Learning Curve

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I sprawl across Ash's bed in his towel and watch him pace restlessly in front of his enormous map, trying and failing to keep the anger and derision from my face as he attempts to buy into my sense of patriotism. Bath water still drips from my freshly cleaned hair as I finish off the plate of pickled fruit and pastries Emity fetched for me.

Ash ignores my scowl as he gestures to Pyrthia's north-western coastline, to the ragged delta known as the Bay of Wails. A long silver rapier in one hand, he circles the area currently swarming with the vampyre threat. Eerily reminiscent of the Witch Handlers while training me, he passionately intones, "Our country is on the brink of collapse. Waves of the Black Tide are landing on our shore night after night, and these vampyres are spreading further east faster than we can combat them. Not on our own. I know you're a deserter, so you must know what I mean."

I do, but I simply twiddle my fork between my fingers like the words are nonsense. He can't scare me with shit I've lived through. Emity sits at his desk listening with all the rapt attention his emotionally charged speech needs. Ash speaks like his brother did, hours before he led hundreds to their deaths.

"Even with all our military force concentrated on them, every blood witch in the land conscripted, it isn't working. Just ten days ago we had fifty men and witches massacred at Brightwell's Keep. One survivor. He claimed there were as many as five dozen of the beasts hiding out there. In one fort. Now multiply this by the entire northern delta."

The fork folds in on itself in my hands as my fists clench. My chest has constricted tight, not from the surprise he's expecting, but from sickening recognition. Ten days... They'd gone past quickly. Enough to get me from one side of the country to the other.

I growl my words through gritted teeth. "She claimed. And it was barely forty vamps. Your informant's not worth shit."

Ash stares, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. In a meek voice, the finally says, "Sasha... You were the-"

"Forget it and continue. This doesn't fucking explain why you're marrying a fucking Ivruthan. You said it earlier. He murdered your brother and last time I checked, we're still at war," I spit. The fruit suddenly tastes like dirt in my mouth and I'm itching for a drink of something strong.

When I'd first crawled my way out of the pit of calamity and gore in Brightwell's Keep, shaking and moaning, the first thing the army officers had done was force me to down rum until it was coming back up in a cocktail of stomach bile. I've been sickened by so much as the smell of spirits since, but right now I'd do anything to bring back that numbness. Hearing Ash's politician voice reducing all my friend's lives to meaningless numbers.

Ash scratches his chin, pausing to assess me with those sneaky, calculating eyes. Probably regretting his choice of body double. Too fucking late. "This is why I'm marrying Prince Valek. Pyrthia can no longer sustain this fight on our own, and the trade sanctions against our northern neighbours are backfiring against us. We need men, weapons and a second chance at fulfilling that prophecy."

"Alysha is the price we pay for that," Emity adds bitterly. "The prophecy states that the existence of vampyres can only be stopped by the union of two princes from Pyrthia and Ivruth-"

"I know what the fucking prophecy says," I snap.

That suns-scorched prophecy. It's the source of this entire mess.

If there's one thing Pyrthians love more than sunlight and burning witches, it's the idea of destiny. The entire Doctrine of the Sacred Flame is composed of religious prophecies collected over the years, the most relevant of which being 'The Scourge of Nightfall'. That which predicts and theorises the cure for the Black Tide- the unexplained appearance of the strange pale ships which have erratically landed upon our shores for the last twenty years. Each one carrying half a dozen blood-thirsty, superhuman monsters.

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