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Everyone is wrong about Ianthe Tridentarius. They think she is vapid, and they are wrong. Ianthe Tridentarius knows exactly what she is. She is aware that she is vain, that she is callous, that she is selfish. The only difference between Ianthe and everybody else is that Ianthe doesn’t pretend she’s anything other than what she is. That makes them assume that they know her.
That makes them underestimate her.
She is smarter than anybody knows. While Harrow is still bumbling around on the Mithraeum, pretending that there’s any hope she’ll be a normal person again, Ianthe understands that they have become something else entirely. Augustine and Mercymorn don’t talk about the early days of their lyctorhood often, but Ianthe learns enough to know that she’s more perceptive than any of them were this early on.
Ianthe beholds the great arch of time that lies before them, and she sees the crushing weight of it. So when Harrow rejects her kiss, just before the plan to kill Gideon the First, she is not overly concerned. She has nothing but time.
It surprises her, how much she wants Harrowhark. True, Harrow is not appealing in the traditional sense – she is cold, withdrawn, angry, astonishingly repressed. But Ianthe has never cared for the traditional, and there is a deep-seated ferocity in the Reverend Daughter that is unlike anything she has ever seen. Underneath that icy, unwelcoming exterior there is a furious wildfire. It requires no outside fuel – it is simply part of her, a chemical reaction in her soul, thermite burning at two thousand degrees without a breath of air to sustain it. It’s captivating.
And so Ianthe decides that she is going to have her.
She does not expect it to happen quickly, and her expectation proves correct. A century goes by, and Harrow rebuffs her advances every time. But Ianthe is smarter than anybody knows, and she understands what is coming for them far better than Harrow does.
Time passes. Coronabeth Tridentarius dies, and Ianthe mourns her with the knowledge that leaving her behind was the best, most selfless thing she has ever done. Because the soul of Naberius Tern may be with her for the next myriad, but it is not companionship, and his soul will never be at rest. Coronabeth got to live her life. Apparently she got married to that drab cavalier from the Sixth and they were quite happy together.
Time passes. For Harrowhark, the Ninth is but a distant memory. She spent only seventeen years of her life there, and she’s spent ten times as long away from it. She does not remember her cavalier, and everyone that she ever knew is long dead. As solitary a person as Harrow is, the loneliness of time begins to weigh on her regardless. And when it does, Ianthe is there for her.
Their relationship is still an antagonistic one. They still argue, and piss each other off, and Harrow still flinches away whenever it looks like Ianthe is about to touch her. But Harrow comes to her. She didn’t do that, in the beginning. She would spend years, decades on her own, despising the company of her fellow lyctors, the infuriatingly calm words of their God.
Now though, now Harrow gravitates around Ianthe. She doesn’t like her, but she always comes back to her. For who else could she come back to? To a normal human being, whose life will pass her by like a single flicker of a candleflame? To the three hateful, broken souls that preceded them, ten thousand years her senior, who treat her with patronizing contempt at the best of times? To the God who does not understand her, who will never view her as an equal? No. She comes back to Ianthe.
And Ianthe comes back to her too. It begins to scare Ianthe, how much she wants Harrow. How much of herself she sees in this frightened, lonely animal. How desperately she wants to feel the heat of that flame. Ianthe loves her. Loves the awkward, stumbling way she reacts to companionship. Loves the slender lines of her body, in the rare moments that she gets to see her dressed in anything other than a robe. Loves those eyes, that obsidian blackness that pierces like a rapier.
Ianthe wants to kiss her, to fuck her, to see her fall apart and beg in her arms.
She will get what she wants. Because after four centuries, and then five, and then six, the weight grows heavier. This is what she understood, at the very beginning. This is what she saw. That they are entwined, in a way they could never fight. It is inevitable.
