Isadora by Charlotte McConaghy

Author:Charlotte McConaghy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

We were two days’ walk from the village when he collapsed. We were so close, had made it so far already. The rain continued to pour, turning everything soggy. It was how he slipped, and why he couldn’t get back up again.

‘Falco!’

He stirred groggily and muttered, ‘Quill?’

We’d reached a muddy road, but I could see nothing through the curtain of rain. We were a long way west, and none wandered these parts for fear of getting lost too near the border of Pirenti.

‘Stand up,’ I ordered him, water persistently running into my eyes. ‘You must stand and walk.’

He moaned, but his eyes remained closed. The shirt around his skull was soaked through not only with rain but with blood. I slapped him on the face and shook his shoulders but it didn’t rouse him.

‘Please get up,’ I urged. ‘Falco, I need you to get up. I’m not strong enough to carry you.’

I wasn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. I was so small, and he so much bigger.

And why should I care? Truly, why? Was this not what I’d wanted? This man’s death was meant to be the purpose of my life. I wasn’t blind to what I’d felt for him when bonded. I’d honestly believed I was in love with him. But the remnant of a thing I had never chosen and had fought to end should not be enough to nullify the very purpose of my life. How had I become so weak?

Leave him. Leave him here for the crows to pick at, and take what you are strong enough to take from a broken world. Eradicate what monstrosity you are strong enough to eradicate.

Here was what I believed.

That you were either the hunter or the hunted. The butcher or the meat. The caged or the free. I believed that I would use my daggers to cut out the hearts of the Mad Ones.

But no longer was that all I believed.

The terrible truth made itself clear as I watched a man die. He may not believe in himself, but I did. I believed in Falco of Sancia, and knew he would be the one to free us from the warders.

So even though I wasn’t strong enough, I rolled him onto my shoulders and I rose trembling to my feet. My hip and shoulder hurt so badly that tears were in my eyes, lost in the rain as they streamed endlessly down my cheeks, but I took step after slippery step towards the village ahead, for hours and hours. Sometimes I thought I wouldn’t take another step, but step I did, because I was forged in a cage by cruelty and madness, and I would not let the distance between my feet and that village be the thing that defeated me. I would carry him forever if I had to.

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