THE ROSE BRIDE

A Juliette Harbinger Novel

Copyright 2015 Michael Adams

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All aspects of this work are intended as fiction.

1

In the months since Lincoln Harbinger died, Juliette had found a suitable but boring norm. She cremated her father, solved his murder, and collected the three baskets of jam from her front steps.

One of his former clients, Sarah Felfen, had become a friend. She was a bit frazzled but skilled. She reinforced the defensive enchantments around The Matriarch of Harbinger’s home, Creaky Manor, and taught the house’s mistress how to tap into these charms. However, what was the point of education without the promise of experience?

She had spent time with her boyfriend, Sevymas Roysch, ate Sunday dinners with his family after church, and spent the rest of her days reading her father’s files and books about various figures and events in the Township of Holly Tail. As time passed, her self-initiated studies began to slacken, and she spent more time in front of the television. With no new cases to chew on, no new mysteries to uncover, no dark secrets to drag into the light, Juliette’s sense of purpose faded. She settled into a luxurious melancholy that only the privileged would have understood as a living death. She hated her existence but had the education to know her first class problems were petty. This made her feel even more insignificant.

She was a monster. She needed bad things to happen to good people to give her life meaning. She tried to trick herself: Bad things were inevitable. She just wanted the predictable to happen sooner rather than later. No. She could not fool herself. She derived pleasure from evil.

In truth, she could have been easier on herself. Juliette never delighted in hearing the stories of victims. Corruption hurt the innocent, and her fulfillment came in forcing the questions left by immorality into resolution. She found purpose in uncertainty’s eradication, not its perpetuation. She served to heal an ailing world. Still, there was a darkness within her that was practical, and therefore justified, in its existence. The glooms could not be destroyed, but they could be commanded. She wanted to be a puppeteer, dancing the shadows on her strings. With illumination came a dark casting. This was nature. Although, when you bent and magnified the light in certain ways, you controlled the blackness projected.

Her discontent was not only due to her uselessness. She knew there was work to be done. She read the histories, official and unofficial. She knew false heroes propped their hollow world up on their shoulders, pretending the weight was much heavier than it was. They did not know true burden, she believed. They knew celebrity, and its price was a bitterness covered by the sweet dryness of champagne.

Her hum drum days of skulking about the manor, playing with her cat, Tonks, running errands, and making out with Sevymas would turn out to be a welcome reprieve. One day, she received an invitation to The Mourning Ball, hosted by Velestine Roysch, Sevymas’s mother. Its pearl white envelope had been on top of the daily newspaper. She checked the paper, reading the headline:

“TRAGIC ACCIDENT. HEADS OF ROYSCH KILLED.”

According to the article, Velestine’s brother and son had taken two months away to travel to Snowy Forks, a town of eternal winter in the Resput Mountains. They had died in an avalanche. Juliette imagined the spectacle of this party: mourners in black couture bathing the distraught matriarch with praise for her strength in surviving grief in between twirls on the dance floor. She resented her peaceful life, only to long for its continuation when something less desirable threatened to take its place. The pretense. The fake smiles. The small talk. The people whispering to her how lucky she was to have Velestine in her family after her father, Velestine’s fiancé, had died. Oh, brave Velestine, losing a lover, a brother, and a son in a matter of months. Death came in threes.

Sitting in her office, Juliette prepared to log the date in her phone and in her book planner. She had initially read the date on the invitation as being two weeks away. However, her mind had recruited her eyes for a scheme. The Mourning Ball was tonight. Velestine had planned the invites and an explanatory note to arrive two weeks before the newspaper released the story. This was still improper etiquette, as all major balls required at least a month’s notice. Only Velestine could have committed such a crime and been spared a death sentence.

Juliette was prepared to grieve the loss of her peaceful night until a thought inspired a spark of excitement. A dark stranger, a man she owed for his misdeeds, may have also been invited. Oliver Tover had inherited a seat with the elites of Newton. His name had been associated with murder, but with no evidence, a pitiful explanation, and no charges, he was owed recognition, even if superficial, as a key member of their town. Juliette had resolved that Tover had made his entrance into society, and this was his sole ambition. Now she chose to believe (once again) that a bigger picture was being painted in broad strokes of time and plotting. Did she need to think this to thrust herself into society? Or was her intuition, her divine voice, whispering to her? She was alive. There was work to be done.

2

Juliette arrived an hour late, beyond what was fashionably appropriate. She wanted to make sure everyone who would attend was present. A doorman in a white-on-white tuxedo opened the front doors to Rockden, the Roysch manor, and she walked down a small wooden hall, crossing the portal into the ballroom. The walls were a regal white with electric violet bundles of straw curling in flourishes. The floor was a dark polished mahogany. A chandelier of white lights floating amongst a labyrinth of gold, leafy, entangling vines hung from the ceiling with four smaller replicas at each corner. Along the back wall were an arrangement of cushioned gilded chairs and plush muffin-like sofas where men and women chatted, overlooking the dancefloor. Before the night was over, guests would waltz to lush and stately strings, frug to quirky and darting flutes, and shimmy and shake to funky guitars. No band was present, but the music played as if an orchestra had the room under siege. Now a ballad played, delicately trickling guitars and harps; lovers locked in each other’s arms swayed in romantic languor.

Sevymas walked over in a rush, a broad smile on his face. He was dressed like the other men in a black-on-black tuxedo. Juliette’s dress had a sweetheart bodice with crisscrossing layers of black chiffon. The skirt flared out in tumbling clouds. The softness of this dream was cut with the severity of leather gloves with black lace fringe and black ankle boots. Her eyes were shadowed a smoky gray, and droplet diamonds hung from her ears by a chain. Her dirty blond hair pinned up in a gorgeous mess, her lips nude, she excited a reaction in Sevymas that he contained by channeling it into a boyish eagerness. He had put off certain feelings in order to give Juliette comfort (and to keep her from thinking he was a dog), but this paradox of rebel and princess she presented him confused his mind to the delight of his libido. He pulled her in and kissed her, using his tongue to massage hers. She pushed him away before her eyes could roll back.

“You didn’t tell me about this stupid affair,” she said.

“My mother didn’t want to spend weeks dodging your excuses for not coming. She said you would get the invitation today and if you didn’t arrive after two hours I was supposed to take the dress she bought for you and make you come.”

Juliette was always perturbed by his attachment to his mother. He revealed her scheme like there was nothing to be offended by. She was too anxious to fight about the silly things that boys and girls are supposed to bicker over, so she smiled.

“Let’s dance,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her away. She stumbled along, half pulling against him, half giving in, and they were soon on the floor. She saw a group of young girls in the dining area snicker as Sevymas put his arms around her. She supposed this dance would not be useless. They were establishing status. The Matriarch of Harbinger united with a Roysch heir. She would give Sevymas his dance, then set about finding Tover.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“And you look very handsome,” she replied.

“I’m sorry I kept this from you. But my mother–”

“Don’t be silly. This isn’t a movie. Or a soap opera. I’ll let you know when you’ve truly betrayed me.”

He heard the dark tone in her voice. In her mind, she had imagined something sinister, an act of betrayal worthy of her fury like revealing her secrets or harming a loved one. She imagined disloyalties in degrees that warranted the punishments she wanted Tover to suffer. Sevymas mistook her warning for mere agitation, a girl who could not be direct with her feelings. He thought she was honestly mad about him siding with his mother, as if she was trying to cover her feelings to appear mature. He thought it cute that she could be jealous of his love for his mother. She was envious–not of Velestine’s hold on her son but of her power.

The song ended. The horns burst into a lively jive. The guests cheered and thrust themselves into kicks and spins causing a ruckus that made Juliette surrender her self-consciousness, laughing and applauding with giddy cheer. Sevymas escorted her to her seat in the dining area where they watched the display. The novelty wore off in a minute, and Juliette observed her surroundings. Gold plated chargers in a checkered pattern were situated in a circle at each seat. The centerpiece was a tall glass Athena, her bow lowered, her quiver filled with a bouquet of violet, black, and white roses. Juliette saw her name ornately written on the place card. She was seated to Velestine’s right. To the matriarch’s left would sit the mayor.

“Where is your brother seated?” Juliette asked.

“He’s not coming,” said Sevymas still watching the dancers. When a pal of his launched his date spinning in the air and caught her, he put his fingers in his mouth and gave a holler of a whistle. His friend waved. “I can’t wait for the guys to meet you.”

Juliette had never considered Sevymas had comrades. She never wondered what his social life was like before, or during, their relationship. What did he do when he was not with her? She had no friends. Or more precisely, she had friends that she did not see often, which she preferred. Her friend Rosalee lived in the Sisestra, a parallel dimension. Her spiritual guide, Sayshe Idris, was a friend, but he was cloistered in his holy home, his church. And finally, there was Felfen, a middle-aged woman with adult children who sometimes came over for tea and taught her magic. She and Sevymas had never had a very public relationship. They hung out at her house. Her life worked this way. She did not want double dates and outings filled with small talk. She did not want to pretend to laugh at inside jokes she did not understand. She did not want to be afraid of saying something out-of-place, or odd, or disturbing.

The song ended, and Sevymas’s friend came heading towards their table, hand in hand with his date. They walked with a smile and bounce that made Juliette dislike them on sight. She knew this reaction was silly, but she was already resentful for having to put on airs.

“Sevymas!” said the man. “I haven’t seen you all night.”

“I know, I know.” Sevymas stood and hugged his brother-in-arms, a fellow Cualquery officer.

Juliette stood. Sevymas made the introductions: Jarah Karimi and Sevymas had met in training camp. His date, wearing a black dress with silver polka dots, was Lila Stamphaven. Juliette already knew of them but followed their lead, shaking their hands and begging the pleasure of their acquaintance. The Stamphavens were a Cornerstone Family. Lila’s ancestors possessed renowned magic and aided in the forming of the Gosrin, the magical barriers that separated ethereals from humans. In her own research, supplemented with her father’s, Juliette found the most fascinating fact was the answer to a recent mystery: There was a son unaccounted for.

As Sevymas had called Juliette by name, “This is my girlfriend, Juliette Harbinger,” Juliette amended her initial impression of Lila. Jarah flashed a snarl at the mention of her, and his pleasantries, “Nice to meet you, Juliette,” “How is it being back from the Sisestra,” were stiff. His eyes were trained on her. He was quick to end the chitchat and talk up Sevymas, never making eye contact with her again. Even when she smiled, watching her boyfriend and his friend talk, Sevymas would look over with a warm grin and Jarah, his jaw tightened enough to indicate he knew she existed, still talked as if her existence was futile, laughing and yammering away about sports scores. He was a cold, gorgeous man. His bronze skin glistened. His green eyes sparkled. His slender nose gave him an aristocratic appeal. Juliette disliked men like him. He would be a wedge between her and Sevymas. She could never tell her love how much his friend detested her. He would assume his friends were her friends, and she would feel alone. Juliette believed he was a gold-digging social climber. She believed he loved the Stamphaven name more than the Stamphaven woman. But with no proof, and all of his condescension veiled in a friendliness transparent only to those who were outcasts, Juliette would only lead Sevymas into saying something infuriatingly unaware if she shared her suspicions of a man he had known longer than her.

Lila was a plump and spirited girl who plopped in Velestine’s chair and started talking. If beauty was in the eye of the beholder, Juliette did not believe Jarah, who had already written her off, was a man who read society’s story with clear lenses. She did not imagine he saw past appearances to witness the beauty of spirit, and she did not believe he rewrote the conventions of attraction on his soul. Lila talked too much about nothing, going on and on to her about collecting porcelain cats: a red cat with gold spots down its spine that supposedly came from a voodoo tribe, a green cat that was the symbol of some secret witching society, and on and on. Juliette liked her. She sensed that Lila was not pretending to not know her. Her new companion kept looking to her with urgency, as if she wanted to tell her a secret, but too many people were around. Juliette suspected, based on Stamphaven’s fascination with cats, whom her curiosity might have as its object.

Sevymas and Jarah walked off. Juliette overheard something about them getting drinks all around. They did not even ask their dates for a preference. Once alone, Lila confirmed Juliette’s deduction:

“How did you get a hellcat?” asked Lila. “What’s his name? I can’t believe you just flew him over the whole freakin’ town.” She shook her head in awe: “He is beautiful. I bet he has a strong name like... Windermere. No, no. Something more demonic. Valerno.”

“Tonks,” replied Juliette. “His name is Tonks.” She liked Lila because she believed the young woman was acting the way she would around anyone–family, friends, acquaintances and strangers. Her liveliness was not a persona, a mask for socializing, but a personality. She had trouble believing Jarah would appreciate this. There was no reason for anyone to pretend they did not know her. She had made a spectacle of herself before Newton, riding a flying beast to alert the masses of Oliver Tover’s wrongdoing. He manipulated her testimony to his advantage, slithering away to claim the Tover Estate, but she had obviously made an impression. Jarah acted as if this had not happened. Lila followed his example until he was gone. Conclusion: Jarah was oppressive.

“Would you like to be friends?” added Juliette.

“I loved you from the moment I saw you.” Lila giggled. “And, to be honest, I did first see you riding a damn hellcat, and I may have loved Tonks first and you by association. But don’t hold it against me. I love you for you now.”

Juliette laughed. Lila would be a great friend in small doses. Having officially established their friendship, Juliette was now prepared to make her inquiry indirectly: “Is your whole family here tonight?”

Lila’s hair was tied back in a tight bun. Her eyes were shadowed red, her lips even more scarlet. She sat up, smooshed her face in puzzlement, and said: “Well... I guess... I suppose it depends on what you know about my family. In one sense, yes, everyone is here. But my brother is a lost cause. He’s a monk.”

“I’ve spent time at the Church of Conscious Divinity,” said Juliette, leading Lila to her next revelation.

“Oh I know. I remember you exonerating the church from that mess concerning Rosalee Amador. They are always trying to pin it on my brother and that head monk.”

“Sayshe Cantor is your brother?”

“By blood. He refused the Stamphaven name so by law he’s been disowned. Cornerstone rules.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, when our mother dies he will be disinherited in essence as well.”

“Sorry for being fascinated. I just find family history interesting.”

“No, no. I get it, Matriarch of Harbinger. And I suppose I owe you a cup of tea considering all of the prying I’m about to do in your life. You will tell me how you tamed Tonks.”

“Maybe.” Juliette smirked to appear coyly sly.

“I knew you would love a useful friend. I promise to be worthy. What connection would you like to make? And don’t lie. That’s the only reason you would come to a party like this. You Harbingers are notorious homebodies. Sevymas was always biding his time to debut you to our circle. He said you were very antisocial. But I knew what that meant. You just don’t like a lot of phoniness. People think you’re stuck up like you’re too superior to play the game and quite frankly... you are.” She laughed. “Now confess.”

“Would you introduce me to the other Cornerstone families?”

“I knew it. And yes.” She touched Juliette’s hand with her fingertips, beamed a bright smile, and hopped up, her dress bouncing. She sashayed through the crowd, Juliette followed, and they proceeded to mingle.

The five families that united the ethereal races under one realm were the Stamphavens, the Likeses, the Chobins, the Trinavellis, and the Roysches. As Juliette met each matriarch, she would take a moment during Lila’s monologuing about various subjects to peruse around the table, noting the place cards. In each case, a family member was missing. Juliette knew the Stamphavens had a son whose existence was barely noted, even her father only had a few scant notes on his whereabouts. He graduated high school then disappeared. Now she knew the lost son was Cantor Jaykes, who had already proven his allegiance to her enemy. She had studied the immediate members of each Cornerstone Family and each one had a member not present at the ball: Seraphin Likes was a known adventurer in her mid-twenties; Ruka Chobin, an honors student at a prestigious university, was skilled in water nature; Faniel Trinavelli, an alpha socialite in his mid-thirties, was often considered the ringleader of the Cornerstone heirs; Burgess Roysch, a young man in his early thirties, served as a liaison at the Department of Borders, a position for political gain not income; finally, Tover was clearly absent as well.

After the mingling, Lila and Juliette returned to where they had sat. Juliette was afraid of probing questions, but Lila said:

“I thought the men went to the watering hole for drinks. I guess they were distracted hunting mammoths or pterodactyls.” She looked out, scanning the ball. “There! Dancing. Oh my.”

Juliette followed her gaze to the dancefloor and saw their partners rolling their eyes, trying to pull away from two girls who kept pulling them back to dance. The girls were twins wearing matching plain black dresses with long white gloves. Juliette was ready to break her acquaintance with Lila but resolved that she would have to keep her new friend entertained for a while longer. However, a reprieve came.

“Juliette,” said a voice.

Two hands rested on her shoulders. Juliette looked behind her to see Velestine bathed in curls of cascading violet that hugged her breasts and waist before falling in torrents to the floor. Juliette hated this woman; she loved her. Even an alien attending this party would have known at first sight that this matriarch was the most formidable, even if not the most powerful, force in this room. In her presence, Juliette instantly felt young.

“Hello,” said Velestine to Lila.

“Hello,” replied Lila, suddenly the picture of demureness as she sat erect with her hands in her lap. “Thank you for inviting us.” She swallowed hard.

“Could you get us some refreshments please?” asked Velestine. “It seems my son has forgotten his manners and his nerve. He really needs to learn his priorities.”

Lila nodded without making eye contact. She was off quickly enough to suggest she was anxious to leave and would not be returning. Velestine had intended this effect. She claimed her seat at the head of the table:

“And what are your priorities?” she asked. “We haven’t really had much time to talk seriously, without my love-foolish son around. What dark corners of our world are you investigating now?”

“I’ve just been enjoying the slow days,” replied Juliette with a tense smile.

“You don’t enjoy tedium, Juliette. You made it a point to garner introductions to the Cornerstone families. I was hoping for this. It was why I had this party. You need a chance to hobnob with the elites, making connections. You should have done more conversing to leave an impression instead of taking notes of names. What did you find?”

“People are missing.”

“Yes.” Her air was disinterested. She scanned the room, overlooking her guests while not seeing any of them. “Burgess felt this farce was an insult to his brother’s and uncle’s memories. He staged an act of protest by not attending. I’m telling people he’s just distraught with grief. People believe it. He’s sensitive that way. People expect it to be particularly rough losing a twin, like waking up with half of yourself missing. Maybe you should go check on him. Take him some dinner.”

Juliette took this suggestion as a command. She was partially correct, just too severe in her judgment. It was a recommendation. Velestine had noticed an oddness in her child’s behavior and could not get him to open up in any meaningful way. He appreciated the little things she did for him, opening his curtains to awaken him in the morning, casually sharing memories of their loved ones at breakfast, but he still walked about in a silent stupor. Velestine noticed his demeanor was no longer of grief but of contemplation. He was a boy who lived in clouds, but now he was living too close to the ground. She was concerned.

She could not enlist Sevymas’s help. Her family was not a family as a collective. For her three living sons, they were attuned as people with no affinity to one another. Sevymas, Burgess, and Valen agreed on one principle: They were a family only with their mother. When she watched Sevymas in his sparring sessions with his tutor, they were a family. When she critiqued Burgess’s poetry, they were a family. When she told Valen he could have learned from his uncle that pretty looks were not a skill, they were a family. However, when Burgess walked in on Sevymas’s training, or Sevymas sat at the breakfast table when she and Burgess had been alone, her sons became a bit fidgety then settled into an attitude unbefitting for family. They talked like acquaintances. This phenomenon was the most unnerving because they knew this was not how they should have gotten along.

Soon she would be dead, and there was no hope that her family would stand united. She was okay with this as long as she could ensure their happiness. Unfortunately, their fates were sealed on a scale from mediocrity to tragedy. Sevymas’s existence would only be in full validation for as long as he knew Juliette loved him. Velestine knew the young girl was doing her best–she was not a bad person–but the aspiring matriarch was not as enraptured with her son as he was with her. He loved her with a passion one might have underestimated, as it spun in a heat locked under a façade of typical, boyish masculinity. Velestine knew that if Juliette ever came to value happiness over ambition her son would be broken under the epiphany. He could have noticed her true heart some time ago had he not been so emotionally unintelligent. He confused the love he saw in her as her soul alighted when it was his own. Juliette told herself she loved Sevymas, and in some way probably did, but Velestine knew Juliette’s feelings were a mask to shield her from her true motivation: She loved being linked to power. Harbinger was smart enough to know Sevymas’s love provided opportunity but good enough to not acknowledge how fundamental this was to their relationship. She loved him. She was not in love with him. Velestine would have intervened but there was no play. Sevymas was too foolish and deluded to understand the complex truths of pretty girls. It was best that, if the other shoe dropped in her lifetime, then she, as his mother, should remain untarnished by any games of love and power. When Juliette broke him, she needed her son not to think his unhappiness was in any way validating to her. Juliette did not realize that love, and not maneuvering, was the key to her future. If Juliette could promise Sevymas unconditional loyalty even in the dearth of true love, then Velestine would have made her the sole heiress of Roysch magic.

Velestine sat a moment in silence, reaching conclusions she had reached many times before. Juliette watched her with an edge of jealousy. Velestine insisted on not being a cliché beauty. They were having a conversation, and then she had lost herself in thoughts that seemed quite profound judging by the stalwart expression on her face. Then Velestine came to, flashing her violet eyes at Juliette. Just as Juliette was beginning to feel an equal as matriarch to matriarch, Velestine would remind her that she was a tolerated ally.

Velestine clapped. A man came with a tray. She got up and left, smiling and waving as she drew attention with every step. Juliette took a hint, taking up the tray to bring to Burgess. She realized the only portal was the one through which she had entered the ballroom. However, she blinked, and a violet door with a black handle appeared against the wall. The man who had brought the tray opened it for her, and she stepped through, walked down the hall, and knocked on the opposite door. No one answered. She entered.

3

The room was small. The room was lit. The walls were red; the floors, oak and unpolished. In the center was a sterling silver table, propped on a long sterling silver needle, tentacles that weaved into a sharp point, balancing the top. An envelope had been placed with great care to look like it had not been placed with great care. It was directly in the center as if also balanced on the needle but slightly cattycornered to avoid too perfect a symmetry.

Juliette had no consideration. She did not think any of this was none of her business. She did not hesitate. She placed the tray in the corner and picked up the blank envelope. The table crashed to the floor in an embarrassingly loud clang, the sound reverberating from the surface and echoing off the walls. Ink bled through the envelope, reading, “Juliette Harbinger.” The enchanted letter must have had different messages for different possessors, thought Juliette. She was a little flattered to be an intended recipient.

She opened the letter:

Dear Juliette,

I would have expected no one else, no one less. Only someone who knows there is a mystery afoot can access this room. Only someone who knows my secret can read this letter. Tell me, is it easier already knowing the culprits, or is the burning question of why, oh why, enough to keep you on your toes? Maybe it really is all about the journey after all. Maybe hiding in the shadows would be a silly gimmick reserved for the weak. Maybe this is more fun. A game. Maybe there are clues in this letter. Maybe there is a cypher in here? No, there isn’t. I’m too lazy for all that.

I and my merry band are on a quest. We seek a power only found in legends. And we need your help. We need you to participate. You have something of value necessary to complete our spell. We have told you this, and I bet you still can’t resist hunting us down. You have teeth.

Give us what we want. When you are ready, hold the object we desire in hand, prick your finger on this needle, and you will be taken to us. If you possess the intention of double crossing, know the duplicity in your blood will betray you before it touches us. Until then, every day there will be a new death.

You have three chances to fulfill our wish with the most honest of intentions.

Your friend, your foe,

Oliver Tover

The letter disappeared in a puff of black smoke. Juliette had three things of magical value: her diary, a sliver of a hellcat’s claw, and Tonks. The morally stupid would have judged her for not bringing these possessions to this very spot, of not pricking her finger and conceding. Even Juliette felt a dread as she questioned her character. She could have ended all of this tonight and spared a life in the morning. Unfortunately, she was rational even at the expense of appearing evil. Good people caused so much harm in their attempts to validate themselves as moral. They judged others. They protected the short-term goodwill of their community at the expense of its future. If she gave Tover the pages of her diary, or the claw taken while the hellbeast was still feral, or her beloved Tonks, how many would be hurt consequently? If a single person died every day, how many days would pass before the death toll matched the destruction of Tover’s plot? Could she witness death after death, knowing this was best? Could she face the real tragedy of dead bodies piling up due to her inaction? Could she stand strong that she knew best, especially if someone–Sevymas–found out she was letting these deaths happen? Either she let someone die tomorrow, hoping to solve the murder, or she surrendered now. If she did not resolve Tover’s puzzle with the one death, how many more before she gave up?

He wanted the leaves of her diary. Tover had been to hell. He was a powerful mage. He could have found his own hellcat. Only her diary possessed a magic that may have been beyond him. If she went home tonight, she could make a proper duplicate and still have the essence to face him in the morning. He had a store of mana, blood infused with pure essence, one of the most volatile substances in ethereal existence. Combined with her pages, there was no choice but to believe that only Death would reign.

A witch often channeled her essence through her blood. The blood acted as a medium between the witch’s spirit and her environment, allowing her magical potential to flow and influence the world. Some possessed a rare condition, where the essence in their inner realm, where the soul resided, leaked into the blood. The blood was not a medium for magic but the substance of magic itself. Rosalee Amador possessed this essence-enriched blood. Tover had used her condition to destroy a small town. Rosalee was sentenced for execution, punishment for the crime. Juliette exonerated her by revealing she was used as a weapon. Tover deflected the blame on another. He had drained Rosalee of her mana but was still gathering the ingredients to complete his spell. Juliette was not optimistic. She was not so desperate to believe the world was a safe place to allow herself a fool’s hope. She had the last piece to Tover’s spell. He would not have shared so much if he still needed rare ingredients to be collected. He was not the kind of villain to deliberately make his life difficult for a thrill. He was not the criminal who bated the detective because he needed a friendship of equals. Tover reached out because she had what he needed. When she lost that, she lost her relevance, her power. Tomorrow, she would allow one person to die for a chance to save them all.

4

Unable to face the crowds, Juliette went home. When she left Tover and Burgess’s little room, Rockden had provided the way. She opened the door and was returned to a hall. The doormen had the doors already opened, and she looked out into the void of night.

In Creaky Manor, she sat in her office, gazing over the computer screen. She checked her email, browsed for a movie to watch, checked her email, ate a dinner of chocolate cake and potato chips, checked her email, and then finally settled half-heartedly on a film about a father rescuing his kidnapped child. She drifted in and out of her thoughts, trying to gather everything she understood about Tover. She knew him, but she had no reason to know him. She only had a sense of him, an intuition. He had once said they had met. She had a suspicion this was not precisely the case. He had probably heard of her. She had not met enough people in her life to forget anyone–unless he was in disguise.

Two o’clock in the morning and she lay in bed with a face full of make up. She had changed into her powder blue cotton pajamas but could not bring herself to wash up. The night was designed to destroy defenses. For all of her accurate reasoning, the truth that someone would be dead in the morning broke her. She sobbed. The helplessness turned her stomach until it cramped. The failure of her existence, the dominance of Tover, created a haze that engulfed her being, leaving her with a sense of nothingness. Nothing was around her. No one was here. No one would understand. She could do nothing. She cried until there was no other choice but to sleep.

She awoke at four, feeling rested. Clarity evaporated the fog. She needed to make preparations. She called Sevymas and left a voicemail:

“Someone is going to die today. I need to know everything about it. It’s important and no one can know.”

She called Velestine and left a voicemail:

“Your son is involved with Tover. Someone is going to die today, and I’ve told Sevymas he needs to tell me when it happens, when the report comes in to the Cualquery.”

Finally, she made the call that she should have made when this predicament was first presented. She dialed Sarah Felfen.

“Sarah,” said Juliette. “Someone is going to die, and I need to know immediately.”

“Meet me at the spice shop,” replied Felfen. A click. She had hung up.

Juliette prepared for the day. She showered. She threw on a pair of jeans, a dark red t-shirt, and a pair of black sneakers. She did not make up her face. She quickly tied up her hair. Calling the Roysch’s when they were most likely asleep was preferable. She did not need Sevymas barging over or Velestine begging an explanation (like Velestine ever begged).

With the first cracks in the night sky leaking the first rays of sun, Juliette arrived at Rufus’s Spices and Elixirs, Sarah’s place of employment. Through the window, she could see a light on in the back. The store was made of long, broad, vertical planks of wood, unstained and splintering. The façade had warped, leaving spaces for birds to stuff their nests of twigs and straw. The store name was painted above the wooden door in cursive.

Juliette went inside. She coughed, assured she was breathing in the dust floating all around. The small space was cramped with shelves. The walls were shelves. There were aisles of more shelves reaching the high ceiling and a central area where the shelves were waist high. They were stuffed with plastic bins filled with herbs and jars, nothing marked. Walking past the store area she reached the counter with the register. She lifted a plank bridging two sections of counter, placed it gently behind her after walking through, and found Felfen in the back, cooking up a storm.

Potions were for nerdettes. Witches of true substance could rely on the elegant brutality of their essence to conjure demonstrations. Potions were time-consuming crutches. The nuances of the art required a dedication to books and experimentation that many did not have the patience to master. The goal of every young and eager witchling was the same: to quickly make her own grimoire so she could inherit her family’s–her mother’s–own magical tome. The grimoire stood as an icon of her magical potential, ripe with her developing essence. In a coming of age ceremony, the witchling’s volume was united with the spells of her generation and she could spend the rest of her years on the leading edge of history, mastering her ancestor’s achievements and adding a few tricks of her own. A seasoned witch only learned to make the several potions necessary to enhance her gifts. The few who did appreciate the art were often brilliant prodigies who preferred cloistered lives. They chose to live apart from society in the Sisestra.

