Chapter Text
1st century in the Age of King Consort Radagon
20 years after the birth of the Twin Empyreans
Ranni had been kept in anticipation long enough for dread to dull into distant curiosity, not long enough for it to go forgotten. Spring-born bairns, the anniversary fell just after the equinox, and each thaw roused the thought. The late-winter winds lapsed into mild chill, the frosted dress of Caria’s lawns now slick dew, it had already been on her mind. Yet Rykard’s proclamation still caught her off guard.
“Oh, yeah, Dad told me he’s looking forward to seeing you at the twins’ thing,” her brother said, leaning back in the iron garden chair.
Ranni blinked. “What?”
Rykard’s carriage had arrived late the night before, and after a few fingers of whiskey by moonlight, he’d promptly crashed in his boyhood bed and slept until noon. Since then they had been together, roaming the grounds with Blaidd, dining on roasted quail with the retinue, now several hours deep into sharing stories and smokes in the upper courtyard.
And in all that time, he hadn’t spoken a word about the other side of the family, hadn’t given her a moment’s preparation before delivering this blunt news like a mace’s blow.
He flicked the grooved metal wheel of his mechanical lighter, dipped the end of his cigar into its sparking flame. “The twins’ twentieth birthday thing. A banquet or some bullshit? I’m guessing you accepted the invite?”
Smoking had become his favored vice since he’d settled into the Volcano Manor of Mount Gelmir. Though strictly regulated in Leyndell, the habit saw increased popularity the farther one strayed from the Erdtree and its capital. Ranni had never been fond of tobacco until Rykard started bringing the product of his foothill plantations to Caria Manor with every visit. She still wouldn’t consider herself a fan, but she pinched the cigar between her fingers and took a long, appreciative drag nonetheless.
Blowing out a thin stream of smoke, she muttered, “I have not received an invitation.”
“Huh,” said Rykard.
Ranni tapped the cigar against the blue-agate ashtray on the tea table. “So he told you he was looking forward to seeing me at this banquet, of which I was yet uninformed?” she asked. “What were his exact words? In what context? When was this? Where were you?”
He waved a hand through the gray-fogged air. “Cool it with the fuckin’ inquisition. What are you, coming for my job?”
“The thickest-skulled demi-human in Limgrave could come for your job and perform it all the better.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that’s a good idea, knock the guy you need answers from.”
She let the cigar dangle loosely from her lips without taking another drag. “I suppose, dearest lord brother, that when you have questions for the illustrious guests of your own manor, you ply them with naught but flattery.”
Rykard grinned. In the lilac twilight, stars just starting to glimmer high above, cigar aflame before him, his countenance was cast in dusky chiaroscuro. A brief vision of the velvet-voiced, steel-fanged justiciar the rest of the Lands Between had come to know. Praetor Rykard, pronounced like a threat. Demigod spawn of the Elden Lord, long arm of the Order’s law.
But, to Ranni, forever, her hapless middle brother, even with his boyish dimples and flushed cheeks hidden behind a scruffy brass-colored beard he refused to shave clean.
“Just tell me what Dad said, when and how and why, okay,” she needled. She wondered if there was something in the way her voice almost broke on Dad that would give Rykard pause. Or maybe it was nothing he would notice, nothing he could even hear. Their cigars crackling over the ashtray, the Manor’s gardens beset by birdsong and far-off howls.
“I guess it’s some mind-game shit if you haven’t actually gotten an invite.” Rykard shrugged one shoulder. “It’s at the end of this month, and I got mine weeks ago. Radahn’s confirmed, too, apparently, so… can’t say yours got lost in the mail if a courier made it to and from Caelid first.”
Ranni frowned into the distance. “All the more important that you convey each and every nuance of your exchange with our esteemed lord father as it regards me, then.”
“Well, I stopped by the palace last week and he pulled me aside. Had some business to discuss. Acted like a pretentious fuck with a stiff golden stick up his ass, no nuance there.”
“So he was being normal?”
“Pretty much a perfectly normal interaction. Then I say I’ve gotta go—not that I was really in a rush, I just wanted to get out—and he asks if I’ll be at the twins’ thing at the end of the month. And I say yeah, even though he definitely knows because I already confirmed and booked that weekend off. So I figure he’s just looking for an excuse to say something about it.” Rykard scratched his jaw with his free hand. “And he nods, and, uh—he’s got his arms folded behind his back, staring into space, and he says—exact words, I think, were—‘I am looking forward to it. It will be good to see your sister again.’”
In a mimicry of that dark monotone, his voice pitched deep.
Ranni inhaled sharply. “And you assume he meant me?”
“Who else?”
“Your other sister,” she said, “the one being honored by this very occasion.”
Rykard’s brow furrowed. “Then he would’ve said half-sister, or—no, she’s a twin, he would’ve said the twins, or your weird little new siblings, or something.”
“Did he know you were coming here in between? Did he mention me or Caria by name at all?”
It would be no to the latter, she was fairly certain of that.
