Chapter 15

We get so caught up in practicalities it's easy to forget how magical Gates are.

I know what it's like to rail at the limitations of Gates, and I know the secret thrill of discovering one. I've read what the world was like before Gates, and for Serenthuar—for myself—I've imagined it so hard it hurts.

But the magic of their demonstrable realness—I'm not sure I can really imagine lacking that.

Liris and Vhannor were, somehow, alone in the kitchen again. After a brief report to Lady Inealuwor to arm her with the salient details, Nysia had taken herself off probably not to sleep for a week while she dealt with the aftermath. Shry had poked Liris' injured side, shrugged and advised, "Ice and rest, you'll be fine," and had headed to her room to patch herself up and go to sleep.

Liris knew, academically, she was exhausted. But her brain was whirring, and she and Vhannor were alone and alive and just... here, and the morning they'd returned to was surreal in its silence, the turmoil of her mind and the adventures of the day at odds with the utter lack of physical evidence here in Embhullor, in her kitchen.

She had her own kitchen. That alone.

Liris' stomach clenched, and she blinked down at it in some surprise. "I should've stashed some of those fancy dumplings wherever Shry keeps her knives."

Vhannor's eyes crinkled in amusement. "I suspect you might not wish to eat them if you knew. You're hungry?"

She shrugged. "I don't feel like I'm about to collapse, but I've probably passed the point of tired and collapse is actually imminent. So going out for food now would be unwise."

Vhannor heaved himself out of the chair and began poking around cupboards. "Shry keeps a stash of food for times like this. Give me a moment, I'll find it."

Liris blinked up at him, bemused. "I can do that too, you know."

"Give me an excuse to make myself useful," Vhannor said, his voice strangely gruff.

Hmm. Still worrying about Jadrhun, then. Well, it wasn't like she wasn't, and if in this moment taking care of her made him feel less guilty instead of more, Liris could manage to keep still. Somehow.

Her thoughts were another matter; easy enough to ignore the strange tightness in her chest, watching him locate an emergency pack of pickles, cheese, crackers, and jam, and arrange them on a plate for her. Not mostly cuisine local to Embhullor, and Liris wondered whether this was what Shry had grown up eating before Vhannor found her, or if she seized on the chance to eat something else, or if it was a mix that couldn't be teased out—

But she had other mysteries to ponder.

"I keep coming back to what Jadrhun could be promising to forge alliances with all these places," Liris said after inhaling a cracker and reaching for a pickle. "I mean, Tellianghu—what could possibly have been worth risking everything like this?"

"Probably to defeat their rivals for them," Vhannor said tightly.

"With demons and portals?" Liris frowned. "The Sundering keeps coming up in all this. I wonder—could he sunder rival realms? As a threat?"

"He wouldn't need demons for that, and that's more likely to worry realms into working against him than making them smug about their prospects, as Minister Belighia was," Vhannor said. "Stop it. We're too tired to come up with anything useful right now."

Liris almost choked; swallowed with difficulty. Vhannor had never told her to stop before.

"What else do you think I'm going to think about right now?" she asked.

He folded his arms on the table, not eating, just watching her. "You're trying to distract yourself. Just tell me."

Oh, was that was this was. Liris deliberately crunched on another cracker before answering. "And you're not trying to avoid the subject bothering you? You first, then: I assume you're still worrying over what Jadrhun said about using me?"

Vhannor's jaw locked for a moment, the orange in his pale eyes glinting. "Fine. Yes. Now that we're... whatever we are—"

Liris snapped a piece of cracker and said in a deceptively mild voice, "If you're about to say you're worried I'm only interested in you because when I met you I had few options, I do hope you realize that first, that's incredibly insulting, and second, that I have met other attractive and powerful men who aren't you and didn't make any effort to choose them."

Vhannor blinked. "I was going to say that our being together only makes the idea of using you worse."

"Oh." Liris ate like an extremely normal person. "Well, good."

"Good?" he demanded, voice rising.

She waved a careless hand, careful to not accidentally fling any nuts. "I mean, Jadrhun wasn't exactly wrong, was he? You did bring me here to help. But since I'm aware of how I'm being used and consent—and am, in fact, an active participant in this—it's fine."

"Is it?" Vhannor asked, studying her. "Liris, you were raised to believe that you needed to be of service."

Enough. Past enough. "So what? Your obsession with work can't have come out of nowhere either. We're all raised to believe things. What's the line between education and indoctrination? How do you get to decide when I'm capable of making my own decisions for myself and when I'm just following how I was raised? Because it looks to me like you only think the latter when it has to do with thinking well of you, so perhaps my education isn't the problem here."

