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You lay next to Ianthe on the bed that was too wide, too soft, and you heard her exhale as she drew closer to sleep. The two-handed sword was between you as always, its malice feeling like a wall dividing you from her. And as Ianthe drifted off into slumber, you became aware of the whimpering. It was not new to you by now; it happened every night, but it should have been easier by now. Instead of doing the sensible thing and plugging your ears or retreating to your own quarters, you spoke into the darkness of her opulent room.
“Hey.”
Ianthe’s sniffling stopped, replaced by her usual drawl hazy with drowsiness and a trace of something huskier. “Oh, I get it. You couldn’t sleep, so now none of us are allowed to?”
“You were crying.” You let the unspoken question hang in the air.
Ianthe didn’t take the bait. “Of course I wasn’t, you dolt. My airways were blocked, that’s all. Happens when I fall asleep.”
Before coming to the Mithraeum, you couldn’t have cared less about Third House antics, but months of only Mercymorn’s acid tongue and Augustine’s indifference for company had worn you down, to say nothing of the Emperor Undying trying to act like a parent. It was almost preferable to wait for the Saint of Duty to make his next attempt on your life. If you didn’t know better, you’d say you were feeling lonely, desperate for some kind of connection that wasn’t this constant sniping at each other. “What do you think your sister is doing right now?” you asked.
Ianthe jolted to her elbows as though you’d dropped a construct on her lap. A wet one—which wasn’t a bad idea, now that you thought about it. “What does Coronabeth have to do with this? Since when are you interested in her?”
You shrugged. Ianthe stared at you suspiciously, stolen eyes gleaming in the dark, and lay back down slowly. “I…I hope she’s eating well, and sleeping in a soft bed. What more can you want, really?”
You imagined you could see those gaudy paintings on her walls then, of cavalier and necromancer long dead, staring back at you through the darkness. Their eyes and mouths were alight with laughter as they pranced through life with dizzying indulgence. Had they cried when they’d found out the cost of Lyctorhood? Or were they immediately resigned? Had you cried? Your sinuses started to sting, and you thought no more of it. “I…suppose,” you began with halting tones, “you want to know where she is, not just that she’s physically well.”
“She’s alive. I feel it. The rest will come with time,” said Ianthe resolutely. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time Babs refused to come to the Cohort parade because he only had gray socks?”
Wondering if the interlude was at all relevant or just her excuse to evade thinking about her sister for too long, you rolled your eyes to the ceiling and answered, “No.”
Her wicked smile was audible. “See, the parade was on a Wednesday and on Wednesdays, you wear pink. But his pink socks were dirty, so all he had was gray, which were his Thursday socks.”
You had changed your mind. If you could go the rest of this myriad without hearing of Third House antics, it would be a mercy.
“Anyway, he had to go in the end, but he kept crying the whole time about how he was going to sprain an ankle because it was bad luck. Coronabeth tripped him and bruised his ego for a little bit. And he never found out I’d hid his pink socks because I’d wanted to see what would happen,” she finished.
“Fascinating.”
She ignored the obvious sarcasm in your voice. “We were seven. Corona and I laughed ourselves silly every time we caught a glimpse of his pink socks afterward, but he never stopped doing it.”
“Why are you telling me this?” you asked.
Ianthe shifted, rustling the silken bedcovers. “Because, believe it or not, I like telling you things sometimes. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with companions?”
Tridentarius considered you a companion. What you’d learned over the course of these months with her was that Ianthe Tridentarius solely valued people based on how useful they were to some nebulous plan you could only guess at. But perhaps you had misjudged your relationship with her yet again.
In that moment, you wished to reciprocate. Yet thinking of your childhood was too painful; these months at the Mithraeum too dull. What detail could you reveal about yourself that Ianthe wouldn’t be able to use against you later? For the sake of, as she had put it, companionship, telling her anything seemed too risky an endeavor.
“Ortus always liked sharing his poetry with me,” you found yourself saying. “It was dull and repetitive, but he persisted. I memorized it against my will, and I could probably quote the entire epic, all twenty volumes and counting, if you wished.”
Ianthe snorted.
“It’s all I have left of him.” You’d said the wrong thing—in that moment, you could tell you’d lost the conversation and the chance to connect with Ianthe.
Your chest ached worse than ever. “You at least have a lifetime of memories with your sister. What do I have?” You couldn’t tell to whom you were posing the question.
“You have me.” Ianthe’s reply was so unexpected you wondered if you were imagining things yet again. “And in the next myriad, we can make memories together.” And, because she couldn’t be nice for longer than a sentence, she added, “You know, so that when you die, I can tell everyone how insufferable you were.”
“Thanks.”
Ianthe let out a huff of air, and this time, the moment of unexpected tenderness had truly dissolved. “Well. That was…”
“Wretched,” you supplied.
“Completely awful,” she agreed. “Thank you for the bedtime story, Harry.”
“Stop with the names and I might say you’re welcome.”
“Not a chance,” said Ianthe. She rolled over to face you, propping herself up on her elbow. You could hear her snide grin and imagine her eyebrows wiggling as she said, “So, do you wanna fuck or what?”
You tossed yourself violently onto your side, facing away from her. You hoped you were imagining the heat burning your face. You echoed back, “Not. A. Chance.”