Continued, Half City #2
She wasn’t the warmest associate, but Nora was one of my mother’s closest friends, and despite her prickly exterior, she’d been thoughtful enough to give me this job so I could take care of our family once Ryder left.
She even helped with my sister, Leigh, when Mother was too sick to take her to classes.
My smile at Nora’s kindness faded as I thought of my mother—she had been too frail to even open her eyes this morning. The irony that I worked as a healer and my mother was slowly dying from an ailment none of us could identify was not lost on me.
Even worse—and maybe more ironic—my abilities had never worked on her. Not even if all she had was a paper cut. Yet another sign that my powers were not those of a common witch, but something far stranger.
My mother had been sick since I was old enough to talk, but it had worsened these past few years.
The only things that helped were the little remedies Nora and I put together—concoctions made of the white canna lilies and rhodanthe flowers native to Amber, blended with Ravensara oil and sandalwood.
But the relief was temporary, and her pain grew worse each day.
I physically shook my head to rattle the unpleasantness away.
I couldn’t focus on that now. The only thing that mattered was taking care of her and my sister as best I could, now that Ryder was gone.
And might never be coming back.
“No, you didn’t hear me right! I didn’t say he was cute, I said he was astute. Like, smart or worldly,” Leigh said, throwing a log on the dwindling hearth fire. I bit back a laugh and pulled three small bowls from the cupboard.
“Mhm, right. I just think you have a little crush, that’s all.”
Leigh rolled her pale blue eyes as she turned around in our tiny kitchen gathering cutlery and mugs.
Our house was small and rickety, but I loved it with my whole heart.
It smelled like Ryder’s tobacco, the vanilla we used for baking, and fragrant white lilies.
Leigh’s sketches hung on almost every wall.
Every time I walked in our front door, a smile tugged at my lips.
Perched on a little hill overlooking most of Abbington and with three well-insulated, cozy rooms, it was one of the nicer houses in our village.
My stepfather, Powell, had built it for my mother and me before my siblings were born.
The kitchen was my favorite place to sit, the wooden table put together by Powell and Ryder one summer back when we were all young and Mother was healthier.
It was uncanny, the warm memories tied to the bones of our home in such contrast to those that swam in my head, in my stomach, when I thought of Powell’s stern face and clenched jaw. The scars on my back from his belt.
I shuddered.
Leigh squeezed in beside me, jarring me from cobwebbed memories and handing over a bundle of roots and herbs for Mother’s medication.
“Here. We don’t have any rosemary left.”
I peered down at her blonde head and a warmth bloomed in me—she was always radiant, even with the misery of wartime that surrounded us. Joyful, funny, bold.
“What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me.
“Nothing,” I said, biting back a smile. She was just starting to see herself as a grown-up and no longer tolerated being treated like a kid. Loving stares of adoration from her older sister were clearly not allowed. She liked it even less when I tried to protect her.
I swallowed hard, throwing the herbs into the bubbling pot over our hearth.
Recently, rumors had been swirling in the taverns, schools, and markets. The men were all gone now—Ryder and Halden had likely given their lives—and we were still losing to the wicked kingdom in the north.
The women would have to be next.
It wasn’t that we couldn’t do what the men could.
I had heard the Onyx Kingdom’s army was filled with strong, ruthless women who fought alongside the men.
I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take someone’s life for my kingdom, couldn’t fight for my own.
The thought of leaving Abbington at all raised the hair on the back of my neck.
It was Leigh I worried about. She was too fearless.
Her youth made her think she was invincible, and her hunger for attention made her loud, risky, and brave to the point of recklessness. The thought of her golden curls bouncing onto the front lines made my stomach twist.
If that wasn’t bad enough, both of us being carted off to fight against Onyx meant Mother would be left alone. Too old and frail to fight, she might avoid the draft but wouldn’t be able to take care of herself. With all three of her children gone, she wouldn’t last a week.
How was I supposed to protect either of them then?
“You couldn’t be more wrong about Jace,” Leigh said, pointing a fork at me with faux assuredness. “I’ve never had a crush in my life. Especially not on him.”
