Rise of a Queen

Chapter 13

At least, we found what was left of him.

He swung his legs off the cot and rose steadily. I forgot how tall he was, so much taller while upright than how he appeared while strewn across that cot. He was staring with eyes wide and mouth dropped open, aghast and speechless beyond what words can describe. Plenty of times I have seen Dustin jarred, more often than not by horrors of gang life, but I have never seen him as stunned as he was in this moment.

And it rocked through him in visible waves that channeled through cords of muscle not yet victimized by atrophy, causing his hands to clench and his shoulders to rise on deep breaths that were uneven and rushed.

He swayed dangerously on his feet, the backs of his knees meeting the edge of his cot, and I thought he might collapse either from weakness or shock. But before gravity caught his unbalance, he stepped towards the window. A single step that freed his mind from whatever haze previously restrained him from reality.

Then he stepped again, and again, rushing forward to meet us at the glass.

But Dustin's advance was brought to an abrupt end and his left leg jerked out from under him. He caught himself before falling, fixing a glare upon the large, bulky chain secured tightly around his ankle that curled upwards to consume most of his leg below the knee and knotted critically around his bare foot. His skin was pinched white and scraped raw from where this chain had been fastened, silver lost of luster as blood tarnished metal, seeping between links and crusting along its surface from where the liquid had dried over time.

Dustin tested the chain again but it held without yielding, merely rattling against the far wall where the other end bolted to brick, confirming Dustin's status as a prisoner. He straightened himself again, the chain promptly forgotten once his gaze found mine, and the smile that appeared over his face brought new tears to my eyes I didn't dare hold back.

It was that smile I recognized the most, because it was the last of him I saw after his eyes closed and his heart stopped. It was that smile that has replaced the beast in my nightmares, haunting me and tormenting me. Yet it was also that smile I beseeched, soliciting its presence from my traitorous mind which was all to happy to comply with my petitions of death. Because even though memory of that smile brought pain enough to kill, it also brought me life and delayed myself from drowning in my own remorse and self hatred.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, my throat closed, and I choked on my words. Suddenly, all the things I have been desperate to tell him were discarded from my mind on erratic drafts of relief. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to apologize for, but nothing was sacred enough to be spoken at this time. Nothing except for ...

"You're alive." My voice cracked between words and my hitch dropped Dustin's expression, blazing sympathetic understanding in his unwavering eyes. But I couldn't stop myself from saying again to establish his existence as more than hallucination, and the more I said it the more I believed it, "You're alive ... you're actually alive."

He glanced down and my gaze followed to the gruesome wound centered at his gut where, only three weeks prior, a bullet tore through him and nearly apprehended his life. Gauze once white was wrapped heavily around his torso, an alarmingly large crimson stain spreading outwards; the only remnants of an injury that brought him to an early grave from which he escaped death only as a contingency because someone else decided it was not yet his time.

Dustin touched two fingers to the gauze, barely indenting the fabric with his stroke. When his eyes found mine once more, I saw that even he was relieved, "Don't ask me how."

The sound of his voice had me spiraling in desired turmoil and goosebumps rose along my skin when the familiar timbre of his tone graced my ears like symphonies of the finest instruments. Husky and gruff, penetrating; how could I have forgotten the power of this voice? How it dominated so entirely and demanded submission?