Chapter 3
It took nearly an hour to scrub the blood from my skin.
Now, seated at the tavern just down the street from Finnick’s, my fingers drum impatiently on the table, desperate and waiting for a meal that surely won’t fill my belly.
The haze of drunken chatter simmers—bellowing laughter and boisterous voices—but none directed toward me.
I’m used to the silent dinners and skeptical glances often thrown my way here.
When you’ve spilled the blood of nearly every patron’s companion, the distance is to be expected.
I sigh and lean into my palm now heavy on the tabletop.
A warm flicker of candlelight lingers beside me, rippling with the smoky draft looming in from the late evening air.
“Enjoy.” A ceramic bowl slams down before me, its watery brown contents sloshing haphazardly over the top. I glance at the barmaid with a content smile. Her cold green eyes don’t return the sentiment.
“Didn’t poison it this time, Val?” I spoon the lukewarm broth and let it trickle back to its bowl.
“Don’t test your luck, girl,” she grunts before turning on her heels.
Her frigid demeanor isn’t surprising when her nephew—a pickpocket from the mercantile district—was unfortunate enough to pull a blade on me last week.
Now his bones rest, crisp and ashen, with the rest of the lowborn corpses heaped together at Scorath’s pillar.
A grimace slips from me with another spoonful of broth, but I swallow it anyway.
It’s a meal, and for now, that’s all I need.
In a few weeks’ time, I’ll leave this place for good.
Even amidst the criminals and crooks drowning themselves in ale, I can feel it—a full belly and peaceful life.
Tomorrow could change everything. It has to, because I’m not sure how much of Val’s dishwater stew I can take anymore.
“Did you hear about what happened this morning during flight ops?” Just to my right, a greasy skeleton of a man snickers to the red-faced woman beside him. My ears perk, but I keep my gaze locked on my meal.
“No, I’ve been working the market all day. Was there another attack, Gale?” the woman asks, taking a sip from her pint.
Gale’s watery eyes dart to me before he shifts closer to her.
“Kallus came back from drill practice whiter than a wraith. During flight ops he and another cadet got caught up in a storm and broke off from the formation. Before they knew it, they’d crossed the border.”
I rest my spoon back in the bowl. Even hunch-backed away from me, Gale’s intoxicated whispers are loud enough for the whole damned bar to hear, let alone my curious ears.
“He crossed the border? Into Shadow?” the woman asks.
Neither patrons notice my wandering eyes under the fog of tobacco and ash.
“Don’t worry, Cee, I gave him an earful. That damned boy is gonna get himself killed before he sees even a shred of combat. But it wasn’t just the border crossing that had him damn near pissing himself.”
I lean in, entirely forgetting the cramp in my stomach and the half-eaten broth.
“Tell me he didn't cross paths with Jace Ashborne. Gods be good…I heard he’s picking up land patrols with his guards.”
Jace Ashborne. At thirty, he’s the youngest heir to the midnight throne ever to succeed. But he’s also the most cutthroat. The most lethal. Fuck, Ashborne makes Smoke’s king, Magnius Ashar, look like sunshine and rainbows—even after his army wiped the northern faction, Sovereign, from our maps.
Just Ashborne’s name sends a prickle down my spine.
“Thank the cosmos, no. You and I both know he’d be dead if he had a run in with the Midnight Heir. That fruit didn’t fall far enough from the Ashborne tree,” Gale spits.
I bite my lip, drawing a tinge of blood with my canine. King Van Ashborne, the late King of Shadow, was an ally to Ashar when Sovereign fell.
Even if Smoke’s king led the armies, Van Ashborne ensured Sovereign’s demise when he closed off his borders in the final hours of battle.
Hundreds of fleeing refugees begged and pounded on the gates, and yet Shadow’s regent did nothing.
Whoever wasn’t incinerated by dragonfire was sent to the slave district in Smoke.
House Ashborne only breeds cruelty, and just as Gale so eloquently said, Jace Ashborne isn’t any different than his father.
Shadow’s borders haven’t ever been open, but more so now, with ruthless land patrols and vicious executions.
I’d rather bathe in dragonfire than find myself in Jace Ashborne’s presence.
“Kallus claimed he saw spirits lingering in the woods, terrifying as all ten hells. These weren’t just servants of Morvayne or those crossing over either.
No, he said they were demons, void of eyes or any features for that matter, just lurking in the trees.
When he landed to catch his bearings, there they were…
watching him from the bordering woodlands.
” Gale’s whispers garner several other sets of probing eyes, but the drunken man pays them no mind.
Something about these creatures shoots ice through my veins.
The forests bordering Shadow are said to be haunted.
Filled with twisted roots and rotten marsh, their trails guide those crossing into Morvayne’s Court.
Passed loved ones and fallen soldiers, flickering in and out of existence, until they meet the death god and receive their sentence.
There’ve been many a whisper muttered in hushed tavern corners, of ethereal spirits long since departed, but never anything described such as this.
I should shake it off as simply a cadet’s made up tale to distract from his noncompliance, but a shudder still escapes at the thought of something malevolent lurking over the border.
“Sounds better than getting caught without a crossing sanction by Ashborne if you ask me,” Cee huffs. With a shrug, Gale returns to his ale, swaying off balance atop the barstool in a fit of drunken snickers.
I return to the bowl, now barely warmer than the chilled air just outside.
My appetite’s escaped me, though, with the mention of Ashborne and these so-called creatures.
Fuck Jace Ashborne, and his whole bloodline right along with him.
They may as well have held the whip as it sliced across my adolescent back.
My mother’s weak embrace and soft whimpers pulse through me.
My father’s final goodbye before marching off to hold the line.
I squeeze my eyes shut before the memories catch.
A few more weeks, Nova. You’ve endured worse. The reminder is forced as I gather my empty coin pouch and make for the door. With a quick nod to Val, who’s glaring from her stoop behind the bar, I exchange the tavern’s haze for the sleepy evening air.
Terrafyre glows over the night sky in hues of orange and ash, like an ever-present deity keeping watch over her people. The breeze rustling through the soot-coated air sends goose flesh up my arms as I cross the silent street back toward the apothecary.
My mind reels with the impending sunrise, turning over the hypotheticals of what it’ll bring again and again, and by the time I slip into bed, I’m wound tighter than a coil.
Only visions of the future, just beyond my fingertips, soothes the blooming ache at the base of my neck. So, I let hope spin its dangerous web.
This mission is irrational, impossible, and most certainly ludicrous, but I fall into dreams with a smile drawn at the corner of my lip.