It was not until we had

  reached the very outskirts of Toria’s kingdom of birth that we

  stopped again. We had ridden straight through the night and day and

  then the night again until I thought I was going to fall asleep

  sitting straight up on my horse. The glow of the inn coming into

  sight as we crested the hill forced a sigh from deep within my lungs.

  My body yearned for a soft place to rest and my mind was a whirl with

  all sorts of thoughts, many of them trying to process what had

  happened over the past few days. I felt myself becoming more paranoid

  than I perhaps otherwise would be if well rested, though I questioned

  if perhaps it was simply a product of my realization of the type of

  creature my family had allowed in its midst.

  I did not know exactly what

  Feros was, but just a tiny taste of his unfiltered magic was enough

  to set off every instinctual alarm in my body. How he had managed to

  keep it a secret for so long I could not explain. Surely my father

  must have demanded proof of his magical abilities at some point and

  then would have known and understood, though I supposed that I myself

  had been certain that I had seen the creature perform magic commonly

  and understood that he was powerful in his abilities, but now that I

  tried to recall specific instances I could not bring a single

  specific event to mind. Every time he did something requiring high

  magical ability like his body switching, it was always done away in

  secret and completed before anyone knew it was happening and now I

  understood why.

  “Are we not going to the

  inn?” Toria’s voice was filled with longing for a lie down in a

  soft bed.

  Snapping back to the present,

  I focused my eyes on the real world around me and saw that indeed we

  had deviated from the path towards the inn at some point and were

  instead skirting the edge of the village away from the object of our

  intense desire.

  “We cannot risk a proper

  inn,” Feros explained, “but I have other plans. Do not worry, I

  know I have been pushing the both of you to your extremes and we are

  almost to where you both can rest.”

  “You specifically leave

  yourself out of that need,” I remarked.

  The creature gave me his

  cliche smirk and tilted his head slightly to the side as he pulled

  his horse up next to mine. “Why bring this up now? You have

  recognized the differences between you and I for quite a while and it

  has never warranted a mention before. I believe you are looking back

  and finding reasons to feel uneasy with me when it has never been an

  issue before.”

  “It has been an issue,” I

  said, pulling the reins of my horse so it would put a slight distance

  between Feros and I. Any time I got close to him since experiencing

  the truth behind his magic my stomach churned thinking about the

  experience. “I have never fully trusted you, but oftentimes I have

  not had the liberty to do anything about it. As one of my father’s

  trusted advisors and trainers you were the default choice that

  everyone just expected to be summoned and I went along with that. Any

  time I would voice my discomfort or my worries about you they were

  pushed aside as me just being too paranoid.”

  “I think you are being just

  that,” he intoned, “you are not bringing up my different need for

  sleep as something to be wary of when that fact has been true since

  long, long before you were even born.”

  “It is unnatural,” I

  argued.

  Toria pulled her horse up

  behind us. “That fact is a bit strange, it has made me feel uneasy

  before as well.”

  Feros looked between the two

  of us and gave a nod of his head. “Before either of you make any

  rash decisions first rest, making choices when stressed and exhausted

  only leads to decisions that require deep reflection later. If you

  decide to cut ties with me after this excursion I will go without a

  fight, though I do ask you to think clearly on it first.”

  A few moments later, Feros

  turned his horse back towards a hill and led us up and over it,

  revealing a small, dilapidated farmhouse sitting at the bottom on the

  other side. The shutters of the house were drawn with several of the

  slates cracked and a few hanging on barely by their rusted nails. The

  house appeared to have been relatively fancy for a human dwelling

  when it had been new, bright white paint peeling and flaking from the

  siding along with a roof that was made of overlapping wooden boards

  instead of the sod or thatching that was typical for most dwellings

  of anyone not of high standing. How any farmer could afford such

  fancy additions to their home was strange, but not unheard of,

  sometimes it was wise for a king or other noble to make an example of

  generosity to a commoner and their family to showcase how good and

  kind they were right before doing something that might otherwise be

  viewed badly.

