Esmi felt as if some huge golem Relic had its hand wrapped around her chest as she watched Stafford plunge his meaty fist into the prince's guts. Someone nearby moaned in dismay, but she wasn't sure who. She couldn't breathe. She'd felt that cold hand inside her own body, and watching the gory scene play out below, she swore she could feel it again. Gerard, she noted distantly, had the decency to look surprised as he died.

Basil's hand stroked the base of her neck, cool and soothing, and she gasped convulsively, the spell broken. Her heaving breaths had a hint of a sob to them. "It's all right," he murmured, quiet and cold. "It will be all right."

"Will it?" she asked, unable to take her eyes from the tableau on the arena. Stafford was bent over the prince as if he were inspecting him. Or smelling him. An involuntary shudder passed through her like a wave. "We've lost three already. I was so sure at first, but now I don't see how we can win this, my love. Have we doomed everyone? Did hope blind us to our reality? Or pride?"

He shrugged. The movement allowed her to finally look away from that horrid brute Stafford and toward the man she loved. He might as well have been carved from ice. "Our reasoning was good, and the alternative was intolerable," he said. "And besides, dearest, it's a moot point. The die has been cast. Win or lose, at this point all we can do is see it through."

She felt a pang of distress entirely different from the phantom claw in her gut. "Does none of it move you anymore?" she whispered, putting a hand to his face. "Where is the Basil who cared so deeply about everything?"

There was a hint of a flutter in his left eyelid, but no more than that. "He's not someone who can do what I must do right now," he said, voice flat. "Esmi, my heart, be patient. We will have our gentle days in the sun once this is all over, and then I will be the man you love again."

The ice in his tone crept into her veins. "You're the man I love right now."

He smiled sadly, and it didn't change his eyes at all. "Have you settled on your final decklist?"

Sighing heavily, she let the matter drop. He was right: she needed to focus on her match. The problem was that she didn't want to fight Alexi. "Settled is the right word for it," she grumbled. "Most of these Death cards are a poor replacement for my old Fire deck if I want to maintain a rush style, and a complete revamp of my fighting style is–"

"A bad idea right now," he said in unison with her. They'd had this conversation more than once since he gifted her Felstrife's Death cards. "But you've got your combos figured out? Your opening strategy?"

Maybe. "Yes," she said decisively. She was a good enough duelist to find the obvious synergies in the cards and how to exploit them. In truth, though, she still felt deeply uncomfortable with the Death Source residing in her heart. She hardly knew who – or what – she was anymore.

"And still no idea of what his rarity might be?" Basil pressed.

"His eyes show nothing, and he never so much as hinted," she said patiently. This was another well-trodden topic since the brackets were posted. "He must have a glamor that hides it. Let's not borrow trouble, shall we? Epic is plenty to be dealing with already without worrying about something higher. We'll see his card soon enough."

His fingers dug into her arm. "Can you win?" he said.

I don't know. "Yes."

His ruby-flecked eyes searched hers, but if he saw the lie, he didn't say anything. "I need you to come back from this fight," he whispered. His face was stone, but his voice was gravel.

There was nothing to be said to that, so she kissed him instead, putting all of her love into it. He'd had to bring her back once; she doubted she could hope for a repeat. She simply had to win.

Gasps echoed around the room, and Esmi jerked back, her cheeks flaming. They hadn't been kissing that long, had they? A quick glance around showed everyone focused on the arena, and she relaxed, letting go of a shame that she never should have felt in the first place.

Down below, Gerard's body was rising from the ground into the air as other dead competitors' bodies had previously, but Stafford had a great fist extended over the top of him, and a thin trickle of blood was pouring from it onto the dead prince's lips. "Keep your elevations," the muscled vampire shouted to the sky. "I claim him, as he asked. You heard him. He is mine!"

Gerard's body bucked in midair as he gasped and opened his mouth for the stream of blood.

"You son of a bitch," Hull bellowed from their box, his hands clenched on the lip of the half wall. "You can't!"

The Twins disagreed, apparently, because both Stafford and Gerard disappeared from view, and Esmi strongly suspected they were back in the opponents' competitor box. "We didn't just lose the match," she murmured. "We gave them one of our own."

"It was what he wanted," Basil said. "We all heard him."

His poor mother. She had never thought she would need to feel pity for the Queen, but she did. Who will run Treledyne if we win? It'll have to be her. She'd need to remarry quickly and have more children if she was to have any hope of a new heir.

"Competitor Esmi," Rakkoden called.

She clutched Basil's hand and gave him a smile far more confident than what she felt. "See you soon," she promised him.

He said nothing but watched her with an unwavering gaze until she passed out of sight into the tunnel. She thought she might have heard Hull say something like, "Tear him a new asshole, will you?" but she had already entered the in-between space that would take her to the arena, and all she could do was chuckle and shake her head. Hull certainly brought a color to the nobility that hadn't been there before. He'd be giving the court fits and fainting spells for years to come once he took his proper place. And what is his proper place? Will any of us live long enough to find out?

