The Beasts We Bury (The Broken Citadel #1)

13. Prospective Seconde Mancella Amaryllis Cliff

13

P ROSPECTIVE S ECONDE M ANCELLA A MARYLLIS C LIFF

|3 DAYS UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|

It takes my father two days to realize the sword is missing.

I’m in my mother’s private dressing room, holding as still as I can while she practices my makeup look for the Assurance. My eyes are stinging—partially from the abundance of powder in the air and partially from the lingering effects of Mara’s useful-but-aggravating tonic, which I’ve already used twice today. I sniff snottily and squeeze out one final tear, just to keep up the act, but my mother rubs it away with a perfectly manicured thumb and keeps painting, her brush never pausing for a moment.

Almost like she’s used to applying makeup to tearstained cheeks.

My father enters without knocking, and this isn’t enough to break her rhythm either, although she does stiffen. For a moment, he just watches her work, tracing the lines she sketches onto my face in silence. Clingy powder along my cheekbones, a thick, claylike paste around my eyes. A line of kohl across each eyebrow. My skin feels heavy and congested, like someone’s smashed my face into a bowl of dough and they won’t let me just wipe it off.

Finally, she lowers the brush and takes in her handiwork, glancing sideways at my father.

But if she’s looking for approval, she doesn’t get it.

“I’d like to speak to Mancella alone,” Father says.

My mother grips the brush in her hand. “I… I’m not quite finished yet.”

My eyes fly to her face as a small bit of hope blooms in my chest. Her words are not exactly defiance, but they’re closer to it than I’ve heard in a while. Does she know what he’s going to say? Is she trying to protect me from it?

“Wespa,” my father says. He puts his hand briefly on her arm, just long enough to freeze her in place for half a breath. She was in the middle of turning her head toward him, but he halts her just as her eyes pass over me, and there’s a flash of worry suspended in them that I probably wasn’t meant to see.

I open my mouth to demand he release her, but he already has, and she’s already tucked the emotion away and replaced it with a vacant expression that makes my heart sink.

She doesn’t finish the turn. Instead she purses her lips together, hard, her gaze still on me but unreadable now. Then she lays down the brush with a clack, lifts her skirts, and bustles out of the room.

The lump in my throat feels sharp, like choking on a shard of glass, but I swallow it down anyway as my father takes her place in front of me.

“I wanted to apologize to you,” he says.

My mind is following my mother down the hallway, so it takes a few seconds for his words to penetrate. When they do, I whip back toward him, mouth open. “You what ?”

He looks through the window above me, at the acidic green glow on the horizon, then finally lowers his eyes to my face.

“I understand your shock,” he says. “But I can admit when I’ve made a mistake. Just because I am aggressive in pursuing my goals doesn’t mean I don’t regret it when I err.”

The paint at the corners of my eyes cracks as I squint up at him.

“All right,” I say carefully. “What are you sorry for? That you threatened to kill children and forced me to become a murderer, or just that it didn’t work?”

“Both,” he says, without hesitation. “Both. I have room for many regrets in my life.”

It’s not exactly the answer I was looking for, but after a short deliberation I decide that I don’t want to start a fight when he’s trying to make a gesture. If… that’s what this is.

“Fine,” I say instead. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

He nods, and then there’s a silence that I’m not sure how to fill. I raise a kohl-darkened eyebrow, trying to figure out why my father hasn’t left yet. Wondering what exactly it is that he’s working up to.

“Did you take the Victory’s Herald?” he asks, voice deceptively mild.

Ah.

I should have expected this.

“It’s… m-missing?” I choke out, hoping my stuttering comes across as genuine surprise instead of the nervousness that it is. But then I register the fact that he noticed the sword’s disappearance at all and frown. “Hold on. Why were you getting it out in the first place?”

“For the Assurance,” he says easily. “We are all making the final preparations.” He gestures to my painted face as proof.

I study his face, and I don’t see a tell. What he’s saying is believable, and a week ago I might have even bought it.

But Silver’s warning that war might be coming rings in my ears.

“Of course,” I say carefully. “Because if you were going to start a war, you would tell me. Right? I’ll be named your Seconde in three days. I need to start being a part of these decisions.”

He regards me coolly, until it occurs to me that I still haven’t responded to his initial inquiry, and he’s noticed.

“No,” I blurt. “I don’t have your sword.”

The pause stretches longer, and I can’t tell if he believes me or not.

