54. Scotlind
FIFTY-FOUR
SCOTLIND
It was another four weeks before Dravenburg called the first official war meeting. I was already in the tent and couldn’t sit still. Almost everyone was healed from Tezya’s rescue, and it was the first time Dravenburg was opening up the meeting to the entire camp.
I was restless after seeing how many Advenians showed up, how many were ready to fight. We moved the meeting to the dining tent so we could accommodate the sheer number of people. Wells brought out a monitor screen where the buffet tables usually stood, and the rest of the tables were cleared so we could fit more chairs. The tent was completely crammed.
Tezya was by my side, his brow arched at my fidgeting, but he didn’t say anything.
After everyone filed in, Dravenburg finally started. “To anyone who is new, welcome to Brighta. This camp was originally created as a refuge. You’re all welcome to stay and call Brighta your home. No one is under any obligation other than to live peacefully as that has always been our intention. That being said, we are now officially on the brink of a war.” A murmur rang out across the tent. Most Advenians were locked up for Goddess knows how long and had no idea what had been happening on the outside world. Dravenburg explained everything quickly and efficiently. Then he gestured for his son to come forward.
Wells cleared his throat, pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, bent each finger mindlessly like he couldn’t stop fidgeting, before turning toward the monitor he’d brought in. “Right. Well, I’m Wells,” he said, his voice squeaked. He turned his back to the crowd and then began talking a mile a minute facing the wall. But after Dravenburg’s speech everyone was so eerily quiet that I could hear him as well as if he was standing directly in front of me.
“It took me some time to fix and rewire our connection to both kingdoms’ broadcasts. After the original broadcast was, um…” He paused, narrowly avoiding Sie’s gaze, then started again, “Well, after that, our original thread was cut off, severing our connection. I was able to break through it again, and I’ve watched all the broadcasts that have been airing over the past eight weeks. There’s um… a lot,” he added. “They started mandating them daily.”
I held my breath. That correlated to when Tezya broke in and freed everyone.
“I’m going to show you them now, but if anyone has a weak stomach, I would, um, take this opportunity to leave.” He waited a good minute, allowing anyone to do so, but no one moved. “Okay,” he murmured, more to himself than the restless crowd at his back. He hit play and the screen came to life.
I watched in horror as I saw what unfolded. At some point, Tezya gripped my thigh, his thumb started mindlessly moving up and down my leg, but I barely felt it. I knew the kings wouldn’t let what we did stand. I knew they would retaliate, but I wasn’t prepared for this amount of brutality…
They aired so many dead bodies, all completely mutilated in different ways. The only similarities they all shared was the zero branded onto their wrists and the letter ‘S’ carved into their flesh.
‘ S’ for Sie.
They were making him out to be a serial killer, framing him for the deaths of all rank zeroes.
I gasped as the screen showed over a hundred dead bodies, all robbed of their clothes as they hung in the wind. A large ‘S’ was carved onto their stomachs by a blade. Blood was still dripping from their wounds, running down their legs and turning the dirt beneath their feet red.
Then another scene was displayed and there were ten bodies now, all with their eyes and tongues cut out. An ‘S’ was carved over their faces, distorting who they were. Their tongues were thrown limp on the ground next to them, the same letter marked into them. In another scene, only the torsos and their wrists for their brand were left. A different one, the victims were drowned. The next video had only three deaths—the smallest number yet. Their foreheads had the signature ‘S’ carved onto them, but their chests each contained a different letter spelling out nix .
After each horrendous murder scene, one of the two kings would speak. They would explain how Sie attacked again, how he was becoming more brutal and even more dangerous by the day. They were provoking fear into everyone.
Then, they reassured them, saying something about protection as they used the mass murders as an excuse to further gain control.
Two weeks in, they announced how guards would be stationed outside of everyone’s homes. They mandated that every male who bore a rank three or higher would now be required to join their armies, regardless of what their Trial outcomes were. The curfew limit kept growing shorter and shorter as the kings slowly chipped at their leashes.
When the broadcasts finally finished playing, and we were caught up to the present day, everyone was silent. There was a broadcast for every single day for the past eight weeks.
Every. Single. Day.
