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Chapter Text

“I hope there won’t be any hard feelings.” Nepheli got up as she spoke. Scooting her chair back produced a sound like uncut nails on concrete. “And I wish you well in your efforts to becoming Elden Lord.”

“Do you,” said that rough, ragged voice—the words sounding more like a statement than an actual question. Nepheli flinched her gaze away, her lips pressed tightly together.

“It’s like you always used to tell me, sir,” she said. “Someday, all doves leave the nest.”

Hot coals burned in the fireplace, spitting out embers and raw flame through a never-ending silence. Nepheli’s legs felt numb, and she’d only been standing for a minute.

“Just one thing,” Gideon said, and Nepheli’s skin crawled as she forced herself to look at him. Sitting the way he always sat, like some starved sentry hunched over stale carrion. He held a quill with fresh ink on its tip, a parchment half-finished spread out before him on his desk. His grip was perfectly steady. Even now in this furious flamelight, Nepheli couldn’t see his eyes within the deep black holes of his helmet. A numb part of her wondered if they were ever there to begin with.

“Are you doing this for you, or are you doing it for him?”

He stared wordlessly, and Nepheli felt her resolve burn under that black gaze. It took an exceptional gift to accomplish that. To make one feel shame where there ought not be any. The painful weight of it pressed down on her throat, plummeting her gaze to the stained wood floor. The crackling fire drowned her ears.

“You may go now,” Gideon said. His quill danced across the parchment. Nepheli realized with a grimace that she’d been waiting for his permission all along.

Ruling over a keep like Stormveil exposes its many particular vices. The exiled militia refuse to work in tandem with the castle knights under most circumstances, the Omen cannot be understood and don’t really get along with anyone, and the warhawks seem incapable of acclimating to their newly assigned duties as maildoves. It had taken months to pry the birds away from their precious and wicked blades to begin with, months of gentle soothing and careful reassurance. Godrick’s entire stock had been raised from birth without real legs or claws of their own, after all. They must be told recurrently that they won't be whipped or tarred for doing anything less than kill or maim, that in fact life will be much better without a pair of iron instruments hanging from their ankles every time they take flight. Only now the poor flocks must contend with the lack of that very same familiar weight in their daily lives. It is a period of precarious readjustment.

The duties of a lord hardly feel different than those of a champion or a warrior, and if that is the case it is because Nepheli has made them that way. She spends more time out on the castle grounds than within its walls, directing and often assisting the staff in their labors as they reconstruct its many collapsed areas. She initially experienced some pushback from the old guard within the staff, those who still remembered Godrick’s reign with vivid clarity. Knowing right from wrong brings with it its own kind of clarity, and it didn’t take long for Nepheli’s constant acts of benevolence to dissuade any lingering protest. In this hectic schedule the throne room and its ornate chair are hardly used, and every referral to Nepheli as My Lady still feels like a punch to the gut for her. But these are all discomforts dulled and buried by the passage of time. Of course, she can only avoid the inevitable for so long. The one task dreaded above all others.

The paperwork.

“Gostoc, don’t leave the door open when you walk in,” she says, biting her lip with the quill and paper in hand as she sits at her desk. “The maildoves soar without a compass.”

He grumbles an apology as he proceeds to leave the door slightly ajar. A few knobbly fingers scratch the weathered lines of his neck, his milk-white eyes squinting. “Centurio wants your opinion on the front gate, My Lady. He reckons he and the boys can get it fixed by the time Miss Halcion and all her buzzing bees come along—”

Nepheli bites back a curse. How had she forgotten about the Stormhill gala? “We’re two weeks away, right?”

“Eh, one.” Gostoc rolls his neck until it cracks, like he just can’t be bothered. “Oh, and about that. Kenneth’s maildove arrived this morning: He’s still tied down with the demihumans over east, and thus will not be able to attend the coming affairs as planned.”

Nepheli sits back, chewing the nubs of her finger nails. His absence is technically a benefit—now there’s less guests to cater to. Stormveil’s stockpiles always seem to waver on the precipice of running dangerously low. The downside is Kenneth won't be here to save her from those pampered mongrels this time. A quiet sigh escapes Nepheli’s throat at the same time a thunderous rumble quakes the entire office. She squints at Gostoc.

“Just an Omen or three,” he explains. “Remember those stockades near the chapel? Only so much heavy lifting we mere commonfolk can take…”

“Whips aren’t allowed anymore.”

“Eh, right.” Another nervous scratch at his neck—which means either he’s lying or his conniptions are acting up again. Nepheli makes a mental note of it just in case. Last time he lost composure all of the corpses in the morgue had been dug up and left to lie there after being stripped of their possessions.

Blinking down at the inventory manifest on her desk turns out to be a mistake. She’d looked away for too long. Now the numbers are a jumbled mess in her head. “Any answers to our call for arithmeticians?”

“Eh, no, My Lady. I doubt there’s a single soul in Limgrave that can tell you the difference between addition and subtraction.”

“Or the sum.” Another thunderous quake shakes the office, and against Nepheli’s better judgment she ignores it. Tapping her fingers on the desk. “How’re your lessons coming along on that front, anyhow?”

“Two plus two equals fish.”

Funny. “Is there anything else you have to tell me, Gostoc?”

“Oh, right. We also received word this morning of—”

The next quake knocks the candles off her desk. Gostoc instantly jerks his head away, whistling crudely. Nepheli permits him a moment’s glare before marching out the office and through Limgrave’s winding halls. Most of the limbless bodies have been removed from the premises but a faint iron odor still remains, no matter how often or how hard the staff scrubs down every surface. The brick and tile are darkly slick as a result, stuck in an impermanent state of being almost clean.

Nepheli’s boots squeak as she storms out into the light of day, on the stone walkway near the chapel Gostoc had spoken of. Instantly she’s struck with a cacophony of sounds, the clank of armor as banished knights and exiles run about the walkway, the shouts of commoners as they pull and strain on straw rope. A bound Omen struggles and roars, twisting and flinging stray commoners left and right. The stockades lie in shattered wooden shards strewn across the stone, the remains of stakewalls and iron ballistic shields. The chapel casts a long shadow over the commotion, as if not even the day itself can bear witness to the sorry state of affairs.

Nepheli grips the axe hooked at her waist before trudging into the fray. For most the sight of a raised stormhawk axe is enough to get them to stand down. Some of the commoner servants need to actually see Nepheli’s face to get the message, and whatever they glimpse there is enough to get them to drop the ropes instantly and submit. She glances the whips coiled and hanging at their belts and her head grows faint with the scent of ozone. Control. She breathes smoothly and the stirring cloud of anger within her vanishes. Now is not the time for thunder. That comes later.

The Omen is larger than most, older, a female with roots sprawling and wild over its hulking frame. She snorts and grunts as she tears the rope bindings away, agitated and swatting at nothing. A properly recorded Omen vocabulary does not exist—one of many consequences of the Erdtree’s reign. How do you defuse a situation when neither of you speak the same tongue? 

Nepheli puts her axe away, swallowing roughly as she takes cautious steps forward, the rest of her staff sheltering behind her as she approaches the Omen with both hands raised. The group of Omen under Stormveil’s employ all recognize Nepheli by now, as she’d taken great lengths to familiarize herself with them personally—whether or not they’ve come to trust her is another matter. They remember Godrick’s rule, his standards, his punishments. Nepheli’s reign has only just begun, and despite her transgressions the commoners under her employ are still carrying whips. Again, the storm stirs within her bones. Again, she attempts to will the thunder away. It’s getting harder to do that in light of a castle staff so hellbent on clinging to the Old Ways of doing things.

“Stand back, My Lady,” one of the  knights behind her calls out but they do not move, “sunlight haunts the beast, drives it into a frenzy! There’s nothing to do now but dispose of—”

The Omen flings a chunk of stakewall over the group's head with a groan, her roars mingling with the splintering crash of wood as she steps back, batting at the air in front of her. Nepheli grits her teeth—the group’s presence agitates the Omen further, but what happens if she turns around to try and call them off? Movements are unpredictable, and she refuses to shed a single drop of blood in this exchange. Inching forward, she maintains as cool an air as she can muster as she removes her leather cowl. Shaking her bushy hair out from her face, Nepheli gestures to the Omen and then herself, her hand pressed lightly over her chest bindings. That silent gesture conveyed between wordless beings: You know me. I am your fellow. I am your friend.

The Omen snorts uncertainly, panting as her eyes dart across the walkway. She hugs her arm tightly over her stomach, clutching the space gingerly. Black-nailed fingers spread between wicked horns, pressing into the soft skin beneath. Her gaze seems to try and urge something out from Nepheli, a panicked desperation in her expression.

Nepheli maintains eye contact with the Omen as she calls out over her shoulder, “What did you take from her?”

The group seems hesitant to answer.  Eventually another knight says, “Take? We didn’t take anything from it, My Lady—it was like that when we dragged it out from the pens—”

The Omen roars, her shoulders rising and falling rapidly. She’s afraid, she’s terrified, she needs something more than she needs her own life and these stammering fools can’t give Nepheli anything to work with. “What else was in her pen?”

