by David Estes
He lies still.
Unrequested, a gurgle rises up from my throat, my body’s natural reaction to having witnessed what appears to be the death of my boyfriend and his brother. It can’t be, I deny, trying to will away the inevitable. Not another loss. Not like this.
Tristan moves, just a shudder, as his shoulders begin to quake: he’s crying. Sobbing into the neck of his dead brother. Now I know what happened. Tristan listened to the voices in my head, realized the same thing that I did. That he had no choice. Kill or be killed. Killen wasn’t going to stop, so he had to plunge his hovering sword into his brother’s breast. And yet, upon doing it he’s wracked with a profound sadness and sense of loss, perhaps not for the person his brother has become, but the boy his brother used to be. And now he’s crying, expressing that sadness in tears that drip onto Killen’s skin, mingle with the blood that’s surely flowing from the hidden wound in his chest. My eyes well up with tears, but mine are for Tristan, not for his brother.
“Tristan!” the President roars, and I flinch; having been so focused on Tristan and his pain, it was as if everything else fell away.
Tristan stops shaking, his body tense as he slowly turns to face us. Even from a distance, his face glistens with a mixture of sweat and tears. Killen’s blood stains his front. I’m glad he’s looking at his father and not me, because on his face is only anger, a building rage I’ve never seen in him before. His dark blue eyes are as black as his father’s. “How dare you do this?” he spits out. “He was your son!”
“He was weak,” the President says, not a shred of remorse or sadness in his voice. “This was always the way it was supposed to be. You were the strong one, the son to succeed me, to follow in my footsteps. You’ve just proven your strength. Now I give you one last chance: come back to me, be my son again, take up your role as the future president of the Tri-Realms.”
“Or what?” Tristan scoffs.
His father’s words are a snarl. “Face the consequences.”
“I’ll never join you,” Tristan says without hesitation.
“Then you and your friends die.”
“Then we’ll die with honor.”
“So be it.”
Tristan
The gate opens and Roc is led back into the pit by three guards, who mostly ignore me. One of them unshackles Roc and gives him a sword. The other two carry Killen’s body and sword out through a door, closing it behind them, leaving only the blood on the ground and on my shirt as a reminder of what transpired here—of what I did.
I’m numb as I stare at my best friend through blurred vision. When I glance at my father, who stares down with such hatred at me, his last remaining son, the hot rage flares up again, but as soon as my gaze drifts to Adele, it dissipates. I take in her lovely pale skin, her moist, emerald eyes, her forlorn but strong expression. I let the vision linger in my mind long after my eyes move on, back to Roc.
“I won’t fight him,” I say to my father, still looking at my best friend.
“You don’t have to,” he says, surprising my eyes back to him. He wears a cat-and-mouse expression that screams I’m better than you! “But if you don’t fight, the moon dweller dies.” Once more, a guard pulls Adele’s head back by grabbing her hair and slides a knife to her throat. My breath catches in my throat. An impossible choice. Fight Roc, potentially killing him, or refuse to fight and watch the girl I—I—I now know that I love, without a doubt in my mind, die in the most horrific manner. Perhaps there are some that have the moral compass to make such a decision, but alas, I am not such a person. I flounder, breathing raggedly, my mind spinning.
Even to the end, Roc is there for me. He says, “Fight me, Tristan. You have no choice.” In his eyes is a plan, perhaps to buy time with a little “safe” swordplay, until an opportunity presents itself. Perhaps something else, I’m not entirely sure.
But it’s a sliver of a chance at saving them both, so I grab it. “We’ll fight,” I say.
“Delicious,” my father says. Although I don’t look at him, he’s licking his lips in my peripheral vision. “But remember, if I so much as get a whiff that you’re not really going at each other, that you’re holding anything back, she dies anyway.”
My heart sinks at his words. Whatever Roc is planning, such a decree surely destroys any chance we have at buying some time. Roc’s face, however, doesn’t show any concern. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: almost shining with peace, his lips closed but slightly curled up in an unexpected smile. What’s he so happy about? I wonder silently.
