As soon as I get outside, I hear a scream from the roof. “You bastard!” It’s Serica, but who’s she yelling at?
Elara is riding her pegasus and wielding a massive lance made of steel. She stabs it downward at the Chained, and it has to duck and bring its shield up to stop the stab. Even so, the lance knocks the Chained over. Elara’s holding her own, but Serica’s not yelling at her.
I run around to the other side where I see something I never imagined. Darian is completely naked with massive eagle wingsoutstretched at the edge of the tower. He’s also carrying the flagpole with the flag attached to it. That’s when I understand.
Darian had been going through all the strategies Serica could have used. If she’d taken the bait completely and fought us on the first or second floor of the tower, he’d have done just what we’d planned. He and Elara would have forced them to deal with an unexpected enemy attacking from their rear. It would have been the safest way to win that fight.
But he knew Serica was smarter than that, so he’d made other plans. He was the only one of us who recognized that all anyone needed to do was steal the flag. Why hadn’t we done that from the beginning? We could have hidden in that cave until midnight. We wouldn’t have even needed to worry about food or drink.
It would have been safe. I guess even Darian doesn’t realize everything immediately.
Darian, the one who always hid what was going on in his mind, knew he had to have alternate plans, and this was the one he followed through with. Steal the flag and hide until the end of the trial.
He wasn’t being a soldier. He was playing a game.
He dives, but I know he’s not coming to the ground. A dragon doesn’t fight battles on the ground that it doesn’t have to. Darian and Elara are the only ones capable of flight. They can stay aloft until the end of the competition if they get far enough away from Serica that they can’t reach them.
As I expect, his wings catch the wind and he suddenly turns upward. As he passes Serica, I see the magic shrouding her. Brownand green within an ever-dark night. They swirl so similarly to the electricity that had moved around Rurik or the red glow that moves around Isola.
Ravess’s power.
Serica isn’t making an Abomination. She’s doing something else. She’s using magic I don’t even understand as she stands at the battlements. I won’t let her kill Darian. Unlike the Chained, she’s not wearing armor. Unlike the Abomination, she doesn’t have a wall of weapons protecting her.
In the blink of an eye, I nock a steel arrow to my bow, pull it taut, and let the arrow fly. As it moves, I realize the disastrous mistake. I catch sight of the yellow fletchings. Somehow, I’d grabbed the wrong arrow.
It’s as though time stands still while the arrow becomes smaller and smaller until it strikes Serica squarely in the chest. I don’t even pay attention to her as a flash of electricity fills the sky.
Arcs of light flash all around her, hitting the tower in a hundred different places. And a single strand of blinding light streaks away from the tower and strikes Darian in the chest.
It doesn’t feel real. This can’t happen. I drew from the section of my quiver that had only steel arrows. Not lightning. Plus, he was too far away for the electricity to have reached him.
But his wings stop beating. They go slack against his body. Then he falls. And falls. And falls.
My heart sinks, and I collapse to my knees as he hits the ground. Isola and Jorren rush to him, but I can’t. I can’t move. Rurik had been my friend, but he’d have killed me in the next trial if he’dneeded to. He’d been a friend. Darian wouldn’t have. He wasfamily. All Darian ever wanted was for this damned war to be over. All he cared about was going back to the days when he didn’t hold the weight of the world on his shoulders. When the only strategy he needed was to win a game of Khorra. When the laughter was genuine. When there was no exhaustion hiding beneath the smile.
He’d been the one who welcomed me into this world and made it feel like home. Weeks together had been better because he was there. His jokes. His ridiculous flirting. Game after game of Khorra. We’ve spent nearly every day together for almost two months, and if he hadn’t been there, I’d not only be dead, but I’d have been miserable.
Everyone thought he was an idiot, a walking joke, and yet he’s probably the smartest person I’ve ever known. He maneuvered everyone with a smile and a laugh rather than orders. He was kind in a world where brutality reigns, and he showed me that even in the most difficult times, we could find laughter and happiness.
He was life when everyone else I’ve ever known has been death.
And now… Now he’s lying in a mangled heap. Because of me. That’s the part that brings tears to my eyes.
Because I killed him, he won’t Return. Darian is gone. Forever.
Chapter 44
The world is a cruel place, full of terrible moments. It always has been, and it always will be. All we can do is try to smile even when it’s hard. Even when no one else would. We cannot kill misery with a blade. We must kill it with a laugh. That is what I have learned in my long life, and when the day comes that Taldor kisses my forehead, I hope my laughter is what people remember most.
~Darian Emlyn, personal journals
Fiona
We won the trial. We survived. Isola, Jorren, Elara, and I are the last competitors vying for the position of Nyxthos’s champion. That’s what everyone is talking about, at least.
Me? I’m sitting at a table in the Great Hall. Rhion and Ainslee are across from me. “He’s really dead?” Ainslee asks in barely a whisper.
I nod to her. She’d watched it happen. Nyxthos had put everyone in the Great Hall into a dream state where they could follow any of the competitors as if they were in a mirror. She’d seen me fire the arrow. She’d seen the stray arc of lightning, and she’d seen the only true friend I’ve ever had fall to the ground. Her twin brother.
