Chapter 31 Leaves of Autumn #2
“I don’t bluff, Miss Kriegen. The damage could have been greater, but I didn’t have the time to delve deeper into…
what was her name again?” he asked himself.
“Lorena, is it? There was a little girl, too.” A twisted smile, reaching his eyes, appeared.
“I assume the child is yours, Miss Kriegen. She has your eyes.”
“What have you done, you monster!” Alissa cried out, thrashing in Eldric’s arms. “I swear I will kill every living being that shares your blood if you laid a finger on my daughter!”
“I did consider cutting out her tongue after she stuck it out at me.” He clicked his tongue, circling them with an air of amusement. “Unfortunately, time wasn’t on my side.”
Alissa’s wrathful roar made every single person in the room stiff, even Freyah, as she cried the loss of her father out of her body.
That was the reaction the general had hoped for, the one he felt he deserved after months of relentless pursuit and frustration, after countless cities and failed attempts.
He had dreamed of the moment he would be face to face with his targets, and the way they fell apart at that moment under the truth of his words was the least he was owed.
But his goal would only be fully accomplished once their hearts stopped beating.
Eldric shook his head, scanning the room, noting the soldiers’ positions, and mentally plotting an escape plan. “Can you live with yourself knowing you’ve handed us over to die by the hands of these cruel people, the very ones who have kept you bound by debt?” he asked Desi, voice raw with emotion.
“They will not kill you. If you surrender, they promised me you’ll all be spared.”
Poor Desi, she should have known better.
One of the guards grabbed Freyah by the arms, pulling her to her feet. Her back was pressed against his broad chest, and her face still bore the signs of distress over the news of her father’s murder. She groaned, trying to wriggle out of his grasp, but he was too strong.
He glanced at his general, who gave a silent nod—a command.
“Get your hands off her now!” Alissa’s howl erupted with the intensity of the siren that blared in Bryniard every six months, louder than she ever thought she was capable of. Perhaps her soul anticipated how the next few seconds of her life would play out.
Without any warning, the man spoke, “I’m sorry, we have explicit orders to take down the Brynardian ladies on the spot.”
A heartbeat later, his sword slid across Freyah’s throat in a swift, effortless movement. Blood spurted out, splattering heavily on the man opposite her in the living room.
Keilan watched everything in shock. His face became a mess of deep red.
He flinched at the taste of iron and the slick texture that covered his skin.
He cleaned the blood from the shattered lens of his glasses, fighting the compassion that threatened to creep up every time he witnessed such brutality.
Though he hadn’t wielded the sword himself, he felt every life taken by his fellow soldiers as if it were his own.
Freyah’s hand instinctively moved to the wide slit on her throat, but the blood poured too freely, slipping through her fingers in thick, warm streams. Her eyes were wide, though her vision was slowly blurring, fading.
Everything happened so fast, but for her, it moved in slow motion, as if time had frozen just for her, granting this fleeting moment.
A final, agonizing second to cling to life.
Freyah Weller had always hoped that when her time came, the last thing her sight would capture would be something as beautiful as the ocean earlier that day, perhaps in the distant future when age had worn her body down to its final threads.
Instead, the last sight she was granted was the pained, horrified expression on Alissa’s face, drained of all color.
Alissa’s roar of despair, fighting against Eldric’s grip, desperate to reach her—to save her—roared through her dying body.
Freyah knew there was no saving her now.
What truly tore at her heart wasn’t the end itself, but the flood of emotions and thoughts she could see through her friend, the silent screams of grief that spoke louder than any words.
Freyah would have given anything for one more moment to say goodbye.
To hold Alissa tight and whisper that everything would be alright.
To tell her that none of this was her fault, that every sacrifice had been worth it.
Her lips wouldn’t move, stuck agape in a dreadful, soundless scream, but she felt a single tear slide down her cheeks.
The end arrived ever so slyly and stealthily.
Freyah did not have time to close her eyes before her mind slipped into the void, and her soul was carried away.
Alissa used to think that all dead bodies hit the ground with the heaviness of a stone, the last stubborn motion of their lives.
But Freyah’s body drifted down gracefully like a leaf detaching from a tree in autumn.
Perhaps not all bodies fell the same way.
Freyah wasn’t like everyone else; she was as graceful as those falling leaves, unique and irreplaceable, too precious to be taken.
The woman she had known for all her life, the woman she called sister, died wearing a hair color she didn’t like, in a place she didn’t call home, in clothes that weren’t hers, as she pretended to be someone else.
Her last words were words she would not have chosen to be her last had she known it.
She died a death that a bright soul such as hers, who had only ever been kind and loving to others, didn’t deserve.
Freyah died a death of no honor, a death of betrayal from someone she had come to adore.
Her body lay lifeless in the living room, her chest against the cold floor.
But it didn’t matter; the floor temperature would not bother Freyah when her body was also growing colder by the second, the only warmth coming from the puddle of blood still spilling out of her throat.
Her eyes, one hazel and the other white from blindness, both froze in that same stare of horror she wore when she realized it would be her last. A stare that would haunt Alissa’s dreams forever.
NO!
NO!
NO!
All Alissa could muster were guttural screams that came out of her one after the other. She didn’t even know if she was still human—she certainly felt more like a wild animal.
The pain was excruciating, unbearable, unbelievable.
She couldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t accept it.
It’s all my fault.
Desperation gave way to an all-consuming rage, erasing all of her senses. She looked up at Desi, who watched it all develop in dismay. “I’m going to kill you!” she wailed in promise, her voice so wrathful it filled the space with horror.
Everything happened so quickly that Alissa didn’t have time to properly mourn or sob over her friend’s body. She didn’t have time because soon another body fell to the ground, and it was Breno who had been murdered, trying to disarm the man who ended Freyah’s life.
Alissa stood frozen as chaos emerged in the background.
She saw Desi cowardly run away from the battle scene.
She watched Olga, fierce and unyielding, swing her axe to decapitate both the man who had murdered her husband and the one who had killed Freyah.
She saw Eldric charge forward, driving one of the guards to surrender, only to be ambushed by another who struck him brutally.
Even as Eldric was nearly subdued, the enraged Iron Claw saw fit to sever his right arm at the elbow.
Eldric’s agonized scream lodged in Alissa’s throat as she gasped for air, his severed limb lying near Freyah’s corpse, both discarded like they were worthless.
“Not the guard, I need him alive, you idiot!” the general roared from the back, where he had engaged in a fight with an infuriated Olga and her axe. “Go after the Brynardian woman!” he barked at his subordinates.
Eldric’s gaze locked onto Alissa between the relentless punches against his face.
His skin was marred with bruises and soaked in his blood.
His expression screamed of grief for his dead friends and a paralyzing fear that gripped him to his core, terrified that the woman he loved would meet the same tragic fate.
His eyes fixed on Alissa, mouthing a plea, “Run.”
It took all of her strength to move away from Freyah’s corpse and Eldric’s torture.
It took all of her not to kneel beside Freyah, cradle her body in her lap, and cry until death came to claim her, too.
Death started to feel more of a relief when all the future had in store was a wave of endless grief and loss.
Thinking of Dhalia was the only thing that gave her the willpower to move.
You need to be strong, my child. She remembered her father’s words.
While Freyah and Breno lay dead and Eldric lay unconscious, Olga swung her axe with pure wrath, screaming as two Iron Claws began to approach Alissa.
Summoning a strength she didn’t know she still possessed, Alissa turned and ran.
She ran until her lungs burned.
She ran until her mind couldn’t think straight anymore.
She ran until she convinced herself this had only been a nightmare.
She ran.