Die for You

The bed dipped beneath him as he sat; he buried his face in his hands. Exhaustion and grief tugged at him. Yvette was at the desk, reading through the reports that had been gathered by his inner circle.

He knew what they said already. All the same thing. Oh, they were nominally different. Long, flowery missives attempting to mask their lack of support, to messages lined with vague threats. In the end, it all came back to the truth.

What little support he’d had, it was gone. Only the staunchest of the untouched were still siding with him. As much as he hated to admit it—hated it with a passion that would make even the traditionalists proud—that small support was not going to be enough.

Yvette sighed, heavy and exhausted as she dropped the last piece of parchment to the desk.

She knew it, too, then. She had quite possibly known it long before Synn had—had warned him, but he hadn’t listened, had refused to give up hope.

If he had had any hope left, it slipped away now. He had hoped Yvette would produce one of her ingenious ideas that would sound far-fetched and impossible, but then would somehow work, regardless. That she would see a way he hadn’t.

“It’s over, Synn,” she told him. When she turned in the chair to meet his gaze, he saw a helplessness in her cool, gray eyes that matched his own helplessness.

He clenched his hands into the heavy woolen blankets beneath him. “It’s not over; we can go to the Empire, they wouldn’t want an Enchanter…”

Yvette shook her head, her long brown hair falling over her shoulder with the vehemence of the movement. It was an old argument, one they’d had countless times. “No, Synn. The Empire has enough of a mess on their hands as it is.” It was true; there was a civil war on the horizon threatening to send the whole land into disarray. “Even if they could intervene, even if we did win this fight with their help…” Her voice turned apologetic and firm. “You can’t bring the Empire into this. Not now. Not again.”

He heard what she didn’t say. Even if the Empire helped him keep power, it wouldn’t last. As soon as the Empire took back their support Pallor would rise up against him. Pallor would hate him.

Not that it seemed to matter, he thought bitterly. They hated him now, no matter what he did. The sixth son of a seventh son, he had failed his people from the moment of his birth, when his mother had died and the promises of a powerful Pallor king had died with her.

He had just wanted to bring them peace.

He had just wanted Pallor to be better than they’d been.

“Synn.” Yvette’s voice turned gentle; he felt his heart twist. It was the same tone she used on the children in the healing wards on her volunteer days, the one she saved for those children who were going to die, even if they didn’t know it yet. “If you play this right, you might get away with your life. If you go to the Empire… it won’t work. The first time Pallor tolerated it because the extremism of the goddess’ followers was more distasteful to them than a reign where you tightened the magical laws. But they support an Enchanter, they want to return to the traditions of their past. They want to return to a land of magic. To deny them that will be an act you can never come back from.”

Synn wanted to jump to his feet, wanted to scream, to yell. He knew, he knew there was nothing they could do. The only reason he hadn’t lost this silent war immediately was because Yvette had long ago helped to temper his plans, had found compromises that would suit both his ideals and the ideals of the traditional. He pulled the emotion back under control, forcing the anger and fear back under his skin where it wouldn’t leak out in unfiltered magic.

All he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was peace.

The mage wars had almost killed their people. They had needed to temper magic or it would have destroyed them.

“Get away with my life?” He scoffed—then winced, perhaps he had not completely control the anger and fear—the tone as derisive as he could manage. “Will it give us peace?”

Yvette sighed, quiet and unhappy. Synn felt a surge of guilt. Yvette was trying, he knew she was. Without her he would be lost, maybe even dead.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. He stood so he could move closer to where she sat.

“I know.” She caught his hand as he got close, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles tenderly. “You’re afraid. We both are.”

She didn’t look afraid, but then she had always been brave so that he didn’t have to be.

He tried to revel in the moment, in Yvette’s hand on his. It had been… it had been a long time since they’d been physically affectionate with one another. They loved each other, now just as they had then, when Yvette had given up her life with the coven to support Synn’s life and dreams here in Pallor. But while they loved each other, they were not still in love.

They had both changed too much for that, and too much of the way they’d changed had made them incompatible with each other.

“What’s your idea?” he asked quietly, some of his anger draining, that helplessness threatening to drown him.

