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Augusta does not know when it started, but Iuno has started preparing for her own death.
It is disquieting, she admits—but only to herself. Never to Iuno. She knows better.
She simply cannot fathom why.
It comes to her attention, suddenly and blindingly obvious, on the day that Iuno gives up her power of prophecy. Augusta hears the story in trickles, told through loose-lipped attendants and bored guards. The Temple mobs Iuno for answers, the Senate schemes behind Augusta’s back, emboldened by what they see as a hit to her influence, and the people cannot help but mock Iuno, caustic with envy. The power of prophecy, a strength so obvious, so valuable in a place like Septimont. The future, as they saw it, lay in Iuno’s hands, and she had elected to cast it into the flames. And all around the city, the air buzzes, charged, with the question of—
“Why?” Augusta asks, carding her fingers through long locks of sapphire blue. Iuno, seated between her legs, grumbles indignantly. A band of sunset gold gleams off the bangles on her wrists. Steam coils lazily around them, floating off into the cooling twilight. “I think I, of all people, reserve the right to an answer.”
“I wish you’d be this forward with the Senate,” Iuno deflects, swinging a towel behind her, which Augusta deftly snatches out of the air before it smacks her on the nose. Gently, she starts drying Iuno’s hair, still dripping from their long, long soak in the baths. “It’d make things so much easier.”
Augusta hums, rubbing circles into Iuno’s scalp. The calluses on her fingers catch strangely on the fluffy wool of the towel, but she makes no mention of it. “I hold no love for the Senate. They get to suffer my other methods.”
Iuno shoots a glance over her soldier. Through the curtain of her hair and the towel, Augusta just barely makes out a flash of twinkling blue, the white of her teeth, the curve of a smirk. “Maybe you ought to court the Senate then, if this is how you treat those you love.”
Augusta snorts. Iuno laughs, shaking her head in an unspoken signal for her to stop. Augusta raises an eyebrow but complies, leaning against the headboard of the bed as Iuno throws herself back onto Augusta’s chest. It’s comfortable. It’s warm. It’s routine. She thinks, if left alone like this long enough, she might be able to just drift off to sleep. Iuno might even be counting on it, crafty as she is. But still, Augusta asks, “Why?”
Iuno sighs. Augusta feels the way her body seems to just… collapse, a little. Iuno’s hand drifts up lazily, first to swat aside a damp strand of hair from her forehead, then to the side of Augusta’s neck, then up against her cheek. Augusta sneakily lets some charge go against the metal railing behind her, then crosses her arms across Iuno’s chest, bringing her close. They sit in silence like that, for a little while. Augusta fights the mounting desire to kiss the nape of Iuno’s neck as she waits for her answer.
“The hunt,” Iuno finally says. Her thumb brushes across Augusta’s cheekbone. “I did it for the hunt.”
Augusta… is confused. Would the power of prophecy not be an advantage in the hunt? It’d certainly helped thus far, both in tracking the Corrosaurus and divining moves against the False Sovereign. So why would she…
Augusta’s eyes widen. “...You didn’t give up your power,” she says, canting her head to the side. Iuno’s gaze meets hers, just barely. “You exchanged it.”
Iuno pinches Augusta’s cheek, grumbling something under her breath. Augusta isn’t sure what to do, so she just smiles and lets Iuno vent her frustrations however she desires. Even if that means her cheek will sting later.
“You could afford to be a bit dimmer, you know.” Iuno somehow slumps further into Augusta’s arms. “For my sake.”
“What’d you get in return?”
Iuno groans. “You sound like the Temple heads. It’s exhausting.”
Augusta just slips a hand under Iuno’s chin, tilting it back so their eyes meet. Properly, this time.
Iuno is afraid.
The sight cuts, a well-placed knife between the ribs. Augusta closes her eyes and takes a deep breath in, the smell of bath salts and incense and candle wax and gold filling her nose. She counts to three, lets it out through her nose, careful not to ruffle Iuno’s hair, and opens her eyes to find Iuno still staring right back. Idly, she notes that Iuno’s hand has stopped pulling at her cheek. It rests, comfortably, right at the nape of Augusta’s neck, fingers curled almost possessively. Augusta smiles at the hesitation. She bends down, and lets herself be pulled into a kiss.
