Chapter 69: The Harreds' Fateful Night

"Someone supplied the Hannans with runes. Runes that overcame my mother's anti-climbing runes and breached the Acrise walls. That same someone bound the mouth of the Hannan prisoner we had and sealed her from telling us secrets. Maura said the runes were more advanced than she was capable of, and my understanding is Maura's pretty good at rune magic."

"She's the best in the country in indigo runes," Rowan said, panting. "I think last year she ranked third for rune magic in general amongst the registered mages."

Seiren paused to allow for Rowan to catch up. He didn't have the physique for the military; that much was clear, but even keeping up with her strides in the snow for the past four hours made him out of puff, but she was glad to see her third attempt at chaos magic actually did something. It made her feel less of a failure. She swallowed, her eyes prickling at the memory of little Kori Fernard, dying of a bad heart, and chaos magic didn't come to her; and the memory of Loren gasping and ashen-grey, pouring her chaos magic into Seiren despite her attempts to heal her instead.

"Why did Loren have to die?"

Rowan slowed at the same time as she did.

"What brought this on?" Although he tried to sound carefree, Seiren was not entirely ignorant of the palpable hurt in his words.

"I never found out. Why was she in Benover? She was based in Bicknor. What will happen to those kids who were relying on her chaos magic now?"

"They got taken care of by a healing mage out east. Loren had contingency plans in place before she left."

"So she expected to be gone for a while?"

Rowan was quiet for so long Seiren thought he didn't plan to answer her question.

"Loren went to Finberry."

Seiren froze. She whipped around and stared at Rowan. The bottom half of his face snuggled into his scarf. His hood covered his ears and the top of his head, casting a shadow over his face, but his eyes appeared steel-blue against the white background. He was frowning, as if uncertain how to express the next words.

"Why would she do that?" she said, bewildered.

"It was my idea. Not long after we first met, I got thinking about your mother, Kristen. About the night she died."

"You mean the night I killed her." Seiren's voice was hollow.

Rowan gave her an odd look. Sympathy, perhaps.

"That's the thing, Seiren. I don't think you killed her."

She blinked slowly, the words perfusing her brain at snail pace. The images of that night flashed before her eyes. She was once again back in the living room of their house, the last trace of the dwindling fire smoke drifting away and the sour taste of bile at the back of her throat. The oppressive sensation of death suffocated her. Her father, collapsed in a heap, eyes glassy, and Madeleine, shallow breaths making her little chest bob. Piles of books littered the floor.

"But I drew that rune." Seiren touched the necklace. Madeleine pressed against her consciousness. "I drew both the runes. It could only have been me."

But deep down, the uncertainty grew. She saw the violet rune, drawn in Madeleine's blood activate over her sister's body, fusing with the crimson-stone necklace that had fallen off the table. She saw the last breath exit her sister.

Yes, that was definitely you. Madeleine touched Seiren's mind. The sketch is all you. I can feel it.

"It can't have been anyone else." Seiren sounded less convinced. The second rune, a fusion of red and orange with eight sides and no locking sigils, was something she'd spied in her mother's book only several days prior. She remembered the whole sketch; she never forgot a drawing. She'd drawn it with the chalk fragments she'd dug from beneath a chair and aimed it at the Hannan, who held her mother hostage, before there was an almighty bang that knocked her out.

She remembered nothing aside from waking up at the hospital after that, alone, Madeleine's necklace sitting at her bedside and her whole family dead.

"You know that second rune didn't fire."

Her breath hitched. She met his eyes, biting her lip.

"And think, a twelve-year-old managed a Kristen Harred rune? And blew up the entire house? You could not have had the magic to power it."

"I had enough for this," she said, pointing to her neck.

"I know that. And that was near-impossible, but for you to have done two runes your mother created at her level is impossible."

"But who did, then? The Hannan?"

"Was there a Hannan?"

She hesitated again, ogling at him.

"I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"The reports were all talking about a Hannan that apparently was caught and tried, then put to death, but his name was never released, not even amongst the mages. Remember when your little experiment went haywire in Bicknor and all the nearby mages received alerts? There never was one for your mother."

"Nobody discovered us until it was too late."

"You really think Kristen Harred's own house would not have security runes?"

"She--" Seiren paused, her mind cast back to her childhood again. She remembered watching, with Madeleine, their mother applying various runes around the house. Runes that made the lights dance, runes that eradicated the stink of rotten food that lingered when she forgot to throw them out, runes that filled the house with the smell of freesias, her favourite flowers. Of course she would have security runes.

"And you think a twelve-year-old girl with no magical training could kill one of the most experienced and talented rune mages in Karma, with her own creations?"

"What are you implying?" she whispered. The age-old guilt that sat heavy on her chest lifted somewhat, but it was still hard to breathe.

"I don't know. I don't know the whole story." Rowan ran a hand through his hair, breaking their eye contact and taking in a deep breath. "The pieces of information I have are quite bitty and with Loren... I don't want to make any wrong assumptions."

"You want to know what happened the night my family died."

He clamped his lips together and shut his eyes before nodding. Seiren looked down, twisting her gloved fingers.

"Let's have a break. We've been walking for hours."

