Astrid didn't feel like a loser.
On the contrary, she felt like a winner. She looked like a winner. Red, blistered burns covered the inside of her right wrist. Black soot smeared under her eyes like the Scribal warriors of old. Her blonde hair lay matted and damp with sweat, windswept about her face. It stuck, plastered to the back of her neck. Her clothes sat ripped across her knees and elbows. She wore the signs of battle like any true warrior would. She had fought and survived.
And, yet, she had lost the second task by a margin of seventy-five points.
Sebastian had taken the lead.
She wondered why she didn't feel more bitter about it than she currently felt.
At least there had been a raving debate about it all. According to Matthias, who had ferreted information back and forth to her well into the night, Master Caius had been thrilled that his creations could actually be ridden. There was a rumor that he was planning to salvage the parts of the crushed dragons from the chasm and had already designed a saddle for one. However, in the end, it had been the book her mother had wanted the kingdom's Saviour to choose.
Astrid hadn't; Sebastian had.
It was odd, knowing that she should be angry about the loss, but she couldn't keep the satisfaction from her lips at the memory of it all.
She had ridden a mythically extinct beast, defied her mother in the most stylistically, theatrical way possible, and had saved both Matthias and that blasted book regardless of what the judges thought.
And Sebastian had saved her.
Astrid stuck her hands into the folds of her cloak and strode into the center of the atrium. Above her head, the high mountain ceilings gave way to the open sky. A natural sky-light. Snow drifted through the hole. A flake landed on the tip of Astrid's nose as she stared up at the dancing stars. Sebastian would probably be able to name them all and find her cartographical location based on the pattern of the twinkling dots alone.
She snorted to herself and kicked at a clump of snow that had gathered at the base of a pine tree. Icicles hung from the needles so that the branches looked more like glittering chandeliers or Halorian dancers draped in jewels. She stood amongst them now, not because she liked the sight of them, but because she actually hated them. Within the fortress, they called these trees Damsels' Gowns, which was perhaps why Astrid disliked them so much.
Nevertheless, Sebastian was meant to meet her here shortly unless he had become lost and wound up dead in the maze of tunnels. Hopefully, that wouldn't be the case; Astrid wished to speak with him privately. Since her disdain for the Damsels wasn't a secret, she highly doubted her mother's guards would think of looking for her here.
She hoped Matthias had been able to get to Sebastian and deliver her message, otherwise she would be out here for nought. Though, she had to admit, something about tonight caused the snow to fall a little more joyously, the pines to sparkle that much brighter.
The sound of heavy, unsure boots caused Astrid's heart to jump, and she spun towards the entrance with a grin.
"You just had to suck out the air, didn't you?" she taunted as Sebastian came into view. His hair was as messy as ever, but his cheeks were a bit pale. There were thick bandages wrapped around his hands, peeking out from beneath his sleeves. "You couldn't have used Water's threads like any other normal elementi?"
Sebastian stopped a few steps from her, his injured hands hidden beneath the heavy furs of his cloak. "Speaks the girl who set herself on fire and then escaped on the back of a dragon."
She smirked. "Well, I've never claimed to be the sensible one. That's all on you."
Astrid had expected him to at least half-smile, but his expression remained withdrawn, caught up in whatever thoughts and theories were battling it out in that analytical brain of his. She leaned closer to catch his attention.
"I suppose congratulations are in order."
He finally met her gaze. "I don't feel much like a winner."
"Well, you are to me."
She wasn't quite sure what had made her say it, but it was too late to backtrack now. His dark eyebrows rose in surprise at her candor. She rushed onwards to fill the void. "You showed incredible control. I thought I was going to die, had prepared myself for it, but you...you bolstered my fall with the wind."
The intensity of his stare seared her. "I saved you."
She nodded, releasing a breath that condensed in the cold air. "You did."
His jaw ticked. "I should have chosen to save Abel. As well, I mean."
Astrid sighed, trying not to scowl. "So, this is why you're acting so forlorn."
She let his frustrated admission suspend in the air between them, imagined it attaching to the back of a snowflake and melting down into the ground. When she spoke again, she almost sounded sympathetic. "You were being practical. Logical. It's what makes you a strong competitor, and you won because of it. You should be proud."
