Chapter 23: Sapphire and Silver
A Lover's Labyrinth
I couldn't know how long Jasmin had been gone, how much lead she had in rushing to her death, so action was my only choice. Deep breath. The air in the apartment was moist. She'd bathed. That gave me a few extra minutes.
Rushing into my clothes, I ran from room to room searching for all I needed. Armour was by the door – a small mercy from Jasmin – but the silverthorn blade was gone. As was my mother's dagger. In their place I found the sapphire and emerald sabres we'd received in Blue Stone.
"Goddesses around us, woman," I sighed, "I told you we would face this together."
Strapping both swords to my belt, I took the mysterious box from Blue Stone – the one from my dream of Gormlaith – and jammed several handfuls of food down my throat before charging out the door.
If I had any hope to catch Jasmin up, I would need much more than my legs. The horses were stabled nearby, but the wrong way. Still, better to have than to need, so I left The Sixth Maiden, bumping into something like twenty people along the way, and I dashed away from the central palace.
My lungs fought every step as I nearly bowled over the stablehand. She handed me a slip of paper, handwriting I knew all too well made my heart sink.
My love,
I told you not to follow. Did you really think I'd make this easy on you? The horses have been put out to work for the sun already. If you're going to do this, you're doing it by your own strength, silly woman.
Please, love. Don't follow.
When you do anyway, leave the sabres with the stablehand. Trust me.
Jas.
I puzzled over the note for far too long, and the woman in front of me began to giggle. "Can you not read, Lady Thornleaf?" As I took her in fully, I was certain she looked familiar, but I didn't have time to think about it.
"Jasmin says to leave you with these two blades," I explained. "Did she leave anything with you for me?"
"She just said that when you spent too long deciding," another light giggle, "I should remind you that you need to hurry."
Unstrapping the two sabres, I groaned. "Goddesses around us, this woman is going to kill me with her games."
After handing off my only two weapons, I took off through the crowd, cradling the box close to my chest. I had to give it everything I could. If Jasmin went there alone, we both knew what was coming, and I couldn't allow that. I wouldn't allow that.
The streets were far more crowded than I expected, filling up more at every step closer to the central palace. Jasmin's childhood home. Or at least until she was demoted.
"Salora," I whispered to no one in particular, "I told you to trust me. You told me to trust you. I'm doing everything you asked, now can you please hold up your end of the deal?"
A flash of silver caught my eye ahead in the crowd, a small necessities shop sign just above the glint. My eyes barely focused enough to make out the tiny imprint of a smith's hammer from a distance. I changed my course and headed straight toward it.
"You're late," the shopkeep said, handing me another note, "or maybe early. Depends whose timeline we're on."
"Jasmin I swear, this isn't funny anymore." My growl scared the person running the shop. "Sorry, friend. I'm just —" They gestured that I should read the note.
My heart,
Don't worry. I'm not going to ask you to leave your armour or boots or anything else. Give the box to the person here and turn about. I've given them explicit instructions.
Since you're going to follow, don't forget to thank them and bring the box along.
Jas.
Reluctantly, I handed them the box and turned my back toward the door of the shop. The sound of tired hinges barely moving tempted me to turn about, but I held. Moments later, the shopkeep's hands were at the sides of my neck with a silver amulet.
I knew it from my dreams. The amulet Salora had given to Afina when the Fiend began killing their sisters. It resembled a bundle of vines twisting and turning about, thorny and dangerous as the woman who made them. At its centre a silver flower. Her flower.
They deftly clasped the amulet's chain before tapping my shoulder and returning me to the moment.
"You look like a real warrior now," they smiled as I met their gaze. "You just need a weapon. The lady said you should hurry, though. Kovar's going to figure out what you two are up to very soon. If we're lucky, she'll be the only one to figure it out."
"And what happens then?"
The shopkeep shrugged. "Kovar tries to stop you. It's not time yet. Like I said, early."
"Thank you," I said softly and took the box.
My feet felt lighter, my lungs somehow clearer. At each step I could see a path forward, clear enough for me to squeeze through. The feat would've been impossible with a horse, I had to admit. Or with blades strapped to my waist.
"Jasmin," I begged to the wind, "please don't die until I get there."
The metal and glass buildings began to thin out as the central palace loomed ever higher in my field of view. It was an eyesore among hideous architecture. A monolith to the cruelty I'd expected to find from the moment we stepped foot in town.
There was a clear line where people no longer crowded or approached the palace, leaving a half-mile of empty ground to cover once I broke free of all the people surrounding me.
The box under my arm seemed to hum to life the closer we drew to the Violet Cathedral – why did I know that name? Why 'we'?
"You are a fool, Lesser Rose," Salora's voice seemed to fill the entirety of Violet's repose, though no one seemed to notice but me.
"She may be that," a second voice hummed assent, "but she's no coward."
A third voice laughed. "I can see why you like her," she sang.
Vaelis's voice joined them. "Lesser Rose, was it? You had best not fail."
I heard a final voice, whose words I couldn't quite make out. But the sound of it startled me. I knew the voice. Togha. So she wasn't gone, simply fading.
"Alright, all of you shut up," I whispered, finally pushing through the last of the human wall keeping me from my goal. "Where's Jasmin?"
A sudden emerald glint drew my eyes to a door near me. Tiny, modest, probably meant for servants. And likely my only way in. As I drew closer, I spotted another note waiting for me.
My life,
If you're reading this, which I know you are, I've left a map of sorts to get you where you need to be. Thank you, dearest one.
I'll see you at the end.
Jas.
The box at my side pulsed, and I could wait no longer. Opening it, I found a silverthorn flower, pristine and perfect, though weathered with age. Jasmin had known. And she'd waited.
What would I have done had I known she was planning this?
