When this blasted tournament ended, Astrid was seriously going to increase her Icicles' training schedule. Three of them currently tailed her; she had sensed their presence the moment she had left her mother's gallery only moments ago.

And what a befuddling conversation that had turned out to be.

Astrid hadn't quite decided what to make of her and Davina's conversation; nonetheless, it had set her on this current warpath of hers: tracking down Matthias, her so-called friend, who, Astrid had come to learn, withheld some fairly vital secrets.

Her jaw clenched.

One Icicle tracked her from the top of the fortress wall in the western-most guard's post. Two others were slinking through the shadows, following at, what they believed, was an inconspicuous distance behind her.

So, though Astrid may not know what to do with Davina's information she had just received, one thing was, at least, abundantly clear: her Icicles were hopeless without her.

Being constantly watched made her skin crawl. Not that she ever went anywhere particularly interesting besides dodgy pubs and worm-infested tunnels. Honestly, where did her mother think she would go? The arid, sandy deserts of Demue? Although, there could be real dragons there, which would certainly prove to be exciting. She snorted to herself. Then again, Davina was, most likely, only concerned with what secrets Astrid would reveal and not where she would actually go.

It made her feel trapped, these dogged footsteps behind her, the way even the clouds seemed to follow. Not to mention the horrible fact that, even though the Icicles were Astrid's to command, they still belonged to her mother.

Everything belonged to her mother.

She rounded a corner near the barracks, breaths oddly heavy as she braced her spine against the cool mountain wall to force her heart to freeze. It hammered far too quickly. The brisk breeze scattered a crumpled piece of parchment across the toes of her boots: a homemade banner from the second task. Her foot went to kick it away, but she hesitated. She looked at the word written upon it.

Salveretta.

Her lungs squeezed as the air around her felt somehow heavier. Smothering.

A farce. Salvera.

Astrid picked up her pace and slipped around the corner and into a familiar alley. Her feet carried her on rote memory. She ducked behind a personal barrack built a meter farther out than its neighbors and paused. The moon tried to break out from beneath the clouds as she patted the barrack's wall until she found the extended brick that had just enough lip to grab onto. Matthias had chiseled away at it when Astrid had turned twelve. It was the only gift he had ever given to her, but it was perhaps the best: an escape to him whenever she needed it. An escape from the fortress, her mother, the secrets and demands of her birth.

And he had apparently lied to her.

Had lied to her about a portal.

A magical artifact he should not have known about, considering she had just learned from her mother that Davina had never told him anything about it.

But could Davina's word be trusted more than Matthias's?

If she chose not to trust her mother, then all of this would have been for naught.

That caused, perhaps, the most claustrophobic feeling of all.

Astrid grit her teeth and gripped her fingers into the rough, scraping texture of the brick. With a single swing, she heaved her bodyweight up the wall and reached for the next poorly-constructed brick. She wondered what her Icicles would think about witnessing her jailbreak into Matthias's personal quarters. In the darkness of night. The thought made her smirk right before she reached the damp wooden windowsill. She braced her toes into a dip in the wall and stretched to peer inside.

A lamp sat on a table beneath the window, which revealed the small living quarters inside. The bed lay rumpled and unmade. A simple, wooden chair had a pile of armor covering most of it. An empty pint-sized tankard looked in danger of being kicked, stepped on, or buried underneath dirty laundry from where it stood, upside down, beside the chair. Astrid grinned to herself.

For a royal captain, Matthias had always been inexplicably messy.

She began to think she acted rather foolishly. "Curse you," she hissed, but she couldn't finish the threat because to whom should she cast it: the Scribes, Rainier's queen, or her captain? 

The window had been left slightly ajar. Astrid only had to give it a slight push before she snuck inside. A small part of her hoped Matthias had left it open on purpose, hoping she would come even though she had failed to visit him in months. Her feet landed on the rickety, round table before she hopped to the floor and shut the window without so much as a creak of the rusty hinge.

Well, she hoped her Icicles had been watching that particular performance because it had been fairly impressive.

