Nyx is a girl who can heal any wounds except her own.
When a king captures and murders her mother, she is imprisoned; forced to heal men of war who deem her lower than dirt and forced to marry the king she loathes the most.
Saval is a servant boy w...
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Felix Exitus
•—||—•••—||—•
A booming knock on her door snapped her awake. “Wake up.” The guard said. “Make haste and waste time no longer.”
Nyx squints as the harsh gaze of the sunlight gleams from the small, barred window. It was the only window there. She stumbles out of the bed when the knocking continues, harsher and louder.
Mother's book rest near her beside, wide open and she hides it under her pillow.
She wears a tunic that is too big for her lanky frame and she shivers. It's nearing winter and the small fireplace is cold and empty; the guards are yet to give her the coals and fire she has requested.
Nyx falters tiredly to the door. “I’m done.”
She hears the door's lock open.
The outside.
There’s a glimmer in her eyes and it’s either of relief or anguish.
A cuff coils in her wrist.
She blinks, wakes and exhaustion crawls.
—
She heals everything and everyone. The stench of blood follows everywhere, it seems. She tries to clean it off her hands—scrubs her skin until it is as red. But, you see, it’s the smell. It’s something you can't forget.
She washes her face.
“Time is up,” calls out the guard near the restroom. Gods, they time everything, don't they?
“I’m having a massive diarrhea,” she lies and sits on the icy cold floors and the soaking waters. She stares at the wall and the lining ants crawling to it.
—
When King Franzes waged war on the southern kingdom of Arzhia four years ago, he brought Nyx right on the battlefield, so as she could heal the hurt soldiers immediately.
Of course, she isn't on the actual battlefield. Even King Franzes is not that deluded to send a ten-year-old to such chaos. She heals on the sidelines, guarded and watched. She learns that there are wounds that cut deeper than in skin.
They burn the bodies at midnight. The cremation sings to the skies—the smoke its offering hand. The night accepts and darkens for the flames' dance.
They say it’s easier to recognize the smell than to describe it. Charred flesh simply smells like nothing else. Nauseating, Nyx remembers, putrid and steaky, like leather being tanned over a flame.
But, do you know? The scent of burning dead is also sweet.
—
Mother's book is yet to show her the future. Instead, it shows stories with little happy endings. Of kings, queens, peasants and such. Nyx has been reading it for years and she's beginning to think the book never ends.
