Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Is that a fucking foot?” I asked incredulously, and someone turned away to retch noisily over his bent knees.

The foot still in its boot was lying on its side, blood having pooled into the sand, turning it black. We stood at a crossroads. One path led to the entrance of the farmstead, and the other led back into the dense forest. The heavy, misty air felt smothering, blanketing all noises except Rodric's vomit hitting his shoes, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled at the scene. 

I crouched for a closer look. The foot had been ripped off; bone jutted from the ruined flesh like a grotesque spear, tendons trailing like snapped ribbons. Judging by the volume of blood pooled beneath it, it had happened while he was still alive.

It was the kind of incident no one walked away from.

Walked away, I snorted quietly. Gods, I was a dick sometimes.

Arlo raised a single brow at me, and I stood, ignoring his subtle comment on my lack of decorum. At least I knew how funny I was.

“Do we know whose foot this is?” I asked, taking off my calfskin gloves, and turned towards Johnith, my captain, a grey, middle-aged, salty man with a wrinkled face and a hoarse voice.

“No, Milady. It could be any number of the men working here.” He reported. “Orin has done a perimeter search, and the farmstead is empty.” He turned away from me, “Pull yourself together, boy. Or you will be back on gate duty before day's end.”

“Sorry, Sir,” Rodric stammered and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, face a sickly green that clashed with his red hair. 

I sighed loudly; there was only one direction this day was going, and with a severed foot in a crossroads, it was bound to be downhill from here. 

But that was part of the job.

Steel sang as I unsheathed the sword at my hip and looked around at the five anxious faces waiting for my lead. These men were my hand-picked guards, my Right Hands, the highest sect of the King's guard. All chosen, maybe for reasons not apparent to anyone but me, and no one questioned my choice; King Malric made sure of that a long time ago. 

“Rodric, can you tell me what is strange about the foot?” I asked, and Rodric's face paled even further under my attention. 

He looked young; having just completed his service made him at least nineteen, maybe twenty; his long frame had that wiry gangliness of a man still with his toes in boyhood. Despite that, he might yet prove to be the most useful out of all my guards if he could stop vomiting.

Rodric swallowed again and said in a thin voice, “It's only a foot, Lady Panithea.”

Dax snorted, and Johnith's face looked like it was turning purple. “Forget the gate, I say we just leave him here,” Orin muttered and pushed his shoulder-length chestnut hair out of his murky blue eyes and tucked it behind an ear.

“I mean, it’s just the foot.” Rodric’s voice cracked, pitching higher with every word. “No drag marks, no droplets… nothing. It’s just a foot in a puddle, which is very fucking weird, because where is the rest of him?” He flung his lanky arms wide, the gesture as desperate as his tone.

“Fucking weird indeed,” I admitted with a grim smile, and I looked at Johnith, who nodded his head in the smallest gesture of unconvinced approval, and Rodric looked like he deflated an inch. 

"Johnith, you take Rodric. Arlo, you are with me; Dax and Orin split up left and right. We don't know what this is, so protect yourself.” I turned to look up at the thick carpet of grey clouds above us, found the dull luminous orb passing as the sun and frowned. "What is that? Five hours until sunset?" I asked no one in particular. 

“Four." Dax corrected and pulled an arrow from the quiver on his back and notched it. 

"And a three-hour ride back to Craggen. So be quick about it; I don’t want to be in these woods after dark. I like my feet where they are."

"Yes, Milady." They all chortled, and I extended my sword hand, pommel facing the dark sky, blade pointed down over the foot. One by one, each guard placed their sword hand over mine, and the back of my mind melted into spaces and colours not my own. 

I rifled through their minds, like sifting through a bag of pennies for the skills I liked to borrow. Johnith was an excellent swordsman. Orin had drastically improved sight and hearing. Dax was a master with a bow. Arlo could poison or kill anything with a dagger. And then there was Rodric, the unfortunate ginger. His mind was chaos breeding order, like a room of a million vibrating strings, bright and restless, crossing and reconnecting in strange patterns, noticing what others missed, such as the missing blood trail.

I saw all their sparkling threads of power and pulled. 

I'd often wondered if they could feel me rummaging in their minds, like a pervert in an underwear drawer borrowing what I pleased. But Adrian, one of only two people who knew about this talent, had said that it was imperceptible. 

That suited me just fine.

More accurately, it suited King Malric. 

My talent for mindfuckery was what made me his spymaster, a position only second to his heir. This and the fact that he owned me. Lady was just a title stitched over the ugly truth. I had been bought as a child, and no matter how decorative the thin band looked, it was still a slave collar. One I could never remove. 

