Page 45 of Oracle of Ruin

I cannot hear his pleas over the rushing water in my ears. Somehow, Gadsden knew the king had planned to sacrifice me, and if he knew, how many of the other nobles did as well? Or perhaps he got it from a maid—he had a nasty habit there as well. It doesn’t even cross my mind that he knew where my room was in the giant palace. No, that thought is the least shocking of them all.

And he knew Tanja was a pureblood, something that even I hadn’t known up until her death. Something her mother most likely died to keep a secret.

“How did you know?”

“What?”

“How did you know she was a pureblood?”

Mavis’s face tells me she thinks I should be asking other questions, but I don’t care. None of those answers can bring her back or make sense of it. This one, at least, leads down a path of revenge.

“I saw her cut herself picking some roses for that other maid one day.”

“She wore gloves.” Tanja always said her skin was too pretty to risk any scars or callouses when working near anything sharp or potentially harmful to the flesh.

“She took them off when she thought no one was around,” he counters quickly. His voice is shaking with nerves, but he wouldn’t lie. Not while his life is on the line. And Tanja was often reckless when she thought someone would turn a blind eye. It all makes too much sense.

So Tanja awoke to Gadsden in my room, who told her I was about to be killed. Tanja rushed in, knowing exactly what she would find. She had the whole run to the tower to decide or choose to turn back. She didn’t. She knew the whole time she would die for me.

Emi’s eyes widen with something like pity and she steps forward as if to deck the man, but Neris grips her by the shoulder. Her knuckles are white and her jaw set as she watches. Mavis traces a long fingernail down the length of her arm until she reaches the junction of her wrist. Then her fingers wrap around the hilt of her blade, her eyes challenging Gadsden to say anything else.

Red pricks the corners of my vision and I am vaguely aware of Mavis producing a map and having the duke mark it with where this Oracle is rumored to be. She rolls it up and safely stashes it in her cloak before releasing the man, who rocks his head back heavily against the trunk of the tree.

Then, so quietly I almost don’t hear it, “I’m glad it wasn’t you, princess.”

I’ve read stories where the characters are so blinded by rage that they don’t realize what they are doing until they’ve done it, or where love drives them to the brink of madness. I’ve never known the emotion for myself before now. My voice is a dead vapor in the chilled air, and Mavis extends her arm, shielding Emi and Neris. Shielding them from me.

“What.”

Not a question. I heard him, I just need him to confess it again. To tell the gods as my pardon.

“She was just the help. If you’re to be queen, it was better for you to live.”

Gold flashes across my mind—her eyes, her smile, her love. Everyone says when someone dies for you, it is an act of love. All I can feel is hatred towards myself. It fills each crevice and void of my soul until there is no room left for this supposed love she gifted me.

My face is mere millimeters from his now. His scent of sweat and filth covers the earthy musk of the bark behind him, both overpowered by the distant scent of something burning. Someone swears low under their breath and I can feel something prickling my arm.

Skeins of black flame have wound themselves around my forearm, dancing upwards towards my heart. A glance downwards reveals the stains crossing the front of Gadsden’s pants have grown.

“It should have been me.”

“Princess, no,” Gadsden rambles, his face slick with a sheen of sweat. “Why would you say that? Why?”

“Because she was all that was good and kind, and I’m stuck here rotting. It should have been me.”

All the pain I’ve so poorly bottled up comes crashing through, so terrible it burns my throat raw. I dig my fingernails into my palms until they bleed. The dark flames lick at the blood and I can feel the heat from them drying the last wick of moisture from my face. My tears are nothing but salt in my eyes as I scream, “It should have been me!”

All the tears I refused to shed for months finally break through the dam, and suddenly, I am choking on my sobs. Not because of the guilt in my chest or the truth the guilt bears. No, I sob because the fact that I am here means she is not. My existence is due to her death. If I am still here, I still have to live through the pain of her absence, I have to exist in a world where her laughter does not chase me through stone halls. I have to exist while she… she is nothing but a memory lost to the wind. There’s not even a body to remember her by. Cruel—all of it is too cruel.

Pain like nothing I’ve felt before tears through my heart as I slam my fist into the tree trunk beside his head. My flesh splits open upon impact, bits of bark grating against bone. My other hand flies open on instinct.

Duke Gadsden stares at me, open-mouthed, barely a sound escaping his lips. A strangled, choking sob comes from somewhere in the back of his throat as blood burbles only for a second, though he stares at me as if I were the one making the sound. The top half of his body and the tree fall at the same time in one fluid motion.

The only sound in the forest is the sizzling of charred flesh and my own labored breathing.

Mavis kneels beside the body and peers closely before letting out a low whistle. “You cauterized the wound. That shouldn’t be possible and yet…” She rises, mud drying and sticking to the knee of her pant leg. “You’re incredible.” She says it reverentially, as if I am something worthy of awe. Like I didn’t just butcher a man in cold blood.

And yet none of that matters. The world is cold, so cold, and I am still painfully alive.

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