Prologue:Let it burn
Limpopo, 12 years ago, 2014. 27 July. 03:17am.
The dogs started barking first.
She was only 10 and bad at sleeping through the night. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, listening for her mother’s voice down the hall.
“Back to bed, Cove, love.” her mother said from the doorway. Always calm, always first to check.
But her voice was wrong, tight.
Little Corvina’s legs swung over the bed, “Mamma?”
“Stay here,” Her mother had said
The front door kicked in.
Glass shattered, shouting erupted. Then the air changed- Sharp, metallic. Wrong. The smell of raw magic and scorched ozone, like lightning hitting wet stone. Wyvern fire didn’t smell like petrol; it smelt like the sky was breaking.
Corina ran. Kids don’t listen to ‘stay here’ when their little sister is screaming. That was the first order she ever ignored.
The hallway was blue-white with an unnatural flame. Her mother was on the floor, her blood at her temple, reaching for 8-year-old Lindi. Lindi was crying, trapped under a fallen beam. The fire coiled; it didn’t burn normally. Instead, it had clung, hissed, and ate through the wood like it was paper.
“Mamma!” She screamed.
Her mother looked up, seeing her eldest. She made a choice that night; a choice every therapist told Corvina was nothing to beat herself up over.
“Run,” she said as loud as she could, but it was weak. “Corvina, run to the fields. Don’t stop.”
“Mamma-”
“Now!”
The word hit like a slap.
Corvina ran.
She made it to the edge of the maze field as the roof collapsed. The heat on her back, magic biting at her skin, Lindy’s screams in her ears. She didn’t stop, her mother told her not to stop. She already ignored one order; she wasn’t making that mistake twice.
She didn’t stop for three days.
Vincent found her three days later.
She was curled under a drainage culvert on the west end of the farm, clinging to her mother’s locket, throat too hoarse to speak.
The report said “Farm accident.”
Faulty wiring. No foul play.
Corvina knew better. She remembered the men, the boots. The smell of wyvern fire before the house came down. Before Vincent spent those three days straight in front of empty doors.
She remembered her mother’s last word.
Run
So, she did.
She ran straight into SAPS, used the excuse of her father’s ex-military experience. Straight into law school, straight into Homicide specialist.
Because if the system wouldn’t call it murder.
She would make them call it murder.
Because if the system wouldn’t find the men who gave the order.
She would find them herself and they’d be fucking sorry.
Even if it took twelve years.
Even if it meant finding monsters to hunt monsters.
The farm burned that night; her mother and sister did.
Corvina didn’t.