“I’ve been speaking with the traditionalists,” she started slowly. Synn had to bite his tongue to keep himself from interrupting immediately. “They suggested that there might, perhaps, be a way to both spare your life and preserve at least some degree of peace and compromise.”

Synn fought with himself for a moment. He wanted to tell Yvette that any option that her precious traditionalists had suggested was out of the question. Her traditionalists had betrayed them, had sided with the Enchanter.

“A suggestion,” he repeated, unwilling to give more support to the as of yet unnamed idea, but not wanting to start another fight about Yvette’s relationship with the traditional.

It was worse, in some ways, because it was because of him that she had a relationship with the traditionalists at all. She’d enmeshed herself with the traditional sects, back when she was still a part of the coven, in order to determine how to best help him regain his rule.

And Yvette had made friends, built relationships and trust that she’d somehow managed to maintain—or at least heal—when the truth had been discovered.

He just wished Yvette had been willing to slowly let those relationships fade away. It would not have needed to be a sharp withdrawal, one that would have reeked of betrayal. But the slow fade that came when lives changed and the world moved on.

Yvette had been unwilling, and it had created a tension in their marriage that neither had been willing to resolve.

“Yes.” Yvette looked down, lips twisting in a way that Synn knew meant she was struggling. Whatever she was about to suggest he wasn’t going to like. “The Enchanter has children, many of them still unwed, you might be able to persuade them to be more lenient, to enact kinder measures.”

Synn felt a wave of cold consume him, and when he spoke her voice was sharp and clipped. “You want me to become a ward, to be given to the Enchanter to be married off to one of his children?”

Yvette looked up; her eyes ached with pain. “You’re powerful, Synn. You’re passionate, enchanting—“ she smiled, a thin, unhappy thing at what had once been a joke between them. “—in time you might be able to convince them to love you. They’re traditionalists, Synn. Passion is in their blood.”

He shook his head, angry and abrupt, and oh, oh so helpless. He couldn’t believe she was suggesting this, that she was genuinely and truly considering it. “No. No. Yvette. Why would you even suggest that? Why would you—“ he cut herself off, knowing that whatever he said next would be a cruelty. She did not deserve cruelty, and he did not want to become the person who would be cruel even in his helplessness.

“It’s not unknown—” Yvette pointed out, voice still calm and composed despite the fact that it was obvious that both of them hated this idea. She could likely feel his revulsion at the very thought of it, the curse of an empathic witch. “—especially back when Pallor was expansionist, for a marriage to be used to peacefully consolidate an already achieved takeover.”

Synn knew the history of Pallor better than Yvette did. He hated that she wasn’t wrong.

“The Enchanter’s not—“ he didn’t know how to finish the sentence. the Enchanter was not good, they were not kind. They were not interested in bringing him into their family, which before this he would have only considered a good thing.

Yvette shook her head, stepping closer. “He’s won, Synn. He doesn’t need to take you into his family to keep Pallor. But if you offer him your life, he may take it anyways, if only to eliminate any further resistance and make it harder for the Empire to interfere if they ever do get their affairs in order.”

Yvette’s eyes were alight with a sharp, almost painful, passion, and Synn was reminded that Yvetted loved him. That she loved him with the same passion a traditional would, even if she had tempered it with the quiet control of her coven upbringing.

Synn had never been able to love her quite the same way. It was at times like this that he wished he’d have been able to.

“But what does it matter what his reasons are, Synn, if it means you get to live?”

“I’m already married,” he reminded her. “To you, Yvette.”

Yvette took a deep breath, and the room was silent around them as though they were posed at the edge of a cliff, right before they were pushed and sent into free fall.

“It won’t be the first time I’ve offered to die for you.”

Synn jerked his hand away from where Yvette held it, reeling back. He had known, or perhaps not known, but subconsciously understood, what the plan would entail. But to hear Yvette say it. To say that she would die for him. Die so that he could marry an Enchanter’s child. Die so that he could live. Die so that he could still have a chance to keep Pallor at peace.

“No, no.” The words felt ripped from him. He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to stop himself from shaking. “No, Yvette. I’m not going to… I’m not going to let him kill you and then let him marry me off.”

Yvette didn’t move closer, didn’t try to close the gap that had opened between them. Synn wasn’t sure if he was grateful for that or if he wished she would.

