CW: Mild body horror
Leandros Nochdvor had a secret: he loved ghost stories. Not just any ghost stories, but the serialized, salacious variety that sold for a penny on street corners. They were hardly high literature, but they helped him to feel in a world that wanted him numb and they never claimed to be anything other than what they were, which was something he wished he could claim for himself.
Besides, there was a catharsis in reading about ghosts while being haunted by memories. He didn’t believe in ghosts — not in the way they appeared in his stories, at least — but on days when he looked in the mirror and saw only his father, or when he traveled old roads and imagined familiar dark eyes among the crowds, he knew with certainty that he was haunted. The stories helped take the edge off that loneliness.
Naturally, though, no one could know about them. Once a week, he stole out of the palace to buy the latest installments of his favorites, then hid in dark cafes to read or else risked smuggling the pamphlets back to his rooms tucked between the pages of real books. For the first time in over a decade, though, he’d missed a week. It was all the travel — travel offered few unsupervised moments, especially travel with his cousin and uncle. He’d finally found one today, six days after leaving Alfheim, but Rhea had caught him sneaking out the servants’ entrance and blackmailed him into taking her with. He wished now that he’d been a little quicker, a little sneakier. If he had, he wouldn’t have had to deal with the latest chapter of MURDER YOUR DARLING taunting him from the newsstand across the street.
Leandros had recognized the style from halfway down the block: the black and white cover depicted a loosely-dressed woman wrapped protectively in her lover’s arms, a dark-windowed house looming behind them. It was a scandalous illustration, as scandalous as the story itself tended to be, and Leandros couldn't possibly buy it in front of his cousin. But at the same time, he might not get another chance. The problem with these stories was that if you missed a week, it was dreadfully difficult to catch up again. Even the most popular authors had limited print runs that sold out fast; you could always buy or borrow an old chapter off someone, of course, but Leandros couldn't afford the attention asking around would draw to himself. And this chapter had probably sold out days ago back in Alfheim. That was all to say: it was now or never.
He bit his lip and eyed the newsstand, then glanced back and found Rhea intently browsing a craftsman’s stall. He made up his mind. Penny already in hand, he stepped off the sidewalk, but before he could even begin to cross the street a cloaked woman crashed into him with all the force of a freight train.
The collision knocked the wind out of Leandros. While he managed to stay on his feet, he stumbled face-first into a local florist’s counter, getting a mouthful of flowers hung to dry and knocking over a tub of wilted roses. The water from the tub splashed all down his front and trousers, sickly sweet and freezing, and Leandros let out a string of curses he hoped Rhea wasn’t close enough to hear. The cloaked woman crashed to the ground and rolled, pushing herself up onto her knees, and annoyed as Leandros was, he shook off as much excess water as he could and offered her a hand up. When she looked up at him, he glimpsed her face beneath her hood.
Leandros didn’t believe in ghosts. He didn’t. But it was the only word he could think of to describe the woman before him. She might well have been a corpse, her skin bloated and torn open by wounds that slashed in jagged lines across her cheek. Blackened, purple veins crept up her neck on the opposite side like a mosaic of rotten marble, disappearing behind a wide, pointed ear. Only her eyes had any life to them, feverish and bright beneath her hood. She accepted Leandros’ proffered hand, and Leandros mechanically pulled her to her feet even as the horror seeped down to his bones. It was like she knew; she knew how he felt and it amused her. She smiled at him, slow and deliberate, and then took off running before he could react.
What else could he have done but give chase?
“Leandros!” Rhea called after him, mixed in with the chatter of the crowd and the florist’s angry shouts.
Leandros pushed through the crowds with an urgency he hadn’t felt in years. He couldn’t say why, but he knew that losing sight of the stranger now would be a mistake. The crowd, unfortunately, lacked the same urgency — it pushed back against him when he pushed against it. Still, he didn’t stop trying, following the woman deeper and deeper into the city, always keeping the back of her raggedy cloak in his sights. Then, finally and all at once, he shot free of the market like a bullet from the barrel of a pistol. The new open air let him push his legs harder, faster, his height giving him an advantage on the small stranger. Bit by bit, he gained ground.
When she was only twenty feet ahead, he watched the edges of her cloak disappear around a corner. When he turned the corner himself, mere moments later, she had vanished. Leandros ground to a stop and looked around, but there was nothing ahead but empty road. There were no alleys, no side streets to disappear down, and the few people out and about barely even seemed to register Leandros’ appearance. He doubted they’d noticed a cloaked woman disappear into thin air.
He kicked a rock and swore under his breath.
