Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
BANG!
I’m dragged roughly from the drowning, inescapable blackness of sleep.
Red Root clings like a clumpy, foggy skin to every one of my senses, shrouding the world as I blink around my bedroom.
Half delirious in a room doused with darkness, I manage to sit up.
Angry shouting leaks through the crack in my bedroom window.
A cool, listless breeze tussles with the organza curtains that frame the large, arched glass fixture.
Bed sheets are tangled around my legs, my longer nightdress having slipped up around my thighs in my restless slumber.
Crashing outside my door throws my heart to my throat. As I desperately try to ground my senses, a roar bellows through the dark as my bedroom door is rammed open. The wood slams like thunder against the stone wall as three enraged men run for my bed.
“Got her!” roars one man as they grab hold of me. My heart hammers in my ribs as their careless, violent hands wrench at my arms and haul me malevolently from the bed.
Idris’s mob. They’re here.
“No! No!” I scream. I try to thrash. To fight.
To throw them off me. But Red Root sticks to my clumsy flailing and robs me of any real strength or control.
I’m not sure it would’ve mattered – these men tow me from my room like I’m weightless, worthless rubbish.
My bare legs trail over the hard floors as the men cheer with a sickening, vicious delight.
They shake me and tighten their fingers like a vice, screaming of their stolen prize down the corridors of my home.
Tears well in my eyes as my breath swells in my lungs, pressing against my throat like a lump of ice.
“We’ve got the traitor! We’ve got her!” the thugs announce to a deafening, feral roar of savage glee that shakes the walls of my home.
Tens of people are in my house, smashing up my home and pocketing my family’s possessions.
I’m callously thrown down the stairs. Pain erupts across my arms, legs, back – even my face as I tumble, limb over limb, inelegantly crashing to a throbbing stop at the base of the stairs.
I land, sprawled over my mother’s mosaic, wearing nothing but my white silk nightdress over bruised and bleeding limbs.
I try to pick myself up, my dark hair loose and tangled around my face.
Unkind hands grab a fistful of my hair before I can move.
I shriek as tearing pain erupts across my head, and I’m hauled back onto my knees.
My fingers flail, instinctively reaching up to the savage grip trying to rip off my scalp.
“You traitorous Di Maineri rat!” roars the man in my face, his round features red from anger and the torches blazing in the hands of a dozen or so of his compatriots.
“No! Stop, please—” My garbled pleas are cut off as his fat hand sails around, smacking the words from my mouth. Blood coats my lips and dribbles down my chin. My eyes roll in my head, the groans bubbling through the taste of iron and salt.
“Lying, thieving, honourless filth!”
“Hang her up! For Patricelli!”
“City stealer!”
“Fateless whore!”
“Di Maineri scum!”
The insults are levied. Objects are thrown, slamming into my body, before the crowd.
Hurled with red-faced anger. Pain cracks across my bare limbs, their points digging into battered flesh.
This man drags me by my hair across the cold floor.
I sob, clutching for my hair like I can stop the agony exploding across my head and neck.
Salty tears flow freely down my face as my pleas are drowned out by this gang of thugs.
Idris’s thugs, here to finally kill me.
Where are my guards? Why aren’t they protecting me? I spy three familiar faces. The guards … they stand with menacing glares. They’re part of this. They’re letting this happen.
I manage to look up as a rope is dangled from my banister.
Ice explodes across my ribs and a terrifying numbness coils around my spine.
I shudder, cowering on the floor as my short, brutal future snaps into punishing clarity.
Ringing takes up an attack in my ears, mingling with the bloodthirsty screams staining the air of my home.
I’m thrust remorselessly forwards, forced to kneel as the coarse rope is twisted around my tender neck.
Without any warning, I’m yanked off the floor by my throat, amidst a chorus of depraved glee.
This isn’t a humane hanging, no broken neck or short drop.
My fingers clutch for the rope constricting my windpipe as I desperately thrash for breath.
I frantically scramble in mid-air, dangling like their prized entertainment as I claw at my brutalised neck against the choking, burning rope.
