Page 94 of Vilest Things
End of the line. But if they keep going any farther, they will freeze.
“Calla,” Anton says suddenly, “teach me what you drew on yourself.”
It takes Calla a second to comprehend his demand. By then, Anton is already acting, unsheathing only a fraction of her sword and slashing his palm across the blade. Blood gathers on his fingers, and he offers it to her.
Anton Makusa was the one who stumbled onto the first of this practice on his own, who turned a dead body into his chance for survival. Who sacrificed so tremendously that he needed no guiding sigil.
“Here.” Calla takes Anton’s hand, his blood running onto hers. She’s already marked—the sigil hasn’t faded—and she pulls down his collar to trace the same sigil onto him. A rush of cold spirits down her spine. The world comes into sharp focus.
“Were you watching the order?” she asks, her voice low.
“No,” Anton answers, and his eyes drop to her mouth. “You’ll have to teach me again. I’ll see you by the light.”
And then he falls, collapsing as deadweight onto the cold ground.
“Hey!” Calla bellows. “You—”
August’s delegation looms closer, riding at full speed. She can’t waste time shouting at air, though she would have expected Anton towaitfor her. With a huff, Calla turns in the direction of the mountains and closes her eyes, feeling for qi too.
She jumps.
The first landing immediately feels bizarre. She’s alive, conscious. But she can’t blink. The world doesn’t move around her—it is a hollow make-believe ofshapes and colors, barely stitching together in her understanding of which way lies north and which is south.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, she turns her face. She cannot move her limbs, but she can feel the direction of the wind. It blows in from the western seaboard.
As far as she can stretch her own qi, she searches for the next body.
Calla slams in with the sort of momentum that should cause her to stumble, but the body doesn’t budge.
She’s on the streets of Rincun again. The field looks familiar. There’s a muddy puddle by her feet, and though it takes some time, Calla tilts her head enough to look at herself in the crystallizing reflection.
When she first saw the princess here, she looked so beautiful. Gems in every part of her headpiece. Her sleeves trailing pink, her dress glimmering with gold. The tears are dripping down Calla’s face without any way to stop them. Her body cannot move outside these tedious speeds, but her tears fall and fall and fall without cessation.
She had wanted it so much. She wants so much… the world, the seas beyond.
Calla must go. If she gives in, she will remain here forever, just like the girl she left at the bottom of a puddle. She shutters her eyes closed, waiting for them to block the sights of Rincun out entirely.
Her skin is frozen. She’s dying. Her waist is buried in white snow, her palms split open on black rock.
Go,she urges herself.Keep going.If this mountain path continues north, there ought to be someone else—
Her head is pressed to ice. There’s blood in her mouth. This time, she has gotten entirely lost. Perhaps mere minutes pass, perhaps entire hours. She searches and searches with her slow-flickering eyes, but she sees only the white snow of the mountains.
The body has fallen. That’s why. Inch by inch, Calla manages to get her head tilted up, staring into the sky.
Please, please…
A flash of light comes from the left.There.
Her hand cradles into her chest. Her hand is so small. She’s found herself among a group. They’re turning in the wrong direction. They’re fleeing. Calla keeps moving.
This body is entirely numb. Approaching death. She feels how close she’s getting to the site of the crown. That flash of light is nearer each time. The twisting sensation in her throat is unbearable.
A knife in her stomach, her lungs awfully full—
There are so many people in the borderlands.
“About time you made it.”
