“I want to. I’m scared, Stasia. I’m so tired of being scared. Is it wrong of me to want that to end? And even if you win tomorrow, there will be another fight, and another, battles unending…”

Stasia turned and knelt in the sand before her cherished, her beloved, her everything. There would be no secrets between them, no unspoken fears. She’d put so much thought into her future, and what she wanted it to be. Come whatever may be, it would be done in naked, painful truth.

“I’ve made up my mind,” she said. “And I think I have known for a long while now. I’m fighting for you, Clarissa. Not Cyrus, not my father, not those men and women doomed to hang. Just you. It means nothing if you aren’t waiting for me when I return. If you want me to stay, then I’ll stay. Whatever life follows, it will be enough, because you’ll be with me.”

Clarissa leaned closer, her messy red hair covering her face in waves.

“Do you promise?”

Stasia thought herself a killer, cold and brutal, yet she realized tears were falling from her eyes. Was it relief she felt, or guilt? She didn’t know.

“Yes,” she swore. “I do.”

Clarissa wrapped her arms around Stasia and pulled her close. Trembling fingers slipped through Stasia’s hair. The softness of her body enveloped her. The embrace renewed her.

“Then I want you to fight,” Clarissa said. “Because if you’re not fighting, then you’re not the Stasia I love.”

More tears, wetting her lover’s shirt.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Arn slumped at the table in the dining hall. A tall glass sat unused before him as he drank straight from the bottle. He’d opened it fresh, and had made decent progress on the final third of it by the time Cyrus descended the stairs, silent as a mouse. The young man looked to the front door, then paused upon realizing Arn was watching him from the dining hall in the opposite direction.

“Heading out?” Arn asked, amused by the young man’s conflicted mood. “Seems like everyone’s got an itch to go somewhere.”

“Maybe it’s this house,” Cyrus said. “It’s unfamiliar to me. I would rather sit among the stars.”

“Sit and what? Think? Piss on that.” Arn lifted the bottle. “I’d rather be drunk.”

Cyrus joined him in the hall. Whatever plans he had, it seemed he could put them on hold for a moment.

“I must confess I am not the wisest when it comes to paragons,” he said with a smile. “But I remember reading once that your divine bodies cannot be intoxicated.”