Corvis Eralith
I sat in what was supposed to be the manager's office of Zestier's Unraveler's Company, and I still could not quite believe this was all real, that this was happening.
Not the office—though that was real enough, with its half-unpacked crates, its bare white walls and the particular scent of new construction that had not yet been worn away by time.
No, what I could not believe was that I had allowed this to happen. That I was sitting here, in a room that was technically mine, in a building that I had helped raise from nothing, in an organization that I had named and helped shape and set into motion.
But it was. I was not dreaming.
Which was proven by the people who were currently occupied with the business of making me into Finn Warend.
One of them was Olfred. Lance of Darv. He was not wearing the uniform of a Greysunders guard today, nor the simple clothes of a traveling merchant, or anything else I would expect from him making a casual visit as a Warend.
He was once again wearing the identity of Damien Malaisson—which meant, as far as I could tell, the same clothes he always wore, with the addition of a certain looseness in his bearing, a certain carelessness that made him look like nothing more than a capable man who had seen enough of the world to know when to be still.
The disguise was in the posture, I had learned. In the way he held himself. In the thousand small choices that made a person into someone else.
The other was Alea. Lance of Elenoir. The woman who had trained me, watched over me, kept my secrets for longer than I had any right to ask.
She was currently applying makeup to my face with the careful precision of someone who had spent a lifetime learning to be invisible, to be unremarkable, to be something that eyes passed over without seeing.
Two white-core mages. Two of the most powerful people on the continent. And they were here, in a half-finished office in the Riverside Yard, working not to avert a war or defend a kingdom or uncover the secrets of the Vritra, but to ensure that an elven prince could pass for a dwarven boy.
If they discovered each other—if Olfred realized that the maid who accompanied the prince was something more, if Alea realized that the merchant's agent was something far, far more—the diplomatic incident would be catastrophic.
A foreign Lance in Zestier, within reach of the Royal Palace and an elven Lance oblivious to it.
But I trusted Olfred. I had trusted him with my life, and he had given it back. I trusted him to hide his mana signature from Alea, to be nothing more than Damien Malaisson, to exist in the spaces between her attention and leave no trace of what he truly was.
And I trusted Alea. I trusted her to see what she needed to see and nothing more, to be the maid she had spent years pretending to be, to let the merchant's agent fade into the background of her concern.
"I think it worked quite well." I kept my voice steady, though my heart was beating faster than I wanted it to. "Considering Ashton and Albold have both met me. Multiple times."
I removed the contact lenses, blinking against the sudden clarity of my own eyes. The world shifted, colors deepening, edges sharpening, the familiar return of a self I had learned to wear like armor.
"You were too hesitant." Olfred's voice came from the corner of the room, where he had stationed himself with his back to the wall, his arms crossed, his eyes half-lidded. "You didn't get into character enough."
"I'm not trying to get into a character." The words came out sharper than I intended. "I'm just trying to show a different side of—ouch."
Alea's fingers pressed against my cheek, correcting something I had not noticed was wrong. The makeup itched where she had touched it, settling into a texture that was not quite skin but close enough to fool the eye.
"Apologies, Your Highness." Her voice was soft, professional, the voice of a maid who had been in the service of the royal family for a very long time. "I found your use of sound magic to modulate your voice very effective."
The words surprised me into silence for a moment.
Sound magic was difficult—more difficult than any other element I had learned, requiring a concentration that pulled at my attention like a river current, threatening to sweep me away from whatever else I was trying to do.
To use it while speaking, while being, while pretending to be someone I was not—it was harder than it seemed.
"If Master Kamiel heard you say that, he would be overjoyed." I kept my voice light, but I saw Alea's expression flicker.
The barest tightening of her lips, the faintest shift in her eyes. Kamiel Rennoux, my music teacher, was truly hopeless when it came to her.
"I'll return to Vildorial." Olfred pushed off from the wall, and the room seemed to shift with him, his presence suddenly larger, more certain. "I'll tell Elder Rahdeas that your cover is secure."
He turned to Alea, and his voice was different now—harder, flatter, the voice of a man who had spent his life protecting things that were not his to protect. "I trust you understand the importance of discretion. No one can know that the Prince and Finn Warend are the same person."
