51. Chapter Fifty-One
I’d made it halfway through the meadows when darkness clouded my vision. A grating headache plagued my mind, and as I leaned over my knees, everything blurred together.
I groaned, forcing myself to stand straight and persevere through it. But, as the darkness faded, I was faced with an entirely new type of evil. A shadow of a memory, one I hoped never afflicted me again. Yenira stood with a limp hold on her long, jagged sword, fingers trembling on her other hand. The veins beneath her skin were black, crawling toward her eyes like a nightmarish vision.
I shuddered, holding up a hand when magic zapped between her nails. “Yenira…”
A wave of magic came barreling down at me, and I screeched as I rolled out of the way, the dagger nearly slipping from my sweaty grasp.
“Yenira, stop this,” I hissed and remained crouched, hair falling into my face as I struggled to keep upright. “This isn’t you.”
The more I said it, the less I believed it, and the more my heart broke.
Her face twitched, and the stars bouncing around her skin started to turn the color of night. Shadows of midnight blue and purple enveloped her arm, and I feared what might happen if it struck me in the chest. I’d all but escaped whatever illness impaired the halflings—but, with Yenira’s blackened eyes and soulless frown, I knew she hadn’t.
To think, she’d been fighting it all her life, and I never knew. She had to have been, based on what little I knew. This was a curse of the mind—one Myrthana commanded. I wondered if Yenira would still be so cruel to me if she hadn’t been poisoned by her words.
That same question resonated about my head in regards to Julius.
My life was shattering before my eyes. My family, broken. My trust…gone.
When she aimed that darkness at me, my lip puckered into a trembling pout. “Yenira, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to fight.”
Whoosh.
I collapsed onto my stomach, missing the blast by a hair. The magic burned the back of my neck, and I slowly lifted my head to peer at her. Her head was twisting side to side, and it felt as if the ground was rumbling with each stomp toward me. I scrambled, rolling away from the lingering cloud of shadowy magic, and tightened my grasp on the dagger. The magic was bottling up in my chest with my anxieties, and when I tried to call to her again, it came out as a croak. This time, she didn’t try to hit me with magic. She swung at me with her sword.
I was clumsy at best, but Casynox and Sapphire had done so much to help me learn to fight. There was only so much you could do to counter a sword with a dagger, though—and I feared she’d win this fight.
“So you’re going to kill me a second time?” I hollered and ducked from her next swing. I used the pommel of my dagger to hit her in the ribs before twisting around her. She yelped and chased after me with the butt of her own weapon, the hard, round end jamming into my jaw. I stumbled onto my side but clambered to my feet and wept. “What did she promise you? Wealth? Power?”
“She promised me nothing,” Yenira cried, her voice pained, her eyes hollowed yet teary as her hand reached for my throat.
I snatched it by the wrist and twisted it so hard it made her lose her footing. She huffed out a cloud of night, and when it wafted over my face, I started coughing. So violently that I let go and stumbled back. Waving my hand around in the air, I gasped for air with wheezing lungs. Yenira grappled my hair and twisted it in her fingers, forcing my head back to look her in the eyes.
“She is our creator, Aurelie, our end. If you don’t know that now, you never will.”
I was shoved back so hard, my body went flying, skidding against the dirt. What little air I’d recovered was knocked out of me, stars spiraling in my eyes. I tried to ready myself for her next blow, but she was faster. Her foot drove into my ribs, and I howled out, rolling onto my side.
“Yenira, please,” I sobbed, inching my hand closer to my dagger. It was too far away—and when Yenira’s boot drove onto my wrist, my vision went black as pain rocketed up my forearm. “Fuck, bitch!”
“You died for her, and it is a disgrace that you did not stay dead. You were worthy of being her sacrifice, Aurelie Cane. You were worthy of her wrath. You are unworthy to see her reign.”
I looked up at her, watching our lives together flash with each blink. She was a best friend. She was my closest ally when life seemed out of control, yet now, when war threatened my livelihood, she was my greatest adversary.
I clumped the dirt in my hands. Being thrust from my home and forced into situations that had all but cost me my life so many times already taught me a lot about fate, about the supposed destiny she preached. It took me months to accept this—weeks doubting her involvement, days in torture, hours in tears. But, with destiny glimmering against her rusted sword that was about to drive into my back, it took seconds to understand there was no turning back.
Less than, even.
I would either fight, or I would die.
Her sword lifted higher. “It didn’t need to be like this,” she whispered, as if it broke her. “I’m sorry, Elie.”
My heart shattered at the nickname. Only one person called me that—and it was not this version of Yenira. “I. Said. Stop.”
