Celeste's feet slid on the loose pebbles as she bolted through the next set of hollow roads of Vanica, the scent of death assaulting her nose as she tried and failed to ignore the fury that bloomed her chest with each new corpse that met her eyes, rotting in the streets.
Countless, but not nearly enough to account for everyone on the island. Likely the rest had fled.
Many of them had been right bastards to her, had deserved terrible fates, but this - this was horrendous. This was a fate that she would have wished on no one. A fate, she realized looking at the mutilated limbs and silent screams of horror on the faces of the dead, that few deserved.
She'd ransacked through every ruin, every empty home, searching, looking.
Anelisse, she had to find Anelisse.
She tore around a corner and slid to a halt at the ruin before her. What had once been the baker's shop was now nothing more than a pile of smoldering rubble, bits of singed and rotted bread lying strewn amongst the broken glass and caked, dried blood.
Celeste felt her stomach roll as she took in the prone form of the baker—the hollow eyes of the elderly woman who had tended the shop staring lifelessly skyward, her floral dress ripped and torn in ways that told Celeste her death had been neither painless or easy.
She stepped forward softly before kneeling next to the prone woman's form, her fingers curled as though she had tried to claw her way away from whoever had killed her.
Celeste reached out a tentative hand and placed it over the woman's chest before diving deep within herself, willing any dregs of her power to spill forth.
Nothing.
She pulled her hand away, feeling utterly useless.
It had been the same with numerous others she had tried to breathe life into again on the island, but it had been hopeless. She let out a long breath, rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands.
Some use this power was when it couldn't even work when it was needed. Another life wiped out due to corruptions of men.
So much like the countless other remains she had searched through, had tried to revive and save, frantically analyzing and hunting for Anelisse.
There had been no trace of her. And if she was here, and if she had died with the rest of the island's occupants . . . if Celeste couldn't bring her back . . .
She felt her breath come in a ragged gasp, panic and anger beginning to take her.
Control, she realized steadying herself internally, she had to take control, to keep herself in check if she wanted any chance of finding Anelisse, of finding any remaining soul on this wretched island.
She sniffed the air for any whiff of her sister, of anyone she knew-
Nothing, she realized, stopping and glancing fruitlessly across the wreckage as nothing but smoke and decay swirled around her, they had spared nothing and no one. And any remaining scents had long since been blotted out by death and fire.
Loosening a growl Celeste whirled on her heel and made her way toward the largest house on the island, the sound of her frantic heart drowning out all the other sounds.
Perhaps there would be some clue, some hint as to what happened, where her sister was at the Penningtons' estate.
Gandriel had no words for the desolation before him, for the smell of the dead saturating the air, for the sight of children and women, their limbs twisted in unnatural ways, their faces peeled back in screams of terror. For the silence that permeated the air around him.
The silence that only death could claim.
He had seen death, the death that took those in the throes of illness and the death of animals taken from the hunt but this . . . full on slaughter . . . Nausea rose up to meet him. He'd never seen the likes of this.
A heaviness unlike any he'd ever felt dusted over his heart as he caught sight of a small hand peeking out from beneath a collapsed wall, pale fingers reaching skyward.
Gandriel stepped forward into the remains of the house and easily lifted the fallen wooden wall, its remaining paint stark against the soot covered surface. He threw the wall aside, revealing the owner of that tiny, frail hand: a small child.
The girl's blonde curls were muted and matted with grey dust and ash, her milky blue eyes wide in frantic fright in her final moments. She'd been so very close to escaping the crumbling building before it'd collapsed down upon her.
The male could do nothing more than stare for a moment before frantically throwing the remaining debris covering her legs to the side. He carefully lifted the child up and away from the smoldering ruin, her tiny body already beginning to bloat with rot, before resting her gently on the smooth cobblestone beneath him and kneeling beside her.
