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“No,” she said firmly, shaking her head.
“Why not?”
“Because it is not my story to tell.”
“Whose story is it?”
She beamed, white eyes shining in the firelight. “Yours.”
Later that morning, after training, I walked to town with a basket full of items Ezra had plopped inside and a list of things I was to barter for—most of them I could not pronounce. Half of them probably didn’t even exist. I mumbled, tempted to chuck the list into the wind, but as soon as my bootheels hit the cobblestone streets, I came to an abrupt halt.
Soldiers filled the village, the king’s crimson banners waving in the wind, a dreadful hello. With this many soldiers, I suspected a mass Cleansing.
A crowd, louder than normal, had formed in the village square, the group growing larger with each passing minute. I wedged my way to the front, itching to get a look, and when I made it, I nearly fell to my knees.
Three rows of men were lined up, fifteen in each row. I knew most of them. Standing at the end of the back row was Kaleb—his face ghastly white.
I screamed his name.
He jerked his head up and our eyes locked.
I shoved at the wall of soldiers that separated us. My Curse felt like lava, rolling through my veins, beckoning for release. I had to get to him—
“Hear ye. Hear ye,” shouted a man wearing a finely tailored wool tunic and a voluminous wig. The leather belt wound around his waist emphasized his bulging gut. He stood on an upturned crate, a scroll stretched out before him. He cleared his throat twice. “His Majesty’s army continues its just and righteous work, cleansing the lands of the Cursed and driving them farther into the Cursed Lands. As of this day, October sixteenth in the thirty-fifth year of the king, a royal proclamation has been bestowed. Any man over the age of eighteen and under of the age of twenty-four is to be conscripted, immediately, into His Majesty’s Royal Army to help rid us of the Cursed filth.”
“No!” I bellowed, my voice lost amongst a hundred others. Mothers, fathers, siblings, and lovers, all of us begged, pleading for our loved ones’ lives. The angry crowd started to push, but the wall of soldiers held firm.
In the past, when the king had enacted conscription, the conscripted were sent to training camps and then to the Cursed Lands—the last stronghold of those who actively rebelled against the Crown. They were known as the Cursed rebels.
The men sent there never returned home.
The thought of Kaleb’s body lying on a bloody battlefield, face void of life, surfaced in my mind.
There was no way in the Spirit Realm I was going to allow that to happen.
I clenched my fists, my gaze locking with Kaleb’s. But where fear should have been, he had replaced it with something else—a plea.
Not to do anything.
I shook my head—my mind was already made up.
“Please,” he mouthed, his shoulders sagging in defeat. He raised a shaky hand, his long fingers spreading over his heart, tapping twice as he held my gaze firmly with his own.
Tears pricked my eyes. Blurry-eyed, I looked around. The defeated crowd was starting to disperse. I wanted to scream at them. Tell them to turn around. To fight. To make a stand. They did not realize the power they held.
And perhaps, neither did I.
Until now.
My gaze locked on the soldier about ten feet from me, the king’s crest so proudly stamped on his armored chest plate—that would be the first thing I wiped off.
I gritted my teeth and tugged my arms to my sides as I conjured from that deep, eternal well within. It swelled. Filled to the brim. Eagerly lapping. Ready to explode. I dropped into a warrior’s stance, my bridled Curse ready to be unleashed. Finally.
But before I could conjure a single drop . . . the air evaporated from my lungs.
I grasped at my throat as if it had been sewn shut, my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. My body quaked, starved of life-giving oxygen.
The world was fading.
