Franca willed her legs to go fast and far. She placed one in front of the other, pushing off with the powerful muscles in her thighs—honed by years atop her big horse, Cato—whom everyone claimed was much too large a horse for a lady. Cato would likely be taken back to Albiyn, and she hoped they would treat him well.
The godsgrass streamed past, slicing tiny cuts across her skin. Still, she ran. On and on.
Franca eventually heard the hooves behind her. Her teeth were clenched in agony as she bore down on the pain of her cramping legs. Her ankles felt like they would shatter under the pressure as her feet pounded across the ground.
And then she fell, her foot twisting sharply under her. The force of her momentum sent her face grinding against the ground, one shoulder digging in, nearly turning her head over heels.
When she came to a stop, she was in a slight depression, lower than the surrounding fields, and that was where she stayed as the soldiers raced past.
"Morrigan Mother, blessed of the angels and warrior of peace. Guard me from the forces of darkness. Morrigan Mother, blessed of the angels and warrior of peace. Guard me from the forces of darkness. Morrigan Mother, blessed of the angels and warrior of peace. Guard me from the forces of darkness."
The horses' hooves missed her by only a few feet where she was curled into herself in a ball, praying in a quiet whisper.
She stayed there, with her eyes tightly shut, repeating the litany of the prayer, letting the words constantly streaming through her mind shield her from the horror of what she had seen on the Godsway. She did not move through all that day and all that night.
Lady Franca Mandelian, sole surviving member of the House of Mandel, picked herself up from the godsgrass as the sun rose over the plains. She made her way back to the road where the carriages still sat, doors open and contents plundered. The horses were gone. Cato and Etreyiu were gone. The wheels of the carriages had been broken so they sat disabled in the middle of the Godsway.
Gierta, her maid, was lying dead in the road, her skirts pushed up over her pale white backside. But her parents' bodies were gone. Her grandmother was gone. The soldiers had taken them, no doubt to provide proof that they were dead or maybe even to spike their heads over the gates of the city.
A raw, hoarse sob escaped her throat as she saw Talia's discarded body by the side of the road, thrown aside like garbage.
She stumbled across, bile rising in her throat at the sight before her. Talia's ruffled white dress was spotted with blood.
Franca wanted to run again. Every muscle in her body screamed to turn away and leave the sight of that broken child behind her.
But she steeled herself, gathered every shred of resolve she had left in her body, and went back to the road where the contents of her trunks were strewn.
All her fine gowns were shredded. The soldiers had painstakingly ripped or sliced apart every article of clothing to ensure that no one who happened upon them could hope to gain a single copper penny from the expensive fabrics.
None of that mattered to Franca, though, as she selected the softest one; a pale yellow gown that Edriana had made for her to wear at Aelia's wedding—the one that was supposed to happen at the end of the month and would have preceded her walk through the godsgrass arches in the rites of ascension.
That had been before everything fell apart though, in the days when Franca had believed she was a few weeks away from being a lady in waiting to the queen.
She could never have imagined that this gown, with its fine gold stitching, would be the funeral shroud for sweet little Talia.
Using the dagger that her father had given her when they first set out from Albiyn, Franca scratched a hole in the earth in the middle of the field and laid her baby sister into the ground between the tangled godsgrass roots
When she was done, she knelt beside the hastily dug grave and tried to think of something to say to make her sister's little life mean something. She had barely even begun to live, and now her body would feed the godsgrass in a shallow grave that would be lost to even Franca's memory once she walked away from it.
"I love you," she said when all the other words failed her. Franca knew the words were also for her father, who had always been so proud of her, her mother, who could never hide the joy she got from simply looking at her.
“My most beautiful girl,” her mother, herself an extraordinarily beautiful woman, would say. “You are like a diamond among pebbles. You put us all to shame.”
But mostly they were for Talia. Sweet blue-eyed, Talia, with her round cheeks and all her wild curls. Talia, who looked at Franca with unconditional love and trust. Talia, who was betrayed by the world that had quickly turned out to be so much more dangerous than Franca could ever have imagined.
"I'm sorry," she added in a whisper.
And then, because it felt like her tears had all been spent, she rose, dry eyed from the grave and reached out for the godsgrass that had been pushed aside. She swept it back in to cradle her little sister in her final resting place.
Franca gathered what supplies she could, a skin of water, a few articles of clothing that had escaped being too badly torn, and the purse of coins that Gierta always kept in the bodice of her gown for emergencies.
Franca set off across the godsgrass, keeping the sun, now angling down across the sky again, to her right, heading south. She had only taken a few steps before she remembered.
She turned and raced back to the carriage, heart thundering in her ears as she yanked open the door and lifted the cushion that covered the secret compartment.
There, nestled in its ancient scabbard, was the golden Sword of Lithaway.
Franca had once asked her father why Mandel carried the Lithaway blade.
