2. Chapter 2 #2
I looked down at the man whose life I’d helped end and thought of the hearth I’d left smoldering, of Muffin curled in his little nest waiting for me to come home, and the children who’d suffer if I wasn’t there to heal their wounds. The innocent still needed me, even if all the rest rejected me.
My reasons for fighting to stay alive amidst the darkness that had befallen the borderlands felt shamefully small compared to what this man had lost. I pressed my trembling fingers to his bloodied chest, making the shape of a blessing my mother had once taught me, though I doubted any of the gods were still watching the border between Larethia and Gelida.
Which was our fault. We’d abandoned the gods first, consigning their names to nothing but superstition and cursing.
In the silence created by my mourning for a life snuffed short and one I wasn’t living, a voice drawled behind me, “Bet you enjoyed that.”
I froze. Elbort again, Selmont’s only pig farmer, leaned on a broken spear.
His gap-toothed smirk was an ugly for the hatred behind it.
One of a thousand men guilty of mistaking hostility for a backbone because it saved him from having to develop one.
The words hadn’t left his lips, but I heard them anyway—Fae-blooded bitch.
I almost laughed at the irony of what he’d suggested.
Me, enjoying death. If only he knew how much it cost my soul every time I granted mercy.
How it felt like my own heart ripped in two along with theirs.
I rose slowly, wiping my hands on the ruined blankets beside a man who had deserved a gentler death than the world gave him.
Elbort stared at my ears.
I stared back. Threads of magic rose beneath the surface of my skin like a thousand needles, eager in a way that made my stomach turn. He always brought this out in me.
I felt a wild impulse to snarl at my neighbor. From a distance, I could weave threads of power into his throat so he couldn’t take another breath. It wouldn’t matter that the work was clumsy with my lack of contact. He’d wind up just as dead.
Like all bad ideas, the thought was satisfying but best left untested.
So I swallowed the words and violent urges, because keeping one more body off my conscience mattered more than teaching a pig farmer manners.
Even after all these years, with all my power, I still hadn’t found the courage to truly stand up for myself.
I left the dead man behind and spent the next hour opening every door searching for survivors. There were none. So I helped carry the children over to the pyre we created for the dead.
When one of them tried to toss a child onto the pyre beside a stranger, I caught his wrist.
He went still. But so did every man near us.
“With her mother,” I said.
He scoffed and mumbled, “Why does it matter?”
The question was so stupidly cruel I almost laughed. “Think back to being her age. Where did you want to be most?”
A few men hovered on the periphery, shifting their weight and clearing their throats as they cast uneasy glances everywhere but directly at the confrontation. After a moment, he shifted the child into the dead woman’s arms.
I let go of him before my magic could cause any more trouble today.
The small gestures wouldn’t change anything—the dead would stay dead—but someone had to remember that they’d belonged to each other. Someone needed to remember that these people had been more than opportunities for personal gain.
When the last body burned, Elbort approached, clutching his left hand. He’d scorched his fingers while trying to pry a pair of boots off a burning body.
My smile, like the insincere “Sorry” I offered, lacked any real warmth or feeling. “Too low on magic after what happened earlier.”
Some of the color drained from Elbort’s face before his cheeks flashed red with anger.
My smile only grew. Try me, it begged. I have enough guilt about things I didn’t want to do in the first place. Teaching you a lesson would bring me a special kind of joy.
He backed down immediately. I’d never attacked anyone in the village, but sometimes fixing injuries required creating new ones. The tales of what I’d done were evidence enough of my power.
The rest of the men barely looked at me as I climbed onto the wagon, clutching the fine woolen cloak and the pair of boots I’d stripped from a pregnant woman my age.
I told myself I took the boots for one of the children.
Then my foot shifted on the slick leaves, and cold mud seeped into the hole in my own sole.
The lie was a useless shield the woman’s sightless eyes saw straight through.
I hadn’t cried then, but now the tears I’d held back for hours spilled over.
So much hope, cut short.
While the men traded jests over their prizes, I said nothing.
I sat there clutching my stolen cloak, blood still sticky beneath my nails, my stomach churning with guilt as their laughter bounced across a dead village.
Their arms were even more burdened with riches than mine, and their hands just as stained with blood, but I was the only one who seemed to falter after what we’d done.
I’d carry these memories to my grave.
We turned our backs on the ruin left behind by politics that had nothing to do with this once sleepy village and headed home.
As the wagon creaked down the road, golden leaves stained with ash and dark splatters crunched beneath its wheels.
I kept my eyes on the tree line, ears straining for hoofbeats, for shouting, for the next raid—anything to drown out the guilt that still clung to me.
I hadn’t recovered by the time we crossed the wards that surrounded Selmont. The magic protecting our little village trembled as my own made contact with the veil.
Not good. The veil only shivered like that when its power was low. The wards would hold for tonight; they had to. But I’d have to shore them up tomorrow so our people could escape any raiding party’s attention.
The problem was, I was no true ward-weaver. Not like my mother. My magic could weave delicate lines through veins and muscles, but it was a true effort to pour myself into cold, unyielding stone like she had. Shoring up the veil that kept Selmont hidden would drain me in ways healing never did.
I didn’t dare say it aloud—not around these men—but something…something told me that no matter how much of my power I poured into it, it might not be enough, because the raids were getting worse.
I drew my shawl tighter as a gust of wind sliced across the wagon, stinging with a chill and the promise of rain.
I pretended normality as I returned home that evening, saying as little as possible to the men as I departed.
But a sense of foreboding remained, a heavy weight in my stomach that refused to ebb.
That night, I pulled the sheets over myself, and Muffin wrapped his long, furry body around my arm, his little paws hugging me in his sleep.
As I shut my eyes, that same distant pull brushed the core of my magic again, even softer this time.
It felt as though it were searching for something, searching for me.
Lying there, alone in my bed, I added another comfortable lie to my list. I told myself that the strange feeling didn’t mean anything, that it couldn’t possibly be the gods warning me of an approaching storm, or something deeper nudging me to pay attention.
I’d always possessed a remarkable talent for self-deception, but it wouldn’t take long for me to be proven wrong.