Finally, he steeples his hands in front of his face. “You’re right,” he says. “You should have more of a part in these things. I reviewed your propositions for the Academy and they were thorough and well reasoned, showing an impressive aptitude. While it would be impossible to enact everything you outlined immediately, I have taken the liberty of instituting the ones that seemed most important to you. The isolation rooms are closed, the restraint chair will no longer be used, and the rocks will be put away. Moving forward, discipline will be administered more humanely. As you wished.”

I blink in shock.

First an apology and then a major concession?

Suspicion buzzes over my skin, making me sit up straighter. The last time he pretended to care about my feelings was right before he ordered me to kill a human. There must be something else coming now, too.

“Thank you,” I say formally. Uncertainly. “I… appreciate your attention on the matter.”

“Of course,” he says. “And as to discussions of war…”

I hold my breath.

“If you want to be included, then you will be. In a few minutes, I’m taking a trip to the border to take care of a few things. Come with me, and you can ask me any questions that you’d like on the journey, about the potential for war or anything else. I promise to answer fully.”

I swallow, expecting there to be more.

And yet it doesn’t come. He only sits there, waiting for my response.

I narrow my eyes.

It’s impossible that there’s no catch here. There must be some other plan, some other atrocity he’ll propose once he has me in the carriage. And anticipating it is almost worse than just having it happen, because at least then I would know what it is.

It occurs to me that I could turn him down. Refuse to go entirely. And perhaps I should.

But the truth is, if he is planning a war—and he hasn’t explicitly said yet that he isn’t—I need to know about it. Maybe I could learn something that would be helpful to Silver and his mysterious group.

Besides, even if he is leading me into a trap, it doesn’t mean I have to be caught in it. I succeeded in thwarting his last plan, after all. I can find a way out of the next one, too.

As Mara so frequently tells me, I need to play the game.

“I would love to,” I say finally.

He nods, standing and holding out a hand.

I don’t take it.

But I do get up and follow him out of the room.

When we step into the hallway, we almost run over Silver, who is up on a ladder dusting one of our many chandeliers. He always seems close at hand lately, finding chores to do nearby, wherever I am. In fact, I’m pretty sure he was dusting this same chandelier when I stepped into Mother’s dressing room an hour ago. I linger a moment to give him a secretive smile, but my father steps past me and reaches up to touch Silver’s leg.

Then Silver’s body locks into place.

I barely stifle a cry of dismay. What’s he doing? Is he going to attack? Does he know something about what Silver and I have done?

But no. He only drones on about a chandelier in another hallway that he’d like cleaned next.

I grimace as bile rises to the back of my throat. My father does this often with servants. He says it’s to make sure he has their full attention while he’s speaking, but I think he likes the casual touch of dominance. The restrained violence. I dig my fingernails into my arm, willing him to let go. Unable to stop looking at the unnatural way Silver’s arm hangs in the air. Thinking about how, despite the fact that his artificially immobilized stance is casual, his insides must be screaming.

Finally, Father drops his hand. Silver’s features shutter immediately.

“Understood?” my father asks.

“Yes, sir,” Silver answers. “I’ll get right on that.” His voice doesn’t betray a hint of rage, but it’s unanimated. Smoke only, no glowing embers to be found.

My father brushes by and keeps walking, his mind already moving on from the interaction.

I stay. Tipping my head back, I catch Silver’s attention, my animals squirming in dismay within me. “I’m sorry,” I mouth behind my father’s back.

He drops off the ladder and approaches me, body language still deliberately casual, but his amber eyes burning.

“How often has he done that to you?” he asks. And now his voice is all ember, no smoke. It takes me a second to find mine.

“I’ve lost count,” I tell him.

He steps up close to me, lifting my chin with one hand, eyes raking over my face. I blush until I realize he’s probably just taking in my makeup. Hopefully he attributes the reddening of my cheeks to liberally applied rouge.

“You two going somewhere?” he asks in a low voice.

“Nowhere important. Just for a ride.”

Silver’s gaze flicks over my shoulder to my father’s back disappearing around the corner, and his mouth tightens.

“Be careful,” he murmurs.

I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

“Mancella?” My father must have finally noticed that I’m not following him. No doubt he’ll double back any second to find me.

“Be right there,” I call.

I make to go after him, but Silver grabs my hand, pulling me to a stop. His fingers are urgent on my wrist.

“Silver?” I whisper.