The ground quaked with my cracked voice, the hail twisting at odd angles and piercing my skin like needles. I smashed my hand onto the soil just as her sword drove down toward me. It emitted a shockwave unlike anything I’d ever witnessed—stronger than the blast of serpentine powder igniting in the night sky, crueler than the stormy waves against unforgiving rock. This time, it was Yenira who went flying backward. It was her sword that was flung out of her hand. It was me who stood to my feet and wobbled toward my dagger. It was I who held her fate.
The rage was unlike anything I’d felt. Tears streamed down my face as anger colored my cheeks red. I was beyond the idea of forgiveness. It had been twice that she tried to kill me, but as I smashed my foot into her chest and spewed venomous rage down at her, I doubted my ability.
I doubted whether I was strong enough to kill her.
“You just had to stop,” I screamed. The ground continued to rumble, and the stars shook overhead. They trembled, in fact, like that of a child stuck under thick ice. “Why didn’t you stop?”
Yenira grabbed hold of my ankle, the darkness spiraling around my skin and cutting into it like a razor, but something kept me upright. It was beyond me—like a guiding hand, or armor crafted of faith. I could see the terror wash over those hollow, crimson eyes when I did not yield. After a moment of consideration—with my dagger trembling in my fingers and my heart sinking deep into my gut—I gulped.
“I should kill you,” I whispered. “I should end your rampage before it hurts more people.”
“Then do it,” she hissed. Her lips trembled, the tears turning her cheeks red. Her voice, however, had a raw tremor to it, something unheard of—something I never expected of Yenira. “Kill me, Aurelie.”
I choked on a sob and kneeled after removing my boot from her chest. I placed my dagger to her neck and screamed. She stared, unaffected by my terrible rage, unaffected by the visceral agony it caused me to think we’d gotten to this point.
She snatched my wrist, the darkness spiraling and tightening like a viper. She wasn’t letting me go—but she wasn’t using it against me. “Stop screaming and do it. Coward.”
I flinched as she forced my hand harsher against her neck. “I can’t—why can’t you just…just…”
Something between desperation and frustration crossed her face. The darkness she was coiling around my wrist tightened to the point where blood beaded around my skin, trickling down my thumb before dropping along the edge of the blade.
Her words were a plea.
And as her voice cracked into the air like a whip, I heard a second voice lingering in the distance—one that wanted to control, to make her obey. “Please—”
I sobbed. My body turned numb as I closed my eyes and swiped my dagger against her throat. Her breaths turned to guttural gasps, and when I forced my teary eyes open to look at her, I was mortified. The blood was black as night, staining her skin. She was convulsing, but the hollow darkness in her eyes faded. For a brief moment, she stared back at me with her crimson irises glossed over, and she looked human again.
Yenira frowned. The words that broke through the gasps were indiscernible, but as I dropped the dagger to the ground next to her and sputtered in panic, she whispered, “I…I…love you, Elie.”
When I grabbed her face in my hands, sobbing uncontrollably, her eyes lost that sparkle of life that had just found its way back to her. “Yenira…Yenira…Yenira, wake up. Come on.”
Her body was still. I tapped on her face and cried, my wrists colored with ichor as my skin touched her neck, the black, oozing liquid slowly shifting red.
Deep, bloody red—the color of human blood.
Yenira had broken my heart, twisted my trust, but in her last few seconds, I knew it was not her. It was not her alone, at least. She’d been victim to Myrthana’s plague, and it ruined her. Ruined us.
“I love you, Yen,” I croaked and let my trembling fingers hover over her eyes. Slowly, I shut them.
Slowly, I let go.
The tears. The rage. The heartbreak.
As I stepped away, the sky overhead became void of all light, and before I could blink, crimson red split open like a void in endless space. It was blinding at first, and then chillingly familiar. They stared down at me—silently, expectantly.
Death awakened, death revoked—reap what you sew at the tree where blood feeds the soil. Death brings life—life brings death.
Without warning, the ground fractured. It raced toward my feet, spreading wider and wider. When I blinked, the light touched Yenira’s finger, and her skin sizzled away into starlight. My body shook, and tears swept down my cheek as I lunged after her.
“No,” I said, voice splintering into oblivion. Just as my body landed on the place where her hand should be, she was gone.
Part of me wanted to villainize her. Part of me wanted to let her rot in the soil an evil, cruel woman, but watching her fade into starlight right after the light returned to her eyes made something in me break.
The sort of something I knew would be lost forever.
With trembling hands, I crawled toward her sword and sheathed my dagger into the waistband of my pants. I stared down the rolling hills toward the burning town. The cracks of the world glowed brighter, guiding me with empty promises and cryptic messages. I might have been losing it—I might have lost touch with my sanity long, long ago—but I only had hope to hold onto.
The hope of what if.
Today, there was no what if. Today, I walked down that hill knowing Yenira’s death would not be in vain. She’d died a monster to many—but I knew the truth.
I knew Myrthana needed to die.
And I’d be the one wielding that blade.