There is little of Iuno’s usual spirited energy in the kiss. It’s slow. Sleepy, almost. A little awkward, with how their lips slot together upside down, but neither of them really care. Iuno’s hand slips through messy waves of sunset orange. Augusta’s hand cups delicately over Iuno’s neck, pulse thumping against her thumb. The sun sets beyond the horizon, and a thick cloud drifts in front of the moon, and suddenly it is completely dark.
She wonders, sometimes, what life might be like if they were allowed to just… shirk their responsibilities entirely. She thinks of the dry heat of the arena. She thinks of more nights spent just like this, under the velvet embrace of a quiet night. She thinks of Iuno’s lips on hers, and a smell that is a little less candle wax and gold.
But then Iuno opens her eyes, and Augusta pulls herself up, and all there is to the world is that wonderful flush that rests high on Iuno’s cheeks, and that look in her eyes that is half fondness and half want. And Augusta cannot fathom any world better than this one.
“Tell me, someday,” Augusta whispers.
Iuno frowns. “Not today?” she questions. There is a strange, nervous pitch to her voice. Guilt, Augusta thinks. She brushes it away, callused fingers sliding carefully over the jut of her brow, smoothing the furrow between her eyes.
Augusta nods. “Not today.”
That thick cloud overhead seems to start drifting. A band of moonlight snakes up the floor of her quarters, inching towards them. The sounds of late-night arena matches drift in with it. The roar of a crowd. The clatter and clang of steel against steel. Augusta lets it all wash over her, waiting in silence once more.
“...Why?”
“Oh, now you want to tell me?” Augusta quips, mirth coiling in her chest, and Iuno pushes her face away with a groan.
“Just answer, you big oaf.”
“Didn’t you say you’d prefer me a bit dimmer?”
“Augusta!”
Augusta just laughs as Iuno turns around in her arms, flailing her fists limply against them. She lets it go on a bit, then catches Iuno’s wrists, lifting them up to place a kiss against the back of her hand. The clouds have drifted even further away, and Iuno shines, bathed in the alabaster glow of a full moon night. Glancing up, she notices a bit of that fear still hasn’t left her eyes. Not a total victory, then. But she will make do. “I trust you. It’s that simple.”
Iuno sighs, resigned. As though she had expected the answer, and was disappointed by it. “You make it so hard to keep secrets, you know that?”
Augusta shrugs, laying down and bringing Iuno with her. Her breath tickles, where it hits Augusta’s pulse. She feels herself suffused with wonder, all of a sudden, surrounded by all the sights and sounds and smells she cherishes most. Septimont breathes, and Augusta breathes with it, and it smells like candle wax and gold, and it looks like the moonlight shining off the curves of Iuno, pressed against her.
“I love you a great deal. You’ll just have to suffer my methods.”
Rover appears, and Iuno hovers.
Augusta doesn’t mind much, at first. She is not prone to jealousy, and Iuno is not prone to unfaithfulness. She actually finds it somewhat amusing, if she’s being honest. The upturned nose, the standoffish attitude, the complete invasion of Rover’s personal space. She remembers it, faintly, as the signs of Iuno’s curiosity. Remembers the hazy, amber-hued sky, the muggy air, the smell of dirt. And Iuno, draped in flowing cloths that never seemed to stain, hovering. She remembers telling Iuno that her behavior struck her as almost… feline.
The silent treatment she got in return was worth it.
But all of this simply begged the question: Why is Iuno so curious about Rover?
It’s not because of her gladiatorial exploits, or else she might show the same interest in the spitfire Lupa. It’s not for her rumored role in major foreign conflicts, since Iuno doesn’t keep up with those. It’s not even for the fact that Rover seems hellbent on speaking to Arsinosa, or that curious talking Echo she’s spied flitting about the food courts. And yet Iuno is still curious.
It’s vexing. Augusta searches her for answers and comes up blank every time.
And then they go hunting.
