My vision blurs as the Tranqs shove me back into my room in the palace. The king's cackles and chortles bore into my ears as he stomps away down the hall, clutching his precious jar of Shadowteeth blood. What does he even want with it anyway?
The room spins. A strange sensation comes over me, like I've both ingested poison and swallowed an entire cup of vodka. Sweat pools on my forehead, and drips down my face as I pace back and forth around the room. Strange shapes morph around me. The bed posts stretch and bend. The windows shatter and I scream, ducking and covering my head in instinct. But when I look back, the glass is still intact.
A rage, unlike anything I have ever felt, explodes into my veins and billows through my body like a rolling storm, rushing and surging and the room is on fire. I am on fire. I want to pull my skin off my bones.
A scream. Mine. It cuts through the booming, rattling percussive sound in my ears and jerks me to my knees.
What is happening to me? I want to shout. But my mouth is sewn shut. I stumble to the bed and collapse.
Finally, the noise, the pain, and the nausea vanish. The fury is all that remains. It's deadly. Thirsts for blood, and heads on spits. A feeling I've never known.
It drains every bit of my strength as I lay in bed, sweating and trembling, and I, at last, tumble into merciful sleep.
---
"Elle." A voice stumbles into the recesses of my consciousness.
A groan tumbles from someone... from me.
"Elle!"
My skull throbs as the blade of a sword has been wedged between the bones, deep in the mushy flesh. But my eyes cannot open, will not open. There is nothing but oblivion awaiting me and it is just calling for me.
"Elle! Someone jolts me and my eyes fly open. A figure swims and blurs before me. Him.
"Ruben," I mumble.
"Gods! Elle, wake up... please." A tear slips down his face and those reddened eyes search me with a desperate frenzy. "I just spoke to Aston. It's – it's your sister."
I sit bolt upright. My heart lurches into my throat. "Is she –" I rasp.
He opens and closes his mouth like the fish the Convex fishermen haul out of the river, and I have my answer. The room spins and sways as I fling myself out of the damp bed, and stagger to the door.
"What the fuck happened to you?" Ruben says with a snap.
I realise my clothes stick to me like tar. There's a strange violet stain on my forearm mixed with the crusty layer of blood. My hair sticks up in all directions like the mane of an enraged lion. I smooth it down. "I'm okay. Now take me to my sister."
He grasps my hand and tugs me out of the room. We run. Through the hallways and around corners, leaping down staircases until we fly out the foyer doors into the awaiting carriage. Ruben orders the horseman to make haste and the reigns crack before the horses yank us to speed. Before I know it, my stomach rises and sinks as the carriage ascends the slope of the bridges, and then canters down, and into the rickety streets of the Convex Sector. The stench of death seeps into the closed windows of the carriage. Ruben gags and covers his mouth and nose with his sleeve. My knee bounces up and down and a scream festers and churns deep within me.
Not my sister. Not Lyra.
I throw the carriage door open before it even comes to a halt outside my apartment building. Ruben calls after me as I launch myself into the familiar shadows of the tight-knit street, and stumble into the grimy apartment building that smells of mildew and rotten wood.
"Lyra," I wheeze, lunging up the staircase, each step feeling slower, the stair stretching away from me, like a bad dream. Suddenly, I am 5 years old, waddling after my big sister from the schoolyard, brown oil-slicked rain dripping down the back of my neck, her hair a flash of fire against the landscape of evening blue flecked with the ominous grey.
"Don't leave me behind, Lyra!" I said, sludgy water splashing up my legs as I hastened down the street.
Her giggle rang in my head, above the rain and the torment of my growling stomach. She grinned at me over her shoulder and stopped on the side of the road, outside the apothecary. "Never," she said, sticking out her hand. "I'll never leave you, Elizabeth."
The air is tainted with the foreboding essence of death as I stagger through the apartment building. Ruben has the good sense to come in quietly and move to the window, where he shoves the pane a few inches with a creak. Lyra's final puffs of fresh breeze. Aston hunches over my sister, who lays in the bed, her chest rising and falling ever so slowly, her scraggly red hair strewn around the sweat-soaked pillows, the shine, and the red faded and dull.
Aston dabs her sweaty forehead with a rag while I choke on my sobs, taking the gut-wrenching steps to her side. I take her hand and flinch at the iciness. Those once bright eyes now look up at me with a deeply entangled exhaustion, as if she's on the verge of tumbling into a bewitched sleep.
"You made it," she says, her voice hardly louder than a breath, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips. The effort. "You made it in time."
My entire body "Please don't leave me," I beg, voice cracking as I weep. Ruben flinches by the window. Something about his presence, his scent of citrus, sandalwood, and the sea, in that moment, keeps me grasping onto tendrils of sanity. But if it weren't for Aston... My best friend kneels beside me, tears streaming down his splotchy cheeks. He dips his chin but keeps his warm, calloused hand resting on my knee. I am here. Is he about to be the last person left here I love?
"I love you, Elle," Lyra rasps, her rattly breath pitter-patters onto my face. "Now, Elle. When I am gone, remember I am not truly gone. You'll see me around. I promised you I wouldn't leave you behind, didn't I?" Then her grip on my hand tightens as if swept by a final burst of strength. "You know who the enemy is. Bring the kingdom to its knees. Promise me, you'll kill the king."
Ruben stumbles back, smacking into the wall. But I ignore him.
A growl tumbles from my mouth and I furiously wipe the tears from my eyes, determined to capture one last clear image of my sister. To bottle her up forever. "I promise," I say, blinking as hot tears drip from the tip of my nose.
She smiles one last time. Lyra leans back into the pillow, and all the thoughts she's ever had, all the love she's ever given, and all the dreams she's ever pondered, are gone forever.