Vhannor slammed his hands down on the table, rattling the plate. "I think about it when I'm requiring you to put yourself in danger!"

Liris, more deliberately, put her hands on the table and leaned forward, locking gazes with him. "I chose this fight. Do you remember that? I chose this."

Vhannor swallowed but didn't say anything.

Since she had his attention, Liris sat back and continued, "It's true that once I taught an enemy genius the basics of Thyrasel, I didn't have many options I'd have been able to live with that weren't fighting, but you know what? I'd like to think I'm the sort of person who'd have chosen to fight regardless. Now I just have an excuse for liking who I'm becoming that coincidentally forces you to lend me your resources for my personal growth, and frankly I'm not as sorry about that as I should be."

She waited, eyebrows arched, until Vhannor took a deep breath. When she reached across the table to snag more nuts, he intercepted her, taking her hand in his.

When Liris looked up at him, his not-so-lavender-now gaze was smoldering, but he squeezed her hand gently. "I'm not sorry about that either."

She swallowed, ignoring her quickening heartbeat. "Okay, then?"

He smiled, finally, and if it was small that only made it more powerful. "Okay," Vhannor agreed softly. Then added, "Now your turn."

Ugh. Liris pulled away from him, flopping back against her chair. "Ugh."

His smile deepened a little, and her heart turned over, and love, she decided, was very stupid.

Well, if he was going to think less of her, she'd rather know that now than later.

"I'm trying not to think," Liris said, "that despite everything I managed to do right tonight, it didn't matter, because I still failed the biggest test. That all I'm doing is making your work harder, and no amount of effort or skill will change that. Would Jadrhun have even opened that portal if not to make a trap for us—which he needed to do for me? Maybe it was selfish of me to choose to stay, and if I'd really cared about Serenthuar and been really committed to what I claim then I would have gone with him. And maybe my commitment is, has always been, the problem, and that's why no matter what I do I never seem to win. And so on. You, ah, look like your brain is exploding. Is everything quite—"

Vhannor made a strangled noise and burst out, "You did not in any way fail at anything. Liris, so help the Serenthuar elders if I ever get my hands on them, this was not a test. None of this has been a test—"

"Oh, that's not at all true, and you know it."

He blew out a breath. "Okay. Yes, I can see what you mean. Let me rephrase: I am not testing you. You have never had to pass any tests to pass with me—or if you did, it was the first day we met."

Liris' eyes narrowed. He wouldn't mean her ability to actually dispel the demon portal; he'd met other skilled casters. "You mean that I was willing to risk my safety to help? That can't be unique."

"No," Vhannor said, his eyes burning, "when after everything, you emphatically wanted more."

Okay, she could see why that would matter to him, but she was still baffled. "I honestly can't imagine having a different response."

Vhannor groaned, rubbing his hands over his face. "See, this is my problem. I have a hard time trusting I'm not just seeing what I desperately want to see when everything you do, are, seems like a perfect dream I must have conjured."

Liris stared at him, this man who was slumped in a chair at her kitchen table, exhausted after giving everything he had with all the skills and resources at his considerable disposal to trying to save people, her, and was still doing it. Still here, trying inexorably to help her and what she specifically wanted, needed, like he'd been doing from the very first day they'd met.

"Do you mean to tell me," Liris said slowly, "that we have both been thinking, this whole time, that the other one was impossibly perfect, and neither of us said anything?"

Vhannor stared at her like she'd bludgeoned him between the eyes.

Helpless mirth bubbled out of her, and Liris collapsed over the table, laughing, and a few moments later heard the beautiful sound of Vhannor joining in.

Liris managed to lift her head to look at him, and he her, and that set both of them off again.

Here she was, in a torn ballgown but still wrapped in the cloak she'd chosen for herself, and he had made possible.

Here she was, feeling like anything might be possible for her. Like she'd been shriveling in obscurity in Serenthuar and began unfurling as soon as she'd gotten herself away: and now, in full bloom, she was sure—of who she was, and what she wanted to do, and where she wanted to be while doing it.

With him.

So she trusted he'd meant it when he promised he could keep up with her, that she didn't have to be afraid to be herself with him, that he was not a test she could fail, and risked, "Maybe this isn't the right time for this, with everything going on. But I'm pretty sure I'm extremely in love with you."

Vhannor sucked in a breath like she'd punched him, his laughter cutting off abruptly.

Okay, so maybe she had some insecurity left after all. Liris sat up straight and tried lightly, "Oh come on, it can't be that surprising."

