The Reaper's Curse #1 - Complete

Hope

Alicia grits her teeth as she pulls her shoe off, dumping it beside her to curl and stretch her aching toes. She doesn't know how long she's been running, but through it all her feet have bled, and blisters have formed and burst. But she promised to escape those exiles, to take Kathryn's secret as far away from them as possible.

Going west seems like her best bet. If she can find her way amongst this wilderness.

She presses her back against a tree, letting her wounded feet rest for a moment. There's no turning back, not anymore, and each time she remembers that the tears rise again and all she wishes for are her aunt's cold eyes.

Alicia hardly remembers the last time she's felt so alone.

She grabs her satchel, wiping the tears from her face with a torn sleeve. Rifling through it, she finds what she's looking for, knowing she needs to focus on something other than the throbbing in her feet. Alicia pulls the journal from a pocket in her satchel, hidden away.

She opens the journal, sniffling loudly as she reads the words with a blurred vision.

For the past two months, she's read every translated passage in the book, stared at each picture of Ghuls, the tomb, grotesque surgeries, until her eyes burned. She dreamed about being on that table, her flesh being peeled back, her organs being removed, only to heal and have it done again and again.

Do they feel pain? Do they feel fear? Or is that creature just angry, waiting to escape and wake more of its brethren to bring their wrath upon the world?

Maybe it would be a good thing if Sergey found a way to control them.

Alicia shakes her head, stuffing the journal back into her satchel. She can't think of such things, not with other vile creatures lurking in the shadows. Her fight in the capital is over and no amount of unanswered questions is going to change that.

Alicia forces herself to put her boots back on, wincing with every shift and scrape. But she manages to stand, clinging to a tree as she slings her satchel across her chest and begins forward again.

She pushes from tree to tree, stumbling when roots insist on disturbing her path, trying to drag her down to the black depths of the Reaper's den, where she belongs.

She follows the setting of the sun through the dense trees, her only hope in such perpetual darkness, the Light daring not stretch its reach to this place.

Alicia promised herself never to know a world of death and suffering again. Like so many others similar to her, she was a child thrust into a life of hunger and hate. Born in the slums, forgotten even before her birth with only her family's will to survive keeping her breathing. She was raised on the faith of the gods, the hope that her life would eventually mean something, raised on the ambition of her mother.

She learned to rely on her mother, on her dreams for Alicia, she clung to her when her brothers and father were sent away. She could never quite let go even when they returned home. Never again did she play in the mud. Never again did she chase her brothers with wooden guns. Never again did she fall asleep in the stables in the company of her horses.

She became a lady in the absence of man, became something more than she ever wanted to be beneath her mother's sharp gaze. Desperation moulded her like clay.

Yet here she is now after all that struggle clawing herself from the slums. The future Queen of Muovea; running through the trees with her aunt's ghost weeping at her shoulder, begging her to come with her. Here she is, with this numbness in her heart, knowing once again what it's like to hear someone choke on their own blood, even after years of promising to herself never again.

Never again.

With a sudden jolt, she tumbles to the ground, crying out as her ankle is wrenched and her head slams into the forest floor. Her fingers twist in wet leaves and she moans as her head swims. She's sluggish as she tries to get herself back up, something trying to keep her down, her body crying to stay laying there like a wounded animal.

But one thing her brothers taught her with their fake guns waving in the air is that when Alicia lays down and stops moving is when she's easiest to find.

Alicia lifts her head, hair a tangled mess around her, housing sticks and leaves that itch her scalp. She squints through the trees, eyes grainy as she tries to see anything ahead of her. It's what she hears that has her inching forward on hands and knees, uncertainty and terror lodged down her throat.

Voices beckon her closer, voices that aren't a sneer in her ear, that aren't a hot breath against her face with a fist gripped in her hair. Someone laughs, soft laughter, the laughter of a woman. There were no women with the other exiles.

Alicia clings to a tree as the world unfolds before her, walls rising. But they're not the ancient stone walls of Muovea that have more tales than truths. These walls are made of wood, stumps around the place make a clearing for slight roads.

Alicia doesn't see the walls or the people by the open gates with their horses and their guns. She sees hope, and suddenly her heart beats again, so strongly she fears it may crack her ribs.

Alicia stands on shaky legs, a sob rising in her chest as she finally—finally—walks towards the Commons.

The shift of clothing and a muffled breath are her only warning before a hand wraps around her mouth. An arm around her waist drags her back into the darkness, her stifled screams going unheard by the people right before her.