Chapter 18
eighteen
They left the tavern just after sunset and stepped out into the warm night. Her skin immediately broke out in a sweat, and the smell of manure returned with force.
Vade secured them a room at the inn next door with a bed made of raggedy blankets and pitiful excuses for pillows.
Melted candle wax covered the top of the dresser that was missing two of its drawers.
Without any other furniture options for Bute’s jar, she placed him on the bed, whispering to the frog that they’d be back soon.
Once they were outside, Vade walked in a circle with the stone in his hand until it pulled him southwest. The silver moon guided them through the woods consisting of an excessively loud orchestra of crickets, frogs, and shrill sounds she’d never heard.
The muddy road quickly disappeared and turned into marshland, and they had to choose their footing carefully so as not to end up waist-deep in mosquito-infested waters.
By the time they made it close to a ramshackle cabin tucked deep in the swamp, Orelia was drenched in sweat.
Orange glowed from inside the home, and a human woman and her young son played in the grass near the front steps.
The boy gripped two sticks, using them for support.
Both of his knees were bent at unnatural angles, and he walked on unsteady feet.
Despite the pain she knew he must be in, he laughed as he kicked a ball around the best he could.
Vade pulled her behind a tree out of sight of the humans. “You’re not going to like what comes next, so stay behind this tree and don’t look,” he whispered as he freed his axe.
“That poor boy’s name couldn’t possibly be on your stone!”
“Shh! Keep your voice down.”
Vade made to move around the tree, but she grabbed his arm. “You can’t kill him!” she whisper-yelled.
His eyes turned more menacing in the dark. “I’m not.”
Her heart sunk at the realization.
“Stay here. I’m serious, Orelia.”
She pulled on his arm when he tried to move. “I will not let you do this. That boy needs her! Who will take care of him? What could she have possibly done to warrant this?”
“I don’t ask questions, you know that. Just because it’s mostly men that do horrible things doesn’t mean a woman can’t. You don’t know what crime she’s committed.”
“And neither do you! Listen to them. Does that sound like an evil woman to you?” They stared at one another, listening to the boy’s bright laughter, the kind only the innocence of a child could offer.
Vade yanked his arm free and peered around the tree. When he looked back at her, uncertainty flashed across his face. With a sigh, he sheathed his axe over his shoulder.
Finally, she seemed to have knocked some sense into him.
Vade locked his cold eyes onto hers. Without breaking his gaze, he lifted his arms on either side of her.
“What are you—”
Shadows shot out from his fingers, and a second later, three unsteady thumps echoed in the night. She looked around the tree to see the mother lying lifeless at the end of the stairs, neck snapped.
Orelia whirled on him. “You absolute—” Shadows wrapped around her face, covering her mouth, concealing her furious words.
Vade grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. She tried to claw at him, but he wrapped his arms around hers so she couldn’t reach. Vade held her tight, his front pressed firmly against her back. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Look.”
“Mama?” The boy’s sticks moved quickly through the grass, carrying his crooked knees closer. “Mama?”
Tears brimmed in Orelia’s eyes at the genuine fear in his voice.
“Mama!” the boy screamed.
A man whipped open the cabin door, and his eyes went straight to the unmoving woman. He descended the steps, crouched by her side, and put two fingers to her neck.
Orelia thrashed again, but Vade held her still. He was a monster. Forcing her to watch as he destroyed a family’s entire life.
“Owen, are you okay?” In the light of the single lantern outside the door, she could see the man’s face was bruised on his right side, and dark purple circles sat under his eyes.
The boy stumbled over, and the man wrapped him in his arms before pulling back and looking him over.
“You’re all right? Are you hurt anywhere? ”
Owen wiped away his tears. “What happened to Mama?”
The man looked at the boy’s mother. “She must have fallen, son. But it’s okay, I’m here. I’ve got you.” He hugged Owen tight, burying his face in his little shoulder.
Orelia waited for the father’s tears to come, but they never did. She recoiled when he smiled and let out a deep and thorough breath. “Oh gods, we’re going to be okay.” He glanced up at the sky, mouthing something that looked like, “Thank Santh.”
Orelia frowned. She wasn’t sure if the father was thanking the god of protection for keeping Owen safe, or for something else.
He kissed the boy’s forehead, picked him and the sticks up, and carried him into the house, leaving the woman lying on the ground without so much as a glance back.
The shadows slid away from her mouth, and Vade let her go. She couldn’t move. She just kept staring at the dead woman with unseeing eyes that felt like they were looking right at her.
“Who do you think crippled that boy?” Vade asked.
She turned to face him. “You don’t know it was her.”
He cocked his head in that predatory way of his. “Don’t I?”
She knew women had the capability of being cruel, but to cripple her own son? Unthinkable.
“Now that family can live in peace. You may think me a monster, Orelia, but monsters have many faces. One can never know the truth of what goes on inside a home except those who live inside it.”
