Chương 4: The Fall

As Elias began to cry over the uncertain fate of our parents, noise rose through the forest: metal clinking, dogs barking, and branches snapping beneath hurried feet. How charming. This was about to become a party. My enjoyment of tormenting the man who had helped make my first eighteen years a private little hell ended far sooner than I would have liked. A few moments later, they arrived. They were not soldiers, exactly, because that would've given them far too much dignity.

They were villagers carrying weapons, their fear dressed up as righteousness. Rusted swords and cracked pikes filled their hands, while pitchforks trembled beside wood axes and hunting knives. A few men carried bows, though they looked as if they had only ever fired at deer and particularly threatening fence posts. They looked less like righteous defenders than a frightened village mob pretending courage was the same thing as conviction. A low chuckle escaped me, and several of them flinched at the sound.

Elias saw them and nearly collapsed with relief.

"She killed them!" he screamed as he tried to dart around me.

"She killed our parents! She killed Lord Vane! This bitch is insane!" I shifted a single step. It was not much, but it was enough. Elias froze, trapped between me and the cliff. The villagers spread into a rough half-circle, their torches hissing in the damp night. Their faces were familiar in the worst possible way. The butcher who had once refused to sell me decent cuts unless my brother was present stood among them.

Beside him was the baker's wife, who always smiled at Elias and pretended not to see me, along with the blacksmith's son, who had thrown the first stone in the square. All of them stared at me with the same accusation burning in their eyes. There was no curiosity, horror, or even confusion. They had already decided what I was.

"Demon," one man whispered.

"Witch," another muttered.

"Spawn of the Dark Below!" someone shouted from the back, made braver by the abundance of bodies between us. I studied them more closely and became aware of every frightened heartbeat pounding beneath their skin, each pulse carrying warm blood through fragile bodies that suddenly seemed frighteningly easy to break. A few hours ago, that thought would've horrified me. Now it merely interested me, which was certainly new and perhaps a little troubling.

Ever since I changed, something inside me had begun rearranging the worth of things. Human lives still registered in my mind, but not with the weight they should've carried. They felt smaller now, softer and more temporary, like brief candles flickering in a room I had somehow stepped above. Was this what predators felt, or had I always been capable of such thoughts, merely waiting for teeth to give them shape?

"She murdered her own blood!" the blacksmith's son shouted as he lifted a rusted blade.

"My blood sold me." My voice carried cleanly through the trees, and the villagers fell quiet. I smiled without warmth.

"Lord Vane bought me. My father counted the coins, my mother looked away, and my brother thanked me for purchasing his house." Elias's face twisted.

"Liar!" I glanced back at him.

"You were more honest when you were crying." He swallowed before immediately turning toward the mob.

"She's twisting it!" he shouted.

"She killed them, and now she's making excuses! You saw her! You all saw her!" Of course… There he was, the real Elias. He was the sniveling little green-tea bitch who smiled when he held power, begged whenever he lost it, and stabbed with whatever hand happened to be free. A creature made from pretty hair, blue eyes, and filth. What kind of brother refused to protect his younger sister? Mine, apparently. The villagers began shouting over one another.

"Burn her!"

"Cut off her head!"

"Don't let her speak!"

"Monster!"

"Vane was her husband!" That accusation made me laugh, loudly enough that several weapons rose in alarm.

"My husband?" I asked.

"Is that what we call men who purchase bound girls now? How efficient. Marriage sounds much cheaper when consent is optional." No one seemed to appreciate that observation. Their faces twisted into something even uglier. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Perhaps they didn't know the full story, or perhaps they knew and simply didn't care. In truth, I doubted the distinction mattered.

They had first come to watch me burn, and now they had come to hunt me down. Whatever sympathy they might once have possessed had died long before I ever laid a hand on them. Did they deserve to die? Probably, but whether I could kill all of them was another question entirely. My new body was strong, fast, and hungry. It had torn through rope and iron, survived fire burning at my feet, and shrugged off blows that should've broken bone, but I still didn't understand its limits.

A rusty sword might do nothing, or it might open me from throat to stomach. A pitchfork might bend against my skin, or it might pin me long enough for fire to finish what the village square had started. I was angry, not stupid, and I had no intention of dying merely to satisfy my fury. Instead of charging the mob, I turned back toward Elias. He noticed immediately.

"No." The villagers shouted louder behind me, but their noise became distant and meaningless, little more than a storm raging beyond thick glass. I walked slowly toward my brother. He backed away until loose stones skittered over the cliff's edge and vanished into the darkness below.

"Helena," he whispered.

"Please. Please, listen to me."

"My dear brother," I murmured, allowing sweetness to drip from every word, "whom I love so very much." His face crumpled.

"Please." I stopped close enough to touch him as wind rose from the sea below, wild and cold, whipping my silver-white hair across my blood-stained face.

"For once in your life," I asked, "why don't you support me?" His head tilted slightly in confusion. Then my meaning reached him a moment too late. I lunged. My arms locked around him like iron bands, and the force of my momentum carried us both over the edge. The villagers screamed, although Elias screamed considerably louder.