A stray arrow glances off the stone floor near the Omen’s foot before anyone can answer. Nepheli jerks her head back and orders the group to cease fire, but it’s too late. The Omen howls in a higher, more anxious pitch, an awful sound, and suddenly rushes forward in a blind panic. The muscles in Nepheli’s back pinch together as the men behind her trip over themselves, each and all shouting out near incomprehensible rubbish.

“My Lady—!”

“Look out—!”

Gold flashes brightly for an instant before a thunderous crack silences the entire walkway. The sudden spike in heat haults both Omen and Stormveil staff in their tracks, the air suddenly sucked out from their lungs. Nepheli stands with her legs square and her back straight, a stormhawk axe coated in lightning raised high overhead. Her expression is that of complete and furious resolve.

The men drop their arms when she glances at them, one by one before they take to their knees with their heads hung low. The Omen has stumbled over herself, shrinking against the ground and cowering with her face covered. She flinches when Nepheli approaches, refusing to meet her gaze even as the woman kneels before her in a relenting gesture. All Nepheli can think of is how often this Omen has been made to do this exact thing—made to feel so small beneath the almighty ruler. This is the role Nepheli has chosen to assume. The axe feels heavy in her hand. All-powerful and useless.

Something faint emanates from the doorway behind the Omen. She and Nepheli both stir at the sound: an ugly, gargling cry. Hooking her axe away, Nepheli’s gaze focuses on the doorway just as someone completely unexpected emerges—someone carrying a small, fleeting thing bundled up in swathed cloth.

“There you are. He’s been screaming all over for you, you know. Heard him in the pens.”

The Omen stumbles onto her feet, immediately snatching her baby out of the man’s outstretched hands. Almost instantly she sits down to cradle her child, grunting quietly as she sways him back and forth in her arms. Behind Nepheli her men are rising onto their feet, still cautious and maintaining a steady distance. She walks up to the man to get a proper look at him, blinking a little dumbly through a receding haze of adrenaline. He has his hands on his hips now, still garbed in those trademark Kaiden furs of his. The dull red mark of the Fell God is branded over one of his ice blue eyes, and the smile he gives her is almost as unmistakable as his thick crimson mane.

“Tarnished,” Nepheli says, almost to herself in her own muted shock. He dips his head in a humble nod.

“It's good to see you too.”

The sense comes back to her and she almost rolls her eyes, but not quite. “Stuff it,” she says, and pulls him into an embrace before he can get another word out.

Of course Gostoc leaves the news of Aeodhan’s arrival last . The comings and goings of their very own Elden Lord are of tantamount importance to all but the most sanctimonious of corpse-looters, it seems. There wasn’t even anyone to receive him at the gate—the commotion with the Omen had exhausted the brunt of Stormveil’s personnel on rotation. Every attempt on Nepheli’s part to apologize is interrupted by Aeodhan’s sudden interest in the next landmark or situation they pass by as they walk the castle grounds. He pitches in to assist the preparation of straw dummies, the tempering of dull blades in the armory, even picks out a shade for a part of the castle they’re repainting. He does these things and hops back into his conversation with Nepheli as if he never missed a step. He regales her with his journey up the Mountaintops, his engagements with ancient dragons in a crumbling utopia, his back-to-back duels with prior Elden Lords in a ruined capitol. For Nepheli’s part, she has tales of…arithmetic. Even her voice sounds dull to herself, embarrassed. And yet Aeodhan commends her achievements, remarking on how he never had the chance to learn. His spirits never waver.

“Trina’s Lilies can’t just grow anywhere,” he’s explaining, on his knees in a small soil patch near the Omen pens with his hands firmly gripped around a dead stem. “Not by themselves. Need a few mushrooms, some nice shade. It’s  a cycle of sorts, you see—things help each other grow.”

Nepheli rests her fists on her hips, the corners of her lips just faintly raised. “Found much growing in the Erdtree, I take it?”

His smile falters. He finishes weeding the dead plants with, “None much at all, in fact.”

It's the first real acknowledgment of time’s passing. By Nepheli’s count near six moons have lapsed since her last conversation with Aeodhan. He’d paid a visit just after her ascent to lordship, before his trek up the Mountains where he did Marika knew what. There’d been a grim determination in his gaze, one that threatened to overshadow the admiration he expressed in Nepheli accepting the task that was ruling Stormveil. He’d gripped her by the shoulders, beaming proudly  as he pulled her into a tight embrace. That careful dignity she’d etched into her throat threatened to erode on the very spot.

“Whatever it was you found in there,” Nepheli says, her tone quietly cautious as Aeodhan rises to full height, “I hope it managed to bring you peace.”

“It didn’t,” he says without missing a beat, his smile full and easy. “But it put the Old Ways behind us. Now we can finally move forward, can’t we?”

Returning his bright expression is difficult. Hesitant, Nepheli says, “Yes, finally.”

He seems satisfied with that. He turns his head up and his eyes slip shut as he basks his face in the afternoon sun. The light washes his face out so Nepheli can only make out the smooth curved lines that make up its silhouette. His jaw is wide and carved, his hair as wild and mangy as hers, but there’s a softness to his expression that she could never hope to replicate. He will make a great Lord for these Lands. Somehow this gentle quality belongs to the same fierce Tarnished she once knew. A terribly far cry from when she first encountered him...

“Will you be staying with us for long?” Nepheli asks, but when his eyes open he’s distracted once more: they track a wheelhouse being carted by two lumbering Omen across the central courtyard.

“I bet I could carry that. No, unfortunately, I won’t be staying the night—curious as I am to witness your strategy for entertaining guests.”

Nepheli turns her cheek and coughs, but her throat remains uncomfortably tight. “It’s not terribly compelling.”

“You, boring? Impossible.” He catches her with a grin so charming it dips her chin and twists her body away from his direction. With a pleasant sigh, Aeodhan continues, “The stars are out tonight, you see. They bring messages I probably ought to hear firsthand.”

“Is that so,” Nepheli says, but she can only feign understanding to such an extent. The burning of the Erdtree and the fall of the Greater Will at large have summoned up this peculiar sense of ease in her old friend—one he had sorely lacked when they first met. He hasn’t brought his pair of Omen Cleavers with him this visit, but she remembers clearly just how very talented he was with them—how talented he still must be. This is the same Aeodhan who challenged her to a duel to the death upon their first meeting, isn’t it?

Aeodhan steps up beside Nepheli, and whether he’s aware of it or not, promptly punishes the woman for her mental wanderings by placing a firm hand on her bare shoulder. Her next breath catches with a grunt, her eyes shot as goosebumps travel from the point of contact over her entire chest. He always ran cold—such stark contrast to the burning furnace of her heart. She clears her throat, praying her cowl can hide her face well enough from this angle.

“Worry not,” he says kindly, “I’ll be around for supper. I can join your lot in the mess—or we can find a den somewhere and hold a private dinner, just us two. And we can talk about, well, everything.”

There is smoke in her throat. “The mess will do just fine,” she murmurs.

Aeodhan chuckles faintly. “Yes, just fine.” His hand slips away. The sun dips past the castle battlements, imbuing the sky with pinks and golds the way pastels stain a tapestry. He seems to be observing that great Erdtree-less horizon. “So much has changed.”

“Yes.”

He glances her way, his smile more tender. Nodding to himself, he hops off the rampart and makes for the ailing wheelhouse. Nepheli remains, her figure statuesque in the dying light. The cold lingers on her shoulder. She recalls the hand that’d just been placed there moments ago.

She thinks of the glittering dark ring she glimpsed on his wedding finger.

“Yes, so much has.”

Chapter Text

“Get your own stinking prawn then,” Aeodhan hissed, shooing Nepheli away with one of those plump crustaceans. It was before she’d left Gideon's care, and before the Erdtree had burned down.

“I wasn’t saying no,” she said neutrally, but he was already tending to his own appetite. She raised a brow, watching the way Aeodhan huddled into himself before the budding site of Grace in this small canopy he’d fashioned for himself beneath one of Liurnia's massive cliffs. She didn’t quite enjoy this country—the air was all too damp, a scent like mineral dew soaked into everything. The Tarnished didn’t seem to like it very much either. Beyond this dark thicket lay vast lakes drowned out by the magnificent glow of the Erdtree. Here there was at least some recompense from that blinding light.

Kneeling beside him, Nepheli set about stirring the boiling morsels in the pot Aeodhan had set up. He made a face but did nothing to impede her. She was beginning to learn his tells—what he permitted and what he did not. Ever since working together to bring Godrick down it seemed the Tarnished had been avoiding her. Passing encounters since amounted to an exchange of single-word responses and not much else. Perhaps he felt some need to save face in light of his resounding defeat at her hand during their very first meeting. He could be permitted that, but the constant cold shoulder was growing somewhat taxing in its own way. It wasn’t like she’d been the one to challenge him, after all.

“Made it through Raya Lucaria,” he grumbled between mouthfuls of prawn. “Snagged the Queen’s Rune. Pass the ale.”

He swiped the pitcher as soon as Nepheli raised it up. She studied his brusque mannerisms but offered no protest. “How’d that go?”

“The things those scholars had gotten up to.” Aeodhan shook his head after downing a swig, his grip suddenly tight on the ale. “Degenerate work. It’s a shock Rennala had survived at all to begin with.”

“You don’t blame her for the catastrophe?”