I took the skills I wanted, lowered my hand, and theirs returned to hilts and bows. 

Orin and Dax split off left and right to make their way around the back of the buildings. Johnith and a very shaky Rodric started up the main road leading into the farmstead. 

"Tell me about this place," I asked Arlo as I glanced down at my hands, at the indigo ink across my knuckles, and pulled on my black gloves. The jittery feeling of stolen skills moved through me like a thousand sparkling threads that made my fingers shake, and I fought the urge to roll my neck and run my tongue over my teeth.

“Harriston Farm is run by Tom and his wife, Alice. Home to three generations of farmers. The family includes twelve members and ten farmhands who live and work on the property.” He unsheathed his dagger and spun it around his palm a few times in a habit I instantly wanted to mimic, just to feel the movement of it in my hand. 

“A trader arrived early this morning and found the farm deserted and in ruins. He rode to Craggen and informed the guard." He turned to look at me through the blond hair that fell into his blue eyes, his expression hard. "He said there was nothing but blood."

"And one foot," I added dryly, not letting my unease show. 

"Do you think this could be… another incident?" 

I gripped the hilt of my dagger and sword, trying to push against the shake in the centre of me that started when I borrowed too much.  

“It can't be the Rues," I said simply. "The Spine melted two months ago, and they are not stupid enough to get stuck here when they know we have no food to steal?" 

He made a sound of agreement at the back of his throat and looked up the road. Johnith and Rodric had just entered a large building with part of its roof burnt and collapsed. 

"Oh Gods," Rodrick shouted somewhere out of sight, sounding like he had stumbled wildly and tripped. 

Arlo and I shared a concerned look. 

We started up the road behind them, and I pulled the threads of Orin's skills into my veins; suddenly, the misted air wasn't so silent. My hearing stretched, snapping wide like a sail catching a breeze. The distant forest noises, the drip of something on leaves, and the cautious steps of the men's boots suddenly sharpened around me. 

Creak. 

My head snapped in the direction of the farmhouse, a sound like weight shifting on old wood. Distant but distinctive enough to be out of place. 

"I hear something," I whispered as we continued up the road. Arlo turned to look at me; his dagger spun around his palm again. 

“Ahead?" He whispered, and I nodded.

We stopped at the first splattering of blood, crimson over a whitewashed fence, a single bloodied handprint smeared along the edge of the gate, like someone had run and gotten this far. 

But no further. 

Dread coiled through my stomach at the sight. The gate opened on one hinge, and we made our way into what looked like a giant yard, buildings flanking on all sides, with a well in the centre. What must have once been a beautifully kept garden was now a trampled mess of ruined flowers. 

I swallowed the bile in the back of my throat; the trader had been right about the blood; it was everywhere. It travelled and traversed in no discernible direction. Splashed and dripped over the grass around a well.

The disturbing scene was only amplified by the unnerving quiet. There should have been chickens and a few dogs or cats lying around. The barn should have housed the long-horned goats or the short-haired boars, the only things that thrived at this altitude on the densely forested slopes. Where there should have been life, there was only evidence of death and an unnerving quiet. 

I looked around the ruin; despite the two excruciatingly difficult years we had suffered since our neighbour kingdom, Valmere, had severed all trade with us, the Harrison Farm seemed to have been prospering, better than most. 

Until now.

“I don't see any bodies," Arlo commented, his handsome face sharp with disgust and something that might have been fear. I made no comment and scanned the crimson-flecked yard. My eyes snagged on the well; something about it was disturbing in a way that pulled at my threads, like oily fingers trying to grasp eels in my gut. 

I took a step closer, then another; with each step, death whispered louder to me. I palmed my hunting dagger in my left hand, keeping my sword tight in my right, and flicked Arlo's skills to my fingertips in a webbing of gold and power.

My heart accelerated as I quickly peered over the edge and down into the cobbled depths; blood had even dripped down into the darkness.

I swallowed the urge to be sick. There was so much of it that it looked like the darkness started at the lip of the cobblestone and ran from red to black as it disappeared. 

"It's even in the well," I whispered to Arlo as he stepped over a puddle that was so wide it must have been someone's whole life force and looked down into the darkness.

"The Rues didn't do this.” He turned to look at me, brows pulled low over his blue eyes. “This has to be another incident." 

Creak.

I spun towards the farmhouse at the end of the yard, where I heard the faintest shifting of old wooden floorboards. Arlo showed no signs of having heard it, but Orin was already crossing the little porch that ran the full length of the front of the building and vanished behind the blue door.

