Chapter Text
Cyrielle pinched at the skin of her scarred hand. The golden sheen of her flesh might have looked unnatural, but she still stung where her nails dug in. The flow of blood warmed her palm. Yet she kneaded it with aimless dread. As if she could wipe away the incantation that preserved her and see the rotten, blackened bones beneath.
Before her lay a letter. One of dozens that had steadily arrived in the past week. Most bore noble seals; those colored blots of wax deigned the matters described upon the parchment urgent. They signed paper pleas with exclamation marks. Limgrave was in minor turmoil. Nepheli Loux, by some mysterious ancestral lark, had lived far longer than she should have in the Age with Death unbound. But she was at last too old to rule Stormveil. As the southern country resigned itself to necessary change, its impatient and spoiled nobility whinged to Leyndell often.
“Put those away, or I shall cast them into the fire,” Morgott groused as he marched into the study. He brought with him the scents of soap and wet fur. He was wringing water from his hair. The hand clenched in his towel had been scrubbed gray-violet. “I cannot bear another word of petty, mindless grievances.”
He spat, irritated. Cyrielle could tell he’d been simmering in ill-content. Usually, she was unphased by his scalding utterances. But the day had left her too raw.
Morgott paced the room, dripping. His voice mounting as he was finally permitted to air his frustrations. “They debase me with their complaints. They worship my graven image and then seek me to rain retribution upon a sheep thief or a blasphemer! I cannot bear it! My son…! Our son is…”
His thin garment could not conceal how tense he was. He was not a God or a Lord but an agitated lion. Cyrielle feared he might lunge across the table and snatch the letters from under her nose to destroy their inked offenses for good.
She declared, “It’s Summonwater.”
“Ah…”
Cyrielle scratched the back of her golden hand. Phantom insects crawled up her arm.
The lands south of the Altus had been populated by refugees displaced during the Erdtree’s razing. A city had exploded around Stormveil Castle. But after a century, people had spread out across the green country. The Summonwater ruins had been rapidly colonized. The surrounding wetland was uniquely fertile for farming and hunting alike. The crumbling stones were converted into new foundations. When she had been merely Tarnished, Cyrielle had excised the Deathroot from that place. At the behest of the Order, she’d driven out Those Who Lived In Death.
“The paddies have gone to rot. The graves stir near Stormhill. Flies are breeding in the waters and bringing disease.” She stamped each letter with an accusing finger.
“Cyrielle.”
“The Deathroot is growing back!” The words clamoring in her mind all day rang forth a bitter curse. “Do you… really believe it’s all connected to Morgan?”
Calloused fingers encircled her scarred wrist. His coarseness was a boon to her itching. It banished the buzzing in her ears. He was a God’s vessel, and it was impossible to feel anything other than alive when his pulse was against hers.
“Forgive me for what I said before. I spoke rashly.”
Cyrielle’s throat was dry. “But what if it’s true? What do we do?”
It was unfair to lay it upon his shoulders. His miracles had staved the thorns for a time. He could cure infestations in fresh corpses. But the Blight upon the land- born of Ranni’s murder- could not be undone by his hands alone. His dominion over Death was paltry. Ineffective beyond his role as the Erdtree’s God.
His thumb massaged the back of her hand. Coaxed the tension from her fingers.
“I could consecrate the wetlands. The dead will settle.”
But he’d done that before. When the town had beseeched the Lord’s aid in quieting the soulless remains at its conception. Cyrielle had been there, to watch Morgott’s Gold burn life from fetid flesh and waterlogged bones. So that another group could take that land for themselves.
“Summonwater should have never been settled,” she asserted. She shook her head. “If a blessing didn’t take the first time, it won’t the second.”
Morgott sighed, “People hath made lives there for generations. They shan’t leave when the brambles spread. I cannot abandon them to that fate.”
“Perhaps we will all have to accept this is something we can’t hold back forever.”
“Investigating Summonwater’s plight may bring me a solution to the curse upon my brother and Morgan.”
“It would be better to consider the dreams,” Cyrielle replied tersely. “Now that we know they’re being shared.”
It was time to confront what had driven her to the study in the first place. What had caused her to stare with glazed eyes at the same handful of letters for hours to escape Mohg and Morgott’s snarling. Only to find there was nowhere to go that wouldn’t viciously remind her how tenuous her peace had become.