“Not by name,” replied Rykard, and Ranni exhaled, no pleasure in being correct, just a grim shred of satisfaction. “But I have to mark it on my schedule when I book time off for visits, and he has access to the records, so he knew I’d be seeing you now.”
“And figured you’d pass along the message? Saves the coin he’d spend on another courier, I suppose,” Ranni intoned. “Are the Order’s finances in such dire straits this quarter? Should I brace myself for austerity measures in the capital?”
To the smoldering butt of his cigar, Rykard huffed, “I’m not playing messenger-boy with you two.”
“A little late for that.” She’d reached the end of her own cigar too. She left the butt in the ashtray and slouched back in her chair. “So is this my invitation, oblique as it may be, or a reminder of my lack thereof, salt rubbed in the wound?”
He paused. “I don’t think he’d bring it up just to… be cruel.”
A laugh escaped Ranni’s throat.
“No, look, I’m not saying he’s not cruel, but—you know—he wouldn’t waste all our time like that just to be cruel. He wouldn’t bother rubbing it in your face if he could just ignore the whole deal instead.”
Ranni angled her head, then nodded. “I concur.”
Rykard opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and opened it again, this time in a broad smile. Ranni sensed the presence of her wolven brother approaching from behind before Rykard spoke his name. “Oh, Blaidd brought booze, thank the stars.”
Blaidd squeezed Ranni’s shoulders as he joined them at the garden table, setting down a flagon of wine and a pair of pewter goblets. “After a few hours without anything to drink,” he said, voice as smooth and warm as his great pelt cloak, “I figured you might be going through withdrawals.”
“None for you?” Ranni asked as her shadow filled the goblets.
“I’m in the middle of running errands for Iji. Took a quick break to show our guest some hospitality.”
“Damn right. Blaidd, you’re my favorite brother,” Rykard told him after a gulp of wine.
Blaidd smiled and bowed his head. “And you’re my second favorite, mate.”
“Hey, fuck you, what’s the General done for you lately?”
“Hasn’t gotten Lady Ranni hooked on such foul habits,” Blaidd said with a nod toward the ashtray, the lingering cloud of steel-wool smoke. His snout was twitching, nostrils flared.
Ranni clasped her goblet in one hand and touched Blaidd’s arm with the other. “Don’t go yet. Listen to this, I need your input.” To Rykard she said, “Tell him what you told me. And do the voice.”
Rykard repeated his account, adopting an even more exaggerated monotone for their father’s words.
Ranni made room for Blaidd to sit on the edge of her chair. “He did not use my name,” she murmured, looking into her shadow’s pale eyes.
Blaidd frowned. “Who else could he mean?”
“Well, I am not Rykard’s only sister.” Ranni sipped the wine unhurriedly. It was a crisp sparkling white, the signature of Liurnia’s Crystalline Woods.
“The wording seems to imply a reference to someone he has not himself seen in some time, which would rule out the children residing in his own palace, under his supervision,” Blaidd said carefully.
“You’re both overthinking it.” Rykard smacked his lips. “Dad comes up to me and talks about my sister, it’s Ranni, obviously it’s Ranni. He’s never called the twins anything but. Like they’re a single unit.” He paused, goblet aloft, as if prepared to make a toast. “I don’t think he’s ever even used their names. Least when I’m around.”
Silence fell over their corner of the courtyard.
“Miquella and Malenia,” Ranni said at last. “Is that right?”
She knew it was.
Rykard nodded, refilling his cup.
Ranni turned back to Blaidd. “I did presume the remark implicated me, but words chosen so deliberately by their speaker necessitate an equal degree of deliberation from their audience,” she said. “While it is highly improbable that he could have meant anyone else, he left room for interpretation in his verbiage.”
A cold breeze rustled Blaidd’s fur. Ranni felt his body shiver against hers. “I think it’s an invitation, in effect. He means to… invite you without inviting you.”
“That’s what I thought,” Ranni mumbled after another sip. “So my question becomes, what do I do now?”
Blaidd stood up, squeezing Ranni’s arm again. “I’ve got to fetch Iji the whetstone he needs before he gets cross. I’ll be back. And I’ll support whatever you choose.”
She gave him a dim smile before he left, then raised her chin at Rykard.
“Fill me in,” she said. “State of things in the palace. All the details. I’d like to make an informed decision.”
“I don’t know, it’s not like I ever see the twins either. This’ll be my first time meeting them. I’ve just—” He waved his right hand, spilling a drop of wine on the ground. “—seen them around the palace. Years ago when they were all small. One’s got gold hair, the other’s got red. So, yeah, Dad’s new kids with fuckin’ Marika, there you go.”
“A rather disappointing dearth of intel from the all-knowing, all-judging Praetor.”
“Not a lot of overlap between my caseload and what a couple little brats get up to on the daily, thank fuck for that.”
“But your work takes you to the palace often, does it not?”
