Who would she reunite with if given the chance?

Her mother? No. She doesn’t need to see all the ways she’s failed. Let her rest.

Eryael? Well, he doesn’t really seem to be dead now. Makes that answer a bit easier.

But what about...oh yes, him. And then she thought about his funeral.



It was a typical day and she was bringing up a tray to her Mistress. The paper had been folded neatly, placed off to the side as she had done morning after morning but today when she reached the top of the stairs it slipped down and became a clump on the floor. Bending down to pick it up, she tried to crease it neatly the way it had been folded before when she took note of a headline along the corner: “SUPPOSED DEMONOLOGIST FROM NALFEIN SUCCUMBS TO FAILED SUMMONING”

She left the tray unattended on a nearby console table as she reviewed the details of the article. The facts were murky enough but his name was there and that he would be sent back home for a private funeral.

They executed him.

She had heard rumors that his name had come up numerous times in the treason and sedition trials following the war. She had seen him manipulate the forces beyond a hundred times and his power over them was confident, even aloof. He would have never lost control.

They wouldn’t suffer a sorcerer.

His family probably paid good money to keep the real cause from public record and this helped shape the continued narrative of the Shining City, that demons were dangerous and unyielding, even to pure elves.

Reclaiming her composure, she delivered her mistress her breakfast, paper neatly folded on the side and then requested a brief leave to visit her ailing great aunt in Ta’Nalfein. During the whole of her trip she was shadowed by a lithe figure in a dark cobalt silk cloak. The Sapphire Guard wasn’t being subtle, they didn’t need to be, but then again whoever was assigned to this task probably wasn’t exactly operating as one of their best.

The day of the funeral she made her way down into the kitchen of her aunt’s townhouse. She did have an aunt in Ta’Nalfein, though she was more alcoholic than ailing. And she wasn’t even staying here at the townhouse. Nothing made Uniana come to terms with her fallen status in society as much as the fact that her own great aunt would not receive her at the family estate but rather kept her at one of her minor properties, like she was some lukewarm acquaintance or passing merchant. Uniana vowed that if she lived through this ordeal she would ensure her status among her family and society would be elevated once more.

If. He certainly didn’t make it out alive.

She grabbed one of the aprons and a plain leather-backed chainsil cloak from off one of the hooks near the backdoor and quietly made her way down the var, head lowered in discretion and possibly shame. The sidegate that led to his family’s garden was left open so that visitors could pay their respects but when she came upon the gathering there were only two males, about his age, dressed in plainish mourning clothes, a half-elf who was in brigandine and his mother. She had met his mother once. Uniana found her kind and smart, real smart. Not some kind of Nalfein feigned intelligence where you read a bit about this or that so you can manage conversations at parties but rather brilliant.

She looked so frail now, pouring loam and ash over a newly dug mound. Next to the smallish mound was a stone of ebony marble and Uniana could determine that it might have been rimmed in black ora but she didn’t dare get closer to the gathering. She remained near the gate out of both respect and fear. This was her fault. He was her mark. She had brought him to the Dark Alliance. She made his mother childless.

It wasn’t all a game to her though. Uniana was actually quite fond of him. He took things easily and he was powerful, a bit of a scoundrel but ever clinging to his elven superiority. There may have even been love between them if they could ever stop using each other.

The small group began to walk back towards the main house, the mother stopped to consider Uniana at a distance but turned away.

She doesn’t recognize me.

Why would she? Uniana was concealed in outerwear suited only for the scullery and the dress underneath was an ill-fitted hand-me-down from her mistress who never used proper Elven tailors. Uniana took the opportunity to draw near the loose soil and she could see now that the small plaque had his name and had a tiny fragment of his runestaff contained within. From within the pocket of her loose dress she removed a single cutout snowflake crafted from dull metallic parchment. The necklace he had given her was long since sold for whatever meager silver it would have fetched but she still felt sentimental about it. And the ball where she wore it and after, the first time they kissed, even if it was all pretense.

He was by no means innocent but did he deserve this? Did he hate her for it all? Was any of it worth it? She didn’t deserve those questions answered though. If she could bring him back for one night, for the Eve of the Reunion, it wouldn’t be to calculate the cost of her deeds. She’d simply ask if he had a message for his mother.