Chapter Twenty-Two
Fallyn
“Thaddeus?” I whispered up the stairs first as Ash moved into the living quarters, finding nothing which made me more and less fearful simultaneously.
No corpses strewn about, no blood to be found, could either mean that they weren’t victim to this, or they had suffered the same grisly end as my father elsewhere. Or as Diem.
I climbed the stairs, cringing when the fourth one squealed under my weight. I froze, waiting for something to rush towards me, but the fragile stillness wasn’t broken. “Thaddeus?” I tried, a bit louder this time.
“Fallyn?” A familiar timber reached me, and suddenly gravity wasn’t holding me to the ground.
He was alive and that fact anchored me. I didn’t hesitate, sprinting the remaining stairs two at a time, running full speed down the hall to the last bedroom on the left.
Blonde hair glinted in the dim light, that familiar gaze that felt like coming home.
My attention snagged on the blood smattering his hair down, that same jagged laceration starting, or ending, along his cheekbone.
While I was no healer, I had a bad feeling about it.
It was angry, with black threads veining out from it, the wound not wanting to close.
“Thaddeus!” I threw myself to him in a bracing hug. “I knew you had to be alive! Are you okay? Can you move?” I parted myself from him, looking around. “Rowena? Dess?”
“I’m well enough. I’d hoped they somehow found you.
What happened out there, Fallyn?” Thaddeus looked confused, blinking down at me, but not relinquishing me even after Ash stepped into the room, marked by my best friend tensing and reaching for a knife.
I held him firm, mitigating the action and earning myself a questioning stare.
“Easy, he’s with me,” I murmured, placing my hands on his forearms as Thaddeus glared over my head.
“Be a lamb and listen to your friend.” Ash’s voice was a cajole and a taunt in equal measure. Thaddeus didn’t move. Didn’t even blink, though his eyes narrowed a fraction, flicking back and forth between us with suspicion.
Suspicion of what, exactly?
“Fallyn, who is this male? I’ve never seen him before.”
“He saved my life, and he’s helping me save you and the girls.” I didn’t mean for my tone to be so dismissive, so flat, but it seemed so raise more alarm for Thaddeus.
“We don’t have time for the dramatics at the moment. Interrogate me all you like once we get out of here. She made a deal, and I’m holding up my end of the bargain,” Ash barked, but made no move to unhand his weapon.
Four years ago, Thaddeus and I were having a drink in the tavern close by the Gateside Market when a male approached me, ignoring all my attempts to dissuade his company, no matter how firm.
Thaddeus punched him out until he left in a maelstrom of anger and threats of violence that he never did deliver on.
That was the first time I’d ever seen Thaddeus angry.
This was the second. And this time his anger was sparked and honed on me as well. The stab of hurt went straight to my heart.
“What did you promise him, Fallyn?”
“Nothing big, but I’ll explain everything once we leave this city. But right now, we have to go, and I need you to tell me what happened.”
Thaddeus took a step, putting himself between me and a widely grinning Ash. How Ash managed to look so antagonizing, I’d never understand. The causal stance, the twisted grin, the mischief in his eyes, he was having fun toying with Thaddeus. “Transfer her debt to me.”
“Now where would the fun be in that?” Ash mused. “Stand down, I mean your beloved no harm.”
“Beloved?” I choked. But Thaddeus didn’t respond to that. That’s what surprised me the most.
“How can I trust you?”
Ash’s grin turned feral at Thaddeus's question, his gaze darkening and descending into something wicked. “You can’t.”
“But you can trust me,” I intervened. My hand met his cheek, bidding him to look at me. “We’re going now, and you’re coming with us. And you’re going to tell us what happened.”
A few more uneasy looks birthed a slow, deep exhale from my friend, finally giving in to the situation at hand. Ash immediately turned back to the hallway, listening intently before giving us the all-clear. We followed lightly, weapons half drawn again.
“After the earthquake,” Thaddeus whispered to explain, “Des and Rowena ran to the gate to help. I stayed behind in case you came back and needed aid. But when we found out that you were denied entry, they ran out to find you in the trees. You mean you really haven’t seen them?”
I couldn’t tell if that was good news or bad news. They were out of the city when the attacks began, but what if our city weren’t the only attack? I shook my head.
“What happened?” I asked. Thaddeus’s face paled.
“They said it was the wrath of the new god. It started with one demon, and then there were dozens of them. A small army—”
A ghastly shriek rent the air from outside. Ash moved on silent feet to the window, peering outside from the shadows with a hardened stare.
“I hate to break up this oh so sweet reunion,” Ash said, sweetness curdling in his tone. His hand drifting towards the sword at his side almost unconsciously, “but we have company.”
Thaddeus flicked a strange look at Ash before turning back to me. Something akin to questioning, but something darker lay beneath. Hostility? Resentment?
“Seriously, Fallyn, what’s going on there?
I have such a bad feeling about him.” That wasn’t necessarily something to discount.
Thaddeus was a healer by nature, but he had some kind of powerful intuition, an innate sense of wisdom that Athena herself would take pride in.
So, when he didn’t trust someone, it was noteworthy, and I found myself listening.
“It’s a long story. Ash is right. We have to leave Este Valnor. Now.” I received no further argument.
Our progress was quicker than anticipated, with light, fast steps down the dilapidated hallway.
A dirty window at the end offered a view of the Main Street below where I could glean where exactly whatever was hunting us might be.
I could hear it prowling outside, but it stubbornly stayed out of my field of view.
It wasn’t clear whether it knew we were there.
“What now?” I whispered, looking at Ash. He’d gotten us this far. I didn’t miss the scrunched expression Thaddeus shot at him in direct response, but I didn’t care. If he had something against Ash, he could fight with him once we got out of here.