The street he found himself on was quiet and mixed residential, not quite wealthy but not poor, either. The road was cobbled but pock-marked, the goods in the few storefronts cheaply made but reeking with the self-importance that permeated all of Illyon. Leandros hated this city. It was dull and dingy, industrial and “progressive” in a way that meant progress for the lucky and nothing good for all the rest. Factory smoke filled its skies and buried the bright suns, and beneath the smog was a smell so foul it hurt to breathe, the product of a sewage system that failed to fit the growing population.
This was exactly the sort of thing that would happen in Illyon, he thought, from the disappearing woman to the unfortunate incident with the moldy flower water. His trousers were still wet, still chilly in the breeze that blew past them. But for all his mother’s complaints about his insistence on still wearing mourning black, he was glad now he wasn’t wearing something lighter. That surely would have been a sight.
He was wondering how this day could possibly get worse when he saw it, a small redemption: another nondescript corner stand, another impossible copy of MURDER YOUR DARLING hanging proudly on the display. It was a shitty consolation prize, to be sure, but it was a consolation prize Leandros would take. He approached the newsstand and asked for a copy, and while the newsagent dug one out of his stores, a group of children behind Leandros played skip rope, chanting an old rhyme to the beat of their jumps.
Taurel, taurel, old stone and coral, Where do you end your reign? Spread through the valley, down to the trees. You will be Egil’s bane.
Leandros winced. There it was. That was how this day could get worse. He’d been so caught up in the ghostly woman that he’d forgotten his own ghosts, his biggest reason for hating Illyon: Egil. In all their self-importance, the people of Illyon clung to the ghost of a hero they had no claim to and Leandros, who had more cause than any to mourn, was forced to face reminders of his lost friend everywhere. Egil’s hometown, they called themselves. It wasn’t true, but Leandros might have been the only person left in all the world that knew it. Still, he couldn’t help but think that if Egil had been here, the cloaked woman wouldn’t have gotten away. Egil would have known what was wrong with her and how to help. Egil had always known what to do.
“Leandros!” a familiar voice called. Leandros swore again and quickly waved off the newsagent, who’d been about to hand him his penny dreadful.
Rheamaren Nochdvor wasn’t like Leandros; she never ran, she only walked. She never swore, either, though Leandros could see in the furious set of her brow and draw of her mouth how badly she wanted to in that moment. She was the quintessential alfar in a way Leandros had never managed to pull off, collected and composed. She wore her long, golden hair down as a symbol of her status, the pointed tips of her ears sticking out from beneath it and her fine clothes standing out from the citizens around her. When Rhea walked down the street, the people didn’t go about their days; they stopped. They stopped and stared and moved almost unconsciously out of her way as she passed.
She stopped in front of Leandros, then paused and looked between Leandros and the newsstand, her anger replaced by puzzlement. “I’m sorry, were you…buying something?”
Leandros glanced behind him as if he hadn’t realized the newsstand was there. “Of course not, I was only asking for directions back.”
Rhea eyed him for a moment, clearly not quite believing him but having no evidence to support it, then shrugged. “Well? Are you going to explain what you were thinking, taking off like that?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Leandros said. He started back toward High Street, effectively steering Rhea away from the newsstand. He cast a last, mournful look over his shoulder as he did. Maybe he’d try to sneak out again that evening. “I just thought I saw something strange.”
“Strange? You ran all this way for strange? What kind of strange?”
Leandros scratched his chin, now embarrassed to say. Away from the urgency of the moment, it seemed rather silly. “It’s hard to describe, I’m afraid. She was orinian, but—”
“Orean is less than a day’s ride away, Leandros,” Rhea said with steady Alfheim composure. It was flat, measured, flawless as cold stone. “Of course there will be orinians here.”
“Obviously, Rhea, there was more to it,” Leandros said, biting back annoyance. “I don’t know how to explain it, but something was very wrong with her. She needed help.”
Rhea hesitated, examined her cousin’s expression more closely. “Well, where did she go? Should we keep looking for her?”
“When are we due back?”
“In ten minutes.”
Leandros swore for the fourth time that day and checked his watch. “No. No, there’s no time,” he said. For all Rhea’s attitude, she would follow his lead. They would stay out all day searching for the cloaked woman if Leandros only gave the word. “Besides, I have the feeling we won’t find her even if we do look. We’re not that far from Hampstead Hall; we can be back in twenty minutes if you don’t dawdle,” he said, starting off down the street without waiting for Rhea to catch up.
“If I don’t dawdle?” Rhea hissed as she hurried after him, past the newsstand and past the children and their games. “Why don’t we just hail a cab?”
