"Veratreez!" Amithaera's voice cracked like a whip through the tower as she stormed down the spiral staircase, her silk robe billowing behind her, and she angrily tied the robe tightly around her waist before screaming out again.

  "VERATREEZ!"

  The goblin appeared within moments, slightly out of breath from sprinting from wherever she had been, "Yes, m'lady?"

  "What," Amithaera said with barely contained fury, bringing up the parchment, "is this letter doing on my bedstand?"

  Veratreez glanced between her mistress and the letter, looking genuinely confused. "I... I thought you wanted to read it, m'lady. You kept looking at it during the cleanup, and I believed you wouldn’t want me to be rid of it. I just… I assumed that-”

  "You assumed wrong," Amithaera snapped, then immediately felt a pang of guilt at the goblin's flinch, at her expression. Veratreez had been working tirelessly all day, had organized everything perfectly, and was only trying to be helpful.

  "I'm sorry, mistress," Veratreez said quietly, squeezing her hand in the other. "I didn't mean to overstep. I just thought... the way you kept glancing at it... I should have asked first. I am sorry…”

  The genuine remorse in the goblin's voice deflated Amithaera's anger entirely. She swallowed hard and breathed out the heat that had built up, "No, I... it's fine. You were trying to be thoughtful."

  "I will burn it, m’lady," Veratreez announced hopefully, her little green arm reaching out for the letter. "I could take care of it right now, throw it in the furnace with the rest of the refu-”

  "No." Amithaera said quickly, bringing the letter up and out of reach, catching herself, "No, I mean, I don't need you to do everything for me. I can handle one piece of parchment myself."

  A tiny smirk flickered across Veratreez's features before she schooled her expression back to one of submission, "Of course, m'lady. You're quite capable."

  "Exactly… Now go and... do whatever it is you do in the evenings,” the Necromancer brought her arm back down, the letter feeling like ice between her fingers.

  Veratreez supplied, "Inventory and then meal planning for tomorrow’s event, m'lady."

  "Right. That…" Amithaera waved her away, "Carry on, little goblin."

  Bowing her head and taking her leave, the Necromancer was all alone once more in the throne room. Once the goblin's footsteps had faded, Amithaera climbed back to her chambers and closed the door firmly behind her. For good measure, she locked it, then walked to her bed and tossed the letter onto the bedstand again.

  She settled into the chair by her vanity, pointedly keeping her back to the bedstand. She had important things to think about. First, venture to Skyfallow as Nyssa, and make some excuse for a weekend absence.

  Perhaps she would say that she was visiting family in Harrathen, or taking a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Saintess Odellae. She'd need someone to water her flower garden while she was away, but only the outdoor plants. The indoor ones were poisonous, and… there were many items in there that would alarm people as to Nyssa’s true identity.

  At the very least, people would think her odd if they found the ceremonial daggers and pickled goat hearts.

  She began planning her route to the guild, considering which roads would be safest for a young woman traveling alone.

  Perhaps she could hire a wagon driver, play up the innocent village maiden act and ask lots of naive questions about dangerous bounties. Something to form a trail of appearances in order to keep questions away. Not that people needed to question where she was going. Was she overthinking this? Was she trying to keep her mind occupied?

  The letter crinkled softly in the breeze from her open window. Not even a second later, the woman used magic to shut the opening down with a loud thud and keep it from distracting her once more.

  Amithaera gripped the arms of her chair and forced herself to focus.

  She needed to gather intelligence, find out if more adventuring parties were forming, gauge the general sentiment about her threat level. It was purely reconnaissance, nothing more, though she could find it in her heart to peruse the markets for a day perhaps. Nothing too exquisite, just some of the month’s harvest and a gift for Crayma.

  "Yes… but not for you, Witch.”

  The Necromancer turned in a flash, a dagger materializing in her hand. She scanned the room as the Warrior's voice echoed in her mind. Willing her heart to slow, Amithaera cleared her throat and made away with the dagger.

  Not for her.

  As if the woman's final words were somehow sacred, too precious to be shared with the person who had killed her. As if Amithaera weren't worthy of whatever truth that letter contained. She was the Lord of Sulfur’s greatest follower. She was a student of the mighty, and utterly despicable, Vernon Soulsword, the master of the necromantic arts!

