"So why are you guys heading to the City of Emeralds?" Rogan asks, putting his cup of hot rice wine on the table with a thud. I look at Mikhael to see if he wants to answer the question since it's been his idea, but he looks like a thought is eating at him. Rogan's attention is fixed on me, I put my lips around my drink and take a slow sip.
"We're going to see an old friend," I say with a mild smile, Mikhael doesn't even grimace. His mind seems stuck somewhere else.
We came a long way towards Emerald City when a sudden shift in the weather made us take shelter at the nearest inn. There were plenty of rooms for us to occupy since no other travelers seem to be going this way as of late. The owner is a short man with a long white beard, and his daughter, a woman of maybe twenty years of age, helps him around the large establishment. Void of guests as it might have been until the six of us come across it.
I look at the table we're sitting at, not a single space left to put anything, as the owner has dish after dish brought out to us. I feel my stomach twist and ache as I, again, fill my plate with pickled root vegetables, lettuce wraps, tender beef filets, and fried soft-shelled crab in spicy sauce. I eat and eat until I think perhaps, I will burst. The others eat more moderately, chatting, laughing, and joking. No one has asked anything after Rogan. Perhaps they aren't that interested, perhaps I should've asked them questions instead, but I haven't had it in me.
I look to Mikhael, his first cup of wine still untouched, his plate just barely touched. I nudge him under the table, he jumps at the touch of my foot against his leg and looks at me. Neither angry nor sad. There's a nothingness in his face that I haven't seen in anyone for a long time.
"Where were you?" I ask, quietly. The others at the table still chat away about their coming adventures and earlier escapades.
"A long time ago," he says and swallows the entirety of his cup, refilling it at once and throwing it back in a matter of seconds. He looks to me, eyes glazed with the relief of alcohol, cheeks rosy almost immediately.
"You're not much of a drinker, are you?" He smiles and shakes his head.
"I took a vow you know – at the temple. To swear off temptations such as wine and…" he looks at the innkeeper's daughter polishing silver behind the bar, "women."
"Are women that much of a temptation that you couldn't do what you had to do if you… were fucking them?" Rogan asks, the group's attention now on us again. Meia and Terie, also rosy-cheeked and gleeful from the wine. I envy them.
Mikhael shakes his head and tosses back another cup. I feel a twist at the base of my throat. Something about this is too familiar, I just don't know what it is.
"For the work that I had to do… you need your senses to be clear, peaked at all times, to trust them, to ward off illusions…" It hits me just as he says it that he said he was 'something like a hunter' and now I put two and two together.
"You hunted mages," I say.
"I did," he answers, voice void of emotion.
"In the war?" Meia asks, her voice soft and nervous. The mood at the table shifts. I notice that the innkeeper's daughter has left the room. I don't have it in me to look at Mikhael as he addresses the company at our table.
"Long before the war," he says. "My friend and I got roped into a so-called 'closed society'. Now I would say it was a cult, no doubt. But at that time, I thought they had a lot of answers to all the questions I had carried with me for a long time. My fiancée… she died, murdered actually, by the Blood Warlocks of Mt. Onyxies and… when I was in that grief, I felt so helpless, so pathetic and small and it drove me mad. And in that madness – you can do a lot of things you will later regret."
We have all gone quiet, the room feels like it's been sucked into a vacuum. I have a hard time finding my breath. Sorrow glistens on Mikhael's face, but he doesn't shed a tear, doesn't even choke up. Rogan looks as if he regrets asking that question, staring blankly down at the table. Collum, who's been quiet for the entirety of this meal, albeit from some light chatter with his comrades earlier, sniffs. And as we all look at him, Mikhael included, we can see that he indeed is crying. His hands cover his face as his shoulders shake. Terie gets to her feet and hugs him from behind. Kissing the top of his head, shushing him.
I look to Meia, to Rogan, as if wanting confirmation that this is something ordinary, not something to worry about, and they just look with bleak sorrow at their comrades.
With her soft voice, Meia says "Collum and Terie's parents were witches… and they were hung at the beginning of the war, by the Crescent Queen." I hold my breath and now, everything in my body aches.
