MY HEART POUNDED as I ran.
That Gnathian made things so damned difficult. Was it really unfair of me to say the things I did? Her brother was dead to her, he was certainly dead if he came near our home, and yet she still said things like ‘you’ll have to kill me first’? If the old laws applied she’d have been run through then and there for being a Berserker sympathiser, family or not. No one, Demon, Gnathian, or otherwise was allowed to take the side of a Berserker. I winced as the brand on my wrist ached and I skidded to a halt.
When I’d started running I had no clue where I was actually going; I just needed to get out before I did something stupid. Now, with my mark throbbing the way it was…It had been a few years since the last contact. There was no way of being sure it was one of them calling but I couldn’t leave it to chance, not when things were so messed up already.
The Berserkers were growing stronger and we weren’t far from being outnumbered. I guess most of us had spent so much of our time running away from each other that we forgot why we were gifted our powers. We were the world’s ace; protectors of the balance.
It was time for me, Ethan Tiviton, protégé of Keagan Arrowthorn and soul reincarnate of Manai, to accept the burden entrusted to me and take my place among the others – no matter how little I wanted to.
I took a breath, whistled for my horse and ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ANOTHER WEEK HAD passed and neither Ethan, nor Alistair, had returned to the house. The guilt was enough to make me worry beyond reason but Lavender’s calmness about their absence made me feel more at ease. I snuck a look at my friend as we sat together in the study. She had another one of her ridiculous-sized books on herbalism and I was trying to make sense of whatever I’d picked up. It took me a while to realise it was in a different language altogether, but the scripting and illustrations were so beautiful that I wasn’t even bothered. Instead I’d turned to fixing up a tear in the sleeve of my dress.
“Any further nightmares?” she asked. I shook my head in response. “How about deadly premonitions?”
“Not since last week.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Though I did dream that you’d come down with a rotten case of trout-foot. It was terrible.”
Lavender looked at me then to her toes before she realised I was joking. She shoved me to the side. “Not funny,” she said.
“What? I’m stuck with this bothersome defect and I can’t joke about it? Now I’m depressed,” I sulked mockingly.
“We need to keep an eye on your actual dreams. Should something like that happen again it could be very useful to us.” Lavender turned the page.
“I have a feeling it won’t be that simple. If I do ever get another vision, who’s to say it won’t be a half-hour before it happens? And what if I don’t recognise that it’s something like that and not a fantasy?” I asked.
“Can’t say I know,” Lavender shrugged. “I guess only you can tell. Could be a feeling or the way the dreams manifest themselves. In the end we’ll just have to wait and see.” She turned another page and scoffed, and I smiled.
“Which one is it today?” I asked, suddenly glad I wasn’t in her shoes.
“Mother’s got me reading up on sweating sicknesses and pneumonia. It’s not even summer yet. Usually we don’t start worrying about these sorts of things until the frost starts setting in.” She sulked.
“Maybe Willow’s got a sixth-sense of her own,” I said. “I expect this place looks stunning in the colder months though. By the time the snow comes I might even be finished with this.” I pulled my thread taut and it snapped. A growl rumbled out of me and it took all of my will not to throw it out the window then and there.
Lavender laughed. “It’s a small hole. Even with the hour it’ll take you to thread the needle again I’m sure you’ll be able to fix it before winter sets in.”
“You’d be able to do it in a blink.”
“Well, I’ve had more time to practice.” She put her book down and threaded the needle for me.
“At seventeen you’re already more accomplished than I can even hope to be at fifty,” I chuckled. Lavender looked at me, her expression curious.
“Seventeen?” she asked before the cogs turned. “Oh, right I forgot. That’s what Mother told you back then.”
My thread snapped again. “What? How old are you really?” I said. “I won’t feel too useless if you’re an old lady in Gnathian years under that pretty skin.”
She shrugged. “Half a century maybe, I don’t know. I stopped counting a while ago. I’ll challenge you to find a single Demon who knows how old they are exactly.”
“Now I feel too young for this place. If it’s of any comfort you don’t look a day over seventeen.” Lavender smiled at that and I dropped the dress to the floor, exasperated. “I’ll be glad to start earning my own wages again. Maybe then I’ll be able to afford a visit to the seamstress and tailor.” I shivered. “Though, I don’t reckon I’ll be forgiven for what happened to the last dress I bought from them.”
“Those were very, very unfortunate circumstances,” Lavender reminded me.
“I could’ve been struck by lighting and preyed on by a pack of wolves and they’d still throw me out of the shop.” Our laughter died out as I thought again of that night. “Has there been any word-?”
“Not yet, but there will be. Before you came along Ethan would travel for weeks upon weeks, sending very little word.” Lavender let her book drop into her lap. “One time he disappeared for a couple of months; no word; no sign that he was alive. When he returned, Mother was furious at him. She clapped him across the ear, made him scavenge for a basket of Groggnuts, and then he had to sleep in with the horses for a week.”
“Groggnuts?” I asked.
Lavender shivered. “Ugh, they stink. When you pluck them from the ground they release a cloud of spores that get stuck in everything. You’re fine so long as you wear a mask but you’ll smell like rotten eggs and dung for a month.”
I couldn’t contain myself at that. The image of Ethan getting scolded by Willow was something, but to punish him further with such a job... “I bet he started checking in a bit more after that.”
“We couldn’t even have him in the house. It made the rest of us want to vomit.” We laughed again.
“This sounds ominous,” Ric said, picking at his breakfast as he entered the room. He tripped over my discarded dress. “Having trouble?”
“I can sew about as well as you can,” I said, eyeing up his thick fingers.
“Hey, I could be the greatest tailor in Vremia.”
“Are you?”
“Daeus, no. I can’t even hold a needle, let alone thread one.” He laced his hand under Lavender’s and raised it up. “You need delicate, little hands like these.”
Lavender flushed and cleared her throat. “I thought you needed two hands to eat breakfast?”