Paragon - Book I

Fireside Tales

The moons rise and the fire crackles, slow and flickering against the shadowed trees. The other two are dozing and Allayria has her head resting against Ben's chest, slipping in and out of consciousness with the rise and fall of his breath. Her spine aches pleasantly with the comfortableness of her position and her legs, sprawled out toward the flames, feel limp and weak as his hand skims through her hair.

"What are we going to do, after all of this?" she murmurs, watching the flames slip and slide around in the cool nighttime breeze.

"After what?" he queries, sounding drowsy. "Finding the bow?"

"No, after that. After we've dealt with the Paragon."

He spins a tendril of her hair around his finger.

"Dealt with the Paragon..." he muses. "We sail for Solveig. We get inside their bases, their high castles. We tear them down from the inside out—we do what we did in Solveigard. We start showing people that they don't have to be afraid anymore. We show them four ordinary people can take down statesmen, generals, kings, even Paragons."

"How are they going to know who we are?" she asks, running her fingers along the top of his hand, turning his words over in her mind, forming the picture with them. "How will they know we're the same people from Solveigard? The same people who... took down the Paragon?"

"They won't—that's the point, isn't it? We're not going to replace one monolith for another. I don't want to be the next Chieftain, the next Imperator." He shifts, his arm holding her tighter against him. "We're going to tear it all down, Allayria. Every door and stone. We'll let these high men see how powerful they are when chaos reigns."

She can see it, but also see the slight snag in this plan, a hinge left all forgotten, and she frowns.

"But how are people supposed to know why we do what we do? If we are completely faceless and nameless, won't people just assume it's another power play, more elite killing elite?" She runs a finger along the top rim of her lip. "We would need something that tells people things are changing—an icon of some sort, maybe? I don't know, I don't think it needs to be a person or a face. Just a symbol to rally behind."

She leans her head back, twisting around to catch the spark in his eyes, the familiar way they narrow against the orange firelight as her words rattle through his brain.

"A symbol," he murmurs, and he actually sits up, displacing her. "Not a person..."

"Something they could even adopt," Allayria suggests, grumbling at the cold contact of her elbow with the ground. "Something symbolic of resistance."

A slow smile of his spreads across his face now. She has designs on that smile, and the mouth that so easily makes it, but she can read in his expression the pages being written in his mind, the connections revealing new, tangible paths to this crazy thing he's been chasing. He's alive, and he wants to revel in the newfound details of his great plan, so she holds back.

He turns his head toward her.

"You know what my favorite story is?"

"I'm sure I don't, though I find it hard to believe you like something more than those coteries," she quips.

His lips twitch in a half-smirk, but he won't be easily sidetracked.

"There's this little folktale my mother used to tell me when I was young, the story of Pai Luella."

Allayria sits up, skootching over so she can reclaim the space between them and lean against his chest again. She crosses her legs over his and sets her forehead against his neck, feeling the reassuring weight of his arm slung around her hip.