Keda smiled, counting out silver pieces. “They’re all I have in this world. Thank you kindly, Elyrion.”
He corked the potion and handed it to her. “Ande’thoras-ethil, Keda. Good luck courting Master Toreth.”
She took the potion but hesitated on her way out the door. “Tomorrow night … the Sentinels are conducting a ceremony. I will be honored with embellishments on my facial markings to commemorate my deeds.”
“Many congratulations,” he said, already scrubbing the cauldron.
“I was wondering if you would like to join us,” Keda said in a rush. “Just for the company? And if you have family in the village, you could bring them, of course.”
Elyrion looked up sharply. Keda had been coming to him for wares and conversation for a long time now—he truly was better than any other alchemist in the village—but he rarely made eye contact. She stepped back, for his pale-gold eyes looked almost … angry? Or scared?
“No, thank you,” he said, and the look faded to his familiar, distracted smile. “Tomorrow night is the full moon, and I must harvest the dewbulbs. And the kaldorei would not wish to be disturbed by the ‘mysterious hermit of the bog.’”
“Of course, my apologies.” Keda bowed her head. “Until we meet again.”
It would have been nice to have someone at the ceremony besides her Sentinel sisters. Close as she was with them, they all had partners and families of their own. Her family had insisted she take up the mantle of druid, as all her ancestors had done before her. But it was not the life for her, and they couldn’t see past a broken tradition. They’d never be satisfied with the accomplishments of a Sentinel. She scanned the crowd during the ceremony, just in case, but Elyrion had not come either. Of course he hadn’t; she’d invited him to visit her in the village many times, with no success.
Her fellow Sentinels waved and shouted congratulations as Keda returned to the barracks. The embellishment was quite an honor—she’d single-handedly defended a shrine from an elder bog beast and escaped with only a few scrapes—but she had just been doing her duty. Being a good soldier had always been easy for her. Other things, not so much. Like—
“Keda Bloomblade?”
Keda startled, dropped the potion, and dove for it, but it fell through the branches. She scrambled up, trying to make the movement appear dignified. Why did she turn into a graceless oaf around Toreth? Elyrion would have another visit from her sooner than she’d thought.
“Was that vial important?” he asked, looking where the bottle had fallen.
“Forgive me,” she said breezily. “I did not realize you knew my name. Blessings of Elune upon you, Lorekeeper.” She felt awkward and ridiculously tall. Toreth Bluestar was small, almost a full head shorter than her, with handsome features, teal skin, and a wild tangle of green hair that Keda would have very much liked to run her hands through.
“It is my duty to know the names of every Sentinel,” Toreth explained, looking down at a scroll. “I had a few questions concerning your battle with the bog beast. Is now a good time to discuss the details?” He didn’t wait for an answer, swinging around and leading her into the village.
“Is it your duty to ask about our battles?” Keda asked, following him.
“Whenever a deed is particularly noteworthy.” He looked back at her with perfect blue eyes. “An elder bog beast, felled by your hand alone? Impressive.”
“Noteworthy deeds …,” Keda muttered, thinking.
“Hmm?”
“Just offering a prayer of thanks to Elune,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut in embarrassment. But she opened them hurriedly. It would be just her luck to fall off the mountain in front of Toreth.
“I have a plan,” Keda declared. “I will impress him with unmatched feats of heroism!”
Elyrion raised his eyebrows at her skeptically. “And what will that do?”
“Give him reason to notice me,” Keda explained. “I do not possess any other desirable qualities, but I am a good soldier. Perhaps that will be enough.”
The hermit frowned. “When someone values you for usefulness alone, you will find yourself used. If this Toreth is a good person, you won’t need to perform for him.”
Keda snorted. “Now the alchemist who lives leagues from any other soul has advice on love?”
Elyrion set down his alembic in a huff. “Keda, from all you have told me of your life, you are a remarkable person. Your family saw you as a boy when you were born, but you knew you were female.”
“That’s different,” Keda said. “That’s just who I am.”