She was so incredibly small, so helpless and had had no means to protect or defend herself when hell had rained down up the small island. And he, too, had never felt so helpless, so unable to do anything about this tragedy before him.
But Celeste . . .
He looked behind him to where his companion was tearing through the rubble, her occasional scream for her sister reverberating around him. A loud crash echoed toward him as she threw aside a heavy wooden beam before stopping and surveying the destruction before her, looking lost.
"Cel-" Gandriel's voice cracked, he cleared his throat of the tears before calling out once more, "Celeste?"
Celeste's head snapped to him, violet eyes glancing him over before picking her way through the fallen house toward him, pausing as she noticed the tiny form before him.
"Is there anything-?" Celeste began sadly shaking her head before the last of the words could leave his mouth.
"I've already tried," she swallowed hard, her hands twisting idly before her, "My power. . . it . . . it won't respond. I think it's been too long." A pause. "I'm sorry."
Something wet and warm slid down his cheek as he felt that tiny spark of hope flaring in his chest extinguish. Just as that tiny, defenseless mortal life before him had been doused out like water to a flame.
Gandriel felt something crack within him.
Guilt tore through him as he considered his involvement in it, considered how he had been the one to free Celeste, had been the one to sabotage their ship.
This could have been prevented had he chosen not to be so selfish—
An internal wise voice inside stopped him, calming his thoughts.
They would have done it regardless, he realized, smoothing back the blood-caked blonde hair from the small girl's head, and he could have done nothing to stop it. He shook his head. A small island like Vanica where no one ventured was the ideal place to take slaves.
He'd be surprised if they hadn't taken anyone else with them, hadn't herded those they saw fit onto their ship and slaughtered the rest.
These were the tales of nightmares, the tales of dark corrupted histories, not of the world he knew - that safe, sheltered world full of sunlight where the wildest storms and darkest thoughts could be calmed with a whisper and the humming of the woman who loved him most.
A heavy sigh escaped his parted lips as he raised shaking fingers to ever so gently close the child's vacant eyes and sent up a small prayer to the Mother to watch and guide.
They would have done this and more anyway. He rose, a shiver dancing down his spine, to think what they would have done to Celeste had he left her. He glanced towards his left where the fae woman had returned to her search through pile after pile of rubble.
Both had come up empty-handed, no signs of her sister or the wretched male that had summoned this horror to this small island. Nothing more than dust and ash and death.
Gandriel rose, attempting to dust off his hands on his already filthy trousers when he noticed a tiny flutter of color in the dust beside where the child had lain. With quick, nimble fingers he swiped up the small object, dusting off its worn surface.
It was ragdoll, made of poorly woven wool and bits of red twine, crude in making but well-loved. He dusted off its small smiling face, a stone of sadness in his chest dropping as he trailed his fingers over the soft fabric. The girl must have been carrying it when she'd died.
The stone turned sharp and molten, forging itself into intent.
Celeste wouldn't be the only one holding a bounty over Lukas's head, Gandriel darkly mused as he ever so gently tucked the little doll into his pocket, the air around him suddenly buzzing with static.
Dark clouds loomed on the horizon and distant thunder rolled as he slowly turned away from that small form on the stone. No, there was more than a bounty on that man now.
Celeste had come up empty-handed on Anelisse's whereabouts as she searched Lukas's home, nothing more than strewn receipts and idle pools of dried blood from the servants sprayed across his wooden floors, painting a grotesque scene.
She tried rifling through the papers for any notes or logs on where Lukas had gone as well but only found old ledgers and the meager pay stubs the Penningtons had provided their workers with, amongst those her own.
She stopped, however, when she came across her name again in a leather-bound book shoved into the deep recesses of a bookshelf, written across a receipt. Celeste felt her eyes widen.
It was the receipt from when the Penningtons had sold her out, her and, it seemed, many others. Celeste's eyes danced down the list of names of people she knew on the island. On the bottom of the ledger was Lukas's signature.