Iuno stands next to her, waiting for the fog to clear, and Augusta busies herself memorizing the sight of Iuno’s eyes, sharp and cunning and ready to hunt. She loves the sight, though she seldom admits it even to herself. She loves Iuno’s ferocity, atop rocky ridges or blazing arenas or whispering sheets. Maybe it’s that little part of Augusta that has always hungered for power. It makes Iuno all the more bewitching.
And then Iuno turns towards Rover, and her gaze doesn’t change, and it dawns on Augusta, slowly, like the angry crags of Sanguis Plateau cutting through the mist, that she has missed something important.
They move forward.
A scouting party clears away the debris left over at the Den from the last Hunt, opening up the clearing that will serve as their base. Warriors mill about from tent to tent, murmuring in hushed tones about her, about Avidius, about the unruly Priestess, about Rover, about the Prophecy. It is almost like the Senate’s rumor mill, but much more intoxicated and much less ambiguous. Augusta much prefers it.
All the while, Iuno hunts. No one but Augusta understands how much Iuno values the Hunt. The temple elders think they do, but that’s only because they know the Hunt gives Iuno another excuse to not be at the temple. That’s only one piece of the puzzle though.
Iuno loves hunting. Even after years of work as a priestess, archery is one of the few things Iuno has continued to devote herself wholly to. Back when they had just started courting, Iuno had made it very clear that she did not believe in being protected like a damsel in distress. If she ever had a problem she couldn’t shoot between the eyes herself, she had said, then maybe Augusta could make herself useful. But not a second before.
Augusta had just kissed her and made sure to restock the targets for her training grounds.
The Hunt suits Iuno. She is lithe, nimble, eagle-eyed. She will perch atop a jagged jut of red stone, high up above the lip of the canyons that make up so much of the hunting grounds, and Augusta will hear her Terminal chirp. Augusta will look up, and a streak of gleaming silver will strike somewhere. Sometimes Iuno just likes to brag, hitting a rabbit five feet away from Augusta. Sometimes Augusta will ride the winds for a whole minute before she finds whatever is left of Iuno’s latest quarry.
It’s their favorite game.
Iuno leads, and Augusta follows, sword flashing through slime and sludge and shadowy sinew as she makes her way from target to target. Augusta always kills more, but Iuno always kills the biggest ones. That’s what the Hunt is really about, for her. It’s a show, it’s proof, it’s an imperious lift of her chin as she stares down at everyone who might mock her.
“I want them to be too afraid of me to even say it,” she once confessed, fire in her voice. “I want everyone who called me weak for trading away my prophecies to realize that even without them, they’re still beneath me.”
After a full day of culling the rabble in preparation for their plans, it ends as everything always does: just like Iuno predicted. They make their way back to camp at dusk, and the stares around the camp are warier. The whispers about them both quieter. Iuno giggles at Augusta’s side, arm slipping into the crook of her elbow.
“Watch Avidius do that, losers,” she murmurs, sly and impish. Augusta’s lips twitch, but she makes sure to keep her mouth drawn tight in a straight line.
“Oh, I’m sure the Hero of Heroes can do all that and more, don’t you know?” Augusta nudges her elbow into Iuno’s side. “Though maybe she would not be so fortunate as to have the beautiful Priestess Iuno at her side.”
Iuno sneers. “They’d have to look past your Forte to acknowledge you can do anything better than the tyke. They’d sooner believe I’d hang myself off his arm too.”
“It’s refreshing to have you so adamantly on my side for once.” Augusta lifts the flap to her tent with an arm, and Iuno slips under and in, settling down on the hammock strung across the back of the small interior. “You’d usually give me a harder time.”
It’s a little darker inside the tent, but the heat on Iuno’s cheeks is unmistakable, and the way she turns her head to the side just puts it in plainer view. “Yeah, well, I… I do love you. Would be a shame if you forgot that. Gotta make sure.”
Augusta’s eyebrows pinch together as she leans down to the firepit at the center of her tent, electricity arcing from her finger to a piece of kindlewood. The pit slowly, lazily, blazes to life, and Augusta takes slow, quiet steps towards the hammock, casting a long shadow over Iuno.
Iuno hesitates, eyes flicking back and forth.
Moonlight and candle wax and clanging metal and gleaming gold. It’s that old fear again. Iuno doesn’t even need to meet her eyes for her to know.
