Agent of the Dragon
Chapter 34

“What were you thinking?!” Armina’s face was tight with anger, and disappointment flared in her eyes.

“I needed to replace out who Camyrn’s contact in Ellendahl is.” The words came automatically in defense. As soon as Rhysa heard what she’d said, she froze and watched Armina carefully.

Armina didn’t even blink. “Hell, child. I could have told you that.”

Rhysa opened her mouth before realizing she didn’t have anything to say. She closed her mouth with a click of teeth.

Armina glared at Rhysa. “You’ve caused quite a mess, Mieryth. If that is actually your name. How do you suggest fixing it?” Her voice dripped acid into Rhysa’s guilt.

Rhysa reviewed The Mess in her mind. To start off with, Sterling was vibrating between sulking and dangerously angry. She’d lost a lot of trust from the other servants, and she’d seen the initial signs of their discontent. Taryn was making herself insufferable again. Even worse was Rhysa’s own guilt; Elise was missing and here she was hopping into bed with some lord’s son on the off chance he would drop the name of a potential traitor. That she had enjoyed it so much made it nearly unbearable. Worst of all, apparently the actions causing all this trouble had been unnecessary.

Rhysa breathed deeply to keep tears from her eyes. She had panicked and made the wrong choice, and now everything she had worked towards could fall apart. Months of work destroyed by a panicked decision and a single, glorious night. She forced herself straight and looked Armina in the eye. “You could--should--fire me.”

“So when things get truly difficult, you quit.” The scorn in Armina’s voice flayed Rhysa’s conscience to the bone.

“I did not say I quit. I said you should fire me.”

“No, child. I won’t make it that easy for you to leave. If you leave, you will do so because you ran.”

Rhysa sent her frustration to do battle with her guilt. “I didn’t say I wanted to leave. I said you should fire me. Firing me is a punishment severe enough to quiet most of the troubles almost immediately. It would certainly make Lady Taryn happy.”

Armina’s eyes narrowed. “You say you don’t want to quit or leave, yet you give me an excellent reason to send you away. Why?” She finally sat behind her desk. “You’re trying to replace Camyrn’s contact in Mestin Reach. Why? You’ve kept your abilities as a mage hidden. Why?” She leaned forward, arms on the desk, and tapped the desk with a bony finger. “Why are you here?”

Rhysa closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and re-centered herself. Armina had known Camyrn’s contact, which meant she was close to The Primacy. She had apparently been willing to share that information with someone potentially in a place to stop The Primacy’s activities, which meant she didn’t like The Primacy. Rhysa decided to take a chance. She put up a ward against anyone who might hear or enter at the wrong time, opened her eyes, and resumed the mannerisms of Lady Rhysa Kasteryn.

“I am here to investigate The Primacy and discover if they pose a serious threat to Ellendahl. From what I’ve seen, I’d have had to leave in a couple of months anyway. I kept my ability to use magic hidden to keep The Primacy leaders from looking at me as a threat. A good thing, too, since it turned out Camyrn is high in their ranks, if not a leader himself.” She smiled at Armina. “I hadn’t expected to replace cover employment so close to them.” She let her smile fade slowly. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you figure out I was a mage?”

Armina’s eyes widened at Rhysa’s shift in posture and body language; she recognized the mannerisms of nobility, and answered as she’d been trained for years. “It was that creature in the lowest level, m’Lady. I saw enough before being overcome to realize it wasn’t a simple ghost. It was a ravenost. No ghost could survive an encounter with one. If Dyram had done as he claimed, we would be dead, our souls and bodies eaten by that thing. That only left you; and the only way you could have defeated it was with magic.”

Rhysa decided she’d made her point, and resumed the mannerisms of Mieryth. Armina relaxed; apparently her shifts in attitude were unconscious. “Please. Let’s drop the title. I don’t want you getting used to calling me that, and risk a slip where someone else can hear. For the same reason, keep thinking of me as Mieryth.” Armina nodded and Rhysa continued. “A ravenost? I hadn’t heard of those before.”

“I’m not surprised. With Ellendahl’s views of non-humans, the environment isn’t conducive to creating a ravenost. Ravenosts are vicious spirits bent on revenge. Their desired revenge is usually centered on racial desires. Humans, for example, tend to become ravenosts if unfairly and cruelly imprisoned. Elves, I’ve heard, become ravenosts if they die while being forced to destroy large tracts of woodlands. Ravenosts are manifested souls, though the soul is changed so much it essentially becomes an anti-soul. The soul of any living creature it touches gets absorbed.”

Rhysa narrowed her eyes. “You calmed down awfully quickly.”

Armina laughed softly. “I expect servants given a lot of responsibility to make at least one incredibly huge mistake, and I scare the wits back into their head for it.You are, what, an Ellendahl Royal Agent? The fact you’re an agent explains an awful lot--and places you outside the normal realms of expectations.” She sighed. “I’ve been around politics and nobility too long to try to force someone like you into an untenable position. You’re right. Publicly firing you would solve several of my problems, as well as a few of yours. It won’t solve the issues with Sterling, though.”

Rhysa sighed, sat back, and closed her eyes. Against the blackness she saw Sterling’s face as he saw her for the first time. She saw his joyful smile when he saw her, saw concerned frown when she was working directly with Lady Taryn. She saw his eyes soften when she came in for a mid-afternoon snack; saw his eagerness at their overlapping time off; and the soul-deep pain and betrayal when he found out what had happened between her and Camyrn.

