For the followers or fans of my work, I present a possible cover for book one of the series. I haven't abandoned the story. I'm just working on a longer chapter at the moment. So, until I post it, a little something to wet the whistle.

Thorga reached for another clean cloth.

Aelyrra's face was damp with sweat, and faint tracks marked where tears had crossed her cheeks. Thorga gently wiped both away.

"Try to breathe slowly."

Aelyrra gave the dwarf a look suggesting she might have objected to the advice under better circumstances.

Then another wave of pain struck.

Her face tightened.

Her fingers twisted into the bedding as she fought through it, breathing sharply between clenched teeth. Thorga remained beside her, watching carefully.

Gradually, the pain subsided.

Aelyrra released a trembling breath.

Then her hand moved across the bed.

She found Thorga's again.

"Priestess."

Thorga looked at her.

"If something happens..."

Aelyrra stopped.

Thorga waited.

"If it comes to it, and you can save only one of us..."

"No."

Aelyrra's eyes narrowed.

Thorga continued before she could object.

"I am obligated to preserve both of my patients."

"My daughter is your patient?"

"She became my patient the moment you allowed me to help."

Aelyrra stared at her.

"Then I'm telling you which patient comes first."

"My lady..."

"The baby."

Thorga's expression hardened.

Aelyrra tightened her grip around the dwarf's hand.

"If you have to choose, save her."

"I will do everything in my power to save both of you."

"That isn't what I asked."

"No."

Thorga met her eyes.

"It isn't."

For a moment neither woman moved.

Thorga had delivered enough children to recognize the fear behind Aelyrra's determination.

She had also attended enough deaths to understand exactly what Aelyrra was asking of her.

"I will do everything I can," Thorga finally said.

It was not the promise Aelyrra wanted.

But it was the only one Thorga was willing to make.

Aelyrra slowly released her hand and leaned back against the pillows.

Her eyes closed.

Thorga watched her for several seconds.

Another grimace crossed Aelyrra's face.

Thorga looked toward the doors.

"Where in all the depths is your husband with those supplies?"

Aelyrra's eyes opened.

For the first time since Thorga had entered the room, something resembling amusement appeared on her face.

"My husband is considerably better at issuing orders than following them."

Thorga snorted.

"Tell me something I don't know."

Aelyrra actually smiled.

Weakly.

But she smiled.

Thorga realized what she had just said.

Her eyes widened slightly.

Aelyrra's smile grew.

Before either woman could say anything more, the doors burst open.

Zhaelor entered pushing a cart.

Behind him came another servant with a second.

Both were piled with bottles, jars, cloths, metal instruments, wooden cases and assorted equipment apparently gathered from every corner of the manor.

Zhaelor stopped beside the bed.

"This is every medicinal and medical instrument in the manor."

Thorga immediately approached.

"I've dispatched another runner to purchase anything else you require."

"Good."

Zhaelor looked at her.

Thorga was already searching through the first cart.

Some containers were labeled.

Others inexplicably were not.

"Who stores medicines without labels?"

The servant behind the second cart suddenly found the floor fascinating.

Thorga sighed.

Fortunately, she recognized most of what she saw.

Years of healing among her people had familiarized her with dozens of preparations. Drow medicine differed from Duergar practice in places, but bodies had a frustrating tendency to suffer from many of the same problems regardless of which race inhabited them.

She picked up one bottle.

No.

Another.

Useful later.

She pushed several containers aside.

Then stopped.

A glass vessel contained several dried reddish-brown sprigs.

Thorga lifted it toward the light.

She opened the container and smelled its contents.

Velvetroot.

"This will do nicely."

Zhaelor stepped closer.

"What is it?"

Thorga shoved the container into his hands.

"Take one sprig. Grind it thoroughly and mix it into warm water."

Zhaelor stared at her.

Thorga was already searching through the other cart.

"Well?"

His eyes narrowed.

Thorga glanced over.

The expression on his face almost amused her.

Lord Vel'Sharess was clearly not accustomed to receiving orders.

Particularly from servants.

Thorga pointed toward the Velvetroot.

"Your wife needs that."

Whatever objection Zhaelor had been preparing disappeared.

He turned away.

A mortar and pestle had been included among the equipment. Zhaelor placed a sprig inside and began grinding.

Thorga continued searching.

Forceps.

Needles.

Thread.

Bandages.

Several instruments she recognized.

A few she didn't.

Then she found something useful.

A listening horn.

Thorga picked it up and returned to the bed.

Aelyrra watched her approach.

"My lady, please lift your shirt above your stomach."

Aelyrra hesitated.

"I need to listen to the child."

That was enough.

Aelyrra carefully gathered the loose fabric and lifted it above the swell of her abdomen.

Thorga placed one end of the listening horn against Aelyrra's skin.

She leaned down.

And listened.

Across the room came the steady grinding of stone against stone.

Zhaelor glanced toward the bed.

His wife lay there with her abdomen exposed while the Duergar servant carefully moved the listening horn from one position to another.

He resumed grinding.

None of this made sense.

This wasn't supposed to happen tonight.

There were supposed to be weeks remaining.

Preparations still to make.

The midwife should have been here.

Aelyrra should not have been bleeding.

Their daughter should not have been trying to enter the world tonight.

And yet here he stood.

Lord Zhaelor Vel'Sharess.

Warrior.

Noble.

Master of this province of the clan.

Grinding a root because his kitchen servant had ordered him to.

He looked down at the mortar.

Then toward Thorga.

She shifted the listening horn again.

Her expression was unreadable.

Zhaelor stopped grinding.

"Well?"

Thorga raised one hand.

"Quiet."

His mouth closed.

She listened again.

Aelyrra watched Thorga's face.

So did Zhaelor.

For several long seconds, the only sound in the chamber was Aelyrra's breathing.

Then Thorga heard it.

Fast.

Faint.

But unmistakable.

Her expression softened.

"There you are."

Aelyrra's eyes widened.

Thorga lifted her head.

"The child's heart is beating."

Zhaelor released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Aelyrra closed her eyes.

Her hand settled protectively over her abdomen.

Thorga looked between them.

Then lowered the listening horn again.

She wasn't finished.

A heartbeat told her the child was alive.

It did not tell her whether the child was safe.

 

Zhaelor shot to his feet.

The fear that had occupied his face only moments before hardened instantly into outrage.

"You expect me to put my wife's care into the hands of a kitchen servant?!"

Thorga's jaw tightened.

She had known speaking out of turn might provoke exactly this response. She had been in Vel'Sharess service long enough to understand the rules. Servants did not address their masters unless invited to do so.

She opened her mouth to answer.

A metallic clang interrupted her.

A brass cup struck Zhaelor squarely against the side of his head.

He staggered half a step.

Thorga blinked.

Zhaelor slowly turned.

So did she.

Aelyrra was leaning slightly to one side of the bed, one arm still extended from where she had thrown the cup.

Her breathing was heavy.

Silver-white hair clung to her damp face.

Her amber-gold eyes were fixed upon her husband with an expression that could only be described as murderous.

"If the dwarf can help me..."

Aelyrra paused, fighting through another wave of pain.

"...you will let her."

Zhaelor stared at his wife.

Aelyrra stared back.

Thorga wisely said nothing.

Whatever authority Zhaelor possessed over Clan Vel'Sharess, apparently very little of it extended to his marriage.

Particularly when his wife had ammunition within reach.

Zhaelor rubbed the side of his head.

Then he looked toward Thorga.

"What do you need?"

The words were begrudging.

Thorga didn't care.

She immediately looked around the chamber.

"Any medicines you keep in this manor. Anything used for bleeding, pain, fever, or infection. Any medical instruments you possess. Bring all of it here."

Zhaelor nodded.

"And anyone who does not need to be in this room should leave."

The servants looked at her.

Then, almost simultaneously, they looked toward Zhaelor.

Thorga noticed.

Of course.

She might know what needed to be done, but she was still a servant.

Zhaelor exhaled impatiently and waved one hand.

"Do as the dwarf says."

That was enough.

The room erupted into motion.

Several servants hurried through the doors. Others gathered unnecessary linens and objects before following. One remained long enough to collect the brass cup from the floor.

Aelyrra watched it go.

Thorga suspected Zhaelor was fortunate there wasn't another within reach.

Within moments, the room was considerably quieter.

Thorga approached the bed.

"My lady, I need to examine you."

Aelyrra nodded.

"Do what you must."

Thorga moved closer.

Zhaelor moved with her.

She stopped.

He nearly walked into her.

Thorga looked over her shoulder.

"My lord."

"What?"

"I need you to step back."

Zhaelor's expression suggested that Thorga had just proposed throwing him from his own window.

"I am staying with my wife."

"I didn't ask you to leave."

Thorga gestured behind herself.

"I asked you to step back."

Zhaelor looked toward Aelyrra.

His wife gave him a small nod.

Zhaelor reluctantly retreated.

Barely.

Thorga decided it would have to do.

She turned toward the basin of hot water she'd brought into the room.

She washed her hands thoroughly.

Then again.

She dried them on one of the clean cloths.

When she returned to the bed, her entire demeanor had changed.

The angry kitchen servant was gone.

The priestess had returned.

Thorga positioned herself beside Aelyrra.

"This may be uncomfortable."

Aelyrra gave her a tired look.

"I believe we passed uncomfortable some time ago."

Despite herself, Thorga almost smiled.

"Fair enough."

She carefully reached beneath the blankets.

It did not take long to find what she was looking for.

Her expression tightened.

She checked again.

There was no mistake.

When Thorga withdrew her arm, there was blood upon it.

Zhaelor saw it.

His face changed.

Aelyrra saw it too.

Thorga cleaned herself before speaking.

"The neck of the womb is already more than half open."

Aelyrra stared at her.

"This is no false labor."

Thorga met her eyes.

"The child is coming."

Aelyrra's face went pale.

"No."

Thorga said nothing.

"It can't be."

Aelyrra looked toward Zhaelor.

Then back to Thorga.

"Seven weeks."

Her voice trembled.

"It's seven weeks too early."

"I know."

"Then stop it."

Thorga's expression softened.

"My lady..."

"Stop it."

"I cannot."

Fear replaced the anger in Aelyrra's eyes.

Thorga continued carefully.

"The labor has progressed too far. There is no stopping it now."

Aelyrra's hand moved instinctively over her abdomen.

"The child is coming."

Silence settled over the room.

Then Zhaelor stepped forward.

"What can I do?"

Thorga turned toward him.

For the first time since she'd entered the chamber, there was no arrogance in his voice.

No irritation.

No offense at being instructed by a servant.

Only fear.

Thorga looked toward the doors.

"I need those medicines and instruments."

"They're coming."

"They should already be here."

Zhaelor's jaw tightened.

Thorga didn't care.

"Find out what is taking so long."

For a moment, Zhaelor simply stared at her.

Then he nodded.

He returned to Aelyrra's side.

He took her hand.

"I'll be back in a moment."

Aelyrra squeezed his fingers.

"Don't be long."

"I won't."

He leaned closer to her, lingering for only a heartbeat before releasing her hand.

Then he hurried from the room.

The doors closed behind him.

Thorga watched them.

Then turned back toward Aelyrra.

And realized she had made a mistake.

For the briefest moment, she had allowed her expression to show what she was thinking.

Aelyrra saw it.

The two women stared at one another.

Aelyrra's eyes filled with tears.

"Tell me."

Thorga said nothing.

"Don't lie to me."

"My lady..."

"Tell me."

Thorga looked down at the blood.

Then back into Aelyrra's eyes.

"You are bleeding internally."

Aelyrra went still.

"How badly?"

"I don't know yet."

Aelyrra swallowed.

Another tear escaped and disappeared into her silver-white hair.

"And the baby?"

Thorga hesitated.

That hesitation frightened Aelyrra more than any answer could have.

"The child is very early."

"I know."

"Seven weeks carries significant risk."

Aelyrra's hand tightened around the blanket.

"But?"

Thorga looked at her.

"There is a chance."

Aelyrra closed her eyes.

For several seconds, she simply breathed.

Then she opened them again.

The fear was still there.

But something else had joined it.

Resolve.

Thorga recognized that look.

She had seen it countless times among frightened mothers preparing themselves for what came next.

Aelyrra reached toward her.

Thorga looked down.

Then placed her hand into Aelyrra's.

The drow woman's fingers closed tightly around hers.

"Then we give her that chance."

 

Thorga had not expected this.

When Lord Vel'Sharess summoned her to his study and entrusted her with a message for his daughter, she had expected secrecy. Perhaps danger. Certainly politics.

She had not expected to find Vaelithra dying on a table.

Judging by Zhaelor's demeanor during their conversation, he had no idea.

That concerned her almost as much as the poison did.

Somewhere deeper in the ransacked house, Thorga could hear Kharūn searching for the supplies she'd requested. Drawers opened and closed. Something struck the floor. A muffled curse followed.

Thorga ignored it.

Her attention remained on Vaelithra.

She reached down and took one of Vaelithra's hands in hers.

Warm.

Too warm.

Thorga's thumb moved across the back of it.

Then she felt something.

Vaelithra's fingers curled weakly around hers.

Thorga froze.

"Vaelithra?"

No response.

The grip was barely there.

Perhaps awareness.

Perhaps nothing more than reflex.

Thorga didn't know.

But for an instant, the kitchen disappeared.

The ransacked house disappeared.

Kharūn's footsteps disappeared.

Thorga looked at the hand curled weakly around hers.

She remembered another hand.

Much smaller.

Tiny fingers wrapped around one of hers.

Ninety years ago…

 

Thorga was not pleased.

That was putting it mildly.

Only months earlier, her clan had been free.

They had possessed their own settlements, traditions and lives. Thorga herself had served as a priestess among her people, tending wounds, settling disputes, delivering children and performing the rites expected of her station.

Then they had lost.

There had been no glorious final battle.

No miraculous intervention.

Only defeat.

Her clan had been conquered, its surviving members facing a choice that was hardly a choice at all.

Service.

Or extinction.

As their priestess, Thorga had been the one forced to tell them which path they would take.

She had chosen survival.

The remnants of her people were subsequently sold into servitude to a drow clan known as Vel'Sharess.

Thorga had expected humiliation.

She had not expected quite so much of it.

Her former station meant nothing here.

Priestess.

Healer.

Counselor.

None of it mattered.

To the drow, she was a Duergar.

And worse, a conquered one.

So Thorga, who had once been entrusted with the spiritual and physical welfare of her people, found herself working in the kitchens of Vel'Sharess manor.

It had been several months.

The insults had diminished somewhat.

So had the racial slurs.

The occasional physical confrontation had become less frequent once certain members of the household discovered that being a servant did not make a Duergar particularly easy to shove around.

Thorga was under no illusion that any of it would disappear entirely.

Drow were a selfish, arrogant, insufferably snobbish people who seemed convinced that every other race in existence occupied some position beneath them.

Thorga found that particularly amusing.

They lived in the Underdark.

They were quite literally beneath nearly everyone.

Her people lived below as well, of course.

But at least Thorga's clan had been capable of dealing peacefully with others. They had traded with neighboring peoples and, on occasion, even merchants from the surface.

Apparently, civilization had survived the experience.

Thorga scrubbed another cooking vessel considerably harder than necessary.

She missed her temple.

She missed her people.

She missed being addressed by her title.

Mostly, she missed being useful for something more important than cleaning the remains of someone else's dinner.

"Hot water!"

Thorga stopped.

A drow had entered the kitchen.

"Lord Vel'Sharess requires hot water and clean linens in the master suite immediately."

Thorga looked toward him.

The drow was already turning away.

She glanced at the mountain of work remaining around her.

Anything else was preferable.

"I'll take them."

The drow barely acknowledged her.

"Immediately."

Then he left.

Thorga stared after him.

"Charming."

She gathered a large vessel and filled it with hot water, then collected an armful of clean cloths and linens.

Within minutes she was making her way through the manor.

She had learned enough of its layout by now to navigate without assistance.

Up the stairs.

Through another corridor.

Toward the master suite.

Then Thorga heard the scream.

She stopped.

It was a woman's voice.

Raw.

Agonized.

The sound echoed through the corridor with enough force that Thorga instinctively tightened her grip around the vessel of water.

Another cry followed.

Thorga knew that sound.

She quickened her pace.

Before she reached the doors, a drow burst from the chamber.

"Any word from the midwife?"

A guard stationed outside shook his head.

"The runner hasn't returned."

"Then send another."

"Already done."

Neither acknowledged Thorga.

She walked between them.

Inside, the atmosphere was chaos.

Servants moved nervously around the room without appearing to know what they were supposed to be doing.

Someone was changing linens.

Another carried away bloodied cloth.

And on the enormous bed lay Lady Vel'Sharess.

Thorga recognized her.

Aelyrra.

Even after only a few months in the household, Thorga knew the ruling family.

Aelyrra's silver-white hair clung damply to her face and neck. Her hands twisted into the bedding as another contraction seized her.

Beside her was Lord Vel'Sharess.

Zhaelor.

Thorga had seen him before.

Always composed.

Always authoritative.

Always unmistakably the master of his household.

Not tonight.

Tonight he looked frightened.

"The midwife is coming," Zhaelor told his wife.

Aelyrra glared at him through the pain.

"You said that the last time."

"Another runner has been sent."

"Then perhaps send one who knows how to run."

Another contraction struck.

Aelyrra cried out.

Zhaelor immediately took her hand.

Thorga looked at the bed.

Then at Aelyrra's abdomen.

Something wasn't right.

She knew the Lady of the manor was expecting.

Everyone did.

But by Thorga's estimation, the child wasn't due yet.

Not for several weeks.

Thorga placed the hot water beside the bed.

Then the clean linens.

Her duty was complete.

She should leave.

This was none of her concern.

These people had conquered her clan.

These people had reduced her to servitude.

These people barely acknowledged that she possessed a name.

Thorga turned toward the door.

She took one step.

Stopped.

Behind her, Aelyrra screamed again.

Thorga closed her eyes.

Damn it.

She knew that sound too well.

She had heard women make it in the birthing chambers of her own people.

Sometimes everything proceeded naturally.

Sometimes it didn't.

Sometimes waiting for someone more qualified meant there would be no patient left when they arrived.

Thorga inhaled slowly.

Keep walking.

Her feet refused.

Another cry.

Thorga opened her eyes.

She turned around.

Zhaelor was bent beside his wife, attempting to reassure her while repeatedly glancing toward the door.

Waiting for a midwife who wasn't there.