“Because this isn’t Alfheim. They don’t have cabs here like they do back home, and the ones they do have won’t be found waiting on a street like this. We have to get back to High Street.”
It wasn’t even a bad neighborhood, in the way people liked to call neighborhoods inherently bad — not unsafe or rowdy or even particularly lively, but Leandros never would have brought Rhea here under other circumstances. It had nothing to do with Rhea and everything to do with her father; Leandros never could disappoint his uncle. Not intentionally, at least. But now that they were already here…
“Look around and commit this to memory,” he said, even as he himself looked under passersby’s hoods and down side alleys for the ghostly woman, knowing he wouldn’t find her. “This is how most of Alfheim lives, even back in the city. If you’re going to be Queen one day, let no one call you out of touch.”
Rhea did as he said, watching the city around them with curious eyes until they eventually were able to hail a cab back on High Street. The carriage rattled easily through the market, the crowd parting for it in the way it didn’t for fellow pedestrians. Leandros kept checking his watch on the way, watching the smooth ride shave minutes off their arrival time. The front of the old watch was dented, the metal tarnished, but it ticked steadily whenever Leandros opened it. Each time, his eyes carefully avoided the initials engraved on the inner corner.
“Only five minutes late,” he said smugly.
“You sound very proud,” Rhea said. “You have flower petals in your hair, by the way.”
Leandros frowned and ran his hands through it. It was the same golden color as Rhea’s and cut fashionably at chin length, though a single, stubborn lock had the tendency to fall rather unfashionably into his eyes. Sure enough, he shook out fragments of flower petals and one single, large leaf.
It was Rhea’s turn to be smug. “I had to pay for all those roses you ruined,” she said, lips turned up into the barest smile. “I expect you to pay me back.”
“Certainly, if your father doesn’t kill me first for making you late.”
“He won’t. You know how he always defends you. We’re here, by the way. Would you like to complain more, or shall we go?”
“By all means, let’s go. I can complain on the way.”
If the guards of Hampstead Hall were surprised at seeing their guests of honor on the wrong side of the gates, they didn’t show it, letting Rhea and Leandros wordlessly through when they arrived. The two alfar passed into a wide courtyard, empty and echoing, and took a moment to brush the dust from their clothes. Leandros’ trousers had mostly dried now, at least, though they’d dried stiff and crunchy.
Around them, the unique silver brick of Hampstead’s walls caught in the light of the suns, making the place feel like a glittering mosaic. The courtyard was empty as they passed through, but now and then Leandros glimpsed servants scurrying along the upper corridors, disappearing and reappearing between ivy-covered columns and glancing over the edge to glimpse the princess and her infamous cousin.
Leandros ignored them, more than used to being the subject of curiosity. He and Rhea climbed the grand staircase up to the reception hall, the gilded doors held open for them by Illyon guards. Rhea swept inside first, treating her arrival like a gift to all waiting within. Before he followed, Leandros wiped his smile from his face. In Illyon, as in all of Alfheim, expression would only be used as a weapon against him.
The reception hall was a round room at the top of Hampstead’s tallest tower, flooded in light and circled on all sides by delicately arched windows. The suns outside blinded Leandros, but not as much as the nobles inside, their sparkling fabrics and bright jewelry refracting sunslight along the domed ceiling. Spaced evenly throughout, they circled a man at the room’s center, planets circling a golden-bright sun.
Nobles and lords and politicians, circling the King of the Alfheim province.
Amos Nochdvor turned when Rhea and Leandros swept in. He didn’t smile — here, that would be seen as boorish — but his eyebrows lifted slightly. It was a good sign. “There you are,” he said.
Rhea bowed and Leandros followed suit. When she straightened again, Rhea said, “Apologies, father. I asked Leandros to show me the city.”
Amos turned his attention to Leandros, his sharp, icy eyes pinning him in place. Leandros had the same eyes, as had his father before him. A ripple made of whispers and scorn passed through the room at the mention of Leandros’ name, more than a few nobles tilting their heads to look down their noses at him. “You couldn’t have chosen a better time for your tour?”
Leandros bowed again. “The fault is mine.”
“It’s a beautiful day and you’re both young. I cannot blame you,” Amos said, looking out the windows. When he again met Leandros’ gaze, the ice in his eyes had thawed. “In the future, just be conscious of the time.”
With that, he waved them away and returned to the conversation they’d interrupted. They hadn’t missed much; alfar meetings always started with careful circles of small talk, court gossip, and pleasantries, moving slowly like hesitant new partners at the start of a dance. Rhea tugged Leandros toward one of the windows, out of the way, where Leandros tried to listen with a straight face. Alfheim prized its stoicism: hide how you feel. Don’t say what you mean. Be private, be discrete, and give your enemies nothing. Leandros had a history of breaking these rules — he’d traveled too often and too far in his youth, they said, and had lost what made him alfar. Some said it was Egil’s influence, all the adventures he had with the once-great, earnestly human hero. Maybe they were right.
