It did not matter that they wielded mágik—that we did not—the Rázuri of the Acsillan Army were struck down under my wrath, as withered as the land beneath my feet.
“How many did you kill tonight?” Lili’s voice cut through my memory, severing the image as I came back to reality.
“Two,” I murmured, my focus firmly on the tread of my boots.
“Me too,” Lili spoke through the frown which tilted her lips. “But… Seren, do you ever wonder if this is just? Killing them as we do?”
I let the silence hang. It stretched uncomfortably, a dark chasm in the soft pink silk of dawn. Finally, I said, “I don’t have to wonder if this is just. They hurt us, so we hurt them.”
“Is that justice? Or is it revenge?” She did not ask the question with malice but with genuine curiosity, and I could not find it in myself to grow angry. I felt only bone deep exhaustion. “When does the cycle end?”
“It ends when either they or we are wiped from Szrestia, I presume. So it has been and so it will be.” I did not speak again as the palace rose before me. I let myself in through the wrought iron gate, flinching at the squeal of unoiled metal, and my eyes found the sky, as they so often did.
The last few persistent stars shone above. They twinkled in greeting, constellations dancing together in a sweeping waltz to music that could not be heard from the mortal realm. The moon beckoned, a pale white crescent in the brightening sky.
A falling star arched spectacularly toward the earth, a shimmering streak of gold, before they winked out altogether, and I wished,hopelessly, that I could turn back time. That I could save them. That I could save myself.
If only I could find the Drakány, I might ride upon their great backs, hands gripping tightly to rough scales. I could nearly feel how we would soar through the trees and mountains, wind in my hair and clouds on my tongue. With a dragon, I could reach my stars, my Goddesses, and the worthy souls who joined them in death.
I lied to myself about what that meant. I shoved down the hypocrisy of my desire for the Goddesses my people had forsaken, and for a creature of mágik, when mágik was what I hated most of all.
Chapter three
Harkin
The steady drum of boots on cobblestone was akin to the pound of my racing heart. It echoed with each weighted drip of steaming blood from my crimson-slicked dagger. My fingers grew sticky with it, grip tightening on the hilt of the weary blade.
Mágik swelled beneath my breast, aching to be called, but I did not draw upon it.
Not yet.
I stalked forward, unhurriedly, for the lord I hunted limped along on severed sinew. The stark white bones of his leg were exposed to the evening air, too bright in the growing twilight. It should have concerned me—that the sight did not disarm me in the slightest—but I had grown accustomed to the gruesome.
Lord Laski reached out, summoning the slightest flame, but his mágik was weak; his power drained away with the ebb of his waning life force. It flickered out just as quickly.
When he collapsed, bitter resignation written in the lines of his face, I paused. My voice was soft when I spoke, not quite placating but something akin to it. “You needn’t have run.”
“I suppose you would have preferred me to offer myself to you? A lamb for the slaughter?” Lord Laski chuckled, a deep and humorlesssound. His laughter died as a coughing fit overtook him. Blood gurgled in his throat. He spat, spittle staining my boots red.
“Your life was forfeit, either way, but I could have made it quick, had you accepted your fate.” I delivered the words with practiced ease. A falsehood of nonchalance that masked the wrongness of it all.
Lord Laski closed his eyes, and he looked at peace for the briefest of moments. “What was it that did me in, in the end?”
“Prince Claudian gave you an order, yet you would not bend your will. You were not swayed by threats or bribery… What did you in, you ask? Your mistake was holding on to your morality in a den of vipers.” I ignored how the words struck a chord within my own wretched heart. I convinced myself that if I was not doing what was right, then I was doing what I must.
I thrust my dagger through the lord’s sternum and twisted until I pierced the straining organ beneath. Muscle and bone wrenched apart, wet and wrong. His blood flowed black in the darkened street, spilling wasted over my hands and into the gutter.
Lord Laski did not make a sound as he died. I didn’t know if it was better or worse, that the only sound in my ears was the rush of my own blood as his corpse stared back at me—empty save for the weight of my own regret.
My fingers wove through the air as I wrapped the body in bands of mágik. The rustle of the wind jumped at my call, and Lord Laski stuttered forward before catching a current.
Mágik settled in my bones and bloomed in my chest. I felt the flow of the air high above Acsilla, wild and indifferent to the kingdom's whims. Teasing apart the fragile drift, I directed Lord Laski into a current bound for the sea. If the lord was ever found, it would be farfrom here, all evidence of my crimes washed away by the seething tide.
A trail of blood settled between the worn grooves in the cobblestone, but there was nothing to be done for it. It would be cleansed with the next rain, and I thanked the Goddesses for the heavy clouds which settled over my head.
The path home was not a long one, but it stretched as exhaustion weighed on me. Music rang through the streets, discordantly bright and cheery in the murderous night. It signaled the start of the Autumn Harvest Ball where Prince Claudian would be expecting me.
I tore my ruined clothes from my body and sank into a steaming bath. The water bloomed pink and red—blood and dirt and sweat shedding from me like a second skin. My hands trembled, and I might have pretended it was from the chill had I not been deliciously warm.