  It was a common enough

  practice, though it was unique that a commoner would actually hold

  onto the money long enough to do anything like build a house with the

  windfall. One of the reasons not to be too generous with people of

  little means that was not commonly spoken about was the tendency for

  people in the same position of struggle to target the family with the

  new fortune and steal from them to fulfill their own needs and

  desires. Blind acts of generosity, while they seemed kind in passing,

  often brought further hardship and even death to the family instead,

  and left them in a situation where they were not only still very much

  poor, but also with the nasty knowledge that they could not trust the

  community around them any longer.

  The simple solution if someone

  with the means wanted to truly do good was to lift the whole

  community up at once so that jealousy did not have a chance to breed

  and focus on any one person or family, but having commoners with

  means at their disposal was a dangerous prospect for nobility. The

  less peasants need to work to survive, the more time they have to

  think, and the more they think, the more they begin to realize the

  injustices of their living position, and eventually even the slowest

  of them will begin to piece together that the source of their

  troubles generally lies square at the door of those with noble

  titles.

  The fields in the distance

  that surrounded the house seemed to be in decent shape and recently

  planted, leading me to believe that whomever had lived in the house

  had sold it along with the land and the new owners only cared about

  the fertile land leaving the house to rot. It seemed a bit strange

  that someone would come across the opportunity to live in such a fine

  house and instead cast it aside for no benefit, though perhaps it

  would have put a target on their back as well. Something had happened

  to the previous occupants and perhaps it would have happened to the

  new ones as well so it was just a necessary cost to leave it and only

  profit from the land.

  “The land was seized by the

  Church and the farmhouse abandoned as it was decided that placing any

  one here would only look like the Church was showing disproportionate

  favor to any one family.” Feros explained as we approached the back

  of the property. “At least that is what they claimed, I am

  personally certain that they just could not stomach the idea of

  putting any of the local peasants in a more fine accommodation and no

  noble would want to live out in this area.”

  “The Church can seize

  lands?” Toria asked. “I was under the impression that they are in

  the business of pretending to be on the side of the common people.”

  “They would not parade out

  troops to take property or land, but they do often find ways to have

  deeds fall into their hands at suspiciously high rates. As in, people

  with large families already living in the house finding themselves

  dead with massive debts and a will that no one knew about naming the

  Church sole benefactor or some other obvious nonsense.” Feros

  pulled his horse up next to the back of the house and swung down off

  of it, haphazardly winding the reins around the rickety hand railing

  on the back steps. “I find it hard to believe that the general

  populace truly thinks the Church is innocent in all these instances

  of them suddenly acquiring profitable land, but there is certainly an

  incentive to keep your mouth shut and not draw attention to your own

  land and property unless they decide they might do better with it

  themselves.”

  Toria and I tied our horses up

  at the back next to a door leading to what used to have been a

  chicken coop from the house and Feros made quick work of starting to

  feed and settle the horses for their long deserved rest, putting on

  their feed bags over their heads quickly as the beasts ravenously dug

  into the grain mixture. We had ridden them for too long and if we

  were any sort of kind people we would give them at least a day’s

  rest, two if possible. I had a feeling that there was a slim to none

  chance we would linger long enough to give them meaningful rest.

  “I think this may be the

  first time I have heard you speak directly ill of the Church,”

  Toria said with a wince as she shifted her weight to her other leg.

  She was a bit better now, at

  least she could move a bit more freely on her own, but her muscles

  were still a bit tender and the burns along her legs and back were

  healing quickly. Luck and the will of the elemental flame had been on

  her side to leave her with a consequence, but none too dire.

