Chapter 26: Sister.
Sister. This woman had said the word, though I highly doubted she understood even a fraction of what that meant.
I had sisters once. Other Demons who were candidates for the class of [Demon Queen]. Other [Demon Princesses], all of whom had the potential to reach for my eventual station, if they’d only killed me first. Demon Queen was a class there could only be one of, after all. I had buried every one of my sisters. I had reduced all of their fortresses to rubble, and scattered their ashes to the wind.
"I have no sisters. I made certain of that a very long time ago," I stared at her. “Unless you have come back from the dead.”
The silver woman tilted her head. The confusion on her face was genuine. I could read that much. Then the confusion broke, and what replaced it was a grin. "You sound like fun." She folded her arms. "What is your name?"
"I am not in the habit of introducing myself first." I folded my own arms. Not to reflect her.
The half-demon’s grin flickered. It did not quite go away, but it certainly flickered. The silence that followed was three seconds, perhaps four. I felt each of them. "Careful," the woman said. Her voice was still light. "I find you a little amusing, but there are limits."
I did not move. I did not adjust my hands, nor my gaze. One showed weakness to powerful strangers by flinching. One showed it by not flinching too obviously too. The woman held my gaze for a moment longer. Her eyes slowly trailed over me, starting from my legs, all the way up and finally settling on my horns. They lingered there for a time, before she met my gaze again. "Isabelle," she said, smiling. Then, she pointed towards me. It was a strange gesture, but I understood what it meant well enough.
For a bare moment, I almost considered giving her my true name. "Lys."
"Lys." She nodded thoughtfully at the name. "That's a very simple name for a half-demon. Most of us like more style. More syllables, you know?" Something in her gaze sharpened.
I did not correct her. This woman was toying with me, that much was rather clear. Whatever game this woman was playing, I had no time for it. I studied her mark. That mirror was still faintly spinning. "Well? Spit it out already," I said. "Why are you here? Why did you separate me from the rest?"
Isabelle paused. The grin returned, thinner this time. "And how do you know I went out of my way to separate you?"
"Do you take me for a fool?" I said. "That blast caught me cleanly and drove me down a slope while leaving everyone else where they stood. Either you aimed it, or one of your people did at your direction." I held her gaze. "Unless, of course, you were simply hiding down here from the Inker. In which case, I apologize for interrupting. You may return to cowering in peace."
Isabelle laughed. It was a sharp sound and she clapped her hands once. "I do like you, Lys. Staring down someone with a Rune and with that much ego? You’re just the way we all should be."
I waited. Whatever amusement this Isabelle was getting from our conversation, I did not share it. The laughter faded, and what replaced it was something more measured. "It's rather simple. I’ll explain it, just because I like you," Isabelle said. She raised one hand and gestured vaguely northward, toward the battle. "We attacked this little troupe of Covenant worms because we heard an interesting story. An Inker -a disgraced one, at that- ran to the Koralis Academy and demanded an audience with the bleeding Archon himself. Who knows what he said to his bleeding eminence Valtheris, but then he left Koralis with twice as many soldiers as he arrived with." She tilted her head, stared at me.
It was perhaps the most obvious test I had ever received. I obliged her. "And to someone watching closely," I said, "it would look as though the Inker had found something rather precious and now meant to collect it."
Isabelle's violet eyes sharpened. She clapped again, and now her smile was so wide it almost threatened to split her face. "Yes," she said. "That is exactly what it looked like. So we came to see for ourselves." She paused. "This kind of thing doesn’t happen often. There are more guards here and with better marks than are guarding the damn Academy itself. Only someone blind wouldn’t see it.”
There was more here, details that I did not know, and yet wished I did to understand this conversation better. Each thing this woman said just raised more questions, and yet I could not ask them. Not without giving away how little I knew.
"The plan was simple," Isabelle continued without prompting. "Destroy or take whatever the hell needs this many guards and then leave before we get noticed by someone...inconvenient. It was all simple. We hadn't expected it to be just two women. I thought I'd find a relic, or something." She looked at me -really looked, the way I had once looked at Generals when I was weighing whether they were worth the air they consumed. "I never thought I'd find a sister."
"You are no sister of mine," I said.
Isabelle's smile turned sad at that. She looked away from me, at the stars above."All men and women with demon blood are brothers and sisters," she said quietly. "Pain makes family of everyone. There ain’t a person with our blood alive in this world lucky enough not to know that."
The people of Hamel had been little but kind to me. Needlessly, foolishly kind. Whatever this woman spoke of, I hadn’t seen. "Your people tried to kill me," I said. "One of them nearly took my head. He would have failed, but he did try."
Isabelle waved a hand. "Demonbloods," she said dismissively. "Most of them aren’t the sharpest. The blood takes too much, gives too little. Between you and me, most of them are more trouble than they’re worth. Bet the fool didn’t realize what you were until he was already swinging and by then it was too late." She shrugged. "To be fair, neither did I, until I pulled you down that slope and got a proper look at you. He's dead now anyway, so what does it matter?"
She said nothing more. Perhaps she was waiting for an answer. She would be disappointed. After a few seconds, the woman broke the silence herself. "What marks did the Ink give you?" Isabelle asked, still staring at the sky.
I did not answer. She looked back at me, and her violet gaze dropped to my forearms, where the sleeves of the dress covered the two Lines. Something shifted behind her eyes, a furrow at the brow. I was sure she had no ability that let her see through cloth, and yet it was hard to dismiss the feeling that this half-demon felt something anyway.