Harrow begins to soften to her. From the start Ianthe could see that little seed of affection Harrow had for her, and over the centuries, she watches it grow. No more does Harrow flinch away the moment Ianthe tries to touch her. There is still hesitation there, but she seems to welcome a hand on her shoulder, fingers brushing her hair behind her ear, even a quiet hug on rare occasions. They still fight whenever they’re together, but not all the time. They go long stretches without saying anything, just existing in one another’s company, appreciating the peace of being with a kindred soul.
The weight is so heavy now, just having a moment to share the burden is an unspeakable relief.
Ianthe sees the moment when Harrow realizes the truth. They’re all back on the Mithraeum, the six of them together for the first time in a century. Ianthe and Harrow are walking back to their rooms when they hear a noise from a nearby hallway. They peer in to see Augustine pinning Mercymorn to a wall. The two of them are kissing frantically, tearing off each other’s clothes with a wild fervor. Augustine presses his hand against her cunt, and she drags her nails down his back, leaving bright red lines that heal in an instant, pulling an animal growl from his throat.
They flee back to Ianthe’s bedroom, Harrow looking absolutely mortified, Ianthe filled with gleeful, transgressive delight.
“They love each other, don’t they?” Harrow says softly. Ianthe stops pacing and turns to see a distant expression on Harrow’s face. “I always thought they loathed one another. But they really do love each other.”
“It’s both.” Ianthe replies.
Harrow nods, and in that moment, Ianthe can see in her eyes that Harrow knows. She knows what their fate is. And the look in her eyes is so defeated that Ianthe almost feels bad.
Almost.
Even after that moment, Harrow still rejects her for another four centuries. Out of stubbornness, or perhaps some sort of misplaced pride. But that’s okay. Ianthe can wait. Her advances are less subtle now, and she can see the conflict Harrow feels every time she gets a little more physical than she should, every time she whispers something suggestive in her ear to get a rise out of her.
It makes Ianthe so deliciously turned on to see this uptight ninth house nun shudder and blush and clench her fists until her knuckles are white, to watch the edges of her self-control fray, all because of her.
It comes to a head one day when Ianthe is in her room on the Mithraeum. She hasn’t seen Harrow in almost twenty years, so when she opens her door to see her standing there, she’s taken by surprise.
Harrow is so tense that she’s shaking. She looks haggard in a way that’s unfairly attractive, her hair longer than Ianthe’s seen it in a long time, her skull paint rushed and sloppy. She stares at Ianthe, and in that gaze Ianthe sees the fire, more clear than it has ever been before. In an instant, she knows what this is.
She grabs Harrow by the collar and pulls her into a fierce, bruising kiss. Harrow goes easily, allows herself to be moved, and Ianthe can feel the relief flood through Harrow’s body as easily as if it were her own. She does not move slowly. She’s been waiting for this for too long. She walks backward, pulling Harrow along with her, and then spins them around and pushes Harrow onto the bed.
Harrow’s robes come off, and then her undershirt, and then her trousers and her briefs, and Ianthe finally gets to see her properly. She’s not wearing a bra, but she doesn’t really need to – her breasts are so small that they barely disrupt the topography of her chest. The parallel lines of her ribs are visible through her pale skin. Harrowhark Nonagesimus is spindly and bony and beautifully delicate, so fucking attractive that it makes Ianthe want to devour her. So she does.
Harrow has no idea what to do with her hands, and they fret from Ianthe’s hair to her arms to the bedsheets and back again, restless energy looking for somewhere to go as she gasps and pants at the feeling of Ianthe’s teeth upon her neck. Eventually she remembers herself and begins to give as good as she’s getting, pulling off Ianthe’s clothes, biting her lower lip when they kiss.
They are an explosion, violent and frantic, and Ianthe knows that they could never have been anything else. They scratch and bite and claw until they both bleed from wounds that heal in seconds. Ianthe fucks Harrow with the hand that Harrow made for her until she is screaming her pleasure with tears in her eyes.
Ianthe figures that there’s something poetic about that.
