Neither Jophiel nor Elisabet responded outwardly to Gwen’s words at first. Instead, they simply glanced to one another for a brief moment, communicating silently. After a few seconds of that, the Seosten woman plucked her glass up daintily, taking a slow sip from it as though savoring the taste. Only then, once she had thoroughly enjoyed that single sip and set the glass back down, did she finally speak.
“You believe that something needs to be changed about our arrangement with the children, Queen Knight of Camelot?” Her tone was a mix of vague challenge and more curiosity.
Meeting her gaze, Gwen replied evenly, “I believe that you took advantage of your position of power over these children, and their desperation, to make an arrangement that suits you far more than it does them. More to the point, I believe you are forcing them to repeatedly and consistently lie to the people they care about, which is an odd thing to do for someone who is supposedly trying to advocate trust and alliance amongst humans and Seosten.”
It was Elisabet’s turn to speak then. “You’re right, it’s not ideal. But it’s for our safety. If word of our intentions with Miss Chambers or Sariel’s children were to get out, we would be expelled from our position and likely hunted down by Jophiel’s own people.” She paused briefly before adding, “And I would be hunted by my own people. Our position is rather tenuous.”
Tabbris abruptly put in. “Oh boy, a secret that could really hurt someone if it got out. Yeah, you better use magic to keep us quiet, cuz we’ve never had anything to do with something like that.”
Clearing her throat, Jophiel gave the young girl a brief squint before speaking again. “Experienced or not, we were and are not willing to put our lives in the hands of children. Look at what happened with Manakel possessing Miss Kohaku. Gaia Sinclaire had no clue. Even if we did wish to tell you which people we know are possessed currently or recently, we are not aware of all of them, particularly those who move often. The odds of our secrets getting out rise exponentially with every person who knows them. Given the amount of friends and family close to these four… that is an unacceptable risk.”
Tristan shook his head with a blurted, “That’s bullshit.” As everyone looked to him, the boy flushed a little but pushed on. “Yeah, sure, it’s a risk. But everything we do is a risk. Besides, we know how to check for possession now. We know how to guard against it. There’s about to be a spell that makes it impossible for any Heretic to be possessed without permission! We’re taking care of things on our end. And you’re still making us lie to everyone we care about. Like Tabs said, we’ve had secrets to keep all year long. It’s not just yours.”
With a little nod, Flick agreed, “I don’t like lying to my friends, or my dad. Actually, I hate it. You want to teach us how to have an alliance with your people, how to trust your people and work with them? But you’re not willing to take a risk yourselves. You might be a lot more powerful than we are, but you’re both so paranoid about someone you know finding out who and what you really are that you might as well be helpless. You’d rather we risk destroying our relationships with the people we care about, than you risk other Seosten finding out you love each other. Yeah, that wasn’t hard to figure out, for the record. You want to prove Seosten and humans can work together? Then stop making us lie to the people we’re supposed to trust.”
“Like I said,” Gwen announced, “we’re going to renegotiate this little agreement from a more equitable point of view. Yes, being cautious is understandable. You are taking a risk. But so are these kids. And there’s plenty of ways to make sure the people they’re talking to aren’t possessed. But first thing first, they couldn’t exactly tell me the whole story. So why don’t you two tell me instead? I want to hear the entire arrangement and plan, not just what I’ve inferred or gotten through eavesdropping. All of it. Then we can talk about how to make it more fair for everyone.”
Again, Jophiel and Elisabet exchanged glances. The latter opened her mouth to speak, but Gwen held a hand up to interrupt. “Wait. Actually, you put this on first.” With a flick of her wrist, she produced a bracelet, tossing it to the Seosten woman. “You know what it is?”
Catching the bracelet, Jophiel frowned at the small reddish-gold gemstone in the middle. “… Jaresh stone.” Her eyes snapped up to stare at Gwen. “You want to block my Tartarus power.”
“Tartarus power?” Flick echoed, blinking back and forth between the women. “You mean the other-dimension Olympian thing? That stone can do that?”
“Yes, it can,” Gwen confirmed. “As you might imagine, it’s very rare. And the power of the gem is drained relatively quickly.” Her eyes moved back to Jophiel. “Yes, I want you to put it on before Elisabet speaks. You know, just to make sure this entire… relationship you both have is actually her choice and not your little ‘shift the emotions someone feels about someone else to me’ power. If you two really trust each other, if your feelings are genuine, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Mmm,” Jophiel murmured, “of course not. And yet, you are asking me to put myself at a disadvantage. Should you have ill intentions–”
“I’m sure you’ll be just fine,” Gwen interrupted. “After all, if Elisabet’s feelings for you are real, she’ll protect you. So you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Let’s just call this practice, for you actually risking yourself a little bit instead of risking everyone else.”
