Xilanada - Pursuit Of Regretted Truths/Part 2

Xilanada woke up in a tangle of unfamiliar sheets. While this was not as unusual an occurrence as she would have liked, it was still cause for alarm. She blinked sleepily, rubbed at her eyes with the back of her arm. Then, she realized she was naked.

That wasn't too unusual either anymore. However, she was naked in the spacious bed-chamber of the Factor who'd kidnapped her. By the bloody Sun, what had he done? Momentary panic gave way when she realized the only other person in bed with her was a woman. But that woman was Solitary Coil.

All new panic made her feel light-headed. It was hard to keep control when all she wanted to do was hyperventilate and crawl away to hide somewhere. Yes, Solitary Coil was naked too and sleeping with that bone-deep look of contentment she only got from one thing.

Xilanada's head throbbed abruptly. She grimaced and pushed the ache away. Surprisingly, it went. Not so bad a headache for once, and no fever at the moment either. Her fingers dropped to the crook of her arm and fingered the small, closed puncture there. Of course.

She squinted her eyes as she thought back through the haze of last night. She remembered...a demon? And Coil. She remembered doing...oh my.

Up until now, Xilanada hadn't thought it possible to blush with your whole body. The evidence was plain before her, though. It was almost like having her fever back.

"The Unconquered Sun damn you, Coil," Xilanada said, shoving herself off the bed in a huff. One of the many blankets spilled across the floor served as a drape, giving her a chance for modesty while she looked around for her clothes. It took a few minutes before she realized she didn't have any.

That's right, the demon. She shuddered at the memory. And then a warm burst of feeling inside of her, an abiding pleasure that she remembered feeling before. Xilanada turned to see Solitary Coil was awake, watching her.

"How do you feel?" asked her Lunar mate. Yes, it was obvious that it was Coil's feelings Xilanada was experiencing. A sparkling caught Xilanada attention, dropping her gaze from Coil's beautiful slitted eyes to the shining oricalcum band on her finger. Gasping, Xilanada looked down to her own hand. She closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them.

No, the moonsilver wedding band was still there. So that explained why she felt that languid contentment in her mind, the long-missed serenity of a well pleased Solitary Coil.

"This is not happening!" she shouted at the smirking Lunar. "And where are my damn clothes?"

"The Demon shredded them, I'd assume," Coil said with a boneless shrug. That flawless white skin shone in the rising light of the dawn. The Dune Woman certainly had no modesty, disdaining even sheets as she rolled off her hip and onto her feet. Xilanada turned her gaze to the floor. Whatever she'd been, she didn't need to look at Coil that way. She didn't dare to.

"We are over, Coil," Xilanada said firmly as her mate advanced upon her. "In fact, there's never been a 'we.' Final Starry Night may have been your husband but I'm not him." It was the first time she'd stood before her since Final Starry Night had ceased to be and she was discomforted to find yet another person taller than she was. By a good margin, thanks to the lofty build of the Dune People.

"We're never over, Xilanada." Solitary Coil stopped an arm's length away and rested her hands on her bare hips. "We can't be. You are my Solar. I am your Lunar. The Incarna who made us married us for all time."

"I refuse to be married against my will!" Xilanada said emphatically.

"Do you think you are the only one to make concessions here?" snarled the feral Lunar. Xilanada involuntarily felt a flicker of the anger the woman must be feeling in her mind. "First, I had to abandon my quiet existence by myself to join you. I had to make peace with your...outsiderness. Do you doubt how hard I tried? I grew to truly love Final Starry Night and then he...became you."

"I had to hunt you down," Coil continued, taking another step, her whole presence growing fiercer. "Then I had to overcome the sickness that rises in me every time I confronted the knowledge that you were a woman. I, who have never touched a girl, had to come to terms with what you are. In time, I did. For you."