Sarah Felfen loved potions. She loved books. She loved experimenting. For no more and for no less than this love had she spent decades studying volumes from all corners of the Gosrin. She tried recipes from fables meant for instruction but dismissed as fiction, or worse, children’s stories. She experimented with ingredients from rumors whispered by drunk mages prattling on about how their mothers turned their fathers’ mistresses into dancing frogs, counting sheep, and coin-laying hens. Whereas most witches crafted their grimoires with the essence of spells, Felfen infused hers with ink-written recipes. When her book was complete, she cooked a potion that instilled her essence throughout every molecule of its pages. She glided from the bottom to the top of her class in the time it took to spill the cerulean liquid.

Now, with a lot more heft on her frame, a lot more frizz and gray in her hair, she looked over large and small pots boiling in various degrees on eight burners. The back room of the shop had even more shelves but the center was a long countertop of stoves lined up side by side. Juliette sat on a stool in the corner without saying a word and watched as Sarah stirred, tasted, stirred again, and simmered ingredients. She took bushy stalks of felzin, stringy roots of ephezra, and the stewed leaves of white tea and placed them aside. She then took a teaspoon of liquid from the five large pots that remained and poured it over the plants.

“The key to this spell is not to infuse your essence while cooking,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron while observing her heap of raw materials. “Also, the solution requires separate boilings, and it takes more to make less. Those are the tricks. The greatest secrets are often unlocked with the tiniest keys.” She closed her eyes and held her hands over the mixture.

Every master has her secrets, and even if she shares many, there are always a few she holds back. Sarah implemented the last tidbit of knowledge without a word. Witches often learned to employ a fine stream of essence. However, Felfen perfected her potion with essence not finely milled, but left a little grainy. The solution turned from a muddy water into a translucent gel. She took her concoction and went to the shelf behind her. She waved for Juliette, who stood at her side. A map was laid out. Felfen poured the potion over this icon of their town.

“Find an essence diminished, one prematurely finished,” she said.

“Can we find her before it comes to that?” asked Juliette.

“Find a waning essence, diminished before its crescent.”

The gel lay in a lump. After a moment, a huge glob representing a large concentration of life rolled in a ball, resting on the children’s hospital. Sarah picked up the board with the map and moved it to the counter space at the end of the stoves. She dashed out and returned, rolling an old, torn leather chair. Juliette sat and watched the map. Sarah patted Juliette on the head and went to work on her next tasks. She cooked eggs and bacon, ate with Juliette, their eyes on the map, then began preparing the store for opening.

Juliette began to doze off until she felt a nudge. Sarah held out a vial of smoke. Juliette quickly opened the container, held her mouth over the rim, and allowed the silver gas to rise into her mouth. The mixture revived her. She looked around, and, finding a potions book, decided to do some reading. She had never taken potions seriously. She had little essence for fueling spells, and yet she overlooked one of the most obvious tools at her disposal. Potions were potent and required little essence, using nature’s power as a buffer for natural potentials. As a student, she had been determined to procure power but via a path of minimal resistance. The crafting of her grimoire was more efficient, less versatile, and more deadly than potion-making. If she was not willing to invest the energy in learning the fine particulars of cooking herbs then it would have been time and effort wasted.

While waiting, she received a voicemail from an agitated Sevymas:

“Juliette, what’s going on? I’m at your house. Where are you? What is this murder you think is going to happen? I have patrol but I’ll be back for lunch.”

She received another message from Velestine:

“I’m sure you have it handled. Let me know if you need anything.”

Juliette did not understand why the women in her life were so much more agreeable to her than the men. Was this her relationship karma or did this signify the difference in nature between the genders? If she found Sevymas too overbearing, was there a point in assuming another man could give her the support she needed without the stress? Sayshe Idris believed in her power. Her father probably would have been inclined to leave her to her own devices once she had proven her capabilities. But they were not like other men. So, she needed a man of rare character. Sevymas validated his existence by being a protector. He would always cast her in a role of damsel. He could make compromises at times, trusting her to fulfill her mission. However, he would always want to see himself as an equal partner in a purpose reserved solely for her, her life. He wanted to lead his own career and be a major shareholder in hers. She would have to be the woman behind the man in his world, and the woman who stood next to him in hers. She needed a man who understood that investigating was the vehicle for her life purpose and this journey was hers alone to travel. When the road became rocky and slithered down dark trails, perhaps a boyfriend in the Cualquery would be a liability and not an asset. She had already made illegal maneuvers in her quest. She had already created a secret self to hide from the man who wanted to know everything about her. She loved him, but she loved herself more. He would not hold her back. She would not compromise her happiness to fulfill his vision of their shared existence. He could accept her or find a flimsy girl who needed to hang on his arm for support. He needed a girl who would make her purpose his own, to become the trophy every politician needed to display for his ascent. She could surrender her ambitions and value the purpose he gave her or sacrifice her dreams for their love. Because when did a man ever let his goals fall away to accommodate love? In a moment, she hated Sevymas, her supposed partner.

It happened at ten o’clock. The glob disintegrated into an array of tiny beads that scattered across the map, rolling in circles. The beads dissolved until one was left, spiraling in on its destination. It rested on a single spot, turned red, then disintegrated, staining its mark. Juliette did not understand the spell, but she knew it was too late. If the bead’s size correlated with the essence, becoming smaller as the essence faded, then the bead was the life she had sacrificed. Gone.

Juliette was enraged. She ran out of the store, toppling over a customer, and made her way to the scene of the murder.

5

Samantha Millpeg walked on Main Street, along the yellow line. Drowned in tiers of sheer tulle, strangled in a corseted bodice sparkling with diamonds, she marched in her wedding dress with a bouquet of black roses. A tiara glistened in her raven hair. The shop owners came out to observe the scene. Cars rode by with heads stuck out of the windows. Some applauded. Some whistled. Some recorded a video on their phones. Everyone gawked.

Samantha stopped, and the roses shed their petals. On currents of air, they fluttered about her, multiplying in a column of potpourri. Their fragrance was sweet but dewy, delicate but pungent. Samantha breathed the poison and fell to the ground. The petals rained down, blanketing her.

When Juliette arrived, she shoved her way through the crowd. The Cualquery marked the site with three circles of floating yellow tape. Sevymas was among the four officers present. She called to him. Jarah heard, glanced at her, then resumed inspecting the victim. She called again, and Sevymas came over.

“Juliette, we need to talk,” he said.

“I need to see the body,” she replied.

“I will call you later.” He turned his back to return to his duties.

“Don’t walk away from me,” she commanded. “I need to see–”

Sevymas spun around, blushing as he saw the bystanders looking at him with wide eyes. “Excuse me, Matriarch of Harbinger,” he replied, “but there are protocols that not even you are above. Officer Karimi and I were first to the scene. We will preserve the evidence until higher ranking officers arrive.”

Boos emerged from the crowd. Juliette was too upset to care. She had embarrassed herself in much grander fashion in the past. However, contrary to her understanding, these heckles were not directed at her. She had proven herself when she had testified on behalf of Rosalee. She had defended the daughter of a beloved citizen, Kiro Amador. Town officials “encouraged” Amador to step down from office. This perceived injustice, an example of bureaucracy punishing a good, strong man for being associated with something unsavory, strengthened the town’s dedication to him. He had done nothing wrong, but politics did not care about the details.

Amador vouched for Juliette. She had the support of a man who was a leader without being a politician. She had uncovered the existence of dark magic long thought buried in the ruins of their history. She had proven herself more competent than the Cualquery and the Reginal. Juliette did not know her reputation had swelled into complicated layers of paradoxes. She was ignored. She was respected. She was hated. But still, she was respected. Jarah Karimi resented her. The town did not want what they needed, another Harbinger. Like her father, she would be insistent and superior, marching over red tape for the good of the people. Her actions would continually suggest that the institutions designed to keep them safe were faulty to the point of antithesis. They contradicted their own purpose.

Now, a girl lay in the street. Their daughter, their sister, their mother, was a lifeless shell. Harbinger had saved Amador’s daughter. She discovered the culprits that the Department of Laws still had not captured. Samantha Millpeg needed Justice. If the township could not provide their brand of this virtue, then its righteousness was in Juliette’s hands.

“JU-LI-ETTE. JU-LI-ETTE,” chanted a man. And soon a chorus rang, fists in the air.

Sevymas raised his hands. The song of protest rang louder. He put his fingers between his lips and whistled. The crowd quieted. Juliette turned and pushed her way through the gathering people, leaving the scene behind. She had caused enough trouble. When she heard renewed jeers, this time directed at her, she was satisfied she had made it up to Sevymas. She had won and lost her town in a moment. They felt rejected. The girl they were ready to trust with the power of Justice had deemed them unworthy. She was just like her arrogant father.

6

Juliette drove home. The images drained her. She played in her mind how Samantha Millpeg must have died. The film rolled and rolled. The young girl woke up and found the wedding dress and bouquet at the foot of her bed. She saw them as a sundress and her wallet. Then she had this urge to go to Main Street. She had no reason to do so, but her will pointed the way. She walked the miles, people stared, but everyone kept moving in the stream of their own lives, only taking a moment to note this oddity. Oliver Tover killed Samantha Millpeg. Juliette had also killed her. She had to tell someone. She could not tell anyone. She pulled into her garage, her eyes burning with grit, her eyelids heavy. She went to pull the handle of her car, but she was too weak. She needed to sleep for a moment. Her head fell back, and she passed out.

A knock on the window. She took a deep breath. Had she fallen asleep? She felt naturally alert, but her consciousness had hovered in a space between reality and dreams. She had heard chirping birds and had felt the sweltering heat in her car. Sweat plastered her hair to her face.

“Juliette! Wake up!” Sevymas tried the door. It was locked. “Juliette!”

She thought she had opened her eyes. She thought she had said hello and opened the door. Was she still asleep? She opened her eyes like they had only been closed for a second. She was not groggy. She sighed, shook her head, then opened the door and climbed out.

“Are you serious?” asked Sevymas. “You cause a scene during an investigation then come home and fall asleep in a hot car in your garage?”

Juliette went to the door, unlocked it, and went inside. Sevymas was talking. He fell silent when she peeled her shirt off in the kitchen. All along the way–through the foyer, up the central stairs, down the hall, to her room–she dropped another piece of attire, leaving a trail. Sevymas knew not to follow. These were not breadcrumbs.

She restarted her day. She took a shower, styled her hair, and refreshed her face with a little foundation and glossy lips. She slipped into a pale yellow sundress that flared into a pleated skirt with hand-beaded butterflies, also yellow. She slipped on a pair of dark blue ballet slippers and returned to Sevymas who was waiting in the living room.

He did not realize how her appearance affected him. His concern was not just propped on pillars of events: her mysterious call and the murder. He and Juliette had battled Death. He suspected she had even held the reaper’s hand, welcoming its visit. Seeing Juliette out of character in jeans and without makeup, he experienced an unconscious fear. He felt she had surrendered, and if the challenge they faced had already defeated her, then he was defeated as well. His heart imagined them buried in the debris of a fallen castle. He only experienced this as a feeling of crisis. Thankfully, when she returned to him as a vision bathed in light, she was restored in her glory. His heart resumed its usual pictures of lovemaking, marriage, and children.

Juliette did not have the privilege of unraveling. Samantha Millpeg needed her. The next victim needed her. There was only one acceptable resolution: Defeat Tover now. She would not relinquish her grimoire. She would not let another girl die. And with this promise came her first question: Why did she assume each victim would be female? She knew this to be true. But why?

They sat on the sofa. Sevymas was happy he did not have to say anything. She immediately explained her theory of the crime: Her father had hung himself. Despite no proof of curses or hexes, she did not dismiss this as a suicide. In time, she and Sevymas discovered that his uncle, Valcogne, and his brother, Burgess’s twin, Logan, had murdered him. Lincoln Harbinger had discovered the existence of an illegitimate Roysch heir. She allowed Valen Roysch to seek retribution on behalf of his sister, executing Valcogne and Logan. This sufficed as Justice for her father, or at least some kind of karmic balancing. She had mostly accepted the idea that Velestine and Valen would never tell her everything that had happened. She moved on, forcing the case closed. Yet she made one gamble. She gave the secret heir of Roysch a journal made from the pages of her unusual grimoire. She enchanted the book to serve its new mistress well. Valera Roysch had a diary that would keep her secrets from everyone except its true master, Juliette. As Valera wrote, the writings appeared in Juliette’s own tome. She learned the secrets of the Head of Roysch, Velestine’s brother, Sevymas’s uncle. Valera refused to burden Valen with the trauma of her experience. She turned to her book as a confidante.

Why was Valera so precious to Valcogne and Logan? Why was preserving the secret of her existence worth killing Juliette’s father? Valera was the child of Velestine, a Cornerstone witch, and a Lazan, an evolved vampire. This mix of blood was deemed by Valcogne the abomination foreshadowed in a prophesy, a spell so mysterious and so powerful in its hold over a mind that it was thought to have been a vision of the future. The spell to conjure The Pearl could reshape reality from the abomination of an abomination. Valcogne continued his father’s work to procure this power that was long thought a myth. He and Logan took the abomination of Valera and sought to see her birth another kind of abomination, their offspring.

Juliette did not tell Sevymas what she did not concretely know. Valera may have been pregnant with her uncle’s or her brother’s child. She also did not reveal the mechanism for gathering her intel in order to keep her diary a secret. Only Velestine knew the power of her pages. Juliette simply revealed the device that most likely subverted Samantha Millpeg’s freewill, the Illusia Apple. Somehow, Logan Roysch had obtained its recipe and indulged her father to suffer a bite. No typical potion could counter a consciousness’s power of choice so absolutely than this relic of ancient magic. Used in a time when kings and knights needed to seduce princesses to ensure alliances and power, the Illusia Apple was the concoction of a dark witch. She traded kingdoms for fortunes.

“So you think Burgess is working with Tover, and he used this Illusia Apple to make a show of killing Millpeg?” asked Sevymas. He sat back, running his hand over his head, taking in the revelation.

Juliette confirmed his summary.

“So what now?”

“We need to kill Tover,” she replied.

Sevymas looked to Juliette. She was hunched over, peering at him with a focus that made him question the identity of this woman. Her eyes seemed surrounded in dark circles, a possession. He said nothing. She continued:

“We will need your mother’s help.”

“No.” He shook his head with a snarl. “She stays out of this.”

“Tover is too–”

“Either we do this alone, or it doesn’t happen at all.”

“Fine,” replied Juliette.

Sevymas’s eyes widened. Juliette did not see this expression of shock because she had looked away to stare out the window lit with sunlight. He was waiting for her to say something to free them from this evil.

“We won’t do it then,” she finished.

Sevymas collapsed on the sofa. Juliette had just been distraught, he thought. In truth, Juliette abandoned the plan because she saw no purpose in a suicide mission.

Now that he was assured Juliette had fully returned to herself, he reached to the ground, picking up a red file, and held it out. Juliette saw him reaching for her in the periphery of her vision. She saw a flash of crimson. She took the file and read it.

Sevymas had received a call from Kiro Amador. The former First Captain asked him if Juliette suspected the man who had harmed his daughter as the culprit in Millpeg’s death. Once Sevymas shared Juliette was working on the matter, he was relieved from the crime scene and returned to headquarters. The file was on his desk. A red folder was used to assign low ranking Cualquery members their inoffensive duties. Now, he had found information above his station.

Juliette perused the contents. Two dead leaves had been found in Millpeg’s mouth. She saw this as confirmation that Tover wanted her grimoire, the leaves symbolizing two pages. A magical examination, an etheocryptisis, was performed on the rose petals. The test found five distinct essences, the identities unknown. Juliette made her next deduction:

“It didn’t matter,” she said. “Someone had to die.”

“Good,” replied Sevymas.

Juliette shot him a glare.

“I’m not apologizing.” He leaned over, placing his elbows on his knees. He nodded as he thought. “You didn’t really explain that call, but I see how odd you’ve been acting. It’s been like you blame yourself for what happened. But now you know.”

“There will be more. And he still wants something from me.”

“Okay, walk me through it.”

And she did. The five essences were overkill to conjure a spectacle, especially from five members of Cornerstone Families. Juliette believed Millpeg was a sacrifice, requiring all five of them to contribute, to have the proverbial blood on their hands. Their essences were now stained with darkness. A portal to blackened realms had been opened in their spirits. The roses were dyed black. The wedding dress was a deliberate touch. These were symbols. Black roses were the insignia of a warlock.

“There are no such things as warlocks,” said Sevymas.

“We call them demons,” replied Juliette.

“No. Demons are scum. Warlocks are dark legends.”

“Sevymas, if you ever meet a demon, you need to acknowledge him as a warlock. Do you understand me? Your life could depend on it.”

“Then I’ll die with honor. Demons are not my brothers.”

When human men married ethereal women, they and their children inherited essence upon conception. These men became known as mages. Over the generations, mages sought to enhance their magic, to find an equivalency to women free from the conditions of natural law. As a result, three evolutions of mages occurred: wizards, warlocks, and demons.

Wizards were Sevymas’s heroes. These gallant men used the essences imbued upon them by their mothers to drive themselves through relentless training, earning skills parallel to a witch’s potential. They were geniuses. They were prodigies. They were inspirations. As levels of magic waned throughout the Gosrin, wizards ceased to exist. However, as darker times once again emerged from the horizon of history, Sevymas, and many others from the Cualquery, found hope in knowing that if the darkness was growing, then so was the light. If evil could find power, then wizards could rise again to fight them.

Warlocks and demons were regarded in stories as men who sought shortcuts to self-actualization. Warlocks were hunters, stealing power from other ethereals. Demons were perversions, infusing their bodies with the parts of goblins, the warped souls of the deceased. Warlocks dishonored the legacy of mages, but they were still counted among the race. Demons were a class of their own. They were a new creature.

The Township of Holly Tail instituted a campaign to have demons removed from consideration as members of the witching order. They changed school curriculums to ensure this new classification. They used prejudice to obscure simple logic: Warlocks took power from other magical beings. Therefore, mages who took power from hell’s creatures were warlocks.

In the Sisestra, Juliette studied the unadulterated histories of her people. The Sisters did not hide dark knowledge. Sisters were entrusted to be noble and to use all knowledge as weapons to ensure their survival and prosperity. Demon was a term assigned by the witches. The race given this name did not define themselves with this moniker. They took it personally when witches forced this label as an icon for their existence.

Juliette was careful with her usage of words. She always referred to the beings that made contracts with goblins as demons when in the presence of other witches. However, she used the word as if surrounded in quotes. She refused to deny her awareness of the truth to herself, even if she did so with others. She knew Sevymas spat on these powerful corruptions of witch nature. Their town had educated within him a hatred for the race. Today, she was going to have to evaporate this fog of misunderstanding for his protection.

“Sevymas,” she now said. “They are not worth dying over. And it is a basic right of humanity to be able to define ourselves. They are corrupt. They are foul. But we will not be like them. We will give them the birthright of freedoms they would not give us. Do you understand?”

Sevymas shot up, standing on his feet. “What does this have to do with anything?”

She stood, facing him. “The flowers were dyed. The color was deliberate. Black roses are the symbol of Samarian.”

“The demon ruling family. Tover is working for Barnabas Samarian.”

Juliette shrugged. Sevymas kissed her on the cheek.

“I have to get back,” he said, and he left.

Tonks jumped on her lap. She stroked his white fur with violet spots, hearing him purr as he walked in circles on her thighs.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asked.

He settled in, curling up as he lay.

Juliette spent the rest of her afternoon and night wondering, theorizing, and plotting. She left a message with Sevymas saying she was going to bed early. He should not have called unless it was an emergency. After an hour, he replied he was going out with friends but to always call if she needed him. She grimaced at the word needed.

7

Velestine was alone. Burgess had disappeared. Sevymas had called to say he would be out with friends. What better excuse existed to have her own friends over for dinner?

The walls of her dining room were wallpapered in sea blue stripes with dark leafy flourishes. Over the fireplace, painted white, was a gilded oval mirror. The eight chairs around the wooden table were cushioned with flowers in violet, coral, and blue, the backs plush and buttoned. Their frames were gilded in strokes of gold that curled to a peak at a cerberus’s head. The central dog head eyed straight ahead, flanked by counterparts looking out in their respective directions, their expressions alert.

Her invited companions were Mayor Frederick Rector and Official Klendall Sheek of the Department of Borders. Velestine had spent years cultivating the proper dynamics with male authority figures. The Ole Boys Club thrived on the blood of friendship; however, a woman too friendly presented the wrong impression. Velestine had to compartmentalize her relations. She had to be the untouchable socialite in public, the drinking buddy in private. Whereas career women and men could joke at balls and in drawing rooms, Velestine could not risk this level of familiarity. She would quickly become the punch line or the tease. As a socialite, there was an inclination among official working types to trivialize her existence. Her air of superiority was her virtue to counter their dismissal. However, their inferiority was underpinned with a prejudice, a spiteful need for domination that, among the men, would have expressed itself in a sexual assertion if she were not careful. They were gentlemen, but a scratch too deep would have hit a reservoir of resentment and entitlement that possessed them and drowned her. She had to be the social dominatrix, intermingling pleasure and dominion. At parties, she would use the force of her presence to establish herself as royalty. Then in private, she would grant a favor here and there. She was a queen but benevolent. Next, she would allow them to return her gestures. She was not a queen but an ally. When she invited them over, the drinks would flow, and after a good song in which she sang off key, they were friends. And when they overstepped in public, over assuming their friendship granted them privilege in society, she would crack her whip. Men learned that Velestine Roysch was one of the boys not to be messed with. Unlike many women, she did not have to tolerate lewd jokes or be regarded as an exception to feminine nature to be accepted and succeed. Men understood she was to be talked to with respect as an individual and as an example of her gender. She was still resented, but she got by gloriously.

She kept the drinks flowing well before dinner was served. The spirits were dark and glowing, potent yet warm. Dressed in jeans and a silk blouse with her red stilettos, she remained elitely casual. Klendall felt comfortable enough to unbutton his pants, allowing his belly to fall out. Rector unbuttoned his top button at the table and loosened his tie. They ate the tender and luxurious meat of the happetoi, an ancient tortoise whose shell was ground into a powder to treat arthritis. Velestine led in song, deliberately singing off key to make her guests feel even more welcome. They sang:

And a merry farmer found a golden egg

Made a wish for his ailing leg

He woke up feeling oh so good

Then went to jail for three men dead

Klendall slapped the beat on the table. “Bom bom, bom bom,” sang Frederick high and low, preparing for the next verse:

And a merry vixen found a golden straw

Made a wish for her only flaw

She woke up feeling oh so good

The mole was gone with a ratu’s claw

A ratu was a bird reviled with the stigma of a rodent. It was representative of filth and decay. Its claws were poisonous.

Three more rounds about a merry mage, a merry witchling, and a merry wizard and amongst cheers and laughter, Velestine asked Klendall to get some cigars from the living room, and she escorted Frederick to the drawing room.

In Holly Tail, the more expansive homes had several kinds of public rooms. Living rooms hosted guests upon immediate arrival or for short visits with very new introductions. Drawing rooms were for deeper acquaintances to have fun telling stories or for casual lunches. Salons were for games with furnishings of card tables and dartboards. Finally, offices were for the closest of confidantes. All great rooms had a cart with decanters of liquor.

Velestine and Frederick left humming and waving their arms as if conducting a magical, drunken chorus. Klendall hurried so he would not miss any of the jovial spirit. Unfortunately, as he entered the living room through the portal opposite his comrades, he found Juliette Harbinger sitting in an armchair.

8

“Hello, Mr. Sheek,” said Juliette.

Sheek gawked at her for a moment, trying to recover from his buzz. The liquor still lightened his head. He could not ground himself. The songs of merriment still lightened his soul. He could not be the politician.

“Miss Harbinger,” he said. He burped. “Excuse me. What have you come to extort from me now? Make it quick so I can have a chat with your future mother-in-law. Because that is where it’s all heading right?”

The room was dimly lit by a lamp on the table next to Juliette. He walked over, took three cigars from a box, stuffed them in his pocket, then plopped in the chair adjacent to the intruder’s. He eyed Juliette. “Get on with it girl,” he said.

“Well,” she replied, “the best part of my friendship with Velestine is that I have access to Rockden. I can come and go as I please. And when I heard you were going to be at this little shindig, I could not resist seeing what you looked like drunk.”

“Ha ha, Miss Harbinger. HA HA!”

“Do you believe Tover had something to do with Samantha Millpeg?” she asked.

“Ah. So Velestine sensed you over here and sent me into a trap.”

“I suppose.”

“Oh, I know... If she had set this snare, her dear Frederick would not have been here.”

Velestine knew this was how Klendall’s mind would work. She invited the mayor just to obscure her participation in this ambush. When he returned, he would mockingly scold her. She would take false airs, lamenting the awkward position that family, especially the young ones, put their elders in, and they would resume their enjoyment.

Klendall already knew what Juliette wanted, and he was inclined to be her aid. She was useful to him. She served as a kind of unofficial private investigator, digging up dirt on his enemies without dirtying his hands. She saw him as a necessary evil; he saw her as a glorious opportunity. There were loyalties he doubted, and Juliette would provide just the test for them.

“Samantha Millpeg. Tover.” He tapped his chin, pretending to ponder. “I cannot officially state–”

“The black roses are the mark of Samarian.”

He smirked. “Juliette Harbinger, how would you know so much about the ruling demon family? There are only thirty people in the Township of Holly Tail who have ever crossed acquaintances in the demon lands, and even fewer with a Samarian. Not even the books of the Sisestra tell much given how recently their new ruler has assumed power.”

“The wedding dress,” she continued. “Are they pushing for a union between demons and witches? Maybe an arranged marriage between the elites and the ruling family?”

“Are you interested? Would you take one for the team? You have no ties, and you have the station. You would make an easy sacrifice.”

“I’m not a bargaining chip. Put something on the table for me or just start talking. And I’ll let Velestine know you are interested in my well-being.”

“Harbinger has come to play. What do you know about demons?”

“They make agreements–”

He slapped his knee. “This isn’t school, little girl.”

Juliette leaned over, preparing to enjoy the stupid look on his face after she made her revelation: “I know you are making deals with Barnabas Samarian.”

“Velestine, that bitch.” He blushed. That word. Yes, he had issues with women superseding their capabilities by insisting on governing, but he also believed in etiquette. And his discriminations never applied to Velestine. She was an exception even if she insisted on this silly sisterhood with other women and children like Juliette. His mortification was not only from fear of her wrath, but from the terror of losing one of his only true friends. She helped him in career and in life. Taking her boys as his assistants did not make up for the good she had done just by believing in him. “P-please... please don’t...” A tear fell.

“You are drunk. I’ve cornered you. And what happens between us will always be our own business.”

“Th-thank you,” he replied. “I knew you were a team player when I met you. What do you want to know?”

“Diplomacy with Samarian is an obvious. It wasn’t something that needed to be confirmed. The heads of all the races do their politicking. But your overreaction suggests there is something major in the works, something vital that is tying Holly Tail to the demons.”

“Yes. Well, times are getting darker.”

“And you want an alliance with the demons?”

“God no, I don’t. But, yes. The mayors, the Board of Leaders, and quite a few of the major departments, think it’s time to keep our enemies close. Samarian has wanted us to consider hiring his people as mercenaries.”

“And Tover is an ambassador of sorts?”

“Well, he did come from hell.”

“And Millpeg?”

“Samarian swore a single act of revenge. He needed to displace his lover to become a sole ruler of unquestioned authority. We insisted on an execution as an act of goodwill, to ensure that when we made agreements there would be no obstacles. He wanted a pound for a pound.”

“Why her?”

“It was enough of a show to make a point. He’s such a flamboyant bugger. But she’s no one, so it doesn’t significantly harm negotiations.”

Juliette wanted to slap Sheek. Samantha was not no one. She was someone’s friend, someone’s daughter, and could some day have been someone’s mother. Someone may have died because she was not alive to save them. Someone may not have fixed their broken world because she was not around to encourage them. Juliette became embarrassed. She was a hypocrite. She had sacrificed Millpeg’s life. First, she had claimed her death was for the greater good; now, she placed this honor on her potential life.

“Thank you,” said Juliette. She excused herself and left Sheek to stumble his way back to his friends. She returned to the little red room with the metal table. Another note had been prepared for her. She picked up the envelope, the tabletop crashed down, and she read:

Dear Juliette,

This first death was a necessity. The next will be for what we desire. If you have shared our secrets, then know you will not pass our test.

Your confidante, your protégé,

Oliver Tover

Juliette had already deduced he was no liaison between Samarian and Holly Tail. He was self-serving. He played games with whimsy. He was not about the politics. Still, it was interesting to note that his appearance correlated with a major time in the affairs between demons and witches. Tover had made the township afraid enough to consider a once implausible alliance. He overwrote generations of learned prejudice with one spectacle of destruction. She had no choice but to have faith in herself and face the beast.

9

The room was made of dark wood. A plush stool, upholstered in burgundy velvet, was situated under a speaker mounted on the wall. On the next wall was a glass box displaying a skinny twig. When Burgess Roysch had entered the room, the wall slid over the portal. He kneeled on the stool, and the room descended.

“State your name,” said a voice covered in static from the speaker.

“Burgess Nathaniel Roysch.”

“Who are you?”

“I am my dreams.”

“If you had dreams, would you be here?”

“If I had dreams I believed in, I would not be here.”

“So you are not your dreams. You are the impossibility of those dreams.”

“Yes. As of now, that is who I am. I am lost.”

“Who were you before?”

“I was my brother’s shadow.”

“But?”

“He is gone now. And even if he weren’t, can I be the shadow of someone I do not understand. I am not like him. I thought we were halves of a soul displaced.”

“That would explain a dual nature.”

“No. It wouldn’t. A soul does not have sides. It is one. If you divide it, it is halved but each half is still a whole.”

“And yet you were his shadow?”

