Rachel and Lana, once again, slept on the living room rug. Rachel, suspicious as she was, remained awake until both Lana and Tassel were verifiably asleep before letting her own eyelids hang closed, and even then, the effort required to sleep outweighed her desire to do so. The sounds of the artisan district quieted as the last light faded from the sky, though not enough to keep Rachel from lending an ear to passing conversations through her open window.

  Strangely, though, it was the monotony of the conversations that finally lulled Rachel to sleep, their utter shallowness draining her interest until even her dreams seemed preferable.

  Of course, though, the inevitable midnight interruption cut her short.

  “Rachel,” Tassel whispered, jolting her awake. As soon as her eyes shot open, Tassel hissed an Edomic suggestion, calming her before she could leap to her feet.

  “Tassel,” Rachel breathed, finding unexpected strength in her voice. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain,” Tassel said, keeping his voice low. “Where nobody else can hear.”

  Rachel wrinkled her nose. “I’m not going anywhere alone with you.”

  Tassel descended even closer to Rachel’s ear. “Would you rather Lana finds out-”

  “She knows,” Rachel interjected, then uttered a quick Edomic command to rouse Lana. “Tassel had something to say. Figured you should be involved.”

  Tassel elbowed Rachel, but showed no weakness on his face. “I’ve got a lot to catch you up on.”

  Lana blinked. “Prongs, Rachel. I feel great. You should do this to me every morning for the rest of my life.”

  A wanting warmth bubbled up in Rachel’s chest. “Heh. Tassel, you’re probably going to tell me about Darvis Kur? Maybe the second wizard in Trensicourt?”

  Rachel almost mentioned the torivors, but managed to hold herself back. She wouldn’t dare throw away the one piece of leverage she might hold.

  Tassel sighed. “I leave you for one day and you become a royal sleuth.”

  “About time you start taking me seriously,” Rachel snubbed. “Why can’t this wait until morning?”

  Tassel paused then, his eyes flashing with an eerie uncertainty in the piercing moonlight. Rachel shivered and drew closer to Lana, unsure if she was ready for Tassel’s answer. A strange feeling began to permeate her like night mists, as if hundreds of tiny stars in her chest were being stirred up and stolen, one by one, through her sternum.

  “Rachel,” Lana murmured, shifting against the rug. Rachel replied by extending her hand, almost subconsciously, to take hold of Lana’s arm and draw her in. The starry discomfort continued to grow.

  “You feel it too,” Rachel said bluntly, turning to face Tassel.

  “Mm.” Tassel knelt towards the window.

  “What does it mean?” Rachel rubbed Lana’s skin with her thumb in tiny circles, hoping it would calm her enough to keep her curiosity buried.

  “Not even the greatest of wizards have ever mastered all schools of Edomic,” Tassel started, staring almost wistfully out into the moonlit city. “This has happened three times, all in the past two years. I know it is the result of Edomic, no doubt wielded by Petra. I… have tried to understand it, to learn from it. I cannot.”

  “A man’s ego must rise and fall like the tide,” Rachel snubbed. The jab made her chest lift, if only for a moment. In truth, she wanted to hide. Whatever this feeling was, whatever dark school of twisted language birthed it, was more than Rachel had ever imagined the need to confront.

  “Stay here,” Tassel ordered, conviction rising in his voice. “You’ll be safe here.”

  “What-” Rachel stammered. “Where are you going?”

  Tassel rose to his feet. “After each of these events, life has resumed as usual. Lana, you likely can’t feel this discomfort at all. I cannot be so naive as to imagine, though, that news of the fall of Darvis Kur arrived on this same night in pure coincidence. There is more to this, I believe, than what I’ve seen.”

  “You’re going to find… Petra?” Lana asked, struggling to remember the name Tassel had mentioned.

  Tassel nodded. “More importantly, I’m going to make sure he does not find me.”

  Tassel unhooked a dark cloak from a dowel next to the living room door, then swung the portal open to reveal the staircase to the street.

  “Nothing will find you here,” Tassel said. “Until the sun reaches your window, do not move.”

  And before Rachel could protest, he was gone.

  “Should we… follow him?” Lana whispered, stilling against Rachel’s touch.

  Rachel shook her head. “When the queens fight on the chessboard, don’t make yourself a pawn.”

  “No idea what a chessboard is. I think I get your drift.” Lana finally pulled away from Rachel, who was at the same time devastated at her withdrawal yet somehow relieved that she was gone. “We can’t get caught in the middle of this.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “We are caught in the middle of this,” Rachel corrected. “What we need is to make ourselves indispensable.”

  Lana nodded. “So that by the time we need to follow him, he wouldn’t dare betray us.”

  “Yes.” Rachel let her balance fail and eased herself back to the floor. “How are you holding up?”

  Lana sighed and lay down across the strip of moonlight on the rug, illuminating her midsection but not her face. “I’m… I don’t know. I’m losing sight of what I’m doing all this for.”

  Rachel’s heartbeat quickened ever so slightly. “Tell me about it.”

  “I just wanted to do research,” Lana murmured. “Get accepted into higher study. Become a historian, a lorekeeper, maybe.”

  “Don’t lose sight of that,” Rachel replied, “if it’s still what you want.”

