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And I will follow.
3
So I Might Live
Corayne
The gray horse ran through a gray world.
Ash and snow spiraled together, hot and cold.
Corayne felt none of it. Not the horse cantering beneath her. Not the tears on her cheeks, carving tracks down her dirty face. Nothing broke through her shield. The emptiness was the only defense she had against all behind her.
Against the death. The loss. And the failure too.
She held on to the invisible shield as long as she could, holding it tight against her heart. She dared not look back again. She could not bear the sight of Gidastern, swallowed up by smoke and flame. A graveyard to so many, including her friends.
Somehow the empty field was worse than the city’s corpse.
No one followed. No one waited.
No one survived.
So Corayne did as she knew best, as her mother would have. She put the horizon ahead of her, and followed the smell of saltwater.
The Watchful Sea was her only companion, its iron waves battering the shore. Then night fell, leaving nothing but the sound of the sea. Eventhe blizzard faded away, the sky clearing. Corayne glared up at the stars, reading them as she would a map. The old constellations she knew were still there. They had not burned with the rest of the world. Out over the sea, the Great Dragon clutched the North Star in its jaws. She tried to take comfort in something familiar, but found even the stars were dull, their light cold and distant.
The horse kept on, never slowing. Corayne knew it was some magic of Valtik’s, one last gift.
If only she gave the same strength to me, she thought bitterly.
She could not say how many hours passed in the burning city. It felt like years, her body aged a century, haggard and exhausted. Her throat burned, still scratchy from smoke. And her eyes stung from too many tears shed.
Reluctantly, she tried the reins. Part of her doubted the horse would listen, bound instead to a dead witch in a burned city.
But the mare responded without hesitation, slowing her pace. It blinked at her mournfully.
“I’m sorry,” Corayne forced out, her voice raw as her throat.
Her nose wrinkled.All my friends are dead and now I’m apologizing to a horse.
Slowly, she slid down from the saddle, her body aching after hours on the road. It hurt to walk but still felt better than riding. Reins in hand, she forced onward, the mare keeping pace at her side.
In her head, she heard the voices of the undead army, little more than beasts, moaning and gurgling as one. United behind Taristan and Erida, and What Waits above them all.
Corayne leaned against the horse’s flank, chasing the mare’s warmth. Reminding herself she was not alone, not truly. The horse smelled of smoke, blood, and something colder, half-familiar. Pine and lavender. Ice.
Valtik.
Corayne’s heart clenched and her tears gathered again, threatening to fall.
“No,” she forced out. “No.”
Jewels gleamed in the corner of her eye. She turned her head to see the Spindleblade in its sheath, the sword lashed to the horse’s saddle. The gemstones in the hilt winked with every step of the horse, weakly reflecting the stars overhead. Corayne knew the stones and steel all too well. It was a perfect match to her father’s Spindleblade, the one left shattered in a burning garden.
“A twin,” Corayne said aloud, her voice low.
Twin blades, twin brothers. Two fates. And one terrible future.
