Mortance: Summer's Snow

Lily Ⅰ

I stole out of Espar in the darkness of the night. One moon was new and dark, while the other looked hardly a crescent, and half the stars were covered by the clouds of a rainy spring. My bow was slung over my back, along with a pack of supplies. I wore only the lightest furs, and soon even those would be unnecessary, for summer was on its way, and I would be fighting a war in Sacreon come summer.

The forest floor was damp and muddy. It was a lucky thing that I could see well in the dark, or I would've tripped more times than I cared to count. Half the reason Espar remained hidden was the treachery of the location. I had no trouble traveling, though. This was where I'd grown up. I'd lived through eighteen springs like this one.

Nobody knew I was leaving, though surely some suspected it. Not even Dani, my greatest friend, could've suspected it. She'd been asleep when I said goodbye, as had Winter, and everyone else but for my father. He had been awake, though not enough to stop me. That conversation had been interesting, to say the least.

"I do not care what you found in the warring realms, your home is here," my father had said when I came upon him. He'd been preparing to sleep, as it was late.

"There are people suffering from a war I helped start. I can help them."

"You will likely do more harm than good. The hate those people hold is-"

"You do not know them," I snapped.

"You forget who I am. You forget the reason we are here, and not Elsinct."

"And you forget that you taught me better than that. Espar does not need me, but the realms of Ert do. I am leaving."

"And what of me?" my father had asked. "You are the only daughter I have left. Maybe Espar does not need you, but I do."

That had given me pause, but only for a moment. The longer I hesitated, the more people died. "Let me be what I need to be," I'd told him coldly. And with those words, I left Autumn, councilman of Espar, alone in his home.

Now I was here, limping through the mud on the forest floor, hiding beneath the darkness of a rainy spring night. This fate was a lonely one, but it was mine, both by choice and duty. It was my fault the elves invaded Untot, and it was my fault that the war had returned. It hurt to think about. Don't think of it that way, the spider's voice echoed in my head. You are returning to help right your wrongs. That is all that mattered.

"Thanks," I muttered quietly as I stopped at a riverbank. My father would surely have sent someone out after me by now, so I had to make myself harder to follow. I slipped out of my boots and stepped into the water, shivering from the cold. Here, I left no footprints, and here, my scent washed away. No vir nor anyone else would track me easily now. They knew where I was going, but they would never find my path.

The five of us had returned to Espar on a different path. It was only days ago, I remembered it well. We'd agreed to give only the sparsest details of what happened. Rose's killer was dead, but the hunt drew us into Sacreon, and we'd been caught in a battle. Harmony and Peter both died. Torrent was unaccounted for. The council would meet about it all as soon as all its members were home again, but I couldn't wait that long.

Winter and I were the only ones who knew the full truth of what happened with Rose and the Wolf Witch. The rest of our party only heard half of it, and Espar knew even less. Not even my father had any idea of the witch that lived in my head. The both of us were better for it, I decided. My time was better spent doing good, having my father worry about trying to "fix" me would only hurt the world. This is what Rose would've wanted, I reminded myself.

But as the days of travel turned to weeks alone with my thoughts, that statement ebbed into a question. Is this what Rose would've wanted? Doubt was nothing if not persistent. You are doing the right thing, the spider insisted, but I couldn't find it in me to truly believe her. What if this wasn't my sister's dying desire?