Pale as Grass in Winter

"We were young and in love and we had the wilful blindness of youth. Every hour was filled with the promise of life eternal. I thought it would never end. It did." Brigitte Abbendis/Sally Whitemane.

Thanks to Dusty the Umbravita, Seripithus, and Demon-Something for the reviews!

Warning(s): For references to F/F romance (like the rest of this fic, I guess), abuse, and mild horror.

Chapter: 4/6

IV

If you'd told me the morning I tended to sick Sally that in two years time she would be the fiercest of our lieutenants I'd have thought you a fool. You see that I lack the gift of foresight. I couldn't know.

But I thought of her often, nonetheless: Sally standing, bathed in flaming sunlight, staring up at the Crusade's arms; kneeling before a latrine, shoulders shaking, robes gathered around her thighs; descending the steps from the chapel, staring at her feet as Isillien leaned towards her and murmured in her ear, her hair like platinum and ice and moonlight.

I travelled far in those days, recruiting for the Crusade, a complement of guards all my strength against the Scourge. I went to the far west where the Greymane Wall stood. I went east, tearing through the dank Plaguelands vines with my machete, stumbling on pockets of living men who had to be purified with the Light before we dared approach. In the south I came within sight of the walls of Lordaeron, crumbling and vandalised. But it was enough; my men were well trained, and I was no helpless princess.

And at night, when I lay awake on my pallet and listened to the moan of the dying land beneath me I thought of her, her eyes like bloodstains, her brow furrowed in curiosity or judgment. And I wondered whether she, too, thought of me.

I had been in Hearthglen for scarce more than two nights this time when on the third morning of my return a messenger knocked at my door, oddly formal.

"Sister Abbendis." His bow would have been more fitting for my father's rank than mine. "Inquisitor Whitemane has arrived. She wishes to meet with you in the library."

I stiffened. Inquisitor Whitemane—I had not spoken to her since Jones was tortured in the dungeons, six months earlier, though she had doubtless been informed by Isillien. I had gathered as much from her reaction to me the few times she'd returned to Hearthglen. We had only ever seen each other at a distance, locking eyes with an intensity that promised either hatred or something else, something I could not name.

I wondered whether all my daydreaming had not been the thing to conjure her up. "Surely it would be more appropriate for her to speak with my father."

He bowed again. "Respectfully, Sister, she already has. She asked specifically for you."

My hands twitched at the hems of my sleeves, pulling them over my wrists as I always did when I was nervous. "Did she say what she wanted?"

"No." A third bow, and I scowled at him. "If my lady would be so kind, she is waiting for you as we speak…"

I looked at my nails-square, and bitten short. "Tell her I'll be down shortly, once I've dressed."

The library stood at the far western end of the compound, a squat, low building that looked more like a storage shed than the Crusade's wealth in knowledge and lore. I entered through the warped double doors, annoyed with how I had to slam them shut for them to remain closed fully.

Sally was waiting for me beside the grate, queenly in white fur draped over her barely-decent outfit. My father called it a costume, but he said it with a laugh and a shake of his head, as if implying, What can you do? Genius and eccentricity go hand-in-hand.

She was so beautiful. Like the snows of the north. Like the first winter snows of Lordaeron, which was my home. Of course I was not the only who loved her. I had a rival.

Renault Mograine, standing at her side, glowering at me.

Laughable as he was, I hated him all the more for being so contemptible. He strutted around Whitemane, trying to act the dainty gentleman. You've blood on your hands, I thought, watching him. Own it, and she will love you the more when you do.

But I did not say this, and he did not do so.

I strode up to the pair, consciously mimicking my father's strut, keeping my eyes fixed, not on Sally, but on Renault. Did I believe Fairbanks's story about Mograine the Elder, how Renault had driven a blade through his own father's chest? I don't know. Saidan Dathrohan vouched for him. But even the best man can tell a lie when it serves his own self-interest. Isn't this one of the main points of our interrogations? In honesty: I didn't care who he killed. I wanted him out of my way.

