by Lily Luchesi
Chapter Two
Ten years later.
The Red Priests flanked the woman on the stage, two of them holding her arms on each side. The leader of their pack, a towering woman with long, grey hair escaping from underneath her red hood, stood in front of the woman being held back by her companions.
The grey-haired woman also wore a red robe, the trademark outfit of the Priests of the Red God, the Blood God, but her robes were adorned with markings and runes in a language older than our kingdom.
“Witchcraft,” she said, her words cutting through the silence that had fallen over the crowd. The market square of our town, Bellhaven, had never been so busy before, not even during the yearly farmer’s market in the height of summer that drew out people from far beyond our town.
The Red Priests ordered everyone to be present. They knocked on doors, dragging people from their beds, forcing parents to bring along their children, even their babies, as we all stood on the market square, huddling together like cattle.
Which was exactly what we were: cattle, ready for the slaughter.
The moment the Red Robes stormed into town, bringing with them mayhem and vengeance, I felt something bad was about to happen, felt it in my bones. The last time they had come here, when I was barely six years old, was forever burned into my skin and soul.
My brother poked me in the ribs, and I realized I brought my hand up to the mark on my forehead without realizing it. I quickly brought my hand down. The mark, forever etched into my skin, was a permanent reminder of the horrors the Red Priests were capable of.
“Per decree of the High-King,” the woman on the stage continued, “witchcraft is outlawed in all of the Seven Kingdoms and has been for the last decade. Witches must be branded through the markings provided to us by the grace of the Red God, so that their magic is caged. This has been the law for ten years.”
Her eyes spit fire as she glanced down at us, at the crowd of heretics, which she, no doubt, believed we were. “Yet, imagine our surprise when we, disciples of the Red God, were warned that you were hiding witches in your midst.”
The Red Priestess splayed open her arms, gesturing at the kneeling woman behind her, who was being held by several of the Red God’s acolytes. The woman’s hair was drenched from sweat, her face streaked with dirt, and tears pooled from her eyes. Aife. I had known her my entire life.
She stared into the crowd, her eyes flickering back and forth, panic setting in.
Look at me, I reached out for her. Look at me.
Despite the brand on my skin, locking up my magic, I could still feel the remnants of it: a small, almost insignificant part of my magic that had survived, that had been strong enough to withstand the horrible strength of the rune.
Look at me, I said again in my mind, urging my magic to find a way to Aife’s.
Aife still looked around frantically—for someone to save her? For someone to step in and end this execution before it was too late?
No one would step in.
One month ago, when the Red Priests descended upon the town of Greymere, twice the size of ours and barely half a day’s walk away, no one complained while the Priests butchered an entire family—parents and children. When two weeks before that, the Priests raided Hammell, the biggest town in our province, and lined up five families for the slaughter, no one dared to utter a word of protest.
No one would do anything to save Aife. Not even me, stupid coward that I was.
Look at me, I repeated, sending a stronger surge of power her way.
Finally, her gaze met mine. Her blue eyes, the color of a freshwater lake, focused on me. I remembered how kind she had been when I hurt my knee while falling on the cobblestones, now many years ago. How she had patched me up by bandaging my wounded knee. And years later, when my mother was dying, when she was being devoured from the inside-out by a magic that now it could no longer be let out, had slowly turned against her, it was Aife who had sat next to my mother’s bed, holding her hand. Aife’s third eye, square in the middle of her forehead, had gazed into my mother’s disease-ridden body and had figured out what was wrong with her.
For healers, the marks the Red Priests used were even worse. The Priests burned them right on top of their third eye, basically robbing them from one of their senses completely.
Of course, Aife, even with her third eye, couldn’t fix my mother’s illness. No one could. The magic had slowly torn my mother apart, piece by piece, until all that was left was a festering husk.
I shivered, refusing to think about those days. My mother was now nothing but a skeleton withering away in a shallow grave outside of town, one of many, her soul forever departed to a world that I prayed was better than our current one.
