The memories of what came next were scattered, dashed between murky sights and sounds.

Soul, ordering the guards to secure Camille and her mate, to lock the doors. The assassin was inside the synkal.

Soul, his face bone white, leaning over her as he begged her not to leave, to keep her eyes open.

Black*Star, his face wan, examining Maka with trembling hands. Ordering Soul to leave the room while the doctors worked, and when he didn't move, ordering the guards to remove him.

Camille, tears tracking down her face, her hands soft and gentle as they stroked Maka's forehead. "It's alright," she said softly. "You can go to sleep now."

So Maka slept.

When she woke up, the pain in her shoulder was greatly lessened, and everything felt sharper and more coherent. Bandages wrapped around her chest, the pressure both welcome and restricting.

Black*Star was sitting by her side. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw her stir. "Thank the skies," he said.

"I seem to keep being poisoned," Maka said wryly, for there was that menacing warmth tingling at the edges of her skin. She immediately regretted speaking as her lungs ached and the fire burned its way across her chest.

"You'll be ookay," Black*Star said. "But it'll take you longer to heal this time. Any higher and the arrow would have hit your lung. Lower would have been just as bad."

"Arrow?"

"Avian-style, but we think it was shot from a serpiente bow. Our arrows never go that deep." He shook his head. "We didn't know if you were going to wake up." His voice shook on the last few words, despite his attempt to steady it.

Maka's head felt like it was filled with cotton, but she was slowly piecing together the last things she remember. One crucial moment stood out. "Eloise - she pulled me out of the way. What happened to her."

Black*Star's grace expression told her the news wasn't good. "The arrow only nicked her, but - she was unconscious when Soul carried the two of you out of the hall, but she hasn't woken yet. The doctors think it's unlikely that she will."

"Soul-"

"-is sleeping right now." At Maka's doubtful look, he confessed, "The guards drugged him."

Now that sounded more accurate. A knock sounded at the door, and Black*Star turned towards the sound. "Come in," he called. "She's awake."

Camille entered, eyes swollen from crying, and yet her head was held high.

"Camille," Black*Star chastised. "You should be resting."

She shook her head. "I can't sleep. I wanted to see how Maka was doing."

Maka tried to smile, but was unsure whether it came across. "I don't go down that easy."

Camille tried to meet the smile with her own. "We told Black*Star to let us know as soon as you were awake, but I'm not surprised to see that he didn't. If you're feeling up to it, I think they have some interesting looking broth for you."

Black*Star nodded. "I'm sure it's very healthy, I'm sure. I can't attest to the taste."

Terrible, was the answer. Maka suffered through a series of thin, watery broths until the palace cooks put their foot down and provided a hearty vegetable broth for dinner. Maka slept fitfully, only waking to eat. Time slipped past in a blur until Maka was unsure of even the hour, never mind the day, when she woke to find Soul sitting at her bedside.

"Soul-"

"How do you feel?"

"Like I was shot with a poisoned arrow." She shifted, trying to find a better position while ignoring the pain that shot through her shoulder.

Soul wasn't in the mood for jokes, however. "Maka."

"I know. I'm doing better, really."

Soul tried to smile, but the expression vanished quickly. "My mother died last night."

"Oh, Soul, I'm so sorry."

His words were hollow as he continued on. "I forgot about her."

"What?"

"When I saw you fall, and I pulled you off her, there was so much blood on you… I didn't even look at her."

"Soul, there was nothing you could have done."

"And yet, I keep going over the moment, over and over in my mind, wondering if there was something I could have done to save her."

"I didn't even see what was going on. I was only standing because your mother grabbed me and pulled me up at the last second."

"I know," Soul said, still tightly controlled. "If you'd both been seated, the arrow would likely have hit your throat, then my mother's side. You'd have both been killed."

"But… I don't understand. No avian would have hurt me, and no serpient would have gone after your mother. They especially wouldn't have coated the arrow with poison that would only affect your family. Why attack us both?"

"We're still trying to figure it out, it's-" Soul broke off as his voice cracked. His hand shook where it rested by Maka's side, and she took it without hesitation.

"Soul…"

His mask finally cracked, and in one great flood everything came rushing out. "I'm terrified, Maka. The guards made the announcement about my mother, and I think my people are still in shock. But I don't know how they'll respond when it wears off." He looked away, bracing himself for what he was going to say next. "I think it was one of my guard who made the shot, or at least organized the attack."