"Sister Abbendis," Sally said when she saw me. She sounded amused, though her face was solemn. "Thank you for coming."

I had planned to play the gracious soldier but Renault's presence put me off my game and made me defensive. Whatever she'd called me down for, it was not what I'd hoped. "Yes? What's so urgent it couldn't wait until after breakfast?"

The corner of Sally's mouth lifted, but Renault glowered at me, red-faced under his yellow beard. "You've got a lot of nerve, Abbendis. Who do you think you are? I don't care what your name is. We both outrank you—"

"Let's grant her that point, lord," Sally said, giving him a pat that did nothing but fluster him and antagonise me. "Sister Abbendis is correct. We haven't eaten." Her white eyelashes fluttered like moth wings, and Renault straightened the already-straight belt at his waist. When she turned back to me, all traces of playfulness were gone. "Come, Sister. This is not a laughing matter we have to discuss, you and I."

You and I. That means you should go away, I thought to Renault, but I managed not to grin as he squared his shoulders, hiding his disappointment beneath a bow even I found impressive.

"What was Mograine doing here?" I said when he'd left. We made our way down an aisle of bookshelves. "You should have warned me."

Sally lifted a hand to brush a row of books' spines. "Why? We all serve the same cause, do we not?" The light filtered through the slats in the shelves and across her face, and her eyes seemed to deepen, as if I were looking miles down into bloody waters.

"Yes, but we're only mortal, and we don't get along."

She smiled and dropped her hand, reaching out for me. I tensed, expecting… I don't know what. But she simply tugged my disarrayed sleeve back into place and kept walking. "You have an ability for understatement. As your father does."

"My father is a great man."

"I don't contest this; it's fact. If you are half as strong in your faith, we're better for having you."

I felt that I should thank her, and yet the compliment was so condescending I could not.

"That brings me to my point. It would be appropriate for you to travel to the Monastery with Renault and I," she said. "Your abilities for recruitment are known. I think your presence there would be beneficial."

For who? For you, for Renault? Would it further your position in the Crusade? Certainly it would not be beneficial to me, or to the cause of the Light. I made a face at her back. This was some sort of political manoeuvre, and though I couldn't tell what, my instincts told me to run in the opposite direction.

"I don't think so. I think I'm better off here."

She paused, engrossed in a well-worn text so old the Common was non-standard—from the days of Arathor, when men were as wild as trolls. "Oh? Why do you say so?"

"There are more human enclaves left here. Hearthglen is well-fortified, but the Plaguelands are in worse shape than Lordaeron."

"They are not." Her sharpness surprised me. "You don't know what Lordaeron is like."

"I've travelled there."

"You have passed through its side roads on your way to other places." Seeing me open my mouth in protest, she raised her hand, silencing me. "You hear a criticism where there is none. But there are too many major operatives here. Too few there." A tremor stirred her. "The undead in the King's city—"

"I saw them," I said. "Don't forget, I was in the scouting group."

"Like flies on a great beast's carcass." She leaned forwards, so that her hair hid her face. Covering emotions, or studying another book? "A desecration."

"When do you return?" I said, rudely, because I did not want her to debase herself in front of me like this.

She lifted her head, her hair falling away from her face. "Soon, Sister Abbendis. And those who are willing to serve will come with us."

That stung—willing to serve. Had I not been party to Isillien's debauches? My blood still ran cold at the memory. Time heals nothing, sometimes. But the best I could muster was, "Good riddance."

Her expression did not even flicker; she kept staring at me like an animal teased beyond forbearance. I had no idea why she wanted me to travel with her, and why she should be so irritated at my unwillingness to do so. It made me stubborn and, I confess it, a little sulky.

"Is it Commander Mograine?" she asked. "Why do you despise him so?" Her eyes widened. "You don't believe those absurd lies of Fairbanks, surely."

"Fairbanks was a fool and a madman." I crossed my arms across my chest. "Like Renault could manage to kill his father. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's more likely that the late Highlord tripped and fell on his sword than that that boy got a blow in."

For once my insubordinate attitude did not amuse her. Sally's expression darkened. "You overstep yourself, Brigitte Abbendis. Commander Mograine is a military leader to be admired."

