"I have bad news," Anubis whispered. "It's Mikhail."
Ketil nodded, his heart pounding in his chest. "What now? They can't kill him. What does he have to worry about?"
"It's not about him. It's about us—we've been summoned to Dastberg before the Tsar."
Ketil felt his mouth go dry. Dastberg? The capital city of Rajsend? This was not a good sign. "This has nothing to do with the Weeping family, does it? Drass, Anubis, this is bad."
"It's not the Weeping incident. I wanted you two to be the first to know. I don't know why he has written to us, but judging by the amount of formalities included, he is very serious. He even wrote it in Rajsend!" She held the letter open to him to reveal the thin letters of Mikhail's hand, all written in the rather brutish Rajsend old tongue. Polarian was eloquent, rolling off the tongue the way water rolled down a stream, gentle and easy. Rajsend was harsh, like a clang of symbols or the crash of boulders slamming into each other.
"Mikhail hates this language, he won't write in it unless forced." Anubis' brow furrowed. "We will leave after the snow stops."
"We should run—we can make it." Raziel said, stepping into the room. "Mikhail is giving us a warning, I think. We should heed it and run."
"I can't run! Damn you Raziel for even saying that!" She yelled back at him. "I can't run," she said softer this time. "You should understand why I can't."
Raziel stared at his feet, "it just seems that abandoning everything is better than meeting the Tsar head on for an unknown reason."
"You can run," she whispered to him. "Take Dante and Ketil and get out of here. But I can't leave Rajsend, not now, not when there is so much to do."
Ketil raised his head, shaking strands of white hair away from his eyes. "Drass, you know good and well we can't do that." He let his accent pull at his words, slumping a little as he did so. "Do you think that we could just leave you? I owe you my life." He pressed his finger against the scar on his chest before touching the finger to his lips. "I am but a lusccan—a dead man walking."
Anubis was silent, her eyes far off. She looked towards the window where flurries of snow began to coat the roofs of the merchant shops below. "Raziel, will you go tell Dante of our plans?"
He nodded, protest pulling at his lips. He remained silent. "What about the new one?"
"Tell him nothing." She pulled her scarf tighter around her throat, pulling off her gloves. "Not until he's proved his salt."
"Good, he seems to be a little too eager." Raziel stepped out, shutting the door as he did.
Ketil stared at her and she stared back. Icy blue eyes met dark black.
"Don't you dare," he said, the accent making his words slip across his tongue. "Don't you dare say something."
"You absolute arse," she narrowed her eyes. "I have to say something. You aren't coming with me."
"I am coming with you!"
"Ketil Østberg, you come with me and you're dead. You die the second time and I can't bring you back. Not to mention how much power we would lose. You're half the reason I'm still in standing with the Tsar."
"I am not a pawn, Anubis!"
"We are all pawns, Østberg." She reached out, touching his cheek. "Ketil, look at me."
He stared at her hands. "No."
"You are the vekrandt—you are the one sought out. The one who was saved." She carefully brushed a curl from his face, her fingers icy to the touch. "I won't lose you."
"You don't have a choice. This is my second chance and no law or person is going to take it from me. Please, you don't understand." He looked into her eyes as he took her hands in his. "You are my friend, you will always be my friend—whether or not you want to. But I am coming with you. You can't shelter me."
She nodded, "I thought I'd try to convince you to stay. I knew you wouldn't."
"I am the rightful Emperor, but I am just a man. I cannot live forever. I will fight with every breath in my lungs for this because we are right. We have no other option. Aras un triæ."
"And it means?"
He looked away, walking towards the door. "There is an end." Ketil stuck a strand of hair behind his ear, looking back to her. "I am going to prepare my bags, I suggest you do the same."
She said something in Rajsend that he didn't catch but he continued on. There was no way he would let her stop him. He owed her his life, but even more than that, he needed to stay with them. Not out of loneliness, but out of the need for revenge. One more ounce of gold in his possession was something they didn't have. One more Inquisitor slain was one less sword to his throat. Maybe it was childish of him. Maybe it was the constant throb of the scars marking his body. But he needed that revenge—needed it like he needed oxygen.
One day he would see Aslaug again and he would—.
No.
He wouldn't.
How could he?
Kill his twin sister?
No.
A piece of him still believed, cleaved so tightly to the belief that mass hysteria or— or some sort of batræ power held her under its command. Aslaug was always so gentle, always so forgiving of him whenever his actions accidentally hurt her. But she had looked in his eyes, gave him her own cloak, and then stabbed him in the heart like he was an animal to die. And then she had left him to bleed out in the snow.
But how could he kill her? She was still his sister. Still the girl whose hair he braided and made flower crowns for, she was the one who had helped him learn swordsmanship and falconry when his father wanted a son with "backbone". She hunted for him when he was unable to kill and stood by his side when their father failed to amend the Elder Laws that cemented his fate.
No. He couldn't.
He slammed the door to his room shut, collapsing on the floor as if made of melting wax. He took a deep breath, head bent back and lips raised towards the ceiling. His fingers pressed into the carpet beneath him, feeling the small patterns and matted areas where he had dropped wet clay. He sunk lower, his back against the carpet now, eyes open to see the delicate painting of the Polarian night sky on the ceiling.
"If I die so be it. I have died once and I am nothing but a lusccan." His hand went to his chest, feeling underneath the lairs of cloth the raised mark of Asluag's blade. Lusccans should be killed. Another Elder Law.
The moment he had awoken to see Anubis' face in the blinding white snow, he knew what he was from then on. A living corpse. Mothers told their children about lusccans in warning, as if they were spooks or haunts ready to kill them. The mother's weren't wrong about them too. When they were adults, lusccans were evil at heart, normally obsessing over one particular sin. Kleptomania was the most common, but there were those with lust in their hearts and wrath circulating in their veins instead of blood.
Ketil opened his eyes. "Aras aste ves und." He repeated to himself, staring at the star Polaria painted above his headboard. "Aras aste ves und."
There is more than one. There was always more than one. There was only a thin line between destruction and creating.
"I am Ketil Østberg of the Empire of Polaria," He shut his eyes, head spinning. "And I am going to die again."
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