There is a boy with dark hair and dark eyes in the ritual space just behind the shrine hall. He is practicing the gestures of a rite under the careful observation of two teachers. The rite is a blessing for a successful battle, the spell that would accompany it, heals minor injuries, relieves exhaustion. The boy is young, and being rushed through some of his training as both priest and mage, trying to press decades of experience and knowledge into one small boy in hopes of meeting the stringent requirements of the chosen ritual.

  The situation angers [Teren]. This ritual--when it was correctly performed--involved a mage sacrificing himself in order to bestow a death-blessing on a recipient. A recipient who was well known and beloved of the sacrifice, so that there was no possibility that the blessing would sour in fear or desperation. [Teren] feels helpless. As the son of a king [he] feels helpless--[he] technically outranks even the most senior of priest at Black Mountain Temple, yet is unable to affect much beyond his own household. He knew to the liver and bones the auguries had been interpreted incorrectly, and has no say in the decisions of his elders.

  “You are too young to truly understand the nuances, Holy One,” the priest says. “You are to be our king. Nemar Jhan, for all of his talent is--"

  “When will I be able to meet him?” [Teren] asks roughly.

  “Holy One,” the senior priest begins in a managing tone that makes [Teren] bristle.

  “When will I be able to meet him?” [He] repeats. [He] struggles to keep from clenching his fist. [He] should look reasonable, calm. [He] tells [himself] this, but it doesn’t truly help, not really. “I should know my brother, shouldn’t I? There are very specific lines in the prayer about brotherhood beyond blood, and loyalty beyond death.”

  “Holiness, he is loyal, and determined to lend his strength. He understands his duty,” the senior priest says.

  “Then being allowed to speak to him, to learn who he is should be no difficulty,” [Teren] says in a voice of flat command.

  “As the Holy One wills,” the senior priest says, finally.

  Teren jerks awake, staring blankly at the timbered ceiling. For a moment, she is somehow still thinking like [him], the prince who was objecting to the sacrifice. She’s angry and confused, both angry for [her] brother, and angry that a boy was being groomed as a sacrifice for some unholy rite. That the “boy” who had been sacrificed--if he had been--was Nemar Jhan, the undead necromancer-king of the Five Cities and her unwanted betrothed just made things more confusing.

  She’s sweaty, and sick to the pit of her stomach as she thinks about the dream. Sick she thinks, from what she remembers of the agonized howling in the distance. Sick from the stench that seemed cling to everything and lingered in her nose and mouth as if there were a physical source. Sick from the content of the dream, of [his] anger and helplessness.

  (The first times she had awakened from a dream where she dreamed of Nemar Jhan as a boy, there was always a stench. A stench and distant howling that was never distant enough. There is a fog or reddish haze in the distance which is [miasma].)

  Teren breathes in the more ordinary scents of the inn. She can smell bread baking--has been smelling it for some time, she realizes. She can smell eggs and sausage, the smell of flat cakes. Her stomach growls hungrily, despite how queasy she still felt. She sits up slowly, and fills a wash basin with cool water, before wiping off the sweat.

  Initially, she thought her dreaming mind was inventing stories based on her research into the history of the Assembly of Five Cities. Usually, she was watching or interacting with a much younger Nemar Jhan in some way. Sometimes she spoke or interacted with teachers, relatives, superiors, or servants. Disturbingly in these dreams, she was often addressed as "Holy One." The person she was in these dreams was a prince, a priest and a mage.

  The official courtship between herself and Nemar Jhan had lasted about a year. There had been letters first, Jhan' letters had been cordial and detailed, and had been--Teren had thought--been intended to be reassuring. Teren's letters had been stiff and formal. She had studied the history and legends of the Assembly and its religions. She studied the history of the conflicts between the Assembly and the kingdoms of the Dosai. Nemar Jhan had little reason to love Sewen or the Dosai. (Or for that matter, the Sarmateon faith.) That he had agreed to this marriage alliance was...surprising, even with the threat of encroaching Kaneket tribes.