She nudged a lone boot out of her path as she strode from the bedroom and through the opposite door. It led into a humble sitting area where Matthias rested on a small couch, his head thrown back against the cushions, eyes shut, some sort of yellowed map spread open across his chest. He wore a loose tunic that tied at the neck, but it was currently open, exposing the sharp, thick ridges of his collarbone. It was always an uncomfortable shock for Astrid whenever she saw him without his pristine, stiff uniform.

His posture remained relaxed, the crease between his eyebrows smoothed away, despite the fact that someone had just succeeded in sneaking into his personal quarters.

"You sounded as large as an ogre, banging your way up my wall," he said in lieu of a greeting.

Astrid huffed. "Are you that much of a liar now, 'Thias?"

Matthias opened his eyes to regard her. If his eyes could speak, they would have sighed. "Do you always have to make everything so dramatic?"

"When the situation warrants it."

"And what have I apparently lied about, Your Highness?"

Her arms crossed over her chest, breaths strangely tight. Their gazes met across the space between them. Secrets, his eyes seemed to whisper. I can't be what you choose. Astrid sucked down an accusatory breath. No one was more surprised than Astrid when her accusation morphed into something entirely different.

"You never thanked me for saving your life."

Matthias pushed the map to the side with an audible ruffle before blinking over at her. "You shoved me off a free-falling mechanical beast."

Astrid held herself tighter as he stood from the sofa, folding the parchment and placing it in the spot he had vacated. She felt her cuff involuntarily heat against her skin.

"Forgive me for not expressing gratitude for something you did out of spite."

Astrid's mind gaped. "Spite?" Anger swept in a wave over her, but it wasn't an anger she had expected. This anger hurt like being punched, and her hand clenched over her heart. "You think I chose you out of spite?"

His expression shifted like a stone in a river. "You knew your mother wanted her champion to choose the book," he said. "It's only natural you would do the opposite."

Her fists jammed themselves beneath her armpits. She tried to keep from gasping down air her lungs cried for. It shook her, these emotions running savagely within her, stemming from the apparent fact that Matthias—the only person in this blasted fortress she could consider her closest friend—hardly seemed to know her at all.

When she remained so still and silent, he cocked a look at her. His heavy brow pinched. "I'm hardly upset with you, Your Highness." It was such a formal tone it caused a sheet of red to obscure any remnants of Astrid's sense of control. "I bear you no ill will."

The cuff on her arm tightened against the surge of emotion threatening to swamp her. "How proper of you, Matthias." Her voice shook with the venom she wished to use to smother these feelings. "You deserve a bleeding medal for possessing such a forgiving nature."

Something in his expression shifted, but she had already turned away from him. Blinking rapidly, she imagined shoving the mess atop his trunk onto the floor, setting it aflame with her hands, tearing that gifted brick out with bare hands and shoving the bits of blood and dust in his statuesque face. Then, perhaps, he could see what real spite looked like. Instead, Astrid felt for her cuff, twisted her fingertips into the metal, focused on the restraint of it, and spun back to face Matthias with an unflinching expression of her own.

Matthias had just taken a step towards her. "Astrid—?"

"I am here for information," she interrupted him. "One that not even captains should have access to despite their claims."

Matthias watched her in return with an impassive expression. "A quest for information seems better suited for Sebastian, don't you think?"

"Yet here I stand before you." Her anger tempered into an ice that froze a sneer into place. "You claimed my mother told you of that portal." Was it just her imagination, or had Matthias's cheeks paled? "I regret to inform you that she, in fact, did not."

His jaw ticked. "Is this an interrogation?"

"Not quite. Not yet."

She took a slow, measured step forward, the kind she had watched her mother take all her life. A simple motion that screamed to others they were not the ones in charge of their own destiny. Of course, though, Matthias had been subject to Davina's intimidating nature himself, so he held his position. Even still, Astrid sensed the way his eyes scattered over her, assessed her, analyzing her powers to check her ability to keep control. His fingers rested above his hip, where his sword normally hung.

