As the morning wore on, Sol grew restless. The small phoenix had hopped to the hearth's edge, pecked at a cooling ember, startled at the heat, and retreated. She had tried to fly to the top of the table. Her wings had carried her farther than they had just yesterday. Surely Ash wasn’t just imagining that. Then, Sol had turned around, and attempted to glide back down. She had half managed, with her tiny wings flapping furiously. She had landed with a tiny thud next to Ash.
The effort left her swaying on her tiny feet afterwards. Her wings drooped, and she sat down as heavily as a tiny golden breadloaf could.
Ash leaned down. Sol pecked her leg and then she looked up with those round golden eyes. Ash held out her cupped hands and Sol hopped into them. Ash raised her slowly and set her atop her own head.
Sol settled. She really was light. The bird's talons gripped her hair and she let out a trill that sounded content. Ash looked at Lysanthia. Lysanthia was looking at Sol. Ash should have asked first. "She seems comfortable," Lysanthia said. Her voice was very soft.
"I thought you'd call her or me a traitor."
Color rose in Lysanthia's face. She looked away. "If she had gone to someone else," she said quietly, "I would."
If she had gone to someone else.
Ash did not have anything to say to that. Something just beneath her chest ached. She looked at Lysanthia, and the ache only grew sharper. Ash looked up instead, at Sol, who was currently fluttering her wings. "I think she just wants to move around," Ash said. "Explore a bit. She hasn’t seen much of this place yet."
She watched the war play out behind Lysanthia's eyes. Ash almost thought Lysanthia would rise and stumble towards her, to be the one who did this. Ash was leaning forward to catch Lysanthia just in case. "Very well," Lysanthia said instead. "As I am not able to, you may do it."
"Are you sure?"
"Do not make me repeat myself."
Ash nodded slowly. She rose, Sol balancing on her head, and moved toward the door. She looked back, and saw Lysanthia gazing towards the table. Where that journal lay. Yes, perhaps she needed this as much as Sol did.
The training yard Ash found was nearly empty. Ash only saw a handful of other students here. The grass was cool as Ash sat at the far edge and set Sol on the ground.
Sol regarded the open air, then hopped forward. She pecked at grass. She pecked at a pebble. She discovered a beetle and followed it for a full minute. The beetle escaped under a stone. Sol chirped at the stone with such volume that a bird in a nearby tree took flight. Ash leaned back on her hands.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me."
Ash turned. Ren stood beneath one of the stone pillars. She must have just come in. Ash hadn’t been paying too much attention, so she hadn’t noticed. Ren was staring at Sol from a few feet away. She approached. Sol didn’t even look at her, but started hopping in the opposite direction.
"This is a conspiracy," Ren said. "Why does she hate me?!"
"She…she hates you? She’s just very fussy." Like someone else. Ash didn’t say that part.
"She bit me Ash. Three times!"
Sol turned at the sound of Ren's voice. Her feathers puffed. She let out a chirp that carried less greeting than warning.
Ren crossed the small distance slowly. Sol hopped backwards. Her wings fluttered as she puffed herself up. "Hey, relax. Edda told me there's a trick." She reached toward one of Sol's black wings. Sol swatted her hand away with one gold wing. She turned her back on Ren and resumed pecking at the grass.
"Bullshit!" Ren threw both hands in the air. "Come on, what did I do? What is wrong with her?!" Ash laughed. Come to think of it, Lysanthia had mentioned something like this. Ash had thought it was a joke.
"Fine. Whatever. She hates me." Ren dropped onto the grass beside Ash. "Where's the other one?”
"She’s sore." Ash said.
Ren looked at her. “She’s…sore? How the hell did that happen?" Ren’s face was just faintly red as she asked this.
"She pushed herself very hard. It was the conditioning class."
"Oh." Ren nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess that would do it.”
They watched Sol hop after another beetle for a time. Ren shifted back and forth. Ash knew the motions well enough. Ren was preparing to ask something. Probably ask something uncomfortable, if her occasional glances were anything to go by.
"So," Ren said. She had drawn her knees up and rested her chin on them. "Hey. Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead. I don’t mind."
"Okay, soooo…." Ren's cheeks had gone a shade of pink. "So, uh, you and Lysanthia are uh….you're together together, right?" She made a gesture with her hands. One that Ash knew very well. "What's that like?" Ash stared at her. "Not that there's anything wrong with it!" Ren added quickly. Ren’s face was red, but it was nothing compared to Ash’s. " I've just always been kind of curious about how two girls, you know..." Her voice dropped.
Ash was raising her hands in front of her. Maybe they’d been raised before, and she’d only just now noticed. "We're not- Ren, we aren't-" She hated how squeaky her own voice sounded.
"Come on." Ren leaned in. "Sorry for being nosy and all that but…come on, I’m dying here!"
"I am telling you." Ash said. Her voice was almost never this loud. "We aren't together together. She is my-" What was she supposed to say? Ash didn’t know, and so she said nothing.
Ren looked at her. It seemed that something was starting to get through to the girl. "Wait," Ren said. Ash's stomach dropped. "Wait wait wait." The girl's eyes went wide. Her voice rose and rose, until she was yelling. "YOU AREN'T TOGETHER?! HOW I-"
Ash lunged. She clapped a hand over Ren's mouth. Fast, but not fast enough. "Keep it down!"
Ren's eyes were very wide. Ash removed her hand slowly, though she was ready to cover Ren’s mouth again if need be.
"But you-" Ren's voice dropped to a volume that was almost normal. "I saw you! In the bed! You were all-" She laced her fingers together. "I mean come on you can’t tell-
"We shared the bed that day because someone destroyed the other one." Ash was trying very hard to keep her voice calm.