For the past twenty years, Ranni had been avoiding undue knowledge of the Erdtree royal family, never inquiring into the affairs of anyone but her two full brothers. Rykard was the only one she still saw regularly, still talked to at all, since she’d moved back into Caria Manor. During his visits, he rarely mentioned the others in Leyndell. Instead he regaled her with tales of the Volcano Manor, what it was like living in a dank dungeon built around a massive magma reservoir, as horrific to Ranni as her own stories of the frozen northeastern peaks were to him.
When they got too drunk together, there was a risk of him griping about their father’s attitude at work, or asking about their mother’s wellbeing, knowing Ranni snuck into Raya Lucaria to see her now and then. Ranni never said much in response, never stoked those conversations. Never spoke their father’s name, or their stepmother’s—nor the twins’, before today—though they were always on her mind.
Now that she’d uttered the twins’ names aloud, and Rykard had said Marika, it was as if a seal had broken, a spell’s hold gone. The moratorium seemingly over, at long last, heralded by Radagon through Rykard.
Ranni supposed she could bring herself to say the goddess’s name, too, but she needed another cup of wine.
She drank quickly, a stinging aftertaste left in her mouth, then leaned across the table, her face close to Rykard’s. “Just, like, in general, what’s been going on there since the twins were born? You report directly to Dad, right? You must run into Marika sometimes too?” The sting worsened, a delayed shot of venom. Ranni swallowed. “Don’t tell me she’s neglected all her adopted demigods since producing a pair of her own.”
Rykard exhaled, his breath acidic and warm. “I don’t always report directly to Dad. Just for big things, or when our schedules line up. The thing is that stuff in Leyndell’s been, like—” He fumbled for the word. “Segmented? Segregated? Since they had the twins. Every holiday, every banquet, whatever, there’s a grown-up one and a kid-friendly version. I just go to the grown-up one, with all the lords and magistrates, and either Dad or Marika will host that while the other stays with the twins—”
Ranni muffled a scoff by chugging some more wine.
“—and then there’ll be a little private thing, for the members of the family who live in the palace. Them and Godwyn. Real tight guest list.” Rykard’s expression darkened momentarily. “I’ve never been invited to those. Neither has Radahn. Until, uh, now. Guess their twentieth is a big deal. They’re finally going public. Getting a seat at the adult table.”
“Ah,” Ranni said slowly. Her Carian brothers had been subjected to a similar measure of exclusion when it came to the new half-siblings. She was unsure how she felt about that. She poured some more wine.
“So are you gonna go? You should,” Rykard said before she could begin to respond. “Come to Gelmir early that week and we can share a carriage to Leyndell.”
She flashed him a tight smile. “I will not be returning to the Volcano Manor unless I am detained and dragged in by your inquisitors.”
“Ran, no, listen, for real, it’s a cool place, you need to see what I’ve done with it.”
“It is by no definition a cool place. I refuse this invitation, and any and all hence, now and evermore.” She leaned back and tilted her head. “I might venture up to the capital to meet the twins, though. Perhaps I’ll ride in on Adula.”
It was not a serious suggestion, but she enjoyed seeing Rykard’s face fall. “Fuck you, I want a dragon.”
“Go find one terrorizing your own territory and make them swear an oath of service if you best them in battle. It’s quite easy.”
“There aren’t even any dragons in Gelmir,” he grumbled, spinning his empty goblet in his hands. “Bunch of fuckin’ magma wyrms and shit else.”
“Those can’t even lift their body off the ground, let alone support a passenger, can they? A crying shame.”
Blaidd came back from Iji’s workshop, drifting toward Ranni again. She beckoned him to sit with her.
“What are you thinking, mistress?” he asked, his chin on her shoulder.
She rested her weight against Blaidd but addressed Rykard. “Which one is which, the twins?”
He understood what she meant. “Miquella is the boy, the blond one. And the redhead’s the girl, Malenia.”
Ranni hummed softly.
When they’d reached the bottom of the flagon, smoked the last of the cigars, Rykard leapt to his feet and made a dramatic show of shivering before insisting on going inside. Ranni did not hasten after him, languorous under the canopy of stars, in the near-spring chill.
Blaidd was at her side, their hands knotted together as he waited for the answer she’d withheld.
She looked at him. “Do we have any leftover indigo? And walnut hulls?”
“We should,” he said, one eyebrow lifting.
The first decade of the moratorium—her travels through the underground Ainsel River and the Eternal City of Nokstella, the rimed ruins of Astrologer settlements and the old Zamor town—she’d kept her hair cut close to her shoulders, always dyed pitch-dark. Her natural crimson hue attracted far too much attention and carried far too many negative connotations, least of all for Ranni herself. But after a few years back in Caria, she’d let the red grow out, and it hung in flaming waves just past her waist again.
“Let’s mix some up this weekend,” Ranni said before they crossed the Manor’s threshold, too low for Rykard to hear. With a flicker of a smile, for only Blaidd to see. “And let’s try not to make a mess this time.”