He could feel their eyes on him, waiting for him to inevitably slip up, so instead he turned to lean out the open window. From here all of Illyon sprawled before him like a map, from the plumes of factory smoke curling in the distance to the flat rooftops of Hampstead Hall below him. The nearest was less than a fifteen foot drop, and he briefly considered leaving this all behind. He could always leave and go to Orean. He lifted his gaze to that other city, little more than a spot in the distance. The independent city-state was nestled at the base of a jagged mountain at the other side of the valley, past Alfheim’s rule and Unity’s grasp. It was a kinder city than Illyon and Leandros dreamed of returning there someday, perhaps when he made a social blunder Amos could not fix.
As he daydreamed, someone knocked at the doors.
Leandros turned as the captain of Hampstead’s security entered the room and knelt before the King. “A messenger from Orean has come to speak with His Majesty,” he said.
Leandros wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the nobles reacted even more disdainfully to the mention of Orean than they did to his name. It hadn’t escaped him that in all the small talk, they’d avoided the subject of Orean. Normally, Orean was a favorite topic of grumbling, like the weather or a favored horse losing at the tracks. There was never nothing. He’d heard rumors — mounting tension, disputes over resources and trade — but then, there were always rumors.
“Were you expecting anyone?” Amos asked the woman beside him — Illyon’s governor, Leandros remembered from the earlier introductions. “No matter. We’ll hear them out.”
“Yes, my King,” the Captain said. He turned to leave, then hesitated. The man had seemed so fearless when Leandros had first met him, but now he wavered. “If you don’t mind my saying, there’s something wrong with her. Something unnatural.”
Rhea and Leandros shared a look. Rhea shook her head, but Leandros was already stepping forward. “Your Majesty,” he said, “If I’m right, the Princess and I ran into the same orinian on our way here. Captain Nielson is right.”
Amos looked to Rhea, but Rhea again shook her head. “I didn’t see her face. Only Leandros did.”
“Go on,” Amos said.
Leandros bowed. “Yes, Your Majesty. I only saw it for a moment, but…her face was wounded, full of cuts from no weapon I’ve ever seen. When I tried to help her, she ran. I don’t think she meant harm — at least, she bore no weapon. You should speak with her.”
“You would give your King orders?” the Governor asked.
Amos gave her a cold look. “I trust my nephew’s judgment,” he said sternly. He turned again to face Captain Nielson, the flowing silks of his coats slithering across the cold marble. “And I won’t turn away a missive from Orean. Send her up.”
It wasn’t long after Nielson left before the doors opened again.
The smell hit first, like rancid meat and spoiled perfume. Then came shadows, gathering preternaturally in the doorway and spreading across the floor and over the walls like grasping claws, snuffing out the dancing lights caused by all the glitter and gold. The nobles exchanged nervous looks, then in stepped Leandros’ cloaked stranger. She’d unbuttoned the cloak now, he realized, so that they could see the Orean insignia beneath, embroidered into leather armor so antiquated Leandros only recognized it from illustrations. She took a step forward, moving with a jerky sway like a puppet guided by an inexperienced puppeteer. Then, when all eyes were on her, she lowered her hood.
It was worse than Leandros remembered. Her skin was gray, almost translucent and framed by long curls as red as blood. Same as all orinians, she had long, calf-like ears and a tail that swished beneath her cloak. The wounds Leandros saw before stretched across her skin in a mockery of orinians’ pale birthmarks, and where muscle and bone should have been visible beneath flowed instead a strange fluid, orange and sluggish like magma. It pulsed beneath her skin with every beat of her heart and her eyes, alight with the same glow, fixed unblinkingly on the King.
Leandros felt ill just looking at her. Near him, one of Illyon’s nobles fainted in a heap of heavy skirts, her friends too entranced by their flyblown visitor to catch her. Just as before, when faced with Leandros’ horror, the woman smiled. At least, Leandros thought it was supposed to be a smile — only half her face cooperated, the other cut through by those wicked gashes.
Beyond her appearance, beyond her smile, beyond the smell of death that clung to her like perfume, there was something else off about the woman. It was something deeper, something worse. Something Leandros couldn’t put a name to. It felt like walking barefoot in snow or wandering alone through haunted ruins, like the numbness of shock or a warning chill at the back of your neck. It was dismal. Distant. Dangerous. It hid behind her eyes and in the swirl of that strange glow. It had Leandros’ hair standing on end and his hand going to the revolver he wore at his hip.
