Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“Leina!” Father’s voice is still urgent, but he’s lowered it from a shout to a whisper.
The soldiers are close enough to hear us.
Their horses’ thundering hooves make the earth vibrate beneath my feet.
It’s a sound that sends Selencian serfs running for whatever shelter we can find—a house, a barn, a forest, a bale of hay.
But right now, fear isn’t what moves me.
That vibration powers something potent within me.
I’m almost … aroused? That can’t be right, but I keep moving forward.
Time itself seems to still, even as I keep walking to stand in front of my family.
Mother has quieted as she watches me stride forward, her mouth agape.
I can taste the fear emanating from her, and it leaves a rotten flavor on my tongue.
It’s both acidic and cloying, like I’ve swallowed spoiled tomatoes.
Father and Seb are coming toward me, radiating anger, confusion, and fear. The anger is spicy, the confusion metallic. Without turning, I swipe my hand in the air behind me, a command for them all to stop.
Don’t come any closer. You’ll get hurt.
I can’t say the words out loud. They’re stuck in my head.
The soldier leading the group—a captain, according to his insignia—has narrowed his eyes at me, but not like I’m a threat. Like I’m a bug beneath his boot.
In some distant part of my mind, I know why he’s looking at me like that.
I take after our mother. I’m petite. Seb could wrap his hand around my wrist twice over and snap it with ease.
My dark hair is sheared short in the Selencian mourning tradition, and my face is no doubt caked with dirt and sweat.
My only weapon is a rusted scythe with a wooden handle.
But even so, this new, wild part of my mind is laughing at this captain and his three paltry soldiers.
The captain bears down on me, as if he’ll run me down with his 2,000 pounds of horseflesh and be done with it.
Distantly, I hear Seb curse as he starts running toward me.
I plant one foot behind me and another in front, balancing myself in a move as natural as breathing.
I am going nowhere, horse or no fucking horse.
I swing my scythe with my back hand, so it hangs above my head.
At the last second, the horse balks and stops, rearing. The hooves brush against my hair. When the animal comes back down, my blade nearly touches its forehead. Everyone is breathing in jagged bursts, even the massive beast. Everyone but me.
I’ve never been so calm.
Seb has stopped to my right, my father to my left. Mother is behind me, a hand on my shoulder trying to pull my arm down.
Seb raises his arms in the air in an attempt to draw the soldiers’ attention, but the captain doesn’t spare him a glance.
He doesn’t take his eyes from mine. He raises his sword while the two archers behind him raise their bows, arrows knocked.
“You should kneel, girl. Do you not know the punishment for disrespecting the king’s soldiers? ”
My mother is crying again, blubbering. “She didn’t mean it. She didn’t?—”
But we can’t speak to the soldiers without permission. The captain raises a hand to signal and my mother is abruptly silenced as an arrow flies through the air and impales her in the forehead.
No! Oh gods, no! I want to drop to my knees, pull her in close, and accept my punishment for doing this to her. But instead, a red film hazes over my eyes and that shattered part of me is muted, like I’m listening to it from under water.
I begin to swing the scythe like it’s an extension of myself, except that it isn’t.
No; it has become part of me, fused to my hand through heat or something else.
Something magical. In seconds, I’ve unseated the captain from his horse, and blood pours from the wound in his throat as he stares at me in horror.
There’s a roar and I swivel my head to see my father charging toward the archer who shot my mother.
The soldier was taking aim at me, but he turns at the inhuman sound my father made and lets his arrow fly toward him instead.
A second follows it as the other archer responds to the new threat, but that doesn’t stop Father from reaching the first and ripping him from his saddle.
Father stabs the shell-shocked archer with one of his own arrows, then falls to his knees with two arrows protruding from his chest. His collapse rattles the ground beneath my feet.
The grief starts to swell again, a wave of it threatening to swallow me whole, until one of the soldiers swings his massive sword to cut me in half.
I’m fast, though, and it swipes through nothing but air as I keep moving, the rhythm of battle humming to life in my blood.
Swing, pivot, dodge. I strike the center of the swordsman’s chest with my scythe.
It isn’t sharp enough to cut through the armor, but the force of my blow unseats him.
