29

Kneeling by Vander’s lifeless body, Vanessa spooned warm broth into his mouth and made sure he didn’t choke. The only time he moved, aside from breathing, was when he ate. Otherwise, the class assessment had taken him and left a husk behind. She treasured these quiet moments. After the first week passed, she’d taken over as his caregiver and let the others have free reign over running wild in the forest.

She looked down at the plain-looking broth and sighed, wondering if the flavor bothered him and that’s what kept him from coming back. She couldn’t attest to the flavor much, since Dom hadn’t done much more than put a minor bit of spices in, claiming, “Why waste supplies on someone who doesn’t know the basics of basics? Not like he can taste it anyway. Would be wasteful…”

Her eyes locked on the wooden spoon and contemplated trying it. Wouldn’t hurt much, probably. Dom likely didn’t poison the food of his members, unless considering lack of exciting flavors was a type of poison. Then he was guilty. But she didn’t consider that the case as she lifted the spoon to her lips. Just a sniff alone told her everything she needed to know before ever tasting the sad herb-water.

It took all her power not to spit out the sorry excuse for food into their camp. She at least had the decency to walk away and relieve herself of the dredge outside their boundary. When she returned, she passed Zekiel heading out for the dozenth time that day. Every time he came back, he shot Vander, a boy his age from a rivaling family, a long and hard look.

“They say the longer one takes to complete the assessment, the more powerful the soul and greater their destiny,” Fallon said as he walked over and knelt beside Vanessa. “Should I say a prayer for him, Mrs. Vanessa?”

“Drop the ‘miss’ thing here, Fallon, or I’ll have to tell Dom you’ve been going against the patriarch’s orders.” Her harrowing glare didn’t phase the man. She sighed. “When did you get so stone cold? I remember when that threat would’ve had your legs shaking.”

“I can’t say much in regards to the progression of faith over long-standing periods of time,” responded the smiling priest. “If you want to talk about shaky legs, I think you may be overdue for a conversation with young master Zekiel, don’t you think?”

Vanessa redoubled her glare, and the priest, in all his wisdom, decided then was the perfect time to take his leave. She didn’t ease up on the death glare until Fallon returned to his position across their expanded camp, entered his golden-rimmed tent of thick triple-layered white, and faded from her view.

They’d since moved from the small place the patriarch and Vander had set up. Carrying Vander in the stretcher while they moved into the second layer of the forest had been all the rage while the beasts howled their fury and an experience she never wanted to repeat. So much so that she refused to move until he woke.

The reward posed to her for this mission—being out here and seeing Vander in person made her second guess herself. The rewards, as great as they would be and everything she’d always wished for since she was a little kid, almost seemed like drops of water in a full bucket now that she’d witnessed him for herself. The things asked of her, she likely would abandon that cause. If he couldn’t bring about something better, a new change, she’d be damned regardless.

At least this way, she could harbor that small seed of hope inside her chest. It threatened to grow and grow as he continued his assessment. So much that she could hardly contain her excitement, though even she thought three weeks was unbelievable.

Zekiel knew what Vander’s current circumstances meant better than anybody else did, having taken a prodigal two weeks himself to complete his assessment. Already, Vander approached twice as long. Given another day or two, a month. She could only imagine what he could be going through in a place with over four times dilation and the amount of growth he’d experience while there.

Again using Zekiel’s experience and his title as reigning prodigy of the generation, an extreme sense of hope and dread whirled around, clashed, and then had tea over a calm conversation. She had no idea what to think. He was still functioning. His magic was still strong, though her magic senses were pretty terrible, she could still sense him. Good indicator he wasn’t as dead as he looked from the outside.

But still, at any moment, without warning, his life could snuff out. None of them would be privy as to why and would have the burden of reporting the death of the successor to him—sorry Dom, that’s all you buddy. Assuming the worst, that is.

As a branch member of the prestigious Braxton dukedom born with neither talent for swords or magic, she’d not seen much in the way of the patriarch but twice in her youth. A youth that seemed so far and otherworldly now. Since coming with Dom, her entire world had changed. she’d spent the entire time they traveled wondering why he’d chosen her of all the others, the more talented, the more skilled of the nameless.

Even Dom’s position seemed otherworldly to Vanessa. A direct subordinate knight? To Duke Adrian Braxton? The patriarch of one of the three great dukedoms? Reporting and receiving direct communication for so long and telling nobody… Then mobilizing the second the patriarch required him too? She had great respect for Dom. The man was built different. His loyalties had been tested and confirmed by Adrian himself. She envied him, but she had her own tests.

Tests she didn’t know if she was failing or succeeding in at the very moment she didn’t drop in a mage crippling poison. Holding onto the evidence alone would’ve had her drawn and quartered without a shred of a doubt. Even then and there, in the middle of a massive forest across the known world, she worried she’d be found out and news would make its way back to Duke Braxton.

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Only Zekiel didn’t have affiliations with the Braxton family. Anna and Fallon both came from Madlus, exiled and nameless siblings. They’d served the patriarch from the day he found them and gave them shelter. Anytime Anna loomed over her, the stink eye she’d fix to Vanessa made it almost seem like Anna knew. Fallon seemed oblivious to Vanessa’s true intentions, but not his sister.

That woman was nothing but gritty faith and blood-dyed steel. She wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if she so chose to behead Vanessa at any given moment. Something to be said about loyalty, that. But Vanessa figured she’d draw her last breath the moment she even reached for the poison she’d been given. She couldn’t see the others, but she’d not survived in her world, a place so stark in contradiction to the current way of things, so long by not being paranoid out of her mind or learning how to ingratiate herself to those in a position to make her life easy.

