stretch before I answered.

"It came at a cost."

"I know." His voice gentled.

"We all know. That's why we understand what's been happening to you." I turned.

"... What?"

"The High Priest told me you haven't been yourself. Not since the new Dark Lord spawned." He kept his eyes on the flowers, giving me room.

"He said I was meant to keep that to myself. But it didn't feel right, letting you walk around not knowing what people had noticed." I had nothing to say to that.

"I wasn't there for the last war," he went on.

"But I heard. Karlo. Linda. Samuel. Timm. Ascilia." He let each name land on its own.

"It wasn't your fault, Evelisse." He couldn't have known. He hadn't seen it. He hadn't watched Karlo throw himself across the Dark Lord's blast already half-broken. He hadn't seen Linda cut down by one of the elite generals in an ambush meant for me. Samuel staying behind to buy the rest of us minutes. Timm opened up in the final clash. And Ascilia… Ascilia taking the Dark Lord's last desperate strike head-on, because I had been too much of a coward to be the one who did. They were the heroes. Not me.

I was a good fighter the Church had chosen, for reasons I had never understood, to carry the Mooncleaver. And I had won on the backs of the people who had died for me. The new Dark Lord spawning so soon could have been a chance; a second chance, to do it right. Instead I fumbled it. I hesitated, again and again, for reasons I couldn't quite—"You're tired," Ywain said.

"And vulnerable." I looked at him.

"The losses wore you down. Then Astrea had no strong team left to give you, so they sent you after the new Dark Lord nearly alone, which made a kind of sense, on paper. A freshly spawned one shouldn't be anything like as strong as the last." He paused.

"But he used that. I don't know the details. I only know he did something to you. Made you hesitate. Played at being humane, maybe, the Dark Lord who won't kill."

"How did you—""Lunareth. Milly." A small shrug.

"Some say he was only testing the waters, learning how to farm fear. I think it was simpler than that. I think he wanted us to lower our guard." I said nothing.

"And somehow he knows your resolve is thin." He turned to face me fully now.

"You come home from a war with your comrades dead, barely steady on your feet, and they throw you straight into another fight you never asked to keep carrying. He knows all of that. So he did whatever he did, and you froze."

"If any of that's true," I said slowly, "why tell me now?"

"Because I want to give you a choice." A choice?

"Evelisse, you have to understand. The Dark Lord is still the Dark Lord. This is his design, and it's already taking root. He killed in Mistros." His jaw tightened.

"He's growing stronger by the day. We don't have time to waste." He didn't, though. Not with his hands. The thought came before I could stop it, and I pushed it down, because it changed nothing. He drew a breath.

"You can rest. Walk away from all of it, and leave him to me. Or you can stand with me and see it through." I couldn't find my voice.

"I know it isn't an easy thing to ask." He softened again.

"If you want my honest opinion, you should take the rest. You've earned it ten times over. But if some part of you still carries the blame, for your comrades, for Mistros, then maybe fighting at my side is what lets you set it down. Both are the right thing, Evelisse. The only question is which one you want." The right thing. What I want. Had I ever once stopped to ask myself what I wanted?

"... give me some time," I said.

"Of course." He pushed off the rail.

"The ceremony's tomorrow. We should have around two days after that before the next journey sets out." After that, we walked back. He must have guessed I had not eaten, because he insisted on getting me something on the way back. We stopped at the little cookshop along the cathedral wall, and he bought a wrapped parcel of bread and cured ham, still warm, pressed it into my hands before I could refuse. I carried it home. Set it on the dining table. Sat down.

For days now I had been like this; drifting, caught in my own head, my feelings reshuffling themselves by the hour. It was unhealthy. And, frankly, a little pathetic. I needed to sort through these messy thoughts and feelings. The past few encounters with Milo had made things slightly clearer yet significantly messier at the same time. The parcel sat in front of me, unopened. Maybe I should visit sis.