Chapter 11

N ariel leads me back to his spire.

"Amir is on his way," he tells me. "He can send a message to Brook about how things stand with your parents."

I let out a breath and plop down on the meditation pouf with a whoomp . Not gonna lie, I'm grateful to not have to tell her to her face exactly how I handled that. Maybe later I won't be such a chickenshit.

But then it occurs to me: "Do you have parents?"

Nariel tenses. "I don't know."

I study him. "So by that you mean, not that you like, hatched from an egg, but that you did have parents at the time of your exile but don't know their current status?"

His expression thaws slightly. "Correct."

Which means they didn't try to help him before or after his exile. Yikes. "So I shouldn't expect to meet them."

"Only with your hammer poised to strike."

"Well, that's much less pressure than trying to get along with them. I can work with that. "

Nariel smiles at last. Just slightly, but I'll take it.

A chime rings through the spire.

"One moment," Nariel says, and vanishes.

I blink. These spires really are secure against magic-less humans. Maybe it's just this one? But I haven't seen anything resembling stairs, so direct teleportation appears to be the only way to reach Nariel here.

I flop back on the pouf, taking a minute to process that I've finally told my parents that magic is real. I used to imagine that when I was younger, but once I realized Evram wasn't coming back for me it seemed impossible. But in theory I've had years to figure out how to break this to them, and what I did was explode their chair.

I sigh. My diplomatic skills are very specific, let's say that.

Nariel returns, sitting next to me on the pouf. I open my eyes when I feel him set a pile of beads in my lap, as well as my selections from the market.

I sit up carefully to put them in my pack but frown as I gather the beads in my hands. "These were for your people, not for me."

"These were for us to distribute as we saw fit, and I had Amir set some aside for you, so that your visits here can offer you a chance to recover."

My chest tightens. He really is trying to make this a home for me.

If only he realized he tremendously does not need to do anything other than exist .

Apparently I hesitate too long before picking a bead up, because Nariel asks, "These are replenishable, Sierra; you're not taking power from people in need. Were you not planning to bring me more?"

"Of course I was. I am. I just... given how things have been, I guess I don't trust that Low Earth's magic won't be taken away again."

That's the fear. That no matter what I do, my magic will be gone again. I'll have offered people in two worlds hope—forced it on them—only to have it ripped away again because they couldn't count on me.

"If Low Earth's magic is stolen again, a stockpile this small won't matter," Nariel points out reasonably. "You might as well use it to help keep that from happening."

I roll the beads around in my hands. Use the magic as if I won't need it stashed for later. "Manifest the life I want by living it, huh."

"I would think that would come easily to you."

He's right. This is no different than deciding I would stay in High Earth and get trained, or that I wouldn't accept that my life in Low Earth could never have magic again.

Magic is my right. It may take a little while to break the habit of feeling like I need to hoard, but I will live the way I deserve to.

I start taking the magic in, leaning against Nariel's side.

He's still for a moment—I think I startled him—before wrapping an arm around me .

I huff a laugh. We're so much tenser now that we're flirting with intent. "Somehow waking up on you in Costa Rica was much less awkward than this."

"Hmm. Awkward may not be the right word."

I'm about to disagree when he drops a kiss onto my head, and I freeze.

Okay, fair point. It's the expectation that's different now.

It's that we care more.

"I apologize," Nariel says. I open my mouth to lay into him if he's about to apologize for kissing me, but he puts a finger briefly on my lips, stilling me, and finishes, "for not allowing you privacy, before."

Oh. "No, that was a good call. And if I'd wanted you to go I could have made that happen."

The words come out of me so easily, no hesitation, and I blink as I realize I absolutely believe them. I could have made him leave; I chose not to. It wasn't about what he wanted or thought; it was about me.

Am I really worried about losing myself in Nariel?

I almost miss Nariel ask, "Why didn't you?"

I breathe into the meditative hum of absorbing magic. It had been an instinctive choice in the moment, so it takes me a moment to sort out the rationale.

"Because I wasn't at my best," I finally say. "And you've seen me lose it before, when I found out Brook had been kidnapped, and you still had my back. You helped me by protecting her, and you stopped me from doing something that would have caused more problems. That was a situation I needed backup for, and I trust you."

