I consider everything I’ve learned since I arrived here. “I think you are honorable. It’s the one thing that always gave me pause, for how could you be the monster I sought when you treated me so kindly?”
“I am not kind,” he murmurs. “There’s a reason I am feared.”
“Not by me,” I tell him, and he stills, considering the words.
“And you?” he asks. “What of your life?”
“There isn’t much to tell,” I reply. “I was born in the deserts, but a plague drove my father to take us north, back to the lands of his birth. We eked out a living in a small village near the border of Karslake for a year or two, whilst we waited for our immigration papers to clear. It was nice there, but the plague followed us eventually. It took my father first, and then mother began to show signs.” I swallow, toying with my nails. The ancient helpless feelings bubble up inside me.
“I was seven, I think. Aylin was thirteen. And when I started to show signs of the fever, she tried everything to stop it. Herbals. Prayer. She even paid amagito look over us, though I think him but a charlatan.” That little hole inside me, the one that has never quite closed, pulses with a long-repressed ache, akin to that of a missing limb. “I was dying, though we didn’t know it. For some reason Aylin never fell ill. And by that time the breath was rattling through Mother’s lungs. Aylin was desperate. She crawled into my bed and held me through the night, rocking me and singing to me. Mother stopped breathing at some stage. I remember the sound of it.”
A long, drawn out rattle and then… nothing.
My voice grows tight. Small. “I woke the next day, miraculously healed. I was the only one in the village who survived.”
Bael’s gaze finds mine, and I can see the suspicion there. “She healed you?”
“She couldn’t save us both,” I whisper. “It took me years to realize that was why mother lingered so long. Aylin had been keeping her alive with the small magics she’d inherited through father’s bloodline, but neither of us knew it at the time. When I fell sick… She somehow made a choice. It was the first time she’d actively channeled her power.
“It’s dangerous in my lands to have magic, particularly in Karslake. I remember her panicking when I woke the next morning, hale and whole. My fever had barely broken before Aylin bundled me into clothes we stole from a nearby house, and identification papers we took from the dead family across the street. My father had a falling out with his own family before our birth, but Aylin swore my aunt would take us in. So we traveled to the city, and Aunt Lyria took one look at us—one look at Aylin to be precise—and ushered us over the doorstep.” I shrug. “Inever felt truly at home there, but Aunt Lyria was kind, and she began to tutor Aylin behind closed doors.
“We were there for a couple of years, until Aunt Lyria was arrested by the Knights of Malus for her small magics. They took her to the breeding colonies and we escaped to the country, moving from farm to farm, making our living through the means of little jobs. Aylin had learned to control her gifts, so she could mend almost anything with her touch.
“When I was eleven, we found a place with an older couple who’d lost their grandchildren years ago. I think they felt sorry for Aylin, as she was of the age when men’s eyes started to linger. They let us stay, let us have the gatekeeper’s cottage for our own. Old Terrill taught me to hunt. Aylin helped Maegery in the herb garden. It was… It was probably the happiest I’ve ever been.” I can almost hear the buzzing of bees in my memory as I lie on the grass in the garden and listen to my sister hum as she clips the basil. Aylin had begun to heal during those years, no longer forced to look over our shoulders at every moment. Full bellies at every meal. Smiles on Aylin’s face as she grew plump and soft. I’d never truly been able to relax, but I found some semblance of relief in learning how to fight and hunt from Terrill.
Some part of me always knew the knights would come again, and this time, I was determined to protect my sister.
Unfortunately, when the time came to be the one to save Aylin, I was away hunting.
“What happened?” Bael murmurs.
“Aylin wasn’t like me. She was soft and kind, despite everything. She’d always been so careful with her magics, but one of the local village girls caught her tending to a bird with a broken wing. The next day the bird was flying. I told Gyria the wing hadn’t been broken, that the bird was merely stunned, but there was enough doubt in her mind. I could see it in her eyes. And then three weeks later, the knights came again.”
His hand slides through mine, and I lock my fingers tight. “This time they came for Aylin, for their sniffer could sense the smell of her magic all over the hearth and herb garden. I wasn’t home. It was prime deer season and we needed to fill the cellar for winter. The first I knew of it was the scent of smoke on the wind.”
Gods, I can see it all over again, feel the dread sinking like a pit in my stomach, the blood pumping through my veins as I run and run, slipping and sliding down the mountain slopes, careless of myself… Knowing it will be too late, knowing they are all gone.
Heat floods my eyes, my throat raw and dry. “The homestead was burning, and the second I found Terrill’s body, I knew what had happened. There’s only one blade in my kingdom that can remove a man’s head that cleanly. Maegery was in the gardens, weeping blood from a sword wound. The knights came for Aylin, and they didn’t care who they cut through to get their hands on her. I thought they intended her for the breeding colonies, for her magic was strong enough to make her highly fertile, and the knights like them fertile. Helps to breed up future acolytes, and if the magic breeds true, then those acolytes would be invulnerable against their war with the witch kind in the north. It made me sick to think of it, for Aylin was… she wasgentle. Her heart would break every time they took a son from her arms and turned him into a monster, or worse, if she birthed a daughter.”
I can’t stop myself from shuddering.
Bael’s brows draw together. “They… kill the daughters?”
He sounds horrified.
“Daughters are witches,” I tell him simply. “In my kingdom, no witch must be allowed to survive uncollared. By the time I found where they’d taken her, they’d sacrificed her to the bride hunt as the kingdom’s tribute. I spent years trying to discover more about the hunt. Eventually I found two women who’d been part of it.” I lean back against his chest. “One of them, Serissa,saw you take Aylin. They told me she was screaming as you plucked her from the ground, and they never saw her again. I swore then that I would find you, and I would kill you.”
A gentle kiss brushes against my shoulder. “What will you do now your quest is done?”
The desperation remains. I want my sister so badly it hurts. Even as the knowledge that she abandoned me remains like a piece of glass left behind in an open wound; raw and irritating.
“I will find Kari. I will rescue her. And then we’ll make our way to the end of this Godforsaken Labyrinth, where the pair of us will take our fates into ourownhands. And if anyone tries to stop me, I’ll burn their fucking world to the ground.”
Bael’s grin is a flash of vicious white in the darkness of the night. “Want some help? I’m good at burning things down.”
Chapter 14
Zyla
