Matthias swore while I swept the dust from my skirts. Behind him, Asher crouched, the usual twinkle of mirth gone as he narrowed his hard gaze in my direction. I was well and truly fucked.
I raised my chin higher. There was no hiding any more.
‘S-Sorrow?’ Matthias’s forehead furrowed.
I steeled my spine. His fingers quivered as they moved towards me before he yanked them back.
‘The horses. Romero’s horses.’
Understanding flooded his voice. Asher turned his bewildered gaze from me to his king, his eyes widening as the pieces fell into place. Matthias let out a low laugh.
‘I thought it was odd horses bred and trained for war bolted at the first sound of a diafol. But they didn’t, did they?’
Matthias swallowed again. ‘The accident. Romero told me you’d lost the magic, your gift. That it was all my fault.’
He reached out again. I shuddered in a shaky breath and forced myself to still as he cupped my cheek. ‘You didn’t lose it, did you?’ I avoided the awe in his wide eyes as he barked out a laugh. ‘All those years! Even Enfys told me you’d lost your gift, but you…I thought you couldn’t…What’s your gift, Sorrow? Did you train at the library? Who was it? Who on Eusis trained you, Sorrow?’
I bit my lip, brushed back the hair spilling over my face.
‘Sorrow?’
Asher moved forward, the harshness gone from his eyes. ‘You’ve been trained, haven’t you?’
I remained silent. Pablo whined, moving off to the tree line. The damned wolf would leave me to deal with this alone. Probably my punishment for chaining him. The two Asmarans exchanged a pointed stare. At times like this, I was grateful I couldn’t fully make out their expressions. I had a tendency to wipe pity from people’s faces with my fists.
‘How are you still alive?’ Matthias whispered.
I stood, straightening my skirts, and dragged in a breath. It seemed ridiculous to try and maintain the charade any longer.
‘I’ve not had any…formal training. I’ve studied, read every manual out there. I think that’s how I’ve avoided the blight. I can manipulate animals. It scares them. They panic. Quite a useless ability for an Anomaly, but it’s what Evella decided to bless me with, so…’
Matthias and Asher stood slowly, never once taking their eyes from me. My stomach soured. I’d give anything to rush after Pablo and hide with him in the shadows.
‘Again, Sorrow.’ Matthias crossed his arms, some semblance of control returning to the king. ‘How are you still alive? We knew you were emerging. You’re a Villente after all, but after you fell, after the accident, they said it was gone. I refused to accept that Evella had stripped you, but after the fall…’
The words – the truth – shrank in my throat. This had been my darkness, my secret for eight years. The gifts Evella blessed me with? When they’d first emerged, I’d struggled to supress them. I watched other Anomalies with envy writhing in my chest and dreamt of becoming one of the greatest after I trained.
Then Mama died…I thought back to the rainy afternoon with Enfys. The screaming. Rivers of blood pooling about my half-sister’s cowering form. I shuddered. Training this poison running through me might hurt others, kill them even. So I’d lied. Told everyone the accident stole my gifts as well as my sight. I knew that the blight claimed untrained Anomalies by the time they were in their late teens. I often scoffed at the idea we were blessed. If Evella favoured us Anomalies, then why did the gift bubble and froth in our blood until we’d been forced to master it? The gift demanded control or else we were no better than a raging diafol, beset with the crippling headaches and maddening itches offered by the blight. The unfettered gift ran rampant through us, creating a sudden, unwarranted strength. That strength, combined with the madness, led to the afflicted Anomaly tearing themselves apart in their desperation to ease the pain. And those that came to their aid? The ill-fated Anomaly would tear them apart too.
I had been amazed to wake up on my twentieth birthday. Then the headaches started. At first, I blamed them on my weak sight. It hadn’t been easy to hide it, but I coped. Until now. Until the fog.
‘You need to use your words. Tell me, Sorrow.’
‘Donotpatronise me, Matthias Elmswood.’
He closed his eyes. Took a settling breath.
‘I’m not. I swear. But this?’ He raised his hand, pointing to me. ‘This is suicide. Without training, emerging Anomalies die. Does Romero know?’
Sniffing, I toyed with the threads on my sleeve, buying myself a few moments to arrange my thoughts. I sifted through the lies. Selecting which facts would prevent further questions. I saw Enfys, the little girl trembling in her tattered blood-soaked clothes, and I shuddered. No. Matthias couldn’t know what else I harboured in my soul.
‘Sorrow?’
‘No.’ I looked him straight in those beautiful green eyes. ‘No. As far as he knew, Evella stripped me of my blessing. He decided I was of no use to him. Said he wouldn’t even be able to marry me off. No one in their right mind would want a half-blind wife, cursed by the Goddess. I persuaded him to send me to the library, but my work, my research got…slower, and he got more and more frustrated with my progress. When he came and told me I was his Tribute, part of me wanted to tell him I still had my gift. I mean, how many Anomalies can talk to the creatures? I knew it would save me from the lava.’ I swallowed as the words flowed. ‘But, they scared me. Scared me more than Vyrus’s flames ever could.’ I stared down at my hands, turned them over, before clenching my fists. ‘So yes, Matthias, I buried it. Kept it secret. Arrogantly tried to mentor myself, and maybe that’s why I’ve survived this long. If you hadn’t forced me to chain Pablo then I could have kept it secret. It’s all your fault.’
He laughed, my heart jolting as he swept his ever-rebellious hair from his face. Asher moved closer, studying me as though I’d crack. I looked away.
‘What about the headaches? How’ve you avoided them?’ Matthias asked. His eyes widened. ‘Back there, before the fog…’
