mavka [d.m]

00.

PROLOGUE

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She is thirteen the first time she slits a Daemon's throat.

It's sloppy and amateur and takes more force than she expected — not a clean cut at all. Blood sprays everywhere, crimson droplets splattering onto the loaf of bread she yanks out of his grip and her tattered shirt is sticky and drenched with a mixture of sweat and blood.

The Daemon is dead even before her knife finishes making the slice — and she feels horror slither down her spine as she watches the light fade from his eyes.

It isn't her fault. He attacked her. Tried to take that loaf of bread she'd stolen from the marketplace just that afternoon. She'd nearly lost her finger trying to get that loaf. The seller had brought his bread knife down on the space where her hand had been a split second after she snatched it back, the bread in her grip.

It wasn't her fault, she tells herself, thirteen and alone, shivering in the cold night by the riverbed. He attacked her. He would've killed her if she hadn't killed him first.

Regardless, she spends the entire night hurling her guts up and only devours the bread in the morning — after she'd dunked it in the river to get the blood off it. Soggy bread never tastes good — but she couldn't care less over the rumbling of her stomach.

Mavka is thirteen and alone when she kills her first Daemon. It won't be long before she does it again.

She masters it soon enough — she's always been quick at picking things up — but she doesn't learn how to catch an Anemoi until she's sixteen.

After one drags a short sword, dipped in nightshade, down the length of her spine.

She remembers screaming, remembers the small carton of healing salves she'd stolen from a nearby warehouse being wrenched out of her grip, remembers being left there in that back alley, in such unending agony that she knew she was going to die.

Her skin splits open down her spine, the nightshade poison working to sap her strength. She's seen others die from this before. Has seen the way it paralyses them, rendering them helpless until it stops their heart and kills them.

She thinks then that it would be nice to have her magic show up — to feel that lightning that zips through her veins whenever she uses it. Not that she's used it many times.

But her powers lie dormant as they have since she was twelve — and she knows she has to move now if she wants to survive. But she can't seem to move her muscles, can't seem to even remember how to breathe.

In the end, it's a Fae who helps her. Who spots her curled up in the alleyway, lying in a pool of her own blood, limp and unresponsive. Who stops to stare at her and then rushes away — only to return with a small vial that he tips down her throat.

She wants to tell him to get off her, wants to scream at him not to touch her, not to lay those Fae hands on her — because her hatred for them runs so deep, it's become a part of her now.

But the nightshade works well and she can only grasp onto a thin thread of light as the potion slides down her throat and she drifts into unconsciousness.

It's hours later when she awakens and she is still lying in that alley in a pool of her dried blood — but there is no more agonising pain although every movement still makes her wince and there's a small pouch next to her with a note pinned to it.

For the bleeding, it writes in elegant cursive. Of course a Fae would write so elegantly. Why wouldn't they when they were the perfect picture of grace and beauty?

Mavka spits onto the pouch but snatches it up anyway, tucking it into her chest as blood trickles down her back when she tries to stand.

The pouch is filled with a dozen little vials — all gleaming with an iridescent silver liquid that she recognises as Unicorn Blood. It'll heal her in just the next few days if she's lucky and she knows that without it, her wound will reopen and she'll die of blood loss in under twenty four hours.

Still, she holds out. Hovers between taking them for the intense ache that settles into her body over the next several hours and selling them on the Black Market. She'd make a hefty sum — and maybe she'd be able to survive long enough to use it.

She bleeds for days, huddled up under the stone bridge that spans the river. All she can see and scent and feel is blood, spilling down her back, soiling her clothes, sticking to her like a second skin. And the agony that comes with it...

She ends up downing two vials of Unicorn Blood on the third day.

It feels like a betrayal — accepting help from a Fae — but at that point, her survival instincts won't let her do anything but swallow down the sweet-smelling liquid and pray it works fast enough.

It does — although it nearly makes her retch everytime she drinks one — and by the time the fifth day after the attack has arrived, she's able to stand.

Being a Nymph, she heals faster than other creatures — not as fast as Fae but she's still up there. Usually, open wounds and cuts heal over within minutes — but the scar down the length of her spine stays as if its been embedded into her skin.

She supposes it's due to the nightshade the blade had been dipped in but she doesn't mind it. Thinks maybe it adds a little character to her warm olive skin. Thinks maybe it's a reminder of how much she's been through — only at the age of sixteen.

The last two vials in the pouch the Fae gave her are not Unicorn Blood. She doesn't know what they are — can't distinguish what the bloodred liquid in one and the golden shimmering one in the other is.

Later — much later, when she opens her own apothecary — she'll realise they were extracts of Bloodbane and Fairy Tears. When mixed and drunk, they clear the body of any toxins and clots left behind by nightshade poisoning — but it must only be taken exactly one hundred and thirty three hours after the nightshade was administered, as dictated by the Fae's handwriting.

Mavka takes it — even though again, she considers selling it. The nausea and headaches fade within the day and by the time the next morning arrives, she's ready to go steal some more food.

She is sixteen and alone when she has her first near death experience with the Anemoi. She will have several more throughout the years — but none will take her as close to the afterlife as the first.

Mavka is twenty-two when she finds the Shadow King of Korinthos lounging outside her front door.