He tumbles to the ground in a cacophony of clanging metal.
The last archer takes aim and fires, but somehow I catch the arrow an inch from my chest. I flip it around and throw it back at him in one movement. It sails through the air as if I had launched it from a bow, striking him in the eye he aimed with. He falls from his horse with a mangled scream.
Now, it’s me and the downed swordsman. The horses have all scattered away from the threat. Away from me.
I stalk toward the soldier, the scythe in my hands dripping blood. He’s on his back staring up at me, trying to crawl backward.
“M-m-m-mercy,” he’s mumbling. “Mercy, please…!”
But there is no mercy in me. I plant my boot on his chest and slam him into the ground, raising the scythe over my head.
“Wait!” Somewhere in my mind I know the voice is Seb’s, but I don’t have time for him right now. I’m not finished.
But Seb grabs my arm with his trembling hands. “Leina, wait!”
I turn to face him, and the red haze begins to clear from my vision.
His eyes are frantic, sweeping from side to side.
I follow his gaze, and the carnage in the field will join my unending nightmares.
Lace browning and curling inward. Fires and burned flesh.
Desperate screams that go forever unheeded.
Bones rotting in the earth. A darkness that crushes.
Now, blood seeping into the soil.
The scythe wobbles in my hands, and my mouth works, trying to form words. What have I done?
The soldier beneath my boot grabs my leg and tries to twist.
I kick him in the face, and blood spurts from his nose. The man is freakishly pale under all that red. I’m about to bring down the scythe when he starts to stammer, eyes rounded.
“I-i-i-i-impossible. It’s not possible.”
I lower the scythe until it rests against his throat. I don’t have to fight Seb now. He’s released my arm and shifted to stand next to me.
“What’s not possible?” It’s a shock to hear my own voice. There’s a command in it that’s never been there before.
But the man is shaking his head and muttering while staring at me as if I’m the monster.
I’m not sure what to do next. Battle was as natural as breathing. But this? What do I do here? Torture? I need the soldier to talk. He might know what is happening to me. He certainly seems to have a better idea than I do.
But it’s Seb who takes over, kicking the man in the side. The soldier makes an oof sound, but he can’t double over because my boot has him pinned.
“You heard her! What’s impossible?”
The man’s eyes are twitching between the two of us now. He tries again to lift my boot but doesn’t budge me even an inch. My boot might as well be a boulder on his chest.
“Speak!” I command.
“There’s nothing you can do to me that will be worse than …” He stops mid-sentence, looks directly at me. “There’s nothing you can do that will be worse.” There’s true fear in his eyes, but not of me. Unacceptable.
I drop the scythe to the ground. It’s too long, too impersonal. I reach an arm behind me, palm out and fingers extended. I’m guided by a knowledge, by a knowing, that is beyond me yet comes from within.
My pruning shears land perfectly in my palm. My fingers flash with heat as they curl around the metal handle. Another extension of myself.
The soldier’s eyes are completely dilated, his gaze locked on my hand with the shears. He’s beyond words, shaking his head in denial.
I drop to a knee on the man’s chest and bring the shears to his left ear.
I lean forward, to whisper. “I know all about ‘worse’.” I smile, but it’s ugly, pained.
Bitter, like my mother’s. “After all, I was taught by the king’s best.” I nudge his ear with the shears—another tool I sharpened until my own fingers bled—and am rewarded with a trickle of his blood.
“A-a-a-altor!” the man finally spits out. “You fight like an Altor.”
What the hell? Selencians don’t have Altor, the warriors blessed by the gods to fight the Kher’zenn. If we did, we sure as hell wouldn’t be baseborn serfs for the Kingdom of Faraengard.
Seb must be as confused as I am, because he kicks the man again.
“What do you mean? Only Faraengard has Altor warriors,” Seb says.
The man opens his mouth, as if to speak, but instead of words, a green foam bubbles out.
“Leina, get off him! We need answers.”
Seb tries to pull me aside, but I’m already scrambling to get off the soldier’s chest. It makes no difference.
The man is convulsing now, choking on his own bile.
His face turns unnaturally red, his eyes bulging as he grasps desperately at his throat.
