Solace Curse: Part I

10 - Blood Trail

"So all this is my fault? It's my fault he's dying because I stuck around to ruin everything after she died!" The last word caught in my throat.

"Don't put that on me, don't make this about—"

I drew my knife and hurled it blade first into the dirt. "What was I supposed to do!?"

"Let me handle it, because I can keep a cool head! Let me make the call, because you can't figure out which way is up!" He jumped up, getting right in my face. "I can't rely on anything you do, I can't trust you to do the right thing for everyone. Maybe it's this Solace magic, maybe it's something else, but I don't know what you're going to do next and neither do you."

Heat rose in my collar. "Everything I did was to keep us safe, I've always fought for us! This magic makes me think things, feel things, but I would never... I'm not some—that's not what it's like!"

"Quit lying to yourself, don't you see it? You ripped that hound to shreds, don't you remember? It was a pile of meat once you were through with it. Your knife is still somewhere rotting in that bloody mess."

"But that was because—!"

"And then it comes to a Ska'al, you say you had the chance to kill it, and just let it go? What if Andrin and I hadn't killed the other one? What if the one you spared killed you, then moved on to us? Did that ever occur to you?"

"I just couldn't—"

"Yeah yeah, you couldn't kill someone staring back at you, but that wouldn't have stopped him from sticking a knife in my back. You think the one that stabbed Andrin would have thought twice about snapping your neck?"

"Koren stop, that's why I—!"

"—threw the knife, which you missed five minutes before!"

"Koren!" My angry mask dissolved into tears. "I can't explain it all but I know the things I'm doing, it's that being Solace makes it that much harder—"

"Listen to me!" He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, startling me into shaking silence. "Listen to me, Sedris." He searched my eyes, his own almost glassy too. "You're losing yourself in all this. You say it's the magic, that it makes you do things. But you lost part of yourself when she died. I could trust the Sedris I used to know, but you... I just have to hope you're still him."

He let me go quickly and stepped back, like he woke up from a dream to find himself shaking me. I shrunk to the ground slowly, eyes sliding down to fixate in the dirt.

"It's—I shouldn't have..." Koren gave himself a little shake and turned to Andrin's pale form.

He was right. Maybe I'm not still me in here.

"Look Sedris." He didn't turn to face me, just hunched over his Animaré, one hand pressing on the blood-soaked bandage. "You're still you. This Solace magic is dangerous though, and I don't like what it does to you." When I didn't have a response, he added, "I didn't mean all those things, I just..."

There wasn't anything else to say. An uneasy silence stretched on, complete but for Andrin's broken breaths.

He's right, but am I really...? He's right.

Maybe you're not still in there.

She took some of me with her. Maybe I kept some of her here?

He's right. Maybe nobody can trust me.

An exhausted sleep stole over me.

* * *

My heavy eyelids opened to slits.