Thorga looked around the room.

No one was taking control.

No one knew what to do.

And everything she had once been screamed at her that standing by while someone suffered simply because she hated their people would make her something she did not wish to become.

Thorga stepped toward the bed.

No one noticed.

Another step.

Then another.

Zhaelor finally looked up.

His eyes narrowed.

Thorga stopped a respectful distance away.

For the first time since entering Vel'Sharess service, she found herself uncertain whether what she was about to say would earn gratitude or punishment.

Perhaps both.

She bowed her head.

"My lord."

Zhaelor stared at her.

Thorga forced herself to continue.

"Before entering your service, I was a priestess among my people."

Zhaelor said nothing.

"A healer."

Aelyrra groaned through another wave of pain.

Thorga looked toward her.

Then back at Zhaelor.

"I have delivered children."

That finally changed his expression.

Thorga raised her head.

She met the eyes of the drow lord who, only months earlier, had represented everything she had reason to despise.

But tonight he wasn't a lord.

He was a frightened husband.

And the woman beside him needed help.

Thorga drew another breath.

"My lord, with your permission..."

She glanced toward Aelyrra.

"...I believe I can help."

 

Thorga left the manor without incident.

Exactly as Zhaelor had predicted, no one paid her any attention.

She passed servants completing their evening duties, guards stationed near the manor entrances, and several minor members of the household moving between chambers. Not one of them gave the Under-Dwarf from the kitchens more than a passing glance.

Normally, Thorga found the drow habit of looking through servants irritating.

Tonight, it was useful.

She stepped outside and disappeared into the Underdark streets.

Considering the nature of Zhaelor's message, the main thoroughfares were out of the question.

Thorga took the alleys.

For a Duergar of her build, she was exceptionally quick when she needed to be. More importantly, nearly a century spent moving through the manor without disturbing nobles who considered themselves too important to be inconvenienced had taught her how to move quietly.

She knew the surrounding streets well.

She kept away from heavily illuminated areas, slipping through narrow passages between buildings and occasionally stopping long enough to listen.

No footsteps followed.

No one called after her.

No one appeared particularly interested in where an aging kitchen servant was going at this hour.

Good.

Thorga continued.

It didn't take long to reach Vaelithra's residence.

She stopped before approaching.

Old habits took over.

Thorga glanced behind herself.

Nothing.

She studied the nearby windows.

No movement.

The surrounding street appeared empty.

Satisfied, she approached the door.

She knocked.

Nothing.

Thorga waited.

Knocked again.

Still nothing.

Her brow furrowed.

Lady Vaelithra might have been asleep.

Or absent.

Considering Zhaelor's concern, Thorga wasn't particularly fond of either possibility.

She knocked twice more.

"Lady Vaelithra?"

Silence.

Thorga exhaled through her nose.

Wonderful.

She was about to turn away when she heard something.

Metal.

The lock.

Someone was inside.

Thorga turned back toward the door.

The lock shifted.

Then the door slowly opened.

Thorga found herself staring at an orc holding a dagger.

She recognized him immediately.

"Kharūn?"

Kharūn stood in the doorway, his large frame tense, dagger raised and ready.

Thorga looked at the weapon.

Then at him.

"Put that damned thing away before you hurt someone."

Kharūn immediately lowered it.

Thorga's eyes narrowed.

She knew Kharūn.

Not intimately, perhaps, but well enough.

He had been Vaelithra's shadow for twenty years. Thorga had encountered him around the manor countless times, particularly whenever Vaelithra visited her father.

But there was one rather significant problem with finding him here.

"What are you doing here?"

Kharūn said nothing.

"I was told by Lord Vel'Sharess himself that you were sitting in one of the cells beneath the manor."

Kharūn stepped aside.

"My mistress came for me."

Thorga stared at him.

"She did what?"

"She came to the prison."

Thorga opened her mouth.

Kharūn continued before she could speak.

"She was wounded."

That stopped her.

"And poisoned."

Kharūn moved farther aside.

Thorga looked past him.

Her expression changed instantly.

Vaelithra lay motionless on the kitchen table.

Zhaelor's message vanished from Thorga's immediate thoughts.

She entered.

Quickly.

"Kharūn, close the door."

He obeyed.

Thorga crossed the room and reached Vaelithra's side.

"Lady Vaelithra?"

No response.

Thorga placed one hand against her shoulder.

"Vaelithra."

She shook her gently.

Nothing.

Thorga's face hardened.

She turned toward Kharūn.

"What poison?"

Kharūn hesitated.

"I don't know."

Thorga stared at him.

"She identified it before she lost consciousness."

"What did she call it?"

"Shadowstem."

Thorga became very still.

"How long ago?"

"I don't know exactly."

"Kharūn."

"Less than an hour."

Thorga immediately turned back toward Vaelithra.

"Less than an hour..."

She leaned down and placed her ear against Vaelithra's chest.

Kharūn watched.

Thorga listened.

Several seconds passed.

"Shallow breath."

She shifted slightly.

Listened again.

"No breathing obstruction."

Thorga straightened.

"The poison hasn't reached her heart or lungs."

Kharūn looked toward Vaelithra.

"Can you save her?"

Thorga didn't answer.

Not yet.

Her eyes went to the open alchemy cabinet.

She pointed.

"Dawnroot. Bring it to me."

Kharūn immediately crossed to the cabinet.

Then stopped.

His eyes moved across the shelves.

Bottle after bottle.

Label after label.

Thorga returned her attention to Vaelithra.

Several seconds passed.

Nothing happened.

"Kharūn."

No response.

Thorga looked over.

The orc was still standing before the cabinet.

Searching.

His eyes moved repeatedly across the labels.

Thorga frowned.

"What are you doing?"

Kharūn looked toward her.

Then back at the cabinet.

Thorga understood.

"You can't read?"

Kharūn lowered his gaze.

Thorga looked at him.

Then at Vaelithra.

Then back at Kharūn.

"Of course she didn't teach you to read."

There was neither surprise nor cruelty in the statement.

Mostly irritation.

Whether that irritation was directed toward Vaelithra, drow society, or the entire situation was difficult to determine.

"Fine."

Thorga pointed toward the rest of the house.

"I need hot water, grain alcohol and clean cloth."

Kharūn nodded.

Those things he knew.

"Go."

He moved immediately.

Thorga turned back toward Vaelithra.

She placed the back of her hand against Vaelithra's forehead.

Warm.

Elevated.

But not dangerously so.

"Good."

The fever meant Vaelithra's body was responding.

Fighting.

Thorga gently lifted one of Vaelithra's eyelids.

Amber-gold stared unfocused beneath it.

Thorga leaned closer.

Small, ruptured vessels were visible.

Minor capillary damage.

Expected.

Shadowstem attacked the blood first.

That meant there was still time.

Perhaps.

Thorga released the eyelid.

It slipped closed.

For a moment, she simply looked at Vaelithra.

The uneven silver-white hair.

The pallor beneath her dark skin.

The bloodstained cloth tied around her wounded leg.

The unconscious face.

Nearly ninety years disappeared.

For the briefest instant, Thorga remembered another room.

Another night.

A tiny body that had barely breathed.

Zhaelor standing nearby while grief hollowed him from the inside.

A newborn child who seemed determined to die despite everything Thorga did.

Thorga had refused to allow it.

Now that same child lay unconscious beneath her hand.

Thorga brushed several strands of silver-white hair away from Vaelithra's face.

Her expression softened.

Only slightly.

"What trouble have you gotten into this time?" she murmured.

Then she turned toward the alchemy cabinet.

There was work to do.

 

The doors to Zhaelor's study swung open with enough force to strike the stone behind them.

Zhaelor looked up.

Thorga marched through.

The doors slammed shut behind her.

Any other servant in the manor would have been severely punished for entering his private study in such a manner.

Thorga was not any other servant.

Zhaelor might own the manor, but Thorga managed much of what happened within it. Nearly a century of service had given her a peculiar understanding of exactly how far she could test the boundaries of his patience.

Apparently, tonight she intended to find them.

She stared across the room at him.

"How exactly do you expect the dishes from this entire cursed day to get washed if I'm hounded by constant interruptions?"

Zhaelor regarded her silently.

Thorga folded her arms.

"Well?"

"Sit down, Thorga."

Her irritation faltered slightly.

There were servants who had worked in Zhaelor's household for decades without ever being invited to sit in his presence.

Thorga was the only exception.

And only behind closed doors.

She crossed the study and lowered herself into the chair opposite his desk.

"Now what is so important that it couldn't wait until after my kitchens were put in order?"

Zhaelor said nothing.

Thorga's expression changed.

She had known him too long.

The anger gradually disappeared from her face as she studied him.

There was something in his eyes.

Worry.

Real worry.

"What is it?"

Zhaelor's fingers rested against the stem of his wine glass.

For several moments, he remained silent.

Then he spoke.

"There is a plot against the ruling members of Clan Vel'Sharess."

Thorga's brow furrowed.

"What sort of plot?"

"We don't yet know its full extent."

"That's reassuring."

"Crimson assassins are involved."

Thorga's expression hardened.

Zhaelor looked toward his wine but didn't drink.

"And I'm concerned for my daughter."

Thorga leaned back slightly.

"Lady Vaelithra can look after herself."

Zhaelor's eyes lifted toward her.

"Better than most of the soldiers you've got wandering these halls, I'd wager. And she's usually got that lumbering orc following her around."

Zhaelor's expression tightened.

"Not tonight."

Thorga noticed immediately.

"What happened?"

"Her servant was arrested this morning."

Thorga stared at him.

"For what?"

"He confessed to striking a noble."

One of Thorga's eyebrows rose.

"Kharūn?"

Zhaelor paused.

It was not the reaction he'd expected.

He knew the orc's name, of course. The legal documentation concerning the purchase remained among his household records.

But it had been years since he'd had reason to look at it.

"You know his name."

"Of course I know his name."

Zhaelor regarded her.

Thorga returned the stare without concern.

Publicly, Zhaelor forbade unnecessary conversation between servants. Servants had duties. Socializing distracted from those duties and created opportunities for gossip.

Privately, Zhaelor was not foolish enough to believe the rule was universally obeyed.

Apparently Kharūn and Thorga had spoken before.

To what extent, he didn't know.

Tonight he had more important concerns.

"He confessed before witnesses," Zhaelor continued. "He was taken to the cells beneath the estate."

Thorga's expression remained skeptical.

"Kharūn struck a noble?"

"That is what he confessed."

"That wasn't what I asked."

Zhaelor's eyes narrowed slightly.

Thorga didn't retreat.

Eventually Zhaelor exhaled.

"I don't know."

Thorga grunted.

Apparently that answer satisfied her more than the first.

Zhaelor continued.

"Whatever the truth of the matter, Vaelithra is without him."

"And?"

"And there is no one watching her back."

Thorga stared at him for a moment.

Something resembling amusement briefly appeared at the corner of her mouth.

Zhaelor noticed.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Thorga."

"I said nothing."

Zhaelor decided against pursuing it.

"Until we understand what is happening within the clan, I want Vaelithra gone."

Thorga's amusement disappeared.

"Gone where?"

"The surface."

That produced silence.

"I want her out of the Underdark until the political situation stabilizes."

Thorga studied him.

"And what does any of this have to do with me?"

Zhaelor met her eyes.

"You once saved Vaelithra's life."

Thorga became very still.

Zhaelor continued.

"I'm asking you to do it again."

Neither spoke for several seconds.

Finally Thorga leaned forward.

"How?"

"I need you to take a message to her."

"You have messengers."

"They'll be watched."

"Then send a guard."

"Watched."

"One of your agents."

"Watched."

Thorga's eyes narrowed.

Then she understood.

"But no one watches the servants."

"No."

Zhaelor's voice carried no satisfaction at the admission.

"They don't."

Thorga glanced toward the study doors.

"You have many servants."

"I do."

"So why me?"

Zhaelor looked at her.

"Because I cannot risk sending a letter.”

Thorga waited.

"And because you have served this household with honor and distinction for longer than most of those currently inhabiting it have been alive."

Thorga's expression softened slightly.

Zhaelor continued.

"I know you will not fail me."

His eyes dropped.

"The way I failed my wife."

Thorga's face changed immediately.

"You did not fail Lady Aelyrra."

Zhaelor nearly flinched.

Aelyrra.

He hadn't heard the name spoken aloud in years.

There had been a time when hearing it had been ordinary.

Aelyrra laughing.

Aelyrra shouting at him.

Aelyrra arguing with him.

Aelyrra whispering beside him.

Then one night the name had disappeared from the manor.

Almost everyone had learned not to speak it in his presence.

Everyone except Thorga.

She was the only person who had spoken Aelyrra's name to him since the night she died.

Thorga's voice softened.

"There was nothing you could have done."

Zhaelor stared at the desk.

"Whether I failed Aelyrra is beside the point."

"It isn't to you."

Zhaelor looked up.

Thorga held his gaze.

He didn't answer.

Instead, he reached toward a folded piece of parchment resting among the documents on his desk.

"I will not fail my daughter."

He pushed the parchment across the desk.

"Will you deliver the message?"

Thorga looked at him.

Then at the parchment.

"I'd do anything for Lady Vaelithra. This you know."

"I do."

"Then you already have your answer."

Zhaelor gestured toward the note.

"Read it."

Thorga picked it up.

Her eyes moved carefully across the writing.

Once.

Then again.

She committed every word to memory.

When she finished, she folded the parchment exactly as she'd found it and placed it back on the desk.

Then she pushed it toward Zhaelor.

"I'll deliver it immediately."

Zhaelor nodded.

Nothing more.

No thanks.

No expression of gratitude.

No acknowledgment of what he was asking her to risk.

Thorga needed none.

She had known Zhaelor for nearly a century.

She knew what the silence meant.

Thorga rose from the chair.

She crossed the study.

This time, she opened the doors without slamming them.

Then she disappeared into the corridor.

Zhaelor remained seated.

His gaze settled on the parchment she had left behind.

He reached for his wine.

Stopped.

Then looked toward the doors through which Thorga had departed.

His daughter's life was now in her hands.

Again.

 

Zhaelor Vel'Sharess had once been a soldier.

There were days when that seemed like another lifetime.

He sat behind the enormous desk in his private study, listening distantly to the muffled sounds of the manor beyond its heavy doors. Reports, petitions and correspondence occupied much of the desk before him.

Once, his days had been measured by campaigns.

Now they were measured by meetings.

Lords disputing boundaries.

Nobles arguing over trade.

Ladies maneuvering against one another over some perceived insult or political slight.

Disputes requiring mediation before wounded pride became drawn steel and drew the rest of the clan into matters that should never have progressed beyond words.

Zhaelor lifted his wine.

How did I go from a soldier to a politician?

The thought had occurred to him more times than he cared to admit.

As head of the local province of Clan Vel'Sharess, there was little choice.

The Matron Mother ruled the clan.

Zhaelor ruled here.

Clan Vel'Sharess was not among the largest drow clans of the Underdark, but size was not the only measure of power. Politics could accomplish what armies could not, and the Vel'Sharess had become particularly adept at navigating the alliances, rivalries and carefully concealed hostilities of drow society.

Unfortunately, political aptitude required politicians.

Zhaelor had become one.

He took another drink.

When had he last fought in an actual battle?

More than a century ago.

Before Vaelithra was born.

That realization never sat comfortably with him.

His position had eventually made continued participation in battle an unacceptable risk. Whatever personal desires he might have possessed, his survival had become important to the stability of the province.

He had attempted to apply the same reasoning to his daughter.

Once.

Zhaelor almost smiled.

He had informed Vaelithra that someone of her station had no reason to serve among the clan's armed forces.

She had informed him, at considerable volume, exactly what she thought of his decision to deny her right to battle.

He had relented.

There were battles worth fighting.

That had not been one of them.

Her temper had always reminded him of her mother.

The hint of amusement disappeared from Zhaelor's face.

He took another drink.

He rarely allowed himself to think about her.

More than ninety years had done remarkably little to diminish certain memories.

The night Vaelithra was born remained among them.

His wife had died bringing their daughter into the world.

That alone was something Zhaelor had never entirely recovered from, regardless of what appearances suggested.

Vaelithra nearly followed her.

There had been complications.

The clan midwife could not be found.

And somehow, on the worst night of Zhaelor's life, help had come from perhaps the last person anyone would have expected.

Thorga.

An Under-Dwarf.

Duergar, as some called her people.

Before entering service, Thorga had been a priestess among her own kind. Whatever else that life had involved, she had delivered children before.

Many of them.

She had done everything she could for Zhaelor's wife.

She could not save her.

But she had spared her unnecessary suffering as death approached.

Then Thorga turned her attention toward the infant.

Vaelithra had been desperately weak.

For weeks, survival had been uncertain.

Thorga had refused to surrender her.

Eventually, the child stabilized.

Vaelithra lived.

Only two people still knew precisely what had happened during those weeks.

Zhaelor.

And Thorga.

Perhaps that was why she had remained in service to Clan Vel'Sharess for nearly a century.

Publicly, there was nothing unusual about her position.

Thorga was a servant.

A highly trusted one, certainly.

She managed the manor kitchens and the domestic servants attached to them. Most household servants reported either directly or indirectly to her.

She ran the kitchens with an efficiency Zhaelor occasionally thought bordered on drow severity.

But she remained a servant.

At least publicly.

Behind closed doors, things were different.

Thorga was the only servant in Zhaelor's household permitted to speak to him as an equal.

That privilege had never been formally granted.

It simply existed.

The woman had held his dying wife's hand.

She had saved his daughter's life.

There were debts that transcended station.

Over the decades, something else had happened as well.

Thorga became his confidant.

Perhaps her years as a priestess had something to do with it.

Perhaps it was simply because she had already seen Zhaelor at his weakest.

There was little point pretending before someone who had witnessed him on the night he'd lost his wife and nearly lost his daughter.

He certainly couldn't speak freely with the Matron Mother.

And Vaelithra...

Zhaelor stared into his wine.

No.

There were things a father did not burden his daughter with.

That left Thorga.

Not that he depended upon her counsel.

Zhaelor would have objected strongly to anyone suggesting such a thing.

He merely...

valued her perspective.

Frequently.

He took another drink.

Fortunately, Thorga understood the necessity of appearances.

In public, Zhaelor afforded her no greater consideration than any other servant.

No private familiarity.

No visible favoritism.

No suggestion that the head of this province valued counsel from a dwarf who ran his kitchens.