For a single heartbeat, there was no ground beneath us, only air, wind, and my brother thrashing helplessly in my grip while the cliff wall blurred past in jagged streaks of stone and shadow. I wasn't completely certain that I would survive the fall, but instinct whispered it would be fine. So I gambled. My cushion came free of charge.

"Thank you, Elias." He stared at me with his mouth hanging open and his eyes stretched wide. Then his body struck the rocks below. The impact shattered through him first, and I felt bone break beneath me as the breath fled his body. One final, useless jerk passed through the brother who had once been cherished more than my entire existence. The force still drove agony through my ribs and shoulder, sharp enough to turn the world white for an instant.

I rolled away from him just as the cliffside vanished beneath me, and then I plunged into the violent seawater below. Cold swallowed me as the sea closed over my head, silencing everything. There was no mob, no barking dogs, and no Elias. There was only water, darkness, and the strange rhythm of my body knitting itself back together. A rib had broken, perhaps more than one, and I felt the bones shifting beneath my skin as they healed. The pain faded almost as quickly as it had arrived. Beneath the water, I smiled.

Far above me, distant voices shouted from the cliff while torches moved like fireflies against the black sky. They could believe we had both died in the fall. Only one of us had. I turned away from the shore and swam into the darkness, my silver hair trailing behind me like moonlight spilling through blood-black water. My world had always been painfully small. It had consisted of a bedroom, a parlor, and a dining table where I was noticed only when I did something wrong.

I had lived in the same village for eighteen years and somehow barely knew it, because wandering too far from my father's house had always been treated like a crime. They hadn't restricted me because they loved me. They had been afraid I would run before they could cash me in. I had tried to escape seven times. Every attempt ended the same way.

I was dragged home, beaten, locked away, and left in bed for weeks, sometimes even a month, while my body healed and my family reminded me that daughters didn't get to choose where they belonged. Escaping had been my dream for as long as I could remember. Now I was free, and the thought filled me with joy. The sea pulled and shoved around me, with dark waves lifting me one moment and trying to swallow me the next.

Salt burned my eyes, and my silver-white hair streamed behind me like a pale banner through the black water. Still, I did not tire. My arms sliced through the water again and again while my legs kicked steadily behind me. My breath remained calm, and whatever this new body had become, it didn't seem particularly interested in weakness.

I didn't know whether a search party would follow the coast, whether dogs could track me through seawater, or whether men carrying torches and rusted swords would grow brave enough to climb down the cliff in search of a corpse. For that reason, I kept swimming until the firelight vanished in the distance. Only then did I turn toward shore. By the time I dragged myself from the water, the night had begun to thin.

Sand clung to my bare feet while cold air moved across my exposed skin, and when I looked down at myself, a grimace pulled at my lips. What little clothing remained barely deserved the name. Blood had dried across my body in dark patches, and although the saltwater had washed some of it away, it hadn't removed nearly enough. I needed clothes, preferably before anyone saw me. Walking around half-naked and covered in blood would only invite problems, and I had already endured a very full evening of those.

I crossed the beach and entered the trees. This forest was different from the one near my village. It seemed older and denser, filled with strange calls and damp shadows. Branches scratched my arms as I moved through the undergrowth, but each mark closed almost as soon as it appeared. A pair of wolves found me before dawn. I heard them long before they appeared their padded steps and low breathing stirring the leaves beneath them.

Two lean gray wolves emerged from the trees, yellow eyes fixed on me as they crept closer, hungry enough to test whatever wandered alone in the dark. They managed only three steps before stopping. One lowered its head while the other gave a quiet whine, and then both turned and bolted into the trees without so much as a backward glance. A bear reacted much the same way an hour later. It lumbered toward me through the underbrush, massive and visibly irritated, until the wind shifted.

The creature froze with its dark eyes fixed upon mine, and every hair along its back rose. The bear began backing away, slowly at first and then considerably faster. So animals knew, sensed, or smelled whatever I had become. The word settled inside me with disturbing ease. That realization should've frightened me, but instead, I found it convenient. By sunrise, the trees had begun to thin. Golden light spilled through the branches, and I stopped beneath it on instinct.

For a moment, I waited for pain, fire, or smoke, some proof that the stories from my half-remembered first life hadn't lied about vampires and sunlight. Nothing happened. The sun touched my skin, warm and harmless. That was all. At least I didn't sparkle. I had no idea why that thought occurred to me. I looked down at my pale hands before raising my gaze toward the brightening sky.

"Well," I muttered, "that is useful." Beyond the trees sat a small town. It was neither large nor wealthy, but it was still larger than my village had been. Wooden houses lined the road, smoke curled lazily from chimneys, and several shops stood near the center with painted signs swaying in the morning breeze. There was a tailor, a bakery, a general store, and a washhouse. People had already begun moving through the streets.

Men carried crates between wagons, children chased one another through the road, and women walked with baskets resting against their hips and shawls wrapped around their shoulders. Several of those women were close to my size. I stepped back into the shade of the trees and watched them. Asking nicely seemed like a reasonable first attempt. If they refused, my gaze settled on a woman folding clean laundry behind the washhouse. Taking what I needed would be simple.

The thought came without guilt, but that no longer frightened me. Eighteen years of fear had been enough. I was done.