"What?" Maka tried to sit up instinctively. Pain lanced through her shoulder and side.

"Careful." Soul helped her settle back onto the pillows.

Maka waved him off. "Tell me more." She could rest later.

"It would have been impossible for an avian to sneak into the synkal unnoticed. Weapons aren't allowed, so a serpiente bow would have been difficult to sneak in. Only a guard could have managed it."

"Where would they have gotten the poison?"

Soul shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they stole it."

"But how?" Maka pressed. The moment she said it, the image of Anya glaring at her in the Keep popped into her mind. Anya and Aryn had been the only serpents allowed inside, after all. Either could have smuggled the bow inside. Either would have known the perfect time to make the shot. "And Eloise - a serpent wouldn't have hurt her."

"I know." Soul shook his frustration. "And I know what you're thinking. If it had been generations past, I might have agreed with you - there was bad blood between Anya's family and mine, but my mother dismissed it out of hand and allowed both Anya and Aryn to join the guard, something they were eternally grateful for. I can't imagine any of the guard doing this, but Anya and Aryn even less so." He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a sigh. "But that's besides the point. Black*Star told me they weren't allowed anywhere near the storeroom, and anyway, the poison was much too strong to have come from there anyway. It would have to be mixed specifically for this. That's a skill only someone from the Royal Flight would have had, but they would have used an avian bow, and would have aimed for me, not my mother." He drooped against the back of his chair. "It doesn't make any sense."

Maka was searching for something to say in reply when a knock came at the door and one of Maka's doctors, a timid sparrow, slipped inside. "Milady, would you care for some supper?" she asked.

Soul would not allow her to decline, so Maka gamely swallowed down yet another bowl of broth while Soul sat by her side. She had hoped to continue their conversation when she'd finished, but the shock of what he'd revealed had sapped all her energy. Soul smiled at her as the doctor left the room, taking her hand to squeeze it gently. "Go to sleep, Maka. I'll be here when you wake."

Maka could not wait to leave her bed.

There was nothing more infuriating to her than hearing snippets and gossip about what was going on in the palace and not being able to do anything about it, especially considering what had happened to her. She was on a regular schedule now, and had even graduated from broths to solid foods, and yet still her doctors insisted she stay where she was. Some part of her recognized the wisdom in resting until she was fully healed, but it was greatly overshadowed by the part of her that itched with restlessness.

The messages her mother kept sending certainly didn't help. Despite Maka's condition, Kami was still reluctant to travel to the serpiente palace, though she insisted she remained at the Keep due to important business there. Instead she sent messages nearly every day, demanding updates on both Maka's progress and the investigation. However, as Soul had pointed out, at least some of the notes could be ignored, unlike her mother herself.

Throughout her recovery, Soul stayed by Maka's side, acting as her emissary whenever she needed something, be it a meal, supplies to write back her mother, or someone to report back on what was going on in the aftermath of the attack. Occasionally, he would also serve as her escort outside, as soon as the doctors cleared Maka for short, supervised trips down the hall, in order to gather her strength. He was more subdued than usual in the wake of his mother's death, but in a way, he was also more open with her than he'd ever been.

Because of this, and the fact that given Maka's condition, she was more likely than ever to get a straight answer, she approached a topic she'd been thinking on for a while. She waited until Soul arrived at her room one morning around a week after the attack, and once he'd settled himself into his usual chair, she struck. "Soul, I've got a question for you, and before you answer, just keep in mind that I'm bedridden."

Soul chuckled. "Alright, ask away."

"Do you remember the conversation we had, where you said you might have been avoiding me?"

Soul's face fell and he began fidgeting uncomfortably in his seat. "I might."

"Can I ask why? You never gave me an answer, and I've been wondering all this time if there was something I did, or something that I'm doing, that caused you to."

Soul was shaking his head before she even finished. "No, please don't ever think that. It wasn't anything you did."

"Then what was it?" Maka knotted her hands in the blankets pooled at her waist.

"I-" To her surprise (and a bit of delight), Soul's cheeks flushed a vivid pink. "I - um…"

"You can tell me anything," Maka said softly, sensing there was more to this than she thought.

"You might regret saying that," Soul said with a bit of wry humor, looking anywhere but at her. "Alright, um… I started avoiding you a little after the alistair ceremony, because I realized something, and I was trying to make life easier on the both of us."

"What did you realize?'

