I straightened my shoulders and strode past my scowling men. Removing my helmet, I went to the armor rack, then divested myself of all the training gear—helmet, breastplate, and so on. Rath and Xae did the same, shooting me worried looks all the while. I finished before they did and hurried away, leaving the training yard with as much dignity as I could muster. As soon as I was around the corner of the keep, I sped up and dashed inside.
“Ember!” Rath called after me.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “I'm a fucking adult. I don't need to be looked after like a child.” I headed for the stairs, but then I was struck with an overwhelming and startling desire to be somewhere else. Somewhere I thought I'd never want to return.
Looking back just as Rath entered the keep, I summoned my Spirit Magic and faded away.
Chapter Eight
Although I was born with magic, including Spirit, I'd never thought I'd be able to fade, traveling great distances in the blink of an eye like the Wraith Lords did. But I was a Wraith Lord now. I had even spoken with the Goddess. And I could fade. It made escaping uncomfortable situations a lot easier.
But why had I chosen this place to escape to?
I stood before the charred remains of my old home. It wasn't a shock. I had seen the wreckage before. What struck me were the small changes. The little plants growing among the blackened beams. The windswept stone floor. And the abundance of vegetables in the garden. Life went on. It rose from the ashes. The world could not be held back by a mere coating of soot. In fact, it was empowered by it.
It lifted my spirits in a strange way. That nature could reclaim what man had destroyed. In a few years, the village might not resemble a village in any way. The forest would creep in and perhaps the animals would make a home in the caves of crumbled houses. If the villagers never returned.
“Fuck,” I whispered, thinking of the neighbors I had known, but not befriended.
I had to keep the secret of my magic. No human on Varr had magic. I was the first. My parents had taught me to hide it. They wanted to protect me. In the end, I used it to protect Rath and outed myself. But I didn't regret it. My life changed for the better the day I saved his.
I went into the front garden and picked a tomato. Munching on the plump vegetable—no, wait, tomatoes are fruit—I wandered through the town. No building had been left standing. This was the site of the Corrupter's humiliation. The place where I had turned him into a statue, albeit briefly. He had to flee that day, something I doubt he had ever done, especially not from a human. But he had returned later with an army of the Corrupted—humans whom he had infected with Death Magic and turned into slaves. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he had corrupted the villagers of Fress—the very people Rath and Nex had saved, and who had probably thought they were safe after surviving that initial attack—and forced them to destroy their own homes. It was just the kind of fucked up thing that bastard would do.
I didn't know how to find them. My old neighbors could be anywhere on Varr, doing the Corrupter's dirty work, completely under his spell. But if I ever crossed paths with any of them again, I would gladly free them from corruption. Until then, I would focus on freeing their children.
Somehow.
Shit. I didn't know where the adults were, but I could free them if I did. While I knew exactly where the children were, but didn't know how to free them.
Suddenly feeling like a child myself—kind of ironic after I'd gotten so upset about being treated like one—I veered right and left the village. I wanted my parents. My mommy and daddy. The one positive of being imprisoned by the Corrupter and chased by Death was that I had gotten to see my parents again. Death used them as bait and tried to lure me into using the magic by showing me what I could have. But the Consciousness of Death Magic wasn't a person. It didn't have the emotions or dreams of someone who had lived. So it couldn't conceive of how I felt when I saw the souls of my parents or predict what they'd say to me. It didn't know that they would only empower my resistance further. My parents were safe in the afterworld, and they were proud of me. The last thing I wanted to do was bring them back using Death Magic. They would not approve of that. All the magic had done was give me peace.
I sought that peace again.
My feet took me down the familiar path, through the trees and to the meadow that had been cleared long ago. An iron fence enclosed it, holding back as much of nature as it could, but even the graveyard would eventually be claimed by the forest. Maybe that was for the best. People shouldn't stand over buried corpses and mourn over them. Their loved ones weren't there. I wouldn't find my parents among the stones carved with their names and dates that meant nothing to them anymore. And thank the Goddess for that. Still, I kept walking.
I opened the gate and stepped through. Then I stopped. Stared. Gaped.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
Racing past the piles of dirt and open holes, my heart slamming in my chest, I nearly fell several times. But I kept going, my floundering steps taking me to the plots I had picked. The earth I had dug myself, without help from anyone. I had buried my parents here, near the edge of the graveyard, near a beautiful elm. I had even planted peonies over their graves. They were my mother's favorite.
The flowers were unearthed.
I stopped before the eruptions of soil and stared at the holes in the center of them. Bits of wooden planks peeped through, and I didn't have to lean in to know that the coffins below were empty. But I did. I went forward and dropped to my knees on the crumbling dirt. I pushed aside the bruised blossoms and grasping roots to bend over the holes and peer into the darkness. A beam of sunlight caught on the white cotton padding of my father's coffin. His empty coffin.
“No,” I whispered. “No, please.”
Then I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed until my voice went hoarse and my eyes swelled shut.
I knew who had done this. Only one man on Varr could be so evil. Only one person would target this particular graveyard and desecrate these graves. Only one sorcerer would even think to take the dead.Mydead.
The Corrupter.
Chapter Nine
I don't know how long I stayed at my parents' defiled graves. It was long enough to turn my screams into silence. Long enough to send me onto my side and curl me into a ball. The sun set. Night enclosed me in its cool, shadowed embrace. Soft sounds attempted to comfort me—the chirping of insects, the cooing of sleepy birds, and the shivering of leaves in the wind. But I wasn't comforted. I was drained. No thoughts in my head, just the endless screaming that I could no longer produce.
I don't know why this broke me. My parents were gone. They were somewhere safe. Most likely with the Goddess, though they hadn't been able to remember when we spoke. Still, I knew their spirits were at peace. Hadn't I been musing about this very thing while I walked to the graveyard? The Corrupter had only taken corpses. Shells that had once housed the souls I loved. Like the homes he had burned, they were empty. They didn't matter.
