73rd Day of Autumn 217 – Three Days After Danica’s Return
Northgate
In his years at Northgate, Ethan was directly responsible for the destruction of two separate hotel rooms: one accidental by way of a magic he barely understood, and the other intentional as part of a ploy to save a girl from execution for a crime she hadn’t committed. The long-term consequence of these actions had a profound impact on his life personally, but they also impacted the industry of hotels within the city. Specifically, the industry of hotel security.
Ethan was reminded of this as he approached the grounds of The Willendorf — the other nice hotel that Ethan hadn’t destroyed.
…Yet, he mused.
The effect of such recent events could be seen in the size and number of intimidating bellhops that stood outside the main entrance, ushering in guests with discerning eyes and impressive muscles. It was also apparent in the silver that framed the doorways and coated the handles throughout the structure. At some point, a rumor gained traction that witches were averse to the metal. Ethan could not say with certainty that the Silverun estate had been the original source of this rumor, but he knew the patriarch was more than happy to perpetuate it; the increase in demand, and price, of silver was a welcome boon.
Ethan ran his fingers across the long silver bar just inside the entrance, the nearest bellhop’s gaze visibly relaxing. That silver did nothing to affect any witches he knew personally — and that he was at the very least a witch in spirit, with an invisible layer of fabric separating his hand from the bar his fingers appeared to sweep across — was an amusing thought in the back of Ethan’s mind as he made his way to the front desk.
Leaning heavily on the long lines of silver filigree adorning the counter, he collected his room key and watched as the clerk scribbled down the name of his expected guest. The faintest hint of worry crept upon Ethan’s face with Danica on his mind. The desk clerk noted the expression and began giving him a second look; this establishment’s clientele wore very practiced masks and concern was not a public emotion. Catching his mistake, Ethan canted his head to the side ever so slightly, a well-honed shield of intolerance and indignation firmly back in place – was this bug looking at him…?!
The desk clerk immediately ceased his inspection and directed his gaze back to the ledger, refusing to make eye contact again until Ethan moved away.
Inside the room, Ethan stood over a modest tea set with his eyebrows drawn together in dissatisfaction. Even among the elite, tea was an unpopular import to this corner of Isendel; reserved primarily for handwashing between meal courses, or offered as a courtesy to rinse one’s mouth, it was ultimately intended to be spit out or discarded rather than consumed. But Danica had always liked tea, and Ethan never passed up an opportunity to make it available.
It was mostly a token gesture rather than a rival to what she’d had at home with her father, but even so, there might have been more than a singular option in front of him had the blight not strangled what paltry variety Northgate had to offer. At least it made selection easy, and at the end of the day it was still just herbs and water like all tea, but it did nothing to quell his nerves.
It had been over a year since Danica left on the back of that cart — a small ray of golden light bundled in varying amber hue, even human-appearing as she had been. She projected confidence then, as she often had, through caution-darkened eyes.
They’d never been apart for so long… How dramatically could she have changed in that time?
And what of himself?
Shaking free of the thought, Ethan found the room more to his satisfaction. He was ambivalent to the décor, but vitally, all of the trappings of luxury in the frigid north were the same for privacy — a heavy rug covered the wooden floor, thick winter drapes had been hung over each window, and a large tapestry adorned the one shared wall — all things good for dampening sound and light. He moved around the plush room, shuttering the windows and drawing the drapes, plunging the room into darkness before he turned to regard the space.
Is this weird…? He thought. This is weird, isn’t it…?
But, for once, there was no response from Bishop. The ring was tucked safely away in a small case in his pocket. He wasn’t sure what Danica would tell him —was there something to tell him? Maybe she just wanted to catch up…?! — but he didn’t know how to concisely say ‘the soul of a man I murdered is in the ring I wear but he’s totally cool so, like, don’t worry about it,’ and not feel like a crazy person.
But it also felt like a violation to have him listening without her knowing so… yeah, the box. Bishop, randy old man that he was, had other hopes for this meeting; he was not considerate enough to keep those hopes to himself before Ethan removed the ring from his finger.
Definitely weird, he decided.
He lit the furnace and several candles to bring in some warmth — and that helped with the light somewhat, especially to the eyes of a half-elf — but he found himself pacing around the room, trying to figure out where he should be when Danica came in. He sat in a chair at the table where the complementary mouthwash tea was kept, but it felt oddly formal. He sat on the edge of the bed but that looked a bit too anxious, like a concerned parent ready to ask ‘where were you?!’ the second she entered.
He tried lying on the bed, but that seemed a little too relaxed… and he didn’t feel relaxed at all.
He should have. It was just Danica, after all… Yet there he was, dancing in the middle of the room — moving a few steps toward the wooden chairs before cutting back toward the bed, stopping indecisively before reaching either destination. He was in the middle of this shuffle, caught in a mire of questions and etiquette when there came a discreet knock on the door.