--
There were only three people who attended Lyra's wake. Besides myself. Ruben. Aston, of course. And the elderly lady in the apartment across the hall, who always had a soft spot for my sister.
For the past week, I have hardly been in my body. As I slump into the porcelain bathtub and prop my feet onto the faucet, the storm brews with vengeance, flashing its angry teeth at me, illuminating the walls for a split of a breath. The faucet squeaks as I turn it on and off with my big toe.
My eyes sting. My throat is raw and scratched from earlier days of screaming. I have not seen Ruben since. Another Tranq has trained with me the past week. A bubble of anger festers, albeit, drowned for the agony demanding to be felt.
I relish the burn on my skin as the heat seeps into my achy muscles, glad to feel something other than the rage of a hurricane. This time, I have no tears. My stomach churns and pain washes through me but I have run out of tears. I lean against the head of the tub, staring blankly out of the bathroom window. A finger of sunlight reaches out from the lip of the horizon, as the sun sinks, bruising the sky in splashes of summer orange. Warm and hopeful. I sit up, heart thundering. A message from Lyra, I am sure of it.
Her final words reverberate in my ear and a chill sweep across my arms draped over the sides of the tub. My hair stands on end. "Promise me, you'll kill the king."
I swallow, although my mouth is bitterly dry. With a yank of the plug, I rise, shaking, and step out of the tub, hugging a towel to my naked body, muttering curses beneath my bread like the lady from the apothecary, insane from malnutrition and life-long horrors. Red stains my vision. Seeing images of blood as dark as onyx spilling from the King's throat as he gurgles, face blanched.
I nod to myself. Ruben was right about the enemy all along. And the decision sinks into my gut, forged from the cold depths of shadow, from which I come from. For Lyra, for the kingdom, for the starving Convex, I will kill the king.
A smile creeps across my face.
I am not a girl. I am the shadows. And the king will soon know what it means to fear the dark.
A knock on the door drags me from my trance. I smear the drool from my lip, tasting metal. Larissa scurries into the room, eyes wide, hands clasped in front of her apron. The kindness in her pink cheeks, so akin to my sister's, my belly cramps.
She throws her arms around me. "Oh, Elle," she says, squeezing tight. "I am so sorry."
"I couldn't save her," I splutter, knees giving way and I slump into her. Fresh weeps rack my body. "I have blood on my hands, it's so dark." I raise my hands out of the tub, watching the water cascade from my skin. "Do you think I can be forgiven for all I've done?"
She holds my shoulders and frowns. "Yes, Elle. You never turned your back on your sister. She was lucky to have you. Your soul is not tainted by the darkness. I know it. I can feel it. You can be forgiven. I believe it."
But dread engulfs me. I hang my head; certain I do not believe her.
"Now, listen," she says, placing her finger under my chin and lifting it, forcing me to look at her. "The prince is on his way. Please be gentle with him."
I almost ask her why when footsteps echo through the hallway and Ruben pokes his head around the corner. The colour drains from his face, and he chews his lips. My muscles shake with pulsing fury as he prowls into the room, swathed in misery.
"You have a lot of nerve showing up here, prince," I snap, completely disregarding Larissa's warning. She clears her throat, hastening around the room, igniting the candles to chase away the evening creeping shadows. "Where were you?"
He purses his lips and stalks closer anyway. "I couldn't be with you, Elle."
"You hot-headed fool," I say, practically tasting the bitterness of the venom dripping from my tongue. "You left me to fend for myself in the days I needed you most. I had to self-soothe alone for the past week following Lyra's death. Did you not hear my screams?"
His vein pops from his reddening neck. "It wasn't my fault." His voice is lifeless. "The king dragged me into other duties. I had no other choice."
Heat flushes my face and I ball my fists, pacing the room back and forth. "What duties?"
He slumps his shoulders, inky darkness clouding his face. "I cannot tell you, Elle."
In the beats of heavy, tangible silence, Larissa leaves the room.
"My sister is dead, prince," I seethe, voice drowning in hatred and quivering in grief. "She is dead."
The word hits me with such sudden finality I fall to my knees. "I know, Elle."
"You promised, Ruben. You promised she would be safe if I stuck by you. You said I could trust you. Her death is on you."
He grabs his stomach and his face twists as his eyes brim with tears. "I tried to save her."
I throw my hands into the air. "That makes two of us." The ferocity in my tone and the fire in my eyes startles him.
"This is the king's fault, not mine. I sent her food for weeks, but someone poisoned it. He let her die."
The truth settles into my gut but I stifle a cold, dry laugh, refusing to think a man could be so utterly cruel. "You would think the prince who could wager my life could save another."
He poisoned her.
The king poisoned my sister.
"The king has the final say in everything, Elle. King Talin has your sister's blood on his hands." Ruben finally stops his pacing, and his body deflates, defeated once again by the relentlessness of his father's cowardice. "It is always King Talin."
Ruben's eyes burn into my own like a storm of darkness and death. For a moment, I see a flash of a little boy terrified by his father's booming voice, and his calloused, violent hand.
As the kingdom falls asleep, draped in the liquid night sky, I slip out of bed. I dress in linen pants and a tunic and pad out of my room. Sneaking into the kitchen, I tuck a small but sharp vegetable knife into my boot before navigating my way through the palace, clinging to the shadows like a vampire afraid of the sun. Past the ballroom, the foyer, and deeper into the palace maze. Eyes of previous kings in portraits leer at me as I pass. Eventually, I stumble across a wide marble staircase, polished white and flecked in deep purple, spiralling up into oblivion. The passage to King Talin's quarters, towering above the rest of the kingdom.
My lip curls into a sneer.
Tonight, I will kill the king. After all, revenge is a brother of grief.