Chapter 57: A Retainer’s Service (Part 1).

Ash had been watching her sleep. She had not meant to. She had woken early and there was nothing else to look at. That was the excuse she gave herself. She knew it was a poor one. Lysanthia lay on her side, facing the wall. Her dark hair had fanned across the pillow and one horn caught the faint light from the dying fire. Her breathing was slow. In sleep, the sharpness left her entirely. In sleep, she just looked like a woman.

Ash had thought this before. In Hamel, when she had spent a night pressing wet cloth to her burns. Lysanthia looked little like the Demon Queen then. She looked even less like her now.

It was getting impossible to reconcile them both. The woman on this bed, who had helped Ash abandon her sword, and the woman in the throne room, who had split Ronan in half with a single swing of an obsidian blade.

Sol stirred by the hearth. The small phoenix lifted her head from the pillow, all four wings ruffling. She let out a chirp, and it was certainly not a quiet chirp. Ash moved before the chirp could become a screech. She knelt beside the hearth and cupped Sol in both hands. The bird was warm. Sol chirped again, this time aimed squarely at the bed.

“Alright,” Ash murmured. “Alright. I think it’s about time anyway.”

She carried Sol to the bed and held her out. The phoenix leaned forward, stretched her tiny neck, and pecked at Lysanthia’s temple.

Lysanthia let out a groan. Her crimson eyes opened, and they were already furious. They found Ash first, then Sol. “You,” she said to the bird, “have exactly one more chance to reconsider that approach.”

Sol pecked her again. Lysanthia’s hand came up to shield her face. She muttered something and pushed herself upright. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and put her feet on the stone floor. Then she stood, and her legs gave out.

Ash caught her. One arm went around Lysanthia’s waist and the other braced against her shoulder. She felt light to Ash, despite her being taller. The woman who had once tried to burn the world. The woman who had swatted Ozriel from the sky. The woman who had killed Calith and Calithra. To Ash, she was light.

“What is this?” Lysanthia’s voice was sharp. Her legs were trembling beneath her. She tried to take a step and her knees buckled again. Ash tightened her grip. “My legs are betraying me.”

“I did warn you,” Ash said. “This is what happens when you push that hard without any kind of reinforcement. Your body isn’t used to the strain, and so, this happens. It takes a little while though.”

“My body,” Lysanthia said, “has endured things that would break this Academy in half.”

“With magic, yes. You couldn’t use Essence, remember? It was all muscle. Well…this is what happens to muscle.”

Lysanthia glared at her. The glare was somewhat diminished by the fact that she was currently being held upright. She raised her left hand. White fire trailed from her fingers. She was going to heal herself, as Ash knew she would.

Ash caught her wrist. “Don’t.”

The red eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“The soreness comes from the muscles tearing. It’s the mending of those tears that builds them back stronger.” She had explained this to recruits before, almost a thousand years ago. How strange that she explain the same to the Demon Queen herself. “If you heal them now, the Cradle will put everything back the way it was. Your forty minutes will have been pointless.”

Lysanthia stared at her. The white fire died. “You must be joking.”

“Afraid not, Lys. Don’t worry, it’ll never be as bad as the first time.”

“Then what,” Lysanthia said, very slowly, “am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing, for now.” Ash guided her back to the edge of the bed and lowered her down, gently. “First, you eat. Then I’ll show you some things that will help. You should be able to walk by tomorrow. Well…mostly walk.”

Lysanthia sat on the bed. Ash could see the faintest tremor still running through her legs. Sol, who had been displaced a few seconds ago, hopped across the mattress and settled on Lysanthia’s thigh. The bird looked up at her and chirped once. “Traitor,” Lysanthia said to her. She did not remove the bird from her leg.

Ash crossed the room to the table. She had been up for some time. Long enough to go to the mess hall, collect two bowls of porridge, and return before the first bell. The cooks had not liked her request, but Ash had always been persuasive. She brought them over. Lysanthia looked at the bowls. Then at Ash.

“It seems,” she said, “that you have prepared for this.”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

How was she supposed to answer that? So many answers came, until they crowded her throat. Ash said none of them, in the end. “It’s what a retainer is supposed to do,” Ash said.

Something flickered across Lysanthia’s face. Her face colored. Ash knew hers had too. Lysanthia took the bowl without further comment.

They ate. Sol ate too, once Lysanthia had bathed a strip of meat in the Cradle’s white fire. Lysanthia did not use the bundles of meat they’d brought just yesterday. Apparently, they were too old now. Sol chirped, and Lysanthia fussed. It was a small mercy, the noise. Without it, the room would have been quiet enough for Ash to hear the grinding.

She could always hear it now. The Core that sat beneath Lysanthia’s ribs. It was there when they sat close. It was there when they slept.

Ash watched Lysanthia eat. Her face gave nothing away. She did not wince or shift or show any sign of discomfort at all. The thing under her ribs ground on, and she said nothing about it.

Lysanthia would carry this for the rest of her life. Ash could not fathom the silence around that much pain. All she could do was press closer, at night, and hope that did something.

“Stop staring at me,” Lysanthia said, without looking up from her bowl.

Ash looked away. “I wasn’t staring.”

“You were. Your gaze has been fixed on me for the better part of two minutes. I can feel it.” She took another spoonful. “A Queen always knows when she is being watched.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Then a Queen should be used to it by now.”

Lysanthia glanced at her. The glare was weak. “Perhaps I am. That does not mean it goes unnoticed.”

Ash said nothing. She finished her porridge and set the bowl aside and waited for Lysanthia and Sol to finish theirs.

When the bowls were empty, Ash knelt at the edge of the bed. “Lie back on the bed. I need to work on your legs.”

Lysanthia looked at her. Ash expected her to say something. Lysanthia’s mouth certainly opened to voice one objection or other. It closed. She lay back, and her long legs extended before her. Ash had not expected her to agree so easily.

Sol hopped down the bed in a tangle of feathers, before making her way to the pillow near the hearth and settled there. The bird was surprisingly intelligent.

“This will help,” Ash said. She kept her voice even. Or tried to, at any rate. “The first time I ran like you did yesterday, I couldn’t move for a week. My instructor at the time showed me how to work through it.”

“An entire week.” Lysanthia said it the way someone might say an entire eternity.