Chapter 22 #2
“We’re almost there,” Mom gasped.
But hope proved fragile and short-lived. Knights appeared from the smoke, their dark armor blocking the stairs. Shadows thickened around us, swirling into a dome that trapped us inside. The city’s roar vanished, leaving only an oppressive silence and a cold chill on my skin.
Mom shoved me behind her, using her body as a shield. A dagger materialized in her hand. “Mordaine, this is not you,” she breathed. “Let us go. I don’t wish to harm you.”
Laughter echoed from the shadows, followed by a hazy, distorted murmur. “And whose fault is it that I ended up like this?”
Mordaine coalesced from the deepest darkness, her form taking shape before us.
Only two points of violet hatred glowed where her eyes should be.
She stepped forward. Her gown of shadows dragged behind her like a funeral shroud, swallowing the firelight.
She rounded us up, but we never let her out of our sight.
“You were the one. The witch who guided the Imperial knights right to my village,” Mordaine accused.
Mom’s knuckles went white around the hilt of her dagger. “Mordaine, that’s not what happened.”
“You opened a portal for them!” A tendril of shadow lashed out like a whip, but Mom parried it with her dagger.
“Your family bowed to the Empire whenever it suited them, all to hide your son’s power.
You walked beside them, knowing what they did to girls my age.
You knew they would take my brother. And now we are playthings for their wars. ”
The dagger dipped in Mom’s grip. “I tried to protect you. I hid you.”
“Your protection became a cage they simply unlocked!” Mordaine spat. “But it’s alright. Your son will become their new bitch. He will suffer everything they did to me, and you can’t protect him anymore.”
With a shriek, Mordaine dissolved into a wave of murk. Mom met the charge, a blur of teleportation and clashing steel as she moved across the space, her dagger a silver flash against the living shadow. But Mordaine was always a step ahead, her darkness intercepting every strike.
She faked an attack to the left, and Mom moved to intercept, but it was a distraction.
While my mother was out of position, Mordaine’s shadows struck from behind, wrapping around me.
Cold tendrils wrapped around my neck. They lifted me off the ground, squeezing the air from my lungs as darkness swallowed everything.
With a roar of absolute fury, Mom yelled, “No!” Her form wavered, and in the next instant, she reappeared at Mordaine’s back. The point of her dagger, now warping the space around it with infused magic, hovered an inch from Mordaine’s cheek. “You still have time to choose. Don’t make me do this.”
Icy, brittle laughter escaped Mordaine. “Choose? The choice was made long ago. The Saintess is dead already. The Emperor’s plan is in motion, and we only need your precious son to finish what was started.”
“I will no longer be a pawn used to create pain for others, and neither will my son,” Mom countered. “The Emperor is slaughtering people in the name of the goddess.”
“And you chose now to grow a conscience? Too late.”
Mom’s expression hardened. In one swift motion, she dragged the dagger across Mordaine’s face, leaving a deep gash that sputtered with unstable portal magic.
As the shadows holding me dissipated, I fell to the floor, and the roar of the flames consuming the city rushed back in.
Mordaine clutched her bleeding face. “You will pay for this!” she shrieked.
“Go, Evan!” Mom yelled at me.
“No! I can’t go without you!” I scrambled to my feet. “I have nowhere to go!”
“Your heart will find safety. I’ll find you there!” she promised.
Tears blurred my vision, stinging my skin from the heat. I memorized her face one last time and ran for the church stairs. I could jump past the guards, then maybe even get outside the capital. But where would I be safe?
The line of knights pivoted toward me, their swords rising in unison.
Their armor began to shimmer with a faint earth magic in preparation for a charge.
As I gathered myself for the first jump, a tendril of shadow snaked around my ankle.
I yanked my foot free, but the jerking movement sent me stumbling forward.
The world warped, and I landed hard at the very edge of the bottom stair, well short of the holy crystals.
A knight’s form blotted out the sky as he loomed above, his sword raised high for a final strike. I flinched and threw an arm over my face, bracing for the end.
It never came. A lance of fire struck him from the side, and a wave of infernal heat washed over me, leaving only a smoldering silhouette where the knight had been.
Through the smoke, I saw him. He was there, sitting atop a massive black warhorse—a terrifying demon wrapped in flame, like a god of ruin come to punish the world.
The knights melted away in his presence.
The burning god shifted in his saddle, and for one impossible moment, his red-ringed eyes found mine.
Then he was gone, galloping down the street and leaving a wake of fire behind.
My heart hammered as the moment broke. I wrenched my attention back to Mom, a wild-eyed figure behind a curtain of fire, her mouth forming one word again and again. “GO!”
I pushed myself up and launched into the jump. It was too late to stop now. As the world warped around me, Mordaine materialized, her face a ruin, and struck my mother from behind. Mom slumped to the ground, blood pooling beneath her on the dark, wet stone while I twisted away, helpless.
The roar of battle abruptly fell silent as the memory crashed over me, forcing me beneath it. The sight of her body on the wet cobblestones merged into another vivid image, and the slick surface cracked open, exposing the fissured linoleum of our kitchen floor.
A single bulb overhead sputtered, casting the long, still shadow of my mom. The blood beneath her head had already dried, crusted and brown at the edges.
Tears streamed down my face, and my hands clutched at nothing. “No, no, not again. You’re not dead, Mama. Mom, I found safety. I finally found it!”
Pain shot through my chest, a scream trapped inside me. The room blurred and spun. This was a dream. This had to be a dream—
I jolted upright, gasping. The world disappeared in a final, silent blink, plunging me into absolute darkness again.
Fuck.