He snorted. “Which one? Pick your poison—each of these Lands carries its own maledictions.”

“That is fair,” Nepheli conceded, even-toned and congenial. “How was the headmaster of Raya Lucaria, then?”

Aeodhan gazed with half-slit eyes into the Grace. “Broken.”

The righteous fury in his tone was somewhat overwhelming whenever he spoke like this. Nepheli had already garnered the gist of Aeodhan’s curious background—that he descended from the Mountaintops of the Giants, that he was a Kaiden sellsword born of a certain name owing to a very certain lineage—as had her father, of course. She held no grievances over that. It meant she was sent to keep track of and watch over someone who already interested her, which was all well and good—but she was still struck by the honed and very much directed nature of Aeodhan’s wrath. He was far from the blind berserker she’d initially mistook him for. A method lay whereabouts to his madness.

“Why're you here?”

Nepheli blinked. She hadn’t been expecting such a direct question. “I’m investigating the whereabouts of an Albinauric settlement. I should be getting close.”

With a cruel grin Aeodhan said, “What, so you can report it back to your precious father?”

“That is the duty I am assigned,” Nepheli said, growing somewhat weary.

Aeodhan snorted softly. “You trust that old codger with far too much.”

“He can be cruel—”

“Vicious.”

“—But he is my guardian, and I respect his wishes. Not all of us have such troubled relationships with our fathers.”

It was perhaps too low of a blow, but Nepheli needed to clearly signal where she drew her line in the sand. She grew tense, ready for an outburst, a retort, maybe even another scrap. But again, the Tarnished surprised her. He sat quietly with his hands in his lap, his head somewhat dipped as to grant him the visage of an exhausted traveler. Prawn oil stained his fingers. In the flickering Grace light, it almost looked like blood.

“You’re right. My apologies, Miss Loux.”

Nepheli remained on her knees with her back erect, uncertain of what to do. With a wide and open expression she said, “Pass the ale.”

He did so without looking at her. She watched him over the brim of her own cup as she drank, this curiously polite adjudicator of vengeance. The light of Grace danced in her eyes. For a time no one said anything.

“I make for Caelid next,” Aeodhan revealed. He rolled his jaw. “A favor for a new acquaintance. But it leads the way to Radahn.”

That part truly gave Nepheli some pause. The cup lowered in her lap, she said, “You believe you can fell the mad demigod?”

“He fell a long time ago. I must simply take part in the festival that grants him rest.”

Nepheli’s fingers traced over the cup’s brim. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she said, “You don’t have to be the one to deal the blow. The things you’ve already borne witness to at Raya Lucaria…”

“Borne witness to what, exactly? A woman once married to the father that never knew me?”

There wasn’t anything to say to that. Nepheli bowed her head as Aeodhan gripped a fistful of his own blood-red hair. “He hated this, you know. This proof of his own infernal heritage. It brought him shame. Can you believe that? Great Champion Radagon feeling a single ounce of shame for anything?”

For a moment, near the end, his voice broke furiously. His fingers curled into tight fists at his knees. Nepheli set her cup aside, nudging herself just slightly closer to the burning man. Softly, she said, “Does he know he abandoned you?”

The grace glowed and swayed. Aeodhan stared into its light as if entranced by some great vision. “He will. The Runes will gather and those doors will open. I will ascend those steps, and he will know this to be true as anything else in that confounded golden tree. There is no forsaking your own past. Not even when you’re a God.”

He looked at Nepheli, and the seething fury she saw there was not that of a proud man but of an abandoned child. All of that raw rage, that heartache and sorrow made manifest. It moved her like nothing else in her life had. So strange and strong the feeling was that she could not recognize it for what it truly meant until much later—that it compelled her because it was her. A blend of admiration and fear and pride and longing all brewed together within her in that instant. She had never been compelled to caress someone’s face before.

“The hens always come home to roost,” he said.

It’s the day of the Stormhill gala. Nepheli looks the sad, sagging dress up and down with her arms folded over her chest. The pair of commoner servants hold it up so she can better see the yellow blotch pattern peppering its black wrinkled surface. “Sunflowers,” she says dully.

“The hottest fashion in Limgrave, yes there is,” one of the commoners snivels.

She gives them a cursory glance before promptly dismissing them and the rags both. Looking out at the waning sun beyond her chamber window, she sighs—the Champion Leathers will just have to do for tonight. Again. The last time Lady Halcyon and her entourage visited the woman had almost up and spewed her guts at the sight of Nepheli’s chosen attire. Attempting to grant the woman a crash course in Badland culture had proven disappointingly unfruitful as well, the Lady more concerned with Nepheli’s prior experience with the recently crowned Elden Lord than with anything else. She never said it aloud, but Halcyon had certainly held a vested interest in Aeodhan’s marriage prospects, and her own potential position among them—or at least that’s what Nepheli had assumed at the time. She had somehow assumed far too little and far too much all in the same measure.

What had she expected when the Tarnished visited again? Well, she hadn’t really been expecting a visit at all, had she? Reconstruction at Stormveil had entered such a critical juncture. Chores and duties piled up until the rest of the outside world seemed to fold in on itself. She had hardly registered the Erdtree’s burning, or even doubted its inevitability beforehand if she were to be honest with herself. Aeodhan had already set out to do everything he had said he would up to that point. None of the staff at the time had known what to do gazing up at that luminously blazing sight, whether to cheer or cry. And yet Nepheli had hardly spared it a glance after it caught flame, gazing at the tree curiously for a second or two out this very same window the night it happened. She’d shrugged the sight off as she parted the moleskin drapes hanging around her canopy, the bed creaking as she settled atop its furskin covers. She’d reached beneath her pillow as she did most nights and pulled out the near clear vial she kept there. Even without unplugging the cap, she could still detect the faint scent of ash in there. Just that one whiff instantly calmed her nerves, dulled her senses, as she could always rely on it to. But the sense of peace these ashes bestowed within her no longer reminded her of the first hawk she caught. It reminded her of the man who’d brought them to her. The memory of his eyes made her feel warm. It made her feel safe.

For the fifteenth time today Nepheli’s cheeks begin to burn. She steps away from the cool stone window and yet that blasted heat remains. Her hand comes to rest on one of her bed’s wooden posts, her fingers curling beneath that polished knob. No one knows of her blunder, though that hardly helps matters. For how long have those in the Lands Between known of the Tarnished’s betrothal? And what blunder is that, exactly? That Nepheli had not been informed? It’s not as if it were her duty to remain vigilant on the ins and outs of another Lord’s social life. She does not know who the lucky man or lady is (though she has an inkling) nor does she need to. There has been no error. No blunder at all.

Gostoc knocks on the open door. The wood splinters beneath Nepheli’s grip. Shards scatter the air and nestle themselves in her coarse hair. She blinks.

After a silence, clearing his throat, Gostoc says, “Halcyon and company arrive within the hour or so, My Lady. Would you, uh, like me to walk you through the proper forms of table etiquette again?”

“No. In fact, I think I’ll go out for a run,” Nepheli says in a rush, forcing herself past Gostoc and out into the hall at a stallion’s pace.

The banishment of the Greater Will removed most of its influences from the Lands—Godwyn’s precocious Deathroot plague being no exception. In an ironic twist of fate, Stormveil’s foundations actually find themselves weaker for the absence. It’s taken months for Nepheli’s personnel to begin patching up the gigantic crevasses and gaps left behind in the castle’s framework. Many sections of its exterior remain precariously open as a result.

It's these open wounds she abandons her pent up torment through. She crosses spiraling towers in an instant, hurtles through walls and over the plunging cliff chasms that separate them. She sprints long after the muscles in her legs begin to burn, the air tearing at her throat until her lungs hold the consistency of sandpaper. Many of the staff glimpse her trek as they mill about the castle in preparation for the gala, though none try to follow. They learned long ago that not even the wind can catch Nepheli Loux when she sets her mind to something.

She skids to a stop on a dry and green-patched cliffside. The view looks out to the Chapel of Anticipation, perched as it is atop its spindle of stone, and the great ocean of gray beyond. Taking deep and haggard breaths through her nose with her hands on her hips, Nepheli’s feet stumble across the dirt for a moment as she reorients herself. That pleasant fog in her head that only raw exertion can bring is already beginning to fade away. The details in her surroundings become painfully clear. It’s not long before she feels that lump of dread in her throat once more, as if it had never truly left at all.

Nepheli’s expression hardens as she watches the pink afterglow of a sun that has already vanished. She feels silly, embarrassed. The Tarnished had never owed her anything. He was undoubtedly a man in most senses, brash and foolhardy and unapologetically stoic, an island unto himself. But that was what had drawn her to him, wasn’t it? That unrelenting, volatile yet somehow impersonal passion for those who are less fortunate. She still isn’t certain she’s ever met a man who fit those particular qualities, before or since. It doesn’t matter what you are, or who you swear allegiance to, or who you’d once chosen to be your own father. The Tarnished lifts you to where he defiantly stands no matter what you have to say about it. That extraordinary trait is what earned him his current title. Perhaps it was what had led him to look towards other women as well. And she had perhaps been foolish to think she’d ever held any stake in the race.

