Chapter 21 #2
The boy said nothing. I noticed the burns on the girl’s index finger and thumb, and the matching ones on the boy’s hand. Valentina once had burns like that, from holding her welding tools. They were machinists. Machinists from Oketia, no less.
We had to go, and quickly. I knew it. I was already starting to turn away, though I couldn’t quite make myself take the first step.
“Please,” the girl begged. Maybe, by now, she had begun to see what I’d always thought was written clearly on my face—that I was no hero, no matter what they called me. “Please, take him. He’s only thirteen.”
I hated this the most. When they begged not for their own lives, but for someone else’s. Thirteen was so gods-damned young. But how old was she? She couldn’t have been more than three years older. Sixteen was young, too.
My hand slipped into my pocket and closed around the pendant there, which had once belonged to the last person who had looked at me that way.
For some reason, I thought of Septimus’s words:
You will not save anyone but yourself.
{You do not have time,} Zefiah said, hearing my decision before I made it.
“Kyrene!” Septimus’s voice echoed from behind me, but I wasn’t paying attention to him, either.
I was already lifting Zefiah and bringing her down, hard, on the bars. The children staggered backward, arms up to shield their faces, as the metal crumpled under Zefiah’s blade with a blast of white light. The twisted, broken door swung lazily open.
I thrust my hand out.
“Come on,” I said.
{Kyrene—}
You’re the blade of fucking justice, Zefiah. Don’t you want me to be a hero for once?
“Stay close,” I snapped at the children. “And keep up.”
The girl nodded. The boy remained silent, wide-eyed.
But no sooner did I turn around to take in our surroundings than did I question my sanity.
It was hell. Literal hell. And I had no idea how to get them out of here.
Across the flames, I met eyes with Septimus.
His expression changed—posture straightening, eyes narrowing, entire body communicating a silent, What the fuck?
I ignored him. Which way out, Zefiah?
{It is not an easy path. And it will close quickly.}
Then we’d better move fast.
Septimus strode toward me, purposeful and quick, and I turned, instinctively shielding my new charges from him. I was certain he would either toss them aside into the Nightflames or force me to leave them behind. I would do the same in his position.
He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, I snapped, “I’m taking them out.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Pity, maybe, though it was such a strange shade on his elegant vampiric features that I couldn’t quite decode it.
“They can’t come with us,” he said.
“I don’t care. I’m getting them out. Alone, if I have to.”
I fully expected him to argue with me. I was ready to push past him if I had to. But instead, an odd expression flickered over his face, a humorless twist raising one corner of his mouth. His eyes bounced from me, to the children, to Zefiah, to me again.
“My,” he said. “How noble of you. Very well. There’s a back door. The safest way out.”
{He is correct,} Zefiah said, a thread of light shooting through the darkness. {This way.}
It felt like some kind of trick—that he was not only not arguing with me, but that he was helping me. I didn’t know what to make of my sudden, unexpected flood of—gods, was that gratefulness?
There was no time for words, anyway, and maybe I was glad for it.
It was a small miracle that we managed to fight our way to the doors. But the chaos was our friend. The Nightborn and the Shadowborn were so distracted with each other that there was barely anyone I needed to kill on our way to the back of the fortress.
And when we finally reached our destination, I threw open the doors and my heart immediately sank.
They wouldn’t make it. No one could.
The fire had spread into the forest, Nightfire and flame fused in a blazing hellscape of red and blue.
A towering pine tree fell with a pained groan, streaking light through the sky.
The night was still blotted out with waves and waves of Nightborn vampires, and the howls of soulless echoed in the night.
Which way do they go? I asked Zefiah.
{Straight. East. There is a harbor.}
It was such a monumentally small shot. As I stood here, covered in the blood of the innocents just like these, the lunacy of what I was attempting seemed outrageous.
Septimus thrust something into the hands of the girl. I looked down and realized it was a sword.
“Have you used one before?” he said. He spoke Oketian—accented, almost melodic. But what surprised me more was his unexpected firm tenderness.
The girl shook her head.