“Now fight!” my father commands.
Roc comes at me immediately, not holding back, attacking with a vehemence I rarely even saw in some of our more heated training matches. With precise movements I block his blows easily, noticing his improvement in the few short weeks since we left the Sun Realm. However, even improved, his skills fall well short of my years of training and experience. With each successful defense I spot several holes in his approach, each of which I could use to disarm him. Of course, I ignore such opportunities, because to disarm him would mean the release of the final grains of sand in our already diminishing hourglass. To cover up the fact that I’m holding back, I pretend to stumble, to trip over my own feet, allowing Roc to continue his barrage of fierce and somewhat awkward attacks. What is he doing? I still can’t get a bead on why Roc seemed so happy before we started fighting and what he could possibly have up his sleeve that will help us in our current situation.
I leap back again, block another powerfully clumsy sword strike, ignore a chance to slip under his arm and kick him, punch him, head butt him, and altogether end the fight. Breathing heavily, we back away for a few seconds, staring at each other. There’s a fire in Roc’s eyes, but it’s not anger or violence toward me, although that’s what he’s expressing outwardly, it’s something else I’ve never seen in him before. A plan.
“Tristan!” my father yells. “You’re not trying hard enough. You could have killed your servant eight times already. Don’t be so arrogant to think I didn’t notice. If the next round is the same, I’ll order my guard to slit her throat.”
Before this started, I was beaten. My father holds all the stones, and all I have is an ignorant child’s hope that perhaps we can get out of this alive. If I don’t fight, she dies. If I do fight, Roc dies. Either way, he’ll probably kill us all eventually anyway. So why am I fighting my best friend? The answer finally comes to me and I almost bang my head with my fist for being so stupid. I shouldn’t be fighting Roc. My father is going to win no matter what, but I can at least deny him the pleasure of pulling his puppet strings and making us all dance for him. I have two choices: kill myself or let one of Roc’s blows sneak through my defenses to kill me. Maybe it won’t save them, but it will at least give them a chance. And I can’t let Roc kill me—he’ll never forgive himself. So that means falling on my own sword.
A sense of peace washes over me as I know I’ve made my decision. My lips curl into a slight smile. That’s when I realize: Roc felt the same peace, had the same content expression just before we started to fight. He came to the same conclusion, except for himself. To kill himself.
I look at him. He’s watching me curiously, but then something changes in his expression. I could never hide anything from him, and I can’t now. He knows what I’m thinking.
A flash of concern narrows his eyebrows, and before I know what’s happening, he raises his sword—there’s a sharp shout from the seats—turns it back on himself—another meaningless shout—and plunges it into his gut.
Adele
Tristan and Roc are just watching each other, perhaps waiting for the other to make a move, when Tawni’s voice enters my ears. It sounds different than usual, all sweetness and caring sucked out of it, leaving only a black grit that is still somehow recognizable as her voice. “Stop this or you die,” she says.
I turn sharply, hearing one of the guards shout an alarm, but it’s too late for anyone to do anything. Tawni’s on her fee
t, which are still shackled together, her arms outstretched, holding a gun. No, not a gun. My gun. The one my mother gave me, shiny and new and deadly. The one I used to kill my father’s murderer, the gun that should be used to kill my father’s real murderer: President Nailin. The gun I gave her because I couldn’t bear to have it near me. From her wrists dangle the ropes, now unknotted, that once bound her hands together. She’s managed to get them undone. But how’d she get the gun off the guard?
I remember: the guard getting frisky with her, groping her instead of properly searching her, not worried about her because she was throwing metal balls—clearly weaponless. Wrong. She bore his roving hands, not fighting back, not crying out, hoping he wouldn’t find it. The gun. Tucked safely under her dress in the small of her back, held hidden in the holster I gave her. She could have used it when we were fighting before but didn’t, either because she’s not used to having a gun at all, or because she was scared of the killing. Either way, I don’t blame her. She has it out now and looks ready to use it.