Ren stared at her for a very, very long moment. "...Oh."
Ash looked away from her. Sol had found a dandelion and was losing a fight with it. The dandelion bent under her beak and snapped back each time she released it. "So you're really not," Ren said. “You know.”
Ash looked at the grass. "No. We're really not." She didn’t like the sound of her own voice.
"But-" Ren stopped. She chewed her lip, and when she spoke, her voice really was quiet. "You want to be…don't you?"
Ash pulled out a clump of grass and gnashed it between her fingers. She stared at them. Her chest was very tight, and she was sure her face was very red.
"But that damn half-demon is so weird," Ren muttered, mostly to herself. Her muttering trailed off. "Wait. So she probably has no idea, does she?" Ash said nothing, though she did wince. "Oh."
Was this what she wanted? Ash herself did not know. She just knew the direction her own thoughts and glances were starting to take, and she knew which way those roads led. How had things ended up this way?
Ren nodded. Ash saw the girl nod from the corners of her eyes. Ren rose to her feet and pointed at herself with her thumb. Ash looked at her. "Don't worry," she said.
Ash looked at her. "What?"
"Don't you worry! You are looking at the greatest matchmaker in the Academy!" Ren's Sigil flared. A wisp of flame shot up her arm and died at the elbow. "If there's one thing I know, it's how to make people's love lives work!"
"What?" Ash repeated eloquently.
"I don't really see the appeal myself. She's way too weird. But that's none of my business!" Ren was already turning. "She'll come around! I just need to do some reading!"
"Ren-"
The girl was running. She turned once and jabbed a finger back at Ash. "LEAVE IT TO ME!" Then she rounded the stone pillar and was gone.
Ash sat alone on the grass. Watching where the girl had run off to. Her own face was so warm it felt like it was burning. Ash brought her hands up to her face. "Oh God." Ash said.
Sol let out a long, low chirp. She was agreeing with her.
The walk back was quiet. Sol had taken her perch atop her head. The little breadloaf really was very warm. The corridors were dim in the late afternoon. Students passed. Many of them noticed her, and they pointed.
Traitor. Demon lover.
That and more were some of the whispers directed at her. It was impossible not to hear them with senses as keen as hers were. Ash’s mind was somewhere else.
She was thinking about her hands again. The ones that had spent the morning on Lysanthia's skin. The hands that had, in another life, held a sword that ended lives. That had ended so many of the lives important to Lysanthia. And Lysanthia’s hands, that had ended so many lives important to Ash.
Ash had apologized to her. Lysanthia had apologized to her back. Ash had accepted it then, and she could only hope that Lysanthia had accepted her apology in turn. It was the speed of it that bothered her. It hadn’t been that long. It had barely even been a month. Yet, Ash had accepted that apology.
What kind of person forgives this easily?
The woman she had been tending this morning. Whose legs she had stretched. Whose upper lip was fuller than her lower one. That woman had ordered villages burned. Had brought the Endless Night. And Ash had forgiven her.
What would Ronan have done? Ronan would have charged her, probably. If the Demon Queen were standing right here in this corridor, he would have drawn his sword, and he would have been right. What would Elowen have done? She would have used every spell she had, probably. She would have leveled the Academy, and she would have been right too. What would Orvyn have- No. That didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that Ash hadn’t done anything but help her. Hadn’t wanted to do anything but help her. It had been like this since that first day, in the forest.
The thought should have disgusted her. That was what she kept waiting for. The disgust. The moment where Lysanthia of the past crashed with the Lysanthia of the present. She kept waiting, and it did not come. Nothing about Lysanthia disgusted her anymore. No…she found she quite liked Lysanthia, her strange quirks and all. Every single one of them. What did that make her? Perhaps ‘Traitor’ isn’t too far off.
Ash shook her head. She had chosen. Just like she had with Orvyn, she had chosen with Lysanthia too. She had chosen the vase. The shielded child. The Hero’s Sword lying in the grass. She had chosen those.
Ash had forgiven Lysanthia because she wanted to. And that choice had been hers and hers alone. Ronan would have understood. She hoped the others would have too.
Sol shifted on her head. One small wing brushed her temple. The feather was warm. Ash reached up and touched it with one finger, and Sol trilled. "Yeah," Ash murmured. "I know."
She opened the door slowly. Lysanthia was on the floor in front of the hearth, propped against the pillow. The journal sat open in her lap. Her dark hair fell loose around her face. Her right hand rested on the page. Her crimson eyes moved across the journal. The fire crackled. In this light, with her hair loose and the sorrow in her eyes she looked-
She looked nothing like the Demon Queen.
Lysanthia looked up. Her eyes found Ash, then Sol on Ash's head. "My retainers have been far away for too long," she said.
Ash stepped inside. She closed the door and Sol chirped. Lysanthia's expression softened by a degree that most people would not have caught. Ash caught it.
She lifted Sol from her head and carried her to the hearth. The bird hopped from her hands to Lysanthia's lap, then from the lap to her thigh, where she settled with a trill and began grooming a gold wing. Lysanthia began to gently scratch under one of Sol’s black feathers. "Ash," she said.
"Yes?"
"Those stretches you showed me." Lysanthia paused. She took a deep breath before she continued, "I would... appreciate your assistance with them again."
Ash’s chest felt very sharp, and very tight. She did not care. "Yes," she said. "Of course."
Sol chirped and the fire crackled. Ash knelt. Her hands found Lysanthia's ankle. Her gaze did not wander.
Much.