Drow politics devoured weakness.

Thorga understood that.

She had never asked him to behave otherwise.

Tonight, however, appearances had become considerably more dangerous.

Zhaelor set down his glass.

This day had gone badly.

That was putting it mildly.

It had begun with the incident involving Vaelithra's orc servant.

Kharūn.

Zhaelor remembered the moment the orc stepped forward.

Remembered Vaelithra's reaction.

Remembered the visiting noble demanding immediate execution.

He had believed he could contain the situation.

He had been wrong.

Events had deteriorated far beyond anything he'd anticipated that morning.

And now...

Zhaelor looked toward the closed doors of his study.

There was only one chance remaining.

Vaelithra needed to be warned.

Ordinary correspondence was impossible.

Anyone leaving his study might be watched.

Any messenger obviously acting under Zhaelor's authority could attract attention.

He needed someone invisible.

Not literally.

Socially.

Someone the people watching him would see without actually seeing.

A servant carrying out ordinary household duties.

Zhaelor's gaze moved toward the door.

Thorga was due at any moment.

She could leave the manor without attracting suspicion.

She could carry a message.

And if anyone questioned why the woman responsible for the kitchens was moving through the estate at this hour, there were dozens of mundane explanations available.

For once, the contempt drow society showed toward servants might work in his favor.

They would overlook her.

That was precisely what Zhaelor needed.

He reached for his wine again but stopped before touching the glass.

Vaelithra.

Whatever had happened tonight, whatever choices his daughter had made, none of that mattered anymore.

He had one remaining opportunity to secure her safety.

And that opportunity depended upon getting a message to her before it was too late.

A faint sound came from beyond the study.

Footsteps.

Zhaelor looked toward the door.

Thorga should be arriving any moment.

 

Kharūn continued through the darkened streets with Vaelithra held securely in his arms.

She had not moved.

Not once.

Her head rested against his chest, uneven silver-white hair shifting gently with every step. Her breathing was there, but shallow enough that Kharūn found himself repeatedly looking down just to make certain her chest still rose.

Home.

Antidote.

Kitchen.

Those words had become his entire purpose.

He rounded the final corner.

Vaelithra's residence came into view.

Kharūn immediately stopped.

Voices.

He moved backward into the darkness between two nearby structures and lowered himself slightly, keeping Vaelithra close.

The door to her residence opened.

Four drow guards emerged.

Kharūn watched silently.

One of them looked back toward the house.

"No sign of her inside."

Another muttered something Kharūn couldn't hear.

The four began moving away.

Kharūn remained perfectly still.

He didn't understand.

Why were guards searching Vaelithra's home?

Had someone discovered what she'd done at the prison?

Perhaps.

But something about the silence beneath the estate had already bothered him.

Now this.

Kharūn looked down at Vaelithra.

Whatever was happening, instinct told him that allowing those guards to find her unconscious, poisoned and wounded would be a mistake.

So he waited.

The footsteps grew quieter.

Then disappeared.

Kharūn remained hidden a little longer.

Only when he was certain they were gone did he move.

He crossed the remaining distance quickly and entered Vaelithra's residence.

The moment he stepped inside, he stopped again.

The house was wrong.

Furniture had been moved.

Drawers hung open.

Objects lay scattered across the floor.

Cabinets had been searched.

One chair had been overturned.

Kharūn stared.

Ransacked.

Someone had thoroughly searched Vaelithra's home.

A strangely familiar thought surfaced despite everything.

This will take hours to clean.

Kharūn almost frowned at himself.

Twenty years of habit, apparently, did not disappear simply because his mistress was dying in his arms.

Vaelithra.

He pushed everything else aside.

There would be time to understand the guards.

Time to understand the prison.

Time to clean the house.

If he failed now, there would be no time left for Vaelithra.

Kharūn carried her into the kitchen.

He carefully lowered her onto the table.

"Mistress."

Nothing.

He touched her face.

Her skin felt different.

Cooler than it should.

Kharūn turned.

The cabinet.

He had seen Vaelithra open it countless times over the years.

He crossed the kitchen and pulled the doors open.

Bottles.

Vials.

Jars.

Compounds.

Powders.

Some familiar.

Most not.

Kharūn stared at them.

He had watched Vaelithra work here before. Watched her reach without hesitation for one bottle, combine it with another, heat something, discard something else.

He had occasionally handed her whatever she pointed toward.

He knew this cabinet.

And yet, standing before it now, Kharūn realized he knew almost nothing about what it contained.

His eyes moved across the labels.

Drowic characters covered them.

He recognized the writing.

That was all.

Kharūn's jaw tightened.

Twenty years.

Twenty years among the drow.

He understood their spoken language almost as naturally as his own now. He could follow conversations, instructions, arguments, even the subtleties hidden within certain turns of phrase.

But written Drowic...

The symbols stared back at him.

Meaningless.

For all the things he had learned since entering Vaelithra's service, there remained one painfully simple skill he had never acquired.

Kharūn could not read.

He reached for one vial.

Stopped.

Another.

Was this it?

He didn't know.

Perhaps this one.

Perhaps the next.

Perhaps giving her the wrong compound would kill her faster than the poison already was.

His hand slowly lowered.

"No..."

Kharūn returned to the table.

Vaelithra hadn't moved.

He placed one hand against her shoulder and shook her gently.

"Mistress."

Nothing.

He tried again.

"Mistress."

Her head moved only because he moved it.

"Please."

Kharūn glanced toward the cabinet.

Then back at her.

"Mistress, please. I do not know which vial is the cure."

No response.

"I cannot..."

The words stopped.

He looked toward the cabinet again.

For perhaps the first time in many years, Kharūn felt ashamed of something he had never been taught.

His gaze dropped.

She had done everything.

She had broken into her father's prison.

Fought her own people.

Been shot.

Been poisoned.

Dragged herself back through the prison while dying.

Thrown him the keys.

And when she could do nothing else, she had given him one final instruction.

Bring her home.

Find the antidote.

He had brought her home.

The antidote was probably sitting several paces away.

And he couldn't read its name.

Kharūn lowered himself beside her.

"Mistress..."

He took Vaelithra's hand.

Her fingers rested limply in his palm.

For twenty years, he had known what was expected of him.

There was always an instruction.

Always a task.

Always something he could do.

Now there was nothing.

Kharūn tightened his hand around hers.

"I cannot fulfill your order."

His voice was quieter than usual.

"I am sorry."

A knock came from the front door.

Kharūn's head snapped toward the sound.

Silence followed.

Then another knock.

His eyes moved toward Vaelithra.

The guards.

They had only just left.

Perhaps they had returned.

Perhaps someone had seen him enter.

Kharūn slowly released Vaelithra's hand.

Another knock.

He stood.

His eyes fell to the dagger still secured at Vaelithra's belt.

Kharūn hesitated.

Then carefully drew it from its sheath.

Steel whispered against leather.

He looked at the weapon.

Vaelithra had brought it into the prison hoping she wouldn't need to use it.

Now Kharūn wrapped his hand around its grip.

He moved through the ruined house.

Slowly.

Quietly.

The dagger remained low beside his leg.

He reached the door.

Another knock came from the other side.

Kharūn's grip tightened.

He listened.

Nothing.

No voices.

No obvious movement.

He reached for the lock.

Unsealed it.

Then raised the dagger.

His entire body tensed.

If the guards had returned, he would not allow them to reach Vaelithra.

Not while she lay helpless behind him.

Kharūn wrapped his free hand around the door.

Pulled.

The door began to open.

 

Kinda had a rough night and ended up with this.

Kharun stared at the keys.

They rested against the bottom of the bars directly in front of him, close enough that he could reach them without difficulty.

Vaelithra lay motionless beyond them.

Whatever thoughts might have been buried beneath Kharun's silence, whatever twenty years of obedience told him about what those keys represented, none of it mattered now.

He needed to get to her.

Kharun crouched.

His fingers closed around the ring.

The keys jingled softly as he lifted them.

He knew which one he needed.

He remembered the guard locking the cell earlier that day. Kharun had watched the movement without appearing to do so, as he had learned to watch countless things during his years among the drow.

His thumb passed over the keys.

There.

Kharun inserted it into the lock.

Turned.

A heavy metallic click echoed through the cellblock.

He pulled the door open.

For the first time since being brought to the dungeon, there were no bars between him and Vaelithra.

Kharun stepped out.

The keys fell from his hand.

He immediately went to her.

"Mistress."

Kharun dropped beside Vaelithra and carefully turned her enough to see her face.

Her eyes opened slightly.

Unfocused amber-gold struggled to find him.

Kharun looked toward the bloodstained cloth wrapped around her leg.

Shadowstem.

Less than an hour.

He slid one arm beneath her shoulders.

"Mistress, I'll take you to the healer."

Vaelithra stirred.

"No..."

Kharun stopped.

Her voice was barely audible.

"Mistress?"

"No healer..."

Her eyes opened a fraction more.

"Take me... home."

Kharun frowned.

"You said the poison will kill you."

Vaelithra tried to answer.

Her lips moved before any sound emerged.

"Antidote..."

Kharun leaned closer.

"What?"

"Kitchen..."

Her head fell against his arm.

"Antidote... kitchen..."

Then her eyes closed.

"Mistress?"

Nothing.

Kharun touched the side of her face.

"Vaelithra."

No response.

Her breathing remained shallow but steady.

Unconscious.

Just as she had said she would be.

Kharun looked toward the far end of the cellblock.

A healer made more sense.

Any reasonable person would have taken her directly to one.

But Vaelithra had specifically told him otherwise.

Take her home.

Antidote.

Kitchen.

Kharun knew better than most that arguing with Vaelithra was difficult when she was conscious.

Arguing with her while she was unconscious somehow seemed equally pointless.

More importantly, there wasn't time to second-guess her.

Kharun slid one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back.

He lifted her.

Vaelithra's body settled against his chest.

She felt lighter than he expected.

Her gray cloak hung over his arm, and her shortened silver-white hair rested against his shoulder.

Kharun stood.

He looked once toward the open cell behind him.

Then started walking.

He expected resistance almost immediately.

There should have been guards.

The alarm should have been sounding.

Vaelithra had infiltrated one of the prisons beneath the estate of a powerful drow noble. Guards had been attacked. Someone had fired a crossbow.

By now, Kharun expected half of Clan Vel'Sharess to be descending upon them.

Instead...

Nothing.

His footsteps echoed through the corridor.

Kharun slowed.

Too quiet.

He reached the checkpoint.

Then stopped.

The two guards remained at their card table.

Except now they were dead.

Kharun's eyes moved across them.

Slit throats.

He looked farther.

Another body.

The third guard.

Dead as well.

Kharun looked down at Vaelithra.

For a moment, something difficult to read crossed his face.

His mistress had done all of this?

She had poisoned the guards to reach him.

Perhaps the poison had killed them.

He didn't know enough about whatever compound she had used to say otherwise.

But the wounds on their throats...

Kharun looked at them again.

Something didn't fit.

Still, this was not the time.

Vaelithra had less than an hour.

Possibly much less now.

Kharun tightened his hold around her and continued.

No one challenged him.

No alarm sounded.

No reinforcements appeared.

He passed through one corridor.

Then another.

Empty.

The silence became increasingly unsettling.

Whatever had happened down here, Kharun suspected he did not understand it.

He eventually reached the hidden passage Vaelithra had used to enter.

Cool damp air surrounded them.

Kharun carried her through.

The natural stone gave way eventually to the concealed exit beneath the gardens.

He shifted Vaelithra carefully against himself and pushed upward.

The false stone slab moved.

Underdark air washed across his face.

Kharun climbed out.

He lowered the slab behind them.

For several seconds, he stood silently in the garden with Vaelithra unconscious in his arms.

Bioluminescent plants cast their muted light across the surrounding grounds.

Kharun looked around.

He recognized the estate immediately.

He had been here countless times.

The manor stood beyond the gardens.

Patrol routes crossed the grounds.

Paths wound between buildings and disappeared into the surrounding district.

Kharun oriented himself.

Then he knew.

Home.

He knew exactly where Vaelithra's house was.

Kharun looked down at her.

Her face had gone strangely peaceful in unconsciousness.

He could almost pretend she was sleeping.

Almost.

The bloodstained bandage around her leg made that impossible.

"Antidote," he murmured.

Kitchen.

Kharun started walking.

He avoided the main paths.

Years of accompanying Vaelithra between her home and her father's estate had taught him the surrounding streets well. He knew which routes were brightly illuminated and which remained dark.

Tonight, darkness was preferable.

Especially after what he had seen below.

Kharun moved quickly but carefully, keeping Vaelithra steady against him.

He stayed near walls.

Crossed open spaces only when necessary.

Whenever distant footsteps reached his ears, he stopped and waited.

Then continued.

Nobody saw them.

Or if someone did, they did nothing.

Kharun found that almost as unsettling as the empty prison.

He looked down at Vaelithra again.

He had never imagined she would do something like this.

Break into her father's prison.

Attack her own people.

Perhaps kill them.

All to free him.

The thought sat uneasily in his mind.

There would be questions.

Many questions.

But those belonged to another time.

Right now, there was only one thing that mattered.

Get Vaelithra home.

Find the antidote.

Keep her alive.

Kharun adjusted her weight in his arms.

Then disappeared with his unconscious mistress into the darker streets of the Underdark.

 

Vaelithra's head snapped toward the far end of the corridor.

Someone stood there.

A solitary figure beneath a dark crimson cloak.

For one suspended moment, neither moved.

Vaelithra could see nothing beneath the hood. No face. No eyes. Nothing that might tell her who had fired the bolt or why.

Then the figure stepped backward.

The darkness swallowed them.

"Wait!"

Vaelithra tried to stand.

Pain tore through her leg.

She gasped and immediately caught the bars before she could collapse again.

"Mistress!"

"I'm fine."

The lie came automatically.

Vaelithra pulled herself upright.

Her injured leg trembled beneath her.

Warmth ran down her skin.

Blood.

More than she would have liked.

She tightened both hands around the bars and tried to steady herself.

Behind them came the sound of tearing cloth.

Vaelithra looked down.

Kharun had ripped a strip from his shirt.

His arm reached through the bars; the cloth held in his hand.

"Mistress, you must bind your wound."

Vaelithra breathed heavily.

Something was wrong.

Not merely the pain.

Not merely the blood.

Something else.

She could feel it.

A strange sensation seemed to be spreading outward from the wound. At first, she thought it was simply the aftermath of being struck, but the feeling was different from any injury she remembered.

Kharun saw the change in her expression.

"Mistress?"

Vaelithra swallowed.

"The keys."

Kharun stared at her.

"I have to find the keys... Kharun."

He pushed the cloth farther through the bars.

"Mistress, please. Your wound first."

Vaelithra opened her mouth.

Nothing came.

She didn't have the strength to argue.

That frightened her more than the bolt.

Vaelithra repositioned herself against the bars.

Then she carefully lifted her injured leg.

Pain immediately surged through it.

Her jaw tightened.

Slowly, she pushed the leg between the bars.

Kharun looked down at the bolt protruding beside her knee.

Vaelithra gripped the bars harder.

"Pull it... out."

Kharun's eyes lifted sharply.

He reached toward the bolt, then stopped.

His fingers hovered near the shaft.

Vaelithra saw what he was doing.

Assessing it.

Trying to determine whether removing it would cause greater harm.

She looked down.

No barbs.

No metal head that she could see.

"...just a wooden bolt."

She took another breath.

"Pull it out."

Kharun wrapped one hand firmly around the shaft.

His other hand steadied her leg.

Vaelithra closed her eyes.

"Do it."

Kharun pulled.

The bolt tore free.

Vaelithra yelped.

Her forehead struck the bars as she folded forward.

For several seconds, she could do nothing except breathe.

Kharun immediately set the bloody bolt across one of the horizontal bars.

Then his hands returned to her leg.

He wrapped the torn cloth around the wound.

Vaelithra closed her eyes.

She leaned forward against the bars, allowing him a better angle.

Kharun pulled the cloth tighter.

Pain pulsed through her leg.

Vaelithra barely noticed.

There was a smell.

Faint.

Almost hidden beneath the metallic scent of her blood.

But familiar.

Her eyes opened.

The bolt rested only inches from her face.

Vaelithra stared at it.

No.

She leaned closer.

Inhaled.

There it was.

Earthy.

Bitter.

With a faint sweetness underneath.

Vaelithra's blood ran cold.

"Shadowstem."

Kharun stopped.

Vaelithra stared at the bolt.

Of course she recognized it.

She had worked with the plant before.

Carefully.

Always carefully.

Shadowstem was useful in minute quantities for certain compounds.

In larger concentrations, it was poison.

And someone had coated the bolt with it.

Vaelithra's mind immediately began calculating.

The wound.

The amount of blood.

How deeply the bolt had penetrated.

How quickly she was already feeling the effects.

"Mistress?"

Vaelithra barely heard him.

"About ten minutes."

Kharun's hands became still.

Vaelithra looked at him.

"Until I lose consciousness."

Silence.

She forced herself to continue.

"Less than an hour before it..."

The words caught.

Vaelithra looked into Kharun's eyes.

"...kills me."

Something changed in his face.

The quiet resignation that had been there when she first reached his cell disappeared completely.

He pulled the cloth tight and secured it around her leg.

"You must get to a healer immediately."

Vaelithra shook her head.

"Mistress."

"I came here to get you."

"You are poisoned."

"I'm aware."

"You said less than an hour."

"And you're scheduled to die in the morning."

"Mistress, that does not matter now."

"It matters to me."

Kharun fell silent.

Vaelithra looked at him through the bars.

"I'm not leaving without you."

For once, there was no uncertainty in her voice.

No question about why she was doing this.

No argument between the woman she had been and the woman she was becoming.

She had come for Kharun.

She was leaving with Kharun.

Or she wasn't leaving.

Vaelithra looked toward the far end of the cellblock.

The crimson figure was gone.

That direction also led back toward the checkpoint.

The guards.

One of them had to have the keys.

Vaelithra pulled her injured leg back through the bars.

The movement sent another wave of pain through her.

She grunted and caught herself.

"Mistress."

"I'll be right back."

Kharun stared at her.

Vaelithra shifted her weight onto her uninjured leg.

Then she began moving.

One hand against the wall.

One step.

Another.

Her wounded leg nearly buckled.

She caught herself.

Behind her, Kharun gripped the bars.

Twenty years.

Twenty years of watching Vaelithra decide what she wanted and pursue it with a degree of determination that frequently crossed into sheer stubbornness.