Augusta’s hands come up to cup Iuno’s cheeks, tender as she can be with hands as rough as hers. Slowly, she lowers herself down, slotting their lips together in a lazy, languid kiss. Iuno’s eyes flutter closed. Her hands come up to wrap around Augusta’s neck and slowly, slowly, she drags her down until they’re both on the hammock, casting writhing shadows across the dusty canvas of her tent. The wooden poles supporting the hammock creak and groan, but they pay that no mind. Iuno’s legs tangle with hers, and their breaths mingle in the shortening pause between kisses.
Iuno’s chest rises and falls a little faster, and her breath hitches as Augusta’s hand slots itself against her side. The kiss turns hungry. Desperate. Kinetic. Augusta’s knee finds its way between Iuno’s thighs. It is a clumsy process, on the rickety, unstable hammock, but as always she makes do. Iuno grabs at the strip of leather around Augusta’s neck, pulling her head down until it rests against the pearly bend of her neck. They breathe in the other’s pulse. Augusta’s teeth graze against skin. Iuno shifts against Augusta’s knee.
“Please,” Iuno breathes. Her fingers flit over Augusta’s pulse. A plea, and a question.
“Of course,” Augusta whispers, taking pale skin between her teeth as she feels Iuno doing the same. Idly, she notices that Iuno is biting somewhere she can cover up easily. It’s considerate in a way she has come to realize is not nearly as surprising as one would think, coming from Iuno. She endures the pinch on her neck, waiting for Iuno to finish by lazily kissing at the small bruise she has left behind on her. Watching shadows flickering over smooth skin.
The hammock creaks. They move no further. Iuno stops.
Iuno’s voice is low, breathy, scratchy. “It’s gonna bruise,” she says.
“You sound happy about that.”
Iuno’s hand moves from Augusta’s neck to her cheek. The sheen of sweat across her skin and the crackling fire at the center of the tent filigree her in gold. “...It’s proof. Proof that I e–” she catches herself. “Proof that I… I love you.”
Augusta’s heart hammers and rages against the confines of her ribcage. Something isn’t right. Something isn’t right and she doesn’t know, hasn’t known all this time, what.
“So I won’t forget?”
Iuno smiles, and it’s so unbearably sad.
“So you won’t forget.”
Augusta does not know when it started, but Iuno has been preparing for her own death.
It was disquieting, she'd admit—but only to herself. Never to Iuno. She knew better.
Spotting the mass of inky black in the distance, roiling and squirming in some twisted facsimile of life, she thinks she finally understands why.
Augusta is going to kill the False Sovereign, and Iuno is going to die to make it happen.
A streak of silver, a flood of light, the sun and moon in the sky. The bruise on Augusta’s neck and the fear in Iuno’s eyes. Understanding floods through her veins like lightning. From her left eye, a tear carves through the grime and dust on her cheek.
“Go chase your fate, Augusta.”
And so they do.
And so she does.
Victory tastes like ash and ozone and molten slag. Augusta washes it down with another mug of ale.
The clamor of a well-earned celebration rings in her ears, warriors singing and yelling and making merry. There’s a pig roasting over an open flame, and barrels of beer and aged wines, and someone snuck a lute onto the peninsula, and everyone is happy.
Augusta is happy.
Not because everyone has finally stopped trying to undermine her authority, now that she’d proven herself a Hero of Heroes, but because some old, unsettled part of her past had finally, quietly, slipped back into place. Murmurstown, in all its drab, dreary glory, had been something she’d needed. The whispers, now quiet, were no doubt a temptation, but Augusta chooses instead to view them as… a motivator. A purpose. She proved them wrong after all. So ultimately, she finds herself thankful.
Augusta is happy, Augusta is thankful, but she is also confused.
There is a bruise on her neck.
She has not checked it yet, because it’s still time for celebrations and it’d reflect poorly on her as the guest of honor to excuse herself early, but she feels it. It’s prickly and sore, and the leather at her neck makes it itch and chafe, and most confounding of all, it’s new. And while being a Hero of Heroes comes with plenty of new political boons, she does not think a title has given her the power to shrug off the kinds of attacks the False Sovereign had wielded at her, much less in the neck.
