Page 3 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Wyntre

Dusk is almost here.

From the roof on top of a minor tower, we’ve come to this dark place beneath the lip of the town where the golems live. Live being an exaggeration. No one really thinks they are alive, even if they move. Only sparse light reaches here, reflected in from the side and off the ground.

The thirty-foot-long golem before us crawls evermore, front and rear paws padding onto earth, over and over, with a grind then a gigantic if soft thud. Its grizzled head is a lump of crackled, raw-born clay and rock. Its neck stunted. Its body colossal. Once, the first time I came down here, I mused about the what-ifs. What if they can think? What if they broke loose? Would we be friend or foe? If it were me, I’d crush us all for being so dismissive of its rights.

Golem rights. It seemed plausible back then.

Above, this cacophony is barely audible. The thickness of the rock overhead, that forms the foundations of the town, muffles the sounds. The cracks where this golem section adjoins the frontward one are perfectly glued. Same as the one behind and to its side. It’s been over a decade since the town had to break up to steer around an avalanche that blocked the route.

I wish I could see that. We are a seventy-three strong golem-town. To witness all the pieces with their houses and shops moving independently of each other… It would be magnificent.

“Noisy!” I yell at Tiera, where she sits beside me on the bumpy, curled ledge, swinging her legs. The brownness of ground rolls by below, far enough away that a fall might be disastrous. The thrill of it, though.

“Whooooo!” As I scream, I raise my hands. My whoop is joined by hers then by Rhuy’s and Tomas’s, as they swing in then clamber up from the outside, using the iron handholds beneath the ledge. Tomas to Tiera’s left and Rhuy to my right; his thigh bumps against mine as he settles himself.

Those handholds are for the stoneborn to come down here, and for workmen when they need to check the structure or the golems. Although they use safety gear, tying ropes to the holds, using cradles, gloves, and harnesses.

We’ll be chastised if anyone catches us.

“Wyntre!” Rhuy’s bellow makes me clap a hand to my ear. “Your da says he has something important for you!”

“Oh.” Strange, how I’ve been trying not to think about that. The history he wants to divulge.

The birthday songs my friends sang helped to blot it out for a while. The cake was a magnificent three-tiered chocolate mess meant to copy the master’s tower, and the five of us ate more than half of it.

The rest is in in Sophie’s room. She’s leaving tomorrow, is up there packing for Albeny to work as a seamstress, so we gifted her the remains of the cake.

Seamstress, apprentice baker for Tomas, Tiera is still looking for work, and so is Rhuy, though he’s keen on police work as a gweller.

Me, am I to be a blacksmith? My dislike of the forge fire must be vanquished. I can do this. I know I can.

My fingers smell of chocolate. Some may have ended up wedged under my nails.

I’m twenty, and I always wanted to know about them , except now I don’t. If what swirled about my fingers at the graveyard, that dark mist, is what compelled Father to reveal his secrets then my parents were, of all things, necromancers.

Conclusion: It’s why he has always warned me away from such magik. It is why I should not have dabbled in what I did. Anathema is a byproduct of necromancy, though I’m still not sure how I did it.

I smile and nod to Rhuy. “Thanks.”

“It’s getting too dark to be here anyway. Before you go,” he says, softer now and directly to my ear. His deeper tone pairs with the brush of his lips on my ear, my hair. He cups my jaw with his hand. “Happy Birthday again, Wyntre.”

I shake him off, lean away from his hand though he holds on, squashing skin painfully against my jaw.

“Not now. Let go. I have to do this.”

“It can wait a moment.” There’s determination in his voice and eyes. “One kiss.”

Another me, yesterday’s me, would’ve succumbed before it became this confrontation.

I harden my own gaze. “If you were standing, I’d knee your balls, Rhuy Anderson, and turn them into mush. Let go.”

He sighs.

“Mush,” I repeat.