He grimaced. "Logical." He released a self-deprecating grunt. "It may make me a brilliant scholar, but I'm beginning to think it makes me a flawed friend."
The pain in his voice drew her nearer. You have always cared the most for those who hurt you. Her mother's taunt rang in her ears; she shook her head furiously.
"But you did save Abel." She reached out to touch his sleeve. "You got her through those flames in the end without so much as a single hair burned off her pretty little husky head. You may have chosen the book today, but it's been her you've chosen first throughout this all."
Sebastian glanced at her fingers that still rested atop his forearm. His cheeks regained some of their bronzed color. "What made you choose Matthias?"
Astrid dropped her hand back to her side. "My mother believes I'm drawn to things that could destroy me." She shrugged, turning her head towards one of the Damsels' Gowns behind Sebastian's left ear.
She squinted at it, eyelids twitching. "Perhaps she is right."
"It's not a bad thing to care for someone," he said.
"Isn't it?"
Sebastian watched her for a short beat; she had the distinct impression that, on this point, she may not be so alone. She wondered if he felt it, too. This inexplicable connection between them. She couldn't be sure. After all, she hadn't had much practice with people. He exhaled loudly, his breath puffing into a small cloud between them, before he stepped towards her. Astrid's heart leapt into her throat at the sudden proximity, but he only walked around her, reaching out a hand to touch one of the icicles hanging from the lowest branch of the pine tree behind her.
"What is this place?" he asked.
She appreciated the change of subject and turned to face him. "Hel's Abyss."
He coughed out a shocked laugh. "It seems to hardly be such an extreme as that."
Astrid couldn't help but grin when he did. "But it is. These trees are called Damsels' Gowns, which is so demeaning and sexist, it makes me want to torch the place with my bare hands."
His muscles relaxed. She liked to think it was because of their camaraderie. "So, what would you have them be called, then?"
"Slayers' Swords."
Sebastian's smile widened. Encouraged by it, Astrid flicked the nearest branch. "Bones of Thine Enemies," she continued.
"How about, Saviour's Tears?" Sebastian offered.
Astrid shot him an amused look. "I'm not crying."
He almost smirked at her. "Who said anything about you being the Saviour I was referring to?"
She mocked a curtsy at him. "Well played, fisherboy."
His head inclined towards her with an air of propriety that surprised her before he nudged her arm with his elbow. "Seriously, though, it wasn't just Matthias you saved during that task, you know."
Astrid wasn't quite sure she wanted to discuss this topic again. She swatted at the falling snow. "There was no one else I cared to save."
"There was me."
She spun to look at the open-honesty of his expression, the lines of his mouth and jaw that pulled under her scrutiny. For the first time, she realized the past few weeks had hardened him. Carved him. His face looked older. Her gaze met his. "But I didn't help you. In fact, I suspect I made your job much more difficult."
"Maybe." A slow grin flickered across his expression. "I nearly suffocated myself, or I suppose it was my magic that did it. Either way, I couldn't breathe."
"Control leads to power," Astrid recited. "You controlled the air, not the elements."
Sebastian shrugged. "Regardless, it was too much for me, but I wasn't alone. I felt you." His expression quirked, glancing from her eyes, to her chin, down to her stomach where he lingered. Her skin erupted into a heated itch that stretched out between them. She knew what he imagined: that breathless punch she often felt in her gut when their Spirits' threads intertwined, weaving together into a force that was capable of destroying the Queen's Keep.
A breath stuck in her throat as he refocused on her eyes. "It was your power that controlled mine, Astrid. You were in control. It broke mine and helped me."
Astrid averted her gaze, feeling strangely vulnerable under the weight of his attention. Her copper cuff tightened around her arm as if to mock the control Sebastian had just claimed she had. The truth was she hadn't been in control, not in the way he apparently thought, anyways. Because, truth be told, she had no idea what he was talking about. The only thing she had done to potentially help him during the second task was when she had distracted his dragon with her own.
There was a large part of her that didn't wish to admit that to him, however. She imagined the way his green eyes would dim at her confession. For some unearthly reason, she wouldn't be able to stand it, knowing she was responsible for that disappointment. Knowing she had done nothing. Useless.