"Admired?" My cry was loud to my own ears; her defense of him struck something deep in me. "He's incompetent! Sure, he can use a sword, I suppose, but every week we get more reports of your disasters in Tirisfal. How many men has he lost out there? No wonder you can't keep up recruitment, everyone you get dies like cattle in a slaughter!"

"Sister Abbendis, enough." She closed the space between us, looming over me, but I was not afraid. She was a priestess, I a warrior. I would take my chances with the odds. "The Crusade must have perfect unity. No more. Knit together. Swallow your pride. What will the underlings say, if they hear you mocking Renault?"

"They'll say, 'Well, someone over there has some sense, at least. Maybe this lot's not a bunch of old fools after all.'"

You can imagine my surprise when she slapped me.

I had only ever been struck by my father before, and no other Crusader would ever have dared such a thing—not Isillien, not even Saidan Dathrohan. The impact stunned me into silence. One of her rings sliced open my cheek; I felt the wound smarting and closed my eyes, then opened them, stared at her staring at my cut face, looking fascinated and horrified. I thought of myself, young and angry and chastened in my holy red. I thought of myself, lying awake at night, thinking of her. Do you think of me, too?

She had hit me. I was a fool.

The words came to me, crystallising like patterns of ice. She hit me. I'm a fool.

Then: I am no one's fool!

Very calmly, as if I were advising someone else on what to do in a highly improbable situation, I raised my hand and slapped her, hard. The sound was loud, like the crack of breaking bones, and beneath my exultation I worried that I'd crushed her cheekbone. I probably could have-it was so fragile, like the wing of a bird, and I felt it come up against my hand, rolling beneath the skin.

She turned her head back to stare, wide-eyed. Already her skin was red and angry; soon it would doubtless be bruised and angry. We faced off, gaping, breathing hard as if we'd been grappling for hours. Her lips parted; I saw the dart of her tongue, suddenly scarlet against her teeth. They were smeared bloody.

And then she surprised me: she laughed, a long, bright, genuine laugh, the sort of laugh heard maybe once every moon turn in Lordaeron in those days. Infectious in its amazed joy. And I realised how absurd we were, scratching at each other like lasses in an erotic novel, and I laughed, too, just as openly and as freely. Laughed until tears ran down my face and into the gash, making it throb and turning my blood to stinging acid. But I couldn't stop until much later, when she did.

"Maybe we should put you with the crack forces," I said when we'd sobered, poking at the cut. It was not deep, but it was long and my father would ask after it. I did not relish the idea of that conversation. "I had no idea you could throw a punch like that."

"Hush." She stroked my cheek, and my face burned with a wash of warmth: healing Light. "I apologise, Brigitte. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Only scold me, right?"

"Right." She gave me a final pat and nodded, looking pleased. "You heal well. Your skin is very smooth. I worried you would scar."

"I wouldn't mind a scar." And when she gave me a surprised look, I added, "I could make up a story about it. Something fascinating and implausible."

She smiled, so uncertain, almost girlish. "It's a sin to lie."

"Everyone lies," I said. "I bet you lie, too. And High Commander Dathrohan."

As soon as I said it I regretted it, because of course she would think that I was referring to his defense of Renault, and she would get angry again, defending him, and I couldn't bear to hear that. But she shook her head. "You utter such casual blasphemies, Sister. It grieves me."

"Don't say that," I said. "I don't mean to blaspheme. I take up a sword and hunt monsters for the Light. I think I'm permitted the occasional bit of brevity."

"Yes," she said. "You are young for a warrior. But your heart is steel." She peered up at me through narrow eyes, her blinks slow, sleepy, as if she were drifting off and struggling to keep herself awake. "Fire and steel, Brigitte."

Something in her look made my skin tingle, and I felt that I should step away, perhaps leave. But I did not; I moved towards her, almost on tiptoe. There was a scar on her face I had never noticed before-a clean notch under her eye, as if someone had carved it out with a sickle. Her hands were at my neck, and I could feel myself breathing, each breath like a lifetime, a world in every exhalation. The fine white hairs on her skin rose and trembled—she was so close I could see them. She was so close I could see the grey ring around her irises, like a hoop of scales, lizard-like, amphibious.

