9. Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Viola
T he sun is barely cresting the horizon when we reach the edge of the meadow where Link and I spent his last night before the Race that would ultimately lead to his death.
And I am here with the man responsible for that death.
When I look at Mace, his expensive clothes tattered and dirty, his skin scratched from rouge branches, and his shaggy hair clumped and oily, I cannot see the man who subjected Link to a ritual he had no hope of surviving. I can't see the person who made the callous decision to force my people into an event that got them slaughtered year after year.
I can't see him, but I know he's there, hiding under the veneer of a man who has succeeded in taking my guard down.
Don't those reprehensible actions come down to self-preservation? Much like my own misguided actions, Mace and even Stone were trying to save themselves and their people from failing magic and increased threats from beasts. They must have believed it was the only way, right?
The trail my thoughts have followed has me keeping Mace at arm's length for now. I feel bad for sending him such mixed signals, but it's a reflection of the push and pull happening in my mind every time I look at him.
After our conversation on the stag, keeping our distance from one another was no issue. The emotional vulnerability has left both of us unsure of where we stand now. Our relationship appears to not be a one-off connection fueled only by sexual desire but something more. Of course, the sexual tension between the two of us remains high, but can either of us truly escape our misdeeds and come together?
I forgive him, but I am starting to realize that forgiveness doesn't mean I can forget.
My feet catch just a few steps into the meadow. Memories flood me at the sight of the swaying grass and the weeds decorated with flowers that glimmer in the early morning light. It has only been weeks since I stepped foot here, but it may as well have been a lifetime.
I right myself, brushing my hands down my shirt and pushing the loose strands of my dark hair behind my ears. I may be dressed the same, but I am not the same woman I was when I left Dalery.
"Do you think your house will have been given away yet?" Tulip whispers as she sidles up beside me.
I shake my head. "No, not yet. I have no heirs. It would go up for auction, but that's only done once a month, so we should still have time. I doubt it's even been cleaned out yet."
Morrow, always hot on Tulip's heels, looks at me sadly. "No heirs? No family whatsoever?"
"No, my parents deserted me in the Race my Ascension year and won. I have no siblings, no extended family."
He puts his hand on my elbow, and I'm shocked by how soft his rich, dark skin is. "You've been on your own for a decade?" His voice is quiet and sad, and I cannot meet his eyes, for I know they will be brimming with pity. I must admit it is refreshing to meet someone who doesn't know my whole life story from spying on me during my hardest times. Since we dabbled with Illusion magic last night, he's been weak, his body struggling from the exertion of holding opposite magic, but he's still finding time to try to comfort me.
"I have. But we all have our struggles, right?" I tap his hand with mine and pull from his grasp. "It's how we handle them that defines us." I leave out that I have not always handled my struggles in honorable ways.
I wave Plume and Mace towards me, and the five of us form a tight circle facing one another. "My home is not far from here. We need to make it there before we do anything else. Unless I've been looted, I've got some things that can help us there. We'll need some meat or crops to trade. We need weapons, clothes, passage on a ship…" It feels more and more insurmountable as I speak, but I try not to let my skepticism show.
Even though the largest market day for the month has passed, we should still be able to find a few local vendors who set up daily in the town square. If not, I know enough craftsmen to visit their homes and beg a favor.
"Actually, Plume, can you get one of those stag to follow us? We can butcher it for meat." Plume winces, and I speak before she can interrupt. "I know that probably seems barbaric to you since they just helped us. But things are different here in the Lowlands. Meat is hard to come by, and an animal that big will give us enough tradeable meat to accomplish our goals." Until I stole the dried meat from Jaz, it must have been close to six months since I'd had any, but I don't tell them that.
With a nod to the team, I take off at a jog towards the place I called home for twenty-eight years, pushing down the memories of Max with every footfall.
Ten minutes later, we're standing outside my ramshackle cottage, with its cracked door, drafty windows, and leaky roof. A rustling on the side has me sliding my knife from my thigh, preparing to protect my companions as the only member of our party who is armed.
"Hilda?" I can't contain my surprise as the plucky little chicken waddles around the side of the house right towards me. I reach out to her to lightly brush my fingers against her feathers when Shadow slides down my hands toward her. With a loud squawk, she runs off.
"Shadow!" I admonish the familiar. "She was my friend before you. I could have given her as a gift so she'd be taken care of! You had to go scaring her off!"
Plume and Tulip are chuckling at the exchange, and until I heard them, I had forgotten I had an audience. I glance back, and Mace and Morrow are straight-faced, no hint of humor deigning to cross their features.
