The Abyssal Lands received him like an old wound reopening—raw, festering, alive with its own terrible pulse. Black stone stretched to the horizon, cracked like desiccated flesh, and rivers of molten glass bled between the fissures. The air burned with a copper tang, thick with smoke and sulfur, searing his lungs as if every breath were a punishment. Overhead, there was no sky, only a churning vault of ash and blood-red auroras that bent like tendons straining across the heavens. Sound never fully carried here, but echoed endlessly in distorted resonance: distant shrieks, the grinding of unseen titans, the gnashing of teeth from things that moved beyond sight.
And Arc… he exhaled. Relief. Not peace, never that, but something near to release. His flesh still ached with the memory of Cragjaw’s claw, but it was Calia’s cruelty that lingered far deeper, etched into him like a second wound. The way her words always struck to maim, how her scorn never dulled, how any tenderness was drowned beneath barbs and venom. He had tried—gods, he had tried—but her endless suspicion, her aggression, her loathing pressed him until every breath around her was a kind of suffocation. She could never be sincere, never offer compassion without poisoning it with cruelty. In the end, it wasn’t Cragjaw that broke him. It was her.
Here, at least, he did not need to smile through her hatred. Here, he could admit that he was not enough for her—never would be. The contract’s weight still pressed against his soul, a tether stretched taut across realms, binding him even now. It was a chain she would not cut and he could not break. The bond thrummed faintly, mocking him with its persistence, reminding him that even in death he could not fully escape her. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the hollow echo of his failure, the ache of not being what she demanded, what she despised him for not being.
But the Abyssal Lands were never empty for long. He felt it before he saw her—the prickle of another presence, sharp and deliberate. A shadow detached from the smoldering haze, coalescing into a form that was all too familiar. Argentina.
She was a second-rank demon, and though her power was not absolute, she wore it like perfume: heavy, intoxicating, impossible to ignore. Her body was almost human, supple and graceful, her features sharp with a beauty designed to wound as much as tempt. She leaned casually against a jagged outcropping as though the Abyss itself bent for her comfort, lips curving in a knowing smile.
“You took your time,” Argentina drawled, her voice low and silken, threaded with the faintest mockery. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d finally decided to play mortal for good.” Her eyes, bright as wet garnet, swept over him with deliberate slowness—taking in his ragged state, the blood still staining him, the exhaustion coiled in his shoulders. Whatever patience she’d had waiting, it had not dulled her cruelty. She was the Abyss embodied: patient, predatory, beautiful, and vicious.
Arc straightened against the weight of her stare, the faintest twitch of bitter amusement in his chest. Of course she was here. Waiting and watching. The Abyss never left its children to suffer alone. The air bent around her as Argentina slipped forward from her perch, slow as oil poured over stone. Her steps didn’t crunch the black shards of the Abyssal ground, didn’t displace the molten veins glowing beneath the crust. She seemed part of the landscape, a predator draped in a shape too human for comfort.
She began to circle Arc, the way carrion birds circled the freshly fallen. Her eyes glowed with wet garnet light, tracking every twitch of his chest, every faint draw of breath like she could taste the exhaustion bleeding from him. “Ahh,” she purred, her smile more barbed than kind. “You’ve returned. Not triumphant. Not even bold. Nor even sly enough to have slipped away unnoticed.” Her fingers trailed lightly over a jut of obsidian as she passed, sparks hissing at her touch. “No, you’ve come back broken. Crushed. And that,” she tilted her head, eyes narrowing, “Is very unlike you.”
The Abyss had a way of stripping every soul to its marrow, and Argentina wielded it like a blade. She didn’t simply circle Arc now—she loomed into him, her presence pressing into the cracks already spiderwebbed through his spirit. Her laughter had teeth in it, but her tone—low, honeyed, venomous—wove itself around his hurt like a serpent winding tighter.
“Ah, but look at you,” she whispered, close enough her breath was a chill across his ear. “Still clinging to the chain. Even here, where it cannot reach you in full, it drags like iron hooks in your flesh. Why endure it? Why drag yourself through torment for a girl who spits venom with every word, who knows nothing of sincerity, nothing of care?”
Her hand hovered near his chest, not touching, but her long fingers mimed curling into his ribcage as if she could pry it open. “I can smell it, Archimedes—the way she cut you. Not with a blade. With loathing. With cruelty. You bleed more from her disdain than from any claw the drake put through you.” She shifted suddenly, crouching in front of him, peering up into his face with predatory intensity. Her eyes gleamed like garnets dipped in fire, and her grin was cruelly tender. “And you relief, I see it. You are relieved to be here. Relieved to be away. Because here you do not have to beg for understanding. Here you do not have to endure her shrieking hatred disguised as strength.”
Her voice dropped, a velvet growl: “You could let it go. The bond. Snap it. Tear it out, and I will show you how. No more chains. No more humiliation. No more being the whipping post for a fae brat who mistakes cruelty for cleverness. Who hates while acting like it’s kindness, I’ve heard her barbs. To make you a pet, dance for her. Entertain her but oh… how couldn’t she see that her actions made you less… she didn’t want you as a friend… she wanted you to step on.” She leaned closer still, so close her words vibrated against his lips, her smile a razor poised to cut. “Stay here. Stay with us. In this abyss you belong. Among your own. Where you are not hated, not used. You could be free, Archimedes. And I…” she tilted her head, mock-affection brushing the edges of her grin, “…I could teach you to stop hurting.” Her circling wasn’t just physical anymore—it was spiritual, predatory, the way a hawk shadowed a wounded hare. She pressed the promise of escape into the ache Calia had carved into him, twisting it, probing it, offering the most seductive balm of all: freedom from her.
Cragjaw’s realm of ice and jagged stone held no more beauty for her. Not in the high mountain cliffs made of granite, marble and limestone pressed into it’s ancient layers. Not in the gorgeous blanket of white snow piled high enough to bury a person well above their head. The air, crisp and ice cold should have been refreshing to breath and yet Calia felt as if she were breathing naught but sulfur and smoke. She walked through plans of glacial ice until the path ahead was no longer flat, until she was forced to start climbing her way up the rock along a trail that’d long since been abandoned by travelers.
She knew when she had left the drake’s realm when color seemed to return to the world. Cloud and storm had faded away to the bright, clear blue of open sky. Boulder and cliff had striations of years marking it’s sides in rainbow one could read had they learned enough. Even the pockets of snow that dotted the mountainside had it’s sparkle again. Alive in the way the world was meant to be.
And Calia almost wished she stayed back there in that deadened realm, for the farther she got away from it and it’s nulling effects, the stronger that tethered bond became to the man she still didn’t want to think about. Forcing her to acknowledge it was not something she could just ignore and pretend didn’t exist. Tied forever to someone that cared so little about her that his hated didn’t even wish death on her. Not even worth the effort of it. Just… distance. To know forever that there was someone right there, and she still had to spend eternity alone.
How could she blame him, though. Archimedes had spent his life having his soul chipped away at until he had no hope left in him. What did Calia even have as an excuse? Oh no, her heart and magic was stolen. Big deal. That was nothing in comparison. She really was just nothing.
Still, she kept walking. Move forward, one step at a time. Keep breathing. He didn’t want her, but she would still be there just as she promised. A curse of being eternal.
The blue skies were starting to shift color to the rosy pinks and streaks of orange, and waiting up ahead was a familiar and wholey unwelcomed shape. That magpie sitting on a rock preening it’s feathers and rolling around in a bit of snow to clean itself. Calia didn’t acknowledge it, she simply kept on climbing past it.
What luck, you’ve killed him! Makes travel easier. Demons are tricksy. it called out, taking to flight along side her.
“I didn’t kill him,” muttered Calia.
Didn’t you, though? Didn’t you?
What the fuck was that supposed to mean? The thought twisted in her chest, not liking how it had her looking over the past hours, even the past few days and seeing how easier it was to find reasonable blame on herself. There were many things she could’ve done differently. Different choices.
Hindsight was a bitch.
“I’m not really in the mood to deal with you right now.”
The magpie cackled, flapping it’s ebony wings and circling overhead. So many feelings. Why do you care about a demon that hates you. You are his prison and his curse.
Fantastic. Even a spying fae magpie knew the truth of things, that Calia was indeed a curse. Why she cared was a good question – something far too complicated to even pull out and examine when she was busy just trying to keep herself on her feet. She didn’t bother to answer and resumed ignoring the blasted thing.
Touchy, touchy. If it matters that much, go reclaim him. Get your pitiful sad-sack demon.
“I don’t know how. …I don’t even know if I want to anymore.” Even as Calia said it out loud and it left a bitter taste in her mouth, she knew the truth of her feelings. She could deny it all she wished, but Calia did want to see him just once. Erase that image of his mangled body out of her mind and at least have a chance to say something. Give a proper closure to them both.
All of this time you reach for that demon when you could have reached for us. Stupid fae girl. My court can help you! Accept my invitation. Your demon problem will be solved and you will be with your kin at last.
Slowing to a gradual stop, Calia paused there on the mountainside with a deepening frown and a heavy sigh. This was an offer too good to be true, even she could see that. What other choice did she have, though? She could try to pull on the tether, to summon him by name to come to her – that’d been possible before when he’d been kidnapped and snatched away. Except… that felt a lot like dragging him by a chained leash. A forced return to someone he didn’t want to be near. He didn’t like it when she did so the first time, he most certainly would hate it now. Calia needed to do something else.
“…and where is this court?” she dared to ask.
As all fae realms are – it is everywhere and nowhere.
The magpie circled over head, finally coming down to land neatly on Calia’s shoulder. Preening and fluffing it’s feathers when Calia felt the subtle shift. The rock face around her blurred and shifted color. When it all came into focus again, the entire world was different. Rich dark soil under her feet. A sky above with such a vivid galaxy of unfamiliar stars. The air no longer frosty cold, but comfortably warm and filled with the strong scent of summer roses. Calia could see the reason why, as up ahead was a short stone wall surrounded a large manor estate where roses of deep red hues and soft romantic pinks were climbing up every surface the vines could cling to. On the wind she could hear music and laughter carrying strong.
Welcome to the Court of Vines, lost sister. The King has been waiting to meet you!
The Abyss stretched before Arc like an endless wound, a wasteland of scorched obsidian split with molten veins that pulsed like exposed arteries. The air reeked of sulfur, iron, and char—thick enough to sting his throat with every breath. The ground hissed beneath his boots, cracking with embers, and the shadows that roiled in the distance whispered with too many voices to count. This was home. Not comfort—never comfort—but home. Argentina’s heels clicked softly as she circled him, each step deliberate, measured, predatory. The glow of the fissures cast her in sharp relief—skin smooth, hair like spilling ink, eyes glinting red as rubies polished with malice. She smiled like she’d been waiting a century for this moment.
“Poor boy,” she crooned, her voice low and syrup-sweet. “You give and you give, and still it was never enough, was it? You twisted yourself in her chains, bled yourself dry to prove your worth, and still she spat at you. Made you take back those awful memories and simply couldn’t be bothered to realize how deep they went. Simply demanding you do more, be more. Oblige her every whim, each time she screamed or pretended to care.” She let out a girlish giggle—sharp and cruel, echoing in the cracked vastness. “You could’ve set yourself aflame to keep her warm, and she’d only curse the fire for not burning the right way.”
Arc’s jaw clenched, shoulders sinking beneath the weight of her words, because they were truths he’d buried under layers of duty and denial. His voice rasped, hoarse from blood and smoke: “It didn’t matter what I did. Every gesture, every word… it was twisted back into contempt. I was never enough. Not as I was. Not as I am. Not as I could be. Nothin’ I gave was ever received—.”
Argentina hummed, pleased, prowling closer. She tilted her head, smile widening. “And yet you followed, obedient. Shackled. Why, Archimedes? Why keep crawling back to the whip that strikes you?”