"Be tempered," she said, at the same time I said, "Yes," and then our lips touched, like a sigh that I thought more than felt, her tongue parting my lips, tasting of her blood, tasting me tasting her, and then I went under, drowning, delirious, clinging to her thinking nothing, or perhaps thinking only, Tempered, yes, I am tempered.

My fingers found the angle of her jaw, her hands my waist, arms wrapping around me, pulling me to her so that we were chest to chest, stomach to stomach. Our teeth knocked and my nails bit into her skin, and she pressed against me so roughly I was certain I bruised her. Her voice was a shuddering gasp, her call, her answer to my unvoiced question, Is this blasphemy? Is this madness? Are we possessed, or is it the Light that shines in on us, and we caught up in nothing more than its wash of holy warmth?

"Inquisitor Whitemane, I was—oh, excuse me!"

We broke apart; just like that the moment was shattered. My blood seethed and screeched and sang, and I watched Sally, her shoulders trembling.

"Brother Harol," she said, but she had lost her flatness; she shook, and it scared me. "What are you doing here?"

His mouth opened and closed. I noticed that his complexion had turned waxy. "I was… forgive me, milady, Commander Mograine sent me…" He looked at me, helpless, and I might have pitied him had I not so acutely pitied myself. "He wishes to speak to you. My leave, lady."

Without waiting to be dismissed, he fled.

Sally turned to look at me, and I stared at her, desperate. But the moment had passed. She was already gone. I saw the ice close over her, saw the gleam of rime return to her eyes, part cunning, part anger. Though I could only know that later.

"Sister Abbendis," she said. Her tone was irreproachable, as was her bow. She swept past me, leaving me standing there, weak-kneed and trembling. Fear and desire and anger and betrayal. Love. All those things together, together in her and now, forever, in me.

I have never been able to unweave those threads, though the Light knows I have tried.

"You know what I must do," Father said.

His back was to me. I could see his salt-and-pepper hair, which was rapidly approaching just salt. The years had been bitter to him. They say that the Scourge had tortured him and Isillien in the sewers beneath the king's palace, flaying each before the other, sewing their eyes shut and pulling out their hair with pincers, splashing acid into their faces, then healing them.

My father never spoke of those times, and there are many among the Crusade who say they did not happen and who punish those who dare speak of it. They claim that to do so is to question my father's sanity. Nonsense, I say. The priests of old used to flagellate themselves with whips and rods; I hear that there are those among the Gilneans who still do. There is strength that comes from pain. There is knowledge.

"I understand," I said.

Harol had told him, of course, the miserable little rat. I had expected no different, but I had trembled nonetheless, and the afternoon had passed in a blur of agony as I wondered, When will he come? Does he know yet, or will Harol wait until after dinner?

He had not waited; I knew this because Father was not present at the meal. I ate with my head lowered, my face burning as if all the crusaders could see my secret shame written in my blazing cheeks. I did not once look at Sally save for halfway through dinner when, abruptly, she stood and left, the imprint of my hand plain on her face for those who could read it.

The next time I saw her, Father was dead.

"You don't want to tell me the whole story?"

He was needling me, trying to get me confess or lie. Maybe he wanted to be lied to. Certainly he did not want to believe what Harol had told him.

"No," I said. "There is nothing for me to say."

He turned away from the slats in the windows to glare down at me. "Actually, there's quite a bit to say! What were you thinking?"

Quietly, my voice shaking, I said, "I wasn't thinking, obviously."

"Obviously! Obviously!" He had worked himself into a temper now; he paced back and forth in front of me, hands flying as he spoke. "Are you mad? Ill? Did I raise you to act like this, a wanton whore in some cheap Stromgarde brothel? I don't even understand it. You never gave me trouble before, not even once—I expected you to take an interest in boys, I would have understood it, but Whitemane!" He rounded on me, wild-eyed. "She was responsible, wasn't she?"