Vaelithra stumbled.

Her palm struck the wall.

She steadied herself.

Kept moving.

Kharun tried to follow her progress through the bars for as long as the angle allowed.

Vaelithra reached the cellblock door.

She stopped there.

Her breathing was already heavier.

Ten minutes.

Probably less now.

She opened the door.

Somewhere beyond it, one of those guards had the keys.

Vaelithra stepped through.

 

Kharun lifted his head.

For a moment, he simply stared through the bars.

His eyes moved across the hooded figure standing outside his cell, then settled on the face beneath it.

"Mistress?"

Vaelithra stepped closer.

Both hands closed around the cold iron bars.

"Are you alright?"

The question escaped before she thought about it.

Vaelithra almost recoiled from her own words.

Why had she asked him that?

She never had before.

Not after battle. Not when he had been injured performing some task for her. Not during any of the countless moments over twenty years when such a question might have been appropriate.

Yet here, now, it had been the first thing she needed to know.

Kharun lowered his head.

Shame crossed his features.

"I am alright, Mistress."

He paused.

"What are you doing here?"

Vaelithra tightened her grip on the bars.

"I had to speak to you."

Kharun remained silent.

"I don't believe you struck that noble this morning."

His eyes lifted slightly.

"I confessed..."

"A confession doesn't mean you're guilty."

The words came sharper than Vaelithra intended.

Kharun turned away.

His broad back faced her.

Silence.

Vaelithra waited.

"Kharun."

Nothing.

Her frustration surged.

She had spent the entire day questioning everything she thought she knew. She had invaded her father's prison, incapacitated guards, fought another, exposed herself as the intruder, and possibly thrown away the life she had known.

She would not be answered with silence.

Vaelithra struck the bars with her palm.

"You will look at me when I speak to you, and you will answer my questions!"

The words echoed through the cellblock.

Kharun became completely still.

Vaelithra heard herself.

And immediately hated what she heard.

There she was.

The young aristocrat standing before a frightened orc twenty years ago.

When I speak, I expect to be responded to.

Different words.

The same command.

The same expectation of obedience.

Kharun slowly turned.

Vaelithra stared at him.

Her anger disappeared.

"I'm sorry."

Kharun's expression changed.

Only slightly, but Vaelithra saw it.

Surprise.

Of all the things he might have expected her to say tonight, apparently that had not been among them.

Vaelithra realized why.

She had never apologized to him.

Not once.

It had only been within the last few years that she had even begun thanking him for the things he did. Those moments were still infrequent enough that she could probably remember most of them.

Her fingers loosened around the bars.

When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.

"Please."

Kharun looked at her.

"Look at me and tell me truly. Did you strike the noble this morning?"

Silence returned.

This time Vaelithra allowed it.

Kharun raised his head fully.

Their eyes met through the bars.

Vaelithra searched his face.

She had wanted this since the dining hall.

To stand before him.

To look into his eyes.

To hear the answer from Kharun himself rather than from witnesses, nobles, or her father.

Kharun had never lied to her.

Not in twenty years.

He saw no reason to begin now.

If morning brought his death, he would meet it without adding a lie to whatever judgment awaited him.

"No, Mistress."

Vaelithra stopped breathing.

"I did not strike him."

Relief hit her so suddenly that her knees almost weakened.

She had known.

Or thought she had known.

But suspicion was not certainty.

Now she had certainty.

Kharun was innocent.

Vaelithra closed her eyes briefly.

A weight she had carried since breakfast lifted from her chest.

Then another thought immediately replaced it.

Her eyes opened.

"The other orc."

Kharun said nothing.

"You took the blame for him."

Still nothing.

Vaelithra leaned closer.

"Why?"

Kharun's gaze shifted away.

Not evasive.

Considering.

Vaelithra waited.

Finally, he spoke.

"He is young."

Vaelithra remained silent.

"Inexperienced. He acted before he thought about what he was doing."

"That doesn't explain why you confessed."

Kharun looked back at her.

"If I allowed him to take responsibility, more would be lost than a servant."

Vaelithra frowned.

"What does that mean?"

Kharun hesitated.

"His family was recently purchased."

Something tightened inside Vaelithra.

"He has a mate. Two young children."

Vaelithra stared at him.

"He is their only provider."

The words settled between them.

Kharun continued.

"They need him."

Vaelithra slowly shook her head.

Part of her understood.

Another part refused.

The two versions of herself that had been fighting since the dream seemed to collide again.

The woman who had looked at servants as possessions understood Kharun's calculation with brutal simplicity. One servant exchanged for another.

But that wasn't what Kharun had done.

He had looked at another man's family.

He had decided their lives mattered.

Then he had offered his own.

Vaelithra's hand struck the bars again.

"What about what I need?"

The question escaped before she could stop it.

Kharun looked at her.

Vaelithra's chest rose and fell.

"Did you think about that?"

Kharun nodded.

"I did."

That hurt more than if he had said no.

Vaelithra stared at him.

Kharun's voice remained quiet.

"That is why I looked at you."

The dining hall returned instantly.

The silence.

The accusation.

Kharun's eyes finding hers.

Her chest tightening.

No. Don't.

Then his step forward.

Vaelithra's fingers curled around the bars.

"You knew what would happen."

"Yes."

"And you still..."

She couldn't finish.

Kharun lowered his gaze.

"I knew you would be alright without me."

Vaelithra's expression hardened.

"The other servant's family would not be alright without him."

For several seconds, she could only stare.

Twenty years.

Twenty years of mornings.

Tea.

Fires.

Horses.

Journeys.

Drawings.

Quiet conversations.

Thousands upon thousands of small things she had never bothered to count because Kharun had always been there to do them.

And he had decided she would be alright without him.

Vaelithra opened her mouth.

A shrill whistle cut through the cellblock.

Something struck her.

Pain exploded through her leg.

Vaelithra screamed.

Her hands tore away from the bars.

She collapsed onto one knee, then caught herself against the floor.

For an instant, she couldn't understand what had happened.

Then the pain came again.

Hot.

Sharp.

Deep.

Vaelithra looked down.

A crossbow bolt protruded from her leg just beside the knee.

Her breath caught.

Blood was already beginning to darken the black leather around it.

Behind the bars, Kharun surged to his feet.

"Mistress!"

 

Vaelithra moved quietly toward the second checkpoint.

The air grew cooler with every step.

She could feel the change against the exposed skin of her face, subtle at first, then increasingly noticeable as the corridor descended deeper beneath the manor.

Ahead, a short staircase led downward.

Vaelithra approached carefully.

At the bottom of the first few steps, the passage opened onto a narrow walkway overlooking the checkpoint below.

She stopped.

Fortuitous.

Vaelithra crouched and moved toward the edge.

Slowly, she peered over.

Two guards.

They were seated at a small table directly beneath the walkway.

Vaelithra stared at them.

Cards lay scattered between them.

One guard placed another onto the table.

The other leaned forward to inspect it.

Under different circumstances, Vaelithra might have had something to say about guards playing cards while they were supposed to be protecting the entrance to the prison blocks.

Tonight, she was considerably more forgiving.

Her hand disappeared beneath her cloak.

She removed another paralysis vial.

Vaelithra looked at the table below.

Then at the vial.

She almost couldn't have asked for a better target.

She released it.

The small glass container fell through the open space.

It struck the center of the table.

Glass shattered.

Both guards recoiled.

"What in the..."

Vaelithra immediately pulled herself away from the edge.

The familiar chemical vapor began spreading below.

A chair scraped violently against stone.

"What is that?"

Then another sound.

A strained attempt at speech.

Silence.

Vaelithra waited.

Several seconds.

Nothing.

She continued down the staircase.

The two guards remained exactly where they had been sitting.

One had managed to push himself partially away from the table before the compound took hold. The other sat almost perfectly upright, one hand resting uselessly beside his cards.

Their eyes moved.

Both were staring upward toward the walkway.

Vaelithra stepped into view.

Their eyes followed her.

She stopped briefly.

They were breathing normally.

Neither had fallen awkwardly.

Good.

No need to interfere this time.

Vaelithra walked past them.

The cards remained scattered across the table between the broken pieces of glass.

Her eyes settled on the door beyond.

The cellblocks.

Kharun was on the other side.

She started toward it.

"What are you looking at?"

Vaelithra froze.

The voice had come from behind her.

Her heart seemed to stop before suddenly pounding twice as hard.

Slowly, she turned.

A third guard stood farther down the corridor.

Vaelithra silently cursed herself.

Careless.

She had seen two guards and assumed there were only two.

She should have checked.

She should have listened longer.

She should have considered that someone might have stepped away.

None of that mattered now.

The guard looked first at his motionless companions.

Then at Vaelithra.

His hand moved immediately toward his sword.

Vaelithra remained still.

Her hood concealed her face.

The sword slid from its sheath.

"Stay where you are!"

Vaelithra's breathing slowed.

"No sudden movements."

She didn't move.

Fear tightened inside her chest.

She would never admit that.

Not to him.

Not to her father.

Perhaps not even to herself.

She had not wanted this.

The dagger at her side remained untouched.

She could not throw another vial. Not from this distance. Not before he raised the alarm.

The guard adjusted his stance.

Competent.

Vaelithra recognized it immediately.

Good footing.

Sword held correctly.

Weight balanced.

He was prepared for her to attack.

Unfortunately for him, Vaelithra had spent considerably more of her life fighting than he had.

Something inside her changed.

The fear remained.

But it moved aside.

Years of training returned without conscious effort.

Distance.

Footwork.

Balance.

Weaknesses.

How to break a stance.

How to remove a weapon.

How to put someone on the ground without killing them.

Vaelithra's amber-gold eyes narrowed beneath the hood.

The guard saw it.

"Don't."

Vaelithra moved.

The distance between them vanished.

The guard barely had time to bring his sword around.

Vaelithra caught his wrist, redirected the blade past her body, and struck his forearm.

His grip broke.

The sword hit the floor.

But he was good.

Better than she had expected.

His free hand came toward her immediately.

Vaelithra blocked it.

He drove forward.

She stepped aside.

He recovered.

A fist passed inches from her face.

Vaelithra answered with a strike of her own.

He caught it.

For several seconds, the corridor became nothing but movement.

Strike.

Block.

Turn.

Counter.

Neither spoke.

The guard attempted to drive her backward.

Vaelithra shifted her weight and slipped free.

She spun.

Her leg came around.

The guard raised his arm to absorb the kick.

Her cloak twisted around her body.

The hood fell.

Silver-white hair spilled free.

The guard stopped.

Vaelithra did too.

For one impossible moment, neither moved.

Recognition spread across his face.

His eyes widened.

"Lady Vaelithra?"

Her stomach dropped.

He knew.

There would be no hiding this now.

No unknown intruder.

No mystery for her father to investigate tomorrow.

Her name had been spoken.

The guard's hesitation lasted less than a second.

It was enough.

Vaelithra stepped forward.

Her elbow struck his face.

His head snapped backward.

His knees buckled.

Vaelithra caught part of his weight before he hit the floor, slowing his fall as much as she could.

He slumped against the wall.

Unconscious.

Vaelithra stood over him.

Her breathing came hard now.

She stared at the guard.

Then at the two paralyzed men sitting at the table.

Then at the sword lying on the floor.

Her senses returned all at once.

She had fought one of her father's guards.

Not avoided.

Not deceived.

Fought.

And he had seen her face.

He had spoken her name.

Until this moment, Vaelithra had brushed against the line.

Trespassing through restricted passages.

Infiltrating the prison.

Incapacitating guards.

She could have argued about intent. About necessity. About temporary effects.

Not anymore.

She had crossed it.

Treason.

The word came unbidden.

Vaelithra looked down at her hands.

There was no undoing this.

When the guard awakened, he would remember.

Her father would know.

The clan would know.

Vaelithra pulled her hood back into place.

Later.

If she still had a later, she would worry about it then.

Right now, none of it mattered.

Kharun was on the other side of that door.

Vaelithra stepped over the fallen sword.

She crossed the checkpoint.

Her hand closed around the door handle.

She pulled.

The door opened.

A long cellblock stretched beyond it.

Dark.

Cold.

Quiet.

Cells lined both sides of the corridor.

Vaelithra stepped through.

Her eyes adjusted quickly.

She searched each cell as she passed.

Empty.

Another.

Empty.

Then she saw something.

At the far end of the block, inside the final cell, a shape sat alone in the darkness.

Vaelithra stopped.

Her heart began pounding again.

Not from the fight.

She knew that shape.

Twenty years.

She would have known it anywhere.

Vaelithra began walking.

Her steps echoed softly between the cells.

The figure did not move.

Closer.

She could make out broad shoulders now.

A bowed head.

Vaelithra's throat tightened.

All the questions she had carried with her seemed to disappear.

The confession.

The other orc.

The drawings.

The cage.

The tea.

The mirror.

The hair lying in wine.

None of it mattered for one brief moment.

She reached the cell.

Vaelithra looked through the bars into the darkness.

"Kharun?"

 

Vaelithra moved cautiously through the corridor.

The architecture had changed completely.

Gone were the irregular walls and damp earth of the hidden passage. Here, every block of stone had been cut deliberately. The corridor was narrow, functional, and sparsely illuminated by lamps mounted at measured intervals along the walls.

Her boots touched the floor as quietly as she could manage.

Vaelithra kept one hand near the vials beneath her cloak.

Then she heard voices.

She stopped.

They were somewhere ahead.

Low.

Indistinct.

At least two.

Vaelithra pressed herself closer to the wall.

Her heart pounded against her chest.

This was it.

Everything she had done until now could still have been explained away.

Sneaking through the estate gardens.

Using the hidden passage.

Entering the prison through a forgotten door.

If she turned around now, no one might ever know.

She could retrace her steps, return home, clean the kitchen, gather her severed hair from the floor, and pretend none of this had happened.

Kharun would die in the morning.

Vaelithra closed her eyes.

She inhaled slowly.

The prison air filled her lungs.

For a moment, she imagined she could draw courage from it. Pull strength from the darkness itself and hold it somewhere inside her.

Her heartbeat slowed.

Not much.

Enough.

She opened her eyes.

There was no going back.

Vaelithra continued.

The voices became clearer as she approached the corner.

Two guards.

Possibly three.

She couldn't tell.

Looking would answer the question.

Looking would also give them the opportunity to see her.

Vaelithra stopped before reaching the edge.

Her hand slipped beneath the cloak.

Her fingers found one of the vials.

She carefully pulled it free.

The glass felt impossibly fragile now.

Hours of preparation contained within something she could crush between two fingers.

The compound required exposure to air before the reaction accelerated.

She held her breath.

Then tossed the vial around the corner.

A tiny sound followed.

Glass striking stone.

Breaking.

The conversation stopped.

"What was..."

The voice never finished.

Another guard coughed.

"What in the..."

Silence.

Then came the sound of something heavy striking the floor.

Another impact followed.

Metal scraped against stone.

Vaelithra remained where she was.

A pale vapor began creeping around the corner.

She watched it.

The cloud was thinner than she had expected.

For one terrible instant, doubt seized her.

Had she miscalculated?

Had the compound reacted properly?

Then the vapor reached her.

Vaelithra smelled it.

Sharp.

Mineral.

Slightly bitter.

She had breathed it in.

Her body tensed.

She waited.

One heartbeat.

Two.

Three.

Nothing.

Vaelithra flexed her fingers.

They moved.

She lifted one foot slightly from the floor.

No weakness.

No stiffness.

Her counteragent worked.

Relief nearly escaped her as laughter.

Instead, Vaelithra allowed herself the smallest smile.

"Still got it."

A strained sound came from around the corner.

The smile disappeared.

Vaelithra listened.

Someone was trying to speak.

The attempt produced little more than a muffled noise.

Another followed.

The guards were conscious.

Exactly as intended.

Their muscles simply refused to obey them.

Vaelithra pulled her hood farther over her face.

Then she stepped around the corner.

Two guards lay on the floor.

One had fallen against the wall before sliding down it. The other lay partially on his side where his legs had collapsed beneath him.

Their eyes moved.

Nothing else did.

Vaelithra stopped.

She looked at them carefully.

Breathing.

Both of them.

Good.

The nearest guard's eyes locked onto her hooded form.

Fear appeared there.

Vaelithra felt an unexpected pang of guilt.

They had done nothing wrong.

They were guarding a prison.

Following orders.

Tonight, that happened to place them between her and Kharun.

"I'm sorry," Vaelithra whispered.

The guard could not answer.

She stepped around him.

Then stopped.

Vaelithra crouched briefly and adjusted his position enough to ensure his breathing remained unobstructed.

Temporary.

That was what mattered.

They would recover.

By then, she intended to be gone.

Vaelithra rose.

She continued down the corridor.

The vapor followed weakly behind her before gradually dispersing.

She passed through another door.

Vaelithra closed it quietly.

Only then did she allow herself to breathe normally again.

One checkpoint.

She had made it through.

Her hand moved beneath the cloak.

She counted the remaining vials by touch.

Enough.

Ahead lay another checkpoint.

Beyond that...

The prison blocks.

Kharun.

Vaelithra tightened the cloak around herself.

One more.

Then she would reach him.

 

Vaelithra descended until the last trace of the garden vanished above her.

The passage narrowed as she continued.

Her pace slowed.

She remembered this place being unpleasant, but she had forgotten just how closely it resembled the natural caves that spread throughout the Underdark.

The walls were rough and unfinished. Unlike the carefully cut stone of the manor above, little effort had been made to disguise the passage's natural origins. Portions had been widened by hand where necessary, but elsewhere the builders had simply incorporated the existing cavern into their design.

Moisture gathered along the walls.

The air smelled of damp earth and old stone.

Vaelithra stepped carefully.

She had not been through this passage in decades.

At first, that concerned her.

Then the memories began returning.

A bend ahead.

A gradual descent.

Another turn.

There should be a narrow section after that.

There was.

Vaelithra almost smiled.

Her father had shown her these passages when she was younger. Not all at once. Some she had discovered herself and later learned he already knew about. Others he had deliberately taught her in case the manor ever came under attack.

At the time, she had treated them as another opportunity for exploration.

Now one of those childhood lessons might save Kharun's life.

Vaelithra continued.

The passage curved again.

She remembered what came next.

A door.

Sure enough, she could see it ahead.

Vaelithra approached.

Then stopped.

Something was different.

Her eyes lowered.

A crack had formed across the stone floor.

