The girl heard the fishermen whisper about her. She spent her days huddled in a corner of the boat, listening to the slosh of the waves and the uncertain murmurs of the sunburned men. She rubbed the place on her arm that had once boasted a pearl bracelet; she’d paid for her passage with it.
Sometimes the girl remembered her name. Other times she wanted to forget.
She gave them her pearl earrings in exchange for a rowboat. When they lowered her into the sea a healthy distance from her destination—they would go no nearer, not on their lives—the men called her a fool as she rowed away.
The girl’s arms were always sore now, and her mind distant. Only half a heart beat in her body.
They took something precious from me. She could barely recall who “they” were, but she hated them.
Though she could forget her own name, she never abandoned her purpose.
So she rowed to shore, a sun-bleached expanse that grew impossibly large the nearer she came. Gulls cried overhead as if calling her back from the brink.
But she had her dagger and her purpose.
By the time she reached land, the sun was at its apex in the azure sky. Sweat soaked, she staggered onto the beach and gazed up a winding path to the top of a craggy promontory. The wind whispered along the shore. There was no sound of life here. Not a bird or beast, not a human voice. There was only the sea and the empty sky.
The girl climbed the path, walking because she could no longer fly.
She came to the top of the cliff, her sandaled feet white with limestone dust. Blading a hand over her eyes, she found the surrounding area filled with statues.
White chalky faces. Wildly gesticulating poses, backs warped and stretched, arms flung high into the air. Some poor bastard had been frozen standing on one foot. The dust whispered among these trapped souls.
Beings suspended in time. If she listened closely, the girl could hear the hum of magic.
The Chaos House. She stood among them, these prisoners of order’s stasis.
Once, a red-haired girl had said that the blood of a noble heart could break such a spell.
Her right hand traced the gilded hilt of her dagger, the sole luxurious item she had kept. She had come to this land as a pilgrim in rough cloth and sandals. She had nothing. She was nothing.
The wind loosened a coil of her blond hair, dancing it behind her like the tail of a kite.
Her hands were numb as she grasped her dagger. Fear fluttered through her, but she had already suffered a much greater agony.
Even if the curse would not break, better not to go on like this.
And if it did break…
If it did, the weak would be culled, and the strong survive. Survive to fight a war, to put down chaos once again and uplift order. The empire needed to be tested, that was all. The empire, now ruled by that “four-headed dragon,” the Sarkoni. The abomination.
If she must become the destroyer of all she held dear to save it, she would.
Her body trembled as she drew the blade.
When faced with weakness…
She closed her eyes and scarcely felt it when the knife entered. She only grunted when it angled underneath her ribs.
…cut out its heart.
The girl collapsed to the ground, her blood soaking into the earth.
As she faded, she realized that death was not as she’d imagined, a black depth that stole over her like the tide. It was hot white. The sun’s blaze turned her closed eyelids red so that she could pick out the veins.
She barely heard it when they began to move around her. Barely heard the crunch of their footsteps. Her eyes fluttered open when someone stood over her, blocking out the sun. She gazed up into a shadowy face.
“Not dead yet?” the person whispered.
“No,” she croaked. “Not…yet.”
Hyperia of the Volscia gave a bloody smile.