Chapter Eighteen Vina #2
“I’ll face him alone. I have to. I’ll go to my old tor on the mountains before the solstice falls and I’ll beg him—I’ll fight him if I have to—I’ll do whatever it takes—”
“The pale assassin? Alone?”
“Alone,” Simran confirmed.
“I don’t think that’s terribly wise,” said Vina. “Simran, what we saw in the chalice—”
“You’re not coming with me,” cut in Simran.
Vina wanted to argue. But Simran, for all her sharpness, was… trembling.
Vina hooked a hand into her belt and said, with forced calm, “Tell me why.”
“Do I really need to explain? You’ve always known you can’t come with me. It isn’t what our story says you do. It’s started now. We’re done.”
“You’ll do what the tale desires now? Of your own free will?”
“I’ve got to do it,” said Simran. “We both have to. What choice is there?”
What had Simran seen in the visions from the chalice that Vina hadn’t? Why had it made her want to see their tale faithfully through?
“Simran,” she said. “Didn’t we hope for more? To—to find out why the tales are so broken? To face the pale assassin and put it right—”
“There is no putting it right.” Simran’s voice was cold. “There’s just saving Hari, and then—well. We both know what comes next.” She kept walking. “Don’t follow me.”
“If he kills you?” Vina asked. “What then?”
“Then I die, and I suppose you’re free.”
Free. The idea of it was too sharp to hold. Vina reached for Simran instead and grasped her wrist. Simran froze, turned away from Vina, ready to flee. But she didn’t pull away.
“Simran, please,” Vina said. “I don’t want to see you hurt. Let’s come up with a plan of how to face him? Together?”
“Don’t pretend you care about me. It’s the tale that makes you care,” said Simran.
“It’s the tale that makes you want me. Don’t you see?
What you want doesn’t matter, what I want doesn’t matter.
No matter what we’ve made or how we’ve lived, we’re just the knight and the witch, again, and again, and again! ”
Simran’s back was still turned, but Vina could hear the tears in her angry, shaky voice.
“I do care about you, Simran,” Vina said quietly. “I care. Not the knight.”
“But you are the knight,” said Simran.
“I’m not just the knight,” Vina corrected.
She felt like she could shatter Simran with a word—turn her to nothing but mirror-shards of grief and rage.
It was an awful feeling, a power Vina abjectly did not want.
“I’ve carried the weight of the knight my whole life, just as you’ve carried the witch.
I know the knight’s desires and fears and grief.
I’ve always known the knight matters more than I ever could.
But I do have my own desires. And I desi—I care about you. ”
“You’re lying to yourself,” said Simran harshly. “I’ve felt the weight of all our lifetimes. We’re nothing compared to the tale we’re cursed by.”
“There are tales about tragic lovers under curses,” said Vina.
The power of the chalice, maybe, talking through her.
“Who live day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime fighting a curse they may one day overcome. When I think of me, my own heart… those tales feel more true than a mirror enthralling me, and a sword in my hand, and both of us dead for my honor.”
“We’re not lovers,” hissed Simran. “We’re not even friends. You don’t know me, Lavinia Morgan, don’t pretend you do.”
“I know you love your family deeply. Your parents. You tried to protect them when the witch hunters came,” said Vina.
“I never see my parents,” Simran said stiffly, through her tears. “I try to never—”
“You love them so much that you run from them, trying to save them from what we are,” Vina continued.
She could feel Simran’s pulse race, the heat of her shaking wrist. “Even though it hurts you, you do it. You’ve traveled across the Isle to save Hari.
You’re not charming the way the witch has always been.
You’re sharp and you’re blunt and you’ve got a shitty temper.
You don’t want to love people, but you keep doing it anyway.
Deeply. And you’re brave—brave without being a hero with a white steed, brave when no one watches, when it matters most.” A step closer.
“And you know me too, Simran. You know I make bad bargains. That I like books and hate to draw my sword, and that I’m a right fool, without a decent thought in my head, but I try. ”
“I know you pretend to be a fool,” said Simran, voice thick.
“All this talk of who I am—do you really know yourself, Vina? I don’t think you do.
You make yourself smaller, you make yourself less, because you think you’re worth less than everyone else and—and it’s not true.
You’re not a fool. All this… It would be easier if you were.
” Her voice firmed. “But I’m still going. ”
“Simran, don’t—”
“If you really like me as much as you say you do, you’ll trust me,” said Simran. “You’ll let me go.”
Vina swallowed.
“Fine,” she said. “Go. I’ll see you again soon.”
She released Simran’s hand.
“I know you will,” said Simran. She reached into her skirt’s pocket, drew out the ripped page, and pressed it into Vina’s still-open palm. “Here,” she said thinly. “Maybe you’ll understand what the green library wants. It’s not my business anymore.”
She watched Simran go. The mist swallowed her.
The tether in her chest tugged at her. The tale, calling her to the Queen—calling her to a quest. The Knight and the Witch wanted to exist. Time was running out.
Vina gritted her teeth. Resisted. She had hope now—a child, a man, she’d never known existed within their tale, who’d reshaped it little by little, increment by increment. If one part of their tale had changed, lifetime upon lifetime, what else could they alter? Could they survive?
She lowered her head and looked at the crumpled page.
The art on it was faded, but still unmistakable: two images, side by side.
On the left, a man in a woman’s arms, being carried across shining seawater.
A crown on his skull, a sword through his chest. On the right, the same man with a sword in his hand, a halo of fire at his brow—and a crown wreathed in roses beneath his foot.
There was writing beneath it.
I live and live again. Eternal.
A chill ran through her. The pale assassin, the ruins they’d found beneath the palace, the dying Isle. Somehow it was all tangled together. Somehow, Vina had to unknot this skein of thread.
Simran had left footsteps in the soil, and Vina was a good hunter when she needed to be. Lifetime upon lifetime had given her that. She followed.