His throat burned as he forced the words out. “Because I thought… I thought if I endured long enough, if I fought hard enough, maybe she’d see me. Maybe she’d…” He stopped, his breath shuddering. “…but she never did. She never will. I can’t—I won’t crawl back to her hatred again.”
“Oh, listen to you,” Argentina cooed, standing in front of him now, her face inches from his. Her hair brushed his cheek like silk, her perfume of smoke and spice a trap. “There it is. The truth.” She giggled again, soft and venomous. “You don’t want to go back. You want the Abyss to take you. You want to shed all that pain, all that loathing, all those chains. Just a demon, nothing more. Just what you were born to be.”
Her hand rose, palm glowing with twisting, abyssal strands of shadow. The very air warped around it, bending inward. When her fingers brushed his chest, Arc hissed—the bond flared, silver threads woven through his being, taut and resisting. Argentina’s eyes closed, her smile trembling with delight as she felt it. “Ahhh… there she is,” she purred, her voice almost trembling with glee. “The Highborn tether. Fragile little thorn. I can smell her through you. Her spark, her poison, her claim.”
Arc swallowed hard, a flicker of dread moving through him even as he leaned into the inevitability of it. His voice was quiet, but steady. “Break it. Take her from me. Tear her out of my marrow. I don’t care what’s left of me when yer done.”
Her red eyes snapped open, glimmering with feverish joy. She leaned her forehead against his, mock tender, her claws grazing the skin of his jaw. “Oh, Archimedes,” she whispered, breath warm, lips curling. “So ready to be undone. So ready to be mine, such poetry.”
His chest heaved, voice cracking like brittle stone. “I don’t want to belong to her anymore. I don’t want to belong at all. Unmake me. Take everythin’—memories, name, all of it. Leave only the demon I was carved to be.”
A soft, intimate laugh spilled from her throat, more chilling than any snarl. She kissed his temple, her lips like ice. “Gladly,” she breathed. “I will peel her from you, strand by strand, and drink down every memory that remains. You will forget the chains. You will forget the shame. You will be fire, shadow, hunger—pure again. And you will never hurt again.”
The Abyss roared, fissures bleeding molten light as if echoing her promise. Around Arc, the shadows pressed closer, coiling with Argentina’s magic as it wrapped around the bond inside him, testing, squeezing. The chain shivered, stretching thin. For the first time since its forging, the contract screamed with strain. Arc closed his eyes, pain and release intermingling in his chest. “Then do it,” he whispered. “End it. End me.”
She gave him a gentle tap to his lower lip, her nail glinting obsidian in the bleeding twilight of the Abyss. “Patience, pet. Patience first…” The words dripped with false honey, the promise of reprieve. Her smile widened, too many teeth catching the glow of hellfire rivers as she cooed, “Let me take care of everything. And let me take care of you…”
Her voice thickened, thrumming with the weight of abyssal spellcraft. “Rest, Archimedes. Rest.” Arc’s breath stuttered as the magic slid over him like oil. He tried to lift his head, to fight the undertow, but exhaustion crashed through him with cruel finality. His body sagged, violet eyes clouding, before his lids fell shut. The Abyss claimed his consciousness, dragging him down into a forced, unbreakable slumber.
Argentina’s laughter chimed softly as she raised her hand, weaving the tether with a precision that bordered on artistry. She sank claw-tips into the bond, into that invisible cord binding demon to fae, and pulled. The Abyss itself buckled as she twisted the chain into a vessel, forcing her will down it like a spike. Arc’s body shivered once, then collapsed into shadow. Darkness compacted, folded, reformed—until all that remained of him was a small, obsidian beetle pendant, slick with violet sheen. Its carapace glowed faintly, veins of light pulsing like a heartbeat. Argentina plucked it from the ash with reverence and slipped the chain around her throat, the pendant settling warmly against her collarbone.
“There now,” she purred, stroking the trinket with mock affection. “So much easier to carry you this way.” The ground beneath her clawed feet trembled as she bent the tether once more, not to reach Arc, but to follow. To crawl out of the Abyss along his binding like a parasite in a vein. The air tore, scarlet sparks bleeding into the storm above. With one step, she left the scorched black stone behind, and when her footfall struck solid earth, it was the cold crust of the mortal plane.
The wind howled, mountains rising around her, the stink of frost and blood still thick in the air. Argentina inhaled deeply, savoring it, her grin sharp and victorious. Her free hand smoothed the beetle pendant, fingers brushing the faint pulse within as though to remind herself of her prize.
Her gaze turned to the distance, to where the pull in the bond whispered—faint but clear—the direction of the Court of Vines. Her lips parted in a sultry laugh. “Ahh, what delightful fortune,” she murmured, hunger sharpening her tone. “You’ve led me straight to the heart of it, little pet.” With the storm hissing around her and Arc’s silent form bound at her throat, Argentina set off, every step purposeful, every sway of her hips carrying her closer to power.
The Court of Vines… as Calia approached the stone wall and the gate that would lead onto the property, she wriggled her fingers at her sides testing the feel of this strange place. It was much like Fawna’s realm, solid in it’s existence. Pure constructed magic and quite personal to whomever made it. Yet unlike Fawna’s little cozy cottage, made to be something specifically to appeal to Calia and lure her into a state of calm trust… this place was old. Far older than Calia, far older than anything she knew. Though perhaps not as ancient as Cragjaw.
On reaching the gate her steps faltered slightly, causing her to pause in a wince pressing hand to her chest. Not her heart, oh how she wished it was! Instead something was pulling on that tether hard and sharp. He really was trying to severe them now. No more hoping, no more pretending the poles would shift and they’d come back together again.
The magpie on her shoulder stomped one of it’s coal black feet.
You are under dressed, let me remedy this.
Before Calia could protest otherwise, a shimmer of fae magic took to her clothes, shifting form and function into a gown that might’ve been plucked right out of the rays of a setting sun. Hues of vibrant fiery orange gently faded into deep coppers, with beaded embellishments that reflected the very vines creeping up the side of the elegant manor they were approaching. That blasted magpie couldn’t seem to just leave it with that either, it had swept up Calia’s hair too in a cascade of coal black curls woven with red roses.
Would you like a mirror, sister? asked the magpie, certainly pleased with itself.
“I’d rather jump off a cliff.”
The bird on her shoulder cackled another laugh, doing a little hophop to encourage Calia to proceed. Patiently being a companionable familiar as the girl pushed through the gates and made her approach towards the manor covered in climbing roses. The sound of music and laughter was even stronger now, carrying with it the scent of savory food and sweet wines. Calia made her way up white marbled stairs and crossed through a pair of wide opened doors into a grand foyer.
People were everywhere. Calia need not worry about looking out of place, for everywhere her eyes turned there was some outrageous ballgown that looked more costume than elegant design. Some fanciful suit or embroidered mask made to look like creatures of the forest, only more ridiculous and exaggerated. One might assume she’d walked into a masquerade of elves by the shape of those ears – so long and pointed and angled – and it dawned on her that these were fae. Some still had antlers and horns, some with shimmered wings that only appeared when they stood just right in the light. Hints of their alternative forms could be seen in some of the clothing they wore… but this was the very first time she’d ever seen them take human shape.
And they’d certainly noticed the moment she came through the threshold. A wave of murmurs and whispers sweeping through the foyer and father still as she walked on through to a larger ballroom adorned with hanging chandeliers made of crystal and starlight. A masquerade ball cast in warm romantic light with roses wrapped around pillars and set into vases. The scent so heavy in the air it was almost hard to breathe. The magpie at her ear clicked it’s beak and urged her to keep going, weaving her way through the parting crowd until she found herself at the ball’s edge.
A throne grown straight out of a rose bushes vines, entwined in simple elegance. Rising from it’s seat was a man so impossibly tall, with hair the same vibrant hue as the blossoms adorning the room and a smile as warm as the morning sun. He wore a crown made of thorns and gold, with eyes of two distinct colors; one the color of rich dark chocolate and the other a smooth honey amber.
Greetings oh great King Alewillan to the Court of Vines! I present to you, the requested lost daughter, Caaaaaaliaaaaa.
A gracious bow that magpie on her shoulder did give before it flapped away, landing on the arms of the throne where it proceeded to preen and fluff again.
Calia had enough sense to not be entirely rude, and yet…? There was no denying she was exhausted both mentally and physically. Fighting against that numbing ache taking over her body, that stretching of the bond that was perhaps a second away from being snapped. She was pissed at demons, at ancient drakes, at the whole of the entire world – and now she was supposed to put on a friendly face in a court of faeries in a gods damned fancy ball.
So she just held out her hands in a gesture of welp, here she was! Ta dah! and frowned at this beautiful crowned faerie king. She could almost hear the entire court of fae go dead silent in that moment whilst holding their breath.
And he fucking laughed!
Erupting immediately at her gesture, loud, clear, joyously bold. It swept across the court like a soothing balm, setting music to playing properly once again, to guests now chittering at a level that was surely way higher than a whisper now. This King Alewillan stepped down to her level to grasp her hand – unasked at that – to lead her to the dance floor.
…why were faeries always so weird.
“What do you want?” Calia asked bluntly. She’d already gone through all of the nonsense of playing by elven rules in Queen Ashera’s palace and she was too damn tired to care about them here. He moved them into position on the dance floor, taking up her hand and wrapping his other around her waist. Gliding into the slow gentle steps of a waltz.
“You, obviously.” He answered without missing a beat, manage to actually stun her that he’d be so obvious about it. “Were you expecting something else? You became the world’s most wanted the moment your magic released a legion of demons back into the realms.”
Ouch. “…I am not the one who did that.”
He merely laughed again. “It is known. As it is known that your stolen heart is not the piece that is vital. Without you that heart is useless.”
Calia sighed that world weary sigh again. This was information she already knew, as there was no reason for her to still be alive otherwise. “Obviously. So what do you want?”
“To help you,” he answered with a broadening grin. “Join my court. In turn I will give you everything you wish. Your own true magic returned, a home here within my court. I will severe the chains to that creature that has rejected your open hand. Let me rule you.”
“That sounds like a lot of empty promises.” she countered. “I don’t know you.”
“There’s time. We can have a lifetime in just a few precious moments. All you have to do is stay.”
It was hollow promises or back to endless walking. Well. Where was she even going to go. At least here she was wanted.
“I’m not agreeing. But I will stay… for now.”
Snowfields that had been silent but for the rasp of the wind now carried a second sound—laughter, thin and honeyed, the kind that did not belong in mortal lands. It slipped and coiled through the blizzard like a serpent, alien to the silence of ice and stone, tainting the purity of the wasteland with its cadence of mockery and delight. The storm itself seemed to hesitate at her voice, as though uncertain whether to howl or hush.
Argentina’s heel pressed into the frost with unhurried grace, a predator’s stride disguised as a queen’s promenade. Each step was deliberate, a declaration—cracks spidered in the rime beneath her footfalls, black veins bleeding through the ice, as if the mountains themselves recoiled from the intrusion. She moved as though the frozen peaks were her courtiers, required to bow beneath the shadow of her presence. Snow slid from the cliffsides, not from wind or weight, but from the faint shimmer of abyssal pressure that curled off her like heat from a forge.
Her fingers, long and pale, traced idle shapes in the frigid air. Each languid motion left behind a trail of dark glyphs that smoldered like brands. They did not fade but hung heavy, smoking with abyssal heat that had no business existing in this realm. The runes warped the air, bending light, causing the snowflakes to hiss into steam as they drifted too near. Every symbol whispered faintly in a tongue older than mortality, promises of rot and ruin, prayers to the pit.
Against her breast, fastened on a slender chain of tarnished silver, the beetle pendant twitched. It was a small, unassuming thing at first glance, its carapace slick black and faintly iridescent, but the longer one stared, the more it seemed alive. The faint shiver of legs folded tight, the quiver of wings caged beneath enamel sheen—Arc’s form, bound and dreaming, sealed into chitin and charm. He pulsed faintly with the beat of a heart that was not his own, his essence pressed into her keeping.
