Crushed Lilies.

~ Nerrissa Ashvale ~

The wooden broom handle felt like a log of ice against my bare palm. I wrapped my red, chapped fingers tighter around the splinters and pushed. The heavy winter mud on the courtyard stone did not want to move.

"Faster, Nerrissa! You sweep like a dying snail!"

My half-sister, Elspeth, shouted from the covered porch. She stayed tucked inside her thick wool cloak, a mug of warm spiced cider held between her gloved hands. Steam rose from her cup, smelling of sweet apples and cinnamon. My stomach let out a hollow, empty growl.

"I am moving as fast as I can, Elspeth," I said. My voice came out small and raspy, barely reaching the porch over the biting mountain wind.

"Well, it isn't fast enough! The stable boys are coming through here in an hour. If there is mud on their boots, Mother will take the cider out of your rations for a week!"

I did not answer. Answering only made her scream louder, and screaming brought my stepmother down the wooden stairs. I bent my knees, ignoring the sharp aches in my ankles, and shoved the heavy mud toward the drainage ditch.

Ashvale was a cold place, but this winter was worse than any I remembered in my twenty years. The sky above our crumbling stone manor was a dull, dirty gray. No sun had broken through the clouds for two weeks. Everything felt wet, frozen, and dead.

A sudden tightness clamped down inside my chest.

"Not now," I thought, closing my eyes tight. "Please, not now."

The air in my throat turned to fire. I dropped the broom. It clattered loudly against the cobblestones. I slammed both hands against my ribs, hunching over as my lungs squeezed shut like a dry leather pouch.

"Oh, look at her," Elspeth laughed, calling back into the open doorway. "Mother! Come see! The little parasite is putting on her dramatic show again!"

I could not breathe. Panic flared in my mind, but I forced my body to stay still. I knew the rules of my own sick body. Panic made the heat in my chest explode.

I fell to my knees in the slush. The cold mud soaked right through the thin cotton of my skirt, biting into my skin. I reached into my apron pocket with a trembling hand, pulling out a faded piece of white linen.

Then came the cough.

It tore out of my throat, violent and sharp. It felt like someone had dragged a rusty nail up through my chest. I pressed the linen against my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut as my body shook. Another cough wracked my small frame, making my vision go dark around the edges.

When the fit finally passed, I sat on my calves in the snow, gasping for air. Cold sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

I lowered the cloth. Bright, dark red blood stood out against the white linen like ink on fresh paper.

"Disgusting," a sharp voice snapped.

My stepmother, Lady Verna, stood beside Elspeth on the porch steps. She looked down her long nose at me, holding her skirts up so they would not touch the muddy floor.

"Look at you," Verna said, her voice dry and cold. "Vomiting blood all over the courtyard. You drain our food, you drain our firewood, and you give nothing back. A useless burden. That is all your mother left me with."

"I am sorry, Stepmother," I whispered. My throat burned with the metallic taste of copper. "I will clean the stone. I just... I need a moment."

"You have had enough years of moments," Elspeth sneered. She stepped down from the porch, her shiny leather boots crunching on the thin ice. She walked right over to where I had been working earlier that morning.

Near the base of the stone wall, a tiny green stem poked out of the snow. It was a snow-lily—a rare, bitter plant that grew only in the freezing months. I had spent two hours digging through the frozen dirt with my bare fingernails to unearth it. Its roots, when boiled, were the only thing that stopped my chest from burning at night.

"What is this trash?" Elspeth asked, pointing her boot at the fragile white petals.

"Please, Elspeth, don't," I said, reaching out a hand. My fingers were covered in wet mud. "That is for my medicine. It helps the cough."

Elspeth looked at the flower, then looked up at me. A cruel, small smile curved her lips.

*Crush.*

She brought her thick leather heel straight down on the stalk. She twisted her foot back and forth, grinding the soft white petals into black mud until nothing was left but smashed green slime.