He starts, like he didn’t realize he’d actually reached out. Then he frowns and drops my hand, stepping back.

I hesitate, but then turn and catch up to my father, mumbling something about a third dusty chandelier I’d noticed that I wanted to make sure the servant addressed as well. My instincts are screaming at me to stay and hear the rest of Silver’s warning, but now isn’t the time.

The last thing I want is to give my father any reason to pay special attention to the amber-eyed boy behind me, or the troubled expression on his face as he watches us walk away.

The carriage Father selects isn’t one of the ostentatious ones we use when we want to be seen, but one of the plainer ones we use for travel. It’s all metal, with no ornamentation but spikes circling its roof like a crown. I take this as a good sign.

“After you,” he says, gesturing inside. I climb up and arrange myself on one of the cushioned benches within. Father joins me, settling on the opposite side. Then the door swings shut and the wheels begin to turn. Over their rattling, my father heaves a sigh, one that’s long and weary. I give him a sidelong glance but say nothing.

We rumble through the castle gates and down the front path, then depart from the main road to take a smaller, bumpier track that avoids the crowds and circles the mountains.

“So,” I prompt testily. “Are we preparing for a war?”

“We are always preparing for war, in a sense.”

“No,” I say, cutting him off. “You promised real answers. Be direct with me. Do you have reason to believe that war is an imminent reality?”

He raises one bushy eyebrow, almost looking impressed with my assertiveness. “It is at minimum a possibility,” he allows. “Our relations with the new Prime in the Grasslands have not gone smoothly. She has sent several correspondences that were decidedly aggressive. I still hope that an outright war can be avoided, but it seems unlikely at this point that mere diplomacy will be enough.”

I frown, processing this. I guess that means my letter didn’t work. My heart squeezes in sorrow as I realize there’s no use waiting for a response anymore. “How do you plan to avert it, then?”

“With a show of force.”

His words strike me in the chest, and as soon as they do I wonder why I expected him to say anything different. “Why do you do that?” I blurt out in frustration.

His other eyebrow climbs to join the first. “Do what?”

“Why do you only use your power to crush people?”

“To protect—”

“Don’t give me that!” I snap. “Because it isn’t just other realms. It’s Mother and S—servants. Mara and me. Do you enjoy the control that much?”

I expect him to be offended by the question, but instead he considers it. “Enjoy?” he says. “No. But I do value it.”

I scowl at him. “What does that mean?”

He shifts in his seat, hands clasped in front of him. “Do you remember when Mara was in the Broken Citadel, and we didn’t know whether she would come out?” he asks. “Do you remember how that felt?”

“Of course,” I say bitterly. “It felt awful. Terrifying .”

He nods. “It felt that way because you had no control over what was happening to her. You were helpless. Right?”

“Yes…?”

“Well, I felt that way, too. When we waited for Uncle Edwarn. When he didn’t come out.”

I still, because Father never talks about that day.

“You waited?” I breathe. “How long?”

“A full day,” he tells me. “And every minute was torture. Before then, it was my brother who I leaned on most for support, so as the wait got more anxious I kept reaching for him, only to be stung anew by his absence. The decision to give up on him and go in myself was one of the hardest I’d ever made. I had to close a part of myself down, and I’m not sure it ever opened back up. That’s one of the reasons I was so… ungracious when we waited for Mara. I didn’t want to ever go through that kind of excruciatingly drawn-out suspense again. That gradual surrender of hope. I preferred to cut it off early, thinking perhaps it would be easier that way. But it was only a different kind of pain.”

In spite of myself, my hands unclench. “I… I had no idea,” I say. “It must have been hard. Dealing with that.”

“Yes,” he says. “Especially when, mere weeks into my mourning, his son tried to end my life.”

Any compassion that his words brought out of me collapses and my eyes narrow angrily. “So you say,” I spit.

“I say it because it’s true,” he says, his tone almost gentle. “You need to come to terms with that.”

But I’m already shaking my head. “I know him,” I insist. “Alect wouldn’t do that! He was my friend.” Yes, he had trained his whole life to be Prime. But he wouldn’t have tried taking it like that. Not the boy who brought me starsprouts.

My father is unperturbed by my denials.

“Everyone has their darkness, Mancella,” he says. “Even Alect. Even you.” He looks out the window at the stark cliffs flying by. Perhaps at the former Mountain Realm beyond them, decimated by the magic so many generations ago that the people no longer exist even in memory. “This world is cruel, and it will eat you alive if you let it. You need to learn how to control it. Tame it. The magic gave me a way to do that, so, yes. I value it.”

