She waited out of sight, tucked in a shaded alcove, listening carefully to the footsteps of the Revos slow. They cursed aloud, debated further pursuit, and eventually decided to let her go. Smart men, Arianna applauded. After all, she so hated killing talent. The Revolvers had little and less of it, in their present circumstances.
Arianna reemerged into the moonlight, looking around at the street she’d tracked to for the first time. It was instantly familiar. She remembered the sounds of industry—welding, hammering, the buzz of saws—that filled the air by day, and yielded to the revels of gambling parlors at night. Now, there was only silence, and her footsteps breaking the stillness.
Two streets down, one over, along a back alley, was a stairwell. Some stairs were missing—the iron rusted out and peeling away from itself like rotten flower petals. But the main joints to the building were still strong enough to hold her weight.
She didn’t have anywhere else to be tonight. Her patron could wait until morning to get the trinket Arianna carried. For now, she’d rest in what was an all-too-familiar flat.
The door was ajar, but the room showed almost no signs of life.
Almost no signs.
Arianna waded through the familiar smells and nostalgic sights over to the kitchen table, where a letter sat among cookie crumbs that had somehow evaded rats for years. It was pristine, fresh, and on it were the letters “W.W.” in a familiar hand. Arianna turned it over, and paused.
The floorboards behind her creaked under the weight of another presence. Another ghost reemerging from the memories of past lives she’d given up when Arianna had died.
“It’s a bit much don’t you think, to have the Dragon King himself hunt me down?”
Arianna turned, setting the letter back down on the table to have her hands free. She didn’t know what she should anticipate… a fight? A flight? Or something more?
A Dragon emerged from the bedroom. His hair had grown out in the months since she’d last seen him. It almost brushed his shoulders in its burnt orange disarray. Cvareh wore dark pants and a long-sleeved, high collared shirt in the current fashion—if any of Loom’s tailoring could really be called that compared to the pomp of Dragons. It was plain, functional, and everything she’d never associated with him.
“Very much Dragon, not quite King.”
Arianna tilted her head curiously.
“You have not heard?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
“When you’re a ghost, you don’t hear much.” Arianna leaned against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. Seeing him was like running her fingers over the dried ink of long-forgotten schematics. She’d not realized just how much she’d missed the familiar designs.
In truth, Arianna had only been truly oblivious until she’d return to Dortam no more than a week ago. Her attempts to fade away had been sincere. She’d secured a cottage in the mountains to the north, far outside the city, that had everything she’d needed.
Or thought she’d needed.
For she still found herself drawn back to the city that had been her home following the last rebellion. She’d made the excuse that it was for fresh supplies alone. Then, somehow, a new coat had found its way onto her shoulders, and her feet had found themselves standing before Helen, asking if there were any odd jobs that needed doing.
“Apparently not.” He chuckled deeply, a sound that could turn moonlight to sunlight. “Though, I’m coming to realize such myself. We are both ghosts.”
“Oh?” She could do little more than make noncommittal noises that encouraged him to continue until he gave her enough information to work with.
“I fear it falls to me to regretfully inform you that the Dragon King you worked so hard to save perished due to poison from Coletta’Ryu.”
The words sank into her flesh slowly, seeping through her. They eventually reached her brain and elicited the most ineloquent response of, “What?”
“I hear, however, that his replacement is every inch the man both worlds hoped for in a Dragon King.”
“Cvareh, what are you saying?” Arianna truly had been gone too long. No one on Loom had ever said the Dragon King’s name; it was always just “Dragon King” or “the king.” Surely, Helen had known. Arianna was already fantasizing about how she’d wring the girl’s neck for neglecting to mention the “death” of Cvareh.
“Cvareh is dead.” He phrased it in a different way, as if she hadn’t already figured it out on her own.
“A pity I couldn’t kill him. I’d so wanted to kill the Dragon King in the last rebellion.” There it was again, the sarcasm that arose in defense of the fragile hope her heart had begun to bleed.
“I have it on good faith that you accomplished that task.”
“You should check your sources, as Yveun’Dono was killed by Cvareh’Oji.”
They both shared a smile that was quickly stolen by silence. She’d fantasized about seeing him again, but Arianna had never let the thoughts take hold. He was the Dragon King, needed in the sky world, and she had no place there. Now that he was in front of her, she was at an utter loss of what to do.
“You should go back to Nova,” she whispered. Arianna knew it was pointless.
“I don’t belong there, not any more.”
“You’re a Dragon. Isn’t the only thing that matters to you your place? In society, in the hierarchy?”
“You’re right,” he affirmed. The man hadn’t moved a muscle and she wanted to tackle him for it. Though she had no idea what would happen once she had him on the ground.
“Then why are you here?” And why was she whispering?
“Because this is my place.”
Arianna wanted to scream at him for the answer that wasn’t an answer. She swallowed hard, but couldn’t dislodge the lump in her throat that was blocking all sound. He took a step, and then another. Arianna burned the sight of him into her eyes. The idea that the end of this rebellion, the true end, might not require her to sacrifice everything she loved, rooted itself unbidden in her mind. It was a notion she’d not considered with even the smallest corner of her heart, and now it burrowed so deep, she feared the hole it would leave would have no bottom.
“Is it my place?” he asked, standing toe-to-toe with her.
“I can’t choose that for you.” It was the only response she could muster. He hadn’t forced her to choose, in the end, and so neither could she.
“I long ago made that choice.” Cvareh leaned forward with all the slowness of a man who had her daggers shoved at his throat the last time they had occupied this space. His forehead met hers, their noses almost touching. And for a moment, for a brief and blissful moment, they merely breathed. “Do you want me?”
“Yes,” she confessed to herself, to him, to his twenty gods, to every maggot and rat and cut-purse that might be listening.
“Do you love me?”
Arianna opened her mouth to respond and closed it. She swallowed once more. She couldn’t make this easy for him, not now, not ever.
“Follow me, and find out.” Arianna stepped away and locked eyes with him for one deliciously long moment, before she strode out the door, his footsteps close behind.
With the moon watching, the Wraith and the Dragon stepped into the night together.