Stay calm, I urged Aife now she had her eyes on me. It won’t hurt. I promise. As long as you focus on me.
“Show us your witchcraft,” the Red Priest barked at Aife suddenly, grabbing her hair and pulling her head.
I gritted my teeth. Don’t be afraid, I sent to Aife. Be strong.
My hands balled into fists. If my magic hadn’t been locked up, if it had been free, I would’ve used it to completely and utterly destroy that woman in red, that she-devil, that demoness sent by the Red God.
I would tear her apart limb by limb until her world existed only out of pain.
“Open,” she snarled at Aife, and I knew what she meant instantly. The third eye.
Tears rolling out of her eyes, Aife shook her head. “Please,” she sobbed in a broken voice. “Please.”
I started shivering. My brother closed his hand over one of my fists, a gesture of support, but also a gesture reminding me that I had to stay calm. It wasn’t him up there, or me.
My heart slammed against my ribcage. If only I could unleash this magic within me, then none of those Red maniacs would stand a chance.
To fight a Red Priest is to fight a God, my mother used to say. You could not go to arms against one of theirs without offending the Blood God himself. And no one dared to fight a God.
Still, while my hands trembled and my heart hammered in my chest, I felt not only my own anger and fears. I felt Aife’s; the myriad wounds inflicted upon her by the Red Robes throbbing all over her body, the immense pain in her chest as she realized her own end was near, her unmeasurable sorrow at not being able to see her own grandchildren grow up—her daughter, mercifully, had moved away from town years ago, and did not have an ounce of magic within her.
I felt Aife’s pain as if it was my own.
Like I had for that family in Greymere. Watching their execution and trying to make them forget about their pain and fear had kept me bedridden for an entire week. Or like in Hammell, where I had vomited and fainted when the Red Robes had slaughtered the fifth and last family because it had been too much for me to take.
The magic of an Empath. I could feel other’s emotions, their pains, their fears, and take it from them to carry it myself, or to pass it on to someone else. In this case, I wanted nothing more than to pass on all those horrors to that red-robed monster standing in front of Aife, but I knew better. Even at the slightest whiff of magic directed toward them, the Red maniacs would turn our town upside down looking for the source of the magic—and if they couldn’t find it, they would find a scapegoat to take the fall.
So, I kept my rage in check, even when the monster probed against Aife’s skin until the third eye popped open.
It was larger than a regular eye and not oval but perfectly round. Sapphire-colored, it had startled me the first time I had seen it, but there was such goodness, such wisdom, emanating from that eye, that my initial fear didn’t last long.
“Blasphemy!” The Red Priestess shouted while she pointed at Aife. “Magic is a blasphemy against our High King, against our God, against the Seven Kingdoms!”
Steel flickered in the sunlight.
No pain, I told Aife, even though I knew it was a lie. You will feel no pain.
Aife didn’t shout or scream, not even when the dagg
er stabbed her through her third eye, blinding her forever. She gasped, though, a gust of air escaping her lungs. For a second, her two remaining eyes stared at the Red Priestess, right before the executioner behind her, leaned forward and slit her throat.
Aife slumped forward, a dull ‘thump’ resonating through the town’s square as her head connected with the wooden boards of the stage those Red monsters had ordered built, precisely for this occasion.
The energy hit me straight in the chest, and I stumbled. If not for my brother’s iron hold on my arm, I would’ve tumbled backward, but he tightened his grip. We couldn’t draw attention to ourselves, lest those Red idiots decide they hadn’t seen enough bloodshed for one day.
The town square was silent. Not even a bird flew past. The sound of that ‘thump’ would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. A deadly, unnatural silence, and then that ‘thump’.
