The Burning

Chapter One:

The snapping of twigs and the frantic crush of leaves were drowned beneath the roar of men — torches raised, throats raw with righteous fury — chasing a young woman through the darkened forest.

Faster.

Her lungs burned. Her vision blurred. Brambles scraped the skin of her shins as she vaulted roots and ducked low branches, each breath a ragged gasp against the cold night air.

But the trees were thinning. She could see torchlight bleeding through the trunks. They were gaining.

Mud sucked at her boots as her legs finally buckled. She collapsed to her knees, hands sinking into wet soil. She bowed forward, chest heaving, the taste of iron hot on her tongue.

If I can just make it to the ravine…

Tears cut through blood and dirt on her cheeks. She tried to stand, even though her body refused.

Every instinct screamed at her to run, but she could not even kneel without shaking.

Her wild grey eyes scanned the young forest for shelter: a hollow trunk, a fox den, anything. But this wood was too new, too thin. It offered no sanctuary.

She dragged herself toward the broadest evergreen she could find, fingers clawing into moss and roots. Bark tore into her palms as she pulled herself into its shadow, tucking her body between the tree’s gnarled roots.

He should have been here by now.

Caiden had promised they would reach the ravine together — that they would cross before the hunters came.

So where was he?

Her head tipped back against the rough bark as her gaze found the stars between trembling branches. Andromeda glared down at her, cold and bright.

Her breath hitched.

Do you mean to sacrifice me and mine?

A single torchlight grew nearer, accompanied by quiet, certain footsteps. Hope flared bitterly in her chest as a familiar voice called her name.

“Thank the Mother you’re here— I thought—”

He emerged from the darkness, torch raised, posture coiled with caution—as if she were the danger here.

Something in her chest dropped. The worst had happened. He hadn’t come to save her.

Not a rescuer, she realized.

A witness.

A shepherd of hunters.

She should never have expected a man who feared her power to defend her life. He had duties—to the Cardinalate, to his people—and she was the complication he could not afford.

How else could their torches have breached her wards, slipping past every Magari defense without a whisper of warning?

Her jaw clenched. Dirt ground between her teeth as she glared up at him.

“Of course they tracked me this deep. It was you.”

He didn't deny it. Instead he set his jaw, his body tensed — as though she might strike him dead where he stood.

And perhaps she would have, if she still had strength.

Slumping back against the trunk, she let one hand fall into the dirt, blood pooling in the grooves of her skin. The other hand slid instinctively to her swollen womb.

She stared up at the constellations and found instead a steadying strength.

“...guide me,” she whispered.

~

When consciousness returned, it did so through pain.

Her limbs were stiff, her wounds swollen. Infection pulsed in her hands with every twitch of muscle. Yet the ache was almost welcome — proof that air still filled her lungs, that blood still moved through her veins, that she had not yet been reduced to ash and memory.

Rusty hinges shrieked somewhere beyond her cell. Sunlight slanted through the bars and onto her bare, dirt-caked feet. Judging by the brightness, it was not past the eighth hour.

“Witch.”

The word was spat with contempt. And though the voice had changed its tone, the cadence was unmistakable.

Caiden Williams.

He stood tall and broad-shouldered, his muddled golden hair brushing his jaw, rust-brown eyes clouded with disdain where once they had been soft.

He had been her lover three moons ago.

“Caiden,” she rasped, the name somehow foreign in her mouth. Her hand drifted to the swell beneath her torn blouse — proof of a life that would never draw breath.

The pyre awaited them both.

Not for the first time, she wondered at the absurdity — that the Prosaic called her kind wicked while hiding behind a doctrine that demanded blood and obedience.

“And they call us heretics,” she murmured under her breath.

“Speak not my name again, witch,” Caiden snapped.

Names swirled in her head. Witch. Lover. Forsworn. Then she saw him again beneath the evergreen—torch raised, hope clawing at her ribs even as the mob closed in. Her gut had known. Her heart had refused. Hope is the last cruelty to die.

Oh, Caiden.

How disappointing you are.

She lifted her chin despite the chains.

“I know not what I did to deserve such ill will from you,” she said, voice sharpening. “I showed you my home, my family, my village. I gave you my body, my heart, and my name. I would bear you a child too, had you not forsaken me so.”

His jaw tightened. His eyes flickered.

“You know not the crimes committed by your people?” he countered, voice rising. “The innocent humans slaughtered? The blood staining your kin? Are these offenses not enough?”

She stared at him — at the shivering boy wearing a man’s righteous anger — and felt only grief.

“You speak of the blood of the Prosaic,” she said softly. “You never speak of the Magari burned in their sleep. Of villages reduced to ash for worshipping gods that were not yours. Does that blood not stain these lands as well?”

Silence. Heavy, stretching.

Her mother’s laughter flashed behind her eyes. The river. The heat of summer. Then fire, and smoke, and no survivors.

They had spent that night together, away from her village by the river's bend. She had fallen into his arms with grief the next morning.

Only recently did she learn what he’d done. That vile thing had comforted her, knowing all along he was the cause.

“It won me the hand of the Cardinal’s daughter,” Caiden had declared, the smugness in his voice enough to curdle blood.

Some betrayals ended once the knife was pulled free. His did not. His kept cutting.

Only the unborn child in her womb remained — and even that life would be taken by noon.

“You bewitched me once,” Caiden muttered, more to himself than to her. “Never again.”

Her laughter came out broken, empty of mirth.

Keys jingled. The cell door creaked open. He moved toward her with solemnity instead of fury.

“High noon approaches,” he said quietly. “The pyre is ready. Are you… ready?”

Her gaze lifted, storm-grey meeting rust-brown.

“Valka,” she whispered.

He froze.

“You have already condemned me to death,” she said. “The least you could do is speak my name once more. Valka.”

His lips parted. Breath caught.

“…Valka,” he said.

Soft. Reverent. Too late.

It sounded like a prayer.