  With bravado in her soul, Amithaera stood up abruptly and strode over to the bedstand, snatching up the parchment with an expression of disdain.

  "Not for me. We'll see about that, you peasant," she muttered, settling cross-legged on her bed with the letter in her lap. She opened it well and good, examining the handwriting.

  It was careful and neat, obviously written during a moment of calm rather than in the heat of battle. Smudges of blood from whatever dumb altercation she’d gotten herself int-

  The woman coughed. She recalled where the blood had come from now…

  Amithaera read the first words on the letter…

  “My dearest Orson,” it began.

  There the name was again. She could rule out a dog now, unless it was a dog that could read. Amithaera had only met one of those in her entire long lifetime, and that turned out to be an illusion cast by a Wizard.

  She continued, right under the first line.

  “It's been three weeks since we entered the Darklands, and I can barely describe the things we've seen.”

  “Yesterday, in the morn, we passed a grove where all the trees seemed to move when we turned our backs to them, their branches clicking together in the wind like fingers that seemed to reach out for us, tangle in our hair and helms. Jirra swears he saw harrowed faces in the bark, but I think he's just letting his imagination run wild. The place does terrible things to your mind if you let it.”

  This Jirra was an astute man. Was he the Rogue?

  The Necromancer kept reading.

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  “This morning we found a village, a bloody village here! It was anything but normal.”

  “When we got close, we realized something was wrong with the villagers. None had tongues but spoke perfect Common. The soles of their feet never touched the ground as they walked. Silk strings clung to their spines, nearly invisible.”

  “I admit I screamed when I noticed. They were being puppeted around by some great hidden beast. Our Wizard, Raedalah, tracked the magic to the well in the square. We dared not venture in. The villagers gave us no bother as we left, nay, ran from the village.”

  Amithaera found herself drawn into the narrative despite herself. The Warrior wrote well of her travels, wrote them in such a way as to send a chill down the elf’s spine. Had she not known of what village the Warrior spoke of, perhaps she would’ve been a touch more frightened.

  The Great Spider Ghraza was not a hostile creature, but… yes, it did bother Amithaera that the creature took an entire village hostage like that.

  She continued to read, narrowing her eyes as she did. Every letter was so small, as if trying to fit her entire mind into one single piece of parchment.

  Granted, it was a very long piece of parchment.

  “I try, my love, not to let fear consume me. I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t terrified… not just of dying, but of not dying cleanly. I have witnessed what this Ameethara does to the fallen, seen the shamblin-”

  Amithaera paused her reading to poke fun at the dead woman, “Ameethara? I hope you’re not writing the bounties, woman.”

  She continued.

  “- seen the shambling corpses that were once adventurers like me. Just the thought of becoming one of those things… of my body being used to hurt others while my soul lay trapped within my form….”

  “I am sorry, my love. I know you despise reading such dark thoughts. You have always said I worried too much about things beyond my control. I have but one defense against these fears: You.”

  Amithaera rolled her eyes. The fear of undeath was so typical of the living. If they could just do some light research, they would understand that her zombies and skeletons were empty vessels, not trapped souls. Death was the grand release, sans several legendary spells, and this was not imprisonment.

  She kept reading.

  “When I’m afraid at night on my bedroll, I think of the night we met.”

  “Gods, I was so angry at you for knocking the pair of us into that fountain. You ruined my best dress, and on my grand debut at Harvest!”

  “Oh, but you looked so mortified, standing there dripping wet and stuttering through apologies. I nearly hit you out of frustration. I very nearly did, but I was thinking of excuses to give to the Harvest Mother as to why her finest singer was soaked to the bone.”

  “You saw me shivering in the breeze and you took off your own cloak and wrapped it around me, even though you were just as soaked.”

  “What did you say? You remember. You said: I can’t fix the dress but I can make sure you don’t freeze to death, and I’ll stand here and listen to you tell me what a clumsy fool I am until you’re dry again.”

  “And when I looked into your eyes, I saw such genuine concern, such sweetness, that my anger just… melted away.”

  “You walked me home and we skipped the festival. We talked for hours on my doorstep about everything and nothing.”

  “You told me about your plans to take over your father's bakery, how you wanted to create pastries that would make people forget their troubles, even if just for a moment.”