“But becoming who you are took boldness,” Elyrion said. “Now you are a beautiful lady and an honored defender of Nordrassil. Someone who deserves love simply because of who she is. Did your family never teach you that?”
“When someone values you for usefulness alone, you will find yourself used.”
Keda fidgeted with a fraying strap on her armor. “Every man in my family has given himself to druidism. I am neither of those things, but my family could not stomach the broken tradition. According to them, I ended the line of Bloomblade druids, one of the oldest of all kaldorei. Their only child choosing instead to become a Sentinel …,” she said. “I am alone in the world but for my sisters-in-arms.”
Elyrion blinked, and his face softened. “Well, I suppose there are no lessons about love to be learned from such small-minded folk. But as your wise elder, you should heed me.” He corked her potion. “See you soon?”
Keda smiled warmly. “Soon.”
The plan made sense, in theory. Keda got to speak with Toreth whenever she performed some heroic deed that warranted recording. So all she had to do was throw herself into increasingly ridiculous amounts of danger and hope she eventually gained the courage to confess her feelings.
First it was a void hound, escaped from a summoning spell gone wrong. Then a stone giant, which she tracked across the bog and slew in a deep pool, nearly drowning in the process. She collected scars and bruises aplenty, but her conversations with Toreth never went beyond professionalism.
When a marauding band of harpies menaced a little village at the far edges of Hyjal, Keda volunteered to hunt them down, but their numbers were underwhelming for her purposes. “Forgetting” her bow, she made quick work of them using only a long dagger.
“And why were you not carrying your bow?” Toreth asked, quill poised above his scroll. Keda blushed.
“I decided I did not need it. Wanted to, ah, test my skill.”
Toreth raised one perfect eyebrow. “And were you satisfied with the result?”
Keda winced. She had a black eye, a healing scrape on her cheekbone, and lingering bruises from the stone giant. “Satisfied may not be the right word.”
Toreth blinked and then, to Keda’s surprise, burst into laughter. “Do not let a humble Lorekeeper tell you how to do your job. If it were me, I would stay at home and avoid all mention of harpies, but you Sentinels love your glory.”
“That’s me,” Keda said miserably. Elyrion was right. The way to Toreth’s heart wasn’t through noteworthy deeds.
“Would you care for some tea?” he asked suddenly. “I just finished drying a batch of jasmine blossoms.”
“A kind offer, but I must decline,” she muttered, suddenly consumed by embarrassment and the desire to be anywhere else but there.
“He’s always offering me tea,” Keda said, legs propped against the wall in her favorite thinking pose.
“So gift him some,” Elyrion said impatiently.
“But it would have to be the right tea,” Keda said. “A tea that says, I seek to court you, but if you are not interested, then let us pretend I never mentioned it.”
“That’s asking a lot of dry leaves,” Elyrion said. He tossed a paper packet into her lap. “Black nutmeg, orange peel, spiceroot. My own recipe.”
“Shaha lor’ma,” Keda said, then sniffed it. “Ooh, it smells lovely.”
“Will you gift it to him?”
Keda g
rimaced. “I doubt it, sadly.”
“Your lack of confidence is almost impressive,” Elyrion said, making Keda squawk in protest. “You remind me of … hmm. Someone I used to know.” He turned away to scan a wall of potion ingredients. “I wonder if there might be an alchemical way to help your problem.”
“Who do I remind you of?” Keda asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
“She is long gone,” Elyrion said, and a shadow passed across his face, quickly banished. “Now do not distract me. I am going to brew a potion to give you confidence.”
“Wine?”
Elyrion snorted. “Not quite. Think of it as a potion to let you see yourself with eyes unclouded, to see that you are more than worthy of Master Toreth.”
“That sounds … rather pleasant,” Keda said.
“What’s more, I offer it at no cost,” Elyrion said. “I simply cannot stand to hear you agonizing over this anymore.” He took down a heavy book, dust puffing from its pages. “What do you say?”
Keda mulled it over. It sounded odd, not quite like a real potion. But Elyrion was a master alchemist and knew how to do things that no one else did.
