Page 59 of Spoils of war
I could still taste blood on my lips as tears slid down my cheeks, quiet and hot, carving tracks through the soot on my cheeks.
There was only one thought left in my mind.
I would make thempay.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I hadn’t thought much about what happens when we die.
But Licia had.
I remember the day of the bridge dare. Will and Aran were walking ahead, still sulking their loss, and Licia couldn’t stop grinning, basking in the thrill of it.
“Did you see his face?” she laughed, tossing a rock into the ditch. “He looked like he was gonna cry. ‘You cheated,’” she said in a silly voice. “Like he didn’t shove me first.”
“You almost fell,” I said.
“Almost doesn’t count.”
We didn’t talk about how close it had been. What could’ve happened if she’d slipped.
Then she asked, “Do you ever think about dying?”
“What?”
“Not like in a sad... sad, just what happens after. Do you think the gods take us somewhere? Like up in the sky? Or do we just... stop being?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t really like thinking about it.”
“I think about it a lot,” she went on, kicking at a clump of dirt. “Like, do we go up there?” She pointed at the clouds. “Or down there?” She nodded toward the ground. “Or maybe somewhere else.”
“I don’t know…”
She laughed a little. “I’m not scared of it. I just wannaknow.It’s like when I get a vision. It just shows up, and then I can’t stop thinking about it. What it means.”
“Do you think they come from the gods?” I asked. “Your visions.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes. Other times it just feels like... noise. Like I’m hearing stuff I’m not supposed to.”
Crickets chirped in the tall grass around us.
“I used to think it meant something,” she said. “Like maybe I was special. Chosen or something. But now... I’m not sure.”
I looked at her. “Why not?”
“Because sometimes I see really awful things. Things I can’t stop. Things I wish I didn’t see.”
She went quiet, then whispered, “And sometimes I think maybe they’re not from the gods at all.”
I still didn’t know what to believe. My mother had told me we’d be reborn, that our souls never really died. The Eredians believed in judgment. That we’d stand before the Eye, punished if we’d failed, and rewarded if we’d served.
What I didn’t expect was the sharp sting of bleach, or the itch of scratchy linens against skin. Not the low murmur of distant voices or the soft clatter of metal trays echoing through hallways.
I forced my eyelids open.
Light hit me. A weak, gray kind of daylight filtered through grimy windows.
Everything looked drained, like someone had wrung all the color out of the world. Pale bodies filled the cots around me. Still. Silent.