I kept silent, my head lowered.

"Don't tell me then!" It came out as a snarl. "Light, your mother would know what to do! She would never have let this happen." Now the slightest hint of despair had crept into his voice, and I quavered to hear it. "I did my best. Was it my fault? Was it me? Did I raise her wrong, Light of the World?"

The Light of the World does not answer, so I spoke for it. "It wasn't your fault, Father. I'm sorry."

"Good!" he said savagely. "Good, be sorry." He turned on his heel and marched towards his desk, and I watched him, breath caught in my throat, as he tore through the drawers, yanking them open one by one until he found it. His quarry; my terror. A plain black leather riding crop.

"Hold out your hands."

I did. They shook.

"Do you think this makes me happy?" He brought the crop down across the backs of my fingers, searing a red-hot line. I cried out. With my father there was no point in pride. "Do you think this is what I want to do?"

I whimpered as it descended again. "No."

He had nothing to say to that. The lash rose and fell steadily—hard enough that the skin broke on the eighth strike and blood curved around the wound, welling and dripping to the floor. Soft enough that he would not truly wound me. He hit me seven more times after that, and I kept my head lowered, listening to his ragged breathing, feeling the fierce sting of every blow, the wet slap.

"Fifteen is sufficient." He pulled out his handkerchief, old and grey, and wiped the blood from my hands. Then, turning the cloth around, he used the clean side to wipe the tears from his face. "All crimes are punished, Brigitte," he said, but his voice was low and gentle. "Do you see how much it pains me to hit you?"

I wept then, with him, and my tears splashed his hands and sloughed the dirt away. I could not bear to displease my father, but I also could not lie to him. I would do as I wished. I always have.

The Lich King has tools besides the brute engine of the Scourge. He has kept all the animal cunning of the orcs, the ruthlessness of a man. In my youth I might have called him a worthy opponent. I am too old and tired for that now. He picked off my advisors and doctors and generals, my highest-ranked and best-educated men, and he did it without ever once setting foot on our territory.

Father Forer woke one night in darkness to the sound of a woman's voice, singing to him a song he knew from long ago. He followed his dead wife out to sea and was nearly drowned; we pulled him back in, sodden and shaking, and one look at his white face was all it took for me to forgive him his madness. I settled for a lacklustre lashing and an afternoon in the stocks after the doctor saw to him.

Doctor Llocker himself was not so lucky—we found him dead in his surgery, his throat opened with a scalpel he held in his hands, his eyes wide and staring. What drove him to it? Patterns on the ceiling, ghosts, a sorry life lived over? Impossible to say.

And the blacksmith: Hayton's bones were in the forge, but from the way his knuckles curved around the fire door, it seemed he had gone in of his own accord.

I have ghosts of my own.

Sometimes now I wake up at night, clutching the blankets to my chest, teeth chattering even as a fire roars in the grate. I feel like a child again, lost in the dark and longing for the warmth of my father and my mother. Particularly my mother. She died birthing me, and I can afford to be nostalgic about her, never having known who she was.

Sometimes she comes, though; I recognise that it is her in my bones and blood, a longing so deep it is beyond words. Sometimes it is my father, or Isillien, or Darion Mograine, or Maxwell Tyrosus, or Uther, or any of a hundred people I've loved and lost.

Mostly, though, it is her. She comes to me at night in the places between the shadows, where the Light does not touch and only memory lives. Sometimes I find her sitting at the foot of my bed, naked save for her long white hair, which she holds over her breasts, coyly, even though I have seen them before. She is sitting there now. I thought she was an illusion at first, sent to torment me, only I can feel her weight against my feet. Even through the blankets she is as heavy and cold as a corpse.

"Sally," I say. My lips are so numb I can barely say it. "Sally, what—"

She turns her mocking gaze on me. Her eyes are as red as ever, but she is not wearing that awful heavy makeup, and her face is bare and it looks strangely unformed. Young. It looks young. "High General Abbendis. What a surprise. I thought that was your father."

