* * *
An explosion woke her.
Vi was on her feet in an instant as shock waves rattled the city. She heard shouts, and the clash of steel on steel. Her heart raced as she stared at the door.
Vi took a step forward, and one back, then two forward.Keep yourself safe,Taavin had said. Another rumble shook the city, and she was off. Running, Vi threw open the door and was down the ladder in a breath, steps ahead of Lucina.
“Yullia!” Lucina called after her, following close behind. “Where are you—”
“Lucina. Lucina!” The young woman’s grandmother was upright in her cot, calling out to her granddaughter. Vi paused at the top of the stairs, watching as her wrinkled hand reached out, grabbing at the air, milky eyes unseeing.
“Granny, I’m here.” Lucina rushed over to her kin, sitting on the edge of the bed as another shock wave rattled the city. The two huddled together tightly, holding each other.
“Lucina.” Vi summoned the girl’s attention with her name. “I’m going out. You’ll want to lock the door behind me.”
“Out? Yullia, there’s awargoing on out there.”
“I know, and I have every intention of fighting in it. Lock the door behind me.” Vi didn’t know if that was entirely true. She still wasn’t sure if she could pick a side in this war—not when both sides were her family. Or at least… once upon a time, they had been family. Though the waters were murky, Vi couldn’t help wanting to jump in with both feet. Sink or swim.
She sprinted down the stairs, unbolted the door, and stepped out into the dusty street.
When she heard the bolt engage behind her, she started off in the direction of an orange haze. The fires of battle were already burning the city; what was once the greatest kingdom in the history of the Dark Isle would fall before the sun rose.
Chapter Three
Vi rantoward the carnage along the main street of Norin. Doubt nipped at her heels as she fell into step with men and women carrying various weapons—everything from forged steel to fishing spears. Her beacon was an orange haze glowing off smoke rising in the horizon. If Vi kept solely focused on that, maybe she wouldn’t question too much what, in the Mother’s name, she was doing.
She pushed against the masses who were fleeing as fast as they could in the opposite direction. Women carried wailing children tightly in their arms; those large enough to walk were half-dragged along the dusty ground.
At first, most of the people fleeing seemed unscathed, but the further she ran, the more Vi saw wounded and dying.
A man staggered through the street, soldiers and civilians alike parting to run around him. His clothes had been nearly burnt off; charred ribbons clung to blistered and reddened skin. He stared with a pleading expression and a gaping mouth that couldn’t seem to find the right words to beg for help.
Suppressing her instinct to gag at the putrid scent of burnt flesh and hair, Vi stopped right before the man, not daring to touch him on his reddened and bubbled side.
“Come this way.” His eyes swung to her when he realized someone was speaking to him. Someone had actually heard his soundless cries. “I can heal you,” Vi said softly. Somehow, little more than a whisper felt loud when the man’s crazed gaze was on her. It was louder than the sounds of fighting in the distance, or the crackle of flames that blazed at the far end of the main street. “Will you come with me?”
He made a choked noise, barely bobbing his head.
Vi took his left hand—the one that hadn’t been burned in whatever blaze he had been caught in. She led him out of the street, making sure no one bumped or jostled him in the process.
“This won’t hurt,” she whispered. She wasn’t good athalleth, but surely, anything was better than the pain he found himself in. Vi murmured under her breath, “Halleth ruta toff.”
She kept the glyph tiny and tightly wound right underneath her palm, holding it above the man’s burnt forearm in such a way that he would see nothing more than a faint glow. Vi focused only on mending his forearm, ignoring the rising sounds of battle and the countless others in just as bad a state as this man.Grow, mend, heal,she willed to the flesh through her magic. When his forearm was no longer blistered and red, Vi moved on.
Section by section, she mended the worst of the burns. She tried to focus on what seemed the most life threatening, but Vi was no cleric. Her healing was clumsy, scarred and knotted, just as Taavin had said it was when she washed up on the beaches of Meru. But it was better than dead. It had to be better than dead, she insisted to herself.
Vi lowered her hand, having finished with the side of the man’s face. His eyes were on her, much more focused than before. He swallowed once before rasping, “Thank you, your highness.”
He thought she was Fiera, just as Lucina had. Vi pursed her lips into a thin smile.
“You’re welcome.” Vi didn’t see the point in correcting him. No one was likely to believe him even if he remembered the details of their encounter come dawn. “Can you tell me what’s happening? Do you remember?”
He gave a nod. The scar tissue of his neck seemed to pull, causing him to wince slightly. “The wall finally fell. The Imperialists blasted through. They’re in the city.”
Vi looked in the direction she’d been heading. The fires burned brighter now, almost like an angry dawn on the horizon. She had read about the fall of Norin, but it wasn’t a breach in the wall that had brought the noble city to its knees after ten long years—it was by an attack on the sea.
The fighting at the wall was a distraction to give the ships carrying the bulk of the Imperial army time to enter the port.