I kick and flail my legs hysterically, searching hopelessly for purchase in the unforgiving cold night.
The deranged assailants laugh and cry out, savouring their twisted thrill at my agonised, terrifying, humiliating murder.
A flash of silver splits the night. Firelight glints off its lightning path like the precious, saving light of dawn. The blade sweeps over the head of the monstrous swarm, severing the rope that hangs me several feet off the floor.
I drop. My legs buckle as I slam hard into the stone floor. Tears roll down my torn face, sobs fighting for breath as I lie broken and shuddering in the shadows of my home.
The murderers stop their gleeful jeering as a dark, blistering flame tears through the crowd.
There is a blurry, swirl of movement around me.
Shouting and yelling merges into screams and pleas.
Coari soldiers grab the criminals, forcing them into brutal, merciless submission.
Floundering on the floor amidst the chaos and violence, I rise to my knees, coughing and yelping and gasping for breath from my swollen throat.
My trembling fingers pull the rope from my neck.
A bonfire touches my back. I sob loudly, my agony seeping through battered lips. I pull away from the world-ending pain, begging for mercy with the words falling from bloody, spittle thick lips. I’m quaking all over, every limb screaming. My face is wet with fresh, molten tears.
“Renza!” Idris’s voice is broiling acid in my ears. “Renza!”
He’s here. Has he come to finish it? To end my suffering? To take this city from me?
I’m not safe. Not here, not anywhere. This city hates me. My city wants me dead.
The city wants me dead!
“We did this for you!” shouts a monster behind me. “For the Patricelli, so you would lead us! Not the city-stealing whore, not the Di Maineri scum!”
Idris turns his attention to the violent beast. Broken, on all fours over the cold mosaic tiles, I watch Idris’s fingers tightening on the hilt of his blade.
The fiery torches throw jumping red light over the figure as Idris stalks towards the men.
There is no mercy in his face, no light or kindness. Just violence. Just fury.
The face of the man drops like a stone, horror and disbelief spilling across his red face.
“No! We did this for you! For Patricelli honour!”
Idris drives his fist at the man’s face, amidst horrified screams and protests from the other captured criminals. Idris is murderous, enraged, shaking and red all over.
“THERE IS NO HONOUR HERE! ONLY PATHETIC COWARDS ATTACKING A GIRL AS SHE SLEEPS! YOU WILL ALL DIE A TRAITOR’S DEATH!” Idris roars, reaching for his blade and lifting it high.
Screams and pleas of horror fill my home.
They echo off my walls and bounce off my furniture.
I sob, wrapping my hands over my head. Violence and more violence and more violence.
I turn my face away, clamping my shuddering fingers over my ears in a vain attempt to banish the anguish.
Fresh tears spring to my eyes, my blood pounds in my bruised, swelling throat and every fibre of my body is screaming at me.
Run.
Run!
RUN!
I desperately scramble to my feet and tear through the halls of my home. I sprint hopelessly through the dark, my feet bare, cold and stinging as I fight to put distance between me and the threat. The monsters coming to kill me. The fury that Fate has called due.
I push through the glass doors at the back of my home, breaking into the cold air.
Like barbed needles it slices mercilessly at my flushed skin.
My vision swirls from the muggy, relentless grip of Red Root and total panic.
Gasping for breath, the cold air is an assault on my bruised, burning lungs.
I can’t stop. I run and run, pushing my legs, obeying the screaming.
I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t really care.
The grass wraps around my feet with icy tendrils.
The dew is wet and clammy on my naked toes as I come to a low wall that separates the garden from the street.
I throw myself over it, dropping down to the sunken road below. My knees give way as I land, and I end up face down on the cold dirty stone. Fresh tears run down soaked cheeks and pain cracks down my arms as I pick myself up.
Get away.
Get away.
Run.
Run.
Run.
My ankle hurts and every limb has been beaten and abused as I stagger, disoriented and splintered, through the empty black streets of Halice.
