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CHAPTER FIVE

As Easy As Falling Off A Log

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"You better have a damn good explanation for all this," Ari began as she stormed into the obnoxiously large room that served as Virgil's "private" audience chamber. He stood to one side of the enormous space, sorting through a large stack of books spread over a table that looked like it had been constructed from an entire felled tree. Carved stone birds perched on the exposed beams at each corner of the vaulted ceiling and witchlights pulsed with soft golden light from within sconces shaped like bird cages. It was like he was trying to make their meetings more and more ridiculous. The room wasn't just bigger than her apartment, it was probably bigger than her whole building. The only allowance she could make was that it was smaller than the chamber he'd been in earlier. Not that it was hard to manage that. "Why did you summon me like that?" She wished she could punch him, but it would only hurt her hand. His head was hard as rock.

"Were you so busy?" Virgil asked and she immediately reconsidered her views on causing herself pain. The satisfaction might be worth it. "Forgive me. That sounded rude, I suppose." He sighed. "I meant to apologize for my earlier words. They were unnecessarily harsh."

"Gee, ya think?"

Virgil surprised her then by laughing. It wasn't the laugh she remembered. This new one had much less joy in it than the old one had. "I have missed your bluntness, Ari."

She made a face. It still took a conscious effort to remember this was not the Virgil she had known. They might have a sort of leftover familiarity, but in all the ways that counted they were no longer friends. Expecting him to act and sound the same as he had a decade ago was only going to aggravate her. Time to start dealing with the Virgil of the present instead of the Virgil of the past.

"I guess that means I should apologize too. I understand that you have a lot going on, Virgil, and I wish I could help, but I'm not sixteen anymore. I have people who will miss me now. I have responsibilities. Maybe they're not as exciting as yours, but they're mine. I get to be concerned about them."

He measured her with his eyes before he nodded. "And we will get you back to them if that's what you wish. You can trust me on that. I have no wish to trap you here. Considering that, I have an idea."

"Such as?"

"It occurs to me, in light of the curse that has befallen the King, that perhaps his sleep and your presence here are connected. In which case—"

"Hell no." Ari put her hands up to fend off any further suggestions.

"Be reasonable."

"I am. I am very reasonable. And if you're trying to suggest what I think you are I am reasonably refusing."

Virgil finally left the side of his table and came to stand before her. He looked almost as tall as the tree his table had been carved from and she thought at first that he meant to hug her, but apparently that was also a relic of the old Virgil. Instead he gave her a considering look. "His cell is heavily guarded at all times, even when he sleeps. I certainly wouldn't send you to the Iron King alone."

"You're not even going to come with me?" Not that she was scared, she told herself. He was just a man—well, not a man precisely, but certainly man-shaped. Man resembling. Mannish.

"You faced the Iron King alone once before," Virgil noted in a quiet voice. She wasn't sure what that tone of his was supposed to mean, but she refused to be taken in by it.

"That was different." Ari let out a bite of the laughter she'd been holding in. That fight had been a lifetime ago. "I was young and stupid then. I still half believed that all of this was a dream. There's no comparison."

"I won't force you, but the fact remains that the Iron King is our only clue to what's going on, Ari." He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze. "And I have seen the bravery of which you are capable in the past. It saved my life on a number of occasions."

"If you're trying to butter me up I just want you to know that it's absolutely working." She smiled begrudgingly.

Virgil's face clouded in new confusion. "Butter?"

At least some things never changed.

***

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DUNGEONS BROUGHT TO mind stone walls and shadowy corners. Dank cells. The unseen drip of water. Maybe some chains hanging from the walls. Ari had never been to a real dungeon before and she didn't want to go there now, but if there was a chance—however slight—that the Iron King knew how to break the curse on Cylian and get her home she had to take it.

And he was locked up. Possibly in those chains she was imagining. There was no reason to worry.

Except for the fact that he was a creature bred of magic—man shaped but not man. Virgil might have magic in his veins. That wasn't the same of being born out of it. If the stories were true. Or even half true. Ari didn't know if they were, but she'd seen enough to know she didn't want to know more. Raising whole armies out of metal scraps woven together with magic. Moving through locked doors like a cloud of dark fog. Reading her thoughts like they were written in neon. She remembered him best in her nightmares.

It had taken an incredible amount of luck and, looking back on it now, bravery bordering on self destruction to defeat the Iron King. They shouldn't have been able to win. But things worked different in a world made of fantastical things. She remembered that every time Virgil called up a flame in his hand.

