A long, long time ago…

  Her feet were caked in dirt.

  Every inch of her trembled.

  She doubted that this humble little cottage was where she’d find him.

  Whispers sounded from all around her, but they didn’t sting her the way the wind did through her chemise and the thin shawl she’d manage to grab before she’d started running.

  While her eyes watered, they weren’t necessarily tears, those had yet to fully come. But they would.

  Her hand was red, and swollen from the cold. Moving it hurt, but she needed to knock, or at least open the worn wooden door to the cottage.

  “Brother…” her voice rasped as a warm tear escaped her eye. The trail of water down her cheek chilled instantly.

  Using the side of her shaking hand, she pounded the door twice.

  It made her hunch over as the tremors grew more violent.

  He probably wasn’t here.

  Some cottar’s wife would probably open the door and tell her to leave. She’d probably be called a horrible name or three. If the wife was a kinder woman she might do it after she’d turned her back.

  The door gave a grunt as it lifted and then a whine as it opened.

  “Aradia?”

  Her eyes snapped up.

  She should hate him.

  She should shout, and bring down every righteous bit of fury imaginable. He was the reason she was powerless and had been hurt.

  Instead, seeing his familiar face staring down at her reduced her to sobs.

  She crumpled into a crouch as she cried.

  Her fingers grabbing uselessly at the shawl around her as she wept.

  She felt strong hands grasp her upper arms that tried to help her stand, but her knees gave way instantly.

  “How long have you been outside?” she heard him ask softly.

  His gentleness made her cry all the harder.

  She felt him scoop her into his arms and turn back to the warmth of the cottage. She was aware of the door closing against the blue evening, the smell of coming snow stinging the air.

  She felt herself be set on a rough woven carpet before a hot fire.

  A soft blanket was thrown over her shoulders.

  She heard the noises of a kettle being set over the fire.

  “What happened?”

  Aradia squeezed her eyes shut. Her fingers were throbbing in the warmth, but they still clumsily tried to tighten her hold on the shawl.

  “What do… they call you in this life?” she managed through a tightened throat.

  “Daniel.”

  Aradia nodded and started to rock back and forth on the carpet, tears still falling as her emotions surged in the face of her safety.

  “I’ll deal with the ones who did this.”

  Aradia’s eyes snapped up to meet her brother’s dark ones.

  Through her tears she saw his somber sincerity; the bright pain in his eyes for her behalf.

  “I can’t feel fear. Not since our battle… What is this… What is… This feeling?”

  “Grief. Anger. Despair.”

  Aradia felt the soft blanket slip from her grasp as she stared at her brother vulnerably. “Why?”

  “It’s normal to feel this way after something horrible happens. A lot of people go through it. I didn’t know you were nearby.” He slowly seating himself down on the ground across from her.

  Instead of explaining how she had come to find him, all she could manage was, “Why… Would you do this to me?”

  Her brother stilled.

  A century ago his face had been filled with ire, and hatred. They had battled. They’d almost destroyed an entire continent doing so… Lobahl had once been a lush jungle. Now more than eighty percent was desert because of them.

  “I wanted you to understand a fraction of what I was feeling. Do you know that in this village, a third of the women have endured what I believe you just have? There are even men who have been hurt this way.”

  The fact that her brother seemed to already know exactly what had happened to Aradia made her throat close to the point where breathing became a struggle.

  “I feel your pain. I feel all of their pain. Aradia, the cruelty of these humans… It’s capable of destroying any good that might have once been.” He paused, and weighed his next words carefully as she stared numbly at him. “There is good. I didn’t ever say otherwise… But these creatures do not deserve this beautiful world our parents have made. Can’t you see that now? Can’t you see now how they will destroy anything good?”

  “What about those who have been hurt! Don’t they deserve every scrap of goodness so that they can heal?” Aradia argued, but unlike in the past, this argument was desperate, and even to her own ears, sounded broken.

  “Good might win out for a little, but the evil of them, Aradia…” Her brother shook his head, his eyes bright with pain and fear. “Aradia, I’m scared for the good humans just as scared as I am for the ancient beasts. The evil will spread more and more. It is beyond my ability to solve. Our parents were wrong. No one can help the humans.”

  “There has to be a way to stop them. To stop the evil in humans from growing more powerful!”

  It was her brother’s turn to grow misty eyed as his gaze drifted over her head. “I’m not strong enough for it, Aradia. I can’t even… I can’t even be raised in my child years without suffering. How can I help people when they fear me because they fear their own darkness? Rather than face it, they blame me. They say I’m the root of evil. When it is just that they are too afraid to see that the root is in them. I don’t even hate them for having the root. I hate them for looking for someone to blame. For ignoring it. For embracing it because it is easier for them than to be humbled.”

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  Aradia listened, her tears quietly falling.

  Her brother’s words… She could tell if she were capable of feeling fear, she would feel it then.

  The sentiment rattled around in some vacant space of her heart where it used to be.

  “Why couldn’t we try to fix it together?” she whispered. “Like mother and father told us to?”

  Daniel stared at her, a tear of his own escaping. “Because you don’t feel and see what I do. Just like I will never know the strain of summoning a tidal wave or of building a mountain the way you did. Aradia… What you have been asking of me this entire time? It is the equivalent to a master looking at its beaten, starved dog, and saying ‘why can’t you go hunt for my family? Why can’t you try?’” He took a shaking breath, his eyes falling to the carpet as the fire used its shadows to cut free the truth of his feelings in his face. “I can’t do it anymore, Aradia. And it was cruel of our parents to expect me to.”

  Aradia stared at her brother.