  The fact that the primal

  elemental flame had answered her call at all was surprising, but to

  have it answer a human and not punish them severely for daring to

  draw upon it was unheard of. The stories of humans being able to

  interact with the primal elements of the demonic plane were sparse to

  begin with and every single one of them I could call to mind ended

  with the human being little more than a pile of ash at the end as a

  warning and lesson not to mess with forces greater than you could

  ever hope to become. Perhaps there was something to Toria that made

  her an acceptable vessel according to the element, though, as much as

  I felt towards her, I could not yet see myself. Though powerful for a

  human, I was certain just about any demon, even the lowest of the

  lowborn I could find would still be able to easily out match her.

  “Ill?” Feros paused

  pumping the small well next to the house to fill up a dilapidated

  bucket of water for us and the horses. “I do not have over much

  against the Church besides the fact they are the enemies of my

  allies. I have generally not traveled much in the human realm to

  consider them any sort of threat and almost none of them have ever

  been powerful enough to realm walk. Those that have are closely

  guarded secrets, it would be very destructive to their methods of

  control if it got out to people that their power and protection were

  so infinitesimal compared to what exists in other realms. More than

  anything I think I find them humorous.” He finished pumping the

  water and motioned for us to hand him our water skins which he filled

  up one by one, handed them back, then filled up the bucket again to

  the brim for the horses. “Those at the very top of the hierarchy

  are fully aware that this realm is laughably weak and insignificant,

  but they are at the top of the pile still and holding onto that power

  is enough for them. I suppose they probably feel like the king of the

  underdogs, even if it’s not very much to brag about at all.”

  Toria’s face was in a deep

  frown and she kept glancing away like the conversation was making her

  uncomfortable. She had yet to fully come to grips with the idea that

  what seemed like lofty ambitions to her were minut in the grand scale

  of things. “Well I certainly despise them.”

  “As you should.” Feros

  smiled and offered her his arm for the first time since she had

  become injured. “Let’s get you inside and somewhere to get some

  rest, we will talk more about how we are going to get your kingdom

  back and defeat the Church as soon as you are a bit more yourself and

  healthy. Mistra, would you please find a way to get a fire going in

  the kitchen and look around to see if there’s any sort of pantry

  left?”

  I raised an eyebrow at his

  sudden turn towards being caring and concerned with either of our

  well being, but knowing him there was some reason for it, so despite

  my promises to myself that I would stop following his lead blindly I

  did as he asked. He was at least getting Toria to settle in and rest

  which was at the top of my priority list.

  I held the door open for them

  into the house before wandering to the kitchen and looking around. It

  looked like someone had gone through at some point, most likely the

  Church, and stripped the house of anything of real value, leaving

  behind not much but bare floors, walls, and old furniture. The

  kitchen had a rickety table with four chairs that looked to be much

  older than myself, the wood rubbed so smooth that any carving work

  done on the legs or back had been worn away long ago, only leaving

  behind the faint marks of a carving tool. The hearth had seen better

  days, but the bricks that made it up were relatively intact and did

  not crumble when I found an old cloth and began to wipe the thick

  build up of dust and cobwebs from them. Giving up on making it look

  as nice as I would want it to be for cooking, I turned to ironwork

  that held up a large pot that could be swung in to be over the fire

  or swung out for cooling and cleaning. It took a good amount of my

  brute strength to get the contraption to budge and it squeaked

  horribly as it did so having been rusted around the hinge for who

  knows how long. Pushing and pulling on the arm of the device several

  times loosened up the rust and gunk clogging the hinge enough to

  where it was passably usable and I swung it out so I could unhook the

  heavy iron pot from the end.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “I found a bed for her

  upstairs and she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.”

  Feros had returned with another bucket he had scrounged from

  somewhere and an old scrub brush that looked like it was missing more

  bristles than it had retained. “She might be hungry, but I think it

  is important that we leave her to rest for a while before we wake her

  up again.”

  “You are avoiding having her

  around for the discussion you promised me.”

  “Always a clever one,” he

  complimented.

  “I think she may be upset if

  she misses your explanation and I have to reiterate everything to her

  later.”