"Well, I haven't," Xilanada glared. "Don't you understand anything I said? I don't want to be what I was. I made a choice last night, to save my life. I suppose I can thank my Father that I didn't level any buildings. The Usurpation happened for a reason, Coil. I have to believe the Incarna empowered us because there was a war and they had no other choice. What history has shown me is that we cannot be trusted with this kind of power in the long-term. I know I can't."

"You speak the lies the Sidereal spoke of, our enemy Fateful Ambiguity," Solitary Coil sneered. "Do you remember your response? By your own words, Xilanada, you must take power and rule. Wisely or not, at least you have the strength to do what must be done. Turning away now means abandoning all these...people you treasure to the pathetic strength of the Dragon-Blooded. We both grew up in the result of that choice."

"I don't want to talk about it," Xilanada said, wrapping the blanket around her. She moved to a wardrobe set against a wall and started rifling through it for some clothing. Being naked with another woman was uncomfortable enough. The flashes of memory from the night made her want to put a dozen layers between her and the Lunar she'd been...intimate with.

The truth was that Xilanada had let Solitary Coil take her. Stoned or not, she had to have had enough judgment to know better. Even now, her body yearned for the woman she hoped to never see again. Her skin remembered graceful fingers and a subtle tongue wielded with an intimate knowledge no man could ever match. Damnit, just thinking about it was making her body react.

"Do you want to do something else, then?" Solitary Coil echoed her thoughts, her harmonious voice made sultry with desire. Of course the Lunar could tell, what with that superhuman sense of smell. Or perhaps she could feel her as Xilanada felt her through the Eternal Vow that bound them.

But Xilanada was more than her desires. She wanted more than idle pleasure and Solitary Coil was too...inhuman, too amoral to truly live with. Could you love someone and dislike her too? Apparently so.

"I want to go home," Xilanada said at last. "I want to go back to the School, go back to my classes and back to my life."

"Back to your little lizard-blood lover?" Solitary Coil said harshly. Xilanada tried to blank her mind and heart but Coil's sudden sharp breath told her she'd failed. The Lunar's statuesque lovely face contorted in rage. "You've been with him. I never even imagined it but I can smell the truth on you now. I can feel your betrayal, as thick on you as you were on me last night. You love him. You love him!"

"What if I do?" Xilanada demanded. She yanked a too-large robe from a hanger, dropping the sheet around her in the process. They faced off and Xilanada found herself wishing she were taller, just so she wouldn't be eye-level with Coil's bosom. It was impossible not to compare herself to the Lunar, who was a little more nicely shaped in every dimension than Xilanada was herself.

"Then I'll kill him!" Solitary Coil seethed. "How could you! You...you shouldn't even like men! How could you do this to me?"

"Oh, have I offended your sensibilities for once?" Xilanada said, losing her temper at last, knowing Coil knew perfectly well how she felt. "You've done almost nothing but offend mine. You...eat people. You have no compassion, no remorse or sympathy, able only to see the outsider and your people with barely a crack in there for me. I didn't just run away from an insane crusade. I ran away from the very cause you believe in so deeply. I can't be that, I won't, and I don't want to be with someone who thinks that way."

"So you'll go to Sen," Solitary Coil said flatly. "Will you please him as I once pleased you? Will you grow heavy and fat with the children he'll give you? Will you be his useless cow? How are you going to explain it when you're no older a decade from now? How about a century? What happens, Xilanada, when you watch him grow old and die while you're still young?"

"Who says she's going to?"

Flames trailed the Fire-Aspected Dragon-Blood as Sen fell through the still-broken window and landed neatly on the floor. His great jade knife roared with flame and smoke trailed from his eyes.

He looked very, very angry.

Xilanada dropped her robe in shock, then realized she was standing completely naked with another naked woman right in front of him. She hit her forehead with her heel. Only a Sidereal could have set up a catastrophe of this magnitude. Maybe one did.

"Your timing...not so good," Xilanada said with a weak smile. "I don't suppose you're here to rescue me?"