  After the letters, there had been a state visit and a series of scheduled meetings. Those had gone...not bad, but not good either. He had not seemed corrupt, nor did he seem to possess any of a thousand little vices she would have expected a servant of Ashten to have. He had seemed tolerant with a wry sense of humor that she absolutely could not bring herself to trust. His very attempts to reassure and show kindness had set her on edge. For all of his unobjectionable traits, she couldn't help but see him as strange and uncanny. His demeanor had grated on her nerves--and she hadn't dared trust it. She hadn't dared trust him.

  She had felt trapped and frightened by the prospects of her marriage to the Lord Warden until Caris came to her rescue. He had proposed that they switch as they had done when they were children. A switch that would be for something other than simple childish mischief. Caris would impersonate her, and travel to Mir. Teren hoped Caris hadn't gone through with his assassination attempt. She would have preferred he find a way to escape--but she knew if their positions were reversed, she would attempt the same.

  (She was terrified for him.)

  Teren's impersonation of her brother hadn't been intended to last. After seeing his “sister" off, "Caris" had retreated to a hunting lodge outside of Nivaelan. Caris had left her supplies and a donkey. Dressed as a mendicant, her hair chopped to barely chin-length, she started her way toward Aruis. From there, she planned on joining a women's monastery.

  That was more than a month ago. She has no way of knowing how her brother fared, and so far she has evaded pursuit. Teren rolls out of the bed and cleans up the mess on the floor before taking care of her morning ablutions. Dressing, and packing for her departure from the inn came next.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  She starts downstairs toward the inn's common room. She pauses two steps down the staircase at the sound of voices. At the sound of one familiar voice, asking questions. Teren immediately recognizes the voice as belonging to her uncle Treyse Grann, Lord of House Ewel. Her heart speeds up at being found. She takes a deep breath: she's not caught yet.

  Teren carefully reverses her steps and heads back to her room. Quickly, and quietly and as she can despite its size and weight, she shoves the clothes press in front of the door, and checks the window. This room looked over the inn's kitchen yard. There's no one in the yard at the moment; likely the inn's servants are eavesdropping on this apparent drama that's come into their home.

  Teren quickly reduces her baggage to a single bag, then opens the window and cautiously steps out onto the roof. From the inn's roof, she slides down to a shed, and from the shed, she drops to the ground. It's not the best or most comfortable landing, but she manages. She looks around cautiously, but it doesn't seem that she's been spotted, except by the inn's chickens. (The rooster in particular is giving her a suspicious and baleful glare as he stands protectively near his ladies.)

  There isn't any way she'll be able to make it to the stables to get her donkey. She knows that her uncle's men will have been positioned there to keep watch for her. Instead, she goes over the kitchen yard fence. The inn is just on the edge of the small border town, set back against the woods. If she can make it into the hills of the Sewen/Aruis border she hopes to evade her uncle's men.

  She's as much of a hunter, and as woods-wise as her brother, so she makes some good distance before her uncle realizes where she must have gone. It isn't long before there's pursuit. Within two hours of setting out, Teren could hear horses and soldiers in the woods--and despite her best efforts, it isn't long before she is spotted. She hears cries of "Teren!" and "Lady Kelfin!" from her uncle and his men, and she runs.

  There isn't any way she'll be able to outrun them, so she frantically seeks a hiding place. It isn't long before she ends up in a semi-circle of riders and foot soldiers attempting to ring her completely in. Panicked, her run becomes heedless of the ground she's running over. The land is hilly and uneven, the forest is full of dense thickets of brush. She eventually takes a wrong step, and rolls down a steep hill and into a ravine. She lands at a bad angle and hears a crack as bone breaks. For a moment her vision whites out and her frantic brain freezes as the pain knocked the breath out of her. She gasps and her stomach twists sickeningly before she blacks out.

  Teren wakes up to the rattling of carriage wheels over stone. The carriage jostles her in a way that makes her feel a little dizzy, and jounces against her leg, which is a throbbing agony. The pain seems to go all the way up her leg to her spine, and from there buries itself in her skull. She can't hold back the whimper of pain.

