Chapter 9 #4
I bolted over fallen logs and ducked beneath hanging vines, but I was too late.
A boy, someone from Hera’s unit, drove a dagger straight into Clive’s stomach just as he spun around.
The breath left my lungs. Clive collapsed to his knees, his eyes wide with shock, blood blooming through his leathers as his hands clutched his abdomen.
The attacker turned toward me and instantly I recognized him as the boy who tripped me during the entrance exam.
Something inside me snapped. I grabbed the hilt of the dagger on my thigh and hurled it.
The blade sank into the guy’s shoulder, but he barely flinched.
He yanked it out with a wince and glared at me. Okay, now he was pissed.
I pulled the remaining dagger from my back as he charged.
Steel clashed as I blocked his strike barely with my one blade, before driving my boot into his stomach.
He staggered away. My injured arm screamed with pain.
He came at me, slashing, and I pivoted, catching him in the arm, but not before his blade slashed across my thigh.
I cried out and stumbled but forced myself to stay upright.
My heart thundered. He swung again, this time I dropped low, the steel slicing through the air above me. In one fluid motion, I swept his legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard. I straddled him and pressed the tip of my blade to his throat. He froze.
“Do you want to live?” I asked, breath ragged, voice cold.
He nodded quickly, hands raised. “Then walk away,” I growled, never breaking eye contact.
But the second I loosened my stance; his hand shot toward his dagger.
I blocked with my forearm, without hesitating.
My blade sliced across his throat in one swift, brutal motion.
Hot blood sprayed across my chest and face.
He gasped, choking, green eyes wide with terror as he clutched at the wound.
He gurgled and writhed, the last of his breath bubbling from his lips.
I stared, my heart shattering. He was someone’s son.
Maybe someone’s brother. And I had killed him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, before rising to my feet and rushing to Clive.
I dropped to my knees beside him. Clive was trying to press his hands to the injury, but blood bubbled past his fingers, spilling from the corner of his mouth.
“Clive, hold on,” I pleaded, grabbing his hand.
“I’ll help you. I can fix this.” His gaze found mine, glassy and wide, tears streaking through the dirt on his cheeks.
“Tell B-Brandon…” he choked.
I shook my head fiercely, tears blurring my vision.
“No. No, you can tell him yourself. Just stay with me.” My voice broke as I pressed my palm to his wound, trying to stop the bleeding, but more blood seeped through my fingers.
He tried to speak again. A wet, strangled sound tore from his throat and after that his body went slack.
“No… no, Clive, wake up,” I whispered, shaking him gently.
Too gently. Like I was afraid he’d break.
“Please. Don’t do this.” He didn’t move. His chest stilled beneath my hand.
He stared past me, unfocused, already drifting somewhere I couldn’t reach.
A sob clawed up my throat as I slowly closed his eyelids.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.
” I eased him back into the grass and cradled his head in my lap, brushing blood-damp hair from his forehead.
He looked so small like this. Not a cadet.
Not a fighter. Just the boy who’d been too nervous to spar with me on the mats. And I couldn’t save him.
Suddenly blinding pain, raw and immediate, exploded through my hands.
I screamed. Runes seared into my palms, carving themselves into flesh as if etched by a blade of living fire.
They burned deep, burrowing past skin and muscle, curling up my arms in glowing veins of molten light.
The smell of scorched flesh filled my lungs.
It wasn’t only heat. It was annihilation.
My skin felt as if it were being peeled from bone, nerves stripped bare and set aflame.
Agony tore through me in waves, relentless and devouring, until I couldn’t tell where the fire ended and I began.
I writhed beside Clive’s still form, fingers clawing uselessly at the ground as my blood seemed to turn to molten metal, searing me from the inside out.
Every heartbeat forced the inferno farther, hotter up my arms, into my chest, through my ribs.
I screamed again, but the sound fractured in my throat.
My voice gave out long before the pain did.
White-hot light swallowed everything. For one terrible, endless moment, I was certain my mind would split in two, that my heart would ignite within me and I would collapse into ash.
And then… silence. The agony vanished. When I opened my eyes, the forest was gone.
So was Clive. I was lying in a field of golden wheat beneath a wide, limitless blue sky.
The sun bathed my skin in warmth, the air rich with honeyed light and a strange, impossible peace. I sat up slowly, breath shaking.
“W-where am I?”