Chapter Thirty-Nine Inana
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Inana
By late afternoon, I’m surrounded by ghosts.
Not spirits. Not even Shades. Just a tableau of the past, so hauntingly familiar.
Dunway is exactly as I remember it. Same main road, same forest in the distance. The way the sun dips toward the horizon, casting a golden glow slanting over the Cassia Mountains, looks just like it did every day in the hours between afternoon and evening.
The only difference is that Dunway is now empty.
Trembling, I dismount my borrowed horse and tether the palfrey to a broken fence outside one of the first houses along the main road.
Not spending a single coin yesterday came in handy for procuring a horse this morning.
That isn’t to say it was easy. The stablemaster eyed me with suspicion, a stranger seeking a horse without an appointment.
All it took was flourishing my mask, announcing myself as a Summoner in service to Eldeen’s current Shadowbane, and asking if he wanted to be the one to tell the mayor he was obstructing Shadowbane business or if I should.
After that, he took my coin without further question and even gave me directions to my destination.
That wasn’t the end of my troubles. I still had to get here, and I haven’t ridden a horse since I was a girl, much less traveled alone. Half the time, I wondered if I was even going in the right direction.
Then familiarity dawned and I knew I was close to home.
Now I’m here, and I can’t fight the bone-deep chill that creeps into my blood, not from the cool air but from deep inside me. Was I right to come here?
I slowly make my way down the road, past empty houses with boarded-up windows and crumbling facades.
Some buildings bear terrifying gouges carved down the walls, rents in the roofs, or doors hanging from their hinges.
The only sound is my footsteps and the occasional caw of a raven from the woods.
With each step I take, I see a younger version of myself walking ahead.
Six-year-old Inana, holding her mother’s hand while they buy bread from the baker.
Ten-year-old Inana, climbing over the fence that lines the wheat fields, then striding to the other side, where she whispers her first words of fiction while gazing at the forest beyond.
Nineteen-year-old Inana, kissed by Henry for the first time, right here on the corner on Beltane Eve.
My teeth chatter as I approach the home I grew up in, a two-story abode of pale stone and a thatched roof, a withered garden outside.
The front door is missing and the windows are shattered.
I approach the walkway, but my feet refuse to move any farther.
All I can see inside the house is darkness, perhaps a few pieces of overturned furniture, but I can’t bear to see more.
I already knew my parents didn’t make it.
Seeing how they may have suffered won’t make this better.
I’m here for one thing.
My memories.
I choke on my short, sharp breaths as I leave my parents’ house, quickening my pace as I proceed to the other side of town.
I’m dizzy from all the destruction I pass.
All the open, empty houses, the abandoned businesses.
It seems like such a waste to have left Dunway like this. It could have been rebuilt. Salvaged.
But, no, of course it was left in this state.
Because it stands as a warning.
An example.
To most, it says: This is what happens without the Sinless. This is why you need us.
To the few who know the truth, it says: This is what happens if you defy us.
Finally, I reach my adult home. The dressmaker’s shop. The only place I was allowed to participate in something like art and be only mildly condemned for it.
This is the last place I was before I was imprisoned.
I ball my shaking hands into fists as I follow the same path I did then, recalling how light my steps were, how bright my hope was, when I strode toward the main street where the duke’s procession would be held.
I follow those same steps now, my heart aching with memories of my own na?veté.
Gods, how happy I was then, in those moments between stepping outside my door and getting captured by the guards.
Such a brief and beautiful slice of joy, where I was certain my life was going to be perfect.
Dunway had a duke and Henry was home. I’d see my love at any moment.
He’d sweep me into his arms, and in a matter of weeks, we’d marry.
Of course we would, for how would he be able to stand waiting a moment longer?
Those were the thoughts of a woman who’d only lost her heart the gentle way.
I halt in place, right where I remember seeing those guards, how they blocked my path, stared down at me, then took hold of my arms. My heart collapses in an echo of how it did then, with the fear, the confusion, the sense that all the hope I had so stupidly built up was about to come crashing down.
My eyes are glazed as I whirl around, just like the guards turned me, marching me back toward my home. Then past it. I remember how I called out to my neighbors who passed us by. Most stopped, but none said a word in my defense. None asked what was happening. Some didn’t even stop at all.
My feet slow to a halt as I recall the most painful memory of that horrific walk through town. One I didn’t have the heart to relay when I shared this story with the others.
This is where I saw my parents.
This is where they locked eyes with me, brows lowering, not with concern.
With disdain.
Mother shook her head. “What did she do now?” she muttered.
And they just walked on by.
They let them take me.
They didn’t fucking care.
I bite my bottom lip to keep it from wobbling.
I can’t even be angry now. I can’t be hurt.
Because even though my parents watched with disinterest as their cursed child—the girl born on the most inauspicious night of the year, the one who was always scolded for telling lies, the one they caught reading a novel she found buried in the woods—was dragged away toward the village jail, I can’t blame them.
Because they died.
For my lies.
For my art.
For my freedom from death.
And I still don’t know if I’m sorry. I still don’t know if I wouldn’t escape all over again, even if I knew what would happen to everyone else.
Swallowing back my tears, I resume my walk, remembering how weak my legs felt by this point. Not from fatigue but just…disappointment. Hurt.
I stop outside the jail, stomach churning as I assess its gated windows.
Some of the bars have been pulled clean out and discarded on the ground.
Then I see the half-broken front door, and the porch marred with dark stains I can only imagine are from blood.
With a bracing breath, I enter, slowly walking past the sheriff’s office, then down the hall to the cells.
My breaths come faster now, sharper, as I approach the open cell at the far end.
This is it.
This is where I was held.
Where I escaped.
I stop outside it, closing my eyes for a few moments to gather my composure. Once I’ve gained some semblance of control over my breathing, I open my eyes and step inside.
It’s just how I remember it. Stone walls, the farthest affixed with iron bars, two of which still bear the shredded ropes I cut myself free from. Moldy straw all over the floor.
And blood. So much blood, dark and discolored and…everywhere.
I smother my mouth with my hand and take a few more steadying breaths.
Everything inside me wants to run. How could I make myself relive this experience?
But I must relive it. Because already I can feel my memories stirring, sharpening, brightening. They’re right there, waiting for me to pull them forward and confront them at last.
On trembling legs, I move to the far wall, press my back against it, and raise my arms, just like I was forced to then. Visions flash through my mind, of the guards tying me to the bars. My sobs and wails, unheard as I was left to wait alone for hours.
Hours.
Hours.
Then him.
Henry.
That hope and happiness that soured as I learned the truth of what he was. What he’d become.
Then the rage. Hatred. My steely resolve.
I angle my fingertips toward my wrist, recalling how I’d pulled a sewing needle from my cuff.
The way I fought the pain of every inch of skin Henry sliced through while I worked my needle against my bindings, fraying every fiber of that rope until my hand came free.
I remember the second needle I extracted from my cuff.
I slash out with my hand, just like I did when I cut his neck.
And then…
A chill moves through me as the next memory becomes clear. One that was only a blur until now.
I heave forward, recalling the searing pain that lanced through my gut when Henry…
He stabbed me.
I splay my palm over my abdomen. Over the wound I forgot. The wound I bear no scar from.
What the fuck?
My eyes glaze, partly from tears, partly from the memories that overlay my vision. Gods, I’m remembering it now.
I remember…