“ONE! TWO! PULL!”

  “UUUUUUUGGGGHHHHAAAAA!”

  Ropes cracked through the miry clay, wagon wheels groaning in the flooded plain.

  “AGAIN!” Came the order from a nearby Hekaton to soldiers knee-deep in rainwater.

  They shifted positions, passing ropes beneath the axles, mud sucking at their boots. The creak of leather and smell of warmed iron filled the air.

  “ONE! TWO! PULL!”

  The horses threw their weight into the harnesses and pulled as hard as they could at the shout, hooves splashing, nostrils flaring.

  The wagon lurched an inch, then another, until the wheels finally broke free with a wet, sloshing sound reaching firmer soil.

  The men sagged in exhaustion, gasping for air. One laughed, as if to taste its sound once more.

  “Good. That’s the last of them.” The Hekaton muttered.

  Beyond the rise, the flooded fields glimmered under the afternoon sun, stretching back toward the haze where the Crag had been.

  Alric sat on his horse at the edge of the plain, watching the column re-form on higher ground.

  The air smelled different now. Sweet, honeyed, almost unnaturally so after the rot he had endured in the Hollow Crag.

  Veracles rode beside him, eyes on the horizon.

  “My Lord, that was the last of the wagons. We may depart at once, just give the order.”

  Alric said nothing for a moment. The wind carried the blossoms’ scent across the field, too gentle to be real.

  “Let the men rest one hour. Then we march. In the meantime, send scouts ahead. They are to return by the end of the given time.”

  “As you command, my Lord.” Veracles nodded and raised his hand to signal the Hekatons.

  They answered in kind. The sounds of war-horns soon followed.

  The column halted; every boot stilled.

  He raised his eyes to where the scent came strongest.

  “Veracles,” he called.

  “Yes, my Lord?”

  “I will be toward the floodplain with the prisoner. I leave the rest in your hands.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  He touched the horse’s flanks and moved into a slow canter. Cresting the ridge, he saw a plot of meadow saffron stretch before him.

  The sun wove its beams of light through roots and green. Wind catching runaway violet petals in the space between.

  Every ripple shimmered with shifting colour, stalks swaying over a field of water.

  He slowed the horse to a stop.

  The scent was thick, almost cloying in its honeyed pull.

  His breath felt foreign, strange, as though he had stepped into the hex-world once more, only through the real one this time.

  Displaced… he thought.

  The water’s skin reflected him, saffron softly bowing beneath the breeze’s gentle kiss. Sunlight swam in his silver eyes with graceful motion, yet he couldn’t find its pulse. Nor his own.

  The surface rippled, blurring his likeness. Then another joined it, hers. Smaller, quieter, in burrowed furs.

  Her outline rested beside his, wavering with each breath of wind. She was watching him.

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  He turned to face her and saw dread.

  Light caught her eyes, turning them to molten gold.

  He forgot how to breathe for a heartbeat.

  “What?” she asked, impatient.

  Her gaze shifted to him, turning a deep forest green, light dulling to ashen embers.

  He saw her usual self, no trace of the golden spectre.

  “Your eyes shone gold in the sun,” he said, voice flat.

  She scoffed. “What of it?”

  “It reflected wrong.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then swung down from the saddle and stepped to the water’s edge.

  The flowers brushed her boots, water mirroring both their forms, still and bright.

  “Fix me then,” she said, mocking.

  He answered nothing, letting the wind pass between them.

  She bared a joyless smile, as though the gesture itself had forgotten its meaning, and slowly beckoned him closer.

  For a heartbeat, he remained seated, reins in hand. Then he went.

  Boots sank into the sludge of root and stalk, water gathering around leather. She stood a few paces from him, saffron swaying in the shallows.

  With every step he took, petals drew their final breath, darkening under his steady stamp.

  When he reached her, she was looking at him, hand outstretched.

  “Why the hand?” he asked.

  “I’m waiting for you to take it,” she said, smile still lingering on her lips.

  “No.”

  Her smile deepened.

  “Why, Commander? Afraid of a single broken woman?”

  He came to stand beside her without a word, her question kept unanswered.

  Her hand fell to her side. Slowly, she turned to face him.

  “You wanted an answer.” She said at last.

  His eyes locked on her form at once.