“Whoaaa.” He releases me, holding his hand high as I maneuver away and search for those holds to swing to the outside.

“See you later,” I declare to them all, smiling. Then I’m gone, outside and by myself as I use the outer holds to climb up to street level.

A raven sits on the high back of an armchair in our living room. Father is perched on the edge of the square dining table where it marks the beginning of our small eating area. The window beyond is open. The cream curtains blow inward.

“Yes.” He nods at the bird. “We have a guest.”

It cocks one red eye at me, then the other side, where a scarred, empty socket shows. Feathers litter the floor, so many feathers.

“It’s shedding because it is undead,” he says.

“Oh, fuck.”

“This time I agree. Oh fuck. It appears this day is auspicious in many ways.”

I take a step. The raven hops down onto the armrest and waddles to the end, closer to me.

“Someone sent it?”

“Yes.”

“Who?” I tilt my head, puzzled. The raven copies me.

“Your parents.” That hits like a blow, banishing all sense from my head. Aren’t they dead? “It has their sigil, underneath. They used to put one there,” he adds. I guess my puzzled look has intensified, maybe turned to petrification.

“How?” I squeak, imagining someone turning it upside down and stamping the bird with a sigil. A stamp like they have at the post office.

Landos shrugs. “Not my specialty.”

“What was yours? What did you do for them?”

“I can see we’re getting to the part where I get really serious.” He sucks in one side of his lip. “Let’s sit down.”

“When is an undead raven not serious?”

“A good point.”

I fetch two timber chairs when he’s slow to react, place them a couple of yards from the bird and sit, waiting while he does the same.

“I was just a blacksmith. Though they sometimes magik-enhanced the weapons.” He leans elbows on his knees and bows forward, gaze unfocused, his thoughts in the past. “That day, I knew they’d been killed, blasted by a dragonshifter. I overheard it said. I found you and fled. I figured the enemy, King Madlin’s Aos Sin army, would soon come through the encampment. I came here…walked here with you, a squalling baby, managed to keep you alive. God knows how I succeeded. I am not a natural father.”

Oh, but you are, I want to say. The best da I could’ve wanted. I’m tearing up now, unexpectedly. I wipe away a few tears, chug in a breath.

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know. I have a key to the fortress your parents built?”

He what? I blink at him, willing the next words from his mouth.

“You are the child of Aislinn and Sabre Gothschild, the rightful owners of the Fortress of Slaedorth.”

More fucks would be in order, but I’m too stunned. I own a fortress? My parents are the most evil of the Chained King’s allies? They feature in history lessons. Hell, no. I am angry, and I stand, tipping over my chair with a bang. The raven flies off the armchair and arrives on my head. Its claws are scratchy but, thankfully, it stays where it landed.

“Ouch.” I reach up, gingerly.

Then it leans over and twists itself almost upside down to stare into my face, its beak an inch from my nose.

This is when the staircase leading up here clatters with the feet of intruders. The window is shadowed as someone vaults inside—an armed and armored man, in black and silver, bearing the crest of an enforcer on his tunic. He rolls to his feet then rips a sword and dagger from belt sheaths.

“Surrender, Wyntre Diamond. We are the King’s Enforcers, and you are under arrest for?—”

The door on the other side of the living room is smashed open, slams back into the wall. A portrait falls, and glass shatters. The raven makes a strangled squawk then departs through the window, dodging a sword slash. Four more men spill into our house through the doorway. Three unsheathe their swords.

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of necromancy,” the frontmost one declares. His fine breastplate and the gemstone on his sword hilt speak of wealth, his sneer of a nasty disposition. “Both of you will come with us.”

“Not yet,” snaps another enforcer, a larger man whose flamboyant head of hair licks the beams of our ceiling.

Pausing less than a heartbeat, Father unfolds to face the man who rudely came in the window. He takes a step and stabs him in the leg then twists the steel, using a poniard pulled from some secret place. Blood squirts over the floor. The man crumples on the leg.

