by Quil Carter
“Elish?”
Silas put his hand on my arm and shook it. “Love…”
Then his tone dropped.
“Elish… do you know why those thiens are searching that building?”
Yeah, lure me towards your trap, little spider. Nudge me forward, make me admit it. You already played with your food, and now it’s time to feed, isn’t it?
You fucking monster.
“Do you?” I whispered, my eyes staring blankly at the back of the passenger side seat. Dread had fully saturated me now, sinking in past my skin, my flesh, all the way down to my bones. It was actively poisoning me when the car carried on down Sebastian Street, contaminating all of the good memories I’d just only received.
This entire evening had been a lie. Every heart-to-heart, every tear, plea. All of it. It had been carefully crafted by him to lead me exactly where he wanted me – right into his trap.
And here I was.
Here I was.
“Houston…” Silas said to the driver. “Take us back to where the thiens were… I think there’s something there I need to see.”
“No,” I said suddenly. I looked out the window and saw that the car was slowing down right in front of Alegria. I had to get rid of Silas; I had to make sure Julian was safe.
And hide him… hide him somewhere… far away from Silas.
Far away from everyone. He wasn’t safe here. He wasn’t safe anywhere.
Silas already has him. Does Silas already have him?
“I don’t want to go back.” I opened up the door, the vehicle still moving. And as Silas told the driver to stop, I left the car and looked around the dark summer night.
“Elish… tell me what’s going on,” Silas said behind me. “You have some explaining to do, and you best start–”
“Do you have him?” I turned around and asked, a desperate catch to my voice. “Tell me… tell me if you have him.”
I didn’t realize how close I was to losing it, until Silas only stared back at me, a narrowed, suspicious look on his face.
And it broke my calm. It broke my restraint.
I grabbed Silas by the collar and yanked his face to mine. “DO YOU HAVE HIM?” I screamed.
The king only stared at me, his eyes shifting from suspicious and confused, to cold and full of contempt.
Then he pushed me away roughly, turned around, and began walking up the stairs towards the entrance to Alegria.
I turned from him and began running towards the road, my thoughts were shooting around my head like I was firing a machine gun in an indestructible room. Everything was just pure undiluted chaos and I couldn’t think straight.
What did Silas do? It was him; I fucking know it was him. This had been his plan this entire time.
You fool. You fool for believing he wanted to make up with you. Now he has Julian. He’s going to kill him just like he killed Cristo and Ryan.
What creative ways will he think of this time? I wonder how long he’d been planning this.
My shoes smacked against the sidewalk as I ran down the now very familiar path to Julian’s skyscraper. It was late, but not late enough for the street to be empty. I passed several people who gave me bewildered looks, two of them jumping out of the way once they recognized the prince running as quickly as he could towards the skyscraper.
I saw the flashing lights, the blues and reds reflecting off of the exteriors of the buildings. My chest clenched at the scene I was running towards, nothing good ever came from those flashing lights and this night was no exception.
I’ll run away. I’ll find him and we’ll run away to the greywastes. I’ll use that seventy thousand dollars to buy us a mansion in some far off town. We’ll live like kings, change our names, our identities.
Whatever I had to do, I’d do it… just don’t let Silas hurt him. I love him.
Three thiens standing by their cars looked in my direction as I ran towards them. One of them even reached for his gun, the sight of me speeding towards them spooking him, but a second put his hand out, and I saw him mouth my name.
“Why are you here?” I demanded. Would they talk to me? Had Silas told them to be quiet? I didn’t know but I had to try.
The man who’d halted the other from drawing his gun, glanced up at the tall skyscraper and squinted his eyes. “We got a tip that there was a man living here illegally,” he said, and my heart became lead, dropping to my feet and staying there. “The tip was bang on… we–”
“Where is he?” I demanded. “I want to know where you have him.”
“He wasn’t home when we raided. Or he saw us coming and escaped,” the thien said. “We don’t have him.”
Is he lying? If this was Silas. No, this was Silas. And Silas would’ve given them a list of lies to tell me. Why was I even asking these damn questions? What was the point? Silas had him. He fucking had him and now I was going to see him die.
“Prince Elish…” the thien said. “Is he a friend of yours?”
No. He’s my boyfriend… and I love him.
“Yes,” I said, my voice catching. I didn’t want to give him the proof he was looking for. The proof that I did indeed know the man living in that skyscraper. But if my assumptions were correct… Silas already knew anyway. “If you find him… tell me immediately. Talbot has my phone number.” I stared up at the skyscraper, the twenty-two storey building reaching high up to the heavens, so high up I couldn’t see the top where I was standing. Oh, how empty it looked now… a dead relic standing amongst the living, dark and abandoned, a shell of its former glory.
Like me.
“We will, Prince Elish,” the thien said. The third one who’d yet to speak, got onto his radio and I heard him call the thiens out of the skyscraper. “If you don’t find your friend, come down to the office and file a missing persons report. If he’s a friend of the royal family, he’ll be found.”
