What Could Have Been #1

Author’s Note: The Nameless Song has been with the betas for just over three weeks so far, and one of the biggest points of criticism is unfortunately one I’ve both anticipated and feared: that the plot is too slow. As such, I sat down this week to reoutline the book, which means we’ll be heading into draft 5 at the end of the beta read, rather than directly into querying (though more on that in the monthly update).

On the positive side, this means I can share larger chunks of TNS because, well, this draft is not actually going to be published. Below the break is the first large chunk: an entire chapter that might be my favorite out of the ones from Mick’s POV. (It’s the third chapter, specifically.) Unfortunately, it’s also part of the first third of the book, before Mick’s transformation—which should give you an idea of why it’s being cut. Still, don’t worry. All of the sentiments here will make their way into other parts of the book, though the exact events won’t.

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy this cut chapter, as it was sent to the betas. Thank you so much for reading!

Three days later, and Mick was convinced this whole thing was a mistake.

Now, there were many reasons for this being a mistake. For one, who leaves home and dedicates themself to hunting monsters for the sake of a girl one hadn’t even admitted their love to?

For another, Mick had severely underestimated how easy it would be to spend days on end. Alone. With the person he had feelings for.

And for a third . . . it was less about Eleanor and more about the potential for pissing off a feral pig the size of a grizzly bear.

That last one was something Mick had previously calculated to be an inevitable but survivable risk. Unfortunately, it came to light then and there, as the aforementioned feral pig the size of a grizzly bear charged at him, that maybe he wasn’t as great at math as he thought he was.

“Mick, look out!”

He wasn’t sure what happened in the next second, except that it wasn’t as dignified as he’d hoped it would be. That and it ended with him flat on his back several feet away from the path the great boar had torn through the underbrush. Eleanor appeared at his side, on her knees, clasping his arm with both hands.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He wanted to say yes, but all he could manage was a cough. One of his hands grasped Eleanor’s arm; the other groped through the tall grass until it closed around Titania’s leather-wrapped hilt. Planting its point into the ground, Mick struggled to his feet, batting away Eleanor’s concerns with a clipped, “I’m all right, I’m all right.” Except he wasn’t. They weren’t. The great boar, still pissed, was stomping hooves the size of Mylene’s head into the ground as it turned to face Mick and Eleanor.

Wait. No. That wasn’t a stomp.

“Oh hells!” Mick whipped his free arm around Eleanor’s midsection, pulled her onto his shoulder, and sprinted away from the great boar.

See, the problem with monsters, like the eight-foot-tall great boar they’d mistaken for an easy mark given its location close to town, was that they were not ordinary animals. They often looked like animals and acted like animals, but the difference between ordinary animals like the very friendly pigs on the farms around Southwind and an eight-foot-tall mountain of swine rage was that the latter was capable of magic.

Like the chasm spell that split the earth from that pig-faced mountain’s hooves straight down the path towards a fleeing Mick.

What did Daisy teach him about countering feral magic? Stun them? With what? No time to look for a solution. He had to run—run, get Eleanor to safety, just go, go, go—

The hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end, and a strange, metallic smell filled his nose. These were his only warnings before something exploded behind him.

Then there was a great squeal, a thunderous thud, and . . . the smell of bacon?

Mick slid to a stop and looked over the shoulder that wasn’t occupied by Eleanor. On the other side of the two-foot-wide-gods-knew-how-deep crack in the earth was the great boar. It gave the two of them a wide-eyed stare from atop its trembling limbs. Smoke curled off its wiry fur, and drool dripped from its half-open mouth.

Mick pulled Eleanor off his shoulder and planted her in front of him. She gave him a smug look in return.

Oh. Stun. With the lightning witch who knew lightning spells. That was what Daisy had told him about stopping feral magic.

“It’s not dead yet, is it?” he asked.

Eleanor lifted a hand. Violet arcs of electricity laced between her fingers. “It could be.”

Mick foisted Titania off the ground and whirled to face the boar. “It’s going to be.”