Alea turned to face him, and I saw something pass between them. Two white cores, measuring each other without knowing what they measured.
"I know how to do my job." Her voice was ice, and I saw Olfred's eyes narrow.
"I hope so." He held her gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable, then turned to me. "Until next time, Finn."
The door closed behind him, and the room seemed to exhale.
"I don't know why you trust him so much, Your Highness." Alea's hands were gentle on my face, correcting, smoothing, perfecting. "I know he was the one who accompanied you to the Red Gorge. I know he helped you retrieve that core. But I don't like him."
"It's just a feeling." I kept my voice even, though my heart was still beating too fast. "Damien is trustworthy."
It was not quite a lie. As long as I was useful to Rahdeas, I was blindly sure of Olfred's loyalty. And as long as my goals and Rahdeas's goals aligned I was more than happy to continue this working relationship.
"Whatever you say." Alea handed me a mirror, and I saw myself in it.
Finn Warend looked back at me. The same Finn who had walked into the Red Gorge four years ago. Now he was here again, the makeup a little different, the face a little older, but the same.
The same brown eyes, the same rounded ears, the same skin the color of earth after rain. Olfred had given Alea everything she needed to replicate the disguise—the materials, the formulas, the careful instructions that had been honed over years of moving through worlds that were not his own.
There were spare contact lenses, clothes that fit a dwarven boy of ten or eleven, trinkets that would prove Finn's identity to anyone who asked. Rahdeas had really thought of everything.
All that remained was for me to become him.
I set the mirror down and looked at the room around me. It was still half-finished, the walls bare, the furniture still in crates, the shelves waiting for books that had not yet been chosen.
This was supposed to be my study. Prince Corvis's study, the office of the elven crown prince who had founded the Unraveler's Company and set it on its path.
I was nine years old, and I was already the co-owner of an organization that spanned two kingdoms. A subsidiary of a trading company that had more money than most noble houses, yes, but still. Still.
I did not know how to feel about that. The me from Earth... what would he think?
His memories were a void where something should have been, a shape I could trace with my fingers but never fill.
I had been Corvis Eralith for nine years now. I had been Finn Warend for a week and now I was him again. I had been the Prince and the Merchant's Nephew and the Boy Who Came Back from the Dead.
Now I was learning to be all of them at once.
Berna stirred at my feet, her great head lifting, her eyes finding mine. She had been asleep through most of the makeup, through Olfred's departure, through Alea's quiet work.
I reached down to touch her fur, and she leaned into my hand, and for a moment we were just a boy and a bear, in a room that was still becoming what it was meant to be.
"I have an idea." I said it aloud, and the words hung in the air, waiting to be shaped into something more.
"Your Highness?" Alea's voice was curious, but I was already standing, already moving, already becoming someone else.
Berna rose with me, her nose finding my face, her tongue reaching for the makeup I had just spent an hour perfecting. I caught her muzzle before she could do any damage.
"No. This is not for you to lick off."
She gave me the look—the one that had convinced me to give her the coin-plate, the one that had won her a place in my room despite all reason—and I held firm.
Alea's hand appeared, a tuft of emerald grass between her fingers. Berna's attention shifted instantly, her nose twitching, her jaws opening to accept the offering.
"Catnip?" I looked at Alea, surprised.
"I always carry some." Her smile was bittersweet, the smile of someone remembering something that had been lost for a very long time. "For magic. But also because my mother used to grow it. The cats would come every evening to our balcony. It brings back memories."
I did not know what to say. I had known Alea and Alwyn for most of my life, but I knew nothing of her mother. Nothing of the life she had lived before she became a Lance, before she became a maid, before she became the woman who watched over a prince and asked nothing in return.
I opened my mouth to ask, and then I closed it. Some questions were not meant to be answered. Some pasts were not meant to be uncovered.
Alea smiled, and the shadow passed. "I need to return to the Palace."
She left, and the door closed behind her, and I was alone with Berna and the half-finished room and the weight of everything I was becoming.