Argentina’s hand rose, and she stroked it with the slow affection one might give a favored pet. Her nails clicked soft against the beetle’s shell, and it quivered in response, a tremor of trapped vitality. She cooed low in her throat, the sound equal parts tenderness and cruelty. “Hush now, little one,” she murmured, voice syrup-sweet, heavy with false comfort. “You’ve done your part. You’ve given me your chain. Rest, and let me do what you could not due to that elven heart still in your chest.” Her lips curved into a grin, sharp with delight, her eyes glimmering like onyx pools. The storm around her seemed to bend closer to listen, the very cold air thickening, as though her presence were enough to taint the wasteland itself. She moved onward, coiling closer to the hidden heart of the realm, every step and every stroke of her fingers a promise that this land was about to be unmade.
“Such bitter air,” she mused, her tone lilting, almost sing-song. “How it cuts. How it bites. And yet you tread it, little fae, leaving your footprints like crumbs for me to follow.” She lowered her face to the snow, inhaled as if scenting prey, and giggled, delighted. “Mmm… roses and frost. I taste the Court already.”
She followed the trail through the blizzard’s ruin until the shape of it loomed: the gate, woven of vine and stone, throbbing faintly with fae power. The air around it smelled too rich for this wasteland—wine, old magic, and thorns. Argentina’s grin sharpened. “Oh, how darling. You slip away into your little secret garden, and yet the bond drags me straight to your door.”
Her claws flexed, and abyssal sigils writhed down her arms, crawling into the snow where they hissed and steamed. She pressed one palm flat to the gate, and black fire spread like oil across its surface, mingling with the green glow of fae enchantment. “Do you feel it, Calia?” she crooned, voice lilting like a lover’s murmur and a threat in one. “That burn in your chest? That isn’t him anymore. That is me. Archimedes wanted an end, and I gave it to him. Now his tether is mine to pull.”
The gate groaned, old wood and vine creaking as abyssal pressure forced its way in. Argentina laughed softly, pressing her body close against it as if embracing a lover. “Oh, Court of Vines… open for me. Your little lost daughter needs company.” The air cracked as roots split under the strain, the veil thinning between realms. Argentina tilted her head, hair falling in a glossy curtain as she whispered sweet against the living gate. “Let me in. I promise I will make such beautiful ruin of everything within.”
Faerie magic was such an intoxicating thing. Familiarity and home all wrapped up in one. The entirety of this realm folding her in and surrounding her with that very thing she was desperate to have back. Flooding her senses with nothing but the scent of roses and sweet wine, her vision of dazzling spectacle in the form of masked creatures that spoke to her like she was one of them. Time truly had no meaning in a faerie’s realm, for it could speed up as it wished or slow down to make a single minute last a lifetime.
Here at the Court of Vines it was an endless, eternal ball. A party full of joy and dancing and social reverie that went on and on and on and on.
Calia found herself to be the guest of honor, the Crown’s very special friend. Always the center of attention, always surrounded by several people eager to speak with her about all manner of unimportant nonsense things. Never alone, though. Not even for a single second. When it seemed she might be getting overwhelmed with too many at once, a singular one would pull her away for a dance. There was never any time to think, and at first Calia welcomed it with open arms. To lose herself inside this crowd of people who knew what she was and never seemed to balk at the way she’d say things or find anything she said offensive.
The trouble with eternal fae spaces was that ache in her chest that never went away. The numbness ever present. How the tether yanked and pulled and burned. What could have felt like days of jovial fraternizing also felt like days of quiet agony. Every burning moment a reminder that she was attached to something that wished her nothing. Literally nothing, for he wanted nothing to do with her at all.
In this carousel of fae, King Alewillan would always return to her to make his offer. Join the court. Stay here in this realm. Stubbornness, really, was the only thing stopping her in the beginning. Yet the longer she stayed, the less of a reason she could think of to refuse it. Here she wouldn’t be alone. Here she wouldn’t have to think! Let someone else find her heart for her and let all of her pain just go away. If all she had to do was stay, then surly it was worth it.
Murmurs soon filled the court and something in the lights had shifted. A flicker that had caught her attention to glance up with a furrowed brow and several in her present grouping of conversation exchanged the sort of glances that Calia could recognize. Trouble coming.
Naturally. How foolish to think fae didn’t have their own dramas going on.
Before she could ask what might be going on, King Alewillan made his reappearance, grasping onto her arm to pull her away and to the side. His usual warm and bright features turned into a stern serious frown.
“I wish I could have given you more time,” he told her. “Something wicked breaks down my gate. Because of you. If you wish to stay, if you want my help, you must be part of my court. Let me rule you and I will be sure to keep you safe.”
There was an urgency there, she could see it in those mix-matched eyes. Moreover, the realm itself seemed to be bracing for something. Candlelit chandeliers going dim, while the climbing rose vines on every surface grew thick and thorny. A part of her so desperately wanted to agree, to let go of everything she was hanging onto. …but there was something in those words that she couldn’t get past.
“I’m already staying, is that not enough-“
“You have to say the words, Calia. Say that you belong to me. Of your own free will, you have to say it.”
Ah… but Calia had already said those words to someone else.
I’m yours. I chose that, no one forced it on me.
…fuck.
“I have to go,” she breathed out. Fuck! Why did it have to feel like her heart was trying to punch it’s way through her chest, there wasn’t anything in there but bitterness and disappointment! Calia pulled herself out of his grasp, too much in a hurry to catch that hardened look on his face. Mentally kicking herself because she’d just been so godsdamned tired of always having to struggle that she couldn’t keep her own priorities straight.
The wastes had never known such laughter. Not the kind that cracked bright across the ice like a whip of silk, too honeyed, too pleased, echoing with a promise of something vile behind every note. Argentina leaned into it as she strolled, savoring how it rattled through the canyons of snow and stone, making the world itself recoil.
Her hand trailed the air as though it were a curtain, and the air obeyed. Runes of shadow stitched themselves into being, jagged lines of abyssal script that smoldered in defiance of the frost. Each symbol warped the veil between realms, widening, prying, cracking it apart the way a dagger might split seams in armor. The glyphs clung to the storm, feeding on its fury, until the sky above her hung black with smoke and searing red veins of hellfire.
Argentina’s smile widened, lips gleaming like the curve of a knife. Her palm flattened, pressing forward with mock tenderness against the invisible skin of the world. The veil hissed under her touch. “Such stubborn craft…” she purred, stroking as though soothing an animal. “But you are thin, aren’t you? Brittle. And I know exactly where to press.”
She tapped the beetle pendant at her throat. Arc shivered within it, the faint pulse of his trapped essence vibrating down the chain. She giggled, the sound bright and girlish, though her eyes were lit with venom. “Thank you, darling,” she cooed to him. “Your bond is the keyhole, and I am the hand that turns the lock. How generous of you, to bring me straight to her.”
With Arc’s tether coiled around her will, Argentina pressed harder. The glyphs flared, lines of abyssal fire branding across the very fabric of reality. The stone gate ahead of her—carved of ancient frost and veined in vine—groaned as though in pain, resisting her intrusion. Its roses, once carved in delicate bloom, shriveled black in an instant, their petals crumbling to ash. The chains of magic strung through its frame screamed audibly as she pushed.
“Shhh,” Argentina breathed, her voice chiming like crystal. “It’s only a door. And all doors open for me.”
She drew her arm back, abyssal heat whirling around her hand like molten glass, then slammed her palm into the gate. The shock cracked across the wasteland, a seismic groan that split stone and snow alike. The wards flared white in desperation—then shattered, shards of fae light exploding outward like broken glass. The veil buckled, wrenched open, torn ragged by her will.
Argentina waltzed through the breach as though the shattered veil were nothing more than a velvet curtain held open for her arrival. The sound of her heels—sharp, elegant, deliberate—rang out on marble tiles that had not been there a heartbeat before, each step landing with the poise of a queen who had found her throne. Behind her, the frozen wastes of the mortal plane twisted and collapsed inward, their silence ruptured by a thousand groans of dying stone. The mountains folded into themselves like a crushed carcass, screaming into the void left by the tear she had carved. The air still quivered with its death rattle, but Argentina did not so much as glance back. The Abyss had given her passage, and the world itself bent to her entrance.
Before her stretched the Court of Vines: radiant, eternal, a realm spun from fae vanity and the dream of perfection. Arched ceilings glittered with chandeliers of crystal and starlight, their beams caught in the mirrors of polished marble floors. Roses bloomed in impossible abundance, climbing the pillars and draping the archways in swaths of scarlet. Music floated through the vast hall, woven of harps and violins that seemed to pluck their strings from the very air. Guests, masked and adorned in splendor, shimmered with a glamour meant to conceal the weight of their true shapes. It was a world sculpted for beauty, eternal and untouchable—yet at the edges, already unraveling.
Her presence bled into it like ink into water. Where she passed, roses curled black and sagged, petals falling like ash onto her path. Thorns dripped with pitch that hissed against the marble, etching trails of corruption that spread like veins. The chandeliers overhead stuttered, their brilliance dimming into a jaundiced glow; the crystals no longer sang with starlight but buzzed with a feverish, sickly flame. The music faltered—first a string slipping flat, then another shrieking sharp until the entire waltz warped into a discordant scream. Guests gasped as the glamour of their gowns and masks sputtered, fabric withering into moth-eaten rags, antlers snapping brittle, wings molting into smoke.
Even the air soured. The heady perfume of roses, once intoxicating, turned cloying and suffocating, laced with the copper tang of fresh blood and the acrid smoke of charred wood. It stuck in throats, turned breaths shallow, coated tongues in bitterness. Vines that had climbed the walls in perfect harmony twisted on themselves, recoiling from her shadow, curling in pain as though strangled by unseen hands.
Argentina smiled through it all, serene as a saint, as if this unraveling had been arranged for her pleasure alone. Her hand drifted to the pendant at her throat—Arc’s form bound and dreaming—and stroked it as though rewarding a beloved pet. The chain gleamed against her collarbone, black metal catching the dim light like a brand. Each brush of her fingers made the air around her pulse, a rhythm that clashed against the fae music until the hall itself seemed to throb with a heartbeat that was not its own.
Fingers stroked the beetle pendant against her collarbone, the chain glinting dully in the warped light. “Such a pretty world,” she sang, tilting her head like a bird. “And how it bends when I touch it.” She laughed again, a ripple of mockery that carried far, bouncing against the vaulted ceiling. “Do you feel it, little fae? Do you feel me? You should. I am in your halls now. In your air. And soon, in your bones.”
She twirled once, a dancer in a nightmare’s masquerade, skirts of shadow and smoke flaring in a sweep that kissed the marble with soot. The air recoiled at her passage, the chandeliers overhead shrieking as their crystalline bodies cracked hairline fractures, shedding dust like falling stars. With every languid step she took further into the Court of Vines, its radiant warmth faltered—edges fraying into frost-burned shadow, gold tarnishing, starlight dimming into ember glow. The court did not collapse, not yet, but it bent beneath her presence, as though beauty itself were forced to wear mourning veils. This was no erasure—this was scarring, seared deep into its flesh.
Argentina’s hand lingered at her throat, stroking the pendant that pulsed faintly like a trapped heartbeat. Arc’s beetle-form twitched at the contact, a living jewel bound in silence, his essence thrumming beneath her nails. She giggled—a sound out of place, silvery, laced with venom—and with that laugh came a shiver of power. Black glyphs unfurled around her in a ring, their lines jagged, burning hot with abyssal script that smoldered in blue-white flame. They lifted from the marble, coiling in patterns like writhing serpents before snapping taut into a barrier.
