Chapter 3 - 003: Exiled
"You are banished from Moon cresent for five years," he declared. "From this day forward, you are stripped of the clan’s protection and may not return before your punishment ends. Consider your life spared by my mercy."
For one second the hall was utterly still.
Then whispers exploded everywhere.
"Five years?"
"He’s letting her live?"
"She should be grateful."
Aria stared at him.
Then, because the entire thing was so absurd that her disgust needed somewhere to go, she laughed.
The sound cut through the hall like a slap.
The clan leader’s face darkened. "What is amusing?"
Aria wiped the corner of her split lip with the back of her hand and said, "You could have said that from the beginning instead of wasting my time and yours."
The uproar that followed was immediate.
"How dare she!"
"Has she gone mad?"
"Shameless!"
The clan leader half-rose from his seat. "Anaria!"
"No," Aria said sharply, and the force of it actually shut him up for a second. "You don’t get to do that now."
She pushed herself to her feet. It hurt. Her legs shook. Her ribs ached. Her head was still pounding hard enough to split, but spite was a remarkable source of structural support.
She looked directly at the man on the raised seat.
"You should have skipped the fatherly disappointment act," she said. "It doesn’t suit you."
A shock went through the room.
"You stopped being worthy of this girl’s loyalty long before today. So don’t sit there and look at me like a father now when you couldn’t be bothered to act like one while she was alive."
The words landed harder than even Aria expected.
For the first time, the clan leader’s expression actually changed.
Good.
She turned slowly, letting her gaze sweep over the hall, over the elders, over the whispering crowd, over the woman in elegant robes and the sister with her pretty tears.
"This entire clan is pathetic," Aria said. "You all knew the verdict before I walked through the door. You don’t want truth. You want a scapegoat ugly enough, weak enough, and unloved enough that no one will object when you throw her out."
The stepmother’s face drained of color.
The sister looked like she wanted to lunge at her.
Aria smiled without warmth.
"And if I had truly meant to poison someone," she said softly, "I wouldn’t have stopped at one cup. I’d have made sure every last one of you swallowed it with me."
That did it.
The hall erupted.
Voices rose everywhere at once. Elders shouting. Clan members recoiling. The stepmother shrieking her outrage. The sister staring at her as if she’d risen from the dead speaking obscenities.
Aria was already done.
She turned before anyone could stop her and started toward the doors.
No one moved at first, too stunned by the fact that Anaria; quiet, broken, obedient Anaria had just stood in the middle of the clan hall and verbally set the whole place on fire.
By the time a guard finally hurried after her, Aria was already halfway out.
No one offered to help her pack.
Which was fine, because Aria would have rather eaten gravel than accept assistance from any of them.
The room Anaria had been living in was somehow even worse when viewed in daylight and without the immediate distraction of public humiliation. Aria stood in the doorway for a long moment, one hand braced against the frame, and simply stared.
The narrow cot. The cracked basin. The rough fur blanket. The tiny wooden chest shoved into the corner like an afterthought. The single window that let in more draft than light.
This was not a room.
This was an insult with furniture.
"Well," Aria said to the silence, "thank God for the banishment, because what the hell is this?"
The attempt at humor landed flat even to her own ears.
She crossed the room and opened the little chest.
Inside were exactly the kind of possessions one would expect from a neglected daughter in a household that had spent years pretending she barely existed: two plain dresses, one patched shawl, a comb missing half its teeth, and a small cloth pouch containing a few copper coins so pathetic Aria almost laughed again.
No jewelry. No keepsakes worth stealing. No hidden savings. Nothing that suggested anyone had ever looked at Anaria and thought, This girl might need comfort.
Aria swallowed something sharp and unpleasant.
Not pity. Not quite.
Just the cold, ugly understanding of what Anaria’s life had been.
They had not simply disliked her.
They had erased her by inches.
Aria shoved the dresses and shawl into a bundle, took the coins, and left before the room could say anything else to her.
The walk to the gate was worse than the hall.
Word had already spread. Clan members lined the path in loose groups, drawn out by the novelty of seeing the disgraced daughter thrown away. Some whispered. Some laughed. One old woman actually spat on the ground near Aria’s feet.
"Shameless creature."
"The Clan Leader was too merciful."
"She should have died for what she did."
Aria kept walking.
Her face hurt. Her shoulders hurt. Her whole body felt like one large bruise wearing a dress. The bundle under her arm was light enough to be insulting. She was exhausted, furious, technically homeless, and about one bad sentence away from using that cracked comb as a weapon.
Still, she did not look back.
Keep barking, she thought. The only good thing this place ever did for me was throw me out of it.
The clan gate loomed ahead at last, wide and heavy, marking the edge of Moon cresent. Beyond it stretched a dirt road lined with sparse trees and low brush, the path out of the territory and into whatever fresh disaster waited next.
Aria made it through the gate.
She got perhaps twenty steps before a hand clamped over her mouth.
Her bundle hit the ground.
