Archive of Our Own ^beta

I stumbled into her room. El caught me as I did.

“Got them with Le main de la mort.” I said to her. “Not what they expected…from the lady who summons little bunnies…”

“And you were an idiot. You wasted malia, and you got stabbed. What the fuck kind of wound even is this?” El glared down at the bloody stain soaking through my undershirt. The artificer had gotten through a weak point, but even the shirt itself was enchanted.

“I think it was the sharpened fang of some kind of mal. She made it into a knife.”

El hauled me to the bed and placed me on it; that was about as gentle as she got with this kind of thing. She took off my armor and started putting pressure on the wound.

She wasn’t a healer; I knew that much. Instead, she amplified her voice, and hollered like a banshee:

“OUR BEST SUMMONER GOT STABBED! SOMEONE WHO CAN HEAL GET IN HERE!”

In came a younger recruit. Strict mana, unlike the rest of us, but she believed in the cause enough to join. She looked at the wound and went for her medicine pouch. Meanwhile, El paced.

“Did you recognize who did this?” asked El.

“An artificer.” I squinted, remembering her features. “She traded me for mal parts back at school…I think her name was Aadhya.”

El frowned, nodding. She had a beautiful scowl, I always thought. You weren’t supposed to fall for an angry look on your crush, but you weren’t supposed to fall for lady maleficers who could flay you with the flick of a pinky. I could picture the disapproving looks from my family.

If they knew. I remembered the looks I’d gotten, when the powerful protections went up and money started to come in from my “new job”.

There had been a shouting match in another room. Eyes full of tears, cousins telling me it wasn’t worth it, after I refused to tell them what I was doing.

My thoughts were jolted back to reality with a harsh sear of something like acid poured on the wound. A younger Liu would’ve yelled. I clenched my jaw.

“Watch it.” El said to the healer. “I---we need her in one piece.”

The healer flicked her eyes between the two of us. At least I didn’t blush. I was too exhausted for that.

“Did you give her the pitch?” El asked.

“I tried.” I said. “She threw that knife at me and said she had her own family to protect.”

“That’s what everyone says. Everyone’s motive.”

The healer left. I tried to sit up; this was El’s room, and no one slept in her bed but her.

El placed a hand on me; she hardly had to apply any pressure to pin me down. “Don’t leave. I won’t have you injured again.”

“Where will you sleep, then?”

El scowled again. My heart flipped on itself.

“Let me play to my strengths, you play to yours. Mana deficit fails your spell and might get you sick. A la mort will kill you. Especially since you don’t know how to throw it.” Said El.

“I do! It missed, but we got away.” I said. “It took a lot---”

“It shouldn’t do either of those things. It’s a simple spell.”

I opened my mouth to protest. El covered it. It turned out that I was not too tired to blush.

“It should be tossed. Not cast. It is the casual thought of someone who can kill without a second thought. And if it were, it would not miss.”

Her hand stayed there. She looked down on it, contemplative, before she took it away.

I said, “I’m a maleficer.”

“And you can cast most of these spells on strict mana. It’s not the material. It’s the mage.”

Not someone like me. Someone like her.

“Are you going to kick me out, then?” I asked.

“No…but you should play to what you can do. Summons.”

I hesitated.

I was Liu the Maleficer; people called me the Beckoning Hand, second to the Maw-Mouth’s Terror. People saw rabbits turn wild and furious, sewer rats and spiders and ruby-throated hummingbirds go for the eyes of Domini.

El didn’t see me that way. And neither did I. Next to her, I felt like a cowering rodent with scratching, tiny claws. She was a battle-hardened bird-of-prey at my side.

“It’s not a bad thing.” She said. Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard.

“I thought we needed to accomplish our goals.”

El sighed. “Yes, but that kind of thing…it’d be nice if we kept hold of it. We’re fighting for the losers and the forgotten. We’re not after conquest, we’re after justice.”

She stared into space, but shook herself. She pulled off my gauntlets, and began to work at the rest of my armor.

“El? What are you…”

“Taking off this damned suit of yours. I can’t very well sleep next to you if you’re made of sharp edges.”

“Next to---”

“I’ve seen you ogling me, Liu. More than Lake, last time I smacked him upside the head.” Said El. “I think I’ve earned a bit in kind.”

She turned the lights out.

She laid down next to me, tucking her head against my shoulder. The pulse in my neck thumped hard. She heard it. I felt her lips curl into a smile.

“Don’t be too excited, Liu. You’re injured, and you need rest.” She whispered.

I could’ve told her to fuck off. I wouldn’t have done it for the fall of New York.