The sphere of protection shimmered, translucent yet dense, woven with strands of Arc’s own magic leashed to her will. It was not a perfect mirror of his craft—it was sharper, twisted, reinforced by her touch until its surface hummed with a killing note, a resonance that could shear spells like silk. Sparks crawled along its edges, leaping like insects of light before dying in acrid smoke. The fae’s court might strike against her, but her shield was abyss and demon both, bolstered by a power Arc had never consented to share.
And then she pulled. Her long fingers traced lazy circles over the pendant, and the bond between Arc and Calia convulsed. What had once been a tether of muted ache and latent weight flared suddenly to life, blazing with a heat not its own. It did not warm—it burned. It raked like claws along the marrow, a chain turned brand, fire coursing through the link as if someone had poured molten iron into the hollow of a scar. The pain was jagged, deliberate, cruel—meant not to sever, but to remind that what bound them was no gift. It was ownership.
Argentina tilted her head, lips curving in something both coy and cruel. Her voice, carried on the faint hum of her tune, wound through the air like smoke. “Ah, there it is,” she purred, pressing the beetle against her lips as though whispering to a lover. “The little leash stretched tight… flame at one end, flame at the other. How exquisite. How fragile.” She inhaled, as if savoring the scent of roses turning to ash. “Come greet me, child of thorns. Or I will come greet you. And I promise—” a giggle burst, sharp, crystalline, unsettling in its joy—”I am better at finding.”
“Calia,” was the King’s demanding shout behind her, but she didn’t stop for him… not that she need go far.
The entire real shuddered, shivered, and rippled enough to rock the very foundations of the gorgeous marbled manor and it’s very pillars. The more it all grew to protect itself, the harder the outside force pushed. A foreign magic to this place, that Calia could recognize now with eerie dread. Abyssal magic. Demon. The Court of Vines was under siege by a demon, and by King Alewillan’s words it was her fault.
Even if she had doubted that, the sudden sharp burning had her faltering in her steps. Letting out an anguished cry when bent and clutched her chest. More than just a shock to wake her, this was pure punishing cruelty. It was malice, searing and branding a warning into her soul. Sending a cold clammy chill of sickening terror when she realized it was not her heart squeezing this vice, but the very tether of magic that bound her to Archimedes.
So when she came staggering into the grand ballroom, where rose vines once rich and beautiful had become thorns dripping with pitch, the sounds of horrified screams as illusions were shattered to leave a masquerade of fae’s true selves now bare for all to see, Calia was half expecting it to be Archimedes himself standing there. Taking some similar shape to the one that had slain the dryder in the mountains to come and end their by any means he could.
An entirely different demon was not on the agenda!
“Who the fuck are you!”
Calia was not the only one to enter the decaying ballroom, for stepping up behind her at a pace that was far too leisurely for her tastes was the very Crown of Thorns himself, King Alewillan. Hair red as summer roses, eyes of amber and chocolate; even with his grand manor being twisted and mangled, turning to ash before their very eyes, he was lustrous and gleaming with a bright and shiny elegance. His people, half in tattered rags and half-shifted animal forms, the other still in masquerade garb all hovered on the very outskirts of the room. Keeping themselves at a wide berth from this invading demon that’d set herself up nicely underneath a shield of protection.
“Argentina.” he greeted with a bland tone. “There are rules about crossing the realms for good reason.”
Calia wasn’t even going to touch what that was about. The issue was that she could feel Arc close, for now their bond bloomed bright and strong even with that searing burn making her lungs feel like she was sucking in embers. It took a moment – she almost missed it! – how the demon woman pet and fiddled with her little charm. It was not the beautiful gold as he should be, but incased in abyssal black.
Trapped.
“He’s not yours,” she hissed through her teeth, throwing her hand splayed to the side in a pull of the tether to summon Archimedes back where he belonged!
Argentina stood enthroned in the ruin she herself had conjured, every inch of the ballroom bowing unwillingly to her touch. Where she passed, roses turned brittle and black, weeping pitch instead of dew. Vines shriveled into spined knots that writhed in quiet agony, while chandeliers above dripped molten wax like tears of glass and flame. Music fractured in the rafters, unraveling into shrieks of strings that clawed at the ears. She inhaled it all as though it were incense, eyes glittering with wicked delight, lips parted in a sigh of rapture. This was worship, this devastation—her sacrament.
Calia’s words cut through the stench, sharp and unflinching, but Argentina only turned her smile on her, a cruel curl of white teeth framed in lips red as blood. At her throat gleamed the beetle pendant, Arc’s form condensed and sealed, twitching faintly in time with her fingers’ lazy caress. She stroked it as one might soothe a beloved pet, her voice lilting when she answered, sweet as a lover’s whisper but threaded with thorns. “Who am I? Why… I am what he chose when the choosing was too heavy for him. I am the silence he begged for. I am the hand he gave himself to when yours only cut him deeper. And now, darling thorn—” her grin widened, sharp as a knife—”I am here.”
When Alewillan’s voice broke across the hall, thunder bound in velvet, Argentina’s gaze flicked to him. His radiance burned stubbornly even through the ruin, and it only made her laughter brighter. Her false modesty sat easily on her shoulders, a coy tilt of her head, a little shrug that made her seem almost girlish. “Rules?” she sang, like a mockingbird echoing back a note. “Oh, your Majesty, I would never disobey. No rebellion, no whimsy—merely obedience. You see, I came on a bond.” She tapped the pendant once and the tether between Arc and Calia snapped hot, branding flame along its length. “Fae-forged, demon-forged. I only follow the path laid for me. I walk where he is bound, and he is bound to her.”
Her skirts flared as she spun once in place, a dancer waltzing in a nightmare, smoke and shadow coiling around her legs. Abyssal glyphs sparked bright in her barrier, Arc’s stolen magic snarling inside like caged lightning, eager to tear. Every step she took cracked marble underfoot, hissed the very air, and yet her expression remained one of delighted amusement, as though the devastation were nothing but perfume in the air.
When Calia spat her denial, Argentina’s smile only sharpened. She tilted her head, eyes glinting as she stroked the pendant again, indulgent. “Oh, but he is mine, darling. He gave himself to me. So tired, your Archimedes. So broken. He whispered with no breath at all that he no longer wished to walk beside you. He was done.” Her voice turned sing-song, cruel and lilting, and the pendant twitched like it agreed. “He let me take him. And you should be proud.”
Her laugh burst out sudden and girlish, high as bells, cruel as glass pressed into skin. She leaned forward, hair spilling like ink over her shoulder, gaze sharp as a blade. “Do you not see what you’ve done? A heart demon of the third rank, once Archmage of Edleguard, undone—not by abyssal chains, not by blade, not even by hellfire. But by you. By your clever cruelty. By your barbs, your loathing dressed as love, your endless scorn. You hollowed him better than we ever could, and were the last person to break that mountain on the bones and bodies of those he ruined before.” Her voice dropped to a velvet purr, savoring every syllable. “Magnificent. You ought to be one of us, thorn-child. You have the talent.”
Her gaze flicked to Alewillan, bold as sunlight on steel. “And you, King of Roses, don’t sulk. I’ve broken no law. Your feathered fool called her here, called him here. I am the bond’s echo, nothing more. I came because she made him nothing. And nothing, Majesty…” her grin split wide and wolfish—”Is mine to shape.” Her hand pressed flat to the pendant, thumb tracing its lines as if stroking a living heart. Her voice softened, turned reverent, almost sweet. “Thank you, Calia,” she whispered, and the tether flared again, fire blistering through the link, hot enough to make the marble floor hiss and split. “Thank you for breaking him. For grinding him into a whelp who begged not to feel anymore. He is mine now. And through him—” she lifted her chin, letting the heat roll outward in waves—”I have this place too.”
Her laughter rose again, bell-bright, cruel, echoing like a hymn through the ruined Court. “So pull, darling thorn. Tug all you like. He won’t come.” Her eyes glittered with cruel delight as she leaned in, purring the last words with intimate relish. “He doesn’t want to, instead you’ll have me.”
This was what he ran to? This woman who reeked of evil in most purest of forms, whose voice spun malice into reality with nothing more than just walking into a room. It corrupted the ground, tainted the air. The way she spoke slipped in like a warm breeze and settled under her skin like a viper’s poison. Spoke of Calia as if she herself had done all the cruelties to Archimedes. Barbs, loathing and scorn? In the beginning, yes. There was no denying their beginning had been violent. But not when they had met again. Not after the bond.
…surely not. Calia had tried so hard to be something better.
Those words slipped in as easily as every burning, punishing whip she sent through the tether. Forcing Calia to bite back a hiss of pain. He had to feel it too, it didn’t just go one way when the woman used him like a prop. Maybe everything about Calia was true, but Archimedes didn’t deserve to be paralyzed inside a jeweled prison just to escape her.
And he sure as hell didn’t belong to this vicious demon bitch.
“Yes, yes, you’re having your fun being a party crasher, but you do not have power over my court, Argentina.” explained the King with a gesture of his hand. When he pushed out his own aura forward, appeared to work much like her own, returning the sparkle and luster and life. Repairing with fae magic what abyssal was decaying. “The only one you can truly touch right now is…”
That gesture of hand was obvious – towards Calia who straightened her form and cast this faerie king of vines and thorns a pleading look.
“Will you help me?” Calia asked outright. This was his own realm, he held the power here to expel the demon by his own will. He had an entire court of faeries waiting along the wings, staring right at them.
“If you agree to my terms-“
“To rule me?”
King Alewillan held out his arms, gesturing once again to the crowd of faeries still there at this schadenfreude of a ball even thought sure it would’ve been better to flee by now.
“This is my court and all within it belongs to me. I am not without generosity, Calia. I can make this court everything you wish it to be. Share my crown. Return your own magic to you and break the bond that torments you now. All you need do is take my hand and say you belong to me. That you are mine. I am benevolent, you would be the most precious jewel at my side. The alternative…” He tilted his head in the demon direction, making it quite clear that he was going to stand by and let Argentina do as she wished. To make Calia into nothing, for that is what the demon claimed she shaped. Nothings.
“Let you control me or let her,” she stated flatly. Who knew she could be so valued, so wanted, and yet absolutely nothing worth being near all at the same time. Invited to this place just to be sweet-talked into being some control freak king’s newest puppet. Abandoned by Archimedes in favor of a cruel mistress who was hurting him more now with deliberate purpose than anything Calia ever did to him!
Fuck this place. Fuck all of them.
A soft breath of sound slipped out of her when she crossed the few steps towards King Alewillan and in those short steps his wide grew wide and smug when he reached out his hand to her. Except Calia didn’t take it, she took magic. No knowledge of where: at best it would’ve been Arc’s if the tether was strong, it could have been Argentina’s as one could bet if she claimed ownership of the bond, that meant her magic was mixed up there too, or it could have even been Calia’s own heart with a promised a backlash soon to follow. Didn’t matter – she pulled hard and in that motion shoved her hand into the faerie king’s chest.
The man was stunned at first, until his face melted back to that smug smile. She hadn’t touched his heart. “You missed.”
“I didn’t.”
Confusion let to a sudden realization, sending King Alewillan into a stuttering N-Nuh-!! as she wrapped her fingers around his spine and sent that magic down into the very marrow of his bones. A shimmering reflection of it went up rippling through him as split second before she stepped backwards and ripped a full skeleton straight out of his meat. Calia flung those frostbitten bones down on the ground, as his body still stood there in living horror before it schlllllooooopped to the ground as a jelly pool of skin, muscle and guts. The faerie king now screaming something incomprehensible as tongues were meant to work in tandem with bone jaws!
Calia stooped, picking up one of the long femurs, flicking it in the direction of the fallen king until the yellowed bone shaped itself into a sword. This magic absolutely stolen in such a horrific way that all those faeries that’d been watching with alarmed but curious interest were now shrieking and finally seeking their escape.
