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So she shoved to her feet and paused only long enough to orient herself before diving straight for the hole the firebomb had made in the window. It seemed like her best bet. Then, once she was outside and away from the immediate threat, she would rage about why no one was coming to help them. She would chase after the blurry figure and make sure he or she or whoever it was paid for the life that had been lost. Not because anyone would have done that for her, but because someone had died to make sure she survived. So her survival needed to mean something.
It was the first time someone had died protecting her.
The metaphorical fire in her heart snuffed out when Rochelle stumbled away from the burning shoe store and turned her head enough to realize that the thick, dark smoke wafting up to the late-morning sky wasn’t just coming from the building she’d escaped. It was coming from buildings all around.
Standing outside, she heard the shattering explosion of glass and the strained creak of wood giving way to intense flame. Worse, she could hear screaming. Inconsistent, pained, terrified screaming.
Rochelle’s heart seized in her chest. She hadn’t hallucinated that sound before. It had been a warning of sorts, a warning she hadn’t heeded. She had no idea what to do. It wasn’t as if they had town meetings about how to act or where to go in the event of … what? Anarchy? Her gaze followed the almost perfect line of smoke towers, and realization dawned like a lead weight in her gut. Not anarchy. Invasion.
Corast was a small working village on the edge of the Yafaen border. Before the literal magical border wall that separated Yafae from Zrynia had been erected, Corast had been one of many nondescript towns in place to act as a barricade against Zrynia. As a result, the village was tucked right up along the usually translucent wall. But it was no secret that Yafae’s relations with Zrynia were tense at best. That was why those who came across were labeled refugees. That was why people who looked like Rochelle—with yellow-blonde hair and pale, untanned skin—were always evaluated cautiously. Distantly.
Rochelle had only been in Corast a couple of months, and even she had heard whispers that war between the diametrically opposed sides was brewing. To her mind,thislooked a lot like war. Or at least the throwing of the proverbial gauntlet.
“Help! Please!” The scream was desperate, female, and not all that far away.
Rochelle jerked herself out of her strange stupor and twisted in place. She had no idea what she could do, but standing in the middle of the roadway and gaping didn’t seem like the wisest option. So she ran, in her flimsy work sandals, toward the screaming. She ran, and she prayed to the ancestors the Yafaens believed in, the ancestors worshipped as something like divine spirits, that somehow Corast would pull through. That somehow no more lives would be lost.
That the monsters responsible would be caught and punished.
She rounded a corner and found two women huddled against the side of a building that wasn’t on fire. The older woman had tears and dirt, or smoke, smeared across her face as she held the younger one in her lap. The younger one was the girl who’d come into the shop just minutes before. She had a large, bleeding gash on her side, above her hip. The blood continued to soak into her torn dress, the red stain widening as blood dripped onto the dirt below. The new shoes she had been so happy to find were discarded in the roadway, already layered with dirt.
Rochelle swallowed hard and rushed up to them. She wasn’t the help these two really needed, but she was the only one there.
“Please,” the older woman said, her voice choked. The resemblance between them was unmistakable. The girl was clearly her daughter. “C-can you help? I can’t use soul magic … o-only air….”
Rochelle ripped off the lightweight wrap she’d been wearing and folded it so that the dirty side was tucked away. “I can’t use any,” she said. “But I’ll do what I can to help you keep her alive until someone else comes.” Her throat swelled, and it was hard to push the words out. It was like she was constantly surrounded by death. This girl didn’t deserve to suffer for that.
“Wh-what do you—”
Rochelle pressed the wadded-up fabric against the girl’s wound, willing her stomach to remain steady this time when a little more blood dribbled out. But then the constant drip stopped and Rochelle let out a breath, meeting the mother’s gaze. “We have to keep the wound covered. Keep pressure on it to stop the bleeding. If we have to move from here, we have to make sure to do that, okay?” There was no way it would stay safe so close to the burning market area for long. Already the smoke was thickening.
The mother nodded. “Thank you,” she said. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but her grip of her daughter’s shoulders never wavered. “Thank you.”
Rochelle looked away, pretending to focus on her task as her own eyes burned and her chest ached. For a moment, she was jealous of the girl whose name she still didn’t know and who might well not survive the day. But there was no sense in that feeling, so she pushed it aside.
“What sacrilege is this?” a man with a scraping voice asked from the direction Rochelle had come.
Rochelle and the mother snapped their heads in his direction, and Rochelle’s stomach dropped in time to the mother’s frightened gasp. She had no idea who the man was specifically. She didn’t need a name or a title.
He was of average height, overly muscular, dressed in loose, tattered clothing, and was pale skinned with wild yellow hair. He wielded a curved, thick-bladed sword of some kind. This man had to be true Zrynian—a warrior trained in physical and bladed combat. A warrior from the nation that detested magic as if it were evil incarnate.
“N-no, please,” the mother said, her voice wobbling. “Please go! Terrorize someone else! Can’t you see my daughter is already hurt?”
Rochelle kept her hand steady over the wound as her heart raced. If he attacked … they were all dead. She had no way to fight someone like him.
He pointed his blade at Rochelle. “Wench. You offer aide to these sorcerers?”
It was her. The anger in his cold blue eyes was for her, because he assumed as everyone else had. That she had fled Zrynia and wound up in Yafae. Rochelle dragged in a breath and did her best to stay calm. If it was her he was focused on, perhaps she could pull him away from the mother and daughter. She moved a hand to the girl’s arm and gently pushed the girl against her mother, trying to signal for the mother to take over holding the slowly soaking bundle in place. Then she looked back toward the frowning warrior and forced out words.
“The people here gave me food and shelter when I had none.” Bjorn, always so critical and distant, and now dead for her sake, flashed through her mind. She stood and moved slightly away from the mother and daughter. “Don’t pretend to care about my choices after all the abandonment I endured, after someone picked me up and tossed me out on this side of the border like trash. Discarded, unwanted, and forgotten. Don’t you dare look at me like I belong to you. It was you—monsters like you—who’ve desecrated this village and hurt these innocent people. People guilty of nothing more than existing! Why would I ever side with the ones who chose to destroy them?”
She knew, of course, that logically people who denied and even vilified the use of magic were not likely the ones responsible for her strange cross-reality abduction. They certainly weren’t responsible for the ordeals she’d gone through before waking up in Yafae. But he wouldn’t know any of that, and it was easier to give herself a backstory with a familiar undertone.
The Zrynian warrior grit his teeth so hard his entire jaw trembled. “You dare,” he said. “I will have your head for that!” And then he lunged, sword swinging.
The mother screamed.
Rochelle threw her hands up to defend herself on instinct, her body twisting away even as it tensed a little more in preparation for impact.