"To be obtained in shipments of no more than three per load," she murmured, reading from the contract, her gut recoiling in disgust.
Lukas had intended to sell the poorest of the island's occupants, a trade agreement that had been woven into the ties his father had been making with the continent.
To think Anidre had willingly sold Anelisse into this life, into this role with that monster. She shook the thought from her head, refusing to acknowledge the small hovel that now sat abandoned on the opposite side of the island.
Any other papers she'd found had been soaked in blood, useless and illegible.
Some alliance, Celeste thought bitterly as she continued her search the trashed mansion, every bit of gold and silver now gone from the Penningtons' lavish estate. The slavers had gouged out strips of destruction in the well-tended walls and floors, peeling up the wood like strips of curled ribbon. They had cracked that great wooden table into tiny bits of splintered wood, strewn about like sawdust.
She'd found Lukas's father still in his elegant night things, the lovely silk now dyed the deepest crimson, as though he'd scrambled from his bed before they'd slit his throat, then left him to him to bleed on his glossy pale comforters. His wife appeared as though she'd never even risen before they'd sliced her throat as well, like a fish gutted.
There had been no Lukas though, no sign of his sorry hide and none of her sister.
Maybe Martha and Adder had survived, had helped Anelisse in some way. They would have been the only ones who would have tried who would have cared enough.
They were her last chance.
Celeste barely registered Gandriel falling into step behind her as she left the manor, coming from Cauldron knew where he'd been helping her search, his scent doused in death and disgust as he glanced around him.
"Those sorry bastards," he hissed, easily keeping pace with her as she raced down the familiar path to the docks. "To think anyone could do this, something so . . ." she heard the throat-deep growl, "vile."
"The docks," she rasped, weaving through the rubble, her mind focused on only one thing, "Martha and Adder's house was there, if anyone survived it would have been-"
Gandriel didn't let her finish. "Lead the way."
Celeste nodded before sprinting off, faster than she had before, racing against a clock she knew she couldn't beat.
It was only minutes before Celeste came upon the old red brick cottage, small and quaint but lovely, just as she remembered it. Her mind flashed with memories of when Martha and Adder would conveniently invite her and Anelisse over for dinner when they were small, when their ribs became a bit too obvious beneath their dirty clothes.
The gardens lay in tatters, the rose bushes hacked to bits and the irises stomped, Adder's small collection of figures from his travels in his youth shattered into frayed pieces of chipped metal and splintered wood.
"To guard against the fae," he'd told her once with a wink about the little iron figurines before ruffling her hair, "But only the bad ones."
The windows had been burst out from the cottage itself - but it stood whole, as though the love that had filled that home had stood as some barrier to weather the storm that had crashed into Vanica.
Celeste didn't bother with manners as she rushed the door and slammed it open, the wood bending and cracking beneath her immortal strength.
"Anelisse!" Celeste cried, glancing frantically around the old cottage, searching for any sign of her sister or of the old couple that had watched after them, "Martha! Adder?"
There was nothing, the house empty. Items were strewn carelessly about as though someone had rushed to leave, taking little care in shoving only the bare necessities into a satchel before fleeing.
Adder and Martha had fled, rather quickly Celeste realized as she caught a whiff of their scents—both stale and old, older than the remnants of the others on the island. And unlike the rest of the island, there was no scent of death and decay here, only dust.
There was a chance they had made it out then.
Celeste damned courtesy as she began upturning things, looking for any sign or clue that the older couple may have left her, any hint of their departure. She was certain they had fled before the slavers had arrived, but why? How could they have known?
She barely registered Gandriel pulling items from shelves behind her, searching also.
There had to be something, anything.
She kept turning up nothing, panic rising as hoarfrost chased a path around her heart. Surely Martha and Adder would have known she would get away, would return looking for Anelisse, would have known she'd come back for her, for them.
Tossing a basket of earth-toned yarn to the side in frustration Celeste heard the chink of metal against tile as a brassy pendant slid across the floor, its tarnished surface reflecting poorly in the dim light of the cottage.