“I do not belong to this court,” she pressed a foot down and from it the frost and ice made it’s fractal pattern known. No sigils needed, ice could make it’s own beautiful symbols, stretching, enchanting, fighting it’s away around her tainted touch to leech it’s away into the realm. The doors froze over trapping all of the faeries of the vine court inside with their useless skin flap of a king.
“But I do belong to Archimedes. So give him back. Because I can guarantee you will not be able to hold us both.”
Argentina’s barrier shimmered like a dome of oil and flame, every glyph alive with Arc’s magic twined in hers, sparks crackling with abyssal hunger. She leaned lazily against it as if it were nothing more than a ballroom column, one heel sliding against marble, skirts of smoke curling about her legs. Her smile widened when the Crown of Thorns, resplendent even in his dripping ruin, dared call her a party crasher.
She rolled her eyes with the languid contempt of a queen bored by a servant’s chatter. “Oh, Alewillan,” she crooned, voice sweet as sugared wine and twice as cloying, “If you think me crashing, perhaps your invitations are too carelessly worded. You call her here, you call her demon—what did you think would follow? If you truly didn’t want me, perhaps teach your magpie to mind its manners. Or better yet,” she grinned wolfishly, tapping the pendant at her throat, “Learn to bind your toys properly.”
When Calia made her desperate plea, Argentina said nothing, only watched, delight dancing in her eyes. She observed the king’s every grandiose word, every open palm, every promise wrapped in thorns. And when Calia struck—not to take his hand but to unmake him—Argentina’s lips parted in a gasp of pure ecstasy. The gruesome crack of magic, the rending of bone from meat, the shriek that spilled from the fae’s marrow as his skeleton came free—oh, she was radiant in her joy. She clutched the pendant against her throat and laughed like a girl at a festival, spinning once in place, skirts lashing black smoke through the air. “Yes! Yes, darling thorn! How exquisite you are when you stop pretending at restraint.” Her laughter rang out as the king’s skin-slop collapsed, as the fae screamed, as panic overtook the hall. She basked in it like sunlight, grinning wide enough to split her cheeks.
When Calia turned that sharp frost-forged defiance on her, Argentina only tilted her head, grinning as if she’d been waiting for it all along. The barrier around her shimmered like black glass, every glyph humming with Arc’s stolen strength, and she looked at Calia with the indulgent patience of a predator watching prey exhaust itself.
“Oh, sweet child of thorns,” she cooed, her tone syrup-thick but edged in malice, “I do so adore your conviction. But let us not misplace truth with want.” Her fingers traced the beetle pendant at her throat, nails gliding lovingly over its shell, and the tether flared—searing, prickling fire ripping through the bond as though to remind Calia where the leash truly rested. “This one?” she purred, stroking the charm as it twitched, “He is mine. Not stolen. Not tricked. Given. Willingly. Do you know why?”
Her grin widened, cruel and indulgent, her eyes gleaming with the pleasure of unmasking someone else’s rot. “Because he wanted to escape not only you, my little frostflower, but himself. All of it. The weight of centuries gnawed hollow in his chest. The memory of every face he ever killed, every voice that died on his hands. Father, lovers, friends—his ghosts never left him. They carved themselves into his ribs and rattled there until he couldn’t breathe anymore.” She pressed the pendant against her breast as if cradling it, her tone slipping into mock sympathy. “You were simply the last stone on a back already breaking. You became the final thorn in a flesh so tender with scars that one more cut made him bleed out.”
She leaned forward slightly, lashes low, lips curved sharp. “Oh, he tried, didn’t he? Tried to stand, tried to offer you pieces of himself. But the truth, darling, is that he was afraid. Afraid that one day he would kill you, too, the way he killed everyone else he ever dared to love. Can’t you see it?” Her laughter came soft, like a whisper behind glass. “That was his secret terror—that you would join the ghosts already screaming in him. Better to give up. Better to lay down. Better to let me take him, cradle him, silence him.”
Her tone brightened, mocking sweetness bleeding into cruelty. “And gods, how he quailed beneath you. How he bent when you lashed, how he flinched at your fire. Sweet one moment, cruel the next. Mercy and malice in the same breath. He could never predict which face of you he’d wake to, and it hollowed him more than any blade. You broke him with what you offer as love, Calia, because you could not love without anger, without barbs. And anger—” Argentina’s smile thinned, her voice dropping into something edged with knowing—”Anger is an inheritance. I know it well. It shapes, it burns, it eats until nothing is left. He was already drowning in his own fury, his own failures. You only had to tip the last drop.”
She tapped the pendant once, and it pulsed, twitching like a heart caught in her hand. “So no—this is not a prison. It is a mercy. He begged not to feel. He begged for nothingness. He begged for me.” Her smile sharpened, white teeth gleaming against the ruin she stood in. “And I, merciful creature that I am, gave it to him. This pendant is his silence. His escape. His cradle.” She leaned forward, lashes low, smile serpent-smooth. “So yes, you belong to Archimedes. And now he belongs to me. Which means…” she spread her arms, barrier flaring, tether burning hotter still, “…You belong with me.”
The words dripped like honey, but the meaning beneath was iron. Her laughter chimed again, silver-bright and cruel, carrying the weight of a dagger slipped between ribs. “You cannot harm me, Calia. So long as he is mine, so long as this bond holds, you may lash and flail and scream—but strike me, and you strike him. You see the genius? I am the new demon at your chain. And unlike him, I will not pull away. I will not rebel. I will not slip your leash.” She pressed her hand flat against her breast, against the pendant, her voice dropping low and sweet as a lullaby. “I will make sure you accomplish what you want most, thorn-child… but I will remain the one holding the reins.”
Her smile split wider, easy, radiant, a mockery of warmth. “So mind the bond, sweet Calia. Feel it prickle, burn, bite. Every thorn in its tether is my reminder that I am here. With you. In you. Around you. And if you want to break me—well, you’ll have to kill him first. And I mean, permanently.”
Her eyes glowed with that predator’s delight, clever and cruel. “A neat little knot, isn’t it? I do love when fae bindings cut both ways.”
Argentina fed her words, syrupy sweet and filled with the sort of glee of someone who was far too confident in what they were sharing. Things of Archimedes that Calia already knew was truth, because she wasn’t heatless or careless, she had eyes and she could see the pain in him. He’d made choices that killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Hurt the ones that were closest to him, even the ones he wanted to save. Calia could recognize that grief as well as she knew her own. To have a role in the death of so many people, to be the one that brought everything to ruin.
She truly thought she’d allowed that empathy to come through, to accept every piece of himself he gave her. To prove to him that she did not judge him, did not hate him… that she was still willing to be there with him as someone he could confide to! She’d made a few blunders, that was true, but she had tried. Every time he shut her down, every time he got into his own head and abandoned her. Calia stayed and waited for him to come back to his senses.
Her hand curled tight around that sword made of a faerie’s king bone, ready to cut the demon off altogether from her bullshit words! Taking a step forward to strike down that shield – oh, but the cruel woman wasn’t done was she.
There was something so insidious about the way Argentina’s words could fill the room and curl under Calia’s skin. Sweetness wrapped in toxic smoke, telling enough truth that could no see where things were getting twisted. Where the lies were slipping in. How could she not believe every word, when it echoed her own inner thoughts along with it. What did it matter of Calia’s intent, in the end she broke him. The way she inevitably broke everything. How could she ever expect him to trust her. Archimedes had needed someone with a gentle voice and soft touch who could shield and protect him from the cruelties of the world – and Calia didn’t have an ounce of gentleness in her. She was sharp, jagged and broken.
She was a curse to harm others. The only reason anyone wanted her at all.
Kill him. Pull his sister’s blade and strike them both down.
No. That was the one thing she couldn’t do.
This world is nothing but agony.
There was no denying that.
Calia was so damn tired of fighting just to exist. The tether burned and seared and twisted without her ever touching itself and all Calia could think was that he’d chosen this. To be wrapped in a cage of a monster’s making was better than being alone with Calia. Well, if that was what he wanted, who was she to fight it.
So wrapped in her thoughts, staring down Argentina and trying to make sense of anything, Calia had no notice of the rest of the court. Most importantly the boneless, spineless body of King Alewillan slapping arm across the floor to slither and slide himself like a snake. Until he’d finally reached her side to grasp onto the shifted bone in her hand and yank it back into himself. She might’ve been clever and caught him in a moment of surprise, but Calia was to be quickly reminded that she was still young and did not have the eons of wisdom nor experience.
With his magic reclaimed, the rest his bones came rolling across the floor back to him. Jumping back into his skin, although a bit of a hodgepodge mismatch that left him looking misshapen and mangled. In an instant King Alewillan grabbed her and furiously through her across the floor to Argentina’s feet, snarling with all the fury of an ancient fae that’d been mortifyingly embarrassed right in front of his own court.
“You would do well to learn to obey the rules, little fae sister,” he growled in his fury, directing his stare then to Argentina. “Take her and get out.”
Argentina’s laughter spilled into the hall like broken glass poured through velvet, bright and cruel in equal measure. She leaned down, skirts pooling around her like smoke, eyes glittering with delight as she looked over Calia’s thrown form. The barrier around her pulsed—Arc’s magic seamed into her own—its glyphs flaring with a hungry shimmer, drunk on their union. She touched the beetle pendant at her throat with lazy reverence, coaxing another pulse of fire through the tether just to watch Calia flinch.
“Oh, thorn-child…” Her voice was honey thick, amused and pitiless. “Don’t you see? You did it. You brought him to his knees.” She giggled, sweet and girlish, before her tone dropped low, silken with malice. “For centuries he staggered beneath the ghosts he made—his father’s eyes dimming under his own hands, his friends’ screams, the trail of corpses he called sacrifice. All of it rotted him hollow long before your barbs ever touched him. But you—” she tilted her head, grin sharp as a blade—”You were the last beautiful crack in a vessel already splitting. The hand that tipped him over the edge.”
Her eyes narrowed, savoring the moment. “Do you think he ran from you alone? No, darling. He ran from himself. From the fear of waking one day with your blood on his hands like all the others. He saw the way you wavered—sweet as balm one breath, venomous the next—and it carved him deeper than any spell or steel. That whiplash, that doubt… you were the mirror he could not bear to face.”
She rose with languid grace, her barrier sparking as if in applause, and tapped the pendant again. The tether flared violently, branding its fire across Calia’s ribs, and Argentina’s grin bloomed wider, fevered in her delight. “So yes. He surrendered. Not because I deceived him, not because I forced him—but because he wanted it. Wanted silence. Wanted nothing. And now…” Her palm swept outward, a mockery of presentation, as the ballroom’s roses collapsed into black ash. “Now I have what no abyssal has ever dreamed of: the power of a fae-bound archmage, gift-wrapped by your hands. Thank you, Calia.” Her giggle was a dagger wrapped in silk, bright and cruel. “You broke him finally, and I inherit the pieces. Oh, how generous you are.”
When Alewillan’s mangled form barked out his fury and snapped, Take her and get out, Argentina only rolled her eyes, a dramatic, sultry gesture that made her laugh anew. She pouted, lips curving into a mock-sad shape, one hand fluttering against her cheek. “Oh, your Majesty, what a miserable host you are. I come all this way, dressed for the ball, and you call me a party crasher?” Her false pout melted into a sly grin, and she tsked at him as a mother might a wayward child. “Poor sport. Poor, poor sport. No wonder the child of thorns doesn’t bloom well in your halls. You fae do not treat her kindly. Tut, tut.”
Her gaze flicked back to Calia, gleeful now, voice syrup-sweet. “Come along, thorn-child. We’ve work to do, you and I. And why stay here, hm? This court is dreadfully boring, and clearly they are dreadful hosts.” She lifted the pendant between her fingers, letting it sway, black-gold and twitching with Arc’s pulse inside. “Besides—so long as I have him, you cannot touch me. The bond protects me as well as it binds you. I am your demon now. And I promise—” her grin sharpened into something wolfish, eyes gleaming as the tether prickled and burned like a thousand nettles through Calia’s chest—”I’ll make sure you achieve your goals. I’ll see your crown delivered. But I’ll stay in control. That’s the cost, my sweet thorn.”
