Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“Hadima, stop.” Iryana grabbed her sister’s shoulder and pulled her aside right before the gate, jaw clenched and eyes wide.
“It’s not,” she begged.
Hadima’s brow pulled up, her face pleading. “We can do this. Our family will support you and we will do whatever we can to help you get to their metal well.”
Iryana recoiled sharply, the words effective as a slap across her cheek.
Our family will support you.
Last time she heard that, she was fourteen years old, stuck on a training mission with her sister and cousins.
One of the many attempts to help Iryana fit back in with the family during the few years she lived at home after her father died and before she moved out at sixteen.
It was meant to be safe, living off the land in a nearby valley that was too rocky for farming but thought to be undiscovered by the dakii.
It flashed through her mind, scene after scene.
The forest at dusk, gathering firewood with her cousin.
Her cousin Marisha’s disgusted expression when she asked about Iryana’s scars, then pushing Iryana to answer.
Pushing and pushing until Iryana shouted the truth.
Her cousin’s horrified face. The beast leaping through the trees.
Iryana drew her bow while her cousin ran, leaving her with the dakya. Abandoning her.
Iryana looked down and clutched her shoulder, where the new scars from that night still marred her flesh, joining those her father had left. Somehow Iryana had survived, but her cousin that had left her to die had not. The only death of their generation so far. All Iryana’s fault.
The family hadn’t supported her afterwards in her guilt and grief—they’d blamed her.
That was the last time she let one of the Kleesolds try to get close to her.
“Iryana,” Hadima pleaded softer, pulling Iryana back. “We can do this together.”
Iryana’s lungs tightened. If only that were the truth. “No. Please, Hadima, please don’t tell anyone.”
Hadima reared back. “What?”
“This isn’t an option. It wouldn’t work. If I thought there was any chance—”
“This is the best chance we have. The only one.” Hadima clung to one of Iryana’s hands. “We have to try. Please, I know I’ve asked a lot of you over the years, but please. I’ll ask nothing else of you if you do this.”
Gods, her heart was ripping. Why did Hadima have to do this to her? The pain of it was as physical as any blade running through her flesh could be. “I can’t. It won’t work.”
Hadima had to know that, and yet she pushed Iryana anyway. Pushed and pushed and pushed. Iryana couldn’t get close to her own family, how could she infiltrate a bunch of strangers? She couldn’t. She would fail.
“Do you resent us that much? I have tried to be a part of your life, tried to make amends, but you have made it very clear that you want nothing to do with us. But please. Think of Misha; she needs her family.” Hadima squeezed Iryana’s hand so hard the joints ached.
“I know she does!” Iryana pulled away and scrubbed her face with her hands. “I just can’t do it.”
Hadima was wrong; Iryana wanted nothing more than to be a bigger part of her family’s life, but she just didn’t know how to make Hadima understand.
“Try! Do something for this family for once and try,” Hadima cried, her words uncharacteristically cruel, as if she had already barreled past the end of her patience. Then her voice dropped low and soft, tormented and desperate. “I will never forgive you if you don’t.”
Iryana recoiled, but a wave of anger simmered up and drowned out the pain. It didn’t matter what she did.
“You wouldn’t forgive me either way,” Iryana snapped.
Her sister’s face dripped with disappointment, looking at Iryana like she just couldn’t understand what had gone so terribly wrong with her.
“You say that,” Hadima scoffed, “But you’ll never forgive me either.”
Iryana opened her mouth to argue, but Hadima held up a hand to silence her.
She watched as the anger drained out of Hadima, exhaustion tugging at her brows.
“I don’t know if I should stop hoping that you’ll ever come back. If I should expect you to disappear one night without a word. Like Mom did.” Hadima’s voice was small, pained.
“I won’t do that to you,” Iryana promised. She would at least say goodbye.
Hadima nodded slightly, like she wasn’t sure if she could believe it.
Iryana’s heart clenched. Her sister wanted her back.
Thought she did, at least. But if Iryana returned, moved back in and sat through family dinners, and played games in the hall…
it would be just like before. Iryana, unable to fit in, and Hadima desperately trying to force it.