She walked onto the arena floor, her stomach in a knot and her fists clenched, only to see Alexi already standing there, tall, pale, and severe in the rich blue military uniform he'd been wearing the first time he summoned her. A saber hung at his side, and his white-gloved hand held the hilt steady. He'd found a cape lined with gold satin that fit the ensemble perfectly. He was a vision of deadly grace.

"Hello, Esmi," he said gravely. "Of all the futures I imagined, this moment never occurred to me until now. What a rare thing."

"Alexi," she replied, inclining her head respectfully. "Of all the foes I might have faced, I hoped most it would not be you."

A hint of a wry smile curved the corner of his mouth. "How very wise of you."

Their cards appeared overhead.

Esmi was shaken to her core, and she gaped at the image. "Legendary?" she gasped. "But… how?"

"I'm so glad you asked," he said. "With great difficulty, unimaginable pain, and two thousand some-odd years of effort."

All of Esmi's hopes died within her. The words Indestructible and Immune to Damage were imprinted on her eyes as if she'd been staring at the sun.

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Heedless of her despair, the ante cards showed in the sky.

"Of course they pick that one," Alexi sighed. "You test my resolve, you pesky gods."

"I can't fight you," Esmi whispered. "It's impossible."

"Give yourself some credit, my young lady," Alexi said with a hint of a frown. "Not so long ago you were a dead girl scrabbling to find a place in an unfriendly Mind Home. Now here you are, a decently impressive Epic dueling in front of the Twins themselves. That doesn't strike me as a woman who faces difficult tasks and calls them impossible."

She steeled herself. Her mind was awhirl and she could barely remember all the strategies she'd worked on with Basil. "Very well. Twins guide me."

"Not a bad start," Alexi opined. "Good spine. However, if I may suggest an alternative…" With an impish grin that erased his earlier gravity, he stepped to one side, revealing a small table he'd been hiding with his own body. With a flourish he whipped off the white cloth that covered it, revealing a steaming pot of tea and a plate of daintily-cut sandwiches. "There are duels and then there are duels. The hardest battle I ever won was fought over a bottle of blood wine and steak tartare." He flashed his brilliant, fanged smile and pulled a stool out, gesturing to her grandly. "Care to join me at the dueling table, my lady?"

Bemused, she sat. "What is this?"

He seated himself primly on the far side of the table, flipping out the tails of his coat to keep from sitting on them and managing his saber deftly. "When you're Legendary, even the servants of the Twins themselves give you a little leeway, it turns out. When I saw that we were paired, I thought I'd take the opportunity to catch up with you. How are you?"

Feeling as if she'd stepped out of her own body and into some two-penny novel, Esmi took a sandwich and bit into it. It tasted of ham, tomato, and watercress. "Alexi, please. I don't understand any of this."

He sighed and relented. "Dearest, you know me better than most. Do I enjoy fighting?"

"No," she said. "You hate it."

"Now, had you encountered me back in the bad old days of being an Epic, it would have been a different story," he said, wagging a finger. "Two hundred years old, discovering the secrets of immortality unknown from the beginning of the world, full of vinegar and an anger I didn't even I was holding…" He trailed off and then shook his head, pouring her a cup of tea. "I had to work for a very long time to purge all the battle abilities I'd collected, but it was the only way I ever found any peace at all."

She swallowed her sandwich and took a sip of a perfectly balanced black tea, not too bitter and not too hot. "Will every vampire really die if you do?"

He sighed and nodded glumly. "If you knew lengths I've gone to keeping that secret just to have it shown to everyone in the city, you'd laugh yourself sick. The Twins care not at all for the secrets of their lessers, it seems. I had not anticipated being swept up in… all this." He clicked his tongue, looking mildly annoyed. "I never should have let Stafford and Beliss bring us to Treledyne. They still care so much for the struggle, though, and the Malaise creeps in at the edges for all of them, so…" He spread his hands. "Well, done is done. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Esmi Emberheart. Alexi Firstblood, the first vampire, at your service."

"The first ever?" Esmi said faintly.

"Ever."

"I see." She didn't really, but she had so many questions crowding her brain that none of them could find their way to her mouth. "And this is our duel?"

The vampire beamed at her and raised his cup of tea in salute. "Exactly. And so I ask, my dear kobold whisperer: how are you?"

She had a glib very well, thank you queued up and ready to deploy when she caught the look in his eye. It was the look he had when he was trying to take care of the Souls in his Mind Home: intent, concerned, and imminently present. He cared. He was listening. Unexpectedly, her words caught in her throat and tears brimmed in her eyes. "I died."

His eyes were riveted on her. "And then you had to play nursemaid to a grieving kobold and a sulky vampire."

"You treated me quite well," she whispered, wiping at her tears. "Thank you."

"It may have taken me some time to remember my manners," Alexi confessed. "Being near the battle for the city upset me greatly."

"You let me go," she reminded him. "You gave my card to Basil."

