39. Losing Track of What I’m Fighting For
DESDEMONA
Idon’t recognize where I wake up, and when I see a figure at the end of this mysterious bed, I pounce. My knife lifts to his neck and his knife meets my chest, but our eyes are on each other.
Do it, or I will.
I nick my knife deeper into his neck.
“Gods, Marquees,” Lucian breathes, but he glances at my blade like it’s a feather.
“Relent,” I say through clenched teeth. I’ll kill him, I will. He deserves it. I can do it this time.
“Everyone outside this room wants you dead. I’m doing you a damned favor.”
“I’d like to see them try.”
“No. You don’t.”
I flick my knife up against the bottom of his chin, pressing harder and harder until he’s forced to look up. Good, I don’t want to look into his eyes.
“Yes, I do.” I’ll kill them first. I’ll kill them all. Everyone who wishes to take away from me what is mine—the only thing that is mine.
Lucian presses his knife into my chest too. “Do you want this to end in a blood bath?”
“I don’t know, I did think we were kind of like Amun and Eira,” I mutter sarcastically, pushing his head up past its breaking point.
“Would you say you’ve seen my charming attributes yet?” I can’t believe he’s joking with my knife digging into the vulnerable pocket below his chin.
“I’d say I’ve seen more of you than I would’ve wished to.”
“Drop the blade, Marquees.”
“Why don’t you say it louder and bring the blood bath to me?”
In a move too fast, he drops his knife and both his hands grip mine. He pulls my knife down and levels it at his chest, forcing me to look him in the eye.
Why not just take it?
“I’m going to try to get you out of here alive,” he says.
I shove him into the wall. “Why would you bring me somewhere that you have to get me out of?”
“It was the safest place.”
“Why would you bring me anywhere?”
He glances down at the knife I have to his chest. “Because I’m a glutton for punishment?”
“Hm, funny,” I mutter, just as I feel the vacancy against my chest. The knife falls from my hand when I reach for it. “My necklace,” I say in sudden realization. “Where’s my necklace?” I back away from him, looking for any reflective surface.
My eyes. They really are red. I touch the bone under them and continue to stare, like if I look long enough, they’ll go back to brown.
They don’t.
Nova. Bernice. They were real. They were my friends. I killed them.
I killed them all.
Every dream I had wasn’t a dream at all. I don’t want to think about my mom and what she truly feels about me.
I don’t want to think about Nova and Bernice. I want to believe that Bernice was nothing more than a living asshole.
I walk back to the bed and throw the cover over my head.
“I’m going back to sleep. You can try to save my life in the morning.” I close my eyes, but I have no intention of going to sleep.
Not only are the dreams not dreams, I’m exactly the monster I thought I was within them. I swore to never become that, but how many people have I killed in these months?
My mom knows me, better than anyone. And she never wanted me. Did she ever love me? Was it all just an act, what Freyr said? If you can’t love her, find a way to give her love.
I see her eyes, looking at me and full of malice.
But she took those memories from me. They were accidents, I swear it. If she hadn’t made me forget, then I could’ve learned. I could be in control.
This is her fault. I see it now. I learned to fear being seen because of her. I learned to fear my magic, because of her. I killed a countless number of people, because of her.
And I think I’m only going to do it all again because it’s the only way I know how to survive now.
But if Bernice was right, if I am a monster, then she made me one.
* * *
I realized I loved Bernice and Nova moments before they died, and I didn’t remember them until yesterday.
I didn’t remember them, but I could never forget the wave that washed over me when Nova looked at me, begging me to stop it. The sword that crashed into me when Bernice looked at me and spoke those words.
You’re a monster.
I believed them instantly.
I didn’t know what love was, but I could feel it turning sour when Bernice screamed. I could taste it growing pungent when he fell.
I could smell it growing rotten in his burning flesh.
I learned what love was in death, and I didn’t remember it until yesterday.
* * *
I guess I did sleep, because when I open my eyes again the sun is out and Lucian is gone. I’m trying to get you out of here alive. Yeah, whatever. I’m just glad I still have my knives on me. I’ll get out alone, without anyone’s help, and I’ll kill anyone who stands in the way of my life.
I don’t need them. Not even Lucian.
