Page 37 of Red Demon (Oria #1)

What I Am

O nce back to my pallet, exhaustion kicked in fast, either from the Red Demon’s herbs or my body’s limitations, I don’t know.

She changed my bandages as I drifted to sleep, leaving me to meditate on the fact that her hands were as deft and gentle with my bandages as they were efficient at piercing Mal’s chest.

I woke to a glass of water on a stool beside me, and a lumpy loaf of mushroom-grain flatbread.

As I reached for the water, I heard mumbling, the sound of the Red Demon whispering in her sleep.

I turned to watch. Sometimes it was groans, sometimes indistinguishable speech. All of it sounded … afraid.

I didn’t know Chaeten-sa could feel that. I thought they modded that out.

“Please,” she said between words I could not make out.

I sat up, gripping the blanket around me. Stale air in the cave chilled my skin, the fire long out. The bed across the cabin room lay untouched, the worn sheets neatly folded. The Red Demon slept huddled on the mat by the fire, weapon in hand.

“No. No. No!” she mumbled, her chest heaving fast under loose, shining hair. Her fists gripped the dusty rug underneath her.

I cleared the small stool beside me of its water and bread.

Then, I tried to rise, leaning all my weight on the stool so as not to bend my legs.

I gripped the cool stone wall with my other hand, inching up.

My knees and chest throbbed, though less than yesterday.

I could manage the pain through clenched teeth as I stood.

Across the dim chamber, the Red Demon lay sleeping on a floor mat, her lean, scarred body lost under all that hair, her knees curved to her chest like a newborn child.

I felt a mix of emotions at the sight. The weaker part of me would apparently forgive that vulnerable woman for a meal and a fucking glass of water.

The rest of me recognized how easy it would be to kill her right now, honor or not.

I took a step closer, my head throbbing.

She breathed fast, eyes closed and tight. One of her swords lay sheathed on the ground between us. I could pick it up, give her the justice she deserved. I’d be saving lives.

“It is no sin to kill a demon,” Galen would say. Maybe Taam would say how that feeling of hating myself made no sense at all. I should kill her, regardless of what I said yesterday; get this over with.

But I knew what Ash would say: if I had to talk myself into it, not the path. Walk the path.

Fucking fine.

Another uneasy step toward her, and I leaned heavily on a side table. On it, some jars, herbs, a pen, and that stained leather journal I’d found at her camp.

I flipped open well-worn pages filled with scrawling text.

On the first page, I read, “My name is Faruhar.” Then something crossed out in heavy ink.

Below it, “Look after Bria.” Then, scratched out but still legible, “Be near people, be helpful to them. You’ll remember more.

” Angrier text lay below it and to the side.

“They will die when you sleep. Do not stay near people.”

Her swords lay beside her, in easy reach.

I flipped the pages: blank pages in the middle but at the end, angry lines, page after page of tallies, broken up by descriptions: “The man who gave me tea at the cottage, the priest with the candles.” The last entry read: “The man in the market.” Beside it, scrawled on the side, it read: “Galen, Jesse’s taam. ”

I shivered, realizing what the tallies meant—the names.

Flipping back to the front, on the last lines before the gap of blank white: my name, a tally of four lines, and above it “Days in the cave.” The writing was a mess of Asri cursive; the Red Demon had terrible handwriting.

I had to bring the journal close to my face, squinting in the dim light before I was sure of anything.

A burst of motion. In a heartbeat, she was up and beside me, her weapon drawn, the blade angled straight at my throat.

I froze, dropping the notebook onto the table, my heart crashing wild between my bandaged ribs. Her cold steel stung the sensitive flesh of my throat. I met her eyes, planning to look her in her eyes as she killed me.

The blade twitched against me with a tremor that ran through her entire body. “I know you.” Her voice cracked—brittle, faint. She didn’t move the blade as she mumbled again. “I’m sorry.”

The tension bled out of me, replaced by a cold confusion as I kept breathing. I searched her face for my fate. But all I saw were wide eyes as frantic as mine.

“No.” She lowered her weapon with a clatter, the despair in her voice echoing in the stone room. “I know you. J–Jesse.” She clutched her head as if to hold it in place. “Do you know my name?”

I blinked. “What?”

“The journal,” she said, her voice low and feral.

I tried to hand it over, almost losing my balance, holding tight against that table to remain standing. She took my arm, steadying me before grabbing her book.

“You’re hurt. Sit down,” she said in a rush, breathing fast. Her scarred arm gestured to the chair. “You’re real, right? You look the same.”