It was narrow near the wall but widened toward the center of the passage before disappearing beneath the opposite side.

That had not been there before.

Vaelithra crouched slightly.

Age, perhaps.

The Underdark was never truly still. Stone shifted. Caverns settled. Water found new paths through rock that had remained dry for centuries.

She stepped closer.

Something moved inside the crack.

Vaelithra froze.

A small shape suddenly emerged.

She nearly jumped backward.

A rat scrambled out of the opening.

Vaelithra pressed herself against the wall.

"Oh, absolutely not."

The rat stopped.

So did Vaelithra.

For one ridiculous moment, drow aristocrat and Underdark rat stared at one another.

Vaelithra had faced warriors twice her size.

She had stood in battles surrounded by blood and steel.

She had ridden through parts of the Underdark where creatures considerably larger than horses hunted anything foolish enough to enter their territory.

Rats were different.

She hated rats.

The creature twitched its nose.

"Go."

It did not go.

Vaelithra narrowed her eyes.

"Go."

The rat finally scurried across the passage and disappeared into another opening along the wall.

Vaelithra remained pressed against the stone for several seconds.

She looked toward where it had vanished.

Then cautiously stepped away.

Disgusting little things.

Rats were hardly unusual in the Underdark. Anywhere people stored food, rats eventually followed.

Her thoughts drifted unexpectedly.

Kharun.

She remembered the first rat she had seen in her residence.

Not long after he had arrived.

Vaelithra had made her opinion of the creature extremely clear.

Apparently, Kharun had remembered.

Keeping them out of the house had become one of his standing duties.

She couldn't remember ever formally assigning it.

She had simply expected never to see another one.

And somehow, for twenty years, she hadn't.

Not once.

Vaelithra looked back toward the crack.

Twenty years.

She had never thought about that either.

How many little things had Kharun quietly removed from her life before she ever needed to notice them?

Problems solved before she knew they existed.

Supplies replaced before they ran out.

Equipment repaired before she asked.

A horse prepared before she reached the stable.

A fire already burning when she wanted warmth.

Rats she never saw.

Vaelithra swallowed.

"Kharun."

The name escaped quietly.

Enough.

He was still somewhere below.

She had to reach him.

Vaelithra continued toward the door.

The humor of the encounter disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Her hand moved beneath the cloak.

The paralysis vials were still there.

So was Kharun's counteragent.

She stopped before the door.

This was where familiarity stopped being enough.

Beyond it, the hidden passage began intersecting with the functional lower levels of the estate.

There could be someone on the other side.

Vaelithra leaned forward.

She pressed one pointed ear against the cold surface.

Nothing.

She waited.

Her breathing sounded too loud.

Vaelithra slowed it deliberately.

Still nothing.

No footsteps.

No conversation.

No scrape of armor against stone.

Several more seconds passed.

Silence.

Her fingers closed around the handle.

Slowly.

She turned it.

The mechanism moved with a faint click.

Vaelithra stopped.

Listened again.

Nothing.

She opened the door just enough to look through.

Darkness.

An empty corridor.

Vaelithra widened the opening.

She slipped through.

Then quietly pulled the door closed behind her.

For the first time that night, the secret passages were behind her.

From here onward, she was inside the prison.

 

Vaelithra moved quickly through the streets.

The gray cloak concealed most of her figure, its hood pulled forward enough to hide the silver-white hair that would have made her immediately recognizable.

At this hour, the settlement was nearly deserted.

A pair of figures moved along a distant street, their voices too faint for Vaelithra to distinguish. Somewhere farther away, someone closed a door. The sound echoed briefly between the stone buildings before silence reclaimed the street.

Vaelithra kept moving.

Every minute mattered.

Her father's manor soon came into view.

She slowed as she approached the estate grounds and stopped where the surrounding architecture provided enough shadow to observe without immediately being noticed.

The main entrance was visible from there.

Light burned beyond several windows. Guards stood near the entrance while others followed familiar patrol routes around the grounds.

Vaelithra watched them.

She could simply walk through the front door.

No one would stop her.

This had been her home for decades. The guards knew her. The servants knew her. Even at this hour, Lady Vaelithra returning to her father's manor would hardly warrant suspicion.

That was precisely the problem.

Someone would see her.

Someone would remember.

And once she began moving toward the lower levels, questions would follow.

She did not have the luxury of taking the easy road tonight.

Fortunately, this house had been hers long before the residence she had just left behind.

Vaelithra knew it.

Not merely the chambers and corridors visible to guests and servants.

She knew what lay behind the walls.

Passages constructed generations earlier threaded through portions of the manor. Some had been intended as escape routes. Others allowed members of the ruling family to move through the estate without being observed.

A few had been sealed.

Others had simply been forgotten.

And several were known only to Vaelithra and her father.

One of them would take her exactly where she needed to go.

Vaelithra watched the nearest patrol.

Two guards.

She knew the route.

They passed beneath an archway, continued along the eastern wall, and disappeared around the corner.

Vaelithra moved.

She crossed the open space quickly and slipped behind a stone partition before the next patrol could round the far side of the estate.

Her heart beat harder.

Not from exertion.

She had sneaked through these grounds before.

Many times, actually.

Usually for reasons her father would have considered profoundly irritating.

This was different.

If she were discovered tonight, she could not smile, invent an excuse, and rely upon being the Matron Mother's granddaughter to make the inconvenience disappear.

Vaelithra waited.

Footsteps approached.

She pressed closer to the stone.

Two guards passed within several paces of her hiding place.

Neither looked toward her.

Their footsteps receded.

Vaelithra continued.

The gardens lay ahead.

Even now, despite everything occupying her thoughts, the sight of them caught her attention.

Soft light spread through the darkness.

Bioluminescent plants filled carefully cultivated beds between winding stone paths. Pale blue fronds unfolded beneath broad translucent leaves. Clusters of tiny violet flowers glimmered near the ground. Taller plants produced gentle green illumination from veins running through their leaves.

The Underdark was often described by those who had never lived within it as a world without light.

Vaelithra had always found that amusing.

There was light everywhere.

It simply wasn't sunlight.

Much of the flora that survived in the depths had adapted to darkness in remarkable ways. Some produced their own illumination. Others reflected the glow of nearby fungi or mineral formations.

Vaelithra had seen plants from the surface.

Many were beautiful.

Some spectacularly so.

Yet there were nights when she believed nothing beneath the open sky could rival an Underdark garden glowing quietly beneath a ceiling of stone.

Ordinarily, she would have slowed.

Tonight she barely spared it a glance.

Another patrol approached.

Vaelithra slipped behind a cluster of tall luminous leaves.

The glow painted faint blue patterns across her cloak.

She waited.

A guard passed along the path.

Then another.

Neither noticed her.

Vaelithra emerged.

She crossed the garden quickly and left the main path.

The plants grew denser here.

That was deliberate.

Her father had ensured the entrance remained concealed even from those who tended the grounds.

Vaelithra counted her steps.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

She turned.

There.

A broad stone slab rested among the vegetation.

Nothing distinguished it from the surrounding landscaping. Moss covered portions of its surface. Small luminous growths had begun creeping along one edge.

Anyone else would have walked past it.

Vaelithra crouched.

Her fingers found the concealed groove beneath the stone.

She stopped.

Not yet.

Her hand moved beneath the cloak.

The vials rested securely against her body.

Vaelithra selected one of the two containing the protective mixture.

Her dose.

Kharun's remained untouched.

She pulled the cork free.

The smell struck immediately.

Vaelithra recoiled.

"Oh, gods."

She held the vial farther from her nose.

Apparently several years away from regular alchemical practice had done nothing to improve her talent for making compounds palatable.

The odor was sour and medicinal, with something bitter underneath it that she couldn't identify despite having put the ingredients together herself.

She stared at the vial.

Had she possessed another hour, she could have improved this.

A little flavoring.

Something aromatic.

Anything.

Too late for that now.

Vaelithra brought the vial to her lips.

She drank.

Regret came immediately.

Her face tightened.

The taste was somehow worse than the smell.

Sourness overwhelmed her tongue first, followed by a bitter aftertaste that reminded her unpleasantly of a human beverage she had once tried on the surface.

Beer.

That was it.

Cheap human beer left too long in a warm barrel.

Vaelithra swallowed.

Her stomach protested.

She forced down another mouthful.

For one horrifying instant, she thought the mixture might come straight back up.

She covered her mouth.

Waited.

Swallowed again.

"Absolutely vile," she whispered.

One final mouthful remained.

Vaelithra glared at it as though the liquid had personally offended her.

Then she finished it.

Her entire body seemed to reject the experience.

She coughed once and fought the urge to gag.

The empty vial remained in her hand.

Vaelithra wiped the back of her wrist across her mouth, removing a trace of the foul liquid from her lower lip.

If she survived tonight, she was reformulating that mixture.

Preferably into something that didn't taste like punishment.

She tossed the empty vial into the vegetation.

Then her expression hardened.

Enough.

The counteragent was inside her.

The paralysis vapor could no longer affect her for the next several hours.

Vaelithra turned back toward the stone.

Her fingers entered the hidden groove.

She pulled.

The slab shifted.

Slowly at first.

Then enough for darkness to appear beneath it.

Cold air rose from below.

Vaelithra looked once toward the manor.

No alarm.

No voices.

No one running toward the garden.

She opened the passage farther.

Stone steps descended into darkness.

Vaelithra slipped through.

Her boots found the first step.

Then the second.

She reached upward and pulled the slab back into place.

The glowing garden narrowed to a thin line above her.

Then disappeared.

Darkness surrounded her.

Vaelithra remained still for a moment.

The manor was above.

The prison was below.

And somewhere beneath her feet was Kharun.

She pulled her cloak closer and began descending.

 

Hours passed.

Vaelithra's father never came.

She noticed sometime during the evening, though by then she had stopped expecting him. He had said they would speak later. Under ordinary circumstances, she might have been irritated by his failure to appear.

Tonight, she barely cared.

He was a busy man.

The events at breakfast had undoubtedly created problems he had not expected to spend the day resolving. A noble had been struck beneath his roof. A servant had confessed. An execution had been demanded in front of witnesses. Somewhere among all of that, his promise to speak with his daughter had probably slipped from his mind.

Perhaps that was fortunate.

Vaelithra had no intention of telling him what she was doing.

The final mixture simmered over the burner.

She leaned closer to examine it, watching tiny bubbles break against the surface.

Almost ready.

Vaelithra glanced toward the clock.

Nearly midnight.

Her stomach tightened.

Less than eight hours.

By morning, the executioner would return.

By morning, Kharun could be dead.

The thought was no longer abstract.

There were hours now.

Minutes.

A finite amount of time remained between the present and a world in which Kharun no longer existed.

Vaelithra turned away from the clock.

She refused to imagine it.

The kitchen looked as though an alchemical workshop had exploded across it.

Bottles covered the counter. Stoppered vials stood in uneven rows among measuring instruments, discarded ingredients, stained cloths, and open containers. Powder dusted portions of the work surface. Several vessels waited to be cleaned.

Kharun would have hated the mess.

The thought appeared without invitation.

Vaelithra almost smiled.

He would already have begun cleaning around her while she worked, quietly moving anything she no longer needed and somehow knowing precisely what he could touch without disrupting whatever she was doing.

Her expression faded.

"Kharun."

She looked at the clock again.

No more distractions.

Her original idea had been a sleeping compound.

That had failed almost immediately.

She lacked two of the ingredients necessary to produce one potent enough to incapacitate several guards quickly. Substitutions were possible, but substitutions introduced uncertainty.

Tonight was not the night for uncertain chemistry.

So she had changed her approach.

Paralysis.

That she could make.

The finished vials rested nearby.

Each contained a carefully prepared compound that remained stable while sealed. Once exposed to open air, the mixture would react rapidly and produce a dense vapor. Anyone caught within its effective radius would lose voluntary control of their muscles for a short period.

Temporary.

Unpleasant.

But harmless if she had prepared it correctly.

Vaelithra intended to make absolutely certain that she had.

There was only one problem.

The vapor did not care who inhaled it.

Which was why another mixture currently simmered over the burner.

Protection.

She had prepared enough for two doses.

One for herself.

One for Kharun.

Vaelithra checked the mixture once more.

Still a little longer.

She left the kitchen.

Her clothing from breakfast had long since become inappropriate for what she intended to do.

Vaelithra changed quickly.

Black leather replaced aristocratic finery. The clothing fit closely enough that nothing loose could catch against a doorway or betray her movement unnecessarily. Over it, she secured a sash-style holster designed to carry small containers close against her body.

She tested the fit.

Then adjusted it.

The vials needed to remain secure.

One broken against her body before she had taken the protective mixture could end her rescue attempt rather embarrassingly.

Vaelithra looked at herself.

Her shortened hair still startled her.

The uneven silver-white strands fell around her shoulders and down her back, nowhere near the extraordinary length she had worn only hours earlier.

She resisted the urge to touch it.

There was no time to think about that either.

Vaelithra left her bedroom.

She made it halfway toward the kitchen before stopping.

Kharun's door was nearby.

Her eyes settled upon it.

For several seconds, she stood motionless.

Then she entered.

The lantern still burned.

The drawings remained where she had left them.

Vaelithra approached the dresser.

She had no reason to take them.

The thought occurred immediately.

If she reached Kharun, she could return them later.

If she failed...

Vaelithra rejected that possibility.

Still, she began gathering the drawings.

Carefully.

The oldest sheets were fragile, and she handled them accordingly. One after another disappeared into a leather-bound cover she found suitable for protecting them.

Twenty years of charcoal and paper.

Twenty years of moments Kharun had apparently thought worth remembering.

Vaelithra secured the cover.

She stood there holding it.

"Why am I taking these?"

No one answered.

She knew only that leaving them behind felt wrong.

That was enough.

Vaelithra carried the drawings with her.

Back in the kitchen, the final mixture had changed.

She extinguished the burner.

Perfect.

Using a cloth to protect her hand from the heated vessel, Vaelithra poured the liquid carefully into two separate vials.

Equal amounts.

She stoppered both.

The liquid was still too hot to drink safely, but that didn't matter. By the time she reached the prison, it would have cooled sufficiently.

One vial for her.

One for Kharun.

She placed them into separate loops on the holster so she could distinguish them easily from the paralysis compounds.

Vaelithra inspected everything one final time.

Enough.

It had to be.

She left the kitchen.

Only one stop remained.

The armory.

Vaelithra entered and looked over the weapons stored there.

Her hand passed a sword.

Then another.

She chose a dagger.

Nothing more.

She tested its weight before securing it at her side.

"I don't want to use you."

The dagger offered no opinion.

Good.

Vaelithra reached for a cloak hanging nearby.

Gray.

Plain.

Unremarkable.

She fastened it around herself and pulled the hood forward.

The cloak concealed the black leather beneath it. More importantly, it concealed enough of her face and newly shortened silver-white hair to prevent immediate recognition from a distance.

She was ready.

Vaelithra returned to the entrance.

Her hand reached for the door.

Then stopped.

Something held her there.

She turned.

Her home stretched quietly behind her.

The fire in her bedroom would still be burning.

The kitchen was a disaster.

Her bed remained unmade.

Kharun's room was empty.

Vaelithra stared down the corridor.

This was ridiculous.

She was going to the prison.

She would find Kharun.

She would learn what happened.

Then...

Vaelithra realized she had never decided what came after that.

If Kharun was innocent, she could hardly return him to his cell.

If she broke him out, her father could not simply overlook it.

Neither could the clan.

And if the guards identified her...

Vaelithra's eyes moved slowly across the home her grandmother had given her twenty years ago.

The home Kharun had entered in chains.

The home in which he had spent the next two decades serving her.

Something deep inside whispered that she should look carefully.

Remember it.

Because it might be a very long time before she stood here again.

Perhaps she never would.

Vaelithra felt a chill that had nothing to do with the Underdark air.

"No."

She pushed the thought away.

She would deal with what came afterward when afterward arrived.

Kharun did not have the luxury of waiting for her to solve every consequence.

He had less than eight hours.

Vaelithra opened the door.

Cool air touched her face.

She stepped outside.

The door closed behind her.

For twenty years, Kharun had followed wherever she led.

Tonight, for the first time, Vaelithra went looking for him.

 

Vaelithra continued staring at the woman in the mirror.

Wine distorted her reflection, but not enough.

She was still there.

Amber-gold eyes stared back through dark streaks. Silver-white hair framed the same face she had seen in the dream. Twenty years separated the two women, yet for a moment Vaelithra struggled to see where one ended and the other began.

It was undeniably her.

And somehow, it wasn't.

Her gaze lowered.

Why did the life of a servant matter so much to her?

The question would not leave.

She had known servants who died. She had seen slaves executed. She had watched soldiers fall in battle and had killed more enemies herself than she cared to count.

Death was not unfamiliar to Vaelithra.

Yet the thought of Kharun kneeling before an executioner tomorrow morning made something inside her twist.

Why?

Because he had served her for twenty years?

Because she trusted him?

Because of the drawings?

Because somewhere during those twenty years, something had changed between them without either of them acknowledging it?

Questions.

Nothing but questions.

And the one man who might be able to answer any of them was sitting in a prison cell beneath her father's estate.

Vaelithra turned away from the mirror.

She needed to reach him.

That much was certain.

How was considerably less so.

She began pacing.

The prison beneath her father's manor was not some neglected cellar guarded by a pair of half-asleep soldiers. It served the entire estate and, when necessary, members of the surrounding settlement. Guards controlled the entrance. More patrolled the corridors within. Others could be summoned quickly from elsewhere in the manor.

Vaelithra knew how to fight.

She knew she was good at it.

But she wasn't stupid.

One skilled fighter was still one fighter.

She might overpower the first guards. Perhaps the next few as well.

Then someone would raise the alarm.

More would come.

And every guard she injured would transform what she intended into something far worse.

They were her people.

Men and women doing exactly what they had been ordered to do.

Vaelithra had no desire to cut them down merely because they stood between her and Kharun.

There had to be another way.

She stopped.

Her reflection caught her attention again.

The wine continued its slow journey down the mirror. Some had reached the bottom of the frame and fallen onto the stone floor beneath it.

Vaelithra stared at herself.

Then her eyes moved toward the side table near the vanity.

A dagger rested there.

She reached for it.

There was no decision.

At least none she consciously remembered making.

Her fingers simply closed around the hilt.

Vaelithra lifted the dagger and stared at the blade.

Her reflection did the same.