Morgott said, “I asked Marie and her brothers if they had received similar invitations. They each deny it.”
But then, they were not Lords. Nor Gods, nor Empyreans.
Cyrielle’s breath hitched. A frigid spark arced in her spine and raced down to scarred fingertips. The thought had leapt forth, predatory, against her awareness. Grabbed hold of her with steel jaws.
Morgott carried on, “Moiragh hath confessed to dreaming. Mohg… swore his are unaltered.”
“You seem unconvinced,” Cyrielle murmured. She slipped free of the mental fangs. With the chill no longer boring into her, she was left with only confusion. She had no idea where that thought had come from.
“Mohg is lying to me. However much he claimeth to despise dishonesty. He will not peer too closely into these portents. They frighten him.”
“Is that what you argued about, then?”
“Mmm.”
“Come on, you must say more than that.”
Morgott sniffed, “I will not.”
There were few things Morgott refused to talk about when it came to his twin. After decades of living with the pair, Cyrielle had begun to catch unwitting glimpses through the concealing veneer. The quarrel, then, had probably been about Mohg’s late husband. The one that had died suddenly of his illness before Moiragh had been conceived. Cyrielle resolutely looked away from secrets laid semi-bare. It wasn’t her right to probe if Morgott didn’t want her to.
“Who else, then?”
Morgott tilted his head. Furrowed his horned brow. His little wings shivered beneath his shirt. Cyrielle guided them through the slits in the fabric.
Now who was scared of the truth?
“I know,” she whispered. “-that Aster is in the city.”
In a hundred years, she’d hardly spared him a moment’s consideration. It had been nothing to pick his frayed threads out of the weaving of her history. When she told her children about her Tarnished past, the parts regarding her once-friend had been easy to remove.
She’d thought she had forgiven him. But it was distance that had made her numb to his memory. With that distance erased, she was awash with hatred.
She stared at her golden hand nestled in her husband’s palm. She felt the intangible echo of a black knife in her side.
“I want to tear his head from his shoulders and be done with him forever.”
“In that we are agreed,” Morgott growled. “But thou’rt my temperance. I will not lose thee to anger. A pathetic Lord he maketh, but a Lord he remains.”
“Then tell me something good.”
Morgott hummed. The sound was rich, nourishing. She wanted to lay her head against his chest and cradled by the timbre of his voice.
“Cynric held court in my absence today.”
“All morning? He didn’t escape with his bow the moment it became tiresome?”
Morgott smirked. “Thou malignest the Prince, Tarnished. He did well. He hath the aptitude for it… when his attention it doth keep.”
“That’s why I gave him a twin. So someone can sit the throne when he inevitably wanders from it.”
Morgott snorted. It was as good as laughter to the Elden Lord, and she smiled. She gestured for a brush, and he gave her one. She began to detangle the damp ends of his hair. It was waist-length- as long as he could feasibly tolerate it. It was a simple joy to groom the silver-while strands. To see the threads of gold within shine. After this, she would preen the kinked feathers of his wings.
But when the last knot was teased from his mane, Morgott took Cyrielle’s hand. Tugged her close.
“Come,” he rumbled. And Cyrielle was utterly tethered. She drifted away from her desk. From the letters bleating their demands. “Now I will show thee something good.”
The personal quarters of the royal family occupied the uppermost tier of Leyndell’s palace. The branching, budding lower floors were crammed with studies and workshops. Sparring yards and a great hall. Dining rooms and libraries. All of it draped in flowers and vines from innumerable terraces. Such that the gilded apses of the palace attempted to recreate the splendor of the unburnt Erdtree.
Morgott led Cyrielle to one such terrace. The vines entwined on the pillars and balustrade were already fragrant and blooming. This one was a favorite of his. One could tell from the sheer number of furnishings he’d made for it with his own hands. Chairs and tables. Games to be played with carved pieces or polished stones. Toys that he’d whittled for his bairns- toys that remained even after their respective child had outgrown them.
A bowl sat on the balustrade. Within was a puddle of half-melted ice that buoyed a plate of fruit. Morgan’s leftovers. Bees hovered over the cold, sweet wedges and halves. Insects droned by their ears, and Cyrielle shuddered. The imported, mid-spring succulence was a luxury most couldn’t afford.