When Yvette spoke, the words felt like a death knell. Like her death knell. “Not even for peace?” she asked quietly. And there was no judgment, just pure, deep understanding. The sort of understanding that had helped Synn fall in love with Yvette the first time. “If you want any power to be able to keep Pallor peaceful, you’re going to need to have a voice. You can’t have that if you’re dead, and you can’t have that if you’re exiled.”

And wasn’t that why he had exiled his own opponents at the beginning? To keep them from having a voice?

Synn turned away from Yvette, pacing to the bed and back. He was angry. So angry. And he felt helpless. Helpless to fix the past. Helpless to solve their problems. Helpless to be anything less than who he was.

And Yvette knew who he was. Knew that he would do anything for peace.

And that only made him angrier. Because Yvette had known before she’d even brought this idea to him that Synn would agree. She had known that she would suggest that Synn let her die, had known that he would weigh Yvette’s life against the mere possibility of peace and decide that her life was worth the cost.

She had suggested it anyway.

He hated her.

He hated himself.

But he was helpless to change who he was.

He collapsed onto the bed, his legs giving out beneath him. “This isn’t what I thought would happen,” he whispered, just loud enough that Yvette would be able to hear him. “It wasn’t what I’d planned when I asked you to stay all those years ago.” He looked up at her, searching her eyes. “Do you regret it?”

Yvette moved to him, dropping to her knees in front of him. “No. Synn, no. Of course I don’t.”

“We used to love each other so much.”

Yvette caught his hand, bringing it up to her lips. And it was still as charming now as it had been the first time she’d done it. “We still love each other, Synn. Sure, there might be times we don’t like each other as much as we should. But we do love each other.”

He let out a half-choked laugh at that. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

She smiled at him warmly. “I love you, Synn. I wouldn’t trade what we had together.” She kissed his knuckles again. “Regret is poison, Synn. I don’t regret what we had. I don’t regret what needs to be done. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I truly believe that you’ll be able to find a path that will give Pallor what it needs. If there is one thing I know is true, is that you, and I, and even the Enchanter and his children all share one thing in common. We all love Pallor. And if my life is what it costs to give us the best chance, then I’ll give it. And there’s nothing about that to regret.”

He could feel tears gathering in his eyes and he looked away. He didn’t cry, it was a weakness he couldn’t be allowed when so many already considered him weak, when he needed to prove he was strong. It was a weakness he couldn’t be allowed when he needed people to trust him, to respect him. 

But if he couldn’t cry for this, then what could he cry for? If he couldn’t cry for the love of his life—or the closest thing he thought he would ever get to the sort of love that was considered its own type of magic.

He clenched Yvette’s hands tightly in his own, and this time he was the one who brought her hand up to kiss her knuckles. “It might not work.” It was a paltry excuse. He had done many things that could have failed, had always pushed and strived to try. It wasn’t in him to not try.

“It might not,” Yvette agreed. And it was clear in her voice that she knew exactly what he’d thought.

A tear slipped from his eye, sliding down his cheek until it fell, landing where their fingers were interlinked. “I don’t want you to die.” A quiet, pained admission that perhaps there was one thing he would give up his peace for. An even more pained admission that even as he thought that, he knew he wouldn’t.

“I’m dead either way, Synn.” Oh, his precious Yvette and her stubborn practicality. “Whatever mercy the Enchanter extends to the rest of Pallor. Whatever mercy he extends to you. I doubt it’ll apply to me. My past as a coven witch, born in the Empire, is no secret, and the Enchanter has no love for an empire-born witch. If I’m already going to die, we might as well use it.”

Practical to the last, Synn thought, and his heart tugged painfully.

He would do this. He would do this for himself. For Yvette. For Pallor.

He would make sure that Yvette’s death wasn’t a waste.

He clenched his jaw, taking his pain and his grief and pushing it away. “I’ll write up the offer.” He leaned forward and kissed Yvette, trying to engrain this moment into his mind so that it would last forever. “For a chance at peace.”

Yvette’s smile was heartbreaking. And by the goddess, she was the bravest woman he had ever met. “Anything,” she agreed. And this was why he’d loved her then, why he loved her now, and why he’d love her for the rest of his life. “Anything for peace.”