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Kaspias watches that large steel gate rise. “They know you won’t get far, and they like to give the swamp dawpers a challenge.”
Fuck!
It hastily dawns on me that Kaspias is now deemed a traitor. He’ll be tortured or killed for helping me make an attempted escape, won’t he? He’ll have to run with me. Find the army with me. And something about the notion gives me small comfort. At least I won’t be alone. At least I’ll have him to help me navigate the dangers of this strange country.
Kaspias grunts loudly as an arrow lodges into his hip. I hiss at the way he keeps sprinting, determined not to let it slow him down.
“Almost there!” I shout over the warring wind, the dreadful sound of swamp dawpers running with thudding feet behind us. Gaining as their speed exceeds our own. I can’t give up! I have to do this to get my family out of here! God, I wish DaiSzek was here more than anything.
Kaspias yelps, causing my entire body to pulse with even more adrenaline. A swamp dawper closes the distance on him, nipping at his ankle.
“No!” I scream.
One drop of their saliva will eat through his tender skin and muscles and tendons! What are we going to do? How will we get out of this one? There must be a way to heal him once we’ve escaped.
But something in Kaspias’s black-rimmed eyes flickers, shifts, alters the trajectory of his thoughts. He looks blankly at that gate now hanging wide open, then back at me.
“Kaspias…”
We make it to the exit with three more giant strides, and instead of crossing that glorious threshold with me, Kaspias shoves me from behind, sending my body hurtling, airborne and whirling, past the steel gate.
Spinning around on the gravel to look back at him with a gaping mouth and tears stinging my eyes, I am a cold, numb statue as he forms a wall in that gateway. Arms clasping the top of the gate overhead, legs spread wide, and he cries out like a small child. A little boy who never had his mother to comfort him in the dead of night.
“Kaspias, no! Come with me!”
Although the denial churns my insides with determination, the fate of all rests over that potent gaze flooding with tears. The swamp dawpers fight to feast on him, no longer caring about me on the other side of this wall. Their giant tusks puncture irreparable damage to his organs, shredding his tan skin right off his flexed muscles.
And I watch Kaspias Valdawell get eaten alive.
Saving my life.
“Tell my brother I love him!” he wails as he holds that stance strong and true. “Tell him I’m sorry, Skylenna!! Tell my brother I’m sorry!”
I break into a devastated cry, holding my hands over my mouth as the gore and horror fill my sight. As I witness Kane’s brother bear it all.
And that’s when I see it. When I see them…
“They’re with you now, Kaspias,” I choke out. “Sophia and Arthur have come to take you home!”
Right there, on his left and right sides, Arthur clings to Kaspias’s pant leg, and Sophia caresses her son’s cheek. She looks at me with sorrowful eyes, mouthing the words thank you.
And though it scorches my soul to run away from him now, I still hear his screams follow me into the depths of the Foul Falcon Forest.
“Tell my brother I love him! Tell my brother I’m sorry!”
58. Alone
Skylenna
The Foul Falcon Forest is grander in size than I anticipated.
As the silvery moonlight creates pinholes of stars and rays of glimmering light through the leaves overhead, a cold, humid wind sweeps through the uninviting forest. I’ve spent twenty minutes running through the muddy ground, sticky and littered with soggy plants, which tells me I’ve already made it a little over two miles with still more land to cover.
Tell my brother I love him! Tell my brother I’m sorry!
I rub my raw eyes and then cover my ears against the repeated echoes of Kaspias’s screams. The void lashes against my being as if in punishment. I changed a man’s mind with a flick of my wrist. I played God. And even after everything he’s done, that pit in my stomach only grows as I replay the way he died. The way Arthur clung to his pants. The way Sophia held him until he passed.
Thank you, Kaspias.