The words settled, sweet as honey, bitter as ash. Argentina twirled once more in her barrier of abyssal light, skirts of smoke and shadow flaring, the Court of Vines groaning around her as roses blackened and chandeliers wept wax like tears. She spread her arms wide, voice gleaming with victory. “So here we are, darling. Bound together. Not by choice, but by him. And unless you’d like to kill your Archimedes for good and all, you’ll play along. Because now—” she tapped the pendant, and it pulsed like a heart inside her palm—”You belong to me as much as he does.”
Her laughter rang again, a sound bright as bells and cruel as glass splitting.
It hurt, it hurt, it hurt. That numbness that’d spread through her body like a heavy iron weight, the searing anguish sent through the tether just to leave her cringing and grunting out a muffled sound of pain as she curled up there on the ground on the skirts of Argentina’s barrier. The voice of the faerie king who only invited her in so she could be a thing he collected. Yet the worst of it was surely her words, that she just kept hammering, over and over, needlessly, cruelly. Of the fears and folly of a man that Calia could never heal no matter how hard she tried. Of Calia who was never going to be anything more than a hollowed out shell of a queen. Propped up on a throne by other’s hands, with an empty smile and a crown on her head, someone else used her magic to bring ruin to the world.
So bet it. Let the dreams become true. Perhaps Archimedes had the way of it, to simply give in. Let it all go. Give someone else the reigns and never have to think again.
Calia let out a slow staggered breath, trying not to think about the tears streaming – what did it matter if they saw her cry anyway? They all won, Calia was done. Finally giving in to what the universe was trying to tell her, to stop fighting her own fate and simply let it all happen.
…but it was wrong.
No matter how hard she tried to ignore that little voice inside her, that very same voice that like to screak for fiery violence, it hissed and cried and demanded action. Calia didn’t care about this stupid world anymore, but she cared about him. Maybe her fate was sealed forever, she could accept that. Yet she wasn’t going to accept him spending another lifetime in chains because he loved people. She couldn’t be the softness that eased his guilt and soothed his soul, however Calia could still pull him out of the brink to give him a chance even if it shattered her into a million pieces.
These feisty thoughts did not make it any easier to move, she was finding out. Still, Calia fought her way past that burning ache to push herself up off the floor. Letting those roses in her air and that ridiculous sunset copper gown melt away, to that close fitting black garb that so better represented the stupid gloom of her battered little soul. Argentina might currently hold their bond like it was a leash made of chains, but Archimedes and all that he was, abyssal and arcane was still Calia’s.
“Alright then,” she murmured soft, practically reeking of that despair and defeat in her voice. Unable to give the twisted, broken up form of King Alewillan even a glance. “We’ll play along.”
Truly none of it had to be faked, she was tired. Exhausted. Ready to collapse on her own feet… Nevertheless, malicious compliance was the new order of business. And Calia had enough spite in her to walk into any fire she had to until she could snatch that beetle off the woman’s neck.
Argentina’s skirts swirled as she turned toward the ruined throne room one last time, all grace and poison dressed as play. She lifted her hand and wagged her fingers in a coy farewell before blowing Alewillan a kiss, lips pursed in mock sincerity. “Truly, such a miserable host,” she crooned, voice ringing out bright as bells. “So sour, so quick to scowl. You’d think a king of vines might be better at hospitality. Ah well—next time, perhaps, you’ll remember to offer wine and song instead of tantrums.” Her smile turned sharp as glass. “Though I suppose Calia suits us demons better. You fae never did know how to treat most.”
She spun on her heel without waiting for a reply, skirts of smoke trailing behind her, the barrier still humming close around her figure like a jeweled cage. Not once did it flicker. Argentina knew better than to drop her shield—not when Calia stood with that stubborn, storm-bitten gleam in her eye. “Come along, frostflower,” she beckoned with a lazy flick of her wrist, as though summoning a wayward child. “Let’s leave these dreary halls before the poor dears faint from embarrassment.”
The wastes greeted them with a blade of wind sharp enough to cut skin, and Argentina breathed it in as though savoring perfume. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and let the chill fan through her hair. “Mmm. So clean after the rot of their court. Do you feel it? How the world itself sighs when chains are broken?” Her fingers stroked over the beetle pendant, coaxing the tether into a hot flare between them. “He is a marvel, your Archimedes. The well of him is fathomless… it must be his mother. A Svartálfar. Their blood runs deep with craft, darker than shadow, older than frost. And now I drink from it. What a gift you’ve given me.” Praising the girl for her generosity all the more and knowing where to keep pressing the stinger of malice. Purposefully switching from suggesting Calia was not the one to tip the scales and then back to it being entirely her fault. To see which one she snapped at first.
The barrier flared once, brighter, stronger, as if to punctuate her words. She glanced sideways at Calia, eyes gleaming with pleasure. “You cracked him open for me, thorn-child. All his grief, all his fury—and now all his power. Thank you.” The sincerity in her voice was venomous, sweet and cloying, made to burrow like a hook under skin.
Argentina strode ahead with the ease of someone utterly certain she would be followed. Her voice carried back lightly, conversational, even playful. “So. The mountain clans, then? Snow, steel, and stubborn men. I’ll enjoy the walk.” She hummed a tuneless melody as if to herself, then added with mock brightness, “Do you prefer venison or hare, Calia? I do hope the clans serve well—one does get so peckish after a night of theatrics, don’t you think?” Her laughter slipped into the cold like silver bells dropped into ice, cutting and sweet, a sound meant to rankle as much as it charmed.
Calia would remember this Court of Vines and their King, as one day there would be a reckoning. Why not lean into the self-righteous tendencies Starling Everflame accused her of. Calia didn’t want to bend people to her will, to control them and make them think like her. However there was so much cruelty and unfairness in this awful, horrible, terrible world. If she was meant to walk this plane as a destructive curse, then by all the gods, she was going to direct that destruction at those who truly deserved it.
Learn to follow the rules? Rules were made for breaking.
Silent as the dead, Calia followed after Argentina, giving the way the world shifted around them barely even a second glance. They passed through the tear the demon made to enter the Vine Court’s realm without invitation, back to the cold of the mountains that Calia had been climbing before she’d been whisked away. If they stayed the course, they would eventually find the passage that lead inside the stone monoliths themselves.
It wasn’t the path Calia kept an eye on, though. Argentina was smart enough to keep that barrier up because surely Calia would have lept on her like an angry cat the very second it dropped. Eventually, she would have to drop it. Hopefully by then Calia would have some sort of reasonable plan of action.
If Argentina claimed Archimedes had given himself to her of free will, then that was the crux of it. Calia couldn’t snatch him back without killing her, and she could not kill her if she was using Archimedes as her shield.
Then she had to wake up the demon so he could break the spell himself.
Of which… well. A troublesome thing to do when he hated her so much. He had to want his escape and he’d not come running to Calia.
This demon woman wouldn’t stop her chattering, either, which was making it oh so worse. Stirring up Calia’s guilt, her fears, her regrets. Twisting the knife in every which direction, leaving Calia in this endless flux of not knowing if she wanted to scream and just try her chance of attacking her, or to drop to the ground and just give up living. She slipped her hands into her pockets simply to keep herself from drawing up a weapon from her hollow or attempting to summon magic. Fingers wrapping around that gem she’d made of his spilled blood and fresh snow. Squeezing tight so it might be her grounding force.
She could do this. She could figure it out.
Then the demon dropped a curious thing, and Calia couldn’t help but take the bait.
“…what is a svartálfar?” she asked, taking great care not to react to the rest of her biting words. Calia wouldn’t give her the satisfaction! “Since you like to hear yourself talk so damn much, go ahead and tell me something I don’t already know.”
Argentina’s laugh came low and velvet-rich, curling in the air like smoke off burning cedar. She swayed her hand through the cold as if scattering invisible petals, and the barrier around her shimmered in response, flaring faintly as though to remind Calia of its presence. Feeling how the girl seemed to be studying in such a way that it warranted conversation! A statement of notice and verbally expressing it. “Ah, persistent little thorn,” she purred, stroking the pendant at her breast with languid fingers. “Of course you’re watching my shield, waiting for it to break. But you’ll be waiting a very long time. His well is… broad, you see. Deep as a chasm, and when braided with my own? Why, I could dance in this bubble for days and never feel the strain.” A smile split her lips, bright as a knife. “But I won’t bore you with how. Just know you’ll have plenty of time to admire me from the outside.”
At Calia’s question, Argentina paused just long enough to let the silence stretch thin, almost cruel. Then her grin widened, delighted. “Svartálfar. Now that is a clever question. They were elves, darling—true fae-born once, long before their neat little sundering between courts and kingdoms. Some stayed when the rest of their kind pulled away, bound themselves to the deep roots and the shadowed places. Workers of the arcane craft, of art so fine and terrible it could shape worlds. Not the high-flown light-bringers others adores, oh no. They were the quiet ones. The patient ones. The ones who whispered to metal and wove shadows into silk.” She tilted her head, eyes glinting. “And yes… one bloodline among them seems to trickle down into your Archimedes. Hidden well, but not well enough for eyes as old as mine.”
Her skirts whispered against the snow as she walked, utterly unbothered by the wind that clawed at the mountain passes. “That depth in him? That well I taste? That is svartálfar craft and abyssal fury, tangled like lovers in the dark. A rare vintage indeed.” She shrugged one shoulder, lips curling in a mockery of modesty. “Of course, I won’t tell you everything. What fun would that be? Knowledge is sweetest when it’s scarce. A morsel here, a crumb there—it keeps you hungry.”
She glanced sidelong, her smile syrupy sweet. “And oh, you are hungry, aren’t you? Hungry for answers, hungry for him. I can smell it on you. Makes me almost want to feed you another little bite… almost.”
Argentina hummed softly, almost cheerfully, as they pressed through the wastes, her voice lilting as if they weren’t shackled to one another by torment. “Now, speaking of morsels,” she added airily, “I do so love mountain folk. All that stubborn pride, all that steel and frost.” She smiled, lips parting in something close to a sigh. “Tell me, Calia—do they brew a decent tea up there? Or is it all bitter snowmelt and goat’s milk? I’d hate to think I went to the trouble of razing a court only to be rewarded with something so… bland.” Her laughter slipped out, light and bell-bright, sweet as sugar and sharp as shattered glass. Knowing she was asking these questions to be painfully annoying.
Calia stooped to pick up a rock and immediately chucked it at the woman – there wasn’t any fire or fury to it. A simple motion of futile testing because it was expected of her to try. She watched that rock bounce infectively away, as Argentina laughed and grinned and dropped just enough curious information to have Calia itching to know more.
Did Archimedes know about his mother? He never spoke of her and Calia never asked. Wondering now if he failure to pressure him for any sort of personal information about himself had been her biggest mistake. It’s not as if she didn’t want to know and have those conversations… she would’ve gladly been a listening ear and his confidant. Just, he did not seem like a man who wanted to be pressed about the things that hurt. She’d honestly believed that he’d give it of his own free will when he felt safe enough to share.
Truly her own folly, for her never felt safe with her. Never did trust her.
Oh but how it gave another thread of their tied fates, another shared trait between them of ancient bloodlines, secrets and power. Magnets cut from the same rock.
Calia frowned at this description of her. Hungry for answers, hungry for him. A way to make that pull she had sound weird, when it was so much more than that. Though they met in the worst way possible, there had always been something there. A chemistry, a connection. He’d made her feel things again when she’d felt nothing at all. Made her want to be better, do better. Infuriated her and inspired her all at the same time. So, yes she wanted him back with her, as he was the only thing in the world that made it feel like it was worth living in.
