Helspira rarely dreaded the dawn, but today the rising sun brought anxiety with it. Her fingers fumbled as she tied her laces and combed stray twigs from her tangled hair.
Her plan would’ve been perfect. Flawless. Merciful. Why did the banneret have to go and ruin everything?
Sink a blade into his eye socket next time you see him.
She blew a stream of air through pursed lips, loosening the laces she had tied a little too tightly in her frustration. Ben could still hail victorious, she reminded herself. Sure, he would no longer have a failsafe if she gave him a fake scroll, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t succeed in killing Vessik.
It just meant his odds of getting out safely dropped. Dramatically.
As if that didn’t sting enough, Catseye’s confession the night prior that Ben was the only thing keeping him together burned like salt in an open wound.
Across the distance, she spied the two men disassemble the tent. How long they had been awake, she had no idea, but it was long enough to dismantle the camp sight and fashion a makeshift grave for the shavugin. A large pile of rocks sat where its bones had fallen last night, and a headstone crudely made of sticks and woven reeds jutted from the stones.
“You’re awake.” Catseye’s voice beckoned her. He approached, red-lined eyes looking more exhausted than ever, as he offered her a handwritten note. “Here.”
“What’s this?” Head tilting, Helspira inspected the note.
“Everything Osta wanted me to tell you after I visited him in the afterlife. By the by, Osta was a he. And his name was Frank.”
Her burrowing howler? Helspira clutched the paper, translating the Siapharian words with haste. Expressions of gratitude were the overarching theme, but the shock of the situation overrode the writing. “I—I don’t understand, how did you—?”
“Popped into Enos in the early morning hours to find the little fella.”
“There must be a billion howlers in Enos,” she whispered, jaw slack.
“Trillions.” Catseye shrugged. “Death helped. Begrudgingly. Don’t worry though; it was no trouble. She keeps good records.”
The longer she stared into his fatigued jade eyes, the drier her mouth became, practically a desert by the time she gathered enough saliva to swallow. It was madness how fast her old scars ripped back open and allowed the horrors of her childhood to resurface. Decades of grief and Osta’s—Frank’s—skull the only friend to help shoulder those circumstances. “Did you tell her—him—that I loved him? That he meant the world to me? That he was one of the precious few things that grounded me and gave me purpose? That I’ll never forget him? That I wish I could’ve given him the funeral that he—”
“Hels.” Catseye surprised her when he met her endless verbal assault with an empathetic smile. “If there’s anything with which I am intimately familiar, it’s all the unspoken words a person wishes they’d have said. I told him everything.”
Tears pricked her functioning eye. Helspira hastily wiped them away, her throat tightening to near agony. “I wouldn’t have made it out of there without him,” was all she managed to squeak out in a high-pitched voice.
Catseye smirked, his fingers splayed on his chest. “Look who you’re talking to. Wouldn’t be standing here myself if it weren’t for Benjamin.”
Though tears still threatened her vision, Helspira scanned the letter, line for line, until confusion overtook her. “Wait. It says here he doesn’t remember me.”
“Well, yeah”—Catseye rubbed the back of his neck—“but I told him all about you. In Frank’s defense, he was already dead when you found him. One can’t exactly form loving memories without a brain to store them in. The good news is that feelingscanbe stored in a soul, and since animals, like Frank, are godless heathens who aren’t taken to any deities’ afterlives, both his essence and soul remain in Enos. You may not live on in his head, but you’ll live on in his spirit. He was very moved to learn how much he meant to you. See?”
Helspira looked to where Catseye pointed, the last line he had scrawled onto the paper. In fine, looping penmanship, she read:In a world of violence, what a beautiful thing it is to love someone you barely know.
A shiver ran through her, and she held the note to her chest. Love was a rare concept for Chthonians. To know her love for Frank, which statistically shouldn’t have existed in the first place, transcended life and death ... A tear ran down her cheek. “Thank you. This means ... everything.”
One side of his lips tugged into a smile. “The gods owe you more than that after all they made you endure, buteverythingis a fine place to start. Shall we?”
“Yes, of course.” Shaking hands wiped away her remaining tears as she tucked the letter into a small leather pouch attached to her belt. “Sorry about the emotional outburst. It’s mad how something can fester when you bury it for over two decades.”
“Or four years,” Ben called out, fastening the last string on his pack.
Either oblivious to Ben’s statement or willfully ignoring it, Catseye surveyed the ground a final time. “No need for apologies. Seems we’ve gathered all our belongings. You’re good to go?”
She donned a fake smile and nodded.
“Great.” Catseye retrieved his scythe and planted it into the ground with a grin. “Let’s go find us a wizard and steal his scroll.”
“Or just ask for it nicely,” Ben chimed in.
“Please, Benjamin, where’s the fun in that? Wizards are well-renowned assholes. Especially material component casters,” he muttered distastefully. “I bet you five copper coins we’re reduced to thievery.”
