Dark had settled over the forest by the time Ira had managed to reclaim his lost Ossein daggers. Mayvalt had correctly called that it wouldn't be easy, but finally Ira had found one hidden in the mulch of the forest floor, and the other embedded in the cooling corpse of the slaughtered King of the Field.

Deciding that guiding a blind New Yorker through the dense forest sounded a lot worse than laying low for a few hours, Mayvalt suggested a campfire. Ira, bruised in every centimeter of flesh he owned, agreed. A part of him wanted to trudge recklessly ahead. It was a wickedly tempting instinct, one born and driven by the need to find Melchior. But he was able to eventually sooth the urge with memories of the last twenty-four tumultuous hours. Going to Hell, scaling a mountain, being held prisoner by a Greater Demon, and killing a mythical snake Beast being among the highlights.

So, camping it was. Mayvalt cleared a small ring in the soggy mulch for their dry kindling to lay, while Ira banged one rock against another until the resulting spark became a warm light. Mayvalt seemed mildly impressed, lifting one peach-colored eyebrow over her dark brown eye. 

"I thought you were a city boy." She remarked. 

"I am, very much." Ira agreed, blowing on the small embers until they caught on the tinder nest they had made of twigs, dried roots, and leaves. Once the nest was fully engulfed in a new flame, Ira pushed it into the heart of their stick pile with the end of his tanto knife. "I like to watch nature documentaries. I guess things stick." 

"That is. . ." Mayvalt cleared her throat in a way that made it obvious she wanted to say lame, "helpful." 

He sat back on his bottom, crossing his legs beneath himself to get comfortable on the cold ground. Newborn orange flickered up into the dark, casting long shadows that twinkled and danced across the prone copper corpse laid to the left. The metallic scales each became a small beacon, spreading the light of their fire much further than the kindling was capable of on its own. 

Ira wasn't particularly worried about sitting in the heart of the spotlight in the dark forest. It was obvious Nehushtan had been living in the rotten ground there, likely his scent would serve to keep away any other loose Beasts. 

"So," he croaked awkwardly, "Beasts do not stay in the pit." 

Mayvalt winced and turned her brown eyes down to the small fire, stirring at it with the end of her silver Fae-Iron bo. "Apparently not." 

Ira suppressed his irritation with a carefully short exhale. He rolled his shoulders to loosen the knot of tension that had been building in his tired muscles. "Care to explain that to me?" He pressed when he knew he could do so with an even and neutral tone.  

Her wide eyes found him, filled with orange flickering and doubt. "I. . . can't. I could only speculate." 

Ira nodded his chin once and spread his palms out, shrugging. "Give me your best." 

Mayvalt sighed and set down her bo, leaning back on the heels of her palms. Her eyes found a faraway place to fix to, somewhere up between the leaves and black sky. "Well, like I said, for a very long time the Beasts and wolves stayed in the Deireadh."

Pit--Ira knew. There was another name they used for it, but it seemed that He-Goats preferred this one. 

"To keep them from leaving the First Prince placed a Trammel over the top of the pit. If they're leaving now then it means that Trammel is fading." She pressed her lips tightly together. The warm coffee color of her face turned into a sickly pale. "Most likely he's dying." 

"Oh," Ira whispered. He didn't know how else to absorb the casual reminder that such powerful creatures, things he had always believed to be as endless as a bad dream, could flicker out of existence. "Are you sure?" 

"Trammels and gates are pretty much the same. They draw off their host's energy to sustain form. If the Trammel is fading, it means the host is too." She shrugged. She seemed carefully nonchalant about the information she offered, as if pretending the idea didn't bother her. "But there'll be really no way to ever know." 

"What do you mean?" Ira asked, head tilted. 

Mayvalt's eyes seemed to find everything in the world but Ira to settle on. They took a shift watching campfire light dance along golden scales. "The First Prince has been missing since the First Demon-Born wars--or since soon after. It's hard to remember now. He's been gone for. . . a very long time." 

"Missing?" Ira said in disbelief. 

Mayvalt nodded in agreement. "Right. It's as hard to believe as it gets. Princes can't just go anywhere they want. It was passing into Heimr that started all this mess in the first place. He certainly isn't in Elysium, either. On account of the exile."

"He's not in Hell?" Ira asked and then shook his head at his own slip-up. "Right, if you knew that he wouldn't be missing." 

Mayvalt huffed up a small laugh and nodded. "Yep, but I don't know. No one does. Not even boss." 