He spoke in a way that made it sound like he was speaking from experience. She thought about what Elshar had said. About what happened to Vade when he was a boy.
She shook her head, not wanting to believe the woman had done what he was insinuating.
“No . . .no, you’re wrong. We don’t know for sure what she did or didn’t do.
But now we’ll never know because—” She choked on the words.
“Because you killed her. You can’t just blindly take lives because they appear on that stupid stone, Vade!
What if one of these days you’re wrong, and you take an innocent life? ”
“Do you think that woman was innocent? You saw what I saw. You saw the father battered and nearly weeping for joy when he hugged his son. Tell me that isn’t a man who’s glad the wolf is no longer sleeping in his bed.”
She kept shaking her head, but the evidence lined up the more she considered his words. Orelia glanced at the cabin. Through the window, the father set a bowl of something steaming on the table in front of Owen, a smile on his face as he tried to console his crying boy.
Vade gently gripped her chin and turned her head, directing her attention back to him.
When he dropped his hand, his face softened.
“If you learn anything from me, let it be this. What’s on the surface is nothing compared to what’s going on inside the mind.
Evil is not in everyone but it is everywhere, Orelia.
It’s in a barmaid, or a farrier, or a street merchant, or a brothel owner.
It’s in a kid that tortures animals, or a sorcerer who deals in dark magic, or in a woman who abuses her husband and son. ”
Tears sat in her eyes. She’d seen the evils of men, but seeing the wrongs of a mother up close had her questioning her entire belief system.
Could Gurn have done something like that, too?
Could he have been the one to kill his wife and merely claimed she’d just gotten sick?
Is that why his name appeared on the stone? Her mind was spinning.
Vade rested his hand on the hilt of his dagger.
“Evil knows no boundaries—not from wealth, or status, or class. It’s in the richest cities in the world and in cabins in the middle of a swamp.
I don’t decide who dies, but I do know that justice must be served one way or another, and justice is an ugly business.
A business I have been in for years, and one that has shown me true horrors you can’t even imagine. ”
Orelia nodded her understanding.
“Next time I have to take a life, don’t try and stop me, because you have no idea what evils lurk in the lives that show up on that stone. Understand?”
There wasn’t the normal condescension in his tone, and Orelia realized this was a teaching moment for her.
The world was vast, and his experiences outweighed hers a thousand fold.
The tears cleared from her eyes, and she began to see the world for what it really was—a sharp-toothed trap waiting for someone like her to step on the trigger plate so it could snap her in half.
Though it was gruesome and horrific to see what he had done, something in her changed. A bit of hope for a positive world was chiseled away. Life was cruel. Life was unfair. And sometimes, foul deeds needed to be done so more evil deeds wouldn’t continue.
She kept quiet, and Vade seemed surprised by her lack of retort. He slunk toward the cabin, but she didn’t want to see him sever the woman’s finger, regardless of what she’d done. When he returned, Orelia asked him if she could offer to set the boy’s bones right.
“I don’t intervene with my kills. Too many questions will get asked.”
“Please?” Orelia asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. I can’t explain who I am, or why we’re out here in the middle of nowhere and how we know he’s crippled already. We need to go before someone sees us.”
She glanced at the woman again, then at the windows, the man and his son having left the table. Orelia’s hands itched to heal, but she let Vade lead her back into the marshland without a word.
After a half mark of trailing behind him mulling over the night’s events, Orelia looked up just in time to avoid a massive spider web.
She rerouted and pushed her hair back from her sweat-soaked face.
Even though Minro was a seaside village, she’d never experienced humidity like this.
The air itself felt wet somehow. She wondered if wind ever graced Fink, or if the air was perpetually thick and still.
She just wanted to get back to the inn, take a bath, and go to sleep.
The moon slipped behind the clouds, coating the area in a near opaque darkness.
Orelia could hardly see her own feet, and Vade was barely visible up ahead.
Between swatting away the gnats and trying not to run into trees, she missed the sloping ground, and her right foot sunk deep into the wetlands.
“Gods-dammit,” she muttered. Orelia tried to pull her foot out, but her leg sunk into the mud down to her knee.
She couldn’t see Vade but heard him as he approached. He grabbed her hand and tugged, but she didn’t budge.
“Pull harder,” she said.
“I’m trying.” Vade yanked her arm, and her boot dislodged from the mud with a loud pop. She fell, but sweaty palms caught her.
“Thanks,” Orelia said. She looked up at him, their faces close and breaths mingling.
Vade held onto her arms, eyes searching hers. His grip softened, hands sliding down her sides and landing on her hips. She sucked in a breath, finding herself unable to look away.
“We need to—” Vade’s words were cut off, and he fell to his knees.
In a flash, a knife was at her throat and a palm covered her mouth.
The moon escaped, illuminating someone with shadows coming from their fingers standing behind Vade. Shadows wrapped around Vade’s face and body, and his hands had been pulled behind his back.
“Scream and I’ll slit ya throat,” a sinister voice said in her ear.