Page 146 of Godbound
If my heart weren’t shattered into so many pieces, I might have smiled. But I don’t.
I stay still, breathing smoke, sweat, and blood. My magic buzzes faintly in my chest like it doesn’t know what to do next. For a moment, there’s only the crackle of dying flames and the sound of footfalls fading into ash.
“How did they manage to catch so many off guard?” I whisper, not expecting an answer. “How did they lock them all inside?”
Kaelzar says, “They came under the pretense of inspection.”
My eyes lift slowly to meet his.
Reading a question in them, he replies. “I already asked these questions,” he explains. “They told the women they were following up on a new proposal you’d made to improve the settlement, approved by the king, apparently. Said they were here to inspect the houses, to test their sturdiness. And that no one was allowed outside during the inspection.”
I cover my face with my hands. Did those women look for me through the smoke? Did they wait by the door, whispering my name? I promised them safety. But I gave them fire.
They trusted me. They sat in their homes while the windows were boarded shut, believing this was part of the future I promised them. Believing they were safe, while Mael’s men sealed the doors. Lit the fires. And walked away.
Did they think it was my order? Did they pray to me with their last breaths?
As my gaze sweeps over the desolated ground, I spot a single wooden pole standing just beyond the ruin’s edge, ironically untouched, still upright when everything else around it has been reduced to ash. It rises like the symbol of a broken system that refuses to fall, no matter the damage it inflicts. Untouchable. Indestructible.
Not anymore.
A roar tears from my throat as I thrust my hands forward, and just as I promised during the Spectra Judicium, I let the rot take it until its last remnant crumbles into nothing.
Then I lower my hands and look back at the settlement, trying to see it for what it truly is now that the rush of the fight is gone. Only ashes, still drifting in the air, soft, silent, and relentless. Somewhere behind me someone coughs. A woman murmurs my name, and I’m unsure whether it’s a plea or a prayer. And then I realize…
There is no settlement. There’s nothing left, only a scar on the earth.
And maybe, now, one in me.
With nothing else left to offer the women who suffered so greatly and whose suffering has only just begun, I drag myself to Micheline’s inn. Kaelzar marches beside me, his gaze sharp and dangerous, glaring at the passersby like he’s expecting one of them to lunge at me without warning.
The rippling shadows slithering across the cobblestones don’t escape my notice. I’m sure they’d rise from the ground in an instant if anyone makes the wrong move too close to me.
He offers to take us through the shadows, but I refuse. I need time. Time to gather my thoughts before I face Peonica.
My sister.The word won’t stop echoing.
A cold part of me whispers it’s a lie, bait meant to unmoor me.
But my heart knows the truth. It clicked into place the moment I saw the writing:
To my beautiful daughters, Raylane and Peonica.
If it’s true, if she really is my sister, then why did she hide it from me? Why keep it secret for so long? Why dangle that notebook in front of me for years, knowing what was inside? Knowing how it tore me apart that I was too late to see our mother, too late to hear her side of the story. Peonica chose silence. And I don’t know whether to call it protection or betrayal.
Those questions burn inside me, feeding the frustration in my gut. I need this walk just to cool my head, to stop the boiling anger fromerupting when I see her again. I want to scream at her. Shake her.
Then I remember the image of her limp body hanging from that pole, her back raw and bleeding and the anger melts into something quieter. There will be time to confront her. Time to demand answers. But not now.
Right now, I just want to take her pain away.
“How is she?” I ask Micheline as we step into the bar. The barmaid is wiping glasses with a cloth.
“Sleeping,” she says, nodding to a curvy waitress to take over behind the bar. “I dosed her with enough sleeping herbs to knock out a horse.”
“Thank you,” I murmur, silently relieved that Peonica hasn’t been awake through all of this. Still, it takes effort not to bristle at the mention of the sleeping herbs. I thought only people with secrets or wicked intentions kept those on hand.
When we enter the room, the sight of Peonica grips my chest until breathing feels impossible. She’s sprawled across the bed, scrawny and pale, her mutilated back exposed to the air. Deep, jagged trenches slice across her skin.