"As a matter of fact, I am," Sen said, and he gave a slight courtly bow. "Twice I've failed to protect you. Maybe that's because you've never needed it though. Tell me, Xilanada, has it pleased you to string me along in my ignorance or was that just the demon in your soul laughing?"

"I don't have a demon," Xilanada said sharply. "I don't even use demons. But I'm guessing you overheard enough of our conversation to have a few other questions. Why don't you ask them?"

"Amazing, what a Dragon-Blooded can overhear from a room open to the air," he said, gesturing back to the shattered window. "But I'm waiting for Solitary Coil to try killing me first. She was just talking about it, after all. It seems impolite to attend to another lady's request before answering the first."

The most wickedly delighted grin spread across Coil's face, matched by a dark cruelty Xilanada could feel soul-deep. She was too beautiful to look ugly from it but it managed to give her a very villainous air. Maybe that's what she really looked like after all. Xilanada herself couldn't say if she'd ever really seen the Lunar objectively, giving their connection.

"I was going to, little man. However, I have an exceptional sense of smell and it's telling me that you feel just as betrayed as I do. What a laugh." Coil looked at her and her expression turned pitiless. "You became someone else, Xilanada, to get away from being a monster and here you've broken two hearts in as many minutes. Final Starry Night was never so cruel."

"Final Starry Night?" Sen asked quietly. They both looked at him and Xilanada realized, with a sinking sensation in her stomach, that he hadn't overheard everything.

"Ask your questions," she said.

"What are you?"

Giving up the voluminous robe on the ground, Xilanada brought fiery Essence out of her skin. Golden sunlight poured from her, settling into a fantastically beautiful and extraordinarily long golden dress that billowed without a breeze. It was natural, and therefore ironic, that Xilanada's Impenetrable Sunmail looked like the dress Sen himself had given her, only scaled to an Exalt's station.

"I am a Solar of the Twilight Caste. I suppose you'd call me one of the Unclean."

"Who are you?"

"I am Xilanada. That much is true. In the First Age, Xilanada was the Chief Librarian of Denandsor, one of the greatest troves of knowledge in Creation. I do not know her fate, as Denandsor's library was overthrown and censored after the Usurption, leaving no records existing of her. The private section that only the Solar could access hadn't been updated since a few years before the Usurpation so it held no clues to her fate either. I do know that I am she reborn. In my youth, I traveled to the city with friends and we managed to anger a guardian of the place. By Exalting, I alone survived. As I bore the Anima of the one who had built the city's defensive artifacts, it had no hold on me and so I studied there for over 50 years."

"That accounts for your knowledge of Old Realm and knowing so much about the First Age. Who were you? Before?"

"Before?" Xilanada swallowed. She didn't want to tell him, especially not now, but though she could lie to him, Coil would not let that deception stand. Not when the Lunar was obviously having such an excellent time at her expense.

"After Xilanada and before who you are now. And what is your connection to the Destroyer of Grayfalls?"

Sen's voice was brittle with anger and suspicion. Xilanada's eyes burned with tears as she looked at his rage, rage toward her. Why did his opinion of her matter so much? She wasn't foolish enough to think she could keep her nature hidden from him forever. What had she thought would happen? There were no love stories between the Princes of the Earth and the Anathema for a reason.

"I was Final Starry Night."

"More than that," Coil added. She looked meaningfully at her and Xilanada reluctantly nodded.

"I am who Final Starry Night was. He and I share more than the same Anima, the same memories. What I've told you all along is true, Sen, from a certain point of view. I don't remember who I am."

"You just contradicted yourself, one breath after another...and you're still not lying?" Sen looked incredulous.

"I imagine I really was Captive Smile, from the Factor's point of view. I choose to be Xilanada, from my point of view. But from the view of the Gods, from the view of my Father, the Unconquered Sun, I'm afraid Heaven thinks of me as Final Starry Night...for it is his soul I bear."

"Make sense!" Sen growled.

"She traded lives with the slave," Coil said in disgust, obviously impatient to be done with every part of Xilanada's protective masquerade. Xilanada couldn't help but flinch and turn her eyes away from the mutual loathing of her two lovers. "The Daimyo of Faces was the method and she is the result."

