Iliana
The scent of death hung heavy over Dunmeaden, thick in the air like the smoke that lingered, a constant cloud cover settling between the peaks of the Malas.
“You would think the Auqin would have found a way to douse the fires,” Penelope had complained after a particularly grueling shift. It had been no small struggle for Iliana to refrain from rolling her eyes at her fellow healer as they restocked the herbs.
“It’s not the buildings that still burn,” she’d muttered in retort. “It’s the bodies.”
Just over a week since the attack, and still the burial rites continued. Iliana was surprised there was anyone left to burn in the sacred ceremonies. Not with the way Kakos had set their capital—herhome—ablaze.
A once formidable city, with sections now reduced to mere ash in hours. Ash that crunched beneath her boots now as she walked to work.
Ash, and debris, and bone, most likely. She tried not to dwell on it. It did no good to fixate on the dead when her skills were so desperately needed to attend to those still living. How the infirmary—more home than her own once she’dearned her healer’s tunic—had escaped the wrath of Kakos, she didn’t know, but she thanked Mora for it daily.
Iliana rolled her shoulders as she stepped through the thick wooden doors that marked the entryway to the infirmary. It had grown quieter, the screams of pain brought forth by the Anima both desperately fighting death and hastening its arrival having lessened as the time stretched on. Her footsteps echoed on the stone floor as she made her way to the steel basin at the back of the hall, rinsing her hands before setting about to prepare for her shift. Penelope appeared moments later, fingers caked with blood. She gave Iliana a curt nod as she approached the basin, scrubbing at her skin with a vengeance.
“A loss?” Iliana asked softly, her head tilting as she took in the tense set of the healer’s shoulders.
“No,” Penelope gritted out.
Iliana bit the inside of her cheek as she watched the water run red.
The healer turned off the faucet and braced her hands on the edge of the basin, glaring down at the dirty water. “It just…seems pointless for the goddess to spare them,” Penelope murmured, her knuckles going white with her tight grip. “They’re going to die anyway. We all are.”
“Watch your tongue.”
Suja’s voice, sharp in a way it had never been before the attack, startled them both. Iliana whirled to see the healer glaring at Penelope, no trace of her usual softness to be found. “Such words are a disgrace to the gifts Mora has blessed you with,” Suja snapped. “These people have enough to weather without adding your dark mood to it.”
Iliana’s hand clenched around the gauze she’d been rolling as Penelope straightened her shoulders, her chin jutting forward. Iliana waited for her acerbic retort, but Penelope merely shook her head, tears springing to her eyes as she shouldered past Suja and stomped down the hall.
Suja huffed, her lips pressing in a tight line as she moved toward the supply shelves.
“She lost her sister, you know,” Iliana murmured, her eyes fixed on where Penelope had disappeared. “In the attacks. She’s not herself.”
Suja’s brow furrowed as she yanked a jar of herbs toward her. “We all lost someone.”
Iliana opened her mouth only to close it. She had been lucky—her parents had fled and had remained unharmed. But Suja…
There was a reason she had been spending her hours in this infirmary.
Most of the Dyminara were dead, and the rest…
Well, the rest would face trial for their treason, and would likely be dead in a fortnight. No one quite knew how Kakos’s evil had seeped into the queen’s elite guard, how the Dyminara had turned their backs on their kingdom and joined the Kakos soldiers in the attack. But there were rumors.
There were always rumors.
“It does not change that there is work we must do,” Suja continued through clenched teeth, and Iliana wondered if she was trying to convince herself of the matter rather than her.
The words were similar to what the High Priestess, Hyacinth, had said in the days following the attack, when she addressed the people from the heart of the ruins. She’d taken the throne just two days after Kakos had retreated.
For stability, Hyacinth had said.
For obedience to the Divine.
For Tala.
“For her own personal gain,” Suja had spat when Iliana had asked her thoughts on the matter.
Perhaps. But what did that matter in the light of what they faced? Tala was at war. Their queen was dead. And the Second Saint?