His pace quickened, first to a swift walk and then, snapping both hands around Titania’s hilt, into a sprint. The great boar steadied itself and huffed curls of dust from its nostrils. It leveled its beady eyes and two pairs of tusks at the human charging straight for it, and despite its shaking legs, it lunged. At the last second, Mick ducked. He rolled his body under the boar’s head, smashed his shoulder into its neck, and slashed Titania across its front leg. The creature squealed and bowed, crooking its injured limb beneath it.

Too close. Too fast. Not a clean amputation. Mick leapt over the crack in the earth and swung Titania before him. Eyes on the boar. Wait for an opening.

The boar opened its tusk-filled mouth and let loose a roar that would’ve shaken Mick off his feet if he hadn’t rooted them to the ground. But the jolt from this roar left him wide open for another attack, and judging by the spark in the beast’s eye, he knew it understood this too. The boar slammed its good front hoof into the ground, and spikes of rock exploded from the earth in a straight line, right for Mick. He braced, watching that line until it came within an inch of him, and then . . .

. . . he jumped. The ground burst upward, as if it was a hand reaching up to grab him. He slammed one of his feet into one newly formed spike, then used it to propel himself to the next.

“Eleanor!” he shouted.

Not out of concern for her safety. More out of concern for the window of opportunity she stood to lose.

The beast’s back was turned to her, after all. Its beady eyes were only on the distraction in front of it.

And behind it, Eleanor wove her hands into a circular pattern and rocked backwards on her heels. Arcs of violet lightning flashed down her arms and wreathed her hands while her body followed her arms. Up, back, down, forward, like a glorious, violet wave.

A deafening thunderclap crashed through the forest as Eleanor threw lightning. The path lit up blinding purple as the bolt connected with the beast’s back.

It threw its head skyward in a silent scream, and the rock spikes stopped.

Now.

Mick leapt from one pillar to the next, gathering speed until he arced over the boar.

Down.

His voice rose into a battle cry as he dropped Titania onto the boar. Through the boar. Perfectly through the boar’s neck.

He landed at its side. Its head landed beside him. The rest of the beast fell still.

For a few seconds, Mick held his stance, partly to catch his breath and partly to determine that the great boar was, indeed, dead. It wasn’t one of those monsters that could keep going if one cut off their heads. But . . .

He peered down at its lifeless eyes, still open but glassy now. Carefully, he eased back onto his feet—then immediately nearly jumped right off them again at the sound of Eleanor clapping.

She strode towards him with her hands slipping behind her back. A low whistle sang past her lips as she examined the mess of the boar up close. Mick cocked his head at her for a beat, then examined Titania. He flicked it, and the blood from the great boar slid off its blade. Squinting at its edges, he drew a rag from his pocket and cleaned off the little blood and gore that still clung to Titania’s metal length. Still sharp. Mostly clean. True to Poppy’s word.

“Barely a day out, and we’re already defeating great boars!” Eleanor exclaimed.

“Uh, no. Great boar. Singular,” he corrected. Satisfied with his inspection, he slid Titania back into its sheath. “On that note, we should probably set up camp for the night. I don’t think I’ve got the stamina for another fight.”

“Oh, speaking of!” Eleanor whirled to face Mick. “You were incredible! Sprinting that fast while carrying an adult elf . . . all of those jumps . . . and that finishing move! Did Daisy teach you that?”

Mick’s face burned at the shower of compliments. Or his everything burned. Eleanor had this tendency to light up like a firework in the dark whenever something excited her, and though Mick knew this and adored watching her whenever it happened, he never imagined what it would feel like to be the focus of that attention. It made his head spin and sent electricity through his limbs, and suffice to say, maybe he was up for another fight.

Clearing his throat, he tried his best to look casual as every part of him melted from the inside out.

“You’ve seen me fight before,” he said with an awkward grin. “I mean, it’s not much more complicated than the one yesterday with the grass mice or all those times I took out a southern dodo for dinner.”

“Pfft! Why do you always sell yourself short?” Eleanor looped an arm around his shoulders and wheeled him around to face the corpse of the great boar. “How many people do you know can take down a great boar without getting so much as a scratch on themselves?”