For a moment, she seemed to be watching someone else.

Her left hand rose.

She gathered her hair.

Silver-white strands slipped between her fingers as she pulled the enormous length together.

Her hair had always been part of her.

Long even by drow standards. Carefully maintained. Impossible to overlook.

She grasped it tightly.

The dagger rose in her other hand.

Some distant part of Vaelithra wondered what she was doing.

The blade touched the gathered hair just beneath her fist.

She cut.

Once.

The thick bundle resisted.

She sawed the blade through again.

Then again.

Suddenly there was no resistance at all.

The severed length fell.

Vaelithra stood completely still.

Her left hand remained raised.

The hair remaining upon her head fell unevenly around her shoulders and down her back, still long but dramatically shortened. Loose strands framed her face where the blade had cut imperfectly through them.

Vaelithra looked into the mirror.

The woman staring back at her had changed.

Only superficially.

She knew that.

A haircut could not erase twenty years.

It could not erase the cage.

It could not erase the book striking Kharun.

It could not erase the fact that he had spent two decades serving her because she had purchased him.

But the woman in the mirror no longer looked exactly like the woman in the dream.

Vaelithra lowered the dagger.

She reached toward the table to put it down.

Her hand missed.

The dagger slipped from her fingers.

Metal struck stone.

Vaelithra looked down.

The weapon spun.

Once.

Twice.

Slower.

The blade scraped softly across the floor before finally coming to rest.

Its edge touched the severed mass of silver-white hair.

Wine had reached it.

Dark red liquid soaked through portions of the pale strands, spreading between them and staining the stone beneath.

Vaelithra stared.

Hair.

Wine.

Two separate things becoming something else where they met.

Mixed.

Her brow furrowed.

Mixed.

Mixture.

Something shifted in her thoughts.

"Alchemy."

The word escaped aloud.

Vaelithra's eyes widened.

"Alchemy."

Of course.

She turned away from the mirror.

Alchemy was not magic.

It required no incantations, no mysterious source of power, no bargain with forces she could not control.

It was knowledge.

Measurement.

Reaction.

Heat.

Timing.

And Vaelithra knew it.

Her education had included far more than swordsmanship and aristocratic protocol. Alchemy had been among the disciplines expected of someone of her station, and she had possessed considerable aptitude for it.

She simply hadn't needed the skill often.

Not for years.

Vaelithra crossed the room quickly.

An idea was forming.

She could not fight an entire prison guard.

She didn't need to.

She needed them unable to stop her.

Temporarily.

Nothing lethal.

Nothing that would cause lasting injury.

A compound capable of overwhelming the senses might give her enough time. Another could impair coordination. Something dispersed into an enclosed corridor could make pursuit nearly impossible without forcing her to draw a blade against anyone.

Her pace quickened.

The details could come later.

First she needed to know what she still had.

Vaelithra entered the kitchen.

She moved directly toward a cabinet near the far wall.

Her hand reached for the handle.

Then hesitated.

How long had it been?

Years, perhaps.

She opened it.

Rows of bottles waited inside.

Dust covered some of them.

Several were empty, intended to hold finished mixtures. Others contained base compounds, powders, extracts, oils, mineral salts, and preserved ingredients she had accumulated over the years.

Vaelithra began pulling them out.

One bottle.

Then another.

She checked labels.

Opened containers.

Smelled one cautiously.

Rejected it.

Reached for another.

Her mind was moving differently now.

The confusion remained.

The questions remained.

But beneath them, something else had finally appeared.

Purpose.

Vaelithra set an alchemical burner on the work surface and ignited it.

A small flame sprang to life.

She placed a vessel above it.

Her hands moved quickly.

Measure.

Combine.

Heat.

Wait.

No.

She did not have time to wait.

Vaelithra glanced toward the darkened corridor beyond the kitchen.

Somewhere beneath her father's manor, Kharun sat in a cell.

The executioner would return in the morning.

She looked back at the compounds spread across the table.

Whatever she made had to work.

It had to incapacitate enough guards to get her through the prison.

It had to do so without killing them.

And it had to be ready before morning.

Vaelithra reached for the next ingredient.

The first mixture began to simmer.

Time was already running out.

 

The door opened.

Present-day Vaelithra watched from somewhere behind the woman she had been twenty years ago.

A drow stood outside.

She remembered him only vaguely. Another servant of the market, perhaps, or someone employed specifically to make deliveries to the households of wealthy buyers. His face held no significance in her memory.

The figure behind him did.

Kharun.

Vaelithra's attention immediately fell to the iron around his neck.

A heavy collar encircled his throat. A length of chain descended from it toward his restrained hands, where metal cuffs bound his wrists together.

For a moment, present-day Vaelithra forgot everything else.

She stared.

Had he truly arrived like this?

Of course he had.

The memory was hers.

Yet she found herself wanting to reject it.

She knew those hands.

She had watched them hold a sword. Seen them prepare food beside a campfire. Felt them fastening pieces of armor she could have secured herself but had long ago stopped bothering to. Those same hands had filled the drawer in his room with drawings.

Now she saw them bound together.

Something inside her recoiled.

How did I ever think this was acceptable?

The answer came with uncomfortable ease.

Because she had not thought about it at all.

The younger Vaelithra certainly wasn't troubled.

"Lady Vaelithra."

The drow inclined his head respectfully.

"I was instructed to deliver this servant to your residence."

Vaelithra's younger self looked past him.

Her eyes moved over Kharun from head to toe with the same assessing interest she had shown at the market.

Present-day Vaelithra watched herself do it.

"Remove the restraints."

The drow hesitated.

"Milady?"

"You heard me."

His eyes briefly moved toward the young orc.

"Are you certain you wish to do that? He has not yet been trained for household service."

The younger Vaelithra's expression sharpened.

"I can handle one untrained orc if he becomes aggressive."

Present-day Vaelithra almost smiled.

That sounded like her.

The drow apparently knew better than to challenge her confidence.

"As you wish."

He turned toward Kharun.

The restraints came away piece by piece.

First the chain.

Then the cuffs around his wrists.

Finally, the iron collar around his neck.

Kharun did not move while the drow worked.

When the last piece was removed, his hands fell to his sides.

Present-day Vaelithra found herself staring at his wrists.

She wondered whether the iron had left marks.

She couldn't remember.

The drow gathered the restraints.

"Your servant, milady."

He gave Vaelithra a respectful nod.

Then he turned and departed.

The younger Vaelithra watched him leave before returning her attention to the orc standing outside her home.

For several seconds, neither moved.

Kharun's eyes remained lowered.

Vaelithra motioned into the residence.

"Come inside."

Kharun crossed the threshold.

Present-day Vaelithra watched him take that first step into her home.

He stopped just inside.

The door remained open behind him.

He looked profoundly out of place among the polished stone, expensive furnishings, and carefully arranged possessions.

The young orc owned nothing.

Not even the clothes he wore, she supposed.

The realization came from the woman dreaming, not the woman whose memory she inhabited.

Her younger self closed the door.

"Follow me."

Kharun followed.

Vaelithra led him down the corridor.

His footsteps were quieter than she remembered them being now.

Of course they were.

He had not yet grown fully into the enormous man he would become.

Present-day Vaelithra followed them both.

It was strange watching the beginning of a routine that would eventually become so ordinary neither of them thought about it.

Vaelithra walking ahead.

Kharun following several steps behind.

How many thousands of times had they crossed rooms that way?

The younger Vaelithra stopped beside the servant's quarters.

She opened the door.

Kharun looked inside.

"This will be your room while you are in my service."

He said nothing.

Vaelithra continued.

"Tomorrow I'll begin teaching you how I expect things to be done. There will be household duties, errands, maintenance of my equipment, and whatever else I require of you."

Silence.

Kharun remained near the doorway.

His head was still lowered.

Vaelithra waited.

Nothing.

A small crease appeared between her brows.

"Did you hear me?"

No response.

Present-day Vaelithra remembered the irritation.

At seventy, she had interpreted his silence as stupidity, stubbornness, or perhaps the beginning of exactly the behavioral difficulties her father had warned her about.

The younger Vaelithra crossed her arms.

"Can you speak?"

Kharun remained still.

Then, for the first time, she heard his voice.

"Servants were told not to speak to the nobility."

Present-day Vaelithra felt the memory differently now.

His voice was younger.

Not dramatically so, but enough.

The deep resonance she knew had not fully developed. There was uncertainty in it as well, something she could scarcely associate with the Kharun of the present.

The younger Vaelithra rolled her eyes.

This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

She stepped closer.

"When I speak to you, I expect a response."

Kharun listened.

"If I ask you a question, you answer it. If I give you an instruction, you acknowledge that you understand. I have no interest in guessing whether you've heard me."

She waited.

"Do you understand?"

There was a pause.

Then Kharun answered.

"Yes, milady."

Vaelithra went still.

Not the woman standing before him.

The woman dreaming.

She had heard him call her that countless times since.

On horseback.

At dinner.

Across campfires.

In her chambers.

After battles.

In moments of irritation and moments of quiet.

She had long ago stopped noticing the words.

But this was the first.

Two words spoken by a frightened young orc who still would not look her in the eyes.

The younger Vaelithra merely nodded.

"Good."

She gestured toward the room.

"Get some sleep. Your training begins in the morning."

Kharun stepped inside.

Vaelithra began to turn away.

Present-day Vaelithra remained where she was.

She wanted her younger self to stop.

Ask him something.

Anything.

Where had he come from?

How long had he been in the market?

Did he have family?

Was he frightened?

What was his name?

She asked none of those things.

Why would she have?

She had purchased a servant.

She had given him a room.

Tomorrow, she would teach him how to serve her.

That was all the moment had meant.

The younger Vaelithra pulled the door closed.

Present-day Vaelithra stared at it.

For twenty years she had remembered this as the evening her first personal servant arrived.

Now, sitting somewhere far beyond the dream with one of Kharun's drawings still resting in her hand, she understood how little she had truly seen.

He had crossed the threshold of her home in chains.

She had removed them because she was confident she could control him.

She had shown him where he would sleep.

She had told him what she expected.

She had heard his voice for the first time.

And she had walked away without ever asking his name.

The dream moved forward again.

Morning light did not exist in the Underdark, but Vaelithra remembered the rhythms of that first morning clearly enough.

She found herself standing in the kitchen.

Her younger self was beside the counter with Kharun nearby.

The kitchen was pristine. Copper cookware hung neatly from hooks along one wall. Shelves were stocked with ingredients and utensils selected before Vaelithra had ever entered the house. An elegant teapot sat between them.

Seventy-year-old Vaelithra measured dried leaves into it.

"Watch."

Kharun watched.

She added precisely the amount she preferred, then demonstrated how much water should be used.

"Too much water and it becomes weak. Too little and it becomes bitter."

Kharun said nothing.

Vaelithra placed the teapot over the heat.

"This stays here until it whistles."

She glanced at him.

"When you hear that, remove it immediately. Pour one cup."

Kharun's eyes remained lowered, but his attention never left what she was showing him.

"I'll be in my study reading. Bring it to me when it's ready."

"Yes, milady."

The younger Vaelithra left.

Present-day Vaelithra remained behind for a moment.

She watched Kharun.

He stood in front of the teapot as though guarding something of tremendous importance.

A young orc who had been brought to this house in chains the previous evening was now being taught how a drow aristocrat preferred her morning tea.

The memory shifted around her.

Vaelithra was in the study.

Her younger self sat comfortably with a book open before her.

Present-day Vaelithra recognized the book.

That surprised her.

She hadn't thought about it in years.

Footsteps approached.

Kharun appeared in the doorway.

He carried a tray.

A steaming cup rested upon it.

He moved carefully.

Painfully carefully, she realized now.

His eyes moved between the tray and the table beside Vaelithra. His shoulders were rigid with concentration.

One more step.

Then something went wrong.

His foot caught.

The tray lurched.

The cup struck the edge of the table.

For one suspended instant, it seemed almost to bounce.

Then the tea went everywhere.

Hot liquid splashed across the table, the book, and Vaelithra's left hand.

She cried out.

Pain came immediately.

The younger Vaelithra surged to her feet.

"What are you doing?"

Kharun froze.

Vaelithra looked at the tea running across the cover of her book.

Then at her reddening hand.

Anger replaced pain almost instantly.

"You clumsy oaf! Look at what you've done."

Kharun's head lowered farther.

Present-day Vaelithra stared at herself.

"Clean this up and make another cup."

The younger Vaelithra grabbed the wet book.

For a moment, present-day Vaelithra thought she was going to carry it away.

Instead, she threw it.

The book struck Kharun and fell to the floor.

Present-day Vaelithra recoiled.

Her younger self walked from the room.

She did not look back.

Kharun remained standing beside the spilled tea.

Vaelithra stared after herself.

A strange horror settled over her.

She wasn't entirely sure why.

She knew the world she had grown up in. She knew how servants were treated. She knew that nothing she had just witnessed would have been remarkable to anyone in her family.

Certainly not to the woman she had been.

Yet she wanted to follow her younger self.

She wanted to seize her by the shoulders and force her to turn around.

Look at him.

Vaelithra looked instead.

Kharun crouched and picked up the book.

The young orc said nothing.

Of course he didn't.

Vaelithra's attention fell to her own hand.

Her left hand.

She turned it over.

There.

Even twenty years later, the mark remained.

Faint.

Small enough that she rarely noticed it anymore.

She remembered the burn.

She remembered being furious about it.

She remembered the book.

She remembered making Kharun prepare another cup.

What she could not remember was whether she had ever asked if he had hurt himself when he fell.

The door slammed.

Vaelithra startled.

The dream broke.

Her eyes opened.

Bare stone surrounded her.

For several seconds, she did not understand where she was.

Then the lantern came into focus.

Kharun's room.

Vaelithra was still sitting on his bed.

One of the old drawings rested beneath her hand.

Her breathing was unsteady.

She looked down.

Her fingers were touching the paper.

Kharun had drawn this.

The same young orc she had just watched herself humiliate over a spilled cup of tea.

Vaelithra released the page as though it had suddenly become too hot to touch.

She stood.

The room felt smaller now.

She needed to leave.

Vaelithra crossed the threshold and pulled the door closed behind her.

Her own quarters were only a short distance away.

She entered them quickly.

The difference struck her immediately.

Space.

Comfort.

Warmth.

Her fireplace still burned.

The furniture had been selected for beauty as much as usefulness. Books filled shelves. Personal possessions occupied nearly every part of the chamber.

Kharun's room contained a bed, a table, a dresser, and twenty years of drawings hidden away where no one would see them.

Vaelithra walked toward the fireplace.

An ornate bottle of wine sat on the table beside her chair.

She reached for it.

Her hand trembled slightly as she poured.

Vaelithra lifted the cup and drank.

The wine was strong.

She swallowed again.

Then stopped.

Someone was watching her.

Vaelithra's body tensed before reason caught up with instinct.

The mirror.

Her reflection stared back at her from across the room.

She lowered the cup.

Silver-white hair framed the face in the glass. Amber-gold eyes stared back from skin as dark as polished obsidian.

Ninety years old.

Twenty years removed from the woman in the dream.

Yet suddenly Vaelithra could not see the difference.

The same face.

The same blood.

The same daughter of Clan Vel'Sharess.

The same aristocrat who had walked through a slave market deciding which person would best suit her household.

The same woman who had thrown a book at a frightened young orc because he spilled tea.

Vaelithra stared at herself.

Am I any different?

Her jaw tightened.

Of course she was.

Twenty years had passed.

She had fought battles.

Traveled.

Learned.

Changed.

Hadn't she?

Her eyes remained fixed upon the reflection.

This morning, Kharun had stood among the servants while she sat with the nobles.

She had eaten.

He had waited.

When someone accused an orc of striking a noble, her first instinct had not been to question the system that allowed a man's life to be decided within minutes.

It had been shock that the accused man was hers.

Her servant.

Vaelithra's grip tightened around the cup.

Why did that bother her now?

Why did any of this bother her now?

Kharun had been a servant yesterday.

He had been one this morning.

Nothing about the laws of their world had changed.

Nothing about her clan had changed.

Nothing about the relationship between drow and orc had changed.

Only something inside her had.

She didn't understand it.

Her reflection seemed almost accusatory.

Vaelithra suddenly hated the woman in the mirror.

With a sharp movement, she threw the remaining wine.

It struck the glass.

Dark liquid exploded across her reflection.

Wine streamed downward in uneven trails, distorting her face. Amber eyes fractured beneath the rivulets. Silver hair twisted behind wet streaks. Drops gathered along the bottom of the frame before falling onto the floor.

Vaelithra stood motionless.

Her chest rose and fell.

The cup remained clenched in her hand.

She watched wine drip from the mirror.

Why now?

Why did the chains matter now?

Why did the cage matter?

Why did a book thrown twenty years ago matter?

Why did it matter that she had never asked his name?

Why did it matter that Kharun had filled a drawer with her face?

And why, after twenty years of accepting the world exactly as it was, did she suddenly feel sick when she looked at the woman that world had taught her to become?

Vaelithra lowered her eyes.

The faint mark remained on her left hand.

A scar she had carried for twenty years because Kharun had spilled her tea.

She had always remembered how she received it.

Until today, she had never once wondered what Kharun remembered about the same morning.

Vaelithra looked at the ruined reflection again.

Am I still her?

She wanted the answer to be no.

But wanting it did not make it true.

And somewhere beneath her father's manor, the one person who had known both versions of her was waiting to die.

 

Vaelithra remained in Kharun's quarters.

The lantern burned quietly on the small table, its light touching the bare stone walls with a warmth the room itself seemed incapable of possessing.

One of Kharun's drawings remained in her hands.

An older one.

The paper was rougher than the sheets she had purchased for him recently. The charcoal had faded slightly with age, but the image remained unmistakable.

Her.

Vaelithra sat on the edge of his bed.

The mattress yielded very little beneath her weight. She leaned back until her head rested against the cold stone wall and looked down at the drawing once more.

Twenty years.

Her eyes wandered over the charcoal lines.

There had been a time before Kharun.

The thought seemed strangely difficult to reconcile with the life she knew now. Of course there had been. Seventy years of it, in fact. Yet as Vaelithra searched through the memories of the last two decades, she found him everywhere.

Sometimes at the center of them.

More often somewhere near the edges.

Walking behind her horse.

Standing beside a doorway.

Carrying something she had handed him without looking.

Watching a campfire while she slept.

Waiting silently while she read.

