Rotten Æther

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Rea chants the words over and over, as she collapses into my arms losing all the strength she was using to keep herself together until I stepped into the room. She breaks down in my arms, almost as if she’s giving up.

Clinging to her, I feel almost as if I’m holding onto a corpse, but for the terrible cold that burns her skin.

“What happened?” I ask, biting down the panic that’s gripping my heart. I almost reach for my swords, just to be ready to fight off whatever terrible bandits have done this to her.

I grip her head instead, as she refuses to give me an answer, and holding her cheeks firmly so that she can’t look away, I gaze into her sparkling eyes. Her irises, deep blue, shatter like ice, forming a thousand splinters that heal only to shatter again.

“What happened? Why are you sorry?” I bark out my questions, but she shakes her head refusing to even look at me by pulling herself out of my grip. “What’s wrong? What can I do?”

She closes her eyes, freezing in place as she refuses to even look at me. The hard tile underneath us has taken on the same cold that’s spreading through her. The frost magic that she’s casting inside of her own body is more powerful than ever before, and it burns to even touch her.

I have to flood myself with healing magic just to keep the effects at bay.

Something bad has happened, but what can I do if she’s not going to tell me what it is, or what I can do about it?

Biting my lip, I let go of her and stand up to look down over her.

“Rea,” I glare into her cold expression. “Tell me what happened.”

Like a statue, she remains frozen in place as if pretending that she’s not alive. What happened to make her like this? To break her like this?

A cheerful bubbling at the side of the room turns my attention to the strange bath built into this room. Steam flows from it, reminds me of the hot springs back in Snowspring but not nearly as awful smelling. It has to be fairly warm in there.

“Rea, if you say nothing, then I’m throwing you into the bath,” I say, crossing my arms and staring down at her.

She refuses to move.

“Fine,” I say, leaning down and grabbing her around the waist. With my enhanced strength, it’s easy to do.

I haul her right over to the edge of the bath, into the steam.

The cold air around her has washed away, but she’s fighting hard against it, her magic growing stronger if anything. Another burst of frost blasts out of her, crystalising the steam around her and sending the sparkling ice drifting about the room.

Sitting her somewhere comfortable, I strip off my clothes and throw them aside. Rea’s clothes are frozen onto her skin, so I can’t help her there, but I’m not in the mood for playing about either. Her clothes aren’t very pretty anyway, a cloak that’s dirty brown and splattered with blood. Difficult to focus on, it’s so boring.

“Rea,” I say, pulling at her and staring into her eyes. “Are you not going to talk to me?”

I shake my head in frustration, pulling her into the bubbling waters with me. The water instantly cools, but that’s just what happens when the water steals away her cold. It should mean that she’s that much warmer, right?

Her cloak slowly soaks through, and her hand is starting to soften in mine. It’s helping her, but not enough. Her clothes are in the way.

Wading into the freezing waters right on top of her, I pull at the oversized cloak that’s, itself, starting to melt. Rea fights against me, holding the cloak down to cover herself, but I don’t care if she’s embarrassed, or frozen, or whatever it is.

I pull harder, putting my magic into it until the cloth finally tears in two. I throw it aside and it hits the furs behind me with a wet splat.

Even with that out of the way, she’s got another long dress on. The same sort that she wore the last time we were here, covering her from the top of her neck down to her ankles. It’s probably more expensive than anything I own.

Rea has finally opened her eyes, and she’s looking at me in confusion and with a little bit of fear. I shove my uncertainties down deep as I step out of the bath.

I find my dropped clothes and shuffle around, finding my knife. When I return, Rea has finally started to move, her eyes turn to me and she opens her mouth but no sounds come out. Instead, she makes a desperate keening sound, shivering in her own cold.

Standing in the bath over her, I slip my knife under the neck of her dress and start tearing it free. If she liked this dress, then she only has herself to blame, and I’ll make sure that she knows it.

I take the split rags that remain of her dress and toss them aside with the worthless dirty cloak.

I repress a growl as I see another layer of clothes that I have to take off of her. Frozen to her skin like a protection against the warmth, she’s crawling away into the cold. Not telling me what’s wrong.

I know that this frost makes her feel terrible, so why is she doing this to herself?

She lifts an arm up, reaching out to me, but I take her wrist and pull her arm aside. Using my knife, I slice through the last of her clothes and do the same with her underwear, tossing the knife that she had strapped to her thigh with the rest of it. I’m too frustrated with her to even care anymore.

Finally, she can relax in this bath and take in a little of its warmth.

Huffing, I throw the knife back towards my clothes and lean back into the tub. It’s starting to heat up again, I think the heating enchantments in it are fighting harder now that the water has cooled, and it’s working to burn away the cold that Rea has tried to spread through it.

Rea is staring at me, blinking slowly, sending a wave of sparkling particles everywhere with each movement as she shatters and then heals.

“Are you going to talk to me, now?” I grumble at her.

She shudders, huddling in closer to herself again and closing her eyes. The way she just closes up, forces an icicle straight through my heart, the sort of guilty pain that I just got past when helping to kill the three mercenaries in the world under this city.

Why isn’t she talking to me? Why is curling into a ball, just because I asked her to talk to me?

I grit my teeth and stare at her naked body, so delicate and weak. The slightest misstep would make her shatter, but it’s the same end if I leave her alone behind the cold walls that she’s building around herself.

