But even if I’d learned how to make people ignore me, I never spared myself a single detail ofthem—their physical features. Their voices. Their gestures.
Tonight, their screams wriggled down into my bones, echoing deep. Waking up the memories I’d taken great pains to bury down in a place where they couldn’t be seen or heard.
Screams everywhere. Far away—strangers' screams.
But also right beside me—herscreams. Screams of fear and agony and grief and suffering.
Screams that told me—even then, when I knew so little of the world—that if they didn’t kill her, she would do the job for them.
She already had a knife in her hand. A blunt thing, barely sharp enough to slice through a radish. It would hurt going in.
She’d try to kill me first. Try to spare me from what I’d suffer at their hands.
It was her voice that sang to me, her voice that clung to the inside of my skull and trilled about all the terrible things they would do.
A word from Oak drew me away from that dark, clouded memory. We’d reached the town gates.
They were closed, the guards gone. Hopefully they were off helping the injured instead of seeking out Mordren. The extra patrols and mercenaries in Ring-Around-the-Hill could certainly help against any beasts that wandered in from the surrounding wilderness, but they were no match for one of the Circle. Especiallyhim.
Mordren couldn’t match Laitha’s raw power, nor her cunning. He was dangerous in a very different way.
If Laitha was devious and deliberate, Mordren was unpredictable, with a tendency toward anarchy and even madness. We’d long suspected that it was only the tight rein of the Circle that kept him in check. But with the Circle fractured…
Pluck off the petals
Slice off the wing
We escaped the town through the guards' door next to the gate, slipping out into the night.
The land surrounding Ring-Around-the-Hill was quiet. Too still after the chaos within. It was as if the night was holding her breath, afraid to make even a whisper lest she draw the attention of the man responsible for this destruction.
Now it was my turn.
Peel off the skin
From the pitiful thing
This was my domain.
With a look to my brothers, I slipped away from them, keeping to the shadows, sliding through the dark toward the trees, slightly to the east of where Talon claimed Mordren was hiding. That friend of Oak’s was insufferable, but I had to admit that his feathered spies had their uses.
When I reached the forest, I released a breath, long and slow. My eyes darted down the line of trees, distinguishing shadow from shadow, until I spotted the one I was looking for—an ancient wild oak with a fallen limb on its left side, offering the perfect den of darkness.
Carve out the poison
Sever each piece
I had no doubt that Mordren was there this very moment, tucked into the darkness beneath the tree. He’d need to recover between blasts of power, and he wouldn’t let us catch him completely spent. He was a reckless fool, yes, but if he’d come here for us, to draw us out to him, he’d be ready. Waiting.
It was unclear how he’d tracked us—he had no skill with zhespers like Laitha, and even those would have been of little use in the crowds of Ring-Around-the-Hill. Maybe he’d kept a remnant of us from before—dried blood on a shirt, or some hair—but honestly, I didn’t believe Mordren capable of such foresight.
Suck out the bones
I moved through the trees, as silent as the night around me. Oak and Alastor would be falling into place on the other side, but the first move was mine—it was always mine, in situations like this. A slash in the darkness, a stab in the silence. Often a quick, quiet attack from the shadows could prevent greater bloodshed.
And then we will feast
There’d be no quick death tonight. Even if I thought I could end this with a single slice of my blade, I didn’t want Mordren’s end to be swift or easy. Not after what he’d done.