"Not much of a talker are you? I don’t mind that. Beats some of my friends who can’t shut up. Suit yourself, I say." Then, she leaned forward. "Join us," she said. "Come with me, Lys."
"No." The word came easily. It always had. A Queen said no and the world rearranged itself or it burnt.
Isabelle frowned. "Why?"
"I have no interest in joining people I have never met." I held her gaze. "Whatever offer you think you can make, you are nobody to me. I have survived long enough not to follow strangers into the dark." And I did not appreciate how she spoke of these Demonbloods, though I could not have said why.
Isabelle considered this. I expected her to press immediately. She did not. Instead, she shifted her weight. "If you’re doing this for power, then the Covenant will never give it to you." Her voice had sharpened. "They will give you some of it, sure. A tiny bit here or there -just enough to make you useful, never enough to make you actually dangerous. They will show you the first few steps up the mountain, but that’s all. There are better ways."
Those words stirred something in me. It was a small thing, and I masked it by exhaling slowly through my nose. "The summit of a mountain one can climb but never see past," I murmured. The words had left me before I could stop them.
Isabelle's eyes widened. She nodded, leaning forward. "Exactly! So you do understand. Then this should be damned simple."
I understood more than she knew. The echo of my own voice in a stranger's mouth should not have stung the way it did. "No," I said again.
The frustration was visible now. Isabelle's jaw worked, and the silver of her skin seemed to shift with her mood, darkening at her temples.
"Are you a fool? How much have they even told you before they took you? Has that worm of an Inker explained how people with our blood are treated at their Academies? I bet he hasn’t even answered any of your questions, save whatever it took to make you follow him. Has he told you anything at all?"
"Very little," I admitted.
"Then why?" She was angry now, and I could hear the edge of something more beneath the anger. If this was recruitment, then it was a strange way to go about it. I did not think it was merely that. I was not sure what she was doing, only that it had gone beyond recruitment at some point.
Isabelle stepped closer. When she spoke again, the anger had burned down to something lower. "Whatever that man promised you is a lie," she said. "Oh, it might not be a lie at the start. For months, maybe even years, everything will go just fine. They will train you. They will praise you. They might even let you believe they trust you." She paused, and the sadness was there again. "But the payment will come, Lys. It always comes, and it is steep." She sighed. “You called me a stranger. I am one. But I swear to ya every word I’ve told you is the gods damned truth.”
Ah. So that’s who she reminds me of. She was looking at me the way Zera had sometimes looked at strays, before she’d tried to take them in. Not because they were useful.
"Even before the payment comes," Isabelle said, quieter still, "anywhere in the Covenant is not a kind place for our kind. The Mandate might work ya to the bone but at least they wouldn’t sneer at you behind your back."
She did not say anything further. I suspected that most of what she’d said had been the truth, or at least, what she believed the truth to be. It changed little and less for me. I did not even know what this ‘Mandate’ was. "Come with me," Isabelle said. Her voice was gentler now. "Please. There is a place for you."
I thought of Hamel. I thought of Sara, standing at the edge of the village, holding a clay bead shaped like horns. Of Martha, pressing a satchel into my hands. Of Tom, shaking in the road, asking me to come back. Of every villager who had stood between us and the Inker's soldiers, knowing what it might cost them.
If I ran, the Inker's threat held. The village that harbored you will answer for it. He had said it plainly, and I was not nearly fool enough not to believe him. Even if this woman simply killed everyone, surely this Archon would know. I could not take her hand, even if I wanted to. I would not have said so before, yet this woman before me earned something akin to an answer.
"I have something I wish to protect," I said. The words came out stiff, as if my tongue were not built for them. It was not. "People who would suffer if I did not keep my word. Perhaps this Academy and this Covenant is everything you say. It doesn’t matter. Those people cannot protect themselves from a stiff breeze."
Isabelle stared at me. The sadness remained, but something else joined it. Confusion. She tilted her head, and the horns caught the faint light. "Why would the strong waste themselves on the weak?"
The words hit me somewhere I had not braced. I had believed words like those once. This was the one true law of the Demon Realm. My law. The faint disgust that rose in me was not aimed at the half-demon entirely. There was a strength to even the weak. I did not yet know what all of this meant, only that it was not nothing, and only that I could not follow this woman wherever she led.
Isabelle's gaze dropped to the satchel pressed against my side. She studied the way my hand rested on it. "There’s an egg inside there, right? I saw it when you opened the thing. You carry it like it is precious. Some people really like beasts. Never really got it myself," she said. Something between us shifted. I felt it in the way Isabelle's posture changed -the looseness leaving her shoulders. "I wanted you to come willingly," she whispered. "I didn’t want to have to do this, but I can damn well drag you kicking and screaming if you prefer."
Her mark blazed. The silver light carved the clearing into sharp blacks and whites as four black figures rose from the ground in front of her. Each one formed into a perfect reflection of the woman who had made them. They approached, each carrying weapons and closing the distance in a few steps. Isabelle hung back, arms folded. She was still frowning. "This doesn't have to hurt, Lys. I do not wish to hurt a Sister...just come with me."
The Requiem stirred in my right arm. Ruin was my only weapon, and I would have to use it well with my mana. It would have to be enough. The clones were close now. Five paces. Four. I set my feet and bared my teeth.
Then I felt it. So faint I might have imagined it, had I not spent days learning the shape of it. A tremor of mana, somewhere in the dark. The whisper of a blade leaving its sheath. One of the clones’ shuddered and split diagonally. There was no resistance. There was nothing at all but the cutting.
Something in my chest loosened as Ash stepped into the clearing.