Winds of War by Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle

Author:Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle [Bruno, Rhett C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2018-12-03T23:00:00+00:00

XVI

THE MYSTIC

By the time sunlight filtered in through the stained glass, Sora’s throat felt like tree bark.

“Help!” she grated. She thrashed her body and clenched the muscles in her stomach until they finally gave out and she hung slack.

Multi-colored light painted the cobwebs like splintered diamonds hanging from rotting beams in the otherwise empty room that would be her grave. A spider flitted across one. It was tiny, but it still brought her back to the Webbed Woods and the last time she thought she was going to die.

She tried to force herself to think about the same things she had when Redstar was killing her—when she lost control and the energy of Elsewhere coursed through her like a hot spring. About all the places in the world she’d missed out on seeing while hiding beneath a shack. She considered every scar. How Wetzel used to cut her mercilessly, bidding the darkness within her to rise up.

She begged her body to bring that power back to bear.

But it never came.

“At least I’ll die in a church,” she groaned, sardonic.

She’d never been religious. Wetzel didn’t care for anything but his studies and his potions. But as a child, she’d gone with Whitney and his family to the Troborough church house. Her first few visits, everyone stared at her. Whitney’s mother told her it was because she was “just so cute.” But his father’s eyes shot daggers sharper than her ears.

But she’d watch the other families leave service, their eyes circled by luminous white paint once a year during the Dawning, when the moons blotched out the sun, and the people of the Glass were forced to look inward for Iam’s light. Tears speckled her eyes as she recalled how they smiled and caroused, mothers hugging their daughters, fathers tussling their sons’ hair.

She’d always longed for that. One year, Whitney’s parents even took him to Yarrington for the ceremony led by Wren the Holy at Yarrington Cathedral. She remembered being the loneliest she’d ever been in her life, sitting by the stream staring at the empty Troborough chapel while Wetzel called for her to help with his potions.

No matter how many times Whitney told her what a load of shog it all was, she always wanted to belong. Wetzel cared for her the best he knew how, but he wasn’t her real father.

She hung her head and closed her eyes. Wetzel didn’t believe in any Gate of Light, didn’t believe that the dead would be delivered into the waiting arms of Iam. Like her ancestors, he believed that after death, the spirit went to Elsewhere. To linger without purpose, watching until the essence of one’s soul would one day be returned to the world of the living. She wondered if she might find her true parents on that eldritch plane.

In truth, she only hoped death would bring relief from painful memories. That when her eyes shut for the last time, she would no longer have to remember the pain of abandonment, the shame of her heritage, or the brutality she’d experienced at the hands of men like Kazimir.

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