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You’ve lived this all before. That’s the thought that keeps me going, through the acrid sting of mage-smoke in my nostrils and the terror of almost having lost you already. There’s fear on your face, too—you’re only now straightening, one trembling hand clutching at your sleeve, and—and—no. I find I cannot call this woman you. You look older than your years, your hair streaked with silver. This woman is barely thirty. She does not have your easy calm; she flinches at the sight of the Tierran assassin pinned neatly to the floor by my sword. She is not you, and will not be for ye...

What I cannot tell Fallon is who I am now. I cannot tell her about the new home I make. I cannot tell her that you were the only person I could ever fight for, because you looked at war and saw only despair. That, having set my blade down, you were the only person for whom I would pick it up again. She is Fallon Deere, First Minister to the Free State of Altorania, and you are you, the woman who sent me to her side.

I feel as if something important has passed between us, but I cannot fathom its true nature. As I make my way back to the ground, I think that descending should be harder, slower, more arduous than the climb had been. A return to the everyday. But it’s no more difficult than the ascent. Nowhere near as much fun, though.

The Guadalupe Witch by Josh Rountree. Her Black Coal Heart a Diamond in My Hand by R.K. Duncan. BCS 272: The Guadalupe Witch by Josh Rountree.

I staged a fight on the ground floor, scattered the broken furniture Ashton had found me and pinned scraps of the boy, the middle child, all around. He hadn’t been a fighter, but people would believe things of a boy they wouldn’t of a girl, and they had to believe for this to reach them. I put some breaks into the bulk of him with my knife and left him bent into unnatural angles beside the stove. A little ghost stuff and witchfire added to the coal would make it burn cold green, and I left that room with no other light.