Chapter 16 Toran #2
Toran kept still as he watched Fell. “We need to know what happened. Captain Fell, please.”
Fell’s hand clenched into a fist beside his coffee cup. “It was a lot like your mission to Aeos, Roada.”
His gut twisted. Toran had handpicked his legion. The First Legion. The best of the best. But the guards he’d picked to join him on the mission hadn’t just been his comrades—they’d been his friends. And he’d led them to the Tordaza palace like pigs to slaughter.
“Whispers of the Witch in that region,” Fell continued. “My legion was sent to find the truth. Instead, the truth found us.”
Nes sipped her coffee. “How so?”
Toran slid his cup closer and lifted it to his lips. The coffee inside was too hot, near scalding, and he set it back down without taking a sip.
“She was waiting for us,” Fell said.
Someone had been waiting for Toran, too. Not the Witch. Toran would have expected the Witch, but he hadn’t expected her.
He’d staked the foreign palace out for weeks, learned the rotations of every guard unit and the schedules of every servant so his legion could slip inside without notice.
But all his preparations had turned useless.
Because he hadn’t accounted for the people who didn’t operate on regular schedules.
People like the Aeosch royal family. People like the princess and her band of assassins.
Fell let out a long breath. “Hiding in plain sight among a kind group of nomads. When they tried to ask for our help, the Witch attacked. She killed three of the nomads and one of my men in one shot.”
One shot.
That was all it had taken for two of Toran’s soldiers to fall.
A single slice through the ropes holding them to life.
Kai. His face open and afraid as he tumbled through the air.
His eyes closing just before his head smashed on marble.
Safie. Her glare, still fierce and strong, as she realized gravity was not something she could conquer.
That look of defiance carrying her through, even into death.
And the green-eyed, hooded archer beside their broken bodies, readying another arrow to bring him and his other two friends down.
One shot. Two dead.
He threw himself from the memory, slamming his knees on the underside of the table and spilling all their drinks.
“Shit,” he hissed, and clambered for more napkins. “Sorry.”
He glanced at Nes, who gave him a peculiar look. So peculiar he could have sworn it was worry creasing her face.
He couldn’t explain how every time someone mentioned Aeos he was right back there, at the heart of his failures. How the memories of their deaths were on loop in his head.
He cleared his throat and took a sip of his remaining coffee, now lukewarm. He nodded to Fell. “You were saying?”
Fell narrowed his eyes at Toran, folding his hands atop the table. “I was saying, the Witch attacked us and the nomads. She killed every last one of them. We never stood a chance.”
Toran glanced down at the registry coin between them. “And your legion?”
Fell’s gaze never left his as he said, “We tried to defend the nomads, but once we took out our swords and bows, she turned on us. My men were dead before we could strike.”
“You shot at her?” Nes leaned closer.
Fell shook his head. “I tried, but by the time I managed to nock an arrow and aim, it was already too late.”
He watched as Fell lifted a shaky hand to his forehead as if shading his eyes against the strength of the memory. He knew the feeling well.
“So, all this time, you could identify the Witch.” Nes’s tone was clipped as he watched her fingers tighten around her cup. “And yet you continue to drown the innocent.”
Fell looked out from beneath his hand, wrath in his cold eyes.
Before Fell could speak, Toran held a placating hand out. “What she means to say is, it would be incredibly helpful if you could describe the Witch for us. So we have a better idea who we’re looking for.”
Fell’s hand dropped. “The Witch is tricky. She is capable of fooling anyone, even myself. It would be pointless to describe her appearance.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because who’s to say she can’t change it with all the magic inside her? Who’s to say she can’t mess with your mind? Nothing is beyond the Witch.”
Nes frowned. “The Witch isn’t Xell.”
Toran didn’t know what to believe. On the one hand, Nes was right. There were no stories about the Witch being able to change shape. History told them such power belonged only to the Xell—that the Goddess had given them the ability to take whatever living form they pleased.
But on the other hand, history was often hearsay at best, rumors at worst. With the holy book gone, no one alive could recall the early stories of the Goddess’s feats. And with all that magic, there was no telling what the Witch could do.
Had the Xell not gone extinct—their disappearance another mystery lost to time—the immortals might have been able to provide firsthand accounts of the Goddess and the Witch’s beginnings, of their respective powers. But the only Xell that existed today were those spoken of in stories.
He tapped a finger against the side of his coffee cup, peering at the liquid as it rippled against every vibration. “How did you survive?”
Fell blinked at him. “What?”
He looked up from his coffee. “How did you survive? You said the Witch killed four people at once, that by the time you managed to shoot an arrow, it was too late. So how did you make it out alive?”
Remorse flooded Fell’s narrow features, like when the rains set the canals overflowing. “My lieutenant,” Fell said, “took a shot meant for me. He fell on top of me. I didn’t get back up. I think the Witch assumed I was dead like everyone else.”
Fell wiped at his eyes, but there were no tears there.
“What about Genna?” he asked. “How did she make it out?”
“Sergeant Rizzo didn’t come to the Wistar Mountains. I left her at the naval base on Rakne Bay.”
“Why leave behind a perfectly good soldier when entering possible enemy territory?”
“Because I didn’t think she was ready,” Fell snapped. “I was concerned her desire for personal glory would put the rest of us in jeopardy. She was only on the mission as a trial basis. Now she’s the only guard left under my tutelage.”
Toran thought back to how desperate Genna seemed to get away from Fell. Perhaps that had something to do with his northern mission.
Nes squirmed in her seat. “What about the trees?”
Fell blinked at her. “The trees?”
“Yes,” she said. “When D—the Witch attacked, do you recall anything odd happening with the trees?”
“They…” Fell closed his eyes as if trying to remember. “They died.”
Toran shifted, and beneath the table, Nes’s hand came down on his thigh. He stilled at the touch. Tried to concentrate on Fell’s words as she squeezed.
“As the Witch killed my men, the trees around the clearing died, too,” Fell said. “Their needles fell from the branches and their trunks dried out.”
Dead trees. Like in the Holy Triad.
Nes didn’t move her hand from his thigh as she leaned over the table. “Thank you, Captain Fell. For being honest about one thing today.”
And then she was up and striding for the door. Leaving an indignant Fell to gape at her and Toran with nothing to do but follow.