Fractured Soul (Assassins of Illumination 1): A Fantasy Epic of the Illumination Cycle by JMD Reid

Author:JMD Reid [Reid, JMD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreaming Between Worlds Publishing, LLC
Published: 2023-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter twenty-one

The Forty-Seventh Day of Modesty, 755 EU

Vinexa had a long, sleepless night waiting for Carstin’s return.

She stood in her bedroom wrapped in her quilted blanket, the coal stove barely producing enough heat to drive back the chill of the night. Spring’s start at the beginning of the new year was only a week away, but winter did not want to release its grip on Kash.

She stared out the window at the foggy street below, looking for some sign of Carstin. He had left last evening to meet with Astophin and had never come back. Dread had slowly built in her, laid brick by brick, each one weighing down her guts with more fear.

I should have gone with him, Vinexa thought for the thousandth time. She rubbed grit from her eyes. They still felt sandy. A headache throbbed through the back of her head from exhaustion. Why didn’t I go with him?

She knew why. She was a laundress. She washed clothes. She wasn’t a fighter. She had no idea how to help Carstin if he got into trouble. He was the fighter. The highwayman. She had always imagined his robberies as something dark and romantic.

Naive, she knew, but he was such a loving man. He had two different hues of White to him. One was the tender lover who had stolen her heart. The other a man who robbed and even killed. Both Truths seemed impossible, but that was a person. A mix of contradictions.

He had gotten free of that past and now he was embroiled in it again. She’d just let him go like she always had. Maybe if she had insisted he stayed, he wouldn’t have been turned into a monster.

He’s stronger than any normal man. He can heal wounds that would kill others. He doesn’t need my help. She shifted. Does he even need me?

She knocked back that treacherous thought.

No, no, he loved her. She knew that. He could not be so tender with her. When they shared their Red, he always made sure she found her pleasure. He was not her first lover, but the two before him had just wanted one thing from her. She had been a step up from a prostitute.

But with Carstin . . .

Please, please be alive, she thought. Come back to me.

The world lightened. Dawn verged on spilling across Kash. She glanced out the windows. From the height of her apartment, she could just make out the Gray Pillar rising out of the middle of the city, rising up and over the fog choking the streets below. It was to the southeast from here. The center of the world.

All her life, she had glimpsed the Gray Pillar rising above the city. It used to be the home of the Kings of Lothon before they’d built their lavish Palace of Lights to the northeast of the city beyond the King’s Preserve. The tower remained a symbol of the Crown’s authority. Some men had still stained their pointer finger gray to show they were king’s men.

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