At least the first time I sold my soul to the Orders, I was too young and stupid to know that I was just driving a dagger into my own gut.
This time, I felt every inch of the blade.
Tisaanah and I slept in one of the outposts that night. I had meant it when I told Tisaanah I couldn’t stay in that house. Even now, curled up with Tisaanah in a little cot in a cold outpost on the edge of the grounds, I could still feel it looming over me. It was the smell that really did it, I think. The minute we had landed, I knew before I opened my eyes that we were here. That scent of pine and iron yanked me ten years into the past in seconds. And now it tethered me there.
I stared at the ceiling, watching moonlight fall over rafters. Tisaanah slept, though it was light and fitful. Her limbs intertwined with mine like roots clinging to the earth.
One sentence kept floating through my mind:
Tomorrow I will leave to go fight Zeryth Aldris’s war.
It was a ridiculous sentence, reflecting a horrifying, distorted reality.
Ruefully, I thought of the man I was five years ago. The man who barely managed to make it out of Seveseed dens alive, who was in the process of creating a garden to surround a cabin in the middle of nowhere. And he would sit there, unmoving, like a rock letting the water rush by him.
I wasn’t sure if I pitied that man or envied him. He had been nothing if not certain. He was certain that there was nothing in the world worth saving. He was certain that even if there was, there was nothing he could contribute to such a cause, anyway. And above all, he had been certain that he would never, ever, under any circumstances, find himself on a battlefield ever again.
I missed certainty.
But then…
My awareness returned to Tisaanah’s weight against my chest. The warmth of her breath on the underside of my chin. The strand of hair that kept tickling my nose.
But then, I thought, there is this.
It was sometime past midnight when I carefully, pushed back the rough blanket. I extracted myself from Tisaanah’s arms, shoved my bare feet into unlaced boots, and rose.
It was so cold outside that when I slipped through the outpost door, my teeth started chattering. Ascended above, I had forgotten how chilly the nights could get so far north at this time of year. I hadn’t bothered to grab a jacket, but I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my trousers and tread down the pathway leading to the main house. There weren’t many people around now, activity dulled to an eerie quiet.
It was a long walk back to the house. I didn’t go to the front gates. Instead I went around back, cutting through the clearing where Brayan used to run me through drills until I could barely lift a sword, then tracing down paths where Atraclius and I once raced. I glanced to the tree line, and through the darkness could make out the entrance of the path that would lead to Kira’s shed.
The door was small, tucked beneath one of the balconies, unassuming compared to the grandeur of the main entryways. I slid my fingers along the inside of the doorframe. My instincts still knew exactly where it was — the notch that, if you pushed just the right way, would jostle the loose lock enough to turn the handle. Atraclius had been the one to discover it. It remained our secret, among my siblings and I. We all, now and then, needed a way to sneak back into the house undetected. Even Brayan.
I slipped through.
It was so silent. Anyone staying here would be in the upper levels, leaving these hallways still and dim beneath the quiet glow of sconces on the walls. I paced through, climbing one narrow set of stairs, then two, until the small servants’ passages opened up to the main atrium. And then I stopped.
I couldn’t move.
Double doors stood before me. Through them would be the ballroom, and the grand staircase, and the hallways that led to my old bedroom and those of my family. Where they had lived, and where they had died. Where I had killed them.
Eight painted pairs of eyes gazed at me from beside the door — an old family portrait. It was a small one, more of a sketch than a finished piece, but my mother had always been fond of it, hence why she found a place for it here. My whole family stared back at me, rendered in loose, organic brushstrokes. My parents, my father with a smile in his eyes and my mother deep in thought. Kira, only ten years old, looking as if she had much more important things to do. Variaslus, who seemed to be trying very hard to seem elegant, and then the twins, one grinning and the other frowning. Atraclius, so comically stern that anyone who knew him would see that he was actually making fun of the whole thing. Brayan, noble and serious. And me, eighteen, vaguely disgruntled, with no idea how fucking lucky I was.
It was suddenly difficult to breathe. It had been so long since I had seen their faces in anything but dreams.
“It is strange, to be here after so many years.”
The voice came from behind me. My blood went cold.
A familiar voice. With no accent.
I turned. Moonlight fell over Tisaanah’s face as she stepped towards the painting. But the movements, clumsy and lurching, were not Tisaanah’s.
I closed my eyes, every muscle suddenly tight.
“Get out,” I ground out. The words were visceral, deep — the only truth I could choke out. There was nothing more terrible than seeing Tisaanah’s face like this, with everything that made her her stripped away. But here, with my family’s ghosts bearing down on us, my revulsion was so intense