"I hear something in the farmhouse," I whispered, and his eyes flicked to mine. His powerful body shifted into a fighter stance, and we started across the ruined garden.

Four rocking chairs lay smashed and scattered across the deck, their broken legs echoing the horrors of the foot at the crossroads. Blue and white flowerpots that once lined the deck's edge lay shattered; rich earth tumbled out of them like pulled guts, trampled petals strewn everywhere. 

I crouched down, gloved fingers touching a trail of empty space. 

The floorboard creaked again, and I flinched, but I could pick out Orin’s footsteps making their way up the stairs. I pressed a hand to my fluttering heart and looked back down at the trail.

"Arlo, look at this," I whispered and pointed to the single trail of bare footprints leading out of the house. 

I looked up at him, his expression hard and severe. "Surely it would have taken at least ten people to kill twenty-two? Maybe more?” I stood and dusted off my gloves, hand instantly going back to Stabby, my favourite black-hilt dagger. “Even our women can give the Rues hell, and this stead was mostly men. These people would have put up a hell of a fight. But there is only one set of footprints leaving?” 

Arlo made a sound in the back of his throat that I took as agreement. He wasn't much for speculation, whereas it helped me think. 

He inclined his head to the door, daggers ready, crossed the deck and pushed it open. 

The first room was too dark and smoky to make sense of what we were seeing. I scanned the room, my horror only growing at a steady incline. Some of the leather chairs had been overturned, and a set of cream curtains had been ripped from the wall and lay over a low table, making a mockery of a white funeral shroud that we used to cover the dead, because there were no bodies here. And everywhere drops and puddles, splatters and sprays of red decorated the room.

When I couldn't look anymore, I turned from the scene and entered a kitchen which lay off to the left of the main room. It was small and neat, with its jugs of fresh herbs lined up in front of the window where the buttery morning sun was meant to catch them. Polished copper pots and pans hung from a shelf, but they had no shine in the heavy grey light. The worn wooden dining room table had been set for dinner; cold and congealed soup still sat in bowls, milk and ale in jugs, and a wide flat platter piled high with dark bread rolls. A precious meal, more than most had, waiting for a family, for the noise and relief after a long day. But all that was left of this nightmare was a dark bloodstain in front of that cooking fire, now burnt to ash, and a wide maroon smear that went into the main room and stopped at the door.

"They were just about to have dinner," Arlo stated, having entered through a door at the end of the kitchen. 

“It would have been easier to sneak in in the middle of the night. Take out as many farmhands as possible while they slept, then use the confusion and darkness to get into the farmhouse.” He shook his head, looking down at the laid table. "But this happened in daylight, with everyone awake and spread out over the farm finishing up the day's chores."

"We still don't know how many people died. Some could have escaped to the forest," I countered, looking out the window across a short clearing that circled all the farm buildings to where the forest started, a wall of dense green.

"We could bring the dogs back tomorrow, but it would be no use if it rains, and by the looks of it, it will. The best we can hope for is that someone turns up on a neighbouring farm or..." Arlo didn't finish his sentence before a scream rent the air and an almighty crash rattled the ceiling above us.

Fear moved over my skin like lightning, and we both spun out of the kitchen and up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Orin!" 

My eyes snagged on a hall of half-open doors. One hanging on only a single hinge. A discarded child's shoe. A torn pink cloak spilling out of a bedroom. The river of blood droplets got denser as we sprinted to the door at the end of the hall.

I heard him take a deep inhale and cough. No other sounds, just a shifting of wood, and we exploded into a large bedroom, swords drawn. Orin lay on his back under a broken roof support beam, dust and wood everywhere.  

"Are you alright?" Arlo shouted, leaning down to shift a thick wooden beam off his chest. Orin groaned and rolled over onto his side, coughing as spit dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

I looked around the room; it must have belonged to Tom and Alice. It was large, dominated by a beautiful red brick fireplace; its autumn tones matched a patchwork quilt that lay across the foot of the bed. White lace curtains framed the windows that looked out over the vast forest rising up steep mountainsides. The room looked almost normal.

Almost.

A giant hole was ripped through the roof. Blood drops led from it, across the floor, and out the door.

"I kept hearing a creak," Orin wheezed, rubbing his chest. His normally slicked-back hair hung loose and dishevelled, blue eyes streamed tears. 

"Then I noticed the blood. Wanted to see if it was on the roof too." He coughed and sat up, wincing.  

I looked up at the gaping hole torn straight through wood and terracotta tiles. With Orin's skills, I could see what he had; there were small traces of blood on the broken wooden planks around the hole. Something had broken through the roof and taken bodies out that way; that was why there was only one set of footprints leaving out of the house. 

