Page 4 of Kissed By the Gods
But even so, this new, wild part of my mind is laughing at this captain and his three paltry soldiers.
The captain bears down on me, as if he’ll run me down with his 2,000 pounds of horseflesh and be done with it. Distantly, I hear Seb curse as he starts running toward me. I plant one foot behind me and another in front, balancing myself in a move as natural as breathing. I am going nowhere, horse or no fucking horse. I swing my scythe with my back hand, so it hangs above my head.
At the last second, the horse balks and stops, rearing. The hooves brush against my hair. When the animal comes back down, my blade nearly touches its forehead. Everyone is breathing in jagged bursts, even the massive beast. Everyone but me.
I’ve never been so calm.
Seb has stopped to my right, my father to my left. Mother is behind me, a hand on my shoulder trying to pull my arm down.
Seb raises his arms in the air in an attempt to draw the soldiers’ attention, but the captain doesn’t spare him a glance. He doesn’t take his eyes from mine. He raises his sword while the two archers behind him raise their bows, arrows knocked. “You should kneel, girl. Do you not know the punishment for disrespecting the king’s soldiers?”
My mother is crying again, blubbering. “She didn’t mean it. She didn’t?—”
But we can’t speak to the soldiers without permission. The captain raises a hand to signal and my mother is abruptly silenced as an arrow flies through the air and impales her in the forehead.
No! Oh gods, no!I want to drop to my knees, pull her in close, and accept my punishment for doing this to her. But instead, a red film hazes over my eyes and that shattered part of me is muted, like I’m listening to it from under water.
I begin to swing the scythe like it’s an extension of myself, except that it isn’t. No; it has become part of me, fused to my hand through heat or something else. Something magical. In seconds, I’ve unseated the captain from his horse, and blood pours from the wound in his throat as he stares at me in horror.
There’s a roar and I swivel my head to see my father charging toward the archer who shot my mother. The soldier was taking aim at me, but he turns at the inhuman sound my father made and lets his arrow fly toward him instead. A second follows it as the other archer responds to the new threat, but that doesn’t stop Father from reaching the first and ripping him from his saddle. Father stabs the shell-shocked archer with one of his own arrows, then falls to his knees with two arrows protruding from his chest. His collapse rattles the ground beneath my feet.
The grief starts to swell again, a wave of it threatening to swallow me whole, until one of the soldiers swings his massive sword to cut me in half. I’m fast, though, and it swipes through nothing but air as I keep moving, the rhythm of battle humming to life in my blood. Swing, pivot, dodge. I strike the center of the swordsman’s chest with my scythe. It isn’t sharp enough to cut through the armor, but the force of my blow unseats him. He tumbles to the ground in a cacophony of clanging metal.
The last archer takes aim and fires, but somehow I catch the arrow an inch from my chest. I flip it around and throw it back at him in one movement. It sails through the air as if I had launched it from a bow, striking him in the eye he aimed with. He falls from his horse with a mangled scream.
Now, it’s me and the downed swordsman. The horses have all scattered away from the threat. Away from me.
I stalk toward the soldier, the scythe in my hands dripping blood. He’s on his back staring up at me, trying to crawl backward.
“M-m-m-mercy,” he’s mumbling. “Mercy, please…!”
But there is no mercy in me. I plant my boot on his chest and slam him into the ground, raising the scythe over my head.
“Wait!” Somewhere in my mind I know the voice is Seb’s, but I don’t have time for him right now. I’m not finished.
But Seb grabs my arm with his trembling hands. “Leina, wait!”
I turn to face him, and the red haze begins to clear from my vision. His eyes are frantic, sweeping from side to side. I follow his gaze, and the carnage in the field will join my unending nightmares. Lace browning and curling inward. Fires and burned flesh. Desperate screams that go forever unheeded. Bones rotting in the earth. A darkness that crushes.
Now, blood seeping into the soil.
The scythe wobbles in my hands, and my mouth works, trying to form words. What have I done?
The soldier beneath my boot grabs my leg and tries to twist.
I kick him in the face, and blood spurts from his nose. The man is freakishly pale under all that red. I’m about to bring down the scythe when he starts to stammer, eyes rounded.
“I-i-i-i-impossible. It’s not possible.”
I lower the scythe until it rests against his throat. I don’t have to fight Seb now. He’s released my arm and shifted to stand next to me.
“What’s not possible?” It’s a shock to hear my own voice. There’s a command in it that’s never been there before.
But the man is shaking his head and muttering while staring at me as if I’m the monster.
I’m not sure what to do next. Battle was as natural as breathing. But this? What do I do here? Torture? I need the soldier to talk. He might know what is happening to me. He certainly seems to have a better idea than I do.
But it’s Seb who takes over, kicking the man in the side. The soldier makes an oof sound, but he can’t double over because my boot has him pinned.
