A Common Enemy

Nobody moved. I don't think anyone in that yard breathed for a solid five seconds, myself included. Fire still guttered along my knuckles, Cillian’s hands were half raised and ready to grab Selene back if there was need to, Orion was frozen mid-step with blue light still crackling between his fingers and nowhere obvious to send it.

"Explain," Orion said, "quickly, or I stop being interested in why you just did that."

“She just tried to kill me” I said in Orion’s direction, not believing that he made Cillian let go of her.

“If she wanted to kill you, you’d have been dead the moment Cillian let her go”, he told me, his eyes still fixated on her.  

"I was sent to bring her in." Selene’s eyes didn’t leave mine, and her voice had gone flat, businesslike, like she was reading a report rather than confessing to attempted murder. "Calum’s orders. Three others tried before me and failed. I don’t fail."

"You’re off to a strange start, then," Cillian said, still breathing hard, blood running from the cut along his jaw.

"I said I don’t fail. I didn’t say I still intend to finish the job." Something flickered across her face then it was gone. "Nyxara wants her dead regardless of what Calum has ordered. Regardless of what happens to his plans if she succeeds. I have spent a long time not caring which of my employers wants what. Tonight, I find that I care."

"Why?" I asked. My voice was steadier now, though the fire hadn’t fully left my hands. "Why would that matter to you?"

"Because Nyxara doesn’t just want you gone." Selene’s gaze flicked to Orion, back to me. "She wants Elaria gone with you, if that’s what it takes to get what she’s after. I’ve served worse people for worse reasons. I will never serve someone willing to burn down the entire board to win one piece."

"That’s a very sudden crisis of conscience for a woman who had a blade at his throat four minutes ago."

I gestured at Cillian without quite looking at him, and heard how the sentence had come out only after it had already left my mouth. Cillian went very still beside me. I did not, for the life of me, know how to take it back gracefully, so I didn't try.

"Interesting phrasing," Selene said, faint amusement flickering behind the flatness in her voice. “I just wanted to know if Ashthorne still has game”. She smirked in Cillian’s direction and he snarled at her making her roll her eyes.

Their interaction twisted something in my stomach but I tried to repress it.

 "I meant what I said. I don’t fail assignments.” She straightened herself and stood with confidence before making eye contact with me. “I am, however, permitted to reconsider who’s worth failing them for, and I’ve been reconsidering since I watched Nyxara casually discuss the acceptable loss of an entire fae territory over dinner."

"And you expect us to just believe that?." Cillian asked.

"I expect nothing," she said. "I’m simply telling you what’s true, and leaving you to decide what to do with it, the way I would with any information that might keep me alive longer."

Orion lowered his hands, slowly, though the light between his fingers didn't fully fade.

"That’s a convenient change of heart," he said. "Forgive me for not immediately trusting the woman who wiped out an entire group of elite fighters just years ago ."

"I don’t need you to trust me." Selene picked her blade from where it was thrown and sheathed it unhurriedly, like the conversation bored her more than the fight had. "I need you to survive long enough to be useful to each other. I can help with that. Or you can turn me away and find out the hard way what else Nyxara is willing to send after her."

"And if we say no?" Orion asked this time around.

"Then I walk away, and you never see me again unless it’s across a blade." A pause, and something almost like honesty crossed her face. "I would rather it not come to that. I find I prefer this side of tonight’s math."

"What do you get out of this," Cillian asked, quiet, still cradling the shallow cut at his collarbone. "People like you don’t switch sides for nothing. What’s the actual price?."

"Survival," Selene said simply. "Mine, specifically. If Nyxara gets what she wants, there won’t be a version of Elaria left worth serving, or betraying, or living in. I’d rather bet on the side that wants the world to still exist tomorrow."

"That’s a very convenient philosophy for a mermaid that switched to supporting a fae and kills people for a living." Orion spat at her bitterly and I nearly whistled.

Girl, the tension is sky high.

"I never claimed it was noble, pretty boy. And I’m a siren, let it sink." Something in her expression shifted, briefly, into something almost tired. "I claimed it was true. There’s a difference, and I’d have thought a Phoenix of all people would understand it — you don’t get to choose what you are. You only get to choose what you do with it once you know."

That landed harder than I expected it to. I looked at my own hands again, still faintly warm, and said nothing for a moment.

"How do we know you won’t just report back to this Calum person the second our guard is down?"

"You don’t," Selene said. "You’ll simply have to watch, and decide, one day at a time, whether the evidence still supports trusting me. That’s all trust ever is, in the end. A running tally nobody admits they’re keeping."

Cillian had left where he was to stand by my side, watching her with an expression I couldn't fully read. It was not trust, but something adjacent to it, cautious and considering.

"Orion." He said it quietly. "Your call. You know her record better than I do."

Orion studied Selene for a long moment, the way you'd study a bridge you weren't sure would hold your weight.

"She stays," he said finally, "for now. But she doesn’t stay unwatched, and all she does will be questioned. Also, the first time anything about tonight stops adding up, she’s out. Do we have a deal or not?" he told her but before she could reply, his eyes moved to me then to Cillian. "I mean that. Don’t forget it just because she put her knife away."

"Understood," Selene said, and if she was offended by the terms, nothing in her face showed it. "For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t trust me yet either."

"That’s the first thing you’ve said all night that I fully believe," Orion muttered. “ Let’s get your chin cleaned up so you can stop dripping over my yard”. He said and went to find something to bandage Cillian’s collarbone with, leaving the rest of us standing in a yard full of scorched grass, none of us quite sure yet what we’d just agreed to.

Selene caught my eye once, briefly, before she followed him inside.

"For what it’s worth," she said, low enough that only I could hear it, "you didn’t kill me when you had every reason to. I don’t forget things like that. Whatever else happens between now and whenever this ends, I won’t forget that."

“Also, that man will go to war for you. He will lay down his life if it means saving yours”, she winked and turned her back.

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing, and watched her walk back into the wrecked house wondering why I was having that conversation with someone that could kill me in a blink of an eye.