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“As if anyone could keep me away from you,” he says. Then he takes off at a sprint, searching for an exit while the rest of the stage crumbles to the ground. Another slab of quartz falls, nearly hitting us. But Xavian is too agile, too quick to be caught up in any of the debris.
We’re almost to one of the exits when Xavian suddenly falls to his knees and drops me to the ground.
“Xavian!”
He clutches his abdomen tightly. Blood drips from a small wound above his naval. No. No, no, no. This can’t be happening. He’s been shot. I didn’t even hear the gun.
I try to stand up, but my knees buckle and in the next second, I’m down on the ground again. Someone’s boot kicks me in my back, knocking the wind out of my lungs.
Everything is on fire. The organic materials left behind in the amphitheater emit thick, black, billowing smoke as they burn, making the air difficult to breathe and reducing visibility to zero. But when I roll onto my back with a wince, I can clearly see who’s staring down at me with a menacing countenance. Lacie.
Her hair flies wildly around her body like a feral mane, making her look twenty times more sadistic than usual.
“You … you did this?” I whisper hoarsely. My throat burns and my bones ache. If I get out of this alive, I will be very, very surprised. “Why?”
She presses her boot into my rib cage, making me cough and sputter. The pain is overwhelming. My eyes fly open. She can’t be serious. All this because she got second place instead of first? Over some perceived slight that never even happened? To think that, for three years, she hasn’t been able to move on and let her loss go. She must have been stewing, biding her time, just waiting for her chance to get her revenge. I mean, it has to be that and not because I wrecked her pool, right?
“This is payback for robbing me of first place,” she hisses. “Told you that you’d go down in flames eventually. No one fucks with me and gets away with it.”
Oh, so she’s just a terrible person with a warped sense of entitlement. Shit.
“You’re unhinged,” I cough out. “You’re really willing to kill because of that?”
Lacie’s feral grin peels back into a sneer, and she says, “No. But my friend here is. He has a bone to pick with you and your boyfriend.”
She steps to the side, revealing a familiar-looking Denorran male. He’s enormous, rivaling Xavian’s height, and broad-chested. Recognition floods my memory. General Atraxis.
“Come to settle the score, I see,” I rasp.
General Atraxis’s chuckle is a thick, guttural rumble as he steps forward. Where his tail used to be, there’s now only a stump. You know, these turn of events aren’t surprising in the least, but they are disappointing. My only regret is that Xavian had to get caught up in my bullshit.
I look back at his beautiful, graceful face. He grimaces in pain. All I want to do is go to him right now. To hold him, tell him I love him. But I can’t move. My body is frozen in place, and my muscles wouldn’t let me do anything even if I could.
General Atraxis turns to Lacie and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Go,” he mutters. “You’ve upheld your end of the deal. Now let me uphold mine.”
Lacie nods and then takes off at a sprint, running for the exit with the other fleeing audience members. I gnash my teeth together. That little snake. Of course she was in league with this piece of shit. Again, not surprised, just disappointed.
General Atraxis removes one of the long, slender blades from the sheath on his side and raises it above his head. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, Kallista. I would have spoiled you rotten, had you given me the chance.”
I meet his cold eyes with a glare. “Ew. Not even if you were the last man in the universe.”
Clenching my eyes shut, I wait for the swing of the laser that will end my life.
It never comes.
The mangled cry of a Denorran male punctuates the air, and when I open my eyes again, I see Xavian on top of the General. A scream rips from my throat as Xavian presses his knee into the Denorran’s throat. Atraxis tries to speak, but all that comes out is a garbled plea.
Xavian digs his knee in harder as he slips one of his hidden blades out of his sleeve. “You know, the only regret I have is that I didn’t kill you back on Nocturne when I had the chance,” he says.
Xavian grabs Atraxis’s throat and forces his head to the side, exposing that Denorran’s weak spot on the back of his neck that he told me about all those weeks ago. His blade cuts through the spot in a flash, and blood sprays in an impressive arc, before splattering across the ground.
As the surrounding smoke thickens, it’s getting harder to breathe. I try to inhale, but when I do, I end up in a coughing fit and curl into the fetal position.
Xavian launches himself off Atraxis’s corpse and flies to me, scooping me into his arms again, looking around wildly for an exit. Cristalite first responders wearing masks and thick rubber gear rush ahead, and one of them stops Xavian to guide us the rest of the way out.
He looks down at me as my vision blurs in a slurry of colors. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
And then darkness takes me.
