I moved to stand in between Crow and the archer's aimed arrows. "Get away from him!"
Beside me, Vale squared off against the king's right hand, snarling, "How did you find us, Reynard?"
The gaunt ghost picked at his nails in disinterest. "How the mighty fall," he mused, side-eyeing Vale. "My predecessor now runs with freaks." His eyes flitted from her to me and then to Webb as he spoke. "An anchored soul and the brainless wonder." He pointed his blade at the last member of our party, who growled like a dog in a snare. "And After's betrayer."
He stabbed his sword into the stone steps and leaned against it with the haughtiest of smirks. "We were following you all the moment you leapt over the wall. Lost your trail in the sandstorm, but we found the prince's lair." He stroked his goatee with his fingers in thought. "I'll admit, I was disappointed there was no one home to ambush. But we did find a whole nursery of fledgling crows. Tell me, Prince, because I'm curious." His smirk grew into a venomous smile. He looked like he had way too many teeth. "Did you feel it when we crushed each one of them into dust?"
Crow's cry of rage was silenced when Clyde pressed his scimitar to his throat.
I had never wanted to pummel a human being more than in that moment.
But no one dared to move.
"Don't worry, monster," Reynard said, laughing down at us all. "We spared one little bird. We needed it to find you."
Clyde pulled a fledgling crow from his pocket and dangled it by a leg above Crow. No matter where Clyde pointed it, the baby bird kept its gaping beak trained in Crow's direction at all times like a compass's needle.
"Weh, weh, weh!"
"Albrecht. My little one," Crow breathed. He stopped struggling with the arrows in his ribs. He lifted his shaking palms to Clyde like a pitiful beggar. "Please! Do not hurt him! Give him to me. Please."
I looked to Reynard, pleading with my eyes. Please.
For a few agonizing heartbeats, Reynard said nothing as he revelled in the prince's pleas. After's second-in-command sucked his teeth, looking bored. "You heard the freak," he finally said to his subordinate. "Give him his bird."
Clyde didn't bother concealing his disappointment. He dangled the little wiggling bird over Crow's cupped hands, teasingly, just out of reach. Then he let the chick fall to the stone steps. A little piece inside me died when Clyde stomped on the creature and ground it into dust beneath his boot, saying, "Oops."
"No!" Crow's anguished wail echoed from every tier of the ziggurat.
Clyde just chuckled as he raised his boot. All that was left of the bird was a little cloud of ashes carried away in the wind. He didn't notice the loner hollow's eyes turn red.
My friends and I lunged for the echelon.
Whips of wind, the beginnings of a storm, accosted us, knocking the archer from his perch atop the gateway. Crow was still too weak to fully summon his power, but I didn't need wind as I threw myself at the archer, spear held out straight. I looked the man dead in the eyes as I struck, and I savored the shock in them when my blade pierced his heart, right where his arrows would have hit me if Crow hadn't tossed me out of the way.
If hollows bled, the man's blood would have doused the temple steps. Yet the cold spilling from the man's twitching body satisfied me just fine as I cut into him, ensuring that he wouldn't be able to heal fast enough to survive. But when his body went limp and his eyes rolled back up into his head, another little piece inside me died with him.
There was a cry to my right. I abandoned the archer's dissolving body when both my friends tumbled down the steps. Reynard wasn't the king's right hand for nothing. His hair had come undone and hung in limp, greasy locks in front of his feral face. He fixed me with a savage snarl. "Come on then, Light worshiper," he teased.
It didn't take long before Vale was right back on her feet, charging up the steps for Reynard. But yet another figure swung up from the side of the staircase, and knocked her off course. Pinky planted a foot on Vale's chest, holding her down. Webb struggled in Blinky's scarred arms.
"I will kill you!" Crow screamed at Clyde, whom he had pinned beneath his body. He'd pulled the arrows from his own chest and he stabbed them into the screaming man's eyes through his mask, over and over and over again. "I will kill you all!"
And then an arm wrapped around me, immobilizing me. A sword bit into my throat. My rapid breaths clouded the blade, obscuring my frightened-looking reflection.
I tore my eyes away from the blade and met Reynard's gleeful face. "Surrender yourself, Prince!" he commanded. "Or you'll have the ashes of one more innocent soul staining your hands."
At that, Crow froze in mid-strike, an arrow still raised. Clyde had long stopped screaming. As his enemy's body began to wither away, Crow turned an ear to Reynard. His eyes blazed lux-red behind his disheveled black hair.
Both Webb and Vale struggled fruitlessly against their captors.
I winced when the knife cut deeper into my flesh. Suddenly I was so cold. "Tell him what I'm doing, girl," Reynard whispered to me.
"He...he has a sword to my throat," I said, trembling in Reynard's grasp. I couldn't contain my cry of shock when the blade sank in deeper. My life spilled from me in the form of an ice-cold mist. "Oh god..."
Crow gasped at my pathetic sound. Then he bared his teeth in Reynard's direction and rose, slowly, from what was left of Clyde's disappearing corpse. He raised hands above his head and let his arrows fall to the stones with a clatter.
The red light left his eyes.
"N-no..." I said through chattering teeth.
I could hear the amusement in Reynard's voice when he said, "Does the prince of monsters have a heart after all?" To his remaining team, he said, "Chain him. And if any of these freaks do something funny, we'll spill his nonexistent guts right here instead of After." He removed the blade from my throat and pointed it at my glowering friends. "The king wants to execute the monster himself."
Webb, Vale, and I were tossed unceremoniously to the steps. I clutched my hand to my seeping throat. Through my blurring vision, I watched Reynard and his hollows cuff Crow and put him in chains. I'd never seen him look so defeated before.
And then the night was full of terrible shrieks and hissing.
"Shit," Reynard hissed. "Get him to the horses. We're taking off. These three can feed the shadows for us."
Crow came alive at the sound of approaching shadows, and struggled against his chains toward us while Reynard and his men pulled him down the steps. "Get to the top of the temple, my fledglings!" he called for us. "See the truth for me!"
His words were lost over the sound of hissing as a wall of monsters separated him from us.
Webb, Vale, and I had nowhere else to run but up the temple steps.
And it was funny.
But I had to blink away tears as I ran.
Are there secrets buried inside?
Are there broken dreams that you try to hide?
Are there feelings that tear at your side?
It's like looking at a house of cards
A tower a lies
We came too far
Too far to turn around
Start up a war inside can't stop it now
I'm not scared of the dark no no
I'm not scared of the dark