Chapter 3
The Girl
The girl opened her eyes on a gasp, quickly cataloguing the aches and pains in her body from sitting so long in one position. The sun had moved more than halfway across the sky, indicating that the girl had sat in Solace forhours. She gazed around, looking for the thing that her great-grandmother said would appear and wreak havoc upon her village.
But she saw nothing. She heard nothing.
Except.
There.
On the opposite edge of the Valley, there was a mass of black. It undulated and writhed, and the girl strained to identify it. Her lips parted on a silent gasp as the mass turned into men—men clad in all black, who streamed down the hill toward her village. She heard the muffled clattering of hooves and war cries as they descended upon her home. They weren’t trying to be covert in the slightest, it’s as if theywantedher people to know they had come to conquer.
She stood transfixed as she watched a sea of black-clad people clamber down the hills opposite where she stood into the village below. What started as a trickle turned into a rush, and soon the hills were coated inblack. She heard the screams next, the terrified screams of her people as they, too, saw the wall of death descend.
RUN!
The voice was loud in her head and the girl winced. But it jolted her stiff and aching muscles into action, and she half-ran, half-fell down the embankment. The girl was lucky that this side wasn’t nearly as steep or long as the opposite end. She still had time. Hopefully.
She reached the edge of the village just as the sea of horses and men swept into her home. The girl ran as fast as she could, chest heaving, heart threatening to jump out, toward the secret entrance of the main house. It was on the east side of the building and she would have to cut across a few streets in order to reach it.
The girl cut left and ran two blocks before she heard it—the wet squelching noise that accompanied swords as they cut into flesh and bone. The sound and accompanying pained scream made her come to a dead stop, and she searched for the cause. Her eyes fell on Allestra, a friend of her mother’s. Allestra made eye contact with the girl, blood pouring from her mouth and the wound in her stomach, staining the ends of her white-blonde hair and alabaster skin red.
The girl stood, horrified at the sight, and she moved to help.
“Go.” Allestra mouthed. Her body fell limp, blood still trickling down her cheek.
The girl physically shook herself and continued running, the sounds of death and dying thick in the humid air. She reached the main house at the same time as a group of soldiers, and she flattened herself against the side of the building. The girl sneaked a peek around the corner, cataloguing the five men demanding entry to the main house. Strangely, apart from the black tunics and pants they wore, there was no unifying physical characteristic of these men—each was more different than the last. The girl was fascinated by their differences, especially since all her people looked the same—shockingly white hair and creamy ivory skin with some variation of blue eyes. One man was extraordinarily tall with pale skin and close-cropped red hair, another was short with dark-brown skin and hair to match. The girl stretched her neck a bit more to further inspect the soldiers but snapped back quickly when the tall man with red hair began pounding on the maindoor, a section of the house the girl had to traverse in order to reach the hidden entrance.
The girl’s heart pounded in her throat, and she fought to keep her fear at bay. If the soldiers turned or even glanced in their periphery, they’d see her pressed against the side of the house, and her fate would be the same as everyone else in her village.
The soldiers turned to brace their bodies against the door, intent on collapsing it, and the girl squeezed her eyes shut, her whole body trembling.
This is it. This is the end.
“If it’s the Matriarchs you’re looking for, you won’t find them inside,” a firm voice carried across the open space in front of the house and the girl peeked her eyes open. Standing across the way was her grandmother, covered head-to-toe in blood and ash, her normally neatly braided white hair singed and askew.
The soldiers stopped their breach attempt as one and slowly turned, their steps marked and assured as they circled the girl’s grandmother like a pack of wolves ensnaring their prey.
“And where would they be then, hmm?” the tall one purred, his eyes blackening as he came to a slow stop in front of her.
The grandmother flicked her eyes quickly to the side, making eye contact with the girl, and the girl froze solid.
Is Grandmother selling me to these men?Her heart felt like it would burst from her chest and the girl cowered where she stood.
But the flick of her gaze betrayed nothing to the soldiers. Instead, she squared her shoulders and drew herself to her full, considerable height before staring straight into the soulless black pits of the soldier’s eyes and admitting the one thing that was sure to seal her fate.
“Right here. In front of you.”
The soldiers tensed as one, but the girl’s grandmother pulled a long boning knife from somewhere in her kaftan before rearing back and stabbing the nearest soldier—a short man with a pocked face and beady brown eyes—repeatedly in the stomach.
Blood gushed from the wounds, coating her grandmother’s arm and kaftan before dripping in a puddle on the ground. The soldier cried out in pain and shock before pushing his hands into his abdomen in a vainattempt to keep his intestines from spilling out of the wound her grandmother so savagely inflicted.
The remaining soldiers around her growled predatorily before closing the distance between them, effectively closing her grandmother within the circle while leaving their friend to die on the outside.
“You’ll pay for that, bitch,” the ebony-skinned Mage spat as the telltale earthy brown wisps of Earth Magic manifested in his palm.
The girl’s grandmother tried to back up and escape her soon-to-be executioners, but she was much too late and severely outnumbered.