After a few more moments of awkward silence, Soul seemed to make a decision. He straightened up and finally met her gaze. "I realized that I was beginning to care for you in a way I wasn't anticipating. I knew you didn't feel the same for me, and I was worried that you would notice my changing regard. I didn't want to force anything on you, or make you feel like I was owed anything in return. So I kept my distance."

Maka's mouth dropped open in shock. "You - care for me?"

Soul shook his head. "I think it might be a little more than that at this point."

"What - but -" Maka spluttered, trying to put her shattered world view back together. "No, that can't - you were miserable! You told Anya so!"

Soul furrowed his brow in confusion. "What? When did I say that?"

Maka realized what she'd inadvertently revealed and blushed. "I, um, might have overheard you two talking in the halls one day. Anya said you were miserable and you deserved good things, and you said what you wanted didn't matter."

"Because I wanted you!" The words burst from him in one great rush, lingering in the air long after the sound had died. Maka's eyes were the size of dinner plates, and expression Soul was echoing back at her.

"You did? Or, you do?" Maka's words were so quiet she wondered if Soul had even heard them.

Soul closed his eyes and sighed, as though accepting his fate. "Anya got it only half right. Yes, I wasn't happy, but that was because I was starting to, well, develop some unexpected feelings for you. And I knew you didn't reciprocate. I was avoiding you so you wouldn't find out, and I was hoping the distance might dull the feeling a little. Which it did not."

Maka's heart broke a little for him. How awful, how lonely, that must have been, to isolate himself from the one person he had promised to work with, the one he had sworn his life to. "I had no idea," she said.

"That was the idea." He was watching her anxiously, and it occurred to her that he had spilled his entire heart out in front of her, and she hadn't addressed it at all.

She played with the blankets in her lap to buy herself more time to answer. "I didn't come into this thinking we would find anything more than a mutual respect, or a partnership," she began. "I admired you for having the courage to seek out peace, to do anything for your people, but other than that, I thought we were two very different souls." She looked up to meet his gaze head on. "I've realized these past few weeks that I was very wrong. There have been so many times when we're talking and I think, 'yes, here is someone who understands me, who knows my soul, because his is the same.' I don't think I knew what that feeling was. But, listening to you just now, I think I understand now."

It took a moment for Soul to gather himself to reply. "What are you saying?"

"I think -"

The door burst open, revealing one of the Royal Flight. "My lady, Soul," he panted. "Black*Star told me to come get you, quickly."

Maka threw the blankets off her lap and made to stand. Soul took one arm gently and helped her rise, then stayed by her side as they followed the guard to the main hall. Black*Star was standing outside, a shallow cut on his cheek and a grim expression on his face. "We've found the assassins," was all he said. "Kim and Aryn are holding them."

Maka sucked in a breath, but before she could ask anything, Black*Star said to Soul, "One of them is the one who shot Eloise and Maka. Soul, it's Anya."

His face went white, and for the first time in days, Maka had to support Soul as his knees weakened underneath him. "No," he whispered. "No, she wouldn't have hurt my mother." He braced himself on the wall next to them. "Who's the other?"

Black*Star's lip curled in disgust. "Ox."

Maka started in surprise. Ox? She had known his feelings toward the serpiente hadn't exactly been kind, but conspiracy and murder? She couldn't quite imagine it.

"Both have confessed," Black*Star continued. "We can deal with them, if you'd like."

Soul shook his head. "I'd like to speak with them." He turned to Maka, silently asking her opinion.

She nodded. As both Naga and Tuuli Thea, it would only be right for her to face them, even if it was to deliver a sentence.

Black*Star nodded and opened the door to let them in.

Both Anya and Ox's hand were tied behind their back, with Kim holding Ox's hands and Aryn holding Anya's. If Aryn was feeling any kind of strong emotion about being the one detaining his own sister, his expression revealed nothing.

"She wasn't supposed to hurt you," Ox blurted out before anyone could say anything.

"They don't care," Anya said, rolling her eyes.

Ox ignored her and pressed on. "I was only trying to protect you," he pleaded to Maka. "You have to understand, I've been studying their kind for years; they're incapable of peace. I knew it was only a matter of time before this alliance ended in bloodshed. I was only trying to get you out of this before you were caught in the crossfire."

Anya laughed, a sharp, cruel thing. "You're guilty of treason; they don't care why you did it."