Mick’s hands twitched at his sides. Don’t reciprocate, he told himself. Don’t touch her when she touches you. Keep it platonic. You know the deal.

He placed his hands on his hips instead, which had the added bonus of nudging Eleanor back an inch—probably not far enough for her to notice.

“Well . . . I had help,” he said. “Nice shooting, by the way. On horseback, no less.”

“On horse—” Eleanor groaned and shoved Mick away. “Knightback, if anything. I’m adding ‘wean you off self-depreciating humor’ to the list of things to do.”

Mick snorted. “What’re you up to now? Twenty-six things you’re hoping to get me to do by the end of this journey?”

Eleanor sauntered towards the edge of the trees. “A year’s a long time, Monsieur Martin. I think I’d have plenty of time to mold you into a self-respecting hero even if I had hundreds of points on a list.”

“I’m a little tempted to take that as a challenge.”

“Oh? A challenge?” Eleanor whirled around—there was a maniacal twinkle in her eye.

Mick stood a little taller and a little stiffer. He held up his hands in surrender. “On second thought, never mind. I just remembered who I’m talking to.”

Eleanor hummed and turned back to the forest. “That’s what I thought. Will you be all right here? I’m off to gather firewood for what I assume will be a boar dinner tonight.”

Slowly lowering his hands, Mick glanced at the boar carcass around him. “Uh. Yeah, probably.”

“Anything else you’d like me to look for?”

Mick pulled a hunting knife from his belt and ran through numbers in his head. How many pounds of boar was he looking at?

“I’m thinking potatoes and wild onions, if you can find them.” He froze, then threw a glance over his shoulder. “Hey, Eleanor?”

She stopped, one hand on the nearest tree. “Yes?”

“Listen. With how territorial these things are, we probably won’t find another great boar for miles,” he said. “But on the off-chance you find one anyway—or really anything you can’t take down yourself—shoot up sparks or something? I’ll come running.”

Eleanor flashed him a warm look.

And Mick felt his heart shudder in his chest.

“Only if you give a shout should anything get ideas about that mountain of pork you’re butchering,” she teased.

“O-of course.”

With a quiet chuckle, she slipped out of sight, into the trees. Mick lingered for a second until his heart calmed, and when it did, he turned back to the mountain of pork in question.

Okay. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be. Sure, it was one year of wandering the kingdom with the most exciting person he had ever met, and sure, the monsters were only going to get stronger and more tempting to Eleanor from here on out. But . . .

It was nice. He never had a chance to spend all day with her—just an afternoon here, a morning there—and once she left for university, the spaces between them only seemed to grow.

That was why Mick chose to stick with this. Matthew was right; he could have said no. He could have told Eleanor that he wanted to stay in Southwind and that he liked being the Red Rooster’s headwaiter. Sure, the job came with its own indignities, least of all that he was his own brother’s lackey, but the pay was good enough, and he was good at it. And anyway, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t like one couldn’t say no to a d’Étoilier.

But Mick knew one of two things would happen if he said no. The first was that Eleanor would leave anyway, and if that happened, there was a high chance he would never see her again. Maybe she would’ve died, gutted by a great boar she’d try to take down herself. Or maybe she would’ve met a party or a better partner than Mick could have been, and she would run off and forget about Southwind. Or maybe, gods forbid, she would’ve gone off with Lord Albert and come back a lady of House Fortier.

And then there was that second possibility: that she would set aside her dream of becoming an adventurer and settle down with whatever profession or husband her family had chosen for her. Which, knowing Eleanor, would have been a far worse fate.

So in a way, he didn’t have much of a choice, now that he thought about it. He had to say yes. It had to be him by her side.

All he had to do now was make sure Eleanor survived the year, avoid dying himself, and help her ease into adult life. Preferably without sending her back to that gilded birdcage she’d come from.

No pressure. Sure.

“Right,” he sighed to himself. “You can do this, Mick. Just . . .”

He took a step towards the boar, shifting his focus from Eleanor to the meat. Oh, gods above, this was at least three hundred pounds of raw meat alone. What did one do with three hundred pounds of boar meat? Dry it? Probably dry it. What did Daisy say about making campfire jerky . . . ?

