Fairy Tale: Winter's Bite

Chapter 25: Oh, Brother (Part 4)

Chris could only watch and wait for the others, though he hoped they wouldn't return. 

After he fell to his knees in surrender, he was stripped of his swords and supplies, bound by the hands, and placed inside a glass jar topped by a lid punched with air holes, as if he were a bug for them to watch die an excruciatingly slow death. He couldn't even hear what orders were being given. Enemies as far, high, and wide as he could see—their lips moved, their hands pointed—but the acoustics of his glass prison made their voices inaudible.

But he wasn't fortunate enough to be left in silence. He had two Modified Gray Coats inside the jar with him. They paced by, not taking their eyes off him, ready to strike if he so much as twitched. And their predatory breathing was almost as loud as Chris's pulse.

As his guards—inside the jar, outside the jar—wandered about, he occasionally caught glimpses of what was beyond them. The view came only in flashes, but Chris saw what he needed to. Joe and Cassie had been captured as well. 

At the first sight of blood on Cassie's dress, Chris's eyes immediately collided with the shameless and knowing stare of the soldier holding her by the hair. His sneer made every hair on Chris's body stand up with rage.

After a deep laugh that found its way inside of Chris's head and a brief, snakelike flick of the tongue over his bloody teeth, the soldier tossed Cassie into the mud with brutal and unnecessary force. Another soldier pushed Joe beside her.

A human-sized Gray Coat scooped them up and dropped them into the same jar Chris was in. They both landed with a bone-jarring clunk. 

Bounding to his feet, Chris had to evade the grasp of his two Gray Coats guards to get closer to them. 

"Sit back down!" one of them shouted. 

Undeterred, Chris stumbled toward the center of the jar. "Are you both all right?"

"Sure. Peachy." Joe rose to his feet and wiped blood from his lip with his sleeve.

"I'm fine," Cassie muttered at the exact moment Chris had to dive underneath a tackle.

By the time he was on his feet again, she had moved farther away. With her arms crossed over her chest and shoulders, she eased into a sitting position by the glass wall. She unfolded her arms enough to cradle her knees and she buried her face in them. She may have tried, but she couldn't conceal the blood from him, not entirely, because it was everywhere.

While the Gray Coats herded Chris and Joe away from Cassie, Chris was jumping to see over their shoulders. "Then why are you bleeding?" he shouted to her.

One of the guards pushed him to the ground and gave him a hard backhanded slap across the face. Chris glared at his punisher and then strained to get a better look. But she was just a tiny trembling blur in the distance. 

"Why is she bleeding?" Chris hissed to Joe.

Joe shrugged, but the lack of shock in his expression suggested a higher awareness.

"You know something! Tell me, Goddammit!"

"She fell. I saw it," Joe whispered.

"Quiet!"

The Gray Coat closest to Joe grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him to a new location. Then the jar lifted off the ground and daylight was taken from them as they were put into some kind of bag. Even in the absolute blackness, Chris couldn't erase from his mind the sight of Cassie's blood. At this point, he could see no way around it.

Red would be the color to seal their fate.

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Hours passed.