Chapter Text
Terence reached Twinside just in time for the city to rip itself in half.
A little girl with dark hair and a high voice that carried through crowds was to be found in the slums by the riverbank, just as Dion had said there would be. Terence had never doubted that. His prince’s words would never be anything but true.
He merely hoped that they would not be the last he ever heard.
Kihel was a comfort, there. She had so many words to say that they didn’t leave much room for his prince’s to echo in his head.
“Ooh! We have to stop!” Kihel tugged at his hand and pointed at a patch of miniscule white flowers by the side of the road. “That’s yarrow over there! If I just take a minute to grind up the leaves and get the juice, I can—”
“Forgive me, my lady,” said Terence, and he cast a look over his shoulder at the looming black cloud over the sea, spreading with terrible speed from the crystal that rose from it. They’d been fleeing for days now, but no matter how far they ran, the cloud followed them just as closely as before. “I don’t believe a minute is a luxury that we possess.”
“But… what if you get hurt?” In what Terence could only assume was an act of deliberate malice, Kihel widened her eyes until they seemed the size of dinner plates and wobbled her lower lip.
He had had a little sister, once. He couldn’t remember much of her, not after Father had called the constables after he’d caught her summoning fire at the hearthside, but he could remember enough to know that looks like that were the result of deliberate ill-will.
“I’ll manage,” Terence said, steeling himself against the damnable, saucer-eyed look and hoisting Kihel up onto his back so that she couldn’t use it against him any longer. “We dragoons always do.”
“Like your friend,” Kihel said quietly, her slim arms tightening around his neck. “He shouldn’t’ve been able to get up like he did, after the way he was when I found him. But he did.”
“A testament to your care, my lady,” Terence said, breaking into a run. The clamor of his armor and the rattle of stone beneath his boots made it harder for the memories in his head to thread themselves together, and that was best.
Left to its own devices, the only image Terence could conjure up was Dion’s face—the brittle mask of determination that had rested over it when they had parted. It hadn’t cracked for an instant since Dion had come marching back to the encampment with his lance in hand after Twinside, the only indications that anything was amiss being the creep of bandages down his right forearm and the tightness around his honey-brown eyes.
Terence had tried to shatter that mask, with all that he was worth. But all that he was worth hadn’t been enough. It never had. He had tried, when the last of the orders were given, and they’d found themselves, at last, alone in their tent for the night, to take his prince in his arms.
But Dion had cringed away from him, and when Terence had reached, through force of habit, to undo the laces of his mail-coat, Dion’s gloved hand had stayed his own.
“Your Grace?”
“I’m not, Terence. I’m not.”
“What happened in Twinside—I know you would never—”
“But I did.” Dion had held Terence’s hand lightly, as he’d pushed it away. As if it weren’t calloused and clumsy and too slow to protect its lord when it counted. “And there is no undoing it now.”
Terence ran westward for all he was worth, and tried not to think of the emptiness in his prince’s eyes.
He left seeking death. He left seeking death, and I might have stopped him, if I were braver than I am.
But Terence hadn’t raised his fists when the constables had come for his sister, and he hadn’t raised his voice when Dion had sent him away. He could not do the things he had left undone, any more than his prince could undo his own sins.
All Terence could do was hike Kihel higher up on his back, and run.
He was running still when the Eikon of Light tore through the clouds over head like a beacon, making for the storm over Twinside. For an instant, sunlight caught on Bahamut’s silver wings, making them gleam like that armor Terence had polished every morning, and tears sprang into his eyes. His footsteps faltered.
“Dion…”
Of course he would hurl himself into that tempest. Terence’s jaw wound tight. Again, when it counted, he was too slow. Stranded on the ground while his prince soared toward death overhead.
On his back, Kihel let out a little gasp of fear and buried her face in the nape of his neck. “Don’t stop now,” she whispered. “He’ll burn us.”
Terence shook his head. Bahamut’s wingbeats were smooth and sure, driving him through the air like a warship with a steady hand at its helm.
“No,” he said, and the tears ran down his face. “He won’t."
He stood transfixed as silver wings lined black clouds, held motionless until the last of the light had faded, and all chance of seeing his prince through that smothering darkness was lost.