It took her a moment to realize what had just fallen out.
Martha's locket, a gift from her mother and her mother's mother before that.
She would have never left that piece of jewelry, not in a million years, unless-
Celeste quickly swiped it up and pried open the delicate cover, a thin piece of parchment tumbling out into her waiting hands. Behind her Gandriel had stilled.
She wasted no time in unwrapping it.
Celeste if you somehow find this,
The handwriting was delicate but messy, written as though by shaking, fearful hands.
He took her to the mainland.
Slavers are headed here Lukas let slip,
His newest business venture without his father's knowledge.
Fury eddied in Celeste's heart as the pieces clicked together on what contracts Lukas had been making in tandem to the ones his father had been drawing those months ago, not trading in fish but in human goods.
Lukas Pennington had sold Vanica out, like sheep sent to slaughter.
Those missing bodies, the ones she hadn't found in the rubble, hadn't escaped but instead had been taken as collateral for what Gandriel had done to their ship.
We tried to get her, but to no avail.
The smell of salt wafted off the paper.
We've run, find her quickly.
Some hybrid of relief and horror crashed through Celeste, the slavers hadn't gotten to Anelisse, hadn't ripped her open unlike many of the other occupants of the island.
But she was still with Lukas.
She didn't realize she'd crumpled the letter in her hand, had bitten her lip so hard that it bled until Gandriel placed a hand on her shoulder, those bright golden eyes shadowed, darker.
Something had changed in that gaze.
"We need to go." Celeste shoved the paper into Gandriel's waiting hands and pushed past him, pocketing the locket next to the odd bronze pendant she'd swiped up on the island and the carefully folded map-
The map.
Celeste quickly pulled the piece of parchment from her pocket and unfolded it, not caring what reaction Gandriel would give upon finding out she'd stolen his artifact.
He gave no indication of caring as he knelt down beside her, the note folded in his hands.
Celeste cleared the broken glass and pottery from the floor with a sweep of her arm and laid the map out, smoothing its edges with her hands. The ancient parchment's appearance was unremarkable, its surface lined with continents and countries but no markings—
"How does it work," Celeste hissed at Gandriel, not bothering to look at him as she glared at the blank piece of parchment, "Tell me how to use it or I swear I'll-"
"Like this." Gandriel gently lifted Celeste's hand, then slipped the knife from his belt and softly pricked her finger, welling up a bubble of scarlet blood before pressing it into the map. The blood disappeared into the parchment, a small red dot inching across its surface, searching.
It crossed the space between the small cluster of islands where Vanica resided at the southern end of the human realms over towards the main continent.
It was inching towards a tiny dot, due south of Marchedor.
Rainfelle.
Celeste wasted very little time after gathering up the map and placing it back in her pocket before she'd departed Vanica. She'd hiked up the trail to the old cottage to retrieve the few personal belongings that she and Anelisse had possessed and to put Anidre to rest.
She'd contemplated it for a time, if the woman had deserved a proper burial but had decided that regardless of everything she at least deserved the peace she had so desperately wanted.
Upon opening the door she'd nearly vomited when she'd caught scent and sight of Anidre's decomposing form, had nearly lost her composure as she looked over the woman she had called mother for years.
Gandriel had offered to bury her, had taken the time to dig a wide, deep hole in the soft soil outside of the cottage for her final resting place, the first droplets of oncoming rain soaking into the dingy fabric over his broad shoulders.
Celeste did the best she was able and wrapped Anidre's fragile remains in the small soil-colored comforter from her bed - the blanket Celeste had slept under as a child, fearful of the storms and what lurked in them. She then gently removed the golden ring embedded with a sapphire from her right hand.
A memento for Anelisse, one passed from mother to daughter as Anidre had once told them. She slipped the small silver wedding band her adoptive mother had carefully hidden in the top drawer in its place.