So, she stared up into the night visible through the hole high up in the atrium's cavern before admitting, "That wasn't me."
"Of course it was—" His words disappeared as quickly as if he had bitten his tongue half-way through speaking—"Who else would it have been?"
"There is no one else."
A thick silence stretched out between them until Sebastian said, "Yes. There is."
Surprised, Astrid turned back to him. His brows were furrowed, and he watched his hands as they twisted together, long puzzle pieces he tried to fit into a recognizable pattern. She could tell he had been trying to get them to fit for quite some time.
When he felt her looking, he raised his head. "There's the Monverta."
Her stomach dropped. "But there were two of them, neither of them my mother's. They are fakes."
"We know one that's real, however. Who's to say your mother doesn't have more? I mean, each Author had one!" Sebastian's jaw ticked, his fingers tangling into his curls as if he wished his next words would get stuck there. They slipped free instead. "In the tower, with the Scribes, something whispered to me. Choked me. And again, during the task...it coerced voixili out of me."
An unpleasant shiver raked up her spine. The same feeling of lecherous discomfort she felt when her mother's book fed on her. "You used voixili," she reiterated, "even after the infamous Muir avalanche of the first task?"
"Infamous?"
She huffed, indignant. "Indeed. I heard Savon gossiping about it just the other day."
Sebastian drew an exhausted hand down the column of his neck. "I didn't use voixili! At least, not knowingly. You know I wouldn't!"
Yes, she did believe that, but nothing else made sense at the moment unless he meant to insinuate some sort of demon possessed him. Though, by all accounts, that wouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibilities.
Could a Monverta possess an Author?
"You said voixili kills. 'What is taken from the earth must be given back' and all that other Scribal text you read—Hold on." She peered at him, thoughts ticking as they clicked into place. "My mother. I've heard she collapsed near the start of the tournament. That was you?"
Sebastian frowned. "Voixili," he corrected. "I told you. It wasn't my voice. I—" he hesitated, his eyes shifting away from her nervously. "Astrid, do you think the Monverta is...alive?"
Her very soul flipped within its cage of bones. "You mean like you and me?"
His expression was harried. "It feeds."
"Like all books feed on ink," she argued because the alternative—agreeing with him—sent a crawling creep down her arms.
"On blood," Sebastian pointed out. "When an Author invokes voixili, the Earth takes something in return. What if it takes a soul and traps it into that Author's Monverta?"
Astrid could tell this was a point he had been stewing on for quite some time. She couldn't help but blame the Scribes. "Why would you ever think such a ludicrous thing?"
Sebastian met her flinty stare, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. "It talked to me. Called to me." His words both hushed and quickened as he continued. "I know it sounds completely implausible but...I think it has a voice, which is insanity since it's an inanimate object. It shouldn't have a voice, nor should it be able to use the elements—"
"Yes," Astrid interrupted, "but you forget, it is a magical book."
"But only people can do those things," Sebastian carried on, lost in his logic. "Elementi can."
He regarded her with a sharp, pointed look. "The word you had me first translate...voixili." He trailed off, eyes shooting around their surroundings. She couldn't blame his paranoia, but her fingers still curled into her palms as he continued. "It was on a ripped bit of parchment."
Damn his intelligent observations.
"That came from the book, didn't it? It gave you that word, and you took it."
Astrid stared at him, trying not to blink. Her eyes burned, throat feeling uncomfortably thick and full. All she could do was jerk her head into a terse nod to answer him.
Sebastian swore, a sound that was more jarring coming from someone like him. "I knew it," he breathed. "Someone intelligible is in there. Serah even told us: 'Bled as many elemental threads from the seven realms as she could. Imprisoned them all into the Monverta.'"
The recitation was perfect, unsurprisingly, but Astrid hated how the words made her feel. Like she was trapped in a skin that had never been her own.
His hands flapped wildly now, nearly smacking the icicles from the trees. "What if they weren't just threads your mother put in there? What if there are Elementi in there? Creatures? Other Authors?"
She read the hope within him as if it were written across his forehead in shining stars. "Your dad is not in my mother's Monverta."
Sebastian's hands stilled. "I wasn't saying that."
