Madwen had a particular preference when packing her equipment and supplies; Worne didn’t care. While the omeness was dragging her heels trading words with the Lord Daithi, Worne was doing the real work, as he found was often the case.

  Many of the supplies Madwen had brought with her had been used or consumed. This was good; less to pack. Though the chest Worne delivered wouldn’t fit everything, it would fit the essentials if they needed to leave immediately—which, judging by the few still-limp bodies Worne had seen merely moments ago, they certainly needed to do.

  The cellar was considerably darker without Madwen’s light, though Worne could see just fine. The omeness had advised that books were packed last, Worne packed them first. It only made sense. Then came the scientific glassware. He placed the glassware carefully, despite the need for haste. If anything broke, he would no doubt be the one fetch any replacements in the High Capital. The rest of her supplies could be thrown in haphazardly. It didn’t truly matter if some flowers were mixed with some herbs or if some metals touched some other meta—

  A puff of smoke and sparks erupted from the chest and into Worne’s face.

  “Magnesium and Charide,” Madwen’s voice said from behind. “I thought we’ve been through this before.”

  Worne stood with his back toward Madwen for a moment, then continued packing, this time, Madwen’s way.

  “Quieter than you look,” he grumbled.

  “If you’d known my mother, then you’d know why,” Madwen replied.

  Worne continued quietly without even a grunt toward Madwen. Now that the omeness was present, he could hardly shake her from his mind. Though he refused to even gaze in her direction, still the image of the omeness standing beneath the cellar door behind him sat in his mind, prodding him as if to stoke his anger.

  She had questions; she always did, though she respected Worne enough not to ask them—not directly at least. Through their brief time together, he’d spotted her eying him, examining him like some sort of specimen. Working for an omeness was perilous—lucrative, but perilous. Only the desperate or delusional took such work, and through the way Madwen often looked at him, he could tell she wanted nothing more than to dissect him like the strange creature she no doubt believed him to be.

  That passion to analyze, to scrutinize his every being, it must have been overwhelming now. How could it not be after what he had just done?

  “Did what needed to be done,” said Worne, moving about the heavy table where Madwen had spent her days studying and experimenting. Madwen stayed silent.

  “If not for me, you’d be dead,” Worne said again, and again heard nothing in return. That damn woman was playing mind games. Worne hated mind games. Intellects thought they were contests of wits of their own creation; that the games somehow separated them from brutes like him. Experience, however, had taught him that nearly any game could be won through brawn if need be. But if that were truly the case, then why could he not shake Madwen?

  “Dark bloke’s on a table upstairs,” said Worne. Idiot, he thought, she’d have seen him. Worne grew more flustered in his movements, gradually becoming rougher as he packed.

  “Horse is ready too,” he said. Worne held for a second, huffed, then continued. She’d have seen that too. Eventually, Madwen’s silence was all he could hear. It was deafening in a way, speaking to his thoughts before he could even think them. She waiting for me to make a mistake? She furious? She disappointed? Bah! What’s it matter?

  “You’re my employer, nothing more! You pay me to protect you. I protected you.” Worne didn’t yell; he didn’t have to. He raised his voice, but so much more spoke his true thoughts than just his volume. All Madwen need to do was watch; and watch she did. It was her speciality.

  “Thank you,” she spoke.

  Worne stopped in place, a small bottle of something that had yet to be packed in his hand. “That all I get?”

  “And your pay of course, as always,” said Madwen.

  Worne huffed, “I expect a bonus.”

  “And you shall receive none. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve done your job as I’ve asked; as was written into the contract you signed.”

  “You have any idea what I’ve done!” With a mad fury in his eyes, Worne finally spun, only to see the omeness standing calmly with her hands clasped behind her back. He wasn’t sure what he expected. To see Madwen, arms crossed, judging him silently? To see her sitting on the steps sobbing? She was a blank slate in his mind, but when he turned to see her, the continued blankness she presented somehow stunned him.

  “I don’t know what you’ve done, no,” she said, plainly. “How could I when you refuse to tell me so much?”

  Worne took a moment to collect himself. “I don’t need to tell you nothing.”

  “Of course not, and nor would I ever force you to tell me anything you didn’t wish to. But don’t go expecting praise and higher payment for things I know nothing about.”

  Now Madwen had crossed her arms, and she made sure Worne watched the gesture.

  “My word not enough then? That it? I tell you I’ve done you a great service and you can’t trust me?” Worne took a step forward.

  “No,” said Madwen, firmly.

  Worne breathed deep, flaring his nostrils and puffing his chest, making sure Madwen watched the gesture. She didn’t react. The two stood in silence for several moments, not a creak or whisper to disturb them.

