56. Lina
Lina
T his time, I do scream. The roar builds from so deep in my soul, I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried.
My scream is cut off quickly, though, with a rough hand over my face.
My Dread is not gentle as he shoves me back against the bars where the girl I tried to save bleeds out. Her limbs twitching.
I want to continue screaming. I want to kick and bite. I want to do the one thing the girl had demanded.
Kill him.
I want to shove that dagger through his chest. Rage like I’ve never felt courses through me, sinking deep into my soul. I’ve never felt hate like this.
This man, who killed my friend. Who stole me from a life with hope and freedom with the one person I loved. Who killed an innocent girl I wanted to save.
He betrayed me , I realize.
Tears fill my eyes so thick I can’t see. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
All energy seeps from my limbs, and instead of rage, I surrender to waves of sorrow. My body crumples to the ground, sinking into the mud and God knows what else.
The sobs come heavy and hard, and he smothers them with a tight grip over my mouth and nose until my vision peppers black.
I can’t believe I did this. I believed him.
How could I have believed him?
I knew what he was. I saw what he was. He showed me.
His fangs ripped into flesh. He’d grinned wide with blood pooling down his chin. And somehow, my stupid gentle mind believed he could be good.
What a fool I was.
His grip lessens gradually, until my sobs soften and I am able to be quiet. I cry again, shoulders shaking.
“Do not let them hear,” he whispers.
“Don’t touch me,” are the first words I’m able to get out. “Don’t ever fucking touch me again.”
Pain flashes across his face before he blinks it away. He has no right to feel pain.
I thought—I thought that, even in darkness, there could be good. I believed. I believed like Astella believed in her parents. Trusted the vision. Trusted the goodness of a world that has always shown the depths of its horror.
My faith is what will doom me , I realize.
I gave it too much power. I gave him too much power.
“Why?” I ask, the word a near cry. “Killing her served no purpose!”
He had offered to bring her food. Was he always going to end her instead? I never would have known.
“You don’t know what she is,” he says through gritted teeth. “She was lying to you, she?—”
“Who’s down there?” a voice hollers through the dungeon.
My heart stops. My Dread freezes, muscles tense. Slowly, his dark eyes shift into the dungeon, past the girl he just slaughtered.
How did I ever think I could trust him?
My whole body is shaking like a leaf, barely clinging to the branch in a windstorm.
He puts his finger up to his lips. He doesn’t reach for me.
When no more shouts come from the dungeon, I shift carefully in the mix of blood and mud and sewage. I scoot backward.
Haze doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t reach for me. He watches with intense eyes. His chest heaves up and down, like he’s exerting a lot of energy, but really this must be child’s play to him.
He’s killed hundreds of people. Including Lucca. I’m next, aren’t I?
Why couldn’t I have just died before giving my heart to this monster? I could have died with no regret.
When I finally find solid stone ground, I rise to my feet and walk backward toward the pit. Haze reaches me in only two strides. My heart hammers.
“I fucking hate you,” I tell him.
His brow pinches.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I whisper.
He doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he silently slides his mask up over his face and becomes the heartless warrior I’ve always known he was. I’d let myself forget for moments at a time.
But here, I feel that reality like a blade.
Like the blade that just killed her. I didn’t even know her name.
I should have learned her name.
My whole life spreads before me, leading me to this stupid, terrible end.
What was all the suffering for? Why did I fight so hard for each breath? Just to feed the enemy. To let them strip me of everything that has ever made me, me.
I held on to hope with each breath.
My lips tremble. He stares down at me, confusion etching into his forehead.
“Why do you hate me?” he asks finally, voice hushed.
“Is she not enough?” I ask, pointing past him to the corpse we left abandoned.
“There’s more,” he says, examining my face. He knows me well enough to see that, does he? “You left me.”
“You killed him,” I say, eyes closed. It takes so much effort not to cry. No, I will not let them win like this. He will never get another inch of me , I vow.
My body is numb. Floating in space somewhere. Not here on the edge of a draken pit, covered in sewage, and soaking in the blood of an innocent girl.
“You killed him,” I bite out, harsher this time.
“Who?” His voice is calm. Bored.
I tug the bracelet off of my wrist, and hold it in my open palm, showing him the beaded bracelet.
His eyes seem so neutral when he looks at the item in my hand. His mask hides much of his face, but his eyes—they’re supposed to show sadness or regret or anger or anything. Anything but this indifference.
He doesn’t even care.
He probably doesn’t even remember him.
“This was in your box, in your nest. It was his, my friend, my—” I swallow. “You killed him,” I whisper again. My nostrils flare as I work to control my reaction.
He blinks twice but otherwise shows no new emotion.
“Tell me if it’s true,” I say because I can’t stand the silence. For one instant, I hope it’s not true. I hope he’ll tell me that box wasn’t his. Or he found that bracelet on the ground, but he had nothing to do with the death of the boy I loved once upon a time.
“If this belonged to him and it was among my things, then yes, I killed him.”
The air is sucked from my lungs.
I never should have been in this situation. I never should have given him that piece of me. I was a prisoner. I was trapped.
I could have hated him, without this pain, if I hadn’t… I freely gave him a piece of my heart. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“I believed in you,” I say, more to myself than to him. Because what does he care?
I half expect him to laugh at me. What a foolish thing to say. What a ludicrous thing to think.
I used to think faith was what made me special. What drove me. What made life worth living beyond survival.
Hope is what destroyed me.
My shattered heart has nothing left to give. Nothing left but hate.
It’s fiery. Burning through my soul.
“Tell me how you killed him.”
My words linger in the darkness so long I think he’ll ignore them.
“You expect me to remember one of hundreds? What if I did cut him open like I cut her open?” He nods to the girl behind the bars.
And again, I want to die. I want to die with her.
I pull the bracelet against my chest. “Just kill me,” I beg, eyes staring blankly ahead.
He doesn’t move. He does not obey my request. Why would he? I am helpless here. There is no reason for him to do anything I ask.
My body stills. I have no more energy for crying or regret. My heart is torn open. Bleeding out like that girl at the bonfire. Sucked dry by these horrid creatures.
Is that how Lucca died?
“Kill me,” I say louder. “Devour me the way you devoured him.”
He leans in close. “No. When I devour you, Dove, it will be in a very different way.”
My lip curls in anger. How dare he flirt with me now after exposing the rot in his soul?
Harsh thuds of stomping feet sound behind me. They’re coming. The end is here, ready to take my life once and for all.
Doomed or not, I’ll take one of these bastards down with me. This one. I’ll take this one because I cannot allow him to hold on to the piece of my soul I gave him.
He doesn’t deserve it.
All of the rage I’ve ever held in my body comes roaring out all at once. I spin, gripping the dagger I kept hidden to finish the job I started.
Maybe my new form of hope is in vengeance. Maybe that’s all that is left in this god-forsaken world. All that’s left in me.
She told me to kill him. So, I will.
Haze’s eyes are wide as the blade plunges into his chest. The sound isn’t the same as when he killed the green-eyed girl. It’s a thunk and gasp and gurgle.
Unsure if it’s even enough to kill him, I throw my weight behind my thrust and I push as hard as I can.
He stumbles back, and me with him. He doesn’t speak or yell or fight back. He just stares down at me like he never could have foreseen this from me.
Like I’d betrayed him .
Then, I shove him one last time into the black abyss. He stumbles once and then falls.
It feels like slow motion as he flutters down, falling into the pit below. In only seconds, he is swallowed whole by blackness.
I never even hear him hit the ground.