An amused chuckle left her lips, all the while ensuring she wasn’t causing her friend any pain.
“Do your best! Don’t worry about hurting me, Alissa,” Olga yelled. “You will need to know how to hurt the Iron Claws before we face them.”
She was hesitant at first, but Olga had a point; inflicting cuts on the Iron Claws wasn’t the most effective way to take them down. She would need to paralyze them, to inflict agonizing pain, if she hoped to stand a chance.
Clutching her fingers, the wisps left her forearm with greater density, making the air above misty. Although her friend was out of her physical reach, she could feel the touch of her power infiltrating Olga’s skin, then squeezing her flesh, her muscles, her veins. If she pushed any further, she knew she could as easily crush the woman’s organs. Olga groaned in pain, falling to her knees a second later. Seeing her ally’s misery, Alissa immediately released her hold, rushing to heal with the same magic that had caused so much pain.
“Are you okay? I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said, eyes wide in horror.
But Olga was not crying or angry. To Alissa’s surprise, she was smiling. Viciously. “You must be the most powerful weapon I have ever seen.”
Being called a weapon was something Alissa wasn’t accustomed to; she had been a simple huntress all her life. But seeing the state she left her friend gasping for air, her heart so vulnerable to her will, she realized that was exactly what she had become. A weapon capable of squeezing the life out of someone without ever laying a hand on them.
Stunned, Alissa glanced at her master. Mrs. Ilden’s eyes were glowing, tearful, as she stepped closer, gently framing Alissa’s cheeks with her palms. “You’re ready,” her voice burned with pride.
It had been four weeks since Freyah died. For four weeks, Eldric had been tortured and used as bait. Four weeks since hermotivation had been to save the man she loved and avenge her best friend’s brutal assassination, while still struggling to come to terms with her loss and everything that was happening with her daughter.
She had been forced to spend an entire unplanned month in Golheim while time seemed to slip away. These weeks were invaluable if she had any hopes of coming back to Bryniard in time. It was ironic that the power now coursing through her veins was built on the strength of time yet couldn’t grant her the extra time she so desperately needed for the most important mission of her life. The clock continued to tick, mocking her as it did in her dreams—she was powerful enough to save Dhalia, but not powerful enough to give herself more time.
With the need to reclaim the man she loved and go back to her hometown, Alissa’s gaze settled on the purple-haired woman still recovering on the ground.
“We leave tonight.”
Chapter 34
A Dance of Axes and Arrows
Born in Porjea, Olga had to learn from a young age how to hide her feelings, wants, and needs. To swallow any discomfort or sadness and smile instead.
“It is not by chance that men are stronger and smarter than we are. They were built this way by nature to lead our species to glory. It is the power of men that makes this world turn, girl. There is no place for us beside their names in the history books. Our role in this world as women is to serve and guarantee the continuity of our species. Nothing else,”her mother used to say.
Raised to serve a man, to be an object of pleasure and breeding rather than a human being. Raised to never dream, never surmise, never question. Olga was only seventeen when she was sold to a man three times her age. Her voice never mattered. Not to choose her clothes or the length of her hair, not to choose what she ate or what to do with her body.
For years, she was his and his alone.
A woman’s greatest duty was to grant men heirs. It was supposed to be her greatest joy, the very thing that gave her life meaning. But every time she imagined having a piece of the man she was forced to call husband growing inside her, sheplotted her escape. Even tamed and taught to believe herself undeserving her entire life, Olga never gave up on herself.
She played her part well. Smiling when his knuckles brushed her cheeks, even when her stomach twisted, feigning ignorance when he was engaged in business conversations, pretending to tremble under his harsh commands and violent outbursts when she acted clumsily around him. On the outside, Olga was the stupid little submissive wife. The perfect puppet. But on the inside, she had always been a rebel.
Olga was thunder waiting for the perfect storm.
Her first act of revolt was to stab her own stomach. It wasn’t a planned decision but an impulsive, desperate attempt to end his continuous abuse and destroy any chance he had of having heirs. If not for the intervention of a skilled healer from a neighboring town, she would have lost her life that day.
Her second act of rebellion was to use that same knife to slit her former husband’s throat open as he slept. His eyes wide open in shock, his hands desperately seeking the source of the bleeding, she trapped his wrists on the bed to watch the blood pour out faster. She saw his head fall sideways and his body turn still with the same blank expression she was taught to wear every time he would force himself on her.
Finally free of his chains, she took all of his savings, everything that was left from his business, and ran away from Porjea, never to look back.
Focusing on her freedom gave Olga the perseverance to survive until that day. But when the time came, and she found herself alone in a world she didn’t fit in, she realized that freedom could make one feel as lost as imprisonment. Being deprived of control over her own life had made it impossible for her to discover her true identity, her desires, and what she would like her future to be.
Years later, in Golheim, when the remnants of her trauma had shaped her into a bitter woman, Olga decided to learn how to fight. If she had been taught how to defend herself, perhaps no man would have dared to buy her in the first place. She dedicated all her time and energy to perfecting her body for combat, striving to reach the best form she was physically capable of to join the Royal Guard. It wasn’t just a desire to never feel weak or helpless again; it was to prove that women were capable of doing anything. Even though she had proven herself stronger than most of the accepted men, she was still denied the chance to fight for the realm for the same reason she had always been marginalized—being a woman.
To this day, Olga reaped the consequences of how she was raised. She knew that now more than ever because she had lost Breno—the one person she had ever loved—and she couldn’t bring herself to let out the pain that ate at her heart since he was gone. She couldn’t bring herself to cry, and she knew well enough that man deserved a tear; he deserved a whole damn ocean of them. She was incapable of properly mourning his passing and the loss of the future that was taken from them.
She met Breno over a decade ago on a rainy night, shortly after she first arrived in Golheim. Terrified and paranoid, she punched him in the face, convinced he had been following her as he wandered the streets at night. At the time, she didn’t know he took walks to ease his mind whenever he had trouble sleeping. Anyone else might have snapped at her or reported her for the unprovoked attack, but he simply asked if she was alright, offering his hand to steady her even as his nose bled.
There was a time she believed herself unfit for love. It was such a distant, foreign feeling. A myth she had only ever heard of in fairy tales, but it all changed when this man came around. He was the first man ever to treat her as a human being and to show her respect. Through his loyalty and righteousness, Brenoshowed her there was still good in people and that life could be beautiful even in a world filled with injustice.
“Husband.” The word that used to frighten her to the bone took on a whole different meaning once he became hers, becoming the key to soothing her heart. With him, life was perfect even in its imperfections. With him, she had purpose and felt seen like never before. There was nothing she wouldn’t have done for that man.