BOOK ONE OF THE BINDING TRILOGY
CURRENTLY UNDER MAJOR CONSTRUCTION! Some big changes are likely being made while you are reading, and you might miss them.
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Fraed was sleeping and I was on first watch. Ifera was pretending to sleep, her back turned to the flames and her chin tucked to her chest. But she couldn't fool me. I don't know why she was pretending to sleep, and that did bother me, but there wasn't anything I could do to stop her. I couldn't force her to go to sleep. So I let her be.
Oh gods, I was going to kill her, wasn't I?
And yes, she hadn't even tried to save Elke. And I hated her for that, but I had been a fool to think that was going to make this any easier.
My hands were starting to shake and my throat started to hurt but I wasn't in the mood to cry right now. It felt better when I looked at her. The hum it... it made things easier. It wasn't as loud now, but somehow I felt it more.
Of course, looking at her also made things worse. I stared through the fire at her back and couldn't stop thinking about the horrible thing that I would have to do. I couldn't stop thinking about how she probably couldn't stop thinking about what was going to happen to her. What would Mama say?
She would be so disappointed. I was going to have to go home and tell her what I did. If she were in my shoes, she wouldn't have been doing this. She would be sad, her heart would ache forever, but she wouldn't kill this girl. Now you know better, Jarelis. I could hear her saying. This ain't right.
And Elke? She would have thought circles around the problem. Would have found some secret loophole that no one had even thought of. Would pick up the gods as if they were the chess pieces they thought they were playing with.
What would I say? What was I saying? Was it bad that it was easier to find their words than my own? Did I even have any? Elke had suggested as much.
Haven't you ever had a dream, Jarelis?
I didn't know. I didn't know anything. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was going to kill this girl, and though it made me feel less lost, though it gave me a hand to hold onto in this moving darkness, it made me sick to my stomach.
It had been easy to live for Elke and Mama and Pa and Vhis before. I did it without thinking, it had been like breathing. But now Elke was asking me to kill for her and I wasn't completely sure I could do that.
And I was crying, even though I really didn't want to. Even though I didn't deserve to be I was crying.
Lucky for me, I had mastered the art of sobbing silently. No one should have noticed.
But she did.
Her measured breathing stopped altogether and her body tensed. Slowly, muscle by muscle, she turned. And she was staring me right in the eyes. And I had already let it out of me, there was no way to reign it back in. Trying to do so just made me feel worse, and I began to get sloppy. I sniffed, gasping for air as I wiped my nose with my arm.