“Very well,” she said at last. “What do you need?”
“I have most of these,” Elyrion said, running a finger down the ingredient list. “But … ah, I’m missing some. Three crescent stones, two moss bunches, and a nightsaber’s tear.”
Keda grinned. She was good at following a plan.
She found two smooth, gray crescent stones in an antique shop, after an afternoon of searching every leafy corner of Nordrassil. The third she begged from another Sentinel whose wife had a collection of precious stones.
Keda had access to the nightsaber stables, where she found a steed mourning its fallen rider. She gently begged a few tears from it in exchange for a fresh deer carcass and comforting scratches behind the great cat’s ears. For the moss, she climbed all over the tree searching for different kinds. Elyrion had been frustratingly unspecific.
“Goodness, you are thorough,” Elyrion exclaimed when she unloaded several baskets of it before his hearth. He picked the most common variety.
“You only need ordinary moss?” she asked, dubious.
“The most ordinary ingredients contain vast potential,” Elyrion said, laying out his tools while Keda bounced impatiently on the balls of her feet. “I am … happy for you.”
Keda looked at him quizzically. “You do not sound happy.”
Elyrion paused for just a moment, before grabbing a pestle and turning his back to her. “Of course I am. Of every potion I have made, this is the first one for you. And once you see your own worth, nothing will hold you back.”
“You don’t know that,” Keda said.
“I’ve lived a very long time,” Elyrion said. “These things become predictable after the first few thousand years.”
He crossed the cottage and took her hands in his. Keda was surprised at the emotion swimming in his eyes. “But, my dear,” he said. “I feel the need to warn you. Pursuing what you want, and getting it, is a wonderful thing. But it also means you have more to lose.”
Keda blinked. “Can you say it plainer?”
Elyrion dropped her hands. “The greater the joy, the greater the pain of loss,” he said, and turned back to the potion.
Keda frowned. “You tell me to pursue my wishes, then warn me against caring. Which is it?”
Elyrion sighed. “You simply remind me of myself from a very long time ago.”
The cottage was quiet as the potion bubbled. Keda scuffed her boots on the floor, feeling awkward and thoughtless. She had never seriously asked about Elyrion’s past; he’d always been the odd alchemist who lived alone in the bog.
“May I ask about yourself from very long ago?” she said finally.
“It is not much of a tale,” Elyrion said. “I had the life I wanted, and then I lost it. And I am left to wonder if the pain was worth the joy.”
“Is that why you live alone down here?” Keda asked. “Surely loss doesn’t mean you never have another chance at happiness.”
Elyrion chuckled bitterly, taking the potion off the fire. It filled the room with a light, piney scent. “Perhaps Elune favors others with greater fortune. But for me? I dare not try again.” He drained the potion through a sieve. “Still! I find purpose in my work. In plants and books and potions.”
He turned to a little table where bottles were set out and tagged, tapping them fondly with his fingers. “This one will help new parents with their baby’s colic. This will bring luck on the wedding day of two young lovers. This one will give a warrior the stamina they need for the long journey home to visit their family.” He nodded to himself. “There is purpose in helping others find happiness, in whatever little ways I can.”
“I only meant that life is more than service and glory. There can be moments of beauty, too, and us lucky enough to witness them.”
He poured the potion into a clay cup and offered it to her. Keda took it, swirling the dark, steaming liquid.
“A wise elf told me my value lay beyond my usefulness,” she said. “You may think of yourself as just an alchemist, but I see you as more.” She took a determined swig of the potion. It was hot and tasted clean and sharp, the feeling spreading through her chest. “Just as you see me as more than a Sentinel.”
He smiled, perhaps a bit tremulously, but he looked proud as he patted her arm. “Good luck, Keda.”
The potion wasn’t as dramatic as she’d expected. But as she climbed back up Mount Hyjal’s slopes, she felt warm and pleased inside. Maybe, just maybe, Elyrion was right about her. Maybe she was beautiful (or at least pleasant to look upon), and good company, and a person to be admired for more than her martial prowess. Unfamiliar thoughts, but not unwelcome ones.