Even in death she wouldn't be without her husband's memory.
It had been nearly heart-shattering to watch Gandriel lift up the fragile corpse and lower it ever so gently into the ground outside of her home. She'd refrained from saying any final words when prompted but had instead instructed the male to "finish it" before stalking back into the empty home and gathering up the few remaining bits of their old life.
Odds and ends of Anidre's: hair combs, silver bracelets and rings, all things from her time as a Child of the Blessed. Things she'd refused to part with even in the face of poverty.
She'd then carefully packed the awful lip color and kohl Anelisse had tried to force on her during the Spring celebration, something that felt as though it had happened in another life in light of recent events. Finally, she'd packed the last of her and her sister's scarce belongings before gently wrapping the two porcelain mugs in Anelisse's dresses before rising.
She'd looked the cottage over once, and the small patch of fresh earth now beside it, eyes hard and heart frozen before nodding her head and stepping back onto the path, intent to never return.
The rain had begun to fall in earnest as they made a beeline for the docks, a dark plume now marking their destination. It seemed the crew of the Siren had taken it upon themselves to offer the dead what little peace they could. The pyre burned high, smoke stinging Celeste's eyes as raindrops hissed on the coals.
Celeste had approached a stone-faced Fallon and Vaerek standing beside the high flames, their faces shadowed as they watched the bodies fade to ash.
She quickly explained what she had found, that Lukas's family had sold out half of the island's inhabitants and that he'd likely taken Anelisse with him when he'd fled the island for the mainland.
"Which way do we cast the sails?" Fallon asked, Vaerek standing behind her still, his face unreadable.
"Rainfelle," Celeste had barely breathed the word before the Captain was barking orders, her shoulders oddly rigid as she strode toward the ship.
Fallon turned away from the flurry of activity and regarded Gandriel sharply, "That magic of yours had better work quickly if we want any hope of tracking them down." She crossed her arms under her ample chest, gaze hard as she faced Celeste. "If they're headed for Rainfelle we have even less time to set those people free and find that sister of yours. That place is the capital of the slavers."
"Wait, you're taking us there?" Gandriel asked, his brows quirking as he watched the woman in confusion, "You had a shipment of tea to take to Prythian-"
"Did you really think we were actually taking tea?" Fallon snorted, nearly rolling her eyes, "We've been tracking these slave ships for months and word was it that you'd served on the ship that eradicated this little town."
Hurt flashed across Gandriel's tawny eyes.
"When we saw you in the Red Maiden we thought you'd taken the girl as another shipment," Fallon nodded toward a straight-backed Celeste, "but I figured out rather quickly during that pathetic game of poker that you were clueless; you let the information slip with a few sips of wine. Any slaver worth his gold wouldn't hand over information so easily."
"So that's why you helped us," Celeste breathed watching the dark-haired Captain, "Then what was your shipment to Prythian?"
"Freed slaves," Fallon glanced over a shoulder at her men, and also her cargo Celeste suddenly realized. No wonder they hadn't the slightest clue how to sail. "We're taking them to our allies amongst the Seven Courts to keep them out of the traffickers' hands."
"But if they're to escape," Gandriel interjected, "wouldn't you be taking them back into harm's way by helping us?"
"If you don't mind me saying, sir," The blond demi-fae Celeste had taught to tie sails, Koda if she remembered correctly, stepped forward. "I'm willing to risk my life to prevent another, human or fae, from facing the fate that I almost succumbed to." The entire crew paused, all attention towards Celeste and Gandriel.
"We're all willing to risk it," Koda continued. "We've discussed it."
There was a silent pause as all of the crew members nodded, the subtle scars Celeste had noticed most possessed days before suddenly prominent.
"When do we set sail?" She inquired, locking gazes with Fallon.
The captain shook her now rain-drenched hair out of her eyes and swept up that magnificent hat, plopping it on her soaked ringlets, "Now."