Chapter 1
He had not come all this way to collapse without even knocking on her door.
Varius, very recently Legatus of the Aurelian Empire—so recently he was still bleeding from his sudden departure—reminded himself of that firmly, as breathing grew increasingly difficult, as blood pooled in his armor and dripped down his limbs, as he stumbled through the dark, ominous forest.
He had to believe he'd make it. He had no other choice now, his chances of surviving this reunion—if you could call it that when they'd never been on the same side of the war—merely astronomically bad instead of the definitively catastrophic future promised if he'd remained in the empire.
But he was as sure as he could be this was the direction he'd find her. When she'd first gone rogue, Varius had sifted through the rumors, and given how versed he'd become in searching for signs of her traps he'd sent soldiers to verify—
He sucked in a sharp breath, almost whited out from the pain, physical and emotional.
Don't think about your soldiers, Varius.
They are not yours anymore.
With effort, he put one foot in front of the other, disassociating himself from the pain of his body, his thoughts, trying to navigate the spindly branches that scratched him without losing his direction.
Almost there. Just a little longer.
He'd been telling himself that for miles now.
In truth, he'd been telling himself that for years.
Just one more battle, and maybe the war would finally be over.
Just one more death, one more tragedy as a family lost a son, as the sorceresses they fought wrought destruction matched only by what the empire could do with their sheer number of bodies, as the treacherous Aurelian patricians sent him into one more unwinnable situation.
Just one more, and maybe he could grieve, or rest, or die.
But now it was just one more thicket to stumble through, and one way or another, he'd reach his destination.
It had better be soon. He knew how many wounds he was bleeding from. He hadn't made it across the border into Korossia uncontested, and he'd fought through his own people, surviving as he always did, even when everyone else died.
That had been hours ago.
The longer he went, the more it felt like the forest itself was trying to stop him.
It wasn't—a sorceress had used that tactic on him years ago, so he knew what that felt like—but Varius caught himself tripping over branches and slipping on leaves more frequently.
The daylight had faded, the spindly branches crowded out the moonlight, and he was tiring.
And then abruptly his path brightened. He looked up—he'd been watching the ground to stay on his feet—to find he'd emerged from the forest all at once, like it had been sheared off.
Whatever he'd been expecting from a renegade sorceress' lair, it wasn't this.
This wasn’t a castle with intimidating spires, nor a hidden hovel tucked away in a corner.
Across the clearing was a house, with wild vines crawling up the sides. It looked like wood from the outside, and why not? No one was going to be able to burn down a sorceress' abode.
But Varius' eyes were drawn to the warm glow inside. Light, and the implication of heat—the thought pulled him forward, and he very deliberately pushed aside the thought that it looked like a home.
Only now that he was so close did his mind allow him to consider more than "just a little longer" and how badly this could go.
He was rapidly approaching the door of the one they now called the Sorceress Transcendent. The only sorceress who'd ever escaped from under the thumb of Korossia's impossibly powerful dictator, beating the Sorcerer Ascendant at his own game.
She'd done it with careful planning, and let's not forget mind-blowing destructive power. Which was what had made her, before she got herself out of the war, his most dangerous enemy.
He'd faced off against her countless times over the years, and whatever relationship he imagined they had—trading sallies and pointed, almost mischievous attacks across a battlefield, avoiding dealing death blows at each other when deniability was possible—it was imagined.
Even if he thought they had both just tried to get their jobs done without killing the other, but also without veering into questions of treason while they went all-out against anyone else, they had still always been on opposite sides of the war.
The last time he'd seen her on the battlefield, she'd given him a cryptic warning that he'd apparently interpreted correctly to keep him and his legion clear of the vast destruction she'd wrought in order to go rogue.
But she'd also poisoned him first.
Not fatally, obviously, which was how she'd managed it; Varius knew her tells well enough to escape anything truly life-threatening, but it had still taken him a critical few days to recover any semblance of function.
He thought the poisoning had been an effort to protect him, to make sure the patricians couldn't order him into the field she'd been poised to raze.
