She had meant so much to him and for so long.
And he, with all his intelligence, had hurt her beyond his understanding.
Etienne read well into the night, his elbow propped on the desk—though carefully avoiding Alphonse’s veil—and his forehead resting in his palm. He scribbled in the notebook on his lap with careless speed until the tips of his fingers were black with ink. Only occasionally did he look up to check on his friend, where she lay sleeping peacefully, curled beneath the quilt she had made him three solstices past.
At first, the book had seemed to hold no new answers. His second reading was much the same as the first: the Old Gods were bound in their temples to prevent a repeat of the Great War. The author of the tome was dismissive of the people who had banished the Gods, calling them extremists or excessively cautious… the word was difficult to understand, maybe excessively cautious meddlers? The author had, however, managed to preserve a memory of the old world from those who would have seen it completely destroyed.
As Etienne continued to re-analyze his translation, however, he began to find repeated instances of the word “vassal” spread throughout the text, as though the memory needed some host to live in. In his original interpretation, Etienne had simply assumed that those who would experience the memory would be, in a sense, it’s vassal. It would live in their memories.
However, if the memory was not a mere memory, but a shadow of the past living again….
Etienne well remembered the language classes in which his professors had explained the double meaning of the word.
If that was the case, then the spell had summoned some living relic of the past, an entity who had likely chosen Alphonse as its vassal.
Etienne’s heart was ice, but he continued reading. The author of the text had gone into some detail about the banishing of the creature in a temple by the name of Thlonandras. It required a relic, a basin.
If they could get there, Etienne could rebind the creature, releasing Alphonse from its clutches.
If they could get there.
The temple was high in the mountain range that lined the north-western border of old Rhosan, now called The Wildlands for its lawless inhabitants. It would mean leaving school and trekking through inhospitable lands populated by innumerable dangers.
Etienne looked at Alphonse, her face calm and gentle in sleep.
It would be worth it. If it saved her.
By the time the bell chimed five of the morning, Etienne had ceased his frenetic study. He had turned to look out the window, his pale face dimly lit by the light of the setting moon. It was still quite dark.
He had worked out, as best he could tell, the path they would need to take to the temple in the mountains, cross-referencing the notes in the books with the locations of known ruins and landmarks. There was nothing he could do now but wait to tell Alphonse what he had learned and hope that she would trust him to rebind the entity they had unwittingly set loose. He knew that he would stop at nothing now. She had to be freed.
Then, without so much as a warning stir, Alphonse sat up.
Etienne blinked in surprise. “You’re up early,” he said. “I know what must be done.”
Her pupils dilated and contracted several times before flickering around the room. There was something carefully calculated in her gaze as she sat up, letting the quilt slither to the floor without trying to catch it, fold it up, and put it back. No. She just let it fall on the wooden boards, collecting dust.
Alphonse turned to survey his room once more. She looked at him, but it wasn’t Alphonse looking out of her eyes.
She stood, hands running over her neck and shoulders, then down the length of her torso in an almost… Sensual manner. They stopped at her hips and then brushed over her straight grey skirts, frowning at the sturdy material in distaste.
Etienne stood up. “Alphonse?” Unease gathered in his chest. Was this the entity in control, the darkness he had unleashed?
Without a backward glance, Alphonse headed towards the door, pulling it open and striding out. Not a word said.
When she stepped out the door, he followed her, calling out her name. “Come back! Your veil…”
He tried to grab her arm, to stop her physically. He’d never before been so grateful for her small stature. “Where are you going?”
Amber eyes darted towards his hand on Alphonse’s arm, then flickered up to his face. While they were Alphonse’s eyes, there was something astoundingly different in how she held them.
They were opened, wide, almost too wide. And she wasn’t blinking…
The way those eyes—now more like glinting copper, moved with steady predatory ease up his wrist, forearm, shoulder…
Throat.
It lingered there for several heartbeats before slipping up to his face.
A foreign smile came to her lips, peeling back from her slightly sharper upper canine teeth, then revealing the rest. Not a pure snarl, but it wasn’t Alphonse’s gentle beam.
Etienne shuddered. Seeing that feral, predatory creature looking out of Alphonse’s eyes… It was utterly wrong, a violation of everything she was.
And while it did frighten him, it also made him angry.
“I know you’re not her,” he told the thing looking out of Alphonse’s face. “You don’t deserve that body. You should have stayed in whatever hell you were banished in.”
Etienne tried to tug Alphonse back towards his room, but she was far stronger than he remembered. He couldn’t seem to get her to budge.
“Give her back to me!” Real desperation mingled with the anger in his voice now, and though no one had seen them yet, the sounds of sleepers stirring behind their doors were clearly audible.
She looked down at his hand again, at the tugging there, and her eyes—flames, not flowers— traced the slope to his mouth. Her head tilted, a mountain lion considering an injured deer.
But just as it seemed it would refuse
