Chapter Twenty-three #2
If there were ever a time Thea thought her magic might come surging back to the surface, this was it. The mix of emotions that churned within her was like a foaming sea whipping into a whirlwind.
Anya gave a dark laugh. ‘You think I was in any state to do such a thing? Let me show you, little sister. Let me show you what your precious guild and precious king did to me. To our family.’
Darkness unfurled, gathering around her and Anya, its touch like a cool breeze. Thea shot an alarmed look towards Wilder, but the world around her was suddenly ripped away in a whirl of shadow.
She stumbled as cobblestones hit the soles of her feet and she found herself in an all-too-familiar place…
From the base of the ramparts, Thea looked onto the courtyard of Thezmarr’s fortress. Dozens of shadow wraiths swarmed the space, shadows coiling and lashing at their will, the scent of burnt hair nearly overpowering.
Anya stood beside Thea, her expression grim as she pointed to the grate in the stone, from which a pair of green eyes gazed out.
‘I was down there with you at first,’ she said, her voice distant.
‘All the children were. Audra told me to stay with you and Wren. But I was never very good at listening.’
Thea watched on in horror as Guardians of Thezmarr spilt from the fortress, falling to their knees as the monsters unleashed their own nightmares upon them.
Where are the Warswords? Thea scanned the chaos, watching as one warrior after another succumbed to the darkness, the gleam of Naarvian steel nowhere to be seen.
‘It had already begun…’
Anya trailed off, watching as a supply cart flipped into the air, surrounded by a mass of shadow and tendrils that whipped out at bystanders. Soon, crimson seeped into the ground while the wheels of the cart still spun and mead flowed from broken barrels.
Dazed, Thea took in the scene around her. ‘I’ve seen this before…’
‘Not like this,’ Anya said, pointing.
More shadow wraiths descended upon Thezmarr, clawing at the stone walls with their talons, lashing their cords of darkness upon the Guardians and shieldbearers brave enough to defend the fortress.
‘There.’ Anya pointed to the outskirts of the battle, where a little girl cowered against the stone wall. No older than six, clutching a necklace of dried flowers, the girl – Anya, Thea realised – made a dash for the servants’ entry, wide-eyed and panicked.
‘Come with me,’ the older Anya said, tugging Thea’s sleeve.
They crossed the stretch of carnage, following the child into a side passage of the fortress, away from the battle. Thea had walked this very hallway many times herself, but it had never felt like this. All the torches had been snuffed out except one at the far end.
She watched as young Anya saw what that lone flame illuminated, throwing herself into a small alcove just in time.
Thea stopped short, spotting two cloaked figures at the far end of the darkened hall. In the distance, she heard screaming, someone in a fit of rage being dragged away.
‘Stop this! Stop this now —’ someone shouted, but their words were cut off, only to be followed by a different kind of scream. One of fear. Panic.
Heart pounding, Thea moved closer to the end of the passageway, flicking a questioning gaze at her older sister as the outline of the two men became clearer. Anya simply watched on, impassive, while her younger self stayed hidden in the nook.
The men at the far end of the hall snapped their heads towards the sound of more screams, before turning back to one another, the tension palpable.
‘You’ll tell no one of this.’ The voice was strangely familiar, as was the feel of his presence, though Thea couldn’t place it. Instead, she watched on as he gestured to the weapon in his hand – a scythe, ribbons of shadow shimmering from its steel.
‘Of course,’ the other man replied – another recognisable baritone. ‘I would never —’
The first figure raised a hand for silence and his gaze flicked down the hall, right to where young Anya was hidden in the alcove.
He surged forward, closing the distance in just a handful of steps.
The little girl cried out as his hand closed around her arm, hard enough to bruise, by the look of it.
‘The answer to our problem, right under our noses…’ the second man said, nodding to the scythe.
Thea’s blood ran cold as she recognised that voice, clear as day now.
Osiris, the Guild Master of Thezmarr.
But the shock had no time to settle, for the first man shoved the scythe into little Anya’s trembling hands, darkness still spilling from the blade. As he did, his hood fell from around his face.
Thea choked on a gasp as King Artos of Harenth hauled the child from the alcove and down the passageway, not away from the threat, but back towards the blood-soaked courtyard.
