Soulmates were a fabled tale, passed down through generations, that spoke of someone with the power to bring you back from death or completely sunder your soul. Ilaria Celestino had never put much stock in the fabled tales as a pair of soulmates had...
"Please!" She screamed. Tears rolled down her cheeks. "No, please!"
A sharp pain seared across her scalp. She screamed and cried, holding onto the wrist of the hand that had a death grip on her hair. Pain scraped across her shins as she was dragged down the stairs of her family's home before she was tossed onto the muddy street by her parents. Cold rain pattered down across her skin. Thunder clapped overhead.
Trembling between the pain and the adrenaline pumping through her veins, she looked up at them with a pitiful sob.
"Ilaria!"
No. Her head whipped around, seized between panic and hope. He was alive, but what the hell was he doing here?
Bursting out of the shadows, a dark figure flew toward the scene. He was no match for the wardens nearly twice his size. A sickening thump sent the figure crashing to the ground, and then two wardens were upon him.
"Appall!" Ilaria screamed for the countless time that night. Scrambling to get to her feet, she was shoved back into the mud with the butt of a spear.
The warden above her chuckled. "That's right. Watch him die."
She gasped when her hair was grabbed once more and yanked back, forcing her to watch as her friend was beaten senselessly into the ground. Tears stung her eyes. There was nothing she could do. Just hours ago, they had been talking about running away together. The figure wheezed and gasped with each hit delivered to his frail body. Before long, he stopped fighting back. Bored of the game, the wardens stepped back to admire their work.
A groan, faint and weak, came from the body.
"Live," she pleaded, trembling as she tried to crawl toward him. When her hair was given a sharp tug, she whimpered. "Appall, please, come find me. Live, Appall."
"Should we take this one, too?" One of the wardens nudged the body with his boot.
"Nah. He ain't worth much. Be surprised if he makes the night."
"Aye, you're right, I reckon. Right. We all set? Get up, you lousy lumps of flesh."
The hand released her hair, the spear was removed from her back, and Ilaria Celestino was dragged to her feet. Was this how it all ended? Marched away from her friend, the home she grew up in, and life as she knew it?
She'd never see him again.
"Where are you taking us?" her father asked, fear in his eyes as he tried to make eye contact with any of the wardens.
"That's for us to know an' you to find out."
Ilaria found she didn't care. She could die tonight, and she wouldn't care. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared at the ground. Appall was going to die, and there was nothing she would be able to do to help him. Let the wardens kill her. She would at least be in peace in another realm with Appall.
Oh, but the stars had something else in mind.
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