  "Niece," Uncle Treyse says. Her eyes don't want to focus on him at first, everything hurt too much, and her vision seemed slightly blurred. Eventually, her eyes grow accustomed to the dim interior of the carriage, and her uncle’s pale face sharpens into focus. He looks worn and disappointed in her--and Teren can't help but feel a heart-squeezing kind of shame at that disappointment (even as she resents it). "It's quite the chase you've led us on, princess."

  Teren swallows, her throat dry. "I won't apologize," she says. "I have a greater vocation than marriage."

  "Is that the excuse you're using?" Uncle Treyse asks skeptically. "You suddenly have a religious vocation because you find the marriage that was arranged for you to be inconvenient?"

  "You make it sound like I made my faith a convenience," Teren says. "This is a true vocation." Her voice is shaking, and one of her hands reflexively clenched into a fist.

  Uncle Treyse snorted. "If I sound that way, it's because it seems more than likely, however pious you are. You ran because you were afraid, and you dragged your brother into this--this thoughtless escapade." He glares at her. "Do you have any care for the trouble you've brought your brother? Your family? Yourself?"

  "I had a greater concern for my soul--do you really think I would have been allowed to practice the faith? The mage-king has burned down temples and massacred priests in the past."

  Uncle Treyse gives her a tired look. "From what I've read, we were burning their sacred places and at one point he spent most of a year in captivity being tortured and repeatedly murdered in a variety of ugly ways."

  "So, you'd have me marry a man with a definite grudge against those of the faith?" Teren asks. Her voice shook slightly, imagining being married to such a man. A servant of Ashten, whether knowing or not, motivated by anger and spite. (At the same time, she remembers the boy from her dream, solemn and attentive as he performed his strange rite. There had been nothing ill or foreboding about that child--but that child was long centuries in the past. Whatever wore that skin was not--could not be--that boy.)

  "The Lord Warden does not seem like a man who would go against his word," Uncle Treyse says. "A stipulation of the marriage contract was that you'd be permitted a priest, and that space in his own home would be dedicated as a chapel. Does that seem like someone waiting to exact some petty vengeance by refusing you the right to practice your faith?"

  She had no good answer for that, and she and her brother had made all the arguments they could. Everything they had said had been dismissed. Anything she said would be taken for speculation, and the feeling of danger she felt would be taken for the fears of a girl who was afraid of marriage. There was a danger to this alliance. It would make them an enemy of Aruis, and Sewen’s relationship with Aruis had always been rocky. It was already causing conflicts among more conservative noble houses and the mercantile houses that wanted to increase trade with the Assembly. It was causing conflict and endless debate within the priesthood. Teren doubted also that a marriage alliance would be enough of a tie, given the history between Sewen and the Assembly. The Sarmateon priesthood had tried hard to convert the Joa and the Tosa and had entirely failed. She couldn’t help but feel that the Assembly would turn on them eventually due to long-held animosity and because the Kaneket were also pagans.

  She could see that her uncle was of no mind to sympathize with her. "I could not marry him, uncle," she says. "I could not marry a pagan."

  "But you could send your brother to betray an alliance," Uncle Treyse says harshly. "An alliance that is sorely needed. How is that the action of a righteous and pious woman?"

  Teren could mention saints who had turned aside powerful pagan suitors or refused marriage outright for a life of faith. She has a feeling these arguments would fall on deaf ears. She notes the way her uncle keeps returning to the issue of her brother having impersonated her, however obliquely. It sent a little thrill of unease through her. "Has. Has there been word yet? About Caris."

  "Oh, now you ask?" her uncle asks, a sarcastic edge to his voice. "The envoy sent word back via pigeon concerning the assassination attempt. Your brother lives, though we don't have very much information on what condition he's being kept in. The Archon of Mir and the mage-king were arguing for further negotiations under the pretext that the marital alliance is in question since their king married the wrong sibling."

  "What's going to happen now?" Teren asks.

  "You are going explain yourself to your parents," her uncle says. "Then you will be confined in the Rose Tower. With luck, we can hopefully salvage this. There are some indications that they are willing to negotiate. We might be able to do an exchange without anyone losing face or needing to rewrite the marriage contract."