‘What…’ Thea breathed. This wasn’t how she’d seen it happen before; this hadn’t been what her visions had shown her —
King Artos, with Osiris at his heels, kicked the door open and thrust young Anya into the fray. ‘We have found the culprit of this insanity,’ he shouted above the violence and mayhem. ‘It is as it was prophesied! The Daughter of Darkness has wielded a blade and brought the end of days upon us!’
Little Anya tried to scramble away, but Artos kept the weapon in her tiny hand, darkness still leaking from its point.
Thunder clapped beyond the fortress walls.
‘She is the one who was prophesied,’ Osiris declared, pointing to the tendrils of magic that roiled through the air around them as lightning flashed in the night sky.
The little girl began to cry, trying to back away from the men, towards the shelter of the cart. The storm raged on, swallowing wisps of obsidian in its path, but it wasn’t enough to save her.
Osiris made a dive for the scythe, making a show of knocking it from Anya’s grasp. With a quiet cry, she dropped it, the steel singing as it hit the stone, as it fell amid the rivers of blood that trickled towards her slippered feet.
And as it did, the shadow wraiths and their darkness retreated from Thezmarr.
The timing, utterly perfect.
The next minute, Thea and older Anya stood in the Great Hall of the fortress, watching as the little girl was presented as an enemy of the midrealms.
Everyone had seen her with the Naarvian weapon.
Everyone had seen the darkness recede upon the blade being knocked from her hand.
Everyone who mattered.
Osiris’ voice rang out like a bell. ‘She is a daughter of darkness, a monster. She needs to be dealt with before she unleashes more madness upon us all. She has brought the truth of the prophecy to our very doorstep…’
Lies… All lies… A fist of panic gripped Thea’s heart, but it wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
‘How did one little girl do all this?’ someone shouted.
‘You saw it for yourselves,’ King Artos said from the dais. ‘As did I. It was just as the prophecy predicted – a girl wielded a blade and brought darkness upon us all. Had Osiris not disarmed her, we would face a dawn of fire and blood.’ He drew a trembling breath. ‘Take her.’
Obsidian swirled around Thea and suddenly she was whisked away into the night, watching another scene unfold, this one more terrifying than the last.
There was a blur of movement as the same little girl was thrown into a deep pit somewhere in the woods on the outskirts of Thezmarr.
She let out a sob – and in the shadows, a chain rattled.
A scream died on Thea’s lips as she watched a wraith stalk towards the girl, both its ankles in manacles, but its chain long enough to reach her.
The girl scrambled back, but she wasn’t fast enough.
Lightning crackled around her, but she was too small, too young to wield it against such a monster.
Talons flashed through the air.
The girl screamed and screamed as the wraith reached into her heart.
Talons pierced flesh and bone, the wraith snarling and hissing as it battled an invisible force – the force of the girl herself, Thea realised.
‘The shadow-touched people are those who fight against the curse when a reaper attempts to turn them…’ Wilder had told her.
The poor girl’s screams turned into a choked gurgling noise as her body thrashed beneath the attempts of the wraith who brutalised her.
With an incensed shriek, the monster cast her aside, discarding her as though she were worthless, before it shot into the sky, breaking its chains and leaving tendrils of shadow in its wake.
The girl lay bleeding in the dirt.
‘They did that to you…’ Thea breathed to her older sister, tears burning her eyes as she forced herself to watch the ragged rise and fall of the unconscious child’s chest.
‘Yes, they did that to me,’ Anya said simply, her expression unreadable.
On the shores of the Broken Isles, Thea found herself at the mouth of a cave, the briny sea air tangling in her hair, with the older Anya at her side and the same little girl facing the hollow in the rocks.
Beneath her skin, her veins had darkened, creating a network of black that seemed to shimmer.
‘Some Warsword told me our parents were inside,’ Anya said, watching as her former self took a step towards the jagged outcrop. ‘I knew he was lying somehow, even then.’
Thea wasn’t sure she was breathing. ‘What did you find inside?’
‘Not our parents, that’s for sure.’
Our parents. The phrase sounded strange, even though Thea knew it to be true. The woman beside her and the girl before them – she was a part of Thea, a part of Wren, though she’d been absent all their lives.
‘What then?’ Thea pressed, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
And all at once, she was in her sister’s shoes, experiencing the damp of the cave and the kiss of shadow in her body as though it were her own.
Anya walked into the cave, deeper and deeper, until she was alone. For a moment, the pitch-black swallowed her.
There was no swift and painless death waiting for her. There was no death at all.
A breath rattled from within – not her own.
But Anya was not afraid.