The gun, now aimed at the head of President Nailin, just a few feet away. Too close to miss.
“Stop this or you die,” she repeats.
“No, Roc, no!” Tristan yells from below.
I want to turn to see what’s happening, but my eyes are transfixed on my nonviolent friend with the gun, a steely determination in her eyes that makes me think she might actually follow through with her death threat. A new Tawni.
“It’s already over,” the President says, smiling down the barrel of the gun.
Tristan’s cries rise up again. “Help me! Someone!” he screams.
I finally turn away from my friend, see the carnage in the arena. What the hell? Did Tristan stab Roc? Distracted by Tawni’s little surprise, I didn’t see what happened, but now Roc has a sword in his stomach, and Tristan’s kneeling over him, looking up at us, pleading with his torn expression and words. “Please! Someone help me! He’s dying!”
My heart beating wildly, I swing back to Tawni. Do it! I say with my eyes, not wanting to give her a verbal command for fear that the advance warning will give the President and his guards a chance to make a move.
Tawni’s nod is almost imperceptible, more like a twitch; her finger tightens on the trigger; she closes her eyes.
Boom! The gun explodes through my ears and flashes across my vision, but the President was already moving, sensing the attack, diving for the floor. A cry of pain erupts from the seats behind him—one of the guards most likely.
President Nailin rises up, reaches for Tawni, whose eyes are wide, her mouth agape. She bobbles the gun, her fingers turning to jelly, and Nailin manages to swipe at the weapon, knocking it back and between his outstretched legs. It clatters past the guard sitting between us and settles at my feet.
The guard lunges and I know this is it. The moment. The reason my mother sent me on this mission. Because she thought I was the one who could do it.
I sweep my still tied together feet upward, kicking the diving guard in the head. The guy to my right tries to grab me, but I thrust my knees as high up as they’ll go, catching him hard under the chin, hearing an awful cracking sound and a roar of anguish. There are yells and screams and voices shouting indecipherable things from behind me and in the pit—Tristan’s voice is louder than them all—and from the President, but I block them out, concentrate on one thing: getting my hands free.
As I pull with all my strength, the ropes rip my skin to ribbons, bite my wrists, send searing pain and shock through my whole body in a series of tremors. “Arrrr!” I yell, trying to relieve the agony through my vocal chords. Whoever tied my ropes did a better job than Tawni’s because they won’t give, won’t break, won’t untie.
The presence of those who are seeking to stop me is all around, pressing and scrabbling and distorting the air—I have no time to fight at my bonds any longer. Raising my tethered hands high over my back, I strain to get them over my head. I scream again, feeling my joints and muscles and tendons and whatever else is hidden beneath my skin, stretching and contorting and trying to move in such a way that should not be possible. Then I feel it: a massive pop in my left shoulder; splinters of pressure, sharp and brutal, running down my arm; my hands in front of me, still together, but in front of me! My left arm dangles unnaturally, but my right is still strong, still ready.
The pain is nothing. My friends are dying, so the pain is nothing.
I grab the gun off the floor, feeling clawed fingers scratching at me from behind, lift it up, whirl to face the man who—by his orders—killed Cole, killed my father, killed Trevor, maimed my sister, who is the object of my mission, of my revenge. Perhaps the fulfillment of my entire purpose for being born into the hell that is the Tri-Realms.
Even now, his face is unrepentant, a grizzled collection of black eyes, stretched and wrinkled skin, and bared teeth. Death and the Devil combined in human form.
“You don’t have the guts!” he spits out, his lips gnarled and red.
I don’t respond. Words are meaningless now; action is everything.
Death—meet death. I fire, seeing a coin of red appear on his forehead instantaneously, drizzling down his gnarled face in an understated trickle of blood.
He falls back.
