Chapter 10

Raey

They let me go after about 10 hours, give or take. It was nowhere near the worst I'd had it, but it still hurt like hell. They were sure I was broken again, heeled, and wouldn't disobey again. And I wouldn't. Not yet.

Because their pain, their torture, had freed me. I remembered. And I knew that I would do anything to get back to Rhys. To my family. But this isn't a story. There's no hero waiting to come save me, kill my captors and set me free. There was no happy ending, not really.

So, I had to be smart. Smarter than before. I would listen for their next assignment, and obey, and when the time came, I would kill them, even in my weakened state, their damper and my own hiding my power.

So it was with new resolve that I faced my next assignment, a plan in my mind and hope in my heart.

~~~

A thud sounded outside my house. I jerked my head up, looking through the mist coated window for the source of the sound. A dark shadow rushed past my window, a soft rustling accompanying it. Then a pounding began on my thick oak door, desperate and rapid.

"Miss Kayla! Please open up! We need your help, now."

I recognised the voice. Dorrin Sharna, the village blacksmith. He was a hulking beast, maybe six and a half feet, al muscle, and one of the most gentle and kind men I'd ever met. His wife, Elena, was a small quiet woman. She was 7 months pregnant, and full of life. I knew what this call was about.

Over the past 9 months I had been in the small town, spying on the mayor and his illicit dealing with the High Lord of Autumn, I had earned a reputation as a healer. Any time I used my true power, I wiped it from the minds of the villagers, like I would wipe my stay from their minds once I left. When I first arrived, I had stolen into their minds and convinced them that Kayla Borich had lived in their small community her whole life. She was 39 years old and lived in her mother's cottage, which was a small abandoned shell I had fixed up.
The fact that Dorrin was calling for a healer was worrying, and probably had something to do with his wife.

I stood up quickly and grabbed my cloak, extinguishing the fire with a wave of my hand, and rushed towards the door. The doorstep creaked as I stepped into the night air, snatching my satchel from its hook.

"Please help," he begged. "It's Elena. The baby's coming."

I nodded. We need to run. The tough ground scratched my feet, but I sprinted along, keeping pace with the larger man.

Their house came into view at the end of the neat paved road, tall and wide and full of a flurry of panicked neighbours and friends. The baby coming two months early was something I had been expecting for a while, but it was clearly a surprise to the others. We burst through the door and Dorrin pointed me up the carpeted stairs, seeming beyond words. I sprinted up them and turned towards Elena's room, doorway bursting with golden light in the early morning darkness.

As I entered the room, three things became clear to me: one, the room was stifling hot, the logs in the fireplace were built much too high, sweat dripping instantly down my back. Two, it was crowded. The local doctor knelt by the bed, holding Elena's hand and wiping the sweat off her gleaming brow, and neighbours from down the road and other streets were crowded around, watching with wet eyes, feeling helpless and hopeless, and three. Three.

One of them would die. Mother or child, one of them would not survive tonight. Elena's cries permeated the air, cut through rational thought and sliced my heart. There was blood on the sheets. Too much blood. The child was coming too fast, too soon, but not fast enough, getting stuck.

Even now, I'm not entirely sure what happened. I sent a wave of my power through the room, and everyone stood up and left, with memories of me taking out various powders and herbs, and intentions of going downstairs for a warm cocoa. I knew they wouldn't both survive of I did nothing. But they had shown me kindness these past months. They had invited me to dinner and fed me on those nights I couldn't feed myself, and helped me when I was sick, and I couldn't let her die. Elena and Dorrin and their beautiful son didn't deserve that.

So, I did something I knew I would come to regret. I put her to sleep, a deep unconscious rest. And I healed her. Completely. I healed her and her son, and, and I cut the cord and I stopped the bleeding and I started her son's heart and then I wrapped him in blankets. And I could sense, deep within him, magic. Flame magic, as befitting of one in the Autumn Court. Stronger than his father's. I put a charm on him that day. He would not die of any illness nor disease, and would be strong, strong enough to defend himself and his family. He would live a good life.

Then I woke Elena and I called out to Dorrin and the neighbours and they rushed into the room, and I rushed into their minds. I planted memories of them crowding around the bed, me feeding her a draught that gave her energy, both she and her child miraculously surviving. They all took the fake memories easily, all turning to her and talking about her miraculous rescue, only one of them, the small sharp-eyed baker, even looked at me. I couldn't let anyone here see my power, or they would surely drive me out or hurt me. Better to be a powerless healer than a powerful warrior, whether I was an ally or not.

That was the first time I really used my power. That was my first mistake.

The days passed slowly, stuck in a perpetual Autumn. The leaves were red on my trees, the days sunny and crisp. I worked in the town, in the bar to earn money that I didn't need as I scouted the mayor.

The sorcerer had received word that the mayor of a small town was part of a larger organisation that dealt in illegal trading of magical goods and items, with members spread all over Prythian, one of them being the High Lord of Autumn himself.

Apparently, the black-market organisation had gotten their hands on a powerful staff, called the Staff of Verdun, which had the ability to drain the power from Fae and faeries and gift it to the wielder, if they were capable of housing it. It was being stored in the manor house of the Mayor of Cowell, a small country town close to the border of the Summer Court.