For the past fifty-six days, the kings were using Sie as a scapegoat, murdering rank zeroes in unimaginable, grotesque ways. They were slowly trying to rid the kingdoms of zeroes, and by framing Sie, they could do it without consequences while having a valid excuse for their new rules in order to keep them safe .
I glanced over at him. He was fuming, his eyes were wholly dark and his body was shaking as he held back untamed rage. He looked like a ticking bomb, ready to detonate at any given notice.
Just when things couldn’t get any more tense, Dravenburg started talking again. “It’s obvious that we need to do something. We plan to make our first attack in a week’s time. Over the next two days, I want everyone to decide whether or not you want to join. No one is required to fight,” Dravenburg reiterated, scanning the crowd. “But we need to know where our numbers stand. There will be a sign-up sheet outside the dining tent. You have two days to decide. Write your name down if you choose to join. We will meet on day three to discuss our plan of attack once we have our numbers. There will also be a secondary sign-up sheet for those who want to help, but don’t want to be on the front line fighting.”
I couldn’t hear the rest of what he was saying. My ears were ringing as all I could think about was one more week. So much could happen in one week. So many more deaths would result from us waiting. The Lux King killed over a hundred people in a single day, if he kept up that brutality, how many zeroes would be left before we decided to take a stand?
Tezya’s squeeze on my thigh was the only indication that the meeting had ended. I watched as everyone filed out around us. I tried to steady my breathing, but all I could focus on was Sie. He remained in his seat. He was unmoving, so still, I would have thought he was one of the dead bodies he was blamed for.
Once everyone left, Dovelyn placed a shield over us. I briefly heard her answer Peter’s question confirming it was a silencing bubble. Dravenburg told us he wanted to discuss things privately after the open meeting.
My breath hitched as I realized Vallie had stayed too. It was the first time I’d seen her since she was brought here. Brock was also present. He was now able to leave the healer’s tent, and I wondered if he was helping tamper down Sie’s rage right now.
“Right. Thank you all for staying,” Dravenburg said. “I want to pick up where we left off from our last meeting. We were discussing if we should merge the kingdoms together.”
“What?” Kallon asked, just as shocked as I was. Of all the things I thought he’d say, it wasn’t that. The knowledge seemed trivial compared to what was just shared with us. We shouldn’t be sitting here discussing what would happen after the war when it’d only barely begun, when rank zeroes were most likely getting murdered and mauled as we spoke.
We’d been meeting every night, discussing our goals for what we wanted after the war. Besides abolishing rank, Brighta didn’t have a structure in place that would work for both kingdoms, and if we wanted to change Tennebris and Lux, we had to figure it out.
I understood the need for the meetings before. I knew they were important, but to sit here and talk about it now after everything we just saw…
“You can’t be serious?” I spat. Dravenburg glared at me. I knew he never cared for me, and at the moment, I’d be dead if looks could kill. I realized it was where Savannah got her scowl from. But I didn’t hold back, leveling a stare of my own. “You want to sit here and continue to talk about our goals? You want to wait a week and do nothing when people are dying right now? We need to attack now . We can’t wait a week for— ”
“Miss Rumor, I highly suggest you learn to hold your tongue on matters you clearly do not understand.” His voice sent chills down my spine. His words felt like a dagger in my back. How could he be so heartless? “This is a war ,” he spat the word in my face. “It needs to be calculated. We need to act on facts and clearly devised plans. We cannot make decisions based on emotions alone. We need time to formulate a calculated move so that we have no surprises. The Lux King is murdering these people as bait. He knows once we witness what has been happening, we’ll walk into his perfectly constructed trap. So forgive me if I do not want to risk the lives of everyone in this camp because you can’t wrap your head around the fact that people die in a war.”
I was fuming. Tezya’s hand found its way back to my thigh. I could faintly hear him enter my mind, Relax, Rumor. Breathe. You need to breathe.
But Dravenburg didn’t stop his speech, his eyes didn’t leave mine either as he continued on. “You’ve been discussing governing options for weeks now, but are nowhere closer to finding a solution. You cannot expect anyone to want to join you if they don’t even know what they’re fighting for. Obviously, you want to stop the death and maltreatment of the lower ranks. That has been the premise of Brighta since it started as a refuge, but what are you going to suggest in the interim? What will you offer those who might be willing to risk their lives and assist you? You will find that many people will not be willing to die for half-ass plans, and what has been working here will not work in Tennebris and Lux.
