Chapter 4
Rorin
I’ve done it now.
Will’s face has turned so red it’s nearly purple, and even though his mouth is open and words are coming out of it, I can’t hear a fucking thing over the roaring inside my head.
Bennett is still as a rock. His body frozen in place as Will tugs him back from the mess I’ve created. I feel a pull on the crease of my elbow as someone pulls me away, also, dragging me out into the night.
By morning, this place will be crawling with people. Word will have spread. As will the fear. Unfortunately, this isn’t something that can just be explained away.
“You’ve gone too far this time.” I hear someone cursing.
Control. What happened to your control? My conscience snaps. “An omen if there ever was one – cleanse, cleanse, cleanse.”
My nails scratch at my ears, anything to make these voices stop. Mine – his.
“Rorin, come on. We have to go.” The tugging becomes more forceful, and I have to make a conscious effort not to trip over my feet as I turn away from the building – the bodies. So many of them…
“I want you to poison them all.”
“I did–” I mutter.
“Rorin!”
I score my nails across the sensitive skin again. “Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
“Gah! We don’t have time for this.” It’s Will who moves to my opposite arm, urging me to go faster, I’m sure of it. The grip is too harsh to be anyone else’s.
No one spoke for the three days that it took us to travel from the manor to right outside the edge of Sorrel.
Exhausted from our trek, we finally made our camp in a long since abandoned cave mouth that Max had gone ahead and found nestled in the mountains shared between the deserts of Suram and the Vast.
As the night came on us quickly, we all split off into our own spots. Millie and Max huddled together almost instantly in a shadowy corner, while Will propped himself up against the sandy stone opening, facing towards the stars.
I drop my head against the cave wall as I zero in on the flames dancing in front of me. Bennett built it up quickly, and in the few minutes I’d managed to doze, he must have slipped over to Will – because I can hear his hushed whispers trying to pacify our friend’s anger.
“If you’re going to talk about me, you might as well say it to my face. No point in being polite now.”
The voices stop quickly, replaced with the sound of shuffling, “I can’t do this.”
“Will–” Bennett tries, but it’s too late. Will storms off down the path we used to climb up, disappearing to where I can no longer see or hear him.
“What can’t you do this time, Will?” I grumble, poking the fire with a brittle stick.
Bennett’s brown eyes narrow into slits as he slinks back into the cave, his top lip curling back a bit as he levels his glare down on me.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” My brow cocks upwards, spurring him on, “you really can’t see the destruction you’ve caused?
The position you continue to put us all in? ”
“Careful, Ben, you’re starting to sound like Will.”
“What does it matter who I sound like? I could sound like anyone: Armond, Felix, Millie – anyone. And you still wouldn’t listen. The only person you’d listen to would be Eveera.”
Her name cuts through me like a knife, and I close my eyes, taking a deep breath of the cool air. I must be showing on my face what hearing it does to me, because Bennett’s expression softens.
Not by much. But still, it softens.
“What are you doing?” He asks me quietly.
My mouth opens to give him an answer, but Will’s shadowy figure reluctantly coming back up the path to where he was sitting before, distracts me, and I reply simply with, “not enough.”
Bennett’s eyes follow mine, and he coughs in disbelief; the laughter following it is dry. “I’d wager you’re doing too much, actually.”
My head shakes, “if I were doing too much, she’d be home already.”
“You poisoned an entire building full of people… all because the keeper told you he hadn’t seen anyone there that matched the descriptions you gave him.” He drops down next to me, a palm falling on my shoulder. “You don’t think that that was a bit of an overreaction?”
The face of the older man appears clear in my mind, and the anger I felt in the brief moment we spoke comes quickly with it. “He was lying. I could see it in his eyes.” From my left, I see Bennett nod, his expression grim and laced with concern.
Or maybe that's pity I’m seeing.
Regardless, it settles heavily in my stomach, like lead.
“You know there’s a chance–”
My hand goes over his mouth fast enough that the force shoves his head against the cave wall. “Do not finish that sentence.” I threaten, my teeth grinding together. His brown eyes widen at my reaction before returning to their sad… pitying gaze.
Definitely, pity.
One by one, I lift a finger off of his face and bring that same hand against my jaw. Rubbing the stubble there harshly, I suck in a sharp breath. “There’s only one outcome of this I am willing to accept.”
“Okay.”
Surprised, my head slowly tilts towards him, “okay?”
Bennett nods, “but you’ve got to go easier on Will.” My lips part to argue, and he gives me a withering look, warning me not to. “He’s just looking out for you, Ror. Like he’s always done – a lot has changed for him, too.”
“He needs to stop challenging my every decision.”
“Can you really blame him?”
The question spears right through me – because, no, I can’t. If he were acting the way I am now? I’m sure I would be concerned. But it would be because I didn’t understand, just as he isn’t understanding me now.
“She’s been through enough,” I answer gruffly.
He takes a deep breath and sits on his next words for a few extra moments before asking, “and she’s worth all of this? All of the carnage?”
“Carnage? This is child’s play,” I scoff, “I’d do much worse for her, Bennett. Much worse.”
The two of us must not have had anything left to say after my admission, because the next thing I knew, we were being woken by the bright stream of light pouring into the cave.
Once fully awake, the five of us wasted no time cleaning up camp and mounting our horses again. Another long and arduous travel day ahead of us.
Much to Will’s pleasure, most of the journey outside of the mountains has been nothing but open stretches of sand. Meaning no civilization for miles, and at one point I could have sworn I heard him mutter, “thank the gods there’s no one unfortunate enough to cross our path.”