Of course… it dawned on him. Placement of his body in the room was never a decision he had to make: he had to answer the door first.
He was grateful to have Bishop locked away so he didn’t have to bear the commentary on just how cool he was in this moment, particularly as it struck him from the doorway that the candles had a far… different connotation than he had intended.
He snuffed out the candles, and moved to open the door.
Danica hovered nervously in the hall, a single velvet glove in hand, lost halfway in the thought to remove them.
She was unsure what temperament to expect in the room. Would Ethan be… upset? Bitter that she hadn’t been in Northgate when Garbon was murdered, and the group fractured? Angry that she had returned alone, having failed to keep Rowen safe?
…Would he be relieved that she’d returned after so long, or disrupted?
She considered the possibility that she was at the wrong room entirely, knocking on some stranger’s door and fretting for naught… A decidedly poor outcome. She’d had more than her share of petty nobles in her past work as a page; she would take her pretend-disgruntled aristocrat over the genuine article any day, no matter how he might receive her.
Danica took a moment to steel her nerve, but turned back to the door at the same moment as it was flung open with Ethan on the other side — their sudden proximity surprising them both.
“Ah!” Danica’s face flushed. “I’m here.”
She hesitated for a prolonged moment, the two of them caught in rare wordlessness. Ethan was striking in the clean cut of his upper-class disguise, but the grace of summer had faded from his copper skin, and his eyes betrayed a habit of sleeplessness. The loveliness of her own garb — a second-hand gown she was given by Lady Caravan for its resemblance to frosty green lamb’s ear — could not disguise how badly she’d been worn by the harsh Jorungun winds of the far north. It had been a year-long winter for both of them, it seemed.
“Come in,” he ushered, instinctively taking a moment to glance into the hallway behind her. He scanned for observers, a habit of vigilance that had become more natural than breathing. Which reminded him…
He took a long, steadying breath and closed the door.
Even as the red-gold sun was sinking beyond the ramshackle roofs of other buildings, not a hint of its brilliant last rays could be seen inside. Danica unclasped the collar of her cloak as she took a moment to adjust to the darkness. Ethan noticed an oddity as he watched her, the pupils of her eyes seeming to catch the glower of the furnace embers and keep it, regardless of her angle to the light.
She glanced around the room, peering back at him over her shoulder. “Is this the secret lighting you use for secret meetings?”
“I uh… thought you might be more relaxed with the added privacy,” he said, his voice calm, even as he tried to keep his heated face from blushing.
An awkward moment hung in the air before Ethan stepped forward and offered to take her cloak. They had been children when he surpassed her height, but she still seemed caught by surprise to find herself looking up at him as she handed it over. He took care with the garment, seeming to assess it for a brief moment before giving it a gentle shake and placing it on the hook of a coat rack. Turning back, he gestured to a small silver kettle by the furnace. “Would you like tea?”
“Oh! …Sure.” She moved to stand nearby, leaning against the edge of the table as Ethan placed the kettle on top of the furnace to steam. Maiden’s breath could be undrinkable for its overpowering perfume, but she would never deny the gesture; one could only pray for the exclusion of its more bitter antiseptics. She sighed, barely an arm’s length between them, her face earnest and soft in the glow of the furnace embers. “…How are you?”
Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but caught himself responding automatically and froze.
Ironically, the most he had heard the question in recent years had been from Swans, bantering with him as an unassuming old baker — or from Leon Silverun, as part of their protocol-laden greetings as the outlandish Luke Bastion. Rarely was he asked such a simple question as himself.
He pulled his gaze from somewhere far away, coming back to the room around them. He glanced down to where Danica’s slender hand rested on the table’s edge, a trail of old scars shining silver across her knuckles in the firelight. It had been less than a grasp since the last time he forced worry from his mind, refusing to acknowledge the chance she might not return; it had been much longer since he could afford a stance of optimism. A glimmer of green light caught his eye as it danced on the edge of her jaw, refracted from her single sea glass earring.
“I’m better than I have been for a while,” he finally said, “…I was worried about you.”
“Yeah…” Danica’s expression wavered, “it was kind of justified though, wasn’t it?” She fell silent until the kettle began to whistle loudly beside them. She offered him a small smile as she shifted off of the table, “shall we sit?”
“Y-yeah… of course,” Ethan caught the distant look in her eyes as she turned away. His hand hovered in the air as if to take her reassuringly by the arm, but he stopped short. “Let me pour these and we’ll sit wherever you like.”
Danica settled on the edge of the bed, sweeping her skirt out of the way as Ethan handed her a steaming cup. She investigated it with some relief while his back was turned; it had no color, but smelled vaguely of mountain flowers and citrusy winter grass. She held it close, finding the warmth of it reassuring.
“What about you,” he pulled over a chair to sit across from her, “how are you?”
