Kera made to help her, but Elix jerked her hands away and looked Kera in the eye. “Don’t.” She scrambled to her feet.
“Scoran and I will take care of the dead.” She spun around and left, her sword slapping the side of the leather trousers as she jerked on a pair of dark-brown gloves. They hid her bloodstained fingers, but not the pain of her loss.
Kera turned her attention to the little girl’s mother, the last of the wounded, but her thoughts stayed on Elix. She was like so many of the tainted. Her spirit had been bruised too many times by the firsts, becoming wary of anyone who held even the smallest measure of power.
Smoke soon filled the air, spinning a cloud of gray against the sun even though Elix and Scoran had taken the dead to the opposite side of the clearing. Using his magic, Scoran quickened the process, and all too soon, the wind pushed the ash along the ground until it covered the area in gray. Kera tried not to think of the life that now fed the earth. If she hadn’t left, could she have prevented all this? Yet if she hadn’t left, Blaze would never have entered the human realm and wouldn’t have been with her in the forest when the millispits found Reece. He and countless others could have died.
Here. There. It didn’t matter. Someone would suffer. Guilt pressed down on Kera, making her head ache and her hands shake.
Nausea twisted her stomach as she knitted the last inch of skin over the last wound. Finished, she stood, her feet unsteady beneath her. She had saved eight and lost three, one a little girl no older than five. Huddled together like refugees, the people she had helped stared up at her, waiting. She had no answers for them, but surely they could help her understand. “I don’t wish to upset you, but I need to know. Why did they attack you? What did they want?”
The woman Kera had seen the dark souls question blinked up at her. “They wanted you.”
Her? That didn’t make sense, but then life in Teag had ceased to make sense years ago. Without warning, her vision darkened and her knees buckled.
Scoran and Elix were beside her in an instant, catching her before she fell.
Lying on the ground, she blinked away the darkness and slowly pushed herself to her elbows. “I’m fine. Just a dizzy spell.”
A dozen hands shot out to press her back down. “You’ve done too much. You need to rest,” a villager said.
So many worried eyes stared down at her. She caught sight of Halim’s owlish gaze poking at her from afar. So young, yet so tough. He was Teag’s future. She couldn’t allow exhaustion and fear to steal that future from him. She’d fought her enemy and won the battle, but they would be back. She had to be ready. Not just her, all of them.
“I haven’t done enough.” Without thinking, Kera pulled more power into her.
She was suddenly reminded of something her father had said. He had known the Lost King by his first name, Baun. They had been friends, and even when Baun had been crowned, they stayed friends. When Baun first ruled, he would go for weeks without sleep because he was able to draw power from the earth at will, something most firsts couldn’t do. His drive to become the perfect king drove his need for power. Her father believed that constant need eventually caused an imbalance in Baun, and that imbalance affected his mind.
Had his insanity begun as simple as that? Wanting to help his people? Tearing through the energy until his body insisted he shut down? Had his extreme exhaustion caused his hate-filled delusions? From her position, her father’s theory was all too easy to believe.
And what did it mean that she could access the same power so easily?
Kera accepted the water Elix offered and shivered. Scoran placed his coat around Kera’s shoulders and sat next to her. After a few moments, the sallow cast to her skin pinkened and a collective sigh of relief passed through everyone. Yet all eyes stayed glued to her.
“What’s wrong? Why are you all staring?” Kera croaked out.
Scoran’s sharp gaze softened. “You’re a healer. The last healer died more than fifty years ago. Not just that, you sent the black souls away, something no other first could do, even if we combined our power.”
They all nodded. A girl with long, tangled brown hair hugged her knees. “They came in a rush of wind and darkness. Pulled us from our homes. No warning. No time to think.” She bit her lip and turned away, blinking back tears.
“You firsts did the same to my father and brother. They were in the field when they were taken. Beheaded and nailed to a post.”
The girl stared in horror at Elix. “Are we being justifiably punished, then? I deserved to be tortured? They deserved to die? Is that what you’re saying?”
Elix looked away and Scoran spoke up. “No. Never.”
“What were those things?” Kera had to know if what she saw was real.
A woman clutched her young son to her side. “I thought they were a myth. I should have known better. They are called the black souls.”
Kera thought back to all the stories she’d been told, and none had ever touched on anything like what she had seen.
“When I was younger,” Scoran said, his voice low and fearful, “an old man whispered a tale about the birth of the dark souls. They were—are—the creation of hate, and once made, nearly impossible to destroy. I never thought the tale was true. But to see them with my own eyes… I’ve not heard of anyone using dark magic for hundreds of years. I thought the art was lost.”
“Someone found it,” a man said.
“Someone always does,” another said.
“But who would do it?”
Elix hovered at the edge of the group, her face sour with hate. Bending, she scooped up a little girl who had lost her parents. “One of your kind, a first,” she said without any hesitance, “and not one I’d like to know. Talking about the dark souls, hearing the fear in our voices only makes them stronger and us weaker. I, for one, say we head back.”
As Elix carried the little girl away, the others straggled along behind her. Scoran leaned close. “Elix is right. Only a first would brave that kind of magic, though I personally know of no first with the kind of power it would take to conjure one dark soul, let alone so many.”
Kera stood, her feet steady, her vision clear. She brushed the dirt from her clothes as her mind spun with possibilities. “We have to find out who did this and why.”
“We will.” Scoran stood and squeezed her shoulder. “I know you wanted to leave, but if you had, everyone would have died. Thank you.”
Kera didn’t feel triumphant. She felt torn in two. If not for the voice…
She refused to analyze where it came from or how it had appeared in her head. She was just grateful for the help. “I cannot stay. You know that.”
His hand slipped from her shoulder, leaving the memory of warmth behind. “I know.” His brows stabbed together briefly. “We are not helpless, no matter what Signe would have you think.”
A gentle rise curved his lips, not exactly a smile, but a show of support she desperately needed. He eyed the sky. “It will rain soon. I should follow the others back to the village. I’ll tell your father what happened. He’ll know what to do.” Without waiting for her, he followed the others through the break in the wheat.
She marveled at his faith in her father. Once she had done the same, but her father had let Navar run wild without questioning his motives, and Teag had suffered for it. Still suffered. Yet, if anyone could unearth how to rid them of the dark souls, it was her scholarly father.
When Kera entered the path, she saw Halim. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and fell into step beside her when she drew near. He cleared his throat twice and peeked up at her several times before he spoke. “I’ve never seen anything like that. You were amazing. When we get to the village, everyone will be abuzz with what you did.”