The witchlights lining the walls made the guards she passed look sallow and not a little corpse-like. There were just as many as Virgil had promised, but they didn't move, didn't acknowledge her, and there was no polite way to check that they were breathing. She took it on faith that they weren't mannequins. Or actual corpses. She didn't know Callaria's (and more importantly Virgil's) stance on necromancy and at the moment she really didn't want to find out. This visit was already going to fuel anxiety dreams for months to come.

If only she had a sword. Everything was better with a weapon. She had even asked, but Virgil said no and, short of commandeering a sword from one of the guards who were currently ignoring her, she wasn't sure how to get her hands on one. They were probably locked up somewhere.

But no, this was fine. This was perfect. She could handle this meeting all by herself.

She was going to strangle Virgil with his own hair when she got back.

If she got back.

This level of the dungeons was made up of rougher stone walls and endless hallways tapering off into darkness but was otherwise not that different from the rest of the castle. With a few tapestries and maybe a window, she might not have known the difference. Her steps echoed.

There was really no reason for the dread resting on her shoulders like a thrift store coat.

Finally Ari reached the end of the wide, empty hall and stopped. "Because that's not creepy at all."

The only cell door had thick bars in a lattice, the interior almost completely black since the line of witchlights had ceased halfway down the hall. Virgil had mentioned that too. It was one of the only helpful things he'd said, something about a precaution to keep the Iron King from drawing on their power. For once, she was glad she didn't have any kind of magic. Having the Iron King feed on her energy like a magical milkshake sounded like an experience she could do without.

She glanced at the nearest guard. "He's really in there, right?" she whispered.

The guard's attention remained focused on the blank wall opposite, but he tipped his head in the smallest of nods.

"Great. Any helpful hints?"

The guard stared on.

"Thanks. You're a big help. Good talk."

Ari approached the bars slowly. The Iron King wasn't the type to lunge out of the darkness just for petty scares. She remembered him as elegant. And terrifying. Terrifying in the same way a tornado was terrifying. Because it was unstoppable. Because it was immense. Because you didn't reason with a force of nature; you got out of its way and hoped for the best. Though in the end they had done exactly that. They had stood in his path. Turned him aside. It still felt like someone else's dream.

And now here they were once again. The tornado might be bottled, but she didn't feel comforted by that fact. Wind could still blow through bars and it could rip apart homes.

"Remember me? I came to have a little chat," Ari called. Her voice didn't shake even if the rest of her did. She was outside. He was in. That was supposed to mean something.

A minute passed. Two.

"I remember." The Iron King's voice came in a thick, unused rasp, but it still sent a shiver through her. It was so dim she couldn't be sure of how deep the cell was or where he was in it. His voice floated out to her like a portent on the breeze.

"Come into the light so we can talk." She regretted the suggestion the moment it passed her lips. Everything was easier in the dark. Not that it mattered since he made no effort to comply.

"So they send the wayward soul to me now when all other efforts have failed. How very interesting. Though I expected you hours ago. Or perhaps days. I felt the ripples of your presence and I knew. Even now they cannot take that from me."

"You know why I'm here?" That seemed like a safe enough question.

"I know. But I wonder if you do."

"Riddles are kind of overdone. Maybe you could try straight answers and really liven things up." The Iron King was barely an impression, like an afterimage left on her retinas after she closed her eyes, and she kept staring into the dark, waiting for the shadows to peel back and show him to her, really show him. They never did. "I'm here to find out how a dagger with your curse on it got into Cylian's hands."

"The usual way, no doubt."

Ari grumbled. She was no interrogator. What had Virgil been thinking sending her down here to blunder around in the dark? "What is the usual way? You'll have to enlighten me because I'm drawing a blank."

"You would be the expert on possibilities. Improbabilities. Loose ends left fluttering in a breeze. But if you desired answers the least you could have done was come in proper supplication. You did not even offer a gift. A bribe. They always offer a bribe."

"Who is they?"

He shook his head. "Do they not cure royal curses with a kiss in the stories of your land? You might try that. I'm sure it will work perfectly for one so heroic as you."

Ari puffed up with automatic indignation at his tone and the implication, but before she could say a word he was already continuing.

"And now that the Champion has asked the question she was tasked with let us speak of your true purpose. What is it that you truly wished to ask of me?"