Father’s swift kick to his head renders him unconscious. “The window! I’ll hold them!”

He cannot do this. He cannot. My eyes are ready to pop.

I pause, hesitating in all the wrong ways at the wrongest time.

The sword the unconscious enforcer dropped is a stride away, and I sidestep to scoop it up, turning in time to see three swords sweep aside my father’s short weapon. He intercepts and parries one, slits the man’s arm partway to his elbow. In the same moment, two blades slide into him at shoulder and arm. A steel point exits, red, a sharp spine bursting out his back.

The sight staggers me, wrenches the world into a flurry of impossibilities.

Have they killed him? He can’t be dead.

Father slumps to one knee, gasping. After they extract their blades and look to me, his palm slaps the floor. He’s still upright though he sways, and a grimace distorts his face.

A squeak leaves my lungs; my scream is soundless.

There is so much blood. Red is everywhere. This is my fault.

He gasps twice more, then mouths, I’m okay . I can read his lips easily, but his eyes are desperate. One of the intruders punches him with a sword pommel, and he collapses.

“How dare you!” I take a wobbly step toward these awful men. I wipe spit from my mouth and show my teeth. Bastards.

I want to strangle them, every one of them, stab them, stab them. I crush my fears beneath this venomous anger.

Will they kill me? I think it even as the blood drips from Father onto the caramel-colored rug he bought to brighten the room only a week ago. He’s still mouthing words at me. Run! Go. Run.

How can I just leave?

“You’re all fools.”

Who said that?

I snap up my head, focusing on the flame-haired, taller one—the one who has not yet drawn a weapon. My own sword, I have stupidly allowed the point to fall. I jerk it higher, grief contorting my face, tears tracking down my cheeks.

Go! They’ll kill you! I shake my head at Father’s silent instructions.

He yells aloud, “Go! I don’t want to dig your grave!” One of the men stomps on his shoulder, and he slumps.

He wants me to desert him, and what purpose do I have here? I cannot defeat these men.

Despairing, I retreat toward the window, my sword point now raised as I try to indicate a lethalness I do not feel.

“She is mine.”

I gape at the stupid words coming from this enforcer, but he’s placed himself between the three others and me. A quick sprint and I can be gone.

“Anathema,” I whisper. The faint scrabble says he heard me. “Meet me outside.”

Then I run for the window. From the yells and the scuffling, the fourth man, the red-haired giant, is delaying them. Or killing them.

I prefer the latter, I decide, as I dive through the window and recover my feet, staggering. Sword lost, I dash southward, to where I calculate they must have left their mounts to follow the town. The eastern side of our road scrapes a cliff and is unreachable by horses, and the bow and stern would be stupid.

I may have to run the length of the town to reach them, but once I do, I can escape.

Escape, and if Father dies, I will track down and kill the men who did this.

He would want that…wouldn’t he? I’m not sure.

Can I ever return to Bollingham if the Aos Sin want me dead?

His last words were odd. Why would he dig my grave? But I don’t have time for this sadness and guilt, and I lock it away, deep, to be released when I have some space to think and to feel.

There is something under the floorboards he wanted to give me.

That memory diverts me for a painful second. I cannot get that, though it may have been the key to the fortress.

An alley threads between the cobbler and Aunt May’s tavern, dead-ending at the defensive wall we’ve never needed. I scramble to the top of the wall, using foot and handholds memorized since my earliest adventures. I lower myself to a crouch, calculating the drop to the outer ledge. The ground beyond, the grass knee-high, skims past—my world has been destroyed but Bollingham keeps going and going. Nothing stops a golem town.

I wish I could stay. Everything is in pieces. I brush away fresh tears, steady myself with a hand on the stone capping.

“Wyntre! I heard the fuss!” Rhuy has found me and stands haloed in the light at the entrance to the alley. He blows me a kiss, then hisses, “Stay safe! I’ll draw them away.” He dashes to the side, vanishes.

