“Stop moving,” Hawthorne hissed.
Morrigan squirmed, trying to stand up, but he was holding her down now, and there was so much blood. Her head felt sticky, “You said you wanted to meet. For peace. You said-” her jaw ached. She closed it, completely impotent.
“I know what I said,” he said tightly, signalling to Cadence. Morrigan blinked, trying to clear her vision. Her hands were clenched at her sides and she looked… furious. “I was the one who said it.”
“You? I wouldn’t have guessed it. Brothers and sisters.”
Hawthorne’s face was speckled with something her brain wanted to write off as freckles, but it was far too red, and she was in far too much pain to believe that. “It’s been a long time.”
It had, hadn’t it. She might look the same, her face unlined, her hair still pitch and limp, but his had thinned and greyed. Cadence’s face was worn and wrinkled. When had been the last time she had seen them. When did they stop being her family?
“Cadence?” she tried to say. It came out as a series of gurgles, but she was understood anyway. She leaned down next to her, her hand stretching out to touch her forehead, brushing away a lock of hair, like she would do a grandchild, or a sister.
Morrigan looked into her face that looked like it had lived ten more lifetimes than hers did, and tried to maintain eye contact. She tried to tell her that she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant for it to all turn out like this.
She missed the flash of metal. She didn’t miss it burying into her groin.
Her life faded in and out, one second staring up at the people who had once been her closest friends in the world, the next she was at their initiation ceremony, happily ignorant of everything happening behind them, in class with them. On hometrain. Graduating. Getting dinner. Grabbing coffee. Drifting away. Being pulled into work. Becoming a wundersmith properly. Making excuses. Disappearing.
Here.
Someone said something to her. She didn’t know which of them it was. It could have been both. It could have been someone else. She barely registered what it meant before she knew no more.
“sic semper tyrannis, Morrigan Crow.”
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