The flap of uneasy wings breaks Nepheli’s train of thought. Her gaze shifts at the same moment the maildove skids across the dirt with a broken shriek. Loose feathers burst over the gold-tinged scenery as the creature tries to take flight. Beneath its legs a pair of small mechanical pincers occupy the same space razor-sharp blades once did. Exhausted and beaten by its own attempts, the maildove lets out another frustrated cry before slumping against the ground.

“Still on unsteady feet, aren’t we,” Nepheli says, approaching the creature gently. Its spotted patterns bristle but otherwise the maildove hardly protests. Kneeling beside it, Nepheli brings curled fingers across its cheek. The maildove’s round, dark eye slides shut as it preens softly. Mottled wings drag against dirt pebbles as it brings more of itself to rest atop Nepheli’s lap. The woman smiles, a faint and somewhat grim sight.

“Or perhaps it is just the ground beneath us.” Her eyes drift over to the maildove’s feet. She notices for the first time the crumbled envelope clutched in its grip. Frowning, she leans over and slips the parchment out. The message is sparse and haphazardly scrawled.

I can only hold these ghouls off for so long. Or should we say you took a raincheck?

~Gostoc

Well, he’s anything if not discreet. Her shoulders slumped, Nepheli looks up and glances the horizon one last time. She continues stroking the maildove as all of reality grounds her to this moment. Ring or no ring, she has a keep to maintain. Duties to uphold. A country to guide by hand. That same sense of pride Nepheli felt when she took up the role of Lord courses through her once more.

Dispelling her melancholy with one last exhale, she rises to leave that dark horizon behind.

“C-Cherries.” Lady Halcyon speaks through black-ringed lips. Her sunken cheeks are bleached white, her hair strung up in a grey beehive with stark white zig-zag patterns meant to resemble lightning. “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Nepheli sits at the head table with the elite members of the Lady’s court. Resting her elbows on her chair's armrests, she’s hardly touched her own food. “I take it the harvest has been plentiful,” she says carefully. Halcyon is something like a shivering bat when agitated.

The rest of the accompaniment dines with Stormveil’s staff in the long tables that line the length of the Great Hall. Someone had forgotten to light all the candles. Only one of the above chandeliers is alight, illuminating sparse sections of the Hall below.

The exiles have hung their hoods and the knights their helmets. The Omen enjoy their reprieve in the field by their pens beneath the stars. Nepheli envies them the fresh air. Upon the guests’ arrival an aroma like sweat-tinged ammonia promptly soaked into the meat and potatoes prepared for the evening. The lain-out utensils are now caked in powdered substances.

“It’s somewhat arid in here, isn’t it?” Halcyon fans herself with an instrument Nepheli hadn’t seen her produce from her dress’s folds, but there’s no other explanation for its abrupt existence. “Am I wrong, isn’t it just freezing?” The Lady’s brother and cousins and ladies-in-waiting at the table, all similarly bleached white and sallow, nod in excited twitches.

“I might have detected a breeze,” Nepheli says. It is in fact quite stuffy and humid. Hence the stripped down nature of her staff’s attire. One would think the ripening of cherry batches would signify the advent of longer, hotter days. But most of the Limgrave aristocracy is still struggling to remember what seasons are.

Halcyon fans herself insufferably. “Might you open a window or two, Nepheli darling?”

“They’re all open.”

Shouts and the clatter of cutlery erupt further down the tables. Some of the exiles are quarreling with Halcyon’s honor guard. Mail-garbed men of varying stature shove and smack and bite each other, using the ruined ceramic dinnerware as makeshift daggers to plunge into each other’s stomachs. The Lady and her court crane their necks in unison and watch the proceedings for a minute or so before eventually losing interest. Nepheli waits for them to do something. When they don’t, her eyes flick to the ceiling and she disrupts the brawl with a sharp whistle. Her exiles disengage immediately, scooting back into their seats with their palms flat on the table like nothing ever happened. Halcyon and her cronies chirp and clap like Nepheli’s just pulled a hare out of a hat. She presses her lips together. With any luck that’ll be tonight’s only brawl.

“My oh my, Miss Loux, I’ll never fathom how you manage to do that,” Halcyon crows.

“The steps are few and easy,” Nepheli says slowly, controlling her own patience via her tone, but Halcyon continues on as if she didn’t hear her, blathering to her cohorts about things Nepheli can’t be bothered to discern. Halcyon decides in passing to execute the men who engaged in the brawl moments earlier. That almost brings Nepheli to glare. These people forget they no longer have an Erdtree to return their souls to. Death has become real and permanent. But was any of it ever real to people like them, Nepheli wonders. She suddenly feels very tired, and almost considers excusing herself from the table. Her eyes drift over the gala and catch themselves on Godfrey.

His portrait still looms over the Great Hall. In that piece there are no galas, no stuffy aristocrats or winding budgetary scrolls to be seen anywhere. There is only the warrior and his bloodlust therein. Serosh’s undulating mane inspires something like elation in Nepheli as she ponders what exactly it is Godfrey is supposed to be looking out to. Whatever it was, it certainly couldn’t have been home. There was never anything in the Badlands worth returning to for anyone with the strength to survive it. Wasn’t that what he’d told her, their one and only conversation they ever had so many years ago? What would he have to say if he could see her now, entertaining ghouls and pining after married lords?

“Erdtree to Miss Loux!”

A pair of fingersnaps almost cause Nepheli to break the table in two. Panting lightly, she hones in on the rancorous laughter surrounding her. Halcyon sits back in her chair with a proud, twitching grin. “Darling, we were calling you for minutes on end!”

“I was,” Nepheli starts, realizing she doesn’t have a good answer. She shakes her head in a last attempt to right herself. “Apologies. My duties here often stretch long into the night.”

Halcyon’s stretched fingers gingerly brush the brim of a goblet filled with dark wine. “Of course! It always takes some getting used to—when you’re not from around certain parts, is all. How long is it you’ve been here with us in Limgrave, now? Ten, maybe twelve months?”

“I traveled through frequently enough before being granted lordship,” Nepheli says, trying not to grimace. She’s been caught too off-guard—now the guests attempt to sink their claws in. Halcyon leans in mischievously as if she’s read Nepheli's mind.

“And that was with Gideon, wasn’t it? That old curmudgeon. He paid more than one visit to my estate over the years, I’ll have you know. He was terrific, just a wonderful Tarnished through and through. It’s strange, I just can’t recall your ever being with him.”

“He…often had me run errands in the field. In lands beyond Limgrave as well.” Nepheli attempts a confident smile. “Your friends may be surprised to hear I do not actually descend from this country.”

“They know. I mean that in the most pleasant of ways of course, darling.”

“It doesn’t sound pleasant,” Nepheli lets slip before she can catch herself.

“I promise it's a statement void of hostility, my dear—it’s just a simple fact. There’s not a single noblewoman living in Limgrave today who’d arrive to a gala looking like that.” Halcyon’s delicate porcelain smile doesn’t waver as the rest of the table laughs appreciatively. Nepheli’s fingers curl on her armrests as the Lady directs her voice outward. “Marika knows what I would do if I caught one of my own handmaidens in a set of rags such as those!”

Another Stormhill noble chimes in with, speaking to Halcyon as if Nepheli isn’t even there, “You’d just think it so cliché. The barbarian warrior goddess? The headdress, the cauldron? I mean, perhaps if we were still in the Shattering…”

“I suppose that is just the culture over there in the Badlands,” Halcyon’s brother clicks his tongue. He shrugs, “It’s a backwards land. I hear a man’s severed tongue is considered a proper wedding gift.”

“Speaking of weddings,” Halcyon says, shimmying her shoulders quiet giddily. “Have you heard the latest gossip from Altus? Rumor is they have consummated. All anyone can talk about over there is Lord Aeodhan’s betrothal to—”

“What would you do?”

The table falls silent as Halcyon jerks her head over. Nepheli has sidled up next to the Lady during their chirping tirade. With her elbow propped on the table, her arm almost brushes Halcyon’s.

Nepheli cocks her head. “If you were to catch one of your maidens in my rags. What would you do then? I’m curious.”

Halcyon stares at her with those wide and hollow eyes. They dart over her face with a kinetic, panicked frenzy. They flick over to the other nobles seated at the table. None of them say anything—some even have their chins dipped down, their gazes curiously preoccupied with their own laps. Halcyon tries a grin on Nepheli, the edges of her lips twitching into the curl. “You misunderstand me, Miss Loux. I was—they were light jests. I meant no ill will—”

“No, you just said it.”

The breath seems to catch in Halcyon’s throat. She manages to meet Nepheli’s dim gaze for a few moments. Her expression twitches apart until she eventually can do nothing but look away, meekly silent. Nepheli observes the fruits of her labor, trying to squeeze some semblance of satisfaction out of it for her efforts—but there is none. A sour sensation fills her chest, and she gives Halcyon a look of faint disgust before rising from her seat.

“Excuse me, lords and ladies. I’ve a couple of severed tongues to see about.”

It feels good to leave them like that, striding down between the Great Hall’s tables. Nepheli tries to hold onto that fleeting victory as she exits the gala and everything it seems hellbent on reminding her of. She fights the urge to shrink beneath Godfrey's portrait as she marches out, his gaze shrewd and regal and faraway, as if he himself has already passed judgment on her.