The question had been drumming against her ribcage since she'd started the descent to the dungeons. Of course he would see it. Even though she hated herself for the little flare of expectation in her chest, Ari stepped closer to the bars and lowered her voice, suddenly aware of all the guards behind her. She had no illusions. They were listening even if they didn't look like it. Anything they heard would go directly back to Virgil. Still, she didn't care. Let him hear. It wasn't anything she wouldn't say to his face. She already had. "I don't belong here. I know you already know that, but you told me once that you could send me home, that you knew how. Was that all bullshit or can you do it? Could you really send me home?"

It was hard to describe even to herself the exact sound coming out of the darkness in the cell as the Iron King moved just as it was hard to explain how he seemed to draw all the shadows to himself, draping them around him like a cape, but where there had been only inky darkness suddenly there was the faintest grey outline of flesh, the curved line of a bare shoulder, the rippling shape of chains.

He moved forward another step, dragging the light up his chest until it finally reached his chin and then his lips. They were curved into a smile. The tips of pointed teeth outlined against his lower lip. His chest was bare and crisscrossed with scars, the skin a pale, translucent grey like moonlight made flesh. Ari had hoped that after a decade and a half she might be able to look him in the eyes, but he was still taller than anyone she had ever seen—tall enough to make Virgil seem average—and his long black hair hung wild about him, blending with the shadows so she still couldn't separate him from the dark. The Iron King was still beyond all her imaginings. Even her many, many dreams hadn't managed to capture the reality of him. They couldn't capture the way the air seethed around him. The way it buzzed against her skin. The palpable sensation of his attention as it focused on her. She remembered the feeling but she would never be used to it.

"Oh yes."

"What would it cost me?"

"More than you are willing to pay."

"I might surprise you."

"No. You won't. Not this time."

"Tell me anyway."

His smile slid into place slow as ice. "A life."

"Whose?"

He drew back, disappearing so completely into the shadows that she could only track him by the slither of chain against the floor. "Goodbye, Champion. Do tell Virgil what a helpful guest I've been."

"Why? You didn't tell me anything."

"Didn't I?"

***

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ARI STARED AT THE WALL in the room that she was already starting to think of as "hers" and replayed the conversation with the Iron King over and over in her head. Guilt loomed in her periphery. It was smaller than she had expected. Did it make her a terrible person for asking the selfish question or did it make her a practical one? Virgil would have asked too. She knew it.

She had waited years to hear the answer to that question. Now that she had it, she felt better. It didn't solve anything. It didn't help Cylian. And there was at least a fifty percent chance that the Iron King was lying out his ass, but she had finally had the courage to ask. That was a kind of closure.

"Virgil's probably going to turn me into a frog or something when he finds out." She sighed. "I hope I make a nice looking frog." A quiet chuckle pulled her attention up from the floor where she was absentmindedly clicking her heels together.

One of the maids stood in the doorway. She recognized the long skirt and blue apron already. And the practiced curtsy. "Begging your pardon, My Lady Champion. I did not mean to intrude." She dropped into a practiced curtsy.

Ari grimaced. "Please don't call me that. I'm not the Champion anymore." This girl looked to be in her late teens at most which made her too young to have fought in the war. She had probably been a toddler at the time.

"As you wish, though the title is conferred for life. And well deserved. We've all heard the tales of your bravery." She bobbed into another curtsy, sweeping her layered skirts out with one hand. Her golden brown hair was pulled back into a bun, but a few tendrils had escaped to brush her round cheeks.

Whatever stories they told were definitely exaggerated. No one had been there for most of the fighting besides Ari, Cylian, Virgil, and Naiah—wherever she was now—and none of them had been in a position to overshare. Thankfully. She feared the results if anyone let Virgil write the history books. He'd never met a half truth he didn't love.

"What exactly do they say in the stories?" It felt like picking at a corpse. She'd given up that life. She had moved on. The real world didn't need a Champion wielding a sword that blazed with pure silver light—when it chose to. For a magic sword, Cheynathril had always been temperamental. And anyway Ari hadn't thought this world needed a Champion anymore either.

The maid leaned out into the hall and looked around.

Ari laughed. "I promise not to tell anyone. Come keep me company for a little while. I haven't talked to anyone for more than five minutes since I got here. What's your name? I assume you already know mine."

"Celeste." The maid stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, all signs of her previous reticence gone though she turned down the chair Ari offered her. "Well, they speak of how you faced the Iron King of course, and of how terrible he was and fearsome."

