Unbroken Chain: The Darker Road

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The body is here, sister,”said the ethran, the village healer. “Bhalla be merciful, the blood-”

“Be quiet,” Sree hissed. “You’ll wake the child. I’ll not have her remember her mother this way.” However, Sree did smell the blood. Behind her mask, the reek of it mingled in her nostrils with the scent of cold earth.

The house was an old stone nub set into the side of a low hill. Heather roots poked through the ceiling. Wisps of smoke and ash rose from a dying cookfire, and by the light of the gray-gold embers, Sree saw the body of Yaraella lying on her back in the corner of the main room.

Slack fingers cradled an ivory-handled knife protruding from her abdomen. The blood pool had soaked her thick brown braid and spread to the threshold of the small bedchamber Yaraella shared with her daughter, Elina.

“Wait outside,” Sree instructed the ethran.

Sree stepped over the coagulating pool and entered the bedchamber. Yaraella’s child was barely four years old. She slept soundly, buried underneath thick wool blankets with only her tiny nose and a thick mop of brown hair showing.

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