Chapter Text
“Ser, just beyond that ridgeline, I believe,” the boy called over the whipping wind.
She brought their steed to a halt in a wide grassy clearing, dismounted, and followed the line of the boy’s outstretched arm.
The Empire’s border was still half a day's journey on foot. There were quicker ways, but she remembered her training.
“You are reckless!”
“I am trying!”
“Stop. Listen. I need you to hear me and remember this. Do you want to go fast? Or do you want to win?”
She was no longer reckless. Or at least, now she chose to be so rather than it being her state of being. Wandering was in her bones. It had brought her far, to this place.
The Wilds was her home and not once had there been reason to leave it. There hadn’t been opportunity either. And while the elders, the ones who had lived in a time before borders, had spoken of the differences between the realms… Seeing the reality was different than the visions her imagination could draw up.
She had expected tales of the boundaries between kingdoms to be exaggerations. Bards spoke of how the trees twisted like skeletons, and nothing bloomed beyond the divide between The Wilds and The Empire.
Between them lay a ravine, carved and scorched and damaged. The source was still debated. What her people knew was a truth the Empire had spent centuries denying.
They claimed that dragons were a myth. A tall tale made up by the unruly and unlearned.
As if the land didn’t still bear the scars of those battles. As if some of their own people were not born bearing that spirit mark. Of course, those people were rumored to be swiftly executed.
The Empire saw these gifts as neither blessing nor birthright. That was the greatest difference between the two territories.
The Empire denied that magic was a gift from the old spirits of the land. They claimed that anyone worthy could be taught spell craft.
They, of course, had a vested interest in being very discerning about controlling the criteria of who they deemed worthy. And those select few were not spell crafters. They did not conjure or practice transmutation. They did not brew potions to heal or muddle soothing salves. Divination had long been outlawed there.
They learned spells. Approved magic. Magic as a tool of utility. As yet another weapon in their ever-accumulating arsenal.
But magic wasn’t like that. It wasn’t something to harness and control and keep away. It was in each spring song, each leaf and blade. All life carried that spark. It was everywhere. Perhaps that is what scared them most.
It was a wild thing, an honored friend to the people and spirits of the Wilds. The Empire thought they could tame it.
The land itself bore the mark of that divide.
The Wilds thrived in unrestrained harmony, forests thick with ancient trees, rivers flowing with untouched waters, the wind carrying whispers of spirits and old gods. Even here, on the edge of the ravine, Rio could feel it humming beneath her boots, pulsing like a heartbeat in the earth. The air smelled of damp moss and cedar, alive with magic.
Here, shrines were built to great spirits of the lands and seas. Children who possessed the gift were celebrated rather than shunted. Bakers delivered honeyed breads that didn’t go stale and smiths imbued wedding bands with minor protection spells. Her family had been farmers, singing to their crops and encouraging their growth. The land gave them plenty.
Across the ravine, the Empire's lands told a different story. The trees stood in rigid lines, uniform and pruned as if the land itself had been broken and reshaped to fit their design. The soil bore scars of past battles, and even from this distance, Rio could see the flickering glow of the lantern towers marking the roads - magic contained, controlled, bent to the will of those who wielded it.
The Empire did not believe in wild things. They did not believe in dragons, in spirits, in magic as something freely given. They took, refined, and decided who was worthy.
And now, after twenty years of keeping their gates sealed, they were inviting the free world in.
It was unsettling.
Rio tightened her jaw, her gloved fingers curling around the hilt of her sword. The timing was too perfect. This festival of theirs, this sudden display of generosity, just as the treaty's anniversary approached. Her people remembered what the Empire had done, the blood spilled to forge that fragile peace. They did not forget as easily as those behind those pristine walls.
"Half a day’s journey ahead,” Billy repeated, his voice breaking through her thoughts.
Rio exhaled and turned toward him. He was young yet, still looking at the world with eyes that had not seen the worst of it. She had tried to keep him from that knowledge for as long as she could.
She would not fail him now.
"We make for the ravine," she said, pulling the reins of their horse. "We’ll find a way across. If the Empire is opening its doors, then it's not just their secrets we need to be wary of. We will camp tonight. Then tomorrow, we will enter by the main road."
If the House of Harkness was revealing itself at last, then it was her duty to find a way in.
She was a knight, not an oath breaker.
When the Harkness clan finally fell, she prayed that it would be upon her sword.
That night, the fire crackled low between them, its embers casting flickering shadows against the thick trunks of the trees. The Wilds stretched in all directions, a living thing that breathed and whispered with the night.
Rio sat with her back to a fallen log, sharpening the edge of her blade with slow, deliberate strokes. Billy lay sprawled on his bedroll, hands tucked behind his head, gazing up at the stars peeking through the canopy.
"So," he said, voice light but edged with curiosity, "now that I'm officially your squire, does that mean you'll finally tell me stories about the war?"
Rio didn't look up from her sword. "I was but a child then," she said, keeping her tone even. She liked the boy, but she thought after years of her influence, he would have become a little less chatty. But no such luck.