“Fine,” I said, searching through a cupboard for carrots. I wondered if Leigh had purposely distracted me—if she could tell I was worrying.
“Honestly,” she continued, plopping down at our kitchen table and folding her feet underneath her. “I don’t care what you think. Look at your taste! You’re in love with Halden Brownfield.” Leigh made a disgusted face.
My pulse rose at his name, remembering the date and my anxiety from this morning. I shook my head at Leigh’s accusation.
“I am not in love with him. I like him. As a person. We’re just friends, actually.”
“Mhm, right,” she said, mocking my earlier sentiments about her and Jace.
I popped the carrots in a separate pot for dinner, beside Mother’s medication. Multitasking had become one of my strong suits since Ryder left. I opened the window above the hearth, letting some of the heat from both pots billow outside. The cool evening breeze washed over my sticky face.
“What’s wrong with Halden anyway?” I asked, curiosity getting to me.
“Nothing, really. He was just boring. And fussy. And he wasn’t silly at all.”
“Stop saying ‘was,’ ” I said, with more bite than I intended. “He’s all right. They both are.”
Not a lie. Just that same bright-side thinking that could occasionally border on denial. Leigh stood to set the table, gathering mismatched mugs for our cider.
“And Halden is silly and interesting…and fussy,” I conceded. “I’ll give you that one. He’s a little tightly wound.” Leigh smiled, knowing she’d gotten me.
I considered my sister. She had grown up so much in so little time that I wasn’t sure what information I was protecting her from anymore.
“Fine,” I said, stirring the two pots simultaneously. “We were seeing each other.”
Leigh raised her brows suggestively.
“But truthfully, there was no ‘in love’ to speak of. By the Stones.”
“Why not? Because you knew he would have to leave?”
My gaze landed on the hearth, watching the meager flames flicker as I thought about her question in earnest.
It was shallow, but the first thing that came to mind when I heard his name was Halden’s hair.
Sometimes, especially in the moonlight, his blond curls looked so pale they nearly glowed.
It was actually what first drew me to him—he was the only boy in our town with fair hair.
Amber mainly produced chocolatey brunettes like me or dirty blonds like Leigh and Ryder.
I had fallen for that ice-blond hair at the determined age of seven.
He and Ryder had become inseparable right around then.
Certain I was going to marry him, I didn’t mind trailing their every adventure and clinging to their scraped-knee-inducing games.
Halden had a smile that made me feel safe.
I would have followed it anywhere. The day word of conscription came to Abbington was the only time I ever saw his smile falter.
That, and the day he first saw my scars.
But if I’d been enamored with Halden since I was little, why didn’t it feel like love when he finally saw in me what I had seen in him for so long?
I didn’t have a good answer, and certainly not one fit for a ten-year-old.
Had I not loved him because I’d never seen it go well for anyone, namely our mother?
Or because sometimes I’d ask him what he thought of Onyx’s expansion of their already sprawling land and his dismissive responses would make me feel prickly for some reason I couldn’t quite place?
Maybe the answer was far worse. The one I hoped wasn’t true but feared the most—that I wasn’t capable of such a feeling.
There was nobody more deserving of it than Halden. Nobody else whom Mother, Ryder, or Powell would have wished me to be with.
“I don’t know, Leigh.”
I swept my attention back to the dinner preparation and sliced vegetables in silence.
Leigh, sensing I was finished with that particular line of questioning, returned to setting the table.
When Mother’s medicine was done boiling, I moved it to the counter to steep.
Once it cooled, I would fill a new vial and place it in the pouch by the cupboard as always.
Maybe I could do this—take care of them all on my own.
The savory aroma of stewing vegetables mixed with the medicinal notes of Mother’s medication drifted through the home.
It was a familiar scent. A comfortable one.
Amber was surrounded by mountains, which meant the valley we were nestled in always had chilly mornings, crisp days, and cold nights.
Every tree wilted brown leaves year-round.
Every dinner was always corn, squash, pumpkin, carrots.
Even the harshest of winters brought only rain and bare branches, and the hottest summer I could remember had a mere two trees of green.
For the most part, it was brown and blustery here every day of the year.