“If you don’t know exactly what you’re fighting for—if you don’t know exactly what your end goals are—you’re only setting yourselves up for failure. You can’t wait until after a war to decide next steps. You’re at your weakest once the fighting ends. It’s the perfect time for people to crawl out of their shadows and attack, and then sooner or later, you’ll be right back to where you started, and anyone who lost their lives would have died for nothing. So I’ll tell you again, you must figure out your goals before starting this war. You have a week. You can’t keep pushing off topics because not everyone agrees. Take votes and start making the hard decisions. You will not please everyone.”
A long stretch of silence ran through us. I was fuming, forcing myself to take slow breaths and trying to stop picturing all the vile deaths I just witnessed, trying not to picture Miles among them.
Dovelyn finally spoke, “It’s clear we should only have one kingdom after the war. This camp is proof we can coexist, and Tezya is proof our kind can mix.”
“Okay, that’s a start,” Dravenburg said before moving onto the next question.
Two hours later, the thing we struggled the most with was what governing system we would use. We couldn’t decide if we should still have a king and a queen. Dravenburg strongly recommended that we keep rulers and the Council the same, suggesting the more radical changes we implemented, the more likely people might not agree with us. That we should start slow and not change everything at once. We also had no idea what to do about the Trials.
Dravenburg finally sighed and said, “What kingdom will you take over? Will you live in Lux or Tennebris?”
A strange silence swept over us. If we only wanted one kingdom after this, if we wanted everyone to live together, we had to pick. But which one?
It was Sie who finally spoke, “Neither.” Everyone turned to look at him. He had been quiet the entire meeting, not uttering a single word during the last couple of hours until now. He just sat there deathly still, taking everything in. And for some reason it made me question what would happen to him after everything was over. Was he quiet because he didn’t think he’d still be here? Did he think he’d die fighting because of the target on his back? And then something else clicked in my mind—if we won, would we be able to set his record straight? Would we be able to convince everyone it wasn’t him who had been killing their loved ones? Or would they demand his blood in retribution?
“I don’t like the idea of your kind taking over another area on Earth. You have two places you already claim. Three if you count your prison, surely you can decide between the two kingdoms—”
Sie cut him off. “You should start over on Allium.”
Everyone stilled, all shocked by his statement to go back to our old planet, but all I could think about was how he said you and not we .
It was Savannah who finally asked, “How?”
Sie swallowed, his jaw ticked, as he met my gaze for one millisecond before turning his attention back to the mortal leader. “The AASP is in Tennebris, located in Backerly—”
Rainer interrupted. “The AAA-what?”
Sie narrowed his eyes, but it was Peter who answered. “It’s the Allium Advenian Space Program.”
Rainer nodded, but Sie didn’t bother to look before he continued. “When I was the prince, I visited their facilities. They have a means to go back, and their research discovered the planet should be habitable again.”
I lost my breath. My mind whirling back to when we went on our tour. When Sie first met Miles, he had said, “I would like to check out your research.”
I hadn’t realized he actually went. I hadn’t realized he took Miles up on his offer. And the fact that he’d done it. The fact that Miles succeeded. Tears welled in my eyes that I couldn’t hold back. I tried to focus my vision, but all I saw was black hair with bright red roots and shaking hands. I watched Vallie sprint out of the tent.
The conversation I had with Miles the night I was leaving for the Tennebrisian castle haunted me .
“Maybe you could fulfill our childhood fantasy of finding us a planet to live on,” I had said to him as I hugged him goodbye.
“Anything for you,” he replied.
My heart stopped because he actually did it, but he wouldn’t be able to come with us. It wouldn’t be him, Vallie, and me like we had always planned, like we promised each other as little kids.
I zoned out the rest of the meeting. I couldn’t focus. I knew they decided on looking into the AASP’s research, but I wasn’t sure what else was said.
All I could think about was how I lost the only family I had ever known.