Chapter 1 #2
I often wonder what Brekon looked like thirty years ago, before it cracked. I’ve never seen a proper blue sky, and I probably never will, because most people say our world will never stop bleeding.
That the core will never clot.
Brekon used to thrive with magic that bloomed from the ground. Fae used to be able to make the forests drift and the seas calm and the fields surge with life. Now, all that power just leaks out into the air, blocking the sun and sky every single day and casting us in its wounded pall.
That doesn’t help morale either.
At the top of the hill, I reach the path that will take me to the paved road.
Through the flying clusters, Hamelyn lies sprawled.
The streets are made up of cobbled stones, stretching large enough for four carriages to ride side by side—not that there are any carriages.
Whatever horses are still alive have been hidden away.
The city used to be packed with activity, but not anymore. Only stragglers wrapped in fabric are around, most of them hurrying from one place to another like myself.
There’s one person up ahead who’s without hurry, though. A shrouded man singing on the corner with a rasp-riddled voice in hopes of a coin being tossed at his feet.
Drought and Flies come to peel
land and flesh away.
Sores and Fire rack the pyre
and Hail will break the way.
Rats infest for there is no rest
since Brekon has broken and burst.
The water bleeds black when the Poison is back.
With Darkness and Ash, we are cursed.
It’s not a particularly happy song, but it gets stuck in my head. The nine Plagues that torment our world are really all the poets and troubadours write about these days, and the tunes catch on like . . . well, like a Plague.
I pass the singing man and look up at the buildings that still boast their delicate flair, some as tall as five stories.
They all have faces of crisscrossed lumber against stark cream paint, and elaborate trim along the eaves and doorways, with wooden curlicues and embellishments like the old dollhouse my aunt made me when I was a little girl.
But the city’s beauty is marred.
Wooden boards, stretched tarps, woven rugs, strips of metal—whatever materials can be spared, really—are covering every window, and slapped against every vulnerable gap and seam.
As I walk down the street, I see buckets left out and filled with fish bones picked clean—an offering in hopes to draw the Flies away from their doorways.
“Holy smoke from the Fates! Cleanse your air of your wickedness, and the Plague will flee!”
I glance over at the shouting vendor perched behind the tight netting tied around her cart. She holds up a smoking smudge of grayed herbs bound with string. It smells awful, even from here. Not that it seems to bother the Flies all that much.
Another vendor calls out to me too, this one selling jars of something foul. “Set this on your doorstep, and the Flies will feast on the cursed offering!”
Sure, they’ll feast on the offering, but they’ll still feast on us. It won’t do a damn thing to get rid of them.
Every time a Plague pops up, the charlatans do too. A couple years ago, when we suffered the Hail Plague, people were selling metal hats, claiming they were indestructible. But when the Hail can become the size of your fist, a hat won’t do much. Especially ones made of tin.
“GET YOUR FLY TONIC HERE!”
I jolt at the shout, shaking my head at the merchant lest they double down and try to get me to buy anything.
I don’t have coin anyway.
Another peddler stands inside some netting, sheer enough that I can still see her face. She’s shouting out at hurrying passersby, but this time, it’s not wares she’s selling. It’s piety.
“The Plagues are our punishment!” she yells. “Repent to the Fates! Reject those of whom shouldn’t be! Rebuke the Banes!”
There’s a painted sign propped up at her feet.
I can’t help it. I look at her.
As soon as our eyes meet, a trio of pinprick lights glint upon her forehead in a cluster of tiny stars. The constellation is only there for a split second before it winks out, disappearing from my view. But it’s long enough.
Unbidden, I hear the truth of her stars as if it were whispered in my ear.
Sharp of tongue. Often causes a chaotic home. Restless.
I stare at her for a beat too long, and the woman’s milky blue eyes move up to the two bumps protruding from beneath my veillet, and then those eyes of hers curdle.
A spindly finger raises up and points at me. “Repent! Reject! Rebuke!”
The way she looks at me makes me cringe. I wonder what she would think if she knew what her stars said. Not that I’d ever tell her. I don’t tell anyone what I read in their stars. Don’t tell anyone that I have this magic at all.
“You are a scourge of Brekon!” she cries. “You keep our world sick!”
I turn away.
Her voice follows.
“Pray to the Fates for the blood you carry! And for the blood that our world still bleeds!” She points up at the oozing sky—at the taint that everyone wants to get rid of.
Exactly like they want to get rid of me.
The evidence is right there on every fae’s face. They hate the sky, they hate the Plagues, and they hate me.
Because when the world ruptured, it wasn’t just core power that leaked out. There was something else that came out too. Nine beings clawed their way out of the center of the earth and up through the break. Beings that were nothing like our world had ever seen.
Fae called them trobāne mor ev ragis michtá in the ancient language.
Terror cracked from the earth.
Now, everyone just calls them Banes.
There are rumors that they used to be gods. That the Fates trapped them in the earth’s core as punishment for committing misdeeds. Everyone says that when Brekon cracked, the Banes came out with antlers on their heads, power at their fingertips, and terrible intent.
They tried to take over all of Brekon, over every fae.
They nearly succeeded too.
It was only the Core fae that saved us—the fae who survived the power that gushed from the cracked earth, their bodies pumped full of new magic that had never existed before.
Still, it took five years for the Core fae to defeat all the Banes. To cut off their antlers and toss them back into the cracks. Yet before they were slain, each of them unleashed a Plague to devastate our world.
And while those Banes are long gone, their Plagues are here to stay.
To punish us.
To curse us.
Just like the woman who shouts her curses at my back.
“Repent! Reject! Rebuke!”
I glance over my shoulder at her. See her expression heaving with blame, because Plagues weren’t the only thing that the Banes left behind.
Five years of living in our world is a long time. Plenty of time for powerful beings to roam and terrorize the fae . . . all while scattering their seed.
And that’s how fiends were born.
With the pointed ears of the fae, and horns like the cut antlers of the Banes. A new species that was birthed upon our broken world.
Half Bane, half fae, and wholly hated.
And I would know.
Because I’m one of them.