“It’s basic,” he said. “There’s a sharp edge. Don’t hesitate to use it, dove.”
The girl’s eyes drifted to the fire. A sword did nothing against that.
“There’s a harbor. Straight shot that way.” I pointed Zefiah’s tip, and she sent a streak of godlight in that direction, burning through the forest. “Move fast.”
The girl started after it, but the boy stood, frozen, in the doorway. His face was blank, his body trembling.
“Hey.” I took his shoulders in my hands. “This is your chance. You might not get another one. Don’t look back. Look for the coast and run for your fucking life. Save yourself.”
The words were an unintentional echo of the ones a stranger had given me ten years ago. I wondered if they would persist in him forever too, just like they’d persisted in me.
The girl opened her mouth to say something, reaching for the boy’s hand—
Blood spattered me.
A stray bolt of light careened from the roof.
The girl was now a puddle of gore on the ground, a burning arrow through her face, her head a mess of tattered flesh.
The horror froze me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. The arrow had clearly not been meant for her. It was a wayward shot intended for some vampire heart. Bad fucking luck, and shitty aim, and careless violence, and a life ended.
The boy let out a small, horrified cry. There were no dramatic screams. No tears. It was often that way, I’d learned. Shocked silence.
Septimus gave the boy a rough shove. “Run, boy. Now.”
It felt like there should be more that we could offer him. But I didn’t even have time to do more than glimpse the child running into the dark forest as Septimus grabbed my arm and dragged me back into the chaos.
{Survive this first,} Zefiah reminded me.
She was right. It wasn’t the first time or the last that I’d see an innocent die in front of me.
Still, my steps were rough, my throat tight, my stride wobbly.
Blood half blinded me, smearing into my left eye.
I had a suspicion it wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t wipe it away with Zefiah occupying my grip.
We managed down a set of stairs, then another.
But then, before we entered the next flight, Septimus stopped. Stopped, at a thick iron door, one that resembled the one he’d paused at when we came in. The smoke was now so thick I could barely see, the not-heat of the Nightflame so close I could feel it on my skin.
He leaned against the door, head hanging, one palm against the metal.
{There is no time for whatever he is doing,} Zefiah warned. She was right.
“What is wrong with you?” I said. “Let’s go!”
“Can you open it?”
He turned just enough so that a sliver of his profile was visible to me. One eye.
“What?” I said.
“The door,” he snapped. “Your sword. Break it.”
It was no longer a question. It was a command.
I examined the bar. It was thick, and no doubt reinforced by magic.
Zefiah said, {I can break the metal. But there is more than iron blocking in whatever sits inside those walls.}
“Taking down the door won’t be enough to let out—”
“I know.” The words were sharp, like a drawn blade. “I know,” he said again, more calmly. “That isn’t what I asked.”
We don’t have time.
The words were on the tip of my tongue. They were true. But there was something in Septimus’s face that made me pause—something a little too raw in a way I knew he didn’t intend to reveal.
And I thought of the way he’d looked at me, when he’d seen me with those two children, and I wondered if I was giving him the same expression now.
{We do not have time for this,} Zefiah insisted.
We hadn’t had time to send that boy to safety, either, but Septimus had done it.
So with a muttered curse between my teeth, I brought down Zefiah on the bar, once, twice, three times, until the iron gave way with a bone-shattering crack.
Screams echoed from within. No, not screams—roars, maybe, or wails. A sound that was a terrible combination of all three. Unlike anything I’d ever heard before.
Goose bumps rose on my skin. Zefiah hissed a wordless revulsion, because the wave of horrific wrong-ness that flowed from behind that door rivaled anything I’d ever witnessed from any soulless.
“What is that?” I breathed.
But Septimus ignored me. He stood in front of the open door, a silhouette of white against a pit of darkness.
He didn’t go inside. He simply withdrew something from his pocket. Matches, I realized. He struck one, and in that little orange glow, I glimpsed something writhing in the dark. Something that almost looked like a person.
Septimus bowed his head, muttered something I could not hear, and tossed the match into the darkness.