by Emma Hamm
A final heartbeat, thudding against her ears like a great bang. Chiming that her time was up.
Her father, staring up at her with blood splattered on his cheek and pooling around his torso. He couldn’t survive this. Even if she could lift the boards. Though they could solve any mystery together, it appeared this was the one that would best them.
She couldn’t leave him here to die alone.
Black spots danced in her vision.
She was his daughter. He deserved more than the cold and mud.
Should she put him out of his misery? Could she...?
A rock would do it, but she wasn’t strong enough to hit him just once and…
No. She couldn’t do it, and that would become the greatest regret of her life. Amicia stumbled to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.
He breathed out a long, pitying sigh. “I never asked. Now go.”
Casting one last look back to her father, Amicia ran through the streets once more.
She traced her journey back to the house through eyes blurred with tears. She hated the monsters. Every last one of them could burn in Hell for all she cared after what they had done to her city and all the people she loved.
The beating whoosh of wings in the air heralded another Dread who wanted to snatch her off the street. Amicia ducked underneath an overhang outside one of the houses, narrowly missing the clawed hands that reached for her.
Chest heaving, she stared at the Dread as it landed on hands and knees just down the street. Like the other, this one was monstrous. The creature stood, granite skin rippling, then turned to stare back at her.
Slitted yellow eyes bore into her soul. It flared its leathery wings wide and let out a low hiss as it stepped toward her on legs that were wrong. Its feet were elongated, creating the illusion of knees that bent backward.
Rage burned her chest. She would not be afraid of this one.
Baring her teeth, she hissed, “You must be faster than that, monster.”
Amicia reached behind her, twisted the doorknob, and disappeared through the home. She didn’t look to see if the inhabitants were still there. She knew this place like the back of her hand.
Their garden connected with hers. She could run through this house, out the door, over the fence, and already be inside her father’s… her… her quaint home before the creature thought to fly up and over.
A great banging knocked the front door off its hinges. It fell with a crash, dust buffeting up from the ground.
Amicia’s breath sawed out of her chest as she burst into movement. Ten steps and she was at the back door, frantically shoving it open and racing out through the mud. The creature, however, was stuck within the house. She heard the flipping crash of the family’s wooden table and the blast of plates shattering on the floor.
Just a little farther now.
Amicia placed a hand on the fence and rolled over the top, falling onto her behind hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. Wheezing, she got back to her feet and ran to the back door of her home.
Plunging into the darkness, she slammed the door behind her and turned the lock. That would take the creature a few minutes to figure out if the door could hold.
Amicia spun, skirts whirling in a wide arc around her, and raced up the spiral staircase to her father’s room.
She ran down the hall, past her own bedroom where there were items she would love to grab. Her mother’s hairbrush. Her first kit of tools that her father had given to her on her sixth birthday. Things that had become dear to her heart.
The door downstairs cracked. When wood splinters hit the ground like rain, there was less time than she’d imagined. The solid wood held, but the creature would soon render it to pieces.
“Think, Amicia,” she scolded herself. Legends said the creatures could hear better than they could see. Which meant the bat-like Dread would search for her by listening. Perhaps the sound of her breathing was too light, so she would need to stay quieter than a mouse.
She slowed her thundering steps and tiptoed to her father’s room. Though the banging on the door made her wish to sprint away, she knew better.
The door creaked under her hand. She winced, but pushed it open and slipped through once there was enough room. Then she turned to the beloved chamber where her father had always been.
His tinkering table was in the corner, taking up most of the space. The window above it revealed the night sky beyond. Moonlight highlighted a wooden desk that had seen better days, chipped by countless hammers and metal. A bookshelf stood beside it, filled to the brim with diagrams and books on the human body. Her father liked to learn whatever he could, even if that meant his cot was shoved in the back corner.
She hadn’t known “heartbreak” wasn’t just a dramatic term. It felt as though the organ was splitting in two within her. Every inhale was an agony when she didn’t know if this was the moment when her father died.
Would she feel it? She had left him alone in the street, but would she know when he passed?
Hands shaking, she walked to the desk and scooped up her father’s greatest possession. The locket had once been her mother’s. The portrait within it had faded greatly in the years since her passing. Her father and herself, the two people her mother had loved more than anything else.
Amicia secured the necklace around her throat. Now, she would have them both with her forever.
Move the bookshelf, she heard her father’s voice in her head. All she could wish was that she’d asked him how.
Downstairs, a crashing roar made the walls shake. The door had fallen, and the Dread had entered her home.
Amicia was running out of time. She placed her shoulder against the side of the bookshelf and shoved. The great screeching of metal feet hurt her ears, and worse, let the Dread know where she was.
“Come on,” she muttered as the clacking of claws started up the stairwell. “Come on.”
Finally, it shifted enough to create a gap in the stone wall. A small one, perhaps, but enough for her father to have placed a lever.
