Chapter 31
Vaetrik slashed at me as I scrambled backwards in the gravel, flicking bits of warm liquid from his sword onto my face.
I touched the droplets that landed on my cheek.
Blood. Ash’s blood. It dyed his chest and the gray rock around him in a languid, spreading pool.
Gasping, labored breaths that were too weak filled the cavern as Ash reached for his gun.
His scarlet-stained hand shook, but he was fighting still. Fighting to live. Fighting for me.
Vaetrik stomped hard on his wrist, and with a gruesome snap of bone, destroyed any hope of Ash grabbing his weapon.
The entire world around me was a haze. All I could focus on was Ash’s pained gasps and the blood. All the blood. I had to help him. I could slow his bleeding if—
Vaetrik stood between us. There was no way around him to get to Ash.
“Please…Please let me save him. I have to save him! He’s just a kid!”
“There’s no saving him,” Vaetrik said. “You can sit there like you always do and watch him die.”
My nails bit into the flesh of my palm. I got to my feet, pointing my rapier at Vaetrik once more. When our gazes met again, I saw his change.
He knew I wasn’t the spineless, na?ve Siren girl he had fooled time and time again. He saw the fury that blazed inside me. Not even for my misfortune at his hands, but for the way he hurt my dearest friend. And he knew I would be his end.
So, Vaetrik tried to come at me first, sending a wild swing of his cutlass at my stomach that I danced backwards to avoid.
He slashed at me so haphazardly that it was easy to dodge.
All I had to do was keep walking backwards.
The wooden bridge creaked beneath my boots as our blades finally met with a clang of metal, one that had my rapier trembling like a blade of grass.
The pool of water surrounding the dock bubbled, but I didn't hazard a glance at it.
“Give up, pet. It’s over for your friend, and it’s over for you,” Vaetrik panted, glaring at me over our locked blades.
I shoved his cutlass away and stabbed at his throat, blind to his smirk of victory.
He sidestepped and swung his sword against mine with such power it almost felt more like a metal club.
The weight and strength he threw into the attack shattered my rapier into pieces that clattered onto the dock and rolled into the pool.
I stumbled backwards at the edge. The water behind me churned.
I tossed away the useless handguard and yanked my Obsidian knife free, my one remaining tool to keep him from winning.
He inched closer.
There was nowhere for me to go—nowhere but the water.
I faced Vaetrik, my expression set in defiance of his cruelty.
“You made me fear you all this time, and yet you are the one who should have feared me.
I'm a sister of the Abyssal Deep, untameable as the waves. I have never once been yours to claim, and no man like you will ever make me feel like nothing again.”
There was no way he was afraid of my knife, but he hesitated for a moment, and a moment was all I needed. The roiling water around us heeded my call and rose in a wave taller than either of us, crashing over us and sweeping Vaetrik and me into the pool.
It was murky, bottomless, and unquestionably hot. Vaetrik struggled and tried to swipe at me, but the water slowed his movements pathetically.
Finally, I had the upper hand. I glared down at him as he moved to swim for the surface, but with a flick of my finger, the water dragged him deeper, deep enough that the shadows in the depths began to writhe and move.
With one push, I shot up close to him and slashed my knife across his throat.
The cloud of blood billowing into the surrounding water and that horrified stare—they felt like rewards I had been waiting to see for years.
He struggled for a moment, slamming his hands against the wound to stem the flow of blood, but it was pointless.
His mouth fell open, a bubble of air leaving him as he went still.
The hat he always wore drifted upwards to float atop the pool.
Those shadowy, skeletal hands grasped at his arms and body, dragging him further and further into the depths, leaving behind a trail of red-stained water. Wiped from the earth forever.
The water scalded my skin and eyes as I swam for the surface and pulled myself back onto the dock, for once relieved to be on dry land. My steps were unsteady, as if the world tilted, but I staggered to Ashkade’s side.
Blood drenched the front of his shirt and vest and trickled out of his mouth, despite the dazed half-grin he gave me. His eyelids drooped, half closed.
“You’ll be alright. I’ll slow the bleeding.” I gently set my hands over the gaping wounds in his stomach and chest, pleading with the water in his blood to slow. A cold shudder swept through my body.
Too late.
