Half Wylde (The Wyldes #1)

Chapter 1

One

Ashes to Ashes

I had always thought drowning would be a terrible way to die. Surely something quick would be better. A beheading, maybe. Or poison, if it were the right sort. But floating under the burning surface of the lake, it was hard to argue with the dark and comfortable sleep that beckoned.

My eyes, heavy and tired, closed. How much time had passed?

My chest, which had seared with the strain to contain what air I could, was now numb, my lungs ready to let go.

The fire overhead, a dancing watercolor of oranges and reds obscured by the rippling surface of the lake, promised no escape.

Maybe wherever you went after death they wouldn’t care that I was half monster.

My lips parted, the water flooding in so hard that I couldn’t change my mind now. I could feel myself fading. Leaving.

That was, until something splashed above me.

I tried to pry my eyelids open, but they wouldn’t budge.

The sway of the water around me pushed through my foggy consciousness as something took hold of me.

The hard angles of an arm wrapped around me, fingers digging into my ribs as it pulled.

Up I went. The water grew hot from the fire that floated on it, that burning oil ready to boil me alive if I was dragged too close.

The heat on my face grew stronger as I got closer.

A pause, then a motion that moved me around wildly as the water rushed in every direction, and for a moment the fire was gone.

We broke the surface, and I blacked out.

I woke with a start, expelling all the water I had swallowed. Violently. The retching roared in my ears along with the blood trying to circulate once again after my cold encounter with the lake.

Still heaving, I strained to sense everything around me while I tried to lessen the swirling in my head, not yet able to sit upright.

A warm crackle at my back soothed my frozen bones.

A fire. I listened, but the clanking metal of the raiders no longer rang through the village.

Screams had been replaced by cries of pain and loss.

My head finally calm—or at least no longer threatening more sickness—I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and sat up.

All around me, bodies huddled for warmth.

The injured and dying moaned under the crackling of the fire.

No sounds of fighting, no screams of terror; the raiders must be done with Silver Lake.

Why was I here? Why were the villagers allowing me to sit so close?

My only guess was that the shared horror of being caught in a raid had prevented anyone from bothering with me.

I judged less than a quarter of the village sat here: the elders, the injured, and some women and children.

But none of them were Bryn. The last thing I remembered was walking by the lake when the raiders came, then he’d thrown me into the water.

“Who has seen the woodcutter?” I asked. My voice crackled like the fire, my throat still raw.

Some of the people looked at me for a heartbeat, but I wasn’t surprised to find that none of them met my gaze. Few of them spoke to me on a good day, and right now was certainly less than good. We might as well have been a pile of dogs crowding the hearth.

With no answer, I’d have to make a bolder move and find out for myself. Unsettled dread seeped into my heart. Standing slowly, a bit of a shake in my legs, I looked around and demanded an answer. “Where is Bryn the woodcutter?”

Some watched me from the corners of their eyes with shock and suspicion.

I doubted any of them had heard me speak up before.

Others just stared ahead, gray-faced and motionless, watching with hollow eyes as their world burned.

And it did burn. I looked over my shoulder to see what remained of the settlement by the lake, and my heart sank.

A once thriving fishing village was now blackened with ash in stark contrast to the dusting of snow around it.

“Everember oil, they called it,” Shanna, a fisherman’s daughter, whispered nearby.

She had my full attention if she knew anything about what had happened.

“It’s on everything.” Her body and voice both shook, stubbornness barely holding her in one piece.

She glanced at me with those sharp eyes and then, as if she had just realized who she was talking to, she turned up her nose and stared ahead.

She was clearly haunted by the sights before her, but the sight of me must have snapped her out of it.

No one wanted to talk to the half monster. Especially not proud Shanna.

An old woman, Gerdie, I thought her name was, fell in a heap from where she’d been sitting on a sack of grain.

The sound startled me, as well as most of the survivors of the attack.

Almost immediately, I smelled the piss. The woman next to her leaned over to confirm what I suspected: her body was limp with death.

They rolled her out of the way, and two more took her place by the warm fire without so much as a word.

