Chapter 24 - A Life for a Life
July
The night before a crossing is a night of rituals.
I’ve heard of Reapers staining their pillows with the blood of their past crops, or spending the night in the woods between Evemerys and Anagessys, to focus their minds on the task ahead and not on the comfort of their beds.
Galen always carries with him some memorabilia, like a gemstone fallen from a bracelet, or a button ripped from a crop’s jacket, after he’s delivered the empty vessels to the Deleteri permanently stationed at the Fields.
“Let. Her. Go.”
Although tonight, there will be no sleep. No luck-summoner gesture. Not even a morning after—by the look of it.
“You forgot ‘If you hurt her, I’ll rip your spine off and send it to your family’, isn’t that what the dark hero always says? And let me guess—I do what you ask, and then you let me walk away? Don’t embarrass yourself, boy, and drop that gun.”
As I fight to stay alert, Galen’s silhouette stands out tall against the dark staircase behind him. His posture doesn’t betray any uncertainty when he takes a step forward. “I said, let her go and step away. What I’ll do with you after is a surprise.”
“You know you won’t make it far against us.” The thick cotton of the stranger's uniform grazes my neck when he lifts me like a shield between him and Galen.
He’s fast, despite his size, but also distracted enough to release the pressure on my mouth.
“Galen…” I mumble. Tears of pain and rage sting in my nose like the stranger’s smell as I inhale deeply to send enough oxygen to my brain and shake my senses awake.
Despite my blurry vision, I detect a grey wall of smoke dotted by small, random explosions of orange and red rising from the top levels of the Wise. The fire breaking free from inside the building is now devouring the head of the castle as well as its foundations.
“You may want to rethink that. I offered the same choice to your friends, up there…” Galen replies, oddly calm, jerking his chin to the tower behind him. His smirk makes me shiver. His eyes darken as he shrugs and adds, “They didn’t listen to me…”
There is something savage in his eyes when he raises his fist in the air, the other hand steadily aiming a gun at the stranger’s head. With a husky laugh that sounds more like a feral growl of satisfaction, he opens his fingers and lets a bunch of white pebbles drop to the floor.
No. Not pebbles—
“You rotten piece of shit,” the stranger barks in my ear, making the small hairs on my neck stand up, as we both stare at a bunch of teeth rolling towards us.
The man’s confidence shakes and cracks like the Wise’s body. His hands are busy keeping me still, one holding my cuffed wrists, the other looped around my shoulders, but his body tenses against mine as if sensing his luck is one step too close to a precipice.
Galen stalks towards us, crushing some of the teeth under his boots. In response, the stranger presses his forearm against my neck, cutting off my air supply.
Surprisingly, Galen doesn’t flinch. “Did you really think you could simply cross our skies, unseen, using fire as a decoy? I thought that centuries of waiting in your filthy, shitty rabbit holes would create at least a slightly smarter generation of Herionos.”
I gasp, and for a split second, Galen’s eyes meet mine.
The stranger chuckles, “Perhaps not smarter, but surely better at making allies...”
As the stranger’s words float and vanish in the space between us, Galen shifts his weight onto his left foot, a stance that promises nothing good. His rage is charging to a level that could force him towards a regrettable decision.
The stranger seems to notice as well, and he pushes me forward, my feet barely touching the ground, as if challenging Galen.
His lips are like sandpaper against my cheek as he lowers and hisses in my ear, “Let’s see where you stand on your friend’s scale of priorities.”
The man loosens the grip around my wrists, his movements precise and swift.
One moment, I think I’m almost free; the next, I hear a click as something hard presses against my back. My eyes widen, and my jaw tightens when the stranger’s gun bites at my spine.
“He’s armed, Galen. Shoot him—” I lunge forward, but the man pulls me back by my hair.
“Ah! How observant! What were you expecting? A bunch of flowers?” he snaps, running the barrel up over my spine until it meets the small of my neck, where it rests hard and cold.
I hiss through my teeth, clenching my jaw to conceal any hint of distress my face may show.
Galen hesitates, biting at his lips, his nostrils flaring.
He is a great shooter and could aim blindfolded, but we both know that no bullet can fly fast enough to hit the stranger before he fires his own gun.
A fire hotter than the one raging around us burns in my veins. Images from the past days, the feeling of being thrust left and right, with no chance to make my own decisions, sparks something inside of me.
Somehow, Galen reads my intentions and shakes his head slightly.
The stranger doesn’t seem to notice our silent exchange and carries on, arrogantly, “I am feeling generous today. You can either let me and your little girlfriend pass before this wreckage of a castle collapses. Or—”
Ignoring the mouth of the gun grazing at my skin with a silent promise of certain death, I tilt my head slightly to the side, faking a coughing fit to distract him while I bend my knee to brace my leg, charging my limb with anger, disgust, hate and desperation.
I have no time to study a trajectory based on our height difference, so I kick back with the sole of my shoe, hoping to hit the stranger, praying for a miracle. This is not a second-chance situation.
My heel crashes against the man’s shin with a sickening sound, followed by his scream of pain.
He stumbles back, letting go of my neck, and I promptly hunch down.
Everything begins to move as if seconds are stretching like an elastic band about to snap.
But at the violent sound of an explosion, time speeds up to normal, and I hit my cheek hard against the wet stones.
For a second, everything falls silent.
I prop myself up, groaning in pain. My hands are bleeding from a myriad of small cuts, and I taste blood on my tongue. But there is another source of discomfort I can’t locate until I sit back on my heels and glance over my shoulder to check if the stranger is still there.
The top of my right sleeve is ripped between my neck and shoulder, and blood is flowing down my arm, dripping from the tip of my fingers in a pink puddle on the floor.