My heart is aglow for a few, awed seconds that I spend wondering how he knew what happened and then hoping he stays safe. But this is our town. Trouble, gossip, and yes, friendship, travel from one end to the other faster than a whisky-fueled sprite.

The breeze tussles my hair, throwing pieces across my face that stick to my tears. I drop to the ledge—the last part of my town that I will touch for who knows how long.

With the hair band that I fish from a pocket of my red leggings, I tie my hair into a ponytail. In daylight, my red leggings will show up from miles away, but my shirt and jacket are brown and black—that’s one plus. The leggings…I can smear them with dirt.

Five horses trot parallel.

I used to do this for a dare, not that long ago, though the poor light adds danger.

I say a prayer to whatever gods are listening, securely button my jacket then wait, judging when to jump to the ground. Anathema joins me, seconds before I must make the leap. He crawls up my shirt to my hair and grips it tightly. I feel the yank from his tiny fists as I throw myself into the air.

Landing, I run myself to a halt with big, loping strides. Moonlight paints the land enough to see where to put my feet. I’m panting but I need to move.

So much of his blood fell upon our floor.

Will they kill him for fighting back, for stabbing one of them?

I gulp back nausea and summon what I need—a somewhat ragged calmness.

When I raise my arms and wave, a mare diverts from the others and comes to me. She has been trained to perfection to greet her rider and is dark-hued—enough to make her hard to find once I have some distance under her hooves.

Horse. Acquired . I catch her reins, fumble for the stirrup so as to ready myself to swing into the saddle.

Next is justice and revenge.

The thump of feet warns me I have a follower, and I risk a glance.

It isn’t just one.

The red-haired enforcer is first, but close behind him are two of the others.

A loud whistle makes the mare toss her head, whipping her reins free of my grip, and she gallops away, toward them.

I’m left stranded, weaponless, stomach churning with—I hate to call it this but—fear.

No point in hanging about waiting to be grabbed. I sprint for the nearest thick stand of trees, hearing the men call their mounts to them and thunder after me. Before I can reach the trees, they cut me off and I’m surrounded by the fae on their horses. Slowly they circle me, trotting. The unhurried clop of hooves as they herd me away from a sanctuary so close I can taste it…it is almost worse than an assault.

Nervously, I check for gaps, for somewhere to go.

Moonlight glides over the etched features of their faces, showing blood and bruising on two of them.

They may have fought each other, but that does not help me.

I don’t want this. This is not how this should end.

But I hold my arms out to the sides, open palmed, to try to lull them.

I just…need…a horse.

One damn horse.

The biggest man nudges in closest. I squint at him, wondering why he did what he did—helped me?

He smiles back.

“You can’t have her, Rorsyd,” the commander drawls, hefting his bejeweled sword. “Give her up. We’re only arresting her. If you want a fuck girl, buy one.”

Rorsyd doesn’t laugh. He growls in a subterranean throb that hints at a jagged-fanged beast, about to rip out some throats.

Growls. What is he?

I back further, knowing the third rider is somewhere behind me. “Are you my friend?”

“Friend? I am your watcher. I am a dragonshifter, and these fools will not have you.” He eyes the others, deliberate and menacing. He doesn’t bother to stray his hand from his broad thigh to his sword, but I see the arched gleam of large claws and how the tips dent his pants. “Mine, as I told you. Or will you have me shift to defeat you?”

“If you could’ve done that, you would’ve already,” sneers the rider at my back, his nasal tone betraying some injury. I hear him snort then spit. “You broke my fuckin’ nose.”

“Must I?” Rorsyd’s eyes, shadowed though they are by his brow, catch moonlight. A fiery moonlight that seethes in oranges and reds with dragon flames.

That mine was a threat.

This is not looking good.

Of all the shifters in all the world, why do I have a dragonshifter after me? Why does he keep saying mine , if he hates me?

