There are small pops and crackles as more and more of the wood is engulfed in the flames, until the fire ignites the entire pyre. The smell of burning flesh takes over the air, and the heat bites at my face, my eyes stinging and watering until tears run freely down my cheeks. No matter how painful it is to keep them open, my eyes do not waver from the sight of the dead as the last of Havers Run burns away to nothing.
Another failure in a long line.
One of my soldiers approaches, a messenger with him looking around with wide eyes and a tremor in his voice as he speaks. “Your Highness, we found more survivors. They ran toward the Brindlewyrd Forest as the wall was breached, but we found them as we cut down the last of the fleeing witches. Should we take them to Yregar Castle?”
I turn to the soldier, Calys, his helmet off and tucked under his arm as he bows his head at me. Relief wars with frustration inside me, because there's nothing I can offer the victims of this attack but the overflowing streets of Yregar. Our rations are already stretched beyond breaking point, but we’ll have to make it work.
I can’t keep failing them all.
“We’ll bring them back with us along with those who took shelter in the temple. We can get them settled into the Grand Hall for now and offer whatever assistance we can. Send word to Yrell for a healer.”
Calys bows deeply and moves away without another word, calling out orders to the soldiers around us. He waits as long as it takes to know they’ve heard him and are getting to work before climbing onto his horse to ride north himself, to Yrell Castle and its surrounding city, held by Prince Mercer. I catch the look that Tauron sends me but hold my tongue, no point saying what we all already know. It’s a fool's errand, one I’m sending Calys on to warn the prince rather than in true hopes of gaining aid.
There are no healers left in the Southern Lands—none but the witch in my dungeon with cold silver eyes and a fate to match mine.
* * *
We ride through the night.
With the survivors on foot, we have no choice but to walk at a snail's pace, our attention on the eerie quiet of the dead plains. Some of the soldiers walk and carry the more gravely injured on their horses, and it’s a long night for us all.
When we arrive back at Yregar with the first of morning light at our backs, crossing through the first gates and then the inner gates to the castle itself, my gaze catches on something, and I pull Nightspark to an abrupt halt, sure that my eyes must be tricking me.
Thinking that it must be a scrap of fabric or the effect of a long night with no sleep, I can barely believe it, but as I blink and stare again, there's no denying what I’m seeing. There, at the edge of the orchard where I was walking with Sari only hours ago, are new shoots of grass.
Grass hasn’t grown here in almost a decade.
The few plants that we still have are protected within the garden grounds and fretted over by the gardeners, and even with all their labors, the greenery is dwindling. Their efforts to turn around the death and decay of our land has become fruitless work, quite literally.
Yet here is something new, a rebirth that has no rhyme or reason.
Tauron stops at my side, and his gaze slowly follows my own until it pauses on the grass. “What the hell is that?”
I shake my head. “Call for Tyton. Send a soldier for him, and quickly.”
There’s no reason for the urgency—the grass isn’t withering away as we speak—but Tauron rides to the castle himself to find his brother and drag him down here. The soldiers continue to direct the survivors around me, sending curious looks, but I can’t tear my gaze away for long.
Tyton has barely come to a halt at my side, a harried look on his face, as I say in the old language, “Can you feel any magic? It must be a trick, some illusion of false hope.”
He hesitates, silent as he looks around us, and when he doesn’t seem to find anything alarming, he slides slowly from his saddle. I swing down from Nightspark as well, handing the reins off to Tauron as I follow his brother, at his back in case it really is a trap. Tauron curses when Nightspark snaps at his horse but I leave him to sort out their bickering for himself, all of my focus on those green shoots.
Tyton walks slowly, haltingly, as though he’s approaching a rabid beast and doesn't want to startle the small sprouts of green on the ground. When he falls into a crouch, I do the same next to him.
I can smell the difference. There’s life in the air here. The undeniable rich smell of the earth beneath us, the smell of growth, of prosperity, offoodand nature reclaiming what it lost. It’s a scent I didn’t even realize that I missed, though now I feel it like a hole in my chest.
Life has slowly leached away for us all, slow enough that I didn't notice the absence of the fresh scent until now, as it's waved in front of my face once again.
Tyton slowly pulls off one of his leather gloves and then, moving so quickly I couldn't have stopped him, he plunges his hand into the earth. The fact that he can do so—that the ground beneath us is soft enough to welcome him—has me rocking back on my heels.
Even a few meters away, the ground is rock hard, cracked, parched, and dead, and yet here is a small patch of fresh and live earth, no greater than my arm span.
“Well, what magic is this? What trap is laid out for us?”
Tyton turns his head slowly toward me, until I can see the glowing nature of his eyes and an unsettling sensation washes over me as it always does when he loses himself to the power within him. My hands drops to the grip of my sword, as though I could fight against such a thing taking him over. I couldn’t, of course. There’s no way to wrestle its grips from his mind and to stop the magic would require killing my cousin along with it, the power a part of him just as intrinsic to his being as the blood in his veins.
“Home,” he says in that voice that shakes with power. “They've come home.”
I don't know what that means, and I definitely don't like the sound of it. “Who, Tyton?Whois home?”