  “Indeed. Are you to give one?”

  “I am.”

  “Speak.”

  She took a step closer, mud clutching at her boots.

  Then, she moved, sudden and reckless, and threw herself onto his chest, arms spread wide catching onto whatever they could, be it collar or cloak, anything to stop herself from falling alone.

  Their legs tangled, his footing broke completely.

  The world narrowed to the shattering of water and its shallow roar.

  Cold flooded his back.

  Water engulfed his ears muting everything but heartbeat and breath.

  Her weight pressed him under, dragging thought and air alike into stillness.

  For a moment, the world became only colour: blackened blue trembling through the ripples.

  When he surfaced, he gasped, and saw her above him, framed in gold-streaked green, laughter spilling in joyless bursts.

  He pushed himself up on his elbows, mud dripping from his back.

  “Have you gone mad?” he asked, voice raw with irritation.

  Water slid from her hair onto his chest, auburn locks sticking to his body like dark kelp.

  “Mad?” She kept laughing, brittle and uneven. “Don’t you see the madness in any of this, Commander? How you shield me from your men and Empire, but keep the right to drown me when you deem it good?”

  Her laughter broke into breathless words.

  “How you act as my guardian when you killed my own in cold blood?”

  She scooped a handful of water and threw it at him.

  “It’s absurd, isn’t it? Nothing makes sense anymore!”

  He remained silent watching her speak.

  She turned to him fully, droplets running from her hair onto his cheekbones.

  “It’s because I felt relief.” She gave a thin, shaking smile.

  “Can you believe it? Relief at the sight of the same army that slughtered my city and used me as spoil.”

  Her voice trembled with a dry, bitter laugh. “Just so it could protect me from the Crag. So I wouldn’t be left in that abyss alone.”

  She drew a breath that was half sob, half disbelief. “That’s what’s mad, Commander. Me. And you made me this way.”

  He gave no answer, gaze dropping for a breath.

  She didn’t let it go.

  “Even now you won’t face me,” she began. “You offer silence as penance and shield. You know not what to say, so you hide behind your mask of hypocrisy and steel.”

  Her voice hardened. “You stripped me of personhood. Gone is Priscilla! Here is the victim!” She motioned to herself, a jerky sweep of her hands, water flinging off her burrowed furs.

  “The Empire’s spoil, your burden of atonement.”

  Her tone fell to barely a tremor. “I got reduced to chattel with no name or self. I am but a simple function in your ever-turning guilt-ridden spirit.”

  She pointed at him. “You call me by name, yet you refuse to acknowledge it. Why? Just so you can feel at peace?”

  He opened his mouth, but no words came. His eyes would not dare meet hers.

  The wind had fallen still, yet the storm within him would not. He tried to speak again, but the sound died before reaching air.

  After an interminable heartbeat, he moved in the only way he knew.

  He rose from the water, chest first, reached behind her head, and drew her into an embrace.

  She stiffened at once.

  “What are you doing? Let go of me.” Her fists thudded dully against his tunic until the blows slowed and fell away.

  He held her, head against his heart. For a while they stayed like that, bodies trembling from the autumn chill.

  “You think this absolves you, monster?” Her voice broke, a braid of anger, grief and sorrow. ”You think you can show me false tenderness and wash away my anguish?”

  Silence.

  The words hung between them unresolved.

  The fight went out of her limbs; the only movement, the shiver that passed through them both.

  Rainwater slid down his temples and into her hair. His breath came uneven and uncertain against the side of her face.

  For the first time, she felt his heartbeat and thought him human, but banished the thought as it threatened to blossom.

  The field around them had grown quiet, saffron bending low. The wind returned faint and patient, rippling the water until their reflection broke apart.

  His breath steadied; his mind followed.

  She spoke.

  “How long do you intend to keep me in your vice?”

  He looked down and saw the crown of her head, wet and cold.

  With a slow movement, he released her.

  She stepped back, eyes fixed on him.

  He rose from the water and stood.

  The space between them felt infinite.

  “Do you think this changes anything?” Her voice was thin, shaped by hollow exhaustion.

  “No.”

  He watched her a moment longer, then turned to the horse and paced toward it.

  She followed.

  At the water’s edge, ripples spread and closed, erasing their every trace.