❝ An exile should remember that they will die in these lands and there is nothing they can do but fight. ❞
[complete | editor's pick | book 1]
The Reaper's Curse has come, the gods have foreseen death and people are helpless to fight it. Those infec...
Alicia is vaguely aware of tilting. For a moment, she's simply falling into bed, eager for the soft embrace of her cushions and the gentle caress of her sheets. It isn't until she slips from the saddle and crashes to the mud that she's jolted back to consciousness.
Gasping for breath—agony like waves colliding into her—Alicia blinks the tears from her eyes to see her horse disappear into the shifting shadows and the thick foliage of the marsh
She parts her lips to call for the stallion, but tastes blood in her mouth and knows she's dying.
Swallowing the blood, Alicia rolls onto her stomach with a hiss.
She won't die here. She hasn't paid enough for her sins.
Dirty water soaks into her dress, and the mud weighs her down as she tries to stand. Her head spins, and the cloying stench of the swamp stuffs its way into her lungs, shortening her breaths.
She pushes herself to her feet, clinging to a tree. Alicia doesn't know where she's going, but she knows she needs to move before the swamps swallow her whole.
Righting herself, Alicia presses her hand to her stomach, wetness causing her dress to cling to her skin. The bleeding's barely subsided.
She ignores the wound.
Moving from tree to tree, she staggers every step of the way. Silence watches her, judging her harsh breaths. The trees wait, anticipating her fall, eager to claim her as their prey. Maybe she is the prey, perhaps she's nothing more than a deer to be hunted, a sheep to be slaughtered.
She's not in the capital anymore.
Alicia doesn't know how long she walks for. Minutes, hours, perhaps even days. She ends up following a road she's familiar with, leaving a trail of blood behind her. It's a journey she used to take all the time and she finds that after seeing her life fall apart, she needs some familiarity.
The road leads her to a clearing in the trees and she gazes upon the house she hasn't been to in years.
It's not as she remembers it.
The farm is overgrown, clustered with weeds. A tree has collapsed onto the porch, destroying part of the roof. There's a deer on the cracked wood of the porch, sniffing at vines that have begun to crawl through the slats of wood. It lifts its head when it notices her and bounds into the dense trees.
Alicia presses her hand to her abdomen and draws in a sharp breath. The pain overcomes her welling emotions and Alicia staggers forward because she can't possibly go back.
Her aunt's farm hasn't seen any activity in some time beyond the wildlife that's claimed it as its own. But still Alicia clings to hope. Hope that she's not alone out here, that she still has family that hasn't turned their backs on her.
"Kathryn?" she calls as she struggles up the broken steps of the porch and towards the front door that barely hangs onto its hinges. "David?" She lurches forward and hisses through clenched teeth as blood soaks through her dress and stains her fingers. It patters on the filthy floorboards, wetting the dust and dirt that coats the house.
Alicia goes further into the house, breathing in the dust that chokes her. All that's left in this place are the ghosts of her memories. Of laughing with her brothers, learning to shoot cans off the fence, sweating beneath the sun as they worked, chasing pigs in the mud.
Leaning against a wall, Alicia accepts that there's no one here anymore. She's alone and it's what she deserves.
She slumps on the ground, baring her teeth as pain flares in her side. She watches the blood soak the blue of her dress, like a dark cloud gathering in the sky. Alicia tilts her head back and watches the dust float in the sunlight streaming through the hole in the roof.
She's content for a brief moment as her weakening breath puffs past her cracked lips. She's content to die here, watching the sun crawl along the rotting floorboards of one of the few places she has good memories of.
How long has she been running from the Reaper, from the consequences of her actions? Maybe it's finally time to stop running.
After everything that happened in the capital, she doesn't even know what the point of fighting is anymore. Everything she's ever done was for her family, but none of it means anything anymore.
She thought she could make a difference and now her pa is dead and Muovea is no closer to being free from the grand duke.
Alicia failed. Again.
She removes her hands from the wound on her stomach and lets out a breath as her blood begins to stain the ground.
She closes her eyes and tries to remember her precious good memories, but all she can see is her pa's blood pooling on floorboards just as hers does now. That's all Alicia has ever left behind.
She never wanted suffering to be her legacy.
Alicia floats into an abyss, away from the memories and pain and into a place of pure nothingness, waiting for the Reaper to find her there and take her home.
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