I scowl at him. “You said the world, but it’s people you’re trying to control. Real, actual people.”

“Oh, don’t be so self-righteous,” he says tiredly. “Everyone tries to control people. Kindness is its own manipulation, and sweetness its own breed of armor. Even one’s status as a victim can be a weapon if wielded properly. There isn’t a person in this world who doesn’t try to puppeteer everyone else; we just have different ways of going about it. Mine at least is direct.”

I stare at him, stunned. “So your apology today…,” I prod. “Was that manipulation as well?”

“Of course,” he acknowledges easily. “All apologies are. People only say they’re sorry when they want someone’s feelings toward them to change. What else would you call it?”

I want to feel disappointed by his answer, but I actually feel relieved. His honesty, however terrible, feels safer than lies. Perhaps we really are having the frank conversation he promised.

Finally.

I lean against the frame of the carriage, regarding him.

“You didn’t mean it, then?” I ask.

He looks back at me, taking in my expression. “I meant it,” he says. “I am sorry. I wish the world wasn’t what it is and that I didn’t have to push you to do such difficult things just so we can survive in it. And, in this particular instance, I made a miscalculation. I hurt you deeply and we gained nothing. So I genuinely regret that it happened. But just because it was sincere doesn’t mean I wasn’t trying to manipulate you by voicing it. Human interaction, at base, is coercion. It’s best if you learn that soon.”

“But it isn’t true ,” I tell him. “At least, not for me. I don’t go about my day trying to control other people.”

“You don’t?”

“Not at all!”

He smiles like he’s glad I said that. “Then tell me. Where is that girl’s body?”

A chill runs down my spine and the carriage lurches beneath us. “Wh-what?” I choke out.

“Her body,” he enunciates. “I looked for it after the fact, and it was nowhere to be found. So mysterious, don’t you think? But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

My stomach plummets and my palms get clammy. I wipe them on my dress, queasy. “I… I told the soldiers to give her body back to her parents. So she could have a proper burial.”

He raises one large eyebrow, amused. “Did you?” he asks. “How considerate.” Then he leans forward, leveling his gaze on mine. “Now tell me again that you’re not trying to manipulate me, Mancella. Tell me that you didn’t put on a show for me that day. And that you’re not lying to my face right now.”

I bunch the fabric of my dress in my hands, my heart racing.

Is this it? What I’ve been waiting for? Did he bring me out here to tell me that the trick didn’t work, that now I need to kill for real? Or, worse, will he tell me that he’s started executing Academy kids, just as he promised?

I’ve never been caught defying him to this degree before, and the uncertainty of how he might respond, how brutal he might get, leaves me lightheaded.

“That—that’s different!” I protest desperately. “You were forcing me. I had to protect myself. To protect others. I had to take control of the situation.”

“You see?” he says, triumphant. “You do understand.”

Frightened, and more than a little disturbed, I hug my arms to my chest and turn away from him. Just as I do, we pass under an overhang in the cliffside, and my window darkens, my reflection flashing across the glass. I suck in a breath because I hadn’t actually seen it yet.

I look sinister. Animalistic. Between the sharp lines, the added shadows and the pelt-like patterning, I look half beast. It’s not the first time I’ve been made to look like this, of course, but it strikes me differently now. It hadn’t ever occurred to me that most of the realm only ever saw me as this .

And Silver was one of them.

No wonder it was so easy for him to believe I was a monster.

I’m about to say something, perhaps make some kind of plea to go home, when we take a turn I don’t expect, and the carriage starts tilting, clacking down the steep slope. My window brightens as we pull away from the cliffside, and I lean forward to peer out of it, concerned.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Shouldn’t we be turning back?” After all, we passed the border of our realm a while ago. We’re not far from the Grassland Realm now.

As soon as I think it, the walled city rises in the distance, causing me to stiffen. Last time I saw the place, a few months ago, its walls were painted with streaks of red, like dripping blood. An homage to their first spark of magic, just like our glass forest is a nod to my grandfather’s powers.

Now the walls are pitchy, sooty black, and towering bonfires burn at their corners. Flakes of ash flutter down from them in waves, some coating the ground in a blanket of gray, and more flurrying through the air, a few even riding the wind all the way to our carriage.

I guess the new Prime wanted a makeover.

