He left before she could respond. Left her crying in the room where he’d first imagined they might build a life.
The night air felt brittle as he walked. His heart’s lake was too cold to offer her comfort. Too bitter to stay.
And somewhere, buried under anger and sweat and everything he hadn’t let himself feel yet, a terrible new grief was waiting.
But perhaps it didn’t matter, at least not right now. The captains were summoning the recruits for some kind of examination in the morning. Maybe by the end of tomorrow, they would all be returning to the mundane lives they had left behind.
The Wolves
Irun madly through the darkness. I run from the flickers of torchlight. I am running from the screaming, from the blood. I am running from my fear. I don’t know where I am going—I just run, panicked, gasping.
What have I done? What have I allowed them to turn me into?
I wish I could drift away like a cloud, but I cannot. I wish I had wings to fly, but I do not. I wish I were braver, strong enough to say no—but I am not.
I am a sinner. I will repent for what I have done.
It is by the stream where I finally stop running. I kneel in the icy water, my knees pierced by centuries of rounded stone. And there, with fire rising behind me, I pray for my soul. I pray the way my mother taught me long ago.
I plead for the sun to rise, for the ravage of a village to end. I ask to be returned to my own bed, to be wrapped in my mother’s quilt, to lie safely beneath the rafters my father built.
And as I weep—as my tears join the sorrows of my appeal to the gods—I hear the voice of the man I hate. He is calling to me, shouting praise for my ghastly deed.
I abandon my unfinished prayer by the stream. I run from my captain’s voice. Madness and terror billow like smoke through the air. I see him there—he who dares to say no to the carnage.
I try to stop it, but I am only a spectator to a play. The actors do not hear my warnings. They go on heedlessly, speaking their lines until the curtain falls. The ending is inevitable—the hero, standing alone before the beast.
I will not deny it.
I am a participant in this carnage, in this tragedy.
I am a witness to the ending of his life—and the beginning of our grief.
—Collin, June 21, 501
The moon’s weak beam could not pierce the dense canopy overhead. Torches and lanterns only deepened the gloom, casting elongated shadows that flickered with a life of their own. The midsummer night clung to him, stifling and oppressive. Heat amplified every scent—the damp earth, sap seeping from torn branches, the rot of fallen leaves, stale sweat, and drying blood.
The air vibrated with the chorus of night-loving insects—buzzing, chirping, humming, scuttling. Their strange symphony rose into the canopy like an offering, muffling the weary footfalls of the trudging survivors.
Collin stumbled. A hand caught his elbow before he collapsed. His skull throbbed, his eyes felt ready to burst from their sockets. Every joint burned, every muscle screamed. He willed his heavy eyelids to stay open, though part of him longed to crumple into the roots, to disappear beneath brambles, to rot and become part of the forest floor.
He turned his head. Aries. His best friend—his brother in this life and the next.
Aries pressed a waterskin into his hands, his voice low and ragged. “Drink.”