Pausing for a moment before heaving a slow, soft sigh, Jophiel nodded. “Fair enough,” she muttered before slipping the bracelet on. The stone flared brightly for a second before fading once more to a dim glow. “There,” she announced while holding her wrist out for inspection. “I cannot use my Olympian power. Everything my Sianame feels is her true, real feelings.”
Gwen took a moment, looking the bracelet over to make sure Jophiel hadn’t pulled a fast one somehow. Nodding in satisfaction, she looked to Elisabet. “First, why don’t you tell us how you feel about Jophiel here?”
The answer came immediately. “She is my Sianame, my partner. I love her more than anyone in the universe. I would do anything for her, and she’d do anything for me. That’s why we wouldn’t let the children tell anyone about our arrangement, because we won’t risk each other. We…” She paused, swallowing. “We want to fix things between our species, but we didn’t know how. But with Vanessa and Tristan there, our species can produce viable offspring together. That has to mean something. We have to convince the Seosten to work with humanity. The only way we knew of how to do that was to train them, so they could show the Seraphim how much better things could be with an alliance.”
“I seem to recall another of your members suggesting an alliance with my husband,” Gwen pointed out. “In fact, she convinced him enough to bring him to a vulnerable location for a ‘chat’. That turned out to be a trap. Why should we believe that this is anything different?”
It was Jophiel who spoke. “That was Chayyiel. And she did not betray Arthur. Puriel betrayed her by attacking their meeting point against her request. A betrayal which Chayyiel did not take kindly to, considering her promise to kill Puriel should he ever attempt to give her one more order.”
Showing no outward reaction to that, Gwen watched the Seosten woman for a moment before speaking again. “As I understand it, she has already negotiated your leadership into a potential alliance with humanity, in response to the impending Liesje spell.”
“An alliance,” Jophiel confirmed, “or invasion. They have not decided which. We have one year to prove that an alliance would be preferable to full enslavement. Which is why we must step up our training endeavors.”
“Does she know about what we’re doing here?” Vanessa put in. “Chayyiel, I mean.”
Jophiel started to respond that before pausing. “I… would say no, but it is Chayyiel. Who knows what that girl is aware of. She learned from the Apocalypse Twins, and has only improved on their teachings in many ways. That said, I do not believe so.”
From there, Elisabet and Jophiel explained the full original agreement to Gwen, who waited through all of it with only a few questions and clarifications. Finally, the former (and many would say current) queen of Camelot announced, “Yes, we’re changing that deal. You’ll get everything you wanted. The children can still agree to train with you. But you are going to remove the requirement that they not tell anyone about it. Yes, it puts you in danger. Just as they are in danger every time they interact with you. Just as they have been in danger for so long. If you want some measure of trust to be extended to you, then you will extend some as well.”
“We’re not gonna go blabbing it everywhere,” Tabbris piped up. “But making us always lie about it is wrong. How’re you gonna convince Mama and the others that you really want to be friends if you’re making us lie to them all the time? I mean… you do know that you’d eventually have to explain all this to them? If your plan works, I mean. If it works, and Seosten become allies with humans, you’d have to explain to Mama what you did.”
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Vanessa stepped forward, hesitating slightly before putting herself in front of Elisabet. “When you guys pretended to be Mrs. Reibach while I was in the foster system, you were nice to me. You took me out for ice cream and helped me. You helped me feel like I wasn’t just crazy. I thought you were the only person there who cared about me.”
Swallowing, the Spanish woman lowered her head briefly before raising her gaze once more to meet Vanessa’s. “I did care about you, Vanessa. I do. We do. We care about you very much. We had… several discussions about possibly taking you in ourselves. But that would have been too dangerous. Not only for us, but for you as well. The best we could do was ensure that Kushiel did not take you.”
“You protected me,” Vanessa murmured. “I’m… I was free because you and Jophiel made sure the other Seosten didn’t take me in. Kushiel… she… she would’ve done bad things. You guys stopped her. You protected me. I never really had a chance to thank you for that.” Lifting her chin, she stared into the woman’s eyes. “I wouldn’t betray you. I won’t go telling everyone about you and Jophiel. I know it has to be a secret. We all know that. Please. Don’t make us hurt our families anymore. Don’t make us lie to them just to protect yourselves.”
