There were a few reasons to take offense to that statement. Firstly, Agathe was not a whore. But more importantly, did he threaten my other mother? No. Oh, no. I’d lost one, I wouldn’t lose another.
“Murderer!” I hollered loudly enough that it caught everyone’s attention.
It quelled their quarrel but not his attitude. “Quiet. You will behave, or I will make you watch as I carve these criminals into monster bait.”
He hadn’t yet realized that he’d messed with the wrong girl.
Twisting meant losing some of my hair, but I gritted my teeth against the tearing pain until I faced him, a man taller than me, meaner, with something…wrong inside him. A sickness. A taint. Similar to that found in the monsters.
I placed my fingers on his cheek before he could grasp my intent. The contact highlighted the pulsing kernel of darkness inside him with its stretching tendrils. Where did it come from?
What would happen if I took it?
I grabbed the sour taint within the soldier and gave it a psychic tug. It clung to the man like a sprouting seed. It had already taken root. No matter, I’d still eat it because that’s how I fed my magic.
Until now, I’d done most of my magical refueling with monster essence, the mist taint that I regularly pulled from my mothers not enough to make a difference. As to how? I simply needed to lay my hands on flesh. Instinct took over at that point as my inner self opened its maw and inhaled the taint invading the monsters. It not only recharged me; it killed the threat, too.
Win-win.
Only Baree wasn’t a monster, and the darkness didn’t spread as far through his system. Not yet. As I held on to his cheeks, his dark kernel tempted.
I took it. Imagine my surprise when I siphoned all of Baree’s taint and discovered a different flavor behind it. A brighter spark.
Life.
I wanted it. I would have taken it if he’d not screamed, “What’s happening?” Then more softly, “What have I done?”
I shoved away from Baree as his grip on me loosened. I broke the contact before I took that last spark. It was one thing to drain monsters. People, though… Surely, that crossed a line.
Baree’s knees buckled, and he hit the floor in a slump, head bowed, shoulders rounded. A choked sob left him as he mumbled, “My sweet Agathe. What have I done?” The remorse in his tone appeared genuine. The dark kernel inside had obviously compelled his actions.
Those realizations didn’t stop me from stabbing him in the heart. My mother’s murderer died, and I was glad.
Despite knowing that it was useless, I threw myself at Agathe. I put my hands on her cheeks, willing the magic inside me to heal her.
Come back to me.
The wound in her torso closed. Her heart remained still. I poured in more magic, but it wasn’t enough.
“No. Please.” I sobbed. I snotted. I gave everything I had and then even more until someone violently ripped me free.
“Stop!” Hiix yelled at me as she gripped my shoulders and shook.
I blinked as her image wavered, splitting into two. My knees buckled. For a moment, I thought I’d gone too far. I felt drained. Weak. And all for nothing.
Agathe, eyes sightless, soul fled, remained dead.
I burst into tears. I cried and cried. But sorrow didn’t fix the hollowness inside me. The guilt. This was my fault. My burden. My quest.
Later, after we’d taken care of the bodies—May you rest in peace with our Goddess, the final words spoken before heaving Agathe’s body into the Abyss—I made a vow. “I’m going to kill the King.”
It didn’t work out as planned.
Chapter One
The dream, a replay of the past, woke the girl, who in the interval since Mother’s death had become a woman. She lay wrapped n her cloak, which did nothing to ease the hard ground. Grief clung to her, demanding satisfaction.
Kill the King.
If only she could be sure that revenge wouldn’t make things worse. Her actions could doom the Valley and all its inhabitants. But by not keeping her vow, she felt as if she betrayed her mother.
She’d sworn never to forget. Never forgive. It was why a girl once called Belle had taken Agathe’s name and history as hers. A daily reminder, which also happened to provide camouflage in a world where a monarch and his minions hunted her. Because of one man, she’d spent a good portion of her life in hiding—first in the shadows and then, when her first attempt at revenge failed so spectacularly, in plain sight.
Now, with two missed attempts at the King under her belt, Agathe didn’t have a plan. Not yet. Hence why she and her two remaining mothers—Venna and Hiix—kept moving.
Running away instead of solving the problem.
“Stop sighing so loudly,” Hiix grumbled as she rolled out of the tangle of her cloak.
Agathe had been awake for a while. A week ago, she’d have been hurting, the age of her body not keeping pace with their needed flight. But the first thing Agathe did when she took back her magic from the King—bastard, how dare he steal it?—was turn back the clock inside her body and then those of her mothers. They’d need the stamina of youth to maintain the rapid pace set since they’d fled King’s City.
Turned out she’d been wrong about so many things.
The first time she’d confronted the man who’d ordered Agathe’s murder, she’d been placed under a spell of forgetfulness. According to her mothers, she’d spent years in his custody—with no memory of it. When she finally escaped, no longer a young woman, she found herself powerless and bitter.
With her mind intact, a return to the Citadel meant seeing what actually happened to the Blessed. The King stole their magic. Their youth. Their lives. He placed them under a spell and had them working for him as servants, never knowing what they’d lost. It curdled her stomach to realize that she’d been one of them.
Shame filled her, knowing that she’d done nothing to free them either. In her defense, she’d barely freed herself.
“Leave her alone. If she wants to sigh, then she can sigh,” Venna argued, still just as plump in her youthful body, her hair haloed in a wild mess that suited her always-pink cheeks. She was the opposite of the often negative-minded Hiix. It led to much arguing, often about the most mundane things.
Venna: “Smells like rain.”
Hiix: “Does not.” Usually spoken a moment before the deluge. And yet, she’d still argue. “Doesn’t mean a thing. You can’t smell rain.”
Not true, of course. The human body could detect all manner of things, including changes in the weather. Agathe, formerly known as Belle, an orphan found on a dark and misty night, sensed things with her magic.
After being without it for so long, each tickle of her power drew her attention. She’d not realized just how dulled her senses had become until they returned in an overwhelming, yet soothing wave of awareness. With it came hunger. The craving for magic. A temptation she had to control because too much power could hurt—a body could only hold so much.
“No, you cannot light a fire,” Hiix snapped when Venna pulled out the leftover meat from one of their catches. “Someone might see the smoke.”
“We are in the middle of nowhere, almost to the edge of the valley. There is no one here.”