Another door hit the stone, nearer this time. Perhaps her smell was stronger there. Whatever the reason, the creature had unknowingly given her enough time to do what her father had wanted.
“Please help them,” she whispered, then grasped the lever and pulled hard.
At first, nothing happened. She lost all the breath in her lungs. Had she not done it right? Had she failed her father?
Then a creaking noise that rocked through the city and filtered through the windows.
She rushed to her father’s desk, clutched the edge, and stared out the glass at the braziers surrounding her home. The fires that were supposed to keep out the Dread.
The braziers, which lit Little Marsh as the beacon of the North, all fell as one. The oil that filled the great cauldrons spilled out onto the streets in rivers of fire. The fortress at the center of the city was engulfed in the distance.
Thus, the city of Little Marsh burned.
Wind blew through the window and screams rode upon it. Screams of the dying. Screeches begging for help that would not come. Wails of her people damning her for eternity.
The Dread rose in a great wave of darkness from the fortress. Hundreds of them, lifting as one into the air. She hadn’t even seen them attached to the silhouette but now could see how many had been attacking her home.
So many monsters, each turning away from the fortress and instead gliding over the streets. As she watched, one dipped low and then rose, a struggling person clutched within its claws.
The flames blurred as her eyes filled with tears. The creature in her house screamed as smoke seeped into the building.
She had to run. Flee from the fires like her father had said. But how could she?
She had just destroyed her home. She had killed all those people who’d sought haven in the fortress, and her father would die alone in the street, burning to death.
“No,” she whispered. “Anything but this.”
There were no other endings, and her father had been right. This was the only choice to make. But her heart didn’t want to acknowledge the truth. Her heart wanted to punish her hands for the blood now on them.
She curled her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms until they sliced through flesh. Blood dripped between her fingers. The simple pain wasn’t enough.
Run, her father’s voice echoed in her mind. Whatever it takes, run mon ange.
She had to be numb. Amicia turned and sprinted through her smoke-filled house. At the door, her boots awaited for gardening, but they’d do best in the forest. She ran until she was on the streets and could dodge the burning buildings. She ran until she reached the wall, where a small door would let her out into the wilds beyond.
Her mother’s door. The door where she would sneak out and run wild in the forests, before she got sick. She would always bring Amicia back a single wildflower for her hair.
Even this door would burn. Heat burned her spine, the fires chasing her even now. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Then she slipped out into the unknown.
Chapter 2
“Master, it is done.”
The shadows on the walls stretched and warped as one of the Dread made its way up the stone stairwell leading to the top of the chateau. Hunched and misshapen, the creature tried to make itself small and unnoticeable.
The King of the Dread wondered which one it was. They all looked the same to him these days. Hundreds of people turned into monsters living in the towering rookeries behind the chateau.
This highest tower was his haven, and the only place he traveled to when he needed space to think. All their voices echoed in his head. The torment of a thousand souls, each one screaming within the body of a monster they had never wanted to become.
Up here in the fresh, chilly air, he could stand above all the sounds. Their thoughts couldn’t pierce through the clouds, stars, and the moon casting silvery strands of light down upon him. Here, he wasn’t the King of the Dread.
Here, he wasn’t a monster.
He slowly turned toward the single Dread who stood behind him. The crumbling walls that used to surround this tower in carved arches silhouetted the beast. One of the Dread’s wings hung at its side, and there was a chip in its right horn.
Each detail should have been enough for him to know which one this was. A name. Perhaps even an occupation. And yet, he remembered nothing. Not even his own.
The King let out a low grumble. “And so, the last bastion falls.”
“Indeed, it has, Master.”
He waited for a moment. For the release of tension in his chest telling him to conquer every city and make it bend to his ways. This was the last hope. The last kingdom to remain untouched by the Dread.
The dark desire in his chest remained unsatisfied. He never understood the desire to conquer, only knew it was part of his being. The King of the Dread was made to force the world onto its knees, and he’d done so time and time again.
Why did this one feel as though it should have been different?
He lifted a clawed hand and waved it in the air. “Good. You may go.”
The Dread hesitated. It took a step forward, a dangerous move when it walked toward the largest of their kind, and the only being who could destroy it. Its broken wing slithered along the stone, the rasp making his ears ache.
The creature hissed, “The others are wondering, what is next?”
He didn’t know. There were a thousand other countries he could conquer. So many more he could force onto their knees and yet… he grew weary. He’d spent so long fighting and battling, and what had it done?
Perhaps he was merely dreaming, thinking he could do something more than just fight. Perhaps he’d thought after all this was done, once Little Marsh was his, that he could rest.
“The humans have fallen,” he replied with a low growl. “There will be time for decisions such as that.”
“Not all the humans,” the Dread replied. Moonlight caught on the chipped horn and cast a jagged shadow behind the creature. “One got away.”
“One?” He huffed out a low breath, rage consuming him. “Who?”
