Free Fleeing Fate by Anya Richards

could be.
    “Is that tattoo your symbol?”
    His hands paused, as though her question had startled him,
then went back to measuring some powder onto a set of scales. “Yes.”
    The flat, monosyllabic answer made her grimace, but she
pressed on, determined not to let him drift away on the tide of his anger. “How
do you tattoo a god?”
    She’d wondered that earlier, had meant to ask, but got oh so
pleasurably distracted.
    “It takes intention.” He emptied the contents of the scale
into a small jar then picked up a black bottle. “And the knowledge of the god’s
element as the medium. All gods know their elements, it’s easy.”
    “So simple.” She watched him use a dropper to squirt ink
into the jar, wrinkling her nose as an acrid scent reached her. “Why can’t
everything be that straightforward?”
    “By all the gods, I wish I knew.”
    The rage in his voice wasn’t quite strong enough to disguise
his hurt and her heart ached. Sliding off the chair, she hesitated, then
crossed to stand beside him.
    “I know it’s not wise, but I—I want to tell you what’s
happening to me, what I’ve done.”
    “Don’t, if you don’t want to.”
    If anything he sounded angrier, but somehow it didn’t deter
her. Laying her hand on his arm, feeling the muscles tighten beneath her
fingers, she looked at his stern, unmoving profile.
    “I want you to understand. No.” She shook her head,
searching for the complete, unvarnished truth, hoping he would recognize it for
what it was. “I need you to understand, even if no one else ever knows
or cares what my story is or what happens to me.”
    She didn’t say that she’d go into the darkness happily
knowing he understood, cared, but knew he recognized her meaning by the
brooding glance he sent her way.
    “Tell me then, but don’t expect me to suddenly be happy
about what you’re doing.”
    Gràinne nodded, accepting the condition. “It started beyond
the Veil, in the human world, while I was on assignment. I started getting
hints of emotion, almost more like curiosity than anything real and true.”
    He was shaking the jar, turned slightly so as to see her
face. “When did it happen the first time?”
    Pain made her wince, the present agony in sharp contrast to
her disinterest at the time. She didn’t want to talk about it, but he deserved
to know whatever he wanted to, and the words seemed dragged out of her by the
intensity of his stare.
    “I was on the field at the Battle of Amiens.” Jakuta nodded,
no doubt aware that in the chaos of what the humans called World War I several
unscrupulous denizens of their side of the Veil had tried to take advantage,
some even going so far as to intensify the conflict. “There were demons and
ghouls who had broken through the defenses and I was sent to sound the alarm.”
    A snort of anger broke from her and she closed her eyes for
a moment, immediately reopened them as an image of what she had seen played
back against her eyelids. At the time the filth and carnage, sundered limbs,
evisceration and bodies so damaged as to be almost unrecognizable meant
nothing. Now she swallowed against the gore rising in her throat, the stench of
mud, unwashed bodies, torn and burning flesh, all overlaid with cordite, once
more assaulting her nostrils. When she was finally able to speak again, her
voice was thick, each word causing a rasping ache in her throat.
    “Do you know what it is like to scream without being heard,
to sound a warning that none will heed, to stand impotent while all around you
the world shudders and moans with the agony of death? The humans have grown
impervious to the clarion call of the banshee. Even the dogs, who used to howl at
the sound of our cries, no longer even raise their heads as we pass. It was a
futile endeavor but the job I had been given, so I wandered from one end of the
battlefield to the other, now moving with the advancing troops, now with the
retreating, watching the humans slaughter each other