“I’m just…” she hesitated, losing herself in thought. A few tears slipped quietly down her face as frustration overcame her and she withdrew, brow furrowed, lips downturned. Her glamour wavered without releasing, creating a vibration of light about her form. She spoke in a quivering rasp as golden tears welled in her eyes and fell freely, “I’m so angry.”
Ethan stilled, glancing at each securely drawn curtain, listening for footsteps in the hall.
“I should have stopped him,” she sobbed, “I tried to force this magic away so that maybe we could have a normal life, but there are terrors in this world I had never imagined…” The feeling of the snake at her back as she scrambled through blood and dirt away from Rowen’s mangled body wrought a shiver from her core. “I could feel the evil in that cave… and I ignored it at the cost of Rowen’s life.”
“Dani,” he admonished her softly, but she merely shook her head in response.
“I couldn’t face any of you after what happened, couldn’t bear the judgment and anger I deserved, but then—” she faltered, “I wasn’t there for Garbon… I came back too late, and then I was truly alone.” She struggled to steady her breathing as Ethan’s expression grew more concerned. “I was terrified that I would never see you again, but…”
Her composure dissolved, teacup clattering to the floor as her glamour fell away. Her earthen gaze turned to honey and her flaxen hair became a shimmering sunset veil, like wildflowers cascading down her shoulders. The air about her form became a blazing aurora of starlight as hot as it was bright. She sobbed openly, overcome with rage and grief, “my very existence here puts everyone in danger; you would be safer without me, but I can’t— I can’t—” Her voice broke as she cried, burying her face in her hands, “I can’t be alone again.”
“Dani, it’s not your fault.” Ethan knelt in front of her, searching for words.
“But it is my fault…!” she wept, “None of this would have happened without the magic that I gave them. They would’ve lived happy, boring lives — not been hunted down… or worse.” The constellation of the bear gleamed on her skin, reaching across her shoulder to her heart as it had on Rowen. “The stars are a curse… I saw their deaths in my dreams before they came true — the serpent, the fire… and I didn’t even warn them.” Her sobbing became fiercer, shaking her as she dropped her head, “Their blood is on my hands. I killed them—”
Ethan sprung forward, pulling Danica into his arms; the two clasped so tightly together that she was rendered speechless.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “magic, dreams, visions, even the stars themselves — none of it matters.” He held the back of her head, tendrils of wild, shining hair bunching under his hand. His arms tightened around her back, “The only thing that matters — the only thing — is that you’re here. Right here, right now… You made it back.”
Danica buried her cries into his shoulder, lungs aching as light beamed through the cracks of their embrace, deep, simmering gold. “But Ethan, I…” she hesitated, taking a shuddering breath between sobs.
“Listen,” he responded firmly, “nothing could have stopped him, not even you. Rowen was brash and bull-headed his entire life.” Ethan’s brow furrowed, halfway between frustration and sadness, “and if you killed Garbon from the top of a mountain in another country, then I killed him here in Northgate, mere feet from where he stood.”
“No,” Danica pushed away to look him in the eye, “Ethan—”
“It’s an awful thing to say, isn’t it,” he pushed, “and it’s not my fault. Right?” There was a sharp pang in his chest, but his words were a direct hit to Danica who gripped his face in her hands, her expression urgent, incredulous.
“Of course not!” Tearful eyes searching. Her head shook in protest before she could speak, her gentle hand sweeping the hair from Ethan’s eyes, “I’m sure you can name every mistake you’ve made since we were children and tell me how they led to where we are right now; but I know you. You loved him. If there had been any way to save him — you would have.”
“Exactly,” his cool demeanor became transparent, anger shining through. “You’ve been blaming yourself for years,” he placed his hands over hers, his expression serious, “but you aren’t the only one making choices and mistakes — we all are. None of us control the army, or the Inquisition, or even the baroness herself. We just have to make the choices in front of us and do our best to survive.”
Ethan gently pulled her hands from his face and gripped them tightly. His eyes gleamed like aventurine in the light, softening as his intensity abated and the two of them took a shared breath. “For the record,” he continued, “even if it had been your fault… you never have to hide from me, from any of us.”
She looked away, caught between shame and relief. Their greater circumstances were wildly strange, but sitting together in the dark to air their innermost pains and wishes like they always had was the closest to home she had ever felt. Her aura gradually faded to a low, glowering red as she calmed, and then to nothing at all. When she could finally return his gaze, her tear-streaked face was human again; but she was cloaked in tired sadness, her eyes darkened with a grief Ethan deeply understood.
“…You win,” she said quietly, moving to sit side by side. Danica sighed and leaned her head against Ethan’s shoulder. “Maybe we’ll be fighting and fleeing for the rest of our lives, but we’ll be together.” Then a rueful thought elicited from her a sardonic huff, “guess you are cursed after all.”
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