Billy scoffed. "Ser, you were my age, weren't you? And I know for a fact that everyone was involved, one way or another."
She set the whetstone down with a sigh. "That doesn't mean I have any stories worth telling."
"That’s not what I heard," Billy pressed, shifting onto his side to look at her more directly. "You were there. You must have seen things, done things."
She had.
Rio exhaled slowly and leaned back against the log, looking into the fire as if a suitable answer lay somewhere in the embers. "I was a messenger," she said at last. "A page. I took messages between our troops along the battle lines."
It wasn’t untrue. She had carried messages. Slipped between the trees, small and swift enough to avoid notice, weaving between soldiers locked in a deadly struggle. She had run through the mud, through the blood, through the aftermath of battles fought and lost.
Billy let out a low whistle. "That must've been terrifying."
She gave him a small nod. "It was. But necessary. It was an honor to protect our home."
It was a good story. A clean one. She hoped he believed it.
Billy lay back down, mulling over her words. "You must've seen a lot, though. More than most, maybe."
More than most children should.
Rio let the silence stretch between them, letting the fire pop and hiss to fill the space. She wouldn’t tell him the real story. Not tonight. Not ever, if she could help it.
She had not just been a messenger. She had been a retriever.
Smallest and quickest, chosen for the terrible task of slipping past the lines, past the bodies left behind in the wake of battle. The Empire had resources, fine steel, enchanted weapons, maps… All things too valuable to leave to rot with the dead. And so the children were sent to collect them.
She had knelt in the mud beside the fallen, hands shaking as she pried rings from stiff fingers, tore sigils from tattered cloaks, rummaged through pockets for letters that might contain intelligence. The dead had names, faces, eyes that sometimes remained open, staring accusingly into the sky. But she had never been told why they were enemies. Just that they were.
Perhaps that was why she had trained as a knight.
There was honor in a sword, in an oath, in facing an enemy as an equal rather than scavenging from the lifeless.
She’d rather be a raven than a vulture.
Rio sheathed her blade and glanced at Billy, his breathing already slowing as sleep crept in. He was still so young. Too young to know what war turned children into.
The night was thick with the hum of insects and the whisper of leaves shifting in the wind. Billy slept soundly by the fire, curled up beneath a worn woolen cloak. Rio watched him for a moment before slipping away, moving through the clearing with practiced silence.
A couple hundred paces away, she stopped, rolling her shoulders before bending to unlace her boots. It made for a better practice when she could feel the earth. Only when she was barefoot did she draw her sword.
She began her forms as she had been taught. Each motion slow, precise, deliberate. The rhythm steadied her, as it always did. Her body moved through the familiar patterns, cutting through the air with purpose.
It was supposed to be meditative. Her only focus on her blade as an extension of her arm. That had been the lesson it had taken her the longest to learn. To not see her sword as something that she carried but something that was part of her.
“One movement. One being. If you think of it as separate from you, it will be separated from you.”
But tonight there was too much to consider to linger on meditations.
She thought of Billy, of how he had come into her care.
It had been seven winters past. His parents, accused Empire spies, were gone before he even knew what was happening. Executed quickly, quietly. A warning to others. Rio had been present when the ruling came down, when the boy was left standing in the cold, orphaned in an instant.
He hadn't cried. Not then, not when she knelt before him, offering a gloved hand and an uncertain promise of something beyond that moment.
She hadn’t known if they were guilty. She still didn’t.
It didn’t really matter… what they were was dead.
A boy had no parents. And though she had no particular want nor need for a child, she had room in her home and food to spare.
It became quickly apparent that the boy carried magic in his blood. A strange, gentle magic, wild and untamed like the wind sent howling through the trees. Small creatures seemed drawn to him. Birds settled easily on his shoulders, mice scurried up his sleeves without fear. It had been that way since he was young.
When he first told her about the secrets the creatures shared with him, she’d dismissed it as a fit of childish fantasy. But he continued to tell her things that he couldn’t possibly have known himself.
A cat that had seen his owner bringing a woman who was not his wife to bed. A snake who whispered about a child stealing shiny things and delivering them to a shrine.
Once, they’d been walking together in the woods when a lumbering gray wolf showed its teeth. Rio had drawn her sword and ordered him behind her.
But there was no need. He’d raised a hand and calmly said to the wolf that they would not make a fine meal for him that day, instead they’d be willing to share some jerky from their packs.
And the beast had curled up and allowed the boy to rest his head against its thick fur.
Her ward, even among the prevalence of magic users, was special.
She had once been tested for magic, too.
Rio moved through another form, sweeping her blade through the air in a tight arc. The memory came unbidden, her small hands outstretched, a rabbit quivering before her in the tall grass. She had tried to call to it, to reach for it with something beyond words. And it had simply… stopped.
She had never tried again.
Her parents had tried to comfort her, to tell her that life and death were part of the same cycle, that even endings had their place in the grand order of things. But before they could fully convince her of that, they were gone too.