Burgess hesitated. “Yes, I am lost.” He and his twin had diverged over the last months of his loved one’s life. It started with a scar. Logan had come home with a scratch over his eyebrow, and he would not explain where it came from. Their only difference had been their hair. Born before their mother enchanted her children’s eyes violet, their irises were dark brown. They had slender noses and round eyes. Logan had wispy auburn hair, while Burgess had a lush, wavy mane of fair blond locks that were suspiciously uniform. His hair had not been enchanted. His hair had not been dyed. Each strand was untainted by another tone. Each strand was the color of every other strand. He was regarded as the more beautiful twin. He preferred his brother’s mane. Logan’s hair could capture the sunlight.

His mother explained to him his brother’s and uncle’s misdeeds. He considered Valcogne a father and was disappointed in his mother for vilifying the only relatives who cared about him enough to spend time with him. His brother was his best friend. His uncle dismissed the nanny because he had wanted to teach him how to tie his own shoes, how to shave, and how to tie a bow tie. He loved his mother. He did not resent her for her delegated parenting, but she owed those who cared for him without salary more respect. He knew Logan and Valcogne had hatched a plot to save their beloved matriarch. He just did not know the details of their scheme until she revealed them. He pretended to accept her degradation of their characters to honor their memories. They loved her. He would continue to love her.

He did not condemn them for their crimes, but he also did not empathize. Logan had been capable of a deed he could not have designed nor executed himself. He did not love himself, nor his brother, nor any ideal, nor any dream, to such a height to consider that breed of violence. He understood murder. He understood sacrifices. Did this make him a hypocrite? Their actions had left Valera alive. What did alive mean in the wake of their perverted scheme? No, he would have rather killed someone than subject himself and someone else to such a sordid bond. Thinking of his brother as a mirror, Burgess was filled with self-disgust. He vomited with just the image of taking off his shirt as he stood over her unconscious body. He was not, nor could he have ever been, his brother’s mirror. He had been his own person this whole time, and this confused him.

“Do you wish your brother returned to you?” asked the voice.

“No. I miss him, or some idea of him. But he deserved his punishment. I would feel guiltier if he were alive.”

“Your mother?”

“I should want to save my mother. I should want to continue his work. But he’s done too much. We don’t owe her anything.”

“What will you do with the power of creation?”

“I will create my brother as my idea of him and resume being the shadow.”

“Go deeper.”

Burgess shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Read what’s in your pocket.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Did your brother help you?”

“No. My mother helps me with my writing.”

“Are they poems?”

“She says they are. She says they are great works of art destined to be unappreciated. She says they are too unpretentious to be respected.”

“Will you read them?”

Despite himself, Burgess was an indulgent artist. The voice’s insistent curiosity stroked his vanity. He wanted to share. He wanted to delight. He wanted to entertain. In this moment, the impending death of his mother weighed on him. She understood him. Maybe if it was just the two of them, maybe if their family was whole with one mother and one son, their lives would be different. He took the scrap of torn paper from his pocket and read the poem created from lines written, scratched out, and parts rewritten:

There once was a knight

Who walked down a rocky road.

He saw a gorgeous light

And dared to follow.

He approached the cliff, wondered “What if?”

And jumped screaming, “HELLOOOOO?!?”

The voice laughed. Burgess had performed his piece, allowing the hello to fall and echo. The voice requested to hear the second work. Burgess obliged:

There once was a knight

Who found a frog.

He asked, “Dear brother, why cry?”

And fell over a stumbling log.

The frog laughed at his wicked craft.

“So high, so low,” he replied.

The voice chuckled. “They remind me of the Old Songs, but they are not as simple.”

Burgess folded the scrap and put it back in his pocket. “The Old Songs are oppressive in their base moralism. ‘Do this. Don’t do that,’ they say. I aim to achieve the dual and interdependent nature of our existence.”

“Who are you?”

“I am my dreams.”

“Who are you?”

“I am my mother’s only son.”

“Are you ready for the power of creation?”

“Grant me the power of creation.”

The twig snapped. The room shuddered, coming to a halt. The wall with the speaker opened, and there stood Cantor Jaykes. He wore a garnet coat with silver buttons and a ring, a square cut obsidian set in a band encrusted with diamonds. He opened a red box and presented the same ring to Burgess.

“When you put this on, you will walk the path of Life and Death. You will be presented with a truth of creation that will destroy you. You will rise from your ashes or remain buried in the chaos of your castle. This is the last choice of your life, if you choose.”

Burgess held out his hand. Cantor slid the ring on to the finger. A scream. Burgess held his head, falling off the stool. He curled into a ball, his breath huffing in torrents, and his trial began. He saw a story and was reborn.

10

Juliette knew Tover’s objective: two pages from her grimoire. She had brought them to Rockden hoping an epiphany born from Sheek’s testimony and her desperation would have prevented this course. She did not consider herself stubborn for not revealing to Velestine or even the mayor her intentions. She believed in Tover’s power and his malevolence. He was conducting an operation years in the making, and he would not have left the magic of Holly Tail unconsidered or underestimated. He had worked hard so he could have his pleasure. She had to find the loophole in his scheme.

She pricked her finger on the needle and it revolved, its metal tendrils appearing to slither. The drop of her blood balanced on its tip; the device took her measure. Deeming her fit, the section of flooring under her descended down a dark hole. When the floor stopped, she saw rays of moonlight. She saw bars of darkness. Her eyes adjusted. No, they were metal bars. She was in a cell. Above, the ceiling had been sealed. There was a bench against the wall. She sat and waited. Burgess appeared. She recognized the coat as a distortion of the garment worn by the Sayshe, Cantor Jaykes. It was red with silver buttons. His slacks and boots were black.

“The pages, Juliette,” he said.

Juliette handed him the leaves through the bars. He reached for them, and she pulled them away.

“I want to speak with Tover,” she said.

“Stop playing games.”

“I participate willingly only with explanations. Your enchanted table did not see that as a large enough betrayal of pure intention to kill me. Why did you defile your mother’s essence by allowing Tover to penetrate Rockden?”

“Maybe I haven’t applied myself like Sevymas, or even Logan. But that doesn’t mean I need help to create a simple room in my own home.”

“And the table?”

“A Roysch heirloom.”

She handed him one page. He quickly seized it then left. While he was gone, she stood on the bench and looked outside the barred window. She saw nothing but a bluish swirl, the result of a privacy spell. She assumed this was Tover Hall. How many other homes, even amongst the most antiquated, would maintain their dungeons? Minutes later, Burgess returned with a key. He unlocked her cell, and she followed him through the dark halls lit only with the moonlight from barred windows. They walked down stairs and now the passages were lit with torches. She gathered the cell must have been some shed. They were now traveling through underground tunnels, most likely to covert sections under the estate.

Their destination was a circular room. The high walls were of a sapphire-colored stone capped with a golden dome. The torches burned with a black fire that bathed the chamber in a crisp white light. Against the back wall, Oliver Tover sat on a high throne. In descending steps at each side, two Cornerstone heirs sat in low chairs. Burgess left Juliette standing before her captors and took his seat directly below Tover on the main floor.

“Welcome, Miss Harbinger,” said Tover. “It is good to see you again.”

“Likewise, Tover,” replied Juliette.

“Don’t lie. We need to have open communication for this to work.”

“I guess you wouldn’t understand the value of facing the one you want to kill. I bet Samantha Millpeg didn’t see you coming.”

“Ouch, Harbinger. I’m hurt. But to earn your respect, I solemnly promise that I looked that stupid, lovesick puppy right in her eyes as she surrendered her will to me. You would know how useful romance can be to the ambitious.”

Juliette was surprised Tover had gone through such labor to manipulate a rather small cog in his manipulations. She had assumed Millpeg was under the trance of the Illusia Apple, not Tover’s seductions. Tover had the power to hollow a woman with fantasies. When a lover began to imagine him, she also allowed him access to her inner realm. Juliette continued the banter while weighing her theories for his modus operandi: One, Samantha was just fun. She was so young, so impressionable, that he owned her with a smile. Tover was in his early twenties. His eyes were narrow, giving him a passionate glare. His dark hair had been cleanly cut. Samantha could have been the boy-crazy type. Tover presented himself as a mature sophisticate, and Samantha launched herself into daydreams of marriage. However, how long would that have taken? Juliette doubted such magic was instantaneous. It took time for the unconsciousness to be penetrated, reverie after reverie sinking into the murky depths of psyche. Tover would not have bothered himself with such a silly girl. He would not feel fulfilled, only insulted, by such a conquest. He would value degrading powerful women, not teenagers. So her second assumption would be that Burgess did not share the secret of the Illusia Apple. She disregarded this. Tover knew too much about all of their histories, probably through Cantor Jaykes’s talents. He knew the Illusia Apple existed. He had the magical potential powerful enough to create it. She had always wondered about the nature of Tover’s essence, and now she understood. He was too powerful for a mage. He was not a demon because then the township would have never cleared him for inheritance and especially residence. In this moment, epiphany finally struck. It was not the realization she wanted, but it helped.

“It’s time to end these games,” said the sole woman, Seraphin Likes, sitting at Tover’s left, a step down. “You two are surprisingly smitten with one another.” Seraphin had long, light green hair that was brushed to one side, falling in waves over her shoulder. Her eyes glowed blue, like light refracting on a crystal.

“We are still not settled on the rules,” said a young dark-haired man seated below Seraphin. He was pale, his limbs sinewy. He sat with his legs crossed, his head resting against a fist. Juliette recognized him as Ruka Chobin. He continued: “I still believe the choice should be hers.”

“We make the rules,” said Jaykes, seated at Tover’s right. Juliette recognized him by his shoulder length blond hair and his diabolically rational demeanor. He was intelligent to the point of heartlessness.

“I disagree,” replied Ruka. “We have to adhere to the spirit of the law. An attempt to subvert nature for our favor will backfire on us. We move forward with the current or risk being washed away.”

“A vote,” said Burgess. “Lady’s choice?”

All except Cantor raised their hand. Burgess continued:

“Veto?”

“Nay,” said Tover.

“The matter is settled.”

The only one who had not spoken was Faniel Trinavelli. He sat below Cantor. A broad and muscular man, he was the oldest, being in his mid-thirties. Juliette found him so unassuming that, despite his large frame, he had been mostly invisible.

“I will present the grounds,” said Ruka. He rose from his throne and escorted Juliette to a small octagonal room papered with black roses. The floor was covered in a Persian rug. Four black arm chairs were situated in the center. Ruka and Juliette sat across from each other.

“The other page please,” said Ruka.

Juliette felt the gut reaction to debate, to try to exchange more information for the page; however, a deeper instinct told her not to antagonize him. She handed him the folded paper.

“Thank you,” he replied. “Juliette Harbinger, you have been challenged to a duel by The League of the Yellow Rose. You can pick your challenger. You can choose your Gladius or name a proxy and serve as their supporter. If you do not accept this declaration of arms, then twenty-five more will die each day until you do.”

“If I accept this duel, will Tover release his victims from his spell?”

“Yes.”

“And what’s the purpose of all of this?”

“None of your concern.”

“You wanted a fair fight. Equal knowledge. Equal power.”

Chobin sat back in the chair and touched his fingertips together. He smiled. Juliette understood these proceedings. Ruka was the most noble member of The League. She had to utilize him while they were alone, and he seemed forthcoming. He needed little prodding to divulge details. She sensed his loyalty to The League was superficial. With Ruka’s support, she was ready to make a gamble.

“This concerns your clever little grimoire,” he said. “Tover is keeping its nature a secret, but he’s given us a glimpse of its power. It birthed a hellcat. Some members think it’s a caricature of our ancestry. I think it’s brilliant. Either way, we need it for our spell. However, you are its master. We need to strip the pages of your essence. You must die. Murdering you would only lock your spirit tighter around your diary. But a duel is a sacred death. We believe your fall in combat will neutralize your magical possession of the pages, and then we can use them for our ends.”

Juliette sighed as she crossed her legs. “Fine. Bring me Sevymas Roysch and a cup of tea. Two sugars and a squeeze of lemon.”

Ruka nodded. He stood and left to make the arrangements.

Juliette’s heart pounded. She appeared relaxed but anxiety suffocated her. She forced herself to breathe. There was a part of her that was always curious about righteous killing, that wondered what it meant, how it felt, to take a life, an evil life. However, now that the time had come, after Rosalee, after Samantha, she just wanted to blink and be home. She should have told Velestine. She should have told Sheek and the mayor. But none of this mattered now. She had every intention of living. Her chest calmed from its heaving. She had to stay centered until Sevymas arrived. Then she would find a way to bring Tover to his knees. She was elated. She was afraid.

11

Sevymas rushed into the room, slamming the door open. Juliette was upset at having her teatime disturbed. She stood to greet him, but he hugged her, squeezing the air from her lungs. She pushed him off.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Juliette caught a whiff of beer. She looked to Ruka.

“He won’t take the sobering potion.” Ruka handed Juliette a vial of clear liquid and sat in the chair.

“We need to be alone,” said Sevymas with a demanding glare.

“No, he can stay.”

“Juliette.”

“Take the damn potion.” She found drunkenness distasteful. She valued efficiency and excellence. Why would people dull themselves for a buzz? Sevymas read her stern demeanor for the judgment it was. He knew his sense of her superiority was an insecurity of his. He tried to earn her. However, he now saw her look at him with disgust. She confirmed his worst fears. He wondered what would happen if she realized the truth, that he was not good enough for her. He could live with this secret shame of unworthiness, but seeing her share in this truth made him want to punch something. She would not stop looking at him, babying him, pitying him, trying to make him follow a simple order. He took the vial, swigged down the contents, and felt instantly alert and refreshed. He apologized for his behavior.

“Whatever,” said Ruka.

Juliette was embarrassed by her boyfriend’s behavior. Ruka was the epitome of class, reason, and fairness. Sevymas had represented her poorly. This typical, chest-thumping male behavior was not the nuanced intelligence and poise she needed in order to face The League of the Yellow Rose. She calmly explained the situation to him, and then made her request:

“I need you to be my Gladius, so I can fight this duel.”

“No,” said Sevymas, shaking his head.

Juliette blushed. A tear threatened to deepen her humility but she wiped it in a movement so swift, Sevymas flinched, mistaking the gesture for something more aggressive.

“I can fight this for you,” continued Sevymas.

“Don’t act like you understand what is happening here,” replied Juliette. “This is my challenge, and I will fight it. Will you support me or not?”

He grabbed her gently by the shoulders and gazed into her eyes as if he could use his words to reshape her consciousness. He spoke slowly. “Juliette. You do not have the training–”

She flung her hands up and threw his arms away from her. “Don’t talk to me like a child. Put your manhood aside and stand behind me.”

“That is all I do, Juliette. I stand behind you.”

“Do I march into Cualquery headquarters and start making demands of you? With the exception of Samantha Millpeg, which I am sorry for, I have never interfered. I have never suggested that you couldn’t be an officer without me.”

“No, Juliette. You just suggest that I can’t be someone you depend on. Tell me that you confide in me the way you did my brother. Tell me you don’t partly wish I was more like Valen.”

“I chose you.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“Yes,” she said. “I wish you were as open-minded and appreciative of my will as he was.”

“I do respect you.”

“You respect me, but you don’t appreciate me for who I am. You would be happier if I let you gallop in on a white horse and handle everything. But this isn’t your life path. It’s mine. My role is to explore these parts of our world, and you should be there when I need you. That’s how life works. You will work on becoming a captain of the Cualquery, and I will hang on your arm and be your trophy at galas and balls and whatever nonsense when it’s mandated. I know my role in your life, but you need to step back and know your place in mine.”

Sevymas put his hands on his hips. His face was pursed with frustration. “Juliette–”

“Stop saying my name.” She cried, the tears choking. “Y-you’re really not going to do this for me.”

“Do not take it personally. As an officer–”

“Shut up!” She collapsed into the chair and dropped her face into her hands. This disappointment. The fear. The concrete revelation. Sevymas was the only man alive she trusted. She knew he struggled with certain conventions of masculinity, but he had always put them aside for her in the past. She needed him more than ever, and even though he was inches away, he was not there. She had no one. She was alone. She was going to die.

“I will do it,” said Ruka. “You can elect me as your Gladius.”

“No,” said Sevymas, raising his hand to Ruka. He directed his next statement to Juliette: “I don’t care if you’re mad at me. This is life and death. No one is going to conveniently teleport out of the arena. I’m still not sure how Valen avoided finishing our own fight. But here, these people are not trying to play tricks. They want you dead, and you have to be able to kill them first, in your heart and then on the field. I’ve never taken a life, but I know it’s inevitable. You have a chance to walk away.”

“No one asked you to be an officer,” replied Juliette. She wiped her face. She looked at him with coldness, like every feeling of warmth she had towards him was now extinguished. “Since my father died, I have had plenty of time to think about my life, where it was going, the positions I might find myself in. I haven’t spent my life just sitting around. I have a mind of my own. I exist even when you aren’t around.”

“Alright, I’m sorry. I will–”

“I accept your offer Ruka.”

Sevymas could not look at her. He bowed his head. “I am trying to say I will–”

“It doesn’t matter now. I don’t trust you. I don’t believe you anymore. I don’t believe you will ever stop silently wishing I were someone else.”

“I do love you.”

“And that’s the problem. You think the parts of me you want to change are easy little fixes. You can’t just wipe them out and think that I’m the person left over. You don’t get how fundamental my independence is to me. It is what makes me different from everyone else.”

“Look.” He bent down on one knee and looked to her. “I am sorry. We can...” He dropped over, falling into her lap.

“Sorry,” said Ruka. “We just don’t have the time. I put a little something extra in that potion.”

“So you never intended to let him serve me?”

“I knew you would realize before the second part of that concoction kicked in that I was the best choice.”

She stroked the back of Sevymas’s head. How had it come to this? How could she trust a stranger more than her own partner? Why did love mean struggle and sacrifice when it came to sharing a life with a man? If she took so much pride in her independence, then maybe that destined her to loneliness. She was silly to think she could be her own person and still meld so completely with another. With Valen, she could be a dreamer but not a matriarch. With Sevymas, she could be a matriarch but not an avenger. With Ruka, she could now be everything she had imagined. He was Sevymas’s inverted twin. The Roysch heir was a man who personified knighthood. The town of Newton saw him as a hero before he even wore a uniform. Still, Juliette did not trust him with the entirety of her being. Now, there was Chobin, the villain. Commonsense dictated she weighed his every word and action, but she took him at face value.

Ruka took Sevymas and propped him up against the chair. He held his hand out to Juliette. She placed her palm in his, and he tucked it into him. Arm-in-arm, they escorted each other back to the arena. She whispered in his ear. He listened. And with no question and no debate, he would obey.

12

Juliette stood alone before The League. Ruka had resumed his seat on the low throne.

“Where’s your champion?” asked Seraphin.

“Don’t be silly,” replied Tover. “My Juliette does not need some barbarian to fight her battles. I am sure the Roysch fool is preparing as we speak to serve his better half.”

“No, he will not be in attendance,” said Ruka.

“He is dumber than I thought,” replied Tover.

Ruka continued: “He insisted on being her proxy, and she refused.”

“Of course. What else could have happened?” Tover sighed. “Let’s get some excitement in here. Juliette, set the terms.”

“I accept the declaration of The League of the Yellow Rose to duel. I name Burgess Roysch as challenger and Ruka Chobin as my Gladius.

Tover clapped: “Duelists, take a moment. But before you play sidekick, Ruka, please tell me you will make some more of that delicious ambrian along with desabread and oil.” He looked to Juliette: “Ruka is not much of a fighter. But he’s a stellar chef.”

Ruka nodded, and The League took a fifteen-minute hiatus. Each member left through various portals that opened in the walls. Juliette chose not to move. Since arriving, she had spoken and acted as if she were being watched. Her cautiousness may have led her to failure. As she thought about her exchanges and impressions of Ruka, she had sensed they were communicating covertly. She believed he was her ally. Watching as he rolled out a silver cart, she waited for him to look at her, to acknowledge her as a friend now that they were alone. Instead, he placed golden goblets on the broad, flat arms of each throne and a plate of bread in seasoned oil on each seat except his own and Burgess’s.

The thrones were made of cherry wood. The back of Tover’s seat was higher and more ornate than those of his lower followers. The wood curled in flourishes around each side then crossed into an X at the head. This marking was hollowed out like a coffin and lined with yellow roses.

When the time had passed, The League resumed their places. Roysch stood opposite Juliette. Ruka stood at her side. From the shadows emerged Velestine, wearing a violet blouse, her black pants tucked into thigh high boots. She stood next to her son.

Ruka placed a hand on Juliette’s shoulder. “Take a breath.”

She was trembling. She had never considered Velestine was complicit in her son’s affairs. But the small red room was in Rockden, Velestine’s domain. She assumed Tover had given Burgess the enchantments to hide the space away. And the table, the Roysch artifact? Velestine was helping him. She had sent Juliette to his room, which led her down this rabbit hole. The Matriarch of Rockden had not tried to help her, she was luring her into Burgess’s, and hence Tover’s, plot. When Burgess gained access to Velestine’s full essence during their duels, how could she defeat such power? Their bond as mother and son, her dreams for her child, his love for her, would manifest in the enchantments of the duel as an unstoppable weapon.

“I-I can’t do this,” she whispered to herself. Covering her mouth, she willed herself not to cry.

“You have no choice. If you surrender, your death is guaranteed. Your only chance lies in moving forward. This is a law in Life and in the duel.”

He sounded cold. It had been a trap. He had dropped subtle indicators of his loyalty. Or she had deluded herself into thinking he was a friend to keep from feeling alone. She had told him her plan. She had given him a part to play. Again, she tried to remember why she felt close to him. He had fought for her rights against Tover. He had acted as her representative and won. Then, he had allowed her to make her own decisions. Juliette realized her mistake. She was so desperate to have a man value her intelligence that she projected all of the qualities she wanted in Sevymas on to Ruka. He had said plainly that his purpose was to ensure the success of the spell. She did not believe him, because she did not want to. She needed to believe that someone was on her side. In a room full of enemies more powerful than herself, she felt Death. But then she remembered this feeling was not a stranger. She had felt it before when her father had died. She had resolved to live, to have justice, and she won. She had won her life for herself and her father.

Velestine kneeled before Burgess. He spoke the unsheathing spell:

“A sword is drawn. Be my pawn. Formed in wind and sun, we will fight as one.”

Red flecks of light burst into a spiral around Velestine. They gathered at the center of her bosom. From the orb, a diamond hilt emerged. Burgess seized his weapon and removed from his mother’s soul a radiant violet blade, emanating a white light that blinded the onlookers. Once the light had faded, The League of the Yellow Rose applauded.

This manifestation of brilliance came from two souls attuned in clarity. They shared a vision, a light. Juliette accepted this duel would be to the death. There would be no last-minute miracles. She spoke her unsheathing spell:

“A sword is drawn. Be my pawn. Formed in wind and sun, we will fight as one.”

Ruka knelt on one knee. He opened his mouth and her own sword appeared from his bowels. She pulled the handle, feeling the blade slide against his throat, and revealed a sword made of ice. Translucent with a shade of blue frost, the sword felt odd. She thought it hummed. The magical weapon vibrated with power. She looked to Ruka with surprise: How had they manifested such a powerful sword?

“Are you prepared?” asked Ruka, wiping his mouth of his own fluids as he stood.

“This sword is your essence.”

“Well you did not have much essence to contribute. Are you prepared?”

“I’m ready,” said Juliette.

The opponents walked to the center of the arena, their swords held erect before them. They stood back to back.

Tover took two yellow roses from his throne and pinned one to each duelist. He smirked at Juliette, but she was not baited. She had not taken her eyes off Ruka, who gave a stern nod. What had happened for their souls to find a union? Juliette did not care. There was a victory to be procured. And when she had won, she would give Ruka any reward he desired.

Tover returned to his place above the spectacle and recited the initiation, his own thoughts more elegantly stated by a poet:

“On the eve of every doom, there is a yellow rose in full bloom. The petals are drained of their sun, and in darkness, they are overcome. There is always death–there is always life–but who will endure the apocalypse this time? May you be granted the power of creation, the gift of deviation, because with a duel, there will be a cruel renewal.”

From the walls erupted four trunks made from entwined tendrils of bark. Violet flowers blossomed from buds. The trunks traversed in arcs and when they met above the duelists, the challengers felt a force thrust them forward. The duel commenced.

Burgess pivoted and slashed his sword as he spun around. Juliette ducked. They circled. Burgess stepped forward and engaged. The fighters clanged swords in measured strikes. Juliette knew he was taking her measure. She deliberately held back, appearing the novice. She acclimated to the surge of energy, Ruka’s essence. She felt him with her, an iciness with a warmth at its core. The attack quickened, but she kept pace. Burgess tried to drive her back to the wall, but she fell to the ground, swiped her leg under her opponent, forcing him to jump, and she cast the spell she heard as a whisper in her ear:

“Reaper of frost, feel the cost.” A beam of ice shot from the sword, hitting Burgess in the air where he was powerless to dodge. He landed on his back, moaning. He gasped. The patch of ice where he had been hit grew, the cold stealing his breath. He writhed. Opening his mind, he felt his mother’s essence, a comforting force. The ice shattered, falling in tiny crystals. He jumped to his feet and charged Juliette. They resumed their volley of strikes. He plunged his blade and cut her cheek. She spun and slashed the fabric of his coat at his waist.

“Fate of fire, billow with desire,” he said and a flume exploded between them, blowing her back. He opened himself to more of his mother’s essence, becoming faster. Juliette channeled more of Ruka’s power, trying to match his speed. But in a glimpse she saw her enemy’s eyes. They were crazed. Veins rippled around his soul’s windows. He slashed furiously. She fired her ice beams, but he smacked them away with his sword. He laughed, feeling invincible. His dreams were his. Creation would be his. He would make the world over, and he felt the power of his mother’s support. This girl he had tolerated at his dinner table on Sundays represented the corruption of his family, everything he was trying to purge with Creation. She was not his family. Sevymas was not his family. And soon, he would never have to pretend to share blood, to share a soul, with such horrible pretenders. No one was who they said they were, and yet they always sat at his table.

He charged, raised his blade, and brought it down with all of his force. Juliette raised her own weapon as a defense. Flames engulfed his sword, and she felt the sear against her face.

“Stillness of the lake, like Time’s essence, create,” she muttered, straining to fight him off her. Water rose from the cracks in the stone floor. She deliberately fell back, destabilizing Burgess, who had not expected this maneuver. She dropped to the floor and rolled away. Burgess tried to run for her, but he could not move. The water had trickled up his legs freezing around his shins. Burgess roared. His aura burst into flames that burned violet. The red, flickering lights floated in the inferno. His ice shackles melted. The water evaporated with the singe of the fire. Juliette backed away, afraid of this beast that now had her in its gaze. He stepped forward, one plodding step at a time. He cried with the pain as Velestine’s essence tore him apart, the power consuming. Juliette saw he could not contain the generations of Roysch magic. She threw up ice barriers, one after another, forcing him to tap more into the magic.

“Do not hold back, Burgess,” cried Velestine. “Tap into the full essence of your family and destroy her.”

And he did. With his scream, the walls of ice crashed, but the fire dispersed. He dropped to his knees. His eyes rolled back, and he fell face down to the floor. Juliette was in shock. Velestine had betrayed her own son. The young matriarch did not know her elder matriarch’s secrets. Velestine was inflicted with a condition that would soon extinguish her life. Her body was too weak as a medium for centuries of Roysch magic, an essence so powerful it had become toxic, corroding her life force. Velestine had encouraged her son to tap into his full inheritance, knowing it would be his end. She loved her son. She was prepared to spend the rest of her short life mourning him. She had served as Gladius, thinking Sevymas would be the challenged duelist. Even though she witnessed Juliette accept the challenge, she knew the young girl’s death would have ended her son as well. Of all her children, Sevymas had the brightest future, and she would not let Burgess compromise that. His sword had not shone bright because they shared the same vision of the world. Instead, they shared one ultimate end beyond that dream. They wanted him to find peace.

Burgess’s chest heaved. Juliette approached. She stood over him, knowing she could not kill him. She had prepared herself to deal a deadly blow in the heat of battle, not slaughter a man she knew while he lay helpless.

“End him,” said Tover, “or be trapped in limbo forever.”

She looked to Velestine but found no forgiveness, only tears. She looked to Ruka, who did not provide his cold reassurance.

“No!” cried Velestine. Juliette still took in her Gladius. The look of alarm on his face. She felt this piercing pain in her stomach–the world went numb. She saw the blade sticking out of her womb. She saw her blood. Burgess was on his knees, his once beautiful face twisted. He pulled his sword from his victim and they fell. Juliette lay on her side and saw Ruka in front of her. She smiled. He smiled in return. But then she remembered she was not standing, she was lying. Why had he fallen against the cold ground as well? Did he want to say goodbye? He closed his eyes, and Juliette took a deep breath. The pain was gone. She no longer felt her life pouring out of her wound. She looked to Ruka. He did not move. She ran to him, crying. Gathering him in her arms, she checked his pulse. No blood flowed through his vessel.

“All glories are bitter. Choose a victor,” said Tover.

The arches of trees unraveled. The flowers released a sparkling pollen. With a fragrant touch, the duelists were restored. Juliette’s clothes were cleansed of her blood. Burgess’s body filled with breath. Once again, Juliette Harbinger had witnessed the subversion of the duel’s law. The two challengers survived but with a price.

The duel drew on ancient magic. However, to perform its feats, including the restoration of its victors, it also drew on essence. Witches and mages existed as physical beings with a deep spiritual well to draw on. However, when a duel was summoned, the bodies of the players became the most outward manifestation of essence, their physical existences subordinated to the spirit. They fought as spirit bodies. They cut bodies of essence, not flesh in the truest sense. The duelists’ weapons were of essence that inflicted damage on essence bodies. When the spirit body died, it was correlated with a death of the physical body. The magic of the duel lent its power to the essence body to heal itself into full revitalization. As the duel closed, the physical body was restored into full reality, the essence body once more submerged into the realm of Consciousness.