Mick reached out, placed a hand on the great boar’s shoulder, and struggled to map out butchering a pig several times larger than the ones he’d trained on. Slowly, he inhaled through his nose and brought his hunting knife up to the creature’s steel-hide skin.

Then a thunderclap boomed behind him.

Eleanor!

He whirled around and dashed for the trees, hunting knife still in hand and fire rushing through his veins. But he’d only managed to cross half the distance between the boar and the trees before Eleanor popped out of the thick underbrush with something in her arms. Mick skidded to a stop, raising his knife-wielding arm to avoid accidentally stabbing her.

“Eleanor!” he cried. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” She blinked, then raised her eyebrows. “Oh! Sorry, no, everything’s fine. More than fine, in fact! Look!”

Mick dropped his eyes to the bundle in her arms, and what was once fire in his veins turned to pure ice. She was carrying what looked to be a bipedal mushroom the size of a toddler with a bulbous, blue-capped head lolling to the side. Its beady black eyes already had a glassy look to them, and its mouth—a tiny, black void in its face—dripped violently purple-green ichor. From just one glance, Mick knew this thing was very dead.

He also knew this thing was a fungin, a monster that was very poisonous. In fact, Daisy’s only lesson on the fungin was simple: “Don’t breathe around these nasty bastards when they’re casting unless you like suffocating on your own throat.”

“Eleanor,” Mick began, “that’s . . . not something I can cook.”

“Oh, this isn’t for cooking!” She held it out to him. “Isn’t it wonderful? A perfect specimen!”

She handed it to Mick like a mother passing somebody her baby; Mick took it like Eleanor had passed him a bomb.

“Uh . . . that’s . . . great,” he said slowly while keeping the fungin at arm’s length. “What do you mean by ‘specimen,’ exactly?”

“The cap, of course!” she replied, as if this was obvious. “Firm! Unblemished! And look at that color!”

“The . . . cap. That. That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Fungin caps have long been valued for their curative effects,” Eleanor explained patiently, “or more accurately, extracts obtained by boiling the caps, or dried, crushed cap brewed in a tea with fae rose. However, there have been recent studies among Eldavenian alchemists regarding the magic-enhancing and mildly psychoactive properties of small doses of raw cap, and I’m quite curious to see these effects myself. Here!”

Before he could react, Eleanor drew the knife he’d given her and lopped off a section of the fungin’s cap. She held it out to Mick, who stood there, watching the piece glisten maliciously in the dying sun.

“Try some!” she said.

Mick lifted his chin a little. “Uh . . .” He took a step back. “Maybe later.”

“Shame,” Eleanor sighed. “Well, I am curious about the difference in effectiveness between dried and fresh cap, so perhaps I could dry this and—”

“No. And please don’t eat that.”

—

Camp beneath bones. That was what Daisy had told him. Four hundred years ago, the last dragon in Eldana had been slain during the Dragon Wars, but there was something about what they left behind—corpses first, then bones, bleached beneath thousands of suns—that kept monsters at bay. Oh, monsters still roamed the wilds, but they steered clear of dragon remains.

So, camp beneath bones. And there were plenty in the Southern Reach, the province in which Southwind sat. Far more than Mick was expecting. In fact, it took him longer to butcher the great boar and shove at least half of it into Eleanor’s pocket dimension than it did for him to find a ribcage and half a spine jutting out of the earth within a grove of trees. Within a grove of trees—as in, several grew straight through the furthest bones from the campfire, twisting through ribs to reach skyward.

Mick kept his back to the whole thing as he tuned his violin. He kept his eyes steady on the pot of boar stew simmering over the fire, but his ears alternated between the subtle shifts of the notes he plucked and the sound of Eleanor shuffling behind him. For the past three days, their routine had been fairly similar: Mick would play while whatever meal he’d prepared was roasting over the campfire, and Eleanor would sketch the dragon bones they camped beneath. The day before, they had slept beside a half-buried skull, and before that, two sets of severed claws. Each of these spread across the pages of Eleanor’s notebook, a growing corpse in black and white.

