The Whiteflower Ascendant

002-1：The Emberstone Ring

Garrick stared at the shears as if he could not quite understand why they were pointed at him.

Then his face changed.

"Give me the ring."

Mara backed toward the table. The room was low and close, the hearth dead behind her, the air thick with old smoke and ale. The ring cut into her palm. It was a poor thing, a dull band with a cloudy red stone, but it was Mira's. It was also the only object in the house that might buy Mara a road out.

"No."

The word surprised them both.

Garrick swung.

He was drunk enough to miss. Mara ducked under his arm and shoved him with both hands. He staggered, caught his heel on the hearthstone, and fell heavily enough to rattle the plates on the shelf.

For one bright, impossible second, Mara only stared.

She had moved him.

Not beaten him. Not truly hurt him. But moved him. Garrick Dace, who had filled doorways and rooms and years of her life like a weather system, was on the floor because she had pushed him.

The shock gave her courage. She ran.

He caught her by the ankle before she reached the door.

His fingers closed like an iron trap. Mara hit the floor, chin striking the boards, pain bursting white behind her eyes. Garrick dragged her back with a curse. Fear rose in her, old and practiced, but something else rose with it, sharper and cleaner.

If he pulled her back, she would not leave.

If she did not leave tonight, she might never leave at all.

Mara twisted and drove the shears into his hand.

Garrick bellowed. His grip loosened. She stabbed again, wild now, not aiming for death, only distance, only air. The shears were blunt and her strength was poor. Blood appeared in thin dark lines across his knuckles and cheek where he shielded himself. It was not much blood.

It was enough to wake him.

His drunken eyes cleared.

"You little curse."

He lunged.

Mara slipped beneath his arm, too small for the space he expected her to fill. Her shoulder struck the table. A clay cup fell and broke. Her hand closed around the oil lamp.

She threw it.

The lamp did not hit him. It struck the floor between them and burst.

Fire leapt up with a sound like torn cloth.

Both of them recoiled. Flame crawled across spilled oil, bright and sudden, painting Garrick's face orange. He looked monstrous in that light, but he also looked far away, trapped on the other side of a narrow burning river.

Mara ran.

Outside, the night had no moon. Clouds pressed low over the village roofs. Garrick roared behind her, and she slammed the door shut with her whole body. Her hands flew over the wall until she found the rope used for binding firewood. She looped it through the latch, knotted it badly, knotted it again, and heard wood crack under Garrick's first blow.

It would not hold long.

She snatched the bundle she had packed: bean cakes, one spare shift, a pair of stockings more holes than wool. Then she fled into the dark.

She did not look back.

If she had, she would have seen light gather in the seams of the house. She would have seen smoke thread from the eaves and then thicken. She would have seen the place that had held her for almost sixteen years begin, at last, to burn.

Mara saw only road.

She ran until the village sounds vanished. She ran until her lungs tore at each breath and her toes went numb in her shoes. She stumbled over a stone hidden in the ruts and nearly fell. She kept going. The road to Alderwick town was a black line between black fields, but she knew it by habit, by memory, by hatred.