Rot ━ Mal Oretsev ✓

001: I HEAR A WHISPER

   Thalia hears the wind talk.

She is alone. Dinner was served not long ago, and after eating what she could stomach, Thalia resigned for the night and carted herself off to the Grisha tent. Zaria had bid her a vacant farewell, interested more in her conversation with Zoya than Thalia's gradually decreasing mood.

She is not tired. Far from it, actually. She had taken five minutes to rub her eyes harshly in order to look it before confronting her general, bidding them adieu and making way for the tent. Her only company is the wind, and Thalia is sure she can hear it speak to her.

This is not an unusual occurrence. It's become somewhat of a staple to see Thalia Vassilieva flinch during training because of a particularly hard breeze. She's earned the nickname Blur, and people like to taunt her. One harsh wind and she is gone. Through the crowds and out of sight like a blur.

Soldier of the Second Army, and she can't even go a day without listening for her mother's screams in the wind. Pathetic.

Sleep is not easy for someone like Thalia to come by. When you are plagued by your own mind and coated in guilt as a second skin, it is natural instinct to stay awake. Stay alive. You cannot outrun your past: it will always come back to bite eventually.

Sometimes, Thalia wishes that she could slow her own heart. Send herself into a deep sleep. Forget the guilt for a little while. Forgive herself in the hours that she is unconscious. Does she deserve to be forgiven?

The answer is simple: no. In what world, what universe, would someone who did something so dreadful deserve to be forgiven? Someone who betrayed her family and threw away everything they ever did to protect her on a whim.

Most days, Thalia finds herself wishing that she hadn't. It was stupid— entirely, utterly brainless. Her wits had gone for a single moment, and now Thalia is set for the rest of her life. She cannot run. The Fold separates her from her only chance at freedom.

A single candlelight is not enough to guide Thalia Vassilieva through the very thing that had given her nightmares for a week after her first trip. And a candlelight is about the only thing she can manage right now.

The lanterns glowing in the tent flicker as a harsh gust of wind pushes in. Thalia flinches involuntarily. She squeezes her eyes closed, praying to every Saint she can summon to for it to go away.

   Go, she begs. Leave me alone.

The words 'leave me alone' have become a natural response for Thalia nowadays. She speaks them to Zaria, when the girl begs for company to one of the fights between First Army servicemen. Liz, her Healer friend, had soon learned to stop asking all together. She simply regarded Thalia with a tight smile and a wave, now.

Her Kefta feels confining. It always had. The red material strapped over her chest, enclosing her heart beneath and choking her at the neck. She has clawed the collar until her skin was red raw, blood dug beneath her fingertips. Her lips are sealed shut as Liz works over her neck in the dark of the Grisha tent, no words exchanged between them. There is nothing to say.

Scars line her neck. A reminder. A meagre punishment before she is touched by death and receives her rightful damnation.

"Saints."

Another voice in the wind. Perhaps her father— Thalia does not remember his voice all that well. An older man. Nearing fifty when Thalia was taken. His skin wizened and his hair greyed, despite her mother's trying attempts to keep it dark with dye made from the ashes of burnt coal.

Her mother has not left Thalia's mind since the day she left home. Wendeline Vassilieva, Lina. She had met Thalia's father when she was twenty, the butchers son and the bakers daughter. The businesses had soon collapsed, the war causing the small town that Thalia did not remember the name of to fall in on itself.