"Okay," Ira breathed. "So, the Trammel is weakened or dying so the Beast and Ze'ev-" 

"No," Mayvalt interrupted, lifting her palms. "The wolves never needed the Trammel to stay in the Deireadh. It wouldn't work anyways. The bigger the net, the easier for guppies to slip through. A Trammel made for Beasts would have little effect on wolves. Sap, even boss could wiggle through. We planned for him to rise out of the pit with the Trammel in mind."

"Then they stayed?" Ira said slowly. "On purpose?"

"On purpose, sure. Let's say that but not exactly by choice. It was their punishment for killing so many of their own kind and others. You know Avernians don't have souls, Ira. All that blood they spilled. . . sap, it's unimaginable. It was real and permanent death." She shivered. "So they went into the pit to atone. Where they stayed for countless generations." 

Ira felt himself prickle. "It isn't the Ze'ev fault--whatever their ancestors did. Why do they--did they--still pay for it?" 

Mayvalt tossed him an odd look before shrugging. "The wolves died out, new pups were born, but their king remained the same. Kago he's called. The Wolfking by those too scared to say his name. He's old blood, from the mother of all wolf kind. As long he demanded their punishment continue, it would."

Ira remembered that demons not only died forever, but they lived forever too--until killed by an outside force. He bit at his bottom lip, wondering how terrible the pit had been for them to live such brief lives. "Then what else changed? Why did the Wolfking take them out of the pit? Where did they go instead?" 

Mayvalt shook her head with a helpless shrug. "Pray to the six Princes that the Fifth can answer us." 

Ira pushed a jagged laugh from his clenched teeth and tilted his head to gaze up at the dark leaf canopy. "Angels, if only the counsel of Cardinals could see me now. I think Salamis Cedar would throw a party--'see, look at the traitor begging at the heels of any Prince who'll take him,'" He bent forward, sinking his fingers into his pale hair. "I really am exactly as they all feared I would be." 

Mayvalt's voice was sharp and bruising as she whispered across the crackling fire. "Is that really the worst thing?"

Ira's fingers ran down his cheeks to collapse in his lap. He lifted his chin, angling his eyes across the smoke screen between them. "I. . . I don't know. It's complicated." 

She blinked but said nothing. Her silence spurred on Ira's instinct to end it. He puffed up his chest and shut his eyes. He thought it would be easier that way. "I was raised to kill demons. Not really because it was right--I mean, that's what all of them thought--but because I had to fill a pool with enough blood to make my ocean of sin seem insignificant." 

"Your sin?" Mayvalt prompted gently. 

Ira's heart stuttered in his chest. "Yeah."

"Care to explain?" She said, parroting his earlier words back to him. 

Ira huffed a begrudging laugh through his nose and let his eyes drift back open to drink in the sight of her curled frown. "When the angels took me--my soul, I mean--and gave it to the Progeny they said I had committed an egregious mistake in the past. That's why I was. . . stuck. Running in circles over, and over, and over. Dying. . . watching others die. I remember it. I remember so much of it I-" Ira's throat squeezed painfully tight. He pressed his palms to his ears, desperate to shut out the memories. "I used to dream of it. In my sleep--I didn't sleep. I was bleeding to death in a battle historians wouldn't even care to name. I was suffocating on my own tongue--this was before science had a name for peanut allergies. Drowning, falling, freezing. . . burning." 

Mayvalt's skin turned pale, her eyes fluttered down to the campfire. "Heimrians aren't meant to remember for a reason, Ira. The rules existed to protect you. Whoever gave you your memories back, it was wrong. The All-King should have stopped it. No matter the war brewing or your attachment to Ba'al. Heimrians are. . .were off limits."

Ira smirked bitterly. "Right. Our attachment. I don't even know what that means. What does he want from me? Why is he always. . .there?" 

Mayvalt swallowed and picked her bo back up to stab at the fire. "I can't-"

"Mayvalt!" 

"No!" She snapped, her eyes wild. "I can't. I swore to never interfere with your life again. Please--I-" her voice cracked, breaking like the sticks being consumed in their small fire. 

Silence became heavy between them once more. Ira looked down at his scratched and red fingers. For something like an hour, they stayed perfectly frozen like that. Ira watched his fingers and Mayvalt stirred the fire until finally, Ira said in a whisper. "I don't dream of my past lives anymore." 

