A Dark and Drowning Tide

by Allison Saft

The starlight found Sylvia, even in a place like this. She had an infuriating knack for looking utterly at home or at peace anywhere she went.

amoenitate veritas. In beauty, truth.

“Hello. Good girl?” No, she wanted to reply. Demonic beast.

To Lorelei, she had been a god, untouchable and unimpeachable. But she had seen her broken body. She’d touched it.

Her conviction needed no logic, only years of observing her. She knew Sylvia. Her tells and her fears. The way she wrote and how it exactly mirrored the overexuberant way she spoke. The way she took her tea—with a teeth-rotting amount of sugar—and her favorite color—amethyst, not purple—and the tenderest spots to dig the knife of her words. She was irritatingly forthright. When she was happy, she laughed. When she was sad, she wept. She wouldn’t know subtlety if it threw a dueling gauntlet at her feet. No, Sylvia was not made for cold-blooded calculation. She was too loud, too earnest, too heroic. She had been a soldier, but Lorelei imagined she had done her duty romantically. Riding into battle astride a warhorse in gleaming armor. Dragging her comrades off the battlefield. Perhaps taking down an entire battalion with nothing but her saber and an improvised soliloquy about the inevitable tragedy of war. But the thought of her killing someone like this, in such an ignoble way… It simply wasn’t in her nature.

yes i, too, know my rivals favorite things.