He stays like that for an agonizingly long minute, his tormented eyes meeting mine one last time, before hundreds of little black bugs start crawling out of his ears, nostrils, and eyes to devour him from the inside out.
Seb and I pull each other backward so fast we nearly fall on our asses, but in the next moment the man and the bugs are gone.
I stare at him in shock. “I didn’t do this, Seb! I swear I didn’t do this!” I may be cursed with unnatural strength and uncanny senses, but I’ve never pulled man-eating bugs from nowhere.
Seb’s arms wrapped around me, his eyes taking in every detail. He’s always been one to see the broad strokes. “I think that was the ‘worse,’ Leina.”
My mouth drops open. I close it, open it again. Try to speak.
“You think he was … cursed? Or something?” I finally get out.
Seb’s eyes are wide, staring at the place where the man was. Not even bloodstains remain on the grass. “Or something.”
A keening cry behind us yanks me out of my stupor, and both of us turn to see Leo kneeling next to our mother’s body.
Oh gods. His cries bring into sharp focus what we’ve lost. What I’ve done. Tears form in my own eyes, and the nausea churning in my stomach makes me certain I’m going to retch.
Seb races over to Leo and snatches him up, hugging Leo so tightly against his chest I’m afraid he might suffocate him.
“S-s-s-e-e-e-b,” I start, but my teeth have started to chatter. I stop and try again, clenching my mouth closed tightly to try to control the rattling. “Seb. Can Leo breathe?”
“Gods, Leina! He can’t see this!” Seb’s large hand trembles as he cradles the back of Leo’s head, pushing him deeper into the linen of his shirt. Leo flails, trying to get back down to Mother.
I try to nod, but my head feels both too heavy and too light.
Seb takes a shuddering breath and squeezes his eyes closed. When he opens them again, he seems to have aged a decade. The rage and grief painted across his face shouldn’t belong to a 19-year-old. Seb shoves Leo into my arms. “Get him inside, away from … Get him inside. Start to pack.”
“P-p-p-a-a-ack?” The chattering of my teeth is uncontrollable now as my entire body shudders.
I’m so cold I could swear there’s ice in my veins.
Leo’s shrieks threaten to shatter my sensitive ear drums. I panic as I try to hold on to him, terrified I’ll crush him, but my strength has deserted me.
I can barely keep the frantic boy in my arms.
“Pack all the food and supplies we have. We can’t stay here now.”
Of course not. They’ll come for us—all of us—because of what happened here today. Because of what I did. We’ll be hunted. But where will we go? There is no safe place.
“I’m so sorry, Seb. I’m sorry for what I did, for what happened. I didn’t mean to, I just …” What? I just what? There was nothing but rage, and now there’s nothing but a hazy cloud of grief that I can’t see my way out of.
Seb has his head lowered, his fingers pressing so firmly into the base of his nose that the tanned skin there turns white from the pressure.
“By Lako’s hells, Leina! Not now! Go pack while I bury them. They deserve that much.” Mother and Father. He has to dig graves and bury our mother and father because of me.
I’m shuddering now, from my toes in my boots to my hands that clutch Leo closer. My knees knock together, though I’m trying to hide it under my dress.
“They’re going to come for us. Maybe if I turn myself in …”
“Think, Leina!” Seb shouts. “Even if they believed you were the one who did this, what would happen to Leo after they execute you and send me to the mines? Who would take care of him, assuming they don’t kill him anyway out of spite?”
No one. No one else would take in another mouth to feed. Not one that can’t work yet.
His voice gentles, but only slightly. He’s not shouting, but he sounds harsh, like he’s talking over sand in his throat. “We don’t have another choice, Leina. Go. Pack. We won’t have much time before someone comes looking for them.”
My voice lowers. “What if they send Altor, Seb?”
Seb rubs the back of his neck and stares up at the sky before bringing his gaze back to land on me. His smile is bitter now, like Mother’s was.
“Well, apparently we have an Altor of our own,” he says, gesturing toward me.
Oh gods. And then everything starts to waver, my vision narrowing in rapid bursts. Seb is reaching for me. Worry lines his face.
What have I done? is my last thought before everything fades, but not into blackness. Instead, I fall into the softest light, the glow from a candle maybe.