Chapter Nine
Chapter
Nine
I’m running late to D my sister has always been my best friend, but I resented how much better at swimming she was than me, especially because she was a year younger.
Mom usually picked us up from practice after work, since I didn’t have my driver’s license yet, but for once, Dad was home from one of his business trips and offered to come.
I was so excited to see him, to tell him how I beat Mona for the first time in a butterfly sprint.
She moped the whole time, of course, so I offered her the front seat as a consolation prize and sat in the back behind Dad.
How many days have I spent wishing I’d never budged?
That day, Dad was loud. Excited. He’d just gotten home the night before and wanted us to catch him up on everything he’d missed. I thought he was just happy to see us. I didn’t learn until later that he’d come straight from happy hour with his work friends.
I remember the way his pale green eyes—the ones I got from him—met mine in the rearview mirror as he asked, Has anyone asked you to prom yet? I held his gaze for so long that neither of us saw the car coming.
I don’t remember the rest, not really, but the doctors explained everything afterward. Dad rolled through the red light, and a car hit us from the right. Dad and I were fine, but—
Mona wasn’t.
After that, we barely spoke. I blamed him, of course, and we grew even further apart after the divorce, though Mona eventually got better. Even after he’d apologized and made a hundred different amends, I just couldn’t bring myself to rebuild that bridge. I still can’t.
My shoulders relax a little when I pull into Game Knight’s parking lot, and after a few bracing breaths, I do my best to shake it all off as I speed-walk through the store and down the stairs to the Dungeon Room.
I’m only fifteen minutes late, but given the tense way I left things last time, my tardiness certainly doesn’t earn me any brownie points from the rest of the table.
Arthur and Shay wear identical grumpy frowns, and Colin impatiently toys with his d20 while reviewing the character sheet laid out before him.
Interesting—I wonder who his new character will be.
Mona perks up gratefully as I pass over her notebook, though Shay’s features inexplicably darken further.
Wesley’s expression is unreadable. I shot him a message to let him know I was running late, and he seemed understanding enough. But now he regards his notes and doesn’t look up until I’m seated.
“My bad,” I say distractedly. I cast a quick glance around the table before meeting Wesley’s gaze. No fighting, I promise myself. “Let’s do this.”
The rest of the journey to Zaska is made in stony silence.
Mortimer’s burial was a quick and brutal affair.
Antoni explained that they wouldn’t survive another night out in the open, and they must move quickly to town.
The whole ordeal was made worse by the necessity of separating Mortimer’s head from his body.
“So he won’t rise again,” Vera said quietly. “It’s what he would have wanted.”
Sindra wasn’t so sure, given the wizard’s interest in necromancy and reanimation, but what could she say?
She’d known him for only a day. And besides, all of the undead they’d encountered had risen again because of the kingdom’s curse, not the necromancer’s magic.
If his body couldn’t be used for arcane science, then perhaps he would not want it used at all.
Moss and Sindra keep their questions to a minimum as the party begins their journey to Zaska.
Sindra recognizes the lines of grief that crease Vera’s and Antoni’s faces—but she sees the signs of tired, long-held resignation, too.
She can tell Mortimer isn’t the first person they’ve lost over the course of their campaign to save their kingdom.
And they don’t expect him to be the last.
The land grows flatter as they descend into the valley, and the signs of decay grow worse.
Entire fields stretch out brown and barren, stalks and vegetation long since shriveled and dead.
For the first time since they arrived in Moros, Sindra’s stomach rumbles, and immediately she wonders, What do these people eat?
Finally, they approach the ramshackle gates of Zaska, where two soldiers stand a little straighter at their approach. After a flash of Antoni’s badge, the dwarf on the left simply grunts, “Captain,” and waves them inside.
The town itself is surprisingly bustling. They’d traveled so many hours without seeing a soul that Sindra is surprised to find them all gathered in one place. It’s necessary for them to live like this, she realizes. To be alone is to make yourself vulnerable. They need community to survive.
And…doors, it seems.
What surprises her even more, though, is that at least a third of Zaska’s population are tieflings.
Sindra has met only a handful of other tieflings. There are some in the druid enclave, but there weren’t many in the kingdom where she spent most of her childhood with her Aunt Bernadette, whose kind features were human and who didn’t share Sindra’s own devilish ancestry.
When Sindra had asked where her traits came from, Auntie said, “It’s devil magic, my love,” and Sindra had gasped in horror.
But Bernie had comfortingly ruffled the hair between Sindra’s horns.
Bernie had always taught Sindra that it doesn’t matter where your magic comes from—it matters only how you wield it.
“And devil magic is a rare thing. Sometimes tieflings are born because their parents bargained with a devil, and their child carries some of the bargain’s influence.
Or the magic may simply be in the land itself, changing the people who walk upon it.
” Bernie had given her a teasing smile. “Or, in special cases, when a mortal loves a devil very much…”
But Sindra hadn’t been old enough for that conversation.
In fact, it wasn’t until she was a young woman that Bernie told her the truth: Sindra’s parents were unrepentant members of a dangerous devil cult, and they’d lost their lives in the worship of it.
So Sindra finds herself shocked to stillness upon entering Zaska, and she freezes just a few steps inside as she takes it all in.
In the shadow of the town’s gate, two mounted guards patrol the street, the taller of them made even more so by the horns curving from his temples.
A group of children runs ahead, two with their tails whipping behind them.
Down the road, a tiefling blacksmith with sunset-orange skin and his hair in a knot sweats in front of a furnace as he hammers away at a chunk of metal.
A throat clears politely behind Sindra, and she quickly steps to the side to allow a wagon carrying a tiefling family to pass, their petal-pink skin dusty from a long journey.
“How?” Sindra wonders aloud. Even Moss, standing at her shoulder, looks surprised.
“We’ll explain it all very soon,” Vera says tiredly.
Antoni nods grimly. Sindra can’t determine whether they always planned to bring her and Moss into their circle of confidence, but with one fewer party member, they are running out of options.
“We’ll stay in the chapel,” Vera says, even as Sindra’s brows knot in confusion.
“From there, we’ll plan our next steps.”
Moss tilts her head to the side. “You live in a chapel?”