Chapter 37: A Queen’s Permission.

“You lied to me.” Ash stared. The words had come out sharper than I had intended, and yet not sharper than they deserved to. The chamber was empty, and the doors had sealed behind the Inker’s retreating back. It was just the two of us now.

“What?” Ash’s voice was careful. Her hand had extended towards me, and it still hovered there. The confusion on her face was plain enough. She was hurt. I could see it in the set of her jaw, in the way the warmth left her eyes. Good. That meant she was listening.

I held her gaze. “You are deliberately holding yourself back. Did you think that I would not notice? Do you consider me a fool?”

“Lys, I don’t understand what you’re-”

“Your core filled at the same time as mine.” Ash went still. “My mana core,” I continued, “is many times the size of yours. You should have filled yours long before I filled mine. The only way they finished at the same time is if you slowed yourself down. Deliberately.” I folded my arms. “As for this business of forming an Essence Core -it is not that complex. You said you did not understand the method that man explained. I think too highly of you to believe you could not have figured it out. You are the slayer of the Demon Queen. You are not a fool. Do not take me for one either.”

The silence stretched between us. Ash’s hand finally fell to her side. She looked at the far wall, at the crystal walls that held shifting light in their strange patterns. At anything but me. She looked smaller than she had just a few moments ago. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I slowed down.”

“Why?” I pressed.

She did not answer. She did not answer for so long that I pressed again. “Was the pain too much? I find that difficult to believe, given what you must have endured when you-”

“It wasn’t the pain.” Her voice was low.

“Then what was it?”

Ash was quiet for a long time. Her jaw worked. Whatever sat behind her teeth, she was not letting it out willingly. I waited. Heroes were famously stubborn. Even more than Demon Queens. “I didn’t want to do it alone,” she said.

I stared at her. “What?”

Colour rose from her collar. She still would not look at me. “I just…wanted to do it with you. At the same time. You know…like…together.” The last word came out barely above a murmur. She seemed to hear it leave her mouth, and the colour deepened sharply. Her hand found the back of her neck and stayed there. The egg pulsed once against my hip. I noticed and ignored it.

The anger found me. It was a sharp thing, and it cut through whatever else I might have felt. “Do you think I am that weak?” I demanded. “Do you think I need your pity?” My voice had never been sharper. “Who do you think-”

Ash’s head snapped toward me. “It wasn’t pity!”

I glared. “Then what was it?”

“I just told you what it was!” Her voice rose, and for one moment, the Hero’s composure broke entirely. She met my gaze, and her eyes were wide. “I wanted to do it with you. That’s all. That’s all it was. It wasn’t pity.”

My anger died. I rose to my full height and crossed the distance between us. Ash looked up at me, her brow furrowed, her cheeks still flushed. I leaned down and put both hands on her shoulders. Her skin was very warm beneath the cloth. I had not expected that, though I could not have said what I had expected instead. She went rigid beneath my grip. There was little distance between us.

“What- what do you think you’re doing?”

I shook her. Once. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make her head rock back, until her hair covered her eyes. “You are going to listen to me,” I said. “I am going to say this once. I will never repeat myself. So, you will listen, and you will remember.” She stared up at me. My hands tightened on her shoulders.

“You will reach your full potential. You will never hold yourself back on my account. That is an insult to me. It implies you can reach a height I cannot, and there is no such height that I will not surpass.” I paused. “If you are presently ahead, then cherish it. It will not last.”

This was beneath me. I had shown too much. Ash’s lips had parted. She said nothing.

My voice dropped. I looked away from her, at the far wall. “In my time,” I said, “it was always I who left others behind. Every general. Every rival. Every companion I ever had or might have had.” I paused. The next words sat heavy, and I had to force them through. “This feeling -of being the one left behind- is not unpleasant. But do not misunderstand me. I will master this. Under no circumstances will you ever hold yourself back again on my account.”

I met her gaze again. My red eyes bored into her blue ones. “Or I will never forgive you.”

Ash stared at me. She stayed exactly where I had left her for two breaths longer than the moment required. Ash nodded. “Okay,” she said.

I held her gaze for one moment more. Then I released her shoulders and stepped back. The distance between us felt different now.

I sat cross-legged on the cool stone and closed my eyes. The marks hummed on my arms -Requiem on the right, Cradle on the left. I drew mana inward and filled my core once more, though it hardly needed the filling. I breathed and fed the smallest threads of both Essences into it. I used too little of each power for it to result in what had happened before. I did not know what the Inker had done to stop me before, but I did not think I or Ash could replicate it now.

The pain came, and the carving began. It lasted all of ten seconds before the two annihilated each other. It happened in the exact same way as before. The Requiem’s carving tore through the Cradle’s, and the Cradle’s tore through the Requiem’s. I adjusted my approach. Perhaps the trick lay in alternating the two. I fed my core the Requiem first, then the Cradle a few moments later. They annihilated each other.

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I tried feeding them to opposite sides of the core, keeping them as far apart as I mentally could. They found each other anyway and destroyed what the other had made. My jaw clenched. The pain from each failure was one thing, but the frustration burned brighter still. It died a few moments later. That was new.

Ash spoke from in front of me. Her voice was quiet. “This is the first time.”

I opened one eye. “The first time for what?”

“The first time someone hasn’t minded being left behind.”

I opened the other eye. She was sitting, her arms resting on her knees. She was looking at her own hands. “It happened before?” I asked.