Juliette was a dud. She had minimal essence. Her essence body was thin and frail. Ruka used this to her advantage. As her Gladius, their essences were harmonized. Her weakened essence allowed for a permeable boundary between their beings. He filled in the spaces of her essence body with his own. He opened his essence to take the consequences of Burgess’s fatal strike. Juliette and Burgess were victors. Ruka had lost.

The League of the Yellow Rose clapped. Velestine went to Burgess, and they disappeared in a puff of red light. Velestine found herself in the garden of Rockden under moonlight. She heard the sound of the trickling fountain. Sevymas and Burgess were unconscious at her feet.

Juliette remained before The League.

“Congratulations,” said Seraphin, so impressed she could not help but smirk.

Cantor remained silent. He shook his head disapprovingly.

“Now now, Cantor,” said Tover. “We still got what we needed.” He looked to Juliette, flapping the two pages she had surrendered. He sniffed them. “There is no scent of you on them.” Deliberately surrendering the papers from the main body of her grimoire had already weakened her agency over them. As she had lain dying, her being transitioned enough into the underworld to finish loosening her grasp of them in the true world.

“We can still kill her,” said Cantor.

“That would be barbaric,” replied Seraphin.

“That would be rational,” replied Cantor. He looked to Tover: “Enough games with her. She needs to be eliminated.”

Tover sighed. “I agree, my longtime friend. But Ruka was right. We have to humble ourselves to the spirit of our laws. She was deemed a victor. She gets to live. We’ve worked with magical nature thus far to success. We must trust in our existence.”

“Give your word on essence that I am unconditionally safe from The League of the Yellow Rose,” said Juliette.

Tover rolled his eyes. “You don’t have the pieces on the board to play this game.”

“Fine. Then look under your chair and consider it my dying wish.”

He reached between his legs and groped. He tore off a folded piece of paper. He read:

Dear Oliver Tover,

I know who you serve. Grant me a bonding oath of protection against The League, or I will tell your glorified henchmen that your power is Barnabas Samarian’s. And you are nothing but his proxy.

Your humble archenemy,

Juliette Harbinger

Juliette had dismissed the idea that Tover was Samarian’s ambassador. Tover’s ambitions did not have the air of politics. However, she had her insight with the Illusia Apple. The enchantment required a pure witchly essence under the control of a master. Tover was a master; so he must have been lacking in purity. Still, he had traversed the boundaries between their world and hell, exhibited powers beyond a mage’s but was not a demon. Juliette concluded that he was merely a medium channeling the magic of someone extraordinary. She played her hunch that this man was the demon king. He may not have been a political liaison, but he could have been representing Samarian with other agendas. Juliette made her wager: She handed over the pages to stop a few immediate deaths. Now, she had to keep this decision from being stupid. She had to prevent Tover’s ultimate spell from happening. The leaves of her grimoire had bought her time that she had to use to save all the lives his spell would destroy. The only option was to save everyone at every stage of Tover’s game. This is what Samantha Millpeg had taught her.

Tover laughed. He crumpled the paper in his hand and it disappeared in smoke. He raised his hand:

“I, Oliver Tover, hereby swear that Juliette Harbinger will not be harmed by The League of the Yellow Rose for the rest of today.”

Juliette raised her hand: “I, Juliette Harbinger, accept the terms.”

Together they said: “Bond us by our words or let us forever burn.”

A circle with their sworn statements was seared into their palms. They smelled their flesh like grilled meat. The oath was complete.

“Now leave, Miss Harbinger. You’ve provided your entertainment for tonight. Don’t become tedious.”

Gasps. Howls. The three remaining members of The League screeched in pain. From the arms of their chair, a plant’s stem had shot up, piercing through their hands. The stems spewed vines that clutched them to their thrones. Red flowers blossomed. The petals bled droplets of blood. The droplets glowed. The arena filled with flashes of light and clouds of smoke and the booms of explosions. The chain reaction happened in seconds.

Juliette tried to look through the smoke but saw nothing. She removed a quargram from her pocket, unfolded the page, and placed it on the floor. For security, she had locked the page. To unlock it, she placed her fingers in the center and turned: “Open for truth do as you choose.” She stepped back. An arm emerged. Juliette grabbed her dear friend and helped her crawl out of the page. They stood side by side, waiting for the smoke to clear. The League was gone.

“There,” said Rosalee Amador, pointing to a lower throne splattered with blood. “We got one of them.”

Juliette sighed. “Faniel Trinavelli.”

“It’s something.” Rosalee had sensed her friend’s disappointment but did not share in it. She had fought to save her own soul and forced Juliette’s plan to fulfill a mandate for Justice and not revenge. This was her only chance to strike back. Therefore, she did, having made her peace with failure. She had found her way back to feeling powerful, to feeling whole, to nurturing herself and her talents. The peace she had found with her being was her victory. Ultimately, she was relieved not to negotiate the dark path of being a killer. She loved her Sister for who she was, a being of light that walked through the shadows, but Rosalee’s decision was not to be at her side. Her purpose was at the Sisestra. Juliette had promised that she would find her way home; and she had, as a teacher to the young outcasts that reminded her of Juliette and herself. She helped them find a community they had longed to have. Her students would not know the frustration and anger of isolation that had hardened them. Her only wish would have been to see her parents again, to see if they would take pride in the woman they had raised.

Juliette smiled reassuringly, but this was only for Rosalee. She had wanted this debacle to be done. She had wanted to at least kill someone she considered a threat.

Before Rosalee had departed for the Sisestra, Juliette had given her a page from her grimoire. Only once had they tested it to ensure its magic could surpass the magic of the Gosrin’s borders. And it did. Juliette was further pleased by the power of her makeshift grimoire. Rosalee was a touch unnerved. They had resolved to use it only for emergencies to avoid detection by the Sisters. However, more than once, the two young women had slept with their linked pages under their pillows, or read with their pages as a bookmark, thinking how it would be to have tea together just once, or to see a movie, or to catch up. But they had to grow up, and growing up meant sacrifices. Finally, an emergency appeared. Juliette needed her friend.

Rosalee was the possessor of mana and a student of ethereal botany. In the Sisestra, the Sisters began training her in the explosive nature of her blood essence, and Rosalee enhanced their teachings with her understanding of magical flowers. Juliette enlisted Ruka to place squares of her grimoire on the arms of the thrones, which he did when serving refreshments for the duel. Juliette had enchanted them to conform to the appearance of the thrones’ wood. These pages acted as gateways to Rosalee’s booby-traps. Juliette had not expected Rosalee to come so far in mastering her magic so quickly, but she was still not surprised. Of course, her best friend would be as competent, if not more so, than herself.

They shared a brief and casual goodbye, the only kind of farewell they were brave enough to endure. Rosalee returned to the Sisestra through the quargram. Juliette looked to the wall. Ruka’s body was gone. She would cry herself to sleep thinking about him, but for now, she had a solemn moment then returned to the black rose room. Sevymas was gone as well. She checked her phone. There was a message from him. He was home. She returned to the cell where she had been prisoner. There was an opening in the ceiling. Stepping under the portal, the floor floated her through the dark tunnel. She reappeared at the surface but not in the small red room. She stood at the gates of Rockden, facing Velestine.

“Good,” said the Matriarch of Roysch. “You made it out in one piece.”

Juliette did not know what to say.

Velestine continued: “I just wanted to inform you that you are expected at lunch tomorrow. We will be having a chat with Official Sheek. And of course, I know to always count on you for Sunday dinners.” With a satisfied sigh, she walked back to Rockden, looking around as if seeing the beauty of her home for the first time. Her children were alive.

13

Ruka Chobin kneeled on the stool upholstered in blue velvet. The floors were marble. The walls were striped. A glass box with the petal of a black lotus was mounted at his right. Above him was a speaker.

“Why are you here Ruka Chobin?” asked the voice from the speaker.

“I want to see the end of the world.”

“The end of the world is a story.”

“And from that story we can be reborn.”

The voice remained silent for a moment. Then he declared: “You were not invited here.”

“My brother received the invitation.” Ruka hesitated.

“Did he not wish to attend?”

“I don’t know. I did not give it to him.” Chobin pulled the invitation from his pocket. “It promises the way. I need to know the way.”

“That is all you need to do?”

Ruka sensed the voice knew his truth. He was being tested. So he replied:

“I wanted to protect my brother from whatever scheme this was. But I am also hoping I can find answers. I am applying to take his place. If you want him, then you will have to prove to me first you don’t mean him harm.”

“Your essence has been accepted, Ruka Chobin. You may apply to our union. You may have your chance to be granted the power of Creation. What is the question?”

“I have tried to see my future. But I only see blackness. At first I thought it was just ignorance, a canvas waiting for my imagination to paint a picture on it, a vision of what my life could mean. But I look at it, and it runs deep. It’s cold. And there is something inside, a meaning. I don’t think it’s nothing. It’s something. The abyss is my future.”

“You have not asked a question.”

“I want confirmation.”

“Why am I more fit than you to decipher the poetry of your consciousness?”

Ruka laughed. “I thought there was magic here. I thought some spell would reach inside of me and end this confusion.”

“Your confusion can be ended without answers. We can change your feelings and make you satisfied with knowing nothing. We can strike you dumb. At our institution we do not find pretty boys who wax pseudo-philosophical of any intrigue. Write a poem that doesn’t rhyme. Dye your hair green. Wear the black you see on your body and call it your mood, call it existence. If you are going to slit your wrists, then do it without wasting our time. If you–”

“But I want to be remembered. I want someone to remember me before I die.” Ruka’s hands trembled. “I want my death to be beautiful. Is that vain?”

“Ignore the question. Go deeper.”

He was the child of Maxima Chobin and Eiji Yukimura. This did not mean anything to him. His lineage was powerful. His ancestors had helped establish the Gosrin, and still, he did not understand himself. He did not understand when people said, “I want to find myself,” and then sought out to find their parents or research their family trees. He did not know how to find himself by traveling, like he was out there waiting to be discovered. He tried meditating. He tried thinking. Was he the things he liked? Was he the things he hated? Did he love whom he loved because his soul looked into them like a mirror? Did he hate the things he hated because of this same phenomenon? Was he his strengths? Was he his weaknesses? If he took everything he knew about himself and totaled it, was that him? And what did that equate to, other than a picture of fragments? Was he the one asking these questions or was he the answer to these questions? He did not know. He did not say anything.

“You must share your inner world,” said the voice.

“There was nothing inside of me. I had nothing to share.”

The room shuddered and began to descend.

“What is beauty to you?” asked the voice.

“It is something you hold on to even when it hurts, especially when it hurts.” He looked up, realizing he finally knew what he meant: “Beauty is a pain that is also a rapture.”

“Your parents will remember you.”

“They will remember losing a son. I want someone who will remember losing my being.”

“Who can know you on such a fundamental level when you yourself are constantly questioning what this even means?”

“No,” he said definitely. In the silence, he had found Truth. “I understand now. It’s not about knowing. I am the sense of myself. I am the impression of myself on my psyche. I am to others the impression of myself on their psyche. It is not about knowledge. It is not about the chatter in the mind. I am the abyss. I have to shift into parallax to sense the whole of my existence as its paradoxes of finites and infinites.”

“And what is the point of this? Are you ready to live now? What does this change about our world?”

Ruka sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Why did you pursue this inquiry?”

“I wanted peace.”

The elevator came to an abrupt halt. Ruka was thrown from the stool. The speaker glitched with the sound of static and silence, turning on and off. The voice was garbled. Ruka cried.

“Don’t make me say it,” he begged. “Please don’t make me say it. Just let me out.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” He collapsed his hands over his face. He tried to stop his sobs but they swelled. Finally, they ceased. He laughed. “I’m just a cliché.”

“No,” said the voice. “You were just a cliché.” The room continued moving down. “Share your revelation.”

Ruka took the invitation once more from his pocket. He delicately tore little tapers at its edges. “I have learned that my death is inevitable. I have learned that I have lived my life like a mannequin, twisting in various poses, to put on a show. And yet, somehow I became invisible. I became invisible to myself and to the world.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I didn’t want to die. I wanted you to give me a purpose, a picture to paint on the canvas.”

“And now?”

“That was never your right.”

“Why did you want to find yourself?”

Ruka looked at the fringed edges he had created. He crumpled up the invitation and knelt once more on the stool. His chest still burned from his crying spell. He answered:

“I wanted to come here and have you think I was worthy of being one of you. I wanted you to take me in and tell me how deep I was, how unfit I am for this stupid, shallow world we live in. I wanted you to show me power and darkness, teach me how to live, then make me your king.” He laughed. “I wanted people superior to me to just worship me. I was going to tell you the blackness was death, and I wanted beauty. Then you were supposed to tell me the darkness was my soul’s reaction to the ignorance of existence. But in my lie, I had told the truth. I had said I was prepared to die to impress you. But I was right. The abyss is death. I do want beauty. And I wanted to know myself so I knew what beauty meant. I didn’t know this until now. Finding yourself was just something you’re supposed to want. I never questioned it.”

“Are you prepared to die?”

“It is inevitable. And yet, I hope to have some say in the affair.”

“What is beauty?”

“Beauty is the pearl of suffering.” Ruka looked to the speaker.

“Beauty is a pain that is also a rapture.”

“Beauty can only be pure in sacrifice. The darkness is the mud. It is her. And within her, within the muck, I can be a pearl. I can be the abyss and find beauty in living forever with her.”

“Who are you?” asked the voice.

“I am the abyss.”

“Are you ready for the power of Creation?”

“Grant me the power of Creation.”

“And what will you do with the power?”

“I will birth a pearl in the abyss.”

The petal of the black lotus turned white. The room shuddered, coming to a halt. The wall before him slid open, and there stood Cantor Jaykes. He wore a garnet coat with silver buttons and a ring, a square cut obsidian set in a band encrusted with diamonds. He opened a red box and presented the same ring.

“When you put this on, you will walk the path of Life and Death. You will be presented with a truth of Creation. You will rise or remain buried in the chaos of your castle. This is the last choice of your life, if you choose. But this means nothing to you, Ruka Chobin, for you are the abyss. You have found a peace, an acceptance, in Life’s ultimate law, and in that surrender you have found great power. I am envious of you, Brother. You are my superior. I am proud to share the story of our shared dreams with you.”

Ruka held out his hand. Cantor slid the ring on to the finger. Ruka saw a story but was not reborn. He had already been reincarnated. He saw what he already knew. His death would be beautiful. He would be the darkness. He would be the pearl. She would remember him forever, and because of this, he could accept the ultimate fate with dignity. He laughed. Filled with pride, Cantor kissed his Brother’s forehead. The former monk did not know Ruka had told himself a joke, and he was the punch line. Their dreams were not one.

14

Juliette did not sleep. She dozed in and out of pockets of unconsciousness for an hour here and an hour there. She felt guilty resting. She owed Samantha, Ruka, and all the others to come her promise of destroying Tover. She had accepted the fact he needed to die. Anxious for her lunch with Sheek, she lay in the dark. The mark of The Essential Oath had faded. The ceasefire had ended. The game was resumed.

She blinked and woke up to sunshine. Exhaustion had wiped her out in the currents of slumber without her awareness. Her mind would not let her sleep, but a deeper part of her, an instinct, took over in an attempt to preserve her. She was thankful. She felt better. She felt clearer.

At Rockden, Juliette sat in the dining room with Sheek and someone unexpected, Mayor Rector. They nodded to each other with a smile but did not talk. Rector wore a dark red coat over a rainbow plaid collared shirt. His pants were burgundy corduroy. Sheek wore his usual work clothes, a saggy black suit with a white shirt unforgiving to his waistline. Juliette decided to return to a more severe look. Her lips were red; her dress, a stark white.

The mood was awkward. The mayor tried to make small talk, but both Juliette and Sheek felt more at ease when he ceased his attempts at lightening the air. Velestine had met them at the door, showed them to the dining room, and disappeared. The guests silently prayed for her return.

Finally, she made an appearance, and everyone hoped she was actually going to sit. The matriarch was followed by her maids who laid out the cuisine on the table. There was Juliette’s favorite, venigriff with steamed potatoes; Sheek’s favorite, fried pontysnails with mashed potatoes; and the mayor’s favorite, steamed vegetables. He was a vegetarian. The food was served in silver pots, enough for everyone to enjoy each other’s preferences. Velestine sat at the head of the table with Juliette on her right, the mayor at her left, and Sheek next to the mayor. Juliette was so concentrated on Rector piling vegetables on his plate that she forgot she was among company and frowned. Sheek laughed, feeling a bond with the girl.

“Yes, our dear mayor gets delighted over very dull things,” said Sheek.

Juliette was a little embarrassed but she went with it: “Now that I can vote, I’m not sure I can trust a man who doesn’t appreciate venigriff. Any comment, Mayor Rector?”

They all laughed. Preparing their plates, they took their first bites, savoring the delicious flavors. Juliette had not liked pontysnails as a girl, but she considered (rather correctly) that her tastes may have matured. They had a crunch then melted with a tender, garlicky flavor. She had to resist her eyes rolling back. She wanted to be alone with her food watching a movie. She wanted to be comfortable and relish her food unadulterated by etiquette. About five minutes into the meal, the wine was poured, and the conversation flowed even more freely. Velestine and Rector traded gardening tips for vegetables. Sheek asked Juliette something he had wondered for some time:

“Juliette, how did you so perfectly forge your father’s handwriting?”

Rector abruptly stopped his lesson on enchanting compost to listen to the answer.

“I have friends in high and low places,” replied Juliette.

Sheek and Rector laughed. Velestine smirked.

When Juliette’s father had died, she wrote notes in his hand. She had used her diary, a secret only Velestine knew. Sheek was satisfied with her answer. He was not only curious about the mechanism of forgery, he also wanted confirmation that a forgery took place. He had suspected her father had not died from heart complications while on a trip. His hunch was that Harbinger had died before Juliette’s debut at the Golden Egg Festival after her return from the Sisestra. He did not want the burden of knowing the details, but he could not resist sleuthing the occasional factoid, especially if he could continue to play ignorant.

The party resumed their conversations. Juliette listened to Sheek explain certain hierarchies in their town. She realized that at some point Sheek had considered her a protégé. His explanations concerning the Department of Borders were not just ramblings about his profession because he had nothing to talk about. He shared about the blood rituals that controlled the portals between realms. And then he brought the merriment to an end as he confronted them with the business that was their purpose for gathering:

“Holly Tail is reaching negotiations with Barnabas Samarian to enlist demons to handle certain unsavory characters in our town.”

“We should not discuss this,” said Rector.

“Why else are we here? And if we want to hear what gems the Matriarch of Harbinger has for us, she surely will not release them without something in return.”

Rector looked to Velestine. She nodded. Sheek continued:

“In exchange, Samarian wants a ridiculous sum of money and unmonitored access across our border. However, he will take a ‘reduced’ fee, which is rarely the fair fee, if we permit him use of the portals.”

The demon lands were only connected to Holly Tail. The witches kept them segregated from the other ethereal races.

“Isn’t this obviously a bad deal?” replied Juliette.

“No. First, there is a growing anxiety among the township. This bastardization of God known as ‘The Angel’ is still on the loose. He brought a town crashing into rubble. He has a stockpile of mana. We are concerned that we may lose invaluable numbers of our people if we search for him ourselves. Enlisting demons to hunt what is probably one of their own is more civilized to our generation. We only know war and fighting as glorified tales. It’s easier to think that dogs should hunt dogs.”

“And then there is Tover,” said the mayor. “We had no choice but to clear him for residency, but no one trusts a man who crawled out of the underworld. And he still possesses a peculiar magic. Right now, he is an enemy we are keeping close.”

“I have the feeling it isn’t working,” replied Sheek.

Velestine took a sip of her wine. They watched her, awaiting her viewpoint.

“Juliette and I have had a visit to Tover Hall. It answered a question to posit five more. Any of you hear of The League of the Yellow Rose?”

Rector and Sheek shook their heads.

“That’s a problem,” said Velestine. “If it’s a new invention then we cannot rely on history for clues. Tover is operating with the help of Cornerstone children. Juliette and I are not clear on all of their identities. They are instituting duels, though. As for Tover, his magic is fickle. He teleported me home, and I sense I could have easily countered it. On the other hand, I did feel something strange during the duel.”

“Who was fighting?” asked Rector.

“I did not know them. Tover has an interesting fixation on Juliette. He wanted her to attend, and I was not going to allow her to go alone.”

“The important things are these duels,” said Sheek. “I have already gotten word from the Department of Ancestral Magic that two duels have had suspicious outcomes.”

“The first was probably between Sevymas and Valen,” said Velestine. “Valen has always had peculiar friends. He and Sevymas got into a spat. And you know how righteous-blooded Sevymas is. He challenged Valen.”

“For God’s sakes!” said Sheek. Rector shook his head and finished his wine in a shot.

“Yes,” replied Velestine. “Anyway, Valen teleported out of the duel with some potion. I’ve sent him away. Rockden is just too volatile with him here.”

“Well, that may be a good thing,” said Rector. “Newton was doing him no good. Maybe a fresh start will kick some gumption into him.”

Sheek tapped his fingers on the table, clicking his tongue. “How did the snot teleport out of a duel?”

“These young ones today are very ingenious,” replied Velestine. “But they have no noble purpose to apply their curiosities. They spend more time making spells for mischief never realizing how powerful they truly are. They don’t understand consequences.”

“And the second duel?” asked Sheek.

“Most likely the one we witnessed. The League of the Yellow Rose called for two challengers. Tover pinned yellow roses on each duelist. They fought, but a Gladius did something rather brilliant. He substituted his essence with his duelist’s, allowing his magical body to take the fatal blow.”

Rector stared at her wide-eyed. Sheek shook his head. They tried to process this miracle.

“Was this Gladius part of Tover’s plot?” asked Rector.

“I don’t think so. Tover seemed quite disappointed. He was invested in that Gladius’s fighter dying. All we know is that Tover is cooking up quite the spell. The ingredients he needs are rare, the magic is complex, and we still have no idea what the endgame is.”

“Juliette,” said Sheek, “What do you make of all of this?”

Juliette saw these elite allies look to her. Her stomach tightened, but she was overjoyed. “We need to gather every powerful friend we have and make a secret maneuver to end Tover. I believe he represents Samarian. Take him out and trust our own to handle The Angel.”

Sheek smacked his fist on the table. “I agree, dammit!” He then looked surprised. “I thought you said he was not an ambassador for the demons.”

Juliette tilted her head from side to side, deciding how to address this statement. “At some point in time, Samarian will have to reveal a name. When negotiations go through, he will name a representative. Tover would be perfect. He is a mage. He lives on our side of the Gosrin but has no sense of loyalty to us. I still don’t think this is what will happen. Also, I think I know the nature of Tover’s magic. He is a medium. He is powerful enough to perform some of the most profound witching spells; and yet, he often uses much more roundabout methods. Still, he is not a demon in the sense we use the word. The black rose and this theory lead me to the conclusion that he is channeling Samarian’s demonic magic. He is using demon essence filtered through his own to enhance his own capabilities.”

“That makes sense,” said Rector.

“You’re like a less pretentious version of your father,” said Sheek, nodding approvingly.

Velestine sighed. “That is not a compliment.”

Sheek shrugged. “Either way, we need to end Tover before the deal with Samarian is finalized. If we can prove a connection, that is even better. We can terminate the whole arrangement. Still, with no Tover, Barnabas will be left pimping out his own people to become our bitches. He will have no play to trump us.”

“We need to think about this,” replied Rector.

“I agree with Juliette,” said Velestine. “The longer we wait to handle Tover, the closer he gets to finishing his spell. And we have no reason to believe any good will come from this. He did not infiltrate our society to help us. He is either masterminding for the supremacy of himself or the demons.”

“The deal will most likely pass,” said Sheek. “Our assumption is that even if we don’t allow him access throughout the Gosrin, he’ll just take the boatload of money we give him and pay for some other means to get what he wants. This will make a mess of relations with the Lazans and Alucians. We will appear weak if it looks like we can’t control our own mongrels. If we allow him passage through the borders under our watch, then at least we can control the diplomacy. Unfortunately, if he starts making inroads with the other realms, then I assume his goal is to make the demons less dependent on the township.”

“You are not going to get the mayors or the Board of Leaders to agree to a hunt,” said Rector. “The whole point is to spare violence.”

Velestine laughed. “You don’t understand. No one is trying to go through legal channels. My dear Frederick, don’t you see? This is a cabal.”

Rector looked from face to face as if he did not recognize anyone. “No, this isn’t.” He thought for a moment. “Oh, my God.” He took his napkin from his lap and smacked it down on the table. “I can’t be a part of this.”

“Can you at least keep your mouth shut?” asked Sheek.

“I only heard friends discussing their opinions. Freedom of expression. No one is planning anything. I’ll show myself out. I have work to do.” And he excused himself from the table. With a kiss on the cheek to Velestine and a nod to Juliette and Sheek, he was gone.

“So now that the Golden Boy is out, what are you two hiding?” asked Sheek.

Velestine answered with a casual air: “The missing Stamphaven son is Tover’s right hand.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yes, along with Faniel Trinavelli and Seraphin Likes.”

“You know how spoiled and sheltered those kids are. They are all twats. It’s a miracle you did not succumb to the same disease of entitlement.”

“Thank you,” replied Velestine, sarcastically.

Juliette understood the concern. Velestine and Sheek believed the Cornerstone matriarchs would prioritize the protection of their children over the safety of the town. They would not allow their heirs to face the legal and social consequences of their actions. Her group would have issues finding support because very few would be willing to cross the most elite witches in their town.

“The Chobins,” said Juliette. “The League was responsible for the death of their son, Ruka.”

Sheek shook his head with a grave concentration. “He was a good boy. How did he get messed up in Tover’s nonsense?” He did not mean for the question to be answered. But this moment brought a practical reality upon him. The doom of this tragedy closed the doors of hope and allowed a simple truth to occur to him: “Will we be able to get this all organized in time?”

“It’s going to be a little shoddy, but we have to try,” said Velestine, pushing the hair from her face with a stiff pinky. “We find him now, or he’ll come to us when he knows he can make us heel.” She checked her watch. “It’s time to wrap this up. Everyone will need to reach out quietly to the most trusted members of their inner circles. I’ll have a dinner party tomorrow. Bring them. We will organize.”

And the meeting concluded. Velestine walked Sheek to the door. Juliette waited at the table. Velestine returned, asked the young matriarch to follow her, and they left through a door that lead to a hall with white striped walls dotted with peonies. There were eight blue doors, four on each side. She opened the second door on the left, revealing an office where Sevymas sat at the computer. He looked up with a surprised expression but quickly lowered his head when he caught a glimpse of Juliette. With his lips pursed, he left the room and walked behind his mother, side by side with Juliette. He never acknowledged her.

Juliette did not think much of this stalwart demeanor. In her mind, their relationship ended at Tover Hall. The official words heralding the conclusion of this era had not rung, yet she assumed the feeling of closure was mutual. Unfortunately, Sevymas avoided her to cling to their shared life. She could not leave him if she could not face him. He would give it a week, let time settle the situation, prove himself some way, and then they could move on.

Velestine lead them to the end of the hall. There were doors to their left and right and one directly before them. This center door was marked with an X made from Velestine’s blood. Inside, through golden bars, Juliette saw Burgess seated in a pearl white armchair reading a book. In the back corner was a fireplace; against the back wall, a queen-sized bed with four posts of braided wood. The walls were a sky blue.

“Hello, my love,” said Velestine.

“Mother,” replied Burgess.

“You said if I brought Juliette you would share with the mother who birthed you, who loves you, who will die to protect you, some information. Well,” she held her hand out to present her guest, “here we are.”

Burgess shot up from the seat. His eyes were wide. “I didn’t call for her. I don’t remember anything since last night.” He gagged. Holding his throat, his legs buckled and he fell against the chair.

Velestine rushed through the bars. Juliette touched them; they were solid to her. Velestine ran to Burgess. Her son looked to her, a tear falling. He was scared. He did not want to die. He opened his mouth, and Velestine saw another mouth in the dark.

“Hello,” said Tover. Burgess craned his neck back. His mouth stretched. “Your son is choking.”

Velestine manifested red sparkles around her hand. The tiny lights floated into the dark cavern but disappeared.

“Sorry, Matriarch. Not all is as it appears. I am here. But I am not.”

“What do you want?” she replied.

“I am giving your son just enough space to breathe. I could snap his neck while I am here. I really never intended to betray such a loyal subject, even if he was a peon. I was prepared to take care of our boy regardless of the inconvenience. Unfortunately, his welfare is no longer under my will but yours. Tonight will be divine. But I cannot have any hindrances. And neither can you. Your son’s life depends on it. You stay out of my way, and I will exempt Burgess from The League and hence from my control.”

“I understand.”

Juliette had a flash to a moment in time past. She remembered Velestine’s concern that the Cornerstone Families would not allow justice to take place in order to protect their children. She had admired Velestine’s sense of sacrifice. However, she had temporarily forgotten that Velestine had no flesh in Tover Hall. She felt a sense of dread, a feeling telling her what bargain Velestine had struck with the monster, before her mind fully understood. She ran, opening doors, channeling her will through Rockden to reveal a way out. Brick walls filled every portal. She turned and the hall had been closed off with a wallpapered wall. She reached in her pocket for a quargram.

“Unfold for truth do as I choose,” she said. The paper harmonized with her urgency and unfolded in an instant, laying flat on the floor. Juliette jumped through.

“Lock as I choose. Do it for truth.”

Velestine appeared above, gazing down through the page. She tried to peel it away but failed. Rockden’s mistress could not see through the surface. Juliette heard garbled speech. She saw flashes of red light. She walked through the cream space, sensed an opening, and reached up, feeling carpet. She pulled herself up and stood in her living room. Tonks sat next to the quargram he had opened for her escape. He meowed. Juliette smiled at her friend. She took a moment to pet him and rushed into the kitchen. She checked his food and refilled his water bowl. She then took her phone from the pocket of her dress and made two calls to two allies. She asked them to hurry to her house. Afterwards, her phone rang. Velestine. She touched “IGNORE.”