“Let this be a reminder,” the leader of the Red hoods said as she turned back to the crowd, stepping over Aife’s corpse. “Let this be a reminder for all remaining magic-wielders out there.” She kicked against Aife’s unmoving form. “Turn yourself in, and we will mark you, lock up the magic that threatens to destroy our world. Hide… And you will meet the Goddess of Death.”
Sebastian practically crushed my hand in his grip. I felt his anger as strongly as my own. I wished I could unlock it, remove that mark on my forehead and rain death upon all of them.
Instead, I stayed unmoving, a nameless figure in the crowd. My bones felt as old as time itself, and an unnatural cold wrapped itself around my spine, anger settling into my core.
The Goddess of Death would only receive one sacrifice today, but as I stared at Aife’s body, I swore that one day I would make the Goddess’ temples flow over with the blood of those damned Red Priests.
Chapter Three
Sebastian lowered his hood and shook his shoulders, droplets of rain dancing all around while he took his coat off.
Shortly after Aife’s execution, it started raining, as if the Gods themselves were upset at what transpired in our little town. For three days, it had rained non-stop, soaking the streets. The Red Priests packed their belongings and moved on to another town to hunt down, torture and execute witches, leaving horror in their wake.
Despite the horrible torrent of rain, Sebastian dragged me to our cousin’s, Fiona, home; with the vague message: Fiona had to tell me something urgent.
I still felt drained of energy, but I let him drag me along, despite the soaking weather. The anger was still coursing through my veins, as sharp and destructive as it had been the moment I heard that horrible ‘thump’ which, as I had predicted, kept me awake at night.
But the moment Sebastian and I entered Fiona’s home, before I could even take off my cloak, I already felt something was wrong. For one, her already small house was even more cramped than usual because of the three people sitting around the table.
Fiona got up when we entered, but the other two stayed seated.
A man and a woman. The man had a nasty scar running down his face. The woman looked to be in her forties, with brown, curly hair and an unremarkable face. Her eyes were soulless, hard, the eyes of someone who had suffered too much. I imagined, eventually, all of us would have that same haunted look in our eyes, but it still sent shivers down my spine when I gazed at her. Both the man and woman had a rune engraved onto their foreheads. Like me, they had possessed magic once.
“What is this?” I asked Fiona and Sebastian, anger flaring through me. I had an inkling of a thought, and if my suspicions were true, then I had every right to be furious.
Fiona held her hands out, trying to calm me down. “Just hear them out, Saleyna.”
“No.” I shot a dark glare at the woman and her companion. “I already told you I want nothing to do with this.” I turned toward the door, but Sebastian’s hand on my arm stopped me.
“Give them a chance, please.” Tears glittered in my brother’s eyes as he turned toward me. With his light-brown hair, straight nose and slightly round face, looking at him was like glancing at my mirror image. My hair was longer than his, and my eyes were slightly greyer, but it was obvious to everyone right away that we were siblings. Sometimes, he reminded me so much of my mother that it hurt.
“Why?” I asked Sebastian, my voice barely rising above a whisper.
“Because it’s time to put a stop to this,” the woman spoke. She hadn’t moved, her hands still clenched on top of the table.
When I turned to her, she barely tilted her head toward me. “You know it as much as I do.”
“I don’t know anything,” I said through gritted teeth.
No hair on my head doubted what this woman represented. The Brotherhood of Whispers, a rebel group of former magic-wielders operating in the shadows of society. There had been rumors about an underground resistance brewing for the past years, and Sebastian had gone to some of their meetings, although I always warned him strongly against it. But I had told him more than once that I wanted nothing to do with any kind of resistance. In ten years, despite revolts, despite people trying to bring down the Red Priests, nothing had ever changed, so why would I dare to hope that someday something would?
“They have moved from marking us to executing us.” The woman clenched and unclenched her hands, and I could sense her anger, a blade that had sharpened each time she witnessed the Red Priests inflicting horror on her brethren. “You were witness to all the executions in the area,” she said to me. “Why?”
