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CHAPTER FIVE ▪▫▪▫▪
MORANA HAD MANY SCARS. She collected them like someone would stamps—only in Morana's case she wasn't particularly delighted when she got one. There was a particular one, a long-jagged line down the length of her shin, that she'd gotten when she was around seven years old.
It was years before the plague, before her mother died, and Morana was still living in the Ketterdam, in a little flat out in the Barrel, the closest to the University District possible, as her mother had a job as a librarian there.
She'd met a girl on the street, and they'd become quick friends—her mother didn't like it when she made friends, though, she said they would just end up getting hurt by her. And the little girl, a girl Morana forgot the name of, ended up with a broken arm. They'd been trying to climb up a vine-covered wall in a small alleyway. The girl had fallen from higher than Morana, and the sickening crack of her arm breaking made Morana lose her grip on the vine and fall—she cut her leg on a broken bottle on the ground.
Morana had tried to help the girl and took her to the Fighting Pit where she knew the Healers were honest and kind to the children of the Barrel. Morana had to get stitches on her leg. Her mother never knew about the wound—if she had Morana would probably... Well, the wound on her shin would be the least of her problems.
"Look, monsters do bleed," she could hear her mother saying in her head, taunting her. Only when the tears began brimming in her eyes, Yelena Zoreslava would wipe them away with a smile, "Don't cry, Morana, or I'll give you something to cry about. You brought this upon yourself."
Safe to say, Morana had learned to swallow her pain and keep it to herself. But there was a limit to her pain, and that second string pulling at her every now and then, would wrap itself around her neck and strangle her without mercy. So, yes. Morana was terrified of the pain with every second they traveled further north.
Towards the islands of the Bone Road. Further away from Ravka—the place that the second string was pulling from. Just like she'd been able to get to Novyi Zem, just like she knew that was the place to be, every time the second connection beckoned her, Morana could sense its direction. And every time it pointed to Ravka. It hurt less when she was closer—the pain she'd felt near Novyi Zem was the worse she'd felt so far, and Morana was terrified of how it would feel now that she was farther than she'd ever been.
But she couldn't be away from Alina. She couldn't regret her decision just now. Better an oops than a what-if. But it would be a big oops if the connection beckoned her. Maybe it would even kill her... Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing. Yet, Morana still hoped it wouldn't choose the next few days to make an appearance.
In the meanwhile, she could only listen to Sturmhond yap about like a proper captain, with his charming smirky face—and by charming, Morana meant extremely irritating.
