Page 87 of Sanctuary of the Shadow
“Did they enjoy being so, do you think? Did they want to serve her? No one ever asks what they think, because they’re just mindless killers, right?”
“Wraiths are made of Furie’s magic,” Harrow insisted, “which is perverted because of her madness. They’re evil creatures. Abominations. That’s what Darya said.”
But Nashira shook her head. “Fire magic is pure. As pure as Ether, Air, Water, and Earth. Fire is Fire, and naught can render it otherwise.”
“But the wraiths…”
“Are no more evil than you are. Such silly ignorance from a child gifted with the Water. I had hoped for better. Yesterday you were far more understanding. Then again, yesterday, your soul was still complete. Today, it’s too late.”
“But they killed an entire group of Elementals,” Harrow argued, refusing to accept this so readily.
“Enchained! Enfettered!” Nashira shouted, waving her hands again. The crystal ball wobbled. “Bound by evil!”
“They’re cold. Unfeeling. They kill with deadly precision. That’s not the work of an unwilling, innocent being.”
The Ether Queen jabbed that finger in Harrow’s direction again. “Where would your mind go if you were sealed in an inescapable prison and then forced to commit unspeakable acts? Protect yourself first, everyone says. What else to do but turn off the feelings? Otherwise, the pain is too great.”
Harrow stared at her. “You’re saying they’re not evil. That they were just forced to act like it.”
“Make no mistake,” Nashira said, sounding the most lucid she had since the start of the conversation, “wraiths can be deadly, fearsome creatures. They will always be capable of violence. They will be quick to anger. They will be fierce fighters. But that is the Fire. The nature of that Element is lethal power. And, twisted by their brutal pasts, in this life and the one before, they have become even more deadly, though who could blame them after what they’ve suffered? We’re all just trying to survive. Have mercy, child. Have great mercy.”
Harrow went over her memories of Raith, remembering how he’d been confused when she’d told him he couldn’t kill Salizar. The idea was incomprehensible to him at first.
But he’d listened, in the end.
He hadn’t killed Salizar because he was willing to listen to Harrow, to learn new behaviors. He was open to change, capable of evolving, growing, understanding.
And she had turned around and betrayed him.
Her hand covered her mouth. “He killed my mother,” she said against her palm, desperate to rediscover the conviction that filled her before. “He was the one who killed my entire clan.”
“And spared your life,” Nashira added.
Harrow swallowed hard.
“A being with no free will, who’d never experienced the concept, who wasn’t even aware of its existence, discovered it the very night he chose to spare the life of an innocent child. At great cost to himself. Do you know what Furie did to him when she discovered his defiance?”
Harrow shook her head, not certain she wanted to hear.
Nashira told her anyway. “She trapped him with his own vow so he was unable to escape. Then she made him burn over and over again. It was the same death he gave the Seers, only he could never die from it. You want him to pay for the deaths of your family? Well, he has. A thousand times over.”
Harrow had started to shake. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“After several months of this, his essence was so weakened, he had become little more than a wisp of smoke. Darya struck at the perfect time. Capturing him was so easy—she all but trapped him beneath a glass as one might a spider on the wall. And what did Darya do?”
“No…” She couldn’t hear this.
“Darya, too, tortured him again and again, trying to force him to embody so she could slay him. She forced him by dousing his Fire essence in Water, extinguishing his inner flame over and over.”
“Dear Goddess,” Malaikah said.
“But the poor creature was too weak to embody, and his fiery will was unbreakable anyway. He endured the torture for nine years.”
Darya had told Harrow this same story from a very different perspective, glossing over the fact that the wraiths hadn’t acted of their own volition and convincing Harrow their Fire magic was warped. She’d been more worried about Furie consolidating power, hadn’t she? And she’d used Harrow’s emotions to manipulate her.
Nashira went on in that cold, detached voice. “After a decade, Darya decided she needed a new tactic. Then came another forty years of trial and error. Endless experimentation until she finally devised a way to merge Fire and Water in perfect harmony, creating a corporeal form for a previously incorporeal creature.”
How had Raith endured such torment without losing his mind completely? Perhaps he had, and his rebirth without memories had been his chance at a new life. Until Darya had forced him to relive his previous existence. Harrow swallowed hard against the bile rising in her throat.