What was this courtyard being renovated into again? That’s right—a garden.

A delicate sequence of hedges has replaced the battlements that one stood here. Orchids and marigolds blend together in a rainbow hue. An empty patch of dirt lays in the garden’s center for a fountain that will eventually be built. Nepheli leans against the castle wall with her arms crossed and scrutinizes the petals of each individual dandelion from far away. Her nails, mere nubs, dig into the flesh above her elbows and produce a dull pain. She shouldn’t have excused herself so abruptly. The riff have said worse to the raff before—she could take it. It’s like even the passing mention of Aeodhan heightens all of her being, forcing her to fight or flee. She shouldn’t be fighting her own subjects at all. If one could even call such petty antics a real fight. She didn’t—couldn’t—so much as raise her own voice. Gideon had stripped her of such outward expression a long time ago. She could shout or scream across this courtyard and the sound would only rake against her throat, sharp and painful and producing nothing in return.  

She thumbs the vial in her palm. Bringing it along for tonight had done nothing in the end. The ashes sit within, plain and dark and almost empty in appearance. Nepheli scrutinizes them quietly, bringing the vial closer to her face. The glass surface feels almost like water in her hand. Its consistency isn’t enough for her callouses to latch onto.

“The Chapel of Anticipation?”

Aeodhan scratched his head with a small smile, sitting beside her against the wall. “It’s a long story.”

In this dim light the Roundtable Hold appeared shrouded in shadow. Fire crackled faintly throughout its entire interior. They could hear Gideon’s pacing steps a few floors above if they were quiet enough. They elected not to be quiet at all.

“They don’t answer me in the slightest,” Aeodhan explained. His voice was uncharacteristically soft—as soft as it’d been when he’d first found her like this, after everything to do with the Albinaurics. She still hadn’t left this spot. “I ring the bell and they refuse the summons. Stubborn old crow.”

“And Roderika’s certain they’re—?”

“The genuine article, yes. Our own veritable Storm King.”

Nepheli’s arms felt suddenly heavy. She bit the inside of her cheek and tried to keep her tone even. “They’re historic ashes in that sense. Maybe even legendary.”

“I know. Well, I don’t really—I’m not from Stormhill. I hold no lineage there, no history. That’s why I figured you could keep them. Maybe see something I can’t.”

Nepheli held the ashes cupped in her hands. She studied them with a long, hard gaze, the lump in her throat taking on a more concrete shape. The feeling was unexplainable—indefinable in her own amateur tongue. She couldn’t explain how the ashes brought her such comfort and such pain all at once. Only that they reminded her of something she once had.

“I don’t have the words,” Nepheli admitted. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Aeodhan then. Statements like ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’ll never forget this’ felt all too mundane—they could never encapsulate what she felt.

“How about this,” Aeodhan said. He shifted in his seat and his knee touched hers. “You hold onto those for me, yeah? You let me know if you ever hear so much as a peep out of them. We’ll bring them back to Roderika, she can coax them out further. And that way we’ll know that they really belong to you.” He laughed. “Not that I need any more proof.”

His smile. It felt so easy and natural now, directed at her. He couldn’t be the same Aeodhan as before—too much had changed. How often had he smiled in her presence before? Had it always felt so warm?

Nepheli could only bear it for so long. She ducked her face away. “You’re so certain of me,” she said helplessly. “So confident I can stand on my own two feet again.”

He laughed again, and it was like she could fall back against its broad, strong quality, and be fully supported by it. He shifted again and before she knew it she felt his arm slung over her shoulder. Her chest tightened, the walls of her throat snapped shut. She felt like a statue; like his half-embrace was an attempt to thaw her.

“Of course I’m certain. You’re Nepheli Loux. You’re a warrior.”

“Moon’ll be out tonight, I reckon.”

Nepheli whips around. Gostoc almost perishes with his back pinned to the wall, his yelp squashed with Nepheli’s elbow pressed against his throat. “O-or not. Whatever takes your—fancy.”

Blushing, Nepheli offers a curt apology before disengaging. She rubs her arm, the vial still in her hand as Gostoc plummets to the ground in gasping shambles.

“I can carry you to the clinic if need be,” Nepheli offers weakly.

“And miss out on the rest of the gala, My Lady?” Gostoc rasps, rubbing his throat gingerly. “No, better to leave bygones where bygones go.”

“ You’re invested in the gala?”

Gostoc tries to cackle. “I’m interested in the bulging, fat pockets of strangers, eh.”

Nepheli’s expression deadens—then she remembers exactly whose pockets they’re discussing and lets it go. Halcyon and her beloved friends can make do without a corsage or two. Just like that Nepheli grows bitter all over again. “Rest assured, friend, I’ll nary chance another step into that dreaded hall for the rest of tonight.”

Gostoc hacks a terrible cough out as he gets back onto his feet. “But our guests have been so genial.”  

Nepheli scoffs lightly. His clothes smell of nickel and iron. There's something black beneath his nails—he’s been sifting through the castle catacombs again. She squashes her more immediate thoughts. There will be a better time to reprimand her subordinate. Or so she’d think. She trusts her own instincts so very well, after all. They are never incorrect. Had she truly never spied that wedding ring before?

“Blind as a bat,” Nepheli murmurs, hating how thick her voice sounds. She hopes Gostoc will not notice.

“If I may so much as chance the ask, My Lady,” he says, and her nerves rise. But then his question comes, “Why is it on nights like these you never wear the pretty laces we set out for you?”

Nepheli snorts. “Because my shoulders are too big for them, and if I had it my way I wouldn’t set out for nights like these at all.”

Gostoc grins wily, his beady eyes scanning her face. “What exactly would you set out for, pray tell?”

Nepheli thinks on that. She opens her mouth only for it to clamp shut. Her first thought: Practice with her stormhawk axes on the castle grounds. But the castle grounds are covered in flowers now, no longer battlements or battle ramparts. Then she thinks she’d spend a night learning more about spirit ash with Roderika, perhaps in the hopes of glimpsing those treasured ghosts herself. But Roderika died with the Roundtable, same as Hewg, same as D and Rogier and Ensha. And Gideon. That scratches out her third thought before it can fully take wind—spar with Aeodhan on the Hold’s first floor until her axes slip from her fingers and she lies flat on her back, breathing and soaring and alive. The Roundtable Hold. She never thought she’d miss such a place. She never thought she’d have to. Gideon was supposed to become Elden Lord, and everything was supposed to be as it should have been. But nothing ever is as it should have been. Now the Erdtree is gone. Now s he is a lord where Father is not.  Now he is gone, and she remains for…

For what, exactly?

Gostoc coughs politely. “Gone a bit spacey, have we.”

Nepheli blinks and the night returns to her. Her gaze slips to the cold ground. “I suppose I don’t have an answer for that one yet.”

“Welcome to the club, My Lady,” Gostoc sighs.

The moon is out now. Nepheli shakes herself off, squinting beneath milk-white stalks of light. That large spotlight in the sky hangs full and blue over the quiet courtyard. It almost feels like it’s watching them. She stares up at it for a long while. “Gostoc?”

“Eh, yes My Lady?”

“We haven’t received any summons to Liurnia, have we?”

“Why would we—?” Realization dawns on Gostoc in the form of a dry exhale. “Eh, no, we have not. Lunar Queen Whatshername and the Tarnished Lord haven’t sent any word to us about wedding proceedings or the like. I reckon they’re still on their honeymoon and whatnot. Heh. Honeymoon. Get it?”

Her arms folded over her chest, Nepheli still stares up at that moon. Blinking, she casts her gaze over the garden one last time. The light has drained the petals of their color.

“Ranni. Her name is Lunar Queen Ranni.”

“Eh…right.”

Nepheli retreats indoors before her chest can grow too heavy.

Chapter Text

Nepheli had only met the Lunar Princess once before.

“And you said your name was Renna?”

The ghostly blue doll caught Nepheli as she was surveilling Stormhill, following a hasty retreat from the nearby castle. There had been no advantage gained within the golden keep. This was Nepheli's twelfth attempt to infiltrate Godrick's stronghold and the most she'd earned for her troubles was the blood of a dozen knights on her blade. No, those walls were solidly fortified—as the woman who named herself Renna seemed passingly interested by. But that wasn’t what she wanted from Nepheli. The woman could gleam that from the very beginning of the conversation.

The blue doll nestled herself within the makeshift alcove of a crumbling piece of architecture jutting out of the clouded hillside. One pair of hands curiously rubbed her chin while the other lay calm in her silken lap. Nepheli wondered what it was like to experience two contradictory emotions at once. Gideon believed the action to be a symptom of a failure in character; a lack of direction. The blue doll seemed quite purposeful in her movements—and in her words.

“Ah. So the church of Elleh is his recurring haunt, is it?” The blue doll tapped her fingers together. Their tips produced a rhythmic wooden thump , again and again. “I believe a merchant set up shop there a while ago, just past the wandering sentinel.”

“That sentinel is vanquished,” Nepheli revealed. “You needn’t worry of its golden stature.”

“I hadn’t. Who felled this Tree Sentinel?”

Nepheli stood on an incline in the hill. This forced her to look up at the blue doll. The air in proximity to the blue doll had chilled a considerable degree. Her lashes were beginning to frost over. “I think you already know the answer to that.”

