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Eventually, he sighed. “Fine. If you’re so keen on a death sentence, tell me what I’m supposed to do.” He folded his strong arms over his chest and glared at me, and when I glanced up through my lashes, for a moment, I felt a flutter in my belly. I shook it away immediately.
“I want you to make me a poison. Make it deadly, but not instant death. It must be agonizing and slow to be useful. Keep in mind that whatever you choose to make, you must also be able to reverse the effects by creating a matching antidote. ” My pulse sped up as he stepped closer to the table.
"This is going to be bad," he whispered as he picked up the first vial.
* * *
Hours passedand my boredom exceeded expectations. Remus was getting nowhere. My lips pursed as I paced the room, and I even offered him a break to collect his thoughts. Yet, more hours passed but he was not making any progress.
Eventually, I was done with waiting and it was time to see what he could do under the knife. I walked up to where he stood, bent over the wooden table, and snatched the vial in his hands.
It was a quick reacting poison that would kill me in a matter of minutes if he didn’t reverse it. Remus tried to grab the elixir from me, but I was too quick. I threw the liquid back, the substance rough against my throat, burning as it made its way all the way down. I swallowed and watched as Remus stared at me in horror.
“Mara, no! Why would you do that? It wasn’t ready!” He panicked, frantically clutching my arms, his face drained of color.
I shrugged as I began the countdown in my head. Remus was frozen in place as I fell to my knees, unable to move. I hit the floor, unable to soften the fall. He was there in seconds, his hand protecting my head from the hard blow and I fell the rest of the way. He whispered in my ear, telling me he would fix this, muttering about how stupid and reckless I was, but his voice became muddied and incoherent.
He searched every vial as he thought through everything he added to the elixir. I gave him the basic rundown of every vial on the table the night before, so I sure hoped the information had been retained. It would be up to his instincts, most of all. Already I was beginning to suffocate as my throat began to close up, and my face swelled until my eyes began to shut.
As time ticked by, I wondered if this was really it. Was this how it would all end for me? I felt like laughing as I stared at the ceiling, the world growing darker by the second.
Remus was suddenly back in my face holding a vial, his long dark hair wild around his face and sweat beading on his furrowed brow. I couldn’t get a good look at it as he leaned my head back and poured the liquid into my mouth. It tasted bland like water, but as I swallowed, I began to sense something vaguely floral with a hint of something metallic. My throat wasn’t working at the moment, so Remus was forced to massage it, making sure every drop of it made it inside of me.
Another few seconds passed, and I felt a tingling where my limbs should have been. I felt my eyelids flutter, and breath suck back into my lungs as I heaved inward. The tightness in my chest was already lifting, and feeling was returning to my limbs.
The shifter had done it. Somehow he’d managed to pass his first real task and keep me alive, much to my immense relief. For a moment, I thought maybe I’d made a critical error.
Sometime later, I was able to move slightly and talk just enough to give the shifter praise when he figured out he did well. “I suppose you can be useful. When you feel like it, apparently.”
Remus still glared at me as he sat next to me on the floor with his arms draped over his bent knees, breathing hard. But then he cracked a reluctant smile, his green eyes filling with mischief as he said, “I’m useful in many ways, Xmara, but you don’t have to kill yourself to find out.”
Xmara
My head still swam, and my eyes burned every time I opened them too wide as Remus and I strode through the dark streets of Avedin. It was nearly sunrise, so we had to move quickly. Our cloaks were black, our hoods pulled down over our eyes, allowing us to once again blend in with the shadows.
On the outskirts of the city, past the Gallows, through an old dried-up orchard, was a decrepit temple that hadn’t been occupied in years. The priestesses were long gone, worship of the goddess Thessia a forgotten practice and outlawed by the King, along with every other deity derived from the Source.
We ascended the stone steps, looking over our shoulders to ensure we weren’t being followed, guided only by the light of the now-waning moon. Just over the trees in the far distance, the sky was beginning to glow with oranges and pinks.
“I haven’t been in a temple since I was a child,” Remus whispered as we passed through a stone archway leading towards a narrow corridor with massive chunks taken out of the walls that let the outside light shine through. Parts of the ceiling were missing too, the temple more ruins than anything these days.
“Were you a worshiper of Thessia?” We stopped at what remained of an altar placed at the head of the main chapel, its walls crumbling and holes in the floor. The only remaining relics left were a simple iron cauldron, a candlestick, and a jar of herbs.
“No, but my mother was training to be a priestess when the Source was outlawed. I’ve read most of her journals, but I never realized how thorough the King was when he wiped the temples off the map.” He stood in the center of the room, gazing around the darkened space with eyes full of regret and sadness. There was a heaviness to the air in this place. “Besides, shifters have their own gods.”
“What happened to her?” I asked as I emptied a pinch of dried herbs into the center of my hand before closing the jar again. “Your mother, I mean.” It wasn’t my place to pry into his personal life, but I was curious. It wasn’t often I met someone who willingly spoke about the Source openly.
He approached the altar, watching my every movement, not with suspicion but curiosity as I dropped the herbs into the cauldron. “I don’t know, actually. My father never spoke about her unless it was an accident. I think he was just scared. As far as I know, most of the priestesses either fled Avedin or were taken by the King’s guard as prisoners during the cleansing.”
The Cleansing.That’s what our people called that horrible year. I was five summers when it happened, but nothing about it stuck in my child brain. It was the year the King announced that every magic user, anyone who spoke of, wielded, or worshiped the Source would be put on trial for treason.
The Source wasn’t as common in Avedin back then as it had been in Nexus, but it still had its place.
I pulled a small steel rod from the pouch around my thigh, striking it against a hunk of flint, watching fire flare up, sparks shooting off into the cauldron and lighting the herbs until a gentle smoke wafted upwards. I whispered a few words I knew of the god language, not because I was a worshiper, but out of respect for the space my Ravens were now occupying.
I turned to Remus, standing close enough that my whisper reached only his ear. “Just so you’re aware, I might serve King Animus, but it doesn’t mean I support the things he’s done.” His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing as if trying to figure out if I was telling him the truth. “I don’t care that you’re a shifter. I have no hatred for heretics or mystics. I do what needs to be done for reasons that are my own, but I…”
He stepped closer. Too close. Close enough that if it had been anyone else, I would have pulled a blade already. “But you what, Mara?” There was anger clear in his voice. An old anger that had obviously built up over decades. Decades of oppression, secrecy, and lies. He reached out, moving aside a wayward curl with his finger. “Why are you telling me this?”
