Chapter 70 #2
I pulled Sorrow’s Edge from its sheath. The tip of the blade dragged on the ground as I trudged back to Vance. It felt too heavy to raise, already burdened by the weight of the deaths it would carry.
“I used to dream of this moment,” I murmured, glaring at Vance.
“I fantasized about making your death as brutal as my father’s.
I was going to make you bleed while I told you that you were a hypocrite who spoke about sacrifice while hiding behind your men.
I was going to watch you suffer for betraying the mortals by trading freedom for revenge.
I told myself you didn’t deserve my humanity, because you let hatred eat away at your soul until you were no longer a man, just an empty shell.
” I let out a bitter, choked laugh. “The gods truly have a sick sense of humor.”
But this wasn’t some divine joke. This was the natural consequence of a people oppressed.
Vance had killed my father to radicalize me against the Descended because he himself had been radicalized by whatever horrific injustice had taken his family.
Each of these men had been swept away by a bloody tide of all the mortals who had ever been beaten or starved or violated or locked away or murdered at the whim of some Descended.
And it was never just one injustice. It was a lifetime of a thousand different wrongs.
It was a shared history of our land being stolen and our culture being mocked, forbidden, and erased.
It was the boundaries set from birth on what schools we would never attend, what jobs we would never hold, what wealth we would never earn, what places we would never go—sometimes through inequitable laws, but more often by unwritten, unspoken obstacles put in place by the holders of power to keep it in the hands of them and their kin.
Each small cruelty we witnessed was a pebble on our backs, every horror a stone, every death a boulder.
Some endured for decades before they broke, but it broke everyone in the end.
I fractured the day I witnessed Rhon Ghislaine murder his mortal lover and half-mortal child, and at my father’s death, I’d shattered completely.
I’d been ready to wage war against the Twenty Houses, consumed by desire to destroy the Descended.
If I hadn’t fallen for Luther and befriended his family, I might have walked the very same path as the men who stood with Vance now.
Was I a better person that I hadn’t, or was I just luckier, privileged by a Crown and a voice that, unlike the mortals, the Descended were willing to hear?
I bristled at branding them villains, and I didn’t feel much like a hero when so many of the Descended who had placed the rocks on their backs stood behind me now, carrying my banner.
I hung my head. These men were already dead in every way that mattered. Their minds were gone. To protect my people, I had to make sure their bodies would follow.
But at least I could still fight for their souls.
I raised my voice loud enough for everyone to hear—the mortals, my army, the gods. “End be your time, a trade in kind—”
“—a life well-lived for peace to find.” My mother’s voice trembled as she joined me. “Be not afraid—”
More voices rang out.
“—as shadows fade, all pain and woe shall be unmade.”
The words echoed over the flatlands as the mortals in my army joined in reciting the ancient, sacred words of the Rite of Endings.
“Now fate well-sealed shall be revealed for those whose worthy souls shall yield.”
Though my voice was raw and breaking, I forced myself to finish.
“In love and calm, this holy psalm, shall guide your soul to realm beyond.”
The heat in my chest turned blistering as I closed both hands around the handle of Sorrow’s Edge. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to forgive you, Vance,” I murmured, lifting the blade to my shoulder, “but I pray we both find our way back to the people we lost.”
My sword swung, and he was dead.
For all that I’d wanted this moment, watching Vance’s blood seep across the soil to pool at my feet brought me no joy. Only the sharp snap of a rope, an anchor finally cut free.
I stepped over his corpse to the mortal standing behind him.
I recalled him as a patient of my mother, a stonemason who came to her after a block of marble slipped and crushed his hand.
The Descended who’d hired him had not only refused to pay for his treatment, they’d fired him for damaging their expensive imported stone.
I wondered if that was the moment that broke him, or if it was just one of the many cruelties he quietly endured along the way.
This death was harder. Sorrow’s Edge was more difficult to lift, and when its blade met flesh, I couldn’t bear to watch him fall.
The next man I didn’t recognize. In the absence of knowing who he was and what drove him to this point, my mind tried to fill in the blanks.
Maybe he’d been depraved, eager to kill for killing’s sake and using the rebellion to do it.
Maybe he’d tortured his victims and defiled their bodies for his own personal glee.
Maybe he was a monster whose death made all of us safer.
Or maybe he was like every other Guardian I’d ever met—tired, angry, and desperate for something to change.
My blade sliced through the air, and another corpse hit the soil. I didn’t know the next man either, and I didn’t give myself time to think before I struck again.
Another swing. Another thump.
I reached the end of that line and turned, staring at the backs of the next. It would be so much easier to strike them down from behind, never having to look at their face or be reminded that this was a human being with a name and a story and people who would grieve their loss.
But killing should never be easy.
Even in war.
Especially in war.
My boots splashed in puddled blood as I walked back up the line. Crimson liquid streamed through cracks in the dry, hardened soil, the scarlet veins mirroring the pulsing Fortos Crown and stretching further with every man slain.
At the front of the ranks, I turned to face the man who’d been standing at Vance’s side—Brant, his second-in-command. Even with his mind gone, he still wore a scowl, as if his hatred had become a physical part of his body.
Brant had hated me from the beginning. He’d never wanted me in the Guardians. He’d tried to sabotage my council. And he’d smiled when he slit my father’s throat.
No, killing should never be easy.
But sometimes . . . it was.
Swing.
Thump.
A cold, harsh apathy shadowed my soul. Across the bond, I felt Luther stir with concern.
Swing. Thump.
Swing. Thump.
Two more bodies at my feet.
On the last man in line, I raised my blade before I looked, hoping the grisly rhythm would carry me through—then I stopped.
This man, I knew well. His name was Dristan. We’d had a brief summer fling when we were younger. He’d been kind and friendly and, most importantly to teenage Diem, very tall.
My body locked up. My arms wouldn’t swing.