HEIR | The Cursed Monarchy | Book 1

Mercy: Part IV - Chapter 22

That afternoon, the darkness returned to claim its favor.

Cecily first heard the word captive whispered across the treetops and around the bases of tangled roots where a mystic light glowed brightly. The voices seemed to be everywhere at once: behind her, before her, and beyond.

She followed it out of the village, drawn along like a moth to the flame. Silver branches vibrant in the sunlight, so striking that it seemed they could not be real, rustled in the wild, singing a low, melancholy song on every breeze. She wanted to touch the trees, to whisper something to them, and to tell them that she knew and understood all they had endured.

Unable to conjure up the right words, she strode forward in respectful silence, watching flower petals float by; some even fanning her cheeks with their cool touch. The map burned in her pocket; guiding her forward like the flight of a bird no longer trapped in its grim cage. Finally, the voices became clearer, whispering an unrecognizable language in her ear. At that point in the forest, the footpath was bounded by a row of elms.

At the end of the row, an enormous figure was leaning silently against a tree, bound to the trunk by ropes that encircled its chest. Its hands and feet were also tied. With silent footfall and sharp eyes warily observing, Cecily approached the battered Veil.

It was a mass of sagging flesh that looked as if it had been folded together, leaving deep creases – with one large fold hanging from its left shoulder like a massive tumor. Gnarled bone chips like awkward toenails covered its toes and ridges of bone crisscrossed its torso. Its arms were longer than its body and its head was a pumpkin-shaped abomination of oozing flesh with two round eyes, dark as mud pools.

Bloodied. Broken. Tortured. Likely by the elves for information.

She stepped closer; something tiny crunched beneath her foot.

The Veil looked up. Terror was its first expression, widening its eyes as it pivoted its head at the realization that she was just a short distance away.

"You're dying," she said plainly.

"We are all dying." Its voice was weak. "Yet you are surprisingly alive."

Cecily's heart pounded against her chest. She wanted to collapse to her knees on the spot, but a renewed determination took hold. She willed herself to keep putting one foot in front of the other in spite of her fear. "Why do you say that?"

"You are young," it snarled. "And naïve."

Finally, she came to a halt beside the tree. "And why am I naïve?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Notice where you find yourself." The Veil let out a strangled noise that might have been laughter. "You think you have a chance of controlling the darkness when it is the darkness that controls you."

Growing impatient, she drew her sword, pointed it at the creature, and even came closer to see its face.

"Ah," said the Veil, revealing its jagged teeth. Its mouth was a dark pit of decay and drool, large enough to engulf her thigh. "Was it the whispers that led you here?"

Cecily's lower lip quivered, and for a moment she said nothing. She glanced at her sword, and then at the Veil. Her arm moved to sheath her weapon, yet she didn't command it.

As she looked at the Veil's cracked lips, she became thirsty. She unlatched the water pouch at her belt and took a sip. Then, Cecily knelt beside the creature, put her hand behind its head and lifted it up.

She put the pouch to its mouth, and the Veil drank a little. "Tell me what it is that I must do," she urged.

"Mercy." Its words escaped through labored breaths and before it could finish, it coughed violently. "Mercy, from your blade."