I crept over the threshold, eyes glued on Caleb's remains and searching for some sign of life: a twitch, the rise of shallow breath, the flutter of his lashes. He's still. My sister twisted her fingers through Cade's hair and forced him to look at his father. "A shame, truly," she said. "Your husband could've been a great Fleshling had he revoked his infidel nature."
"Tetra." I lowered my weapons, shaking. "Let him go."
She trailed her blade away from my son's neck, pointing to me. "What, just as before? Where will you run this time?" She tsked. "No. I must finish this. Unless you would like to do the honors?"
My son was trying his very best to show that he wasn't afraid, shifting in her arms and eyeing her sword.
"Cade, stay still." I focused on keeping my voice steady. "Don't move. It's going to be alright."
"Yes, heed your mother," Tetra said. "One slip and you'll save us a lot of trouble."
I narrowed my eyes. "Put your blade down. Turn around and run. Do it now and I'll consider letting you go."
She threw her head back and laughed, her long black tongue stretching over pointed teeth. She rasped when she spoke. "How desperate."
"You've got what you wanted. You killed my husband. Tell Father that you didn't spare me, and I will stay hidden with my son. Keep my silence. It'll be enough to restore your honor-"
"Enough to restore my honor?" She scraped her throat and spat. "How dare you speak of Father. Turning a blind eye to you was the worst mistake I've ever made, now I'm here to rectify what you've done to my family."
"Cade isn't a part of this. He's just a boy!"
"You think it's enough to let you hide and cower? Pathetic. Killing you isn't enough, it will never be enough-"
Cade bucked against her. I sheathed my weapons and held up my long pale fingers, a slow, watchful surrender. "Cade, stay calm."
He tried to lift his chin over her arm. "Mom, please..."
"Stay still," I warned. "Tetra, I will give you anything-"
Cade is thinking of attacking. Before I could plead, he elbowed the exposed portion of her diaphragm plate and made away while she stirred. If I knew anything about Tetra, is that she was a very sore loser. She doubled, rage twisting her face, tongue running over her fangs. "Die, traitor!" She rushed, glassblade speared.
I met with my own. I'qod raked over i'qod, hissing in our trade. She snapped out, lunged the blade's give; I juked, danced over the attack, and made for my dagger. Her smile then. We've done this dance before, and we're both in step. She bucked her leg like a mule and caught the back of my knee. I keeled, rolled out of the light. My dagger clattered against the wood floors before me, the i'qod a luminescent teal casting over the curling lines in her face. Tetra guided her sword hand to recalibrate. I met her motions, got to a knee. We swirled at the eye of the room. A perfect storm.
"You're soft," she said, purple eyes sunken into her skull. "Exile's made you fat and slow. Only you could manage such a thing."
"You're the same book I've read a hundred times. Almat tactics could never match what the wasteland has taught me."
"Hardly. How many times, pray tell, will you use that parlor trick of yours on me?" She hungered for the dagger then. We closed in together, but only one of us arrived. Tetra kicked off a table and aimed for my head above. I caught her attack, grinded off as sparks emitted. But she wanted more; she brought her blade to smash, smash down until my wrists visibly weakened.
Cade hid in a crawlspace below where we kept fresh kill to be processed. Aegis flecks caught in his hair. He saw it, too: my dagger. I nodded no, bucked under grit fangs. My sword arm faltered. She sundered my blade, grounded me as she hammered her heavy greave into my pelvis. Anguish, a cracked bone robbed me of a scream. She was already savoring it. The tip of her glassblade parted, glimmered red between my eyes. Caleb's blood dripped fresh onto my chin. Suddenly, it came to me. Let her think she's won, I told my instincts. Give her everything she came for: tremble some, reel, look through her purple irises where she's most vulnerable. Caleb was nothing to her, but me? She wanted to take her time with me. I needed her undivided attention. You'll pay for everything you've done today. My left hand trailed to a holster, then a grip. The rust over composite handle; I found my last revenge as I carefully slid out a snub-nose .357 and slung to fire-
But no, she seized my hand in the bonecatcher of her glassblade. She twisted slow at first, but then yanked so it cut. Her face twisted with revulsion. "Oh, sister. Truly, you've lost your way." She worked through a saddened grimace only to conflagrate, snapping the gun from my grip. Blood trailed down my fingers, then filled the crease of my arm. "A firearm?" she said. "How sorry I feel for you. Too weak to wield the weapon of your own kind." The cutting was sadistic now. "How dare you, sister, how dare you!" Her breaths were pain. "I would've buried you, you know? Sent your body to the Great Apparatus in red silk! I see now-it was all too good for you!" But she would never want to hear my answer. With one last motion, she freed my wrist only to plunge her blade down.
That is, until Cade erupted from the crawlspace, screaming, "No!"
Tetra's gaze flicked to his chase. He brandished his tiny dagger, mouth wide and screaming, tears dripping over the sides. I tasted the salt on my own tongue. There, a weakness, hatred in her eyes. It was then that I knew she detested my son more than she did me. Such hesitation was against her training and beneath her pride. Frozen she was, my hand in hers bleeding, her sword at my stomach, breath smelling of iron from the gash she hewed into her own cheek. I found my dagger, then drove the sickled end into her face.
