Page 34 of Wings of Destruction

He’s dead because of me, because he tried to help me.

“You can’t save them,” Kieran grunts. He absorbs every punch. “This is what happens when you fight without knowing what you’re doing. When you don’t have a clear path forward.”

“You heard my cousin!” Tristan laughs. “Round them up. We’re off to market, boys.”

Market. They won’t survive.

My words devolve into a seamless tirade of sound. Kieran sets me on my feet hard enough to send my teeth clacking together. At the mouth of the cave, with the ground shaky beneath us and pebbles trailing down the hillside, he slaps me.

Once. Twice.

The reverberation of flesh hitting flesh does nothing to stop my screaming until he goes for a third slap. With each connection, my teeth rattle. My cheeks sting and finally the sound cuts off.

“He’s gone. It was an accident.”

Young. Handsome. Even as my enemy, those things are fact. I hate him.

That’s what matters.

“People die. People you care about. But if you let me help you, then I’ll make sure you don’t,” he insists.

His movements are sure as he meets my blows with his own. He matches me, hit for hit, my fists bouncing off his armor until I send my elbow into his side. He flinches, but it’s for show. He doesn’t feel anything.

He’s dead inside and still walking around like his body hasn’t caught up to the truth.

Then Kieran sweeps me off my feet with a curse.

“It won’t do any good for me to apologize.” Behind him, the sounds of a scuffle grow dim and distant. “Tristan would have killed the boy eventually. He does the same to anyone who fights back against him. It’s lucky you’re still breathing.”

My screams die away into a low moan. Golden rays of sunlight scald my retinas as he hauls me out of the cave.

The decline makes it difficult to traverse the mountains with any sort of grace but Kieran manages. He picks his way along the path like a goat or an elk, sure of his steps, sure of the path.

He makes good time and disappears into a thickened grove of trees. There, he drops me on my feet, facing him, stealing the opportunity to latch a length of rope around my wrist.

Where had he gotten it?

Why hadn’t I noticed?

Reality fades until it’s only the two of us standing in the middle of the blur. The scratchy material slices fissures in my overly sensitive skin as he wraps it around my wrists, binding me with a complicated knot.

“It’s for your own good,” he reminds me conversationally. “You have no reason to trust me but I’m telling you now, you’re here for a reason. You’re alive for a reason. Focus on that and it won’t hurt as much.”

The screams from the cave flay me, alive in my memory. I hear nothing now. Kieran draws the rope around my ankles and pulls it tight, looping it up to connect it to my wrists. His deft fingers manage expert knots.

“You want to hurt me. Right?” His tone is tight. “I understand. Trust me, I understand.”

He’s got me separated from the others. Separated and tied and responsible. So blasted responsible, the gemstone on Illonia’s necklace sinks into my chest bones.

The sapphire gives a throb of awareness when I acknowledge it, or maybe it’s my own imagination playing games with me. My mother would be horrified. She’d have fought harder, smarter.

I shouldn’t be alive right now.

Harsh, guttural breaths shake my chest. I’ve lost it. I’ve lost it entirely.

“It’s off to DragonSpear,” Kieran continues. The sound of his voice is another tether to this hellscape existence. “I have to finish searching the area around your village and then we’ll be off by night. Sometimes it’s easier to travel at night.”

A storm thunders in my head. He throws me over his shoulder again and takes the slender path between aspen trees with precision.