Vestige (20)
Once I'd recovered enough to move, I dragged myself out to the front lines.
Serepina tried to stop me, her face crumpled as if she were about to cry. It made no difference.
I wasn't out there fighting.
I'd strapped a sword to my belt and tried to follow her, but she fixed me with a look that promised she'd saw my legs off if I took another step.
She'd taken my wrist off without a second thought. Ankles wouldn't be any harder.
Sometimes—rarely—when I'd taken injuries that should've killed me and somehow didn't feel like I was dying, that strange sensation I'd first felt in Rineta's village crept back.
The feeling that I could stand against anything, anyone.
A groundless certainty that the world would bend to my will no matter what.
These days I wasn't throwing myself into danger to chase that high. I sat in comfort and safety behind the lines, mingling with noble lords.
Thinking back, things rarely went the way I wanted.
And when they didn't, it was usually Serepina, Estelle, or Levina throwing everything off course.
I kept those thoughts to myself. I knew damn well that grumbling without having accomplished anything made me look like a fool.
Thanks to Serepina, I was stationed well back from the action, watching mages hurl spells into the distance.
The view outside the window looked like another world.
Streaks of light splitting the sky, no different from fireworks I had nothing to do with.
I stared out at it, nursing a cup of cheap coffee.
It wasn't like I was trapped here.
The command had requisitioned a civilian house near the battlefield—bed, decent food, nothing to complain about. But a gnawing urgency wouldn't leave me alone.
If anything, it was making me restless.
Killing a few demons meant nothing. We weren't capturing many prisoners, either—not demons, not heretics.
Nothing I could pry out of them helped.
Whether they had people from Earth stuffed inside their heads like me, I couldn't tell. They seemed proud to blow themselves to bits in an "honorable" death before capture.
I pulled a dagger from my belt and laid the flat of the blade across my palm, turning it idly.
The cold steel was a sharp contrast to the heat of my skin.
Then someone stepped through the open door—a face I vaguely recognized.
I regretted leaving it open.
We'd attended classes together. A noble who'd hung around Kyle more than most, though his name escaped me.
I seemed to recall him saying something over a meal once, but I hadn't paid attention.
His left arm was wrapped in bandages. He limped.
"An illegitimate son with no rights shouldn't have any obligations either."
He tilted his head.
"I can't figure out why you keep throwing yourself into the front line like your life's worth nothing. You don't strike me as some honor-crazed fool."
I didn't answer. I shrugged and drank my coffee.
It had gone cold. Tasted like mud.
"You know what the soldiers are calling Kyle these days?"
The young man stepped closer.
I pulled the revolver from my waist and leveled it at him.
"I don't give a shit. Shut your mouth."
His face went white. He backed out of the room.
I tucked the gun back inside my coat.
I fished out a cigarette, stuck it in my mouth, and lit it.
Inhaled deep. Exhaled slow.
The haze of smoke drifted into his face as he retreated.
His frown followed him out the door.
Beyond the empty doorway, the distant thunder of shelling rumbled on.
The sound of a world coming apart.
And so the days passed. I lay in a bed that never quite got comfortable, slept, ate, and wasted time.
Mostly I spent all day reading books Serepina had recommended.
Vague treatises on spellcraft—how to cast, what it felt like. Nothing concrete.
* * *
A few days later, Levina showed up, her face drawn with exhaustion.
Her armor was dented in half a dozen places. Dried blood crusted her cheek.
I was smoking again, same as always.
She looked at me, said nothing, just smirked.
Then she walked over, plucked the cigarette from my fingers, and put it between her own lips.
She settled onto my lap and kissed me, forcing the smoke down my throat.
Acrid heat clawed deep into my lungs.
"Cough—hack—"
I choked, glaring at her. She smiled, lazy and pleased.
"Yes. This is where you belong. Buried in a place like this."
She brushed the hair from my forehead. Her fingers were cold, rough.
"While your sister's out there breaking her back, how was it? Resting up nice and cozy inside?"
I gave no answer. I stared at her.
Fatigue dulled her eyes, but something lurked beneath it—a strange, fevered glitter.
When I still didn't speak, she stood, looked down at me, and touched my cheek.
"Say something. Come on."
