Young Writers Society

a/n: hey, thanks for checking out Starry Veins! This is the novel I wrote for Round V of LMS, and it's still a first draft! While I don't discourage any feedback, I prefer not to receive feedback on grammar! I'm not polishing this draft up yet, so I'm not as concerned about editing. I am, of course, open to all feedback, but I ask that you keep this in consideration! Thanks <3

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[Mishal]

The passing, jubilant melody of a bard plucking a lute echoed even through the closed windows. Sunlight poured in golden shafts through the room, cutting apart even the darkest shadows.

It was jarring and achingly discordant.

Mishal tightened his grip on the windowsill. As his nails dug in, a splinter pierced his fingertip, and wood creaked under his grip.

None of this was right. The world should be drained of its colour and splendour. Everything should be monochrome and solemn. But light and vibrant hues burned his eyes like the sun, leaving them hot and swollen.

Margaretta cleared her throat. It broke apart in the air, immediately snuffed out like a candle lit in a strong breeze.

He watched someone tug a stubborn horse’s lead. If he focused hard enough, he didn’t have to think…

Gracia made a noise like a false start of a conversation. The chair she was sitting in, somewhere behind him, scraped against the wooden floor. “I’m going to see if those flowers have arrived yet.”

“Gracia.” Margaretta’s voice was hoarse and low. “Send for the rest of the guild. They need to know what happened.”

Mishal shut his eyes. He didn’t want to think about those left back at the Citadel. The kids. Alanna and Cassius.

“…the rest of the guild,” Gracia repeated, voice hesitant.

The silence that filled the space once again had become an intimate companion in the last day. It was so stiflingly quiet, and yet, Mishal’s head spun and throbbed so badly he expected blood to pour form his ears at any moment.

Finally, he heard Margaretta’s heavy exhale. “You know who I mean. Bring them back here. And Moira’s apprentice… he needs to know.”

He opened his eyes and frowned. Slowly, he turned, an acidic taste rising in his mouth. “Bring them… here.” He narrowed his eyes. His throat cracked and ached. He couldn’t remember when last he’d had a drink, nor a bite to eat. “What about Ashael?”

Another lapse of silence, as if by command of the universe, so too did the noise dim in the streets. The windows shuddered, and the walls creaked as though sensing the tension they trapped within them.

Gracia stood with her head bent, in the archway that led out of the room, her hands pressed into the front of her dark grey dress and pale apron. “Mishal—"

“Go bring the others here,” Margaretta said. She was leaning against the ivory mantle of the fireplace, staring down at the charred remains of the log, her expression lost and yet present. She looked at the logs like the remains of a fallen child.

He gave Gracia another look in time to meet her gaze and found that she wore the same, pale, miserable expression everyone wore when they looked at him. Then she disappeared down the hall.

“Margaretta,” he said, his voice rusted and worn, yet he had hardly used it recently. “What about Ashael?”

She closed her eyes. “Understand I was keeping your best interests in mind. I did not wish to cause you or Isadora undue fear—”

“What did you not say?”

Margaretta pursed her lips and opened her eyes. She didn’t look up at him, and her jaw twitched as though she was fighting some powerful force within herself. But she remained calm, as she always did, and a part of Mishal shrivelled and went sour.

“Thom returned from the errand I sent him and Gillian on.”

“When?” He shifted forward. His legs and shins burned with the movements, in the places the crystal shards had pierced and burrowed into his skin.

She swallowed carefully and raised her chin, as if addressing a crowd, when she turned to face him. “Some time before we returned from the expedition. I asked them to stay at a nearby inn and away from… the two of you. I did not want the two of you to worry about what had happened. Gillian remained back in the village, but Thom did return with several members of the guild.”

Questions whirled through his head like arrows, piercing through his temples, but he held them carefully behind his teeth as Margaretta paused. Why did they come? How many is several?

How did you keep the other kids away?

Margaretta glanced back at the ash in the fireplace. “Early into the Season of the Sun’s Reign, the Citadel was, evidently, burned down. Those who did not wish to stay in the village or begin rebuilding efforts came with Thom back here to reconvene with us.”

He grabbed the back of the chair to steady himself as he grew dizzy, fuzz hazing his vision. The Citadel. Burned down. “How—” He glanced up at Margaretta, a panic so sudden and so intense it hurt burst in his chest. The grief that had eclipsed him before now was doubled, swallowing him whole and threatening to drown him. “Where are the other four?”

Margaretta didn’t respond.

Ice filled his veins and his teeth clacked together. “Margaretta, where are they?”

She bent her head. “No one knows. Nobody saw them after the fire started. There was too much chaos and confusion, and apparently there were assailants as well. They started the fire, a mage did, and nobody knows what happened to them either.”

He managed two steps forward and it was all he needed to get close enough to collapse into the armchair he had been gripping. He buried his face in his hands, digging his palms into his eyes and rubbing. This couldn’t be real, not so much like this all at once. A lump rose in his throat, and the familiar prickle under the heels of his hands, at the back of his eyes, began to sting anew. There was nothing now that could make this worse. Fate had played its hand, and he wasn’t the slightest bit sure how to survive this.

“Margaretta!”

Gracia’s voice split through the silence like a beacon in the night, and despite her breathless and joyous tone, he stayed where he was. She sounded faraway and muddled. He watched the abyss swirl on the back of his eyelids, colours and shapes spinning before him, and fought against the tide that was swelling inside of him.

The silence stretched on forever around him, broken on by the soft rustle of clothes and the tap of shoes against the floor, but it seemed slowed. Buffered. Like something had pulled at the flow of time and obstructed it.

Then suddenly Margaretta’s voice, in a tone he had never heard it in before, broke it. “Oh, thank the gods.”

He reluctantly raised his head, feeling like his every limb weighed a hundred pounds, and his heart stilled.

An unfamiliar woman, so tall she had to duck under the archway to step into the room, surveyed them. She wore polished, dark grey armour, and her skin was darker and smoother than his. A halo of black hair clouded around her head, frizzled, and ruffled but otherwise kept.

She was flanked on either side by two very familiar faces.

They both looked older, though he had last seen them only a few seasons ago. Rowan looked far more dishevelled and disarrayed than Mishal had ever seen them, but there was a comfortable familiarity in their soft smile that warmed Mishal’s chest. Their hair was sloppily braided, in a way that he had never known Rowan to be, but there was an incredible relief in Rowan’s expression that loosened something inside himself.

Alanna, of the two of them, looked much older than he remembered. The lines of her face with grim and sharper, highlighted in a way he hadn’t known. Her eyes were brighter and colder now somehow, even though they had already been so striking he couldn’t imagine any more. But her face softened as she met his gaze, and a smile broke out and crinkled her eyes.

There was a prolonged moment of stillness, before Alanna barrelled towards him. He had enough time to stand before he caught her, nearly falling back with the effort. Something cracked in his chest as he pulled her close, and he found himself holding her as tightly as he could without harming her. He gritted his teeth until they hurt, grimacing in an attempt to begin weeping again.

Alanna was here. Now.

It did get worse.

word count:

1,395