Starsinger

Broken

Delia gripped the cool ceramic lip of the vase with both hands, careful not to slosh the water out the sides and onto her dress.

Cook had sent her out for water so they'd be ready for the morning. It should have only taken Delia a trip to the pump behind the kitchen, but Malcolm's mercenaries liked to congregate there on cold nights and amuse themselves by pushing the workers around. Tonight they blocked her path, telling her if she wanted more water she could go out to the garden pump and get it.

She was itching to use her powers. It had been so long. She was so tired of bowing and trembling whenever the mercenaries mocked her. They made her feel weak, vulnerable, angry.

The same way she'd felt when Jace confessed.

Fury spasmed in her chests. She remembered the icy burn of the void magic on her fingertips, the deathly exhaustion as she worked the spell into the obsidian pendants one after the other. Pendants made from the broken manacles they'd used to chain her. A strange alchemy transforming that symbol of hate into one of trust, protection – freedom.

Now one of those pendants belonged to a king and an army who feared her as much as Jace once did. The Flint Guard. Jace didn't think his commander would leverage that power to hurt innocent mages, but Delia knew her history too well to believe that. Innocence is subjective, a cloak granted to the privileged, and one that could be snatched away just as quick.

Jace should have known better. He should have listened to her.

Why would he? Beneath her collar, Delia's serpent tattoo seemed to sizzle. Rivers follow the riverbed. You taught him your truth, and he learned – but the grooves in his soul are deep. You thought you alone could make him abandon a lifetime of believing magic was the enemy? With nothing but tremulous trust and a grudging respect and the soft, sidelong way you would catch him looking at you when he thought you didn't notice—

Embarrassment swept in and she ran from it, taking refuge in the comfortable embrace of rage. He'd used her. She'd trusted him, and he'd betrayed that trust in spectacular fashion. She wasn't the kind of woman who let that happen twice. She was smarter than that. Stronger.

So why did her insides feel more like bruised flesh than scorched earth?

Because I wanted him to be better. The answer came to her mind unbidden. She squashed it down where it belonged and threw her rage into the water pump.

Delia was a few hundred yards from the manse, the heavy vase straining her fingers, when a door swung open and flooded the yard with a long rectangle of light. Instinctively she stepped into the shadows.

A troupe of guards emerged, three at the front and two at the back, carrying some heavy load between them. Delia stepped closer and squinted.

The load was a man, beaten so his skin was more purple than brown, bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts. His long legs dragged uselessly along the ground behind the guards and his mop of red hair lolled to the side as he coughed, wincing at the pain.

The ceramic vase crashed to the ground and shattered.