“She spoke of them,” Ithel repeats the word as his mind replays Helena’s last words. The ones she left me for, Ithel adds bitterly, the unhealed wounds in his heart breaking open once more. It was the first time he’d heard her mention the family she’d had in Cassè since she’d been freed from the prison. The ones she loved more than she ever cared for me.
A sour taste rises to Ithel’s tongue as he recalls the early days of their relationship. He’d been the lead guard at the border station in the heart of the Devil’s Spine when she’d joined his ranks. She’d marched into his office with her head held high and handed him the transfer orders. “Why come here? Thinking of making a name for yourself?” he sniped, surprised that someone of her background would take a job in a wild, rangy outpost at the border.
“I’ve come to see if the stories I’ve grown up hearing are true,” Helena replied, her voice lacking all empathy and emotion. She’d been a colder, harsher woman in her younger years. “I want to see if the people in Cassè are really as barbaric as I’ve been led to believe.”
“Dangerous choice,” Ithel remarked with a smirk, secretly admiring her spirit. “Not many would willingly leave the comforts of the palace just to question their king’s version of the truth.”
“I’m not most people,” Helena shot back, staring at Ithel in cool detachment. “I prefer to make my own choices.”
“And what will you do with the information you discover out here?” Ithel couldn’t help but wonder as she strode toward the door. “What will it solve?”
It was the only moment in Helena’s introduction that her resolve faltered. In that single backward glance, she appeared completely vulnerable and lost. “I…I don’t know what I’ll do. I just have to see it for myself. I couldn’t bear to sit through another meeting listening to the terrors of Cassè without actually experiencing it firsthand. Once I know the truth, I’ll figure out the rest.”
He’d let her leave the office and settle into the barracks, wordlessly adding her name to the guard’s roster for the next evening. But he knew what she’d discover; he knew how bitter and disillusioned she’d become when she realized everything she’d been told was a lie. The people of Cassè were not monstrous at all. The life they led was just as refined and amicable as you could find in Déchets—and that was the real problem for their king. Alaric wasn’t afraid of this neighboring land’s barbaric ways; he was jealous that they were thriving without his leadership. He was afraid that Cassè was doing better than Déchets. It was pure greed that fueled the king’s desperate feud with the people of Cassè, nothing more.
We might have changed the world together, Ithel recalls as a single tear slips down his cheek. I would have followed you into Cassè. I would have helped you fight alongside them. I’d have given you anything you wanted if you’d only stayed true to me. But Helena had strayed; she’d disappeared into Cassè without a trace once she’d learned the truth. She found someone else over in that land; she loved another and had a family. That realization is a rusty dagger slicing into Ithel’s chest so that every next breath brings an excruciating ache in his heart.
Ithel lets his tears fall as he listens to Helena’s terrorized sobs as she plummets to the ground. Then, silence. A blessed, terrifying silence. “Helena?” Ithel whispers the name, praying that her blood does not paint the stones below. Nothing. If she’d gotten control, she would have answered. Even if it was just to call me atrocious names.
“We’re doing our best,” one of the healer slaves shouts in response, his voice betraying the worry he feels for his patient. “But we may need more….” The healer’s words die off as he gives his final breath.
Ithel races into the infirmary, shouting orders as he moves. “All available healers report to the ground floor. Priority patient in critical condition!” he demands, grateful to see a handful of healer slaves racing to the window, using their Windwalker magic to speed their arrival to their patient’s side. Hurry, hurry, Ithel urges even as he follows them, lithe and graceful as he flies out the window and drifts down to the ground floor on the breeze.
It feels like an eternity before Ithel’s heels strike the paving marble on the ground floor. He hears the soft wails of onlookers, frozen in place as the healers attempt to save Helena. Ithel’s eyes land on a young girl, her mouth hanging open as tears pour down her face. “There was nothing we could do,” the young girl’s mother insists, racing over to cling to Ithel’s arm. She desperately tries to pull her daughter’s gaze away from the gory scene. “She was falling so fast; there was just no time to react,” she adds as silent, grieving tears well in her eyes. “We tried to use our Windwalker abilities to slow her fall, but there wasn’t enough time.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ithel whispers hoarsely, wishing there was someone to blame besides himself. The little girl’s haunted expression does not leave his mind’s eye. How many more will be traumatized this week? Because if Helena survives this, if she truly wishes to succeed in the tunnel, she’ll have to endure this training. Again. And again, until she’s mastered it.
Ithel shakes off the woman’s clinging grasp, forcing his feet to carry him closer to the scene. Voices hiss and murmur as waves of watchers part the way for Ithel to reach Helena’s side. His stomach drops as his shoes slide on the stones, blood making them slippery. Helena’s blood. My gods, I’ve killed her! Piles of sand form as the bodies of the dead healers disintegrate. More slaves take their place,