The briefest pause of Mayvalt's bo was the only indication that she was listening. But it was enough. It was better that way--to feel like there was no one but himself. "During the battle against Legion, I helped the Prince anchor his power to the lake. When I did--I broke something. Some dam inside of my head, this wall keeping me from going to far, and I smashed it to pieces. I couldn't remember him before. I don't think the angels meant for me to. But now I don't dream of anyone else. I just have these nightmares. These horrible twisted up visions. A lot of the time Melchior is there, taunting me for failing him. A lot more of the time, it's just me in his voice. But they always end the same way--with the Third Prince killing me." 

Mayvalt's breath hitched. Her fingers trembled where they held her silver weapon. "Killing you?" 

"Didn't he?" Ira pressed. 

She didn't raise to his bait, just shook her head and frowned. 

Ira sighed, turning his eyes towards the slaughtered king. "I don't know if I die. I just see his golden eyes--and a sword coming at me in a flash of silver too fast to track--and then the dream ends." 

Silence again. Ira was beginning to grow tired of silence. Mayvalt shifted on her legs, rustling the mulch under them. She chewed on her bottom lip and poked at the fire. Ira laid himself down across the cold floor and let his eyes drift slowly shut. Sleep would avoid him--he was glad for that--but he could at least pretend until dawn. Orange shadows danced across the back of his eyelids. Just as they began to dim, Mayvalt stood and trotted away. For a moment, he dizzily wondered where she had gone but he was quickly answered by the whoosh of fresh heat and the sound of new sticks cracking under eager red tongues of flame. They settled back into stillness after that, enjoying the mock-peace this moment could offer them. 

"Boss didn't kill him," Mayvalt whispered into the dark. 

Ira's muscles tensed before he forced them slack again. He rolled over onto his side and opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of her. She had gone back to poking at embers, her head bowed and her eyes uncatchable. He held his breath and his tongue, too scared to break the spell that had fallen over the midnight forest. No one had ever gotten this close to telling Ira the truth before. His entire existence had stemmed from events he had no recollection of, and the chance to glimpse on them forced him to be still. 

"But he tried." When she said it she laughed. Ira's chest felt strangely tight. His mouth felt fuzzy, full of forgotten words. "They both tried. He was a soldier. One of the first. A true knight of the Progeny. And boss was, well, boss. So, yes. They both tried. But neither one of them could quite find the strength to kill the other. The knight lasted for much longer than any foe who had ever faced the Prince. So long that his efforts charmed the Ely and they turned his cheap steel weapon into a Vestige just as it struck the Prince--I think it shocked them both. Or did something else, I don't know. But the knight saw the Prince bleed and surrendered just as the kill was his. The hate they had for each other became passion. They fell in love." 

The story was all too charming for Ira's tastes. It sounded like a perfect fairytale--but those rarely had the happy endings history rewrote for them. "Happily ever after?" He whispered. 

"Almost." Mayvalt choked. "They abandoned the war, choosing to find a home for just the two of them. Far away from everyone who wouldn't understand. But they made a mistake." 

Ira looked at her. Her face was unreadable through the smoke and shadows. "What mistake?" 

"The Prince was too trusting. Too attached." She said, voice cracking. "Long before the Prince met his knight, he met someone else. A little Faun girl. She had been orphaned by the war. With nowhere to go, he had taken her in. When the knight and him left together, they brought the little girl. But she made the knight nervous. The Prince tried to cover up all her demon parts, make her feel like a real child for them, but she was uselessly stubborn. For no good reason at all. It began to drive the knight mad--until he couldn't take it anymore. He told her to leave. So she did-" Mayvalt inhaled a sharp breath before forcing out her hoarse whispers, "she left and went right to all the people who the Prince and knight had wronged by giving up on the useless bloodshed."

Ira's blood pounded in his ears, drowning out the noise outside of his skull. But it wasn't enough to stop him from hearing what happened next. 

"The Progeny found the knight because of what she told them and they-" she might have been screaming, or whispering, or pleading, "-burned him on a pyre, tied to a post."

Ira felt his stomach cramping with sick. He pushed himself up onto his legs and straightened his spine, looking down at the ghostly orange flames between them. "Does the Prince know?" He asked in a whisper. "That the girl betrayed him?" 

Mayvalt only nodded. She sniffled softly. She must have been crying behind her curtain of pink curls. 

"And he lets her stay?" Ira asked, mind numb as the cold wind that came over the Hudson river. 

