Chapter 5: First Morning of Eternity
The first thing that registered was the smell. Not ozone and cold stone, but yeast and warm dough. Not the scent of her own magic, but of baking bread. Kadri’s eyes snapped open. The canopy of frozen fire was gone, replaced by a painfully blue sky. The hum of standing stones had been swapped for the chaotic, cheerful din of a marketplace.
She was standing in the center of a sun-drenched village square. Cobblestones, worn smooth by generations of feet, lay under her boots. Half-timbered houses leaned into each other like gossiping old women, their window boxes overflowing with red geraniums. Children shrieked with laughter as they chased a dog with a lopsided gait.
It was nauseating.
Her head throbbed, a dull ache behind her eyes. The last clear memory was the altar, the sigil burning into her skin, Ca’s final words. Try to enjoy the garden. This… this was the garden. A prison of picturesque contentment.
A woman carrying a basket of laundry paused, her eyes widening. But it wasn't fear that widened them. It was a kind of reverent awe. She dropped her basket into the dust, clean linens forgotten, and sank into a deep, clumsy curtsy.
“My lady,” the woman breathed, her voice trembling with what sounded like joy.
Kadri took a step back, her horns feeling impossibly heavy, her ash-gray skin a glaring obscenity in the cheerful sunlight. “What are you doing? Get up.”
But the woman didn’t get up. Instead, she called out, “She’s here! The lady of the grove is here!”
The call rippled through the square. The laughter died. The market hubbub silenced. Every face turned toward her. And then, as one, they knelt. The baker, flour dusting his knees. The children, confused but mimicking their parents. An old man with a face like a wrinkled apple, his hat clutched to his chest.
They didn’t look terrified. They looked… grateful.
A little girl, no more than six, detached herself from her mother’s side and approached. She held out a clumsily made daisy chain, her small hands grubby. “For you,” she whispered, her eyes huge. “For making the scary lights go away.”
Kadri stared at the offered flowers. The "scary lights." The grove. The ritual. It must have been visible from here, a disturbance in the fabric of the world. And now she was here, and they thought she’d fixed it. They thought she was their benefactor.
The Curse of Serendipity. Her grand design to bind an ancient demon and ascend to true power had failed catastrophically. And in its place? She got a daisy chain and the adoration of mud-footed peasants.
A hot, sharp pain lanced through her chest. She glanced down. The sigil between her breasts, hidden by her clothes, was warm. It pulsed in time with the village’s simple, stupid joy.
“I didn’t do anything for you,” Kadri said, her voice low and harsh. She knocked the daisy chain from the girl’s hand. The flowers scattered on the cobblestones.
A collective, soft gasp went through the crowd. The little girl’s lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. She just looked up at Kadri with unwavering devotion. “You’re so beautiful,” the child said.
The words were a physical blow. This was worse than any hellfire, any battle scar. This was annihilation by kindness.
“Stop it,” Kadri snarled, taking another step back, her heel hitting the edge of a water trough. “All of you, get up. Look at me! Do I look like a ‘lady’ to you?” She gestured at her horns, her hellfire eyes, her skin the color of cinders.
The old man with the wrinkled-apple face spoke up, his voice raspy but firm. “The old stories say the guardians of the stone circles often wear strange forms. To test our faith.” He smiled a gap-toothed smile. “You have passed our test, guardian. You have returned peace to our valley.”
Faith. Tests. Peace. Each word was a nail in the coffin of her ambition. She had wanted legions kneeling in terror, not a village kneeling in thanks. She had wanted her name to be a curse whispered in dark places, not a blessing sighed by children.
This was the exquisite, slow kill Ca had promised. Not with a blade, but with daisies. Not with fire, but with fresh-baked bread.
The warmth of the sigil spread through her chest, a comforting, insidious heat that felt like surrender. It would be so easy to just accept it. To let them feed her, adore her, build her a little shrine. To live a long, happy, insignificant life.
A wave of pure, undiluted rage cut through the seductive warmth. No.
She would not be retired. She would not be content.
Kadri turned from them, from their kneeling forms and their hopeful faces, and pushed through the crowd. They parted for her easily, a sea of reverence. She didn’t look back. She stalked down the main street, her every step a rejection of the path laid out for her.
The village ended abruptly, giving way to a country lane flanked by green fields. The sigil on her chest cooled slightly. The further she got from their adoration, the more her own mind felt clear.
She had to find a way out. A way to break the curse. There was always a counter-curse, a loophole, a price. There had to be.
A shadow detached itself from the deep shade of a large oak tree beside the lane. Ca leaned against the trunk, arms crossed, watching her approach. He looked utterly at ease, a spectator enjoying the show.
“See?” he said, his voice light. “I told you you’d get something pleasant. Adoration is a much softer pillow than a throne.”
Kadri didn’t break her stride. She walked right up to him, stopping only when they were inches apart. The memory of his touch, his kiss, the feeling of coming apart in his arms, flashed through her, followed immediately by the cold, sharp shame of her own gullibility.
“How do I break it?” she demanded, her voice low and venomous.
He looked down at her, his green eyes mildly curious. “You don’t. That’s the point of a forever kind of promise.”
“Nothing is forever. Everything has a key. A price.”
“The price was paid,” he said softly. “By me. When I chose not to spill your entrails across that altar.” He pushed off from the tree, his presence suddenly overwhelming. “This is the kinder option. Take the win.”
“This isn’t a win. This is you playing with your food.” She jabbed a finger at the hidden sigil on her chest. “You marked me. This is a connection. If I can’t break the curse through you, maybe I can break you.”
A slow, genuine smile spread across his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. They were ancient and cold. “Oh, I do hope you try,” he murmured. “I really do. It’s been so long since I’ve been properly… broken.”
He didn’t vanish into shadow. He just turned and started walking down the lane, hands in his pockets, as if he were any other man out for a stroll. Leaving her standing there, seething, the cheerful sounds of the village at her back and the infuriating demon sauntering away in front of her.
Two paths. Both prisons.
Kadri stood perfectly still, the weight of the curse and the ghost of his touch warring within her. She wouldn’t choose either. She would make a third.