"You were." But she took his wrist gently, her fingers wrapping around it. "However, there are people who can give us these answers you seek."
The excited flush of his cheeks paled. "I don't want to hurt Serah again."
Astrid gave him a half-smirk. "I was thinking of Zev, actually."
When his expression twisted into one of outrage, she tried to laugh it off. "I am obviously joking. They can write to us."
"What?"
"Well, they can write to you," she amended quickly because the way his face shone with so much hope and trust left her wanting to give him anything that would keep it there. "When a Scribe takes an oath to an Author, they undergo a pledge with the Soleitian priestesses. It takes away their ability to write with any utensil in any other language other than Scribal tongue."
For a short moment, Sebastian gaped at her. "It's a dead language now."
"That is true. It's why my mother only cut out their tongues and not their hands," she agreed and then winked at him. "Except, you know it. You could read what they write."
"You—but—we could have done that all along! We didn't have to heal Serah and then...mangle her again!"
He glowered at her so fiercely that it almost shocked her into feeling bad about it.
Anger exploded from him. "You should have told me!"
His rage brought forth her own. "Why?" The word shot like a spear from her crossbow. It even echoed off the cavern walls. "Why should I tell you Rainier's secrets at all? I hardly know you."
"Because I want us to be a team!"
Astrid stepped back, stunned. "What?"
"I want us to be a team," Sebastian repeated.
Snow kicked up around the edges of his long cloak. He moved restlessly, pulling her closer, and when he flipped their wrists, her fingers were suddenly in his own. They both stared, quite shocked, before Sebastian smothered his anger and lowered his voice.
"Your mother's wrong, you know. It's not destructive to care for things. To care for people."
The backs of her arms brushed up against the frozen icicles hanging from the pines. She could feel the chill through her clothes, and she was sure her heart deserved the same. Their gazes met and held.
The truth fled from her. "But it is hard."
"Maybe that's what makes it worth it."
They watched each other, eyes assessing, searching, looking for easier answers to questions that were too hard to ask. Something in Astrid's chest ached at the sight of him before her. She placed a shaky hand over the cuff on her arm for determination. Control. Two paths stretched out before her. She knew she could snatch up control in this moment, disregard his ideas as preposterous, make him feel insignificant and small, just a bumbling fisher's boy from Eilibir. She could retreat into the comfort of the world she had known.
Had it ever really been a comfort, though?
She looked into his face, and her nerves unwound.
The second path called to her. She could demand control over her own life starting now; discover the truths she should have already sought out years ago; and she could do it all with Sebastian, a boy who saw a strength in her that she'd always been told she lacked. It had been a lie she had been raised to accept. She saw that now. But what, exactly, was true? It felt idiotic to admit that the truth had never been much of a concern of hers. It was only now that she questioned why not.
She stuck out her arm, offering him her other hand before she could think better of it. "I would like to be on a team with you, too, I think."
For a short moment, he read her as if the truths of her were written on her flesh. When she didn't retreat, he clasped her outstretched hand. Now, they stood with both hands linked. Astrid shivered. Their skin was cold from snow, and the fear of the unknown slid their fingers together, interlocking their fates. She exhaled against the pressure of her cuff and sent a spark of magic down her arm and into his. He startled and blinked as their skin warmed.
Astrid grinned across the slim space between them and dropped his hand before she could realize how nice it felt to hold onto someone else for a change. "So," she began, wiping her hands on her sides, "I hope you've been brushing up on your Scribal tongue."
Sebastian clasped his hands in front of him. "And why's that?"
"Because we're going to investigate the Monverta and whatever may live within it. We have Scribes to correspond with, after all."
A slight frown was the only immediate reaction that met her otherwise lofty pronouncement. She had expected a gasp, at least. If they were to be partners, he was going to have to learn to appreciate the theatrics.
Instead, he said, "Let's not blow anything up this time."
"Does that include avalanches?"
"Definitely."
Astrid's grin widened even as her chest lurched. She would be sent straight to the Abyss for this. "Well, then, I'm afraid I can make no such promises, Seabass."
_ _ _
Babel or Bastrid? AH! Only time will tell.
Thank you for sticking with us! Random question of the day: If you could only have one person on your team, who would it be: Astrid or Abel?