Page 2 of The Last One
In this land, she conquers foes.
As daystar sets in foreign sky,
A requiem and a lullaby.
The quilt shrinks to a cosmic strand,
Her legend hailed in this strange land.
—An Elegy by Veril Bairnell the Sapient
1
I open my eyes and choose violence.
Because I’m on my back and a woman is on top of me. Her pale hand is wrapped around my neck. She smells sickly sweet, she smells strange, and she smells foul. The whites of her large blue eyes are yellow as straw. With that smooth skin, she looks nineteen or twenty years old. Is she a thief? Is she a murderer?
Either way, she needs to get off me. So I slap at her ear with one hand and grab her fingers with the other.
“Oh!” Her eyes widen, and she successfully dodges my swipe. She tries to reel away but falls back over me instead. She gasps, and her rancid breath hits my nose.
I gag—ugh!—then squeeze her hand.
She doesn’t wince even as I crack a bone in her smallest finger. No. She uses her free hand to dip near my neck. “Ha,” she says with a grin. “Still got it.”
I want to ask,Youstill got what?but my tongue droops in my mouth like a dying lily. I can’t push out one word, and definitely not four.
The thief holds up a thick gold chain that sparkles in the light. A gold moth with ruby-encrusted wings dangles from that chain. The stone on the moth’s thorax is the size of a robin’s egg and as dark as the darkest night.
The pendant’s clasp is as broken as I am, and my chest feels cold without that jeweled moth, oddly empty, like she’s taken more than an amulet from me.
The thief yanks out of my hold and this time successfully scoots away. She tries to chuckle, but tears shine in her eyes as she winces and flexes her injured hand. “You didn’t have to break every bone. One would’ve been plenty.”
I open my mouth to respond—Iknowyou’re not talking to me like that—but the back of my head throbs, and my tongue is still stuck.
“But I’ll take this necklace as an apology,” the bandit says, scrambling to her feet. “Thanks.” She winces again as she tries to flex her tender hand, then swings a knapsack onto her shoulder and winks at me. “Tah.”
And just like that, she’s gone, a flash through the grove of trees.
Did she just…?Yeah, she did.And…“Tah?”
With fire bubbling in my belly, I push up from the bed of twigs, yellowing leaves, and gray bark to follow her—but my legs flop beneath me, and I fall back into the dry rubbish.
What is happening? Why can’t I stand?
My mind spins with dizziness and confusion. My feet were working fine just moments ago. I think. Because what was I doing moments ago before waking up with a thief on top of me? Uhh… I don’t remember.
The rapid pulsing in my gut makes me look down to see my heaving chest protected by my favorite scarlet bandeau and—
Wait. Why the hell am I looking at my favorite bandeau?
My eyes dart to the stretch of mahogany skin across my belly and then farther down. The soil speckling my toes and ankles looks sickly gray, so stark against my brown feet, pinpoints of starlight against the velvet night sky.
I should not be seeing gray dirt. I should not be seeing my toes.
Where are my boots? Why am I so cold? Where is my cloak?
I squeeze the bridge of my aching nose.