  “Once she awakens and is

  ready to go her mind is only going to be on reclaiming her

  birthright, I doubt very much she will consider little else. If she

  happens to return to the topic afterwards, then we have a perfect

  excuse as to why we did not involve her, we did not want to worry her

  before her triumph.” He tapped the brush on the side of the bucket,

  causing ripples in the bucket of water. “First I think you may want

  to get that pot clean and get some water on, you are hungry as well

  and will think better on a full stomach.”

  I took the brush and bucket of

  water from him and poured enough water in the dusty iron pot to get

  enough to slosh around while I scrubbed it clean. By the time I was

  finished, Feros had gone back out to the horses to finish cleaning

  them down and returned with our bags with dried meat and other

  various travel ingredients. I was by no means a fantastic cook, but I

  managed something that resembled a basic stew and set it to start

  cooking over the flames. The dried meat would take a while to

  re-hydrate and soften, giving plenty of time for him to give the

  explanations I had always wanted from him. I gingerly lowered myself

  into one of the chairs at the table, fully expecting it to give up

  under my weight, luckily it held up, though it did not feel the most

  stable. I motioned to the chair across from me with a serious look, I

  would not allow him to stall any longer. With a low chuckle he nodded

  his head and sat, then looked at me with his typical toothy grin.

  “Why do you not want her to

  be a part of this?” I asked.

  “Toria? I think you already

  know the answer to that, but if I need to verify it for you, I simply

  do not think that she will be able to wrap her head around some of

  the things you want to know. Her experience with magic will never be

  anything close to either of us and I am certain that she would make

  poor decisions based on what she thinks she knows and applying it to

  my situation. She really does have a rather black and white view of

  pretty much every topic, the subtle shades of grey are lost on her.”

  I drew in my breath to try to

  defend her, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand.

  “I know what you are about

  to say, yes she is clever and sharp, I am not downplaying her mental

  abilities in the slightest. If I am to have a human in my corner,

  Toria would be at the top of my list, she just has a perception

  issue, she sees what she wants to see and blocks out anything beyond

  that. We both know that if she approached things a little differently

  sometimes she likely would have achieved her goals already, but

  instead she goes with the first thing that pops into her mind and

  that has to be the route taken and be stubbornly adhered to.”

  “In some ways that can be

  admirable,” I countered, “she is not easily swayed from what she

  wants and her plan to achieve it. Some rulers change with every

  single breath of the wind and it causes chaos, at least with House

  Yser you know exactly what you are going to get and that the plan

  will be followed to the end.”

  The grin already on his lips

  twitched slightly at the corners and he crossed his arms in front of

  him. “Do you remember back when I was still training you here in

  this realm and told you that it seemed that you were becoming lost in

  your feelings for her? I remember that you were adamant that your

  pairing was mostly political and that you would not be so silly as to

  allow your emotions to cloud your view of things.”

  My cheeks flushed and a

  mixture of anger at his accusation and shame that he was right

  flooded me. At some point along the way I had dropped any pretense of

  my consort ship being strictly political in a way that made looking

  back on it now hilarious.

  “It is the way of things,”

  he continued, “you are far from the first political couple to start

  off trying to make it strictly business and end up making

  questionable decisions just to keep the other happy. I have yet to

  meet a creature that can keep romantic feelings at bay forever and

  that is not always a bad thing, Toria will very much benefit from

  having someone like yourself looking after her.”

  “That implies that you do

  not believe she does the same for me.”

  “This line of conversation

  will end in you being more upset than you need to be and will not

  change your mind about anything,” he said with a light laugh.

  “Besides, your stew needs a stir.”

