8. Tivre
Chapter eight
Tivre
O ver a millennium ago, Rhydonia was a collection of small kingdoms with different cultures and patron saints.
They believed in magic, in the unknown, and in powers beyond their mortal understanding.
As their hunger for land grew, they pushed the fae north, which drove out the magic, as well.
The last fae city south of the Gloaming burned eight hundred years ago, if Tivre’s memory served him.
This cathedral he now stood in must have been built at around that same time.
It was a beautiful stone structure, whose now-fragmented stained glass windows very well could have been made by fae artisans.
A pity humans left the beauty of the past behind so swiftly, unlike the fae, whose worship remained unchanged for millennia, and were ruled by a Queen with divine blood in her veins.
Tivre stood on the high altar of the cathedral underneath the massive stained-glass window, awash in all the feelings such things brought to him. Loss, grief, an aching for a time now gone. Closing his eyes, he lifted the violin and began a song woven through with magic.
A violin had only four strings, and yet, could make an infinite number of songs.
Magic was summoned by sigils, and there were far, far more than four sigils.
Indeed, there was a near-endless catalog of them, offering countless possibilities for what one might craft.
Magic was infinite, intoxicating, and far too often, utterly useless.
It could not unbreak a shattered heart nor turn back time.
Tivre had tried.
As Tivre played, he whispered the name of each sigil, rather than his usual practice of drawing them in the air. Speaking sigils was a far more powerful, and draining, way to summon magic. He needed the power and the music of the violin for what he must achieve.
A song capable of finding the one he looked for.
The song’s keening notes would spread throughout the city, until they reached her ears. Magic, like other powerful things, was not precise. The same song might undo others’ enchantments, or attract unwanted company.
Quila paced the cathedral floor below him, stalking past rows of broken pews. “She’s not here yet, Godspeaker!”
“She’s on her way.”
“Is that assurance from a vision?”
“Mm.” His answer was non-committal. In visions, he’d seen the end of the night, with the moon setting, and the Oathborn mark on the young woman’s wrist but he could not see Quila in those visions, nor any hint of what had unfolded prior to that moment.
It worried him. A little.
More so, as the song stretched on and on, until finally, the massive doors of the cathedral groaned open.
An attractive young woman stepped through, her gaze glassy and distant, as if she were waking from a dream.
Her gown was rumpled, and her tattered silk gloves suggested she’d fallen.
Even her blonde hair was tousled, hanging in her eyes.
Tivre smiled.
She was the Oathborn part-fae human, the one he’d seen in his visions.
His song had summoned her, as it unknit whatever other enchantments might be lingering on her, or any other denizen of the city.
Tivre could only hope there was no part-fae depending on a glamour for their safety.
It would take until moonfall for anyone’s magic to return to the way it once was .
“What am I doing here?” the woman asked, her voice elegant and lovely, just like the rest of her.
To other mortals, she probably seemed simply beautiful, not strange or supernatural in any way.
Diluted fae blood had that effect. Wildlings carried their own enchantments, subtle ones that depended on each one’s family line and own magical prowess.
Some were swifter, others, more talented in art, still others, luckier in gambling.
“What’s your name, dear lost one?” Tivre called down, attempting his best ethereal-voice-of-an-immortal. He had a role to play here. He’d been far more genuine in conversing with General Ankmetta’s daughter.
Then again, Zari had not been enchanted, as this young woman was.
Still, how strange, how convenient it was for Tivre that the two were friends.
It made his true plan, the secret one he’d not told Quila, far easier.
Provided, of course, that Zari could both read and follow directions, which he certainly hoped she was capable of.
“I’m… Annette.”
Quila reached for Annette’s hands. “By your Oath and mine. You have been found.” Quila ran a thumb over the now dark Oathborn mark on Annette’s wrist.
“I don’t understand.”
No, of course she wouldn’t. The mark must have been glamoured, hidden away from her eyes by some elderly relative at her birth. Perhaps a great-aunt who also had fae blood and the folk teaching to use it.
They would have thought that hiding the mark was enough to keep her safe. If it hadn’t been for Tivre’s visions, it would have. Now, he was here to bring her back to serve as an Oathborn to the Queen.
In her gown, Annette looked nothing like a warrior, especially compared to Quila. It didn’t matter. Once she met the Queen, Annette’s free will would vanish. She would be trained, the same as any other Oathborn, and commanded to forget her home.
A motor roared, closer and closer to the cathedral, before it went silent .
For a moment, Tivre forgot to breathe. Then, a rolling tide of magic surged across the empty cathedral and burned Tivre’s lungs as he gasped. Ice frosted over the broken windows and dropped the temperature of the air around him.
Magic like that… he hadn’t felt in a decade.
The song’s effects had reached someone else, someone who must have kept his own glamour quite closely guarded in the city.
Damn it all, Tivre thought. Couldn’t he have picked any other city to make his home?
Tivre snapped his fingers, summoning enough magic to render Annette unconscious. Silently, she sank to the ground, like a marionette with cut strings. Pointing at her, Tivre commanded Quila. “Get her to safety. He’s approaching.” Panic colored his voice.