On his face, patchwork outlines glow, growing brighter, marking the shapes of scales on his skin. He’s preparing to shift, and I have no exit here. Nowhere to go that won’t see me run down by a horse and hurt or killed, spitted, or taken before an Aos Sin court for practicing necromancy.

If I must pick between two or three bad choices. I choose…

I lock my gaze onto this Rorsyd. “I am innocent. Help me, please?”

I choose him. I don’t know what he wants from me except that he doesn’t want to arrest me.

The utter confusion I created is clear in those flame-licked irises. He blinks, staring at me. The transparent eyelids of a dragon flick across his eyes then retract.

“I’ve doing nothing bad.” I’m repeating myself but it appears to be working.

“You are…” He shakes his head then he wheels his horse about to face his commander, declaring, “Let us not be hasty. We should question her. Seek evidence of necromancy.”

With the other horse breathing at my back, I creep up to his saddle, this Rorsyd’s, and lock my hand over the girth strap. The gelding twists and sweeps its head around to snort at then nuzzle me. Gingerly, I offer him my cupped hand. At least this animal is friendly.

“No. This is ridiculous. You saw the raven. We follow our instructions. We arrest her and take her to Tensorga. She’s at your stirrup. Do your duty, Rorsyd.”

“My duty is not to the petty instructions of minor lawgivers. My duty is to honor my ancestors and my vow. Move away, Davyd. I will question her, alone, and take her to Tensorga if it’s wise to do so.” His voice deepens, and a growl crackles along every syllable. “Girl, get one of the spare horses. Mount up.”

Girl sounds like an insult, but I look around and spy one of the strays near a copse of trees.

The faintest whisper warns of someone reacting, and I spin to look.

A blade downswings. With a grunt, Rorsyd shifts in the saddle to intersect it with his claws. There’s a ringing scrape then a flash of flung-aside metal.

The rearward enforcer spurs his horse closer, and I’m in the middle of what promises to become a swordfight with much stabbing and clashing of steel, and enough horseflesh to crush me to a pulp and break my bones, if I’m caught between them or a horse falls on me.

Seconds later and, from where I stand, teetering on my bootheels, Rorsyd seems to merely flex his massive shoulders to hurl first one man then the other off his horse, sending them yards skyward. They sprawl in a moonlit tangle of male screams and limbs, shiny cartwheeling blades, and I…

I am fucking well-satisfied.

My choice was wise.

Though groaning, the two enforcers lie mostly still. One half-rises to a knee then collapses.

“Get the horse.”

I swivel, ready to jog to it once I locate a horse, any horse, when a thundering rumble in the earth from the direction of that copse has me pausing. “What new monstrosity is this?”

“Something is coming,” Rorsyd murmurs, stating the obvious.

A jangle of metal, a neigh, and the drumming of horses galloping heralds a troop of five or six riders. They break around the left of that small forest and keep coming, straight for us.

“Fuck. More enforcers. Reinforcements. Very well then. If I must, I must.” He sighs, grumbling.

So damned ominous. I like it.

The felled sergeant raises a hand in greeting that flops down as these riders pass him.

And Rorsyd swells with copious mounds of strangely formed muscle. His skin morphs through a coruscation of colors from red to pink to blue, forming scales, locking legs into new morphologies, and settling on dark red and gold for his hide. His claws have become truly awesome sabers.

Then he screams.

It’s a terrifying noise that shafts ice to my heart and panics the mounts. They buck, rear, and flee. The new enforcers struggle to stay in the saddle, and most are thrown clear. Darkness sweeps outward, upward, obscuring the stars in the sky. Everything is torn loose, whirling, flipped, howling. Dust and dirt are whipped forth along with a hurricane of bodies.

The curve of his wing has done this.

I understand in the same instant I’m sucked into the air. My hair lashes about as I somersault. I land on my butt, skidding, my arms wrapped about my head. Instinctively, I guard my face.