Cyrielle plucked a piece anyway- plump and orange and sticky with juice. The cool flesh sat heavy in her stomach. Made her teeth tingle. The saccharine taste was marvelously decadent.
Morgott claimed for himself the melon rinds- the fruits most suited for his large hands. “Ah, they are still there.”
Meters below, a small courtyard was lined by potted herbs. Morgan was curled by the feet of a sentinel statue. A book of bound, unmarked paper lay in his lap. With charcoal he drew. On the opposite side of the yard, Marie sagged into a puddle of horns and fur in the shade of the wall. If either child glanced upwards, they would see their mother and father watching them, elbows planted upon the balustrade.
“Would that I had your blood, Morgan,” Marie groaned. “And half as much fur.”
“You don’t mean that.” Morgan’s brusque retort. He rubbed a finger over a mark he’d just made.
“Not all the time, obviously,” Marie scoffed without missing a beat. “But I hate this time of year. I’m boiling alive!”
“Hold still. I am trying to get your tail.”
Morgott crunched on a fruit’s stone. He murmured to his wife, “She is too old to tease her brother, so.”
Cyrielle hummed. A berry’s pustules popped against her molars. “He doesn’t mind. It’s what sisters are meant to do.”
Their eldest and youngest returned to a companionable silence. Or, if they spoke, it didn’t reach Cyrielle and Morgott’s eavesdropping ears. The plate’s offerings were nearly consumed when Moiragh swept into the yard. A handful of golden leaves flounced from her skirts. She strode to Marie and wilted into her cousin. She pushed her toothsome face into Marie’s stomach and screamed. The sound was swallowed by fur and fabric. Her tail whipped about until it found Marie’s own to coil around.
Morgott emitted another tiny, throaty sound. He picked shards of pit from his fangs. “‘Twould appear Moiragh is still upset about Aster’s imprisonment.”
“Why?”
“Because she is kind. Because… Mohg’s accursed blood bindeth the man to her.”
“Mercy,” Cyrielle muttered. “He didn’t…?”
“I think not. She is unharmed”
An ancient memory grasped fiercely Cyrielle’s insides. Of Morgott bloodied, his life fading from his eyes. Of her Lord succumbing to the injuries Aster had dealt him. That had been the least of it. The Tarnished had made himself kindling for the Erdtree. Thousands upon thousands had died for his selfish self-pity.
Cyrielle included.
Moiragh- her siblings- they would have to be told. Cyrielle grieved that. Not for Aster’s sake, but for her tender niece. She would not delight in informing the Princess her benevolence was being squandered.
She didn’t want to think about that anymore.
“Have you had any dreams, Morgott?”
Lords and Gods of the old order-
“Only the usual sort. Even if I were to receive such messages, I am uncertain I would know which came from the Greater Will, and which did not.”
“Might the Greater Will have anything to do with this?”
Morgott shook his head, lips pressed thin. “‘Tis doubtful, Wife.”
No one knew God better than its vessel. Cyrielle found no reason to argue the point further. She licked the fingers of her left hand.
“I have had a few nightmares. Sometimes… one of the children will reach for me. I will go to embrace them and see that I am rotting before my eyes. Sometimes I am trapped in a lightless place that smells like a grave. Or I will be adrift- beyond my body. Something else will be there, controlling my arms and legs. And it will hold you and kiss you, but no matter how loudly I call for you-"
She slapped at a prickle on her golden right arm. A honeybee was smashed beneath her palm. Morgott’s gaze was a brand. Silently discerning. But he merely touched one of his knuckles to her heated cheek.
“Thou didst not speak of this to me.”
“You have worse nightmares. I did not want to bother you. And, in my defense, I did not consider them to be dire omens.”
“What of promises?” Morgott asked gently. “The Carian imbecile was promised a cure for his madness. Morgan was promised an end to his curse. In thy dreams, was a gift sworn to thee?”
“Unless the promise is death,” Cyrielle grimaced. “No.”
“No,” Morgott echoed. “Never. That is not thy fate.”
His tail curled around her calves. velvety fur warmed her legs through her trousers. She placed a hand on a coiled, ruddy horn. Death was fated for them all, now. But she understood what he meant. Below, the Prince and his sisters laughed at something unseen and unheard by their parents.
“I give thee my promise, Cyrielle. We will find the source of these visions. We will discover just what they desire from us. But until then, let us urge the bairns not to heed them.”
“Agreed.”