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“Where is he?” My question was a growl.
Myrinn’s lips trembled, teeth dark with blood. The only sound she made in return was the whimpering of an injured animal.
I looked across the room, studying the knocked over chair. The emptiness of Arlo’s presence.
Gildir.
Myrinn was trying to say something. Each time she forced a noise, more blood spilled from the wound beneath her chin. It gushed across her body, spilling free, until her gown looked as though it was crafted from the richest of rubies.
I stood, leaving her reaching for my jacket. Never had one come so close to touch me willingly, other than those seeking death. The shock of it had my attention snapping back down to her.
Myrinn continued to splutter words that made little sense. I wished to clasp her shoulders and shake sense into her.
“You promised to protect him,” I shouted down at her, spittle flying. “You owe it to him to tell me what Gildir has done!”
Myrinn’s weak fingers dropped from my jacket, staining the hem red.She gagged on her own gore. It splattered across the floor, almost black in the ominously lit room, as though red wine had been spilled carelessly upon the floor.
A waste.
My world was in turmoil. Still, the fire grew in the servants’ dwelling, the bodies of children and their families stuck within. Ana had called after me as I left the bodies of Haldor and Frila discarded across the ground; I did not turn back to help her. All I could think of was Arlo. His name thrummed through my mind. I felt his lack of presence as physical agony. My bones ached as though they grew brittle in my arms and legs. Even the blood in my veins seemed to thicken and boil. The worst of it was the tremendous crack that formed deep within my chest.
Gildir had been behind the attempts upon Arlo’s life. Gildir had wanted power at any cost. Gildir had taken him from me—my Arlo, snatched from my grasp. In that moment, I felt as though the meaning of my life had slipped through my hands, never to return.Darkness swelled within my soul, an overwhelming ache that clouded my vision and shackled me with a slew of terrible thoughts.
I will kill them all. They took everything.
Arlo, my heart.
It all shattered.
I felt the Styx shiver as my cry broke free. The souls who slumbered within the dark waters came alive. Even from a distance, I felt them crawl free from their imprisonment. They harboured my hate andwelcomedmy anger, begging me to share my burden so it did not consume me.
Powerful, disturbed shadows spun around me like obedient hounds returning to my side. The presence of the dead pounded within me for release, and I gave it to them.I lost myself to the power. To grief. I cared little for Haxton, for Evelina, and the innocents that dwelled among those who wished nothing more than to punish me for being alive. They had finally broken me. After all these years, it took a human boy to drive the fatal weapon into my cracked heart to see it shatter completely.
They wanted the monster. They wished for it. For an age, Claria and my family had forced me onto a path I never wished to journey down. Here I was, at the end, alone and broken. Hollow. Carved from the inside out.
They had taken the one thing that kept my love for humanity and life ablaze.
It was time for them all to feel as I do now.
Myrinn’s blood-slick fingers clamped around my ankle. Her touch was steel, fingers gripping my skin as nails dug into it. The touch broke through the darkness within me, like sun peeking between clouds. I looked down as the glow of life drained from her body. Her death came swiftly and instant, my shadows fuelled with hunger for it. Had her pain become too much to bear? She wished for peace she likely did not deserve and found it by pressing her skin to mine.
No. It was not that simple.
Before her, strokes of blood had been painted across the floor. She had wished for me to see, her way of giving a message, one provided only with the sacrifice of her life. Drawn in blood was a single word. Even upside-down I could make sense of it.
Nyssa.
My shadows closed in around me so suddenly, devouring my skin, my body, until we were one and the same.
Myrinn’s final message was simple. Gildir had taken Arlo to Nyssa.
* * *
I could only imagine what those around me thought as I swept into Nyssa. In their wide, horrified stares, I could see myself, passing through the innards of the Great Tree with shadows billowing from my back like the wings of some dark being come to claim its prey. Hidden within my shadows, the dead withered, twisting and coiling among one another like snakes forced into a basket.
Phantom arms reached out towards the crowd that waited beyond the throne room. Their screams of terror set my soul on fire. Some ran, many stayed standing, frozen to the spot. They all shared the same fear, I could taste it, sweet as honey, making my mouth salivate with yearning.
Did they come to witness Arlo’s murder? A crowd of people who had once shown us love now thirsted for revenge, to witness Arlo suffer because of falsities and lies.