And that was really what I needed, wasn't it? His trust; his belief that I could be trusted. Because I needed my parents to trust me with Brook, when I wasn't sure I trusted myself.

I wasn't sure any of them should trust me to keep them safe.

"I have also," Nariel says, "seen you at your best, Sierra. Don't forget that. And you have also seen me... not at my lowest, but in a position of helplessness. And you still trust me ."

I want to say that's different, but that would be both whining and splitting hairs.

So instead I turn into him and press a kiss to his cheek. "I do," I murmur.

Nariel's eyes stare down at me, abruptly black as night.

I shiver, and it's not from cold.

It's time to stop pussyfooting around this. I know he heard our conversation back at Ayaka's. "You said a bond is serious for you."

"And you," Nariel says softly, his normal eyes reasserting themselves as he controls himself, "haven't said if you want serious."

I blink again.

I guess it would make sense for him to be unsure of me, given he knows I've been trying—badly—not to be seduced.

"Serious with you is all I want," I tell him honestly .

His eyes go black again.

I love that reaction.

But I put a hand on his chest before he can take the inevitable next step I know we both want.

"But," I say, a little breathless just from his reaction, "you're millennia old. How are you sure of me?"

Nariel's eyes narrow, but they stay black.

He puts his hand over mine.

And slowly moves it out of the way.

I hold his gaze, my pulse thundering. I don't make any move to stop him.

Still he asks, "Yes?"

What exactly am I saying yes to here?

Better be specific.

"Kiss me," I breathe.

Nariel smiles.

It still feels like an eternity passes as he slowly lowers his mouth to mine.

At the first press of his lips, it's like my whole body relaxes.

Not like I've gone helplessly limp.

But like all of me was clenched, ready, always, for a fight, but with him, I know in my bones I'm safe.

With Nariel, I can let go.

His arm pulls me tighter against him and I wrap my arms around his neck as he bends me back into the pouf, lips caressing mine .

At first I let the feeling of him wash over me like a wave, but now I start to pay attention to specifics.

I may not have centuries—or, let's be real, any—experience kissing, but I have always been a fast learner.

(How is this experience gap not one that worries me? That is very much a question for Future Sierra; Current Sierra is occupied.)

I kiss Nariel back for all I'm worth, feeling him respond—in the increased pace, in the harshness of both our breaths, in his growing hardness pressing between my legs.

Nariel finally pulls back, and I gaze up at him, panting.

He looks, as always, perfect.

His skin tone hasn't changed. I can't read anything specific in his full-black eyes.

But his hair is just a touch mussed, and he's breathing hard.

Nariel brushes hair away from my forehead—apparently my hair is substantially more mussed, go figure—and his hand lingers, cupping my cheek.

He's not even kissing me anymore, and my heart still feels like it might explode out of my chest, just from this touch.

"I keep telling you," Nariel says, "and I will tell you as many times as you need."

It takes me a moment to remember what the fuck he's talking about—I'd asked him how he was sure of me.

That kiss definitely conveyed the surety all right, if not the reason for it .

"But right now," Nariel says, his thumb drawing over my bottom lip, "something is preventing you from hearing me."

Like my parents hadn't been willing to hear me, or Brook, because they didn't trust us.

I narrow my eyes, my thoughts racing.

My parents might not trust me, but they had no reason to. But the grand magus should have, and he didn't. Seamus didn't.

Nariel did.

I'd trusted myself, too, until Evram had forsaken me.

I'd done my best to rebuild myself, and then Brook had been kidnapped.

And then Nariel had been trapped.

And I've fixed all those things, and I'm working on fixing the Low Earth attacks, but somehow along the way I've become not afraid of what I can't do, but afraid of what I can .

That's what High Earth should be—

No. No, there was too much fear. If High Earth wasn't so afraid, everything would be different.

Maybe it was that simple.

Nariel slides off of me and offers a hand to pull me back to sitting, too.

As I rise, he says, "So let me tell you something else."

Nariel checks that the hair clip is still securely pinned to him.

My eyebrows lift. "Are we going somewhere else for this part of the conversation? "

Nariel's eyes are still black, but somehow I get the feeling the emotion filling him now isn't lust.

"Follow me?" he asks.