“Fascinating,” Eleanor breathed. “You really can tell this was a wood dragon.”

Mick slid his bow across his violin’s strings in a few quick warm-ups. “The dissipated lumina, right?” That was what she called it when she explained why yesterday’s dragon had been embedded in the crags of a final spell and why the severed claws from the night before had been reaching up from a lake that bled out from the earth itself four hundred years ago.

“Well, that, and these trees seem to be rooted in the core of these bones,” Eleanor replied. “Have you ever seen plants do that?”

Once. Ages ago, when one of the wood mages in Southwind got a little too ambitious with magic he wasn’t ready to wield. Mick’s mother wasn’t technically a chirugienne—she’d been her husband’s business partner until he’d died and she’d retired in one eventful summer three years ago—but she was the best blood witch in town. So naturally, she was the only one who could untangle the roses from that mage’s arm, and Mick, eleven and too young to work for the Red Rooster at the time, had been right by her side, learning exactly what too much ambition could do to a person.

Mick had never told Eleanor this, and he wasn’t going to that night, with dinner just minutes away.

“Absolutely beautiful,” Eleanor continued. “The specimens in Eldaven are entirely too pristine—no evidence of what each one could have been.” She slid over to Mick’s side and took a seat just at the edge of his vision. “Nonetheless, remind me to take you when we get there. It’s worth it for the sight of a full skeleton alone. Or perhaps we’ll see one at some point, right here in the wilds! Wouldn’t that be remarkable?”

It wouldn’t. Not really. Oh, dragon skeletons were handy for warding off monsters and for making Eleanor light up at night. But dragons themselves?

He shuddered, acutely aware that the rib Eleanor had been observing had towered over him even when he’d been standing. Thankfully, as far as anyone knew, the last dragon had been eradicated at the end of the Dragon Wars, the bloody eon-long conflict between the dragons and Eldana. But then, these flying behemoths had terrorized the kingdom and razed entire towns until four hundred years ago, when the Dawnlit Gods finally sent a wave of saints to strike down the dragons’ most powerful. Everyone knew this story; it was basic Eldanan history, celebrated annually on the Feast of Elda, queen of the gods.

So Mick knew he and Eleanor would never see a dragon. But seeing one dead?

It unsettled him. He couldn’t put his finger on why. Maybe it was how many bones littered the wilds. Maybe it was the thought of camping beneath a corpse.

Or maybe it was just looking at these bones of something that had once been the gods’ greatest enemy. To think that this world had ever birthed such horrors.

Mick murmured a soft prayer to Ordnir that neither he nor Eleanor would face a monster like that. His fingers tingled strangely at his prayer, yet he played on.

Eleanor knelt beside the pot and stirred it. “Tomorrow, we should be reaching Faelenvale, right?”

Mick hummed an affirmative and peered at Eleanor over his violin.

“Which means tomorrow we’ll have our first job.”

Mick slowed for a few bars, then caught himself and swung back into the right tempo—also slow, but the difference, like the shift in his mood, was hopefully imperceptible to Eleanor.

Slow waltz first, before anything fast. A good performance was like a good roast: it needed time to build up to something good.

Well, that and a slow waltz steadied his nerves.

Because, really, Mick didn’t have high hopes that they’d land a job. He knew about the Adventurers’ Guild, the governing body that oversaw all businesses and activities related to adventurers, and more importantly, he knew that every town had a job board, a literal board where adventurers could find job postings that had been requested by townsfolk and carefully vetted by the Guild. And he knew that adventurers who didn’t want to be lured into a forest and robbed blind after accepting shady jobs from random gnomes would stick strictly to the job board.

Most importantly, he knew how many jobs a small, peaceful town with a well-managed monster population tended to have. And he knew this because Southwind’s job board was right outside the Red Rooster, in a perfect spot for him to watch disappointed adventurers sulk away empty-handed, every single day from the moment he’d started working there until the day before he left.

And Faelenvale wasn’t that much bigger than Southwind, and that was what worried him.

“Maybe,” Mick finally said, careful not to deflate Eleanor’s hopes. “Y’know, Faelenvale’s a really nice town.”

