Castle Oakcrest was misery.

Night had fallen by the time I left Boston. I reached Castle Oakcrest at the same time as Cornelius's retinue. The older man was in a state of shock. He seemed to have detached himself from himself. I wanted to go inside, to see Katya. But I felt the need to wait as he dismounted.

The little man shuffled over to me. His face was constipated with emotion. He needed to break down and sob and let the feelings out. But he had been sitting in the Lord's Hall. Now he was standing before his remaining knights and the Sword of Boston. The man had lost his daughter in an event as sudden and random as a lightning bolt. It brought me perspective. Lauren had become precious to me because she was a friend in a world where I had few enough. But I hadn't known her a year before. This man had lost his daughter, his baby, his heir, his legacy for the future.

I embraced him when he reached me. He felt like a deflating ball. He sagged into my arms like a corpse, though he did what he could to compose himself with what remained of his energy.

The thought flashed through my mind that Leona had named him as one of the conspirators. After she told me that, it had soured me on the man. It spoiled the evenings I had spent before the fire with him. It spoiled the way he had drawn me into his family and his circle so welcomingly.

When I parted from Cornelius I went into the castle. I was both urgently eager to see Katya, to be near her for a time, to make up for the way I had abandoned her in her time of need. At the same time I desperately wanted to be anywhere else.

When I entered the doors, a lady directed me down the hall. I was still in a daze and followed her instruction, not even thinking that I hadn't told her it was Katya I sought.

When I entered the indicated chamber I didn't find Katya. I found Lauren.

She was laid out on a dais. I was too dazed to wonder what the purpose of the altar was. Was this a permanent mourning chamber that the castle contained. Whatever the explanation, the reality of her body was before me.

They'd changed her clothes. The shredded bloody dress was gone. The blood had been cleaned from her flesh. What remained was the most beautiful corpse in the world. I stared at her in shock. It was real. It was so terribly and unavoidably real.

Her face was almost unmarked. There was a blemish on her brow. I could imagine she had hit her head on the ground when Perdinger killed her.

I thought at first that she was perfect. At first glance I was looking at the incredible beauty that had stalked the Choosing. The perfect picture of womanhood that had obsessed me.

But I stared too long.

As I stared I could see the discoloration around her ears and the back of her neck. The blood in her body no longer had a beating heart to drive it and it was settling. The skin of her perfect face was icy white, but growing mottled. Her eyes had seemed closed, as though she was sleeping, but I saw now that the lids were pulling back as the body contracted in death.

It was beginning. Lauren was in decay. The process had started, subtly now, that would end in her being nothing but bones beneath the earth.

A shuddering gasp passed through my lips. Tears sprung unbidden to my face.

I fled the room, staggered down the hall without direction. Maybe I moved with intention to the room I had found most comforting in this building. Maybe I just stumbled blindly. Whatever it was that drove me, I found myself in the private living room where we had spent evenings together since the end of the Choosing.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

A fire crackled in the hearth.

Katya sat before it, staring into the flames.

She turned her head to look at me. At first it seemed like she didn't even know who I was.

She wasn't crying. I had probably missed the time of tears. No, she wasn't weeping. Her eyes were dry. They were as vacant and hollow as the eyes of the corpse I had just escaped from.

I said, "Katya… I'm so sorry."

She kept looking at me. Was she judging me for leaving her. Was she judging me for failing in my promise to bring the killer back.

I said, "I nearly got him. I was so close. But there were knights. I fought them. I killed them all. But he was gone, inside the walls. I was going to get him Katya, I promise you, I was going to bring him back for you."

As I rambled she rose and moved to me. She put her arms around me. It was the third embrace I had felt that day. It seemed wrong that she was comforting me. She was so small. Even without my armor she was tiny. But the nerves of the suit conducted the touch of her little body to me, I felt her squeezing me and it was like the pressure forced it all to come out.

I sagged into her, ragged wheezes pouring out. I cried. I moaned. It was the first moment where I had felt like I was in a place that I could.

When the storm of my feelings passed I sat with her. We didn't say much. She was cold. She was terrifying. There were gears turning in her head that I couldn't begin to fathom.

The night grew later and she rose from her chair. Her sadness surfaced again as she moved closer to me. "Tiberius… I… I need to sleep now. It would be nice to sleep so I could forget—"

A pitiful little sob erupted from her throat, interrupting her.

I rose and held her again. She pressed her face into my shoulder and I heard her muffled words. "If I go to sleep then I won't be thinking about it for a while. I need to do that now."

Her voice was so small, so broken. It wasn't Katya at all.

Then, like black magic, I was outside again. My memories of that day are stretches of vivid perfection I wish I could forget, and black spots of nothingness I will never know.

It was late, close to midnight. The ground still smelled of the wetness of the storm. The rearguard of the tempest drifted across the sky, trailing wisps of clouds that cast an incomplete veil over the moon.

I thought I was alone. The castle was asleep. A couple of weary guards moved in the courtyard. I could hear the steps of a watchman on the walls above.

I felt cold.

Then I saw the horseman a few yards down the path. A sole figure, sitting astride a horse. Both man and rider somehow seemed to face into the night. At first I thought I was imagining their presence.

The man was waiting for me.

I moved to him, secure in the powers of my suit. He was waiting for me. A dirty part of me imagined he was here to do me violence, and I craved it. The greatest peace I had known that day was killing the knights of Buffalo. I prayed for another chance to deal death, to fight, to forget.

When I grew closer, I breathed, "It's you."

Zeb said, "It's always me."

I said, "What are you doing here?"

He ignored the question and eyed the night-darkened walls of the castle that rose above us. "Bad business that."

I nodded. "It was. It is."

He eyed the lance hole that still marred the surface of my suit. He said, "Did that make you feel better?"

I hesitated. He couldn't know I had fought the Buffalo knights. Could he? It was Zeb after all.

I said, "It did."

He nodded. "It would."

I said, "What are you doing here, Zeb?"

He said, "You gave me a mission."

For a moment I was nothing but confusion. A mission? My mind wandered aimlessly for a moment, lost in the desert of despair that this day had been. Then I remembered.

I said, "My mother?"

He nodded.

I said, "You found her?"

He said, "Dunno. Your Lord Supreme has had me busy in Buffalo, and you told me not to shirk my duty there. But I put feelers out. I have an address."

I said, "An address?"

He said, "For where your mother lives."

I said, "My mother died…"

He just stared back, not hiding his vague disdain for my slow uptake.

I said, "My mother's alive?"

He shrugged. "I didn't go out there to check her pulse."

He held up a shred of parchment. "I have a source says there was a lady living here a year ago. A girl who was a bastard daughter of a Montagnion. She had a boy years back that could have been you. Source didn't identify your Da as ever being a resident."

He held the parchment out to me and I took it.

I looked at the words scrawled there in barely legible script.

I exhaled. "The City of Angels."

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