I avoided Darius after my conversation with Peroth. It wasn't difficult to do. The Sin checked on my whereabouts periodically, typically finding me in the dining room with the wolves and Elias, in one of the lounges reading, or chasing Lionel from Peroth's things. Otherwise, I struck out into the manor's vast unknown, determined to occupy my mind and keep away from the Sin of Pride.

I knew I wouldn't be able to avoid Darius forever. Not confronting the baffling facts given to me by Sloth was juvenile, but I struggled to rationalize what he'd said. I had thought I understood Darius's motives, at least in the abstract. He was using our contract as a vehicle for his own vengeance—as a way to kill Balthier for himself and for me, and yet....

Before learning of Envy's involvement, before knowing my motivations and my goals, the Sin had given up a piece of his soul, risking a terrible fate. He had risked his life.

Darius was a snowballing contradiction. In one breath he'd insult my entire species and call me a mewling human—in the next he'd praise my bravery and my lack of adherence to human nature. It was my fate to die in his hands, and yet the creature had thrown himself before bullets and mages for my benefit. He wanted so fiercely to live he risked his very survival. 

I knew little, inconsequential details about Darius. I knew he became cranky when he was hungry and wasn't quite sure what mayonnaise was for. After perusing his bookshelves, I knew he liked poetry, especially the works of Keats and the darker tales of renowned Gothic writers. I knew he loved his brother just as much as he hated him. He liked to drive and loathed the term supernatural. Prideful to a fault, Darius was still brimming with regrets. Sometimes, in an unguarded moment, his eyes would open to a bottomless oubliette of remorse, grief, rage, and introspection.

For brief windows of time the true creature beneath the stone mask would peer from his self-imposed prison, and with each glimpse I stole of the true Darius, the more confounded I became.

I knew nothing about him. I knew nothing of his plans, of his motives, of his reasoning. I understood so little of who the man really was.

So I avoided Darius. I avoided him until I was ready to confront the tangled catastrophe of my own thoughts. 

A week passed. It took some time, but I managed to find a calendar and deduce I was half way through October. I spared a thought for my phone and laptop, both left in Verweald in my rush to leave, which wasn't one of my brightest decisions, but I guessed it was much too late to complain about it now.

I walked one of my more well-traipsed hallways, one hand lingering on the chair rail—careful not to touch the ghoulish wallpaper—as I counted doors under my breath. I didn't have a firm destination in mind. I only wished to avoid Darius and to find a place where I could avoid my mind's spiraling conundrums.

Instead of contemplating the Sin of Pride, I turned my thoughts to the inexorable passage of days. 

My sister had been dead for two months now. God, time was a fickle bastard. In so many ways, Tara's presence remained with me, a tangible memory I clung to and fooled myself with. Sometimes, in the early morning when I woke bleary-eyed before the dawn, I would forget she was dead and my heart would break again when I realized she was gone.

Some mornings I felt her keenly, and yet others I realized I couldn't quite remember the exact pitch of her laugh, or I worried I had forgotten some minuscule facet of her face or her voice or her manner. Tara existed only as a tapestry of gathered details in my head, and I was terrified parts of that tapestry may unravel without my knowledge, that I would lose parts of my sister. One day, I worried I would wake and my well-woven tapestry would be nothing more than a moth-eaten rag and I would lose Tara all over again. 

Grumbling, I stopped counting the doors as I came to a fork in the hallway. The gilded mirror facing me was familiar, providing an easy reminder to this particular corridor's quirk. I backtracked two doorways, then approached the final door again. The bland, plain black portal had been replaced by one with two bands of a gold and an inset panel painted with red.

I had come upon this particular room by chance some weeks ago. It contained one of my favored lounges. At first, I had been attracted to its obscurity, but later I found a measure of peace in the bamboo paneling, dated furniture, and the wide casement windows with views of the marshland. It was a strange place. There were a couple of crates in the back corner, and though I hadn't dared sift through them, I imagined Peroth used the space for some of his eclectic collections. 

I opened the door—and stumbled to a halt.

The Sin of Lust was situated on one of the couches, bent at the waist to see the screen of the laptop she had borrowed from Peroth. The woman had one computer and a sheaf of papers and was trying to run her empire from the other side of the world. Her aggravation was evident.