It was clearly not Afina's silverthorn, or at least not the one I'd been carrying all this time, because its thorns were all in place. But it felt familiar as I took it carefully from inside the box.
Afina had entrusted this flower to Gormlaith, to hold not for herself, but for one willing to change everything. I'd held it before, as her. Hundreds of times, if not thousands, in service to Salora.
Was I meant to be her Thorn That Befalls The Wicked? No. I wouldn't follow Afina's path. But I would stand at Jasmin's side until the last.
"Jasmin, you silver-haired idiot," I smiled as I set the flower back into the box and closed it. "We do this my way. I'm not letting you die again."
The servant's door was unlocked, and the corridor behind it was empty. Up ahead I saw the faint flicker of a slowly dying cold-flame. Emerald. It was her alright. And I couldn't be too far behind.
I followed the 'map' of cold-flames through corridor after corridor up stairs, around corners, for longer than seemed reasonable. How was the Violet Cathedral so big? It looked much more modest from the outside.
Up. Turn. Follow. Left. Down. Right. Up. Follow.
The directions seemed almost random. Was she leading me toward her or farther away? My only hope was that the cold-flames were brighter as I passed them. I was finally catching up.
When I had begun to give up hope, I spotted her, setting a cold-flame up ahead of me. Not daring to speak, I kept moving as she vanished from my sight.
She was two flames ahead, then one, then I held her tightly in my arms.
"Jasmin, darling, why did you try to go without me?" I met her amber eyes. They were resolute. Set for anything.
"Roisin, dearest, because I can't let you die." She wasn't angry from the sound of her words. Hopeless maybe?
"And how do you think I feel?"
"Point taken. Though I expected you to take a bit more time." She eyed my neck where the amulet hung. "It looks good on you, dearest. Why didn't you wear it the first time?"
"We were doomed to fail the first time, and we both knew it, darling."
Her voice cracked as she pulled me closer and renewed the hug I'd begun when I caught her. "How long have you known?"
"Since Thornwood, when your eyes turned emerald the first time," I admitted. "I didn't want to say anything. Speaking things has a habit of —"
"Making them truth," she breathed. I felt something wet drip into my hair. "It took longer for me. Blue Stone. The attack."
"I know."
We stood speechless for a long while before she pushed me back gently. "This may be our last moment of peace," she said. "Kiss me like you know it's the last."
I gently placed my hand on her cheek and leaned closer, pulling her face to meet mine. A light press of our lips together, only a second, and I pulled away.
"Our last won't be until I say so, darling."
She smiled as the tears started streaming. "You are a fool."
"Then we are fools together."
A Final Lullaby
Jasmin didn't lead me to the throne room. Not to some grand strategy hall or any other self-important space. Instead, we found ourselves in a bedroom, small and stylish. Everything was covered in a layer of dust nearly as thick as that in Thornleaf Manor.
The bed was unmade. Toys were strewn about. Remnants of a long-forgotten meal sat on a table by the window. Beside it, a bug-chewed book barely held itself together. In one corner stood a dress-form wearing a tattered court gown made for a child and a crown, tarnished from disuse, its prismatic gemstones cracked with age.
My eyes settled, though, not on a trinket or a shiny jewel, but on the flower stood gently in a vase in the darkest corner. It was impossible not to recognise, even in its long-wilted state. Silverthorn.
"The poisoning was an accident," Jasmin recalled, "caused by a gardener who thought the flower was just another rose. A special one, blessed by the goddess. I was enamoured of it so deeply, I took it from its vase, and its thorns pierced my skin.
"I worried I'd be in trouble, so I hid the bleeding from my attendants. I put the flower back in its crystal vase, and I prayed to the goddess that no one would find out. Then the pain started. I'd been pricked in my fingers and palms, but the burning waited till my wrists. It was the worst thing I'd ever felt."
As she spoke, Jasmin walked toward the vase, unwrapping the cloth from her arms and revealing the scars from her nightmare. I was struck by the fact that they weren't progressing, but receding.
"My screams echoed through the halls of the palace, alerting guards and attendants and my mother and her mother, who was queen at the time. They all rushed to my side, and they spoke in hushed tones. I didn't know I was supposed to die. So I didn't."
She folded the wraps and placed them before the vase.
"That's when, the torture, the disgrace, the banishment from the palace." She breathed deeply, the scars along her collar seeming to shine at her mention of the torture. "And eighteen miserable years of servitude, not as princess but as clerk." Her eyes met mine, gleaming with the tears that had renewed their assault. "The gardener wasn't so lucky. They poisoned him with the flower he'd almost killed me with."
As she spoke, I noticed her clothing at last. She wasn't wearing a noblewoman's gown or a warrior's armour, but an ephemeral sort of dress that brought heat to my cheeks as I explored the length of it. I'd seen her dressed this way in vision after vision, a sight I'd longed to see in person, but now it made my heart ache. Minus her amber eyes, she was every bit the goddess who was stealing Jasmin away from me.
"Roisin," she smiled, despite herself.
I forced a smile of my own. "Jasmin."
"What's in the box is yours. What you've been carrying is mine." She indicated the silverthorn flower she'd hung at her hip, opposite my mother's dagger. "Please don't poison yourself as you fight. I still don't remember how to heal with soulfire – probably should have asked Vaelis to teach me while she was around – so saving you would be a dreadful chore."
"Certainly, my Lady," my deference to her caught a scoff. "Fine. If you'd prefer it. As you desire, my darling love."
Her skin from toe to cheek flushed bright pink. "So, we go and confront my mother. The Fiend. Apparently."
"We do. And we win. Understood?"
She chuckled mirthlessly. "You make it sound easy."
"If we work together," I said as I took her hand, "it will be."