I was nine years old, and I was the co-owner of an organization that would send elves and dwarves into the Beast Glades, that would pull at the threads of the world until they unraveled, that would find the secrets the Djinn had left behind and learn what they had known about Fate.
—
The workers filed out one by one, their footsteps fading down the stairs, their voices carrying the particular satisfaction of a job completed.
Berna watched them go from her corner—the bottom left of the room, where I had insisted the carpet be thickest and the light from the window fell softest.
She had claimed it the moment the last crate was moved.
The desk was the last thing to be placed. It sat at the center of the room like a ship at anchor, its wood dark and warm, its surface polished to a mirror sheen.
It was the exact match of Grandpa's desk. The exact match of Elder Rahdeas's. Grandpa had sent it himself, had had it crated and delivered with a letter that I had not yet opened. It was sitting in the top drawer, waiting, and I could not bring myself to read it.
Not yet. Not until this room was finished, until Finn was ready, until I had become the person I needed to be to understand whatever he had written.
I sat behind it, and the chair swallowed me. It was too large for me—made for a grown man, for someone who had earned the right to sit behind a desk like this.
My feet did not touch the floor. My hands rested on the polished wood like a child reaching for something they were not old enough to hold.
The evening light was coming through the window now, piercing the silk curtains and falling across the desk in long, golden bars. I had chosen this room for the view.
The Winetail was visible from here, its surface catching the last of the day, its current slow and patient. It was not the river. It was just water. I told myself that every time I looked at it.
The knock came at the door. Three sharp raps, the knock of someone who had never learned to wait for permission.
"Yes?"
Albold Chaffer entered without hesitation. He took the seat across from me without being asked, settling into it with the ease of someone who had never doubted that he belonged wherever he happened to be.
His boots were muddied, I noticed. His overcoat was unbuttoned. He had come straight from somewhere, and he had not stopped to change.
"Corvis." He said my name the way he always said it, without the weight that others put on it, without the deference that made me want to scream. It was the reason I had let him in. It was the reason I kept letting him in.
"Albold." I leaned back in my chair, and it creaked under me, a sound that was too old for my body. "Finn told me you wanted to see me. About the Unraveler's Company."
"Exactly." He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. "I want to become an Unraveler."
There was no hesitation in his voice. No doubt. He wanted this the way he wanted everything—with the full force of a will that had never been taught to bend.
"Let me guess." I kept my voice light, though my heart was beating faster than I wanted it to. "Lord and Lady Chaffer are opposed."
"Well said."
He was waiting. I could see it in the set of his jaw, the focus of his eyes. He had come to me because he knew I would help him, because I would always help him. Four years ago, with the Red Gorge he helped.
And after, when I came back, he had trained with me, sparred with me, treated me like a person instead of a prince. He had done the same for Alwyn, without being asked, without expecting anything in return.
"I will speak to your parents." I said it before I could think better of it. "Personally."
His face broke into a smile, bright and sudden, the smile of a boy who had just been given permission to chase something he had wanted for longer than he could remember. "Thank you, Your Highness."
I held up a hand. "Not so fast."
He sat back down. He had not realized he had stood up.
"I want you to team up with Finn." I let the words settle between us. "And Ashton Auddyr. For your first unraveling. Berna will accompany you as well, she needs to stretch her paws."
The silence that followed was heavier than I had expected. Albold's face went through several expressions in the space of a breath—surprise, confusion, and then, unmistakably, displeasure.
"Ashton Auddyr?" He said the name like it was something he had swallowed and was trying to spit out. "Corvi—"
I reached for the document on my desk, the one that would make him an official Unraveler, the one I had prepared days ago because I had known that he would come. I picked it up. I held it between my fingers. I made as if to tear it in half.
"Fine." The word came out like a concession, like a surrender, like the first step in a war he had not known he was fighting. He bowed his head, and I saw the tension in his shoulders, the effort it cost him to let this go. "Thank you. For helping me."
I set the document down. "No problem."
I watched him relax, watched the fight drain out of him, and felt something twist in my chest. He did not understand why I was doing this. He did not know about the war that was coming, about the threads I was trying to weave, about the long, slow work of building something that might survive.
"You depart next week."