Panting, stinging from the blows of sticks, dirt, and whatever else ran into me, I open my eyes and peek through my jumble of hair.

Rorsyd. Is. A. Dragon.

A moment later, in a blink of time, he collapses impossibly fast, and is a man again—crouching over, curled into himself, with that scream still reverberating.

Is that blood on his legs?

Stunned, ears ringing, and somewhat deaf, I look about me. Even the grass, for hundreds of yards, is wrecked.

In the distance, two horses trot in circles. Others are heading for the horizon. Rorsyd’s horse is here, in the slightly less-destroyed epicenter. He shakes his mane, totters. One other horse gets its legs beneath it and staggers upright. Men lie in crumpled heaps, legs in crooked shapes like poorly put-together jigsaw puzzles.

Has he killed them all? This field held ten or twenty living things. Now there is me, the horse I had my hand on, and Rorsyd, though he looks a bit crap.

I scramble to my feet. With my hand at my throat, I turn in a circle.

I can hear my heart and, with the ringing lessening, the wind also, so I must be alive?

Incredible. And bloodcurdling. Terrifying too.

He’s standing now, naked and swaying, raising his head. He looks worse than dead.

Cautiously, I approach him, picking my way past the debris, avoiding a bared knife, a pale bone with shreds of… ugh …not looking in case I vomit.

Until today, I’ve never seen a dead person.

“Is that,” I ask hesitantly, hugging my stomach. “Is that how dragonshifters are supposed to shift?”

His eyes roll up, he mutters a fuck , then he keels over, sprawls out on his stomach…still naked.

“So that’s a no?”

That’s a somewhat smartass comment, but I am so fucking relieved to be alive.

A second later, I’m feeling sad and guilty for being so flippant in the face of this massacre.

He moves again, hunching, pushing at the ground before slumping flat.

My mouth is open, and so I close it, swallow. His bare ass and back are more than a bit disconcerting. The back muscles bulge, move, ripple. When he shifts his arm, they twist again, shining here and there. Muscle on muscle. Rhuy had nothing like this. My standards for male awesomeness have gone up several notches.

I hope he lives. I really do. And not just because of his muscles. Though I’m very likely better off without him.

I’m torn between leaving him as he is, to recover or not recover…and checking him for wounds.

I shift from foot to foot, considering the best option, again.

I’m not a healer. The puppy was accidental, and the creation of Anathema? And I have no idea how.

Where is Anathema?

Around me the dust settles. A man groans and spews a fountain of blood.

Father’s last words return at this inconvenient moment. I don’t want to dig your grave.

I need to run, get a horse, and leave. In a few days, or sooner, I will go back and find out how Father is. Or now. I could go now. I should. Everyone here is dead or incapacitated.

I should leave this dragonshifter. Whatever his reasons for sort of helping me, they will not necessarily be good ones.

But I cannot be that callous.

“Fuck. I am a fool.” I go to him, lower myself to one knee and start to examine him for injuries. Nothing shows on his back—no cuts. I grit my teeth before I touch him and strain to roll him over. I heave then get my shoulder under him and push again, put a hand on his hip and shove with one final gargantuan effort. He flops over onto his back.

“You weigh more than a horse!” I gasp, trying to look anywhere except for there …at his cock.

My hands are trembling as I touch his body, looking for injuries. His top leg is crossed over the other, one arm lies flopped over his chest. Moving those aside, especially his leg, sends a shiver through me as more of his body is exposed to my view.

The shiver is not from fear or shock.

It is from arousal and so wrong I want to slap myself. There are dead people around me.

“Keep going, fool.” I scowl as I chastise myself. It’s normal for a female to react to someone as fine as he is. I stare at him again. That’s so much bigger than Rhuy’s.

Wrong and creepy, too.

His chest is moving, up and down. I swallow. Definitely alive then.

