Page 3 of This Monster of Mine

Sarai raised an eyebrow. They had been on that “last toast” for some time now.

“To the assessors that seek out our humble town every year!” Marus pronounced. “And to the Tetrarchy. Long may they rule!”

Cups rose and clinked, and Marus promptly poured the other half of the goblet over his face in an attempt to reach his mouth. She turned her snort into a sneeze when Cretus narrowed his rheumy eyes in her direction. Hands braced on the counter, he returned to examining his tavern with predatory intent. His profits would be high tonight. Ur Dinyé’s most remote village had so little to celebrate that the assessors’ visits from the capital had become a strange annual festival. Where everyone toasted themisfortune of those assessed as a Petitor Candidate. Where they thanked the gods, High and Dark, that it wasn’t their kin being bundled away to Edessa to be trained for four years at exorbitant tuition fees, only to take their lives after graduating.

That was Arsamea. Grateful for what they had and grateful that others lacked the same. And at present, everyone was grateful that they weren’t Chieftain Marus.

“Feels like yesterday when Cisuré started at the Academiae, and she’s already graduating,” Marus boasted to a silver-haired man whose smile looked frozen on. “One month and she’ll be aTetrarch’sPetitor.”

“You aren’t … worried?” the man ventured, causing several others at the table to stiffen.

Marus waved a hand. “She’s mountain bred. None of that city-folk weakness in her. She’ll handle the job.”

For once, Sarai wanted him to be right. She couldn’t lose Cisuré on top of everything else, and their letters, brief and stilted as they could be, were one of her few tethers to hope.

A few years back, this unease around Petitors would have been unheard of. They were highly prized for their rare brand of magic: detecting lies and tunneling into the memories of those accused of crimes to extract evidence during trials for public view. A talent so indispensable to governance that assessors scoured Ur Dinyé for Candidates and trained them at the land’s most prestigious school. Graduates all received lifelong posts with government officials, with the very best getting to work for the Tetrarchy, the land’s ruling judges. Then, four years ago, the Tetrarchy’s Petitors had begun taking their lives. Now, Candidates were highly prized for a different reason.

“Word is that there’s only a few Candidates left in the Academiae. The rest all fled Edessa.” Ethra, the town’s new healer—and Marus’s bit on the side—pursed her lips. “Imagine running from serving a Tetrarch.”

“The job’s cursed,” Flavia, Arsamea’s oldest resident, pronounced. “Don’t the Codices warn of the forbidden realms of the dead and their lust for resurrection? Something haunts the Tetrarchy. On Wisdom, I feel it.”

Sarai hid a snort when the table agreed in hushed whispers.Thiswas why southern Urds classified everyone from the north as backward, largely magicless mountain swine. Yet, sometimes, she wondered if Flavia had a point. The Tetrarchy had hidden the conditions of their dead Petitors’ corpses, but the capital’s grapevine had unearthed and passed on murmurs of sliced limbs, self-immolation, and daggers shoved to the hilt in throats, all of which had raised the same questions across the country. Why would a Petitor take their life with such brutality?

And here I am pining for the same job.Sighing, she picked up another cup to polish.No hope yet, whispered the meager coins in the pouch around her neck.Not for a long time.Because it didn’t matter that she possessed the magic the assessors sought. She couldn’t afford a year of the Academiae’s tuition, let alone the requisite four; and until she could, she wasn’t a Candidate. She was nothing.

“Must be nice in the capital.” Ethra gloomily stared at the snow piling outside. “Imagine all that sun and sand on our—your skin,” she corrected, after a glare from Marus’s wife.

Sarai warily eyed the two women’s tight grip on their utensils. Their last fight had ended in her scrubbing the floor for hours to prize off the deer gizzards they’d thrown at each other.

Oblivious to the fact that he was the root of most of the village’s problems, Marus shot Ethra an irritated glance. “Nothing wrong with our life here.”

“It can be a little dull,” she foolishly persisted, looking around the table for support. “Haven’t you wondered if the south might have more to offer?”

The table fell quiet. Clouds gathered on Marus’s face.Now she’s done it.

He rose with the menace of a blackstripe bear. “Run off to Edessa then. Or have you forgotten what happened to the last brainless woman who did that?” He jabbed a finger that, even in his drunken state, unerringly found Sarai.

She stilled. Anger, always so close at hand, welled forth like blood as heads swiveled toward her from across the tavern, sporting matchingexpressions of glee. Reminding her that she was worse than nothing becausenothingreceived merciful indifference. She silently prayed to all seven of the High Elsar that the barb was a one-off. Then again, the gods had never been overly fond of her.

Booted steps approached the countertop. Marus tossed his cup at her, spite on his red-splotched face. Emptying half an amphora into his cup, she returned it to him.Don’t do it, Marus. Leave me alone.

“That’s what stupid ideas get you,” he told Ethra, prodding the air by Sarai’s face to indicate the ridged scars mapping every inch of her, brown tributaries within golden skin. “Still think the south has anything to offer?”

Sarai’s nails formed red crescents in her palms as Ethra shook her head with distaste.Stupid ideas.As though her scars were a punishment from the gods. She had no insight into whether the Elsar gave ahavïdthat she’d dared to be orphaned in a town that froze over for nine months of the year, or that she’d been desperate enough for education to leave Arsamea four years ago and follow Cisuré to the capital. But the good townsfolkcertodid. So when she’d returned as a scarred wreck after only three days in Edessa, they had never let her live it down.

Perhaps the scars were punishment for the day she finally poisoned them all.

Marus snorted when she forced herself to placidly polish another cup. “If Cretus didn’t need the help, I wouldn’t have allowed you back,scum. So certain you were too good for us, only to crawl back as a patchwork creature. The Academiae didn’t want the likes of you, and Cisuré had no use for you at all.”

At least the second half wasn’t true.Your daughter writes to me every month, asshole.

“Four years,” Marus told his rapt audience. “Cisuré’s soon to be a Petitor, and this one’s still a barmaid. Blood will out. The worthy will rise, but the rest? Destined for dirt.” He seized her jaw. “Though someone already taught you that lesson, didn’t they?”

A shudder ripped through her at his touch. Crimson tainted her vision, bitterly familiar. She bit her cheek as the walls pressed closer, the room tilting and rippling while the warm salt of blood filled her mouth. Just as it hadthatnight in Edessa when her body had smashed into the ground, blood pouring from shattered limbs, assomeonecrouched over her and—

Marus released his grip, shoving her head back. She collided with the wall, nearly knocking over a row of amphorae. The cup she had been polishing clattered to the ground as laughter erupted from every corner of the tavern.

“Did you see her face?” someone yelled. “Where’d you go, Sarai? Back to Edessa?”

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