My heart comes to that thought and halts.
That can’t be why I stalled.
No, it’s because taking a life is an irreversible evil. There’s a reason it works. It rips the soul. And since my soul is knitted to the Fabric, it rips the Fabric, too.
“He wants me to put him out of his misery,” I sigh, translating for the man into Farin’s tongue. “He’s paralyzed. Hit a rock on his way into the ocean.”
For a moment, Farin doesn’t move, and I refuse to look at him. Need to think. Need to find a way to get Farin to go away, so I can…
“Zora.” Farin says my name so softly, I can’t help but turn around to face him. “Don’t look.”
It happens so fast.
Farin grabs his dagger and brings it down behind me.
There’s the sickening slicing of flesh, and a gentle thud as the dagger hits the sand.
The man doesn’t have the chance to scream.
The sound makes me sick, and instinct has me craning toward the man, as if my eyes need to confirm what my ears can’t seem to process.
Farin’s arm lands on my shoulder, his other hand still holding the dagger, which now drips with blood. “I said don’t look.”
I don’t.
My throat constricts, and I feel as though I might retch.
I do retch.
It doesn’t take seeing it to imagine the kind sailor’s head severed from his body.
“Why did you do that?” I ask, digging my fingers into the sand to steady myself. I’m still gagging, though nothing’s coming out.
“So you didn’t have to,” he says, as nonchalantly as if he just plucked a coconut from a palm that was too high for me to reach.
“I didn’t. I didn’t.” My throat constricts, and I feel as if I can’t get air. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
Farin furrows his brow, suspicion heavy on his face as he looks down at me. “You would have rather done it yourself?” Even the question sounds scornful.
I say nothing. The sound of the sailor’s torn flesh still scratches against my skull. Suddenly, I feel as if I have to put an island of distance between myself and the body. I scramble to my feet, but my nausea is dizzying, and I find I stumble.
Strong hands catch me, pulling me into his chest, but I scratch at him until he lets go of me.
“Zora,” Farin says, following behind me as I trudge through the sand.
“You’re a monster,” I say, to no one in particular.
Farin scoffs. “Are you just now figuring this out?”
I want nothing but to whirl on him, but I’m afraid of what I might accidentally see. Now that the man is dead, is he omniscient? Can he hear my thoughts, know what I would have done to him?
But I can’t think about that now.
“Hey,” Farin says, but I don’t want to hear it. “If you were going to do it, you would have done it before I caught up to you.”
“The fact that you think like that proves that you don’t care. That you have no empathy, no awareness for any feelings other than your own.”
Farin stops, and though I can’t turn to face him, I stop too.
“If I didn’t care,” he says, “I wouldn’t have wasted my energy. Believe it or not, it takes more effort to sever someone’s head from their body than it does to walk on by.”
I grit my teeth. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not joking. Do you think I enjoyed that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Did you, or did you not, once possess a magic that got high off the pain of others?”
Farin is so quiet, I can hardly tell that he’s breathing. “That man didn’t feel a thing. Didn’t even see it coming. I don’t know what more you would have had me do for him.”
I shake my head, placing my palm over my mouth, as if the man already has a stench that’s following me around.
Hero or villain?
Now that the man is dead, I think I know.
“You didn’t do it for him,” I say. “You did it for me, and I’d rather you not.”
He must think the disgust in my voice is directed at him, because he drops the bloodied dagger in the sand and walks on ahead.
