by Elizabeth Lo
And now, Sucre knows that he’s talking to Glorieux. In the strange mixture of souls within her body, a tiny little white light now pokes out.
Sucre just needs to get Glorieux further away from the Palace. The further the better.
The fire in his chest sparks up again with determination.
He glances down to see that Midnight, Annabelle, and Falcon are already on their way to the palace. Maybe halfway there. Which means…
That boy. Artemis. Is he still there in the woods?
Perhaps he can do something, if pushed in the right direction.
Making sure Glorieux stays at the tip of his tail, he slowly starts descending, trying his best to sway from side to side to dodge the fire with nothing but pure luck.
Glorieux Frost. No. I don’t understand you, he says. But I don’t have to in order to know you suffered. Even so, you don’t have to do all this. If you had just communicated this sooner, you could have been helped. We could have prevented this whole situation.
“‘Helped.’ You mean fixed. I’m the same as a shovel to you—used to dig to your goal only to be thrown out when I break. Isn’t that right?”
No.
“Liar!” She screams. Even on this cold day, the fire coming from her body and her voice is enough to make his hide smolder like a giant pink marshmallow getting toasted at a campfire. “Liar, liar, liar! Nothing but a liar!”
What did you want to do, then? He asks. What would you have done if you were free?
“I would… I would…” She stumbles over her words, her eyes glazing over. “I would…I would have liked… I…wish… I can’t… I can’t…” But her eyes become irate and hurt all over again.
Is that why you’re doing all this? He continues. Is that why you’re continuing on your path of destruction? Just because you don’t know what else to do?
Her laugh is glacial.
“Why, yes! It’s so satisfying to break everyone! To crush their spirits as much as mine has been crushed.”
Sucre and Glorieux are both still moving through the air, but they now fight with murderous, despising glares.
He has no doubt there are patches of burnt fur missing, a few broken ribs underneath his pelt, and a good quarter of his tail is now gone. Blood sticks to his body, making his pink skin a darker red. Although he might have enough to Regenerate it, doing so would exhaust him too much. The smell of burnt flesh has filled his nostrils, and an entire leg stings with every little movement.
He has to hurry.
Artemis, Sucre says off to the side, channeling a bit of his telecommunication over to the reddish blob in the middle of the woods. I want you to help fight Glorieux when I get close. Be ready. We need to deplete her magic reserves. He doesn’t hear a response, so he goes back to Glorieux. Maybe it was those spirits who were influencing you. But in the end, it was you who decided to let them in and take control of you, right?
It’s no use. Everything he says only drives her further and further into madness.
“Oh, that’s right. There you go again,” she mutters in a low voice. “There you go again, telling me, again, that it’s my fault, my fault. I didn’t do something right. It was my fault for messing up. It was my fault for having feeling things I shouldn’t have had. It was my fault for succumbing to them!”
You’re a living being, for the sake of all things on this earth, woman! You’re not perfect. But it’s up to you to own up to your mistakes, or at least to admit to them, or ask for help instead of suffering through it silently!
“That’s right, that’s right,” she starts screaming, the small white light in her mishmash of souls disappearing into the thick of the mixture once more. Glorieux has gone back into hiding. Hiding away from the things she doesn’t want to hear. “It’s all my fault, isn’t it? I should repent, right?”
Well…
“Well, we won’t!” they scream at him.
An explosive ripple vibrates through the air, firing Glorieux straight into Sucre’s side. He jerks to the side, and as soon as she latches onto his fur, she starts burning away straight into his flesh. He yowls, but it isn’t quite as loud as her ferocious cries.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong,” she keeps yelling, over and over again.
Glorieux and Sucre then both plummet to the ground, crashing through the trees. Right in front of Artemis.
All right, all right, he thinks.
He shouldn’t have started the blame game. But even so… is it so bad to want to push blame all onto the person who deserves it the most? Fault is a tricky word. It’ll stick a person into the ground and keep them there, dwelling on it instead of moving them into the future.
This isn’t Glorieux’s fault. Or the spirits’ faults. Or his fault.
It’s everyone’s fault.
But someone needs to pay.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Artemis
Always, always, Artemis looked up to Mommy. Even in the moments of his insanity and rage, he still looked up to her. She was an unmovable force in his life—a firm, iron grip, perhaps all the more powerful since he can’t even remember her face.
And there she is, plummeting down towards him on the back of the burning nuagepanthère. Despite not remembering her, though, he knows it’s her. The blurry image he had clears the moment he sees her in the skies above him. The closer she gets, the more he remembers.
Her eyes are the same as his: cold, metal gray. And more importantly, he remembers her from his dreams.
From his dreams set in the days before he was just two years old, barely standing, as he gripped her finger tightly in his little hand, while waiting outside of two large double doors. A woman’s screams sounded from the other side of them and was soon joined by the shrieks of other men. They came bursting out of the room in strange clothes, fleeing, pushing an unconscious woman on a gurney. Mommy started running, too.