Having been chased out of her city without prior warning, Amoroth had none of her possessions, including her clothes or any of the nifty baubles and scripts she coerced off Verweald's witches and neighboring mages. Her wounded arm was bundled in bandages and hung in a sling. She had been forced to appropriate pants from one of the Aos Sí women and wore an oversized button-down I suspected was actually Peroth's. Her hair wasn't styled and her face went without any cosmetic touches. 

Amoroth would always be a beautiful woman with or without her pricey couture, but she looked...tired. Defeated.

As I bumbled into the lounge, she also looked annoyed. 

"What," she grated as her vitric stare listed from the computer's screen. The artificial glow accentuated the bruised rings below her eyes and washed out her complexion. "Do you want?"

"Uh." I retreated with my hand still upon the door's handle. "N-nothing. Absolutely nothing."

I slammed the door shut before she could ask something else. 

There was another study on the next floor that I knew of. It wasn't as comfortable nor as serene as the lounge Amoroth was occupying. It always smelt of burnt leaves, there weren't any windows I could open, and the shelves had bookends of rather odious shrunken heads I couldn't tell were real or not—but being in there was better than being in a room with a pissed, wounded Amoroth.

Much better.

I managed to find and ascend the stairs again—only to be disappointed when I discovered someone else was already inside the study. The gas lamps weren't lit, so I didn't recognize the man stationed at the oak desk until he tucked the curtain of his black hair behind his pointed ear and revealed his face.

"Sara?" Anzel questioned as he spotted me silhouetted at the threshold. He was reading a journal of loose pages by candlelight. I had used the lights in the room before, so either the Vytian had made an aesthetic choice or the manor was being petulant and denying him the privilege.

"Hello," I answered, lingering as I hadn't done with Amoroth. "Is it all right if I sit in here?"

"Of course," Anzel said as he straightened and started to pat his pockets. "Allow me to light a few more candles. The lamps aren't working again, I'm afraid...."

The Vytian plucked a book of matches out from under the mess of papers on the desk and busied himself with lighting the accrued candles as I entered the study. My eyes adjusted quickly to the dark, and once a few of the tapers were lit I could recognize the shape of the antique furniture and the dusty lectern propping open a thick grimoire.

"What are you up to?" I asked, pinching my nose as the stench of burnt oak clogged my nostrils. Abashed, Anzel wafted his hand through the air as he slid a glass lid over the top of a smoldering mortar and pestle.

"Working on one of my more complicated mixtures." Thin strands of his hair began to fall into his eyes again, so Anzel brushed them aside with a grunt.

"Don't you usually do that in your room?"

"Yes, usually, but I can't make this one in there. To explain simply, this concoction cannot be cross-contaminated by the various ambient energies and lingering essences of my other spells and creations that are in storage still brewing, as it were."

He rattled off the explanation as if unbalanced by my sudden appearance. I doubted Anzel Vyus was ever truly off-balance, only surprised. Still, his clarification was sound. Just as a scientist must be cautious when mixing chemicals, a magic user creating a potion had to be cautious with his magic and ingredients.

I coughed, but the putrid smell was becoming more tolerable.

"That's what the burnt leaves is for, isn't? To scrub unwanted essences?"

Anzel hummed low in affirmation, an affectionate smile spreading over his lips. "Yes. It smells atrocious, but it cleans the air well. Two oak leaves, a sprig of juniper, a pinch of peat moss, and just a few scrapings of yew."

He pointed at the items he listed. Each was kept in its own container or satchel, though none of it was labeled and I was amazed he could remember what each ingredient was. Half of the satchels held a variation of tree bark and regardless of the names Anzel gave them, bark was bark to me.

As he spoke, the door popped open again and Elias entered carrying an armload of polished pine boxes.

"Oh," he said when he spotted Anzel and me standing together by the desk. "Would you like me to come back later, my lord?"

"No, Elias," Anzel answered. "Come in. Let me help you with those."

Anzel went to help the older Vytian carry the boxes and I got out of their way, moving from the desk to one of the sofas. I sank onto the cushion, setting loose a cloud of dust that had me sneezing something fierce as the two men went about organizing the boxes on the desktop.

I tried to dust myself off and Anzel cracked open one of the slim lids, exhaling with admiration as he took stock of what was inside. "Lovely," the Vytian remarked as his hand dipped into the box and extracted a bundle of silk fabric. The dark gray cloth tumbled through his long fingers, revealing itself as a waistcoat. It was embossed with a subtle leaf pattern, lined with a simple black satin and finished with brushed silver buttons.

"What do you think?" Anzel asked, holding the waistcoat out for my inspection. "All the way from Gran Vyus. Takes months to get a bloody courier to bring me goods."

