The pain tugged at her, and she forced herself to ignore the tightness in her throat at his suffering. Focus on what you can do, focus on solvable problems, she thought. So she fetched a cup of water and dipped a cool cloth into it. She brushed the cloth across his forehead and his bright red cheeks as she looked him over. No obvious external wounds, but by the way he alternately rubbed at his neck, then tugged his cloak more tightly around him, something must be wrong with his neck. He groaned when she moved his head and batted at her hands when she reached for the clasp of his cloak. She stifled a sigh at his resistance, then pushed his hands away and yanked at the two sides of the cloak.
It tore apart, revealing the man’s neck. And around the man’s neck, a familiar metal torque—an echo of her nightmares—caught the glow of the firelight.
She leaped to her feet and drew her hidden dagger, her joints protesting at the speed of her movement.
The war had come back to her, in a way she’d tried to never think of again.
Her muscles tensed, and her heart raced as she crouched in a fighting stance, waiting for him to pounce. He didn’t look like a warrior—in fact, he looked more than half dead. But she had no idea the extent of the torque’s powers. For all she knew, it could make even the half dead fight like dragons.
“Please,” he muttered. “Help me.” He opened glassy eyes and looked up at her, pleading, clawing at his neck like an animal caught in a trap. “Don’t”—he shook his head slowly—“don’t let them have me.”
“Who? Why are you here?” A thought suddenly struck her with a wave of horror. “Do you know who I am? Were you here for me?”
But he had lapsed into unconsciousness, and no matter how she nudged at him—dagger at the ready—he only tossed feverishly.
She fetched some cord from a cupboard and bound him quickly to the bed, then backed away to a safer distance, where she could observe the man and think. She had to think, ignore emotion, ignore the queasy wash of sadness and anger and fear that lapped through her.
If someone was making these torques, something dangerous was on the horizon. Of course, it couldn’t be war again, not with the oathbound pact still in place. The rulers of both lands had sworn in carefully worded oaths that there would be no war between their countries, and that pact would have to be honored as long as the oathbinder lived. But even without causing outright war, the torque could make plenty of mischief.
Or maybe it had nothing to do with the tension between the two lands, but whatever it was, it had to be stopped.
As she settled onto the edge of her kitchen chair, her eyes were drawn to the torque again. It caught the firelight and flickered almost like a living thing. Where an opening should be, allowing the wearer to remove the torque from around the neck, there was only smooth metal. She couldn’t look away, and she couldn’t stop the memories that she’d tried to hide from for so many years.
The only other time she’d seen an object like this had been during the war, when Mollen had disappeared for two weeks, then suddenly come back, changed. They’d thought he was captured by the enemy while on a secret mission, so when he returned, she’d rejoiced and rushed to greet him. He didn’t even glance her way. She’d taken him to report to the commanding officers, hiding her pain at his treatment. Other soldiers had gathered to hear where he’d been. He’d stood in front of them all, and then, without any warning beyond one short cry of pain, he’d thrust his sword through the commander and started cutting down his fellow soldiers. His movements were jerky, not his usual perfect grace—almost like a separate battle raged within him. A strange metal torque around his neck shone in the sunlight as he moved.
The torque the stranger wore was the same. She examined it carefully. The skin around his neck was red and raw, and when she touched it, he moaned. She swallowed and closed her eyes against the man’s suffering, but that only took her back to Mollen. She had watched in shock for a moment; then she and several other soldiers had flown into action, striking at him with shocked rage. A part of her detached itself then, unwilling to feel the agony of that battle. Within minutes, he was dead, and Lina was numbly thankful that someone else had struck the fatal blow. She didn’t know if she could have survived killing him.
After Mollen’s death, several fae spellworkers—only the fae had magic, of course, and only a few truly understood how it worked—had studied the torque. It had been imbued with mindturning, a magic forbidden, and largely forgotten, for centuries. Mollen’s treachery was not his fault. Someone had broken his will, turned his mind, and sent him back as an assassin.
Now someone was using this magic again. The knowledge seared through her. Mollen. She’d tried so hard to forget him and the pain of his death. She’d turned that pain to good, to helping stop the war once and for all. Or at least for a long while, hopefully long enough for real peace to settle in. She’d sought—and found—her own measure of that peace.
But seeing that torque again . . . Rage burned within her, brilliant yellow and malleable like iron in the forge, waiting to be shaped to her purpose. Someone had dared to experiment with such brutal magic again, and it could not be tolerated. She could not tolerate it.
Lina crept back to the smithy to gather her tools and returned to her still-unconscious visitor.
She examined his neck and the torque again, then placed clamps on its edges and began to tighten them. Tricky work to remove the cursed item without killing the man beneath; she might have given up if she hadn’t known what it was. She gritted her teeth and continued applying pressure.
Finally, with a satisfying snap, the torque broke and fell to the dirt floor. The man breathed in sharply, then rolled to his side. He opened his eyes, glassy and unfocused. “Thank you,” he whispered, then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Who did this?” Lina asked, desperate now for answers. He didn’t respond. She nudged him, gently at first, but with increasing strength. “Where are they?” she asked, shaking him now.
Still no response. It was as if removing the torque had released him from life and pain. She watched helplessly as his breathing slowed, becoming gentler, softer, until it dwindled to nothing.
She leaned back, sighing. The yellow burning inside her dulled under the weight of death, and she swiped at her eyes.
She straightened his hands to his sides, swallowing to relax the shaking of her own hands. “From dust to dust,” she murmured over the body, speaking the human last rites. “From breath to tears.” She’d said these words over so many others, she hardly had to think about it. She paused, then added the fae blessing for good measure—more words she knew by heart. “Full circle, like the moon. Full season, like the earth. Rest now, beneath them both.” He didn’t look fae, but she knew very well there were plenty of mixed-bloods who could pass for human. The burning of iron on fae skin was the only foolproof way to tell, and since she hadn’t tried it on the poor tormented man, she’d never know if he was mixed-blood. The iron test didn’t work on the dead.
She closed her eyes for a moment of stillness. Fae or human, she wished him peace.
But the moment couldn’t last. What if he had been there for her? Did they know where and who she was?
Probably not. Solime was a busy town despite its size, with people coming through all the time. It was likely just the wildest of luck that he had happened upon Lina.