Wyrd: Book One of the Witch War Trilogy - WATTYS 2018 WINNER!

Chapter 22: In Which Rowan FINALLY Meets her Siblings

Rowan Aary had spent her life believing she was the last living Aary. She had known she was alone. There had been no one left on Htrae to whom she belonged.

The day she had burnt on the pyre, Rowan had prayed to be with her family again. She had wanted the Gods to let her join her mother and father in the heavens. At eight years old, as her breathing became laboured and her skin melted, she had not begged to be spared from pain or to be saved; In the moment she had been tested by the flames, she had cried out, pleaded to the Fates, to be with those she loved.

Instead, the Gods had spared her life, sent her power over fire. And through the smoke, a young man had emerged like a spark of hope, igniting her will to live.

For ten years, Joel Ba'leon had been the only person she had thought she had left.

But now, in her twenty-fourth year, she was waiting to be proven wrong.

It was an overcast summer day. The beautiful weather of the past week was finally breaking over a south wind, the warm humidity carrying the promise of rain and relief from the cloying heat. On another afternoon, Rowan would have stripped off her supple riding leathers, and taken a dip in the indigo ocean surrounding the spit of land where her team stood. Instead, her hands were gripping her horse's reigns tightly, as she stared at a dot on the horizon as it grew slowly, willing it to move faster. The wind, and the whinnying and whickering of steeds, were the only noises permeating the pensive air around the elite team of rebel soldiers as they waited.

She had received the message from Joel by carrier pigeon just that morning, noting that everything had gone to plan, mostly – and of course, without further detail, Rowan worried at the 'mostly' like a sharp stone in her riding boot – and that Joel would be arriving early, on the northern tip of the Bay of Dunfair this very afternoon with the Wyrd Sky and Rowan's siblings in tow. The message had been written in the rebel code, a small doodle of a two-tongued gibbon mooning the viewer whilst sticking out both its tongues, crammed into the margin of the parchment.

She had not planned or packed; she had not let the horses or soldiers rest; she had ridden as if the hounds of hell were at her back until her sister, her brother and Joel were a speck in her sights.

Now the moment was here: the moment of which she had not even dared dream. Her sister, Laina Aary, stood in front of her, hand outstretched.

As the two sister's eyes met for the first time, Rowan flinched, surprised, pulling back as if Laina's palm had been made of embers. Of the deluge of emotions Rowan had expected to feel, had expected to be overwhelmed with, she could not have predicted this.

She beheld the girl in front of her, eyes like a deep cerulean stormy ocean with flecks glancing off waves, where Rowan's were pale-blue, like a frozen fractured lake. Her sister's golden-hued hair shone like warm gold in contrast to Rowan's pale, cool-toned white-blond. Though they were of similar diminutive stature, where Rowan was all hard, lean muscle, Laina was soft, alluring curves. They had congruent dainty features, the same rosebud pink lips, but Laina's skin was unblemished; perfect. Rowan's, mottled with burns up her right side. Had Rowan grown up in a different world, an easier place, she wouldn't have collected the scars and burns that marred the canvas of her own body with reminders of past violence and pain. Maybe she would have grown into a lady; not a warrior. But Rowan was what she was; who she was. And so too was this young woman.

Looking at her, two things were as clear to Rowan as the swash of water magnifying the granular sand under the lapping waves on the spit where they now met: Laina was a stunning beauty. And, she was her sister.