"No..." Sen said. He didn't believe it. He really didn't believe it. Xilanada sighed and sank into a chair set against the wall, watching how her dress of sunlight settled regally about her as the hems twisted in the air. She rather thought she looked like the Scarlet Empress at the moment. The fancy left as quickly as it came before the brunt of Sen's growing resignation.

"I'm afraid so, Sen," Xilanada said. At last, the burning in her eyes escaped and hot tears fell down her cheeks. "Final Starry Night is the one who came to Denandsor. He was the one who studied for 50 years. He was the one who began a campaign of conquest with the noblest intentions. And in the end, he was the one who destroyed Grayfalls when it would not surrender."

"You're the Destroyer." Sen gawked at her.

"Yes," Coil hissed, sounding like a supremely contented snake.

"Not anymore," Xilanada said, turning the conversation away from the dead end it was headed. "I'm Xilanada now. I'm her and I'm happy to be her. The past few months of my life have been some of the best, the most meaningful to me. In no small part is that thanks to you, Sen."

She bowed her head, feeling her tears fall and evaporate against her dress.

"Was any part of you true?" Sen asked as the silence threatened to stretch endlessly.

"Every word," Xilanada said brokenly, still unable to look up. She didn't trust her composure and she refused to let him see her sobbing. "Even that night, every word. You already know who I am, Sen. Now, you know who I was. Condemn me as an Unclean if you will but I beg you not to condemn my heart. I do love you."

"I can't...I can't reconcile it," Sen said at last. His voice, too, was strained with effort. "I've loved you from the moment I first saw you, Lana. But the truth is you're a demon. Or as good as. You aren't just any Anathema either. I know for a fact that you conquered three countries and you killed all those people in Grayfalls. I had a cousin in Grayfalls!"

"I would give anything, Sen, to undo those deaths," Xilanada whispered, choking on her guilt. "I would give my life if it could give them life again. But nothing can do that. Final Starry Night died the moment he killed your cousin, Sen, and I am someone else now. Please believe that."

"Your kind killed most of my family!" Sen shouted. "My House is dying because of you! You're just as bad as the Bull of the North, worse. At least he took prisoners sometimes!"

"What are you going to do, Sen?" Solitary Coil said sultrily. Xilanada glanced up, knowing that undercurrent of edge in the Lunar's voice, feeling the spike of pleasure in her mind.

"Don't, Coil," she warned. Though Xilanada was still crying, though her voice shook, the white woman was too dangerous to ignore for emotion's sake.

"I should kill both of you! You really are meant for each other," he sneered. "And look, you even have wedding rings."

Xilanada's gaze shot to her hand where the damning evidence lay cradling her finger. Helplessly, she covered it with her other hand, knowing the damage was already done. She didn't think even a Weaver of Destiny could undo things now.

"If I see you again...I will kill you," Sen promised. "Or I'll die trying."

Solitary Coil gave a low moan of disappointment as Sen turned and jumped back through the window. Xilanada bolted from her chair to the empty fame and watched him fall a most of a dozen stories to the ground below. The Dragon-Blooded landed without so much as a stumble and began walking away, back toward the School.

"This is what happens when you defy destiny," Coil whispered. "This is what happens when you deny me."

"Coil!" Xilanada shrieked.

An impossibly tremendous madness rose inside her. All her heartache, the loss of the man she'd had so much trouble admitting she loved...and the malign betrayal of a woman she'd once cherished had pushed her too far. Xilanada spun to face her Lunar mate and screamed all her fury at the Dune Woman.

Solitary Coil fell to her knees, bowing her head submissively. It wasn't fear or guilt that drove her there but the desire that had rarely bothered Final Starry Night, that need of hers to always be mastered. The cursed woman was a hideous creature, no matter what she looked like. And Xilanada had had enough.

She channeled Essence without thought and moved with the speed of sunlight.

