39. One Foot After the Other #3
Rerdas looked at the dogs. They were aimless, gazing off in different directions. No scent had snagged their attention. He did not dare look back at whatever, or whomever, hid in the trees.
“Kirinoll,” Hize continued, “is too far off to wait.” His dagger gleamed as he drew it.
Rerdas, pulse wild with warning, readied himself for pain.
Hize plunged the blade into Etiana’s stomach, and her scream carved Rerdas’s heart into ribbons.
“Etiana!” His captors were startled enough that he tore free. He flung himself toward his cousin as she sagged.
The guards dropped her. She tumbled backward with the dagger buried hilt-deep beneath her ribs.
“No,” Rerdas mouthed, barely a sound. He was on his hands and knees. Hize kicked him aside, but Rerdas only hurled himself toward her again.
One guard pointed over Etiana. “What is tha—”
Someone charged into the open with a bloodcurdling cry. Not one. Many. Steel stormed and clashed, and the air rang with too much sound.
Rerdas crouched beside Etiana, barely aware of anything else. His hands were useless, shaking so much that he was afraid to touch her. “No,” he whispered again.
Etiana stared up at him. She gasped, and a pink bubble popped at the corner of her mouth. Her lips gleamed with something shining and red as berries.
“No, Eti, please, please, please.” His hands fluttered above the hilt of the dagger. She would bleed so badly if he pulled it free.
“Fall back!” a hoarse, unfamiliar voice shouted. “Get him and fall back!”
Hands slammed into Rerdas, arms that wrapped around his waist. They were picking him up. They were going to take him away. There were no hands reaching for Etiana.
“No! Don’t—” He fought loose, tearing into the dirt, the roots, clawing his way back to her. Etiana’s eyes kept roving away from his face and darting back again. Her breath made a terrible, watery sound.
Rerdas gripped her shoulders. “Don’t leave me. Please. Etiana.”
“Should we—” Someone’s question bounced off his ears and was cut off by the gruff voice from earlier.
“Just him, it’s too late for her—”
“No!” Rerdas howled. There were people all around him, hauling him up, trying to shove him further into the jungle.
Blood soaked through Etiana’s robes. She was watching him. She was watching him leave.
“Please, please, Eternals, gods, no, don’t—”
“Shut him up; who knows how many of the Guard are about.”
“I can’t! He’s fucking—”
“Etiana! Please!” Rerdas screamed, writhing in the grip of his captors.
They were tearing him away. He found a foothold, but someone seized his feet and pulled him from the ground.
Impossible that he was moving further away.
He fought. They were so much stronger than he was.
Step by step, away. He could still see her. She was looking for him. He knew it.
Then he was sobbing. He could not see through tears, and his skin was bursting. He had no words; even her name was lost. The sound that flooded out of him stripped his guts, his throat, left him bleeding, sent his soul back to the place his body was being dragged from, and still it was not enough.
His only blessing came when they bashed him in the head. Darkness poured in from all sides, and his last thought as it devoured him was that at least he would not feel how he had been ripped apart.
THE END of BOOK TWO
Thank you for reading this series! Rerdas and Imalroc’s story continues in the final installment in the trilogy: The Battle Unseen