Sage

Sage

Sage took one look at the training grounds they’d been assigned to and internally groaned. It was much bigger, and more spread out than she’d thought. A main bunkhouse stood in the middle, surrounded by six smaller living quarters. At least two hundred Hands were out and about, using the training grounds or just meandering between the buildings.

“So, are we burning it all or just blasting it? Oh, that’s right, we’re taking prisoners.” Sage grumbled, “Because that’s a thing now.”

With her chin propped in her hands, Wraza lay flat on her stomach, her eyes fixated on the busy training grounds below. They had stumbled upon a prime viewing spot on a hill in the park that overlooked the grounds. She tore her eyes from them to cut her a cold look.

“Is there something you want to say, Blackwood?” She asked.

Sage rolled onto her back, gazing up at the cloudless sky above. “I just did.” She waited for Wraza to take the bait, but instead, she changed the subject.

“So, a Maiden and a Demon Prince?” Wraza asked. Sage flopped back over, brows furrowed at her flippant tone.

“Do you have a problem with Kade?” She asked, her tone warning.

“No.” Wraza retorted flatly. “Demons have been villainized by nearly everyone, and some of them have earned that title, but not to me.” She glanced back down to the Hands below and the grass beneath her arms began to char from the heat her skin gave off.

“The villains in my life have always been human.” She said quietly.

Sage stretched out her arm next to her. She traced something over her skin with her fingernail and said, “You can’t see them, but I had nearly a hundred gashes all over my body. I know- I tried to count them one time when I was staying with Naru and his Guild. The Goddess Spring healed them, but sometimes I can still feel them, just under my skin.”

Wraza quirked a brow, watching as Sage traced out the wounds with her fingertip. The shapes and placements were etched into her memory. The spring might have healed them all, but they still existed in her mind.

“I heard about that. Your mother tried to give you to the Demons for power?” Wraza asked. Sage wasn’t entirely surprised she knew about it. She figured someone had mentioned it while she’d been in a self-induced mini-coma for two weeks.

“My entire family did. They would have tried again if it hadn’t been for my cousin Trent. He saved me.” She shut her eyes, thinking about that night in the cabin when she had to flee to the cave or be taken again. She hoped he was still alive.

“Well, be grateful you had that,” Wraza said, her words dripping with malice.

Sage glanced up. Wraza’s eyes were burning again. She was looking at the Hands below, but she wasn’t watching them. She was somewhere else in her mind.

“I dream of going back and destroying it all,” Sage admitted. Wraza blinked in surprise, then turned to her. “I think about what I’d do,” Sage announced proudly.

“I’d waltz into my mother’s office and I imagine the look on her face when she realizes I’m alive and I have the power she was so desperate to have.” She shut her eyes again, picturing the shock on Seraphina’s face melting into outrage. “She’d demand I give it to her- she’s delusional like that, but I guess it’s partly my fault. I lived my entire life under her thumb, trying to please her. I tried so hard to prove my worthiness that I missed all the signs.”

“Sometimes they are never there,” Wraza said. Sage’s eyes snapped open. Wraza had turned onto her side, propping her head on one hand.

“Is that what happened to you?” Sage asked boldly.

Wraza frowned. “I figured you’d figure it out.”

Sage shrugged, “I knew my way around Leox because Minx and I were forced to study old books that went over this place in great detail. I never understood why until after- it had been an obvious distraction- but I’m glad I did because it gave me the advantage there. But,” she gave her a sideways glance, “those were the old ways. I would expect you’d know a little about the palace, but not how it operated today. You could only know the things you knew, and in such detail, if you had been there.”

Wraza pinned her with a look and for a moment Sage wondered if she’d melt her right there. But instead of raining fire down on her, she pulled something from inside of her boot. Wraza held it up; a twisted piece of metal.

“This was the circlet they made me wear there. I kept it as a reminder.” Sage’s heart nearly stopped when she recognized the twisted metal for the concubine’s circlet.

“My family lived in the desert with a nomadic tribe. We’d lived like that for generations, after the fall. It wasn’t safe to return, but we had nowhere else to go, so we traveled the dunes. The desert is a harsh, unforgiving place full of devastating beauty.” Wraza’s lips curled into a small smile. “The sunsets there are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” She glanced up. “But don’t tell Rhea I said that.”

Sage smiled, then pinched her fingers to her lips, drawing an invisible zipper over them. Wraza blinked at her blankly.

“My lips are sealed,” Sage explained. Wraza cocked a brow but didn’t comment on her zipper lips.

“Anyway, I grew up going from village to village, not realizing how little we had. I was too young to see it- the way my mother drank herself nearly to death, every night- but that life, that harsh, unforgiving place, took its toll on her. She was weak.” Wraza’s hand heated over the metal, causing it to twist some more beneath her palm. By the looks of it, Wraza had been twisting the metal out of shape for a while.

“She sold me to a group of skin traders when I was eleven for a cask of wine.” Wraza’s lips twisted into a gruesome smirk. “A cask. That’s all I was worth to her in the end. I wouldn’t venture to say we had a loving relationship- not like Rhea had with her mother. But you’d think a mother would value her kid more than that, right?”

Sage watched the metal cool as Wraza’s hand stopped burning.

“You’d think,” Sage echoed, understanding.

Wraza blinked, then put the metal back in her boot. “She was a terrible mother, but she did tell me who I was, at least. She told me to keep it a secret, or I’d burn for it.” Wraza chuckled ruefully. “That’s rich, isn’t it? The Halifax Maiden- who controls fire, burning at the stake?”

Sage couldn’t help but chuckle with her.

“It’s absurd when you think about it- but I didn’t. I was eleven, and I’d just been sold to skin trades by the one person who was supposed to protect me. It didn’t dawn on me until my seventeenth birthday when I felt my gift settle in my bones. How dumb it all was.” Wraza turned back onto her belly, her cognac eyes watching the Hands again.

“It was too late by then, of course. I’d been passed around to nearly every Hand. Every high-ranking visitor we had. I had invisible shackles- so tight I couldn’t get rid of them. Until one day one of those Hands took me with them here, and I saw her.”

“Rhea?” Sage asked when Wraza paused.

“Yeah. I saw her on the docks, wearing that stupid hat and barking orders to some sailors like some kind of commander. A queen, I thought. And then I felt it- the pull between us. Like for like, and I knew who she was.

“She did too, but I was too scared, too much of a coward to go to her. It took three weeks of her coming around at night, calling to me below my window and me gaining the courage to sneak out with her before I realized she was my home. When the idea of going back to the palace made me want to die, I knew I had to stay. So one night I never crept back through my window.”

“And you’ve never wanted to go back there? Not even to get revenge?” Sage asked.

Wraza shook her head, her shark tooth earring bouncing violently. “No. The idea of going back still makes me want to die. I want to live. And Rhea is my light, my home.”

Home. Sage felt the word out and found she understood. Home didn’t feel like the world she’d left, but it also didn’t feel like the cities or the Blackwood manor. The Hunter Guild had felt like what a home should feel like, but not hers.

No, when she thought of home and what it felt like, she only thought of one thing.

Kade.