The fog switched again, to running through the forests of Ireland. Knox could barely keep his head straight, keep track of what was going on. He couldn't pull out of this vision.
Mary was only a few decades old. She couldn't take dragon form. She didn't know if she ever would. She blocked out that day, the charred bodies and the fire all around them. It was unfair that the scent was so thick on her skin. She bathed for hours. Or Gran would hold her under water in a lake.
Seasons shifted, summer one minute, winter the next. Decades in the flash of an eye.
Gran and Mary sat around a fire. Mary was frozen solid, her eyes coated with frost, half-blind. The pair of women walked miles every day, Gran leading the maimed Mary by her frost-bitten hand, her black fingers curled and cracking. Her legs were sore, every tissue under her skin bled. She was a bag of bones and nothing more. Armies were hard on their heels, but they had to stop. Gran was getting old fast and she couldn't run like she used to. Mam's death was a mortal wound for her.
Mary recalled a starving minstrel who sat with them. Was that a week ago? Or a year ago? She couldn't remember. He strummed his lute in exchange for some bread a priest had given them.
"There once was an evil, born in the bowels of Hell.
"His heart burned and he knew cruelty well.
"Satan called him son and gushed with pride,
"And at his hand, Satan did die."
That song kept Mary sane that night. The beating of the drum thumped in her shrunken brain.
YOU ARE READING
The Lamb and the Gray Battle
FantasyEvie has spent the last 575 years on the North American continent, now called America, the Pure and Clean. She smiles, volunteers and makes cakes and pastries for her neighbors, hiding away her demon blood. She wants nothing to do with her estranged...