My feet move in their own direction, coated in dirt and grime as tears race like a waterfall over my skin.
My breath is clustered and gasping. My pulse is throbbing and numb as ice in my ears.
The ringing overwhelms me, smothering any other sound or sense as I lurch and teeter as fast as I can force my battered limbs forwards. Ever forwards.
The inky streets of Halice are entirely abandoned. Empty, cold, alone.
Empty. Cold. Alone.
I’m empty. I’m cold. I’m alone.
This city is suddenly foreign and strange. A terrifying monster come to eat me alive. This is not the home I knew. This is not the home I loved. I have lost, and the war isn’t even here yet.
It’s over.
I failed.
This is my fault. The division in this city. The hatred that has prospered here. I did this. It was my job. I’m an Electi – I’m the Maestrus. I’m a failure. A worthless, stupid failure. I have let myself down. I have let all of Halice down. I have let my father down.
Before I know it, I come to painted steps. Familiar in shape, the paint is swallowed by a black blanket of night. The moon hides behind ebony clouds, the stars barely deigning to shine. Why would they cast their eyes to a failure?
I look up at the hallowed High Chamber – a place I thought was home.
A place where I once felt so proud and strong.
Now every pane of glass, every gilded corner and twist of stone are the eyes of my ancestors glaring down at me.
The loathing of generations and generations pour from the building.
For being too stupid, too weak, too arrogant to protect this city.
For failing in my sacred duty.
I stagger up the steps, tears stopping as a numb, aching acceptance curls up in my chest. With clumsy limbs I push open the door of the High Chamber. Moonlight pours through the domed ceiling, and the space is filled with colour so faint it’s barely a memory. A shadow of the city I knew and loved.
I stagger past the empty chairs and tables, the silence a united judgement crashing against me.
I push through the gate that hasn’t been opened in weeks and towards the Electi chairs, standing proudly in their positions.
All have been empty since I became Maestrus.
With small steps I walk barefoot towards the centre of the white marble stage.
With trembling, grimy feet I step onto the perfect, polished podium.
My crushed breath leaves shuddering lips.
I look at my seat. Usually basking in proud pink light, the colour is muted and silvery thin now.
Muted, watery, its beauty washed away to a distant memory.
I am the Electi that lost Halice.
I am the Electi that killed our city.
Shame piles on my self-loathing. Guilt. I turn slowly, my bare feet numb from the cool, unforgiving stone below.
That coldness stretches up my shins, the chilly air biting into the naked skin of my arms and face.
My tears cling like salty, clawing wounds to my cheeks as I survey the chairs of my colleagues.
I turn slowly, remembering their strength.
Their honour. Their spirit. They died, and I lived.
I shouldn’t have lived. It should’ve been them.
Any one of them. They would’ve been better. They wouldn’t have failed.
All strength leaves me as I see my father’s seat. I can feel his shame. His disappointment. His legacy broken by one stupid daughter.
I crumble to the floor, a numb blanket of clarity draining me of any remaining energy. I lie on the while marble floor, its coldness leaching into my exposed flesh. I stare at my father’s seat with swollen eyes.
I can’t move. So I lie on the hard marble, taking the shame I deserve.
My world hasn’t been the same since Idris Patricelli came back to town. The entire world twisted in one meeting and nothing has been the same since. Tragedy, pain, loss, it has stalked us both. We have lost so much.
So many warned me. I was a fool to think I was any different. Fate would always have his due.
Perhaps there’s a reason why Fate paired us like this.
Because Fate knew I wouldn’t be strong enough.
Fate knew what would happen, so he bonded me with Patricelli.
Someone who was strong and smart and capable.
He was supposed to kill me, so I couldn’t mess it up.
So I wouldn’t be here to ruin everything.
I should’ve listened to Fate and just died.
I was a coward then, a stupid arrogant fool who refused to listen to the wisdom of Fate’s Great Plan. But I won’t be anymore. I know what I have to do. I don’t have it in me to fight anymore.
I know what has to happen.
Idris Patricelli must kill me.