She would be a burden, a constant source of frustration.
And when something happened again, like Marisha, they would cast her out for good.
“I can’t do it, Iri.” Hadima shuddered, leaning against the gate limply. “I can’t leave my home again, pack up my life. Worry about everyone every single day. I can’t do it.”
Iryana’s hands were shaking at the sound of her sister’s distress. Like the very foundation of her world was coming apart.
If she said no, she would lose Hadima. That was clear. The family would get disbanded, leaving Iryana adrift in the world.
If she said yes, she would inevitably fail the Kleesolds. Maybe they’d have to renounce her to protect the post. Maybe they’d tell the duchess to put her somewhere she couldn’t do any damage. Maybe it wouldn’t matter because the brigade would discover her and Iryana would be dead.
The best she could promise was to give her sister hope for a while.
Long enough that Hadima could find some other solution.
And if she could do it… find the metal well?
It would change everything for her family.
But then the small place she’d carved out at the post would slip away from her; it would be all or nothing with the First. And Iryana would have to choose nothing.
Was that better than dooming her clan? It was a noose around her neck either way.
“Okay,” she said. The word felt like giving up. Like letting go of the small hold she still had on her family.
Hadima visibly deflated with relief. “Okay?”
“But no one can know. Just you and me. And you can’t count on this working; look for other ways too. I will try, but no promises.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“Keep the unforged from leaving. Hunt the dakii. Do whatever you can.” That would be something, and even if Iryana failed, it might be enough.
Hadima took a steadying breath. “How will this work? If you’re gone, the family will notice eventually. And what about your shifts?”
“You’ll have to cover for me.” Iryana took a shaking breath. “Tell them I am helping at another post, seeing if I want to move there after the summer. The family will have to give out my shifts. And take care of my animals.”
Hadima winced, and Iryana knew it would hurt.
The family was already pulled too thin. But they’d be pulled even thinner if the other unforged left.
It went against the agreement she’d made with the First, would seem to go against her guardian vows.
She didn’t envy her sister’s having to explain it.
Iryana was a coward for making her sister do it.
“Okay.” Hadima looked carefully at Iryana and held out the aged coin. Guilt swam in her eyes. “Thank you.”
Iryana stared at it, hoping it would grow wings and take off into the sky, saving her from the pain it would bring. But it stayed where it was between Hadima’s pinched fingers until Iryana slowly took it with her own.
“We are already running out of time. If this is to work, we need to start immediately.” Hadima gestured toward the house, and Iryana hesitated. “We should make some plans to stay in touch.”
Then she would need to pack. And hunt down the brigade’s liaison to take her to their base.
A shiver went up her spine. It already felt like a mistake.
Iryana’s hands shook as she unclipped the patchy gray scarves from the drying line strung across her yard.
She rubbed the fabric between her fingers.
It was stiff from drip-drying, and she could still make out hints of the patterns that had decorated the scarves before she’d soaked them in baths of mordant and dye.
They really needed another round in the bath, but there wasn’t time.
She was leaving the only place she could really call home. No matter how hard she tried to wrap her head around it, it didn’t feel real.
Her cottage was quiet when she slipped back inside, the stove already cooling from the lack of careful tending through the night.
She had spent hours digging in the dark, burying the seed potatoes that had sprouted just in time.
A show of faith that she would return by autumn and the post would still be here.
She tried not to think about where she was going, the people she would live with: drug dealers, murderers, and leeches. Tried not to think about what she’d have to do for them.
It had been a week since the First had revealed the duchess’s ultimatum, a few wild days of preparation culminating the morning before by asking the liaison for an escort. Everything about her was numb.
After carefully tucking her new headscarves into her bag, Iryana kneeled at the foot of her bed. The corners of the trunk scratched against the wood floor as she dragged it out, and the hinges squeaked when she forced the lid open.
Once, it had been beautiful; the inside made of fine wood and papered with soft purple flowers and yellow-green vines now faded with age.
Her mother had brought it all the way from Klees and it was still full of clothes that there’d been no occasion for.
Her mother hadn’t bothered to take any of it with her when she left, and Iryana felt the loss with each garment she had to remake for her own needs.