He feared she was losing it.

But she wasn't. Empowerment over having rattled him set her spine straighter. Her hands held firmly at her sides, she felt her power radiating from her. She met the apprehensive lines around his eyes.

"I saved you because I care for you," she admitted. "Not out of spite, despite how lowly of a human you may think me to be."

Matthias frowned. "I do not think—Astrid—"

"Stop saying my name." Though the demand was calm. Controlled. "I'm either a royal title or simply a girl. I cannot be both to you. Not any longer."

"And if you're neither of those options to me?" Matthias challenged.

"Then I suppose I am nothing," she retorted. "To you, anyways, it would seem." Matthias kept his lips firmly shut as she paced nearer. "How did you come to know of portals?"

His uncanny ability to remain poised had always stunned her, but it seemed more so now. Almost like he hadn't even heard her, though Astrid knew his ability to hear was as sharp as the fresh scar that ran from his elbow to his wrist.

He simply watched her as she stood before him, so near that she felt his words fall across her cheeks as he said, "You could never be simply a girl."

This surprised her even more, though she struggled to not show it. "That was not my question."

"I disagree. I think it would be the question of most importance between us."

Her breaths quickened. Us. She got stuck on the word for a moment; the idea of it caused her scowl to lighten. She had never thought she wanted nor needed an us. Us. It made her think of Sebastian now. Astrid pushed Matthias in the chest and stepped back, breathing heavily, and yet—

"The portal, 'Thias. How did you know how to get it to release Sebastian?"

A bone in Matthias's jaw seemed to crack, slack open, and a breath leaked out of him.

"First of all—" his eyes darkened as if trapped in an unpleasant memory—"you should know I did not live in Rainier during the Purge."

Astrid raked her own memories. He would have been but seven-years-old. Nothing more than a child throughout the events of the Purge. And if he hadn't been in Rainier, then how did he end up here? With her?

"But the borders were shut prior to the Purge. Nothing in or out. They've been closed ever since."

Matthias watched her closely. "You cannot close a door that doesn't truly exist."

Her mind, metaphorically, jumped off a dragon. "A portal?"

"Yes." Slowly, he released his hand from his sword and held his palms out as if to placate her. They were palms she could have traced the lines of in her sleep, and yet she barely knew them at all. "Even after the Purge, when Davina had succeeded in wiping the memory of elemental threads entirely from Rainier, portals still existed in Soleita." He paused. "At least, for a while."

This was what suffocation felt like. A direct punch to her chest, swarming thoughts flooding her lungs, drowning her. She grasped for what she could. "My mother—" her hands shook—"she preserved our magic. In the Monverta. She did what she could against Soleita."

"The Scribes—" Matthias frowned. "Astrid, you spoke with them."

She backed away from him. "Never trust a Scribe," she recited. "You told me that. The night we went to find Sebastian; yet, you are from Soleita? One of them."

"I'm not." He rushed to assure her. A hiss from a kettle that had only started boiling. "I came to Rainier through Soleita. That's it, I swear. I'm not from Soleita."

An undeniable curse punctuated his tone when he spoke of Soleita that Astrid found that she believed him. On that point, at least. "And my mother? Does she know of this?"

"Of course." His gaze met hers. "She brought me here. Anchored my passage to this side without any of us the wiser."

Astrid shook her head. "That isn't possible." Because she remembered what Matthias had told her and Sebastian in the tunnels: that an anchor had to be the blood of someone with the elements in their veins. "My mother does not have any elemental connection."

"She had none of natural origins," Matthias corrected, "but she had enough for that, by then."

Salveretta is a farce. A lie Davina constructed.

None of natural origins.

Astrid had an intense urge to tear the cuff from her arm, burn this entire bloody mountain to the ground, and then feed the ashes to the Abyss. A horrible pressure built behind her eyes; she blinked it back furiously.

"Where are you from, "Thias? Who are you?"