I don't want to be here anymore, do not want to know all of this, know these people like this. Their scars and sorrows, I don't want any of it. I chew at the inside of my cheek and look around at the mess of human emotion that's been puked all over the table. Darkness claws at us from the shadows. I get up, a sudden movement that makes my chair fall to the floor, scaring the others at the table.
I begin to speak but fail to find the words. I clear my throat and look at the people I have been dining with. "I am sorry for your loss," is all I manage to get out. Then I leave. Up the stairs, down the corridor to the right I find my room.
A bath has been prepared, still steaming from the heated water. At the wall opposite the bed, a hearth has been lit, the sound of cracking wood calming. I undress quickly and crawl into the hot water. My head underwater, I scream until there's nothing left inside of me. Hammering at the wood the bathtub is made of with my fists until I break the skin. I don't know what's caused this sudden burst of emotion, but everything I feel is… too much. So much. I feel like it's going to choke me, strangle me in my sleep. Perhaps, I want that. In those seconds under the water where everything is a murky and painless void.
--
A knock at my door as I'm just getting out of the tub. I recognize the pattern of the knock and the footsteps in the corridor, I know it's Mikhael. I answer the door in nothing, the water running down my naked body and dripping to the floor. He's seen me naked before, and at dinner, I suppose I saw parts of him exposed as well.
"You left," he says, his words catching me off guard. I'm puzzled by his presence, but I invite him in nonetheless. He pauses at the doorway as if assessing the situation, perhaps wondering if I'll pounce on him in this vulnerable state. He steps in finally, shutting the door behind him. I retreat behind a privacy divider and hastily slip into a moth-eaten nightgown and thick socks, hoping to ease any unease he might have.
"You left," he repeats, the words heavy with meaning.
"Yes, I did," I reply, although he's not posing a question. My hair is bundled up in a towel, and I settle onto the foot of the bed. The sheets are inviting, infused with the fragrance of Coral lilies, a scent that takes me back to the Pink Islands. It feels like home.
"Why?" his voice carrying genuine curiosity.
"I wanted to take a bath…"
"When everyone was… crying and baring their souls, you chose to take a bath?" I nod. "Don't you think that seems a bit… detached?"
"Why? Just because I don't feel the need to immerse myself in other people's emotions, to cradle their sorrows in my lap, to pat their heads and comfort them like children… does that automatically make me cold?"
"Yes," his words come out dry and hard, like needles pricking at my skin.
"I care about people," I retort as if those words hold the power to prove him wrong.
"Do you?" he questions, the hardness still present in his voice.
"I don't have to prove anything to you... after all, you're the one who hunted down mages and ended their lives," I shoot back, unyielding.
"I never said I killed them," he corrects me, though his face betrays the impact of my words. It's like a knife slicing through him, and I continue to deepen the wound.
"Perhaps you didn't personally end their lives, but you certainly hunted them, didn't you? And what happens to them once you have captured them? I've witnessed the southern prison camps, Mikhael. I know that they're condemned from the moment you catch them."
His response is swift, taking long strides across the room until he looms before me. His fist clenches tightly, knuckles turning white. In that moment, I almost wish he would strike me. I want the emotional turmoil within me to manifest as a physical ache. I hold his gaze, refusing to look away, as his demeanor freezes me in place, like a winter storm. I feel the electricity from under his skin, the pulsating of his powers as he is towering over me.
"I know," he confesses, his voice barely audible. Yet, the truth is there, words he tries to deny. Murderer. His eyes shift, revealing his inner turmoil.
"Don't worry," I interject, rising to my feet. The urge to share my experiences of saving individuals from the southern prison camps tugs at me, the women who fought alongside me to overcome the guards and the Spellbinders - mages capable of stripping witches and other magic users of their powers. I want him to realize the weight of his actions, and to fight with remorse and regret. But seeing the disbelief and anguish in his eyes, I opt for a simpler reassurance.
"I've killed too, you know."
His head finds a resting place on my shoulder as the words linger in the air, a confession hanging between us. Though he doesn't shed tears, it seems as if he longs to. An ache, mourning for something buried deep within him.
"How do you find forgiveness for yourself?" he asks, the question simple.
"I don't think I have,"