From Silver and Chaos

Late.

Chapter 7: Late.

Of course she was alive.

With my luck, I should have known that.

With an undeniable rage burning inside of my chest, I knew that I could not rest. Washed and dried, I stood wrapped in furs inside the Map-Room. Thunder and lightning broke the night outside, whilst rain lashed against the window panes. The wind howled and behind my eyes, a headache thundered.

The grand table was a mess of reports and illustrations of ghastly creatures. I mess that I knew Mahon would not endure. The placeholders on the maps had been changed – placed in areas that I had not ventured before.

More curved along the lands near Naredan.

The Final Tablet.

"We received word of Haaling yesterday morning." Fyr watched me cautiously. "Was that you?"

"I stepped back into Cadelith in the forests around Haaling." I said. "And found the Legion's birthplace in smoking ruins."

"Reports spoke of a freak storm – bolts from the blue that scorched the fallen outpost." Matthaeus sipped his breakfast juice, staining the bow of his lip red.

"How could that have happened?"

"We expanded too boldly – to show that we were not weakened by your disappearance. We spun the story, saying that your absence was intentional. That we were infallible, but Vanya's reappearance sparked rumours that you had died. That the battle in Aoak had been your end."

"When?" I asked in a clipped voice. "When did you learn that she was alive?"

"Three weeks after you vanished in Aoak," Fyr was strangely nervous, her small hands smoothing over the wrinkles in our main map repeatedly. "...we heard rumours. Everything was in disarray here in the inner circle in the Legion with what had happened. We were hanging by threads, struggling to show brave faces. But – the rumours kept coming. Land was being poisoned, people were being slaughtered or kidnapped. Terrified people spoke of the Burned One who swept through the outer fringes of the land belonging to Naredan lords with a black rage. A merciless rage. It sounded too familiar."

Anger sparked, like embers burning in my fleshy throat. I curled my hands tight, my nails cutting into my skin. It had been a possibility. I had considered it, but hearing the news still felt like a terrible blow. It only deepened the disrespect she had inflicted on my family and on me. The Dratlan Elves deserved better than her survival.

Keenly, I remembered the heartbreak on Kendon's face. There had been anger, but heartbreak too. He loved her just as much as I had. We had loved each other – or so I thought. There was a strange strength to the rage felt when someone wronged those I loved. It wasn't as crippling as my own wounds, but it fuelled me.

Kohen cleared his throat, breaking the silence my anger had created. "We thought that if Vanya had lived, then there was a possibility that you had died in the Abyss. That your fight had continued and she had bested you."

A flicker in the back of my mind – keening, brutal grief that wasn't mine.

Shaking hands touched my head and I pressed my fingers into my temple, feeling a rush of blinding, white light. That grief – I knew what it felt like, but this wasn't mine.

Kohen stared at me.

The feeling faded and I swayed, hands braced against the table. "And where was she seen last? Has she definitely been sighted."