And so they forge a new routine together. They’re still snippy and cruel to one another, as they always have been and always will be, but instead of leaving all that tension and emotion unresolved, they fuck each other until they can barely walk. They learn one another’s bodies almost as well as their own. Ianthe knows every intimate detail about Harrowhark’s body – the way her skin bruises so easily before she heals it, the wicked curl of her long, talented fingers, the way that gorgeous chest heaves when she’s about to come.
Ianthe’s bruises always disappear in moments, but Harrow’s healing isn’t automatic, and sometimes she leaves them there for hours or days. Ianthe wants to believe that it’s because Harrow wants a reminder of her, wants something of their encounters to last, but she isn’t so naive. She does not know why Harrow chooses to keep them, only that it is something private within herself, something Ianthe will never be privy to.
Ianthe wants to believe that Harrow is beginning to love her. That Harrow will feel for her what she feels for Harrow. She can tell that Harrow does feel something for her. Some form of love. But it is not what Ianthe feels. It is not true love, and it never will be. Because Ianthe has seen Harrowhark Nonagesimus in love – she saw the soul-deep agony of Harrow’s grief when she chose to erase her cavalier. She saw the way Harrow looked at Gideon Nav, and she knows that Harrow will never look at her that way.
Nevertheless, it is some kind of love, and it keeps Harrow coming back to her time and time again. Harrow does not remember Gideon Nav. She does not remember what it felt like to love someone with her entire being. Ianthe doesn’t want her to know, doesn’t want her to remember. Even if the magic Harrow placed on her didn't prevent it, Ianthe would never speak Gideon Nav's name. Because if Harrow remembered what love really feels like, she would never settle for this shallow imitation.
There is a moment, where she comes so close to remembering. Such a mundane little moment. There's always a danger of her remembering when she’s around Gideon the First, so Ianthe is thankful that he still doesn’t like Harrow, even if he’s not trying to kill her anymore. Augustine makes a little play on words using Gideon’s name, and Ianthe can see the furrow in Harrow’s brow. Harrow can tell that something was wrong there, that what she heard couldn’t have been correct, doesn’t make any sense. Harrow knows that she tampered with her own brain, and now there are dots connecting inside those fiery eyes.
So Ianthe kisses her. Harrow’s eyes go wide, along with the eyes of everyone else in the room. None of the others knew that they were together, at Harrow’s request. Their gazes are surprised. Harrow’s is furious.
Later Harrow pins Ianthe to a wall and takes her anger out on her. The press of her fingers inside Ianthe is cruel and vindictive, and she chokes her with the other hand. This is not the kind of choking that Ianthe likes to joke about – this is actual violence, this is Harrow using the enhanced strength of lyctorhood and squeezing so hard that she crushes Ianthe’s trachea. Ianthe comes harder than she’s ever come in her life.
She knows that she made Harrow angry, and that she shouldn’t have done it, but she doesn’t care. She had to steer her away.
Because Ianthe Tridentarius is a selfish creature. Because her love is a black hole, and she cannot reshape it into anything else. Her parents escaped, because she did not love them. Her sister escaped, and it was the only good thing Ianthe has ever done with her life. Naberius Tern did not escape, and she didn’t even love him as a person. She loved him like a trophy, or a pet, and even that was enough to consume him.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus will not escape. What they are, what they have become, does not allow for it. She beholds the great arch of time before them, sees the awesome size of it, and knows that the only way they can survive is to be more than human. Harrowhark is a blazing star, burning hotter than the mind can conceive. Ianthe knows that what they have is unhealthy. That in the end, a black hole will consume even the brightest star in the universe. But she cannot change their course.
The fire that lies inside Harrow is the most beautiful thing Ianthe has ever seen. She wants it to burn forever. But she knows that it won’t. Because Ianthe is in love with Harrowhark. And Ianthe Tridentarius knows exactly what she is.