A sharp wind howled over the hillside. The blue doll smiled, as much as dolls can smile anyhow, and the sight only served to unnerve Nepheli further.

“To be inquisitive is to gain insight. Master Gideon would say the same, wouldn’t he?” The blue doll seemed to leer down at Nepheli. “Isn’t that why he sent you out here?”

Nepheli gripped her axes tightly. Unwinding the knot of tension in her back, she rolled her jaw and said, “It’s why you're here when the rest of your family isn’t.”

“Who said I have a family, I wonder.”

“Who said your name was Renna?”

The grass shifted and swayed like the bulk of a doomed sea. The blue doll leaned in, getting a better look at Nepheli beneath the dip of her great white hat. A certain vestige of resolve remained in the blue doll’s expression, but something else had bloomed there too. A new sense of curiosity, however fleeting. This was somehow more disconcerting than her prior condescension. The doll’s gaze had grown intensely serious. “So the All-Knowing is more than a handler. He passes his coveted wisdom on to those he deems worthy. Very interesting.”

“I told you where the Tarnished will be,” Nepheli said. She made no effort to hide the scowl on her face. “Is there anything else you’d like to hear, Renna ?”

“No, I think that will suffice.” The blue doll sat with her back straight, still gazing down at Nepheli. A light smirk adorned her lips. “Curious. If Torrent’s new master doesn’t work out, perhaps I’ll tender this gift to you.”

Before Nepheli could say anything else, the blue doll vanished. The woman watched whispery blue trails drift away into the clouded sky. Her teeth grit, she wrenched her grip free of her precious stormhawk axes. The experience had made frozen blocks of their handles. That lone eye, blue and shimmering like ghosts of flame. It permeated her thoughts. So that was what had become of Caria’s only daughter.

She vowed never to seek that thing out ever again.

Kenneth Haight announces his arrival to Stormveil, like always, with the warbling and dying sound of badly tuned horns. The marching quartet of demihumans play instruments hewn from unpurified brass, and they are a lasting gift from their ambassador to Haight. Every time he makes it a point to emphasize how much they’re improving. He’s a loud and strangely comforting presence in this castle.

“You’re removing the golden filigree?”

Even if he doesn’t always agree with what Nepheli does to it.

“Nepheli, My Lady,” he moans, slumped over the woman’s office desk like a figure most tragic, “why, why is it you always make the most drastic decisions when I’m away from Stormveil?”

“The filigree is more difficult to maintain than it’s worth, and an all too prevalent reminder of the castle’s prior governor.” Nepheli’s gaze never leaves the parchment it's on—she’s double-checking the castle’s supplies after the arrival of Kenneth and his demihuman entourage. “And I don’t like it. The color is gaudy.”

Kenneth sighs in defeat. “Your keep, your rules, My Lady. Gaudy or no, tradition is valued very highly among the commonfolk, not to mention the men under your employ.”

“The commonfolk value a hot meal and a roof to sleep under.” Nepheli makes a correction on the parchment with her quill. “The men and women under my employ have just begun to rediscover what ‘wanting’ something even means. Or do you not remember the state of the castle pantries at the time of my ascent?”

A sudden shiver overtakes Kenneth, his face paling. “All those corpses…Ah, please bear no offense, Miss Loux. You know me by now—I’m an indomitable worrywart.”

Nepheli smiles faintly in his direction before returning to the scroll. Stormveil is slightly understocked after the recent gala’s expenses. Summer harvest has just begun, so the timing works out, but it still leaves Nepheli unnerved. After all, what if there was no harvest? And the results of it barring Halcyon’s precious cherries remain to be seen. She’ll have to convene with that woman over resupplying the castle because of this…

Nepheli leans back until her shoulder blades press into the edges of her chair and groans, her fingers dug into her wild hair. The sound is involuntary and she regrets having made it as soon as she hears how loud it comes out. Kenneth looks up with his eyebrows raised.

“Acclimating well to the position, I take it?”

“It’s been near twelve moons,” Nepheli mutters, “if I’m not acclimated now then I never will be.”

Kenneth rises from the desk. His hair glints gold in the open doorway light as he clutches his book to his side and observes Nepheli. Once she asked him what the tome’s contents were. Floral patterns. “How was the gala? My apologies, again, for being unable to attend.”

He sees the way she stiffens upon the shift in topic. Or at the very least he must see it—she’s always so terrible at masking these sudden changes in mood. Nepheli looks away as Kenneth’s smile softens. “Quite a treat aren’t they, the Halcyons,” he says. “They once invited me to a dinner on their grounds, you know. They served porcelain cups of clear water and strips of unseasoned white meat.”

“Unseasoned?”

“They expected me to dip them into my cup. For flavor.”

Nepheli’s face twists into something rancid as Kenneth’s smile broadens. “I hope they didn’t shave too many years off your life,” he says. “They’re just the one family.”

“Just the one.” Nepheli’s chair creaks as she presses her palms into her hips. “That’s the true nature of the matter, isn’t it? They’re one family, and another eleven just like them pocket Limgrave, all of them boasting their own meager connections to the Golden Lineage. Then you get into other lands like Liurnia or Leyndell. And they all have Halcyons of their own among Marika knows how many more.”

“You blaspheme, My Lady.”

“I accepted my lordship because I know I hold a duty to the people of this land. I’m meant to help them, to lift them up. What duty do I hold to the pampered descendants of dead bloodlines?”

There’s a polite knock on the doorframe. Gostoc pokes his head in. “The, eh, commoners are chasing the maildoves again. Something about the pens being left unlocked?”

“Get the knights on it,” Nepheli sighs, her head propped up on her hand. Gostoc’s gaze shifts between her and Kenneth before he dips out of sight. Looking up, Nepheli calls, “No lashes, we don’t punish the maildoves that way anymore!” But he’s already gone. She sits back with a frustrated exhale.

Approaching with cautious steps, Kenneth says, “I’ll try not to take up any more of your time—you’re a busy lady, after all—”

“Please don’t call me that,” Nepheli says quietly, but Kenneth continues unimpeded.

“And part of my being here is a means of weathering these troubled early stretches. No one ever fell into the role of lord knowing all the ways to count a coin, Leyndell wasn’t built in a day and all. Heavens, I can only go for two days of peace in that silly little fort out east without a demihuman flaying a soldier’s corpse because they thought it was amusing or what have you. These things take time, Lady Nepheli, all great tapestries do—”

“I don’t feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.”

A maildove squawks as it passes by the open doorway. Kenneth blinks more than once before stepping forward and placing a ginger hand on Nepheli’s desk. “It’s rough now, I know. The castle’s reconstruction impedes things somewhat. But I trust my own instincts, Miss Loux, after working this racket for so bloody long. You will grab this land by the reigns, and you will show it what for. After all, isn’t that what you’ve always done? I think a certain All-Knowing could attest to that—ehm, if he was still with us.”

Nepheli’s gaze turns pensive, looking somewhat beyond Kenneth. He recognizes this eventually and clears his throat as he steps away. “I’ll go and see to it that the demihumans are properly settled. Last time the staff misplaced their instruments and, well, we can only wash the blood off the castle floors so many times. But please, do call if you need any help with…anything, as it were. I’m here to help you weather things.”

“Yes. Thank you, Kenneth,” Nepheli says distantly, though she makes sure to imbue her second statement with a more pronounced level of genuine feeling. The man’s smile warms at that, and he wishes Nepheli good day with a proper bow. In the end she’s left alone in her office with her own naked thoughts. The day’s light wanes. She ponders the castle walls and for the first time in twelve moons wonders if she shouldn’t be in them.

There’s little room for Aeodhan in Nepheli’s mind the coming weeks. Following the weekly routine of shaving the horns off of Omens’ bodies, a group within the castle guard attempt to consume the discarded appendages. The resulting infection is contagious and spreads to the rest of the staff. Left relatively (miraculously) unscathed, Nepheli becomes tied up with overseeing the staff’s recovery as Stormveil temporarily transitions into a makeshift infirmary. Gostoc is one of few other personnel to escape the ordeal with amiable health, and despite his own misgivings is made to assist the few perfumers they have on file as the illness runs its course. He promises, unprompted, not to lift the pockets of any patients. A considerable portion of Nepheli’s day consists of following the little weasel’s every move.

“I’m saying the Lilies we have on hand aren’t enough,” Perfumer Marcia tells Nepheli. Behind them in a cramped tent (one of many occupying the castle courtyards now) lies a groaning and feverish banished knight. “I need more sleep pots. The last few days are the worst.”

Nepheli’s eyes shift over to the tent every other moment. “We’re combing what we can of east Limgrave. I’ll get back to you when—” The tent rustles and she struts up to its folded entrance flaps and shoves a hand in. Muffled protests bleat out as she drags Gostoc into the light by the scruff of his neck. “I’ll get back to you when we have more.”

Perfumer Marcia doesn’t seem pleased, but she bids them both a polite farewell nod. Gostoc readjusts the shackle around his neck as he struggles to keep pace with Nepheli. “I’d ask you to pat me down but, eh, I’ve no pockets.”

“You’ve worse hiding spots. If that’s supposed to be an invitation—”

“It’s not.”

“Then shut it, and do something useful for me.”