I straighten myself and square my shoulders. "Home sweet home. Follow me."
It's easy to push my way into the door, the locks long since rusted and years of skill unbracing it from the outside. A fine layer of dust coats the interior, but other than that, it's how I left it.
"No one touched it?" Tulip asks, surprised. I'm sure in Pran, with their housing shortage, this home would already have been overwhelmed with people.
"I don't know if you've realized this, Tulip, but I can be slightly intimidating. The city is probably waiting to be sure I won't return." I expect my humor to get any sort of reaction out of Mace, but his face is still frustratingly blank, allowing me no opportunity to discern his thoughts. "Well, make yourself at home," I say, gesturing to the table of four chairs while remaining standing. They all sink into the chairs, looking around at my meager belongings.
I reach towards the top shelf of my bookcase and grab a bottle of mead, the one I replaced every year after the Race, as I drank my sorrows for not making it to Ytopie. I toss it to Morrow, who catches it deftly, and I grab the two teacups I own. I only ever needed two – one for me, one for Max. I place them on the table. "Sorry, I only have two cups. It was just me most of the time, but Max spent time here too, so that one," I point at the cup with the faded yellow flowers painted on a canvas of soft green, "was hers." Next to it, my mug looks downright depressing, solid black and chipped in multiple places, the white of the ceramic showing through .
Morrow slides the mugs in front of Plume and Tulip and fills them with several healthy glugs of the mead before taking a deep swig himself. He grimaces. "This is… something, Viola."
Shame creeps across my hairline. "I made it myself. It's made from dandelions." I trail off, turning my back to him, pretending to try to locate something in my kitchen cabinets. I feel him behind me, his large hand between my shoulder blades. He's shorter than me, the top of his head reaching the base of my ears, but his stocky, square build could easily fell the largest man.
"That's very resourceful of you. You're a very interesting woman, Shadowweaver." I grimace at the title, even though I was the first to bring it up after we left the garrison. He pushes the bottle into my hands, and I drink from it greedily, the familiar taste flashing me back to when Max and I shared a similar bottle before the Race.
Turning around, I set the bottle in front of a still-silent Mace and stand between him and Tulip. "This is where I killed Max," I say softly. Tulip glances at Mace and then Plume with a look of confusion. Plume is about to interject when I hold my hand up.
"A day or two before the Race, Max found me training and came over to trade me a whetstone for a few eggs. That's a very unbalanced trade," I add, for the benefit of the fae, "but she was always trying to look out for me, and I had no problem accepting it." With nowhere to sit, I slide my rear onto the table, forcing Tulip and Mace to slide their chairs closer to Morrow and Plume, respectively, so I have a place to rest.
With my back to them all, I continue my story. "We shared a bottle of mead, not unlike this one. I keep, well, kept, a bottle saved away every year for right before the Race to loosen my nerves and right after to commiserate my loss. This is the loss bottle, by the way." The bottle ends up back in my hands via Tulip, and I drink again. The warmth of the dandelion wine runs through me.
"As we sat, we argued a little. She was happy just meandering through the Race and coming back to have a life together. That's all she wanted, me and her living a normal life here in Dalery. Max wasn't my friend. She was an extension of myself, holding all the good for both of us. I never felt shame about who I was with her, despite the choices I made being very different than the choices she'd make. Even in the Race, when she disagreed with my theft and how I handled Amio, she still loved me through those choices. A part of me wonders…" I trail off, not willing to speak about my fears of being unlovable to my travel companions. "Anyways, she was all I had." I get choked up, voicing words I was never brave enough to release into the world until now.
Since Max's death, I have been able to compartmentalize it, push it down, and bury it deep under a layer of denial. In this home where I spent so much time with her, the grief has taken root, memories feeding its rapid growth.
I place the mead back on the table, uncaring who picks it up. Tulip's hand is on my arm, and I know she would want me to face her, but if I looked into those shining blue eyes and saw her unshed tears, I would fall apart. "I wasn't satisfied with the life she wanted with me. The idea of giving up on winning the Race, on never seeing my parents again, was impossible to accept. So here, at this table, I made Max promise that we would make it to the arena together and leave behind all of this." I gesture widely at my meager home.
"That's the promise that got her killed. Here at this table, I signed my best friend's death warrant."
The squeaking of a chair on the floor and the slamming of a door alert me that someone has left. Turning around, I am unsurprised to see that Mace is gone.