Page 105 of Scourged

As she lay there, her mind drifted.

And as her mind drifted, she forced herself tofeel.

She started with the sun. Then turned to the blades of grass. With some reluctance, she turned inward, toward her soul.

That wrecked, broken little soul of hers, curled in the hollow space beneath her ribs. A soul that once wished desperately for escape, for adventure and freedom, but now only craved safety. Comfort. Familiarity.

Things it would never know again. Things that were cleaved from her with the lash of a steel-studded whip and by the touch of unwanted, taking hands. Things that were stolen from her by starvation and betrayal and feelings too confusing and twisted to process.

A coiled and gnarled mass of panic burst through her body, roots that burrowed deep and strangled her lungs. She wanted to run from those things. To retreat into her surface-level self, to lose herself to a run or a fight or a bottle of wine. It was whatshe’d always been good at: using the world around her to create a life she could live with.

But something forced her to stay.

It wasn’t anything she recognized. Not a force she could name or one she’d known before. But it filtered in and held her there within herself, forcing her to lie with the smoking ruins of her soul.

And as she stayed, her heart stopped hammering so heavily beneath her ribs, and her lungs stopped squeezing the air from her chest. Her hands unfurled, clumps of grass falling out as her fingers loosened, bits of dirt buried beneath her nails.

She allowed herself to sit with her brokenness and did not run from it.

Mariah didn’t know how much time passed as she lay there beneath the rustling trees. Birds sang in the canopy above; a cricket chirped from its place in a bramble bush; a curious rabbit peeked its nose out from behind a fallen log, its heartbeat racing, sending vibrations through the forest floor. Her pain and grief and rage wrapped around all that she heard, and her panic and fear slowly and slowly ebbed away.

“M? Are you … are yousleeping?”

A familiar voice cut through her reverie. Mariah pulled herself from those deepest parts of herself, her mouth spreading into an easy smile as she cracked open her eyes. Bright light blinded her, but she knew who’d disturbed her peace.

“Well, Quentin, if Iwas, I’m definitely not anymore.”

She’d heard his footsteps start a few minutes before he spoke, felt the steadily increasing tremors beneath her hands. She had opened their bond, just a fracture, guiding him to her little clearing.

She’d had enough of being alone.

“Oh, please. I’m quiet as a mouse.” Quentin grinned, his movements easy and casual as he slipped his baldric from hischest. He cavalierly tossed the leather leaden with throwing knifes to the side before sliding to the ground a few feet from Mariah. He leaned back against the trunk of a smooth birch tree, kicking out his feet before him.

Mariah huffed a chuckle. “Yeah, sure,” she quipped, sitting up and leaning back on her hands. “If mice were the size of an Idrixian Ephalant.”

Quentin barked a laugh. “Gods, M.” His bottle green eyes shone with mirth. “Do you think the Ephalant’s are real? I always thought they were just myths, but I also didn’t think shifters could exist, so …”

“I don’t know,” Mariah said with her own answering laugh. “But I think it would be fun to find out for sure one day, don’t you think?”

“If this is you telling me I get to go to Idrix, then say no more.”

Mariah picked at a single blade of grass, still smiling, but her humor settled in her chest. “Maybe one day.” She turned to the sky. “Onita has spent so long in solitude, who’s to say what the world is really like beyond its borders?”

Quentin didn’t answer her right away. Some of their early lightheartedness faded, washing away with Mariah’s question. Instead, he studied her, head cocking to the side, an errant strand of wild ginger hair falling across his freckled forehead.

“Have I ever told you about where I came from? Where I was … before I was Marked?”

Mariah whipped her head to Quentin. He’d lost the usual blithe gleam in his eye, replaced by an uncharacteristic seriousness. She blinked at him once, slowly, before shaking her head, straightening her back, and crossing her legs in the soft grass.

He shifted against the tree, clearing his throat. “Well, I was born here, in Verith. But not in the shiny streets of the mountaindistrict.” He picked at his fingers. “My mother … she worked at a brothel. Told me my father was a rich pirate lord from the Kizar Islands who had slipped past the blockades and made it to shore. Which, come to think of it,fuckthose pirates.” His fist met his leg as a frustrated sound tore from his throat. Quentin breathed deeply, rolling his neck.

“I lived with her, for a time … until a few men decided they didn’t want to pay for the goods and took from her instead. They left her there in that dirty alleyway for me to find. She was so pretty, with her honey hair and crystal blue eyes … but whenever I try to recall her face, all I can picture is the way she looked on the day she died. Bloody and bruised and broken.”

All the sounds of the forest faded away. Mariah stared at her brave and fierce Armature, usually so full of exuberant fire, and saw who he really was, hidden beneath it all.

Someone who wasn’t much different from who she was now. Someone damaged and starved and broken. Someone who’d seen the worst in humanity but had come out on the other side stronger for it.

“Quentin …”

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