"I care," Soul said, his tone colder than anything Maka had heard from him before. "I care why you killed my mother and tried to kill my mate."

"The poison wasn't supposed to be that strong," Anya snapped, glaring daggers at Ox. "He gave me an avian bolt so they would be blamed. The poison was supposed to be weak, just enough so it looked like someone was trying to harm Eloise without actually doing so."

"And you weren't supposed to hit my Tuuli Thea!" Ox shot back. "You almost killed her-"

"I was trying to!" Anya shouted. "My only mistake was missing." She glared at Maka. "Who do you think you are, waltzing in here like you own the place, stealing a spot that's rightfully mine. And even worse, every day I have to see my Diente honoring his vows, even if it makes him miserable, and you don't even care-"

"Would someone shut her up already?" Ox snapped.

Anya rounded on him. "And you, you stupid bird, I should have skinned you when I found you back in the palace. How stupid do you have to be, to cut open your own Naga like that?"

"No, the only thing stupid was trusting you!"

"Enough!" Soul's shout cut through their argument. "Ox, you were the one who hurt Maka?"

Ox nodded. "Trying to kill you."

"And Anya, you lied to me about Ox."

"Yes."

"You tried to kill my mate in the synkal, and did kill my mother."

"Yes, but-"

"That's all I needed to hear."

"I know it's a death sentence," Anya said quickly, before Soul could say anything else. "And I'm willing to accept that for your mother's death. I only wanted to make sure he" - she nodded to Ox - "was also caught, before he could try to kill you again."

Soul didn't spare her another look as he turned to Black*Star and said, "Can you and your guard make sure these two remain secure until something can be done with them?"

Black*Star nodded.

"Good." Soul closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. "Aryn, you can be dismissed. You don't need to be involved in this."

Aryn hesitated a brief moment, then straightened. He shook his head sharply. "Thank you, sir, but I'll stay. If I can't perform my duties now, I have no place in your guard."

Soul nodded, and Black*Star, Kim, and Aryn escorted the traitors out.

The moment the door closed behind them, Soul sagged against a wall. "How did I miss this?" he asked the air. "I should have known."

Maka slid down next to him carefully, on hand on her still tender side. "Please don't blame yourself for this," she said softly. "I didn't see it in Ox, either."

Soul shook his head, but didn't reply.

An impulsive thought crept over Maka, but instead of dismissing it out of hand, she decided to go with it. She leaned over and pressed her lips to his cheek gently, letting them linger there for a moment before dropping her head onto his shoulder.

They sat like that for a long while, listening to each other breathe.

It was over.

Later, after Maka had been officially released from bed rest and they'd returned to the Keep, Soul met her once again on the top balcony. At the sound of his approach, Maka turned to face him, leaning against the stone railing as she looked up at him.

"You're looking better," he said, scanning her up and down.

"Feeling better," she replied. They stood like that for a long moment, simply looking at each other. Maka sometimes thought about how she might have reacted all those months ago, if someone had told her she would be standing here, looking into Soul Evan's eyes without a drop of fear, feeling her heart pound underneath her ribs. She chuckled a little at the idea.

"What's so funny?" he asked, smiling.

Maka shook her head. "I'm just thinking how strange life is."

"That it is."

Looking up at him, Maka felt a little piece click into place. She'd known a little about how she felt, had danced around it for a while, but standing here with him - she couldn't deny this. A slow, wide smile crept across her face.

"What are you thinking about?" Soul asked softly, lifting a hand to brush away an errant piece of hair from her face.

"We never finished our conversation before. About why you were avoiding me."

Soul pulled back, wary now. "No, I guess we didn't."

"I wanted to say something else."

"Go ahead."

But instead of speaking, Maka merely raised herself onto her toes and pressed her lips to his.

He was still for a moment, and then he was pressing back, wrapping one hand around her waist as he pulled her tight. A delicious warmth settled in Maka's chest, then spread to her every limb until she thought she might float away with the breeze.

When they separated, Soul looked down at her with mild amusement. "Technically, that wasn't speaking."

"I didn't hear you complaining," she said cheekily.

Soul rolled his eyes. "You just always have to have the last word, don't you?"

"I don't see-" He abruptly cut her off with another kiss, and another, and another. The wind teased the ends of Maka's hair and the hem of Soul's shirt, running playful hands across them as it passed by. All her emotions bubbled up insider her until Maka thought she might burst from them all, but one thought reigned above all others:

Finally, here was peace.