  “Daithi told you, didn’t he?” asked Worne, still fierce.

  “Only that you made some kind of deal. He’d mentioned it in passing previously but I thought nothing of it. I figured I could trust you—figured you’d warn me if I were in some kind of danger or if you’d found something important. Now, however, after needing to pry information from you, after needing to tell you to do your job, after watching you fight Daithi and watching you both resist me… Frankly, Worne, I’m not sure what to think. You’ve certainly lost my trust. In fact, I’ve half a mind to end our partnership here and now.”

  Madwen did not shy away her gaze, nor did Worne. There was much to fear about the woman, even if one knew nothing about her. Something about the magic she commanded and the omens she had slain had left their marks on her. Each person saw the marks differently, like the random stains of soggy tea leaves in a porcelain cup. Worne saw her lack of fear. Not bravery, for that required perseverance over fear, and not confidence, for that required uncertainty, and Madwen was more than certain in her abilities. No, Madwen felt fear the same way Worne did, and how could one feel anything after seeing the horrors he had?

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Worne breathed heavy once again, though this time more steadily. He turned his back to the omeness and pressed his hands against the thick wooden table laden with her possessions.

  “Little lord offered me payment if I set you off the path. Said he didn’t want none sniffing around. ‘Specially the High Crown.” Worne could practically see the omeness cocking her head behind him.

  “Payment?” she said, indeed completing that gesture. “I don’t understand, I told you before that I would match any bribe provided to you so long as you played along with their ruse. Why not do the same with Daithi?”

  “Weren’t something I wanted you to know.”

  “I see,” Madwen’s shoulders dropped slightly. “Then he granted it to you, didn’t he? The power. You’re like him now.”

  “I’m not like him!” Worne snapped, jerking the table in his hands, two palm prints now forever embedded into the woodwork. The world pulsed all around him. The dark was now lighter, and the light now more vibrant. He could hear Madwen’s unchanging pulse—smell the cold sweat on her skin. These heightened senses, it was overwhelming after so long without them.

  “Never took his offer,” said Worne, quietly. “Couldn’t. Wanted to, though.”

  There was a shame in his voice; none could have heard it, none but Madwen. She gave pause, then stepped closer to Worne—away from the tavern’s warm light.

  “Then what was it? You two are different. Why?”

  Worne hung his head and slowly reached into the chest. He placed a small, brown vial onto the table, then stepped deeper into the dark cellar.

  “You’re an omeness. Figure it out.”

  Madwen approached the table. The light now was too faint. With a wave in the air, she touched the empathy within her. Twinkling light spread from her fingers and palm, streaks of gentle silver smearing across the air like paint. Madwen plucked the vial from the table and held it to the glistening light. This vial was hers, she’d seen it just the morning previous. The label was missing, but she knew its contents.

  “Darkblood.”

  For but a moment, there was peace—the questions in her mind like the gentle pattering of rain. Then came the answers, surging into her consciousness like floods after a storm.

  Her own words echoed in her mind like screams in a cave: “Darkblood consumes; lightblood emits.”

  She could see it now: the taverness clutching to Worne at the feast, unaffected by his touch when Madwen only felt a biting, freezing pain. She lowered the vial and felt at her neck. The flesh was tender where Daithi had wrapped his fingers and squeezed. At the time, she lacked the presence to see it, but now all that plagued her mind was the same searing coldness that seemed to strike at her heart. The same coldness she felt when Worne had clutched her forearm the night before. It was more than just cold, however—she realised that now—it was the very absence of warmth. The absence of magic.

  The vial of darkblood rested cold in hand, never warming by her body’s heat.

  “I was never weak like I thought, and you were never resisting my magic; you were consuming it, as darkblood does.”

  Worne stood motionless in the darkness, visible only by the lack of light that shadowed him. Keeping the vial low and moving her fingers delicately, Madwen attempted to remove the cork stopper.

  “No!” the brute roared.

  Whether through scent, sound, or some other unknown sense, Worne was aware of more now than he ever had been before. Madwen fully uncorked the stopper from the vial. Immediately, Worne recoiled and thrashed about, continuing to do so for a moment longer after she’d resealed it.

  “You’re drawn to it,” she observed. “Just as I thought. There’s no label, yet still you found it when it had been lost in my apothecary. You were agitated quite like this after you’d first spoken with Daithi as well. Then this…” she said while staring into the black nothing in her hand, “this is what he offered you, isn’t it?”

  Worne sniffed and snorted in the corner, clearing the liquid’s putrid scent from his nostrils and regaining his composure. Madwen gave him a moment more to collect himself, but still, he refused to answer. His silence was answer enough.