“It wouldn’t have taken me that long to stop for yarrow,” Kihel muttered, and Terence fell back into himself. Her hands, where they laced together over his collarbone, were shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“So, the dragoons… you still follow him? After what he did?” Kihel’s voice was small, but Terence could hear the mistrust in it.
Of course I—of course we do. We would to the ends of the earth, if he would only let us.
But Kihel probably wouldn’t care for that answer.
“He… is the one who sent me to find you. The one you healed. He—he wasn’t himself, that night in Twinside. He is—kind and just, and—so, yes. We do still follow him. I always will.”
Kihel went silent, after that, and when Terence glanced over his shoulder, he saw her worrying her lip in thought. “I… healed an Eikon?”
“You did.”
“That’s a little cool.”
“It was very cool, my lady,” Terence said, and despite the misery and loneliness of the past month, a smile started at the corner of his mouth. Somewhere beyond the clouds, Dion’s light still shone, thanks to this girl and her herbs and her pleading black eyes.
Not half an hour had passed when the earth rumbled under Terence’s feet. He set Kihel down and spun around in time to see the crystal hanging over Twinside shiver to pieces. The screech of stone shearing through stone scraped at his ears, even miles away.
He could run no longer. Sir Terence stood his ground and turned his eyes upwards, searching the sky for a glimmer of light—the silver flash of a wing. Rubble poured down upon the horizon like black rainfall, and he waited to learn whether or not his faith was vain.
There—no, that was a burst of fire—there!—no, just a trick of the moon’s glow.
Please, there is so much left to say. Please, I swore I would be there.
A single burst of radiant silver pierced the darkness, and then a larger blast of hateful, alien blue ate it whole. The silver dwindled, and fell into blackness, hundreds of feet through the smoke and down to the fangs of the rocks below.
On the horizon, his hope burned, and flickered, and went out.
The hideaway jutted out of the water like a sinking ship.
Terence dragged the oars through the water, his arms weighing from his shoulders like lead. His chest rang hollow and quiet, a suit of armor without a heart to protect. The orders his prince had left him with still animated his body, but the only sound in his head was the lapping of gray waters against the hull.
“Is that an airship?” Kihel’s spirits, at least, hadn’t dimmed. Terence had kept himself from tears, for her sake. The world was frightening enough without the man who had sworn to protect her weeping and blubbering.
“It was, my lady,” Terence managed. “Once upon a time.”
He had his doubts about seeking out the Outlaw’s hideaway, but if Dion had gone to Cid’s aid, the man had to be worthy of some regard. Perhaps his followers would be better able to care for a bright young thing like Kihel than a hollow man like Terence could.
The rowboat he’d rented knocked against the wood of the docks, and a heavy rattling sounded overhead as a lift clattered down to his level. Terence’s hand strayed toward his lance, his body shifting to place itself between Kihel and the danger, as he’d ever done for his—for Dion.
Still, his battlefield reflexes did nothing to prepare him for Lady Jote of the Order of the Undying to charge full tilt from the lift, slide expertly past his guard, and crush him in a hug.
Terence stumbled back a step, his hands rising in confusion, and before he could think to lower them, Jote had retreated, pressing her arms to her sides.
“My apologies, Sir Terence,” she said. She had Dion’s way of talking to the space past Terence’s shoulder. “It has—the Lords Rosfield have not returned.”
Terence had met Jote only once before. They had ridden from their encampment back to Twinside with the princes they had sworn themselves to, and they had spoken to one another only when left alone in an antechamber of the royal palace, blades drawn against any who would wish their charges ill.
“Your prince’s stepmother,” Jote had said haltingly, “I would be on your guard.”
Terence hadn’t been able to help bristling a little, not least at the fact that Jote was ignorant of the dangers of speaking words like that aloud in the royal palace.
“I assure you, my lady,” he’d said, “I know how to defend His Grace.”
Terence hadn’t. He supposed Jote hadn’t either, for all that her eyes never strayed from her charge. She had been as ready with her steel and tonics as Terence had been with his own, and it hadn’t done either of their princes the least bit of good.