"By the time I-" Mayvalt choked again. It seemed it became a new struggle to speak of the girl as herself. Like the protective barrier had been ripped away. "By the time I found him and told him the truth, he wasn't able to feel anger at me anymore. The rangale made sure of that." 

Ira didn't really know what that meant and he didn't push. Grief made people--maybe Greater Demons, too--into apathetic shells all the time. "So that story--it's why you think you owe me?" 

Mayvalt risked a glance at him, perhaps curious at his nonchalant tone. "It was because of me-" 

Ira lifted his palms, shushing her with minimal effort. She didn't seem in the mood to speak over him and fell into the silence he offered. "All those bad things happened because adults picked their fantasy over the feelings of a little girl. It wasn't your fault, Mayvalt." 

Her eyes widened, filling with tears and campfire light. "No. . . no--I caused so much harm-" 

"You were hurting, too." Ira interrupted, eyes locked on hers. "They shouldn't have made you feel less than. They shouldn't have pushed you away. They were wrong."

Mayvalt blinked. The flutter of her eyelids pushed new tears over the rim of her wide eyes to roll down her pale cheeks. 

"It's okay to let it go now." Ira murmured. He thought of the story she had told him--of someone who was someone else and he knew that it didn't matter anymore. He wasn't exactly glad to have learned what he did, but there was a weight missing from it. Like the story hadn't been his own, no matter what his soul had done. A disconnection that felt centuries and miles long. The past--it wasn't Ira's past. He didn't yearn to learn more of it no matter how unanswered his questions still felt. "Whatever happened, it happened to someone else. A corpse, Mayvalt. Like it or not, that man died. His soul might have been recycled, but I'm not him. I can't forgive you--I don't know what he would have done."

"I know." She whispered, pressing her knuckles into her eyes. 

"And the Third Prince--I don't know what his deal is, but you don't owe him either." Ira said. 

She flinched. Her shoulders beneath her leather jacket stiffened. "I don't-" 

"Really?" Ira scoffed. "You don't follow him around like his personal butler, cleaning up the messes he makes, out of a sense of obligation? What else is there? Don't tell me you just like hanging out with him, then I'll really know you're lying." 

She giggled through her tears, "boss isn't so bad." 

Ira shivered, rubbing his palms over his arms. "What is that? Do I feel Hell freezing over?" 

She laughed harder this time, enough to crack a smile across her fragile features. Ira found himself laughing too, if only because the joke was lame and reminded him of something Father Pine would have said. As their laughter fizzled out, Ira set his shoulders with something like determination. "Don't you think it's time you lived your own life? You don't need forgiveness anymore." 

Mayvalt smiled softly, somewhat sadly, and lifted up her shoulders to frame her face in a half-hearted shrug. "I could say the same to you. Do you still feel like you have a sin to repay?" 

Ira tilted his face away from the scorching heat of the fire and frowned in thought. All his life, he had been on trial for falling in love. The punishment, he had been told, was purgatory. But there was no such thing. He was human--he had a soul that could never tire. Those were things Ira still struggle to comprehend, to accept. But he knew that one day he would. 

"Yes," he answered, "I still have a sin to repay." 

Maybe Mayvalt knew by the sound of his hoarse whisper. Maybe she knew it by the weight of the golden cuff on her antler. But either way, she nodded and said. "The wolf?" 

"Melchior." Ira whispered. The ache that rode in on the sound of his name was sharp and bitter and only ever settled in the space between Ira's heart and lungs. "The angels might have set me on this path for their own gain, maybe hoping I'd turn against the Prince. I don't know. I don't care anymore. I'll keep marching along until I find him." 

"I think that purpose is a beautiful thing." She murmured. When the silence came again, this time it was one of peaceful contentment. Ira settled back onto his spine against the mulch as Mayvalt prodded the glowing embers with her bo. 

"You should rest." Ira said softly, eyes closed and breathing slowed. "Tomorrow we'll face the Fifth Prince again."

Mayvalt hummed in agreement. "Do you think it will make a difference?" He opened one eye, finding her across the fire. Her head was turned left, locked on the cooling corpse. "There will be more Beasts. The Half-Bloods may never leave the Faun alone."

Ira's eyes drifted shut. The nightmares circled just beyond the threshold, begging to sink into him with fangs and claws. He said, just as sleep began to creep into the edges of his mind, "Maybe they need someone braver than Princes to protect them." 

If Mayvalt said anything in reply, it was lost to the beginning of Ira's dreams.