"The Light will scourge you, evil thing." I close my eyes but her fire burns through my eyelids, and I can see her perfectly. "You have no power on hallowed ground."

"Oh, no?" She laughs, and it sounds so much like her real one that I have to sneak another look at her. "Must we go through this every time, Brigitte?"

My sword. I can barely think for the cold, seeping through my skin as though I have been drenched in icy water, but I manage to form the thought: I need my sword.

"I'm so much older now," she says. She shifts her weight and her hair drapes over the bed and drags along my legs. I jerk my feet away. Even through metal the contact is like the splash of slush, or the seaweed that washes up frozen on the shore. "I know what I'm doing. Do you, High General Abbendis?"

My limbs seem locked against my body, my joints swollen with the chill. I try to move slowly, but moving is so difficult at the moment, and I am shaking, almost convulsing. I jerk my hand towards the night table, inching to where it must be. It must be there. Against the bed.

Sally's doppelganger makes no effort to stop me, just watches me with a faint smile on her face. I would hate it less if I did not recognise it. I loved that smile once. What Scourge creature is this, who looks so much like my Sally and feels so much like the dead?

"You are afraid." She leans forward so that she is crouching on her hands and knees, still naked. If she held me down I would be helpless against her. "But why? Am I not your friend, your dearest friend?"

I push myself towards the edge of the bed with a great shove, grunting with the effort. I should never have kept my armour on; that was idiotic. It's not swords that the armies of the Scourge put to work. It made me feel safe, and I am not safe.

"What are you doing?" she asks, and at last she touches me. I cry out in pain where her fingers close around my shoulder; I can feel the throb of glaciers, snowfields, pans of ice, the infinite chill of graves.

"Kiss me again," she said. Her face comes is very close to mine, so close I can feel her breath, like a biting wind. "I've missed the feel of your skin. This beautiful hair. Your arms around me."

If this is supposed to be temptation, then I am watertight against it. I feel no desire whatsoever, only a dull, vague horror, my heart pounding in my throat. I will break down, I know it, but later, later, when the moment has passed. Right now all I am thinking is: get my weapon. Get it in my hands.

I reach out, blindly, for my sword, and yes, it is where I left it, propped against my night table. My hand closes around the hilt and with all the strength in my body I roll onto my back, swinging the blade above my head and towards her. It is not enough. I am drained in the presence of this thing, and she moves to avoid its arc effortlessly. It strikes the bedding, my fingers limp around it.

It feels like an eternity that she is watching me, with her limp hair and her inhuman eyes. Her movements are wrong, jerky. I shudder and try to curl away from her, from her knowing stare, but she grabs my other shoulder and pins me down. The cold travels from her fingertips to mine; the sword falls from my hand, now numb and useless.

"Did it have to end like this, Brigitte?" she spits. "Light. Did anyone love you the way I did, in all the world?" Her face is very close to mine, now, and I can see that it is not Sally, that its skin is as tight as the skin of an apple. Tighter, even: pulling apart when it speaks, leaving narrow fissures. "You are going to die like an animal!" Its fingers twine in my hair and I shudder. "Just like me! Just like me."

"No." The word sounds loud in the silence of the chamber. Where is everyone? Where is the watch, why do they not come? Why does the firelight seem to touch neither the shadows nor me? "No. The Light guards its chosen."

"As it guarded Darion Mograine?" I say nothing, and the thing gives my head a rough shake, as I once shook Sally's. "As it guarded Darion Mograine?"

"Faithless." The word is barely a whisper, but I hear it.

It laughs, then, a banshee's laugh. It pierces my ears and it makes me shake, makes all the light and air leave the room. I bring my trembling hands to my face, trying to keep it out, but it wrenches them away. Its touch stings like a burn. I will have bruises and scars tomorrow, if I survive this. If I survive. My sword is there, but it is too heavy for me to lift, and apathy tugs at every fibre of my body. It would be so easy just to sleep, to forget that this is a monster image and curl up against it, against her. My Sally. Returned to me, impossibly, at last.

The dagger. I remember. I am armed, still.

