Chapter 1
This was not the first dead body Valynda Bellamy had seen - she had helped her mother bury her father just a few years before. This was, however, the most dread-inspiring death she had witnessed.
Mikael stood over the broken form of the Draconic Justiciar, his chest heaving. The waning crescent moon shed little light on their crime, but it was still enough for Valynda to see the dark sheen of his lifeblood creeping toward her. It moved like ebony ichor, reaching out to mark her. This, this is my killer, it seemed to whisper. Her fear still gripped her too strongly to make a sound. All she could do was step away from its ambling path, jostling Jeremiah behind her. At the touch of another, the silence of the scene shattered, and their free will returned.
“We are so fucked,” Fallon swore, yanking Jeremiah further away from the body. As if physically distancing him would remove his guilt in the crime. It would not.
“He was going to kill her, Fal,” Mikael croaked. His hands shook as he turned to face the three of them, and Valynda could see the blood and gore that coated his fists. He had- He had crushed the man’s skull like it was nothing, and sealed their fates only more certainly because of it. The remnants of the vision flashed through her mind, and she watched it all over again. The dead man pushed her into a kneeling position, then the bite of steel against skin as he slit her throat.She should have just kept her mouth shut - she would have if she could have. Now they would all die with her.
“We have to get rid of his body,” she said, her voice barely a breath. It was obvious none of them had heard her. “We have to get rid of his body. Now.”
Her voice finally registered through the fear-addled minds of her friends. Jeremiah turned to her first, nodding. Though she could not see his face in the shadows, she knew the determined set his sharp jaw would have. He was smart. He would already be planning just how to rid themselves of their fallen foe.
“I am not touching him. I am not,” Fallon replied, clinging to Jeremiah’s arm like he was the only flotsam in their sea of troubles. He wrapped a comforting arm around her, pulling her head into his chest. His fingers tangles in her hair as the fear within her broke into sobs. Valynda mentally tallied the other woman as a hopeless cause that night, vowing to teach her how to shield properly in the morrow.
“What about the river? It would throw any Trackers off our scent. Even if they found him again, they wouldn’t know where he started,” Jeremiah suggested, still soothing Fallon as he spoke.
“If he washed up and anybody found him, a Necromage would have him talking in seconds,” she replied, shivering at the thought of the deformed head uttering their death sentence.
“We burn him, then. Come back tomorrow and spread the ashes. The Trackers won’t know which direction to look for him.”
Her stomach heaved at the suggestion, but she nodded. She could think of no better plan.
And that is how the Valynda found herself building a bonfire over the body of one of her king’s loyal soldiers. Fallon was beyond helping, still sobbing as she sat and watched them work. Mikael helped wordlessly, hauling the logs into the small clearing for Valynda to stack. She suppressed the anger building within her, knowing he had tried to do the right thing.
Damn Jeremiah for setting her up on the worst date ever, and damn her stupid visions for ruining things so horribly. If she had just been able to act normally for one godsdamned night, she may have lived to see the week out. At this rate, her head would be rolling across the town square tomorrow. Her mother, already so weak since her father’s passing, would have another body to bury.
As Valynda placed the last piece of wood and stood back from the pure, she felt warmth pass by her cheek. A small ball of flame landed amongst the branches and logs, looking as if it may fizzle out. She heard Jeremiah shift behind her, likely about to attempt a second time, but then the dying enders finally caught the dry tinder. The flames grew, searching the pyre hungrily, then they caught the black fabric of the guard’s tunic. She turned from the grim sight as the scent of burning flesh caught the air.
Jeremiah’s gaze caught hers, and she felt her look of despair reflected in his ashen eyes. The brand upon his neck seemed to dance in the firelight, marking him the weakest of Flamehearts. His very flesh was scarred with his apparent inadequacies, yet he would be the first to be executed for his friend’s foolishness. As soon as they knew her to be a Farseer, a secret her parents had hidden with such care, she would be next. Whether they beheaded her or fed her to a wyrm was yet to be seen.
“What now?” Mikael asked, his voice even but his hands still shaking. For his 6-foot-something frame and bravado he showed around town, he really had the courage of a flea. Valynda silently cursed Jeremiah for attempting to set them up once more.
“Now you go to the river and scrub yourself until you are sure you are clean, and then scrub yourself again. If one speck of blood is still under your nails, they will find you, and then they will kill us all,” Jeremiah replied. Giving Valynda one final look, he turned and helped Fallon to her feet. “And Mikael - please do not try and talk to me for at least the next week.”
Valynda watched as they left, feeling a pang of jealousy for the blonde-haired woman in the arms of her best friend. If anybody was going to make it out of this, it was her. She was purely and perfectly plain. She had been a witness to a horrible crime, but was not a Wielder hiding that it ever happened. A few years, a few hopeless pleas, and the justiciars were likely to let her free relatively unscathed.
“I couldn’t let him hurt you, Val,” Mikael said behind her. In another circumstance, his protectiveness may have flattered her. Currently, she was beyond any kindness for this man.
“What possesses you to kill him? Like that?” She hissed, exasperated. “If you had given me three seconds before flying at him, I could have talked my way out of it!” Whether that was true was debatable. The Justiciar had realised what she was the second the prophecy began to spill from her tongue.
“Stay here for a minute and I will walk you home. It is the least I can do,” he said, his voice pleading. It was the last straw for the horrid night.
“Whilst I would absolutely love to stay and watch a corpse burn, I really don’t want to ever see you again, Mikael. I would rather risk the wolves eating me on the way home. Good night, and please never speak to me again,” Valynda replied.