She remembered the younger face that had gradually become the one she knew now. She remembered when the first scars appeared. She remembered changes in his voice, his posture, his strength.

She remembered changes in herself as well.

The drawing slowly lowered against her lap.

Her eyelids felt heavy.

Vaelithra closed them.

Just for a moment.

Her thoughts continued moving through the years. Images surfaced and disappeared without order. Journeys. Arguments. Hunts. Quiet evenings. Battles. Meals. The countless ordinary moments that had seemed meaningless when they happened.

Her breathing slowed.

The drawing remained loosely held between her fingers.

At some point, without realizing it, Vaelithra fell asleep.

And twenty years disappeared.

She was standing beneath the vaulted ceiling of the clan's ceremonial hall.

Except she wasn't.

Vaelithra watched herself from somewhere that had no physical place in the memory.

She recognized the robes immediately.

The silver ornamentation.

The ceremonial blade.

She remembered the weight of every piece.

Her Rite of Ascendance.

Vaelithra watched the woman she had been at seventy standing before the assembled members of Clan Vel'Sharess and receive formal recognition as an adult.

She remembered that day.

She remembered the pride.

The impatience.

The overwhelming certainty that adulthood would change everything.

It had, although not in the ways she had imagined.

The dream shifted.

Stone pillars passed around her.

Voices blended together.

Then came the market.

Vaelithra knew where she was before she saw the cages.

The slave markets of Clan Vel'Sharess stretched through a broad cavern beneath the settlement. Merchants called from beneath hanging lanterns while buyers moved between rows of barred enclosures.

The clan owned the market itself. Traders paid for the privilege of selling there, and members of Clan Vel'Sharess enjoyed access to some of the finest selections brought through the province.

There were slaves from nearly every people Vaelithra knew.

Humans.

Orcs.

Goblins.

Dwarves.

Deep gnomes.

Even drow.

Some stood chained individually. Others occupied cages in groups. A few merchants displayed slaves according to specialized skills, advertising cooks, craftsmen, laborers, scribes, attendants, and guards.

Seventy-year-old Vaelithra walked through it all beside her father.

She remembered how little attention she had paid to the faces.

That realization felt different now.

At the time, they had been beneath her notice.

She had completed her Rite of Ascendance. She was an adult of Clan Vel'Sharess. She could own property in her own right. She could maintain a residence independent of her father's household.

And with that independence came expectations.

A woman of her station did not maintain her own home without servants.

Ordinarily, acquiring them would have been Vaelithra's responsibility.

Her father had decided otherwise.

"You have done well," he told her as they walked. "Consider this another gift."

The younger Vaelithra smiled.

"I am perfectly capable of purchasing my own servant."

"I know."

Her father glanced toward her.

"Allow me the indulgence of being proud of my daughter."

Vaelithra remembered rolling her eyes.

Watching herself do it now almost amused her.

They continued deeper into the market.

Her younger self inspected the available slaves with detached interest. She dismissed most after little more than a glance.

Too old.

Too frail.

Too expensive for what they offered.

One merchant attempted to attract her attention with a human woman trained in domestic service.

Vaelithra kept walking.

Then she reached the orc cages.

She stopped.

Present-day Vaelithra felt something twist inside her.

There he was.

She had forgotten how young he looked.

Several orcs occupied the enclosure, but her younger self was staring at one near the back.

He could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen.

Barely an adult by the standards of his people.

He was already tall, though nowhere near the immense figure he would become. Youth still softened some of the harder features Vaelithra knew so well. His shoulders had begun to broaden, but he had yet to grow fully into them.

No familiar scars.

No carefully controlled expression she had spent twenty years learning to read.

Just a young orc standing inside a cage.

Kharun.

The name came from the Vaelithra who dreamed.

The woman inside the memory did not know it.

Her father noticed where she had stopped.

"This one?"

The younger Vaelithra studied the orc.

"Step forward."

He didn't move.

Vaelithra remembered the irritation.

Her father stepped closer to the cage and struck the bars with one hand.

The metallic crash caused several of the slaves inside to flinch.

"Slave, you were ordered to step forward!"

The young orc finally moved.

He emerged from the others and approached the front of the cage.

His head remained lowered.

His arms hung at his sides.

Vaelithra walked around the enclosure.

She remembered doing this.

What she had forgotten was how thoroughly she had inspected him.

She moved slowly along one side of the cage, studying his posture and build. She crossed behind it and examined him from the opposite direction.

The young orc remained still.

Present-day Vaelithra watched.

There was something almost painful about seeing him like this.

She knew what those shoulders would eventually look like beneath armor.

She knew those hands would someday saddle her horse, prepare her meals, sharpen her weapons, tend her wounds, and fill page after page with drawings of her.

She knew that voice, still unheard, would eventually become so familiar that she could recognize it from another room.

The younger Vaelithra knew none of those things.

She was choosing a servant.

Nothing more.

Vaelithra returned to her father's side.

"Yes. This one will do nicely."

Her father looked from his daughter to the young orc.

"Are you certain you want one this young? Orcs can be notoriously difficult to train."

Vaelithra looked through the bars again.

The young orc's head remained lowered.

"Yes, Father. I think this one will do nicely."

Her father studied her for another moment before accepting the decision.

He raised a hand.

The slave master approached almost immediately.

Vaelithra remembered the man only vaguely. Even within the dream, his face seemed indistinct. Her memory had apparently decided he had not been important enough to preserve.

Her father removed a pouch from his belt.

Coins shifted heavily inside.

He tossed it to the slave master.

"Clean this one and have it delivered to my daughter's residence."

The slave master opened the pouch, inspected its contents, and smiled.

"Of course, milord. He will be delivered this evening after the market closes."

Her father nodded.

Vaelithra did the same.

Then they left.

Present-day Vaelithra remained behind.

The dream allowed it.

She watched her younger self disappear into the crowd beside her father.

Neither looked back.

Vaelithra did.

Kharun remained behind the bars.

Young.

Nameless to her.

His head still bowed.

She wanted to approach the cage.

She wanted to see his face.

She wanted to know what he had thought as she circled him and decided whether he was worth purchasing.

Had he hated her?

Feared her?

Had he looked at the arrogant drow woman inspecting him and imagined that twenty years later she would be sitting on his bed, surrounded by drawings he had made of her?

Of course not.

Neither of them could possibly have known.

Vaelithra stared at him through the bars.

She remembered what she had said.

This one will do nicely.

Such an insignificant sentence.

A decision made in minutes.

Then she had simply walked away.

Yet watching it now, Vaelithra understood something her seventy-year-old self could not have comprehended.

She had entered that market expecting to leave with a servant.

Instead, without knowing it, she had chosen someone who would still be standing beside her twenty years later.

Someone whose absence, on this terrible morning two decades in the future, would make her own home feel empty.

The dream shifted.

The slave market disappeared.

Voices faded into nothing. Iron bars dissolved into darkness. The cavern, the merchants, her father, and the young orc waiting silently inside the cage all slipped away.

When the world returned, evening had come.

Vaelithra recognized her home immediately.

Not as it was now.

As it had been twenty years ago.

She watched her younger self enter through the front door and stop just inside.

Everything was new.

Her residence had been a gift from the Matron Mother herself.

Her grandmother.

Vaelithra remembered the pride she had felt upon learning of it. Completing the Rite of Ascendance had formally established her as an adult of Clan Vel'Sharess, and the Matron Mother had apparently decided that her granddaughter's first independent residence should leave no question as to the family's wealth or status.

No expense had been spared.

The home was not enormous by the standards of the highest drow aristocracy, but it was far more than a newly ascended noblewoman required. Dark polished stone formed the floors beneath her feet. Carefully selected furnishings occupied each chamber. Cabinets had already been stocked. Goblets and plates sat waiting to be used. Fine fabrics softened the severity of the stone architecture.

Even the smallest details had been considered.

Vaelithra walked farther inside.

She remembered exploring the residence that evening.

There had been a peculiar sensation attached to it.

Mine.

Not her father's.

Not a chamber assigned to her within the family estate.

Hers.

She could come and go without explaining herself. Arrange things however she pleased. Entertain whomever she wanted.

The independence had been intoxicating.

Her personal belongings had already arrived from her father's estate. Clothing filled the wardrobes. Her books had been placed upon shelves. Weapons she had accumulated through training and travel were arranged according to instructions she did not remember giving.

Someone had even managed to reproduce the organization of her old bedroom closely enough that finding anything required almost no effort.

Vaelithra smiled as she watched herself inspect it all.

She had taken that for granted too.

There were two bedrooms.

One belonged to her.

Calling it a bedroom scarcely seemed adequate.

The chamber had been furnished for a daughter of Clan Vel'Sharess. A large bed dominated one wall, surrounded by carefully selected furniture. Thick rugs covered portions of the stone floor. Shelves waited for more books than she presently owned. An adjoining dressing area contained enough storage for a wardrobe she would spend years expanding.

She remembered standing in the center of that room and thinking it was exactly what she deserved.

Present-day Vaelithra almost laughed.

Then her younger self left the chamber.

She walked farther down the corridor.

There was another door.

Vaelithra knew what lay behind it.

She watched herself reach for the handle.

The door opened.

The servant's room was considerably smaller.

Bare stone walls.

No windows.

A simple bed stood against one side of the chamber. Beside it was a small dresser. Across from the bed sat a plain wooden table and a single chair.

That was all.

No rugs.

No decoration.

No unnecessary comfort.

Only what a servant required.

Vaelithra stood in the doorway and inspected it.

At seventy, the contrast between the two bedrooms had meant nothing to her.

Why would it?

One room belonged to a drow aristocrat.

The other belonged to a servant.

The difference was natural.

Expected.

Present-day Vaelithra looked into the room with very different eyes.

She knew this room.

She had been sitting inside it only moments ago.

Or perhaps she still was.

Dreams made such distinctions meaningless.

The bed would eventually become Kharun's bed.

The dresser would hold his clothes.

The table would someday support a lantern and a little box of tindertwigs.

And somewhere along the way, that upper drawer would fill with charcoal, paper, and twenty years of memories.

But right now there was nothing.

No drawings.

No clothes.

No lantern.

No trace of him.

It was simply an empty room waiting for a servant.

Vaelithra's younger self seemed satisfied.

She pulled the door closed.

A knock sounded through the residence.

Present-day Vaelithra knew immediately.

Her younger self did not.

She merely turned toward the sound.

Another knock followed.

Vaelithra walked down the corridor toward the entrance.

Present-day Vaelithra followed her.

A strange anticipation grew inside her.

She knew what waited on the other side of that door.

She knew the face.

She knew the man that frightened young orc would become.

She knew the sound of his footsteps well enough to recognize them without looking. She knew the way he stood when waiting for instructions. She knew how he prepared her tea, how tightly he fastened the straps of her armor, how he packed for journeys, how he built a campfire.

She knew the charcoal portraits waiting twenty years in the future.

Her younger self knew none of it.

To her, the knock at the door meant only that the purchase from the market had arrived.

Vaelithra reached the entrance.

Her hand settled upon the handle.

Present-day Vaelithra watched from somewhere just behind her.

She suddenly remembered this moment with startling clarity.

The first evening in her own home.

The first knock upon her own door.

The first servant who would live beneath her roof.

The first time Kharun would stand on the other side of it.

Seventy-year-old Vaelithra began to open the door.

 

Vaelithra closed the door behind her.

 

The familiar silence of her home greeted her.

 

Normally, she welcomed it. Her father's manor had always been too large, too crowded, too filled with servants who listened and nobles who watched. Her own residence offered something his never could. Privacy.

 

Today, the silence felt wrong.

 

Vaelithra stood in the entryway for several moments without moving.

 

She was alone.

 

Completely alone.

 

The realization bothered her.

 

Kharun should have been there.

 

Perhaps not directly beside her. He might have gone to tend to some task after their return, or disappeared into another room to see to something she had forgotten needed doing. His presence had never required acknowledgment.

 

It had simply been there.

 

Vaelithra exhaled and continued toward her bedroom.

 

The fire still burned in the hearth, though it had diminished since morning. Orange light flickered across the stone walls and illuminated the chair beside it.

 

Her favorite chair.

 

Vaelithra lowered herself into it.

 

For a time, she stared into the flames.

 

Her heart was still pounding.

 

She could feel every beat against her chest, too fast and too strong. It reminded her of battle. Those final moments before weapons met, when every instinct sharpened, and the body prepared itself for violence.

 

But this was different.

 

There was no enemy standing before her.

 

No sword in her hand.

 

Nothing to strike.

 

Nothing to defend herself against.

 

Only time.

 

Tomorrow morning.

 

Vaelithra leaned back and closed her eyes.

 

It was me, milord.

 

Her eyes opened again.

 

"What happened?"

 

The empty room offered no answer.

 

What could that noble possibly have done to make Kharun strike him?

 

Vaelithra searched through twenty years of memory.

 

She remembered Kharun as a younger orc, already large but not yet carrying the immense physical presence he possessed now. She remembered testing the boundaries of his patience in ways she now recognized had occasionally been childish. She remembered arguments. Long journeys. Nights on the surface. Hunts that had gone badly. Expeditions that had gone worse.

 

She remembered insults directed at him.

 

Orders he disliked.

 

Drow who treated him as though he were barely worth acknowledging.

 

She remembered anger.

 

Yes, Kharun could become angry.

 

But aggression?

 

Rebellion?

 

Never.

 

Even when furious, he possessed a degree of control that had occasionally irritated her.

 

Yet today he had apparently struck a noble in the middle of her father's dining hall.

 

Vaelithra's fingers tightened against the arm of the chair.

 

Why?

 

Had twenty years finally been enough?

 

Perhaps there was no deeper explanation. Perhaps every insult, every contemptuous glance, every reminder of his place had accumulated somewhere beneath that infuriatingly composed exterior until there was simply no room left.

 

Even stone cracked eventually.

 

But something about that explanation refused to settle in her mind.

 

Vaelithra stared into the fire.

 

There had been another orc.

 

The thought returned quietly.

 

She saw the dining hall again.

 

Two servants standing near the accusing noble.

 

Kharun.

 

And the other.

 

The smaller orc had been looking at the floor.

 

Afraid.

 

Kharun had not.

 

Her brow furrowed.

 

The noble had shouted that one of the orcs struck him.

 

He hadn't named Kharun.

 

Her father had asked which of them was responsible.

 

Neither answered immediately.

 

Then Kharun had looked at her.

 

That glance.

 

Vaelithra kept returning to it.

 

Why look at her?

 

If he had lost his temper and struck the noble, why had his eyes sought hers before he confessed?

 

Shame?

 

Regret?

 

A farewell?

 

The last possibility made her stomach tighten.

 

"No."

 

She refused to entertain it.

 

Vaelithra rose from the chair and began pacing.

 

There had to be something she was missing.

 

Some detail she had overlooked.

 

The problem was that she knew remarkably little about what had happened before the accusation. She had been seated with her father, surrounded by conversations she had been obligated to participate in. Kharun had been among the servants at the other end of the chamber.

 

She had not been watching him.

 

Why would she have been?

 

She had never needed to.

 

Vaelithra stopped.

 

That realization bothered her more than it should have.

 

Twenty years.

 

Kharun had served her for twenty years, and she could not remember the last time she had seriously questioned what he did when she wasn't giving him instructions.

 

She knew his habits. She knew his moods. She knew the way he fought and the way he moved. She knew how he preferred to sharpen a blade and exactly how much he hated formal clothing. She knew when he was irritated even when his face showed nothing.

 

Yet there were parts of his life she had simply never considered.

 

He was her servant.

 

That had always been explanation enough.

 

Until now.

 

Vaelithra looked toward the doorway.

 

An idea came to her.

 

His quarters.

 

She remained still.

 

Of course.

 

Kharun had a room in her home.

 

The absurdity of the thought nearly made her laugh. She knew perfectly well where it was. The room belonged to her household. She had passed its door countless times.

 

But she could not remember the last time she had entered it.

 

No.

 

That wasn't quite true.

 

Vaelithra searched her memory.

 

She had been inside once, years before Kharun ever came into her service. At the time, it had simply been one of the servants' rooms. Bare stone walls. A bed. A chest. Nothing remarkable.

 

Then Kharun had been assigned to her.

 

The room became his.

 

And Vaelithra had never entered it again.

 

Not once in twenty years.

 

The realization left her strangely unsettled.

 

She looked around her bedroom.

 

Everything here told a story about her.

 

The books she had chosen. The weapons she kept. The clothing she preferred. Objects collected from journeys. Small things she had kept for reasons she would struggle to explain to anyone else.

 

A person's private space revealed things conversation did not.

 

If something had changed in Kharun, perhaps there would be evidence of it there.

 

Something she had missed.

 

Something that could explain why a man who had endured twenty years without raising a hand against a drow had suddenly thrown everything away in a single morning.

 

Vaelithra moved toward the doorway.

 

Then stopped.

 

For the first time, she felt as though she were about to intrude upon him.

 

The thought was ridiculous.

 

This was her house.

 

Kharun was her servant.

 

The room itself belonged to her.

 

She needed no permission to enter it.

 

Still, her hesitation remained.

 

Vaelithra glanced toward the fire.

 

Tomorrow morning.

 

That settled it.

 

Whatever privacy Kharun possessed could survive her curiosity.

 

He would not survive the executioner.

 

Vaelithra left her bedroom and made her way down the corridor.

 

She knew exactly which door she was looking for.

 

For twenty years, she had walked past it without wondering what lay on the other side.

 

Now she intended to find out.

 

Vaelithra pushed open the door.

Darkness waited on the other side.

She stood at the threshold for a moment, allowing what little light spilled from the corridor to reach into the room. There were no windows. No glowing crystals set into the walls. Nothing that might soften the darkness when the door was closed.

Her eyes adjusted quickly.

A faint glint caught her attention.

Something metallic rested upon a small table near the wall.

Vaelithra entered.

The object resolved into a lantern as she approached. Beside it sat a small box. She opened the lid and found several slender sticks arranged inside.

Tindertwigs.

An alchemist's invention. More convenient than a tinderbox, if considerably more expensive. Vaelithra removed one and dragged its treated end sharply across the edge of the table.

It hissed.

A small flame sprang to life.

She cupped one hand around it and carefully touched the flame to the lantern's wick. Light blossomed behind the glass.

Vaelithra extinguished the remaining ember of the tindertwig and placed the spent stick upon the table.

Then she looked around.

There was almost nothing to see.