To my surprise, the door to the room is only locked from the inside, and I slip out with one of my knives blades already clasped between my thumb and index finger. I keep my head down and conceal my eyes as members of the kingdom pass me in the hall.
There seems to be an abundance of guards around me. Some soldiers too. I wonder if Lucian was right—could all these people be here to kill me? I have to assume they are, there is no benefit of the doubt in such severe cases as my life.
The entire wall to my left is doors and everything to my right is glass, which isn’t doing me any favors, because light is exactly what I’d like to avoid. I can’t afford to be recognized, and I also don’t know my way around this kingdom, which means I’ll be fiddling around until I find the exit.
I seem to catch the eye of a guard, so I duck my head lower but it doesn’t stop him. He’s walking to me, closer, closer.
My knife slides into his throat from only three steps away. Every pair of eyes in the room falls to him, then they slip to me. Noblemen and women, dressed in soft blue fabrics and bodices. Guards with their swords, soldiers with their bows and blades.
I pull my knife from the guard’s throat and run for my life, knowing that more murder lies ahead of me. But that’s what I’m good for, isn’t it? I can’t think of anything else I’ve accomplished in my life. I murdered animals for food and people for life. I mean, I couldn’t even find my mom with all this power. I could only kill.
And she doesn’t seem to think anything more of me than that either.
So when both my wrists are restricted and pulled behind my back so tightly that my spine cracks with the lash and I fall to my knees, I don’t hold back one bit. My hands might be restricted, but my power never will be, and my eyes are on fire.
I can’t even count the number of people I’ve killed anymore, not with all those memories that flooded back to me. And I didn’t even have to touch one of those Folk.
Guards approach me from the front while I’m sure there are more at my back. Shadows wrap around me, freezing into my core, but I don’t mind the cold. First, one falls, and if I had to bet, I’d say their eyes are on fire like Bernice’s. I think of what that felt like before I understood what it meant. The pulling of the muscles from a place deeper than I can fathom.
Three more go down.
No one’s going to kill me now. I’m a weapon, a murderer, a monster, and that’s not going to change the moment I need to be. Every last organ inside of me burns as I focus on another guard. I fight the urge to gag against the smell of what I’ve come to know as burning flesh.
Like hair in flames and sweat that’s sickeningly sweet.
Burning hot steel touches my throat. My vocal cords work, but I can’t hear myself because all I can feel is the blaring agony of what must be a thousand degrees. Or hotter. I pull at the shadows holding my hands, trying to reach for whatever is burning me, trying to free myself from the pain before I crumple beneath it, but they won’t budge.
Stop, please, stop,I try to say, but I only manage a wheeze.
“How does that feel?” They’re behind me. Burning me.
Whatever this is, it is piercing into my skin. Even my blood burns.
“Queen Lusia wants her alive.”
It feels like the skin is being ripped from my neck, layer by layer. Ripping, ripping, ripping. Slowly, sweetly, like they enjoy the view of my flesh.
Spots of darkness fill my eyes as the burning of my flesh eases to nothing. The world does too.
* * *
I wake up with the same shackles around my wrists as Leiholan had on my first day at Visnatus. I don’t feel hot. For once, I just feel… warm.
I have no power.
I’m dead, for sure. This is where I die.
“He burned you good.” The woman in front of me is a blurry mess, but I can make out that she is looking at my neck. Touching it too, I think, though I can’t feel anything in that region of my body. “Fascinating what a resilient thing you are,” she whispers like she is talking to herself.
I blink with force until I can make out the world a little more. It’s the woman from the Gerner who examines my neck. Queen Lusia, Lucian’s mom.
“Do you even know what you are, darling?” I like that word better on Lucian’s tongue. “The things you’re capable of achieving.” She holds my chin like it’s hers. “Unfortunately, I can’t have you.” The blue of her eyes glow until they’re almost white.
“Where’s Lucian?” I ask. I didn’t even know I was thinking of him.
Queen Lusia’s mouth flips upside down. “You two have truly gotten under one another’s skin.” Her finger is on my neck, but I can’t feel it.“Is Lucian truly what you want to ask me about? Come on,” she beckons, “think deeper.”
It’s like my mind is blank, being beckoned by something beyond me. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Hm.” She smiles like my question brought her pleasure. “I’m going to let you go, and you are going to run.” Her hand clamps around my cheeks with so much force that it aches in my jaw. Speaking slowly, she says, “You will never stop. At any sign of trouble, you will run again.”