Heat built in my eyes, but I rubbed at them with my wrist to make it stop. “I’m going to have to put physical pressure on them to—”
“Better this way…I think,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Even if I didn’t get to…”
“Shut up. It’s going to hurt, but I can—”
“Nothin’ made me happier…than bein’ a family with you and Rei.”
Air refused to flow into my lungs, and my stomach twisted into a thousand writhing knots.
“I’ll always be grateful…both of you loved me back.
” His skin had already left its usual shut-in pale behind for a graying pallor.
Colorless, lifeless. Even his lips had lost color, and his half-open eyes seemed dull.
Still, he smiled. “I wish Rei was here…And I wish…the three of us could have been a family longer.”
Tears blurred my vision, but I found his hand and squeezed it. “Please, Ash. We’re still going to be a family, aren’t we? You wanted to be the godfather when Reiven and I have a baby, didn’t you? That’s a long way away, so you have to hang on.”
Ash tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a whimpering sob.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said, injecting every ounce of false certainty I had left in me into my words.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for…lyin’ to you.”
“Shh.” I cupped his cheeks and drew out the pain he was in, the same way I would with Reiven’s.
But it felt as though his pain had begun to drain even before I took it away.
I forced a smile. “You still have a lot to do, Timebreaker. You’re going to bring everyone together to work towards a beautiful, peaceful future, right?
The sun will shine as children of all kinds laugh and play together, and—and—”
The pain inside him was disappearing, but not because of me. My tears fell on his face, and I couldn’t keep pretending to smile and be confident anymore. I sobbed as my heart shattered.
Ash was taking all my strength with him, but he continued to smile.
“Almost thought I wouldn’t get to…see it.
That kind of future… But I do, right here.
” It seemed like it took all his remaining energy to do so, but he raised one trembling hand to my face, brushing his fingers against my cheek.
“You and Rei…will finish it for me…won’t you? ”
I nodded and squeezed my eyes shut, but that didn’t stop the hot, painful tears from streaming down my cheeks. I caught his hand before it slipped away and screamed.
When I forced my eyes open again, he had gone so still, like a statue that had never once moved at all. His sweet, young face wasn’t supposed to be so empty of life. His pretty eyes shouldn’t blankly stare up at the ceiling, so I gently closed them with shaking hands.
He’s just a kid… just a boy that wanted to stop all the endless fighting…
Ash was meant to grow older until he was tall and had muscles like Reiven.
In that world of harmony he’d create with his own hands, he could have found someone to love, like how I found Rei.
Maybe he’d have a family of his own, or maybe he’d settle for being a godfather. But now he wouldn’t have that chance.
Someone’s presence drew closer as I lost myself in the whirlwind of what Ash's life could have been—what it was supposed to be. The world around me was a blur of nothingness. A vibration of sound reached my ears, but it was so muffled, I couldn't understand. I didn't even care to try.
When a hand reached out and gripped my shoulder, and I saw Reiven kneeling in front of me on the opposite side of Ash's body, everything cleared.
Rei said my name, worry etched across his features as his eyes darted down to Ash's body and back up to me. He said my name again, and this time I focused on him and his words to keep the static and blurry vision from returning.
“Zephra…Wh-what happened?”
I couldn’t find my voice. Vaetrik might as well have been squeezing my throat from his watery grave.
“Is Ash going to be okay?” Reiven’s voice was as hollow as the cavern we knelt in. He shook Ash’s lifeless body by the shoulder, like he somehow foolishly fell asleep in the depths of Hell.
“I’m…so sorry…”
“He’ll be fine, won’t he? Can’t you help him? Zephra, p-please, we have to help him!” Panic and anguish flooded his scarlet eyes as he touched Ash’s face—his surrogate little brother that he loved so dearly, that he had been willing to give his life to protect. “He’s still warm…”
I buried my face in my hands and wept. Anything. I would have given anything to have him back. My mind scrambled to return to the past, finding every weak moment I had in our encounter with Vaetrik that let this happen. “My fault…it’s my fault…”
“No,” Reiven said shakily. He came to my side and pulled me close so I could disintegrate into a puddle of weakness against him. “It isn’t your fault, Zephra.”
“Vaetrik…if it wasn’t for me…”
I glanced back at Vaetrik’s hat, floating in the bubbling pool, until Reiven pressed my face against his chest.
No revenge was worth this.
I dissolved into more tears and clung to him. We sat there in Hell and held each other, like nothing else in the world could ever matter more than the pain we shared with every shuddering breath.