15

Juliette paced back and forth in her living room, wondering when Sarah and Mr. Hlok would arrive. When she heard a car pull up, she ran out the door. Sevymas stepped from his vehicle to greet her.

“We need to talk,” he said. He breezed past her, entered her home, and sat on her couch–all without her permission. Juliette was livid. His mother betrayed her, and now he dared to act like he had a right to consider her home his.

She marched after him. “Sevymas, I don’t–”

“It’s over. Isn’t it?” He looked at her with such sadness and yet such hope. She thawed, remembering that this man was flawed but loving.

“Yes,” she replied. “It’s over.”

Sevymas stepped towards her, taking her cheek in his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. He kissed her, and she fell unconscious into his arms. He picked her up and laid her on the couch. Tonks jumped on the sofa, looking to Sevymas, then licking Juliette, then looking once again to this man he considered a friend. Sevymas had put an enchanted balm on his lips. One kiss turned his love into a sleeping beauty.

“She is fine,” said Sevymas to the feline. “She just needs some rest.”

He stood over her, watching her. His mother had cried, fallen to her knees clinging to him. She needed him to get Juliette to stop her pursuit of Tover. He had to choose, his girlfriend or his family. Then he wondered: was she still his girlfriend? Knowing she would not forgive him when no sin could have turned him away from her, he chose his family. He chose the mother who loved him unconditionally. He would have forgiven Juliette for sacrificing his brother. He would have betrayed his mother for her. But she was not his. He kissed her on the forehead and left. When Juliette awakened, Sarah and Mr. Hlok stood over her. She rubbed her eyes. It was dark.

“No!” she cried. “No, no, no. Oh God, please no! What time is it?”

“It’s midnight,” replied Hlok. “We couldn’t wake you.”

“We tried potions,” said Sarah. “We tried–”

The earth quaked. The three comrades rushed out of Creaky Manor and saw a colossal beam of yellow light reach from the horizon and ascend through the heavens.

“I’ll drive,” said Sarah.

Juliette ran back to the house and retrieved her keys. Sarah drove like a crazed drunkard, weaving between cars, running red lights, cutting across lanes. On the highway, cars had pulled over. People stood on the side of the road watching the sky. The column of light flickered, then was gone.

“Where were they?” asked Juliette.

“The size of it. The direction,” replied Hlok from the backseat, hanging on even though he was buckled in. “I think it’s Faranuga Lake.”

It took them thirty minutes to reach Beacon Hills. They drove through the hillside hamlet of Macon Ridge. No lights shone in the windows of homes. No one was on the streets. They drove down roads, deeper into the hills, until they finally reached the lake site. Sarah stopped the car, and they looked out over the crater. The lake was gone. They broke into homes, smashing in the glass and unlocking the front doors. In house after house around the lake and throughout the hamlet, the beds were unmade, but no one was found. The people had disappeared.

16

Oliver Tover had not been pleased with recent events. Juliette Harbinger should have been dead, and Burgess should have still sat on his throne. When Tover pulled the strings of the heir, he expected his puppet’s limbs would in turn pull the chords tied to his mother. When Juliette took her leave, he knew a cavalry would soon be at his door.

Seraphin, Cantor, and Faniel, the remaining members of The League of the Yellow Rose, joined Tover in the ballroom of his home. Faniel was sickly pale but insisted on standing to prove his strength, his worthiness. He held his right arm as if it was in pain, but there could not have been the slightest discomfort. There was no arm, only a phantom limb.

The League men wore plum shirts with black suits. Seraphin wore a ruffled plum blouse with black slacks. Each member was pinned with a dark yellow rose.

“Will his mother let him come out and play?” asked Seraphin.

They heard the clanking of heels echo on the floor. Burgess entered, dragging the body of Ruka Chobin. The circle opened to make way. The young Roysch dropped the body in the center and stood with his Brothers. Tover spoke:

“The five Cornerstone Families chose Newton, and not Summons Arch, commonly known as Capitol City, as their home. In the creation of the Gosrin, the magic became concentrated in certain locales. Newton stands on one of these hubs. The Cornerstone Families chose to remain here to protect and thrive from this power. They served like slaves when they could have ruled like kings.

“Today, we are gathered to play the game of Creation. We represent the epitome of power and privilege, and yet even we remain hopeless in our abilities to see humanity live up to its potential or to fulfill our basic needs for love or justice. Corruption is an incurable disease. Cowards govern. Every day, we see how man could choose differently. He could feed his children. He could punish rapists. He could embrace all the ways we are different. But He does not view all children as His own. He does not see all women as His Sisters. He sees our differences as a threat and wages a war of civility against us, thinking we will not notice His hate if it’s disguised in niceties and institutions. He has created His own prophecy. We want to destroy Him because He made a world where we cannot coexist unless we believe we deserve less than Him. And we are no longer willing to buy into this delusion. We want family. We want love. We want understanding. And if He won’t use His power to bestow our dreams unto us, then we will take that power for ourselves.”

The League cheered. Tover continued:

“We act for ourselves and for our community. We want to be granted the power of Creation to change the fundamental nature of our reality into a place where the noble and competent govern and where prosperity is conditioned on character. As we proceed through the following trials, we will determine whose vision of existence will prevail. Whose dream can outshine every star? Let’s begin.”

He held out his hands and a polished wooden case appeared. Inside were six silver daggers with jeweled hilts. They rearranged their circle, placing their fallen Brother in line with them. Faniel took the sixth dagger and slit Ruka’s cheek. The knives were placed in the center to form their own circle, the tips pointing at the center. They chanted:

“Uncover what we have hidden. Remember what we have written.”

The blood on each blade floated, swirling in a circle before the members. It gushed into lines, forming a square within its circumference. Blood circles appeared in the center and in the space between the larger circle and the square. The hemogram lowered to the ground, the blood circulating through the lines of the design. On the marble floor, it glowed, rays of light illuminating the pattern with swelling intensity until it engulfed the symbol and a portal was opened. A man with blond hair, dressed in a white suit, was raised from this alternate space. The hemogram disappeared.

The Angel, Lionel, stood before them as a husk of a person. He was the vessel for the mana Tover and Cantor had stolen from Rosalee Amador. The mana corroded his consciousness until he was no one. He had no thoughts, no dreams. Promised the chance to be a god, he had swallowed potions that gave him power. However, this was only temporary. Their primary purpose was to prepare him as a container.

The League held hands and disappeared from Tover Hall. In a blink, they stood at Faranuga Lake at sunset. One by one, they were teleported to the various corners around the vast body of water. The vessel in white stood at the lake’s center.

“Let his blood finish the promise he made in life, or may his soul live forever in strife.” Tover’s eyes turned black. Ruka’s body lay on the opposite shore. His blood dripped in drops from every orifice. In the underword, he thought he would have found peace, but his soul tore into pieces, each one whole, each one empty. He screamed, fearing this was his eternal price. He could not deny Tover his wish. For a moment of peace, he surrendered his essence to fulfill his share of their bargain.

Tover removed two pieces of paper from his jacket. With a fountain pen he pricked his thumb and wrote in blood on one page:

We summon thirteen so pure. We summon thirteen for the cure.

And on the other:

These leaves were alive in Death and dead in Life. With each breath, we walk the crossing and make our engagement with the unholy wife.

He dropped the pages, and they sailed on the dead winds. They floated to The Angel of Emptiness and Fulfillment, revolving around him.

The League chanted: “We summon thirteen so pure. We summon thirteen for the cure.” They repeated their chants, and their spell birthed their desire. Within the hour, thirteen girls of thirteen appeared at different spots around the lake at various times. They arrived in fluffy rabbit slippers, pink pajama pants, shirts with flowers, and with blue stuffed griffins. When they touched the lake, crowns of black roses appeared on their heads, and they wore sheer white dresses. Their bare feet walked across the lake and they formed another circle around The Angel. When all thirteen had taken their place, the page with the spell that had called them burned away.

The second chant began: “She is alive in Death and dead in Life. With each breath, we engage our unholy wife.”

Hours passed, but in the hamlet of Macon Ridge, time had stopped. Those adorned with the dark yellow roses felt a giddy excitement as their goal was so close to fulfillment. They had walked around with feelings of nervousness, jumping at every stray sound, or crying in private, constantly afraid that at any moment The Reginal would burst through their doors and carry them away. They grasped their dreams in fists until their hearts’ thorns cut through them, reminding them why they had sacrificed their sanities.

Five minutes before midnight, the thirteen sacrifices fell into the lake. An inner light burned through their eyes and mouths, illuminating the dark depths. At midnight, the last page burned. The Angel was consumed in an aura of his own light. The earth quaked, and a new portal of yellow light was opened, bridging the world of Life with the world of Death. The essence that emerged from the light crushed inferior essences into nonexistence. But as this entity settled into the objective realm, so did its potential. The light disappeared. Tover teleported his Brothers to the center of the crater. They saw her surrounded in twinkling orange lights, the Rose Bride. The League returned with their trophy to the throne arena under Tover Hall.

The Rose Bride had soft white skin. Her hair was like the changing leaves of autumn. She fluttered her long eyelashes, flashing dark blue eyes. Her dress was overflowing with sheer, bluish silks, but she wore brown unattached sleeves that seemed like crumpled paper bags. She approached Cantor. He cried. He wanted to possess her. He wanted to kiss her neck. He wanted to stroke her shoulders, feeling how soft she was. He caught a whiff of her flower scent and buckled under the intoxication. He wanted to hear her moan. He wanted to know he could make her gasp. After taking a second to compose himself, he unpinned his rose and put it in her hair. She bowed before him, and he felt like a king. He held out his hand, and she kissed his ring. The stone turned orange and his hair turned like hers, glowing a pumpkin orange and lust red. She made her rounds to each member, Seraphin, Faniel, and Burgess, then stopped before the body of Ruka. She craned her head as if this situation was beyond her comprehension. Bending down before him, she took up his stiff, cold hand and kissed his ring. The black stone crumbled, falling away. His body disintegrated into ash. She completed her round with Tover. He broke out into laughter. With a clap of his hands, a table of drinks appeared. Each member took up a goblet, raised their drink, and Tover recited a toast:

“To the rebirth of The League of Red-Headed Gentlemen.”

They cheered and toasted. Tover put his arm around the Rose Bride.

“Drink, dear,” he said, raising his cup to her lips. She tilted her head back and drank. Cantor imagined taking the pitcher of wine and bashing Tover’s head in. After a moment of indulging in a festive spirit, Tover brought his clan back to firmer ground: “We still need to complete the circle.”

“Does it have to be a Chobin?” asked Seraphin.

Tover looked to the Rose Bride; she shook her head.

“Does it have to be a member of a Cornerstone Family?” asked Cantor. He was not in the least curious. He spoke because he longed for her to look at him. She nodded, keeping her head bowed. Disappointed, he guzzled down the remainder of his drink.

The League took to their thrones, each one gazing upon the Rose Bride like she was a crystal ball, holding the answer to their predicament. Then Tover had the answer:

“Rose Bride, to whom is your initial engagement?”

“No one,” she replied. “I have not been won. I am under your guardianship until you give me away.”

“Give her to me,” replied Cantor. “Then we will search for Ruka’s replacement. Or we can duel now.”

“The Duels of Creation cannot begin until the circle is fully restored,” said Tover. “And an engagement is not necessary.” He looked to the Rose Bride: “Do you have a suitable replacement in mind.”

“I do,” she replied.

“So who is it, fool?” asked Cantor. When she was his, she would not be such a tease.

“Sevymas Roysch is the suitor I choose.”

Choice? Sevymas Roysch was a choice? thought Cantor. He descended from his throne and stood before his bride. She looked at him with a blank expression, but he saw something disrespectful in her gaze.

Slap! The sound echoed through the chamber. Seraphin and Faniel shot to their feet, but Tover raised both hands. They sat, trembling with the desire to hurt Cantor. Burgess tilted his head. This sight of violence perplexed him. It was jarring. He felt half removed from reality. Cantor had hit her. Why did he hit her?

“Pick someone else,” said Cantor. “Or we will just pick someone for you.”

“Once I have selected a suitor, it must be so,” she replied, once more lowering her head.

Cantor pointed to Tover. “You! This is your fault! You thought you were being so damn smart.”

Tover looked around Cantor to the bride: “Could it have been anyone else?”

“No,” she said. “The most eligible suitors have already been selected or have met their demise. Sevymas Roysch is all who is left.”

Tover addressed Cantor: “She would not have chosen him if he could not be won. Have a little faith, Brother.” He knew this was not the point, but he and Cantor had to present the appearance of a rational conversation. Tover was not surprised by Cantor’s emotional outburst. His friend had always been rational to a fault, and he knew that those who used reason as a sheet of ice were only trying to freeze out the tempests of hate and lust that stormed in their souls. The Rose Bride had thawed Cantor’s defenses. However, Tover still felt a good point was being made. Sevymas Roysch was not a Brother he wanted.

“How about me?” asked Tover. “Would you accept my courtship?”

The Rose Bride opened her eyes wide. “Are you sure?”

“You have never been one to ask questions.”

She looked at him. Again her expression offered no reflection of a thought or hope or dream. Still, everyone, except Tover, saw something. Burgess saw calculation. Seraphin saw admiration. Faniel saw contempt. And Cantor saw lust.

“Yes,” she said. “I accept your courtship.”

And with the matter settled, The League retired for the evening.

17

Juliette did not intend on eating Sunday dinner with the Roysches. Yet Sunday came, and she donned a black dress with a sparkling bodice, her skirt dotted with black pearls. She knocked on the front door of Rockden, and Velestine, not a nanny or a maid, answered. The matriarch looked at her, gasped as a tear fell, and hugged Juliette so tightly that the young girl, for the first time in her life, began to wonder what it was like to have a mother. She pulled away from Velestine and went inside, leaving the Mistress of Rockden to close the door.

In the days since The Light Vanishings, Juliette, former Official Hlok, and Sarah Felfen had only one goal: trying to discern what had happened that night. They had to leave the scene before the officials responded. A fleet of Reginal officers, driving their gray sports cars, arrived at the scene, putting up blockades. The Cualquery were called in to assist. The highest officials at the Department of Capitol Law made a point to visit the sight. They refused to make statements to the media, but the newspapers already had their headlines: “TOWN VANISHES. HAS THE ANGEL STRUCK AGAIN?” Each day rattled with speculations, theories, and gossip, but Juliette did not socialize enough to be driven mad by it. She kept the news off, stuck to watching movies, and awaited Hlok’s call. He said he needed time, but they would need to mobilize again at Faranuga Lake.

Unfortunately, Juliette would soon be united with the town from which she had painstakingly alienated herself. In a horror of public consciousness, Newton would be bonded together by waves of shock and bandwidth.

Velestine commented that she had not seen Burgess since The League of the Yellow Rose had performed their spell. Sevymas would be working long hours assisting in the case. The two matriarchs sat at the table with a luxurious feast before them. They heard heavy footsteps. Burgess entered the dining room:

“Hello, Mother. Juliette. I’m not late for dinner?”

He took a seat opposite Juliette, to the left of his mother. He unfolded his napkin and placed it in his lap.

“Pass me the edel snouts, please?” he asked no one in particular.

Velestine and Juliette’s mouths were agape. They looked to Burgess’s fiery mane, the sight triggering a childhood dread that had been instilled in every child of Holly Tail.

While Burgess returned home, the other League members had arrived at the five-star restaurant, La Tête de Fluk. They sauntered in with a casual superiority and took their seats amongst gasps and mumblings of disgust and disbelief. Tover took his place at the head of the table, overlooking the room. Phones alighted. Pictures were taken. Texts were sent. The town of Newton went into a haze of static as they abandoned their activities to become immersed in their phones and computers.

Juliette and her town had one thought, “This has to be a prank,” and yet they also shared in one fear, “What did this mean?” In memories long buried, a tale was read to the deepest part of their selves. They did not hear it, but it was told nonetheless. It conjured a mystery that they were afraid to answer.

We are the League of Red-Headed Gentlemen.

Your souls we eat for the vitamins.

So be good and count to ten,

Or we’ll be back. Who knows when?

Oh God, who blessed us with free will,

Who shared his power in each child,

Would it be wrong to distill

Every essence until spirit reconciled?

We wander through the streets

And are disappointed in what we see.

We will bleed every beast dry

And hear his howls, his simpering cries.

We will nail his entrails to his door,

A reminder not to cower forevermore.

Reclaim our souls, Brother Warlock.

They’ve been squandered on the lame and foolish.

We have taken our stock,

And this world has suffered under the ghoulish.

Skin the queen in her den.

Take back Creation, remember to say amen.

Then be good and count to ten,

Or we’ll be back, the League of Red-Headed Gentlemen.

“What have you done?” asked Velestine.

“Oh,” replied Burgess, stroking his hair. “Do you like it?”

“It’s not real.” She snarled. She got up, snatched his hair, and held his head back, looking at her son with an anger that he met with disinterest. “Don’t take superior tones with me. Tell me right now this is some stupid nonsense to make up for how well-behaved you were when you were younger. I was always upset that you didn’t rebel more, but you are taking it too far.”

“Would you have preferred green?”

She pulled him to the ground. He remained on all fours, staring at her shoes. He wanted to fight back, but she was his mother. Juliette watched. He wanted to cry, thinking that she could put him in this powerless position in front of a stranger.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He was not speaking to Velestine, but soothing himself. “Everything will be different soon.”

“Get out!” she exclaimed. “Get out! If I could, I would tear my essence from your body and give it to someone worthy of being called a Roysch.”

He whimpered. He cackled. Getting on his feet, he stood his ground: “You will thank me one day. Or maybe not. You’ll be too happy to even realize there is something to be grateful for. But until then, fuck you, my dear mother. Fuck. You.” He turned to Juliette: “Enjoy my family. For now.” And he took his leave.

18

Juliette sat, gone in a haze of her thoughts. She heard Velestine on the phone, calling Sheek, Rector, and Sevymas. Her surrogate mother had cancelled the cabal after her betrayal to help Burgess escape. Now, their secret union seemed in full drive. The official, the politician, and the officer sat at the table, but Juliette did not remember greeting them. The men occasionally looked to her; Velestine reassured them the young matriarch was probably on the brink of an ingenious insight. Sevymas looked at her with earnestness. He wanted to reach across the table and touch her hand, to bring her back to him, to them. But she remained in her haze. Once she heard that others would be arriving, Juliette made her first statement: “Sarah Felfen will represent me. Call her please.” And she stood from the table as if a program unknown to her had found the parameters sufficient to automate this response. She walked away from the table.

She went home and lay in her bed. Creaky Manor blanketed her with a welcoming silence. Tonks jumped on the bed and meowed. He looked to the bathroom and hopped from the bed. She followed. She felt the coolness of the cream tiles on the soles of her feet. Tonks leaped onto a white iron chair with a pink cushion for a seat, then onto her antique vanity table. She had left it in its original condition–wobbly, the eggshell paint chipped. The garden tub with shiny gold fixtures, the murals of scholars pouring over books, releasing enchantments of birds and broken chains, symbols of freedom–she found this old, rickety table somehow balanced the room.

Tonks looked to the mirror. Juliette sat and gazed at the glass. She caught a glimpse of herself. She saw the frosted windows above the tub. She touched the glass, the reflection of her fingertips leading her down the image of her arm, deeper into a realm of a relative physique. She understood Tonks’s message.

“Do you really think I’ve become this desperate?” she asked.

Tonks walked in circles around her leg, rubbing his fur against her. He purred.

Juliette sighed. Desperation was becoming a theme in her life. She had been desperate to mobilize against Tover. She had been desperate to be a part of something bigger, to feel like a leader. And now, she had the respect of an official and a mayor, she was on the verge of finding a cabal, and all she knew was that she did not belong there. She had nothing to contribute. She had no magic to be of use. She did not want to be there. So she went where she wanted to go. She returned home. She returned to being alone with her only friend. She did not want to admit that she was already happier. At Rockden, outside Creaky Manor, she was losing herself in a current of events, conditions that eroded the façade of her personality, shaping her with no regard to her will. She felt reactive. Tover determined her thoughts and actions. She needed to take control, to find the flow of her intuition. Tonks had presented an interesting, if dangerous, possibility.

She left her master suite and made her way down the long stretch of hall to her office. She took a moment to look at her father’s ducks dotted on the wallpaper. From the bottom drawer of the desk that was once his, now hers, she sorted through piles of quargrams, looking at markings that distinguished them. She found one marked with a red slash. Opening it on her desk, she reached in with both hands and grabbed a short stack of papers. At the Sisestra, she had photocopied and taken notes on an array of books from the library, storing them in quargrams. The lesson in class on The League of Red-Headed Gentlemen had been quite brief, along with the information in her textbook, so she had studied the subject further.

The poem about the league was penned well after its demise. A group of elite mages, tired of their station only being guaranteed by marriage, sought to create their own reservoir of power. They had been humans and thought the ethereal world would have remedied the diseases of corruption and poverty. It had not. This disappointment made the conditions of the Gosrin infuriating to this collective of gentlemen. One could live with inevitable truths, resigning themselves to it as a natural law. However, an expectation of change tolerated with living amongst the avoidable decay of ego maddened the men. Juliette never understood why these men had such high hopes for magic, thinking it was a cure-all for every man-made ailment.

Five men, who by marriage became mages, founded the league. They thought to utilize magic in ways that witches were too lazy, petty, and stupid to consider. One night, hair aflame, they walked through the streets of Grewster, slaughtering every man, woman, and child. They set houses afire, and as families ran into the streets, they used dark spells to slice them into slivers. Bodies heaped on doorsteps, witches and mages hurled defensive spells at their invaders, but the league thrived on the essence. As they killed, they usurped the power of their victims.

As they marched through the rest of the town, they grew ill. Their stomachs churned. They spat up blood. Their power was turning against them. From the fires they had set emerged five women, their wives. The matriarchs reclaimed the essence these foolish men were dumb enough to have considered their own. The men had thought their children anchored their magical potential into their spirits, making it uniquely theirs. They assumed their wives were manipulating the essence granted in their marriage, but they were incorrect. The women had cast a séance, summoning the souls whose bodies lay in the streets to exact their revenge. Each soul wanted to protect their magical lineage, to ensure their relations who survived inherited essences that had not been tainted with evil. As the souls were conjured they called on their ancestors and inheritors throughout the underworld and the Gosrin. Like one trunk growing branches that in turn grew branches, souls found on earth and lost in purgatory, tore their birthrights from the league. The men’s flesh melted, their existences unwinding. They screamed. They begged for forgiveness. They were left as a fleshy gelatin on the concrete.

Juliette understood how Tover corrected the original league’s mistake. He used children, whose essence had been bestowed upon them at birth, becoming a part of their nature. The magic inherited by children was from their mother but absolutely their own. Very rarely did human men come to the Gosrin. Her father was always considered the last. Most women married mages, men who came from their own magical lines. Upon sacred rites, the essence of the matriarch became the dominant force. The husband’s essence was thought to return to his sisters or lay dormant. Even if Tover had enlisted married mages, he would still be concerned with the essences of the matriarchs as a variable working in the favor of witches. With unmarried ethereal children, he had magic that was individualized and hence independent. Their essence was an entitlement, not a gift.

She had found scant evidence that a second league had once appeared in their history. However, she could not find much else other than a line here or there. This suggested that they had stumbled on an important secret that the township leaders preferred hidden. She believed if their existence was largely insignificant then volumes would have been written, a veiled cockiness to brag about how the township had overcome such a menacing force. History was a story where victors won the rights to dictate their supremacy. If the witches had not penned the tale of the second league, then it was because they did not feel so victorious.

Tover represented the third incarnation of the organization. He either discovered the secret of the second league or was just very creative. He was using the magic of the duels to unlock powerful spells. However, she did not believe his objective was utopia. He was not trying to reshape their universe into a place of universal prosperity. He worked on behalf of Barnabas, but she also believed Tover was an egomaniac in his own right and would probably betray the demon ruler. The Samarians thought of their people as warlocks. The League of Red-Headed Gentlemen was their history, their origins. After The League’s demise, generations of mages continued the ideas it had sown, of seeking independent power to create their own world. And they succeeded in a way. Their existence was so distasteful to the witches that the Sisters of the Sisestra gave them their own domain. To the witches, the demons were the abominations of the demon lands. However, they considered themselves at once expatriates and exiles, the warlocks of Kraken.

Juliette could only assume one logical conclusion: Barnabas sought to position himself as the dominant ruler of Holly Tail and Kraken, to merge their realms into one kingdom united under him. She believed Sheek’s theory concerning Samantha Millpeg. Having witnessed Tover’s rendition of the duels, she failed to see how Millpeg factored into the ritual. It stood to reason, she was a symbol from Tover on behalf of Samarian. If Barnabas loved his wife enough to risk himself in such a public display, then resurrecting her was most likely a part of his new world order.

In solitude, Juliette remembered much she had forgotten. She recalled her sense of Tover and was able to find a better knowledge of his league. Burgess would not aid the demons. Imagining Seraphin’s regal stature as she sat on her throne, Juliette believed this woman was proud of her witch nature; she would not undermine her spirit. If she could have proven Tover’s allegiance to Samarian, the members would turn against their leader, the snake eating its own tail. Unfortunately, she sensed Tover was nearing his endgame. He and his league would be locked away.

Before it became too late, she called Sarah. Over the phone, she heard a bustling ruckus. She inquired if anything meaningful had been revealed.

“No, no,” replied Felfen. “Everyone’s still debating how to deal with the Cornerstone Families. Some want to put Tover Hall under siege; others are afraid of retaliation from the families. No one is sure whether to risk informing them that plans are being made.”

“Is that Harbinger?” asked a voice in the background. “Harbinger?” asked the voice, directly.

“Hello, Sheek,” replied Juliette.

“Where the hell are you?” he asked.

“Home.”

“Home?” He laughed. “So you figured before any of us how useless this would be.”

“I don’t think Tover will be coming out to play anytime soon. And he’s too smart not to have taken precautions. I think anyone who attempts to overcome Tover Hall will either die or wish they were dead.” Before Sheek could reply, she blurted: “Where is Samarian in all of this?”

“I don’t know what he’s playing at.”

“No, where is he? Literally, what is his location?”

“That’s privileged information.”

“What is your theory as to the overall objective?”

He spoke in a whisper: “Well, our little circle are the only one’s who suspect his involvement. The others just assume Tover’s a dark mage on a bender for power. But my guess is, if this is ultimately Barnabas’s plot, then he’s preparing for an invasion. This negotiation of mercenaries is either a distraction or a necessary foothold he needs in Holly Tail.”

“So again, where is he?”

A sigh. “He’s turned himself in. The Reginal took him into custody.”

“He’s at Major Law?”

“Yes, but not our department. He’s being transported to Capitol City for questioning.”

“Oh God.”

“Yep. The man plotting some obscene scheme will be in the heart of our township’s government.”

Juliette wrapped up the conversation, hung up her phone, and returned to the papers on her desk. She knew there was nothing to be done right now. Still, she took a standing oval mirror in a gilded frame from storage and set it up in her bedroom. She was beginning to get the sense she understood Tonks’s riddle. The spell he was suggesting had a purpose. She got in bed and mentally chewed on the glass before her. Barnabas and Tover had performed their spell. She deduced The League of Red-Headed Gentlemen was coming to a tragic end. And in their tragedy lay her answer.

19

Velestine, Sheek, Rector, and their small band of cohorts finally resolved on a plan, thanks to a call of divine synchronicity. Hlok had left messages with Sarah and Juliette. He was prepared to discover the ritual performed at Faranuga.

The town was in a state of emergency. Velestine used this to her advantage to insist that, despite the late night hour, the matriarchs of the Cornerstone Families needed to convene. They agreed. They needed to find a united stance either with or against the township when it came to their children’s admittance into Tover’s league. While Velestine kept the matriarchs in her drawing room, Hlok, Felfen, Sheek, Sevymas, and Rector returned to the crater, via Felfen’s teleportation potions. They stood at the epicenter of the carnage. Unfortunately, Velestine could not persuade the matriarchs to view their children as traitors. The Cornerstone Families saw themselves as separate and superior to other witch families. They believed the world envied them and would destroy them to abate their sense of inferiority. Cornerstone members always grew up in isolation, seeing the glances and hearing the whispers. They did not feel sufficiently a part of the community to turn against their own children for their sake. Family was everything.

At the crater, the attendants formed their circle around Hlok. He spoke his spell:

“I summon the celestial fire, see what evil has been inspired.”

On the palms of his hands, he had carved hemograms. The symbol was a triangle embedded in a circle. Another smaller circle formed the center. Around the outer circle was a wavy border, a burning sun. As the others continued his spell in chant, he pressed his palms against the soil and continued:

“Ancestors of Hlok, know our town nears its fate. Grant my blood a chance to recreate. In our minds, we must see what has past across a plane for one too vast.”

A sapphire fire burned around the crater. Lines of flame ran down surrounding the chanters. Hlok remembered Rosalee as a little girl, how she held his hand, clung to his leg, afraid, with no name and no home. He remembered the pain the Tovers had wrought. He thought of their offspring, now plotting in their place. His fire consumed his eyes, his sacrifice, filling his mind with images: Tover and the league appeared around the lake. The thirteen girls walked on its waters. They chanted. The floating pages. The Angel lost in his aura. The yellow light. And her. She looked at him with roses in her hair. “Who are you?” he asked. “I am the Rose Bride,” she replied. She kissed him. He smiled then fell to ash.

The circle opened their eyes. Hlok had vanished. They only heard him in a whisper: “She is the Rose Bride.” Sarah called Juliette; Sevymas called his mother.