And as she squeezed that gem in her hands, she willed those thoughts into it. Wishing she had the courage to say it all out loud and actually to him. He wouldn’t believe a word of it, and that was fine. At least he would be free, they’d scuffle and then they could go have a goddamned nap.
“He is extraordinary,” she agreed instead. “Reminds me of an old fae tale from a children’s storybook. That all souls are born in stars before they fall to the earth, only they split in half before they make it. Maybe once in a lifetime someone stumbles over another that so perfectly reflects them… their good, their bad, their everything. Their balance. That other half of their soul.”
“So if you don’t mind, I’d sure appreciate if you’d stop petting my fucking soulmate, because you’re creeping me out.”
When the rock came sailing at her and ricocheted harmlessly off the shimmering barrier, Argentina didn’t bother to dignify it with words. A single, smug curl of her lips was all she offered, eyes glittering with the satisfaction of a predator who knew the cage bars were strong. No quip needed—silence, in that moment, was sharper than any jeer. She rolled her eyes, a languid, dismissive motion, one hand idly stroking the charm at her breast as though it were nothing more than an afterthought, not that she was doing it on purpose now. “Oh, darling,” she murmured, her voice dripping with sweet venom, “You make it sound so scandalous. As though I were fondling your lover beneath the table instead of wearing what he gave me of his own volition.” She tilted her head, smile sharp and amused, utterly unbothered by Calia’s barbed insistence.
At Calia’s mention of the fae tale, Argentina gave a scoff so delicate it could’ve been mistaken for a laugh. “A storybook fable, hmm? That’s rich. Do you believe it?” she asked, feigning curiosity, though the lilt of her tone made clear she thought the answer laughable. “Because I’ve noticed, frostflower, that your truths are always wrapped in anger first, prying into Archimedes memories certainly shows that. If you had such faith in fairy tales of balance and star-born souls, surely you would’ve spoken them aloud long before now. But that would mean opening doors you’ve kept locked tight. Are you so certain you can walk through them without reaching for fury to prop you up?”
Her eyes gleamed, her words soft and sweet as if she were offering advice, though each syllable was a needle meant to prick. “Take your little spat with Cragjaw, for instance. You tore into Archimedes for keeping silence about nullification, didn’t you? Tell me, did you truly think he was omniscient? That he carried every answer in his pockets like spare coin? Or did you never pause to consider he might’ve only known in theory? That perhaps, in his long suffering, he hadn’t seen it firsthand either? But no, you leapt at anger as your first weapon, the way you always do. Because mortals, even astonishing ones,” she lingered on the word, her smile sweet as rot, “Fail. Unless, of course, you expect perfection. Do you?”
Her fingers lingered the beetle again, slow and deliberate, feeding another ripple of fire through the tether before she went on. “You call him extraordinary.” A silken pause, then her voice dropped, gleaming with cruelty hidden behind honey. “But it isn’t him, frostflower. It never was. It’s his magic. That vast, hungry ocean flowing through his veins—that is what makes him remarkable. He is only the vessel. It’s why the old demons found him such a nuisance. Too loud, too wild, too dangerous to remain among elves who might sharpen him into something unmanageable. Better, they thought, to strip him down. Remove him from the picture. Or remake him as one of their own.”
Her smile widened into something dazzling, false as glass. “So, soulmates, fairy tales, halves of stars—such pretty words. But I wonder, do you believe them? Or do you only say them now to convince yourself?” Her tone was airy, conversational, but her grin said otherwise: every word was a carefully sharpened blade, pressed just deep enough to sting. “You are self serving after all, are you not? Your goals, your ambitions, your misery… does it not come first?”
“Mm,” the demoness hummed, tilting her head with syrup-sweet amusement, her voice threading through the cold air like a lullaby with teeth. “But really, frostflower—what is it you do for anyone else? Since you’re so intent on prying into me, let’s turn the mirror, shall we? Let’s figure out you.” She let the question hang, soft as a kiss, cruel as a blade. Her eyes gleamed with that calculated glee as she rolled the beetle pendant between her fingers, letting the tether thrum sharp in Calia’s chest. “You swing your swords, you hurl your ice, you bark your defiance at the world. All very dramatic, very sharp. But when has any of that ever saved anyone?” A smile tugged her mouth wider, all mock delight. “Tell me—who is breathing today because you were kind? Who was spared because you were honest? Or is your mercy as brittle as your temper?”
She gave a low, rich laugh, almost indulgent, like a mother humoring a stubborn child. “No, no. You strike, you rage, you claw at everything in reach. But lifting someone up? That isn’t in your nature. You mistake fire for warmth, frost for protection. And you wonder why he—” she tapped the pendant, eyes alight with cruel mirth, “—why he sought silence instead of your storm.”
Argentina tilted her head again, feigning pity, though her smile made a mockery of it. “Oh, but I do understand, little thorn. Anger is easier, isn’t it? It’s simple. You don’t need to think. You don’t need to listen. You only need to break and burn and hope someone else calls it love.” She clicked her tongue softly, tutting as if disappointed. “That’s all you’ve ever given anyone—your jagged edges. You call him extraordinary because you must. Because if you admit he’s only a man who bled and broke like any other, then you’d have to face the truth, wouldn’t you? That perhaps you weren’t enough. That perhaps you never were.”
If that was true and it was how Archimedes truly saw her – actually, no. Calia knew it was true, because everything she said seemed to be some slight towards him even when she’d hadn’t said anything barbed at all. There were moments for certain she snapped at him, yet there were just as many where they were having calm moments and Calia had no idea what it was she’d said to have him turn on her. Moments that left her confused and frustrated, and oh so afraid to risk speaking up at all because she just didn’t know what it would be that set him off.
The same fear. How could they have the exact same fears and still not be able to work their way around them.
Calia opened her mouth to defend, to declare Archimedes had never given her any grace or even a chance to live up to his own expectations and just… shut her mouth. Who was she arguing with anyway. The woman sent another blistering ripple through the temple just to make her next words bite all the more, nearly having Calia’s steps faulted when she hissed through her teeth and clung so tight to that gem in her hand that her own nails cut through skin.
Everything out of the woman’s mouth was dripping venom, and when it was about Calia that was fine. She knew her own lack of worth in the world! But to talk about Archimedes as if he wasn’t nothing without the magic in his blood?
“Say what you want about me, you dumb bitch, but you do not get to talk about Archimedes as if he’s nothing more than a trinket to be in your hands!” she spat. “You think being born with all of that power makes someone uniquely special? He has a light in him. For learning about the world, in having compassion for everything around him! He loved the people in his life so much he gave up his soul to save them. And aye, I might be a stupid selfish piece of shit, but he still looked out for me and made me want to be something better than just a vengeful ball of hatred.”
Damn this woman every time she tapped that pendant, Calia wanted to snap her fingers off and make her eat them.
“So I am fire and frost and I will never be what he wants or what he needs. You can tear me down to bone and marrow, and he can hate me until the end of days, but you don’t get to talk about him like he’s nothing. You don’t get to use him like a toy!”
That clever control she’d been holding onto was lost in a flurry of bitter feelings, egged on by those sharp nasty little twinges the evil woman kept twisting through the tether. Calia should’ve just let it. Shut her mouth and block her out until she had an actual good idea.
Instead it was the frustrated anger that won out, with Calia stomping her foot to the ground to dislodge and cascade an avalanche of rock from the mountain down on them both. Oh, it wouldn’t kill her and was just as likely to kill Calia instead – but she’d fucking remember she had a wildcat on a leash!
Argentina only grinned when Calia’s temper snapped sharp, her laughter spilling out light and bell-bright, as though rage itself were some orchestral piece performed for her amusement. “Ohhh, there it is,” she cooed, tilting her head like a delighted spectator. “The bite behind the pretty frost. Always so quick to bare your teeth, darling. You make it far too easy for me.” She twirled her fingers lazily in the air, tracing invisible sigils as her eyes glinted with cruel delight. “No hold on that temper at all. But isn’t it strange?” Her smile widened. “That same unruly fire—the refusal to bend, the refusal to break—that was what he found admirable. Noble, even. Imagine that. He admired the very blaze that singes everyone who dares to touch you.” Clearly pleased to use this conversation as the perfect way to piss her off.
She pressed her palm to the barrier, savoring the way Arc’s magic rippled outward in dark glyphs that shimmered like mocking laughter. The ward answered her touch like a loyal beast, eager, endless, bottomless. “Do you know what puzzles me most, frostflower?” she asked, voice softened into something almost tender. “He had a demon’s heart, so hungry for chaos. So willing to rend, devour, ruin. And yet…” She leaned closer to the humming glyphs, eyes narrowing in mock thought. “After his elven blood remembered itself, he never killed again. Not once. Mischief, yes. But no more bodies left in his wake.” Her lips pursed as though in genuine puzzlement, though her tone dripped venom. “Such an inconvenience, wasn’t it? That bleeding, wretched conscience. And that—” she patted the ward affectionately—”That isn’t demon’s work. That’s an elven curse. Mortal. Fragile. Weak. And yet… noble.”
Calia’s words—her fierce defense of Arc, her insistence that he was more than a vessel of power—earned only another lilting giggle, sweet as spun sugar and just as sharp as broken glass. Argentina tilted her head, her eyes soft as velvet, her smile all razors. “Oh, frostflower. How precious you are when you bristle. You say he hated you, but isn’t it funny? Because nestled right here—” her finger tapped the beetle charm, and pain ripped cruelly through the tether—”Is a fondness he never could burn out. He wanted you safe. He valued you, as he valued those he lost. Why else would he fear you? Why else would he quake at the thought of your corpse in his hands, the way he carried the ashes of his family?”
Her voice dipped lower, honey barely hiding the poison. “But you—” her grin widened—”You are far too stubborn to see past your own reflection. Always quick to snap, always so certain the world conspires against you. He didn’t flee you, Calia. He fled himself. Because he longed to be seen—oh, how he longed for it—but to be seen by someone he might destroy? Someone whose life he might end with his own hands?” She clucked her tongue, savoring the cruelty. “Unbearable. So he ran.”
The mountain quaked as Calia’s fury cracked open the slope, a thunderous roar of stone and snow surging down in a cascade. Dust plumed into the air, blotting the sky in shifting gray. Argentina didn’t so much as twitch; her chin rested delicately in her palm, her smile faint, eyes lidded as though the end of the world were no more than background noise. But even in her languor, she wasn’t careless. With a flick of her wrist—casual as a yawn—the air split before them in a yawning black rift. Shadows spilled wide and swallowing, edges rippling like ink in water. “Predictable,” she murmured, her voice silken with boredom, even as the avalanche thundered closer. The barrier hummed steady around her, fed by Arc’s bottomless magic, but she didn’t bother testing its limits against the mountain’s weight. No, she preferred not to be buried in rubble when there were cleaner exits to be had.
The tether snapped taut as she stepped forward, demanding that Calia be with her without so much as a glance, skirts swaying as if she were strolling through a ballroom instead of fleeing the crushing jaws of stone. “Finished?” she drawled over her shoulder, sweet as honey but laced with scorn. “I’ve seen children pitch better fits.”
And with that, the world of falling rock and choking dust vanished behind them. Argentina slipped through the rift, humming softly, the barrier still clinging to her like a second skin. On the other side so they might watch where the debris of snow and stone fell, she cast Calia a flat, unimpressed look, as if nothing more than a draft had ruffled her hem. “Good,” she said simply, a little smile tugging her lips. “We’ve places to be. Aren’t we going towards the mountain pass?”
All of that tumbling stone and cracked rock might as well been a visual representation of the absolute mess of feelings that come thundering through her chest. Anger at this blasted woman, confusion and disbelief to even hear that he actually admired her, valued her… feared for her become of himself. And what the hell sense did that make, because not even when he was all demon violence did he even come close to harming her. Hurting feelings definitely! Wounding her pride, her ego, and even her heart. But she sure as hell was never going to be another body he had to bury.