"Oops," Elspeth said. She did not even look down at what she had done. "My foot slipped."

My heart squeezed, but I kept my face completely still. I did not cry. I did not scream. I had learned years ago that showing pain to Elspeth and Verna was like throwing meat to hungry dogs. It only made them bite harder.

So, I forced my mouth into a soft, quiet smile. I wiped the blood from my lips with the clean corner of my rag.

"It is alright," I murmured gently, looking up into her sharp eyes. "It was just a wild plant. I am sorry it was in your way."

Elspeth’s smile vanished. Her eyebrows pulled together in irritation. She hated when I smiled. She wanted me to weep, to beg, to make a scene so she could tell the village how unstable I was. But I refused to give her that power.

"Get up and finish sweeping," Verna ordered, turning her back on us. "And do not come inside for dinner until the entire courtyard is clear."

The heavy wooden doors slammed shut, leaving me alone in the freezing wind.

I stayed on my knees for a long time. My legs were numb, but I forced myself to reach out and touch the ruined petals in the dirt. My chest throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, but beneath the physical pain, my mind was sharp and clear. I noticed everything—the way Verna’s hands trembled when she held her dress, the way the courtyard guards kept looking up at the gray sky with nervous eyes, the complete lack of birds singing in the surrounding forest.

Something was wrong today. The air felt heavy, like the sky was waiting to drop a mountain on us.

Slowly, using the stone wall for support, I pushed myself up. My knees wobbled, but I stood. I picked up the broom with stiff fingers and cleared the rest of the mud.

By the time the sky turned from gray to deep indigo, I dragged my feet up the narrow back staircase to my room.

My room was not a proper bedroom. It was a tiny attic storage space right beneath the roof tiles. It had no hearth, no carpet, and only one small window that let the freezing night air whistle through the cracks.

I closed the rickety wooden door and bolted it shut with a rusty iron latch.

I pulled off my wet shoes and wrapped my shoulders in a thin, threadbare blanket. Sitting on the edge of my small cot, I unbuttoned the top three buttons of my dress and pulled down the linen collar.

Right below my collarbone, the skin was smooth and pale. But right in the center sat a faint, dark mark. It was the shape of a creature with wide wings and a long, curving tail—a dragon.

I had been born with it. Verna called it a curse. The village priests called it a deformity.

I pulled a loose floorboard away from the wall beside my bed. Reaching into the dark space, my fingers brushed against a heavy roll of dry, decaying parchment—a scroll I had stolen from the manor’s dusty archive few years ago.

I unrolled it carefully on my lap. The ancient human language written on it was hard to read, but I had spent hundreds of quiet nights studying the symbols.

"The vessel holds the spark," the old words read. "The weak flesh burns while the ancient fire sleeps."

"What were you hiding, Mother?" I whispered into the quiet room.

I reached up with a cold thumb and touched the dragon mark on my chest.

The moment my skin brushed the mark, a shock of intense heat snapped through my collarbone.

I gasped, dropping the scroll. The mark beneath my skin flashed a dull, burning crimson. It did not feel like cold sickness. It felt like hot iron pressed against my bone. My breath hitched, a sudden surge of heat flooding my veins so fast my head spun.

Before I could pull my hand away, a terrible sound shattered the quiet night.

BOOM.

It was not thunder. It was a deep, brassy blare that vibrated right through the stone walls, rattling the wooden floorboards beneath my feet.

War horns.

I scrambled to the small window, pushing open the frost-covered glass.

Far off in the distance, past the jagged mountain peaks of Ashvale, the dark night sky was splitting in two. Clouds ripped apart like wet cloth as red fire washed over the horizon, painting the snow below in colors of blood and shadow.

And then, I saw the shadow.

It was larger than the manor. Larger than the village. A colossal, winged shape cut through the red sky, blocking out the stars as it soared toward us.

My mark pulsed again—hot, violent, and wild.