But it also could have been to make absolutely sure he, the one Aurelian legatus who'd ever been able to keep up with her, couldn't interfere with her plan, and she'd taken him off the board the only way she'd been able to; the only way he'd let her.
Was it all a long con, which she had proved she was absolutely capable of, or did they really have a bizarre, twisted friendship?
If Varius was wrong, he'd die today.
And now he was going to, what, just knock on her door? Give her a chance to kill him when he couldn't put up even a token resistance, in case that had really been her goal all along?
And if it wasn't, he was going to show up already injured with nothing to offer her but problems she'd managed the impossible to leave behind? Hello, it's your favorite old enemy, let's have some tea and catch up before I bleed out on your floor?
This was a mistake.
Varius somehow slowed even further. Maybe all the branches he'd caught on in the forest had been his subconscious trying to convince him to make better choices.
Only now, out of the forest with no obstacles before him, did it feel like he was walking into a trap.
Those vines up ahead could choke him, he was sure. And probably would.
But he was on a path, of all things, beautiful flat stones leading him on a lightly winding route through—gardens. Carefully cultivated, not a clearing after all. No wonder the trees had stopped so abruptly.
Even in the dark he could see the gardens were flourishing, which meant the sorceress who lived here had plenty of materials at hand to feed her spells and brandish them against him.
Not that she'd need to, in his current condition.
Varius reached the door.
It was huge, looming before him like it belonged to a castle instead of a cottage, with an ornate metal knocker. An appropriate hint of grandeur for any who dared approach a sorceress adept of the first tier.
There was also a mat at his feet, and in the light from the window it looked like it was woven with a floral design, more vines, and very clearly thorns, just like the ones framing the door.
The vines were probably poisonous, too, something she cultivated in her front yard. That would be just like her, to greet any visitors to her home with a cozy threat.
The thought obscurely centered him. This was probably a mistake, but under the circumstances he didn't have better options.
So Varius did what he always did. He steeled himself, and braced for impact.
Which is to say, he finally picked up the godscursed knocker, winced at his abused ribs, and knocked.
One breathless moment, where he suddenly realized she could simply not open the door to him—
And then she did.
The monstrous door opened partway, and there Theira stood, bathed in light.
Her black, wavy hair cascaded luxuriantly untamed around her, a dark contrast to her pale face. She wore a simple dress with a utility belt, a cozy mauve rather than the showy amethyst he associated with her on the battlefield, and for the first time he saw her without the bold makeup she favored.
Maybe she didn't bother because, for once, she didn't look tired.
Had he ever been this physically close to her?
Varius couldn't recall. It seemed impossible, that he—they—could just be here.
So close, one more step, and he could touch her, and not just in his dreams. He ached with the effort not to reach out, struck silent by the strange intimacy of the moment, her lips without paint, her beauty as wild as ever without adornment.
The vines around the door twisted, thorns pointing toward him in clear, unstated warning, but he barely noticed, so arrested by the sight of her and the sudden reality that she was really here, and he was here, that somehow they had both made it to this place together.
Surrounded as ever by barbs.
Into that silence, the Sorceress Transcendent spoke first.
"I was beginning to wonder," Theira said, cool amusement in her voice, "if you thought that this time for sure you would be able to simply stare me into submission."
It was the sound of her voice after all this time more than even the vision of her alive and well and free and gorgeous that almost undid him. His knees tried to buckle, and Varius caught himself.
Theira tracked the movement, and the thorny vines withdrew abruptly. She never missed anything, even if she didn't speak. How long had he stood at the door like a dumbass?
And now she also knew he was at her mercy, that he had no hidden strategy she needed to counter, that she could kill him at any time without worry. A first, for them. Varius might have been ashamed if he hadn't suspected she was nonplussed.
He stared at this sorceress, his once-best enemy, who waited with endless patience for him to get to the godscursed point. He sucked in a breath to greet her politely and make his case, to explain and formally request her forbearance, but what made it out was:
"I had nowhere else to go."