The sorcerers had decided to send me to the small town to both steal the staff and try to gain information on the operation. I was to stay under the radar and not use my power, to be an unremarkable herbal healer, working most nights at the only bar.

When I stole the staff, I was to wipe my presence from their minds, my unremarkable existence forever forgotten. That was another reason why is wasn't allowed to use my magic. If a feral Naga had been ravaging the town and I killed it, then when a few months after I left, someone wondered what had happened to it, my magic was at risk of failing. They could break through the wall in their mind and unblock their memories, and that would put my secrets at risk if they reported it to the Autumn Lord.

So, I continued my scouting in the day, and at night, I made a point to mingle with the townspeople in an unobtrusive way. In ten months, no one would remember exactly how many people played cards with them that night, or exactly who wiped down their table. I would leave most of the money I earned back in the till, so it wouldn't appear missing, and then I would disappear.

But not yet. I had work to do.

My breathing was even and controlled as I bolted through the darkened forest. My feet blurred over the ground, and my hand clenched as I secured my grip on the wooden staff, it's smooth handle slipping in my grasp. I paused, halting with preternatural stillness, not breathing, making no sound. Faint calls and cries flitted through the night-laden forest, the sounds of the guards pursuing me growing steadily closer.

I closed my eyes. My power flowed through the darkened forest, stumbling over ancient trees and the small critters that nested in them. It reached the guards, and I broke through their measly barriers to reach their pliable minds. Within ten minutes, I had turned them around, back to the manor house, with vague recollections of a wild animal in the woods, that had been dealt with.

Earlier that night, I had broken into the mayor's house and easily made my way to his storeroom, where I opened the safe using the code I stole from the mayor's mind. Inside it lay the Staff, and a few documents that were incriminating proof of his communications with the High Lord. My mission complete, I had slipped out, accidentally triggering an alarm on the way out. I had quickly wiped the existence of the Staff from the mayor's mind, and he would find nothing but ordinary gold in the safe.

My mission was finished, and so I had no reason to remain in Cowell. I hurriedly ran back to the cottage I had been staying at and grabbed the small satchel sitting ready and packed at the door. I snatched my heavier travelling cloak from the hook on the back of the door and locked it, saying goodbye to the small town that had been my home for the past year. In the past week I had been steadily and consistently wiping my existence form the minds of everyone in the town and had met no resistance from the low-level Fae.

I walked through the town, saying a silent goodbye, before picking up my pace on the road out. I was to drop the Staff at a nearby Roadhouse and move onto my next mission, in the Summer Court.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with glorious night air, and tilted my head to look at the stars, shining resolutely above my head.

The townswoman hurried out of Cowell, her footsteps sinking into the mud and she bustled towards the woods around the town. It was dark; in the wee hours of the morning, when fell creatures roamed free, the moon a tiny sliver up above.

She glanced over her shoulder, periodically turning back to make sure she wasn't noticed or followed, her slim figure slipping between the trees to find the familiar grove. As she had every week for the past year, she looked around, waiting for the stranger that kept asking her for information.

This time, she had valuable information for him. The only other bit she'd managed to feed him had been three months ago, when the strange girl had healed Elena Sharna. But now, the girl was gone. The baker had seen her leave an hour earlier on the main thoroughfare, carrying a strange stick, but the fact that she'd left near midnight wasn't the strangest thing about her disappearance. No-one in the town seemed to remember she'd ever existed. It was like she was nothing but an imagined wraith.

The villager had almost thought herself insane, until she went to the old cottage on the outskirts out town and found the fireplace still warm, full of burned logs and cinders.

A crack echoed through the forest and she jumped, spinning n place. Her small stature meant that she often appeared defenceless, prey, and the forest at night was not a good place to be.

Before she could determine the source of the noise, an unnatural darkness began to seep into the clearing, jumping over roots and flooding the whole area, blocking out the stars, stifling her. Into the centre of it walked the man. His cruel smile was the slash of a knife against the dark, kept carefully honed. She gripped her cloak tighter around her as he approached and tilted her chin up with a cold hand.

His voice was dark velvet, and she had no doubt he could kill her a million times before she could even scream. He was always like this, a being of death and cold and dark.

"What do you have to tell me?" She shivered as his voice drifted down her spine and managed to stutter out a few sentences. She told him about the girl, and the fact she had left, and the odd stick she had with her, and the fact that no-one knew she existed. Her voice was breathless when she finished, and the man hummed in thought.

"Leave." The command was full of dominance, and a promise of retribution if he did not obey. She didn't argue, and ran out of the darkness, out of the woods.

By the time she reached her home and tucked herself into bed, she didn't remember she had been out at all, and she knew nothing of the strange man.

Miles away, in a cold clearing in a darkened forest, the man thought.

Violet eyes glinted as he disappeared.