Not knowing what to say, I let her ease me into a chair until she withdrew her shaking hand.

After studying me to, perhaps, ensure my ass couldn’t fall out of a chair, she turned for the journal, picking it up with reverence. Her breathing calmed as she read the cover. “Faruhar.”

I swallowed, all my thoughts, hatred included, flickered and gutted. This savage murderer, the demon I feared for so long, didn’t remember her own name?

“Faruhar,” I repeated. “You told me that yesterday.”

A minute passed, two, as she flipped pages, wild and fast, the only sound echoing in the room.

Her eyes closed wet when she thudded the leather book closed.

“What else do you know? You told me to draw my sword; you fought well.” She paused, blinking.

“You said I took everything from you. What did I do? I didn’t write that down. ”

A choked sound came out of my open mouth.

“Please. Tell me. There’s so much fading under the surface. If you tell me, I can bring it back.” She gripped her head.

“You really don’t remember?”

Faruhar, the Red Demon, the destroyer of Nunbiren: she rocked back and forth, her body shaking with silent sobs.

“No,” she rasped, the word a desperate plea that scraped against the raw grief clinging to me like second skin. “No. No. No… What did I do to you?”

I pictured Galen, swinging his blade at me with all his mighty strength. The sound of her last slash bled into the silence of my mind, tightening the knot in my gut.

“You—you killed a lot of people—my taam.” Voids, I hated the taste of those words.

She nodded, eyes distant. “Where?”

“A town called Nunbiren. All dead.”

“Why did I kill them?”

“I don’t know,” I stuttered out. “A ghost girl warned us about the attack. We were stupid enough to stay. We expected rebels and got you. When you showed up, my friends started killing each other.”

She flinched violently, her shoulders hunching as if under an invisible blow. Her breaths came in ragged gasps, her eyes squeezed shut so tight they threatened to disappear altogether.

“I remember Nunbiren. You said your father was Galen. I wrote him down,” she said, the word a hollow whisper. “Who else? Tell me their names.” She pulled out her book.

“You want to write them down?”

Tears welled in her winged, yellow-green eyes. “I need to remember what I am.”

My breaths stuttered, but I forced them out.

“Atalia.” I lashed out every name I knew, slain by her sword or the ghosts she brought with her. Meragc, Nestor, Vann, Ola, Plato … Juna, her granddaughter Terana upstairs. She winced with each name.

She stared at me with wide eyes. “I don’t remember them all. Some are gone. Who else?”

When I’d named everyone I knew was dead in Nunbiren, I kept going.

I listed any death I’d learned through Galen, counting everyone the elders credited as her kill in Noé.

Ten dead on the road by Blind Tree. Thirty in Farris.

She wouldn’t write the number if she couldn’t find a matching record.

Instead, she tallied in slow strokes, one by one.

“Anyone else?” She eyed me with hunger, gripping the bones of her arms as if they’d strike again.

I cleared my throat. “Seven years ago, you destroyed a lot of Chaeten towns in the Bend. I don’t know who helped you. The empire evacuated any survivors within a year.”

“Why would I do that?” Her voice cracked.

I shook my head, heart pounding.

She closed her eyes tight. “In Nunbiren, I didn’t think they were real. You’re sure?” Her chest heaved and shuddered in silence before she looked back at me.

I swallowed, nodding.

“Tell me about Crofton.”

I clenched my fists, knuckles whitening as I fought the urge to lash out at just how strange this all was.

“You got my brother Iden with a sword. I think you sent ghosts for him; broke his mind,” I said.

“My brother Mal too. He was messed up, but getting better when you killed him. And before that, a whole town of people who just fell dead. They told me rebels spread the SBO virus, but it was you. You let me just run away…”

“There was a boy like you, dead by the river.” She paused. “Same hair and eyes. I already wrote him down.”

“Iden,” I growled. “Did writing that down make it all okay?”

The monster I swore to kill crumpled to her knees, burying her face in her hands. “No,” she sobbed, the word raw and desperate. “I thought he was a ghost. He wasn’t real. What did I miss?” Hollow despair echoed in her empty eyes. “I don’t always get it right. I know what I am.”

“What does that even mean!?”

“I know what I am.” She began rocking. “But I can’t let Bria die.”

“Who?”

She only shook her head, continuing a slow rock of her body with her knees to her chest. We sat in a tense silence for a long moment, the only sound her ragged gasps and the steady drip of water from a tap on the far side of the cabin.