"Instead of staying somewhere safe with me, you crawled all the way here just to be dead weight—how was that?"
"Sometimes I think you're asking me to hit you," I said.
I stepped closer, reached out, and crushed the cigarette between her fingers and mine.
The ember flattened against our skin. A faint smell of burning flesh.
"I can't act like your parent. This is all I ever learned to do."
I didn't slap her cheek so much as tap it, a few sharp pats.
Her skin was cold.
The more we talked, the clearer it became: Levina seemed to understand being hit as something close to a parent's love, or at least a parent's attention.
I wanted to believe I hadn't gone that far off the edge.
Every time I realized I was doing exactly what she'd always done to me, I wanted to find a rope.
Levina caught my hand against her cheek. She laced her fingers through mine.
"I'd like to stay like this. Right where everyone can see. What do you think the reactions would be?"
"Your fiancée and the Saintess, watching brother and sister cling to each other like this."
I wrapped my hand around her throat and squeezed, just enough.
"They'd probably try to strangle you to death."
She laughed through the constriction, a choked, rasping sound.
I wasn't gripping hard enough to cut off her air.
"By you—hck—not them?"
"Yes. They'd have plenty of reason."
Levina was pitiable.
Whatever she felt, whatever she saw, whatever she experienced—she'd grown into this. A person who could only think this way, only act this way.
And I was no different.
Only after I'd died in front of her, blown my head apart, did anything change. Before that, no matter what I did, everyone must have seen me as barely distinguishable from her.
The way Levina craved kisses from me, the way she sometimes approached with words that sounded almost like love—I saw her as exactly what she was.
Nothing more.
With Levina here, Serepina and Estelle would be back soon.
I let go of her throat. I exhaled.
"We'll probably live like this for the rest of our lives."
"You're already thinking that far ahead."
Levina's voice had settled back to its usual cold composure.
But something nagged at me—an odd expression I hadn't seen on her face before.
"Not the rest of our lives. I'd be fine if it stayed like this... if you never married anyone, if you died with me. But I'll die first. At least that way you'll never forget me."
I walked out instead of answering.
She followed.
Her footsteps were strangely light. Her voice, drifting after me, held a note of elation.
"Is my love too much for you? Too heavy? Hm?"
"Yes. Heavy enough to crush me flat."
Outside, the air was thick and stale. I stretched, gazing toward the distant clamor—shouts and battle cries still echoing from the front lines.
The sky was a flat, indifferent blue.
"Anyway, when's Serepina coming back?"
"Not sure. It'll be a while. The demons pulled back, but they left a mess of stragglers behind. Lots to clean up. Still, she should be back by tomorrow."
Levina tilted her head as she spoke. Her expression remained odd.
"Estelle will probably be back tomorrow too."
She walked slowly around me, then stopped directly in my path.
"Can't we just go back? Now. Marry Serepina, marry Estelle—I'd genuinely bless it, genuinely help. Return to the territory. Live peacefully. Somewhere you don't have to hear any of this."
"Ravin, you know you don't belong here. Ever since that day I visited the annex, you've seemed like a different person. Let's go back. I mean it—I'm worried about you."
I looked at her.
"If we go back, will nothing happen?"
"Right now we're not even pushing the demons back. We're getting pushed ourselves, barely plugging the holes as they open. Can we really live peacefully, like nothing's wrong?"
I kept going.
"It's possible... it's not impossible... but the end would be unbearable."
Watching someone walk off to die is never pleasant.
I'd come back. They wouldn't.
"So, sister, die with me here. Die to the demons. You killed your own mother and fell in love with your little brother—as far as endings go, it's fitting. Die fighting for humanity. Something like that."
"Then kiss me."
"It's the sort of thing that only happens in cheap romance novels, but tell me your cruel words and the disgust and the coldness were just because you couldn't admit your feelings. Love me. Really."
I smiled, gave no answer. Levina approached slowly.
She stared at me, and when I didn't push her away, she stepped in and wrapped her arms around me tight.
For a long moment.
Our lips brushed, soft, then parted.
She leaned in again—
"Holy fuck. You've really run out of women if you're having an affair with your own sister now."
A familiar voice.
I turned. Estelle stood there, a disbelieving laugh dying on her lips.
And Levina, still in front of me, was smiling too.