A girl, one who most definitely was not Lambert, pushed her way through Matthias's front door. Matthias nearly stumbled backwards into the opposite wall in her haste as she demanded entry. The door snapped shut behind her, and Matthias made sure to keep his gaze from the stairs where he hoped Astrid no longer sat on his windowsill.

Odds were slim on that front. 

"You shouldn't be here," he snapped. "It's too dangerous."

She was clad head-to-toe in a heavy blood-red cloak. The hood, which she kept up, was lined with dark fur and strapped at her waist was a leather belt from which he could see a slim arrow swinging. He would bet money on the fact that her trusted bow created the bulge at the top of her spine. Matthias assessed her harried appearance with a little more caution. Her hands shook from where she held them in front of her stomach, slender fingers twisting together, stark white like bleached bones. She kept her head bowed, her long neck swaying from left to right as if in anxious search.

"What's happened?" He slid the bolt into place for extra measure and stepped towards her, taking her by the arm. "Did anyone see you?"

Abel shook him off and tossed off her hood. "Something's happened to me."

"Besides a concussion, which could be the only explanation as to why you are here?"

Even the edges of her soft, auburn hair shifted, trembling. "Just shut up and look at me!"

At first, Matthias wasn't sure what she intended for him to see. Her words had been soft; it should have, perhaps, been his first clue. They released on a shaky breath, though she didn't sound pained. Instead, it was fear in her voice. Awe. Horror. Besides, Matthias couldn't smell the metallic scent of blood, so it didn't appear she'd been hurt. When she finally met his gaze, and he truly scanned his gaze over her, Matthias struggled to not react.

Somehow, even his lips barely twitched.

He supposed he'd had a good decade of practice.

Holy Hel of the Abyss.

Something had happened, indeed. Matthias couldn't help but stare at her. Her amber eyes were held wide, the same tawny color he remembered them, and yet they gleamed like the realm's brightest stars against the creamier pallor of her pearly skin. As if overnight, her cheekbones had sharpened, her nose elongated to better balance out her distinct features. Her hair shone like a sheet of bronze as she tucked it wonderingly behind her ear.

Her ear!

The tip of it now ended in a slight point, like a child's drawing of an upside-down heart.

Matthias swallowed, hands clasped behind his back.

"I know," Abel began in that new, quiet way of hers. It sounded like a song, one that Matthias remembered with a pang from his youth. "I'm...stunning." With a single, graceful motion, she wrenched the belt from her waist and threw it against the wall. "I hate it. It's revolting!"

A grunted snort escaped Matthias, but Abel already marched up his stairs, uninvited. Despite her best efforts to make a sound, her angry footsteps remained as soft as a snowflake. "This is ridiculous! And don't you dare laugh at me, Soiree! Now, where's your nearest mirror so I can smash my own reflection?"

Matthias shook his head and followed her up to his sitting area. His steps were just as light as her own against the wooden stairs. The old, rickety step at the top didn't even so much as creak. "I don't keep a mirror in my quarters."

There hadn't been a reason to since his appearance had stopped changing the moment Astrid and Sebastian had released Davina's Monverta.

"A glass, then. Perhaps a polished shield?"

Before she could completely ransack his belongings, Matthias grabbed her by the back of her fiery cloak and redirected her into the nearest armchair. "Will you stop destroying my personal property and tell me when this happened?"

Instead of reprimanding him for tossing her into the pillows, Abel found the window across the room and glared at herself through it.

"For a while now, I guess. I could hear things I shouldn't. Do things. After Sebastian and Princess Bitch blew apart that wretched tower. By the Scribes, I don't know! But this morning, it was like...I—it was me, but it somehow also wasn't."

His heart thumped unsteadily, a broken war drum. "I can see that."

Her gaze met his. "Matthias, what am I?"

"Why do you think I would know such a thing?"

She scowled at him and crossed her ankles demurely in front of her. Then, as if she just realized what she'd done, she wrenched her legs apart and promptly sat on her feet, perched like a bird on its nest. A small smirk threatened Matthias's otherwise stoic expression. He couldn't help it. Curse the sudden childhood nostalgia she had brought forth into his home!

Abel caught it and glowered. "I'm glad this is amusing to you, Captain Stick-Arse."

"I'm glad to see your language has improved as well."

She threw out a hand as if to smack him, but she jerked it to a stop, catching the wrist with her opposite hand. She watched it wearily before stuffing it beneath her buttocks as well. "None of this is an improvement! I barely feel in control, and I can hear things. All the damn time. It's maddening! And have you ever noticed how slowly everyone else moves? Well, I suppose you haven't." She laughed bitterly, slumping against the arm of the chair. "For instance, I can't tell if you're just not saying anything because you're an arse, or if your human ways are just taking their gods-damned time!"

He blinked at her. "So, you think you're not human?"

Abel threw up her hands. "I have no earthly idea! If I had all the answers, I wouldn't have needed to come to you, now would I?" She peered over at him. "But I'm not human, right? I can't be. Not...not like this. I—" She bit off her words mid-thought and chewed on her tongue.

Matthias crossed his arms and studied her. "How old are you?"

"A gentleman should never ask a woman that."

"I'm hardly a gentleman." He narrowed his eyes and tried to picture her as she had been before all of this. Her skin unlined. Smooth. Round, rosy cheeks. The childlike wonder she had shown when faced with dragons and magic, not to mention the haunting mysteries of the fortress. 

"You can't be older than eighteen years."

Abel's spine straightened. Her neck tilted a little higher in defiance against her youth. "What does it matter?"

