Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
The kingdom of oscuro
sapphire
When I cracked my eyes open, the light had changed. Dimmer. Off. As if the sun had been swallowed whole, still glowing behind a curtain of something heavy and wrong. It was there—but only barely.
Shadows pressed around my mind, thick and restless, like smoke that wouldn’t clear. Perhaps I just needed to get out of bed. Shake off that horrendous dream. The one where Meeka was on the ground, her head in a pool of crimson and I was pinned beneath the weight of a soulless man.
My body ached everywhere. Bones grinded against each other without flesh and muscle in between. I was on my back, staring up at the sky. With blurred vision I rolled over, groaning as I tried to gather my wits. My hands dug into something . . . moist. Soil? Why was I on the ground?
A crushing pain stabbed me in the chest like the air had been ripped from lungs, leaving me hollow. I tried to breathe but it just resulted in coughing up whatever the last thing I ate was.
The air smelt like sulphur and death mixed with the entrails of a dying creature.
I know the marketplace wasn’t always pleasant on the nose, and if I remembered correctly, it was snowing when I had closed my eyes.
Yet the temperature now was uncomfortably warm.
My skin felt clammy and cold all at once.
Perhaps Rhodes had dragged me near a fire when he was done with me.
I tried to stand, dragging my stiff legs under me, but something heavy on my back toppled me sideways and I collapsed onto the musty ground, dry heaving once again. How was it possible to feel like I was in my body, but like I wasn’t at the same time?
“Fucking fresh meat, look at them all sprawled on the ground like scraps from the dinner plate of a wealthy man,” a voice hissed.
It grated against my ears, knocking about in my skull until a wave of nausea passed over me once again.
I hurriedly rolled to the side, coughing up bile.
I’d just wiped the back of my hand across my mouth when cold, spindly fingers wrapped around my upper arm, heaving me up from the ground.
Empty, grey eyes and yellow teeth sneered down at me. “Get a move on.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but no words would form. The woman let go of my arm, her long white hair bordered on yellow—same as her lopsided grin. It was dull—lifeless—void of shine and lustre. Her outfit choice was questionable too.
Never had I seen a woman wear black leather pants and a blouse of the same shade with skintight boots up to her knees. This wasn’t how the women of District Five dressed. Was I dreaming?
“Are you deaf?” she hissed at me again.
I shook my head as I dragged my gaze over her face right to the top of her head. My eyes grew wide when I noticed the black feathered wings towering over her. This was a dream. It had to be.
“Wh—where am I?” I forced the words out.
The woman huffed, folding her boney arms across her skeletal-looking chest. “You fool, where do you think you are? The fucking Light Kingdom? Turn around.”
I didn’t want to. Fear had me frozen to the spot as the fog in my mind began to clear, and I realised all too suddenly what was happening.
Light Kingdom?
The weight on my back—it wasn’t going away. At first I’d thought maybe I was just sore from fighting Rhodes off, but the longer I stood on my legs, the more I realised that I, too, mimicked the woman in front of me.
Hesitation gripped me, but I forced my head to turn. A shudder rattled my aching bones. Inky black feathers jutted past my shoulder, fluttering in the hot breeze. My breath caught. I clutched my mouth as my stomach churned, the sight clawing at the edges of my sanity.
Panic bloomed in my chest like a rotten flower. I spun in a circle trying to free myself from the weight, but it was no use. The wings were too heavy—too stuck. The tips of them dragged along the dusty ground, catching on rough stones.
My breath came in sharp ragged bursts, and no matter how many times I blinked, the world around me didn't change. Withered looking trees and grass that was the wrong shade of green. And no sign of the marketplace in sight.
I was dead.
All those whispered stories about the kingdoms, the choosing, the afterlife—they hadn’t been rumours. They’d been truth.
The desire to stand upright left my body, and I dropped to my knees. Pain splintered through my skin as rough gravel bit into my skin. The realisation slammed into me harder this time and before I could stop myself, I wailed into my hands.
Rhodes had killed me . . . just like Lily.
My hands slammed against the ground as my stomach threatened to empty itself again. I clawed at the dirt beneath me, fingers splitting on the rough surface.
Bodies swayed around me. I wasn’t alone. We were being ushered into a line, but I couldn't do it. I couldn’t stay here.
