Maybe we’re more alike than I first thought. Maybe we can even learn to trust each other. Fully trust each other.
As quickly as the thought hits me, I reject it. Gabriel should never trust me fully.
ChapterForty
Early morning light wanes through the open barn door. I left it ajar while I attend to my chores. Birds belting out a melody strum to where I sit, milking Jersa. The cow happily chomps on hay as I collect milk in a terracotta jar.
The door creaks as it opens wider, and Everly steps through. My breath catches at her disheveled hair, and her surcoat covered in dust, like she ran to this barn.
Her wide eyes meet mine, and my heart sinks. “It’s Kassandra. She’s really upset. Will you come and speak to her?”
“Of course.” I finish with Jersa and secure the barn door before following Everly.
As we walk through the town, we receive the same shunning as usual. We might as well not exist. To these people, we are nothing. No, we are less than nothing.
The moment we stop in front of the tiny, run-down cottage, I am struck by the red circle splattered in paint across the front of the house. The stain covers the entire expanse.
Red poppies scatter the grass, driving a dagger of fear into my heart. I try to not show it as I follow Everly into the cottage, but those damn flowers and what they mean for the Bloodstones will not leave my thoughts.
Red poppies mean death.
No!
I dig my nails into my palm, sinking pain into my skin. It doesn’t ease the waves of trepidation billowing around me. Everything in me wants to race back to the grass, pick up every poppy and throw them at the people who dared to put them there. No, everything in me wants to punish the people responsible.
My fingers burn with the urge. I clasp them together as I trail Everly into the room she shares with Kassandra.
Kassandra sits on the center of her mattress, her gaze locked on the far wall, her eyes void of emotion.
I sit next to her and try to think of any words she’d find comforting. Nothing comes to mind.
After a while of sitting in silence, Kassandra speaks. “I cannot wed Luc.”
“Oh, Kass,” Everly says.
Kassandra jerks her hand across her eyes and speaks in a voice riddled with pain. “For as long as I can remember, Luc is the only man I thought about. The only man I wanted. The only man I could see myself having children with.” She sniffs and stares down at her hands. “Our people will not let me have him.”
Everything in me wants to tell her to ignore them. Those red poppies keep me silent. Those flowers are a warning as deadly as if they left a cobra in her bed.
“They’re not my people,” Everly says bitterly.
“Oh, Evie.” Kassandra shakes her head. “Don’t speak that way.”
Everly tugs at the red circle on her surcoat. “If they were my people, I wouldn’t wear this. If they were my people, they wouldn’t turn away when I walk past. We are nothing to them, Kass.”
Kassandra sniffs again. “I wanted to be the change.”
“They will never change,” Everly says bitterly. “They’re incapable of change.”
“I was removed from my training,” I say, my voice pitched low as I reveal a truth I never speak of, “because I couldn’t heal with magic like the rest of the people in my tribe.”
Kassandra’s eyes widen. “You cannot heal with magic?”
I open and close my fingers as I recall everything that happened with Praxis. “No. I couldn’t. I was shunned, ridiculed, and removed like a dead limb from a thriving tree. Everyone around me had powerful gifts. I had none.” I take a deep breath. “People are the same everywhere. Not just here.”
Everly stares at the far wall as she speaks. “I would live alone in a vast wilderness if I could.”
“I think that would be a glorious existence,” I admit.
