“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? You would risk your lives fighting the Watchmen, all while knowing full well what they’re capable of?” She looked to Henry and Zara.
“They all know the risks, Miss Yarrow,” said the boy seated at the table. His voice was surprisingly calm, sincere. Pulling her attention toward him. She wasn’t the only one drawn to his words as she noticed the Vedran glance toward the boy. His indiscernible gaze appearing to take on a fleeting glimpse of…attentiveness, possibly even affection. The look she’d given Enid so many times before so familiar that it reopened a wound inside her chest. The boy leaned forward, resting his arms atop the table as he regarded her. “We all do. And we have all paid a price to find ourselves in this room today. As I understand you have.”
Before she could ask who this boy was, Henry placed a hand over Zara’s shoulder as he said, “There is much you do not yet know, Anya. That is by no fault of yours, we know.”
The snort Adan released cut through the room.
They all ignored him as Henry continued. “But this is the only way to put an end to all of this bloodshed. This tormentwe’d been subjected to for far too long. This is war, and we intend on doing everything we can to put a stop to it.”
“Even if it means killing the king himself,” Zara added. Those terrible words sounded foreign coming from her lips.
The boy glanced down to the table with a solemn expression. As if he knew this was the only option. The only way forward. Yet she was the one having difficultly processing the implication of Zara’s words.
“And risk being executed in the process?”
“We all know the risks, but there’s no time to linger in the shadows anymore. You have not been conjuring as often as we all have so you perhaps do not feel the effects of the curse taking root upon you yet. But the rest of us do,” Zara said, coming to take her hands in hers. Imploring her to understand. All Anelize could do was look at her, confusion and wariness roiling about in her mind. “We are running out of time. Surely you must know that.”
Of course she did. The Vedrans may not use magic, as the rumors in Elvir may suggest, to conjure their powers, but the cost of doing so required a sacrifice that went far beyond the pain that came with cutting one’s palm. One that consumed them with every cut, every drop of blood spilled. At times, a debilitating cost that they could never recover from.
Anelize had barely conjured to escape the Watchmen, and she could already feel the consequences of doing so. The edges of her vision not as sharp as they had been days ago. It was a seedling of worry beginning to take root inside herself that she could not acknowledge yet.
“What does our curse have to do with killing King Amaranth?”
“Because he intends to bring about the end of the Vedransentirely.” When the Vedran spoke, she tensed. Glowering, she watched as he stepped forward, his long legs consuming the space in the room as he crossed over to where the twins were. He leaned against the back of the settee, crossing one ankle over the other. His blue eyes sharp and bright as the shadows in the room appeared to grow darker, the glowing fire casting a silhouette around him. “The high possibility of our very extinction only grows closer with each passing day.”
Dread filled Anelize at those words.
The room suddenly grew tense, and an ominous, foreboding feeling hung in the air.
Henry said. “Recently, the Moroi have begun to roam the streets far more frequently than ever before. They used to keep to the forest, only wandering out to the fields if they sensed someone who should not be there. Only now, they’ve been stalking the streets past nightfall. No longer mindless, strange beings, but hunters hungry for flesh and blood. Not even the Vedrans can truly hold their own against them, not any who aren’t already experienced in defending themselves, at least. Do you know why they are called the Moroi?”
She thought of that night in the alleyway. The creature that had attacked them, neither man nor animal but a grotesque combination of both. Decaying flesh and snapping bones. The scent of fetid rot that had reminded her of those struck with the malady.
“The harbingers of death…” she murmured.
“They have existed in Elvir since the end of the war, but do you know how they came about?” Henry asked her. “How these people became Moroi?”
“My father told me it started with the experimentation of conjuring that brought it. The malady. Some form of darkmagic unlike our true power that turns against them. I know not why that is, nor how it has happened.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Why else do you think people have been disappearing throughout the city? Returning with the malady.”
All eyes turned to the Vedran across from her, watching him expectantly.
He was silent for a long moment, as if taking great pleasure in the suspended anticipation of his next words. As if he thought the world itself would stop if he so wished it. It made Anelize grit her teeth at the arrogance that poured over him when the corners of his lips tugged upward. But the smile was wrong, twisted. Full of resentment, one so unmistakable that they all shared it in their own ways. “It is because of the king and the power he has kept hidden away for nearly twenty years.”
11
“How can you be so sure?” Anelize questioned.
The Vedran crossed his arms. His gaze indiscernible, cold. As if winter itself had been captured through those eyes. There was no warmth within them whatsoever. And yet, he’d been able to burn the Moroi—with the flames he’d called forth.
“Contrary to what the folk of Elvir think about how we came to exist—be it by magic or crawling our way through Hell itself—the truth is rather simple. We were born as any otherhumanchildren were. The only difference between us and them is that we were granted the gift of amplifying what already exists before us. It is not such a simple thing asmagic,per se.”
Anelize knew that. The reason they were all prosecuted as monsters was because of their unnatural power to alter that around them. They do not conjure out of nothingness, nor do the Vedrans possess any sort of disease to pass down onto others. No matter what the Madacians believe. They were,are, people the same as them. They bleed and suffer the same way, with the sole exception being able to heal their wounds, control the elements around them, and much more.
Vedrans like Zara were consideredavit, for their ability to heal and preserve life, though the latter was considered a lost practice. Not many knew how to do it or do it well. Anelize hadonce heard stories of her father witnessing anavitcausing an injured person’s heart to quite literally implode within their body while trying to pump life back into it. But the intent was always to heal and repair.
Unlike Anelize’s so-called gift, which was a direct contradiction, or how she always saw it as a biological anomaly.Nevit,the word once spoken in the lost language of the Vedrans when correctly translated would be closely related todeath. Pain. Misfortune. A curse of itself. Being an apothecary and having such a talent for inflicting pain was quite laughable, the irony not once being lost on her over the years.
