“…the Blighted Lands are expanding again,” a dryad murmured, her voice a rustle of dry parchment. “Nothing can grow there. The earth turns to gray dust. Pure, mindless destruction.”
“It’s not mindless,” a satyr replied, his voice a low rumble. “There is a center to it. A core deep inside the fog. My brother swears the mist is a wall, hiding a kingdom where the dead walk.”
“A city of the dead?” The dryad shivered. “Madness. Nothing survives that air.”
“Maybe not us,” the satyr countered. “But things that feed on corpses? That thrive when surrounded by death? The stories say such creatures belong there. The Blighted Ones.”
The words struck a chord in me, a faint, flickering spark in the absolute dark of my mind.A city of the dead. The Blighted Ones.I looked at my heavy, lead-lined gloves, feeling the bite of the iron cuffs beneath them. If there was a place out there built on death—a place where my curse was the very air they breathed—then perhaps my touch wouldn’t destroy them.
Perhaps there was a place for me beyond this cage.
Jason stood, his chair scraping loudly against the floorboards. The tension in his shoulders vanished, replaced instantly by his casual, easy grace. The servant girl was still standing near the back of the inn, her eyes fixed on him.
Jason caught her gaze. A slow, thoughtful smile spread across his face.
“Peleus, Telamon,” he ordered softly. “Watch our precious cargo. I have some… business to attend to.” He nodded toward the servant girl, his eyes dark with sudden hunger.
The Argonauts grinned, their faces lighting up with cruel understanding.
Jason walked away, leading the eager girl toward the dark corridor of the inn’s back rooms. He was a man of singular focus, but even he allowed himself a moment of indulgence.
He left me at the table with his men. They drank heavily, tracking the barmaid’s hips as she disappeared with their captain. They saw me as a thing. A piece of luggage that couldn’t move without its master’s permission.
They failed to see the woman watching, waiting, and planning.
Right now, my magic was smothered in enchanted lead and silk, my body shackled and bruised. But as the Argonauts calledfor another flagon of ale, the spark in my mind ignited into a desperate flame.
Jason had left me with distracted guards. He had given me an opening.
I was going to run.
The Blighted Lands did not welcome the living, and they certainly did not welcome me.
For two days, the sky hung heavy, a stagnant violet choked with ash. Jagged, silver-blue death crystals jutted from the cracked earth. The ground beneath my feet formed a web of dry, gray silt. Skeletal trees clawed at the air with bone-white branches. Their long, distorted shadows seemed to reach for my ankles, hungry for warmth.
“You don’t belong here,”every single speck of dust seemed to scream.
My left wrist throbbed with blinding agony. At the tavern, I’d seen it as a small price to pay for freedom. I’d broken it on purpose, to free my hands. It hurt now, but the simple sacrifice had allowed me to rust away my hated shackles.
I hadn’t given much thought to what would happen after. Now, my wrist hung swollen and purple, a heavy weight I cradled against my chest. Worse still, the power that had freed me was destroying what little I had left.
I’d discarded my gloves myself, but my terrible gift was beginning to rot through my remaining clothes. Three hours ago, I’d been left barefoot. I hadn’t eaten in more than a day. I was afraid that if I tried, the food would vanish in my hands.
Come on, Medea. You can’t give up now.
I stumbled into a hollow and stopped to catch my breath. Here, the gray dust gave way to a carpet of pale flowers. Asphodels. They were the flowers of the dead, fed by the ambient energy of the fallen. Jason spoke of them often.“Beautiful and indifferent,”he called them.“Like you.”
I didn’t think I was indifferent, but maybe he liked to see me that way. Like nothing more than a doll. A puppet.
“She went that way,” Peleus called out from somewhere in the distance. “She’s weakening.”
“This place can’t touch Medea.” Jason’s answer came from farther back. Unhurried. “Don’t lose her to the mist.”
Not: be careful. Not: don’t hurt her. Lose her to the mist—as though I were a bag that had slipped from someone’s grip.
I’d been here too long. Even the few seconds I’d rested had cost me. They were getting closer, so close I could feel Jason’s breath on my neck.
Still shaking, I waded into the asphodel field. The effect was instantaneous. My shadow fell over the petals, and they shivered. The petals curled into dry ash before they hit the ground. I left a trail of dead, black stalks through the glowing field.