I said a silent prayer to the Mother. Gerdie hadn’t been nice to me, but she hadn’t been cruel either.

I reached up, lightly touching my arm. I would have a bruise where Bryn had grabbed me and thrown me into the water, and my lungs pained me from everything they’d gone through, but I was otherwise unharmed.

There was nothing left for me at the fire but comfort from the cold and little in the way of answers.

I walked away, and my place was quickly taken by other frozen bodies.

So be it. I didn’t need to sit by the fire; I needed to find Bryn.

Pieces of the puzzle fell into place as I walked the village.

The blacksmith and his boys were pulling people from the lake who had tried to escape the flames.

Most had jumped in. I had been thrown in right before that putrid oil coated the surface and was set ablaze.

That couldn’t have been that long ago; my clothes were still damp.

So where were the raiders? Where was Bryn?

My heart started to hurt as I walked, a bit faster as the moments grew longer.

My eyes drifted to a slow movement by the edge of the water.

An old woman hunched over the lake, the villagers giving her a wide berth.

An ancient raven perched on her shoulder, his one clear eye turned toward me.

Mila the Witch. She rarely came to the village, but I was glad to have a friendly face here.

One that would talk to me. I quickened my pace.

The smells assaulted me as I walked toward the water.

A fiendish aroma of cooking meat seared my nose and watered my eyes.

Tears fell, loosening the caked-on soot down my face.

I tried not to look around me as I kept walking, not letting myself imagine what meat could be cooking right now. I focused on the watchful raven.

The witch shuffled a few feet and dipped back to the water as I drew near. Feathers and bones adorned her neck, and her hands rustled in the breeze over the lake. Her black dress billowed to her side as the wind tugged at it. The air around her was heavy with old magic.

“Wren, I see you survived.” She didn’t even turn to me as she collected a sample of the oil floating on the water. “Good. The Mother blesses you.”

“Where is Bryn?” I asked, a tremor to my voice.

She turned to me now and looked me in the eye, her face soft. Wrinkled fingers reached for my hands, and she rubbed them gently. “You’re chilled to the bone, child. You should have stayed by the fire.”

My hands went numb. My heart tightened in my chest. “Where is Bryn?”

“I know he was as a father to you.” Mila’s words were slow, deliberate.

“No,” I choked. My stomach dropped.

“He is gone, Wren,” she said.

I fell to my knees, my legs suddenly losing whatever strength they had left.

Tears welled and fell, distorting my vision as I scrambled to see where he had fallen.

She couldn’t be so sure of it, not in the chaos that had overtaken the village.

Somewhere along the bank, near the dock but past the baker’s house.

That was where he’d pushed me in. Maybe he was still alive; Mila could be wrong. Maybe he needed help, or . . . or . . .

“Danger is still in the wind, and we need to prepare ourselves. Live now to mourn later.”

“No! He can’t be. He can’t be dead.” My throat tightened. My stubbornness held as the last dam of defense against the spilling of my grief. Keeping me in one piece, if only for a moment. Bryn was my only family, and without him I had absolutely nothing.

A fool. I was a fool not to admit it when I hadn’t woken up to his smiling face. He wouldn’t have left me alone by choice, and certainly not during a raid. Bryn was gone, and I could swear I heard my heart breaking as the first sob escaped me.

“Caution, child. Your danger has not yet ended,” Mila warned. Her raven, Puko, cawed in agreement. Her voice might have been stern, but her warm hand rubbed my back even as she said it.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat unsuccessfully. “What does it matter? My only family is dead.”

“And Bryn would have you die as well?” Mila asked, more harshly.

I was numb. Empty. A coldness had settled over me that I wasn’t trying to fight off.

“No,” I whispered.

“Then get up.” She grunted as she stood and dipped an empty bottle into the lake, a few steps down.

“I don’t know what to do. Where is Bryn’s . . . body?” I sniffed. Body. The word was disgusting to even think about. That it could be used to describe what was left of him.

“He will burn with the rest of the lost villagers,” Mila said. “You do not need to see what remains of him. He would not want it.”

I shivered. Her words promised a terrible end. “Still—”