1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of Air: Book #5, Chronicles of Marsdenfel

Year 232 of the Bynding - The Realm of Salles, Winter - post 1

Lallie takes her self-appointed guarding of me seriously, rarely leaving me for long unless someone else is here, so one day near the winter solstice, when she takes far longer than usual to fetch lunch for us, concern pricks at the top of my spine.

When she does come in, it's clumsily enough that I would've expected it to be someone else, had I not been able to sense her magic. She stumbles into something downstairs and goes still.

I hoist myself out of my chair while my magic tells me that nobody else is nearby. "Lallie?"

She doesn't answer.

Breathing carefully and keeping my movements quiet in case someone else is present that my magic isn't catching, I ease myself down the stairs, leery of my awkward weight and need to protect my child.

The sheen of liquid and crimson of blood catch my eye. The spatter at the entrance follows to the spot where Lallie's curled up against the wall, shivering. The lack of a pool beneath her reassures me that her magic's working properly, but it doesn't answer whence the blood has come.

"Lallie?" I ask softly. "Are you hurt?"

She shakes her head, something clutched tight in one fist, and chokes out, "He weren't much older than me."

She knows I'm here and whom I am, but that's insufficient for me to be certain that it's safe to touch her yet. "What happened?" I ask gently.

Her shivers turn into shakes. "I—I—"

Her hand loosens enough for me to see what she holds, and I have to fight back an instinctual chill. The talon is covered in blood and gore, as obviously as fresh-ripped from a gryphon as it's freshly used as a weapon.

Darnell knows where I am.

I take a moment and reach into my magic to steady myself, so I can speak with the soothing calm she needs. "You protected yourself. That isn't murder."

She whips her head back and forth, in full denial. "It—"

I tie the words into her own magic, to strengthen them in her mind: "Self-defense isn't murder."

The girl breaks into sobs.

I draw her close as well as I can, with the baby in the way. "I know, Lallie. I know."

Soon, by some means, I'll be back in Grehafen with my daughter, forced to endure whatever cruelties my brother wishes to foist on me—on my husband, on my son—for my flight. I want to believe he'll show mercy to his daughter, but... I know him too well for that.

She'll survive. She'll free Marsdenfel. Somehow. Not that I—and therefore not my husband—will live to see it.

I don't let myself cry.