Rhysa took a deep breath and made sure of her voice before speaking. “I don’t know. He’s a complication I wasn’t expecting.”

“He loves you.”

“I know. I tried to keep him from going down that path, but he insisted.”

There was a long period of silence, then Armina spoke. “I suppose he’ll get over it eventually.”

“I hope so. He didn’t deserve what I did. I thought I had things arranged so he wouldn’t replace out.”

“No. He didn’t deserve it. So I ask again. What are you going to do about it?”

“What can I do? I can’t tell him the truth.”

“I agree, though probably for reasons other than yours.”

Rhysa stood and paced, working at the problem aloud. “I can’t tell him who I am, or why I’m here. I don’t want to leave things as they are, he’ll turn bitter. The toughest part is I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know what he’s feeling.”

“Don’t be silly. You know what soul-deep betrayal feels like. Even if you haven’t experienced it, you can imagine it.”

Rhysa stopped pacing. She tried to imagine what she would feel like if Elise betrayed her somehow. Her heart began to ache. Elise loved her, and she loved Elise, but was not in love with her. A betrayal by Elise would hurt a lot, but it wouldn’t hit Rhysa in the same primal way her betrayal of Sterling had. She thought about Hallyk, but the ache in her heart only increased slightly. She thought about Jagun, and something slashed into her heart.

Rhysa’s knees nearly gave out and she stumbled to lean against a wall. The imagined pain was bad enough, but the shock of realization was nearly overwhelming. A flash of insight showed her this realization was premature. Her mind wasn’t yet ready to accept it, and so the pain she felt when thinking about Jagun betraying her was magnified.

A gentle touch on her shoulder brought Rhysa back to the present. She was leaning against a wall, slightly hunched over with an arm across her belly, as if she’d just received a gut stab. Armina stood next to her. Rhysa straightened with an effort, and looked at Armina with haunted eyes. Armina’s own face expressed concern.

“I didn’t expect that, child.” There was a slight hint of apology in Armina’s voice. “I only wanted you to put yourself in Sterling’s place. Can you stand?”

Rhysa nodded and pushed herself off the wall.

“Come. Sit down. If you’ll remove the barrier, I’ll have someone bring in some water.”

Rhysa absently dismissed the barrier with a slight twist of her mind. Most of her attention was taken up with getting across the room and into a chair. Gradually, Rhysa put the pieces of her heart back together.

She looked up when Armina offered a cup half filled with water. Rhysa sipped at it, taking pleasure in the feel of the cup against her lips, the cool water in her mouth and throat. By the time the cup was empty, she had at least stabilized her mind and heart.

“That was a stronger reaction than I expected.” Armina’s voice was still soft.

“Me, too.” Rhysa took a deep breath. “The betrayal was bad enough. In replaceing an appropriate betrayal, I made a few realizations I wasn’t quite ready for.”

“Apparently.” They dryness in Armina’s voice brought a half-desperate laugh from Rhysa. “So. Now you know what Sterling’s going through.”

Rhysa nodded. “Yes.”

“What would make you feel better?”

“In the short term? Nothing. Maybe knowing there was a reason would help later. The problem is he’s built up a fantasy that can’t hold; and my reason is I’m trying to stop The Primacy, in so far as Ellendahl is concerned, while he feels a certain sympathy with The Primacy.”

“Less so, since you exposed Dyram to the household.”

“What is his problem with elves, anyway?”

Armina shook her head. “That’s not my story to tell.”

Rhysa shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter that much.” She looked at Armina. “Firing me should help. Without me around, he’ll get over it.”

Armina shook her head again. “You had it right the first time. Leaving things as they are will cause him to become bitter.” She walked around her desk and sat in her chair. “You’re still young, so you may not realize this. A good deal of the pain he’s feeling is because he still hopes you’ll love him, that this was a single incident you can both put behind you.”

Rhysa thought about that for a long while before nodding. “So I need to replace a way of removing that hope without causing further damage.”

“Not quite. You need to convince him to remove the hope on his own. It has to come from within, you see, or it will cause great harm.”

“You’re saying I have to get him to shatter his own dreams.”

“But if he does it himself, the dream won’t be shattering. It’ll be placed on a shelf, to be taken down and viewed with nostalgia every now and then.”

“How do you do that?”

“You’re right. It’s not easy. The first part starts with you.”

Sterling found her packing her bags. “I heard.” His voice revealed conflicting emotions. “You don’t have to go.”

Rhysa stopped and let her chin rest on her chest. “I’ve been fired, Sterling. Armina says my actions are causing more problems than such an episode usually does. She’s been around enough to know where the limits are.”

“But what will you do?”

Rhysa heard the hope in Sterling’s voice. She ignored his question, and spoke directly to that hope. “If I were anyone other than who I am, we might have had a chance with each other.” His face went stony. “We were friends, at least, and I wish we could still be.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure it would work.”

“Why not?” His voice held challenge.

“What’s happened has happened. You won’t be able to forget it. It would poison any relationship.”

“Not a friendship.”

Rhysa shook her head again. “I’m sorry, Sterling. I could never be just a friend to you. You love me. That would get in the way.”

Armina had been right. Rhysa knew it. And now Sterling’s tears showed he knew it, too.

She watched as he left her room. She hoped the seed she’d planted would grow. Armina would do what she could; Armina was far more experienced than she in such matters. Rhysa looked around the room to be sure she’d packed only her personal things, then she took her bag and went to meet with Armina one last time.

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