Page 11 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

Zylah watched him all the while, wondering if she could get to the matches in his pocket, if she could set him on fire instead of using the knife.

“I didn’t want this to happen, Zylah,” he said, as if he could read the malicious thoughts from her expression alone.

She studied his face, trying to see some hint of truth in the depths of his black eyes, but found only a stranger staring back at her. “But you let it.”

He didn’t reply.

“You and Rose used to play here,” Zylah said as he finished the last of the stew. “Your mother was still alive then?”

Raif stood slowly, took the pot and utensils into the bathroom, and began to wash them. “We used to come here to escape her punishments,” he explained, the space so small she could hear him just fine from where she sat, but at that, Zylah pushed to her feet to watch him.

“She used her magic on you?”

“Don’t act like you care, Zylah,” he told her, parroting her words. “She wanted us to have destruction magic like hers. Pushed us and pushed us to work on it. The first time I realised what I could do, I was with Holt.”

A sprite. Holt had told her the story.

“We were boys, playing in the forest. Those damned sprites followed Holt everywhere, and I tried to push one away, but it turned to ash at my touch,” Raif said, staring at his palms. “And I knew I had to hide it from my mother for as long as I could.”

Zylah swallowed. He didn’t deserve her pity, for all that he’d done. But he’d been made this way, moulded and shaped by his mother from the beginning, and she could at least acknowledge the unfairness of that.

“Get some rest,” he told her when she didn’t reply, leaving without another word.

But Zylah couldn’t. Instead, she sat on her bed, legs crossed, trying and trying to draw a piece of baylock to her open palm. Then she paced her room, hands at her sides, fingers twitching as if the movement might help the flow of her magic. But nothing came.

There were no other hints of Holt, no other flickers of feeling in her chest. But she refused to believe he was gone. She’d felt him. Even when Raif had carried her away from Ranon’s tomb, she’d felt him. The scent of acani berries clinging to Aurelia—it had to be him. It had to be.

She curled up in her bed, pulling and pulling and pulling on her magic, willing a piece of baylock to appear until sleep claimed her. She woke once, the rough scrape of something against her fingers rousing her. A single tear rolled down Zylah’s cheek as she shoved the leaf into her pocket and fell back to sleep.

When she awoke, Raif still wasn’t there, but breakfast had been delivered: a stale pastry wrapped in cloth. Zylah summoned more baylock, a single leaf at a time, shoving it into her clothing to hide it from Raif.

She kept looking for a reason why he was the way he was. His mother’s abuse. Her ‘death’. His father. His dark magic. A reason he might still be good inside. But she knew what she had to do. She only hoped she’d have enough baylock to do it. Even if it just knocked him out, gave her a head start, enough time to run far away from him, she would take it.

The sunlight passed across the room in a thick band as she worked through her exercises, summoning baylock leaves until her head thumped and her chest felt tight. She’d just slipped another into the hem of her tunic when she heard Raif’s footsteps in the passage beyond.

He raised a little sack in greeting, placing it in the makeshift workspace Zylah had made the day before. She didn’t greet him back. If she seemed to have warmed to him too quickly, it would only rouse suspicion.

With her back to him, she prepared the food he’d brought. More potatoes. Some leeks. A small block of cheese, a tin of salt. A brin fruit, for later, she presumed. Adding the baylock leaves discreetly wasn’t easy, but on her knees, her back to him, she managed it, almost exclaiming aloud in relief when she realised they wilted down in a similar fashion to the dried herbs, herbs she feigned spilling too many into the pot.

She’d added far more baylock than when she’d made the drinks for the army outside the vanquicite mine, far more than the paste she’d applied to the weapons prior to the attack. There was no way of knowing if it was enough to kill a vampire, if it even could. There was, of course, the possibility that so much of it might make her sick too, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

When she’d eaten her fill, Zylah left her discarded, half-eaten bowl of food and curled up in bed without offering Raif any of what was left. She turned away from him, fingers curled around Holt’s bracelet at her wrist and waited. Waited for so long she wasn’t sure if the vampire was still there, her breathing slowing as sleep tugged at her.

The soft scrape of a chair had her holding her breath, the sound of the spoon gently grazing the side of the pot. She forced her breaths to stay even, her heart to remain slow and steady. When the spoon clattered, Zylah still didn’t move.

The pot fell to the floor, and she was on her feet, taking a tentative step towards Raif where he’d slumped in his chair. There was no time to waste. Zylah pocketed the small knife, the brin fruit, reached for the orblight, and ran.

Chapter Seven

Thewardsrippledoverher skin as she passed through them. Zylah had no idea which direction to take; every passage looked the same, rock and root and dirt and darkness. When she’d tried to escape before, slivers of sunlight had still poked through gaps from above, wherever above was. But now the sun had set and the shadows were deep.

She held tightly to the orblight for fear it might fall from her grasp and shatter to the floor, leaving her alone in the dark. Strange noises echoed from deeper within the maze, every sound fraying her nerves and sending her heart racing all over again.

Get out. Find him.The two thoughts cycled on repeat, fashioning her resolve into something sharp.

A root snagged Zylah’s foot and she fell, arms outstretched to keep the orblight safe, her chest taking the brunt of her tumble. “Fuck,” she whispered into the dirt, laying prone as she caught her breath. She couldn’t risk calling out to Arioch, couldn’t risk anything that would draw attention. If Raif had been brought in and out by another Fae, or worse, a vampire who had once been a Fae with the ability to evanesce, then Zylah couldn’t risk being discovered.

Instead, she pressed on, smothering the fear threatening to overcome her. Small creatures scuttled in the shadows, something that was too much like a hiss far too close for comfort, but Zylah ignored it all. The maze changed as she moved. Sometimes the passages seemed like they were dug into the side of a mountain, sometimes the walls glistened with little shards of purple crystal, other times they were completely covered in tree roots and vines. Every now and then a cool breeze blew, a thin shaft of moonlight slashing across the dirt. She’d brought no water with her, and realised now what a stupid mistake that was.

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