FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
Asomber air fell upon Gardiah Estate as Sulim checked in with the head chef about dinner that night.
There are plenty of tastes to account for.
It was supposed to be a happy occasion, wasn’t it?
Yet even the chef curtly nodded and made notes on his holographic clipboard before barking something at one of his assistants.
One of many hired from Harksplit to help out that week.
The fog was dense in the backyard, which was where Sulim soon found herself.
Occasionally, even all those years later, she still suffered from confusion.
Am I here? Am I there? Was she Lady Gardiah, the so-called matriarch of a fractured clan?
Or was she Sulim di’Graelic, one of Cerilyn’s most celebrated mercenaries?
Both died fifteen years ago. Somehow, by some grace of the Void, both lived today.
And the Sulim who had been abducted on Qahrain and thrown into chaos that was Cerilyn often couldn’t believe that she lived here in relative peace.
A tenuous, rewound peace that belonged to neither reality.
There wasn’t much time for her to lollygag, especially as Lady Gardiah, a title she accepted fifteen years ago in the wake of the murders of the former Lord and Lady.
Twenty-five-year-old Sulim had risen to the challenge of rebuilding the estate alongside her husband, all so forty-year-old Sulim could endure this moment.
It was a big day, wasn’t it?
She had to keep reframing it that way; otherwise she forgot how perfect everything needed to be.
But unlike her late mother-in-law, who wore frilly dresses and kept an impeccable salon to entertain guests, Sulim wore tailored trousers, colorful blouses, and never bothered to grow out her hair—every time it got long enough to brush against her shoulders, she was back in Harksplit,
asking her stylist to “do something.”
She had been getting it cut the same way for fifteen years, and the stylist got to boast that he cut the Lady Gardiahs’ short and chic hair.
Today, she wore an off-the-shoulder blouse swathed in dark blue and fringed in black.
The pattern depicted a herd of wild horses, although based on the cut, most of the horses were unrecognizable as splotchy black blobs that meshed well with the dark blue and her pale skin.
After seventeen years as a Gardiah, she had finally accepted that she knew how to dress herself.
It helped that nobody told her how anymore.
“My Lady,” said one of the head maids. “They’ll be here soon.”
Sulim, who had made it to the back porch where she nursed—but did not smoke—a pipe, slightly nodded before removing the pipe and asking, “Where’s Sonall?”
“Lord Gardiah has just locked up his office, ma’am. He said he’ll be waiting in the den.”
“Good. Escort all of our guests to the den when they arrive. It’s big enough to accommodate everyone. Now, where’s Nolan?”
“He is still out with the ranch hands, ma’am. But I believe he’ll return soon.”
“All right. Make sure he’s washed up when we receive our guests.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sulim remained out there for a short time. When she was done indulging in her oral fixation, she pocketed her empty pipe and felt at the zatbah stone necklace around her neck.
Mira…
A pang hit her heart. Even at forty, Sulim thought of Mira the same way she had at twenty-five. I may still be married, but… They had all agreed that, when the dust settled after the last mercenary attack, this was the best thing to do. For now.
One day, Sulim would no longer be married. She would be a widow. And she would have lived long enough for nobody in julah high society to care.
But that was far off. And the Sulim of today had a big day ahead of her.
Sonall was not yet in the den, but she caught sight of another family member dusting the mantle and fluffing the couch pillows as she wandered around in a dark blue sheath dress and her black hair pulled back into a fetching ponytail.
Even Sulim had to stop and admire how Kema adorned herself that day, from the thick gold necklace and the big rock on her hand.
Bigger than mine. But like Sulim, Kema had her way of acknowledging the lover she was not married to.
Sonall had given her that ring ten years ago, and off they went at Kema’s teleportation behest, on a week-long “honeymoon” to a pleasure moon, of all places.
Sulim had been shocked until she realized that, deep down, Sonall had a taste for booze, gambling, and women.
Things that Kema readily indulged in because she was culturally a julah, and was not put off by those indulgences if she participated in them as well.
And while the staff and remaining Gardiahs looked the other way while Kema slept with Lord Gardiah in the main bedroom every night, which she had decorated to her tastes and her hold on the Lord Gardiah,
they likewise didn’t dare question who was Lady Gardiah around there—or why she remained in the same room as before, only this time with someone else warming her bed.
Kema gestured toward one of the large windows as her passive sorcery continued to clean up the room. “She’s out there.”