“He?” she asked, and then, understanding dawned. Even she knew there was only one who could frighten Tivre. “I will stay. The Traitor’s death is my duty.”
“You will leave!” Tivre shouted. “Before he gets here. Before Annette wakes.” Only now did Tivre realize all that his vision had left out, and what would happen before that fateful deal would be made.
One window shattered, shards raining down like ice. A figure landed on the ground, a hand stabilizing himself, the other holding an already drawn blade, his military uniform and dark hair unmarred by his entrance into the cathedral.
Tivre flung out an arm in a useless attempt to keep Quila away.
It was too late, her eyes had met Javen’s. The magic in her blood ignited. Now, either she would kill Javen, or fall to his blade herself. There was no other option.
None, except for her to break her own Oath, but Tivre doubted she would consider such a thing. Even without the Oath’s magically-induced rage demanding she kill Javen for his betrayal, she’d made her hatred of him clear.
Quila surged forward, sword flashing, the force of her swing slicing the air.
Javen slipped past her first strike, then her second, but only just. Her speed was blistering, and the clash of steel rang through the ruined hall.
He vaulted over a half-rotted pew as her blade smashed into the wood, splintering it in a spray of jagged shards.
Before she could recover, he moved, as fast, precise, and relentless as he’d ever been.
The past decade had not slowed his speed nor decreased his power.
His sword blocked hers, twisting it aside, and with a sharp pivot he drove his boot into her midsection, sending her staggering.
“Fool!” he snapped. “You should have stayed on the isles.”
“You should be dead!” Quila roared.
She came at him again, fury blazing, but every blow met an effortless parry, every opening she tried to take turned into another trap. Javen’s eyes stayed cold, calculating. It was no contest. He wasn’t fighting to survive, he was deciding when to end it.
Growling, Quila swung her blade at Javen’s neck.
He slipped aside with effortless precision.
Every movement he made was calm, economical, practiced, as if this were nothing more than a tedious sparring match.
Quila, by contrast, fought like her life depended on it.
Each fierce strike was driven by raw desperation, and her ragged breaths betrayed how close she was to the edge of exhaustion.
Tivre had no time to summon magic, nor did he know of any spells that would have saved Quila without killing Javen. And idiot that he was, Tivre could not find it in himself to harm Javen.
It would mean Quila’s blood would be on Tivre’s hands, soon enough. What was one more innocent life on his soul, already stained dark enough to be pitch black?
Forcing herself upright, Quila attacked once more. “For the Queen!”
A snarl escaped Javen’s lips, and his next attack smashed through Quila’s defenses, knocking the sword from her hand. Before it could land, he caught it, then with the two swords, lunged forward. The blades cut through her neck in one clean motion. Her head and body landed, separate, on the ground.
Javen flicked the blood off his blade with a practiced twist of his wrist. Then, he turned to face Tivre. “You,” he snarled .
They stood at either end of the destroyed cathedral, their eyes locking onto each other’s for the first time in a decade.
On the way to the capital, Tivre had told himself when he finally saw Javen, there would be nothing left of who he’d been before.
If their paths would cross, perhaps he’d not recognize him, not in the officer’s clothes he now wore.
His blue eyes, intense like a storm, deep as the sea, those were the same as Tivre had known his whole life. Only now, they held hatred. Worse, Tivre knew he deserved that disdain.
“I’m sorry,” Tivre whispered. As if the words meant anything. As if Javen had not just murdered another fae in front of him. As if any apology could ever fix anything, in the end.
“Sorry?” Javen spat on the ground. “You come here, of all places. You break every glamour in this damned city, to ask for forgiveness ? After what you did? Have you lost whatever scrap of sense you have left?”
He was speaking Rhydonian, Tivre realized. Not only speaking it, but clinging to fragmented shards of his nowbroken glamour, as if desperate to still be seen as human. To be anything other than what he truly was.
“I didn’t come here for you.” Tivre said. “I’m here to save the Accords.”
“The Accords?” Javen charged forward and grabbed Tivre by his collar, lifting him off the ground. “You will break them with your foolishness!”
Tivre tried to pry Javen’s hand away. Javen had always been so much stronger than him, than anyone, really. Quila never stood a chance. At the very least… Tivre’s eyes flicked to where Annette lay. Still safe, for as long as she slept.
Fighting the pressure of Javen’s tightening fingers, Tivre gasped out. “Please. The girl is a human with an Oathborn mark.” This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d plotted so carefully to save lives, not kill more innocents. “If she wakes while you’re here—”
“I’ll leave once you’re dead.”
A tempting thought, to be be done with this heartbreaking business of trying to protect people.
“I saved your life,” Tivre whispered, doubting that bullet he’d taken twenty years ago would replace all the suffering Tivre had caused.
Still, for the sake of peace, Tivre had to try. “You owe me the same.”
Hesitation flickered for only a second in the otherwise cold blue eyes.
“After this, we’re even.” Javen threw Tivre backward.
His body crashed into one of the church pillars.
When his head hit the cold marble, stars blossomed in his eyes.
Until his consciousness left him, visions of the future and painful memories of the past flickered by, both mocking the cursed reality he now lived.