20

Seraphin Likes knelt on the stool before the speaker. A glass box with a silver picture frame was mounted in the cardboard room. She dug the tips of her boots into the grassy ground to balance herself.

“Wonderful accommodations,” she said.

“This space reflects your spirit. I thought it was earthy, but your perception of deficiency says a lot.”

Seraphin sucked her teeth and shook her head. With a sigh, she resigned herself to this game.

“Ask your questions, Stamphaven,” she said.

“I have claimed my own name.”

“Does your mother know what you’ve been up to?”

“Will your deflections get you what you want? How much time do you think I’m willing to spend playing with you? Get serious, or get out.”

The wall slid open. She stood and was prepared to leave until she saw the silver picture frame. There was something familiar about its design, a hawk with its wings and talons spread. She felt a sense of purpose. She had accepted the invitation for a reason. She returned to the stool. The wall closed. The room descended.

“Why are you here?” asked the voice. “I had placed a wager you would dismiss the invitation.”

“I delight in your disappointment. I never believed someone could have been born wrong until I met you. Even when we were children, you were not just mischievous. You would stand alone in the corner of the classroom with this scowl on your face. The more others enjoyed themselves the angrier you became. When Farden Lucks brought treats, you went out of your way to tease him for his weight. That’s typical bullying from someone typically insecure. But for you that was phase one of a plan. You apologized, and then he mysteriously found a browlila in his desk. One lick and he lost his sense of taste. A second lick, and everything tasted like fertilizer. To this day, no one has found a cure, and he lives off pills and shots and fluids running through tubes into his veins.”

“I don’t recall this.”

“Why would you? What has scarred that man since his childhood was just a silly line in a very long history for you.”

“You’ve lived with this.”

“It was the moment I understood you. How smart you were. How you targeted weakness. How your plans always had just one extra level of evil to them. But no one would have believed me. Valedictorian Stamphaven. That sweet boy who brought the principal sweets on her birthday, who kept his white coat clean even during recess.” She scoffed. “He couldn’t even hurt a blade of grass by stepping on it.”

“And yet here you are, applying to be under my thumb.”

“I am here to protect a friend.”

“You mean like Farden Lucks? That kind of friend?”

“I never spoke to him.”

“I am sure he could have used a friend, a protector such as yourself.”

“I was not as strong back then. I lived afraid, seeing so much go wrong but worried of putting a target on my own back by doing something about it.”

“This is very mundane, Seraphin. I have heard philosophers confess.”

“The feeble are very complex indeed. They ask profound questions to keep from focusing on what is relevant. They wonder what their purpose is, what life means, what love means, and get lost in such a haze they become useless. The strong answer these questions so as to get on in the world. The great mysteries of life are just distractions for those who can’t cope with realities.”

“What is love for a modern spirit?”

Seraphin felt a chill. She stiffened the lapels of her black coat to caress her neck. She answered: “Love is a form of emotional attachment.”

“How cynical.”

“It is what it is. We are social creatures; we need bonds. Hence, love is a necessary mechanism of nature.”

“And since you have it all figured out: What is the meaning of life?”

“I believe in free will, so the answer is easy: Each individual assigns a purpose to their life if they desire. Then they can spend their life finding a vehicle for that objective. Some people need something to do to get along. Some people need a goal. Those who ask the question do not respect their own authority. They want someone else to validate their existence by answering their self-doubt for them. They are giving their power to someone else, call it God, priest, teacher, or cult leader.”

“And what meaning have you assigned to your life?”

“I will protect my friend, Faniel Trinavelli.”

A laugh. “Very noble. The girl who sat on the sidelines now wants to joust.”

“Mock me or ask your next question.”

“Why does he need you?”

“He recognized your voice, and only I know you for the trickster that you are.”

“He won’t return your love.”

“I know.”

“Fool.”

“It really bothers you that I love him, that I don’t need to be with him to be happy. That I can just be next to him and find fulfillment.”

“Leave it to the woman to be the most simple. I have faced the abyss. I have faced the pearl. I have seen true love, a love that could recreate the world in a beautiful poetic. And now, I have a woman who wants to fight for a man in a fit of unrequited love. But luckily for you, there is intrigue to be had here. You will face your soul soon enough. However, why should you be chosen over another? Say like, Juliette Harbinger. Or even my beautiful sister. Maybe you are insecure and that is why you force the universe into simple explanations. I know there are women who can face the beast without reductive cockiness.”

“There can only be one?”

“There can only be one.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve just said so. If I told you there was only one woman whom I considered a threat, and she were not you, would you step aside and let her walk into the arena?”

“You’re bluffing.”

“You want to believe I am bluffing. Here in our confession, I cannot lie.”

Seraphin closed her eyes, tempering the quiver of wrath that shook her. She tried to find reason in this madness. She would not have her answer until she sat on her throne, watching as her friend sacrificed his life to save the Matriarch of Harbinger. For now, she could only hold what she knew to be true. She had set out to intervene on behalf of Faniel.

“I will take my place in your organization,” she said. “And I’m not leaving until I pass your test.”

“You should be grateful to the Life you can’t control. You have unwittingly placed yourself in a delicious poetry.”

The room came to a halt. The wall before Seraphin opened. Cantor walked past her. He channeled his essence into a hilt, forming a sword of blue aura. He plunged his weapon, the blade passing through the glass box and breaking the picture frame. Seraphin was on her feet. He tossed her the black ring and left. She looked at the black stone, the sparkling band, wondering if it was too late to renege. She slid it on, realizing she was leashed.

21

The Rose Bride sat in her chamber. Black roses grew from the cracks of the dusty white stone walls. There were no furnishings except for the chair she occupied. One small arched window allowed for light. Her door opened. The room filled with the warm glow of a magical orb. She felt the soft touch of a hand as it took hers. A kiss on her knuckles. She looked to see Cantor Jaykes kneeling at her side.

“I never knew what love was until I saw you,” he said. “And I can tell by the look in your eyes you want someone to teach you, to fill you with visions of the heart’s beauty. It is only right that I show you what you’ve shown me.” He looked to her, and as usual, she insisted on being cold. “I was like you once,” he continued. “I thought I was superior because I did not feel, because I was not human. To be human was to be imperfect and what made man were his feelings, so feelings had to be his tragic flaw. But now I know the picture of the universe was much grander than I thought. I finally understand what it means to be the pearl and the abyss. Ruka was smarter than all of this. He was so beautiful that he was unfit for this existence.”

He lifted up her dress and disappeared under its folds, burying his head between her thighs. She was still. She was silent. He finished his taste and looked to her again:

“You really won’t understand me until I’ve won you?”

“I am engaged to no one.”

“But you wish to be?”

“My purpose is to be engaged. When I am, I will know my orders.”

“You will love me when I win?”

“If you and I are engaged, and you command me to love you, then I will love you.”

He knew these rules, but his love was transcendent. He did not understand how she could not feel him, know him. Why did she not realize that rules were so puny in the face of cosmic law. He had spent his life searching for something to keep living from being so pitiful. Even as a child, he felt like every day posed the challenge of how not to just crumple up in mediocrity. People were too simple to understand. They were entertained and struck by such idiotic things. Everything was either too frivolous or too self-important to matter. As a young boy, hearing the subtext of crying souls under even the most mundane of actions, he had no choice but to be alone. Children wanted to share their toys so they could be liked. Little girls offering him flowers like how he felt mattered. Why should his approval have mattered? How dumb did you have to be to care what a stranger thought? He roamed Holly Tail, lived in caves searching for Truth, had conversation after conversation talking about the weather, lives past, lessons learned, but even among the most wise all he heard was, “Life is grand, but I am small.” What was the point of stretches of cosmos if just to allow for a speck called Man to exist? Man answered this question by blowing his sense of self to proportion. He made himself the purpose of the universe. He made himself the universe. Only when Cantor Jaykes fell in love with the Rose Bride did he understand that Man truly was everything. He was small, but his heart was infinite.

The closest he had come to tolerating life was when he met Idris Debhan. He stood on Wirkly Bridge, looking at the rushing waters below. This world could not have been his home. Maybe he had been born in Death and died, sentenced to Life. He was not the smartest man. He was not the most beautiful man. But how stupid for people to think this made one superior. He was above them all because he felt above them all. And then a stranger touched his hand. He looked into calm eyes, a face that did not hide the silly desperation of humanity. Idris helped him down from the bridge, and only when with the monk could he tolerate everyone else’s nonsense. He tried to be good. He tried to be the man, the Sayshe, that his only superior could admire. He learned Debhan’s ways. He renounced his connection to mediocrity by cleansing himself from the Stamphaven name. Then they needed money. He had never known what it meant to need money. Something that was always there, so bountiful as not to be noticed, was gone. For the first time, he felt the mediocrity of the masses. To purge this feeling away, he struck a deal with Tover and discovered another way to tolerate humanity. Tover replaced the First Sayshe as his anchor, his root, to life. Now there was only the Rose Bride.

The bride stood and left the room. With her passionate suitor in tow, she returned to the throne room, the arena, where the other members of The League of Red-Headed Gentlemen had taken their places.

“I wish to duel first,” said Cantor.

“Fine,” said Tover. “Whom do you challenge?”

“I challenge Seraphin and Faniel.”

“Do the challenged accept?”

The two old friends nodded. They took their places on the floor. The Rose Bride spoke her initiation: “Black roses of the foregone mist, aid me with the forces I enlist. We gather here with hearts for one purpose, creation. And in your honor we manifest a vision, our deliberation. Grant the winner who is most suited with the power of Birth. Let the challenge stand as a proof of worth. With this duel, there will be a cruel renewal.”

Winds whipped her dress. In her hands coalesced a light that she centered upon her self. Each duelist reached through her bright womb and seized their golden swords. The light dissipated. The bride moved to the wall. When the three swords burst with light, the duel began. Cantor charged Faniel, but Seraphin slid between them, clashing swords with Cantor. She whipped her blade into a controlled frenzy, pushing him back.

“Don’t do this for me,” said Faniel. “I am not worth it.”

“Don’t deny me this,” replied Seraphin. “And don’t tell me I’m not worth my own dream.”

His opponent distracted, Cantor lit his fist with his essence, and punched Seraphin in her gut. She coughed up blood, wheezing as she lost her breath. Faniel felt the need to avenge his friend and to commit an act of forgiveness to assuage his guilt. He engaged Cantor, hearing Seraphin’s pleas to back down. She could tell Cantor was toying with Faniel, slackening his pace but not striking any deadly blows. She screamed. By Cantor’s stance–one step back, blade tucked in to his side–she knew his final strike was coming. She saw the plunge of his blade as if she had conquered Time. But when its flow washed over her again and the world returned to its fast pace, she was left frozen. Faniel was alive. Cantor had grazed his opponent’s side, his blade sliding under the chain of a fob watch and cutting it loose from Faniel’s coat. Cantor had the watch wrapped around his sword. With a fling, he threw it at the Rose Bride’s feet.

Seraphin saw Faniel. He was sweating. His eyes did not leave the watch. His breath was heavy. He looked at her. They read one another’s intention on the other’s face, and they raced to the watch. Seraphin stumbled to her feet. Faniel grabbed her from behind, but, with a blunt movement of her elbow into his face, he let her go. She took up the watch, opened it, and saw Faniel’s blade run through her stomach. She heard his panting in her ear. His nose was broken, blood running down. She conjured a fire in her hand that burned the picture in this false watch that had truly served as a locket. He screamed and pushed his blade deeper. He held on to the sword, feeling her life fade away just like the picture of his true love.

22

“Faniel Trinavelli, hero of The Reginal, I did not think you would heed the call,” said the voice. “You have everything, and, if you do not, all you need do is ask and it will be given.”

“I can have everything but what I truly want. I have destroyed goblins with my bare hands. I am the youngest second rank officer in the history of The Reginal. But I see her... I need her... And I try to move on, I try to find little ways to have her... And...” His lip quivered. The celebrated soldier shed a tear.

Wearing his Reginal uniform, he knelt on a plush stool before the speaker. His room was marble, a light gray with swirls of cinnamon and golden sparkles. It did not move. It would not move. A glass case displaying a porcelain statue of a mother holding a baby was mounted on the wall.

“Dear, gentle giant,” said the voice. “I always knew the heroes who served us were only human, even if ethereal. By being something more, a statue, an icon, an institution of man, of justice, of enforcement, a burden has been placed on you, a burden you wear because someone has to in our broken world. And, by hiding your humanity to become something more, something more humble than a god, you are not protected. You lay hidden as a child in the shadows, a child who longs for sun, and meadows, buried in the sludge of civilization’s strife. Those of you who find a defense, who build walls of arrogance, inevitably tarnish the ideal you are supposed to be with corruption.”

“The innocent get hurt.”

“Even when you are perfect–”

“They are hurt regardless.”

“As hard as you’ve worked, are you not entitled to one little thing? Does she share your feelings?”

Faniel did not hear the first question as a true inquiry. He heard it as a plea, his heart’s desire personified in a voice. If this man, whom he was sure was Cantor Jaykes, understood the silent agony of existence, how a man with every reason to be proud and happy still suffered, then maybe he had found someone to trust. He knew if someone could talk him out of his feelings, not by berating him, but by understanding him, he would have a chance to be free. He broke into sobs.

“I’m almost afraid to understand you as well as I do,” said the voice. “It scares me that I know your torment comes because she loves you.”

“This will ruin me,” he said. “If I were anyone else, we could run away. Live in a small hamlet.”

“You wish to be insignificant? Would you even be worthy of her if you were this anonymous man?”

Faniel laughed. “No, I wouldn’t be. She’s treated like a slave.” He thought about the injustice. He seethed. His chest huffed. His saliva bubbled. “Only as I am, am I strong enough to free her. With me, she can feel like a true woman.” He had once thought he was sick. No healthy mind would fall so thoroughly in love at first sight. Time and distance should have remedied a crush, an emotional phenomenon that grown men should have conquered. But this feeling of boyhood, this sprightly childishness, was a revelation. To feel so light even after having faced Death. He joined the forces, thinking he could rule Death and Corruption. Instead, he learned that his job was to sweep away their mess. For every life he saved, many more would be lost. This awareness of his purpose could have destroyed him, but his love for this beautiful spirit gave him hope. He could build a world where he was truly the protector, not a symbol people gawked at to keep from facing reality.

“Grant me the power of Creation,” he said.

“Is this why you came here?”

He shook his head.

“What did you want?”

“I wanted you to make me different, to make me the man I am supposed to be. I wanted to be a man who didn’t hurt people, who didn’t destroy lives. I know I can’t control myself much longer. I’ve tasted her. She’s tasted me. And I thought that one memory could last me my whole life, but it hasn’t.”

“When we are left to imaginings, it’s easier to get by on fantasy. But once we’ve had the sweet pulp between our lips, we understand that reveries never suffice as a replacement for real experience. We crave it more. We hunger to recapture the sensations, the feeling.”

Faniel nodded. “There is no reason anyone should be hurt. There is no reason for there to be a scandal. If we make each other happy, then in time everyone should move on.”

“But what damage could be done until that time?”

He nodded again. “I know. So I need to create a world where we can be together without hurting our families. Even if we are together, even if we run away, I would be haunted by her look.”

“Whose?”

“Seraphin. Seraphin Likes. She is my dearest friend. And I don’t think I could be as happy as I am meant to be if I have to spend the rest of my life with that look. Her horror. Her disappointment. The look of anger at our betrayal.” He wiped his tears on his sleeve. “I need us to live in a world where everyone won’t judge us. I need to be an officer. I shouldn’t have to give up my post because of feelings I cannot control. Please grant me the power of Creation.”

“You are getting ahead of yourself.”

He punched his fist through the wall. He harnessed his anger. He took a deep breath and looked to the speaker: “I have been behind my fears for a long time. It’s about time I took the lead. Grant me the power of Creation, or I will hunt you down, Jaykes. I will tear your limbs off and feed them to pigs, the mundane’s filthiest animals.”

“First, tell me the time.”

Faniel leaned back. His eyes widened, his lips parted–he was shocked by the request. In a moment, he was drained of his fury, of his reserves of strength, and he felt his waist, feeling his fob watch under the fabric of his uniform. He was not sure why he hesitated. He had come this far. He had found someone who did not judge him, who was prepared to help him create a world. He unbuttoned his shirt and retrieved the silver watch. He looked at its decoration, a hawk swooping down for the kill. He looked to the speaker. Then to the watch. With a sigh, he opened the timepiece and looked at the picture taped inside, the image of his love. He had had the watch since he was a child. Everyone knew it was his most prized possession. His grandfather had taken it from a demon he had defeated. However, in the last year, Faniel’s feelings about the heirloom had changed. He hated it. Always counting. Always moving forward. He smashed the glass, gutted it of its cogs, and turned it into a sanctuary for his love.

He held up the opened locket to the speaker.

“Who are you?” asked the voice.

“I am an aspiring god.”

“Who are you?”

“I am a man in love.”

“You are ready for the power of Creation.”

“Grant me the power of Creation.”

With a crack, the mother’s head fell from the statue. It clanked against the glass and rolled back and forth before settling. The wall before Faniel slid open, and Cantor Jaykes presented a black ring in a black box.

“When you put this on, you will walk the path of Life and Death,” said Cantor. “You will be presented with a truth of Creation that will destroy you. You will rise from your ashes or remain buried in the chaos of your castle. This is the last choice of your life, if you choose.”

Faniel held out his hand. Cantor slid the ring on to the finger. The officer screamed. He held his head, falling off the stool. He curled into a ball, his breath huffing in torrents, and his trial began. He saw a story and was reborn.

23

Seraphin held the locket, dying. Faniel had seen the look he never wanted to see. It was worse than he had expected. The shock on her face looked more like fear. She was afraid of him. She had confirmed that he was a monster.

Looking again at the picture, Seraphin tried to determine what it meant. Why was her little dog, Cinnamon, in his watch? The dog wore a pink ribbon that she had not bought. And then she felt him driving the blade deeper into her. She felt his trembling anger; his hopelessness; his misery. She laughed, spitting up blood, then fell over.

Cantor had laughed so hard he doubled over, fell to his knees, and cried. His face had turned red. He tried to control the imp that played mercilessly in his gut, but he could not. He stumbled back up on his feet. Seraphin and Faniel had not heard him. They were lost in a world that existed only between them. As Faniel now held Seraphin’s body, realizing she was gone, what he had done, his instincts warned him of approaching danger, but before he could react, his head rolled off his body. He fell to the ground. With a handkerchief removed from his breast pocket, Cantor wiped his blade clean of Faniel’s blood. He looked to the Rose Bride with delight; two of the dark yellow roses in her hair had withered and turned black. He pointed his sword at Burgess, seated on the lowest throne:

“Who’s next?” he asked with a grin.

Burgess looked to the Rose Bride. She blew Seraphin and Faniel a kiss, and their bodies were gone in ash. She took up their swords, one in each hand, and held them down at her side.

“Rose Bride,” said Burgess. “We are trying to prove our worth, correct?” She nodded. He continued: “And only one yellow rose can remain in your hair?” She shrugged. “Whomever wins is your betrothed?” She nodded. “And how does that grant the victor the power of Creation?” For the first time, she batted her eyelashes, and looked at him:

“When I am engaged, I will know whom I serve. I will grant him a wish. This wish can transcend time and space, any notion of the universe.”

Burgess stood. “I do not believe dueling is proof of worth. What is the connection between a man who can wield a sword and a visionary? Nothing.”

The Rose Bride stood behind Cantor. He caught a whiff of her garden scent. He smiled, looking at her with admiration, before returning to Burgess.

“Do you still wish to court the Rose Bride?” asked Tover.

“No,” replied Cantor. “He’s trying to find a loophole, because he knows he can’t defeat me.”

“Do you accept my reasoning?” asked Burgess of the Rose Bride.

The empty creature took the sword in her right hand and plunged it upward through the base of Cantor’s skull where it re-emerged at his crown. She took the sword in her left hand and inserted it at the base of his spine. Cantor did not feel pain. He felt triumph. He felt love. And then he went numb. Another body on the floor.

“I accept your reasoning,” replied the Rose Bride, another rose in her hair turning black. The two roses that remained yellow shed their petals, which curled and browned as they dropped from her hair. “Burgess Roysch, you are my betrothed. As the victor, we are engaged.” She took his hands in hers. She looked to him with concern. “The roses in my hair have collected the power of spirit. The love, the fear, and the lust of your fellows, Seraphin Likes, Faniel Trinavelli, and Cantor Jaykes, have provided me with the magic to grant a wish. However, one suitor remains, Oliver Tover. You may surrender your wish to him and live, or prepare for your next challenge of worth.”

Burgess was the only member who had not made the mistake of thinking the Rose Bride had feelings. So he was not foolish enough to underestimate her expression now. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should surrender.” Her eyes had a glimpse of the sinister.

“Very well.” He looked to Tover. “Make me the oath you made Juliette, and the wish is yours.”

“That is not necessary,” said the Rose Bride. “You are under my protection for as long as I live.”

“And thank you for your participation,” said Tover. “You will always be welcome to play again.” He hopped up from his throne and with a merry sprightliness, came down the steps. The Rose Bride released Burgess, wrapped her arms around her new engagement, and kissed him on the cheek. Tover asked his bride: “You know my wish, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know all my suitors’ wishes.”

He looked to Burgess: “Do you wish to see?”

Burgess was repulsed by the grin on his face. He was also afraid. On one hand, he had the opportunity to run. On the other, regardless of the Rose Bride’s promise, he may have been safer remaining close to his enemies. “I will tag along, I suppose,” he replied. “Might as well see first hand what my gullibility has allowed you to achieve.”

“Oh, no, no,” said Tover, wrapping his arm around Burgess’s neck and pulling him close. The devil, his bride, and his little imp huddled together. “Everything I promised was true. If you had challenged me and won, you would have had your wish of infinite potential. But yes, the deck was stacked against you. Still, you were on the verge of claiming the game for yourself. It’s not my fault you got scared and decided to choose the middling existence of safety rather than take a risk on true prosperity. I was just as impressed and concerned as any ignoramus would have been. I did not expect you to somehow subvert the duels. I thought for sure the final battle for Creation would have been between me and Cantor, and I planned to just overwhelm him with spells that even he couldn’t counter. But if you chose a game of rhetoric, or poetic, you surely would have won.” He kissed him on the temple with a big, almost comical, smooch. “You are brilliant, Burgess Roysch. I consider you like a son. I’m happy you’ve chosen to stay with me. Now, we’re off!” And they disappeared in black smoke. The thrones crumbled.

24

Juliette was too busy to be heartbroken, but still she cried in sobs as she prepared her spell. Hlok was dead. The tears stained the pages of her diary as she tore them out one by one, smeared a circle in her blood on each one, and plastered them over her standing mirror. Tonks sat on her bed, observing the proceedings. When she was done and had plopped next to him, gathering her energies for what came next, he stood on his hind legs, and used his paws to dab her tears. She laughed, scooped him up, and snuggled him.

She held her small book open in her palms. She had spent an hour finding the wording for her spell, experimenting with her litmus paper to ensure its success. She spoke her variations of the spell while holding her hands over a page. At first the paper turned a light blue, a sure sign the spell would not penetrate the darkness of her grimoire. Then the paper was too black, signaling she would be sucked into a void of oblivion. Finally, the spell tested a milky midnight. The wording found the balance between expression and intention. Working with the darker magic of her book, she had to master an intuitive sense of wording that minimized trickster loopholes. If one enchanted cupcakes to be sweet, they could ensure their spell would sweeten the cupcake to the perfect level. However, if dark magic was used, the cupcake would have been far superior to any in existence, and then you dropped dead because the sweetening agent was also a rare toxin. The magic from pure essence was always calibrated to work in favor of the caster, to automatically fill in loopholes, working with the spirit of the request. However, dark magic played games. And as Juliette channeled her essence in unison with the pages of her unofficial, and illegal, grimoire, she was in harmony with dark magic.

Her spell book had the unique capability to reveal spells she had never learned or studied. Unfortunately, she knew when she accessed this potential she was tapping into an evil that threatened her grimoire and hence herself as she was bonded to it. She used love and goodwill as a shield against this encroaching malevolence; however, she did not think within months of leaving the Sisestra that she would need to be negotiating this capability. Over the years, the decades, how many more times could she consider this a plausible option? How long before she had to automatically deny using this power to save her soul, and what if the costs were worse than what they were now? She spoke the spell:

“These dead leaves were retrieved from the dark woods. In the essence of hope, the humility of a reformed bragger’s faith, I return them if there be pure good. I once surrendered, and I surrender again; can you appreciate this end? If so, open a path so I may enter with permission into the darkest realm.”

In her grimoire, the words appeared, but she did not know their language. The blood circles turned black seeping into the page. She had been accepted. The pages dissolved into the mirror. In the glass, she saw a chamber in Hell. The stone room was the color of lemon chiffon. Black roses grew in the crevices. Two silver chairs with red cushions were situated on opposing sides of a silver table. In the right chair sat Ruka Chobin, his head slumped over. A barrage of ice swords stabbed through the chair, through his body. Juliette stepped through the mirror and inspected his injuries, wondering if she could transcend his karmic fate to free him. She looked at the table. A chess board. His white king had fallen, surrounded by a black pawn, a black rook, and a black queen. She decided to try pulling one of the swords out. As she reached for the hilt:

“I would not do that,” said a voice.

Three steps led to an arched portal. In the frame, stood a young, dark-skinned man. His eyes were wide open but drooped in their corners. He had a face like a child, innocent enough to not directly understand the world but still born knowing of its tribulations. His black boots had silver buckles at the ankles. They rode up his legs to an emblem of encrusted gems, a cross of obsidians in a circle of rubies. His black shirt had a stiff collar and his long, pure white coat was pinned with a black rose. The symbolic rose, the regal stature–Juliette deduced his identity.

“I am sorry for intruding, King of Samarian,” said Juliette.

“Don’t pretend to know me, Harbinger,” replied Samarian. He came down the steps and sat in the chair. Ruka moaned, lifting his head. Juliette crouched, placing her lips by his ear, and whispered his name. He uttered her name in return.

She stood erect, prepared for the battle to come. “I came to make a bargain.”

“To achieve what?” He looked at her with a superior disinterest.

Juliette thought she had conquered her insecurities in her confrontations with the Matriarch of Roysch. However, Samarian’s power was palpable. When he had entered the room, he had a gravity that she felt pushing her to her knees. His sheer presence compelled those around him into submission, into a stance of servitude. She refused to let him see her weakness under his aura.

“What do you need to spare Holly Tail?” she asked. “Tover has conjured the Rose Bride. He has prepared the final duels. Your resurrection is guaranteed. You will be reunited with your husband, and he will wage a war that will see many of our people lost. Hatred between our factions will only drive us farther apart. If Barnabas will use his one wish to restore you to the true world, then you must have some sway over him.”

“You are suggesting I am the great woman behind the great man.” He eyed the chessboard, observing the game he had won against Chobin. With a wave of his hand, the pieces reassembled into their pre-war positions, all aligned in two tidy rows. “You have a lot to learn about negotiations, about diplomacy. When you jump straight to the point, you look desperate. But I suppose this has its use. You come here and face me with a respect that other witches could not muster. Even faced with apocalypse, they would spit on me, call me demon rather than acknowledge me as their messiah. I’ve always liked you, Harbinger. You don’t test my patience. You don’t pretend like I could not summon a thousand deaths upon you. And you are reasonable.” He snapped his fingers and another chair appeared. “Sit, and I will tell you a story. By its end, you will understand me and the full weight of the deal you will make to save your people from extinction.”

25

Clythe Samarian inherited the throne of Kraken upon his father’s death. He was the true Caliq. However, he was young. The elders used his age as an excuse to temper the effects of what they called “an effeminate prince.” They insisted he needed a ruling partner, a Caline, and a fast resolution to the necessity of a blood heir. The elders convinced Clythe that the people were not ready to see him as Caliq, and he needed to stabilize discontent. So he took their suggestion and married a leader in their army, Barnabas Reza. Barnabas took his name and provided the persona of authority the elders thought he needed. However, the heir’s marriage instead raised doubts to his competency that infected Barnabas himself.

In the early years of their marriage, Barnabas took great honor in his service as a figurehead. He implemented Clythe’s legislation and rulings with a ruthless dignity that made him a statue of power in his own right. Then, there was a disagreement.

Generations ago, the warlocks had sought refuge from the persecution of witches. Reginald Samarian invaded the Sisestra, forcing the most noble Sisters to create a homeland for them, the demon lands they called Redune. The realm the witches created was a wasteland of hard, cracked desert, red skies, and storms. Still, over the generations the warlocks’ numbers grew, they harnessed their magic, and their numerous tribes battled until unified into three volatile kingdoms: Alstern, Labrule, and Kraken. Some considered the expelling an exile, others an exodus. Young warlocks grew up hearing stories of the paradise of Holly Tail. To them, grass and sun were a myth. And then Clythe had done the impossible, he opened a magical pipeline to an earthly heaven. He cast a spell that created a wormhole into the township where their people had been born and despised.

He allowed himself to be arrested by the Reginal. After investigators concluded that he could have easily abandoned his cell, the Board of Leaders brought him to the Great Hall. The Ruler of Kraken stood in a round theater before the fifteen mayors of Holly Tail and the Board of Leaders. They sat up high, prepared to judge. Around the room, the Reginals from all corners of the township stood in the balconies, a display of strength. Samarian testified to the conditions of Redune and suggested an arrangement too difficult to refuse. He offered Holly Tail the gift of egin, a magical plant that remained an icon of the witches’ golden era. When all of the human races lived in one dimension, the witches had grown this herb to be used in a variety of potions. However, when the Gosrin was formed, the plant died. At first, Clythe was met with scoffs. A demented demon could not cultivate the purest essence that grounded the egin’s roots. However, no test confirmed their prejudice; the egin was true. The demon lands had proven to be a home to one of the witches’ most cherished icons. They were disgusted, but they bargained. In exchange for the root, the wormhole became an arc, transporting the two genders of many animals so that they could be farmed in Kraken.

