Chapter 29 Locke #2
He taught me every move he now uses against me, every technique and strategy, but I’ve learned more since my days in the training grounds. Pain has sharpened my instincts to a razor’s edge. Love has tempered my strength into something unbreakable.
When he drives toward my chest with a thrust meant to pierce my heart, I twist low and slam my shoulder into his gut with all the force I can muster.
He stumbles backward, momentarily off-balance, and I don’t waste the opportunity.
My blade slashes across his thigh in a silver arc, parting leather and chainmail to find flesh beneath.
His blood sprays across the moss-covered ground in a dark fan.
He roars in pain and fury, enraged that I’m besting him, that the student has truly surpassed the master. As he straightens and comes at me again with renewed ferocity, his face is a mask of murderous intent.
“You betray your own blood!” he shouts, spittle flying from his lips.
“You betrayed everything!” I roar back, driving him backward with a series of brutal, hammering blows that ring like thunder in the clearing. “You betrayed the king who trusted you! You betrayed the people who looked up to you! You betrayed me!”
We clash again with renewed violence, our blades sending showers of sparks flying with each strike, steel against steel in a symphony of destruction.
Bark explodes from the trunk of an ancient ash as his blade misses my throat by mere inches, carving a deep gouge in the silver wood.
I duck under his next swing, pivot on the balls of my feet, and drive my sword upward in a stroke that would have opened him from groin to sternum if he hadn’t deflected it with a desperate, ringing parry.
“You were always weak,” he pants, sweat streaming down his face as we circle each other like predators. “Always too soft, just like your mother. She made you weak, filled your head with foolish notions of honor and mercy.”
Rage explodes in my chest at the mention of her, white-hot and consuming. How dare he speak of her now, how dare he use her memory as a weapon against me when he knows, he knows, how much I loved her, how much her loss nearly destroyed us both.
I knock his blade aside with a strike that reverberates through both our arms and ram my knee into his ribs with bone-crushing force.
He gasps, the air driven from his lungs, and staggers.
My sword slashes across his shoulder, parting armor like parchment, and he falls back against one of the standing stones with a grunt of pain.
I don’t hesitate. I can’t afford to.
With a cry torn from the very depths of my soul, a sound that encompasses every moment of betrayal, every sleepless night wondering how it all went so wrong, I drive my sword clean through his chest. The blade punches through his breastplate like it’s made of paper, through flesh and bone and out the other side to scrape against stone.
He chokes, his eyes meeting mine, wide with shock and sudden, terrible understanding. For a moment that stretches like eternity, there’s nothing but silence between us, father and son, teacher and student, locked together in this final, irreversible act.
Then I pull the blade free, the suction audible, and blood blooms across his chest like a dark flower.
I raise my sword one last time and swing with all the strength left in my body.
His head separates from his shoulders with barely a whisper of resistance and falls to the moss-covered ground with a soft, final thud.
It rolls once. Twice. Then stills, and I feel absolutely nothing where once there might have been grief or regret or even satisfaction.
Just. . .emptiness. The forest itself seems to exhale in satisfaction, as if accepting this ultimate offering, this final payment for all the blood that has been spilled in its depths.
Almost immediately, thick vines begin to slither from the earth like awakening serpents, coiling around his headless body with purposeful intent.
More vines emerge to embrace the corpses of the fallen soldiers scattered throughout the forest. Roots pierce through gaps in armor with the patience of centuries, while broad leaves unfurl to shroud the dead like burial wrappings.
One by one, they sink into the hungry earth, drawn down into the forest’s eternal embrace until they’re gone completely, as if they had never existed at all.
I drop to my knees on the soft moss, suddenly exhausted beyond measure but also profoundly relieved.
The weight that has been pressing down on my shoulders for months, the constant tension of knowing this confrontation was inevitable, finally lifts.
It’s over. This chapter of blood and betrayal is finally, truly over.
Behind me, I hear the soft sound of footsteps as Rue trudges into the clearing, his usually immaculate clothing now blood-slicked and torn. He’s breathing hard from his own battles, but his eyes are bright with fierce satisfaction.
“Well,” he says, surveying the scene where the vines are now receding back into the earth, leaving no trace of what transpired here. “That was. . .horrifyingly poetic. Very you, actually. Brooding and dramatic and environmentally conscious all at once.”
“I’ll burn every last one who threatens her,” I say quietly, my voice carrying across the suddenly peaceful clearing like a vow spoken before the gods themselves. “This kingdom. That throne. Her. I’ll protect them all until my dying breath, and beyond if the fates allow it.”
Rue steps closer, his usual theatrical energy spent but his spirit still as fierce as ever. He claps a blood-sticky hand on my shoulder, the gesture both comforting and grounding.
“I’m with you to the end,” he says, and for once there’s no mockery in his voice, no flourish or clever quip. Just simple, absolute truth. “To the very end, brother. Through whatever comes next.”
Then, as if the weight of sincerity is too much for him to bear, he groans dramatically and flops onto a fallen log with exaggerated exhaustion, dragging a torn sleeve across his face to wipe away the worst of the blood and forest debris.
“At least two days,” he announces to the canopy above.
“That’s how long I plan to sleep. Possibly three, if I can manage it.
God knows, my bed is calling to me like a siren’s song.
That’s assuming I don’t collapse in the corridor first and have to be carried to my chambers like some swooning maiden, or strapping courtier. ”
Despite everything, the blood, the death, the finality of what I’ve just done, I snort with something that might be laughter. Half amusement, half an exhale of pure disbelief that we’re still here, still breathing, still whole after everything we’ve been through.
After everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve fought, everything we’ve lost and gained and lost again, I might just sleep for days too.
Preferably with the woman I love safe in my arms and that ridiculous wolf of hers sprawled across the foot of the bed like a furry guardian.
Yes, I believe what I feel truly is love.
Not just the desperate need born of a magical bond, but something deeper, something that has grown in the spaces between crisis and comfort.
I love Esme with every fiber of my being, and I give my soul to this extraordinary woman, now and forever, in whatever form our future takes.
We’re not done yet, far from it. There will be other threats, other battles, other moments when everything we hold dear hangs in the balance. But tonight, for the first time in longer than I can remember, we’ve earned our rest.
Looking up at the shifting patterns of light and shadow dancing through the ancient canopy, feeling the ancient forest’s approval settling around us like a benediction, I have a feeling our journey together has only just begun.