But he stupidly forgot his shoe behind him. And he let go her finger, turning back to retrieve nothing but his little shoe…
He will never forget her voice that haunts him. The voice that desperately tries to call him back to her side, but cannot move to save him because otherwise she, too, will have been hurt. She screamed call after call that beckoned him towards her, but he never listened. His attention was transfixed on that little shoe…
He will never forget the disappointment he became after that day. He was apparently bedridden and half-conscious for weeks and months. By the time he was able to move again, he’d already realized he’d been cursed by the monster that was born that day. And he never saw his mother again because of it.
Shunned from a world that already shunned his existence.
She will always hover in his life. Every action, every day, every little thing picking at him in his small, useless life is a reminder of what he is. The very fact that he is hiding in his own home country is proof that if only he had turned back and answered that pleading call, he would have been living in the lavish, bright Palace like the one up ahead.
There is a pistol in his hand. It’s heavy and unfamiliar. The monster cat is just ahead. But he knows the weakness of the cat. Behead the cat, and he’ll stay dead forever. That or drain all of his magic at once. Mr. Harvey had mentioned this once in a passing comment.
This is his chance. To get Mommy’s approval. To make her love him again.
Artemis, the monster cat says to him. Go. Shoot her. Restrain her somehow. If you can find a way to incapacitate her, together we can kill her.
Kill her?
Oh, it’s another dream. A nightmare trying to trick him into killing his Mommy. In all his six years of living, he’s learned how to defeat the nightmares. The way out is always to get to her.
A small prick into his mind makes him hesitate for a moment. Why is he hesitating? Shoot the cat. Don’t kill her.
Artemis, the cat says again. If she runs out of magic, she will be weakened. We only need to pin her down, and
then I can cast an enchantment on her.
Enchantment? What is that?
It swooshes past Artemis in a fierce breeze, breaking through the trees in a crash and snapping through branches like toothpicks. Its eyes swerve around to look at him as it runs past—even as it scrambles up onto its paws, trying to avoid Mommy. But now, in the dense forest, it’s their game now—Artemis and Mommy.
Boy, is all it says to him in his mind. It sounds more desperate now. Help me.
“Don’t touch her,” Artemis snarls back instead.
A bullet flies, hitting the cat square in the left side. A whimper comes from the cat, filling little Artemis with pleasure.
You don’t realize what you’re doing. You need to help me! Pin her down, so I can cast an enchantment!
But Artemis doesn’t listen. It’s only the nightmares coming back to haunt him. He will beat those nightmares. This isn’t real. The only escape is to beat the world.
The cat starts murmuring nonsensical syllables to himself, and Mommy, furious, slams a fist into the cat’s side, stopping the chants.
“YOU STOP THAT!” she yells.
“Yeah!” Artemis joins her.
But the monster and Mommy are already moving ahead.
Smoke hits Artemis’s nose as he runs through the brush to catch up with them. The cat is running as fast as he can through the trees, but they’re too green and much too strong to yield to his giant body. His mother slips through the branches easily, burning most of them when she fumes fire at the cat.
The smoke is starting to blur Artemis’s vision, but he charges through, ignoring the suffocating effect it has on his body. Excitement shoots through him like fireworks.
While slipping through the trees to get a better shot, his Mommy shoves a fist deep into Sucre’s gut, sending him flying and crashing through the trees. Blood drips from the cat—his fur can be as hard as armor, but once it’s gone his tender pink skin immediately turns bright red and burns.
Standing up and shaking himself out, Sucre’s eyes turn deadly as he looks at Artemis. Once again, those incantations come back, and the cat’s eyes turn only a faint glowing blue instead. It’s not a powerful spell, whatever he’s doing.
“No, you don’t” Glorieux socks him in the head, making his head snap to the side with a crack. “Oh, sorry. My fault you couldn’t cast that enchantment, right?” Her laugh is loud and blithe in Artemis’s ears, covering the crackling of the flames around them.
A tree falls down behind him. Every tree has been consumed in flames and smoke, but his breath keeps coming in and out, burning with the acrid air and his overflowing adrenaline.
“What?” his mother keeps taunting the cat. “It was such a small enchantment. Is that all you got? Oh, that’s right, you wasted three hundred years of magic accumulation to stop only half the curse… You would have to wait at least another decade before you can even dream of killing us!”
Artemis finally jumps up and over a fallen tree, coming out on the left of his mother with the crouched, wounded cat glaring daggers at his mother and ignoring Artemis’s existence.
That’s right. Ignore Artemis. Ignore him like the rest of the world.
BANG.
One eye out.
The screech in the air from the cat this time makes Artemis’s head shake and spin on itself.
YOU. Get a hold of yourself!
It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream.
Artemis, the cat starts. No. As Phelix calls you, Six, Please lower your arms.
What? He is Artemis. Everyone keeps calling Six like he’s just another number on a page.
You don’t belong here, the cat keeps saying.
Artemis’s head snaps towards the cat.
“I don’t belong here?!” he yells. “I do! I DO! You’re only just a monster trying to trick me!”