After cleaning my fingertips on my pants, I touched the fabric's hem. It was thin like silk but infinitely denser, heavier. It slid across my skin like cool, rippling water.

"Lovely," I agreed. The Vytian smiled as he folded the waistcoat and returned it to the box. He continued to root through the small container, humming under his breath as he noted what items were present, though he didn't remove anything else.

"I'll have to wear that for the Solstice," he said, speaking more to Elias than to me. As he snapped the lid into place, I asked him what he meant. Anzel's brow rose as he answered, "The Winter Solstice. Sloth holds parties at both the winter and summer solstices. I believe it's his way of getting better shipments of inventory. Merchants out of the Vale and from under the hill are much more likely to make the trek if given the right incentive. A party is a very good incentive for an Aos Sí."

Parties? Peroth holds parties? Why is that so hard to believe?

"You'll be coming this year, yes?" the Vytian asked as Elias continued to sort the packages on the desk, pointedly ignoring us. "I look forward to seeing you dance again."

I flushed as I remembered the bonfire, the faeries out on the moor, and how I had danced into the early hours of the morning with them. I picked at my sleeve as I muttered, "How embarrassing."

Anzel laughed, startling Elias. "I found it quite charming. You smiled then. It was...memorable."

His words did nothing to alleviate the furious blush in my face, so—clearing my throat—I looked anywhere but at Anzel as I allowed my gaze to land upon a prepped circle defacing the floor. "You were going to cast something here?"

Anzel let the conversation change with a knowing smirk on his face. It mattered little. If I recalled correctly, the solstice was in late December. Whether or not I would be alive then was a dubious subject. "Yes, I was. Would you care to assist?"

I shrugged, though my curiosity was piqued. "Okay."

The Vytian waved me forward, indicating where I should stand at the edge of an intricate construct already drawn on the stone floor. Unlike the construct Anzel had laid in salt for my ether infusion, this construct was in chalk, and it was quite large and quite meticulous.

There were innumerable circles entwined with lines of scripts and more profound symbols and glyphs. There was a single central circle the others were connected to with various channels of bars and verbiage linking. Circles were inset on the edge of the main circle, each with a large rune carefully drawn in its middle and distal line enclosing them.

"Put this in that circle there," Anzel said as he pointed toward one of inset constructs on the left side of his creation. He extended a sprig of purple flowers and leaves partially wrapped in a handkerchief to me. I went to touch the leaves and Anzel jerked away. "By the cloth, love. It's monkshood. It's poisonous."

Exercising caution, I took the plant and placed it where he indicated. Again and again Anzel presented a new plant or item and gestured toward where I should situate it. Most of the items he handed over were dead, withered and dried. They all were allocated to the left half of the construct.

Anzel himself handled the green, living plants. Many samples he had to clip from potted specimens or fish out of containers. One prickly vine trapped in a jar didn't appreciate the Vytian's touch and latched its barbs into his hand. I learned several new swear words in Vytian before Elias managed to pry the vine off of him.

As I scraped a pile of dry, flaky willow bark off my palm, I asked, "What are you making?"

The Vytian dropped a leaf of stinging nettle into place. "I'd rather not say for the time being. It's nothing nefarious, only...personal. I will tell you time, just not now."

After settling the final ingredient, Anzel beckoned me closer, and together we knelt at the head of the construct. The orientation of the runes and scripts spilled in clockwise directions or angles, indicating this particular part of the construct as a position of power. Anzel brought his hands together and rubbed them vigorously in preparation. He pressed his palms to the extremity of the construct's edge and inhaled.

Then his hair fell into his face again, and Anzel straighten, uttering mild oaths as he quickly tried to tie his hair into a loose queue.

Seeing his efforts fail, I intervened. "Why is your hair so long if you do this so often?" I asked as I quickly parted and wove his hair together. It felt similar to the silk I handled earlier, dense and cool like rippling water. "I mean, men don't typically have long hair."

Anzel made a scandalized sound as Elias, chopping assorted vegetation and placing it into the proper containers, chuckled. "In Vyus, warriors have long hair. Servants have short hair."

Elias pointed at his own manageable short hair without looking up from his task.

"Do you think yourself a warrior?" I asked as I tied the black ribbon he handed me into a knot at the base of his braid. I was torn between finding the idea ludicrous or believable. From the moment I had met Anzel, I had sensed a benign duplicity to his nature that proved challenging to assess and understand. The good-natured, affable alchemist before me wasn't a warrior, but there was remarkable strength in Anzel's lithe hands and arms, and a notable grace to his movements.

