A Touch of Death

Chapter 6

She was surprisingly small.

Perhaps that was just from the way she seemed to shrink in on herself, but the woman sitting across the carriage from him didn't appear to be quite... big enough... for the power she held. Dark hair fell past her shoulders in tangled waves, partially obscuring her face. She stared out the window with a vacant, absent look, like she was looking at the scenery without ever seeing what passed by. She still wore her gloves, and the palace had dressed her in a high-collared, red dress with trumpet sleeves, effectively keeping all of her skin covered except for her face.

They had been riding in the small carriage for hours now, making only one brief stop at the Rimsilla estate so that she could collect her belongings, packing them into a single trunk that the coachman promptly loaded onto the back of the carriage. She'd gone in and out quietly, without spending much time on goodbyes. A middle-aged woman had pressed a bundle of something into her hands as she left, and though the Grand Enchanter couldn't see the girl's face at the time, the slight motion of blinking away unshed tears as she moved back towards the carriage was enough to tell him how she felt. He'd forced her out of a place that made her happy.

She still didn't speak as she clambered back into the carriage, holding the cloth bundle in her lap like a lifeline, though she did not open it. Her fingers clenched in the fabric of her skirt, and she would not meet his eyes. The Enchanter wondered for a moment what made her so withdrawn, but brushed the thought aside. It wasn't important. Withdrawn or not, he would make certain that she participated in his project.

"Do you have a name?" he asked. She blinked in surprise, as if she'd just been pulled away from somewhere very far off, and turned to look at him. Her hair fell away from her face as she moved, and he could see the strangely pale skin of her jaw. Strange not because it was pale, but because there was a large, mottled bruise there only the day before from where the man struck her at the festival. His eyes swept over what little of the rest of her freckled skin he could see, noting that she didn't seem to be otherwise scratched or bruised, though he could swear that she'd been at least a little bloodied the day before

"Are you going to kill me?" Out of all the things that could have come out of her mouth, that wasn't one he was expecting.

"Do you have a name?" he asked again, more insistently.

"Aoife," she whispered.

"Good. Now, Aoife, why do you think I'm going to kill you? Because you drained the life of a few rose bushes?"

She shook her head. The Enchanter couldn't hold back the huff of frustration, briefly closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "For the love of all that is holy: Speak."

"Because... I... I kill things," she said softly. She tucked her fists tightly against her side, as if trying to keep them away from anyone else.

"Lesson number one: You're Touched. You don't get to choose how," he said bluntly. "We deal with the things we are given in the best way that we can."

"I don't want to kill things."

"Someone help us— the girl in control the most powerful magic in existence is an insufferable bleeding heart," he muttered, fighting back an eye roll. "If you don't want to kill things, then don't."

"I can't control it!" she protested, squeezing her firsts in a way that looked less like she wanted to hide and more like she wanted to punch him. It was almost the first thing akin to emotion that she'd shown.

"I think we are all well aware of that," he said with a snort. This time, she actually leveled a glare at him. "Let me see your Mark."

"Why?"