Chapter 39 #2
This was what Torin had been training the Illusion troops for, I realized with the nauseating clarity of hindsight.
Torin and Rowena had never planned to let Imogen have the full month to win Mistei over.
They’d never planned to support her at all.
And in the days I’d spent dithering over my own decision, they’d managed to recruit a portion of Illusion House to their side.
I couldn’t see Kallen anymore, but I spotted Hector in the brief slices of space between fleeing faeries. He’d gotten a sword from somewhere and was fighting three Sun Soldiers at once. A fourth tackled him, and his arms were wrenched behind his back before he was bound in iron manacles.
“Kallen!” I screamed. “Where are you?”
A Light faerie tried to stab me, so I slit his throat and jammed Caedo against the wound. A weeping Earth asrai sprinted past, and as I moved out of her way, I nearly tripped over a corpse wearing red. Grief tore through me as I recognized one of my new house members.
They’d trusted me to save them, and I’d killed them instead.
Someone called my name, and I turned to see Aidan shoving his way towards me. Horror swamped me. He looked so small and vulnerable compared to the taller, stronger Noble Fae, and the only weapon he carried was a ceramic wine pitcher. “Get out of here!” I shouted.
“I’ll save you!” he cried out, shattering the pitcher over the head of an Illusion faerie.
“You need to run!”
The surge of retreating faeries pushed him back, and he struggled against the flow. “I can’t leave you,” he said, tears streaking down his face. “And Edric is here, and I can’t find him—” His voice broke. “I have to find him.”
If Aidan stayed, he would die. “You have to escape,” I said, my own tears carving tracks through the blood splattered across my cheeks. “Tell everyone they poisoned me and made me lose control of my senses. Tell them Ulric cast an illusion to trick me.”
“They’re going to kill you—”
“No, they’re not.” It was an awful, ice-cold realization, the kind that could only be found in utter defeat. They were chaining the house heads—which meant they had something worse planned for us.
Aidan looked tormented, still shaking his head in refusal. A new group of refugees poured between us, driving us farther apart.
“Please,” I shouted, voice raw. “We’re going to need someone to save us.”
An enormous Sun Soldier appeared behind Aidan, cleaving his way through the crowd. His eyes were fixed on me, but his sword was slicing through everyone who got in his way—and Aidan was directly in his path. I screamed as the blade descended towards my first friend in Mistei.
Edric was suddenly there, bursting through the crowd to grab Aidan around the waist. The Fire lord spun him away, and the sword breezed past them to strike sparks from the stone floor.
Edric didn’t let go of Aidan. He started running, carrying him towards the exit. “We’ll find you, Kenna!” Aidan cried out over Edric’s shoulder.
The Sun Soldier was in front of me now. I aimed my knife towards his neck, but he knocked my chained wrists aside with one gauntleted forearm before slamming into me.
I flew through the air, and my back hit the ground hard enough to snatch the breath from my lungs.
I wheezed but kept fighting, my blade scraping over the metal greave covering the soldier’s shin.
He stomped on my bound hands, shattering my fingers in an explosion of white-hot agony.
The knife clattered to the floor. Then the Sun Soldier grabbed the long chain hooked to my manacles and started dragging me on my back towards the dais.
My arms felt like they might rip out of their sockets. I sobbed from pain and something far worse. The cavern was emptying of the living, leaving only heaped bodies and a lake of blood behind, just as Caedo had imagined. All this suffering, all this death—all of it my doing.
Where was Kallen? Had he escaped?
I knew better, though. Kallen wouldn’t leave Hector or me behind. Terror threatened to choke me as I was pulled through the carnage. I looked frantically to either side, trying to find him, praying to anything that might be listening that he was still alive.
The faerie hauled me past a pile of dead Sun Soldiers, and their pooling blood smeared over my skin and the fine fabric of my dress. They lay sprawled over one another, half of them looking like they’d been cut down trying to escape something terrifying.
At the top of the pile was a single figure in black.
I screamed, grief ripping through me. “No, no, no, no!”
Kallen’s face was so swollen it was nearly unrecognizable, and his dark hair was matted with blood. His empty sword hand hung limp at his side, crossed by a delicate silver chain.
I strained against the cuffs, the iron gouging deep into my blistered skin. I could heal him, I could bring him back. I had to bring him back. Blood spilled, hot and wet, but the manacles didn’t budge, and then the metal was cutting to bone, and I still couldn’t get them off.
Kallen didn’t move as I was dragged past him. Blood dripped in a steady cadence from his fingers, splatting into the pool on the floor.
A swirl of shadow condensed and took form next to him.
It was Una, with a healing cut on her temple and her feathered dress covered in gore.
She grabbed Kallen under the arms, yanking him off the heap of corpses.
His body hit the ground with a wet thud, and Una threw herself on top of him.
Shadows twined around them, forming a cocoon of night.
The soldier dragging me leapt towards her, but Una’s magic was already wisping the two of them away, and his sword cleaved through empty air.
Tears poured from my eyes, and another scream ripped its way out of my throat, so raw it hurt. He’d looked dead. Was there enough left of him for Void House’s healers to salvage, or was Una bringing his body home to mourn?
I couldn’t bear it if he was gone.
The Sun Soldier stopped before the dais, still holding the chain taut so my arms were stretched over my head.
A shadow fell across me. Through the blur of tears, I saw Rowena silhouetted against the drifting faerie lights.
She crouched, eyes bright behind her golden mask as she studied me.
Her hem was soaked red with the death she’d orchestrated.
“You really must be more careful about what you drink,” she said.