It was hard to keep his lips from twitching into a grin. There was something about her that made him want to push her buttons. Gods knew she did it enough to him. "Fine, so, seventeen, then?"

She glared. "Not quite."

Matthias swallowed his chuckle and leaned back in his chair. Sixteen. She had to be about the same age as—

A small piece of him he'd buried years ago clenched within his chest.

"You've seen a lot for one so young."

Abel flicked a nearly invisible speck of dust from her sleeve. "Well, you can thank my shitty family for that. Then again, they probably weren't my real family, huh?" She threw up her legs and slung them over the arm of her chair, sinking horizontally across it. The way the new sheen to her hair caught the light reminded him of the candles his mother used to light to ward off bad spirits. She side-eyed him as if she had heard his thoughts. "You must have had a rotten family. You're far too serious and tight."

Matthias raised his brows. "Tight?"

"Yeah," Abel clipped. "I expect your muscles just ache all the time. They're always tense like you're expecting a swift kick to the groin."

"You're quite the charmer."

"So I've been told." Her tawny eyes roamed over his face. He tried to relax to not add further fuel to her flame but suspected he failed. "So," she began again, "did you have a human family? They must have been human. You aren't nearly as pretty as I now am."

He scowled at her coy smirk. "You'll be insufferable to me, now."

She pushed her hair over her shoulder and blinked at him innocently. "You failed to answer my question, Soiree. And you really shouldn't deny me because I feel I have some hidden super-strength now and could most likely crush your wrist bones into dust, if I so wished." She flexed her fingers at him, experimentally wrapping them around the empty air as if she could crush the mere atoms of it.

Matthias snorted at the threat, leaning back more comfortably against his chair if only to prove to her that she could never frighten him. Even with her new face.

Although, that should be the most frightening thing of all.

Besides, she didn't have super-strength.

His fingers roamed along the jagged ridge of the scar running down his forearm; the wound he recently had reopened. He pressed against the lump that lay hidden beneath it. He barely winced, now. Thankfully, he had grown used to the odd, foreign pain even though it hadn't been there long.

His hand fell away when he felt Abel tracking his fingers' movements. He looked back at her with an unflinching stare. "My family was hardly terrible, and they're most likely dead."

Abel stilled so precisely that the recognition of the posture caused his next breath to catch in his chest. It was difficult to hold her gaze when her lashes lowered, and he cursed himself. He should have kicked her out of his personal barracks when she had arrived, looking so wide-eyed and cautious. He should have known it would have led to nothing good. Not for him, anyways.

In fact, come to think of it—he stood up to do just that, his skin and bones suddenly itching and restless, when Abel said bluntly, "Well, I'm glad they weren't terrible. To you."

Matthias glanced at her, attempting to mask his surprise, but Abel continued onwards, as per usual. "So, what am I, then?"

"Abel, I told you, I'm not—"

"You're ridiculous." She swung her legs from their slouched position and sat up. Leaning her elbows on her knees, she peered at him with her round chin resting on her clasped hands. "All my life, I've heard the stories of ancient beings: the water fey across the Ember Sea, the earthen-bound elvish communities in Galandreal, which, I suppose I now know, are real. Bash's mother told us stories about them, but they were just stories. Children's tales. But now they are true as am I. So, how did I end up here?"

Looking upon her, memories rushed, unbidden, behind his eyes: holding his newborn sibling in his arms while his mother met with the Willow, keeping his arms so still for fear of waking her with the slightest breath. Running through the trees, giggling in childish abandon as his cousin caused leaves to whip about his head, tickling his neck—

"There were stories." It was a near-silent mutter of admission first but grew stronger with each breath. "Stories that came from rumors. Rumors that arose from very real events." It was unnerving how his shoulders relaxed under her curiosity; for some reason, the tightness she had so acutely pointed out melted into weeping wax as the words escaped him. "When the Purge began, magical creatures—Elementi—were already dying breeds. They began to send their young here, to Rainier, to the humanity of this place. It was meant to save them."

Abel hummed, her expression entranced on his face. "Save them? From what?"

"The loss of their realm's magic, I suppose," Matthias said. It was hard to keep the bitterness from his tongue, the burning taste of hatred that ran down his throat.

"But there is no magic here," Abel countered. "Well, there wasn't—" She paused, tilting her head as if she heard his hesitance, the slight pause to his inhale, the small stutter in his heartbeat. He remembered how strong her senses had been when they had explored the underground tunnels of the fortress and discovered those mechanical dragons. He leaned away slightly as if that would help, his fingers back on that damned scar.

"What?" she asked. "What are you not telling me?"

He folded his arms across his torso. "It's unlucky your brain doesn't seem to have grown in intelligence like that pretty new face of yours."

Quick as a flash from one of Astrid's contraband solar flares, Abel shot a pillow across the room. It smacked into him, straight between the eyes. He half-growled at her, shoving the pillow aside, baring his teeth at her like a blasted wolf.

She only shrugged. "Quit trying to change the subject, Soiree. It won't work. I may not be able to read your mind, but I can read your expressions, or lack thereof—" She looked him over in a way that sent rapid, chilling bumps down his spine. "Now, tell me about these hidden, magical babies or you'll find something far more damaging lodged into your face."

"You are annoying as Hel."

Her slim hand waved it off. "Add it to the list you've already started against my virtue and start talking, Stick-Arse." She even had the nerve to tap her booted foot. "I won't tell a soul. Besides, I already know you've been in communication with spies from Soleita, and I haven't even told Bash." 

- - -

Whelp. Abel just dropping bombs left and right. And what does Matthias know, exactly? We had to split this chapter up into 2 parts, so more answers to come with the next one! 

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