"You could have come with me," it says, "that day when I asked you to travel to the monastery. It would have been better for all of us. You'd never have let me die the way I did. You could have defended me."

No. That's a lie. I couldn't have protected her. It would have made no difference. I would have left, and travelled to meet the High Commander. She would have died no matter what I did. No matter what.

"On the contrary," it says, "not no matter what. You could have asked me to stay with you in New Avalon. Ordered me to. I wanted to stay with you, Brigitte."

"Not authorised to… to give…"

"Orders," it finishes for me, and that's so typically Sally I fear I might give in, the weak part of me breaking free of its bindings like so much rotten balsam. "Correct. You weren't. All I wanted was a damn invitation."

I wanted her to stay too. More than anything. But I couldn't ask her to shame herself like that. We needed her elsewhere.

Excuses. I was too afraid of the judgement of men. The fact remains: if she had remained in New Avalon, then maybe, maybe she would be here, in Northrend, by my side. As more than a memory, more than just another angry ghost.

Its lips brush my ears as it leans in, and it whispers in Sally's voice, "You killed me through your negligence. Through your lack of love. Through your lack of faith. Just as you killed your father."

Horror gives me strength: horror that it should say this, this thing I have sometimes thought and always feared. I bend my hand up, my fingers brushing the hilt of the blade in my vambraces, and before even I know what I'm doing I bring the dagger up, driving it through the hollow between the thing's breasts. Its ribs yield before the steel, crumbling like wet plaster, and I press it into the monster's heart. Withered and dead, no doubt. But it gives me no pleasure.

It screams once, a scream that feels like it should shatter the mirrors and the glass, and then its form moults hair, eyelashes, skin, muscles, peeling away to webs of veins, nerves, bones, and then the bones are ground away too, dissolving to dust on a breeze I cannot feel.

I lay there for a long time, trembling. My dagger, when I lift it, is unbloodied, the same flawless grey as ever. But I was not imagining things. When I lean over the edge my bed, clinging to the corner of the mattress to keep from tumbling with my sudden light-headedness, dust like charcoal stains the wood.

It is too much to bear, all of it. Though it is the maid's job I stumble to the closet, looking for a broom. I tear through the boxes, knocking down a pile of blankets. In my terror I am making an enormous amount of noise, probably waking up every soldier in the place, but I can't bring myself to care.

Broom in hand, I return to the bedroom and sweep everything into the dustpan, scouring every inch. Then, thinking that the remains were so fine, like sand on the wind, I take out one of my old, grey undershirts and dust off the night table, the bookcases, the stands, even my coat rack and the feet of my bed.

I cannot bear to have anything of it left. Whatever it was. It was not Sally.

The fire is burning low in the grate, but it roars to life like a furnace when I toss the dust in, piles of it pouring into the blaze. Ashes to ashes. May she stay dead, this time.

My hands are shaking, oddly; the room feels smaller, constricted, as if I am staring at it through a tunnel. I try to turn back to my bed but my legs tremble and I stagger, toppling to the floor in a clatter. I barely register the impact, only notice myself staring up at the ceiling, wondering how I got here. Exhausted, completely spent, I can only slump against the chair, my back pressing into the wooden legs. My thoughts are a mantra: Sally, Sally. And then, I killed my father, and then I killed you.

The fire burns on for an hour, and I wonder what it is was it was made of, this monster Sally, that it should burn like so much tissue or so much silk. It is not until the fire has settled, the embers glowing, that I sit back, allowing myself to breath. Holding my breath has made me dizzy.

At length I stand, my legs boneless, almost like rubber; I have to lean on the arm of the chair for support. I could weep with pain and relief, but I am Brigitte Abbendis, High General Abbendis. That was my father, too, and his strength is in me. His strength and his terrible wisdom. I do not cry.

Instead I go outside.

Author's Note: Thanks again for tuning in! I hope this chapter was at least sort of worth the wait. Two months-I really couldn't believe it, but here we are. I've been extraordinarily busy lately, and probably will be until May, but I'm going to try not to take two months this round. Especially since I have other fics to tend to as well.