Bonds that Burn and Bind

Chapter 3 Part 1

AN: Hi everyone, I hope you are all enjoying my story! If you wouldn't mind taking some time to tell me if anything in this part is confusing, I am not good at writing action scenes.

TRIGER WARNING: Mild depictions of blood and self-harm
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I lowered my bow without firing my arrow while the girl, her blue silk gown stained red, gazed at me with indigo eyes hazed with pain before she folded over and crumpled to the ground.  Her white-blonde hair, like fine strands of silk, drifted across her delicate features and skin the color of a full moon.

My eyes searched the mist from which she had emerged. Nothing.

In the next heartbeat, I replaced my weapon and rushed forward. I knelt beside her, breathing only through my mouth to avoid the metallic scent in the air. The dress' sheer fabric, paired with the blood soaking it, made it hard to get a grip on her— almost like trying to grasp a dead fish on a muddy riverbank. Still, I managed, rolling her onto her back.

I suspected the tightness of her dress was the only reason she hadn't bled out. And so, I choose not to remove it, even if it would make assessing her injuries easier, at least not without a clean cloth to press over her wounds.

She groaned softly while I gently explored each stain, blooming like grotesque red carnations across sky-blue silk. A gentle probe at a particularly dark spot on her lower abdomen, which also revealed a small tear in the dress's silk, had her indigo eyes fluttering open.
There, I thought. At least, that's got to be where most of this blood is coming from.

"Please," she whispered.

"Val," Winnie said from behind me, her voice tense like a bowstring knocked with an arrow.
I looked for what caused that tension, and I found it—clutched tightly in the ball of the girl's bloody fist. A serrated knife with a thin piece of fabric clinging to its blade. Normally meant to slice bread and cheese, used to carve up flesh. Her flesh.

"Please, let me die," she whispered.
I leaned back while the realization settled in.
She had done this to herself.

My eyes danced over her. Her clothes were of fine quality and her throat dripped with a necklace of tear-shaped sapphires as big as almonds. But sickness of the mind poisoned all, no matter what class or station they belong too. Still, why come here to end her life?

"I'm not lookin' at the knife— if that's why you think I'm nervous," Winnie said.
I glanced over my shoulder. She hung back, not far, but nowhere near touching distance. She still clutched my basket in her hands.

"Her ears," she said, her gaze fixed on the crumbled form on the ground.

I looked down at her ears protruding from her hair. They were longer and pointer than that of a human.

I recoiled slightly. "She's a fairy."
Winnie snorted. "Took you long enough to notice!"

I had never been this close to a fairy before. The Fae mainly kept to their ancestral lands, rarely getting involved with us mere mortals, which had made the Fae Prince's decree that much more shocking when he declared he intended to take a human as his bride.

I chewed on my lip. "We can't bring her to a healer. Can we?"

"None on the mortal side, at least. Unless we want to stop their heart by layin' a fairy at their doorstep."

"No, that would not do." I looked up at the basket Winnie still clutched. The Witch's-Glass peered just over its top. "We'll have to be her healers."
Winnie followed my gaze. "So, you would give the Witch's-Glass to a fairy but not to me, a human?"
"If you were bleeding out with no way of getting you to a healer, I would've. And besides," my eyes lingered over the necklace, "I think I've found something more valuable than it."

Winnie set the basket at my side without further comment, and I gently removed the delicate flower. I stared at it while my mind struggled to recall how to use it. Then I frowned when the answer came, because it required that I use something I rarely touched—magic.

All of my siblings had been Blessed by Father Sky and had magic naturally occurring within us. Our mother had made us stuff it away in the darkest and deepest parts of ourselves. She had fixated that desire with particular ferocity onto me.

"Lords and kings already hesitate to marry their sons off to a daughter of The Prince of Thieves, no matter how rich or powerful your father." That accent of hers, the way she elongated some words but shortened others, still rang clearly in my head. "How visible your Widtide heritage runs through your blood also does you no favors. Don't add a third strike by practicing magic. Those who practice magic in this new world serve masters. You have servants—you aren't one."

I plucked the colorful petals from their stem, scatting them over the fairy's wound, and hovered my fingers above her stomach. I closed my eyes and visualized my inner stores of  magic as a glowing ball of white yawn. I reached out with my mental fingers and explored its uneven, silky surface until I found a loose strand. Much like unwinding the red yarn, I unwound my magic until I had a long enough piece. I imagined a pair of scissors sniping  it, before returning to the swirling blue mists of No-Land. I let that strand flow through my fingers and onto the petals, praying this bit of raw magic would be enough to activate the Witch's-Glass's healing property.

"Huh, thought you nobles were too good for magic,"  Winnie said, but I ignored her to focus on the task at hand.

"Nooooo!" the fairy moaned in despair while an orb of whirling rainbow light formed over her stomach. " I said, let me die!"

Ignoring her plea, I reached out and snatched the sapphire necklace from her throat and slipped it into my pocket. I knew a guy on Witch's Row who dealt in items of questionable origins and could fetch me at least one golden rose for it. Winnie could have the rest if I could haggle a better price.

The fairy'd knife used to harm herself also came with me—more for her sake than my own. I tossed it into my basket which Winnie had picked up again.

I backed away while the light from the Witch's-Glass faded. Winnie matching my retreat step-by-step. I knocked an arrow into my quiver, but the fairy's blood staining my fingers made keeping a grip on the string challenging.
"Fair warning," Winnie whispered in my ear. "If she makes a move for us, I'm runnin'. I don't mess with no Fae!"

I shushed her while the fairy sat up and examined the spot I had pinpointed being the worst of her wounds.

  "Why did you do that?" the fairy asked. Her voice held no gratitude or anger—it held nothing at all.

"Because you would've regretted doing this to yourself in the end," I said. "Now be on your way, fairy! We don't want any trouble from you."

Two pools of sad indigo stared back at me. Even half-dead, the fairy's beauty outshone my own. "Death would've been better than...." Her elegant fingers skittered to her neck, her eyes going wide. "My necklace," her eyes flickered to me. "Give it back. Please! It was my mother's."

"No," I said, hoping she didn't detect the unease in my voice. "It's payment for assisting you. You shouldn't have worn anything in here you weren't willing to part with."

Winnie snorted and muttered something about books under her breath. I shushed her again.
Anger flickered in the fairy's eyes, and I tensed, ready for a fight, but it extinguished before it could become a proper flame. "I guess that's fair," she said.

Despite having feared it, my heart ached at the extinguished flame.

"Val," Winnie nudged me. "We best get goin."
The fairy gracefully pushed herself from the ground and held her hands to her chest, squeezing them against her heart.

She looks like a lost little girl. And that sent another surge of sorrow through my chest, stronger than I expected.

I sighed—looking at the fairy one last time. "Yeah, we should."

A strange stirring in the air had the hair on my arms standing on end. Winnie must have sensed it, too, because she dropped the basket and withdrew her dagger.

Something is coming, I thought.