I glanced from her to Sebastian and Fiona. My cousin stared at the ground, a blush appearing on her cheeks. So, it was Fiona who had betrayed me.
“Why ask if you know the answer?” I fired back at the woman. “I’m leaving.”
“I used to be like you,” the woman blurted out. She got up from her seat, and for the first time, I saw the vulnerability on her face. The hurt behind it. “An Empath,” she clarified. “I could feel other people’s emotions as sharp as my own. I could take their pain, siphon it away, help them. Now, I’m like an empty vessel, a painful memory of the person I once was.”
I tried my best to keep my gaze blank. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”
“You go there to take their pain. Their fear. That means that you still have your powers.”
Panic made my heart race. It was bad enough that Sebastian and Fiona knew my secret, but this woman whose name I didn’t even know? Who worked for an organization I wanted nothing to do with? This encounter seemed like a one-way ticket straight to the executioner’s block, and I had no desire to suffer the same fate Aife had.
“I don’t have any powers,” I said blankly. “Your information is wrong.”
“You can trust her,” Fiona tried, but I held my hand up, stopping her.
“I told you I wanted nothing to do with this, and you pulled me into this mess anyway,” I warned her. What I didn’t say out loud was how much her actions betrayed me.
“We have a plan,” the woman said. “A plan to stop them, but we’ll need your help.”
I felt that anger pulling at me, squeezing into my heart until I had no emotions left but wrath.
“Whatever plan you have…” I spat out the words, resting my palms on the table and staring straight at the woman, “it will fail. I can tell you that right now. You think no one else had plans?” A dry laugh escaped my throat. “You think the magic-wielders just succumbed to the will of the Red Priests without a fight? They all fought. They all failed.”
The woman met my stare, her expression neutral. “Just because they failed, doesn’t mean we should not try again. If we stop fighting, if we give up, then all is lost.”
“How many more need to die before we take action?” Fiona interrupted, grabbing my arm. “Our powers are gone, but you still have yours. You can still do something.”
“Barely,” I reminded her while I yanked my arm away. “I barely have any powers left. I can use them to help ease someone’s pain, or take away their fear, but that�
��s it.” I shook my head, turning back toward the woman sitting at the other end of the table. “I can’t help you.”
“You’re all we have,” Sebastian said. “At least hear out their plan.”
I felt like an animal trapped in the cage with nowhere to run. Joining a rebel group equaled signing my own death warrant. With my remaining powers, I was already walking on thin ice, risking discovery just by walking out my door—as soon as one of those Red Priests had an inkling of an idea that I still had magic, they would execute me without hesitation.
“We cannot defeat the Red Priests in open battle. Fighting against them means fighting against the crown, and none of us are willing to risk that,” the woman said. “The High-King, for all his flaws, is still our High-King.”
“So, you draw the line at treason,” I said sarcastically.
This woman was too calm, her expression lingering between neutral and mild amusement, the kind of deadly calm that clung to those who had nothing left to lose. And if experience told me anything, it was that people who had nothing to lose, were the most dangerous people alive.
“That is why we plan to destroy them from the inside out,” the woman continued as if I hadn’t interrupted her at all. “For that plan to succeed, we need someone to infiltrate the Red Keep.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. The Red Keep was the heavily warded castle in the Lowlands where the Red Priests’ order was housed, and where they prayed to their vengeful Blood God. Infiltrating the Red Keep, the stronghold of the order, was like walking into a lion’s den, except you wouldn’t be facing one lion but dozens of them.
“You’re insane if you think I’m risking my life like that.” I wrapped my cloak closer around myself, ignoring the shiver that ran down my spine. “That’s blatant suicide. Only a complete idiot would go along with your kamikaze plan.”
The woman chuckled. “You call it suicide; I call it brilliance. Tell me, with those remnants of powers you have left, do you feel safe when you stand outside with the rest of us, forced to watch the executions of our own kind, knowing that any moment your powers could be discovered and you could be next?”
