CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
A hallway stretched out ahead of us, dim and cavernous, a large portrait hung, capturing a younger version of Iria. Her face was smooth then, untouched by time, her dark hair falling loose around her shoulders. She stood beside a tall, handsome man dressed in a fine suit and top hat.
I wondered what had happened to him.
If she’d lost him.
If that was why her eyes looked so tired now.
"What were you thinking?” she snapped, rounding on Will the moment the door latched.
I barely heard her. My mind was somewhere else.
“Is there no curfew in Novil?” she demanded.
“Not anymore,” Will countered.
“I did not mean..." she started, but the apology wilted on her tongue.
I ran my hands up and down my arms, trying to rub some warmth into my skin. Inside, the stone walls sucked the warmth from the air. It felt even colder than outside.
“You must be freezing,” she said briskly, already moving toward the kitchen. Grief still clung to her, but she shook it off the way people do when they can’t afford to fall apart. “I’ll warm some cocoa.”
Cocoa.
The word almost knocked the breath out of me. It reminded me of my mother, how she would make hot cocoa for me every year on my birthday. It was always just the two of us, awake with the sunrise.
Cocoa wasn’t anything special. Just warm milk, sugar, and a pinch of cocoa powder she had saved. But it tasted like love.
We followed Iria into the sitting room. A fire burned low in the hearth, the coals glowing quietly in the dim light. I sank down in front of it, knees tucked beneath the stolen dress, watching the flames curl around the logs.
Fire is strange. It could save your life, or take it from you. It could warm you or reduce everything you love to ash.
I let the heat sink into me as the smell of cocoa filled the room, thick and sweet. Iria handed me a cup. It burned against my palms, but I didn’t let go.
It was a good kind of burn. The kind that reminded me I could still feel.
“Everyone’s heard... what those monsters did,” Iria said suddenly, her lip curling with disgust. “People are scared now. They’re saying if it happened to Novil, it could happen anywhere. Even here.”
She paused. Her gaze found Will. Whatever strength she’d been holding onto flickered for a second, and something heavier settled in her face.
“I’m so sorry, Will.”
He didn’t blink. “I’m fine,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t there when it happened.”
He glanced sideways, just enough for her to follow his gaze.
“She was.”
Iria’s eyes landed on me.
“Kera, was it?” she asked, her tone softening.
I nodded and shrank back into the cushions, trying to disappear. I caught Will’s gaze, and sent him a silent plea.
Please don’t say more.
But he didn’t stop.
“I found her and brought her to Fjelltorp. She was the only survivor. At least the only one I could find. If there were others, they were already gone.”
Iria leaned forward, her hands twisting in her lap.
“It was a nightmare,” Will went on. “Bodies piled in the streets. Left to rot, swarming with flies. Worms. I nearly threw up from the smell. From the sight of it.”
His words pulled the memory from where I’d buried it.
And suddenly, I was there again.
I saw them.
The faces of the people I had loved.
Bloated. Broken. Unrecognizable where they’d fallen.
Forgotten. Abandoned. Left for the worms.
There would be no flowers. No carved stones. No one to remember them.
Just a number in a history book.
The sacking of Novil. Estimated dead: three hundred.
If anyone bothered to count.
The tears escaped before I could gather myself, small and traitorous.
“No, please don’t cry, dear,” Iria said gently, her voice thick with sympathy. She leaned forward and reached for my hand. “You’re safe now. You’re safe here.”
But I wasn’t. Not really. Not anywhere in Vestance.
“You can both stay as long as you need,” she added, squeezing my fingers.
“I think a few nights will be enough,” Will answered before I could say anything. “I promised Kera we’d head south.”
Iria looked at me again, curious but kind.
“Do you have family in the south, Kera?”
I shook my head.
“It's not Vestance. That’s good enough,” Will explained.
“Yet,” Iria remarked.
Yet.
Like it was only a matter of time.
What was stopping King Devore and his Vultures from going south too?
The Wall?
Nowhere was safe from monsters.
“I’ll make sure you have everything you need. Horses, food and gold. It’s a long journey.”
“I'm aware,” Will said, his eyes flickering toward me.
“Thank you.” I managed. Always polite. Always grateful. Maybe I had taken my old life for granted. Maybe that’s why the gods had punished me in every way imaginable.
“No trouble at all, dearie,” Iria replied with a soft smile. “Now, let me see if I can find some blankets and clean sheets for the guest rooms.”
She left the two of us alone by the fire.
“Are you okay?” Will asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
There was no point lying anymore. I was too tired to pretend.
“Iria will look after us. She’ll make this place feel like home for the next few days,” Will said.
“She’s a kind woman. I remember staying here when I was younger.
She’d always have food, cakes, and presents waiting for me.
I’d get fatter every visit.” He huffed a quiet laugh.
“She’ll take good care of us. We’ll rest and then be on our way. ”
I followed Iria up the stairs and down the hall. Her home didn’t feel like a house. It felt like a fortress. Or a maze. The kind of place you could get lost in if you weren’t careful.
When she opened the door to the room I’d be sleeping in, I stopped in the doorway and stared.
It didn’t look real. It looked like something from someone else’s life.
A little girl’s dream room.
Delicate flowers curled along the wallpaper, and a pale canopy hung above the bed like mist. The sheets were soft, tucked neatly, all in shades of pink.
Iria had laid out a white nightgown at the edge of the bed. Too clean. Too perfect. But I put it on anyway.
I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
I slipped beneath the covers, their softness washing over me like water. I let it swallow me, and for the first time in what felt like forever, the sadness and the anger were quiet. But serenity hadn’t taken their place.
What came instead was worse.
An emptiness settled so deep in my chest it felt like it had carved me out from the inside.
I stared at the floral pattern on the wallpaper until the shapes blurred into each other, and as I started to drift, I wondered if there was anything left of me at all.
If the part that mattered, the part that loved and laughed and dreamed, had died along with my family.
I thought maybe that’s how it should have been.
Why was I still breathing when they weren’t?