Page 54 of Silver & Smoke
She waited for her lungs to constrict, for panic to grip her by the throat, for the scent of burnt hair to fill her nostrils. The anticipation had her straight-backed in her saddle, but the familiar terror didn’t take hold.
Exhaling shakily, Wren looked to the towering walls. Plain stone greeted her. Nothing more. And for the first time, the sight didn’t send her into a vivid flashback of her friends’ heads spiked atop the walls.
What did that mean? That she was forgetting them and their suffering? Surely that was the cost of her survival – to carry them with her always? To never forget?
They’re at peace now, Torj’s voice said into her mind. He was riding somewhere towards the rear of the company, but he knew her, knew what haunted her dreams and what triggered those visceral returns to the past.
I hope so, she replied as she passed beneath the gates.
His presence brushed against her consciousness again, gentle and reassuring.The past doesn’t own us, Embers.
Wren allowed herself a small smile at that.
Next, the courtyard opened up before her, and her eyes fell immediately to where Anya had taken her last breath, to where she’d gifted her storm magic to her younger sisters – her final sacrifice for the good of the midrealms, despite being painted as the villain for so long. Wren’s heart still ached for her. Just like Sam and Ida, Anya’s life had been cut short, and the injustice of it would never fade.
‘Do you know what she said to me before the end?’ Thea spoke suddenly from beside her, the words loud in the empty cobblestone square.
Wren looked to her sister, who sat proudly astride her Tverrian stallion – something else Anya hadn’t lived to see. ‘What?’
Thea took a deep breath, her gaze still lingering on the spot where their sister had died. ‘We knew she wasn’t going to make it...so I asked her not to leave us without any hope for the world.’ Her voice wavered. ‘She told me that she had wanted to scorch the earth with her fury, but that there was still hope left... and then she looked at you.’
Tears stung Wren’s eyes, and for once she didn’t fight them. ‘Really?’ she managed, the word thick in her throat.
Thea nodded. ‘She knew you were the future, even then.’
‘But—’
Thea gave a sad laugh, shaking her head. ‘You can’t argue with Anya, not even in death.’
The last time Wren had visited the fortress, parts of the structure had still been covered in scaffolding. That was no longer the case. Under Audra’s command, the home of the realm’s protectors had been rebuilt, with much improvement. Even the sound was different – where once there had been the clash of steel and cries for help, and then eerie silence, now came the ordinary bustle of daily life: the ring of a blacksmith’s hammer, voices calling across the courtyard, the scrape of cartwheels on stone. It was all so different... and when Wren entered the great hall, she gasped.
For at the heart of the grand space towered three giant stone sculptures.
A breathtaking monument to the Furies, replacing the one that had been destroyed during the war. Instead of swords that pierced the hall’s ceiling, the new tribute showed the Furies as they truly were: protectors, warriors, goddesses – women who had carried the weight of the realm on their shoulders. Wren’s throat tightened as she admired Audra’s decision to portray the original Warswords in all their glory, as women of flesh and blood, of strength and sacrifice. Their faces held both power and compassion, showing everything the Furies embodied in their purest form, everything Anya had been beneath her rage.
The old monument had been about fear; this one spoke of hope.
Thea held out a dagger and nodded to the plinth of the monument. ‘I told Anya she was just as much a hero as any Thezmarrian. I promised I’d carve her name there.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ Wren murmured, taking the blade.
Together, she and Thea etched Anya’s name into the stone, as was tradition to acknowledge a warrior’s sacrifice to the midrealms. The scrape of metal rang out in the vast space, each stroke a reminder of what they’d lost – and what they’d gained despite it all. Sisterhood. Understanding.
Thea traced over their carving with her fingers. ‘To Anya... a mosaic of contradictions,’ she said, echoing the words Wren had spoken during the funeral rites nearly six years ago now.A mosaic of contradictions, a blend of darkness and light, and as such, she mirrored the very heart of humanity...Perhaps that could be said of all the Embervales.
Wren placed her hand over Thea’s and said a final farewell to Anya. ‘Rest now, sister.’ The words felt different this time – less like goodbye and more like permission. Permission to look towards tomorrow, to do what needed to be done.
A layer of dust coated the workbenches within the alchemy workshop of Thezmarr. Without the laws preventing women from wielding blades, without Farissa’s formidable presence, alchemy had been all but abandoned at the fortress. From the state of the room, Wren wasn’t sure when it had last been used. There was something liberating about that, though, and as she wiped down the surfaces and opened her travel case, she breathed her first easy breath in a while.
It wasn’t long before the desk was covered in her notebooks and equipment, in her various vials and pouches of herbs, the chaos a familiar comfort to her. Gods, how she wished Sam and Ida werethere with her, as they had been so many times before, brainstorming the problems of a particular tincture, or discussing the optimum measurements of a potion. She could have used their wisdom now.
The poison inside Torj was gaining ground, and though she was making progress on her cure, she wasn’t moving fast enough. There had been no word from the rosarians she’d contacted, and she didn’t expect any help from them now, even after sending additional ravens detailing her change in location. For this, she was on her own. And so she worked, hunched over her shallow glass dishes brimming with blood and silvertide roses, praying to the Furies that she’d find the cure to save her soul-bonded.
CHAPTER 29
Torj
‘Thezmarr was, and always will be, the home of the protectors of the midrealms’