“That’s enough,” I say, shifting closer to her and pulling her arms aside. Her shoulders burst with sparkling shards, but they heal back healthy as before. She backs away in surprise, kicking out at me. I wrestle her into place and sit on her legs while holding her arms aside to keep her from crawling back up into a ball again.

Wrestling naked in the bath sounds like something that should be sexy and fun. It’s something that I would have dreamed about with a smile before, but right now I just feel angry. How can I help her if she closes up like this?

I don’t care if she’s a powerful and terrible vampire, or some noble commanding an army of knights. She’s going to tell me what’s wrong, and we’re going to work through it.

“Rea,” I say her name, pressing my face close against hers until our foreheads touch. She opens her mouth to speak, but only a cold breath escapes her, chilling my neck and sending a shock through my body. I push her further back, just staring into her eyes that are flicking back and forth as if taking in every part of my expression.

She doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

She’s scared.

Tears are still freezing in her eyes, falling into the bubbling waters around us. Slowly and carefully, I let go of her arms. I pull her close into a hug, without moving her head from my own.

Her cold leeches into my flesh, but I refuse to let her go. Summoning small bursts of fire into my chilled flesh, I then use healing to repair the damage, heating myself more and more to melt her defences.

Slowly, very slowly, she softens under me, blinking slowly as she moves her hands around to hold me in return.

“What happened?” I ask her.

Slowly, she opens her mouth again, looking up at me with her shattering eyes.

“I… can we… have this night?” She asks. “Can we just forget everything, and… I don’t want… I want this to at least be a happy ending to our…”

“What is it? Is someone trying to kill you? Is there some reason this is going to be the end?”

“I… I met a man today. He’s an ordinary man, but he’s also a monster. He can ask me to do anything, and I’ll be forced to obey.”

“What?” I ask, my brain freezes as I imagine what could happen, and what she’s so afraid of. I grip her tight and glare into her eyes.

If someone wants to do anything to her, then I’ll tear them apart and spread the ashes into the bottom of a latrine to mix with the mash of shit and piss. I will not let anyone else take her away from me. No one else is taking my family from me again.

“He’s too strong,” she says shaking her head and grabbing at me, her hands shivering as she talks. “You can’t fight him, no one can fight him. I… he wants you dead, but he doesn’t know about you yet. I can’t let him know about you. I can’t let him find out that you exist.”

“So, what can we do?” I ask. “I’ll find some way to kill him. I’ll dig up the bones of a dragon and use it to burn down this whole city down if that’s what it takes, no one takes my family from me. I can’t let this happen again.

“So what’s our plan?” I ask again.

She opens her mouth but shakes her head back and forth, refusing to speak anymore. She’s softened and her flesh is warm and comfortable under me now, instead of answering she presses her face up against mine as if to kiss me.

I hold her back but she keeps pushing, throwing me back into the tub.

We float in each other’s arms, as she desperately grips me. Her fingers sink into my back she desperately tries to hold onto me, even though I’m not fighting back. She’s barely even looking at me, the tears dripping from her eyes fog her vision as she tries to look away from something in the distance.

It’s like she’s just using this to forget about something else. I don’t want to kiss her with the burning rage and frustration in my chest, not until I know what we can do about it. I’m not going to let her distract me until I’m confident that we have a way out of this.

I don’t want her in this one moment, I want her for the few hundred years we have ahead of us. So I want to know that we have that, and if there is trouble, then I would rather be out there fighting off her villains, than in her arms while she cries.

“Rea,” I hiss, gripping her shoulders tight and holding her at arm’s length. “What is happening? What is the plan? How do we fix this?”

She shudders, trying to fight me, but failing to pull out of my grip. Finally sighing in resignation, she accepts the distance between us and struggles to find some words. Her lips move, and her voice whispers weakly.

“I need you,” she says, her fingers sinking into my back. She shivers in the warmth. “I need you to make me forget that you exist.”

“What?” I bring her face close to my own, looking in her eyes for something. Some sign that she’s confused or lying.

“I can’t let him know about you, or he’ll kill you,” she whispers. “He can make me give up my every secret, so that means I can’t know about you.”

“What about you?” I ask. “I’m not going to let him have you. I will not let him do whatever he wants with you. I’m claiming you. You’re mine, and that means that he can’t have you.”

“We need to do this, Syr,” she says, staring through me stronger than she was a moment ago. “He won’t hurt me. He… he sees me as a daughter, and he won’t hurt me. He cares about me, but he might still make me do something terrible to you, and to everyone else. I need to forget you, so that I can’t be made to hurt you.

“It’s the only way.”

“I’ll kill him,” I say, but she just leans in and wraps her arms around me, shaking her head.

“I… please. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I meet him again, but I don’t think I can escape. So please, just… Can we have tonight? Even if I won’t remember it, I want to have this moment with you.

“I…” she stares down into my hands as she holds them in her own. “If I do die, or somehow he finds you anyway… I don’t want to regret not having this moment. So, tonight. Just tonight, and then… Remember it for me.”

“I’ll find you,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I’ll grow strong enough to kill anything that stands in my way, and I’ll find you. You won’t get to complain, or say anything, and if this whole city stands between us, then I’ll burn them all. I’ll take their souls and force them to be my servants. If anyone wants to take my family from me, I’ll destroy them.”

Rea leans in over me, pressing her lips to mine, more of her cold diffusing through me as she closes her eyes. Her frozen tears fall on me, melting as they run down my cheeks.