Pure (COMPLETED)

Chapter 4: The Pearl

Maigred pulled her daughter, Sinead, close and the girl buried her face in her shoulder, light sobs shaking her body. Maigred's other hand was inside her cloak clutching her dagger. Even from the very back corner of the square, as far as Maigred could get from the wyrm, Soleil's distress was clear.

If she didn't fear for what could happen to her daughter, Maigred would have already been up on the platform burying her knife in the wyrm's throat. The blade had been bathed in her lady's blood when had been used to kill her. Maigred suspected that might give the blade extra powers against the wyrm, but she wasn't sure. She did know that an ordinary knife to the throat wouldn't be enough to kill the wyrm. He healed too fast. Almost as fast as a tarasque.

Healing was the one thing that tarasque excelled at more than the wyrms. They were notoriously difficult to kill and this gave them an edge in battle. They could be poisoned, slashed open, broken, crushed, and they would still keep fighting.

At least most tarasque.

Maigred's glare switched to Finten as he half stumbled down the platform steps to fetch his next victim. He had given up on fighting years ago. He was probably already drunk this morning.

She remember the smell of alcohol on his breath, the redness in his eyes and the way his hands had shook on the day she had been dragged to the wyrm's manor twelve years ago.

Maigred's fingers tightened around the grip of her dagger.

Finten had become a shadow of the man she'd seen before the wyrm had taken their town.

Her lady Caevah had always spoken highly of Finten. Her lady had loved him. She had trusted him implicitly. Maigred hadn't had much personal experience with Finten before her lady had died. She had only started as an acolyte a few months before, and at that time Finten was busy planning, and then carrying out his campaign against the wyrm.

Maigred remembered Finten sweeping into the room during lessons a few times, full of exuberance and chaos, smelling of fresh air and grass. He would wrap Caevah in his big arms and kiss her tenderly while all the acolytes giggled. Caevah would laugh and half-heartedly swat him away, demanding that he leave her to her students.

Finten almost always brought Caevah little presents whenever he interrupted class, and they were usually the reason for the interruption. He couldn't wait to give them to her. Sometimes it was an especially pretty flower, or a handful of berries. Sometimes he brought her a little pouch filled with a rare herb. Once he'd brought a little finch with a broken wing, cupped gently in his big hands, an anxious expression on his face.

That little finch had become the lesson for the day. Caevah had taught her acolytes how to channel their hearth magic into the tiny body in small enough amounts that it didn't overwhelm its delicate constitution. It took a couple of days, but the little finch had healed nicely and was released back into the wild. It didn't go far from it's saviors. Maigred had seen the little bird perched on Finten's shoulder, or in his wild black hair several times after that.

Back in those days Maigred thought that she was in love with Finten. She couldn't wait to find her own tarasque to bring home and love with all her heart.

The second girl stumbled out of the pavilion up on the platform, her white dress stained with a red smear, and was attended to by Alvie, that traitorous bitch, and Finten brought the last girl up to the wyrm. She knelt before the wyrm and offered him her gifts, then was led into the pavilion. She endured the ordeal as compliantly and quietly as the other girls, just as Finten had probably told them to.

That was the one thing he had stressed above all else to Maigred the year she had turned sixteen. He had come to her mother's home a month before the presentation ceremony to tell her what to expect. He told Maigred she needed to be compliant and as non-emotional as possible. It hadn't been what she needed to hear, not even if she had been planning to attend the presentation ceremony.