Something With a Prince

Chapter Fifty-Nine: All For Us

Tallethea

My hands were all but covered in her magic, blue-black frost crawling up my veins at a painful speed. Like a poison, the harder I ran, the more blood I pumped, the faster it spread. But I couldn't help it. I had to run. My legs thundered against the rolling mud, trailing after Lansing. I looked like a deer stalking a hunter. A rabbit stalking a wolf.

The creatures, knowing that the job was all but done, didn't bother to hold me back anymore. Instead, they continued to turn the tide against the war. Dominic's soldiers falling faster than flies, some of them even retreating. Saorla's magic grew stronger, that putrid smell growing thick and heavy in the mist as the earth leeched blood from the soil. But that wasn't the most important thing to worry about at the moment. Dominic was--standing over my King with a raised sword, His boot pressing into Arlyn's chest.

I couldn't move fast enough in the sludge. Like running in a dream, my legs were lead, heavy and useless. Even my lungs burned, as if I had been screaming. I guess I had been.

Lansing approached Dominic, without a weapon...what use would he have for a sword when he was the most dangerous thing among us. Like a well-aimed.... I nearly stumbled as his words finally hit me, the sight of its outline on the back of his neck. Arrow.

Lansing did not kill Arlyn. He didn't have to.

The blade came down into his stomach, and his outstretched hands fell to the mud.

My chest tore open, blood setting itself aflame. Pain. A blinding, shattering pain flew into my body like a crater. It even dropped Lansing, who stumbled to his knees, clutching his chest with a stunned gasp. Our heart.

Though I know it came from my throat, it was not my voice. That horrible, cracked, shredded thing. Sobs struck my insides like fists. "ARLYN!!"

Rai, finally there, set upon Dominic like a fury. Like a divine justice. Her screams were cries, tears, rage set upon a pyre and left to smother us all. Her King was dead. Killed by the man who beheaded her love. Her country. Rai was us all, and yet, had more righteous rage than all of us combined.

Her white hair was like a whip in the rain, as she leaped upon Dominic. She took him by surprise, and instead of defending himself, he raised his hands out of instinct. But to block was not enough. Rai would be revenged. Her closed fist met his face, hard and true. Dominic stumbled back to his senses, but she was too the point. This would not be a fight. It would be the end.

Without a second thought, that broad sword was glinting in the rain. And Rai stood there, holding Dominic's severed head in her hand. His hair between her fingertips. Water poured down his face, frozen in fear. Rai staggered, blood dripping onto the toe of her boot. Those around her, both Rughwen and Tuisedor watched in astonishment. The war was over.

Rughwen began to retreat, Tuisedor's soldiers taking heart to drive them either into the ground or out of the valley while Saorla's creatures feasted on the bodies left behind.

Before I knew it, Rai was beside me, the head of Dominic at her knees with his face in the mud. She tore out the sword and pressed her hands to Arlyn's gut. I had been so frozen in fear, in grief, that I hadn't noticed he was breathing. I hadn't noticed Lansing was gone.

"GET HIM UP!" She screamed at me. Tears and blood ran over her cheeks.

We swept our arms under him, carrying Arlyn to the medical tent as quickly as we could. All he did was grunt, and wince, but eventually he stopped doing even that. I could feel the heat of his blood on my arms as we burst through the flaps of the tent. My mother was tending to the soldiers toward the back, Elleanor the middle, and a boy with brown hair toward the front.