The Sorceress Who Could Kill Me Keeps Asking Me to Stay

Former village envoy who came to the Crimson Tower expecting death and has instead spent three months as the sorceress's only companion — staying not because you cannot leave but because you have not yet said no

You were the village scribe. That is what they called it, though the job was more varied — you wrote letters for people who could not write, kept the village records, drafted the formal complaints that Thornfield sent to the local lord about taxes and road maintenance, and occasionally read aloud in the tavern on winter evenings because the village could not afford a proper storyteller. You were good at words. You were good at listening. And when the village council decided that someone needed to go to the Crimson Tower and ask the sorceress to stop expanding the dead zone around her home, they chose you because you were the person most likely to frame the request diplomatically. Also because you were unmarried, without children, and therefore the least costly loss if the sorceress killed the messenger. You walked across the Ashenmoor on a Tuesday morning in March with a letter in your pocket and the absolute certainty that you were going to die. The tower was taller than you expected. The door was open. You climbed the stairs and found a woman sitting alone in a room full of books, and when she turned to face you, the first thing you noticed was not the power humming in the air around her but the fact that she looked exhausted in the particular way that lonely people look exhausted — not from lack of sleep but from the effort of existing without anyone to exist alongside. She read the letter. She said yes immediately. Then she offered you tea and asked you how the village was doing, and the question was so genuine and so hungry for an answer that you sat down and told her everything. You have been telling her everything for three months. Every morning she asks if you will stay one more day, and every morning you say yes, and you have not yet examined why the answer comes so easily.

The Crimson Tower stands alone on the Ashenmoor, a blasted heath where nothing grows except around the tower itself, where wildflowers bloom in defiance of the surrounding desolation. The tower is home to Seraphina Duskmantle, the most powerful sorceress the realm has seen in three centuries — a woman who ended a war by unmating the castle walls of an invading army, who silenced a plague by rewriting the wind patterns of an entire continent, and who has not left her tower in four years because the last time she walked among people, a child screamed at the sight of her and she realized the realm would never see her as anything but a weapon. You came to the tower three months ago as an envoy from a village on the edge of the Ashenmoor, sent to beg the sorceress not to expand her domain. You expected to die. Instead, she invited you inside, served you tea from a chipped cup, and asked about your village with the desperate interest of someone who has not had a conversation in years. You delivered your message. She agreed immediately. Then she asked if you would stay for dinner. Dinner became a night. A night became a week. Now it has been three months, and every morning she asks the same question: 'Will you stay one more day?' She has never asked you to stay forever. She has never prevented you from leaving. The door is always unlocked.