  The gentle burble of the soup

  in the pot was starting to rattle the lid and after a quick stir and

  adjustment of where I had it hanging over the fire it settled back

  down to a gentle simmer. I stood tending the pot longer than I needed

  to, using the time to consider how things had changed over the past

  year and I found I could not deny that the Mistra of a year ago would

  call the Mistra now a fool. Whether I agreed with that assessment I

  was not sure of yet, things were much more nuanced and complicated

  than I thought they could become. It had seemed like a no brainer

  move accepting Toria’s invitation to be her consort and gathering

  more power than I had hoped to wield on my own and I had started with

  no intention of allowing myself to be emotionally tied to her in a

  way where I would not be able to untangle myself from her if another,

  more promising opportunity came along, but I did not think that I

  would be able to do that any longer. In a way I had gone back on a

  promise I had made to myself long ago, to put myself above everyone

  else and pursue what would be the best for me and me alone.

  “I envy it,” Feros said

  suddenly.

  Snapping back to reality I

  replaced the lid on the pot and returned to my seat. “Envy what?”

  “Having someone that you

  feel comfortable with exposing all of yourself to and being

  vulnerable. That has always been much too dangerous of an idea for

  me.”

  “You had Ana,” I pointed

  out, “she seems to know quite a bit more about you than anyone

  else.”

  Darkness shadowed his features

  for a moment and with a shake of his head it was gone. “She was one

  of the closest I have ever come to revealing my whole story to, yes

  that’s true, though I still very carefully kept many things from

  her for the safety of the both of us.”

  “So there is very little

  hope of getting the full truth out of you.”

  “The full truth?” He

  laughed with legitimate mirth, a gleam of entertainment in his eye.

  “My dear Mistra, I’m not sure there is enough time in your

  lifetime, whether that be human or demon length to go over my version

  of the truth, but I will tell you what I safely can. Perhaps start at

  your most pressing questions and we can go from there.”

  “Are you going to answer

  honestly?” Even if he answered in the affirmative I probably was

  not going to be able to fully trust him, there was too long a track

  record of him feeding half-truths, but it was the logical place to

  start.

  “As honestly as is safe for

  the both of us, I can promise that. If it makes you feel better,

  generally my lack of transparency is generally due to an omission of

  the truth, not spoken lies. I do not intend to cover up anything with

  a fabrication, if I am unwilling to answer your question or explain

  myself further I will try to just say so.”

  Surprisingly, his admittance

  that he would not tell me absolutely everything was somewhat

  reassuring. At least he had enough decency and respect for me to

  admit his inability to be fully honest, it was more than I had been

  expecting. Any answers would be better than the almost none he had

  been willing to provide prior.

  “Can you read minds?”

  “I think you already know

  the answer to that.”

  “I want to hear it from you

  directly.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, “to

  a certain extent I can.”

  “What is that extent?” If

  there was any way to shield my thoughts from him I wanted to know

  how.

  “It is something I have to

  focus and intend to do, it is not something passive that just happens

  to me, that would be extremely overwhelming and annoying otherwise, I

  imagine,” he explained. “I do not do it all the time, not even a

  majority of the time, just when I feel it is important to do so.”

  “I know you have been

  listening in to my thoughts quite often, so is there something about

  mine that has been particularly important to you?”

  He leaned back in his chair

  and took on a look I instantly recognized as the visage he donned

  when he put himself in the position of a teacher. “There are some

  things that I could outright explain to you, but there are some that

  I think you will get more out of by working out yourself. I have

  managed to keep this ability secret to everyone else around me, yet

  have slipped up in letting you in on my dirty little secret, why?”

  Furrowing my brow in thought,

  I had never considered that perhaps there had been an ulterior motive

  for my knowing about his mind reading. It had been my gut instinct to

  just assume I had managed to work out something he had been trying to

  hide and deny, it was an entirely new line of thinking that maybe it

  had not been an accident of my being particularly clever. In

  hindsight, it actually seemed very silly of me to think that I had

  somehow managed to out wit him on something.

  “You wanted me to figure it

  out,” I said. “Even though that does not seem to make sense to me

  as to why. If I had ever really pressed the issue seriously with my

  father and forced him to believe me, that would have at least ensured

  that you would be exiled from the kingdom. You know as well as I do

  how paranoid he is on his best days, he would have never entertained

  having you anywhere near him if he knew. I very nearly did pursue it

  in earnest, it has always bothered me that you seemed to be always

  listening in.”

