Heritage.
The way she spits the word makes my skin crawl, as if I am beholden to it, tothem.
Fen bares his teeth.
Say the word, Little Raven, and I’ll happily rip them to shreds.
Not yet, I respond, praying he can’t hear the doubt in my voice. After all, we’ve just spent this entire fight trying to rip them to shreds. Yet they evaded us. Sank into my mind and knew our every move.
If I’m right, then the only way to defeat them will be to separate the bond between Fen and me, and right now, that’s not something I’m willing to do. Not when I already know they consider him disposable.
Instead, I meet the woman’s gaze. Her garnet eyes cause a ghost of a memory to flicker somewhere in the back of my mind.
‘You don’t get to decide what I am,’ I spit.
She scoffs as she tilts her head to the side. ‘No, your blood does. Your Torailian blood.’
The words hit like a strike between my ribs.
To my right, a crash of thunder bellows through the air, and I twist to find Kyor there, well within hearing distance as he battles two Torailians at once – although they seem to be striking him more to distract than to kill.
Or perhaps they are just poorly trained. Though that hardly fits with what William believed about their arrows that never miss, or the professional manner in which they surrounded us.
You carry our blood, she continues directly in my mind, as her face twists in a moue of distaste.A quarter Torailian, I suspect. It is enough. Enough to matter. Enough to be our responsibility.
‘No,’ I snarl aloud. ‘I don’t belong to you.’
‘Belonging is not a choice,’ she replies. ‘It is a fact.’
Something ugly and furious coils in my chest. No, it’s not. I belonged more in the slums than I ever did in the High Hold, despite being born there. And in the Retterheld there were plenty who thought I didn’t belong there either.
And yet it istheirpowers that were returned to Mortidem. Not mine.
‘Then try it,’ I say softly, meeting her gaze. ‘Try to take me.’
She smiles. She doesn’t raise her hand or call out, and yet in the same instant that her lips rise, the fightingexplodes.
Another two dozen Torailian soldiers appear from the weathered landscape, moving seamlessly, covering one another and rotating positions without hesitation. Every strike is countered, every flame dodged. They know where we’re going before we do.
So much for the fallacy that the Torailians do not have magic. It might not be demonstrable or seen or felt with the senses, but that makes it even more dangerous.
Sickness curdles within me. They can read our minds, anticipate our moves, sense our feelings. Just like I sensed the kraken’s emotions in the Retterheld.
Just like I felt Fen’s distress long before I saw him.
Just like my father took on a grief heavier than that of one person when Florian died.
Goosebumps rise.
Fen is still leading and twisting as he evades the nets, yet I can barely even feel him as my mind struggles to accept the truth.
If she’s right, I’m not just part Issen – I’m part Torailian, too.
You’re an abomination!the leader spits into my head, there even now, reading the thoughts the moment they form.
FUCK YOU!I scream at her with all that I have, and for the first time I see an effect as she flinches, recoiling away from me as she holds her head.
Despite my warning, the lightning has started again. Kyor raises bolts from the ground, drawing on the charge within the earth and air as his blade continues to blur from one strike to the next.