Realising that the wound is real makes it even more painful, but I can’t help gaping, then smiling proudly, at the image of the man behind me, contorting on the floor in agony.
He is trying to sit up, without much success, stretching his arms towards his leg, bent at an odd angle, as blood gushes out from a nasty wound in his abdomen every time he moves. His mouth agape, his terrified eyes almost as wide.
I can’t stop staring. I turn on my knees, wincing when I press my hands, still bound, down to keep my balance. As much as I want to believe he can’t harm me anymore, I need to make sure his gun is out of reach.
I quickly scout around, searching for it until I spot it meters behind him. It must have flown away when Galen shot him.
Reality strikes.
“You. Fired...” I mutter. An odd thing to notice when I was the one who ordered Galen to kill the bastard. But thinking that I was right in the trajectory of the bullet…Had I not moved faster, I’d probably be the one bleeding to death.
“It’s done. We’re safe.” Galen’s voice is croaky when he approaches me, the familiar scent of him carried by the howling wind.
As much as I want to turn around and bury my face in his chest, as much as I need to believe his words, I keep my attention on the stranger.
His fingers are battling to put pressure on the wound while life abandons him in violent spurts of blood.
The subtle halo of his soul starts misting off his body like fog off warm soil.
It doesn’t have any particular hue but instead just a milky tone to it. That of a soul who’s never needed Roden’s help. Something so rare I’ve never encountered before, and only ever read about.
I can’t take my eyes off of him even when a wet gurgle escapes his open mouth, and the man spits blood.
I blink tears away.
Galen’s bullet must have compromised more than one organ and blood vessels because the man’s face is turning ashen too quickly.
Rain begins to fall again, loud and heavy, like curtains on a stage, when Galen kneels behind me and starts fidgeting with the manacles at my wrists.
In seconds, they snap open, and Galen throws them away, spins me around and hugs me against his chest before I can witness the last minutes of the stranger's solo performance.
Panic, anger, fear of losing my best friend—every single feeling comes to me in a rush.
I gently push away from him and cup his cheek, shaking.“He could’ve killed you, he…”
Raindrops run down his face, flattening his hair over his eyes. “Sof, we have to go.” He brushes dirt and tears off my cheek with his thumb before casting a quick look at the dying body behind me.
He lowers his hands on my shoulders. I’m paralysed by cold and fear, but Galen’s grip is the only thing that keeps me from shattering into pieces. Until he squeezes too hard, and I flinch.
“He hurt you. Where?” he lifts his hand, hissing through his teeth.
I shake my head, and a faint smile crosses my face. “I’m fine; it’s just a scratch…dark hero,” I repeat the stranger’s early words, if only to release some of the tension still building up in my guts, as I peer down at the wound, where the blood has already turned darker and thicker.
When I move my eyes back to him, Galen is staring at his hands. “I didn’t have another choice…” His words tangle with the dreadful cries of the dying stranger.
I take his hands into mine and let out a deep sigh. “It is not your fault. If it wasn’t for you, that could have been me.” I jerk my head to the man behind me, still finding it difficult to call him what he really is.
But I can’t ignore it any longer.
My heart beats fast, and my breath catches short. “Please, tell me I heard you wrong. I was panicking—the rain, the fire—” My head is heavy, and dark spots start dancing behind my eyes.
“July, listen to me. You’re fainting. If we don’t leave now, we will both end up trapped up here with no option but to run through the fire.” Galen ignores my questions and pulls me back to my feet.
Before I can rebut, he starts leading me towards the stairs, keeping hold of my bloodied hand. I trail after him in shock, glad at least one of us still has the spirit to think straight after what just happened.
We approach the lifeless body with caution, and Galen kicks it in the ribs twice before we jump past it.
Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding.
The rain has turned into a blissful stream. In the corner of my eyes, the fire is still raging and climbing over the windows, still trying to devour the Wise from the inside, but the rain is turning the flames into wisps of harmless smoke, making our escape less frightful.
“I got another one, but I have to run…Abandon the Wise ASAP. It’s not safe - I repeat - not safe.
” I hear Galen roaring over the commotion of water and fire as he presses a finger to his right ear.
“The fire... what? That was a decoy…My suspicions were right—Roden knows…I’m going to the beach… pray she’s there…”
Who is he talking to? But my brain can only process one thing at a time; I can either breathe or talk.
The way down the tower’s outermost stairs is too narrow for two people to run side by side, so I let Galen lead while I throw panicked looks over my shoulder to make sure nobody is following.
We proceed as fast as we can, stopping only when a sudden burst of glass and stones fills the air with the acrid smell of smoke.
I know Galen would go faster if he weren’t aware of my wound, but the way he’s moving - almost limping - tells me something is not right.
Something I didn’t notice before catches my attention, and I can’t help but tug at his hand, forcing him to stop and look at me as I point at a stain darkening the rim of his white shirt just above his left hip.
“You’re bleeding.” I suck in water and smoke.
He lowers his eyes. “Just a scratch. I think he fired when you kicked him, but missed,” he answers too hastily.
“It’s all my fault…I shouldn’t have—”
He brushes a lock of hair off my cheek, smiling. “You were being reckless, as usual, but you saved us both.” Like mine, his voice is hoarse.
With a gentle pull, Galen restarts our descent to safety. “Come on.”
I've always known he was a great fighter; I’ve witnessed it during our training sessions, and that earned him the role of a Deleteri leader.
But having seen him in action put him in a different light.
He didn’t flinch at the Herionos - if that’s what he really was - bleeding to death on the floor.
That wasn’t the first time he’d shot someone.
We do carry weapons when in Horigos, mostly for self-defence, but I had no memory of Galen killing anyone—until now.
Until he had to take a life to save mine.