This ached and Calia could not breathed. Before she could could even shriek some new insult at the demon, Argentina was yanking the tether tight, pulling them both through some abyssal rift before the consequences of Calia’s anger could bury them both under rubble and ice. Glancing back to watch it fall and leave it’s minor catastrophe down below.
Calia screamed anyway, closing both fists tight and letting out every ounce of her frustration. Echoing off in the valleys and canyons below, screaming loud enough to displace birds and wildlife, to make loose rocks shake and long enough that she was hoarse and breathless by the end.
It didn’t make it feel any better, but what else was there to do? The bitch was so infuriating and calling meteors from the sky was just as likely to harm Archimedes than kill her!
…was she really just supposed to go on about her life with this woman?
“No,” she stated in quiet defiance. Fuck that, Calia wasn’t going to just toddle on about her life with a knock-off demon and pretend like it was fine. “No mountain pass, no mountain clans. I don’t want to play your stupid kinky torture games and be entertainment! So do what demons do and make a new deal with me. What do I have to give you, so you’ll stop leeching off of him and let him go? To set him loose?”
Argentina arched a brow at Calia’s defiance, the corner of her mouth tugging upward as though the girl had just offered her the most amusing jest. For a moment she simply watched, letting the silence stretch, savoring the raw edge of Calia’s hoarse scream still echoing faintly off the crags. Then she chuckled low, velvety, delighted in a way that made the sound itself a blade.
“Oh, frostflower,” she cooed, shaking her head with mock sympathy. “Do you truly believe you have anything I could want? No, darling. That’s the part you haven’t understood yet. I already have everything.” Her fingers toyed with the beetle pendant, glyphs sparking faintly at her touch making sure it annoyed Calia all the more. “The bond that freed me from the hells—you know, the little cage they threw me into when they banished me—I owe that to him. To you, in a way. I’ve his magic in my palm now, and it’s glorious. Endless. And I have him entirely, right down to the very minuscule detail. And you…” Her grin sharpened, eyes glinting like wine in firelight. “You are a fine little lure. A fae so very wanted. Coveted. Do you know how irresistible bait you are in my hands?”
She sighed as if pleased, tilting her head. “There is no deal to be made. None I would stoop to, at least. I don’t need bargains when I hold the winning pieces already.” She tapped the pendant again, sending a shimmer through the tether, cruel satisfaction lighting her eyes. “The only choice you have, frostflower, is one you’ll never stomach—kill him, or kill yourself. Break the bond by shattering the vessel that sustains it. Otherwise?” She spread her hands as if to say the world was simple. “I remain here. Rooted. Feeding. And keeping what’s mine.”
Her voice softened, almost sweet, though the venom clung to every word. “You see, little fae, I never made my bargain with you. The pact was his. His hand, his choice, his power. That is what binds us. So ask yourself, darling: what hope is there in offering me scraps, when I’ve already feasted?” She smiled—soft, indulgent, merciless—and let the silence after her words hang heavy, waiting for Calia to choke on it. “You only have importance to the warlock who stole your heart. Not all demons care about his ambitions and I, am not a greedy sort. I have what I want, and when I want something else… I can take it myself.”
She turned again, “Now are we going or do you want to have another tantrum?”
Honestly, Calia did not blame the demon. She could feel Arc’s magic font and knew her own strength as well. Having a leash on their bond, with one party sealed away in a trapped slumber that it might never resolve the contract? Argentina could have them forever. Natural talent and unlimited magic across multiple crafts.
The world really should tremble to know them.
No deal, no escape – kill him or kill herself. That might have been Argentina’s second mistake, for the way Calia still and the slow crawl of a feral smile bloomed into her features. How all of that tense stiffness in her shoulders faded and her stance change, languid and lazy. That wild, uncontrollable thing that would sooner eat her own arm off than ever bend to someone else’s will. With all options stolen from her, she would burn the whole world down with her.
“Kill myself you say? Oh, I would love to die.”
Of course, the first mistake was that the bitch wouldn’t stop fucking touching him, and with every little ripped, sear, and tear she sent through him across the tether Calia was quickly deciding that herself wasn’t the one about to die. Nono, she was not going to be allowed to walk this earth believing she had any claim to him. Argentina was not going to walk this realm or any others ever again.
There was no true plan, just that instinct that took over. Some subconscious murderous calamity that lived inside her and reared it’s head with that last shred of her temper. Calia opened her hollow and the first thing she pulled out was a small dagger. Theatrics and misdirects was the game here, making sure it was very clear that Calia didn’t give two shits about herself she was more than willing to die.
She also knew Argentina wasn’t likely to allow her to actually die, expecting her to still stand there being smug as fuck and practically dare her to go on ahead. Make her own self suffer, only for her to swoop in and make it everlasting. But Calia did it anyway, stabbed that dagger right between the ribs with a defiant grunt, holding the demon’s gaze with that wide feral smile.
Counting on that smugness, that attention on the knife in her guts bleeding onto her open hand, her other was reaching behind her. Pulling out the sword Archimedes had made for his paladin sister. For Lyra. A beautiful, perfect gift that she had been waiting to try. And because it was made by the very Master of the Arcane himself? That warded shield made of his own magic didn’t mean shit.
Like stabbing through a watermelon, the movement was quick. Going through the shield like there was nothing there at all and striking right through the woman’s stomach, severing the spine and right back out the other side. Calia pushing it forward all the way to the hilt, face to face, eye to eye with nothing but that wild smile. No finishing dramatic statements necessary.
Snatching that beetle pendant off her neck was statement enough.
Argentina’s smile was smug perfection as Calia pulled that little dagger from her hollow. The demoness leaned into her barrier with lazy grace, a queen observing a jester, chin tilting ever so slightly as though the theatrics were beneath her. “Really?” she purred, her tone sweetly cruel. “A blade? How quaint. And here I thought you’d at least—”
The words died on her lips the instant the steel plunged deep into Calia’s chest.
For a heartbeat, Argentina faltered. Her composure cracked wide open, smugness shattered into raw horror. Her hand slapped against the barrier as if she could seize the tether and rip it taut, stop what had just happened by force of will alone. “No,” she hissed, the sound breaking into a guttural, abyssal snarl that vibrated through the earth, rattling stones loose from their perches. The air quivered with black static, her scream splitting the mountain valley with a resonance that was less a sound than a tearing of reality itself. “NO!” The cry was ragged, shrill, edged with disbelief and fury. “What do you think you’re—stop this madness!” Dark glyphs bled violently across the ward, jagged strokes of living shadow that flickered and writhed like snakes. The air around her barrier thickened, heavy with ash and ozone, as if the veil between worlds was collapsing under her sudden loss of control.
And then the sword came free.
A holy thing—no, a radiant thing—dragged from the hollow, gleaming with a light that had no place in this dark, cursed wintery wasteland. The blade sang as though it had been waiting for this exact moment, eager to cut, eager to burn. Its brilliance slashed through the gloom, radiant and merciless, and the world seemed to hold its breath.
Argentina’s eyes went wide. For the first time, she had no smile, no taunting curl of lips, no clever barb upon her tongue. The veneer of confidence drained away, leaving only naked fear—pure, ancient, marrow-deep. “Where—” she stammered, her voice cracked and shrill, “Where in all the hells did you get that?”
The answer was silence. The only answer needed.
As the fae girl waited for no need to give an answer. Unmaking the barrier like wet paper, glyphs dissolving in screams of static before the blade cut straight through flesh, bone, and shadow alike.
Argentina screamed.
It was not laughter this time, not her bell-bright mockery, but a shriek that tore through heaven and earth alike, piercing and unearthly. It rattled the cliffs. It split the air. The sword burned through her, severing spine, unmaking wards, scattering abyssal shadows like dead leaves in a hurricane. Black ichor poured in heavy rivulets down her form, sizzling where it struck stone, each droplet eating through rock like acid. Her hands clawed desperately at the wound, fingers sinking into her own flesh as if she could somehow hold herself together against the light that was unmaking her.
“That—” she gasped, her voice warped, high, and broken, “That was not the deal! This was never—never the deal!” Her laughter broke free again, jagged, hysterical, blending with sobs until it was impossible to tell if she was mocking or mourning. “He gave me his hand, his power—his soul! You cannot—you cannot take this from me!” The pendant snapped from her throat with a sharp, final tug. The scream that followed was worse than any before—something primal, despairing, shrill enough to bleed the ears and tear the sky. It was the sound of something ancient being wrenched from the world, the very soul of possession denied. “No! NO! It’s mine—mine! He is mine!“
The sword carved again, and again, each stroke scattering pieces of her shadow-body into writhing motes of black fire. Her form convulsed, tearing apart like parchment in a blaze, shrieking in pain and rage as the world itself seemed to recoil. The mountains groaned, the sky above splitting in seams of red lightning, the ground buckling as if rejecting her presence. Her shrieks rose higher, desperate, cracking into raw static until there was nothing left to scream with. Her body imploded in a cascade of black flame, dispersing in smoke and ash, the taste of brimstone bitter on the tongue.
And then there was silence.
The pendant struck Calia’s palm with a dull clatter, heavy and inert, its weight unnatural—as if it carried not only metal but the gravity of a heart in stillness. It did not yet gleam gold; its brilliance lay dormant, waiting. The silence that followed Argentina’s unraveling pressed down thick as a shroud, but in it Calia heard more than absence—she felt Arc himself, caught somewhere between breath and breathless, stilled by bonds not yet broken. The beetle lay in her hand like a heartbeat that would not stir, a fragile echo of him held in suspension, neither lost nor returned.
It was so damn satisfying to hear the demon go from smug confidence to shock and horror. Calia had even twisted that beautiful wonderful sword just to make it hurt a little bit more, not that it was even slightly necessary for the weapon that seemed to be enchanted to tear an demon’s being entirely asunder. Shining so bright at one point that even Calia had to turn her gaze away.
She stood there for a long, long moment even after Argentina’s ashes took to the wind.
There were consequences to being so reckless.
Her knees hit the ground when she dropped, the dormant form of Archimedes in one hand and his sister’s sword in the other. A damned dagger sticking out of her, that was a fucking stupid idea! At least she’d had the sense enough to know where to strike and not damage anything vital. Still, it was bleeding faster than she’d intended and there was a problem not yet solved.
Calia opened her palm to examine what had become of Archimedes – a shimmer of abyssal magic, black as night still shrouding him in a deep sleep. She didn’t want to risk squeezing it and cracking it open. Worse yet, was it a cruelty to even force him awake at all? How much of that demon woman’s blathering had been simply twists of the truth, lies… Maybe he didn’t hate her, but would he if she took this moment of peace away? At least in her own hands he would be safe.
The man was exhausting and he wasn’t even awake.
With a soft frown she’d made her choice – this enchantment had to end but she would not force it. In the end it would always be his choice on whether or not he came back to her, just like it was hers to stay. Brushing her thumb over the black carapace, Calia pulled away the last tainted remnants of Argentina’s magic. Washed away every malicious touch with gentle care until there was nothing left but his own magic to hold the seal.
“You can come out when you’re ready to. It would- I wish… Life isn’t worth living without you, so can you please come out sooner than later.”
She never had been good with words, had she.
With a sigh and faint umph, she shifted to rest him down on a large stone, so she could take care of this mess she’d gotten herself in. See, bad choices when he wasn’t there! He’d have told her something smarter and less bloody! Calia had to tug the knife out with a quick jerk, looking at it with a grimace thinking to herself it needed to be clean, along with the sword too before she went tucking them back into her hollow. Although, she should also find something to help stop all this bleeding.
Luckily, Calia was pretty sure she wasn’t going to die… that nap was sounding really good, however. Just one tiny little nap, she decided on her way to hitting the dirt.