They’re in the square outside the castle’s inner wall. White tents stained with dirt line either side of the pair, with perfumers and coughing commoners running back and forth across the rows carrying towels and clear glass bottles. The plaza reeks of ammonia and general body stench. It reminds Nepheli of a battlefield, and the charged, frenetic energy imbued with the memory heightens her own already sharp mood.

Marching up the steps leading into Stormveil’s inner sanctum, Gostoc says, “There a particular reason we’re headed to where I think we’re headed..?”

Nepheli ducks smoothly out of the way of a passing group of exiles carrying another wailing patient. Gostoc almost trips, stumbling behind her as she says, “Take a guess.”

Answering him would be all well and good, but she needs to see if his senses are up to the task. Without enough self-control he’ll need someone to watch over him. Gostoc scratches his head, frowning. “You want me to do the thing I do best for once, eh? But you’ve just spent I don’t know how many days making sure I can’t.”

“I know.” They enter the small tunnel separating the rest of Stormveil from the sanctum. Few personnel are allowed back here due to the nature of the terrain—it's the least changed from Godrick’s reign as a result. “Now I need those nimble, sleight hands of yours.”

“Nimble, eh?” He sounds flattered. Nepheli rolls her eyes but she steps aside to allow him a view of their destination all the same: Stormveil’s overgrown, ruined graveyard.

The dragon’s corpse has been removed, but the winding ravine of tombs is almost the same as it was before. Cool afternoon sunlight passes through the golden trees that pocket the landscape. Beyond the cracked and stained black earth lies the pair of golden doors leading to the castle throneroom. They remain tightly shut.

Nepheli gives Gostoc a moment to pick his jaw up off the floor. Cautiously, she says, “You remember whose bodies are buried here, yes?”

Gostoc uses his knuckles to wipe at his mouth. “Yes, the, uh—the other descendants of the Golden Lineage. Godrick’s brothers and sisters, in essence—I dug most the graves meself.”

Still gauging his reaction, Nepheli nods. “I don’t have to tell you what we’re digging for then, do I? Most of them, from what I know, were buried following Leyndell customs—that permits an Altus bloom and a gravel stone with each body for ceremonial purposes. The perfumers need those items as ingredients for their precious concoctions.”

“I follow.” Gostoc turns to Nepheli, and she’s relieved to find the glint in his eyes remains mostly sane. “I’ll tell you though, them blooms will be mostly dead by now.”

“Yes, and most of the petals will have fallen off. The stems are still of interest to the perfumers—as well as any petal remains you may find. Can you identify something like that?”

Gostoc thinks about it. “Aye, I can.”

“Off to it, then. Those ingredients are needed yesterday.”

He eyes the cemetery suspiciously one last time. “You really trust me with this, Lady Nepheli?”

“Gods no. But circumstances are circumstances. I’ll survey things for a while before deeming whether you’re fit to be on your own here or not. Again, only things belonging of those two items. You cannot keep anything else you find. If you try I’ll wring your arse out.”

Gostoc nods, though he doesn’t seem terribly disappointed, to Nepheli’s surprise. “As you wish, ma’am.” He hobbles off to start his work, and Nepheli almost regrets being so stern. Perhaps he has gotten better. Then again, today wasn’t exactly any sort of encouragement.

She watches him proceed from the tunnel entrance, her shoulders slumping forward as the sun dips further behind the castle skyline. This recent ordeal on top of all the prior ones is starting to wane on her. She tries to remember when was the last time she had an honest to Marika full night’s rest. She’s certain it happened recently, maybe. There won’t be time in the coming future after this situation’s dealt with either. Then she has the supply matter to deal with, and then the harvest. Tasks upon tasks. Nepheli’s bones begin to ache, and the feeling worsens when she thinks about what lies beyond those shut doors on the other end of the graveyard. The throne she hasn’t even used. She’d told herself after the castle renovation project was completed that Stormveil would open its gates to the citizens of Limgrave, and she would sit upon that throne so she could listen to the people’s everyday wants and woes. That she would grant them a voice they might not have had in…gods, she’s not certain what comes after centuries. Now she’s here and it feels as if the castle is nowhere near finished, the woes of the commonfolk continue to go on unheard, and the prospect of actually sitting on that throne fills Nepheli with—what, exactly? Is it dread? Is it fear? That can’t be right. What does it make her feel, and should it even matter? Standing by the tunnel entrance, something bitter and hollow begins to fester in Nepheli’s gut.

“He’s taking their socks. Is he supposed to be doing that?”

Like lightning, shocking her open and cracking her to her very core. Nepheli’s throat clamps up as she whips around with her fists instinctively held up, ready for a fight. Aeodhan raises his own open palms, surrendering with an apologetic smile that shows his teeth. He’s dressed exactly the way he was last time he visited (though still no Omen cleavers.) He smells like salt—like a fresh open breeze.

His appearance is so abrupt, so random, Nepheli is momentarily convinced she has dreamt it. Then he speaks again, and the events of the day come flooding back to her.

“I mean it, really,” he says. He glances over Nepheli's shoulder with his eyebrows pinched together almost playfully. “He really is taking their socks.”

Nepheli’s thoughts crash into each other. A half-formed question gets stuck in her throat and she twists back around. Gostoc’s boney little rump is stuck high in the air, a pile of dirt and a stack of the undergarments in question sitting plainly beside him.

“Gostoc,” Nepheli calls out, her voice strange yet somehow steady. The man jerks his head up. Frozen, his eyes wild, he gives her a shaky, wry grin.

“J-Just testing ya, is alls.” He gingerly places the socks back in the grave. “See? No fowl is the harm.”

“No harm, no fowl,” Nepheli mutters beneath her breath. There’s enough murder in her eyes for Gostoc to resume working at a more disciplined, much faster rate. A throbbing pain has suddenly manifested behind Nepheli’s eye, and she rubs her fist into the socket trying to get it out as she breathes furiously. She looks back at Aeodhan. “And you. Just who in Helphen’s Steeple do you think you are, spooking me like that? Jumping in like a, like a—”

“A genial samaritan?” He steps up beside her, his tone apologetically soft. With his shoulders set back and his chin lifted, he resembles a chiseled statue more than he does a human. He shrugs, the motion's sheepish nature a stark contrast to his…everything else. “I’ve never been very good at greetings.”

Nepheli punches him in the shoulder. It’s like she’s hitting fur-covered stone; the man steps back with a grunt, his hands raised in surrender again. “By the gods, save that strength for the menials!”

“As if you couldn’t stand the blow,” Nepheli crows, but her mood is already (unfortunately) lifting. She doesn’t want to labor over his appearance so of course her eye keeps catching details. There’s dark blotches beneath his eyes, faint but visibly present. His hair seems duller, and there’s a sense of suppressed exhaustion beneath his easy smile. Had he been toiling away in Leyndell as everyone had said he was? What duties did he have on hand?

Consummating, Halcyon’s voice echoes in Nepheli’s thoughts. Her chest pounds as she clears her throat and asks him about his reasons for being here.

“I heard about the epidemic,” Aeodhan says. “They almost didn’t let me through the gates.” He rubs the back of his head, the ease in his gait replaced with a sincere expression. “You look okay.”

Cotton in her throat. Daft woman, he’s only been here a minute. Nepheli rubs her neck, trying to get a grip by gazing passively out at the graveyard. “Um, yes. The Omen disease left me seemingly untouched for whatever reason. A stroke of luck, it seems.”

“But you’ve truly shown no symptoms? No horns growing on the inside of your stomach or what have you?”

“Not as far as I know…can one check for that sort of thing?”

“There are ways.” Aeodhan’s eyes flick past Nepheli. “Socks.”

“Gostoc,” Nepheli calls without turning around. The man yowls bitterly like a disgruntled cat but that’s all. Shaking her head, Nepheli lets out a rough huff. “You never found a means of dealing with—?”

“He’s a creature of habit,” Aeodhan says. He steps past Nepheli and cups his hands over his mouth and bids Gostoc a broad greeting. The two wave genially at one another for a moment. Gostoc rubs his nose, exposing a rusted bracelet in his grip that he then tries to hide.

“Bloody miserable creature,” Aeodhan remarks to Nepheli, his brilliant smile returned once more. The sight of that alone is enough to make her entire day. Then he lowers his hands and she sees the ring. Her own smile drops as she turns away and fiddles with her ear. When she speaks it’s like her words are stuck to one another, and she has to pick at their edges to tear them apart.

“Ahem. So, now that you’re here and all…being the Elden Lord and whatnot...it seems the proper arrangements must be made. I will have my staff prepare the guest chambers…the ones that can still walk, that is…we’re low on supplies, but I’m sure some kind of supper can be prepared…”

“Yes, yes, supper and all that and whatnot.” Aeodhan’s gaze twinkles. “You wanna get out of here?”

Nepheli’s face scrunches up. Her fingers feel tingly. “Out of here?”

“Yes, out of the castle!” He nudges her lightly on her pauldron-covered shoulder. A faint disgruntled sound leaves her throat, and she hopes he cannot hear it. “When was the last time you actually set foot outside this dreary keep?”

“It is not dreary,” Nepheli protests, thoroughly offended. “We’ve just put the finishing touches on the east ramparts—”

“Let me put it better. When was the last time you thought about anything other than this dreary keep?”