On the heels of those words, Flick quietly added, “Just think about how you two would feel if you were put under a magic spell to lie to each other all the time, about anything, let alone something this important. This isn’t just something like lying about who ate the last cookie. We are working with the Seosten possessing one of the Crossroads Committee members, and we can’t tell anyone. You’re making us lie to the people we love, because you don’t want to put the person you love at risk. Isn’t that fucked up for people who want to make an alliance?”
Tristan nodded. “Seriously. Come on, let’s work together by working together. Like Nessa said, we’re not about to go blabbing everything all over the place. We’re smarter than that. You wanna be allies, let’s be allies by trusting each other. I mean, from what you said, we’ve only got a year to work all this out. We’re never gonna get there if you’re making us lie all the time. Yeah, it’s a risk. Everything’s a risk.”
Finally, Flick finished with, “What it comes down to is a choice, I guess. If you want to be perfectly safe, you guys could ignore us. Hell, you’re strong enough, I bet you could go off by yourselves and be just fine. If all you care about is each other, you could probably be just fine without anyone’s help. I’m pretty sure no one could track you down if you put your mind to disappearing. So you could do that.
“But I don’t think you want that. I think you want to make this alliance work. I think you really want humans and Seosten to work together. And the only way we’re gonna do that in one year is with some risks, and some trust. From both sides.”
In the end, it was Jophiel who sighed and looked to Elisabet. “I suppose they have a point.”
“But it’s still a risk,” the other woman pointed out quietly. She looked to Gwen and the others. “Give us a moment?” Receiving a nod, she and Jophiel stepped over to the other side of the clearing, using a spell or ability to mask their conversation as they spoke quietly and intently.
“Thanks for coming,” Vanessa softly said toward Gwen. “Even though everything we said would be true without you, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be as quick to listen.”
Gwen, in turn, smiled easily. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind playing muscle sometimes. Besides, like you said, it’s all true. It’s not fair that you have to lie to everyone you care about. That’s not how you foster an alliance. And they took advantage of your desperation to save your mother to make you agree to it. Whether their overall intentions are noble or not, that’s what they did. And it’s wrong. If they want a true alliance, they’ll do it from closer to even ground.”
“You’re all correct.” That was Jophiel, who had moved back to them with Elisabet at her side. She still wore the faintly glowing bracelet. “We have discussed it, and in the interest of ensuring a lasting, true alliance between our people, we will agree to remove the prohibition against discussing it with anyone.” Even as she said those words, the woman’s voice seemed to tremble just a little. It was obvious that she was truly afraid of what might happen.
“However,” Elisabet added, “we would request time first. Before you begin discussing our arrangement with anyone, we would ask for two weeks. We’re not saying you are incapable of keeping secrets. But the Seosten are incredibly good at ferreting those secrets out at the worst possible time, regardless of your intentions or how careful you are. We would like to use those two weeks to prepare potential countermeasures and… escape plans in case things go wrong. We have things we can do to prepare for being exposed and to provide some advance warning should worse come to worst.”
“We know this is a lot to ask,” Jophiel informed them. “Particularly after you have made such compelling points about not lying to your loved ones. But we hope you will understand our own precaution. The Imperium is not forgiving. Should word of our relationship escape and we not know about it, there is a chance that… that they will take her from me.” She swallowed hard then, looking from Gwen to Flick and meeting the girl’s gaze. “Please. We will undo the spell and allow you to tell your loved ones, if you give us two weeks to prepare.”
Felicity and the rest all looked to one another before Vanessa spoke up. “I don’t see why we couldn’t do that. It’s an alliance, right? That means compromise. We can keep quiet for two more weeks while you get ready in case something goes wrong.”
“Yeah,” Flick agreed, “we’re not gonna be assholes about it. Deal, we’ll wait a couple weeks for you to set up your countermeasures and escape plan or whatever.”
Clearing her throat, Gwen gave a very faint smile. “It seems that you have come to an agreement. So let me make my own promise. Should either of you prove untrustworthy or should I believe for a second that you are putting these children at greater risk, I will end the arrangement as… thoroughly and permanently as needed.”