The look he turned on her stole her breath. "Forgive me," Vhannor said in a low voice, "if I take a moment to process such a gift I hadn't dared hope for."

Liris tried to make herself breathe, managed shakily. Okay, turning that back around, she could see how—

Vhannor surged out of his seat and around the table, kneeling in front of her and taking her hands while she, for once, struggled to keep up.

"Caring isn't a distraction," Vhannor said, and Liris flashed back to their arrival in Otaryl, her excitement about dumplings, and everything.

She'd thought he was testing her—he'd thought she was challenging his commitment.

Before she could explain, he'd continued, "It's what makes what we do, saving people, matter. People includes you, Liris. Whether you are useful or not, by whatever metric you hold yourself to, I will never be sorry to have you at my side." Vhannor smiled, a slow, devasting smile that would have melted her heart if it hadn't already been a puddle and said, "I am sure that I love you, too."

Liris wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

She'd thought she was full before? Now she was overflowing—with love, a revelatory joy, and hope, for all this meant, the future she could have.

Pounding at the front door startled them apart, though not very far, each frowning at the other in dazed confusion as the world attempted to penetrate.

The pounding again. "Lord Vhannor! Come quickly, there's an emergency. Special Operations needs you right away."

That got him moving. He swore under his breath as he stalked quickly to the door with Liris right beside him. She threw it open.

"Oh, thank everything, you're both here," the messenger said in relief.

Liris' eyebrows shot up, but Vhannor was already demanding, "What's happened?"

The messenger looked sick. "The Gate Liris discovered between Serenthuar and Etorsiye is gone. Princess Nysia said to tell you it looks like Jadrhun blew it up."

What did it even mean to blow up a Gate?

No one in the situation room at Special Operations was exactly sure what Jadrhun had done. But two points were undeniable:

The Gate to Serenthuar was gone.

The destruction left in its wake bore all the signs of magical backlash: ambient magic vanished; scorched earth spreading in a shockwave out from the epicenter of the detonation, wiping out any magical working for miles.

The shockwave itself hadn't killed anyone, but taking out workings included spells written into foundations of buildings and carts, which had collapsed. Liris was told Yenti looked like a warzone.

"Starting with Serenthuar can't be an accident," Princess Nysia pointed out, not looking at Liris, because she didn't need to.

Just about everyone else around the table did, though.

If not for her, Jadrhun would never have known that Gate existed. She hadn't made him blow it up, by showing him, by not joining him, and yet it was hard not to feel like his choices were making her a liability.

So much for her bright future. Liris clenched her hands underneath the table to the point of pain but let nothing show on her face.

"We have to assume Jadrhun can detonate any Gate a realm has given him access to," Vhannor said. "We don't know what he's up to, so the first order of business is to work out how to protect people in the places we know he can hit."

Realm map booklets were brought out, the page for each realm ripped out of its binding so the senior Special Operations casters, researchers, and staff could move them around like cards and attempt to find patterns.

"This doesn't make any sense," Nysia growled in frustration. "Serenthuar, Tellianghu, Otaryl, Periannolu, Hinsheoress... None of these realms have anything in common. Different biomes, political structures, interests—Otaryl didn't even want to be part of whatever Jadrhun's doing!"

Liris pointed out, "Otaryl and Periannolu used to."

Nysia looked at her sharply. "What?"

"Geographically," she explained.

The princess was aghast. "You've studied pre-Sundering borders? Why?"

"I had," Liris bit out, "a lot. Of. Time. To. Read." She glanced at the piecemeal map, dread making all her limbs heavy. "I haven't memorized every map. But they shared borders with Serenthuar."

Silence fell around the table.

Vhannor asked softly, "There's something else, isn't there?"

Thyrasel is a language from one of the lost realms that once shared borders with the realms now known as Otaryl and Periannolu, she'd said.

Liris closed her eyes. "Jadrhun knew I knew that."

Of course he hadn't just wanted her for knowledge of Thyrasel. Whatever he'd been planning had been put into motion before that was ever an option for him. Other casters would catch up with his knowledge, though maybe not quickly enough.

But Liris had also happened to know the whole key to his plan, and she'd had it this whole time and hadn't seen.

One of Vhannor's hands covered her own, squeezing. Support, probably. Liris's face screwed up as she tried to hold in the riot she was now feeling.

"I think I know after all," Vhannor said, "what Jadrhun is doing."

That did get Liris' attention. She made herself breathe evenly and finally looked up at Vhannor.