"Actually he's quite articulate," Ari murmured, thinking back to their first meeting. She'd never told anyone about it. At first because they were already suspicious of her. Then later because it was too personal, too close to the truth that she was only a sixteen year old girl lost in a world she had thought she wanted and she was scared. He'd come to her not in the flesh but in a dream, a vision, sent on the back of one of his clockwork drones, small as a mechanical bird but slightly wrong shaped. Almost insectile. The metal was darkly patinaed and bitingly cold to the touch. By the time she had felt the wrongness, it was already too late. The drone had sunk needle-like fangs into her hand. Virgil told her later that she had collapsed. She blamed exhaustion. She couldn't tell him the truth.

"You want to go home, don't you? You don't belong here, fighting a borrowed war. Wouldn't you rather go back, let all of this fade away into the fever dream it was meant to be? They will forget you," the Iron King had whispered as she dreamed, each word like a needle aimed at her heart.

The worst was that she hadn't known if she wanted to be forgotten. And by which world did he mean? The world she'd come from or the one that had adopted her?

Virgil had crushed the little drone, but there was still a flicker of power buried in it even after she woke. She felt it in the permanent chill of the metal and she had spent so many nights with it next to her pillow, wondering if she called whether the Iron King would answer and let her make the deal she had denied before.

Funny to think she was back in that place again.

"His weapons have always been words."

She didn't realize she'd said the last aloud until Celeste leaned forward and said, "Really? What was his magic like? Did you see him work a great spell?"

Ari hadn't meant his magic but that was an easier answer to give. "Yes. It was definitely... something."

***

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WHEN THE BELL TOLLED the hour some time later, Celeste jumped. They'd been trading stories, one of Ari's stumbling stories of heroism for one of Celeste's folktales, as the room dimmed. Ari hadn't even noticed. She'd missed stories. Sitting around a campfire as Virgil, Cylian, and, more rarely, Naiah, talked late into the night, recounting fantastic tales and equally fantastic realities. There were many more she'd never heard. Callaria had a seemingly unending stream of folktales. A lot of them featured radishes for some reason.

Celeste scurried to the wardrobe as the bell kept counting out the hours. "Oh, forgive me. I was to help you dress for dinner."

"I think I can manage on my own," Ari said wryly.

"But it would be my honor."

"You must be joking."

"We drew lots for your service. I won."

The enormous smile on her face crumbled Ari's resolve. She really was that happy about it. Ari didn't get it. "All right. Make me fancy."

Dressing involved lacing her into a fresh gown—it was too fancy to be called a dress—and an attempt to coax her short, dark hair into rows of braids at the temples that could be pinned back.

"Virgil chose this dress, didn't he?" Ari made a face at her reflection in the mirror.

Celeste nodded, silent thanks to the hair pins poking out of the corner of her mouth.

"I would think it was one of his, but it's not long enough. It would be up around his knees. He's so tall."

At that Celeste almost spit the pins across the room, but she held in her laughter. Barely. "No, my lady. It is not."

Her hair slowly succumbed to Celeste's attempts to coax it into a style, pins studded with polished stones holding everything in place and adding at least an extra pound to her head. Ari had never been this dressed up in her life. Except maybe for prom. "Is all of this really necessary just for dinner?"

They both jumped at a knock on the door. "My Lady Champion?" The voice was unfamiliar but that was no surprise. Ari currently knew three people in the entire castle—four if she added Celeste—and one was still locked in the dungeons. The other was in a magical coma. Neither was likely to be knocking on her door.

"She is indisposed," Celeste called back without pausing in her work. "Please give her another moment and make her excuses to the court." She speared a segment of hair with one of the last pins. Ari shivered as it grazed her scalp.

When the footsteps had receded from outside the door, Ari met Celeste's eyes in the mirror. "How much of the court should I be expecting? I thought it would only be Virgil, maybe the Captain of the Guard, whoever that is now—who did they choose? I wasn't here long enough for them to decide before."

"It was Fenwallis not long ago," Celeste said in between pin thrusts. "But he had a mishap some months ago and had to step down, temporarily they say but the new captain looks in no hurry to drop back into the rank and file. Perhaps it isn't my place to say but Captain Gorva doesn't seem suited to some of the finer points of leadership. It is a pity. The Guard was a beautiful machine once."

Ari smiled at Celeste's reflection. "You know an awful lot about them for a lady's maid."

Celeste flushed, cheeks puffing in embarrassment. "I had hopes once. Of enlisting." She looked away.

"But not anymore?"

"A lady's maid is a much more dependable position," she said with that same unhappy mouth as she stepped back from the mirror. "I believe that will serve you nicely no matter how long the night runs on. Now you'd best hurry. Do you know your way?"