Matthias grabbed the back of his neck. "Listen, Astrid, Davina is not my queen, and you—" His brown eyes jumped, shifting once from her to the open window across the room and then to her hands, which she realized vibrated so violently she was surprised the entire barracks weren't about to topple over.

He lowered his voice, head bowed. "You were never meant to be my Salveretta."

Her back fetched against the doorway into his bedroom. It startled her, having not even registered retreating from him, but she leaned against it, grateful for the support. Her brain spun to fit everything together, to place what she suspected and what he had just told her into some hazy picture that made sense.

The only thought she settled on was—"Meant?" Her thoughts clicked into place. "You said I was never meant to be your saviour. But then who—?"

The muscles of his neck throbbed, and Astrid knew. Of course she knew. "You mean Sebastian." What a complete fool she had been! "You knew of him, didn't you? You helped me find him. Why?"

He ran a hand up his face and over his shorn hair, hair that she'd always secretly thought of as being the same color of a flash that lightning made on wood. She felt blinded by it now. Again, he looked at the open window behind her with a harried frown and then walked towards it. He made a large arch around her, leaving a respectable distance between them as if doing his best not to place himself in danger's range. She half-snorted at the thought, but it sounded oddly like a sob. She placed a hand over her mouth and nose as he shut the window and turned back to her.

"You need to be careful." He tossed an extra knife into her hands despite the fact he must have known she had multiple strapped to her. "These attacks are targeted, Astrid. There are those within the seven realms who want you dead."

Tell her something she didn't know.

"Are you one of them?"

A patterned knock interrupted Matthias from answering. The sharp sound clanged up from the bottom of the wooden staircase in the far corner of the sitting room.

Astrid's hand jumped to the knife hidden in the sheath at her thigh, but her frantic gaze tracked Matthias. He appeared in front of her, his pale hands on her shoulders.

"Get out of here."

His breaths slapped hot against her cheeks.

She found she could do nothing more than gape at him as he steered her roughly towards the window through which she had come. The callouses on his fingertips scratched agains the back of her neck. All her hairs stood on end. Her foot tripped over his boot as she struggled to stop him.

"Are you one of them? 'Thias! Tell me!"

He growled in her ear. "Stay away from Lambert."

"Lambert? The dodgy old librarian?" His fingers were thick as vines around her arms. "You cannot be serious!"

"It was his idea for that kill-switch on the dragons." He pressed her against the open window. "These attacks aren't only from outside Rainier's borders. They're from within."

She pushed at him, digging her heels into the fur carpet. "Who are you?"

The same knock sounded, louder this time. Whoever it was appeared highly impatient. Matthias half-lifted her out the window so she straddled its ledge. "I lied before—" His words fell in a rush—"in the flames. I lied. I do trust you. Now, trust me. Go."

He didn't wait for her response, nor did he look back to check she had listened to him. Instead, he strode to the staircase with his typical stoic confidence; though his uneven steps gave him away, falling heavier than normal as if he were counting down the seconds she still had to leave.

Bloody Hel. Astrid mouthed the words into the night before she leapt from the window.

For a split moment, she considered staying, refusing to leave, allowing whoever was waiting on the other side of that door to see her perched at ease on his windowsill. But she had also seen the crazed look in Matthias's eyes, the frantic way he had used his hands to push her to the window, the hushed way he had whispered to her. Trust me.

It frightened her.

By the time Astrid scurried around to the front door of Matthias's barracks, the mysterious visitor had already slipped inside, nothing but a swish of a red tunic to be seen.

Astrid leaned against the building to catch her breath.

From whom was Matthias so desperate to hide her?

There are those who want you dead.

You were never meant to be my Salveretta.

Her stomach plunged. Matthias had claimed Astrid wasn't meant to have been his savior, which meant he had expected to have one. Just not her. Someone else. Someone he had known. Had allowed Astrid to sneak out to find. Had led her to.

There was only one other.

Seabass.

- - -

Any bets on who Matthias actually is? Thoughts? Theories? Let us know! 

Random question of the day: If you could be any type of magical creature/being, who/what would you be?