What he really meant was – thank the gods there’s no one unfortunate enough to cross my path.
At least so far.
For the duration of our ride, I’ve stayed at the back of the group with Millie and Max. The two of them are a nauseating view.
After the second Battle of Vellar, they have remained inseparable.
Even now, sharing a horse – their bodies connected by Max’s arm as he holds her tight against him.
After that fateful day, his already dark nature shifted, and now it’s as if Millie and the search for Eveera are the only two things tethering him to this realm.
I pull my attention away from them, gut twinging in unwelcome envy as the pull to reach for Eveera grows tighter.
“Bennett, how long did you say the ride would take today?” Will shouts, disrupting the group’s silence.
“I didn’t.”
Will grumbles, swiping the sweat from his brow as he squints against the sun. There’s a wide expanse of nothingness ahead of us, and while our seal remains cold to the touch, all I can think is – please be where I think you are.
The plea is desperate-sounding, even inside the walls of my mind. But that’s what she’s made me. Desperate.
After my last display of desperation, we were quick to realize there was no more place for us in Sorrel. Lucky for me, Millie overheard one of Max’s family members mention they’d heard rumors of a unique-looking man, looking for tonics in the markets a few days prior. Magic binding tonics.
She’d rushed to tell Max, and the two of them went to the markets alone the next day. While they came up empty on a dealer of magic binding tonics, they struck gold on where there is a place they could find such things.
It’s no secret that magic binding is considered taboo outside of military or royal use, and based on Millie’s retelling of their conversation with the tradeswoman, she wasn’t too thrilled that word had gotten out about her private conversation.
As sick as it made me to think of Eveera’s magic being snuffed out, it’s the only thing that makes sense. There’s no other way Ezra could contain her without something assisting him.
So here we were.
In the desert, on horseback, in the fucking bloody heat.
A high-pitched whistle rings through the air, sending all of our animals to a sharp halt. Millie straightens in her saddle, a hand coming back to grip Max’s chin, urging his face to look forward.
All of our stares follow hers to where, on the horizon, is a dark blob blurred by the heat waves rising from the sand. Another high-pitched whistle rings out, and their horse backs up nervously.
“I’m going to guess that that isn’t some foreign ambassador coming out here to welcome us?” She says between clenched teeth.
“In the middle of the desert? I’m guessing not.” Will answers.
The blob quickly picks up speed, inching closer to our now stationary group. Instinctively, our hands – save for Mil’s – all drop to the pommel of our swords.
Impatient, I draw mine and nudge my mount forward, “it’s probably just fucking bandits.”
“Ror– what are you doing?” Will hisses as I pull up next to his horse. The riders are more visible now, and I spin the hilt in my hand, the sword moving in a wide arc.
“Taking care of a problem.” I snap, spurring my horse on and leaving behind the collection of sighs from behind me.
The first cut is always the hardest. It’s unsure, nerve-wracking even. It isn’t until you free the blade and see them fall to the ground that the pressure lifts off your chest.
You’ve succeeded. You're alive – at least for the next fifteen seconds – but the cuts that follow are always easier. The hard part is shifting to keeping yourself alive now.
Of course, if you have magic on your side, that’s always a welcome perk.
I can feel my Wield creep to the surface as my fingers flex around the cool metal, adjusting my hold as I block an incoming blow.
SCRAAPPPEEE!
Sparks fly off the edges of our blades as they drag against each other. The bandit glares up at me, and I can’t help the laugh that comes out of me as I pull my sword back, plunging it into his side.
There is a cacophony of metal meeting metal around us, and I give the fight a cursory glance – checking on everyone.
On my right, Millicent and Max are fighting back-to-back, and I tense while watching them move against their assailants, right as the man Millie fights gets a little too close to landing his mark and sending my stomach into my throat.
She leaps back into Max, and he uses that push to slice across the abdomen of his opponent.
With one down, he continues the arc up and over Millie’s head until the tip of his blade is set nicely in the eye socket of their secondary opponent, the metal of the weapon flickering from the electricity of his Wield.
The result leaves two crumpled and charred men at their feet. Briefly, Max cups her cheek, their chests rising and falling rapidly as their foreheads fall together.
I flick my eyes away, allowing them their private moment, when to my left, in my peripheral vision, I see Bennett hunched over with a fist pressed to his chest. Strewn around us are the remains of our opponents, the spilled blood sizzling from the heat.
I do another headcount and notice that while the number of bodies is correct, the number of bodies still with breath in them is not.
“Where’s Will?” I ask, and Bennett turns his head side to side, Max and Millicent doing the same.
When all three of them shrug, panic claws its way into my chest. Frantically, I turn and spin around, recounting the felled men and women to make sure that I didn’t callously miss his body in the wreckage.
“HEY!” A voice echoes, and we all look up at the same time.
“Uh–” Millie stutters, and I raise my hand over my eyes, squinting to see who the voice belongs to. Relief floods me when I see Will crest over the dune, hurriedly waving us over to him.
The four of us break off into a sprint, stopping only when we reach the top, Will’s arm outstretched and pointing to an abandoned carriage.
“It’s a carriage.” Bennett says matter-of-factly.
Will nods, rushing over to it. “Just wait.”
We all form a crescent moon shape around it, watching tensely as Will wraps his hand around the door handle and pulls.
Momentarily, I’m stunned until the anger pushes my shock out of the way. “You’re certainly not what I was expecting.” I growl, sizing the girl up and down. “Little far from home… aren’t we, Pruella?”