The leather journal, unbound, sits on the desk with both covers spread wide apart. There are words, written in beautiful script, gold on browning parchment and glinting in the low lantern light. It's night time. You aren't sure why you're here, but the pages draw you in anyway - they almost shift and dance across the page with each cursive loop and intricate taper, handwriting far too disciplined for someone you know as reckless as Vandal... and yet there it stands before your eyes, a testament to secrets she withholds.

It reads:

❝ She was beautiful.

I laid eyes on her during introduction. Through the ranks of new souls meeting old, I saw her bathed in a glimmering sheen of oils and water and crisp lace forming loops at the back of her head, white bows so intricate as they weave in and out of her mane. Her eyes were unlike any flower I'd ever seen, so bright and yellow and filled with warmth that lit up even the darkest, coldest depths of Jotunheimr. I was young, so was she - barely ten moons old - but we knew something was there when our eyes first touched. She gasped, as had I, and in that collective intake breath we knew a part of ourselves reached out and took hold, intertwining into destinies we didn't know had already been laid out for us in the stars.

Aegroixe. My beautiful Aegroixe.

Beautiful in battle as she had been between sheets. We grew up side by side, two halves of a whole, and friendship soon grew to awkward affection, then tentative steps towards a relationship that would be both our cresting rise and our overwhelming downfall. It had been a rush, a rollercoaster ride of happiness and rivalry and love and nights spent either whispering in the darkness or panting in unashamed need and unabashed want - days spent picking flowers off of the Giantess' rippling lawn or caught in the heat of mock-battle with talon-gauntlets sparking against talon-gauntlets.

Aegroixe.

Aegroixe was everything to me. Mornings were spent staring silently into each other's eyes, lost in wandering gazes and secret smiles, evenings wasted away in butterfly kisses and playful nibbles, touching, feeling, reliving, falling, loving over and over again; it was a cycle I never wanted to deviate from, never thought I'd be forced to. Aegroixe, my dear, beloved Aegroixe saw me and nourished me and cherished me. In between my frequent lashings at disobedience, she healed me and nurtured me and wrapped herself around me to keep my trembling body still as I choked back sob after sob of pain and anguish and grief over my consequences - and my love for her had consequences too.

I will never forget that day.

I had woken up without her by my side; only the Mistress stared back at me with cold, cold eyes, telling me to get wear my gear and head to the Temple where I am to report to the Goddess herself, who had been personally overseeing my progress. I thought - I thought, perhaps, it would be a good day for me despite it starting without her. I thought it would lead to many good things. I sang when I bathed, sang when I dressed, sang when I clasped the golden gauntlets around my tarsus. I sang, I sang all the way to the Temple until I saw her on the other side of the Arena, shaking in cold, white metal armor.

"Prove yourself to me, Maxine Roux. Prove to me your worth to my cause."

I had refused - I had begged, belly to the ground, pleading for her mercy for I had once believed that she was a merciful god, a just god, a kind god. I had tears in my eyes, desperate and searing across my face as she grasped my jaw in her sharp grip and pulled me close, threw me back into the midst of the arena where I knew... I knew, picking myself up, that things would never be the same again.

"Kill her... kill her or you will have gone against your pact to me, and I will collect the life of your brother."

My life shattered before my eyes, for how is one supposed to choose between one heart and another? Brother and lover. Family and friend. No amount of begging, of pleading could save me from the decision I had to make - and so she did it for me. Aegroixe, my dear, my sweet, my brave little Aegroixe. I had proposed to her only the night before, and she wore the diamond anklet around her talon as she brandished her sword and told me to kill her in battle.

Aegroixe, why?

Why?

She was the first to attack, knowing that I would never make the first step - She was the first to land a blow across my chest in successive slashes, carving patterns into my skin until I bled the neon ichor of my kind. On and on, her blade bit into me, deeper and deeper until my vision was darkening at the fringes... until I heard her voice, whispered between the whistle of steel into flesh, timed with each strike so that I and only I may hear.

"My little vandal." Don't leave me.

"Your brother has a family now." Don't leave me!

"You have nieces, nephews - a big family, just like you always wished for." You're my family!

"I know - I know you wanted it with me - but here we are, and a choice must be made. I know you. I know your heart. I know who you choose and I accept, I accept my end." I can't do this without you, Aggie, please!

"You will find another. I know this. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared. I trust you. I trust you. Do you trust me?" Please.

"Go home, my little vandal. I love you. Go home to your family." Please don't let go.

I spread my wings and soared high, bringing her to the sky for one last moment of peace in the endless velvet night - I kissed her for the last time, holding her talon to her chest so that the anklet was pressed against her beating heart. Her mouth was warm and tingling next to mine, as it had the first time, as I knew it will the last time. Her tears tasted like the ocean, like home. Mine tasted the same too.

In that second, in that moment, we became complete...

and then we fell, plummeted back to the realm of the goddess where my blades finally sank into the thick of her neck. Her blood, crimson still, splashed against my wounds, my talons, my blades, my eyes, mixing with my tears until they tasted like rust on my tongue.

Aegroixe. My dear Aegroixe.

The love of my life.

She smiled as the light faded from her eyes, body twitching, stilling, growing cold under my grasp. I thought I felt her spirit then, filling me with the happiness and joy of our combined memories, seeping into the very core of my being and intertwining with me for one last time - she pulled, and pulled, and pulled so hard I felt like she would take my soul with me.

That's when I woke up in the bottom of the ocean. ❞

At the bottom corner of the page, there's a sketch of an anklet, wrought in golden leaves and set with diamonds and corals, struck and splattered with something you do not doubt is tear-stains. Below the sketch, there is one last entry:

❝ I'll be happy for you. ❞


; written to the song killer + the sound by phoebe bridgers, feat. abby and noah gundersen; it is recommended to listen to the song in low volume while reading.