Councilor Lorian stepped back from their anger. It boiled, beginning to spill over the brim. All shouting to be heard.
“This is madness!” Wendell bellowed. “We are leaving this place. It’s cursed, and I will not leave my family here for the demon to devour. Come with us if you want to survive!” He grabbed Fleur and dragged her toward the exit.
The men followed suit, hauling their wives and children in a rush to escape the impending shadows at their backs.
Shouts blended into one mass roar as fear infected the atmosphere. Dyna felt it fall over her, growing and growing until she could not breathe. People fed into the panic and pushed to get to the door. Fights and screams broke out among the clamor.
“Enough!” Councilor Lorian shouted. “Calm yourselves! See reason!”
His pleadings went ignored. Dyna stayed in place, holding onto her grandmother. They pressed their backs into the wall so they wouldn’t be dragged into the chaos. This had to stop, or people would be injured.
“Lyra?” Dyna desperately searched the writhing crowd. “Grandmother, where is Lyra? I don’t see her!”
“God of Urn, I hope she stayed outside.”
Why’d she taken her eyes off her sister? If Lyra was caught in this, she would be trampled!
A crackle of energy prickled against Dyna’s skin at the charge in the air. Lady Samira’s dark eyes glowed with remnants of gold Essence as it spread throughout her silhouette. She rose from the table, moving slow but steady with the help of her gnarled staff. Her robes trailed behind her small, hunched frame.
She came to stand by Lorian and her thin arms trembled as she slowly raised her staff and slammed it on the floor with an unexpected force, sending a crack like thunder through the room. A wave of gold Essence blasted outward, and people dropped like sheared wheat. The stunned villagers laid where they fell, groaning but otherwise unhurt.
Dyna slowly righted herself and helped her grandmother stand where they had fallen against the wall. She searched for that spot of red hair and finally spotted Lyra standing at the doorway with Wren, and the other children who had been playing outside.
Dyna exhaled in relief, motioning at her sister to stay away. Lyra nodded and led the children away.
“Are we to squawk and cluck like mindless chickens?” Lady Samira demanded, her harsh tone cutting clear through the silence. She regarded the villagers with a severe glare, arching a white brow and daring anyone to defy her.
No one did.
She was one of the last remaining elders with powerful Essence and had earned their respect. But Dyna could see it had taken a great deal out of her. The color leached from her face, and she gripped her staff tightly in her shaking hands to remain upright.
Wendell cleared his throat. “Forgive us, Lady Samira, but we cannot keep biding our time. The Shadow will come again. Do you expect us to sit around and wait to die?”
“We have sent an expedition to gather Luna Reeds,” Councilor Cario announced, at last speaking. “We are awaiting their return.”
Councilor Mathis nodded. “Traveling as far as the Magos Empire will take time.”
“They left last summer,” another man wearing a leather tanner apron said as he sat up from where he had been thrown. “Either they didn’t survive the journey, or they have abandoned us.”
Dyna didn’t believe it. No one had volunteered to go on the expedition so the councilors chose a group at random. Well, they insisted it had been a random selection, but she’d noticed those chosen had families. Men with the most to lose if they didn’t return.
“What if the Archmage discovered who they are?” Duren grunted. “They could be trapped in Magos for all we know, maybe no one is coming at all.”
Five women gathered in a back corner near Dyna silently wept and held onto each other for comfort. The wives of those who had gone on the expedition, she realized. Every day they must watch the road leading out of the village, hoping and waiting for their husbands to come home.
Would they return? Or would this be another loss the council deemed necessary?
Wendell shook his head. “We need to abandon this place. It’s cursed.”
The villagers agreed in loud calls.
“You are right,” Lady Samira said, her brisk tone silencing them. “Go on, then. Leave the only protection that hides your wives and daughters from the mages. Go and die fighting the Archmage’s Enforcers when they come for them. You may as well walk through the Forbidden Woods; it will be a much kinder ending.”
The villagers gasped and murmured at the mention of the dark, looming forest on the eastern side of North Star—the forest they were warned not to enter. Any who dared go in was never seen again.
Grandmother Leyla’s eldest daughter had been one of them.
The surrounding crowd stole glances at her, whispering among themselves. Dyna’s grandmother ignored them all, poised and calm as she looked ahead.