I won't say ‘always'. I won't always follow where he or anyone leads me.

So instead I reach out and take his hand long enough to squeeze it and say simply, "Yes."

W herever we are, it's really fucking dark.

No sooner have I registered the thought than Nariel's shadows enclose around me without him actually touching me for once, and I can see, sort of.

It's still dark, and quiet. Oppressively so.

We're surrounded by the obsidian bedrock of this world.

There's a single shaft of light, a hole above us, leaving a small spotlight on the ground and presumably providing air for me to breathe.

But that's it.

Everything else, it's like we're entombed.

A spacious tomb, admittedly—a little bigger than a dueling ground in High Earth, space enough for a fight. Though the ground isn't anywhere near that smooth.

There are craters like from explosions of magic; shapes embedded into the walls that are... humanoid .

Lots of them. Reaching out like they tried to fire one more blast.

I almost ask what monster lived here and did this, and if they're still here.

But with Nariel's silence beside me, I think I know.

"What exactly is this place?" I ask.

"What do you think?"

"I think it's not fair for you to test me when I am doing my best to be honest with you," I say. "But if I had to guess, it's where you killed hundreds of spirits when you first landed in Dark Earth after your exile."

Which is why he is very careful not to touch me right now.

Next to me, Nariel is like a statue.

"Yes," he agrees softly. "This was my killing field."

All at once I understand.

He's seen me at my worst, but he doesn't think I've seen him at his.

Because this was his worst.

I point at the one shaft. "That's where you came through?"

Nariel nods stiffly. "I did not accept my exile. I was forced out. The blow that sent me through the worlds knocked me through the mountain. "

Yikes. "Lucky there was a cavern at the bottom—" I stop. "Or not lucky?"

"Not lucky," Nariel confirms, his voice detached. "I was buried under the mountain. "

"The mountain? Are we underneath where we stood on top of, before? Where you brought me to train?"

"We are."

Wow. Okay. I guess I'm not the only one of us who needs to learn how not to torture myself with my insecurities.

"When I awoke," Nariel says, "my wings were gone. I didn't have enough power to transport myself, and there was no magic I could absorb. So I started pushing."

Pushing ? Oh my god.

He made this cave, inch by inch.

At least at first. I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

"Until," I say softly, "the spirits realized an angel was in their midst and wasn't dead."

"Correct," Nariel says. "And I was starving. The first ones who came down the shaft to kill me while I was weak, I tore apart with my hands, and I ate them."

I nod. He would have been out of his mind with pain. But not so far that he didn't do whatever he had to in order to survive, and that would be what haunted him.

"And then you got stronger, and more came, and you killed them too. And eventually you made it out, but you couldn't destroy the mountain. So it's remained here just as you left it."

That's how he could be sure I couldn't damage it.

Because he had tried everything.

"You are taking this," Nariel says slowly, "very calmly. "

What the hell did he think I was going to do? Scream at him and start blubbering? Oh no, he's such a monster, I can never have sex with him now! It's like he doesn't even know humans, or me.

Like, he told me he'd killed his way to the top very shortly after we met; this isn't news.

What I hadn't known was the circumstances that had forced him to start that way.

I hadn't known he still held himself responsible.

"Actually," I say in a very even voice, "I am pretty fucking pissed. But not for the reasons you apparently expect."

He is so still.

"And what," Nariel asks tightly, "do you think I expect?"

But still he doesn't step away from me, because he knows that then I would be lost in the darkness, the stupid fucking martyr .

"You're acting like you're expecting me to be so horrified at the sight of this place that I throw you over, which, first of all, is bullshit. And if you really did think that I'd react that way, this was also a bullshit way to go about showing me. Like, here, Sierra, I know you've had such an exhausting day you're willing to steal magic you'd tried to do something good with, so how about I take this feeling of safety I've been building with you and set it on fire? Honestly, Nariel, what the fuck?"

"I thought," Nariel says, and I am absurdly glad to hear a bite in his tone, "you might wish to have a more thorough understanding of a person you were considering binding your magic to."

"Oh, so you thought you'd seduce me first , and then, when it looked like it was working, tried to scare me off, so it would be maximally scarring for both of us? Again: what the fuck , Nariel. I thought you were the well-adjusted one of the two of us!"