“We don’t know, Master. A woman burned the city to the ground and escaped us. The others… did not survive.”
So many lives. So many people he could have added into his ranks, and a single woman had destroyed it all?
He closed his hands into fists, claws digging into his palms and slicing through leather skin. Drops of blood struck the ground like rain. He stalked toward the arches and lashed out.
His fist collided with stone that pulverized underneath the power of his strike. The bones in his hands rattled. But even granite didn’t cut through his skin. Nothing but the claws of the Dread could.
The arch gave one last groan before its final support snapped. Wind whistled through the stones that plummeted toward the earth, then struck the ground with enough force to shake the chateau.
This woman was the reason his soul hadn’t found its peace. She was the reason he hadn’t felt the ease of tension in his chest and continued to harbor the horrid desire to hurt more and more people.
Glancing over his shoulder, he snarled, “Find her.”
Chapter 3
Amicia stumbled through the forest. Twigs yanked at her hair, tugging her backward like claws caught in the dark strands. She tried to go slow. Noise would only bring them to her faster, and fear convinced her they would hunt her down. But she couldn’t stop the thundering of her heart or the way her muscles twitched to sprint.
The forest was far more terrifying than she imagined. Dark trunks surrounded her and she swore faces peered around their bark. Rustling leaves and breaking twigs threatened there was more in this forest than just monsters. But animals as well.
She’d only been outside the city limits a few times with her father and never close enough to touch one of the trees. He’d always said this was the land of the Dread, and she was never to go in
Now, there was nowhere else for her to go. She couldn’t follow the road leading to the other cities. The Dread could fly. They would see her, swoop down, and pluck her off the road as easily as a hawk snagging a chicken.
Night had fallen, and somehow that made it more terrifying than before. The forest came alive at night. What little moonlight remained, served only to spear beams which made the darkness all the more deep and mysterious.
Her thoughts drifted back to her home. Back to Little Marsh and what she had done.
The screams still echoed in her head. She could hear them, the people who needed help and all she had done was destroy. Why had her father wanted her to do that? Why would he rather see the kingdom burn than the Dread capture them?
Father. He’d been so certain and she had done nothing. Was he still alive? He couldn’t be, the streets had ran red with fire and blood. But she hadn’t felt him go. It was like he was still here with her, in her heart.
Every fiber of her soul was tainted now. She had destroyed an entire city, saving them from becoming the Dread, but still taking their lives.
A choked sound escaped between her clenched teeth. There wasn’t time for this, she told herself. She had to remain strong and keep going through this forest of tangled briars and shadows that seemed to move on their own. She couldn’t bog herself down with guilt and thoughts of dying people, screaming and trapped within the fortress of Little Marsh.
Amicia tripped at the thought, falling hard on her hands and knees in the dirt. Mud oozed between her fingers and, for a second, it looked like blood in the glistening light of the moon.
“What have I done?” she whispered, sinking her hands deeper into the muck. “What did you ask me to do, Father?”
Would she ever be able to ease the torment in her soul? Would she ever be able to look anyone in the eye again once they knew she was the killer of Little Marsh?
Her city had been a haven for all of the Empire of Ember. A safe place for all those who
needed to seek asylum. And now, there was nowhere else for anyone to go.
Sniffing hard, she reached up and dashed away the tears on her face. Mud slicked across her cheeks, but maybe that would help her hide if need be.
Her father used to talk about the days when they could go out into the forest. The days when humans hunted creatures in the woods for meat.
She wracked her brain for any memories of what they had done. He said they tracked the creatures, but that wouldn’t help her. Though her stomach rumbled with the desire for food, she had no tools other than a small set of lock picks in her pocket. It seemed unlikely she’d kill a deer with those.
Twigs snapped to her left, followed by a heavy thud of feet. Amicia’s breath caught in her chest, and she slowly tilted her head. She couldn’t see much in the shadows, but she doubted creatures existed in this forest who were large enough to make that sound.
The darkness warped between a copse of trees, at least seven feet high and with horns as thick as her forearms. The shape of a Dread.
Moving inch by inch, she flattened herself into the mud, arms bent underneath her head.
The creature lifted its head, snuffled, and then moved away. For a moment, a horn snagged on a branch above it before the beast gave a quick toss of its head and snapped the limb clear off.
She couldn’t stay here. Not in the forest when they were still searching for her.
Although… it made little sense why they were still looking. Certainly, they didn’t care if they only missed one person to add to their army of monsters? They should have been focusing on trying to put out the fires in the city and stealing whatever humans they could from the veritable cauldron of souls within those walls.
Instead, they had come into the forest for her. A single woman. Nothing more than a mere scrap compared to all the strong men in Little Marsh.
Perhaps her father had been right. The Dread in her home had stepped into the torchlight. They might truly be averse to fire, but they weren’t averse to light. The others had left when the city burned, though. That was enough to give her hope.