Through tears streaming down my face I glanced around, and noticed a shimmering curtain to my left. It was otherworldly, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. At the base of it was a round wooden structure that stood at least two men tall. I could see guards of some kind stationed on either side.
The gates. Surely they led back there . . . to The Grey. I had to try. I had to find Meeka. If I was dead . . . where was she? Why wasn’t she here with me?
Hot tears streaked my face, and my throat swelled with emotion that threatened to choke me.
I had to get up. Meeka needed me . . . I needed her.
So I forced myself to my feet. Each step towards the gate was torture.
My knees ached from torn skin. My back ached from carrying the weight of blackened wings.
My lungs ached from the absence of fresh air, but most importantly my chest ached from the absence of my beating heart.
It was there, fluttering like a bird with broken wings.
Yet I knew it would soon stop beating forever if I didn’t get back to Meeka.
So I would drag myself towards those gates, because this couldn’t be the end.
I’d only made it a few paces when a larger hand gripped my upper arm, swivelling me around and shoving me back in the direction I’d come from.
Cold, emotionless eyes bore down on me. “Where are you off too? The city is that way.”
I snatched my arm out of his grip. “I don’t want to go that way. I want to go home.”
He looked at me blankly. Then his chest rose and fell with a laughter that sent a chill to my core. “This is your home.”
I shook my head, fighting the fresh wave of tears threatening to spill.
“Best get used to it,” he continued before shoving me forwards.
My feet stumbled into submission, following behind what I could only presume were other Shadowkin who were clearly in the same state of mind as I was.
The world tilted. The air felt too thick. I clawed at my chest, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, because there was none. Nothing real. Nothing grounding. Only the crushing weight of feathers on my back and the deafening truth that I was alone.
“Please,” I whispered, voice trembling into the void. “Please, someone tell me this isn’t the end. . .”
Sounds blurred around me. Some faces looked happy, others horrified. A mix of men and women in all different shapes and sizes, but the one thing we all had in common were the large black wings protruding from our backs. Were we meant to fly with these things?
I wouldn’t even bother trying. Surely I’d wake up soon and find this was all a horrid dream. Just wait.
“We’re going to have the best time—”
“How did you die then, eh?”
“I don’t think I belong here . . .”
Too many voices. I couldn’t handle it, so I clasped my hands over my ears, trying to block them all out. The closer we came to the looming city gates, the more I realized that the only things growing here were murky green trees with ash-dark trunks and the occasional bush studded with black roses.
How was it possible to grow flowers in a place the reeked of death?
I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the ground, but it was impossible when I didn’t know where I was going and the crowd around me kept jostling, our newly grown wings knocking into one another.
Up ahead, a large, black castle grew from the ground like shards of broken glass. I shuddered at the thought of who ruled from a place that looked as if it had been dipped in the blood of the dead.
There’d been murmurs of the afterlife as I grew up, and in the few years I’d spent in school, those tales had been nothing more than that—stories. Yet as I dragged my boots towards the dark walls of the city, the truth lay bare before me.
I was indeed in the dark kingdom of the after life. Deemed unworthy to enter what I can only presume was the Light Kingdom. No doubt where Lily, Meeka and possibly my mother would be.
Typical. And why I thought anything less shocked even myself. A fresh wave of silent, hot tears spilled down my cheeks. I wiped them with the back of my hand, just as someone bumped into me.
A man to my left kept swatting at his wings like he could rip them off. Another kept muttering under his breath, arms tucked tight around his ribs as if trying to hold himself together.
Then someone shoved someone else.
Hard.
I froze. The tension snapped like fraying rope. One man, face smeared with blood, lunged at another. A woman screamed. Wings flailed. Fists flew.
Instincts had me moving out of the way just in time before the two men fighting barrelled by. They missed me by inches. Panic twisted in my chest as the oddly dressed male and females dove into the crowd to break them up.
It was chaotic and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I just wanted to be back at the Silver Finch, even if that was still my own personal hell.
“All of you Thorns better fucking move it!”
Thorns? That’s what they were calling us? Fitting, I supposed—nothing more than the ugliness beneath the bloom. The part no one wanted to touch. Just the worst of humanity, dragging itself towards a city of shadows, where the dead turned on each other before they even made it to the gates.