She stared intently at Jophiel. “I don’t know if I trust you. But I do know that the Fomorians are worse than anything your people might do to this world and everyone on it. So you’re right, we need an alliance. We need to work together. Just don’t give me a reason to think you’re playing us, or that either of you are a threat to these guys.”
Bowing her head in acknowledgment of that, Jophiel watched the woman carefully. Her tone was soft. “If I might ask, your purpose at Crossroads, was it to seek the Merlin Key or something else?”
“We are far from any point in our relationship where I might answer that question with anything truthful,” Gwen pointed out in a flat voice. “Suffice to say, I am not done at Crossroads. Not by a long shot.”
“Merlin Key?” Tabbris piped up. “What’s–”
“The Key of Merlin,” Elisabet informed them, “is a person who will help to wake Arthur from… who will bring him back to life. It was a prophecy given by fifteen different seers across the world at the exact second of his… pseudo-death. Fifteen seers that we know of, anyway. At the exact second of his fall, these fifteen unrelated, unconnected seers announced that a child known as the Key of Merlin would awaken Arthur.”
Staring at her, Flick managed, “And you guys think that it’s someone at Crossroads?”
“I know they are,” Gwen confirmed. “But I do not know who, exactly. I was making progress, until… well, until all of this happened. Perhaps they are still at the school, or perhaps they fled. Unless…” She looked to Jophiel and Elisabet.
“We do not know either,” Elisabet replied. “You may believe that or not, but it is the truth. However, we may know someone who does.”
Eyes snapping to the woman then, Gwen spoke in a sharp tone. “Do not toy with me.”
“Arthur was amenable to an alliance with Chayyiel,” Jophiel pointed out. “We would not exactly be against his return, in that regard. Again, give us two weeks to prepare, and we will tell you what we know.”
For a moment, it looked as though Gwen might argue with that. Her desperation to finally be reunited with her husband was so great that it took a physical effort for the woman to contain herself. She took in a long, deep breath before letting it out, her voice soft. “Very well. You can have two weeks to prepare for everything going wrong. After that, you will break the secrecy spell to allow these guys to tell the truth to their loved ones. And you will tell me everything you know about bringing back mine.”
“We can agree to that,” Elisabet murmured thoughtfully, nodding. “And as a show of good faith, there is something you should be aware of, concerning your… friend who was taken.”
Blinking once, Flick asked, “You mean Sean? What about him? I mean… wait, he’s okay, right? Dare said they wouldn’t really hurt him, just lock him up. But if they–”
“He is physically well,” Elisabet assured her. “But their methods of changing his mind, of… of breaking him of this loyalty to you are barbaric. And risk destroying his mind if something is not done.”
She explained what was happening then, that Sean had been put in a cell that accelerated time. For every day that passed in the outside world, weeks and months would pass in there. Weeks and months where he was left alone, with only the occasional visit from Crossroads loyalists to wear him down.
“Oh my God, Sean…” Putting a hand against her mouth, Flick gasped before cursing. “Ruthers. It’s Ruthers. It’s his plan, isn’t it? He’s the one who–”
“Litonya, actually,” Jophiel interrupted. “This is her doing. She is the one pulling the strings of this particular endeavor.”
“Then get him out!” That was Vanessa, her eyes wide. “We thought we could get ready and get him out of there in like a month or two. But–but two months? That’s years in there! He can’t stay in there that long. He’ll be–they’ll make him–they… get him out!”
“As I said,” Jophiel replied shortly, “The prison is being run by Litonya. We have no authority there. Or at least none that would not be run by her first. We cannot extract him without exposing ourselves. If we are exposed to Crossroads, we will be exposed to all of our people. That will be the end of any authority we might have. We understand your loyalty to your friend. But this is not something we can risk.”
Tristan started to open his mouth to argue, but Flick held up a hand. “What if there was something you could do? Not taking him out of there, but a way you could help him without completely exposing yourselves?”
Meeting her gaze, Jophiel asked, “What do you have in mind?”
“You might not be able to break him out without Litonya and everyone else finding out,” Flick replied, “But you’d know what kind of security measures are on him. I mean, maybe you can’t march in there and order him released, but you know what they’ve got to stop that from happening.”
Elisabet glanced to her partner before squinting at the blonde girl. “If you think you have a way of taking that boy out of that cell just because we give you the security details–”
“No.” Flick’s head shook. “I don’t know how to get him out, not yet. But I think I know how to help him.
“Or rather, who can help him.”