I made slow work of it. The pain was enough to keep her still. She collapsed. I caught the back of her hair to hold her in place. The steel bit, pierced brow, lash, dug into the socket. The optic nerve split. I felt it through my dagger. A subtle tap. There wasn't time to take the fleshy remains with my fingers and pull it clean. I left her with a bit of tissue out of mercy, then dragged the steel across her nose to pierce the other, continued dragging until the blade came free at her temple. One eye cleaved, the other a sticky hollow of yellow mucus. I found her chest with my boot, aimed low at a skewed diaphragm plate, then kicked her down to grovel. She screamed. A child untamed, unthinking. She was never allowed to have her own thoughts; her failures belonged to House Helford.
I caught Cade in my arms. Violent tremors wracked his every nerve. He couldn't stand because of them. I kept saying his name over and over, gumming up his curls with the blood on my fingers."I know, love." I kissed his cheek."You'll be okay, now run. Get back to the village and stay out of sight."
"I can't, Mom."
"You must."
He buried his head in my shoulder. "No, no, no." His voice peaked, and then he was screaming. I wanted to sit and let him cry. I wanted to cradle him until he felt safe, or until he tired out and fell asleep, just as I always have. I've never felt such heartbreak like that before; having to unstick his fingers from my hair and push him away, then yelling; "get out!" again and again until he fell back, scrambling. I never wanted to look at my child and see that he was afraid of me like that. Those wide eyes, that twisted expression-every mother dreads it.
There was a hot breeze coming through the windows and shifting the metal plates on top of the house. A sound that we'd grown accustomed to, the frequent hurricanes often kept the bolts loose. I was a fool to mistake the wind for an oncoming storm, the footsteps on the termite-ridden deck, the blood pounding into my ears as thrusters stayed their altitude above. Cade never made it past the threshold.
A blinding white light barged through our door. Almat silver, idling lights of Tetra's personal Crucible right outside. Cade stood in the judgment of an Almat trooper's gleaming black helm that shrouded his fallen humanity. Then, a large shadow casted over; I thought it impossible for Tetra to recruit two of the House's Legionites, but lo stood the second: an Almat built like a ship himself crossed into my home. He did a whipping motion with his offhand; a length of cable shot out, thunked and coiled around Cade. He lost his footing, stumbled. The Legionite lassoed his grip upward, a buzz prowling the length until my son wracked with convulsions and dropped. Glassblades were already training on me, but I didn't care.
"Cade!" I was at his side, Tetra forgotten, picking him up to hold close to my chest. His head lazed back. I caught it, shielding the vulnerable places. "Almat filth, how dare you hurt my boy?" Spit glued its strings between my lips, blood adding its color to it. "I'll kill you! I'll kill you for it!"
It felt at first as though I'd been punched in the back just below my ribs. There wasn't any initial pain, just the spread of something warm as though someone was holding a branding iron to my skin. I tasted copper in my mouth. A thousand needles crept through my legs until I couldn't feel them anymore. Then, like the iron, the needles climbed into my stomach. They paralyzed me. I could not move to protect Cade when the Legionite took him from me. I couldn't even see him, my vision was reduced to a dark blurry spot. Whenever I tried to take a breath to scream, my lungs wouldn't let the air in, and I was drained of all my energy.
Tetra put her mouth against my ear, her blade leaving the wound, a slow tearing of the intestines, muscles through the sinew, and then what flesh remained. "You sound just like the other Fleshlings when they die," she said. "Not a scream, but a gasp. Silent. No one will come to save you, no one will hear. You will die here alone in exile as it was commanded. I think that's appropriate."
She set me down, my head cradled between her palms. They carried a stench of infection. "Get the boy on my Crucible while you and your squad clean up the rest of this Rebel filth." She heaved, crawling from me. The dark spot in my vision grew wide. "I will dispose of him there."
"Legionite Tetra," the other said, bowing, Cade a ragdoll in his arms. "What of the Exile?"
"Let her bleed."
There was nothing but a ring in my head, a thickness in my ears as though I were underwater. My eyes were open but my vision was dark, the black circle closing in, then all of my pain went away. I just wanted to sleep, I didn't fear dying. Minutes passed and I lay watching that spot grow until Xae was there, the Rebels surrounding, and Xae was telling me not to close my eyes. She placed my head on her lap and put pressure on my wound, my blood on her armor and her hands. "Don't fall asleep," she kept saying. She shook me, patted my cheeks, then poured cold water through my hair. "You hear me? Whatever you do, you've got to stay with me."
I could see the open doorway over the Rebels who stood guard there, a trail of black smoke dissipating into the gray sky. The remnants of the Crucible, gone above the clouds, my son facing a fate of his own at the hands of my sister. I knew that I would never see him again.
Life's really taught me about all the different variations of what family can really mean.
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