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Pain spread across my back when she swatted me to the side. I rolled and slammed into a broken wall, moving before the broken chunks could fall on me. I was holding onto my control for dear life, but when I looked up, I could tell my eyes had turned red. The minotaur stopped.
“You didn’t help him like the others!” she yelled, her body shaking. “Why didn’t you help him too?”
I wanted to speak, to tell her I was sorry. But I couldn’t.
"He was all I had," she wept. I held my breath. Her pain was like a jackhammer repeatedly slamming into me. "He didn’t mean to kill that girl. It wasn't him."
She wiped at her tears, and dirt smeared her cheeks. "Kill me," she said with a sob, stepping forward. "Kill me too."
I shook my head, and she drew closer. She pulled a dagger out of her waist and grabbed my hand.
“Do it,” she said, smiling through the tears. “I want to be with him.”
In this realm, there was nothing after death. But she had to know that already. When I didn’t do as she asked, she pushed me, and the dagger fell to the ground.
"Why won't you say anything? You killed him, and you have nothing to say! You can't even say you're sorry! People are calling you a savior, but you're a murderer!" She spat on the ground. "You saved no one today. All those infected souls died anyway. You killed them all!” She stepped back. "Your eyes are no different than his were. People are fools to think you aren't as mad as the rest of them. Very soon, you'll feel it, just as my brother did. Say you're sorry, damn it! Say it!"
My lips parted, her words echoing in my mind, and my shoulders dropped. She wasn't wrong. Apologizing for what I'd done was the least I could do. I had the weight of his death to carry, but this woman, his sister, was falling apart. And that was because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words barely audible.
She stopped crying, and I looked up. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she slowly began to smile.
“Natalie!” I heard Rumir calling. “It’s not real!”
The minotaur picked up the dagger and ran at me. The blade pierced my heart, and I gasped, blinking as pain burned across my chest. Suddenly, Lucian’s face appeared.
I looked around and found Rehema and Rumir on either side of me.
“It’s not real,” Rumir repeated, and I touched my chest to find it free of a dagger, the minotaur was nowhere in sight.
Had it all been an illusion? But I could still feel the pain from the blade in my chest.
“Well,” Nathos sighed. “Now we know what guilt you carry. We need to run.”
The sand around us began to move, and a resounding hiss echoed around us.
"We need to run now!" he yelled, and without warning, the ground beneath us exploded, and we were all thrown in different directions.
My back smacked onto the ground, my fingers disappearing in the sand beneath me. I held my breath and stared at the large black snake moving beneath the sand.
“Run!” Nathos yelled from somewhere to my left, and to my right, Lucian jumped to his feet.
I rose as well, as another hiss echoed around us. But before Lucian could reach me, something hit me. My vision blurred, and I let go of my power.
A light red and transparent shield appeared on the ground to cushion my fall. I wrapped my arms around myself, the pain slowly subsiding while my broken limbs healed. Then, out of nowhere, Rumir appeared and scooped me up.
It seemed like my powers weren’t instinctively protecting me anymore. I had to do it myself, and if not, I would die.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Rumir started running, and over his shoulder, another snake appeared from underground. No, it was the same black snake I saw first. There weren’t several snakes, but just one. And going by the size of the sand disturbed, it was as long as it was massive.
“Put me down!” I told Rumir. “I’m slowing you down!”
"You're not that heavy!" he shouted back, leaping over another part of the snake that appeared from beneath the sand.
Whatever was moving beneath us wasn't an ordinary snake. It was hungry and pissed about being disturbed. I didn't need to feel its emotions to know that. It had just slapped me with its tail moments ago as if I’d been a bag of feathers.