Eleanor huffed and gave Mick an exasperated look. “Definitely. Think optimistically, Mick! A larger town than Southwind, right on the edge of monster territory. No doubt there will be plenty of jobs for all of us.”

Mick bit his tongue. Literally bit it, to keep himself from replying. Which song should come next? “Harvest Moon Waltz” into . . . “Clearmourn’s Reel”?

Eleanor sat back onto her heels. “You’re doing that thing again where you get suspiciously quiet because you don’t want to say what’s on your mind,” she said.

That wasn’t heart magic, as far as Mick knew. That was Eleanor calling on a decade of shared experiences. Which was worse in his opinion, because he liked to think he wasn’t that predictable.

“That thing? I have no idea what you’re talking about!” He played a little faster and louder to hide the nervous lilt in his voice.

“Mick.”

“I mean . . .” His voice dropped a little, and so did his music. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed, is all.” And then, hastily, he added, “No big deal if we don’t get a job, right? Towns could always use a little monster culling. We don’t need to accept a job from the Guild to do that.”

“Hm.” Eleanor hugged her knees to her chest. “Pessimistic as always, Mick Martin. You know, just for that, I’m going to say we’ll find a five-star job nobody else wants to touch, just to balance things out.”

“Five-star?”

Eleanor fanned a hand in front of her. “There’s a dragon in the woods we’ll need to slay. It’s been hiding in the depths of the fae wilds for eons, just waiting for the right time to emerge.”

“Ah . . .”

“But now, for reasons unknown, it rose from its slumber to threaten first Faelenvale, then Meadowlark, and soon the planet as a whole, unless two brave and highly talented adventurers strike it down before it reaches its full power.”

“Mm.”

“And of course we do. We come back heroes. We get medals. Girls throw themselves at your feet.”

“Okay, now you’re getting carried away.”

“Girls throw themselves at my feet?”

“Eleanor.”

“Gods forbid a woman dream anything, I suppose.”

Despite himself, Mick guffawed, and he let his bow rest on his knee. “Eleanor, you know I encourage you to dream whatever you want, despite the fact that experience tells me that’s a dangerous thing to do.”

She gave him a fiendish grin.

“But that having been said,” he continued, pointedly ignoring her, “we are not meeting a dragon. Even if they did exist.” He set his bow against the strings of his violin. “And anyway, we’re beginning adventurers. We can’t take anything over—”

“—three stars. I know,” she finished with a roll of her eyes. “And yes, dragons might not exist.”

Mick inhaled deeply. “They don’t exist.”

“You never know! We don’t have proof one way or another.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her but somehow kept himself from pointing out the likelihood of giant flying lizards just going completely unnoticed in Eldana for centuries. “You know what? Fair. But still, no dragons. No dire wolves. No great dionaea. Nothing harder than a one-star for our first outing. Deal?”

Eleanor’s fiendish grin returned before Mick could realize what he’d said.

“There. One step away from entirely defeatist,” she said. With that grin still on her face, Eleanor turned back to the stew. “I’d be happy enough just gathering fae roses in Faelen Woods. That’s all.” She visibly relaxed. “And you?”

“Me?”

“What are you hoping for?”

To bring you home in one piece. “The same.”

Eleanor smiled warmly at that. Mick sat with his bow still on his knee, just taking in the sight of her, excited, lit by the warm orange-red of the campfire. This was why he’d agreed to go with her. Feed her excitement. Keep her going. Make her feel alive and safe and confident, so that maybe, one day, she’ll figure out she wanted to do after this grand adventure.

But mostly, it was these moments. These quiet moments, where Eleanor dreamed, where she lit up, both literally and metaphorically, with anticipation for the road ahead. Mick lived for these moments, and whenever they happened, he felt his heart beat a little faster in his chest.

Gods, if only he could take each one and crystallize them in amber.

But of course, he couldn’t, and of course, that particular moment ended as gracefully as it began.

“I wonder what would happen if we added fun—”

Mick brandished his bow at her. “Unless you want to watch me get arrested for nearly killing the count’s daughter, you will not.”