If this is a dream, the cat hisses. Then how are you able to imagine the Summer Palace if you’ve never even seen it before?
Artemis stops. His breath shudders through his body.
The urge to destroy is still pumping through his veins. That frustration is still there.
Kill. He must kill this dream.
Mommy is yelling and screaming too. The world has turned into the noise of screaming, crackling flames, and then—
BANG!
The gun goes off again.
Mommy prepares to strike the helpless creature once more.
The bullet misses the cat’s other eye, but it drills a hole in the rump of the defenseless creature.
“I will win!” Artemis screeches with burning ferocity.
His lungs are screaming now, but he doesn’t care. Nothing matters. Nothing matters. Just beat the dream. Kill the monster and make his mother look at him again. It was his fault. It was all his fault that he turned back for that stupid shoe. He needs to earn her love back.
Yes, yes. That’s the problem, right?
Mommy is already getting up again, jumping, her eyes fixated on the creature.
Why is she still ignoring him?
She swings; the cat swats. He dodges, and she only attacks more. The forest continues to blaze, setting the pale gray sky to dusty, gunpowder brown while the fiery light starts burning his face and making his eyes sting and water.
No. Look at me, Mommy. Look at me! Artemis thinks.
It’s not enough. That one shot was not enough. But he doesn’t know how to reload the gun. It only gives him an empty click…
There were only three shots in the pistol. Pistol… where did he get it in the first place?
No time to think. He races at the creature, a feral scream in his throat. Twigs snag and scratch at him, roots and rocks try to stop him. No matter what. He will beat this nightmare. He will wake up in the morning. And maybe then he can escape that Godforsaken laboratory they banished him to.
He will make Mommy look at him. That’s how he will win.
Black wisps dance around him and shadows crawl after him at his feet. His body gets lighter and lighter. The world starts blurring around him, turning into just a dark blur. He can just barely see the remaining eye of the cat. Like the light at the end of the tunnel.
Just get the last eye. Get the last eye.
But…
Why can he imagine the Summer Palace so perfectly?
Why is he so tall?
Where did he get that pistol again?
Pistol, pistol, pistol…
Arty. The entire world isn’t against you, you know. And even if it was, I would still stand by your side. Why? Because I love you, obviously.
Strawberry curls. Chocolate eyes.
The cat yowls as a burst of orange light sparks on his side.
The sound pierces Artemis’s mind, finally breaking that fog.
Clarity comes rushing back.
A scream rips through him, and every memory from the last year of his life come cascading back to him in knife-like sharpness… His forgotten sixth birthday… and then more. The angry glares the old man gives him behind his back, all the while smiling to his face. The condescending whispers of the unfamiliar faces around him.
And the daunting realization that he is no longer worth anything to his mother. He is nothing to her. She moved past him long ago.
Artemis! The cat yells desperately.
Time to… what is he doing?
It’s too late. His shadowy mist of a body careens into the yellow eye of the Royal Nuagepanthère of Galviton, going all the way through the cat’s head, coming out the back then rolling down the pink fur; a sinking feeling runs through his entire body. It was a spell he learned long ago from that shadow magic of his. One that could turn his body into a shadow and throw himself at anything fast enough to break it in less than a second.
He was already on the path to kill. He returned to consciousness too late.
The nuagepanthère doesn’t make a sound as its body tilts and flops to the ground. The thump of the large corpse shakes Artemis’s whole being.
Blood is sloshed onto the trees, slathered all over him. It glitters in the slowly setting sun and the orange flames, sickening him.
Six had taken over. Artemis wishes this moment now was a nightmare.
He looks to his left. Glorieux is standing over the now headless cadaver of the nuagepanthère.
He remembers now. Where he got his pistol from. Annabelle. Her bright warm smile he loved to see. The less entangled with his past he got, it seemed the more he saw her smile every day. Those bouncy red curls, that hand outstretched to him as he bounded behind her.
The extra pieces of chocolate Phelix would secretly give him. Phelix’s calm voice instructing him in the ways of the world and the use of the magic he thought was a curse.
Yes… It was Annabelle who gave him the pistol. She had entrusted it to him, and he should have used it the way she would have wanted.
He should’ve pointed the muzzle at his mother. Of all the times to let his curse get the best of him.
“Mother…” he breathes. Only now does he see her for the first time in nineteen years. “Do you remember me?”
Because he doesn’t. His loving image of a mother in Glorieux Frost was just a fantasy and a delusion.
She blinks at him in confusion too.
“No… She only has one child… Gracieux.”
He shakes his head.
“No. I’m your son, Artemis? Don’t you remember me?” he says, his voice turning into a plea.
“Ar…te…mis…” It looks like she’s pronouncing a foreign word. Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “Oh, it’s you? You’re that child? Oh, yes. I can see now. The silver hair. The hair I never gave you. No, you are not my son.”
“But…”
“But… do you love your mother anyway?” she says softly, but her eyes look like the red pelt of a fox, lit by the orange flame.