“Okay,” I said back. I could physically feel the life draining out of me, the joy that had been filling my heart for the last several days leaking through these cracks now growing larger with each passing moment. Silas was such a pro at breaking my heart, I now couldn’t even tell he was doing it until it was already too late. “Thank you.”
I turned from the thiens, a small crowd of people murmuring amongst each other now standing under the street lights like clustered moths. I walked past them, none daring to speak to me, and began walking back to Alegria. The only thing left to do now, was go back to my prison in the sky to see what creative fate Silas had for me and my boyfriend.
That king, so dead inside, had built me up, had given me hope for a life worth living… only to break me down with one fell swoop. This Mad King had seen me writhing in the pits of my despair, and because he knew I was miserable, depressed, lonely, and sad… he wouldn’t get the same reactions out of me than he would if he gave me wings, then savagely cut them from my body.
How stupid was I to think he would do something different?
Slowly I walked back home, my body being dragged by an invisible leash. I had no will to walk, no strength left in me. I just wanted it to be over… I didn’t have the energy, or the want, to face another of Silas’s punishments.
I wouldn’t… I’ll kill myself first.
And I meant that with every ounce left in me.
I closed my eyes tightly, and I tried to force myself into a different world, a different life. Anywhere but here… fucking anywhere…
“Elish?”
… but here.
My closed eyelids flew open, and my head shot to the alleyway that I’d been walking past. I thought I was going to have a heart attack the moment I recognized that voice. And when I saw Julian crouched beside a pair of metal trash cans, I was sure that I had, and was now dead.
“Julian!” I cried. I ran to him, my eyes becoming submerged in tears. I saw nothing but his blurry silhouette as I kneeled down in front of him. And as he began to cry as well, I took him into my arms and held him to me.
Juli
an was crying, and it was seeing him in that state that made my own tears dry up. I had to be the strong one for him; I didn’t want him to see just how much this had scared me.
I shushed him and stroked his hair back as he cried. I looked down the deserted alleyway, shadows of people on the other street passing by, several of them glancing in but none stopping.
But as I comforted my boyfriend, a familiar aroma hit by nose.
Blood. I could smell blood… he was hurt.
I pulled away from Julian, and swore when I got a better look at him.
The thiens… those fucking lying bastards. I’d have every single one of them sent to Stadium.
They’d beaten Julian… his nose was crusted with red, his lip split and the blood from it hardening into his facial hair, and there were bruises all over him.
I stared in shock as I looked him over. “I’ll kill them…” I whispered. “I’ll kill them all.”
Julian deflected his gaze, his blackened face tightening and his eyes closing. “It wasn’t the thiens…” he croaked. Then he put a hand to his mouth and his shoulders began to shake as he cried.
As Julian attempted to rise, I rested a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t move too quickly. You–”
My words faded when I glanced down.
And I realized, with a gut-wrenching horror that I’d never experienced before, that he wasn’t wearing any pants.
Only bloodstained underwear.
Heavily bloodstained underwear.
CHAPTER 43
Every heavy emotion inside of me died the moment I realized what had happened to Julian, and all that remained was a feeling of literally being gutted. Like someone had reached inside of my body, my mind, and my spirit, and had disembowelled me, had taken everything that made me into me, and leaving nothing behind but an empty cavity.
Only when he burst into hysterical sobs did I put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, and only when he dove into my arms did I hold him and rub his back.
But those were all forced movements, being commanded by a brain that was already running to Alegria with a gun in one hand, and a knife in the other.
Silas.
Silas did this.
“What happened?” I rasped, my voice a ghost. I stared down that dark alley unblinking, waiting for the moment my brain snapped out of this catatonia. A snap that I knew would spell the deaths of many people. “Julian… what happened?”
The answer was one that I’d never expected.
“Finn… it was Finn.”
What? I pulled away from Julian, tears streaming down his face, wetting the blood that had dried to his face to make the tears a rosy pink. Finn? How the fuck could it be Finn?
Julian refused to look at me, he seemed to be on the verge of an anxiety attack with how ragged and desperate his breaths were. “Finn hired those fucking greywasters…” He let out a sob and covered his mouth. “And he called the thiens… he’s been following me for… for I don’t know how long.”
“What?” I whispered, stunned and confused by his admission. It couldn’t have been Finn… there was just no way my sengil… just… no. “That… doesn’t…”
But as I spoke, I remembered something. Finn missing that day I came home early from work. He’d come back with that bag of Xanax… saying he’d needed to buy more.
How many other days had he come home before me, and had never told me he’d even been gone?
No… there was just no way Finn would do this. He knew all about Julian… he didn’t mind him at all. Julian was no threat to me and Finn’s relationship, a relationship that was typical to any Master and Sengil arrangement. Julian had been the one upset by it…
And several times… Finn…
‘Do you… love him, Master Elish?’
‘Does he make you happy, Master?’
So the sengil had been hiding his own nature under a mask. It wasn’t just Silas who held cards underneath his sleeve. Finn… Finn had been jealous of Julian the entire time. And it had been him who waited for me to be out of Skyfall to plan his attack on the man I loved.