Sulim glanced out the window before heading outside, where she found Mira standing in the side yard, her black shirt dress cinched with a jade belt and a large, golden butterfly clasp in her hair.
She was looking up at the cloudy sky, basking in the cool, drizzly air as if she had just discovered being alive again.
Sulim watched her from a distance, breathless by the curve of Mira’s throat as she craned her head back and drank in the humid atmosphere.
She looks like a goddess. There was no High Priestess in this reality, but she still recalled the statues that had adorned the altars of her childhood and mercenary career.
“I know, I know,” Mira sang before Sulim had the chance to say anything. “Everyone’s due soon. I haven’t forgotten.”
Sulim remained by the wall, encouraging Mira to approach her instead. The closer she came, though, the more Sulim fought back a girlish smile, as if she were a kid again. Damnit, why does she do this to me? She swore, if she started giggling…
“Man, look at her.” Mira pointed toward the den window. “You gonna spend another fifteen years letting my umpteenth cousin pretend she’s Lady Gardiah around here?”
“According to some human cultures, sleeping with the Lord gives you the title, not being married to him.”
“You can take her.”
“Don’t get me started on what he was drunkenly rambling about a few weeks ago.”
Mira rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to flirt here, and you’re going on about your husband.”
“Hm? Oh, it’s Nolan.”
Even Mira was distracted by the young man riding up on a brown mare, his torrent of tussled, rusty curls announcing himself before the horse whinnied and he soothed her with a voice that was always as loud as it was friendly.
Yet the boy from Dassil, whom Sulim had sent for once things were settled after Jacelah’s funeral, was at home on Gardiah Estate from the moment his foster mother arrived with a confused little boy clutching her hand.
He’s been our ward ever since. Legally, “our” meant Sonall and Sulim, who formally adopted Nolan to give him legitimacy among the household.
But even Nolan agreed that he was not the true heir to Gardiah Estate, nor did he want to be.
For now, he was working on the ranch since it turned out he was handy and outdoorsy, but he had aspirations to go to university using the funds his mother had set aside for his care.
That final decision was what made Sulim point out to her husband that “we need to figure out the order of succession, now.”
At least they no longer had to worry about mercenary raids, especially with Mira and Kema moving into Gardiah Estate full time. Word had surely gotten back to Cerilyn—something that Sulim still couldn’t wrap her head around. I was one of them. Wasn’t I?
Despite it being fifteen years since the last attack, Sulim still struggled to understand what had happened.
She distinctly recalled two separate deaths: here, in this house, and on Cerilyn.
Mira had explained to her that she had Crossed and fused with the woman who had been here, just like Mira had done in the other direction, but it wasn’t like Sulim got it.
Not even when she went to the Temple to pray.
Not even when she took exercising seriously, confused why she felt so weak in this body.
Dual realities conflicted in her memory.
Here, Eyne was dead; there, she had been alive.
Here, Graella had grown up and gotten married; there, Graella was killed during the first raid.
Even Sonall, who didn’t like talking about these things until his wife got him drunk, admitted he couldn’t keep track of what was real and what was memory.
At least, in this world, when he got the news that his parents had been murdered, his initial reaction had simply been, “I know.”
Once, he admitted that getting to oversee their funerals and going through their things gave him the closure he never had in the other reality. For Sulim, she had to rationalize that she would never see Eyne again. Not like we saw each other a lot in the other life.
And this boy in front of her hadn’t existed in that other life, either.
“Hey!” Nolan dismounted from his mare and waved to Sulim. “I know, I know! I’ve gotta go wash up!”
Sulim and Mira stood nearby as Nolan sauntered up the front steps and greeted one of the maids coming out of the front door. The maid giggled, implying that Nolan had either flirted with her or she fancied him enough that anything he said would get her giggling.
At first, Sulim didn’t say anything. Then, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she blurted, “That boy is totally a Gardiah.”
“What?” Mira asked. “I think it’s clear that Vern wasn’t the one with the dandy gene.”
“Fine. He’s totally his mother’s son.”
Mira patted her partner’s shoulder. “I’ve gotta greet our guests. You should check inside.”
That was Sulim’s cue to get back to work as Lady Gardiah, a woman expected to have everything sorted and ready for important guests.
And we have quite a few. She recalled the way Jacelah fretted when they had so many unexpected guests fifteen years ago.