When the warlocks learned of Clythe’s greatest accomplishment, they cheered. Parades were held to honor the venigriff and other rare animals that came into their borders. Some of the animals, legends now proven to be true, became deified. Some began to hope for reconciliation, a new era where warlocks and witches lived in paradise together.

The elders saw opportunity. With a door to Holly Tail open, they also fell under the spell of progress. When the impossible had been achieved, it was easy to envision revolutions, to overestimate the possibility of even grander change. They did not see how Clythe worked tirelessly to be the picture of civility and grace. His effort to micro-shape the perceptions of Holly Tail’s leaders, to stand as an example, or at least an exception, of demon nature, was fundamental to opening trade routes. As the elders demanded an audience with Holly Tail leaders, Clythe believed the old men would destroy his historic achievement with entitlement, demanding more as if more had been promised. The warlocks were used to pillaging for their keep. Diplomacy was a strategy of rhetoric not swords. He refused the elders.

Barnabas did not agree with Clythe’s ruling. He may have kept his mouth shut to play his part, but his face told his truth. Barnabas and Clythe differed in their stance on Holly Tail in a way any who knew their natures could have predicted. Clythe saw beauty in sandstorms and rock. He found the crimson glow of their skies to be a miracle. His father taught him the magnificence of their lands. He felt blessed and hence worthy of blessing. However, Barnabas marked the oppression of his impoverished existence with the revelation of Redune. He truly believed his people were demons, and they deserved this living Hell to which they had been banished. He buried this hate beneath an arrogance of patriotism, fighting for his kingdom. He climbed the hierarchy hoping to distance himself from the filth of his family. He fought for supremacy. He fought to earn the right to believe he was worthy. When he caught his first glimpse of a green pasture as Clythe passed through the portal, he knew God had finally rewarded his worth. He used the love he had spent years cultivating with Clythe to slither his way through the wormhole.

Clythe imagined a coexistence between Kraken and Holly Tail that would fortify his kingdom against Alstern and Labrule while enhancing the quality of life for his people. Baranabas dreamed of taking the landscape of Holly Tail for himself. With the elders, he plotted to gain a stronger hold. He made his own connections with certain witch leaders, proposing a plan of unified armed strength. Unfortunately, Holly Tail was too cozy to fully understand the necessity of magical forces beyond their Reginal. However, some who long thought the witches had become too complacent with the generations of peace with the Lazans and Alucians, who were constantly evolving, sided with Barnabas in secret.

The more Clythe faced the witches with tolerance, accepting their slurs and degradation, the more Barnabas faced his love with condemnation. Clythe did not value the witches enough to register their nonsensical biases. As long as his wishes were granted and their agreements were honored, he was content. However, Barnabas believed the witches needed to acknowledge the warlocks as brothers, not alien creatures from the underworld. He had once respected Clythe for his intellect, but now he viewed that same intelligence as weakness. He imagined how glorious he could have been if he were the true ruler. Many already considered him Caliq. He subtly inquired with his allies in Holly Tail how they would feel about a coup. His allies in the Department of Capitol Law, the overseeing institution of every town’s law enforcement, gave their unofficial support to Barnabas.

During their wedding anniversary, before Kraken’s greatest officials, where they all wore white and feasted on the bounty of Holly Tail, Barnabas took a sword and sliced off Clythe’s head. He declared himself Caliq. Unfortunately, his plans were rewritten in history.

As Clythe crossed the foamy quantum border between the true world and the underworld, he touched time in the infinitude of Hell. His soul manifested in a cavern with a silver pool. Looking in the waters, he saw himself in the true world, some time before his death. He had eternities to plot his revenge. He set about conquering the caverns and lands of Hell, forming a new kingdom. His ancestors had been petrified in iron statues, but he did not need them. He had their essence as the last of their line.

One of the subjects of his new kingdom was a boy named Warner Trubble. This young man fascinated him, and, after hearing his story and casting a spell on his blood, he knew why. The child was a discarded aristocrat. He sought the boy’s adopted mother and his true father and pieced together a sinister story.

The Matriarch of Tover was a woman who loved adventure and science. She would take long trips to jump off snowy cliffs and cut open children to see how they ticked. In the process of living her grand ambitions, she left a husband at home to fondle the maid. When she quit only to reappear nearly a year later with a child, he killed her and left the child in a cart. A woman, Samantha Trubble, grieving her husband who had died in a mining accident, found the baby and saw the child as her husband reincarnated. She took the miracle home and raised him as her son.

Do we hold our status in our blood? asked Samarian. Do we not need jewels and couture to know our worth? Because some people have a great sense of entitlement even when there is nothing to their name. Warner Trubble Jr. was raised in a small hut in a poor hamlet; and yet he knew, even as a child, he was above it all. The only thing he loved about life was his little brother, Sam, a neighborhood child he had unofficially adopted.

Love is a force. What that means depends on the heart it dwells within. Who we are is magnified in its presence. Warner’s love for his brother strengthened his need to create a paradise worthy of his greatness, a home to show and share his brilliance with those whom he respectively hated and loved. And it was not severe to say he hated everyone. He did not know why. He just did. Out of necessity, he considered himself more valuable than them. He felt when they hurt. He did not want to see their pain. He was too young to understand, but he hated them for their acceptance of their poverty. They were suggesting that somehow he did not deserve more. If they had not betrayed him in this way, he would have argued they all deserved paradise.

He took his little brother and began practicing his magic. Not knowing he came from a powerful bloodline, he was surprised at his potential and soon overestimated his capabilities. In an attempt to re-imagine the world, he performed a spell that killed his brother and banished him to Hell. True demons, the beastly citizens of Hell, chased him with their pitchforks. They longed to bring him to his karmic chamber to live his torturous eternity. He fought them, forever running and hiding until he found himself in the safety of a walled city, the kingdom of Samarian.

There is no complete explanation for Clythe’s transcendence, his acquired ability to affect the land of the living from the place of the dead. He was powerful, but not in a way to suggest he could ascend cosmonatural law. Perhaps some souls truly do die before their time, and this mutiny against nature opens doors for other acts of rebellion. Perhaps karma, concentrated from his acceptance of his existence, was a power that he harnessed in spades. Maybe the perceived weakness of the noble becomes the mirrored strength of Life in Death. Regardless, when the time came, he was prepared to enact his influence on worlds.

The one true Caliq nurtured Warner Trubble into Oliver Tover. A soul that was not dead found his home among the deceased. He called the Caliq father and grew up as his prince. He wanted to become a warlock, to make the bargain men like Clythe had made with Hell’s goblins, but his father assured him his value was in his witch nature. When the time came, Clythe set forth his plan. He and Tover cast a spell that returned the unknown heir to his place in Holly Tail. As a member of the living, the transition was seamless. Unfortunately, Oliver refused to part with his father. No matter how many times Clythe assured him he would not be alone for long, Tover was still gripped by an apprehension at returning to the surface. For him, Hell was home, and home was Hell. He departed when a little friend named Lionel, a boy who was like another Sam to him, offered to keep him company. He promised the young soul that they would live in paradise together. He would find a way to undo the goblin transformation, and they would be heroes when they resurrected their Caliq. Unfortunately, promises are not guarantees; they are not histories. Their uncertain future only appeared assured because they had witnessed Clythe, a power that always struck them as absolute.

Tover had not accounted for the mana and ego that fueled Lionel’s demise. He eventually had to sacrifice his little brother on behalf of the one he served. Lionel had become independent to a fault, always on some maniacal mission of divinity. Tover had originally intended to condition a vessel among the romantic girls he found in Holly Tail. However, seeing the precursors of Lionel’s corruption, he used what respect and admiration the boy still had for him to trick him into taking the potions and mana that hollowed him.

Purity had corrupted Lionel. He scorched the land of Holly Tail. The unintended consequence of this nightmare was that Barnabas now had the witches’ backing to release warlock forces into the township, under the jurisdiction of the Board of Leaders.

Clythe had the displeasure of feeling his death once more. Due to ripples Tover had introduced into the streams of Time, Clythe was not killed in pomp and circumstance. No, his throat was slit by his love while he slept. Barnabas had to move quickly to take advantage of Holly Tail’s fear in the aftermath of The Inferno of Faded Meadow. One soul in two places, two beings entangled, the death of the living Clythe was a reunion. The soul that perished assimilated into the soul already deceased.

Tover proceeded with Clythe’s plans, even if he had to improvise at times. Clythe had built the Rose Bride from parts of demons and souls, an enchanted doll who could absorb essence when magnified in the delightfully twisted abyss of neurotic psychologies. He built her in Hell and created a flawless ritual with mana as a sort of engine to help her crossover into the living. The spell only worked because his mannequin was vacuous, an artificial facsimile of a spirit.

He built the Rose Bride and utilized the legend of the League of Red-Headed Gentlemen to create a scenario for duels that would unlock and harness the psychic energies necessary to free him from Hell. So why did Clythe walk such a twisted path towards resurrection?

A dead soul had three fates in the underworld: nirvana, the path to nirvana, or reincarnation. A soul either died and went to Edenia, the eternal paradise; was reborn in Hell and given eternity to resolve the obstacles that kept him from peace; or he could press the reset button, being reborn in karma to once again attempt to get it right in life. If the tests of Hell were too impossible, then perhaps he could improve his karmic status through another round of suffering on Earth. Reincarnation was not suitable for Clythe. He wanted to be restored as he was, blooming in his full power.

26

“So Juliette, you have heard my tale. Here is the deal: If you want Holly Tail spared, give me Barnabas. And if you want our boy Ruka here, then provide me with your means of arriving in my kingdom.”

Juliette looked to Ruka who bled from his wounds, the agony floating him in a daze. When he tried to speak again, he muttered mumbles, strings of spittle dangling from his lips. Clythe handed Juliette a white handkerchief embroidered with a flourished “S.” She wiped Ruka’s mouth and replied:

“But you have no intention of attacking Holly Tail. You need us.”

“You came here thinking that because I had done some hurtful things, I could only have my mind set on world domination, of pillaging your town and devouring your people. So be it. Give me Barnabas, or I will make your fears something worth fearing.”

Juliette tried to think but her mistake preoccupied her. She had known Samarian by reputation. She knew he was particularly principled. He held himself and others to the minutiae of their word. Unfortunately, she had always assumed the he of repute was Barnabas. In her intel, she only knew him as Samarian. Barnabas was so determined to legitimize his reign as the successor in the Samarian dynasty that he was primarily addressed by the surname. When she researched Samarian and tried to covertly warn Sevymas of an encounter with a demon, she had unknowingly been referencing Clythe. She told Sevymas to call a demon a warlock if he ever encountered one. She knew demons were gaining ground in Holly Tail. She knew a Samarian was making regular visits there. And she knew Samarian was noble to the extreme of vicious. When Sheek revealed the leaders were in talks with Barnabas, she assumed he was the one to be feared. She had been wrong. As she sat with Clythe she could have laughed at herself for ever considering Velestine a role model, a threat to her self-esteem. Confronted with Clythe, she had found a mirror, a dark creature that made the light kneel, a perfect counterpart to her ideal, a bright being that made the darkness dance. Unfortunately, she was not supreme. She was a reflection of her dream in a shard of broken glass. If she were whom she wanted to be, she would have used Clythe’s greatest character trait against him. This need for principle would have been easier to exploit for a mastermind. She was not a genius, but she was smart enough to know she was in the presence of one. She did not have any leverage. The fact that he demanded so little with full awareness of her desperation made her respect him. And this made her become disgusted with herself. To respect him was to acknowledge that he was her superior.

“Barnabas is being held in custody at the capitol,” she replied. “And in order to maintain a portal to this realm, I can create a talisman for you. No one can perform the spell but me.” This ensured that she was under the protection of the Caliq of Kraken.

He sighed. “Very well. And I assume you will want a Sacred Oath. You seem to have issues with trust.”

“No Caliq Samarian, I know you are an ethereal of your word.”

“Good.” He stood. “And just for that, you can call me Clythe.”

“Alright, Clythe. How do you plan to resurrect Ruka?”

He took his finger, reached over the chessboard, and poked Chobin in the head. It bobbled, and he disappeared in a puff of smoke. “It is done.” And he left.

The Rose Bride had a unique gift, one Clythe had not designed. As a being that was concentrated soul and essence, she had the ability to wipe one from the records of existence. When she touched Ruka, his karmic slate was cleaned. He did not have the force of history propelling him through existence. In stagnation, he was stationed by manifestations of his own essence. His blades did not represent his accumulated karmic Life but his immediate self-pitying. With a touch, Clythe got the ball of his existence rolling again. He gave him the karmic momentum to resume living. In one sense, he had been resurrected. In another sense, he had been reincarnated. He was reborn, but he was still a man. The Rose Bride had only used this innate talent on one other, Gerard Hlok. However, he did not fixate in Hell. He appeared in the stillness of Edenia. Clythe explained these events without prompting. Juliette cried lovely tears for her friends and felt stupid for sobbing in front of the enemy she admired.

She did not think that Ruka’s chamber was one of many. Precisely, it was one of four, each attached to the four cardinal directions of a larger round room. Ruka was fixed at the east. Seraphin sat at the west in a seat of gold that had grown spikes to puncture her heart and her legs. She had fallen back, her head facing up high as if it could see through the ceiling of shadows and witness the sky. Her neck was craned back as if some arrogant force had wished to revel in his domination. Faniel sat at the south in a seat of copper. A giant beast’s talon had pierced the crown of his head. An endless fountain of blood trickled in array from the wound. He had been struck immobile and silent. Paralyzed, delirious from pain, he saw in the blur of his vision a hazy figure with bright green hair, holding a little ball of brown. He tried to apologize, but when his tongue moved his blood choked him. Finally, Cantor sat at the north in a seat of silver. His head had sunken in and served as a pot for a bush of dark yellow roses. He stared at the portal, anticipating a delightful arrival. Clythe found most of these images, like their masters, a bit too obvious. He was not as enthralled with them as Tover had been and was happy he would not have to consider any requests for accepting them as underlings. Thankfully, with Ruka, he had at least found a companion for games.

27

Ms. Felfen had a moment. She had received the call from Juliette to be an ambassador. She sat in the home where she had once served as nanny and plotted with her former employer and her former charge along with her town’s leaders, whom she had only seen on television and in the paper. She was a part of something much bigger. If only Ms. Demelle could have seen her now. As she cooked transportation and cloaking potions in the Roysch kitchen where she had once made children snacks, Velestine had come up to her and said:

“Why did you never make it known that you were so talented? I could have had use for these kinds of skills. Instead you were just a little mouse from some neutered fairy tale, always scurrying around to serve children.” And she walked away.

Sarah did not think the Roysches would have even remembered her. Now, she had been acknowledged. When she could share this feeling with her children, when she could wash out the invisibility that had become synonymous with the Felfen name, then what wonderful lives could her heirs, her grandchildren, lead for themselves?

Unfortunately, as soon as Sarah had resolved a childhood of nothingness, a sense of failure unraveled it all. Some were truly destined for nonexistence. Even though she did her part gloriously, getting the party of volunteers to the Faranuga crater without being detected, the loss of Hlok–her comrade, a member of her circle with Juliette–made all details, all minor facts, irrelevant. Hlok was gone. He left them not with revelations but with a riddle: the Rose Bride. And now Juliette was gone.

She arranged ten maps on the Roysch dining room table, and ten people with ten pendulum crystals, including herself, scryed the township, searching for one of their leaders now lost. Sevymas and Sheek paced back and forth. Sarah tried not to let their nerves affect her concentration. In a moment of frustration, minutes passing with no result, she yelled for them to get out. The room came to a halt. Everyone looked to her for an explanation. Velestine took her son, Rector put a hand on Sheek’s shoulder, and they left the scryers to focus on their task. Sarah cooked potions to spill on the maps. They slept in shifts. When a few showed signs of weakening, of thinking it was hopeless, she told them to get out or commit. Finally, at seven o’clock in the morning, her pendulum pulled its chain taut, pointing at Creaky Manor. She closed her eyes and sensed through her enchantments around the house that Juliette had, in fact, returned home. She ran into the living room where Sevymas stared out a window, the rest asleep on the sofa or in a chair, and alerted everyone of the good news. They cheered and clapped for some welcome news during a tragic night. Velestine directed Sheek and Rector to get in a little more sleep before their duties called for them. Sarah sent her fellows home with potions that would make two hours sleep feel like eight. Then she, Velestine, and Sevymas went to check in on the Matriarch of Creaky Manor.

Velestine knocked on Juliette’s front door. Sevymas cowered in the back. When Juliette opened the door, Sarah rushed past and hugged her young friend, laughing through tears. But then she caught a sulfurous smell.

“You’ve been around ghosts,” she said. “Where the hell have you been, worrying us all like this?”

“And I’m sure she hasn’t eaten anything substantial,” added Velestine, walking in. She turned to Sevymas: “Come on, darling son. You can do it.”

Sevymas entered. He smiled at Juliette, but she did not notice. The dark circles around her bloodshot eyes, the way she could barely keep the corners of her mouth lifted in a smile–he just wanted to hold her.

Sarah gave her a sleeping potion and then went to work in the kitchen. Sevymas sat in a chair, watching his love sleep on the sofa. He dozed off for little spells.

Velestine felt odd in this place. She had only visited on occasion, but it was during a time when Lincoln Harbinger was alive. Even though Juliette had undone many of her décor choices, she still felt a sense of him in this home. For a moment, she swore he had touched her shoulder. He may not have been the love of her life, but she missed him.

After Juliette awoke, they sat to eat. They had a moment of silence then indulged in Sarah’s breakfast feast of scrambled hickel eggs, pancakes, and fried venigriff. Sevymas ate voraciously this comfort food that reminded him of his childhood. Velestine barely touched hers, concerned with the pooled grease of butter and oils. After some lighthearted banter and laughter, Juliette recounted her disappearance. She was selective in detail and veracity. She claimed her information came from a visit to Tover Hall. No one did not chastise her for this reckless move.

Juliette explained that she knew the League of Red-Headed Gentlemen would be entering a tournament of duels. Due to Hlok’s sacrifice, she knew the Rose Bride stood at the center of the competition. Based on her understanding of Burgess’s personality, and Tover’s link to Samarian, she deduced the league was being used as a smokescreen for a political plot. The Rose Bride was the key to giving the demon ruler his wish: a world where he and his love could rule Holly Tail and the demon lands. Everyone wanted to know what came next. How did they stop Samarian, Tover, and the Rose Bride? Juliette said the Rose Bride was preparing her spell, but it would take time. For now, they just needed to get on with life as usual. She instructed Velestine to convince Rector and Sheek to leave the sabotage of Samarian’s agenda to her. Neither Sarah, Velestine, nor Sevymas believed Juliette was divulging every secret she had uncovered, but the Roysches were willing to give Juliette her space once she requested Sevymas stay with her for a while. She needed him. Sarah declared she would be staying, but Juliette insisted she had the potions she needed and another person may have been a hindrance to the success of her plan. When the small group of friends, now family, broke for the day, they were at once unsettled and relieved by the return to normalcy, except for Sevymas. He was happy to once again feel like he stood with the woman he loved on the frontlines.

“So what is the plan?” he asked once his mother and Felfen had left. They sat on the sofa. Juliette used the remote to load a movie on the television mounted above her fireplace. Now that they were alone, he knew a more accurate account of events was to come, and he felt an eagerness at being her true confidante again.

“I know you all figure I was withholding some things,” she replied.

“Yes, and we are alone now.” He moved closer to her, putting his arm behind her, resting it on the back of the sofa. Juliette moved away.

“We are going to let Tover and the Rose Bride cast their spell.” The movie, an action film she was sure Sevymas would have liked, began to play.

“You can’t be serious?”

She pressed pause. “Yes, I am.”

“I know you like to play things close. But this is different. We are talking about an invasion from an enemy realm.”

“Which is why I kept it secret. We need them to perform the spell, but no one would let that happen. I don’t need people’s desperate self-righteousness making an egotistical muck out of everything. Rector will want to bring in the capitol. Sheek will support him. You will go raging to the Cualquery who will yield to the Reginal. They will piss off Barnabas, and who knows what bombs go off then. I am in a unique position to control–well, manage–the situation. Trust me when I say, we need this spell to happen to check Samarian. It’s destined to backfire.”

“You know this for certain.”

“I am not the legendary Orac of the Lazans. I cannot make promises about the future. But the probabilities seem more in our favor, or at least in our control, if we follow my plan. And my plan involves giving the enemy what he wants, to a point.”

“And a lot of people would not understand that.”

“Correct.”

“They would probably do something over the top and bring us all toppling down.”

“Exactly.”

“I accept that. Now, tell me the truth.”

She told him of Clythe Samarian. However, she still allowed him to believe Tover had brought her in contact with him. Sevymas learned the Rose Bride was Clythe’s invention for resurrection, and this plan would benefit Holly Tail as he could undermine Barnabas, the usurper. Clythe was the more noble barbarian. With the matter settled, they resumed the movie. She wanted to look for Ruka, but she understood transitioning her relationship with Sevymas into some kind of friendship needed to be a priority. As Sevymas saw her comfort with the distance between them, he slowly began to understand he was at a crossroad. They had reached the paradoxical end of a fated love. He could either be her friend and share a special privilege with her, or force the matter and break their goodwill. He was not yet sure which he could live with.

28

Once Velestine had sent some clothes and other provisions for her son, Juliette situated Sevymas in the guestroom and left him to get settled. She went to her office and placed a phone call to Lila Stamphaven.

“Juliette! I didn’t want too seem to eager, so I was going to wait about another week before calling. Have you already handled all of the scandalousness Tover and my brother have caused?”

Juliette feigned a laugh. “Oh, this whole red-headed thing is just a prank.”

“Thank you! People are being so ridiculous. My brother would not burn down the world just to create some narcissist’s paradise. I know he is troubled. He is too smart for his own damn good. But he is not diabolical. Anyway, now that I have you–”

“I actually have a favor to ask.”

“I’m excited already. Details.”

“Ruka Chobin was a member of Tover’s little faction. Do you know where he is now?”

“Nope. But give me three phone calls, and I’ll have answers.”

“Excellent.”

“And you can repay me with a day trip. I love day trips. A weekend off to a new environment with quaint lunches, sun, and drinks.”

“It’s a deal.”

They concluded their conversation. Juliette took to hiding her files in secret compartments in the floors and walls. She did not want to risk Sevymas chancing upon them. Next, she began to consider her fulfillment of her bargain with the true Caliq of Kraken. She had to present Barnabas and craft a mirror. She debated further whether she wanted to do this. Could she make him a talisman he could not alter to a more malevolent use? Was building him a portal to join his kingdoms in Hell and Redune as innocent as it seemed? Spoken in her mind, it was not innocuous. If his army in Hell could cross over into the Gosrin, his forces would be greatly multiplied. An army of warlocks matched with a force of goblins would tilt the balance of power. Still, Samarian’s access to Holly Tail was limited to his own dimensional gateway. Although, if he found one way, then he could find others. With provisions to consider, Juliette tweaked her spell:

“These dead leaves were retrieved from the dark woods. In the essence of hope, the humility of a once bragger’s faith, I return them if there be pure good. I once surrendered, and I surrender again; can you appreciate this end? If so, open a path so only Clythe Samarian may ever pass with permission into the darkest realm. But know I am your master, me, the original caster. Permit him solely one chamber in only two abodes. He cannot act if I am his foe. If he undermines the spirit, commit upon him a curse. Not even Death should fix it.”

Her next consideration was Barnabas. He planned an invasion that Clythe stood against. However, Clythe was obviously the more intelligent, and hence the more deadly, enemy. Did the short-term good of foiling Barnabas threaten Holly Tail’s long-term prosperity as Clythe reclaimed his dynasty? Barnabas’s ambitions were born into possibility based on the diplomatic miracles Clythe had performed. If she could have ensured the Reginal turned against Barnabas, banishing him back to the demon lands, then the invasion attempt could be avoided. Unfortunately, she believed Clythe’s resurrection was mostly guaranteed. Somewhere, a nowhere to be found, the Rose Bride was fulfilling her duties. If the ideal of suppressing both Samarians were possible, it hinged on stopping Tover. If she revealed Barnabas’s plot only to have him sent away, and then Clythe emerged into Holly Tail, Samarian would fulfill his promise of decimating the township, most likely by unleashing hoards of goblins. If she stopped Clythe, then Barnabas’s afflictions on her home could be easily remedied. Juliette considered her group’s original idea, to gather in numbers and storm their enemies. However, she still believed her original assumption: Tover had an infinity of time to consider every contingency. Did she not trust in the strength of her fellow witches? Was she so afraid of Samarian and Tover’s genius that she made them false gods? Maybe she was like her town leaders, so sheltered that she made excuses to mitigate the necessity of flat out war. Thankfully, her phone rang, a welcome distraction.

“Juliette,” said Lila. “I found Ruka. He’s being held by the Department of Borders. I don’t know why, but it seems serious. I will meet you there.”

Juliette did not appreciate the idea of company, but she expressed gratitude regardless. She found Sevymas making a snack in the kitchen. She told him she needed to buy toiletries and ran out. Sevymas shook his head and resumed making his sandwich. She would never stop lying for the greater good.

29

Juliette could not see Ruka. Even after Lila tried to use the force of the Stamphaven name to break down the walls, there was still a gantlet of red tape. Assistant after assistant directed them to office after office on the second floor, the third floor, the fifth floor, and back down to the first floor, all in a rather half-considered attempt to guide them to an authority who could grant them visitation.

The Department of Borders was a paradox, like every government building in Newton. You walked up long, white stone steps to a grand brick building with columns. The classic look exuded virtue. Then you waded through dusty air along thirty-year old carpeting that snagged your shoes, and questioned tired, cynical assistants in polyester-blend suits at second-hand desks who in turn directed and re-directed you to various departments that looked the same except for the demarcating signs on the doors written in the same font. Finally, Juliette and Lila gave up. However, in a half-refusal to let the issue go, they sat on the steps of the building.

Juliette considered calling Sheek, but she did not want to overuse her pipeline. A part of her was also concerned with having to address anyone about her knowledge of Ruka’s situation. Then there was facing her comrade. Did he remember her visit to the underworld? Could he dismiss it all as a dream if he remembered at all? What did it mean to have your karma wiped clean? His second existence in their world barraged her with questions that she was not prepared to confront. Her phone rang. It was Sheek.

“Harbinger,” he said. “You’re friends with the Chobin boy?”

Juliette confirmed this to be true.

“Thirteenth floor. And be discrete. You don’t just roam a government building. Oh, and also put the Stamphaven girl on her way.” The line disconnected.

Juliette conveyed to Lila the message.

“Well,” she said. “Another adventure I get to miss.”

“Have you spoken with Cantor recently?” asked Juliette.

Lila laughed as tears fell. She looked to Juliette: “Are you just pretending that he’s still alive or do you really think there’s a chance?” She sighed. “If he’d been caught, the Law would be all over the news bragging about it. And if he were out there with Tover, I’d feel him. But I don’t feel anything. Even when he was a monk I could sense him. There was no enchantment, no spell. He was my big brother, and I loved him. Even if he was an evil, calculating sociopath.”

Juliette patted her on the back, which did not improve the matter. She was quick to get on her feet and smile.

“I’ll be fine,” said the young Stamphaven. “A couple of sweet treats, some shopping, and life will go on. I will prepare for our trip.” She hugged Juliette. “Good luck.” And she left her new friend on the steps.

Juliette was still not completely sure about Lila as a person. However, she wondered what this said about her, not to trust being liked by others. She had the spirit to defy epic schemes and political agenda, yet she found relationships, and the emotional bonds that came with them, exhausting. They were burdensome in their responsibilities. If she had to choose between comforting Lila, discerning what trouble Ruka was in, or taking another meeting to try to outwit Clythe Samarian, her first choice was the latter; her last, the former. When she thought of it this way, Ruka was a suitable compromise of sorts. But caring for him bothered her. The affection made the stakes feel so much greater.

When she re-entered the building, a young woman in a crisp suit greeted her. Juliette followed her to an office at the end of the hall and was directed to sign her name in a book. As soon as she finished the last letter of her name, a door in the corner appeared. The assistant nodded approvingly, and Juliette took her cue. She opened the door and found herself walking down a long marble hall. She heard splashing. She came to a lobby where a fountain of electric fish jumped and spurted streams of water. Three silver chandeliers strung with crystals descended from a high ceiling painted with a representation of the Gosrin. In the center circle, Juliette saw witches in flowing white togas casting spells that formed the sparkling bubbles constituting the Gosrin’s borders. One great witch, who stood on a platform above her Sisters, held up the scales of Justice. Around this portrait of the Sisestra, in their respective realms, were the other ethereal races. The Lazans wore pinstripe suits. They used forks to poke holes in their prisoner’s necks, tilting them over basins like a dancer dipping his partner. The blood streamed from the puncture wounds into pools where other Lazans dipped in their gold goblets for a drink. The Alucians wore tweed suits, forming a line. They stood in a small crowd smiling and talking, but as the queue progressed, their limbs turned beastly tearing through their suits. The change from man to animal became more severe until only a pack of creatures remained. And finally, there were the witches, women dressed in silk gowns pouring over books in a study. They pointed at lines in their tomes, directing a friend to observe the passage. They created birds from clouds of sparks and conjured little rain clouds that drizzled over their Sister’s heads to the laughter of many.

“Miss Harbinger,” said a voice.

Juliette blushed when she considered how long she must have stood with her head craned towards the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” she replied.

“That’s okay. Everyone is entitled to a little gawking during their first visit.” A young woman with dark hair smiled genuinely. She wore a cream silk blouse. A silhouette pendant made of sapphire hung from her neck.

“Beautiful necklace,” said Juliette, hoping to quickly move past the scene she had made.