This was all my fault. Finn belonged to me, and his actions were my actions.
“I’ll kill him,” I whispered. I took Julian into my arms and squeezed him tightly to me as tears stung my eyes. “I swear… I’ll kill him.” My eyes closed and I stifled a sob. “Baby, I’m sorry.”
Julian clung to me, and cried softly into my shoulder. “He was… he was acting like fucking King Silas when those greywasters finally caught me. Lording it over me that you belonged to him. He…” Julian sniffed. “He wanted those greywasters to kill me but I managed to escape. I collapsed here and hid… I think the thiens scared them away.”
I’ll kill him.
I swear I will fucking kill him. That little sneak, that shifty fucking bastard. He really had me fooled, didn’t he? And he thought I wouldn’t believe Julian?
Of course this is Finn’s nature. Silas handpicked him, did he not? This is exactly something that Silas would do. If there was one thing I was learning about Silas, it was that his plans were never a straightforward, boring design. They were elaborate patterns weaved together with many different-coloured threads, and many different types. Silas made these tapestries with time and patience, then sat back and admired his intricate work.
So even if this king, this dead inside king, hadn’t been the one to send the thiens out to Julian’s home… he still inadvertently caused this. He’d given me a little version of himself to have by my side constantly, and now he got to watch me unravel in front of him.
Just like he wanted, I bet.
I broke my hold on Julian, then rose to standing. I picked him up, broken glass and ice now stuffed into my bleeding heart, and began to walk him towards Alegria. My movements were stiff, my eyes locked forward like a laser beam, and not even Julian dared speak.
One foot in front of the other was all I could manage in that moment. I couldn’t talk to Julian, or console him when he began to cry again, nor could I think of what I was supposed to do once I got there. Just one foot, then the other, walk forward into a straight line, then up the steps… to the lobby…
I carried him in my arms, feeling the wet blood on his underwear soak into my hand. One of the thiens guarding the entrance to Alegria asked me if I wanted him to call Liam, and I don’t remember what I told him.
I took the elevator to the second floor, my floor, and I remember asking Julian to turn the handle for me, since I couldn’t with him in my arms.
There was no one on the second floor, but I could hear a remote phone ringing upstairs. I walked to my room with Julian, and my breath shortened in anticipation for seeing Finn in my bedroom. Usually he was sitting on my bed with the cat if the household chores were done, or at my desk to continue his homeschooling.
And when I do see him… I will put my boyfriend down onto my bed… and I will close my hands around Finn’s throat, and strangle him right in front of Julian.
I will watch the life fade from his eyes, and that is how I will make it up to my boyfriend.
But when the door opened, my heart now thrashing madly inside of my chest, it opened to an empty room.
Finn was gone. Had he fled once those greywasters told him Julian had escaped? I wouldn’t put it past the slippery traitor. To leave Julian alive, would mean that Julian would tell me everything. A pretty big hitch in his plan, and it would be the last mistake he ever made.
I put Julian down on my bed, the boy still having trouble breathing through his soft sobs. I stroked his dark hair back and kissed his forehead. “You’ll be safe here,” I whispered to him. “The door locks, and Silas doesn’t know you’re down here.” He would eventually, but I was living minute to minute at that moment. “I’m going to…”
What was I going to do?
I needed to find Finn. That’s what I had to do. For all I knew he was upstairs, and this would end quickly.
And if he wasn’t upstairs…
I would find h
im.
I will do nothing else until I find him.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
I turned to leave, but Julian grabbed my sleeve. I looked back at him, and emotion tightened my throat when I saw the pain and fear in his eyes.
“I love you,” he whimpered.
I love you… more then you’ll ever know do I love you. I will be punishing myself until my dying day for allowing this to happen. All I can do now, is find the snake who did this, and end him.
“I love you,” I whispered back. I leaned down and gently kissed his lips, the taste of his blood awakening the chimera instincts that urged me to find the man who’d done this to my boyfriend. “I’ll be right back. I’ll make everything okay, love. I promise.”
Julian sniffed and nodded. “Okay,” he croaked.
I turned from him, the fact that my boyfriend was in my bedroom for the first time, in Alegria for the first time, wasted on me, and I walked out into the hall.
I made sure the door was locked, then with robotic movements, I walked up the stairs and onto the top floor.
My eyes shifted focus when I saw movement, and I turned to see Nero jumping to his feet. My brother was pale as a ghost, Keela beside him crying. My brother was holding a remote phone in his hand.
He was holding my phone. I’d left it behind during my outing with Silas.
“I… I thought they’d reached you another way…” Nero said, his words quick, almost stammered. It wasn’t often I heard that tone on my brother. “The hospital just called. They… they fucking have Finn, dude. They say he was… he was jumped.” Nero swore and put a hand on his forehead. Keela burst into fresh tears. “You – you gotta go to the hospital. He’s really hurt bad.”
I stared at Nero, the gears in my mind jamming in on itself like Nero’s words were rocks. “What?” I said.
Finn was in the hospital. How did he end up in the hospital? Was this… some sort of trick? What the fuck was going on?