Kneading my skirts anxiously with my fingers, I wonder what it might mean that Azele wiped out her own realm’s history.

It doesn’t strike me as a particularly positive omen.

“We’ll turn back in a minute,” my father tells me. “First there’s something I want to try, and it will be easier on flat ground.” As he says this, the carriage levels out and comes to a stop.

With the wheels no longer clacking beneath us, we are plunged into a sudden silence. The fluttering ash gives everything an eerie feeling, and I don’t want to linger.

“What exactly do you want to try?” I ask.

“Summon your animals for me?”

A premonition of danger slides down my spine, and I turn from the window to face him. “Why?” I ask carefully.

He gives an exasperated huff. “You know, I wouldn’t need to manipulate you if you didn’t fight me so hard at every turn. Believe it or not, I would prefer our relationship to be less antagonistic. You’ll be my Seconde soon. Can’t we have a fresh start? Work together on more level ground? I’ll tell you what; if you humor me with this one request, I’ll forget about the girl completely. We’ll never speak of her again. All right?”

“And you won’t ask me to kill another human?” I press. “You’ll drop that, too?”

He huffs in exasperation.

“Yes,” he says. “I will drop that, too.”

Relief and continued suspicion war in my chest, and the animals within me are unsettled. But I doubt I’ll get this offer again.

“Fine,” I say. “Which animals?”

“All of them.”

I hesitate for one more moment, but then I comply, flinging my creatures toward the space outside the carriage.

In an instant, the fields around us are bursting with life. My jaguar bounds through the open fields. My monkey frolics through the ash like it’s snow. And they keep coming. A dog, a wolf, a raccoon, a bear, a bobcat, a fox, a horse, an owl… I lose count. I’ve never sent them all out at once before. I’ve seen them stuffed and mounted on walls, of course, but not all breathing and moving and alive like this. It’s odd to think that I carry so much life inside me every day.

Then something cold wraps around my wrist.

I look down. It’s a metal bracelet made of two semicircles that fit together, with a giant keyhole on the end of one of them. My father swings the other side shut, and it clicks past several notches until it lays uncomfortably tight against my skin. When I tug at the metal, it doesn’t pull back apart.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Like I said, just trying something,” he says. “Can you call your animals back?”

I tug at the metal again, not liking the way it’s digging into me, but I do what he asks, pulling my animals back into my body.

Only they don’t come.

My magic feels odd, like it’s curdling just beneath my skin, unable to push past it. And while my animals still feel connected to me, it’s like someone is stepping on the thread I use to pull them back and they can’t feel my tug.

An unintentional whimper escapes my lips, and I dig my fingers into the bracelet more earnestly, trying to pry it off. “What did you do? It feels… it feels wrong . Take it off!”

“I will,” he says. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t cut off magic completely. It just creates a barrier that magic can’t pass through. Like your body is a fortress that has been secured. If they were within you when I put the bracelet on, they would be locked inside. But they’re out, so they’re locked out.”

“I don’t like it,” I repeat. “Take it off .”

“In a minute,” he says, craning to look at something behind me.

I follow his gaze, and what I see stifles my response in my throat.

A group of soldiers approaches the border from the other side. Unlike our guards, who all wear insignia made from twisted glass trees, these soldiers have painted their faces in ash. Their armor is all in tones of gray as well. In the middle stands a woman significantly more decorated than the others. The pale gray soot traces her cheekbones, standing out against her dark skin. She regards my animals with steel-colored eyes.

“Is that… Prime Azele? What is she doing here?” But when I look at my father and his expression isn’t surprised, my question changes. “What are we doing here?”

“Remember,” he says. “Everything I do is to protect you. Our realm must be strong.”

Dread slams into my chest.

Behind us, several more carriages stream down the cliffside, and soldiers disembark from them like ants forming lines. Foreboding stirs in my gut, and my animals shift restlessly all around me as my father sticks his head out of the carriage window.

Beside Azele, a crack opens up in the earth; then a shadow leaps upward from it and forms into a person. Her bodyguard, Rift. My breath catches as he surveys the soldiers before him, face stony.

“I called this parley as a courtesy,” Azele speaks. “Explain your actions, or you risk war between our realms.”

Her eyes land on my face, and as they narrow I suddenly remember what I look like and how she must interpret that. I cast around for a towel or a rag, anything to wipe the ferocity off me.

“Fire,” my father says.

