“Who do you think crippled that boy?” Vade asked.
She turned to face him. “You don’t know it was her.”
He cocked his head in that predatory way of his. “Don’t I?”
She knew women had the capability of being cruel, but to cripple her own son? Unthinkable.
“Now that family can live in peace. You may think me a monster, Orelia, but monsters have many faces. One can never know the truth of what goes on inside a home except those who live inside it.”
He spoke in a way that made it sound like he was speaking from experience. She thought about what Elshar had said. About what happened to Vade when he was a boy.
She shook her head, not wanting to believe the woman had done what he was insinuating. “No . . .no, you’re wrong. We don’t know for sure what she did or didn’t do. But now we’ll never know because—” She choked on the words. “Because you killed her. You can’t just blindly take lives because they appear on that stupid stone, Vade! What if one of these days you’re wrong, and you take an innocent life?”
“Do you think that woman was innocent? You saw what I saw. You saw the father battered and nearly weeping for joy when he hugged his son. Tell me that isn’t a man who’s glad the wolf is no longer sleeping in his bed.”
She kept shaking her head, but the evidence lined up the more she considered his words. Orelia glanced at the cabin. Through the window, the father set a bowl of something steaming on the table in front of Owen, a smile on his face as he tried to console his crying boy.
Vade gently gripped her chin and turned her head, directing her attention back to him. When he dropped his hand, his face softened. “If you learn anything from me, let it be this. What’s on the surface is nothing compared to what’s going on inside the mind. Evil is not in everyonebut it is everywhere, Orelia. It’s in a barmaid, or a farrier, or a street merchant, or a brothel owner. It’s in a kid that tortures animals, or a sorcerer who deals in dark magic, or in a woman who abuses her husband and son.”
Tears sat in her eyes. She’d seen the evils of men, but seeing the wrongs of a mother up close had her questioning her entire belief system. Could Gurn have done something like that, too? Could hehave been the one to kill his wife and merely claimed she’d just gotten sick? Is that why his name appeared on the stone? Her mind was spinning.
Vade rested his hand on the hilt of his dagger. “Evil knows no boundaries—not from wealth, or status, or class. It’s in the richest cities in the world and in cabins in the middle of a swamp. I don’t decide who dies, but I do know that justice must be served one way or another, and justice is an ugly business. A business I have been in for years, and one that has shown me true horrors you can’t even imagine.”
Orelia nodded her understanding.
“Next time I have to take a life, don’t try and stop me, because you have no idea what evils lurk in the lives that show up on that stone. Understand?”
There wasn’t the normal condescension in his tone, and Orelia realized this was a teaching moment for her. The world was vast, and his experiences outweighed hers a thousand fold. The tears cleared from her eyes, and she began to see the world for what it really was—a sharp-toothed trap waiting for someone like her to step on the trigger plate so it could snap her in half.
Though it was gruesome and horrific to see what he had done, something in her changed. A bit of hope for a positive world was chiseled away. Life was cruel. Life was unfair. And sometimes, foul deeds needed to be done so more evil deeds wouldn’t continue.
She kept quiet, and Vade seemed surprised by her lack of retort. He slunk toward the cabin, but she didn’t want to see him sever thewoman’s finger, regardless of what she’d done. When he returned, Orelia asked him if she could offer to set the boy’s bones right.
“I don’t intervene with my kills. Too many questions will get asked.”
“Please?” Orelia asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. I can’t explain who I am, or why we’re out here in the middle of nowhere and how we know he’s crippled already. We need to go before someone sees us.”
She glanced at the woman again, then at the windows, the man and his son having left the table. Orelia’s hands itched to heal, but she let Vade lead her back into the marshland without a word.
After a half mark of trailing behind him mulling over the night’s events, Orelia looked up just in time to avoid a massive spider web. She rerouted and pushed her hair back from her sweat-soaked face. Even though Minro was a seaside village, she’d never experienced humidity like this. The air itself felt wet somehow. She wondered if wind ever graced Fink, or if the air was perpetually thick and still. She just wanted to get back to the inn, take a bath, and go to sleep.
The moon slipped behind the clouds, coating the area in a near opaque darkness. Orelia could hardly see her own feet, and Vade was barely visible up ahead. Between swatting away the gnats and trying not to run into trees, she missed the sloping ground, and her right foot sunk deep into the wetlands.
“Gods-dammit,” she muttered. Orelia tried to pull her foot out, but her leg sunk into the mud down to her knee.
She couldn’t see Vade but heard him as he approached. He grabbed her hand and tugged, but she didn’t budge.
“Pull harder,” she said.
“I’m trying.” Vade yanked her arm, and her boot dislodged from the mud with a loudpop. She fell, but sweaty palms caught her.
“Thanks,” Orelia said. She looked up at him, their faces close and breaths mingling.
Vade held onto her arms, eyes searching hers. His grip softened, hands sliding down her sides and landing on her hips. She sucked in a breath, finding herself unable to look away.
“We need to—” Vade’s words were cut off, and he fell to his knees.
