The first Shadowfeeders take care of the guards, and the gate swings wide open for the horde to enter. I smile darkly. I’ve just made the demons do my work.
While Tainted are ripping the audience at my feet to ribbons, I help Talysse up.
Her Sunblade appears immediately, and she looks at me with those cornflower petals eyes, unsure what to do.
“Run, Talysse. Take the Guardsmen’s door.” I point my blade at the low, inconspicuous gate away from the turmoil. “And make sure we never cross paths again.” Dark threats drip from these words.
I must restrain myself, so overwhelming is the need to run after her. My body cannot bear being away from her. She runs, taking away with her the last remains of the man I was before, leaving a cold, callused shell behind.
I watch her hack her way to the Guardsmen’s tower with that beautiful and terrifying blade of hers.
Elders, she’s a sight to behold. Then, I turn on my heel and throw myself in the battle.
Talysse
Escape
Death is constantly on the back of my mind since the day my parents died.
On that day when everything was lost, I stood for hours at the gallows, long after everyone left. My eyes were fixed on my parents’ lifeless bodies, dangling in the wind like rag dolls. I have searched that magical pool inside me for any spells to bring them back to life; I prayed to all Elders, and I cried. Without any success, of course. I was a terrified child, not a necromancer. So, I just stood there and watched helplessly their faces change, turn dark, and the crows get cockier. One landed on my father’s shoulder, and I chased it with a rock, but it returned with friends.
The vision of my own death crept into my young mind back then. When Friar Ben came to take me to the orphanage later that night, my first question was: “What happens to people when they die?”
He gave me the standard tale of Atos’s Underworld that looks a lot like our world, but the good people are having good lives, and the bad ones are going to hell pits teeming with demons, but somehow, this story has never been satisfying for me.
Well, tonight, I am about to find out.
I step onto the scaffold, nearly slipping on the pools of blood of the Unseelie court mage. Her headless body, soaked in crimson and tossed aside like a broken toy, demonstrates what awaits me.
This is when the terror strikes, its sticky tentacles wrapping around my feet, nearly making me stumble. I have always had different scenarios about my own end, but I have never imagined that it would be by the hand of the man I feel so drawn to.
Yet the Elders, cruel as they are, seem to have other plans for me.
I struggle to realize what is happening when hordes of Tainted swarm the nobles around the scaffold.
“Talysse,” the prince calls me back to my senses, “run, Talysse. Take the Guardsmen’s door.” He points at it, and I nod, still processing that turn of events.
When life gives you sour apples—
You bet I’ll make some fine apple pie out of this second chance.
The mysterious blade that seems to appear when I need it slips into my hand, and I hop off the scaffold. The Tainted are busy pulling out the intestines of a courtier two feet away to notice me, and just like that, I make it to the small, inconspicuous door in one of the towers.
The Prince
The Prophecy
Between two sword strikes I realize I’d rather face all the torments of Atos’s hell pits and laugh at all the inventive torture methods of his demons than lose her again. Seelie or not.
Seelie or not, she’s the light of my darkness, the moon of my night, and the thought of seeing her body, headless and limp like Aernysse’s, is simply unbearable.
So, I gladly ripped my chest open, took my heart out, and placed it in her palms. Now, she’s free to take it wherever she wishes.
For me, there’s only one hope left, that we’d meet in another life, as Seuta promises to souls that are bound. Because after this bracelet cracked, so did the wall between us.
We’re connected. We’re mates, bound to search for each other and breathe for each other in all lifetimes. Too bad the cruel gods made us implacable enemies, and for that, I’ll curse them to the end of my days.
I look around as if awakening from a dream. Hordes are ravaging the streets, killing everything in their path. Shadowfeeders spawn in the dark alleys.