“ What?! ” No sooner is the word out of my mouth than an arrow flies from a soldier somewhere to my left. He’s a good shot, but the second before his arrow hits the Prime square in the face, she holds up her hand. When the arrow meets her skin, it turns to cinders and blows away in the wind.

“So be it,” she says.

She darts forward, pressing a hand to the helmet of a soldier right in front of us. It puffs to ash and she slams her knife into the space just under his jaw. Her bodyguard immediately follows suit, his body folding back into the earth, creating a chasm that rips through the grass and splits apart our soldiers’ ranks, only for him to take full form again just past our front line. With a swish of his sword, three of them fall, spines sliced in half.

I scream as the bodies topple. Both sides rush to engage and soon the battle becomes a chaotic melee of fighting figures and flashing metal. Inside the safety of the carriage, my father grabs me.

“What have you done?” I gasp.

“Focus, Mancella. I need you to incite your animals to fight.”

I look at him with a multilevel horror. “Are you insane? You know I would never do that, and you also know that I can’t. They don’t respond to my commands!”

“But they feed off your emotions. If you’re angry, they’ll react to that. Make them fight, now, or our men will die here.”

“How… how could you? How dare you?”

He hasn’t let the idea of an army go at all. Maybe he’s dropped the idea of summoning a human, but he means to make me an instrument of war anyway.

Not one second of this ride was the open discourse he’d pretended it was. For all his carefully crafted “honesty,” we were always headed right here. To a battlefield.

Fury fills me, burning so hot I’m surprised I don’t physically burst into flames.

“Good, good,” he says. “Keep going.”

What?

Oh no.

I scramble back to the window, and my animals are rampaging. My grizzly is ripping a soldier apart. My jaguar has her fangs buried in a man’s skull, flecks of ash from his face peppering the blood. My wolf is dragging a man by his leg.

Only that’s our man.

“They’re attacking everyone! They can’t tell the difference between our soldiers and theirs!”

“That’s a good note for next time.”

“Next time?!” My rage flares, and I hear my animals roar with my bloodlust. My heart lurches in alarm.

I have to calm down.

I squeeze my eyes closed and take deep breaths, but the sounds of carnage surround me. I try to think of calm things. The way it was before magic, before my father was Prime. Late-night games and warm smiles. Snuggling in Mara’s bed. Ripples on a lake in the woods.

Something, it sounds like a body, hits the side of our carriage, making it rock on its wheels.

“Ripples on a lake!” I yell. “ Ripples on a lake! ”

“No,” says my father. “Your mother, beaten. Your sister, tortured. Your people, slaughtered. Take your pretty lake and imagine it filled with blood and corpses.”

“Stop it!” I scream. “What is wrong with you?” But his words are working and my anger feels like an inferno within me. Only I’m not angry with the soldiers from the Grasslands, I’m angry with him .

But, no. I’m stronger than this. I’m stronger than my father. I may not be able to control him, but I can control my own mind. I slam my mental walls down, shutting everything out, focusing on that last image, of a lake in the woods. A specific lake, one I haven’t been to in a long time, but that I can still remember in detail. I focus on those details now. Soft ripples on the water. Dappled sunlight on the leaves. The gentle lapping sound. The smell of moss and earth.

And it’s working. I can feel myself relaxing, feel the calm—

Then my father lays his palm on my forehead.

“You force my hand,” he says.

And I don’t understand fast enough, don’t flinch away as immediately as I should.

In the next moment, my skin hardens under his touch.

The screams from outside the carriage grow more desperate, and if my eyes could widen, they would. I remember my snake writhing and lashing out the last time my father did this, remember how single-mindedly he attacked as I fought for air, and then I imagine my multitude of animals feeling that same level of desperate hostility.

As that primal need to live stokes my panic, it dawns on me that my father might not care if the whole field of soldiers is slaughtered around us. He may consider that a worthwhile cost. And no matter what he pretended at the beginning of this carriage ride, he doesn’t care how this affects me at all.

My eyelids are locked halfway open, just wide enough to see my own hands frozen in my lap, but the sounds of carnage continue to assault my ears. Roaring. Slashing. Stampeding. Screaming. Tearing. Squelching. Begging. Clawing. Gurgling. Howling. Crying. Dying. The scent of fresh blood oozes into my nostrils. Ash flutters in and coats my face.

I have never felt so helpless.

When the magic moves to my lungs, stealing my breath, I almost welcome it.