She pushed the thought aside, swinging her sword in a final sharp motion, exhaling through her nose as she steadied her stance.
And then she saw it reflected on the edge of her blade.
A glimmer of violet light.
She glanced up, looking for the source. Far beyond their camp, rising from the tallest spire of a distant tower, it pulsed like a star against the darkness.
Rio narrowed her eyes.
The House of Harkness had always been shrouded in secrecy, its power a mystery even among the Empire’s ranks. And yet, here it was. A kind of magic, raw and unmistakable, casting its glow against the night.
Witchcraft.
Witchcraft within the walls of the Empire.
“Do it again!”
The little boy in her lap squealed and clapped his hands in delight.
Agatha smiled, and even though the motion still felt foreign after years of lessons on how to be presentable, which boiled down to drawing as little attention as possible, it came easier at this moment.
She closed her eyes and focused on the pressure she felt just behind her ribs, imagining it as a slowly growing orb as she inhaled. She opened her eyes and curled the first two fingers of her left hand, slowly exhaling as she did.
A shower of purple sparks rained over the pair as the boy nestled in her lap giggled.
She buried her smile against the top of his head, breathing him in. It had been a month since she’d seen him and would be at least another still once their visit was over. He was growing so quickly these days.
“To the wardrobe, little sprout. Let’s see how much you have grown.”
Agatha opened the doors to the ostentatious piece and shoved the hideous gowns inside to the side.
“Do you need a boost?”
He shook his head, “I can do it!” and pulled out the bottom drawer to stand in it before climbing up into the wardrobe.
From a different drawer, she pulled a small file and scratched a mark just above his head.
Their secret ritual. A measure of time.
Tonight she’d scratch in his age and the date as close as she could remember it. She’d run her names over the other markings too. Each time they met, she recorded his height.
She was fortunate that the visits were more frequent now than they used to be, but he was also growing more quickly too.
“Did I grow? Can I see?”
He turned around and traced a small hand, still chubby with baby fat, over the latest line.
“You did grow; you’re getting very tall! I bet you’re going to be taller than me soon,” she teased, scooping him out of the wardrobe and spinning him before putting him on the floor.
Sparing a glance at the carvings in the wood, her makeshift calendar, she was reminded of the month.
“Nicky, did you know, we get to practice a new number the next time you visit here?”
He nodded seriously and held up four fingers on his hand.
“Four! My birthday!”
Agatha nodded. “That’s right. And I promise we’ll do something very fun together.”
She hadn’t figured out quite what that would be yet. If four would be different than three and he’d be less easily amused by magic lights and stories. She dreaded the day he’d ask her something more real.
One day he would know when she was lying.
“Will you do the lights one more time? The purple?”
There were no time pieces in this room, so she glanced out the window. The moon was beginning to wink into sight. There wasn’t much more time.
But who was she to deny a little prince?
“If you can tell me the rule,” she whispered, kneeling down next to him.
He cupped a hand against her cheek, still sticky from some earlier treat. “It’s our secret light.”
She nodded. “Good boy. You are my light. And this is yours.”
Agatha conjured one more shower of sparks and his eyes widened with such wonder she could easily watch them fall in the reflection of his irises.
Both of them startled at the sound of a rap on the door.
She didn’t mean to glare at him, but he put a finger to his lips and nodded carefully before standing and pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“I’m here to fetch Sir Nicholas. His mother awaits,” an attendant called.
They’d once at least had the courtesy to come through the door. She’d hated their pitying faces, but she hated cowards more.
Agatha flung the door open, sneering at the woman outside. “Well, don’t keep Evanora waiting then.”
She didn’t trail a hand through his hair as he left. She didn’t linger to watch him wave goodbye.
Agatha closed the door. She counted until they had walked at least fifty paces away.
Then she screamed.
She wrenched her hands through the air and sent a beam of violet light towards the window.
It shattered, raining glass down into the courtyard below.
Evanora would be extremely displeased. And this pleased Agatha greatly. It was a small comfort.
Agatha stood in the wreckage, her breath forming clouds in the cold air instead of fogging against the glass as usual. Below, the shards of glass winked up at her like falling stars, scattered across the pristine stone of the courtyard. Someone would be coming soon to reprimand her. They always did.
She turned back to the room, heavier now. One less occupant made the airy space twist into something oppressive. She leaned against the fractured frame, gazing once more toward the distant Wilds.
The trees stood dark and endless beyond the city walls, a world untouched by her mother’s careful curation. No courtyards adorned with statues of great rulers. No patrols or curfews to keep the people inside. In line. She thought again of the stories - the ones drilled into her mind since childhood, warning of the chaos and savagery beyond the Empire’s reach.
On her thirteenth name day she'd been gifted a greenfinch in a beautiful cage. It was a little too on the nose for her liking. She'd thrown the entire cage through the window. That bird had wings, it could figure it out.
A door slammed somewhere below, voices rising in alarm.
Agatha smirked.
Tomorrow was a celebration. A dreadful day. She at least deserved to have some fun with it.