Tristan
Roc’s dying and I’m pleading to those who will never listen. Something’s happening in the stands but I can’t understand it through my clouded vision and blubbering lips. A commotion of some sort. Tawni standing up, pointing at my father. A noise, loud, but not as loud as the beat of my heart. My father striking Tawni. A scuffle of some sort. Adele screaming, an awful keening that seems to shatter my heart into a thousand fragments, which roll around in my chest, scratching and tearing me apart from the inside.
Her screaming stops and now she’s standing, pointing at my father. Another loud noise and my father falls back, narrowly missing Tawni. Can someone tell me what’s going on? Can someone help me? I try to yell, but nothing comes out, my voice box rendered useless by some unseen force.
There are more loud bangs from Adele’s fingers, which are almost shimmering in the light. A few guards drop to the ground. A gun; she’s got a gun. She shot my father. She’s shooting his guards. Bending down, she picks up something else: another gun, dropped by one of the dead guards. She shoots again and again until everyone in red has fallen. All dead.
I manage another yell, nothing more than a cry of the pain in my chest.
Roc speaks, his voice weak, just a low rasp. “You’ll always be my brother,” he says.
His eyes close.
Chapter Twenty-FourAdele
After they all die I finally feel the throb of pain in my shoulder, so strong I nearly pass out. But then I hear Tristan’s scream and I will my body to soldier on. I drop into my seat, my hand scrabbling at the nearest dead guard’s belt, finding a knife, and although it’s difficult with only one hand, cutting my bonds from my hands and feet. Down the aisle Tawni’s doing the same with the ropes around her ankles.
We should both be in shock, but perhaps everything we’ve seen has been so shocking that our bodies don’t even know enough to start shutting down. For whatever reason, I’m able to tuck my injured arm across my belly, pick up a gun with my right arm, and move down the aisle, stepping over bodies—over the President’s body—and usher Tawni to the steps.
We take them two at a time to the bottom and Tawni pushes through the gate, immediately sprinting across the floor. I try to run, but the pain is too much and I start seeing stars, so I drop back into a more reasonable stride.
When I reach Tristan and Tawni and Roc—poor, poor broken Roc—Tawni’s taking charge. Tristan’s hysterical. “He’s dead. He’s dead. My fault. All my fault,” he wails, sobbing and choking and gasping.
“Take him,” Tawni says to me gently.
I lay down the gun, kneel, put my good arm around Tristan’s shoulders, and pull his grief-wracked form into my chest. “Shhh. Let Tawni check him out. She knows what
she’s doing. Remember? Shhh.”
He continues sobbing as Tawni hovers over Roc. Half a sword blade and the hilt are still sticking from his stomach. There’s blood around the blade’s entrance, but not as much as I’d expect from such a horrific wound. Roc’s eyes are closed, like he’s only sleeping, his chest doesn’t appear to rise and fall, so I expect the worst when Tawni places two fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse.
I want to join Tristan, cry my eyes out, but I know he needs me to be strong now. Tawni is somehow holding it together, although it’s her boyfriend who’s lying there, possibly dead. If the roles were reversed and it was Tristan instead of Roc, I’d be a mess, inconsolable. But Tawni just goes about her business, professionally searching for a pulse, her ear near Roc’s closed lips, perhaps hoping to feel an exhalation from his nose on her skin.
“He has a pulse, but it’s weak,” she says. “And he’s breathing.” Her words should give me some comfort, but when she turns back to me, the look on her face paints a different story. “But he is dying. He needs medical help, right now.”
Tristan jerks, his head lifting from my chest, his sobbing ending abruptly. “He’s alive?” he says, the last of his tears dripping from his chin.
“Barely. Can you guys carry him?”
There’s a light in Tristan’s eyes that I thought had gone out for good. “Yes, yes, of course. But shouldn’t we remove the sword?”
“No!” Tawni cries. “That’s the only thing preventing a significant loss of blood. It might be the only thing keeping him alive.”
Strange how the instrument that caused his injuries might now be saving his life.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Tristan slides his hands under Roc’s armpits from behind, props him up.
“Gently. Gently,” Tawni says.