“His Grace?” Terence asked, like the fool that he was, in case the clouds had been too thick for him to see a miracle flying overhead.
Jote shook her head. “I’m sorry. Lady Jill… says she felt him go. Just before the others.”
“I—I see.” The ache in Terence’s throat tightened. He nearly choked in his effort to keep it from escaping in a sob, and he shook his head, as if that would clear the grief from it. “I have a final duty to fulfill for him.”
He reached behind himself and took Kihel’s hand. “Her name is Kihel,” he explained. “His Grace asked that I see her provided for. There are precious few safe havens left in this world, and… I had heard this was one of them.”
Half of the truth. The remainder was the fact that he had seen Bahamut fly from the west, and westwards he had been drawn, in case Dion should find his wings again and fly back.
He never would.
Jote saw them up the lift and into a wide series of rooms and wooden decks, a castle built of Fallen stone and driftwood. Before they could get three steps, a blonde cannonball of a girl came hurtling over one of the platforms to land in their midst.
“Oi! Who’ve you got there, Jote?” Terence could have sworn that smiles like the one the girl wore had gone extinct years ago. Perhaps he hadn’t been wrong in bringing Kihel here.
“Lady Mid, this is Sir Terence,” Jote said. “Commander of the Imperial Dragoons and—”
“Aw, not Tin Can there!” Mid scoffed, pushing past Terence and stooping to meet Kihel’s eyes. “Who’s this?”
“I’m Kihel!” Kihel piped up.
“Well, Kihel.” Mid smiled. “What skills’ve ye got?”
“I make good poultices,” Kihel volunteered. “And tonics!”
“Ooh, a master physicker!” Mid beamed and clapped her hands together. “How’s about I show you to the herb garden, and you can have your pick of the lot?”
Kihel cast Terence another of those deadly, big-eyed looks, and for a moment it struck him dumb. Though they were safe now, she still looked to him, as if he had the right to tell her no.
He turned to Jote and whispered. “Is Mid altogether safe?”
“Yes, and lovely with children. Do not fear.” Jote returned, with the smooth cadence of a soldier passing along intelligence.
Terence turned back to Kihel. “Find me back here in an hour, all right?”
“Okay,” said Kihel, and a little smile turned the corner of the mouth. “Thank you, Sir Terence.”
Mid jumped up and clapped her hands together. “Brilliant! Now, let’s get on our way, Kihel!” The two of them scurried up a staircase on the far side of the platform, and Terence let out a sigh as they vanished. His hands fell listless at his sides. They had no reason to draw a sword or reach for bandages.
He felt suddenly very small and very lost, a boy from a small manor thrown into the bustle and barking of the dragoon encampment, who didn’t know where troops marshalled in the morning or which end of the mess tent the line started at.
“Lady Jill would speak with you,” said Jote, “if you’re willing.”
Terence had never had the gift of being unwilling, so he went.
A month ago, he’d have been shocked at the mere thought of agreeing to meet with the infamous Lady Jill, whose name rang nearly as loudly across the Twins as Cid’s own. A year ago, he might have been sent to take her head.
Now, he shuffled down the path after Jote, and felt nothing.
Jote guided him up a staircase and into a dim room occupied by a vast table with a map of the Twins stretched across it. Standing before that table, her head bowed in concentration and her back to the door, was a woman with steel-colored hair and a rapier at her side.
Before either Terence or Jote could make so much as a sound, she turned on her heel in a rustling of silk and chainmail. The fragile brightness in her eyes wasn’t unlike the one that shone in Jote’s.
There were rumors, of course. About Cid and his most constant companion, the same way rumors had swirled around Terence and Dion, much as Terence had tried to quiet them. On seeing that light in Jill Warrick’s eyes, Terence knew them all to be true.
He bowed. It was the least he could do, in the face of that sort of pain. “My lady.”
“Please.” Lady Jill’s laugh was choked and awkward. “That won’t be necessary. Sir Terence, is it not?”
Terence folded himself upright. “Yes, my lady.”
Lady Jill’s eyes had steel in them, and her fingers closed around her rapier. “We could use steel like yours.”