"What...mmph "
Two men seized her from behind and dragged her hard off the road, into a strip of brush and shadow just beyond the wall. Aria kicked instinctively, but Anaria’s body was weak, and the men were bigger and prepared for it. One twisted her arms behind her back. Another shoved her against a tree hard enough to jar her bruised ribs.
Pain burst through her side.
Then a familiar voice said lightly, "Careful. Don’t break her before I’m finished."
The men stepped back just enough for her to see the adopted sister, Mirah emerge from the shade.
Gone were the trembling lashes and soft concern from the clan hall. Mirah looked almost radiant now calm, composed, and smiling in a way that made her seem far uglier than any neglect had ever made Anaria.
"Well," she said, tilting her head. "That was entertaining."
Aria yanked uselessly against the grip on her arms and glared at her. "You know, for someone who cries that much in public, you look remarkably healthy in private."
Mirah’s smile thinned.
"Still sharp-tongued," she said. "I suppose it doesn’t matter. You won’t need that mouth much longer."
Aria stared at her.
And then, because she had had an exhausting day and was no longer in the mood for subtlety, she said, "Let me guess. You’re here because exile wasn’t enough and your mother raised a coward."
The slap came so fast Aria barely saw it.
Her head snapped sideways. Fresh pain exploded across her already bruised cheek.
Mirah flexed her hand once and smiled again. "I’ve dreamed of doing that for years."
Aria tasted blood.
"Congratulations," she said hoarsely. "It’s still the most pathetic thing I’ve seen all day, and I was in your family meeting."
Mirah’s expression sharpened.
"I really have wanted this for a long time," she said softly. "Do you know how exhausting it is, living with someone like you in the house? Always there. Always reminding everyone of a stain they’d rather ignore." She stepped closer, eyes glittering. "No one wanted you there. Not Father. Not Mother. Certainly not Young Master Cael."
Aria said nothing.
Mirah laughed.
"Oh, don’t look so offended. You should be grateful I’m honest enough to say it. Who would want a female like you? A fox with weak scent, weak blood, and a face no one could bear to look at?" She leaned in, lowering her voice to a sweet murmur. "Though I’ll admit, Mother and I did good work there. The soaps, the herbs, the ointments... it’s amazing what a little effort can do to a person’s skin and health."
Something in Aria went very still.
So that was it.
Not natural plainness. Not bad luck. Deliberate ruin.
Years of it.
Mirah smiled, clearly enjoying the realization on her face. "You really never figured it out? We thought you had. Then again, you were never very clever."
Aria laughed once, low and humorless.
Mirah blinked. "What’s funny?"
"You," Aria said. "All this effort just to destroy someone weaker than you. Poison, lies, sabotage, public tears." Her split lip pulled painfully when she smiled. "If this is what winning looks like, you must be even more miserable than I thought."
Mirah’s face changed.
There it was. The hit.
Aria pressed harder.
"Tell me," she said. "When you fake that innocent expression in the mirror, do you ever embarrass yourself, or have you truly committed to being a fraud full-time?"
The sister’s hand shot out and seized Aria’s jaw.
"You really should have kept your mouth shut."
"Why?" Aria asked, voice muffled by the grip. "Afraid I’ll start sounding more believable than you?"
Mirah’s eyes flashed.
"Hold her still."
One of the men tightened his grip on Aria’s arms. The other caught her by the shoulders as the sister pulled a small vial from her sleeve.
Aria went cold.
"Oh, don’t look at me like that," the girl said. "I’m only doing one final kindness as your good sister."
Mirah uncorked the vial.
Aria jerked violently, but the men held her fast. Mirah pinched her jaw harder, forcing her mouth open.
"Since you’re leaving anyway," she said with a bright little smile, "I may as well make sure you never find your way back."
The liquid hit Aria’s tongue bitter, burning, wrong.
She tried to spit it out. Mirah slapped a hand over her mouth and forced her head back until instinct betrayed her and she swallowed.
The poison went down like fire.
By the time the sister released her, Aria was already choking.
She doubled over, coughing violently, throat raw, chest seizing. The world tilted. Her knees hit the ground hard enough to bruise through the dress.
Mirah stepped back, expression smoothing into satisfaction.
"You should be grateful," she said. "No one would have taken you in looking like that anyway."
Aria coughed again, harder this time, and red splattered across the dirt.
Mirah’s smile widened.
"Goodbye, sister."
Then she turned and walked away, her hired men following behind her, leaving Aria alone in the dust just outside the gates of Moon cresent.
For a few seconds Aria could only breathe or try to.
Her chest felt tight, then tighter. A numb, icy heat spread from her throat down into her stomach, then out through her limbs in slow, poisonous waves. Her fingers trembled. Her vision blurred at the edges.
"No," she rasped.
She tried to stand and nearly collapsed face-first into the dirt.
This was not happening.
Absolutely not.
She had already died once. She had survived a rooftop accident, a body swap, a public trial, a clan full of rabid hypocrites, and the worst room she had ever seen in her life. She was not about to get murdered a second time by a discount evil stepsister with a crying hobby.
Aria coughed again, blood staining her lips.
Her body was going colder.
Her heartbeat felt wrong.
Panic finally cut through the fury.
"System," she choked out.
Nothing.