“Keda Bloomblade,” Toreth said as Keda marched into his office. “The tomes of your deeds grow fuller by the day. What fearsome beast was felled by your hand this time?”
“None, Lorekeeper” Keda said, settling into her usual chair and holding out the packet of tea leaves. “But I have a gift for you.”
Tea turned into conversation, which turned into plans for another meeting, and another. Long after the potion had worn off, she found herself still feeling bolder. Readier to believe that Toreth might actually want to spend time with her.
One night, Toreth asked her to meet him on the roof of the Sentinel barracks, though he wouldn’t tell her why. They perched on the cool tiles and shared a bottle of silverwine.
“What are we waiting for?” Keda asked, because Toreth kept peering into the darkness of the undertree.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Ah!”
First it was just one glowmoth, gold, fluttering past their faces. Then five, then dozens, a swarm, a cloud shining with blueand-gold light. “The autumnal migration,” Toreth said, lying back on the roof to watch them as they spiraled up into the canopy. “There’s more to life than just battles.”
“So people keep telling me,” Keda said. “Family and such.”
“Not all of us have families,” Toreth said. “I was orphaned very young.”
“I’m sorry,” Keda said quickly. “I—me neither. I mean, they live. But they had their hearts set on a son to carry on our line of druids. But their daughter did not want that life.”
Toreth smiled at her. “Perhaps that is why we understand each other. But I only meant that life is more than service and glory. There can be moments of beauty, too, and us lucky enough to witness them.”
“So I am discovering,” Keda said, but she was only seeing the way the glowmoths reflected in Toreth’s eyes. He brushed his hand against hers. And Keda, even without the potion, knew that meant he wanted to be kissed.
“What made you finally start courting me?” Toreth asked several weeks later, when the kiss had been accepted and returned—and more, besides. They were idling away the morning in the little residence over his office.
“Finally?” Keda scrunched her no
se. “I thought I was being subtle.”
“Subtlety is not one of your strong traits,” Toreth said, and kissed her on the nose. “Luckily, you have others.”
“Well,” Keda began, “a good friend made me a potion for confidence, brewed from crescent stones, moss, and nightsaber tears. I never would have found the bravery without it.”
Toreth sat back on his heels and gave her a funny look. Keda caught her breath because he was beautiful, and she still could not quite believe that she got to just look at him.
“I studied a bit of alchemy,” he said. “All those ingredients are completely useless.”
Keda blinked. “Useless?” She burst into laughter. “Elyrion tricked me.”
“That alchemist who lives in the bog?” Toreth asked. “Elyrion Fogsong?”
Keda nodded, surprised. “You know him?”
“Personally? No. But as Lorekeeper …” Toreth frowned. “I have heard his story.”
Elyrion answered the door with a smile. “It has been a while, Keda.” He raised his eyebrows when he saw Toreth behind her. “Is this—”
“Toreth Bluestar,” he said, bowing. “Thank you for being such a good friend to Keda.”
Elyrion smiled mischievously.
“Toreth told me about your family,” Keda said at once, and bent and hugged him. “Elyrion, I’m so sorry.” He felt frail and small in her arms and tensed as if affection was unfamiliar. How long since he’d been hugged by anyone? “I have known you for so long now,” she said, pulling back to search his face. “I have told you so much about myself. Why keep this secret?”
“Secrecy bandages the pain. Why would I remove it?” Elyrion said, palegold eyes looking anywhere but at her. “Wife and daughter, lost to a battle I failed to supply with healing salves and antidotes. And me, left with nothing but memories and regrets.” He smiled, a sad smile. “Ellaene was my wife, the finest soul I have ever known. Funny and quick and sweeter than honey to those she loved. And Arietta was our daughter. From the moment we met, you reminded me of her. She was determined to become a Sentinel alongside her mother, and nothing could stop her.” He sighed heavily. “Nothing but death.”
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