Chapter 46
Evie
Evie was certain there were many people in the world who would’ve loved a choice in how they left it.
As flames rose around her, she was certain.
This wasn’t her first choice.
She froze, watching the fire catching around the room with rapid speed. Knowing for several heinous people, her death would be easier. For the building to be consumed by flames. For the architecture to crumble around her the way her life had. Crushed beneath the fallen dreams of a loved one.
It would be easier for the kingdom. Poetic, even. Evie stared at the short rise and fall of Fritz’s chest. At the cruelty etched into his wounds.
And then she found herself again through the smoke. Her inner voice, definitive.
Evie Sage died like a martyr.
And allowed an innocent man to die.
Nope. Not doing that.
With a powerful push to her feet, Evie hunched over, using all her strength, muscles straining beneath Fritz’s body, and leaned his weight on her shoulder.
She stumbled past the flames to the front entrance of the theater, one-handedly beating on the steel door, ignoring the sting in her fist. It was already so hot.
“Helena!” Evie yelled. “Can you hear me? Raphael! Marv! Roland!”
No answer.
Something moved in the corner of her eye.
“Hey!” Evie cried, gently placing Fritz down and standing in front of him like a sentry, knowing that blur was the person who’d hurt him.
Which meant they were dangerous.
Still, she sprinted after them.
Her lungs were beginning to burn unbearably, her eyes watering, though at least not from tears for a change.
Refreshing.
“Show yourself, you coward!”
And out wandered Douglas, the blond man with his tiny notebook. “Surprised?” He sneered.
“Not particularly.” She rolled her eyes. “I spent, what? Less than a few moments in your presence the last time I was here, and you spent the bulk of it glaring at me. I’m not surprised when a dark cloud spits rain, either.”
Douglas’s face fell.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she said with an exaggerated hand to her chest, all while coughing furiously. “Did I upset you?”
A fire-licked beam fell right beside her, and a piece of debris dug itself underneath the skin of her arm, scalding her and only angering her further. The dark magic twisted inside her, wanting out. It was trapped, too.
Her vision grew cloudy, her heartbeat slower in her chest, black spots forming before her eyes.
Unable to see ahead of her feet, she slammed shoulder-first into a wall but was knocked to the ground.
The heat was so suffocating now she was choking on it, her breaths coming in short pants. No air. There was no air.
“Help,” she rasped, hardly above a whisper, not enough for any to hear over the cracking of the fire, the decimation of the building piece by piece. Her throat was on fire, her eyes burning so much she had to shut them, her limbs and heart giving out.
She was dying.
No. I won’t.
“I can end it now, if you wish.” Douglas stood over her, unaffected by the fire and smoke, his body clad in some sort of shiny material that was impervious to the flames.
Hacking and fighting for breath, Evie struggled with everything in herself not to close her eyes, not to surrender to unconsciousness, holding tight to the real world lest she slip into the dream one.
“Why?” she wheezed, shriveling into herself when he came closer.
“The former owner promised to leave the theater to me.” Douglas nudged her with his foot, and she tried to roll away but found herself too weak to move.
“But he gave it to Helena. Do you think I relished losing my theater to her? Being forced to work for that harpy instead? I hate her. And I hate you.”
Evie had almost died in many different ways since her employment with The Villain began. Strangulation, poison, drowning, falling…the list went on. She could accept death by fire if she must.
But dying at the hands of a weak man and his fragile ego?
She fucking refused.
Douglas took one step closer, and she reached for the sharp slab of wood she’d found beneath her when she fell and rammed it into his foot. He yelped in disbelief and stumbled back, into the blur of smoke and fire.
“You should use your little notebook to express yourself. Arson’s a lot messier.” She stumbled to her feet, wood and concrete coming down around them as the rest of the theater was consumed by the flames.
“You refuse to die,” Douglas spat.
“A bad habit.” She coughed into her arm, searching for an out. Any out.
Douglas didn’t appear to care. “Allow me to break it for you.”
Without ceremony, he lunged for her. Evie stumbled and fell onto the ground hard, crying out in pain when the man jumped to hover over her.
Another creak above them, this one louder, more ominous than the rest.
“Fuck!” Evie yelled as a beam fell just above her. Among burning alive, or suffocation, or being squished to death, she now decided that squished was likely the worst. She wondered at how she nearly missed drowning.
Run. Get up.
But it was over.
And then she felt a tingle against her left pinkie.
BOOM.
Evie could not see him, could not hear him; all that stood before her was another blur, but this one didn’t shove her. No, this one ran right for her, through the fire, dodging falling debris through spreading flame—it didn’t matter. Nothing slowed him.
Nothing. Nothing until he got to her. And then sure hands pulled her tight into a chest she knew. Evie grabbed tight to his neck when he shifted, only holding her with one arm, his other hacking debris away with his sword. “You came.”
“There is no world in existence,” Trystan whispered into her ear as he dragged them away from the burning stage, “where I do not come for you.”
But Evie looked up. And so wished she hadn’t.
Another crack.
And the Deadlands Theater fell.