  There was nothing she could say. These were the discussions they’d had before. But she had to silently confess to herself she’d never have imagined what it would have been like to feel as powerless as she’d been made to feel when she had been attacked earlier that very day…

  Something hot and uncomfortable sparked in her chest as she looked at her brother. “If you know how horrible this kind of thing is… Why did you wish an eternity of it for me? Why do I deserve to be tortured? I just wanted to help.”

  Her brother’s agonized, pleading eyes found her own. “Because you were torturing me. And you were torturing the ancient beasts without knowing what you were doing.”

  Aradia continued to cry. “I never wished harm on you.”

  “I didn’t want you to be harmed either, but it was the only way.”

  Tears were starting to fall quicker and hotter down Aradia’s cheeks. “If this is the only way in your eyes to help me understand, then you aren’t any better than them.”

  Her brother flinched at her words like they had hurt him, but it was accompanied by acceptance in his face . “I never said I was. I know I’ll pay in the Grove of Sorrows. But one day, Aradia, I think you might realize that sometimes in life, there are no good choices, and you simply have to make the one you believe to be best for as many people as possible.”

  ***

  Tam awoke with a start, sweat coating his brow, his stomach roiling.

  He located the chamber pot under the bed and retched.

  Shivering, he clambered out of bed to sit on the floor. The ship rocked more than it had during the day, and it was making Tam’s head spin.

  Grabbing his discarded tunic on the floor beside his bed, he launched himself at the door of his and Eli’s cabin. Next he pushed himself out into the corridor, and proceeded blindly until he clambered up the stairs on stiff legs.

  The frigid sea air struck him full on in the face as soon as his head crested the main deck.

  He welcomed it, and gulped down a clear breath, which in turn made his vision whirl even more aggressively.

  His hand clasped the bannister as his knees buckled.

  “Lord Tam, are you alright?” A sailor’s voice sounded from somewhere on the main deck, but Tam couldn’t respond as he sprinted up the rest of the stairs, dove for the railing, and heaved all over again.

  “My apologies, Lord Tam! I will retrieve a coat for you!” The sound of the sailor’s footsteps scampering off distantly sounded behind him.

  A dull throbbing entered Tam’s head as he raised an unsteady hand to his forehead. “What the hell was that dream?”

  He remained glued to the railing as the waning moon shone brightly overhead.

  Eventually the sailor returned with a coat that Tam proceeded to slip on with a quiet mutter of thanks.

  He didn’t want to return downstairs yet.

  The longer he was above deck the better his stomach felt, and bit by bit, his head managed to clear too. Though the haunting dream he’d had of the devil and first witch was still sharp in his mind’s eye.

  The devil really did look like him.

  Something soft brushed against Tam’s ankles, jolting him in surprise. When he glanced down, however, he found the shining familiar eyes of Kraken, and relaxed.

  Stooping over, he swept up his father’s familiar into his arms. He could feel Kraken’s soothing purrs rumble beneath his fluff, and it had the near instantaneous effect of calming Tam’s erratic heartbeat.

  “I had a bad dream,” Tam began quietly. “But it felt more than just a dream… And with everything going on, I suspect it has a lot more meaning and truth behind it.”

  Kraken didn’t make a sound, merely flicked his head to the side to gaze out over the shadowed water that spanned endlessly before them.

  “I think I… I did something,” Tam felt his shoulders ease as he concluded instinctively why he had had such a dream.

  Kraken turned back to look at him.

  “You can’t tell anyone, Kraken. Promise?”

  The fluffy familiar slowly blinked up at Tam.

  “I started telling people I was the devil. I even told it to the first witch.”

  A chirp of alarm sounded from Kraken.

  “I felt something in the air when I resolved to start doing this… And I think… I think something is happening to me because of it.”

  A low rumble sounded in Kraken’s belly.

  Tam chuckled quietly. “Are you really growling at me?”

  Kraken’s growl increased in volume.

  “Yeah. I know. I know… But I did it for Luca. He’s my son, and everyone kept targeting him because they think he’s the devil. It wasn’t my best idea, but it seemed like the only way I could keep him safe.”

  Kraken let out an exasperated huff.

  “I’ll figure it out. I’m an Ashowan, right?” Weariness filled Tam’s body once more. “I’ve known for a long time that there is something off about me. Something not like other people. I’ve kind of felt like darkness was always ready to eat me. Like it was hunting me, even though it also felt attached to me like my shadow.”

  Kraken’s tail twitched.

  Tam tilted his head, his thoughts drifting. “My da and sister always seem like they are in this other world. A world that’s warm, and whole. A world filled with light, and hope, and… good. I’ve never felt like I could be in that world.”

  With his breaths quickening, Kraken proceeded to nuzzle Tam’s bicep.

  “I used to think it was because I was scared of my magic. But I’m not scared of it anymore, and I still feel this way. It’s one of the reasons I feel so uncomfortable around the Troivackian king. He’s always been able to see it in me somehow.”

  Tam lifted his gaze to the stars. “Mum says that you only had to look up at the stars to see an example of infinite possibilities.” He cast a melancholy smile upward. “I had wanted to believe it was possible that maybe one day I would be able to live in the light, too.”

  Tam lowered his face to Kraken, a sharp prickling starting behind his eyes that he forced a smile through. “I’m starting to think I was never meant to be in the light. I think there’s a chance that I was always supposed to become the devil.”

  Kraken stopped purring.

  Tam returned his smile to the sky. “I’m probably being dramatic after a bad dream. Don’t worry too much, Kraken… But if someday the darkness does get me? Please keep my family safe for me?”

  Kraken pressed his face even more firmly against Tam’s arm, drawing his attention back down.

  Only when Tam peered down into Kraken’s soft face, he could see a tear gleaming on the feline’s long lashes. The sight of it made Tam feel even worse, but at the very least, he was a little less alone in that moment.