Ash wasn’t the only one who could use someone mercilessly.
“What’s the quickest way to the entrance?” He murmured as he looked around. I pointed left, to the southwest.
“Four or five blocks that way.”
“Oh good, just a short distance to run for our lives,” Thaddeus’s joke fell to its death between us as he surveyed the path before us, mentally mapping the route.
Our progress back through the city was stone-silent.
The air vibrated with so much tension I thought something might ignite in its wake.
Thaddeus walked with a concerning limp, but his bow and arrows were drawn and at the ready.
Ash’s sword was at the ready too, leading our way and daring anything to attack.
I drew my sword as well, but with my lack of precision and mediocre skill, I may as well have been handling a toothpick.
Thaddeus looked formidable, Ash looked downright dangerous.
I just hoped I looked less delicate than I usually did.
Peeking around the final corner, we could see the gate still swinging on its hinge, the lone rusted squeal puncturing the air. At the same moment, a cacophony of demons prowled between our means of escape, and us.
“Fuck,” Ash grunted.
“We have to fight our way through that?” I tried not to let the despair in my heart well up through my voice.
Thaddeus was weakening by the minute, and Ash was only one fighter.
I could try and put up my best fight, but I would only get so far.
No response. I turned my head to see a grave Thaddeus having a hushed conversation with a stone-faced, nodding Ash.
“Promise me.” Thaddeus’s tone gave no room for discussion. Ash nodded once more before bowing his head.
“I promise I will,” Ash said, his hand meeting my friend’s shoulder. “This won’t be forgotten.”
Those four words were all it took for my blood pressure to spike. I pressed closer to him intently, “What is he talking about, Thaddeus?”
Thaddeus, my best friend since childhood, turned and looked at me then, with so much sorrow in his expression. His eyes were rimmed black now, a startling discovery. His hands clasped mine as a single tear slipped down the corner of his shadowed gaze.
“Fallyn…”
I squeezed his hands in response. Ash looked at us and shook his head, a gesture I didn’t understand—
—especially not as my best friend’s lips crushed into mine.
I startled, going suddenly very stiff. His hands climbed from my hands to my shoulders, to my chin, securing me in place as he kissed me as though I were oxygen for a male starved of it.
I didn’t know how to move. I didn’t know how to respond.
My head swam, my hands clutching his were both a question and an attempt to ground us both through the bleakness I could taste in his kiss.
A sorrow that kept me from pulling away.
What was he doing? When his lips left mine at last, that despair, the heartbreak I felt in his kiss was there to see on his bloodied face.
“What are you—"
“—I love you.” Thaddeus’s forehead dipped to mine, “I need you to run.”
“What are you doing?” I felt panic creeping up, forcing my heart into my throat.
I grasped at him, anything I could hold on to.
His sleeves, his belt, his hand, but he shrugged me off easily.
“Don’t do it, whatever it is! I can’t lose you too!
” I begged around the lump forming in my throat. “Don’t make me lose you too!”
Thaddeus didn’t acknowledge me further, instead stepping back to put distance between him and I and turning to Ash at last. Ash, who stepped up to anchor his hand to my shoulder as Thaddeus stepped back again.
I wrenched my body, flailing against Ash, but his hold on me was unyielding.
“You know what to do. Whatever it takes.”
“I’ll get her out." His tone was solemn as a hymn, "I promise.”
Maybe it was their cool exchange, or maybe it was the resignation in Thaddeus’s eyes that I finally understood.
“No,” I said as loudly as I dared. But Thaddeus backed away. “No, Thaddeus, please don’t do this! Please!”
“Run, Fallyn. Live. Be safe." Thaddeus turned back to us with a devastating smile that was so utterly him, I wept. "Thank you for everything.”
Breaking Ash’s hold, I lunged at Thaddeus, his hand slipping through mine like sand through an hourglass, his name dying on my lips as they were speared by sobs, but he’d turned and ran loudly towards the demons blocking our escape while Ash held me fast in place.
I slumped against him when the cage of his arms proved too difficult to break.
“Let him go,” Ash whispered. “I need you to trust me. This was the only way.”
How could I trust him? He just sent my best friend to his doom. Hiccups fought for dominion with my sobs.
“Run, Fallyn. Run when I say, so his sacrifice won’t be in vain.
” His hand held my forearm, bracing me. Bolstering me.
My only tether to reality. Thaddeus had disappeared through my blurred vision and the shadows growing in the street.
But I could hear fine. My vision was lost to me through the tears when I heard Thaddeus yell out to all the demons at the gate.
I heard him laugh as they charged him, goading them on as if it were a merry chase.
“Run. Now.” Ash half dragged me out from our hiding spot, and we raced down the now empty street as the wave of demons sought out my best friend. I heard him yell and whoop to antagonize them as he ran.
But that all changed for me the moment I heard him scream.
I stopped moving, wiping the tears from my eyes. My throat constricted, trying to work around the bile that was suddenly there. I whirled to face the demons pursuing Thaddeus, but Ash’s hold on me was too strong.
“Damn it, Fallyn,” I heard a moment before I heard the words, “forgive me.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t yell.
My mouth was bound by shadows, as were my hands.
In the next moment, Ash hoisted me into his arms and took off running.
I couldn’t pay attention to the fact that he ran faster than any normal mortal could.
I didn’t care that we were almost free. I hated him for forcing me to leave my best friend to his agonizing demise.
The screams of Thaddeus’s final moments sang on the air as we crossed the gate out of the smoldering ruins of my city.
I couldn’t even struggle as we entered into the trees and my best friend fell silent.
Thaddeus was dead.