Page 66 of Red Demon

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.

This broken woman was a fucking mess. Terrifying as she may be in a fight, she had a mind like wormy duck shit. I thought she’d been leading the center of some vast rebel conspiracy. At best, she was a weapon.

There’d be a hand. Someone in control.

Her breathing calmed. Her face steeled. She wiped her tears away with what appeared like disgust. “If I can get you to the fire, can you start it?”

“Yeah,” I said, exhaling. She helped me over.

“I’m going to get some firewood. Breakfast.” Her eyes trailed over my bandages in cold assessment before she left.

Faruhar came back to the cave in a much better mood, humming as she added ingredients for more venison stew to the pot. She washed her hands, then rummaged through old jars on the shelf, sniffing them and making faces. “I couldn’t find more plantain for your wounds. Hoping I can find something useful in here, but it’s all old.”

“Is this where you live?”

“No.” She pulled up a few dried flowers from a clay jar with her tweezers, squinting. After sniffing it, she grabbed another jar instead. She accepted whatever she found in that one, pulling it onto the side table.

“So who lives here?”

“No one, anymore.” She sprinkled some herbs into a cup. “Asri rebels used to use it until the empire got to them, killed off tunnels in this area. It will take a while for Oria to grow back. Bria helped me find it.”