The Blood Witch

The Exception

I've soldiered through the stench of a dozen disembowelments in my life. I've seen my bones on the wrong side of my skin. I've heard the screams of my only friends as they died while I failed to save them.

But nothing has ever quite curdled my stomach like the contents of this letter.

Then again, I've never exactly received a love letter before, so perhaps it's customary to include such vivid threats. Prince Valek spared no detail in his description of exactly what I should face once we are wed. In the beatings and the degradation, in the defilement and the dishonouring. Acts which sicken even me. Princess Alysha is promised children under no terms to which she could object.

For the first time I agree with Emity quite whole-heartedly. Ash cannot know of this letter from my betrothed.

Hiding it from his perceptive little eagle eyes is another matter entirely. I kneel and stuff it into my socks, hoping that his aversion to picking up his laundry will keep it safe until we're both far, far away from here.

"Thank you," Emity mutters beneath her breath as I straighten and we continue back to Ash's room in stiff silence.

I don't deserve the thanks she gives. I'm completely fucking terrified.

For the first time, the reality of Ash's plan fully settles in, gnawing at my gut with the nervous weight that's hung suspended until this moment. I am going to Ivruth alone. A land where I will be locked in a tower, surrounded by the men who have wanted to raid and rape and pillage my country since the Father first sent the seeds of man across the Sea of Mists.

The same men who stood aside and mocked as Marcel Avamere rode into Fort Ulstark and was torn to pieces. Now they've concocted a fate even worse for his sister.

This isn't a destiny I can survive intact. But it's far less a destiny that Ash deserves to suffer instead.

Maybe it's the years of loyalty to the Crown finally working after years of military indoctrination. Maybe it's his resemblance to Paige in the shining optimism of his eyes, the thought that giving Ash these years of my life somehow repents for the years taken from hers. Maybe that it's inexplicably I've come to trust him, eaten up every ounce of integrity of his words and poise.

Being born a blood witch is no fortunate lot to draw in life. In some morbid clarity I can acknowledge that I've spent the last ten years running along a path of suffering to end up in the arms of the Abyss itself.

Perhaps I'm finally doing something noble if I'm doing it for Ash.

*

The night before the wedding, we stay up well past the point at which the waning moon hovers dead above us in the sky. Ash and I sit cross legged together on the floor of his balcony, passing a goblet of heady wine between us, just the latest of many filled tonight. Emity's snores still drift out into the evening air from the bedroom, where she's drunk herself into an early stupor.

The room itself is near empty of Ash's belongings, the half of "Princess Alysha's" belongings packed and moved to Ivruth ahead of me. The other half of contraband and other ignoble items collected by "Sir Ash Maleric" have similarly been cleared away and housed in a small apartment he's been pawning off his jewelry to afford.

It's tradition in Pyrthia for a woman to spend her last unwed night in celebration and I would have expected more for the Princess and heir to the throne, but this is perfect. Indeed, there had been a stuffy and excessively prepared banquet hours earlier, attended by the least lively revelers I've ever seen.

I'd sat through it in determined silence, far too intimidated by the piercing stare Queen Ilyana had fixed me with to risk speaking. With so few hours until I'm in Ivruth and Ash's freedom is guaranteed, nothing can be allowed to jeopardise his plan. Yet Ilyana had watched me the entire evening as if she could see through the half a dozen layers of robes and veil I was clothed in.