Valla owed the Witch her life and would not hurt her village. She could choose to leave quickly, but that would mean abandoning Doren. He might easily catch up to her if he wanted, but the Witch’s town was no ordinary place. Anyone who left would forget the town and their time there immediately. Leaving Doren meant he would forget her, the tavern, and their conversation, and Valla did not trust her ability to persuade him as a stranger approaching him in the wilderness, rather than in a tavern with music and comfort. The only way they could leave with their memories intact was with the Witch's blessing, something she planned to ask for once – that is, if – Doren accepted her bargain.
How foolish of her to sleep. She should have scried the Witch herself immediately. She could ask Doren for help now, perhaps, but she did not know how he would react. The townsfolk might simply decide he was also some sort of masquerading daemon, or he might decide Valla was too strange and choose to help them oust her. And what if he had already decided not to come with her? What could she possibly do then? Valla sat and listened and waited. Two more villagers joined the conference outside – Welem and Laurie now – and their muttered curses cut her deeper than she expected. She stopped listening, and just waited, knowing her resignation was something worse than logic, something more like rationalization. She really should wake Doren, ask him to leave, and find the Witch with her, but hearing the rising voices spitting vilifications outside she found she didn't want to move.
The sun had just started to lighten the edges of the sky when Aisel called inside. "Daemon, we know what you are now. Come out and leave immediately, by the Witch's rules and town's authority."
Not Valla anymore, then. Daemon. Valla stood slowly, consideringly. "You are being hasty. I cannot leave now. I will go peacefully, just as I've lived here until now, very soon. But I cannot leave as you've asked."
The door opened, and the group moved in grimly, weapons in hand - some clubs and old swords, and even one honest-to-gods pitchfork in Orlo's shaking hands. Orlo, so gifted but so easily scared, whose Sight had always made her nervous around Valla even if she hadn't quite known why. Aisel's face was hard. Valla inhaled slowly, careful of her wound, trying to ignore the traitorous hurt that rose up in her at Aisel's sudden loathing. Gods above and below, she was tired. She couldn't remember anything of her life before she had appeared in the Witch's valley two years ago, but she knew suddenly, bone-deep, that this was not the first time she had been faced by those she had once counted as friends in such a way. Perhaps Doren would one day look at her like that. An odd thought to have, and she didn't have time to consider where it came from.
Doren was upstairs, and he had enough Sight to wake if they made any more noise. She couldn’t trust him to react well if he saw this scene when he came down. Perhaps he would join the would-be mob in driving her out of town. That would be the end of her entire haphazard, desperate plan to leave here. They needed to move. She thought all of this rapidly but without any clarity, motivated more by shame and fear of humiliation than by reason.
"Let us go outside. This should not be done here, and it should not be done without the Witch present," she said, still directing her words at Aisel. Laurie was gone from the group now, Valla noted. Hopefully, that meant the Witch was being summoned. Without waiting for a reply, Valla moved to the main door, not bothering to try to look mundane. It would make things worse, but she was finding it harder to care as something like panic rose in her heart. She could hear the others scrambling to follow, hardly quiet. But Doren did not appear.
The air was chill and damp and the sky was a deep blue-grey, just lighter than night. Valla left no footprints as she walked stiffly toward the town hall, done pretending. She kept her power banked though, the edges flaring around the edges of the bindings that weakened her. The poison-blue ribbons of power were made of aether, wrapped around the core of her power, her aura, but they still marked her skin beneath her scarf and tunic. They pulsed now as the fire surged and rolled, tightening, the feeling almost physical along her body where it wound up and around from her left ankle up to coil around her neck. Perhaps if she were unbound she could easily solve this confrontation bloodlessly, just knock the villagers out quickly and painlessly and walk away unharmed. But she was so much less than what they thought she was – a monster, maybe, but a mortally wounded one with her strength in the stranglehold of a magic collar. Thus hindered, she would have a much more difficult time defending herself without harming them. They were deeply foolish to threaten something they believed to be a daemon, which would simply destroy the town and revel in the bloodbath.
But Valla was not a daemon, and she had taken an oath to the Witch to protect the town and its people, so they would leave this unscathed. Valla might not, though. The absurdity of it was enough to start her giggling softly, then louder, until she was laughing breathily as she reached the hall, stopping outside the great doors to lean against them, facing the tavern down the main dirt road. She glanced up at the murky sky. Dawn was so far away.
CW: The next chapter contains profanity and physical violence.
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