Or miserable. But miserable meant alive rather than dead.

When they’d first taken Zekiel on, she’d seen his rising potential. Just as she did now for Vander, she’d watched over the Tamaranth boy for the entire time he’d been in his assessment before they stepped foot on the Two Maidens and began their dangerous voyage across the ocean of mist. The plots and plans back on Varoth seemed to still be in play, but at least she found her own slice of peace away from that life.

For the time being. The moment Vander woke up, she’d have to make a decision. Until then, she didn’t have to. Plenty of times before, assessments and advancements wound up in total, cataclysmic failure, despite the potential of greatness. If he woke after failing, the poison would be in his system before he knew what hit him, and she’d be fleeing the content to return to those who’d have the successor of the Braxton family remain a savage forgotten to time.

If he grew and made a splash like she hoped he would after waking up, showed himself worth her life, then she’d abandon any intentions to ever use the mageslaying poison on him and any notion of ever returning to Varoth without him—maybe even report the acts requested of her over the years to Duke Braxton herself and throw the lot of the ambitious and corrupt Braxton branches into his clutches.

From what she’d seen of the man, he’d rip out those who’d wronged her by the roots. Her biggest fear and what kept her inactive, even now, knowing that Dom could relay vital information to the patriarch as fast as she could tell him, was the thought that she’d be lumped in with those he culled.

She’d not lived a nice life. Only through practice, immense effort, and countless beatings did she make herself valuable. Not for her swordsmanship either—though she could wield one with the basic requirements of the Braxton name, meaning better than most others that ever wielded a sword.

Swordplay was a fanciful art of precision, showmanship, and control. One she detested. Life had taught her the meaning of honor and authority and prestige through blood, sweat, and tears. Her true calling had been in assassination. Bows, crossbows, knives, poisons, stealth. All things detested by those pompous brats of the Braxton branch families but necessary to make the splashes they wanted.

Never one to make a mistake or leave evidence, none suspected her. Not with how in the limelight she put herself, a disguise. From years of experience, she’d noticed that people always looked in the dark and searched through the shadows for the dagger that robbed them of one lord, lady, or another. But with the man in front of her, that whole world could be one she never had to return to, never had to think of again.

And the fear of hope that grew in her chest, fear of disappointment, fear of failure, fear of pain made her shake as she ladeled another spoonful of broth. Hands steady, she didn’t let her fear show on the outside, a disguise she’d perfected in the face of far more scrupulous gazes. A visage she’d crafted with absolute infallibility.

One she wanted to never have to wear again. Being a fighter like her took its toll and wore down the soul. Oddly, in her initial screening of Vander, she sensed that same weariness of the soul. When he didn’t think anybody watched him, he’d let the facade he put on drop, his eyes glossing over as he lost himself in his thoughts.

The faces he’d make, warped in frustration or disdain or a hurt that transcended anything she’d ever seen. So pure was his pain. A thing far beyond his years. She’d talked to Dom about how Duke Braxton must have treated him to make such pain radiate from his very being, but he’d heard directly from the patriarch himself that Vander had always had this aged maturity about him.

As if he’d lived far longer than his years and experienced unspeakable horrors. “Never one to complain about training or demand things, Vander was a survivor in a past life, and it carried over. I only want peace for him, but he’s picked up some vicious demons in his journeys. One that won’t allow him peace and freedom without fighting for it himself,” Duke Braxton supposedly told Dom before leaving back to the main family.

A sentiment Vanessa couldn’t escape. In her dreams, Vander would look at her with conflicted eyes full of pain and kindness, love and hate, resentment and desire. The thought that she would end his life with the mageslaying poison given to her hurt more than she’d considered such a thing at all, consequences be damned. He resonated with her deep down on a level nobody had before. The thought of killing him was akin to killing herself, and she would never do such a thing.

Through and through, she was a survivor. As was he. The look in his eyes was the same that stared back in her own reflection. A look so haunted and grim yet full of stubborn refusal to surrender to the demons haunting the mind, body, and soul.

But no matter how bad she wanted him to wake and have been successful in all her endeavors, she too wished he would fail and simplify the path she was supposed to take. If he woke with that vibrant growth and buzzing with power, things would take a turn for the worst. Complications she never anticipated already building and growing and festering within her would evolve into something even greater, something that she’d have to hide from the others.

And for once in her life, she didn’t think she’d be able to hide herself from someone, from Vander. Each time she thought he’d see through her when he woke up, see her intentions and the mission she’d been assigned, know her for who she truly was and not as she showed the world. Not for the disguise she put on for the sake of others but for the sake of knowing her heart, the truth of her being… The poison weighed heavier on her hip.

The belt on her waist was made for the craft of death, for sending a person into the arms of the final embrace, and her desire to never need to use it against another person haunted her as she nurtured her final hope. Success or failure? The question robbed her of peace and perpetuated a state of wariness she hadn’t experienced in so many years.

Hope, something she thought to be a foreign thing to her, like lunchtime tea with Duke Braxton and his kin, blossomed in her chest. No matter how much she tried to stop the feeling, no matter how much her body told her to fight that spark, she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t deny that she wanted the lost Braxton she’d always been curious about to wake up more powerful than before and make a world where she didn’t have to bow before those damned branch families again.

Hell, maybe he’ll take over the world?