“Thank you. It’s my grandmother’s silhouette. And I am Greta.” She extended her hand.

After a hearty shake, Juliette followed Greta to the elevators. The gold doors parted, and when they stepped inside, Greta placed her hand against a clear square of glass. The elevator approved her access, and she proceeded to press the button “13.” The elevator did not ascend. The doors opened, and Juliette looked down a long hall with hardwood floors, polished until she could see the reflections of the recessed lights along the ceiling. Greta directed Juliette to room twelve but did not go with the young matriarch as she made her way down the hall, passing the numbered red doors.

In room twelve, Juliette found Ruka in an overstuffed armchair with his feet on a striped ottoman. He heard the door open, saw his dearest friend, the one who would remember him forever, and rushed to hug her.

“I’m happy I get to say goodbye,” he said. “They only allowed me one visitor, and I had to choose my mom. Even after everything that has happened, I still have to care about etiquette.”

He offered Juliette the armchair and pulled up a wooden chair. He wore jeans and a white t-shirt. He seemed surprisingly happy which perturbed Juliette. She had been worried. This demonstrated once more the inconvenience of friendships. She could have been planning how to thwart Samarian.

“So what’s happened exactly?” she asked.

“Well, you know about the whole Rose Bride fiasco: the part where I went to Hell, and you saved me by striking a deal with the most badass mage ever.”

“So you have your memories,” Juliette said with a depression that Ruka did not notice.

“Yes. And your secrets are safe with me. And even if you don’t trust me it won’t matter. I’m not staying in Holly Tail.”

Juliette shook her head. Ruka saw this as a symptom of confusion, but the gesture was in fact a refusal to accept his statement. In the moment he had declared his departure, Juliette understood how she felt about Ruka. Seeing him happy and comfortable, she had flashes of a life she wanted. Once, she had imagined having a true family. She and Sevymas would go to the Amadors to eat dinner. Sayshe Idris would be there. Rosalee would have joined them in time. She imagined this as a family she could have after her father had died. It did not last. Sevymas wanted his mother as the head of their family. Sayshe Idris returned to his church. Rosalee went into hiding at the Sisestra. And the Amadors did not call like they used to. Then she met Ruka. He seemed to be an outcast in his own family. He was someone who had fought for her when Sevymas would not. She did not realize how desperate her deal with Clythe had been to have him returned to Holly Tail, to her. She did not know the mixed feelings of anticipation and anxiety she experienced were due to the fear of being close to what she wanted. He was here. But life was always so disappointing. He may have wanted to go home to his family. He may not have cared about her.

“Where are you going?” she asked, hearing her voice crack.

“They tell me I have no essence.” He laughed. “I am not even a dud. I’m human, they say.” With a broad joker smile, he shrugged. “My mom said she will perform the spell to grant me essence, but being the controlling hag she is, it basically comes with an eternal sentence of indentured servitude. I’ve decided to take my chances in the human realm. See how our cousins on the other side of existence live.”

“Marry me,” Juliette blurted. Ruka was stunned. Juliette wanted to cry from embarrassment. Her existence was always so pitiful. She conquered evil only to end up in such silly predicaments. But she thought about it, this knee-jerk reaction. And so did Ruka. He smiled. She smiled. “It’s perfect,” she continued. “You can live at Creaky Manor with me. You can have the second bedroom.” She did not notice how disappointment slightly lowered the corners of his mouth in a lesser smile.

“Yes.” He nodded excitedly. “If it’s okay. Don’t do it for me. Not even to repay me for anything. Only do it because you want me around.”

She laughed. “I definitely want you around.”

“Alright. Let’s do it. Now I wish I hadn’t turned down that offer for a solicitor.”

He got up and picked up the phone mounted on the wall. He pressed “0.” He was connected to an operator and placed his request: “My case number is 3-2-5-A-5-1. Ruka Chobin. I will be marrying the lovely Juliette Harbinger, so I will be needing to appeal my deportation.” He was placed on hold. After about five minutes, he was connected to an official:

“Hello, Ruka. This is Official Rayburn. I am your immediate case handler. We met when you were first taken into custody.”

“Yes,” said Ruka. “I remember you from like several hours ago.”

“Please put Matriarch Harbinger on the phone.”

Ruka handed Juliette the phone.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, Matriarch Harbinger. My name is Official Rayburn. I have been handling Chobin’s case. I will make a few statements then please signify that A) you are in fact Juliette Claire Harbinger, Head of Creaky Manor and B) you understand everything I have said. Thank you. Ruka Chobin caused a disturbance that alerted border officials. His mother, in accordance with law, reported him deceased after he failed to register in her essence network. When she felt his presence return to existence, she alerted the authorities. Upon examination, he has been determined to have no trace of essence. He has been classified not as a low ethereal, but as human. According to procedure, the memories of the Gosrin are to be deleted from his mind, and he is to be sent to the human realm. We will provide him with artificial memories, the proper papers, a home, and employment. However, if he is to marry a witch, particularly a matriarch, he will be granted citizenship into Holly Tail. Please know, that you will be held liable for his care and actions. Furthermore, you take full responsibility concerning his condition and circumstances. The Department of Borders has exercised full disclosure in its understandings. If you proceed, you will not be allowed to annul any agreements under the terms of fraud. Also, if it is discovered that you have married Ruka Chobin fraudulently, you will experience the full penalties of the law, and Chobin will be executed. First, confirm you are Juliette Harbinger.”

“I am Juliette Harbinger.”

“Do you wish to marry Ruka Chobin because you love him?”

“Yes, I wish to marry Ruka Chobin because he is my family.”

“Please put Ruka on the line.”

Juliette handed Ruka the phone. A long moment of silence, then he said:

“I am Ruka Chobin. I understand the terms.” Another silence. “Yes, I wish to marry Juliette Harbinger.” He looked to her. “She is my true family.” He hung up the phone.

A bell rang. Under the window there was a metal drawer. Ruka hustled over, pulled the drawer out and pulled out four documents with red covers, each identical at two thousand pages in length. The covers read, “AGREEMENT OF MARITAL UNION.” When Ruka closed the drawer an automated speaker announced: “Congratulations on committing your lives into a lifelong AGREEMENT OF MARITAL UNION. The Township of Holly Tail wishes you a lifetime of prosperity. We recommend reading your contracts thoroughly and even hiring a solicitor to review them with you. When you are ready, each party signs two of the documents. Please return one to the address on the back or place them in the drawer. Finally, please keep the second copies for your own records. Thank you, and once again, congratulations.”

Ruka eyed the intimidating contract. “Maybe we should...”

Juliette had already clicked her pen. She flipped to the last page and signed. “I have things to do.” She did not want to think about finding a box and postage to mail it. She placed her contract in the drawer. Ruka signed his and placed it in the drawer as well.

Juliette stood and held out her hand, “Well, Mr. Chobin–”

“No.” He said, standing before her. “Say it. Say my new name.”

She smiled. “Well, Mr. Ruka Harbinger. It was good doing business with you.”

He kissed her on the forehead and touched her cheek. “It was my honor to do business with you as well.”

And in his eyes, she saw love. She could have fallen into him and lost herself in his affection, but she thought about their home, Creaky Manor, and remembered Sevymas.

“Could you stay here until everything is sorted out?”

“Of course.”

She kissed him on the cheek and left abruptly. She felt guilty. But she had done nothing wrong. Sevymas had betrayed her, abandoned her in her greatest moment of need because she would not lie as a sacrifice on the alter of his ego. He loved her, but she did not owe him. Society would probably cast her as the villain, him as the vulnerable hero. However, she had every right to marry Chobin, to live her life of her own accord. If Sevymas wanted to be a wounded puppy too full of himself to realize that her marriage to Ruka was a sham, then that only confirmed he was not a man to consider for her first true husband. He did not want to be her Gladius; she did not want to be his wife. Her life was her own to share with the one who had earned the privilege, Ruka Harbinger.

Realizing she had become lost in thought while still standing at the elevator, she pressed a white button. The doors parted, she entered, and the doors closed once more. “Do you still have business at the Department of Borders?” asked a voice. “No,” she replied. The doors parted, and she stepped onto the sidewalk at the base of the department’s front stairs.

30

By the time Juliette walked through her front door, she had no intention of facing Sevymas. She planned to run upstairs to her office and keep her head buried in her laptop, researching under the guise of trying to track Clythe. Unfortunately, when she opened her door, the Roysch heir was waiting with his arms crossed.

“We need to talk,” he said.

There was never anything good to come from this statement. Yet Juliette was quite happy. She followed him into the kitchen where he took a wrapped sandwich from the refrigerator and placed it before her as she sat in the breakfast nook. She shook her head, ashamed she had made this wonderful man an antagonist in her mind. Since her duel at Tover Hall, she had berated him constantly to force herself to let him go, to convince herself this man was not someone she needed. This sandwich, this act of kindness, reminded her that, even when they were at extreme odds, they were a team. If Sevymas had understood how much he had progressed in earning her forgiveness with such a small gesture, he might not have made his confession:

“Juliette, I reported everything you told me about Clythe Samarian.”

She had been unwrapping the sandwich. She had been realizing how hungry she actually was. But when she took a moment, which she truly needed, to process what he had said, she placed the wrap back over the peace offering. She had to think about each part of the sentence. The who? Sevymas. The what? A reporting. To whom? Now this was where she had stumped herself. The answer was obvious, but she refused it. His mother? No, the Cualquery. But reported what specifically? Not Clythe. But no. He had said Clythe. Sevymas had reported Clythe Samarian’s plan for resurrection to the Department of Minor Inquiries.

“Okay,” she said, pushing the plate away.

Accepting closure to his romance with Juliette, Sevymas felt sober. He had allowed an intoxication to envelop his mind, his senses, and everything he did was tainted with the perfume of love. Returning to the man of duty he was, he realized that Juliette Harbinger was a smart woman, a good woman, but she also did not have faith in her town, her home. She thought she could slay dragons herself, and he knew this was not true. He no longer had to pretend this woman he loved could–and would–do everything. He owed her nothing, and that would allow him to do what he always wanted–and still wanted–to do. He could keep her safe.

He reached over the table to touch her trembling hand, but she pulled it away. Placing both hands in her lap, she asked, “And...?”

“They are looking for Tover. They searched his house, but he was not there. They are also preparing for the possibility that Clythe emerges.”

“Let me guess. They are going to try to use Barnabas, the devil they prefer.”

“I don’t know. But between both law departments, Borders, and God knows how many more that will now be involved, including the capitol, we have a chance to work a checks-and-balances on both Samarians.”

“Okay.” Juliette nodded slowly, her gaze in the air, contemplating. A part of her felt vindictive. She wanted to see Holly Tail fail to prove her superior intellect. However, she thought about the lives. The lives lost. The lives devastated by loss. “Is there someone we can talk to? There are still things about the nature of this Lazarus effect that need to be relayed.”

“I can try to get someone. Just tell me what you want me to say.”

“Excuse me?” She looked at him squarely. He looked at her anticipating her message:

“What do you want me to tell my head officer?”

“Tell him I want to talk to the person in charge.”

“Juliette, that is not how it works.”

“You really want to play a game of phone tag? This is already so beyond the Cualquery. And if our entire government is running around trying to avert an apocalypse, that will ultimately be their own self-fulfilling prophesy, then no message that has to pass from multiple mouths to multiple ears is going to make it very far through the vine. But fine. Tell your superiors that I know how the Rose Bride crossed over and have seen her power.”

“Is that the truth?”

“That’s the message. The more dire, the more likely it gets through. And I will still bet you twenty-five bollens no one calls. Another fifty that they disregard everything I say.”

“Deal,” said Sevymas. He made the call. No one answered. He left a message. “They are probably busy,” he said defensively.

Juliette shook her head: “He knows. Clythe knows.”

“He’s in the underworld.”

She could not explain that she had been to Hell. Clythe had known her before she knew him. He could have been connected to Tover, the Rose Bride, or have had some other means of seeing into their world. Men never seemed to understand when the best course of action was to do nothing. When all of the pieces were in place, you let nature determine the finale.

The worst-case scenario was that Barnabas and Clythe were working together. She only had a feeling to tell her this was not the truth. The idea, however, was masterful. If Barnabas had alerted Clythe to Holly Tail’s request for an assassination and they plotted his death and arising in order to conjure an army in Holly Tail, then the witches were doomed. She had not considered this, but she could not refute it. Between the township mucking up her plan to turn Samarian against Samarian and now this new theory, she had to find Tover.

“When I come back down,” she said, “be gone.” And she left Sevymas to consult her grimoire. She returned briefly to retrieve her sandwich. When she reached her bedroom, Tonks had already opened her book to a useful spell.

31

Juliette spent her days meditating on her two problems: How could she find Tover and the Rose Bride? How could she stop Clythe if necessary? During her nights, she coerced herself into resting her mind by indulging in junk food and entertainment. While the appearance of the sun brought concerns of averting an invasion, the moon summoned an equally pressing conundrum: What happened when she ran out of frozen cookie dough and boxes of brownie mix? Her father had kept these secret stashes for when freshly baked treats were not available, but even Mr. Carver had to confess he did not know Harbinger’s source for mundane ingredients. Soon, the treats that defined her childhood would be gone. She could not have cookies without chocolate chips.

Even when she had finalized her preparations for what she now deemed The Questioning Hour, she reviewed her plans constantly. She kept her necessary potions lined up. She rehearsed the memorization of her spells. With only the occasional call from Sarah, her life had returned to an alienated norm. Her life alone with Tonks had resumed. He seemed happy. She was not so consistent in her feelings. She appreciated the freedom and simplicity of being on her own. However, she still had moments when she missed human conversation, the evolution of ideas in the intermingling of voices, despite the hindrances and complexities of relationships. She did not have to keep secrets by herself. She did not have to worry how others would inappropriately react to the news of the day. She did not have to keep her own feelings hidden or feel like she had to defend them for a desperate chance to be understood. Tonks, Sarah, and Ruka would be her family. She was not a Roysch.

She was too young to know her nobility and arrogance. Sevymas may not have agreed with Juliette, but he would never disown her for it. Even as she broke his heart, even as her chair would remain empty week after week at Sunday dinner, she still had a place when she was ready to receive it. His humility was a virtue and a weakness. Juliette could not break bread with someone who hurt people, even if it was an attempt to protect them. She could not devalue the lives of those harmed by faulty decisions to the point where she could eat, love, and laugh with those who had set that course into motion, especially when they would not learn from their mistakes. Sevymas would allow himself to be happy. He would tell himself the world was a cruel place, bad things happened, and he needed to make peace with that. Yet, when it came to his own little world, he would be filled with unbridled optimism. He would expect love and family. He would never think Tragedy would knock on his golden door. This was not a possible reality for Juliette. She could not drink and joke when she could have been better for her sake; for other’s sake; for her new family’s sake.

One week after Sevymas had left her to her home, The Questioning Hour began.

32

The essence of Hell was her clue and her compass. She was a living soul in the presence of a Hellking, and yet she was not obliterated. She only felt his gravity. She swam in pools of darkness, connected her own soul to the void, and yet she never realized how attuned she was to it. She felt normal, and she had taken this feeling for granted until now.

She had torn a page from her grimoire, rolled it into a needle, and hung it with a piece of string. She cast the following spell:

“My dark page you have served me. You know the essence I seek. We have been to Hell. We have drunk from the dark well. Point me to him; so that I may decide if he be a victim.” She had once more reaffirmed her alliance with her grimoire and put it to task. At the first inkling of Clythe’s emergence into Holly Tail, the needle spun. She had been attempting to read a novel when Tonks sprung up on the sofa to warn her.

The first part of her plan was to protect herself against the aftermath of ethereal radiation. In her room, she kept her grimoire open in her hands:

“Pages of darkness, your power I harness. Protect me from selected sight and source, and we will gather glory in due course.”

Pages flew from her grimoire and circled her. The leaves plastered themselves over her body from the soles of her black ballet slippers, up her legs, over her black mod dress, and to the crown of her head. The last page covered her face. She looked at herself in the mirror. She could see the faint edges of the leaves as they had overlapped to cover her.

Next, she directed the same spell towards her grimoire. After a swig of teleportation potion, she spoke the next spell:

“Sense the dark magic, take me to the one who should have been left a relic.”

In a puff of blue sparkles she was gone. However, in a funnel of dark clouds, her grimoire, not the potion, was the force that guided her reappearance in a field of waving grain under the full moon. The Rose Bride floated above. Her back arched, she faced the sky with her eyes closed to the heavens. Her arms were opened and at her bosom an orb of dark light appeared. She walked closer, seeing two dark figures through the grain.

“Tover,” she said. He and Burgess faced her.

“Welcome to the show, Juliette,” he replied.

“The Reginal knows everything. They are coming.”

“It does not matter. By the time their best scryers find my bride, they will only be sentencing themselves to nonexistence. If the little town of Beacon’s Ridge was snuffed out under the Rose Bride’s magnificence, imagine how far Clythe Samarian’s superiority will reach, judging your defenders as inferior.”

“Clythe would not want that,” she said, preparing for the question that would define their fates. “If he truly wants to preserve peace and diplomacy, then can you be certain he would approve of destroying an entire army?”

“It won’t matter.”

Juliette knew instantly what this meant. “Will he accept your wish, if you defy him now? That is what you’re doing. You’re not just giving him a second life. You will create a world that knows your true majesty. He will know you as the god that you are.”

Tover looked at her with a frown. He walked up to her and inspected the look on her face. She continued:

“I accept the fact there is nothing I can do. But I can keep my town safe. Clythe will not trust you if you destroy everything he has built. If you make Holly Tail an enemy, he will think of you as a traitor. Let me protect my people.”

“What do you think, Burgess?” he asked, still observing Juliette.

“If she’s busy with them, she’s not busy with us.”

Tover smiled. “Or...” A black fire ignited around his hands. He grabbed Juliette by her throat, but the flames fizzled out.

The Rose Bride erected herself and looked to Tover. “Your power was given to you by our Dark Lord. You are his proxy. And now, prepare for the celestial request you made to serve him.” The light she possessed exploded. Juliette’s grimoire reacted, sucking her into its cloudy passages. When she reappeared, she stood outside a dome of white light. A page floated from her dress and rested against the hemisphere, sending ripples of light waves. Juliette felt a love and hope in the energy.

The Questioning Hour was resolved. As she had expected, all that needed to be done had already been accomplished with her Devil’s bargain, paving the way to this moment. She only needed her plan to run its course. Tover was prepared to kill the troops and then kill her to keep this slaughter a secret. If Clythe had intended to wage war, there was no reason for Tover to invest in secrecy.

They appeared spontaneously. She saw flashing lights form around the crystal light globe, signaling the arrival of Holly Tail’s forces. Around the resurrection chamber, she saw officials in shabby suits bend on one knee. They cut their fingertips with knives, opened their grimoires, and began drawing their respective tetragrams.

Juliette took out her phone. She took a picture of the symbol one of the women had nearly completed. It was four circles arranged in the four cardinal directions with a larger circle running through their center points. She took a quartz crystal and placed it in the center of the diagram. Juliette texted the picture to Sheek with a message: “WHAT IS THIS???” She waited. More Reginal officers appeared, escorting more officials. The troops fortified another circle around the light. The officials remained silent, observing the anomaly. Juliette’s phone lit up. Sheek had replied: “It opens the portal between realms.” Juliette thought for a moment: They were going to teleport this magical device back to the demon lands.

This epiphany stunned her. She had imagined battalions storming the field, Clythe unleashing dark spells of destruction. She did not account for one truth: She did not know everything.

When Sevymas’s intel leaked through the veins of government, the news eventually reached the Board of Leaders at the capitol. Along the way, a series of vouches crystallized the young Cualquery officer’s word as fact. The Leaders knew relations had to be maintained with the Samarian family. They knew a battle was to be avoided. They also knew that a war would burn them all. They had sanctioned for Samarian’s death, the execution of an ethereal ruler. If they could just move the inverted Lazarus pit to the demon lands and release Barnabas, then the Samarians could perform their tragic play on their own stage, locked inside their own world. A Capitol Reginal troop was already guarding the site for Clythe’s original portal into Holly Tail.

The page Juliette left on the dome began to sink into the light. She felt the instability of the magic. She watched the portal officials finish their tetragrams. They had run out of time. The officials’ hands disintegrated. As their beings slowly unwound, the officials were calm. They began their chant:

“Open the way through stars and foam. Send this place through a space unsewn. To Kraken let them be. May they find sanctuary.”

Juliette swigged her next potion. Feeling her essence build, she channeled her magical energies through her grimoire. She spoke her own spell:

“Essence of your only daughter, save us from this slaughter. Cover us in your dark embrace, show that even we have your grace.”

The leaves of her grimoire flew, wrapping themselves around the circle of portal creators, but they fell to dust. All around her, the officials and officers blew into the wind. Her pages flocked around Samarian’s light, covering it in layers. She felt the darkness reaching for her, tracing her through the essence she poured out. The purpose of this book was to compensate for the magic she did not have. Now that she possessed power through the potion, it felt unneeded. Her grimoire hated her–its master, its mother–for abandoning it, the dark child. She forced the book against its will to do as she commanded. She heard a howling in her spirit.

“I will surrender in this moment, but only if you endure one final torment.”

The grimoire conceded. To regain the support of its guardian, it finished her order. Juliette did not understand why it fought her to protect her, an intention she had worked hard to condition into its magic. The grimoire knew this task was hopeless, it would expose her to Death, but she overrode its spirit. The pages combusted in black flames. Juliette felt a piece of her mind burn with each explosion. She screamed, falling to the ground. She went into a seizure, seeing images in flashes. A garden. Clythe. Tover. Barnabas.

As she fell unconscious, her grimoire flipped to a page marked with a paw print. Tonks leaped up and began licking his friend, conjuring her life force. The remaining pages escaped the onslaught of black fire, returning to the book.

33

Clythe had been reborn, and in that rebirth, existence was annihilated. As the Rose Bride had done when she crossed over, so had Samarian, creating an instability at a fundamental level of reality that only the most powerful of magic could have survived. The mastermind Caliq had not anticipated this with his bride. However, having seen her transition’s effect, he had prepared to prevent the same occurrence. Samarian had selected the field of grain because there was no life within miles.

The Rose Bride sacrificed herself to fulfill her purpose. With no reason to exist, death was imminent. She created for her master and his servant a garden. The true Samarian sat on an iron throne in a stone square walled off with columns. Black roses grew in great bounty. Tover cried. It had been so long since he had smelled a real black rose. He plucked a flower, held it to his nostrils, and took in the scent of his beloved ruler.

“What have you done, Oliver?” asked Clythe, his lips pursed to suggest he was not impressed.

Tover took a knee. “I have recreated you. We now exist in a world of our controlling. This place will grow with our intention, consuming all of reality under its domain. We won’t ever know strife or heartbreak.”

“So what would be the point of living? If there is no heartbreak, then there is no one to love. If there is no strife, then there is nothing to achieve. This is not my paradise. I want my red skies, not this silly blueness that everyone else idealizes.”

“Then change it. Change anything. Change everything.”

“There is no fun in that. There is no strength. There is no mastery. These are the inherent drives of living. I want to rule with Barnabas at my side, on his knees. I want to know that I’ve broken him, that I can break him.”

Oliver took the Caliq’s hand and entwined his fingers through his. He held their hands together in a fist. “I deserve to reign with you. I have done everything you commanded. I love you in ways he is incapable of. If you can just appreciate true dedication, if you can value serenity, we can be happy. Existence can be love.”

“Existence is pain. The pain of growth. The pain of decay. This is the Truth, whether we make our peace with it or not.”

“We can redefine Life here and now.”

“Fine. I accept this world.” And with its power, Clythe issued an intention that crushed Oliver’s legs. Over the screams, he said: “That is Life. That is what you fight against to prosper, to progress. I took you in as a son because you are weak. Children need to be provided shelter until they are strong enough to survive the storms. I gave you my power because you did not know your own. And now you have mistaken my gifts, my inherited and cultivated talents, with your own. If you wanted to be my lover, if you wanted to penetrate my inner chambers, to drink from the essence of my heart and to share the essence of yours, you should have become a greater man.” He released the fool’s hand. “You could have worked to manifest your own gifts. You could have used your mind and power to create your own world and carved on Fate’s back our destiny as soulmates.”

Tover laughed, his face reddened with his sobs. “You still love him. He betrayed you, and you will still give him a place at your side. Only a pathetic soul, one who constantly worries about his worthiness, would subject himself to such an insufferable worldview. You want to hurt for him. You want him to damage you. Those are your bonds. You two are just digging into each other with your claws. You need to lord his flaws over him, but what is so magnificent about him that you would ache to deserve him.” He cackled. “Is he so beautiful that you can’t see your own magnificence? Are you blinded by his chest-thumping mediocrity?”

With a wave of his hand, Clythe dismissed Tover from existence. He was gone in a smear of light. He left the square and prepared to utilize the power of this universe, but he felt arms embrace him. He felt a familiar kiss on his neck.

“Traitor,” he said.

“My love,” replied Barnabas. The warrior had skin like copper. His dark hair was short but slightly disheveled. His eyes were heavy with weariness. He looked like a man who had learned that dreams fulfilled were burdens. They gazed into each others eyes. After earning and losing kingdoms in instants, it was the sight of each other that made them take pause. Finally, Barnabas spoke:

“It’s time to go home. I’m sorry.” He plunged his hand through Clythe’s chest and gripped his heart in a fist. “With the heart of your essence, I rebirth you. With the essence of your heart, I am your due.” Clythe had been reborn as pure soul in the hands of Oliver Tover. Upon this third death and new arising, he would have to settle for flesh and bone. The universe that stood as Tover’s monument to him crumbled. Barnabas found shame in the ruins. Clythe did deserve beautiful things, jewels and even more kingdoms, but only if he were the one to bring those luxuries before him.

The garden world disappeared, and Barnabas stood in the field of grain with his allies: Officer Lucy Whitewall, the First Captain of the Capitol Reginal; Leader Bendalla Hush, the second member of the Board of Leaders; and Jamal Freecash, the mayor of Silverton. Barnabas had set up a doppelganger in Kraken to rule in his stead. Then he allowed himself to be taken into custody, anticipating his beloved’s arrival. Barnabas was not a nuanced warlock, but he still felt deeply for Clythe, sensing his soulmate’s power in Tover’s hands. His connections in the Holly Tail government assured his reunion went smoothly.

He shook the hands of his allies, and then they performed the ritual to return him to Kraken. They never saw Juliette and her grimoire laying in the grass, Tonks keeping guard.

34

Cold and wet with sweat and dew, Juliette awoke in the field. Tonks was asleep at her side. She gathered her grimoire and her friend then teleported home.

She could only assume that Clythe had completed his crossing-over. He was gone. There were no battle cries. No screams of agony. No goblins charging through Newton. He came. He went. She took no pride in being right. If the town had stayed out of it, all of those men and women who served their leaders would still have been alive. She hated thinking it was for nothing. She had seen the intelligence of their plan, to teleport the portal where it could not harm them, where they could keep the town safe from consequences that were unknown. Unfortunately, their attempt to prevent the worst led to disaster.

Juliette did not understand that a perspective larger than her own existed. The value of the lives sacrificed was not in the outcome of their actions but in their heroism as they calmly faced Death to preserve their civilization. Juliette had been prepared to kill Tover as a purely functionalist measure, an easy solution with no regard for its morality. If she had succeeded, she would have set a precedent that diminished her light. How long could she deaden parts of her spirit before she also corroded her core purpose? As justifying the taking of lives became easier, how did she hold life in high enough esteem to continue expressing Justice, balancing the light and the dark?

The officers, the portal keepers, and the officials had kissed their loved ones farewell, some promising to return soon knowing there were no assurances, and went to work with pride. They had a chance to protect the peace of their land.

Unaware of Samarian’s schemes, they could have remained home, waiting in fear. They could have stayed a safe distance away and charged with an army once the demon appeared. Instead, they took a greater risk of greater importance, moving in and standing united for a chance to avoid war. Corruption had brought a deadly anomaly into their world, and they sought to protect their fellow citizens from the backfire. They gave their lives for a principle of honor that would ripple throughout the future and save more lives than were lost. If they had not acted, fear would have been the reigning spirit of their era. Instead, they reminded the township that freedom was not fought by magic but by the heart of community.

After a shower, Juliette settled into bed with Tonks and a bowl of sugary cereal. Sheek, Velestine, Sarah, and Sevymas had left her messages wondering if she knew what had happened. For miles, everyone had seen the dome of light, a universe encroaching upon their world. She replied briefly: “I don’t know.”

After eating, she placed the empty bowl on the nightstand, and lay on her side, feeling her head sink into the soft pillow. Her toes wiggled as she delighted in being between crisp, clean sheets. She could not sleep. She got out of bed, put on her white dress with powder blue stilettos and went to the Department of Borders. She knocked on a door marked “13”. Ruka answered.

“Hey, hubby,” she said.

“Come on in, wifey,” he replied. She walked past him into the small room. “I was just packin’ up the ole bachelor’s pad,” he continued. “Gotta get to an honest livin’ now.”

She saw two ring boxes on the coffee table. She opened one up to see a wedding band engraved with the name Ruka Harbinger. She opened the second box, checking to verify her name was inscribed. Ruka clasped his hands over hers. He took the band, looked at her with tenderness, then slid the ring on her finger. She took his hand and his ring and finalized their union, except for one last gesture.

“And I now pronounce us husband and wife,” said Ruka. “Can I kiss the bride?”

Juliette threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. They held each other. She broke the lock between them and asked:

“Are you ready to go home?”

He looked around, noting he had no suitcases or belongings other than the town-issued clothes he wore. “I think so,” he replied, smiling. Hand in hand, they passed over the threshold into another kind of life.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL R.E. ADAMS writes stories in the fantasy tradition. He completed his undergraduate studies in English at Georgetown University and his graduate studies in English/Writing at Mills College.

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