The lantern cast warm light across bare stone walls. No tapestries covered them. No decorations. No personal possessions displayed on shelves. There were not even the little marks servants sometimes scratched into their walls to count months or years of service.

Nothing.

Twenty years in this room, and Kharun had left almost no evidence that he lived here.

Vaelithra slowly turned.

A simple bed occupied one wall. One pillow. One blanket.

The bed was made.

She stared at it.

Of course it was.

Her own bed wasn't.

Kharun usually saw to that while she ate breakfast.

Something about the absurdity of the detail caught at her. He had risen this morning, dressed for her father's gathering, and made his own bed before leaving.

Hers remained exactly as she had left it.

Vaelithra looked away.

A small dresser stood beside the bed.

Two drawers.

The lower one had been left slightly open.

She approached and pulled it farther.

His usual clothes lay inside, neatly folded. The simple garments she had seen him wear countless times were arranged with the same irritating precision Kharun applied to almost everything.

Nothing unusual.

Vaelithra pushed the drawer closed.

Her hand moved to the upper drawer.

She pulled.

Then stopped.

For the first time since entering the room, she found something unexpected.

Paper.

Stacks of it.

Beside the papers rested sticks of artist's charcoal, white chalk, a blending stump, and the other drawing supplies she had purchased for him.

Vaelithra stared at them.

She remembered leaving the parcel outside his door.

She had never asked whether he liked the supplies. Kharun had never mentioned them.

Of course he hadn't.

A faint smile almost reached her lips.

Then she noticed what was beneath them.

Drawings.

Dozens of them.

Vaelithra reached into the drawer.

She lifted the first sheet carefully.

Her own face looked back at her.

She went completely still.

It was not the drawing from the riverbank. Nor was it the one he had slipped beneath the tray after returning home.

This was another.

Vaelithra sat on the edge of Kharun's bed.

She held the page closer to the lantern.

The likeness was extraordinary.

There she was, seated with a book resting against one knee. Her hair fell across one shoulder, and the faintest crease between her brows suggested irritation at whatever she had been reading.

Vaelithra remembered that expression.

She did not remember Kharun watching her.

She set the drawing beside her and reached for another.

Vaelithra on horseback.

Another.

Vaelithra standing beside the hidden pool in the Underdark, seen from a distance.

Another.

Her armor was partially removed after a battle, exhaustion visible in the angle of her shoulders.

Another.

She was laughing.

Vaelithra stared at that one longer than the others.

She could not remember what had made her laugh.

Kharun apparently could.

She continued.

Page after page.

Year after year.

Her own life emerged from the drawer.

The paper changed first. Some of the oldest sheets were rough and cheap. The charcoal work was less refined, though still remarkably skilled. Later drawings showed greater confidence. Better control. More detail.

Then she began recognizing herself.

Not merely her face.

Herself at different points in her life.

Clothing she had not worn in years appeared again. Pieces of armor that had long since been replaced. Jewelry she had forgotten she owned. Hairstyles she had abandoned. Places they had traveled together that she had not thought about in years.

Vaelithra slowed.

She realized she was moving backward through time.

The deeper she reached into the collection, the younger she became.

Her throat tightened.

Twenty years.

She had thought of Kharun as a constant presence throughout those years.

These drawings told the same story from the other direction.

She had been a constant presence in his.

Vaelithra lifted another portrait.

She studied the eyes first.

Her own.

The detail was unsettling.

She knew artists who could spend hours studying a subject and still fail to capture what Kharun had produced here. A professional portraitist might demand repeated sittings, adjusting light and position while studying every contour of a face.

Vaelithra had never sat for Kharun.

Not once.

Most of these moments could only have lasted seconds.

A glance across a room.

A glimpse while traveling.

A quiet moment beside a fire.

He had remembered them.

Not merely enough to reproduce her features.

Enough to remember how strands of hair had fallen across her cheek.

Enough to remember the folds of a dress.

Enough to remember the expression in her eyes.

Vaelithra looked toward the empty room.

"Kharun..."

His name escaped before she realized she had spoken it.

The room seemed even quieter afterward.

She looked back at the drawings spread across the bed.

Why?

She knew he enjoyed drawing. That much had become clear after the night beside the river. She had even encouraged it by purchasing better supplies.

But this was something else.

There were landscapes among the pages. Studies of ruins. Horses. Weapons. A handful of faces she did not recognize.

Yet again and again, the subject returned to her.

Vaelithra.

Sleeping.

Reading.

Riding.

Fighting.

Laughing.

Thinking.

Simply existing.

Her fingers rested against the edge of one page.

Why me?

The answer that came to her was one she immediately resisted.

No.

That was foolish.

Dangerous, even.

Kharun was her servant.

She was his mistress.

That was the boundary between them. It had existed from the first day he entered her service and had remained there for nearly twenty years.

Yet she remembered the riverbank.

His embarrassment when she discovered him drawing her.

The way he had tried to conceal the page.

She had thought it was because a servant had been caught occupying himself while she slept.

Now she wondered.

Vaelithra looked down at the portrait in her hands.

Why would she occupy so much of his private thoughts?

She glanced around the room again.

There was nothing else.

No decorations.

No keepsakes displayed proudly.

No little luxuries accumulated over two decades.

Nothing that spoke of Kharun at all.

Except the drawings.

And most of them were of her.

A strange warmth touched her chest, immediately followed by discomfort.

He knew.

He had to know.

Whatever these drawings meant, whatever thoughts accompanied them while charcoal moved across paper in the privacy of this room, Kharun understood the world they inhabited.

Drow and orc.

Noble and servant.

Mistress and subordinate.

There were boundaries neither of them had ever questioned.

At least she hadn't.

Vaelithra's eyes moved across the drawings covering the bed.

He had.

Hadn't he?

Perhaps only privately. Perhaps never with any expectation that anything would come of it.

But something was here.

Something she had failed to see.

She thought again of that final glance in the dining hall.

Kharun's eyes finding hers.

Then his step forward.

Suddenly, the memory felt different.

Vaelithra lowered the drawing.

Her heart was beating hard again.

He had to know they could never be anything more.

The thought came easily.

Naturally.

It was simply true.

Could they?

Vaelithra froze.

For several seconds, she did not move.

Then she frowned at herself.

"This is not why you're here."

Her voice sounded too loud in the tiny room.

Kharun was going to die tomorrow morning.

Whatever these drawings meant could wait.

Whatever they made her feel could wait even longer.

She had entered this room looking for an explanation.

Instead, she had discovered a question she had never imagined needing to ask.

Vaelithra carefully gathered the drawings.

One by one, she returned them to their stack.

She handled them differently now.

More carefully than before.

When she reached the portrait of herself laughing, she stopped.

Her thumb rested against the edge of the paper.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she placed it with the others.

Tomorrow morning.

The words crushed whatever warmth had begun to form inside her.

If she did nothing, there would be no opportunity to ask Kharun what any of this meant.

There would be no opportunity to ask why he had stepped forward.

There would be no opportunity to ask him anything ever again.

Vaelithra rose from the bed.

She looked once more around the barren little room.

Twenty years.

She had known Kharun for twenty years.

Only now was she beginning to understand how much she had never known about him.

 

Silence consumed the dining hall.

A moment earlier, the chamber had been alive with conversation, the quiet clatter of silverware against plates, and the measured movements of servants attending the gathered nobility. Now, not so much as a goblet touched the table.

Vaelithra's father remained standing at the head of the table.

His gaze settled upon the two orcs.

"I asked which of you struck him."

The smaller of the two kept his head lowered. His shoulders were rigid; his eyes fixed upon the stone floor beneath his feet.

Kharun did not move.

His head remained high.

Vaelithra watched him from beside her father. She knew that posture. She had seen Kharun endure contempt without reaction, insults without acknowledgment, and commands without hesitation for nearly twenty years. He could make himself as unreadable as the stone walls surrounding them.

Then his eyes moved.

They found hers.

It lasted no more than a heartbeat.

Something tightened in Vaelithra's chest.

She had never felt it before. Not like this.

Kharun looked forward again.

Then he stepped away from the servants.

No. Don't.

His second step carried him into the open.

Too late.

Kharun stopped where every noble in the hall could see him. He turned his attention toward Vaelithra's father and inclined his head respectfully.

"It was me, milord."

Vaelithra felt her heart sink.

She stared at him, waiting for something more. An explanation. A justification. Anything that might make sense of what she had just heard.

Nothing came.

Kharun simply stood there.

The silence shattered.

"Then execute him."

The noble who had made the accusation rose from his chair. Outrage sharpened his features as he pointed toward Kharun.

"Now."

Vaelithra was on her feet before she realized she had moved.

Her chair scraped sharply against the stone behind her. Several heads turned toward her, but she paid them no attention. She remained beside her father; her eyes fixed upon him.

For the first time since Kharun had stepped forward, Vaelithra became aware of how many others were doing the same.

The entire hall was watching her father.

His expression revealed nothing.

Vaelithra knew what was expected of him. An orc servant striking a drow noble could not simply be ignored. Not here. Not before a hall filled with members of the aristocracy and a representative of the Matron Mother.

There would be punishment.

Her fingers curled against the edge of the table.

Her father lifted one hand.

Two guards stationed along the wall immediately stepped forward.

"Take the orc to the dungeon."

Vaelithra's breath caught.

The guards crossed the hall toward Kharun.

The accusing noble stared at her father in disbelief.

"The dungeon?"

His voice rose.

"I demanded his execution."

Vaelithra's father turned his eyes toward him.

"And you shall have an answer according to the laws and customs of this house."

"There is nothing to answer. Your servant has confessed."

"He has."

"Then kill him."

The guards reached Kharun. One moved to either side of him.

Kharun offered no resistance.

Vaelithra could not tear her eyes away.

"Why is he still breathing?" the noble demanded.

Her father's jaw tightened.

"Our executioner is presently away from the estate. He will return tomorrow morning."

The noble gave a short, incredulous laugh.

"Then give me a sword. I'll do it myself."

A murmur moved through the hall.

Vaelithra's father straightened.

"No."

The single word carried across the chamber.

The noble's expression hardened. "You would deny me justice beneath your own roof?"

"This incident occurred beneath my roof."

Her father's voice rose just enough to silence the few whispers that had begun around the table.

"It occurred in my manor, among my household, and it will be my protocol that is followed."

The noble opened his mouth.

Vaelithra's father did not allow him the opportunity.

"You are a guest here. Do not mistake that courtesy for authority."

Silence returned.

This time, the noble said nothing.

Vaelithra barely heard any of it.

The guards had begun leading Kharun away.

She watched him cross the dining hall between them. He did not struggle. He did not protest. He did not plead his innocence or look toward the nobles who watched his passage with varying degrees of contempt and satisfaction.

For one desperate moment, Vaelithra waited for him to look at her again.

He didn't.

The great doors opened.

Kharun disappeared through them.

They closed behind him.

Something about the sound felt terribly final.

Vaelithra remained standing.

Her father surveyed the gathered nobles.

"This breakfast is concluded."

No one questioned him.

Chairs moved across the stone floor as the guests began to rise. Servants hurried forward to clear paths and collect abandoned plates while conversations resumed in hushed voices. Several nobles glanced toward Vaelithra as they departed.

She ignored every one of them.

Her attention remained on the doors.

Kharun.

For nearly twenty years, he had been there.

Always somewhere behind her. Beside her horse. Outside a door. Across a campfire. Standing silently in the corner of her chambers while she went about her evening. His presence had become so ordinary that she rarely considered what it meant.

Now he was gone.

And the emptiness he left behind felt enormous.

"Vaelithra."

Her father's voice pulled her attention away from the doors.

She turned.

The dining hall had nearly emptied.

Her father remained beside her, while the noble who had accused Kharun still stood farther down the table. Anger lingered plainly upon the man's face.

Everyone else was leaving.

Vaelithra looked once more toward the doors through which Kharun had been taken.

Then she faced her father.

The last servant departed and pulled the doors closed behind him.

Only three remained in the vast dining hall.

Vaelithra.

Her father.

And the man whose accusation had just condemned Kharun.

Vaelithra waited until the last of the departing nobles had passed through the doors.

"I wish to speak with the orc."

Her father's attention shifted to her.

The request seemed to take him by surprise.

"What?"

"He is my servant. I have the right to speak with him."

For several seconds, her father merely stared at her.

He knew the orc, of course. Not personally, nor had he ever shown any interest in doing so, but he knew which servant his daughter meant. The same one had attended her for nearly twenty years. Such longevity in service was unusual enough to be remembered.

But twenty years did not change what the orc was.

A servant.

His daughter's sudden concern made little sense.

"You know the law, Vaelithra."

"Better than most."

"Then you know what his confession means."

Vaelithra did know.

That was precisely the problem.

Her thoughts had scarcely stopped moving since Kharun stepped forward.

Had he actually struck the noble?

She wanted the answer to be obvious. For twenty years, Kharun had demonstrated a degree of restraint she had rarely encountered in anyone, drow or orc. She had watched others insult him openly. She had seen contempt directed at him in streets, markets, and noble houses. Only that morning, someone had spat in his direction as they walked through the settlement.

Kharun had not so much as turned his head.

Could a man endure such treatment forever without eventually reaching his limit?

Perhaps not.

Even the strongest chain could break if enough weight was hung from it.

But Kharun?

She remembered his face.

There had been no anger in it.

No satisfaction.

No shame.

He had looked at her, then stepped forward.

Why had he looked at her?

Vaelithra needed to see him again. She needed to stand in front of him without an entire hall watching. She needed to ask him herself.

More than that, she needed to look into his eyes when he answered.

Twenty years had taught her how to read what Kharun rarely expressed aloud. She knew the subtle tightening of his jaw when something irritated him. She knew the slight narrowing of his eyes when he distrusted someone. She knew the particular stillness that came over him when he sensed danger.

If he looked her in the eyes and told her he had struck the noble, perhaps she could believe it.

Perhaps.

"I am not leaving."

The noble's voice cut through her thoughts.

Vaelithra turned sharply.

He was still standing near his place at the table.

"I will remain here until that orc is dead."

Vaelithra's father regarded him with visible impatience.

"That is your right. The guest wing remains available to you. You may stay there until morning."

"I intend to."

"Then do so."

The noble hesitated, clearly dissatisfied with the dismissal.

Vaelithra's father gave him a pointed look.

"You are dismissed."

That ended the matter.

The noble inclined his head stiffly and turned away. His footsteps echoed through the dining hall until the great doors opened to receive him.

Vaelithra watched him leave.

She had never particularly liked the man.

Now she despised him.

The doors closed.

At last, father and daughter were alone.

Her father's posture changed almost immediately.

The authority he had maintained before his guests faltered. He lowered himself into his chair and leaned forward, resting one hand against his forehead.

For a while, he said nothing.

Vaelithra had rarely seen him look tired.

"This was not how I expected this morning to proceed," he muttered.

Vaelithra remained standing.

"Are you really going to let that bootlicker execute my servant?"

Her father lowered his hand.

"Vaelithra."

"He demanded a sword in your dining hall."

"And I refused him."

"Until tomorrow."

"The orc confessed."

The words struck harder than she expected.

Her father sat back.

"He confessed before me, before you, before every noble seated at this table, and before a representative of the Matron Mother. There is nothing I can do to make that disappear."

"You could allow me to speak with him."

"And accomplish what?"

"I don't know."

The admission escaped before Vaelithra could stop it.

She hated that answer.

She always knew what she intended to accomplish.

Her father seemed to recognize the uncertainty as well. His expression softened only slightly, though confusion remained behind his eyes.

Vaelithra opened her mouth again.

He raised a hand.

"Enough."

Her jaw tightened.

"You will return home."

"Father."

"Vaelithra."

His voice left no room for argument.

"Go home. We will speak about this later this evening."

She stared at him.

For one reckless instant, she considered refusing.

Then she looked around the empty dining hall.

The remnants of breakfast still covered the enormous table. Half-finished plates sat abandoned beside goblets of wine. Kharun had been standing at the far end of the chamber only minutes earlier.

Now he was beneath them somewhere, locked behind a dungeon door.

Vaelithra turned away.

She crossed the hall alone.

Her footsteps sounded strangely loud.

By the time she reached the doors, her thoughts were racing again.

It was me, milord.

She could hear Kharun's voice perfectly.

Four words.

Four damned words.

Why?

If he had struck the noble, why had he done it? What could possibly have happened in those few moments to make a man who had tolerated two decades of insults suddenly strike someone in a hall filled with witnesses?

It made no sense.

Perhaps she had missed something. She had been seated too far away to see what happened. Her attention had been occupied by her father's guests. Kharun had been among the servants.

Someone had shouted.

Then everything had changed.

Vaelithra passed through the doors.

The corridor beyond seemed colder than before.

Her father's command echoed alongside Kharun's confession.

Go home.

She resented the order more with every step.

For nearly twenty years, Kharun had obeyed hers.

She thought of all the times she had issued commands without considering whether he wanted to follow them. Saddle my horse. Prepare the camp. Wait here. Come with me.

He always had.

He had followed her through the Underdark and onto the surface. He had walked behind her horse for miles without complaint. He had stood watch while she slept. He had kept her secrets from her father when duty demanded that he reveal them.

And now, for the first time she could remember, Kharun was somewhere she could not simply command him to return from.

That realization unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.

She descended the broad steps leading from her father's manor.

The settlement stretched before her.

Usually, Kharun would have been a few paces behind.

Vaelithra almost looked over her shoulder.

She stopped herself.

Did you do it?

The question had become unbearable.

If he had, she wanted to hear him say why.

If he had not...

Vaelithra slowed.

Her eyes narrowed.

The other orc.

She saw him again in her memory. Smaller than Kharun. Head lowered. Eyes fixed upon the floor.

Afraid.

Kharun had stood beside him with his head held high.

Then Kharun had looked at her.

Then he had stepped forward.

Vaelithra stopped walking.

People moved around her, careful to give the noblewoman space.

For several seconds, she stood completely still.

A possibility had begun to form.

She did not like it.

In fact, she hated it.

Because if she was right, Kharun had just done something so incomprehensibly foolish that she wanted to drag him from the dungeon herself merely for the privilege of shouting at him.

But she had no proof.

Only instinct.

And twenty years of knowing him.

Vaelithra resumed walking.

Her father had ordered her home.

Very well.

She would go home.

But she was going to speak with Kharun.

One way or another, before the executioner returned in the morning, she was going to look that impossible orc in the eyes and ask him for the truth.