"Now you know better," he snaps back.

I snort. "Yeah. So how did you think this was going to go, exactly? I panic and leave? Since I'm not leaving, what am I supposed to do with this?" I wave around. "Just leave your shame monument here?"

Nariel's head tilts. "You're not leaving."

I shove into his space so I can glare at him up close. "Absolutely not, and fuck you for thinking I would."

Annoyingly, his jaw clenches. "I'm not sure you saw—"

Oh for god's sake. I turn away from him and walk far enough away that his shadows can't help me see, and I cast my own damn light, illuminating the whole space.

The light I cast is clinical, like fluorescent lights over a morgue, making the damage here stark.

We stand in the middle of a killing field. Without the shadows smoothing out every crevice, I can see everything.

The aftermath of every attack shaping the rock. The shapes of so many spirits who died to try to keep Nariel from rising.

I walk through with their impressions under my feet, their last efforts reaching down from above. Even if I could erase this for Nariel's sake, it feels disrespectful. This did happen. This is his past.

Then the light changes, and I realize I'm in the one spot of natural light, shining down through the shaft where an angel was brutally cast down from heaven.

For wanting to help these spirits he then killed.

And it occurs to me that maybe Nariel's problem isn't that this place exists, but that he has to keep it in the dark and let it fester.

With one hand, I reach into my pack for the rocks from the market that I planned to use as anchors in Low Earth.

With the other, I manifest my hammer.

"Sierra," Nariel says in a warning tone.

But nothing else.

Looking across the cave, I meet his gaze. "Do you trust me?" I ask.

I can see him taking deep breaths.

But he says, "Yes."

And that's all I need to get to work.

I swing my hammer, a weapon that rivals the power of the angels who sent Nariel to this place, of Nariel himself after he clawed his way back to the sky with wings reforged in the darkness.

My impression of that shape reaching for one final blow becomes a pillar reaching for the sky.

With my other hand, I set a rock on top of it. Anchored not in Low Earth, but to Low Earth. So in this space where once spirits lost power, now they can more easily find their way to full power spots, no matter their power level.

Here, in the place where they fought against what they expected to be a new tyranny, we build a path to enable them to find their own freedom.

I hear Nariel suck in a breath when he realizes what I've done, but I don't stop.

Around and around I go, my hammer constantly in motion. I can't know everything that happened here, every point of pain or struggle or triumph.

But hammers don't only destroy.

They can also build.

I can take the death of so many and try to make something beautiful with it. So that their loss won't be forgotten, and their memory can benefit the ones who survived.

When I am surrounded by gates of obsidian, there is one last thing to do.

I stand at the bottom of the spotlight and look up.

I draw the hammer back, and gather my magic for one blow, feeling the buzz of the hammer in my hands like electricity crackling over my skin.

And then I swing it upwards into the shaft of light.

This isn't a narrow beam of power that will shoot cleanly into the sky.

It's like I've flung a motherfucking electrical storm at a tiny hole in the roof.

And accordingly, the hole expands .

This isn't like a normal mountain.

It's not made of normal rock.

It's magical bedrock, and I can shape it.

No matter how powerful the angels were that exiled Nariel, I don't have to leave their legacy untouched to haunt him.

The rock rumbles as it reshapes, the hole widening, the rock around crunching and gathering like it's reinforcing a structure.

And soon we're not in an underground cave, but an open-air amphitheater.

I let my light spell go, because I don't need it anymore.

The natural light here is warm and bright, like the morning of a spring day. Not a light to expose horror, but to invite healing.

Only belatedly do I notice that Nariel, far more experienced than I am with this bedrock, has finally broken free of his stasis.

Obsidian stairs unfold from where the shaft used to be, stretching to the ground.

Nariel finally meets my gaze, his eyes bright, his expression faintly stunned.

"You," he breathes.

This is kind of an accusation, but I smile anyway.

Me.

This is me.

"I thought I was going to tell you something different," Nariel says hoarsely. "But you've turned it around on me again. I have never been surer of anything in my life, Sierra, than I am of you. Never doubt it."

I probably will, once in a while.

But not now.

Now, I say, "Good news. I know how to deal with Casimir."