So where? Where did she get the bruise?
A voice, light and lilting and ever-so-slightly drunk, breaks Augusta out of her reverie. “Lots to think about after today?”
August smiles up at Rover from her seat. She, too, is covered in a layer of muck and grime, and she wears it like a medal. To Septimontians, it might as well be. “Certainly. I’ve already begun thinking of all the things the Senate will finally let me do once we get back.”
“Ah,” Rover says, chuckling. “And they say you aren’t fit to be Ephor. Half the mountain is drunk and you’re thinking about politics.”
Augusta waves away the concern. “Not worrying about that is their privilege as the people.” She lifts her mug up against Rover’s, the hollow thunk of wood against wood nearly drowned out in all the noise. “And as the ruler, this drink is mine.”
Rover shakes her head, sitting down next to Augusta. She stares out over the crowd with a wistful expression on her face. “This reminds me of home, a little.”
Augusta raises an eyebrow. “Is ‘home’ full of more Septimontians than I'd initially assumed?”
Rover laughs, straight from the belly. “Goodness no! No, my home is full of people in lab coats. They tend to prefer screwdrivers over spears, that sort.”
“But?” Augusta nudges, motioning with her mug.
“But... we recently went through… an ordeal of our own. And when everything was over and done with, everyone was… so happy. Me included.” She waves a hand towards the rowdy, beautiful mess of a Septimontian celebration. “This reminded me of that. And the way everyone feels almost like… like family, I think.”
Augusta hums, head tilting to one side. “Fighting alongside one another is how I would wager most of my fellow warriors have made a good portion of their friends.”
Rover snickers.
Augusta straightens. “Hm?”
“Oh, no no nothing, it’s just… Contender Lupa, you remember her right?”
A nod. The world swims pleasantly with the motion. “That I do. I wish she would have joined us, honestly.”
“She constantly calls me ‘fellow warrior’. The turn of phrase just reminded me of that, is all.”
Augusta smiles. She feels something settle awkwardly in her chest, but pushes past it. “You lead a life of many friendships, don’t you?”
“As a traveler,” Rover responds, something coy in her smile. “That is my privilege.”
The two share a laugh, and Augusta stares up at the star-speckled sky. There is a crescent moon overhead, and it feels almost like a cleansing, to be sitting under it. She imagines herself bathed in cool silver, after all the splendor and glory of the blazing gold she had brought to bear against the Sovereign, and the thought is comforting, for some reason.
Out of the corner of her eye, something glints.
There is a crescent moon bangle in Rover’s hands. The bruise on her neck throbs.
“There are some people,” Rover starts, haltingly. “Who, even as a traveler of many friends, I have come to cherish… quite deeply.”
Augusta’s eyes trace the fractal patterns on the gem of the bangle. The gold shines, fire and moonlight dancing across its edge.
Rover gingerly places the bangle in Augusta’s hand. She hadn’t even realized she’d extended it. “I think it should be a ruler’s privilege to have at least one of those, too.”
Augusta can do naught but stare. The gold is smudged, and the gemstone is cracked in spots. The edges are chipped, but she can imagine a world where they are ground into an edge fine enough to almost serve as a weapon. She can picture it, somehow, peeking out from among the light robes of the temple priestesses. She can imagine—
A world with… something. Someone, maybe. The bruise itches.
“Thank you,” she finally says, and Rover just nods, something calculating in her golden eyes. “I’ll be sure to treasure it.”
“Please do.”
The hammock feels empty.
Augusta clutches the crescent moon against her chest, and wonders if someone will trade her a smaller one before they leave.
There is a girl, the people say. There is a girl who likes to run along the narrow bricks of the high wall. She leaps from perch to perch with feline grace—flighty, ethereal. There is a girl, and the people cheer for her every time they see her running through the streets, always away from something, or someone. There is a girl, and she carries with her the scent of silver and spring water.
Augusta smiles when she hears the story. The bangle on her wrist, polished and honed by her own hand, in her own forge, feels warm.
“I’d love to meet her, some day,” she says.
A star-studded sky gleams overhead.