Nepheli takes in a breath. Aeodhan raises his brows, standing in wait for a response. She clamps her lips shut. Alarms go off in her head; certain things are failing to compute. Her, leave the castle? For even one moment? It’s become difficult to look Aeodhan’s smug face in the eye. In a growing panic, she says, “But. Gostoc…?”

“Kenneth is here, is he not?” Aeodhan winces. “Try not to let him know I’m around, actually. He’s a rather adept groveler—I wouldn’t want to see another pair of robes scuffed.”

Hesitation roots Nepheli to where she stands. Something will go wrong if she leaves—something always goes wrong. But her heart’s already pounding; as if her decision is already made.

“Offer’s open,” Aeodhan says, already taking a few steps back into the tunnel. He shrugs. “Saw some boars running amok over Stormhill. What do you reckon we can make out of those?”

She grins in spite of herself. The tingling in her fingers has crept up her arms. Something flutters in her stomach. “What can I make of those, you mean.”

“I was thinking more of a team effort, actually.” 

“You have never been a team player,” Nepheli scoffs, shouldering past Aeodhan as she leads the way. She hears him laugh behind her, his voice cool and quiet.

“Never too late to start.”

Either he’s seceded ownership of Torrent or he chooses to leave the mount behind. They sprint side by side through the brush, the constant wind at their backs and the bleak sun breaking through the clouds as they try and gain a vantage over one another. The earth supports Nepheli, granting her bounds and strides purchase, searing her lungs comfortably, an electric tenor crackling through all her cavities. Even still, she struggles to match Aeodhan’s pace. His bulky frame slinks through the ferns and slips between tree trunks, his breath calm and smooth through his nose as his legs pump evenly beneath him. Together they vault over the herd of squealing boars, leaping between branches and scattering the creatures in unspoken tandem. Nepheli never has to check her positioning to know where Aeodhan is. He is just where he needs her to be, and she him. It is just as it was before.

Eventually their chase leads them out into the sprawling hillsides. With pounds of dead meat slung over their shoulders, they foot it across the damp graylands, still trying to outsprint each other and themselves. The air is coldly invigorating. Nepheli’s sweat collects on her brow. She breathes and breathes, drunk on the blood pumping through her body. For once the boars she carries are the only weight she feels on her shoulders.

They only stop when their trek crosses paths with a wandering merchant. Aeodhan barters the hide off one of his boars for a ritual pot. Fashioning the jar into a stew pot, he and Nepheli strip the fur off their remaining catches and boil the meat over a low fire behind a boulder that provides ample shelter from the neverending wind. Aeodhan pours over the task, stirring and seasoning the fruits of their shared labor, and Nepheli is struck once more by his sheer candidness. He doesn’t carry himself like a lord, nor does he dress or talk like one. He is almost the same sellsword that came barreling down the Mountaintops all that time ago, only he smiles a hell of a lot more than he frowns now. She wonders how much of that old rage still lingers in him. She wonders how much he hides.

“Leyndell, is that right?” Aeodhan stares at the steaming wooden bowl in his hands. He smirks slightly as he shakes his head. “That pile of ash won’t be fit for a capital anytime soon—maybe never, if all goes well. No, I was in Caelid again. That bitter country…The Rot is gone but the poison remains.”

He tries to hide how rough his voice gets near the end. Nepheli pretends not to hear it as she stirs her own bowl. Evening has fallen across the land. The flames light up the boulder’s stone surface, exposing all of its particular cracks and crevices. “How strange. I suppose Lady Halcyon and the others garner their gossip from sheep,” Nepheli says.

Aeodhan laughs. “Well, what the riff-raff don’t know won’t torture their souls.” He slurps up the contents of his bowl and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His ring catches the light. “Leyndell, though. I like it. What was the word used, again? Consummated ?”

“Something to the effect.” 

“For shame,” Aeodhan snorts. He adds more stew to his bowl, nonchalant and chipper. “The story doesn’t quite add up though, does it? Who in their right mind would take their betrothed to Leyndell of all places, in this climate? And it borders on cliche, on top of that. Where would the Elden Lord entreat his bride, oh I know, the Elden capital! As if either of us hold any particular love for the place.” 

Nepheli tries a smile. Imbuing her voice with a lighter tenor, she says, “I can’t imagine the actual trip must’ve been good on your woman then, was it? Caelid isn’t particularly known for its honeymooning endeavors.”

“I suppose not. But what land is these days, right? Either way, such events are a ways off yet. We haven’t even scheduled our vows.” Aeodhan sighs before leaning in and imploring Nepheli to do the same. His voice held low in somewhat comic effect, he says, “Don’t tell anyone this, but Her Majesty…well, she isn’t particularly fond of tradition.”

“I should think. This is the Lunar Princess we speak of.” Nepheli pales. “Queen. Apologies—”

“Don’t worry, she fusses up the title too sometimes.” Aeodhan winces helplessly. “She’s also not exactly…here. Again, don’t tell anyone.”

Nepheli frowns. “Then where…?”

Holding a silent finger to his lips, Aeodhan sits back and points upward. Nepheli squints.  A scant few twinkling stars are out tonight. “She communes with outside forces,” Aeodhan explains. “So that we may go on unimpeded by the likes of the Greater Will ever again. It’s a whole story.”

“I’ll say,” Nepheli says, not trying as hard as she should to mask her genuine uncertainty. Communing with outside forces is what led to the descent of the Greater Will to begin with. But it’s difficult to argue a decision when she doesn’t know the full extent of things. There’s so much of Aeodhan she feels like she still doesn’t know. Her greedy half wants to take him in her hands, to crack him open and spill all his insides out for her to see. Her more rational, inquisitive half instead says, “Does she feel like your half-sister?”

Aeodhan chuckles, and Nepheli isn’t certain whether she genuinely detects a sense of unease there. “In all the worst ways. But that’s the price that comes with having family, isn’t it? I think she recognized that too—when the end of the Erdtree came and we were the only two left standing to take the reins. Aside from her mother…She doesn’t really have anyone else. Her brothers are gone.”

“Right. You murdered both of them.”

“Among countless others. But again, that was the price. Tearing down foundations means to bury those supported by them. To usher in the new world means…well, you know the rest. She knew that too. We both walked dark paths.”

It’s impossible to discern his true feelings from such vague wording. Sitting there, Nepheli teeters between pursuing the topic further and dropping it altogether. Caught in the middle, she says, “What is she like? I myself have—never had the pleasure.”

Aeodhan hugs his sides, frowning in thought. He cocks his head, saying slowly, “Deceptive. Wait, that sounds bad.”

“A little,” Nepheli says, half-smiling. His hands waving in front of him, Aeodhan shakes his head with a broad smile. 

“She’s smart! She knows her way around a conversation. Tie your own tongue up when she’s through with you. Old-fashioned. She’s from an older era. I think you’d know what I mean just from talking to her. She’s great at dinner even if she doesn’t eat any.” He shrugs helplessly. “She’s my sister.”

The revealed warmth in his tone. Nepheli struggles to try and define what it pertains to. Warmth in what fashion? Familial, respectful? Or the other kind? Was this a betrothal born of necessity, or…?

“I think you’d get along great with her,” Aeodhan says, not seeming to notice the way Nepheli stiffens up. “You’re of a kind, both of you. I can attest to that wholly and utterly.”

Swallowing, Nepheli ducks her head. “I’m not that crafty. You make her intellect sound impenetrable.”

“You’re wise where she isn’t. Ranni, she’s smart, but…there’s certain ways in which the world works that she’s not privy to. That’s what I always admired about you, truth be told.” Aeodhan’s tone is indecipherable. “You always knew so much better than me.”

Nepheli covers her face by scratching her cheek irritably. “And yet you’re the one on the throne.”

“It’s not a terribly comfortable one.”

The fire crackles and pops. Nepheli sits still with the bowl in her lap and feels like she might explode at any moment. She jumps when Aeodhan’s spoon clatters and looks up to catch him putting aside his stew and lurching forward onto his knee in front of her. “My apologies, I’ve gotten so much farther off track than I’ve meant to. I…think Ranni might be rubbing off on me a little. I’ve been a bit deceptive myself today.”

Nepheli stares, uncomprehending. Aeodhan huddles closer, at eye-level with her. “You see, I brought you out here because I wanted to ask you something. And what’s fair’s fair, you can decline if you so wish. Though I truly hope you consider itt.”

“What is it?” Nepheli’s breath almost catches in her throat and she feels like a silly dumb girl for it. The position he’s in, kneeling before her…it brings about all kinds of ludicrous, tantalizing images. Earnestly, Aeodhan smiles as he continues.

“My trip to Caelid. It’s actually the first of many visits I have planned for all of the Lands Between. There’s so much to do—so much to have done. The groundwork has to be laid down in order for these kingdoms to rise into prosperity once again. Gotta make the rounds. The arrangements have all been made, and I was supposed to make the journey all on my lonesome. But…”

Nepheli feels lightheaded. She knows what he’s going to ask before he even says it. There’s a flush to her face, a smothering heat. Something in her chest rises even as her gut sinks to the very floor.

“Won’t you come and see this beautifully wounded land with me?