Perhaps Anzel was a warrior. It simply wasn't a side of him I'd witnessed yet.

The Vytian winked as he tucked a loose strand behind his ear. At this proximity, I noticed a pattern of old scars on the upper edge of cartilage, as if someone had taken a knife and had tried to slice the pointed tip off. "Leave me my mysteries, love. Sometimes they're all I have."

He again warmed up his hands and placed them on the construct. I sat on my heels and waited for what would happen next.

His magic rose as it was wont to do, like a wild cat breaking its leash with sudden vigor and violence. It prowled with hunger on its mind, winding about construct as if the circle were a downed, bloody rabbit it was about to devour. The energy Anzel summoned was more powerful than it had been when he'd created my first ether infusion. The magic was thicker, more tangible. I felt it rove the room, bathing it in vivid, colorless light as its motion brushed my face and tossed my hair into the air.

The magic entered the chalk and glowed. Tiny fractals of metal or perhaps glass held in the chalk sparkled. The overwhelming scent of fresh, broken greenery spilled forth once the magic began to devour Anzel's ether. The rising shift in air pressure was surprisingly crisp in temperature. My eyes watered and I blinked to dispel the moisture.

One by one, the plants and mysterious items Anzel and I had placed were burnt to ash by brilliant streamers of white, glimmering fire. The magic was very powerful—and yet Anzel still kept his hands in place, concentrating on the stream as he wrung more from his soul. His blank eyes, normally so colorless, reflected every spark of light in an array of yellows, blues, and greens.

On a hidden cue, Anzel flinched and the magic coursing in a tight circle upon his meticulously drawn construct yanked itself in the opposing direction, folding in upon itself with a throbbing boom of sound that set the worthless gas lamps to trembling. The abrupt whiplash of energy stripped the chalk right off the floor, and as the Vytian lifted his hands, the magic he had summoned converged upon the construct's middle.

Hissing, the palpable energy funneled into the small potion vial set there until it disappeared and the room returned to its natural state. The construct was gone, and the magic was roiling within the demure flask.

Elias paused from his work to step forward with a cork in hand to seal the vial shut. Anzel's display had left me breathless; the older Vytian hardly seemed to have notice.

"That was..." I uttered at a loss for words. My skin tingled with the energy—a familiar energy I tasted every morning when Elias provided me with my daily ether infusion. I had thought Elias was making them. I hadn't seen Anzel for the past few days, not since the incident with the Cassandra—and yet, the Vytian prince had been creating my infusions.

I turned to Anzel to tell him thank you. The Vytian slumped, sighed, and began to tip.

"Hey—whoa!" I caught him by the shoulders to prevent a full face-flop onto the floor. Anzel sagged in my grip, his chin bumping against his chest. "Elias—! Elias, help!"

"Calm yourself, miss. He's just pushed himself a bit too far today." The older Vytian retrieved one of the many boxes he had arrived with and crouched at our side. The box landed on the floor with a hollow thunk and clink of glass tapping. Elias broke the seal, lifting a bottle from the packaging of loose straw. "Come now, my lord. Drink this. It's quite unseemly to lean upon a lady in this manner...."

In spite of supporting Anzel's weight, my eyes were riveted upon the open box. Inside was a collection of finely blown glass vials with ribbons of gold tied about their necks. The vessels were pretty—but it wasn't their beauty that interested me.

I eased my hands from the Vytian's shoulders and passed my fingers over the warm glass as Elias administered the ether infusion to Anzel. Those bottles burned like captured moonlight—like mercury set aflame. The contained energy burned my fingertips, but I didn't yield. I stared at the silver effulgence as it poured over my trembling hand.

Silver ether—silver mana. I was looking at true silver mana, not the paltry excuse of a silver sheen my own soul held. This was real, and it was beautiful.

"See something you like?" Anzel teased, having regained his strength after consuming one of the infusions. His voice was raspy, his proud shoulders rounded. The empty bottle had been gathered by Elias, who had returned to the desk and was cleaning their implements.

"These are...yours?"

"Mhmm." He lifted one of the vials and weighed it in his hand as if it were nothing more than a simple bauble. "My ether infusions. As you know, I can make my own, but Elias insists I have them sent in by the bloody royal alchemist. He's not even the royal alchemist anymore, Elias," he complained to the older man. "Doesn't he work out of some hovel in the city's backstreets, hiding from the Republic? Testing mixtures on cats and urchins?"