Hate filled me, pushing aside all other emotions. I blinked the tears away, then spat at her. She flinched as my pink-flecked saliva spattered across her dress.
“Charming,” she said with disgust as she wiped the spit away.
I turned my head, looking to see what was happening now that the battle had been lost. The civilians were gone, and only groups of fighters from Light and Illusion House remained, sorting through the carnage.
A soldier had slung Imogen over his shoulder and was carrying her away while she struggled weakly.
Drustan staggered behind them, hands chained behind his back as soldiers jabbed him with spears.
Relief mixed with agonizing guilt. He’d healed from my attack, but his copper tunic was peppered with bloody stab marks.
Hector had needed to be knocked out, it looked like, and was being dragged.
Oriana wasn’t there. She wouldn’t have sanctioned this, so Torin and Rowena had probably let her escape, knowing she would keep Earth House complacent while they established their new order.
Rowena’s cool fingers gripped my chin, and she turned my face towards her. Her attire was pristine except for the reddened hem, and her hair was pinned up perfectly, with diamonds sparkling amidst the gold. “You didn’t even pick up a sword, did you?” I asked bitterly. “What a coward.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I fight in other ways. Would you like to know what I put in your wine? It’s one of my favorites.”
I wanted her to suffer as no one had ever suffered before. “Fuck you,” I snarled.
She pouted. “Maybe later, then. You’ll be getting a good look at my collection soon enough.” Her assessing gaze moved over me, from my blood-spattered face to my bound hands. “We need to take care of that,” she said, frowning.
Take care of what?
She addressed a nearby soldier. “Cut her right arm off.”
His sword swung in a vicious arc, severing my arm near the shoulder.
Lightning cracked through my body at the site of the cut, an agony so immense and overwhelming my brain couldn’t process it.
Then shock hit, and the pain became a deep, aching throb.
That’s my arm , I thought hysterically, craning my head to see.
My lax fingers, my bone and muscle visible at the line of the cut, my blood spilling red.
Rowena held a hand out, and the soldier passed her a key. She unlocked the manacle around my right wrist, then picked up the severed limb and set it down several feet away. I watched, nauseated, as she took the guard’s sword and chopped my hand off.
Rowena picked up my arm and shook it, and Caedo slid off the stump of my wrist and clattered to the ground. Just a silver bracelet with a red jewel. “Get that thing in a box,” she ordered another Light faerie. “Don’t touch it.”
As the faerie used his spear to drag Caedo across the floor, Rowena crouched beside me once more, pressing my severed arm back into position. The soldier passed her my hand, and she held it against my cut wrist.
The Fae could heal even an injury this grievous, so long as the missing body parts were reunited quickly enough. Why was she doing it, though? Why fix me?
I’d gone numb from the trauma, but prickling discomfort spread at the top of my arm, like insects crawling over the tear.
Then the pain flooded back in, so intense my back bowed and my teeth punctured my lower lip.
My immortality was already fighting so many other injuries, but bit by bit, the wounds sealed, and then I had a right hand and a right arm again, bloody but whole.
I flexed my fingers, feeling like an essential part of me was still missing without Caedo curving over my skin.
I tried to grab Rowena’s throat, but she jerked back, and with my left arm still held tight over my head, there wasn’t enough slack in the chain to reach her. The soldier who had assisted her grabbed my free wrist and muscled it back into the manacles.
Rowena sat back on her heels. “That’s better,” she said. “It’s more fun when they start in one piece.”
I was lightheaded from blood loss and so terrified I wanted to weep, but I gritted my teeth, determined not to cry. She’d stolen enough from me tonight.
Kallen , I thought desperately. Please be alive. Please. Give me something to aim for.
If he was alive, I would find a way to survive whatever was coming. I’d fight my way back to him, even if it took years. So long as I lived and he lived, nothing could break me entirely.
If he was dead…
No. I refused to believe it.
I closed my eyes, conjuring a memory of Kallen’s dark blue eyes, his secret smile. I imagined a moonless night and a sky full of stars and fixed the memory of him, the hope of him, in that firmament, one star shining brighter than the rest.
Then I imagined locking that dream of a night sky away behind metal gates, where no one would ever get to it.
If I let myself hold that hope too close to the surface, it could be used against me.
I might use it against myself, too, torturing myself with impossibilities when I needed to focus on survival.
But if I buried the dream deep enough, there might be enough of me left at the end to resurrect it.
I opened my eyes to see more Sun Soldiers gathering around us. There would be no escaping. I was Light House’s prisoner now.
Beyond them, the hall was filled with dozens of corpses. From the colors of their tunics, they came from every house, but the majority wore the black of Void and the brilliant hues of Fire. Dotted among them were a few spots of dark red. All dead because of me.
If Torin and Rowena didn’t kill me eventually, the guilt might.
“Ready, my love?” Torin asked from the dais. His tunic was spattered with blood, and he was wearing Imogen’s crown. Mistei would have a king, after all.
It would have a queen, too. Rowena echoed his triumphant smile, then leaned over me.
She unhooked a pouch from her belt and loosened the drawstring.
“Time to go,” she told me in her sweet, girlish voice, as if we were two friends about to embark on a journey.
She upended the pouch, pouring powder into my face.
It smelled like poppies, and as I breathed in, the world faded.
Soft blackness swallowed me up, clouding my thoughts. My heart slowed. It was almost a relief, this feeling. Sleep reached for me, easy and lulling, promising everything would be all right in the morning.
It wouldn’t, though.
I heard Rowena whisper one last thing before my consciousness drowned.
“I’m so glad you like to dance.”