Every instinct in my blood screamed to run. 

"We need to leave. Now." I barked, and we all turned as footsteps pounded down the hall, and Dax charged into the room, bow drawn.

"Get him up." I snapped before he had even skidded to a halt. "We are leaving!"

We met the others in the centre of the yard. Rodric had been crying; tears streaked down his baby face. Even Johnith looked visibly sick; his grey moustache twitched nervously above his thin lips. 

"Report." I barked.

"There are no bodies," Rodric whispered, his sword loose in his hand. He had not yet been battle-tested enough to know to keep it at the ready, and maybe Johnith had been right to be sceptical about him.

"I have checked the other buildings; no one is here," Dax added in a rush.

"I can't even find signs of the animals,” Johnith added, his hands constantly squeezing and relaxing on the hilts of his two short swords. “But nothing else seems to be taken. All of their food is still here. A few weapons here and there." 

“The Rues would never leave empty-handed.” I looked back down the road to where the foot waited. 

"There are also no blood trails or drag marks out of the village." My eyes snapped to Orin as he continued speaking. “And without the bodies, there is no way to tell if anyone got out alive.”

"No graves were dug in the yard? They are not stashed under any floorboards?" I asked hotly, throwing my arms wide. “Twenty-two people don't just vanish.”

"No, Milady. They are just gone," Dax answered simply, his face a mask of horror.

Just gone, the words struck a nerve through the heart of me so sharply that I put my hand to my chest. They are just gone, like we were when my mother must have woken in the morning, and we weren't in our beds, weren't in the village, and weren't on the island, stolen in the night. 

Sold.

Gone.

Suddenly, the well stood before me, a silent, gaping maw in the ruined yard. I did not even remember walking towards it, lost in my melancholy. Something about it tugged at the threads in my gut. 

‘Loooook,’ my secret sense whispered across the back of my mind, and my heart beat a staccato rhythm as dread churned through me. 

I leaned closer, trying not to touch the blood running in thick rivulets over the lip, and peered over the edge, down into the cobbled depths.

All I heard was my own ragged breath, in and out, in and out.

And then I felt it, a flicker from the dark.

In an instant, my sword was in my hand; the zing of steel on leather told me the others had drawn theirs too. They formed a wall behind me as the darkness seemed to breathe, to pulse, calling to me. 

But little did it know, I could touch death, and it would whisper its stories to me…

I closed my eyes and reached deep into the back of myself, where all the hidden things lay. I sucked in a breath and, on the exhale, pushed out with my secret sense. A bubble of gold light, visible only to me, expanded from my hands, and I pushed it down the well. It descended, trailing its softness over the red-slick walls.

Every inch inside was coated in blood.

I'd felt many deaths before, and each held its own visceral signature: sticky like honey, light like silk, cold like winter's first kiss, hot like moulting rage. But these deaths were nothing like that; they held only pain and terror, coated in a bitterness I had never touched before.

"I think…” I whispered, “I think the bodies are in the…" and as the sound left my lips, something at the bottom of the well pushed back against my bubble of light like hands sinking into soft dough, pushing at a barrier. 

Terror slammed into my soul, and I flinched back, smacking into someone.

“RRAAWWHHHH.” A deep, throaty scream split the air from the left of us, and then an answering call from the right.

“RRAAWWHHHH.” 

We reeled back from the well. Dax, with his bow already notched, ran to the corner of the nearest building to get a clean view of the forest. Orin was right behind him. "I can't see anything." He shouted. 

“RRAAWWHHHH.” 

Rodric dropped his sword; his hands were shaking too much to pick it up. He lost his footing and slipped, going down in a bloody puddle. 

"Pick up your fucking sword, Boy!" Johnith swore loudly and grabbed him by the scruff of his armour and hauled him up. 

I sheathed my sword and pulled the bow off my back and notched an arrow, aiming it off to the right. But there was no use having Dax's skills steadying my bow or Orin's for heightened senses when we couldn't see what we were fighting. 

"Get to the horses," I screamed and turned towards the only exit marked by the foot. "NOW."

Johnith and Rodric bolted. We all followed. Dax and I covered our retreat. Arrows notched. Our boots pounded the dirt. Rodric sobbed, gasping for breath. Johnith hauled him by his collar.

"Arlo, get the foot," I yelled, and he didn't break stride as he scooped it up and stashed it in a sack.

And we rode out of there to the sound of our horses' hooves pounding louder than our hearts and "RRAAWWHHHH" in our ears.