"Imagine my surprise to find you running around with a body the next time I saw you," he said. "That young man of yours holds surprising depths, I must admit. I thought him a useless slip of a thing when first I clapped eyes on him." Raising his eyes to the box seats overhead, he raised one hand in a conciliatory gesture. "My deepest apologies for first misjudging you, Basil of Hintal. Your love for this woman is a truly worthy thing."

"It is," Esmi said, a smile shining through the tears that, annoyingly, refused to stop. "It is."

Alexi cocked his head. "I hear a but in your voice, my dear."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Not at all."

He regarded her silently for a long moment. "But…"

The tears came harder. "We have both lost so much. Look at me! Death! Why is my soul rife with Death? And he–" her voice choked. She knew he was listening, but if she didn't find the courage to say it now, she never would. "He was tortured for me. He bled and suffered to put me back together piece by piece, and it cost him dearly. He is cold now. He kills without a care." She hung her head and her tears dripped into her tea. "Do we even know each other?"

Alexi put a hand over hers. It was cold, but somehow pleasantly so against her always-hot skin. "I kill, dearest."

She looked up. "You said you don't anymore."

"These days I let others do the deed for me, perhaps, but I still drink blood with relish," he said, holding her gaze. "Does that not make me a killer? And yet I love and am loved in return."

"It's different," she said, looking away.

"It's not," he replied with perfect mildness. "You have death within you that you must grapple with, and so does he, if in a slightly different fashion. No one moves through this world blamelessly, my dear. Perhaps the killer in Basil is merely a different side of the man you already know and love. You're both still babies, after all. You should expect to find some surprises in each other along the way. Life would be terribly boring otherwise."

"I suppose that's true," Esmi said, wiping her eyes again. "But when I look at him, I'm scared I've lost him."

"That's good too," Alexi said cheerfully. "That means you care."

She gave a helpless, hiccuping laugh. "You make it sound so easy."

"Live a long time and most of the world turns into something you've seen before. It's just death, Esmi. You've been through it, and he's been touched by it. Learn to love it in each other and you'll find even more beauty than you had before."

The words rang true. Touched, Esmi raised the vampire's hand to her lips and kissed it. "Thank you, Alexi. For everything."

"Make me cry and I'll tear your head off," Alexi warned. "This entire outfit is silk."

That wrung a true, loud laugh from her, and the tears finally stopped. "I wouldn't dream of it." She ate another sandwich. It tasted even better than the first.

"I have a little something for you," Alexi said, reaching into a side pocket. He pulled out a silk handkerchief wrapped around a small rectangular bundle. "Stafford sends his regards and his compliments." He laid the bundle gently before her.

Opening the handkerchief, which was doubled in on itself ingeniously to keep the whole thing closed, her breath caught. It was her cards. Her Fire deck. "Oh, Alexi."

"He doesn't use Fire," he said offhandedly, "and I've already got more kobolds than balance and good sense can account for. Trading opportunities have been thin for a while now. I don't know if you've heard, but there's a war on."

Her hands shook. They were all there. All her beloved friends. "Thank you. Truly, deeply."

He waved a hand. "His idea, really. I think once he'd seen how attached I got to you he rather regretted killing you in the first place."

She paused. "Alexi… if I have to fight him, I'll do my best to kill him." She hadn't even let herself think it until now, but she knew the words were true as soon as they left her lips.

His smile was sad. "I know. You young ones have to work the vigor out of your blood one way or the other. All I can do is pray to the Twins you never match. If you do, then no matter what happens, I lose."

He rose and took her by the hands to bring her to her feet as well. He kissed her gently on one cheek and then on the other, two cool drops of rain on her face. "Do what you must, my dear. Stafford is dear to me, but all of us must shed this world soon or late. Even me." His smile turned impish. "Though I think I may wait a while yet for that." Raising his voice without looking away, he called out, "I concede!"

"What?" Esmi breathed.

"You have won me, my dear," he said with a respectful bow. "I am helpless against your truth and beauty. May you spread them far and wide."

With a jerk, his ante card rose from him and zoomed into her hand.

He sighed, sorrow painting his face. "I only just got them back together."

The card would be amazing in Esmi's deck now that she had all her kobolds back… but some things trumped dueling. "In no world that ever was or could be would I beat you in a fair fight," she said, firmly pressing the card back into Alexi's hand. "Consider this my thanks for your kindness. Besides, I'd never forgive myself for separating Vyrstrad from his mate again."

His smile could have outshone the sun. "Ah, my girl, you have the makings of true greatness. Come find me in a century or two and we'll have some truly interesting conversations."

"I'll hold you to it," she said, returning his earlier bow.

With a flourish of his cape, Alexi retreated from the field. Overhead, the voice of the Twins was asking her what card she wished to elevate, and she knew she'd need to answer in just a moment, but she held on, watching the vampire go. Amazing. She'd come onto the field scared, sad, and sure of her own death once she'd seen Alexi's card.

Now, somehow, despite all the danger and difficulty that still remained, the world felt right again.

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