Rowan closed his eyes and eased out a breath before clapping his hands. The ground rumbled. Rock erupted from beneath the snow, converging until a small cave formed, its surface glossy and silvery grey in the afternoon sun.

"Sit inside. Once we stop moving, we'll start cooling down."

Or you can use an orange rune, right, Seiren? Seiren?

Seiren sat down without a word, the cave floor chilly through her cloak and leggings. She crossed her legs and wrapped her arms around herself. Rowan sat near the entrance, watching her.

"That night..." She shut her eyes and shook her head. "No. I don't want to remember."

"It might change our entire course. I know you changed your surname for a reason."

"It's not just so people don't know I'm Kristen Harred's daughter." Seiren gave a hollow laugh. "I think that's common enough knowledge when they see my face. I just don't want to be reminded of them every time someone says my name."

"Using your father's surname helps?"

"It helps me."

The images flashed vividly before her. She could see every crease of her nightdress, every eyelash on Madeleine's face, her flushed, raging face, the long blonde hair styled in two plaits. Seiren swallowed.

"Madeleine and I had a fight. It was over something petty."

If memory serves, you had actually stolen my horse toy and broken it. It was my favourite. Not petty.

I told you I was sorry.

I don't bear grudges, unlike you. But it wasn't petty.

"I..." She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and stared, fixated, at the corner of the cave. "I refused to share a room with her that night. Mother made her apologise and I just didn't want to see Madeleine's face. Our room was at the back of the house. I made her sleep in our parents' room that night and stayed up all night just thinking of all the reasons I hated being twins with her."

So much love, awww.

"I fell asleep really late. I don't know what time. The next thing I heard was angry shouting -- from Dad. But there wasn't a second person. Then I heard Madeleine. And then--then--"

Seiren clutched her head, eyes wide open but not seeing Rowan's concerned face before her but the inside of the bedroom as she dashed out, the bottom of the stairs where it was murky and felt suffocatingly heavy, the still body of her father and the rasping, near-dead Madeleine.

"They were dead. They were all dead."

"Breathe, Seiren." Rowan took her hand but didn't touch any other part of her. Just as well, or she might have accidentally introduced his face to her elbow or knee. "Calm the thoughts."

Last year, she would not have been able to. The thoughts usually took on a trajectory of their own, corrosive and unyielding, wholly dominating her mind and assaulted her consciousness until she collapsed in a crying heap; this was why she'd been perfectly happy burying that memory as deep as she could, pretending it never existed.

Yet now she could slow the whirlwind down. The images flashed, vivid and violent, but the information she could now process. It was as if she rewound the whole recollection and placed them before her.

"Dad. He was in front of the extinguished fireplace, face-up. Madeleine was beside him. She was breathing... he wasn't. He was dead. Cold." Madeleine's breathing was so shallow it was like watching autumn leaves tremble before they crumbled in the wind. "And when I saw Madeleine, all I could feel was my soul being tugged away with her. I knew she was going to die if I didn't do anything. I used her blood to draw this blood rune I'd seen from Mother's spell book -- it was the only picture in my head. Somehow, her soul stayed with the necklace."

She touched it. The stone was warm against her flesh, a lush crimson with the blood rune embedded within.

"Then I looked up. I saw Mother there beside the Hannan. He was going to kill her. I took chalk from nearby and sketched a blast rune, a red and orange one, also from Mother's spell book. I activated it and the house blew up."

"How did you know it was a Hannan?"

"What do you mean 'how'?"

"What made you believe it was a Hannan? It was the middle of the night. The fire was dead. How did you know?"

"I--" Seiren hesitated. Did she smell the cinnamon scent of their summoning dust? Did she catch a glimpse of his weathered skin from exposure to their corrosive dust or the stereotypical wild black hair, prominent features, and pale eyes?

There was a face. She recalled that face -- the eyes were wild and animal-like, and jagged teeth that gave her nightmares every day for the past six years.

"It was a Hannan." It was peculiar where the conviction was from, but deep in her heart, that face was that of a Hannan's. There was no doubt about it. "Even if you said it was impossible for me to fire that second rune -- then it was him who killed her. He--"

She clutched her head again, tugging at her blonde hair.

"But I can't see his face! Why can't I see his face?"

"It was a long time ago. You were under incredible stress."

"But that's the point, Rowan." She looked up at him in frustration. "I remember everything. Every rune shape I learn about, every face I make an effort to study -- my memory does not forget. So how is it I can't remember his face? What happened to me?"

"It was probably stress."

She shook her head. It didn't add up. Everything was so clear until that point. She saw the smooth ridge of each wooden stair and the dark outline of her father's dead body, and then Madeleine's dwindling life next to his. She could see every log on the wood pile in the dim moonlight that streamed through the front window, before which were the silhouettes of the Hannan and her mother -- but they were fuzzy. Everything around them had no details, as if someone had deliberately taken a brush and wiped over them repeatedly. And yet the second rune she drew was vivid and clear, and the subsequent explosion that sent her crashing through the kitchen table and even the shearing sensation of the wooden leg impaling through her thigh felt only like yesterday.

Stress, my ass.

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