Elias nodded as he tidied up. "Yes, my lord. But he's still the royal alchemist if he's making the king's infusions."

Anzel sighed with exasperation, but nonetheless returned his attention to me.

"This color...." Again, I was at a loss for words. It was a foolish notion, but if I worded my suspicions aloud and was incorrect, I would've felt very stupid. So I waited, willing the answer to come out of Anzel's mouth though I didn't ask him a question.

His lips had been fixed in his handsome, devil-may-care smile—but as the Vytian regarded my somber countenance and the stubborn set of my jaw, his grin waned and a severer mien assumed dominance over his face. Again, like the many facets of a gem, I beheld a new side of the Vytian prince. "The color...it's the same as yours."

"No," I answered, staring at the bottle brimming with vivacity and power. Oh, to have that kind of strength. To have that sort of will. There wouldn't be a thing beyond my ability, beyond my protection. "Not like mine. It's the color mine imitates. This is what my soul pretends to be."

Anzel voiced a small but noticeable sound of negation. "Be it even the faintest of silver-linings, if your soul bears the silver light, then you are Vytian." He pressed the luminescent infusion into my grip, hands lingering upon my own. "You realize the truth of my words. That for all your protests, for all your denials and quick rebukes about being human, you aren't human. You are Vytian."

There it was, stated as bold as brass, the truth I had been skirting ever since that book of Vytian magic had landed in my possession. The pieces of my world had been shaken and realigned in a different pattern. The change wasn't monumental. I was, after all, the same stupid mortal I had been all along, only now I understood I was a stupid mortal whose ancestors hadn't been from this realm.

It shouldn't have mattered, but for some reason it mattered immensely.

"Come now, love, you're going to break the bottle."

Startled, I looked at the infusion in my hand and realized I had been gripping it so tightly the artfully crafted glass had begun to complain and splinter. "Oh, I'm sorry." I relinquished it to Anzel and wiped my hands as I hopped up off the floor. The study was infinitely more claustrophobic than it had been minutes before. I wished to be away from here, to go outside and breathe in the whispering moorland air, if only for an instant.

"Va...va-natha'lan." My father's words came unbidden to my mouth as I stared at Anzel, then at Elias' stiff back. I blurted the statement out and both Vytians flinched as if I had uttered something profound. "What does that mean?"

Anzel leaned on his arms with his long legs folded before himself, his keen eyes flickering from my face over the entirety of my body and back again. "It's an oath," he finally answered, voice lacking inflection. "You're pronouncing it incorrectly. It's va-natha'lan. Roughly translated into your tongue, I am of the soul. It's an oath, a benediction, a promise. Given to a loved one, it means I am devoted. To an enemy, it means I am stronger. They aren't words given lightly among our people."

His head tilted, a stand of his black hair crossing his serious face as if hewing the man into two people. "Who told you those words to you?"

"They weren't said to me. My dad said them to a demon."

Anzel sat up so swiftly I jumped. "For curiosity's sake, what is his name?"

"Err—the demon's or my dad's?"

"Your father."

"Luc."

"And his father's name?"

"Rene." I hesitated as I picked at my sleeve. "Why?"

Elias choked at the desk and fumbled with the paper pouches he was sorting. Sprigs of rosemary scattered over the neatly stacked books and boxes.

My brow furrowed with confusion—but Anzel reined in my attention when he rose, looping his arm through mine and all but yanking me from my feet. I caught my balance against him, huffing irritably as he continued to smile with his pleasant white teeth.

"Come now, love. We're off on a quick errand while Elias cleans up."

"But—."

"Come, come! Let's go!"

Anzel insisted, and so I had no choice but to stumble after the Vytian. His behavior wasn't unusual; I was fully aware that the princeling was used to getting his way, but the rapid necessity of our departure rankled my intuition.

I had said my grandfather's name, and they had recognized it.

At the door, I dragged my feet and turned to the study bathed in candlelight once more. Elias had his gloved hand braced on the desk's edge, his formal posture deflated into one of great pain or burden.

"Elias?" I asked, quieting the unease building my middle. "Elias, are you alright?"

He fidgeted as if to rise, but couldn't manage the strength. "I am fine, miss. Please, go with Anzel."

The Vytian servant remained where he was, declining further conversation. I studied his back, wishing to ask more, but I didn't have the chance before Anzel lead me from the room.