Forsaken: The Chosen Trilogy - Book One

Chapter Three: Part Two

KRYSSA

7 Davael 569A.F.

The Crone came to visit us six months after Janis' death, riding up to our house one morning in a rickety cart that should have shaken itself to pieces on the rutted road. She took one look at Malachi and left again without a word.

I watched her drive away, one hand absently pressed to my cramping stomach. Without Janis to pay them, the farm hands had left. The fields lay fallow and our stores were gone, and so all we had to eat was what we managed to scavenge from the overgrown vegetable garden and the forest. Though I let my brothers and sisters eat more than I did, their faces had grown lean. The upcoming winter filled me with dread, so I tried not to think of it.

The Crone returned a few hours after noon, just as the sky was darkening with a late summer storm. I had been shelling the wild peas I had found that morning on the front steps, but I stopped as she drew up, rising slowly to my feet as Brannyn walked over to help her dismount.

Kylee ran out of the house toward the Crone's gelding, and I darted forward to catch her. She turned her pixie face up to me, smiling brightly. "Kryssa, it's Teodore! Can I pet him?"

I nodded, and, once I was sure she wouldn't spook him, let her stroke the horse's soft nose. I kept my eyes on the Crone as my sister cooed, watching as she slowly walked toward our father. He barely acknowledged her, even when she called out. The sun blazed down on them as clouds rolled across the sky, threatening to smother the light at any moment.

The distant rolls of thunder and the rising wind drowned out whatever she might have said, but I saw the look on his face change as he finally looked at her. She drew something out of her pocket and offered it to him, something that gleamed in the dying light. A vial. My father stared at it for a long moment, then reached out to take it with a shaking, skeletal hand.

A sense of foreboding struck me, so hard my throat sealed shut, trapping the screams in my head. I couldn't breathe, couldn't speak. The world spun sickeningly around me. I knew.

He's holding poison.

Kylee gasped and clung to me in sudden fear. Brannyn's face turned white, his hands fisting at his sides. Inside the house, Reyce began to cry.

Malachi drank the Crone's offering.

There was no immediate change, and yet... everything was different. The clouds finally swallowed the sun, plunging the world into unnatural twilight as Malachi gave the Crone back the empty vial. She placed it in her pocket, then walked back to her cart. Brannyn didn't offer to help her into the seat, merely stared at her as she hefted herself up on her own.

Her gaze met mine for a moment. I thought I saw guilt, or maybe shame, in her worn, wrinkled face. But then she looked away and pulled on Teodore's reins, clucking to him. The gelding sighed and started down the narrow road to the village.

I stared after her for long minutes, filled with fathomless dread, until the sky rumbled again and the rain at last began to pour.