Curses and Will Chapter 16: Chapter 8: The Blade That Burned (Part III - The Demon That Never Left)

Read chapter 16 of Curses and Will by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

I kept running, Annya held tight against my chest, past the bleeding corridors of the palace, through gardens torn apart by the fighting, over bodies I made myself stop looking at directly. The marble that had once seemed so proud and untouchable was painted now in colors it had never been built to wear, and the air carried the smell of burnt flesh and betrayal in a combination that lodged itself permanently somewhere behind my eyes. Then we reached the village at the edge of the palace grounds. It wasn't a village anymore. It had become something closer to a graveyard built by hands that wanted you to understand exactly how much they'd enjoyed the work. Bodies lay scattered in pieces across the mud, the kind of damage that doesn't happen by accident. Villagers who'd done nothing but live there, caught in something they had no part in deciding. Among them, smaller shapes, ones I made myself look away from as fast as I could, ones that wouldn't leave my mind no matter how fast I turned my head. Heads had been raised on spikes along the village's broken fence line, mouths frozen in expressions I'll carry for as long as I live. The fires burning through what remained of the houses weren't simply consuming wood and thatch. They felt like they were consuming something larger than that, something that didn't have a name I wanted to find. I couldn't breathe properly. I couldn't make my legs keep moving. I went down to my knees in the mud, choking on air that tasted like iron, my vision blurring from something that had nothing to do with smoke. Because there, at the center of all of it, something was waiting. The same presence I'd seen thirteen years ago, in the fire that had taken my parents and the better part of my childhood along with them. The same twisted shape, the same eyes that held nothing but a kind of ancient, patient hatred, the same crushing weight that seemed to flatten the world into silence around it. Its presence hit me like something physical. I couldn't scream. I couldn't think clearly enough to form a single coherent thought. All I felt was my own heart trying to tear itself loose from my chest, trying to escape a monster some part of me had never actually stopped running from, not in thirteen years, not for a single day. I would have stayed there, frozen, if her voice hadn't found me. "Hey." Annya's voice. Soft. Steady in a way that nothing else around us was managing to be. She dropped down beside me in the mud and wrapped her arms around me without hesitation, without the flinch I'd been bracing for since the moment I'd felt the demon's presence settle over the village. She held on while I shook, and somehow that simple, unflinching contact pulled me back from wherever I'd been about to disappear into. She didn't fear me. Not even now, not even with whatever was showing on my face in that moment. She just held me, and for one stolen breath in the middle of all that destruction, she became the only steady thing left standing. We ran again, deeper into the trees beyond the village, the dark closing in around us on every side. But it wasn't finished with us yet. They caught up eventually. Dozens of soldiers, mages with staffs already glowing, assassins with blades that hadn't yet been cleaned of whatever they'd already done that night. Their eyes all carried the same message, plain and unanimous. Kill her. "Just die already, you cursed witch," one of them spat, face twisted with a hatred that didn't need any further explanation behind it. Something in me broke loose. I stepped forward, shaking, every part of me raw and furious in a way I had no remaining capacity to control, and the words tore out of me before I'd decided to let them. "Who decides what's right and wrong? Who gave any of you the right to judge who's cursed and who isn't? Who decided you get to choose who lives and who doesn't?" They sneered back at me, unmoved. One of them raised a hand toward Annya, fire already gathering at his fingertips. The in