Page 45 of Blood Red Woes

I’m hurt. I’m enraged. I want to hit something. I tell him, “And how do I know that’s not just another lie? Help you with the woes. Right. Why should I help you—any of you—with your problems, hmm?” With every sentence, my voice gets louder until I’m practically yelling at him, but he doesn’t flinch.

I say, “No one is there to help me with my problems. No one gives a shit about me. Kicked out of school, my scholarship possibly gone. About to be homeless. No one cares about me, so why the fuck should I care about you?”

My right hand tenses up, and even though I’m not looking at it, I can feel the sparks of magic glowing, dancing along my skin, their warmth the only bit of friendship I have right now. “I never asked for any of this,” I tell him. “I don’t want it. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be your goddamned hero. I just want to go home and forget all of this!”

Even though I just yelled at him, Frederick is calm when he whispers, “Sometimes we are given responsibilities we never asked for, things no one else can accomplish. To deny them is to deny fate. Do you really think you came to Laconia accidentally? That you can somehow walk through the storms and survive out there when none of us can? I refuse to believe it’s a coincidence. You are here because you are the answer to our prayers—”

“I don’t want to be,” I hiss.

“We don’t always get what we want in life. Sometimes we are burdened with duties we never asked for, and we have no choice but to rise to the task.”

I lift a finger at him, Rune still glowing on my wrist and hand. “Easy for you to say. This isyourhome.Yourkingdom. Of course you want to do everything you can to save it: it’syours. It’s. Not. Mine. I might never get to go home again.”

Frederick quietly says, “This city is not my home. It is where I live now, yes, but my home is out there, past those stone walls. My home is Magnysia. You have the freedom to walk outside those walls, to see things most in here have only dreamed of seeing. You were sent to answer our pleas, Rey. I wish you could understand that.”

All I can do is shake my head. Shake my head and back away from him, to the door. The glowing tattoo on my wrist fades into its normal black color, the magic dissipating.

No. No, it’s not right. It’s not fair. I don’t want any of this. I don’t care how selfish that makes me. I just want to go home, to blink and for everything to go back to the way things were, to a time when I had no idea what a woe was or who the empresses were. Simpler times when my problems were just that: my own.

I don’t say a word more as I turn and run out of Frederick’s hut. I run with no destination, passing the same group of people washing their clothes in the dirty pond. Habit drives me toward the grate in the outer stone wall, and I slip through it.

I run. I run for a few minutes along the flowing creek.

If I’m stuck here… what am I going to do?

Chapter Thirteen

“That didn’t go so well, did it?” Rune asks, his snide tone dialed back a bit. The tattoo on my wrist and hand light up when he speaks, waves of gold and white washing over the black mark. “Frederick lied to get you to do what he wants. Never saw that coming. Didn’t think he had it in him to do something like that.”

I sit on the edge of a stone cliff, half a mile or so outside the city’s wall. The creek is a few feet to my right, though it falls off the side of the cliff to join what is eventually a river further down. I’m on the side of Laconia where there aren’t any abandoned homes or farmlands, the cliffs too sharp to be of use to anyone, even before the woes.

All I can do in response to what Rune said is heave a sigh.

“It seems,” Rune goes on, “you might be here for a while.”

As my eyes gaze over the horizon, over the path I took not so long ago while following Fred’s trail out into Acadia, I sigh again.

And then Rune says something that makes me want to strangle him: “Perhaps we should rethink the Emperor’s offer.” I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but he goes on, “It’s clear Frederick doesn’t know a thing about what it would take to get you home. He was hoping to get you onto his side, rally you to save Laconia. I simply mean, Rey, that the Emperor might make a better ally. He might actually be able to help you.”

“You think?” I huff with a frown. “Or do you think he was blowing smoke up my ass to get me to do what he wants, just like Frederick? How can I trust anyone here?” I hunch over and bury my face in my hands.

“I believe the Emperor is a man out of options, a man who is perhaps not used to asking for help.”

“He was an asshole. A jerk.”

“Be that as it may, he might be your only way out of here. Perhaps, if we fulfill his request, we will inadvertently save the rest of Laconia, too.”

I pull my hands away from my face, staring out at the horizon. The sun hangs low in the sky, late afternoon, but its warmth is just as unyielding as ever. Not an uncomfortable heat, but one that reminds me of an early summer day, right when you get out of school. No responsibilities, nothing to drag you down.

“I don’t want to be a hero,” I whisper.

“Then don’t be. Do whatever you need to do to go home.”

My gaze falls to my wrist. “What about you?”

“Don’t concern yourself with me. Perhaps if the Emperor can find a way for you to go home, he can also find a way for us to be unbound.” Rune sounds hopeful at that, his accented voice eager to find a way to solve all of our problems.

I think back to the Emperor. How he acted, what he said; he was a good-looking guy, sure, but not the kind of guy I’d ever stick my neck out to help. Then again, I wouldn’t really stick my neck out for anybody.

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