Chapter Nine. In Which the Girl Attempts to Survive （Again） #2
Risa knew Cairn because she knew Barrow.
They were two sides of the same coin, perhaps cursed by the same god or witch or whatever entity had decided to influence humanity in its own conniving way.
That meant she knew which winding roads led where, which alleys served as shortcuts, and which paths turned into dead ends.
She knew how quick it would be to go down the hills and dips, how soon it would all be over.
Risa could find her way through town and back to that bridge in the dark, if she were to just take her chances and run. But without the prince, she wouldn’t make it far. Even if she managed to make him follow, she wasn’t sure he could manage in his condition.
She would have to figure out another way to save them.
“Sorry,” the prince grumbled, interrupting her thoughts with a sidelong glance of contrition. “I should have listened.”
“Does that mean you’ll listen to me the next time I tell you there’s definitely something wrong?”
Indignation flashed across his still-slightly-ill face. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “We’re on track for death right now. Would you like to use some of your good luck and free me of my binds?”
Risa did not answer. She had no chance to, for the town square sprang out of the darkness before her very eyes, gas lamps burning with a yellow glow. The streets were overrun by flowers the same color as the prince’s new hair, interspersed with bursts of vermilion that looked like spattered blood.
“We’re here,” the mayor sang, his face a false approximation of the real thing, carved by hands that did not know how to illustrate humanity. His grin did not meet his eyes, their watery depths as still as a cold lake.
A hush descended over the crowd when Risa and Prince Javi entered the square.
It had been transformed over the course of the day into an altar of flowers, a large wooden platform overlooking the fountain.
The townspeople gathered before it, jubilant and expectant faces turned to the surprisingly small beheading stone that caught the lamplight.
Upon seeing it, Risa felt woozy. She did not struggle when one of the twins suddenly gripped her arms and steered her toward the platform with a rough shove.
Two axes were angled against the slab of stone, one an elaborately wrought, filigreed thing with leather wrappings around the handle, its blade glinting silver; the other was plain and rusted over with crimson.
An executioner reached for the second axe and bowed his head to her.
“An honor,” he sang.
She wanted to leap from the platform, run toward the bridge, and hurry back into the forest, where at least she understood the monsters that were hiding.
Instead, she was forced to face ravenous townspeople as the girl they named maiden, who would die so they could enjoy an eternal spring.
Her gaze slid sideways to where Prince Javi stood beside the other axe, his panicked face still a questionable shade.
The beheading stone might have been beautiful once.
Despite the hundreds of years of sacrifices it had seen, Risa was able to discern the intricate flowers carved on its face and how the dip for the neck was smooth and rounded for comfort.
The lives of hundreds of girls had ended there, spilled blood having seeped into the crevices of petals and leaves, forever trapped in service of a thing they may or may not have believed in. All of them given a role to play.
They had been no different from her. Whether they’d been loved and treasured by their parents, adored by their friends and family, or shunned by a town that could not understand them, they had all met their end on the same cold stone slab.
Hands were on her shoulders, forcing her down onto her knees. Shoved her head down until her throat pressed against the cold stone.
“This will be quick,” the executioner assured her, dropping the singing. “The knight will finish the job, but you’ll already be dead.”
The axe swung upward. The crowd held its breath. Light from the lampposts glinted off the blade, caught on the rust caked into the handle.
“NO!” she screamed, the word ripping from her throat before she could be silenced forever.
The executioner dropped his weapon. It clattered onto the platform with a deafening clang.
No one moved. Everyone watched. Risa stood, swaying from the effort, aware that the shock would soon run out.
“I am not going to be sacrificed,” she declared. The words echoed in her ears, too loud. “Your festival is garbage and I refuse to die.”
The crowd shouted words she could not decipher, the noise like bells. The executioner fumbled to pick up his axe, the tip of it bent beyond repair. The mayor’s face matched the shade of the bright red flowers that lined the path into town, his body vibrating with unconcealed rage.
“Kill her!” the mayor ordered, no longer singing.
The voice that came out had lost its reediness.
It was pitched low—too low, like it had been raked over gravel.
His anger forced the veneer of his face to slip, exposing a whirling miasma of shadow in the spaces between the cracks.
The brown watery pools that were once his eyes turned black as pitch.
The executioner made another grab for his axe, but Risa rammed her hip into his side and sent him tumbling over the platform. The crowd parted as he fell, and his head made impact with cobblestones.
Prince Javi took advantage of the distraction and rushed to her. His deft fingers worked at the rope around her wrists. She had a silent question on her tongue that was answered by a flash of black, which revealed itself to be Brunie. The mangled ends of a rope hung from the cat’s mouth.
Risa felt heat rise along her neck. Felt it spark down the line of her spine.
A strange haze settled over her vision as the crowd pushed back from the platform, their faces morphed into masks of horror.
She followed their eyes and found the mayor turning purple, the cravat at his neck pulled tight.
He lifted a short, squat, quivering finger at her.
His mouth opened and closed like that of a fish out of water as darkness oozed from him like noxious vapor.
Magic was unspooling, twisting out of the mayor’s control.
Voices rose from the crowd. “The Fangal!” Their horror was replaced with awe.
Behind her, the prince huffed in exasperation. The binds were giving him a difficult time. Even Brunie joined in, gnawing at the rope.
A shaky voice sang above the rest, “The Fangal demands sacrifice!”
Their god.
The once-mayor continued his revolting transformation. The vapor began to coalesce beneath him in a dull, ominous pool of black tar. The itch on Risa’s neck was insistent now, forewarning the incoming storm she could not stop.
Except—
While she had no magic, she did have words.
“Is this your god? Is this who you’ve been sacrificing for?” Risa’s tremulous voice thundered over the enraptured crowd. “Is this a blessing, or a curse?”
A voice cut through the square. “Curses are propagated by witches in order to control the populace! Beware the witch state. Read Disputation on the Power and Magic of Witchlings!”
It sounded a lot like Maria.
An older, shawl-clad woman snapped out of her reverie and dragged Maria from the crowd. “What have I told you about books?” she admonished. “Girls can’t read.”
Maria was right about one thing: Curses were about control. And the festival, the maiden, even the knight—those were their own kind of curse. One held over this town for centuries, reinforced by the townspeople’s beliefs. Their happiness, their cloudless skies—all of it was to keep them sedated.
Everything made sense now.
“You’ve been sacrificing young women for a god’s own sick delight, immortalizing a curse that forces you to live in eternal sunshine, to be happy, to never question his power, to never have any power of your own.”
“Don’t listen to her!”
The voice had shed all pretense of humanity.
It sounded like fingers scratching against a blackboard, the scraping of branches against a window.
A storm crashing against a small boat in the middle of an ocean, ancient trees groaning under the viciousness of a violent wind.
The mayor was gone, and in his place stood a shapeless form made of shadows.
The Fangal had sloughed off its shell.