He was looking at her—she read... pity, fear, anger—

Vhannor said, "He's planning to sunder Serenthuar."

Liris' whole world whited out. For a long moment, she couldn't hear, couldn't see, couldn't think.

A completely sundered realm couldn't sustain itself. Even a hypothetical realm with all the natural resources it needed at its disposal but few Gates would struggle due to less ambient magic: the theory was that the paths connecting the realms somehow helped the magic sustain itself. Without any Gates, would the bubble that kept the magic in the realms, and the void outside it, hold?

No way to know, of course. No one from a fully sundered realm could report back. Jadrhun had to know that and was still planning to risk a whole realm—gods, who knew how many realms.

And that hypothetical realm not dependent on any trade whatsoever didn't exist. At the very least, a sundering would be like an apocalypse, a crumbling-away of everything that made their current way of life possible—

The best case was a compressed version of the dwindling Serenthuar had been experiencing for centuries, choking out its life.

The more likely case was an expanded version of what had just happened to Etorsiye, and if they were lucky, it would be localized to one realm.

Liris was still staring at Vhannor and gradually became aware the table around them had erupted, the sound filtering in through Liris' shock as the pieces fell into place.

Jadrhun's passion. Why other realms would work with him.

"He thinks he can undo the Sundering," she whispered.

"How?" Nysia demanded, her voice cracking like a whip through Liris' protective calm. "How does sundering Serenthuar un-sunder it?"

"At the Sundering, magic forged connections between realms randomly, right? Jadrhun must think he can guide them. So if he has access to all the realms Serenthuar was once connected to, and he detaches Serenthuar from its only Gates in Etorsiye and Ormbtai—"

"He thinks Serenthuar will geographically reconnect with its former neighbors," Princess Nysia finished, falling back in her chair. "That's insane. How does he even have the power? Why does he think it would work—why does Serenthuar think it—oh, void it. Void everything and Jadrhun specifically, if I'd been faster—"

Liris didn't follow this change of direction in Nysia's thought process until all at once she did.

A researcher Liris didn't know explained to a caster, "There are so few realms with only one Gate, as Jadrhun thought Serenthuar had. Most realms would never risk an experiment like this. But Serenthuar, with their reputation for forward-thinking, for considering their realm as a whole even at the expense of individuals..."

They trailed off, apparently remembering that Liris was one of those individuals, but Liris could complete that thought easily.

Serenthuar would take this risk where it wouldn't take others.

Serenthuar, despite its best efforts, had been shriveling, and only a plot of epic proportions might save it. They would risk being sundered for the chance of being saved—in a way that would allow them to keep themselves exactly how they were without having to change.

Liris could have told them about the Gate to Etorsiye years ago. It might have mattered.

Then again, they'd considered this course reasonable and trusting her impossible.

"This is not your fault," Vhannor told her fiercely. "Jadrhun said he no longer needed Tellianghu's superfluous Gate. My guess is he didn't just detonate Etorsiye's Gate to separate Serenthuar further. He figured out a way to gather that magic to power the spell he'll need to try to guide a sundering. People in Tellianghu would have died instead."

"It doesn't matter," Liris whispered.

"It does—"

"IT DOESN'T MATTER."

She'd surged to her feet so quickly the chair clattered behind her.

Her love watched her quietly. So did the rest of the room.

Liris couldn't just be part of a team without bringing it down. She couldn't act without shedding worse consequences everywhere.

"You mean this gives us a brief window of time before Jadrhun can bring his plan to fruition," Liris said. "I understand that. But he'll expect us to figure this out, which means he'll be working as fast as he can—using Thyrasel to power his spells faster, probably trying to kill me to make sure I can't make it to Ormbtai to interfere, because I'm the only one who might be able to on the fly. So I have to get away from everyone so they don't get caught up in attacks on me, and I have to get to Ormbtai to stop him. Nothing else matters."

Vhannor shouldered his way into her vision, filling it with himself. "Liris, listen to me."

His voice, her center.

Serenthuar had been her center.

Her guts curdled.

"We don't know how far along Jadrhun is," Vhannor said, taking her by the shoulders, "what traps he might have laid. And even if we get there—dispelling a work like that is impossibly dangerous in its own right, even before whatever obstacles Jadrhun can muster. This is—not just reckless, it's more like suicidal, and you don't have to—"

"An entire realm, Vhann," Liris whispered. "Entire realms. I do have to try, even if it's hopeless. Of course, I have to."

Liris couldn't have a future until she'd dealt with her past. She couldn't choose any path for herself but this one.

Serenthuar still had her trapped after all.