My words come out mumbled, because she has me fish-lipped with her death grip around my cheeks. “You want me to run?” I want to whack her hand away from my face. I clench my jaw against the ache. “Why don’t you just kill me then?”
“Don’t bother with riddles that have no answer.” Her unrelenting hand finally releases me. A key appears in front of my eyes. Salvation is the only word I can comprehend. “Do you understand?”
“Run, got it.” Been doing it my whole life anyway.
“What concealed your essence before? Can you get it back?”
The necklace.So, my eyes are really red and the dreams are really real. Even if I don’t want to believe it, I’d be lying to myself.
What does that mean for me?
“A memor. It’s gone.”
“I’ll cover you. It won’t last, nor will it conceal your eyes. You’ll be able to get out of the kingdom without notice, perhaps into the septic. I wouldn’t advise you stay here.”
I nod numbly. Notice from what? Apart from her guards who take her orders, am I running from something else?
“Okay.” Is she really going to let me go? On the pretense that I run? It just seems too good to be true. Things usually do. But I’m a sentimental idiot, and I say, “What about my mom?”
“Oh, Sulva,” she mumbles. “She is gone. Dead. Do you understand?”
“No, she’s not. I saw her.” A sentimental idiot indeed.
“Hear me good and hear me once, child.” Her face is so close to mine. With one, short movement of my head maybe I could smash her skull in. “You never will again.”
I don’t care what Mom said. I don’t care about the way she looked at me. I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it. “Okay,” I say. If I can just get out of these shackles, I’ll get my power back and I can figure out what I’m going to do next.
I’ll go back home. I’ll go to Damien and Elliae. Yes. For the first time in these months, this hope feels good, possible. Maybe Mom is still out there somewhere, but would she even want me to find her?
“I’ll run, like you said.”
“This will hurt.” Queen Lusia stands in front of me. She raises her hands and shadows summon from every part of the room, swirling up her arms and then from her palms, right into me.
I gasp with the pain as they fill me, cover me. Every inch of my body, inside and out, is struck with the freezing cold and immobilizing nature of the Lucent’s power. I become so thoroughly frozen that the aching becomes dull. I’m not even sure my heart beats.
I don’t even think the blood moves in my veins.
With another forceful motion of her arms, the shadows suck back out of me, like they were never there at all. But I feel their ghosts. I fall over at once, coughing out nothing. Every breath I take and release is colder than ice.
“You’re not far from the exit. When you leave this room, turn left. You’ll find the portcullis in three hundred yards. It will be open. Cross the moat and run south of the Great Sea.” The key slides into my shackles, and with a gratifying click, my hands are released.
“Got it.” I nod, then I run, turning left like she said.
The halls are different from the ones before. There is no marble and glass, just dark stone. A fortress. I’m not running for very long before I can see the portcullis. I hear it open for me.
A group of at least seven guards make their way down the hall, walking in a square and coming right for me. I’m so close. I can’t make it without risking them seeing me. I slip against the wall, between two columns.
They come slow, in no obvious hurry, and I shrink against the wall, trying to catch my breath as quietly as possible. They come to pass, and I watch them from my dark corner, my eyes catching on Lucian.
He looks almost dead, his body barely breathing, but his eyes still meet mine. They glance at the opened portcullis only a few feet from me.
When his gaze comes back to me, he nods, and when I don’t move, he mouths a word I can’t make out.
This is it. The last time I’ll see him. I try to conjure the memory of him telling the students I’m from the septic as I turn away from him, behind the guards and for the open door.
The light momentarily blinds me when I step outside. There’s a thick layer of snow beneath my feet, coating the bridge and making it hard to walk across. But I manage. South of the Great Sea is the way I go.
I’ve made good distance between me and the kingdom when I hear the clicking noise that tells me the portcullis is closing.
I keep running south.
But the last message Lucian had tried to send to me was one word. I see it now, make sense of it now.
Go.
My body forces me to turn around. He told the school I was septic. He made me fear for my life more than once.
But even as he was being defeated, he told me to go. He saved my life in the ballroom. He saved me when I killed the Lucent.
He didn’t look at me like I was a monster.