Coil leaped to her feet, her own Essence rising to protect her, but it wasn't enough. The Lunar must have seen her coming but her best couldn't keep Xilanada's hands from seizing her throat and slamming her down against the ground. Coil shuddered erotically at first, then her eyes bulged with real pain as Xilanada applied far more force than her slim frame could ordinarily produce. Moonsilver claws flashed out, scoring the sides of her Impenetrable Sunmailed dress but the talons skittered off harmlessly.

"Listen to me," Xilanada said, her throat so tight that she couldn't do more than whisper hoarsely. "You have just...ruined my life. Stay...away...from me. If I see you again, Coil...Sen's promise to me is mine to you. I will kill you."

Tears rose in the Lunar's eyes but they fell against a heart too badly wounded to care. Xilanada pushed her away and fled to the same window Sen had just vanished through. No need for Sorcery this time. No, she wanted the effort of concentration because just breathing was painful right now.

Xilanada thrust an arm out before her and soared through the empty frame. Her Anima surrounded her and the fantastically long Sunmail dress as she flew from the Guild Tower and over the streets of Nexus. Far below her, she managed to make Sen out of the crowd, distinctive enough in the light traffic of the early morning. Did he pause to look up, to see the woman trailing golden fire who ached for him? Was his face still hardened with hate? Was his heart?

The wind whipped past her and Xilanada flew across Nexus. She wasn't leaving, not yet. But she had a lot to think about before she could either stay or go.

She lit down on the top of the bent Tower of the Council. No green shield barred her way and Xilanada collapsed against a battlement that was now more like a stiff-backed chair. The dress of sunlight flamed and flickered as it caught the rays of her Father and Xilanada cried openly for her sins beneath His eyes.

Whatever she was now, she was still a Solar. Now that the illusion of the schoolteacher had been burned away, she still had to choose her next course. That meant coming to terms with her feelings for the man and woman she loved.

Solitary Coil...was what she was. Lying beneath the Sun's light, it seemed impossible to lie to herself while He was watching. It was not Coil's fault that Xilanada had been dishonest about her past. Coil may have been crueler than she would have liked but the Lunar couldn't have done anything if Xilanada's deception hadn't been in place.

Coil herself was undoubtedly heartbroken as well. No matter her bestial nature, she was still a human and a woman and deeply in love. Final Starry Night had never doubted the depth of feeling his Lunar had developed for him. Xilanada saw now the full measure of Solitary Coil's devotion, an obsession that had led her to overcome her own nature and all obstacles to offer herself up.

Even from here, she could feel the utter devastation in the woman's soul, until she pulled the ring from her finger and willed it to fade.

But what of Sen?

Ahhh...Sen. Xilanada's tears came anew as she thought of him. She loved him. He had shown her such tenderness that she thought the marks of his hands and kisses must be burned across her flesh for all time. It wasn't those hands and lips that made her heart bleed now, though.

Sen loved her with a passion that rivaled Coil's, if it perhaps lacking the Lunar's measure of single-mindedness. He loved her while still being himself. Fundamentally, Sen was a man she could respect, relate to, and trust to be moral. Coil barely understood the principles Xilanada cherished and those she did, she tolerated in her Solar while refusing to embody them herself. None of that would be true with Sen.

No, his Immaculate indoctrination would be a barrier instead. Also, his anger at being deceived and at having lost family to her hand. Like it or not, Xilanada knew she was responsible for all the deaths he blamed her for. The one sin that had driven her to such desperate measures still stood against her now, denying her happiness no matter how far she had gone.

What could she do? Who would she choose? And what would they choose? Either way, what was to become of Xilanada, the once and perhaps future Destroyer?

At last, Xilanada's analytical nature gave way to her pain. The inkling of a plan lay beneath it but it could wait. If the Solar were no longer allowed to be human to the world, then she could have this one private moment in the dawn alone to be merely mortal. The Sun was bright behind her closed eyes but she thought He was smiling consolingly at her.

She hoped so.