I knew that already. I inhale and make myself check every inch of him. Blood is smeared across his lower stomach and legs, but I can find no discernible wound. No new wounds—an area of scarred skin covers half of him below his navel. It looks as if something has thrust into him then rummaged about.

Judging from the scream and him losing consciousness, the shifting has undone him, perhaps even hurt him severely? There might be some internal problem.

I dare to place my palm over that scar, seeking a further clue as to what has felled him.

And I shouldn’t… I know I should not do what I am thinking of doing.

But I lower my head, shut my eyes, and think my way into his flesh. This is what messed me up with the puppy. It’s why Anathema exists. But the broken leg did heal.

I sink past the skin and deeper still where his blood rushes and surges through heated flesh in an ancient rhythm. And the shift of organs, the background shush of his chest drawing air, those feel as healthy as an ocean pushing waves to shore.

I catch my breath, hold it, thinking myself deeper, deeper, into a place of ancient harm.

Here.

Here is where he is damaged. The ocean calmness, the wash of blood, lymph, and etharum—that vital ingredient that holds this dragonshifter together—here it is silent and barely real.

Here is dead.

I breathe—remembering to breathe is important. My mind swims in this malignant place. Here are lumps of crushed and matted cells. Nothing is as it should be.

The scar runs all the way down. For an immortal this must be unusual?

I…could. Do something.

But I shouldn’t. That’s my cautious side. This could harm.

Harm what is dead? How?

Am I not a budding necromancer and at one with Death, according to the troop of enforcers?

I smirk at that ridiculous summary, and I begin to fumble. I don’t really know what I’m doing but I gather the dead matter, the fibrous scars, the gangrenous pieces of his flesh, and I drag them into line with where I think they should be, if they were alive.

Knit. Thread. Smooth it down. Build it up. I mutter swear words at the cells, scolding them, and I tell them: Remember what you were and stay the fuck where I put you.

Then I draw away from the task, swimming upward, panicking a little as I lose my way. Which way is up? Is it possible to be lost in here, inside this space? Am I truly inside him or am I simply bonkers, loopy, crazy?

I kick off, push upward, or where I think upward lies.

There!

I emerge into the night, gasping, and sit back on my heels, and I really, really do breathe. I’m back! That was stupid, risky. Then I stare at the star-filled blackness overhead. The dust has cleared. Around me, I know that the landscape of ruined men remains. I’m not looking. I may throw up if I do.

Rorsyd is this one’s name.

Leaving his mount alone, I rise, trembling. More breathing is required.

I go to the next closest horse, lay a hand on its reins. I’ve ridden before, though not often. The horse is still skittish, though whether that’s because of me and my inexperience or the explosion it just survived, I don’t know.

I put my forehead to its neck, talking softly in nonsense, willing her to calm. I may be alone from now on, and I doubt the enforcers will simply forget me. Even if Father is okay, I will have to say goodbye, for his sake. I am going to need to learn many new things—not only how to ride well.

What does someone do when their future is nothing like they imagined it would be?

Rorsyd wanted to take me away and question me. If I was found guilty, he said he was putting me in the hands of the Aos Sin. What I did is a gift to him, in return for what he did to help me. And maybe it’s a curse. I doubt he would be happy knowing I used some sort of death magik on him.

Though this won’t last. I know this, too, from the results, before…but it should help him?

I should have suspected my origins, what my parents were. Then, I was scared of what I did and knew I must not tell my friends. I was in denial. Now I’m not.

What could I accomplish if I were taught what I am capable of?

The patter of familiar feet makes me smile.

“Anathema?” He jumps and climbs up my clothes then onto the saddle. He is as black as tar and as elusive as a shadow if you don’t know he exists. With the star and moonlight behind him, I can just discern his spindly stick-figure shape and his little arms and legs. “Well-timed. We must leave before he wakes.”

I suspect Anathema is exactly the evidence they needed to convict me of necromancy.