The way my own mom did.
The portcullis closes slowly, but the distance between me and it has made it feel far too fast. I force my legs to move faster and every step keeps pushing me further into the snow.
I’m not going to make it.
He was right. His touch did make my breath catch and it still does, despite everything that’s grown between us. Run faster, I demand myself.
He and Leiholan are the only two people who I haven’t severely censored myself around these past months. They’re the only ones who I don’t think would run in the other direction if they saw me for what I am.
Maybe not for all of me. Not for the dreams turned memories.
And maybe Lucian will stop wanting to kiss me, and I would too if I were him, but the shocking sensation of wanting him that I’ve been running from is catching up to me.
I miss the smile he would give me when his voice was full of amusement. I miss stepping on his toes and dancing in dusty rooms and laughing like I haven’t laughed with anyone in years.
I miss the way he’d push my hair behind my ear and the strange sense of safety I felt when I saw him after thinking I was going to die.
I just miss him, whether there is hatred between us or not.
My body makes it under the portcullis just in time for it to not cut me into two. I go in the direction they took Lucian, hoping their slow pace will make up for my slow heart. When I come across stairs that look prettier than they ought to, I take my chances. I look down every hall I happen to pass until I’ve run up three stories and I see a speck of the guards square far ahead of me.
I walk with my knife in my hand, clutched against my wrist, hidden. When they turn a corner that feels miles away, I pick up my pace, scared to lose them. And when I make that turn, I see a door close another seemingly mile away.
This time, with no one here, I run. The door is locked when I try to open it as silently as possible, and I remember all those lessons with the headmistress. She was teaching me how to melt metal—anything, really—without cutting open my hand.
Not that I ever could. And not that I’ll try now. Once again, I pierce open the skin of my palm and put my hand on the knob, forcing the heat deeper than I ever could before. Into the mechanisms of this lock. The knob melts in my hand and I feel the door give.
It opens with a silent push.
A vial is being held to Lucian’s mouth, and his slow elbow hits a guard so hard in the face that he falls with a bloody nose. The vial shatters, blue liquid spilling on the floor. He snaps another guard’s neck while another grabs onto his neck—ready to kill. But they won’t kill the prince, will they?
I send a knife flying into his back anyway. No one even turns to me in the midst of the fight. I take another step inside the room. Lucian slams his knee into one of their noses and another cuts his arm. I hear a thud and turn to see a guard on the floor, shadows faltering around him.
There’s a big metal contraption in the middle of the room and swords, axes, and bows lining the walls. This is a weapons room. That must be the weapon Lucian told me my mom made.
Shadows wrap around my throat, and they feel far different than Lucian’s ever did. They’re weaker. I spot the guard who’s looking at me and throw a knife at his chest.
Two left.
The shadows fall from my throat when he falls to the floor.
Another guard steps behind Lucian while he’s busy asphyxiating another. I throw my second-to-last knife into his throat.
Finally, Lucian looks at me. And the smile that flicks across his face is irreplaceable. He runs to me, and the way he grabs me makes my head dizzy.
I think he’s going to kiss me when he picks up my chin, but he only lifts my head higher. I guess he didn’t have the same realization I had at the sight of him.
“Who did this to you?” My neck. I wonder what it looks like. “Was it Lusia?”
“A guard. I didn’t see who.”
Lucian’s jaw clenches, then he sweeps me off my feet, pinning me into a wall with his body covering mine.
A red arrow flashes just behind his head.
Red like the dagger that I used to kill the Lucent.
“Move,” I say, and when he does just that, I duck in front of him and throw a knife at the soldier with the bow. My last one.
Lucian grabs my hand with one word: “Run.” He leads me in a zigzag pattern and arrows pass us by. One grazes the outside of my shoulder and the roaring pain is almost enough to make me fall to my knees, but Lucian catches me. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” I bite out, picking up our running pace again.
“Do you trust me?” he asks, and we run into a room, shoving the door shut behind us and running to the balcony.
“Do you trust me?” I retort.
He doesn’t even hesitate one bit before he says, “Yes.”
Bullshit.
Footsteps rush to us from behind, and I have no choice but to follow him as we climb to the top of the balcony’s white marble railing. I tell myself to not look down.
I force my eyes to close.
And I fall.