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Chapter1
Dace
Words. Words strung together into sentences. Something distant, foreign, yet somehow vaguely recognizable. Voices. There were voices in the room. A buzzing in my ears that couldn’t be ignored. There, but also not. Shrieking and violent but distant and foggy, heavy currents that pulled me down deeper into myself. Every small moment was laced with pain, in the tenderness of my pink, healing wound, and also in the gaping hole of my soul that was loss.
It was confusing to lose someone you had told yourself you’d hated for so long. No matter the cruelty of their words, there was still thisconnection. Something not entirely of this world, or maybe that was what it was: some piece of fabric in the universe that had woven itself in intricate threads between us.
A mother, gone.
A father, gone.
Ripped away before I was ready for them to go. I had spent so much time hating them and wishing that they would leave me alone. Now I’d never be bothered by them again.
And that felt more wrong than ignoring their nagging calls. More than that though...
It was my fault.
My fault. My fault. It was MY fault.
Dreams were supposed to be followed through. Completed as the gods deemed them. They were gifts to us, to our people, so the gods could ensure that fate would not unravel. I didn’t believe it, never did.
I’d saved the Nymphs from the Day of Ruin, thinking myself the ruler of my fate, and I supposed, theirs too. But five years later, many of them were killed. Children were killed.
And it was my fault.
My fault. My fault.
It’s ALL MY fault.
The burgundy witch lives. The carving of her teeth still etched into my slowly knitting flesh. She was a clue to the many mysteries that continued to plague Stylica.
They plagued Ryker, and I wanted her to be pleased with me because I loved her. A stipulation from the parents, that no longer existed, had me wishing for the fastest solution to the madness that kept Ryker busy with anything that wasn’t myself.
Fucking selfish bastard.
I’M A FUCKING SELFISH BASTARD.
And it was all my fault.
My fault. My fault.
IT’S ALL MY FAULT.
Father was right. Maybe it was the ghost of his soul that told me that now. Perhaps the gods had allowed him to stay here on this realm, unseen, to burden me with crazed thoughts. Father was right. What was told in the dreams was meant to be. I should slit the witch's throat.
It was too late for that now.
“We should kill her before she can hurt anyone else.” A voice rose louder than my thoughts. It was an odd sensation considering my thoughts were mighty loud.
“She is an abomination!”
“Can we even call it a she? Thatthingshouldn’t exist. Our ancestors made sure of that.”
“You’re right. Letting it live would be doing a disservice to them. It’s absolutely disrespectful.”
My eyes snapped up from the grains of the wooden table. How long had my vision been focused on the knots and spirals within it?
“To let her die now would be disrespectful,” I said. My flat tone met my ears as if I was speaking from across the room.
