Page 173 of Kingdom of Embers and Ruin

Maude’s ears rang at his words. Her friends and Bryn exploded into movement as her father’s restrictions lifted, but Maude could only see his form walking away from her.

The edges of her vision blurred as Maude’s entire focus narrowed on the back of her cruel father. She stood on numb feet, the pain from the arrow in her leg throbbing slightly as she took one step toward her father.

Another.

Maude almost broke into a sprint as her father’s soldiers closed around him, forming an impenetrable line that Maude knew she would try to break through until her broken body hung from the blades of the men who protected that monster.

A single voice cleaved through the clatter of battle, forcing her still.

“Maude!”

She turned automatically toward Herrick’s voice as he called for her. Locked in battle with two soldiers, ice and water rained on them. Maude moved to help him when another voice called her name. The similar sound pulled Maude back to a time that she had tried to forget these last ten years.

Her father drew back the dagger to slice across her mother’s throat, and Maude only reacted. She released the arrow that was aimed at her father’s head, but The Norns had a different fate in mind for that day.

Maude watched in paralyzing horror as her father shifted out of the way and pushed her mother in front of the arrow. Time warped as Maude watched the arrow puncture through the burnt orange silk gown her mother had worn to supper and then through her chest wall, right into her heart.

Her mother let out a small noise that sounded like ‘Oh’ and fell to her knees. Never once did she look away from Maude. Never once did she cry out in pain. Blood spread out across her chest at an alarming rate as she fell to her side onto the night-blooming roses she had tended to so diligently during Maude’s childhood.

“Run, Maude. It’s okay,” her mother whispered before her eyes emptied, and she stared into nothing.

Despair, unlike anything Maude had ever known, overtook her senses. Fire exploded out of her in waves that crested well over the wall she stood on, burning away every flower her mother had ever gardened, every soldier who sullied her mother’s garden with their hateful presence.

A cry that matched Maude’s own echoed from across the garden, where she could see Bryn witnessing their mother’s death at her sister's hand. Copper hair and hazel eyes flashed with hatred before Bryn extended her hands out toward the remaining soldiers, her own fire bursting out in orange pyres.

Their father had begun to make his way to Maude, where she was perched on the wall.

No.

She couldn’t go back, not after this.

Maude shot one last look at Bryn, her sister who had nothing but disdain in her eyes now, and one last look at her mother, the only thing Maude had spared in her explosion. Her mother’s red hair that matched Maude’s so perfectly lay billowing around her, her green eyes void of any life.

She had killed her own mother. Her arrow had pierced her mother’s heart, ending her life forever.

Run, Mama had said.

So she ran. But no matter how far she got, the image of her mother’s lifeless body came with her. Haunted her. So Maude kept running and never stopped.

She had never told anyone that it washerarrow that had taken her mother’s life, that it was byherhand that her mother was dead. That night at the inn in Dagsbrun, Maude had tried to tell Herrick, but the words had died in her throat. The gods orchestrated this fight to mirror that day like they were all puppets for their personal enjoyment.

Time slowed to a crawl as Maude watched a Flame Soldier move in on Herrick, his short sword slicing in a way that would end in Herrick’s death. At the same moment, Maude saw Bryn struggling with their uncle. Bryn called out to Maude and screamed her name in the same way their mother had ten years ago.

A choice was set out before her by the gods, the fates, and any other celestial bastard who thought they could choose a person's life for them.

A choice between her sister— her other half— and the man she loved.

A choice laid out before the most selfish person in the world.

The Allfather was punishing Maude for running from her fate all these years by forcing her to choose now—an impossible choice.

But what the Allfather could not foresee was that Maude trusted Herrick. She trusted him to fight alongside her as an equal. Maude trusted Herrick to save himself because he would know exactly who she would choose at this moment.

So, as Maude watched her uncle angle his knife to stab up into Bryn’s lungs, she made her choice. She could not allow her sister to die on this day.

The note she had left for Herrick burned in Maude’s heart as she pivoted toward her sister.

Forgive me.

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