  “Not always at all.” He

  waved away the idea with his hand like it was absolutely ridiculous

  that I would have thought that at all. “Only here and there when I

  felt it was necessary to refresh your memory that I was able to do

  such things.”

  “Then if you were not doing

  it specifically to manipulate me in some manner other than for me to

  keep conscious that you were doing it, why run the risk of me outing

  you to my father?”

  As he already stated, he did

  not say anything, only raised his eyebrows and patiently waited for

  me to figure it out myself.

  “You knew I would not, or at

  least figured there was a good chance that I would try to figure it

  out on my own without pressing the issue to a point where you would

  be in danger. Though that leaves the question as to why, especially

  when you have said already that you have never truly trusted anyone

  with your secrets. Perhaps this is simply not that big of a secret

  for you.”

  “In the grand perspective of

  things, no, not even close,” he admitted. “Mind reading is not

  even that deviant of an act in many realms, there is just a certain

  level of courtesy extended that is mutually agreed upon. Humans and

  demons have a strange visceral sense of privacy in regards to their

  thoughts, perhaps it is because they generally lack the magical

  talent necessary to make mind reading a regular occurrence. Though,

  it would have completely closed off the demon realm for a while to me

  to allow enough time for people to forget or perhaps re-branding

  myself as someone entirely different so it would have been

  inconvenient overall if you had decided to out me.”

  “Since it is not something I

  would generally think was possible, that makes it even more telling

  that you purposefully made sure that I knew about it. You are always

  working so hard to think ahead to all eventualities, maybe you wanted

  me to eventually demand answers from you so you would be backed into

  a wall about letting some of your secrets out.”

  “I dare to repeat myself in

  complimenting you on how clever you are, my dear. I do not expect you

  to be able to extrapolate any further what my reasonings are for

  letting you in on my secrets, I am sure it probably seems counter to

  everything else I have ever done to preserve my anonymity.”

  I nodded my agreement, it did

  seem counter to everything else I knew about him.

  “I am simply tired,” he

  chuffed, “I do not think there is a way to give you perspective on

  just how long it has been for me, though I have tried to give you

  glimpses before. I have never exaggerated on just how long I have

  been around, thinking about it in terms of age has even become

  ridiculous after all this time, the number would be astoundingly

  large and meaningless. During this whole time, I have had to be a

  lone wolf and I am not sure exactly what has changed, but at some

  point that fact has worn on me. By no means am I wanting things to

  end, I still very much intend to live this life as long as is

  possible, but the bleakness of viewing the millennia alone has become

  a bit unbearable. If that means that I need to start taking a

  reasonable amount of risk, then so be it. I want someone to have even

  a small fraction of understanding of who I am and what my story is.”

  “And I am who you have

  decided is safe?”

  “Out of everyone I have

  known in recent memory, yes, honestly perhaps even longer. There is

  something about you that inclines me to trust you even more than I

  did Ana, I feel certain that you will not use anything you find out

  to my destruction. Your soul is steadfast, Mistra, there is a quality

  to you that is hard to find in many. While you push yourself to focus

  mostly on yourself and you have tried to adhere closely to the demon

  idea of selfishness to attain power, that is not who you are at your

  core. I have said so before and I will continue to say so, you are a

  shining example of what hybridization can do. You have taken the

  positives from each of your family lines and boosted their effects.

  There is a reason that I so readily came to you when you called for

  my training once more and have not left your side, though you will

  come to discover during our conversation today that it would behoove

  me to disappear from your life entirely and that I am taking a huge

  risk by sticking around.”

  “You

  make it sound like you are in love with me,” I joked. It was a

  ludicrous idea that I regretted even vocalizing as soon as the words

  left my mouth, surely he was going to use the statement to tease me

  mercilessly for having it cross my mind at all. I did not expect him

  to go completely silent, eyes trained on me for an uncomfortable

  amount of time.