  “But it’s… I don’t know.” Lana curled up, finally pulling her face into the moonlight. “I don’t know where this is all taking me. Whether I’ll even use my degree at all.”

  Rachel let silence flow between them, assuming Lana had not yet finished.

  “But I like it,” Lana finally decided. “There’s a shadow war going on. Later, I may be the only person capable of codifying its events into history, and that drives me. For now, though, I just want to be here. I want to stick with you and see where it all takes us.”

  Rachel could have sworn the fluttering in her stomach was audible. “You want… to stick with me? Even though you know it could-”

  Lana reached out and covered Rachel’s upturned palm with her own. “Yes. I do.”

  Rachel, timidly, curled her fingers around Lana’s hand. She had done so before - hell, at least once tonight - but it felt… different this time. She stole a glance at Lana’s moonlit face, the blue glow countering the deep olive sheen of her skin and cutting its round shape into a striking canvas of blue over black. Her skin was soft, unblemished by hunger or conflict.

  She was all that Rachel wished she could be.

  An instant before Rachel looked away, Lana caught her gaze. Rachel flinched, glanced up at the ceiling as if to pretend she had never been interested, then thought better of it.

  “You must still be hurting,” Lana breathed. “I know how much Matt means to you.”

  Rachel’s heart sank. “You just had to mention him.”

  “As much as I might want to,” Lana sighed, “I refuse to be used.”

  Rachel smiled, though her stomach felt as if it were caving in. “Thank you.”

  Lana scooted forward until she lay on her side parallel to Rachel. “I’ve made my intent. You know this. But you do not love me.”

  Rachel struggled to find a way to respond. “I…”

  “It is not criminal to want to forget,” Lana continued. “Some misguided part of you might believe that you do love me. But it - this - will all end. We will find Matt again. Tassel will leave us to live our lives. And then…”

  “You can’t be certain we’ll last forever,” Rachel finished.

  Lana shook her head. “Nothing lasts forever. I just… I don’t know. It wrenches at me, the temptation. Even just to try, to let myself feel this, is a bitter curse.”

  Rachel closed her eyes. “I know. I should repeat that all back to you.”

  Rachel wanted to continue, to tell Lana that she was right, that whatever precipice upon which they teetered would only lead to ruin, but a flashing weight in her sternum compelled her to stop. If this were a battle of wits, for once, Rachel would be losing.

  “Do you love him?” Lana asked, her voice barely managing to split the air between them.

  Rachel took a moment to think, and was met with not weeks, but years of memories. They melted into her slowly, finally, like an artificial second skin that had, at long last, melded perfectly to her own. She thought of Galloran, of Ferrin, Drake, Tark, Farfalee and Ulani.

  She thought of Jason. Jason, who had known for over four years that Rachel would leave, and yet found the courage to ask anyway. It had been almost a year since the end of the war. She would be leaving for Mianamon the following morning to begin reconstruction of the trade route between the elusive temple and southern Lyrian, and Jason had caught up to her outside the west wing of his manor at Caberton.

  She had desperately wanted to say yes. More than she had ever wanted anything.

  But, with hardly a moment’s hesitation, she had turned him away.

  Even now, years later, she still felt a persistent emptiness, waiting for what might never come. She knew that, if she had let him in then, she would never have recovered from her trip back to Earth.

  Even now, back in Lyrian despite all odds, she would never see him again.

  “It would be easy to say no without explaining why,” Rachel muttered.

  Lana shifted. “You don’t?”

  Rachel shook her head. “I tried to.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the friend you were trying to find?” Lana pushed.

  It has everything to do with him. “Mm. Not in the way you think.”

  “I think you left with unfinished business,” Lana guessed. “You never told him, not before you left. Maybe you were keeping it from him, knowing you couldn’t stay. Maybe - and correct me if I’m wrong - you came back to Lyrian in hopes of finding closure.”

  Rachel let Lana finish before she thought to correct her. “I… couldn’t stand the thought of starting something I knew would have to end.”

  Lana nodded. “You won’t ever see him again.”

  “Nor will I see the world I knew,” Rachel sighed. “I truly do just want to put it all behind me, but…”

  “You will.” Lana covered Rachel’s hand with her own and squeezed. “It might take time. Years, maybe. But you will.”

  Rachel flipped her palm over and interlaced her fingers with Lana’s. “This is helping.”

  Even then, though, Rachel could not bear to look Lana in the eyes. She focused on raising her gaze little by little, from her collarbones to the pitch-black shadow beneath her jaw, to her chin, to her lips. Her short, pointed nose. Her lips, again, as they parted slightly in an expression that Rachel couldn’t distinguish between surprise and anticipation.

  “Rachel, if you try to kiss me, I’ll kill you,” Lana warned playfully.

  Rachel smiled, finally meeting Lana’s gaze. “That just makes me want to see you try.”

  “I mean it.” Lana’s voice grew an edge - not too sharp, but enough. “Please.”

  Rachel closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a youthful hope drowning in her chest. “I’m sorry. I got away from myself.”

  Lana shook her head, still resting her hand in Rachel’s. “As did I.”

  And she pulled her hand away, rolled over and stole all the warmth from the room.

  Rachel spread out on her back and sang to herself in Edomic, putting just enough force behind her words to put both her and Lana to sleep.

  She closed her eyes, and dreamed of the future.