[2.11] A Total Eclipse of the Heart

Griffon,

The Risen Flame

Sol’s eyes shut, his chin dipping down to his chest. His shoulders shifted all but imperceptibly, moved by a sigh that the Roman did his best to stifle. It was the reaction of a man that was all too used to being disappointed by his mentors, a man that was far too considerate of them in spite of that. As the student of a mentor, he held his tongue.

As the brother of a sister, I did no such thing.

“Haaa!” My sigh was explosive. The crack of my skull against the mast as I flung myself back in disgust, sharp as a knife. The flourish of my hand as I pressed my arm against my eyes — admittedly a bit dramatic.

“To think I haggled on your behalf,” I lamented. “To think you let me!”

“Griffon,” Sol sighed, too defeated to properly rebuke me.

“The shamelessness of it, to accept my brother’s gold with a smile when that’s all you had to say! Even a brother can only take so much from his sister—even I!”

“Would you like to know why?”

I lifted my bicep and peered up at my little sister’s face. She wasn’t as flustered as I had expected her to be. In fact, she wasn’t bothered at all. She was still sitting there on the edge of the crow’s nest, hands folded one over the other in her lap, with a patient smile on her lips.

I straightened and sat back up in interest. Sol raised his head, watching her intently.

“I can’t tell either of you what you must do, because I don’t know,” the daughter of the Oracle said with sympathy—but not, I noted, a hint of apology. “But I can tell you why I don’t know. If you trust me enough to listen.”

Her heartbeat was steady, and though there was some sadness there—and some worry—there was no shame. My ribbing hadn’t flustered her because this was something she believed she couldn’t know.

“You don’t have to ask for our trust,” Sol told her without hesitation. “You already have it.”

I hummed in agreement. “We know your word is good.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “But that isn’t quite what I meant.”

The scarlet heart-flame behind her eyes flared, and in one swift motion she pulled the Oracle’s ceremonial spear from a fold in her silks and spun it around with two hands to point the tip at her own heart.

Blood-stained hands of my intent seized her in a dozen places up and down her arms, folded themselves protectively over her heart, and pressed the spearhead back while Sol and I lunged toward her.

She stopped us both with a single look. I had never seen its like before. It was too old for the rest of her, unsuited to her face. Too heavy for her heart to have produced it on its own, it seemed.

“Do you trust me?” she asked again, though this time the question was mine alone to answer.

One by one, I forced the blood-stained hands of my pneuma to pull away. Some of them refused to budge and had to be broken by the more obedient manifestations of my violent intent. The last one, cupped over her chest—directly over her heart—was broken in all 27 places that a hand could be broken, until Sol finally grabbed it himself and pulled it back.

“Of course I do, sister,” I said, swallowing down my bile.

The joy that radiated from her heart felt like a betrayal.

“Thank you, brother,” she said, and stabbed herself in the heart.

Something lurched inside me. The world changed in the blink of an eye. The sensation started in my gut. The Nile fell away—like a fist—no, it gave way—wrapped around my intestines—no, it had always been this way—clenching—no, it had never been there at all—twisting—no, it was still there now—

I opened my eyes.

I was kneeling—on the ship’s mast—in the shallow basin of a fountain filled with saltwater. Above me—on the lip of the crow’s nest—on a tripod carved from honeycomb, sat a woman I had known by many names, and who had been known to the world by many more than that.

I knew her as the daughter of the Scarlet Oracle, as the girl, as the heir to Polyzalus, as the heroine, as my junior, as my sister, as Selene.

My stomach roiled.

There were other names that I had never known her by, that I had always known her by, that I would inevitably know her by. Dear heart. Little bee. Honeydrop. Saving grace of Burning Dusk. Young blood. Daughter of Destiny. Mother of Mercy. Names that made no sense, names that could never apply, names that I could not deny.

I had known her—wrong.
We had known her—wrong.
The world had known her—wrong.
The heavens had declared her—WRONG.

She was the Saint of Scarlet Hearts.

“What is this?” I ground out.