  Men who draw their power from omen blood itself. There was only one kind of being that matched that description, but they had passed long ago.

  “Daithi called you ‘Ser,’” Madwen started. “He wasn’t taunting you. You two have some sort of history.”

  No reply came from the shadows.

  “Which High King did you first serve?” she asked.

  The same silence sat in the darkness with the massive soldier, until finally, it spoke. “Oliveer.”

  High King Oliveer. Founder of the High Kingdom. Victor of the High War. Slayer of The Old Gods.

  “Father of the Blood Knights.” Even as the words left her mouth, Madwen could hardly believe them. To suggest something so outlandish. Though, why couldn’t it be true? Madwen was a slayer of omens—the slayer of gods to some—surely nothing was too outlandish.

  “When did you join him?” she questioned further.

  Worne emerged from the darkness. He moved with purpose. She’d always thought he had one, but now that purpose was clear: to kill—the only duty of a blood knight. The man she’d seen when Worne fought to stop her on the hilltop, this was him. Though the question arose: was this man the true Worne, or was it the man she’d come to know? The two men were different. She couldn’t say how, only that it was the case.

  “Missing the point,” said Worne.

  Madwen looked off into nothing. “Daithi. He’s a blood knight as well? How many of you were there?”

  “Not many in the beginning, but it was a long war and gods are hard to kill. We needed more men.”

  “So Oliveer simply made more of you?”

  “Nothing simple about it,” Worne said, stern.

  Madwens’ possessions still lay on the table in and around the chest. The city was still recovering. If they fled now, they could retreat to safety with ease. If they stayed, there was no knowing what the blood knight Daithi would do. This revelation, however, had to mean something. Nothing in the Coven taught of faith or destiny, yet those ideas kept tapping at her mind. Tapping at my mind.

  Neither Daithi nor Worne had suffered the same mental torment as Madwen. Much was unknown about blood knights, but aside from their strength, their immunity to magic made them formidable against the old gods and any other magical creatures. That’s how he’s been surviving here. Whatever creature resides in this place can’t affect him. Does that mean he’s using it? Controlling it?

  The more Madwen began to think, the more fog clouded her thoughts. She was tired, weak, drained of her reserves of magic—only her rings remained.

  “We leave tonight,” said Worne, seeing the conflict stirring in the omeness. “Retreat to your estate with the stranger and return with an army.”

  “But the omen—”

  “Lord built this city himself. He ain’t going nowhere. Doubt the omen is neither.”

  Madwen hesitated, but ultimately agreed. Worne moved about quickly and reached past her to grab an item on the table. Madwen flinched… she flinched. When had she last done so? When had she last felt fear? For the first time in what must have been decades, Madwen had met a creature that she did not understand, and it scared her.

  The brute watched carefully, then continued without a word. Madwen did so in kind.

  The tavern was empty, cleaned beyond reason before the feast. The omeness sat with the unconscious stranger as he lay strewn across a table in the centre of the room. Worne emerged from the cellar, large chest in hand. The massive man dragged the boy by his leg and flung him over his shoulder like hunted game.

  Moonlight fought torchlight for power in the still-empty streets. Time had passed, nearly an hour, nevertheless, those who had chosen to avoid the bustling crowds near the castle still lay slumped along the slender buildings that surrounded them. Despite having already come to, they seemed to have chosen to lay in wait for the help of others, or perhaps for the sun’s morning light.

  A loud thud sounded as the stranger’s limp body was thrown over the horse. The saddle had already been fitted with a space to store the large chest to assist with Worne’s frequent deliveries. As such, there was hardly room enough to ride with the stranger draped across the saddle. It didn’t matter. Madwen needed the walk if only to stay conscious during this late hour.

  Several drained guards sat around the city gate. From their stations, they watched without urgency. Never before had Madwen entered a city with an omen presence and left with the presence still intact. It felt wrong, like leaving a secured door unlocked; something could get in, or worse, something could get out. Worne’s words rang true, however. The pair were weak; outnumbered. Were they to stay, they would only—

  The horse stopped.

  Madwen looked to Worne whose head was high.

  “What’s—”

  “Shh.” Worne interrupted—his body still.

  Madwen turned to see it.

  It towered amidst the trees, its ashen skin delicate and translucent, stretched tight across long, black bones. It bore no eyes, nose, ears, or mouth—merely a hollow shell, almost spherical.

  It had no name; no purpose.

  Though faceless, the creature stared down at the two humans. A single, deep, resonating croak sounded from its body, bouncing off the stone wall behind them.

  Three brilliant silver rings shone around Madwen’s wrists.