  “I told you about my dreams of seeing the world, of proving that a smith’s daughter could be more than what everyone expected.”

  “We talked until the sun came up.”

  “You never tried to talk me out of adventuring, even when others did. You never made me feel small for wanting something bigger than myself. You just listened and supported me, and you loved me exactly as I was: crazy and undeserving of your love.”

  Amithaera found herself holding her breath. She deliberately exhaled and inhaled, imagining the two of them on that doorstep, talking, knowing each other better one word at a time.

  “I think about you every morning when I wake up and every night before I sleep.”

  “I think about the way you hum while you knead dough, how you always save me the end pieces of fresh bread because you know I love them best.”

  “I think about Sunday mornings in bed, when you keep the bakery closed and we have nowhere to be but with each other.”

  “I think about the way you trace patterns on my chest.”

  “You make me feel like I'm home, even when I'm a thousand furlongs away in this cursed place. You make me feel like the person I want to be, fearless and strong and worthy of true love, true love from and for you.”

  Amithaera's hands trembled slightly as she read. The intimacy of the words felt almost invasive, like glimpsing something she had no right to see. She should stop. She should burn the parchment and be done with it. Let the words burn away and this beautiful, ruined future of a life begone… but she couldn’t.

  “If I don't make it back, Orson, my love, I want you to know that loving you has been the greatest adventure of my life. Loving you has been greater than any treasure or glory.”

  “You gave me a reason to be brave, a reason to come back home.”

  “I started writing you a poem yesterday, something to capture how I feel about our life together, about the future we talked about.”

  “I'm not very good at poetry, but I wanted to try. For you.”

  And then, in slightly different handwriting, as if written at a different moment of the day…

  “I close my eyes and I’m suddenly there,

  I see the garden we began behind your father’s shop,

  I see our future children, your gentle eyes below my red hair,

  Chasing butterflies between the crops.”

  “I see Sundays thirty years from now,

  When your hair is silver and mine is grey,

  Tea in the blue cups your mother left us,

  While we watch our grandchildren play.”

  “I see a larger bakery, tables where families gather,

  The scent of your cinnamon bread drawing them in from the cold,

  My stories I’ll tell and you’ll smile while I blather,

  You’ll pretend you’re not proud of how your wife was so bold.”

  “I see us growing old in the house where we first kissed,

  Where we first made love in the meadow all night,

  Where you proposed beneath the biggest tree in the orchard,

  Where you promised-”

  And there it ended. Mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-dream.

  Amithaera stared at the unfinished line until her vision blurred.

  The poem painted a picture of such simple and profound happiness. That domestic bliss, the children, the… growing old together, a life built on shared love and mutual respect. All the things the Warrior would never have now because Amithaera had put a bolt of darkness through her heart.

  She set the letter down with shaking hands and wrapped her arms around herself.

  The silence in her chambers felt oppressive, broken only by the soft whisper of the distant sounds her minions made as they moved about their nightly duties.

  The Necromancer laid down on her soft bed, a far cry from whatever final bedroll this Warrior had rested upon the night before meeting her death.

  The poem's unfinished last line haunted her.

  Where you promised.

  What had he promised? What was it? What could it have been?

  What did Amithaera take from this woman?

  She would never know.

  The Warrior's voice had been silenced forever, and with it, the ending to her poem. The completion of her love story, the future she had dreamed of with this Orson, with her husband, destroyed at the Necromancer’s hands.

  Amithaera lay back on her bed, reaching to clutch the letter and press it to her chest, and stared up at the ceiling.

  Somewhere out there, a man named Orson was going about his life, unaware that the woman he loved was dead, unaware that he would never hear the end of her poem, never know how much their shared dreams had meant to her in her final moments.

  The thought should have pleased her. What delicious ruin… but it only felt like the ruination of her own heart. Was she regretting a kill? Was that even possible?

  Why didn’t that… foolish girl just keep her hand still? Why didn’t she keep her own hand still?

  A surprised sob left Amithaera’s mouth. Tears burned up as they left her eyes, and the woman grumbled with a sniffle as she undid her wards, letting the sadness flow freely down her cheeks. Her chest rose up and down in emotional heaves, trying to will the sensation away, trying to stifle the outburst.

  But it just wasn’t possible.