By the time we return to Thornfal, dawn has broken over the horizon. Our news that we’ve defeated the dragon isn’t met with celebration. It never is when I’ve dispatched a serious threat. Because a serious threat means dead to mourn. Furthermore, there’s always the chance the threat could return, in cases where a resident is responsible for attracting it. The three nights following the de-escalation of a Shade attack are the most important, for that is the most likely window of time in which a Shade would regain its frenzied state and return, drawn to whoever attracted it, either by a repeat of their sin, or by their guilt over having been responsible. The caveat is that the resident must be aware that they were the cause and feel guilty about it.
Regardless, a repeat attack never bodes well for the village, even when the perpetrator has been caught. Even if a town was next in line to receive a Holy Brazier, having a known sinner discovered in their midst can set them back to zero in the eyes of King Kaelum. Supplies like oil, wicks, and lamps will suddenly become unavailable to those villages. The nearest churches will withhold their support in requesting aid from Shadowbanes.
Fear is a powerful motivator in garnering obedience. And there’s nothing more terrifying than seeing an entire village razed to the ground by Shades.
As the morning sun illuminates more of the damage done to Thornfal, the bodies being collected in the market square, the somber faces of those either busying themselves with cleaning or hunched in mourning, I can’t help but cast a prayer to the gods that this is the worst they’ll see. Whether that’s more for the village’s benefit or mine—to assuage my guilt for having been late to my post—I know not. But I’m about to find out whether I deserve blame or mercy.
“When did the dragon first appear?” I ask the mayor of Thornfal. My crew has been escorted to the inn, where rooms had already been prepared in anticipation of our arrival. As much as my body begs me to rest too, my duties aren’t yet done.
The mayor rubs his brow. He’s a middle-aged man with wire-rimmed spectacles, his nightshirt stained with soot and blood. “Last night.”
His answer surprises me. “Last night as in…nightfall twelve hours ago?”
“Approximately,” he says with an uneven nod.
I furrow my brow. I received the missive before then. All the letter stated was that the situation at my post had escalated from a routine service to emergency status and that my post would be given to another Shadowbane if I didn’t promptly arrive. Routine posts are regularly assigned at villages, whether they see nightly Shade activity or not, whereas emergency posts are assigned when there are active attacks on homes or people. My post in Thornfal was meant to be a routine assignment, which is why I thought we had time to rest and train before arriving. So was it merely a coincidence that the threat level escalated during my tardiness? Or was my post mislabeled from the start?
“What was the reason for your plea to the church to alter the level of threat?” I ask. “What was the situation like before last night?”
“We’d seen an average amount of Shades,” he says, voice tired, “but nothing worth fretting about. Then, three days ago, their visits grew more active, with some scratching at doors or even entering dark rooms in houses. One of my citizens was attacked when their lamp went out, so I sent my plea to the church. We had no idea our situation would worsen so quickly.”
“Do you suspect anyone?” I hate this question. Hate the witch hunts it can inspire, just to shift the blame onto someone and cast the accuser in a holy light. But the mayor seems an honest man.
“No, Thornfal’s residents are pious. We beg for mercy when we sin, and we cast out the unrepentant.”
My eye twitches at this. He’s perhaps too honest.
“Still, we receive our share of travelers. We can’t vouch for those who aren’t our own.”
“No one reported suspicious activity when the first deadly attack occurred?”
“No, there was nothing.”
I nod, letting myself be satisfied with that. He returns to his efforts helping the villagers clean up the market square, sweeping up soot and debris and scrubbing blood from cobblestones. My eyes snag on a deep gash carved into one of the stone houses. The Shade may have been calmed and encouraged to shift into harmless flying squirrels, but there’s no forgetting what it was. What it did. The damage it caused. The people it killed.
And there’s no pretending the dozen Shades took that singular shape of their own accord. Only an artist could have tempted them to become a dragon.
The next three nights will tell whether said artist is still in our midst.
Chapter Fifteen
Inana
Thornfal feels so much like my hometown it makes my heart ache. Not that my life in Dunway was enviable, and after everything that happened there, even my happy memories are tainted. Still, an inadequate home is still a home if you’ve never found a place to call your own elsewhere.
Under the light of day, Thornfal is almost identical to Dunway. Same stone houses, same thatched or tiled roofs, same unobtrusive storefronts with the same bland wares. There are no trees or shrubs, offering as few places as possible for Shades to linger. There’s even a dress shop that looks just like mine did: a simple brick building with militant-looking dress forms cluttering the window, boasting the most austere skirts and bodices made from the same patterns I traced and sewed day in and day out for the five years I was a seamstress.
I note all of this from the window of our loft room at the inn. We haven’t left the loft since we retired here yesterday at dawn, our every need attended to by the servants who bring our food and drink. We even received gifts from the mayor: new cloaks and boots lined with fur to get us through the approaching winter, an assortment of wool clothing, clean vials for Dominic and Calvin.
The room itself is a gift, a grand suite compared to the barracks where I slept in Nalheim, and probably the finest accommodationsthis town has to offer. It’s a large space with a sloped ceiling, wood-paneled walls, four beds, and an abundance of oil lamps, candles, and reflective disks hanging from the rafters to protect us come nightfall. After the makeshift barricade of flame we saw the night of the attack, I’m surprised the town has anything left to burn.
I shudder.
That night feels like a dream. A nightmare, more like, but one where I awoke not from terror but from victory. A strange, unearthly victory tinged with the sorrow that comes from knowing we were too late to prevent casualties. Yet that happens in every unprotected town; fatalities come with the territory of being plagued by monsters. That doesn’t stop the conflict in my heart. The dragon Shade was terrifying. Deadly. It left enough destruction in its wake that the villagers are still cleaning up outside, from what little I can see of the market square from my window.
And yet…
What we did with our art, mesmerizing the Shade and convincing it to divide into flying squirrels…