He needed to get her away from Amos, and Amos seemed to have the same realization. “Guards!” he shouted, the calm King’s voice breaking on the word. “Guards!”
There was no answer from the hallway beyond, only fingers of blood flowing through the open doors. If Leandros had to guess, it belonged to the Captain. When the orinian woman took a step toward the King, the Governor bravely moved to block her way.
“Don’t!” Leandros warned, but too late. The orinian caught the Governor by the throat, her graying fingers swollen, and lifted her off the ground like she weighed nothing. As she did, she smiled the same twisted half-smile from before.
“Release her,” the King ordered. “Release her and tell us what you want.”
The orinian tilted her head to one side, considering the order, then let the Governor drop. “Very well,” she said, her voice unexpectedly sweet. Her accent felt as old as her clothing, as old as the strange presence behind her eyes that wore her like a shell. “I want you. Will you come with me?”
Leandros drew his gun and aimed it at the woman. “Don’t move any closer,” he warned. “We can help you, but you need to stay back.”
The woman only glanced at Leandros and seemed ready to dismiss him, but then her gaze snapped back to his face. She blinked, almost seeming surprised. “You again,” she observed. “I’m sorry, but I will have him.”
When she stepped forward again, Leandros fired.
The shot echoed around the room. The bullet struck its target and tore into the woman’s shoulder. While she stumbled back and lost her stride, though, she didn’t so much as glance at the wound before pressing forward again. So again, Leandros shot. Again, she barely even slowed. It was impossible. Inhuman. Leandros shot her again and again and again, shot until his gun ran out of bullets and the orinian reached her target. When she stopped before the King, she pressed a single finger to his chest.
Leandros watched his uncle shudder and crumple like a broken doll.
Rhea screamed and surged forward, but Leandros caught her by the wrist to stop her. Others rushed to the King’s aid while she struggled to break Leandros’ grip, but before any of them could reach Amos, the orinian swept her arm through the air and something erupted from her palm — something like lightning and something like fire, something glowing with the same crimson as the magma beneath her skin. It hung suspended in a ring around herself and the fallen king. It cracked and sputtered and grew brighter, stronger, hotter while the orinian hoisted Amos off the ground and threw him over her shoulder. It sparked and flared, singeing any who stood close enough.
Despite Rhea’s struggling, Leandros only dragged her further back, stopping when the backs of his thighs hit the windowsill. He tore his eyes from his uncle’s limp form to watch the flames: they were starting to lose their shape, flaring out further with each pop and sputter. When he risked a glance at the orinian again, what he saw turned his blood cold. Her eyes had changed, shadow eclipsing pupil, iris, and sclera and leaving her eyes entirely black. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew she was looking at him. Before he could do anything to stop her, both she and the King disappeared into thin air.
Rhea sobbed and struggled harder against Leandros, but even though the orinian was gone, her flames were not. Molten sparks flew at them every few seconds, and Leandros could feel their heat even from the far wall. While the others only stared, he made his decision. He turned, caught Rhea by the waist, and launched them both out the open window.
Rhea screamed at Leandros as they fell, but her words were drowned out by a final, deafening pop from the tower. An explosion followed that shook the earth and blew out every window in the high tower, and the two alfar fell amidst a shower of glass and flame.
They hit the flat rooftop a few fleeting seconds later, searing pain shooting up Leandros’ shoulder at his awkward landing. He gasped but pushed himself up anyway, holding himself over Rhea to protect her from the falling glass. He felt it hitting his back and arms, cutting and slicing even as the smaller bits dug into his palms. Finally, after what felt like ages, it ended and Leandros collapsed beside his cousin.
From their place on the rooftop, he could hear people shouting below, fire bells ringing in the distance. From their place on this rooftop, he had a perfect view of the charred tower above them, its bricks no longer sparkling. Then Rhea was blocking that view, Leaning over Leandros with a face streaked with tears. She looked more lost than Leandros had ever seen her. “Leandros,” she said, voice hoarse. “She took my father. What do we do?”
The answer came easy. “We get him back,” Leandros said.
Welcome to the official Fractured Magic relaunch; I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. For those who are new to the story, welcome! For those who have been around or have been waiting for the substack launch, thank you for your patience!!
This was a rather enticing way to begin the story. Great way to get a reader invested. I'm glad you're releasing this again, otherwise, I would've missed out!
dude this is so good, there's so much life in this!! i felt like i was a teenager hanging out in the library again. very excited about the rest of it!