Here’s a little bonus story about Aviva and Bet, in honor of In Sunlight and in Shadow being featured in I Heart Sapphfic’s weekly reading challenge. Enjoy!

---

The doors of the downtown bound B train slid open to a prehistoric sea.  Through the clear water, past schools of fish and waving stands of feathery creatures, Aviva could see the name of the station in mosaic tile: 81st Street – Museum of Natural History. Embedded in the wall beside it were bronze casts of fossils.

No water poured into the car, and none of the other passengers seemed to notice anything strange. None of them moved to get off, either. Aviva—sometimes known as Vivienne of the Roses, Midnight Queen, Grand Sorceress of the Last Court—took a scarf of air and darkness out of her backpack, wrapped it around the lower half of her face, walked through the door of the train and swam out into the submerged platform, which melted away entirely, leaving nothing but the sea.

Bet had invited her to a date in the museum, and she’d been excited to go, but this wasn’t . . . Bet, sometimes known as Queen Ysabet of the Sword, Pendragon of the Last Court, had made a lot of enemies when she’d taken the Pendragon’s crown, and rededicated the court to fighting the monsters that lay in the shadows and preyed on those who did not see them.  This seemed a lot more like an attack than like a date.

All the fish suddenly darted away as a shadow appeared overhead: a long oval, two flippers on either side of it. Aviva moved along with them, taking cover among the fronds until the thing passed. It took longer than she expected. It wasn’t that it was moving slowly, it was just that it was enormous.

Once it was gone, Aviva swam back out and took stock. Even in these strange surroundings, a structure stood out: a massive tower of twisted coral, its top above the surface, out of sight. She made her way towards it, past a school of creatures with tendrils drifting behind spiral shells. Ammonites. Aviva recognized them from the last time she was at the museum, and from the bronze casts in the station.  One brushed against her as they scudded by, heedless, and it felt heavier than it should have been, solid. On impulse, she reached out, and her hand closed on hard stone. When she opened it, the ammonite lay there unmoving. Not an illusion. A fossil.

She slipped it into her pocket and pulled herself into the tower’s shadowed entrance. In here, there was air, and she pulled the scarf away from her face, calling, “Bet?  Ysabet?”

Nothing.  The tower was sandstone and coral, with windows of shimmering glass, and a spiral staircase of mother-of-pearl that looped up and around.  She followed it, up, up right near the surface of the water, where Queen Ysabet of Sword hung from the ceiling, her wrists held by cords of seaweed. Her feet barely touched the floor. Her armor was pocked with barnacles and her head hung down, her cropped blonde hair hanging ragged in her face. How long had she been here?

Her head snapped up as soon as Aviva came in.  “Vivi!” said Bet, before Aviva could say anything at all.  “You should’ve have come.”

That was nonsense.  “What do you mean I shouldn’t have come,” said Aviva, crossing the room quickly, standing on her tiptoes to tug at the seaweed.  Enchanted, of course, otherwise Bet would’ve pulled them loose herself, she was impossibly strong.  “You said to come here and we’d have a date, then there were three smiley faces, one sideways smiley face, a rainbow flag, and there was a pound sign and ‘loveyou’ as one word.”

“Does that sound like the way I talk?” asked Bet.

“No,” said Aviva.  “But I thought that’s what people were like when they were texting.”

Bet sighed.  “Of course,” she said.  “You know as much about text messages as she does.  It doesn’t matter.  She stole my phone, and she wants you, not me.  You have to—”

“Who?” asked Aviva.

“Undine,” said Bet, and, as if summoned, she was outside the windows of the chamber, massive and inhuman, her face nearly half as tall as Aviva, with small reflective eyes, an elongated muzzle filled with pointed teeth, and hair fanning out behind it like streamers of kelp.

“Undine,” the thing repeated. “And you are the Grand Sorceress of the Last Court. You shall serve.”

Bet clenched her teeth and growled, “No, she won’t.”

Ignoring her, Undine fixed one beady eye on Aviva. “There is not enough magic left in this place, for me, and—” there was an angry thrash of its tail, the bulk of moving so much water that the windows of the tower flexed under the pressure.  “And it has become hostile to me and my kind.  So, I will go back to where the world was pleasant, and it shall be your strength that shall keep us there.”

“Shall it?” said Aviva, still tugging at the seaweed that held Bet prisoner, not even watching as the bulk of Undine made its slow way around the coral tower.  “I don’t think it shall.”

“You stood surety for the Pendragon once before,” said Undine.  “You shall stand surety for her again, or I shall take her and keep here where you cannot find her, and if my body washes up on the shores of the Hudson, hers will wash up beside me.  If you do not stand—”

“I will always,” said Aviva, reaching up to grasp Bet’s hand, “stand with the Pendragon.”

Undine gave a long hiss of satisfaction, bubbles frothing from her snout. “Then swear that you will remain my prisoner, my spark of magic beneath the water, and I will release her.”

Aviva let her hand trail down Bet’s arm, seaweed slimy beneath her fingers and the armor hard and unyielding beneath, as she stepped forward and raised her chin.

“Vivienne!” Bet snapped.

And the seaweed binding her wrists snapped too, sending Bet to stumble forward a few steps before she recovered her feet. Aviva shot her a sidelong smile. She’d known she could get that binding loose—she’d just needed a little time.

Bet huffed out a breath and shook her head, then returned Aviva’s smile as her sword Glad Tidings leapt into her hand, and she launched herself out the window at Undine.  The windows buckled and cracked, all at once, and the water washed in.  Aviva was battered by it as she pulled her scarf back around her face, and then she ducked down in beneath the water, to watch Bet battle Undine.

Ever since she’d first come to the Last Court, Aviva had loved watching Bet fight, her deadly grace and economy of movement, precision and passion. Undine was massive, half-woman, half-monster, with razor-sharp teeth and a muscular tail that sent Bet spinning through the water when it connected. But it didn’t connect often. Bet was too fast, her blade too accurate, leaving dozens of small cuts on Undine’s body, ribbons of blood unspooling in the water.

But when she finally drove her sword home, sinking deep into Undine’s chest, Undine only laughed.

“Fool! You cannot kill me! My life is hidden, ancient as the sea, hard as stone, black as night—”

As she spoke, Aviva’s hand closed on the fossil in her pocket.  She wasn’t the swimmer that Bet was, or Undine, and she wasn’t at all sure she’d be able to get away from that tail.  But she swam out, fast as she could, and when she reached out with the fossil, Glad Tidings was there; it cut through water and stone and it did not touch Aviva’s hand; the two halves of the fossil fell away, one on either side of her hand, sinking fast.  And Undine gave a shriek and sank down as well, down, down into the darkness below.

The water subsided at the same time, the prehistoric creatures flickering and fading from view, the coral tower crumbling beneath Aviva’s feet. Soon she and Bet were standing on the subway platform again. Bet let her armor fade and bent to pick up her phone, and Aviva wrung out her hair.

“So,” said Aviva. “You promised me a date at the Natural History Museum.”

“That wasn’t me!” Bet protested. “That was someone who texted with multiple emojis.”  Then she linked her arm with Aviva’s. “But as long as we’re here, we might as well go.”

Aviva nodded. “I already got us tickets. I want to see the whale.”