Andromeda could practically taste Christopher MacRae's blood.
It was oozing from a nick on his left shoulder and was spotting his filthy, tattered tunic. Christopher may have mastered the art of fighting ambidextrously, but he wasn't using his left side effectively due to exertion, injury, or both. With his right arm, every chance he had, he cradled the rib cage below his left arm.
Canis Major, on the other hand, was not a disappointment. He had a superior weapon, the advantage of flight, and had spent his whole life training for this moment with the best instructors his inheritance could buy. He had yet to make a mistake, and even if he did, at this stage in the battle, her Gray Coats were practically fighting each other for the privilege to kill.
One by one, her soldiers joined the circle surrounding the duel, as if to close in on Christopher like a vise.
Andromeda's attention shifted to Joseph MacRae. He was fighting with strength and valor disproportionate to his size. With closer analysis, she noticed how the subtle flicks of his eyes could thwart her soldiers. He wasn't changing the course of the battle decisively in favor of the rebels, but he was getting on her nerves.
She stared at the white orb of the Imperial Scepter until it turned a blood red. After three waves of her hand over it, the orb emitted a thin strand of fire. She moved her hand quicker, and the strand lengthened. Then with the power from her scepter, Andromeda circled the strand into a massive ball of fire and let it float through the air and settle below the crystal chandelier.
Heads turned, jaws dropped, and rebel faces lit up with fear. Even the corpses seemed more lifelike as the fire flickered in their dead eyes.
When Joe glanced into the firelight, Andromeda caught and held his focus. She smiled at him to let him know that she could play mind games, too. Before she released the ball of fire into the crowd, she wanted to scorch his morale and watch his mental fortress crumble, piece by piece.
She moved the blaze closer to him, slowly, as both a threat and a tease. His eyes moved wildly, from her, to the fire, to the soldiers attacking him from every angle. The lapses in his concentration were putting holes in his invisible wall. The rebels who were once inside his protection were falling. As a final desperate effort, he had to use his body rather than his mind to shield his precious princess.
Joe wasn't a strong enough swordsman for even one of her soldiers, not by half, and his brother wasn't faring much better. The end was near for the MacRaes, and Andromeda threw back her head and laughed.
Then, the palace doors opened with a crash. Before Andromeda realized what was happening, the ball of fire spun out of her control. It hissed into the wall behind her. The life-size painting of her father burst into flames. She turned to watch the only accurate likeness of her one and only king peel and distort, dropping into ash.
The ferocious fire surged along the row of paintings and licked into the wall that supported them. Andromeda rotated back toward the fighting rebels and sought his face, gathering her wits and powers to use against him. Only the King of the Unworthy would dare such an assault.
Sure enough, Scott MacRae was charging toward the Grand Staircase with a clan of jungle barbarians at his side. He stopped next to Joseph MacRae, and together they diverted her foulest curses, her most treacherous hexes, her most heinous spells.
And when the Imperial Scepter flew from her hands and shattered against what was left of the wall, she retreated into smoke and shadow.
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For the first time, Chris could sense his opponent's fear. Rather than fight fairly, as he had done before, Canis Major kept lifting into the air, higher and more often. Time and again he plunged toward Chris with deadly momentum, his sword prepped to kill.
Each time, at the penultimate moment, Chris spun, dived, rolled, or jumped out of the way, making sure he never set a pattern. While Canis was in flight, Chris had a chance to take a breath and wipe the sweat and blood from his brow before it trickled into his eyes. And then he took his ready stance and waited for his enemy's next move.
Chris realized that the tactics he knew, meant for a fight in which his opponent stayed on the ground, would not be enough to defeat the Prince of Pyxis. Chris would have to outsmart him. Or tire him out. It wouldn't be an easy feat, but somehow, Chris had to use his winglessness to his advantage.
As usual, Canis was high out of reach and kept Chris guessing by hovering, faking a descent, and then whizzing to a new location. By now, Chris had learned to fake him out as well. If Chris appeared distracted—glancing at other fights nearby, rubbing a wound, adjusting his grip, drying his palms on his shirt—Canis swooped in on him.
Unfortunately, Chris didn't have to pretend to be distracted. A barrel-chested Gray Coat, a fairy-world colossus, tried to engage Chris in battle with a spiked war flail. He had already taken three Kāne arrows to the chest, but he didn't seem to be showing any sign of weakness.
The flail swung toward Chris's head at the same time Canis was dropping in from behind. Rather than duck underneath the flail and roll forward, Chris turned and leaped into a horizontal dive underneath Canis's feet. He twisted in midair to get behind him and used both of his swords to slice across Canis's open wings.
Chris landed hard on his backside. And while Canis floundered back into the air, a piece of his wing broke off. Canis spiraled at first, and then plummeted fast when his other wing snapped off.
This time Chris rolled toward his descent. It was a stretch. It was a reach. He dropped one weapon and his hands met around the hilt of his father's sword. With all his might, he squeezed and held the blade upright.
Canis's back landed on its tip, right by his heart. Chris shut his eyes on impact. He couldn't see the blood, but he felt its hot spray and the ooze of it on his hands.
Chris's eyes startled open when something else crashed beside him. A dozen or so arrows later, the Gray Coat with the war flail had finally fallen, too.
Chris rose to a crouch and looked upon the fallen heir to the Pyxian throne. Along with his blood, his size, strength, and ferocity seemed to drain as well. What remained was deathly pale and childlike. He has his sister's eyes, Chris thought while he closed Canis's eyelids.
Chris slowly pulled his sword free. Nearly ready to collapse himself, he gazed at the ongoing battle around him. Lost in the vision of swords swinging, arrows flying, and blood splattering, a distant, high-pitched scream of warning barely pierced Chris's fading awareness.
An embrace around his shoulders nearly knocked him from his crouch. A flash of silver pierced the air just above his head and was then obscured by a wave of long dark hair.
Cassie. He turned to hold the fairy princess. The blade of a dagger was jutting out of her left shoulder. Almost immediately, she collapsed in his unprepared hands.
Chris secured his sword in his belt as best he could and rose to standing with Cassie's body draped over his arms. Trying to answer the questions of how and why, he lifted his head toward the balcony.
Framed by the burning portraits of Pyxian monarchs long dead, Andromeda was watching him, her regard as smug, spiteful, and satisfied as his was shocked and horrified. Hatred was the only conviction they shared.
Then, in a blinding burst of white light, Andromeda vanished. And all at once, her soldiers, what was left of them, stood down, dropped their weapons, and disappeared as well. So did every jewel on display. Everything else—her enemies and the bodies of the dead or fatally wounded—were deserted in the hell she unleashed . . . and abandoned.
Chris knew there was no time to waste in bewilderment. "Cassie. C'mon. Open your eyes!" he pleaded as he elevated her head with his elbow.
Her eyes lolled open in response to his voice, but then they drooped shut. They didn't reopen. Her head fell back and her body went limp.
"Chris!"
He whirled toward his father's call.
"Bring her up these stairs," Scott said, bobbing his nose toward the second floor. Joe came up beside him. "Bear right on the landing and turn left at the top. Bedchambers should start toward the end of the hall. I'll see if I can find a doctor."
Chris nodded and charged up the stairs with Joe close behind. In the long hall, Joe ran ahead. The first few doors he checked were locked. By the third try, Joe broke the lock with his mind and led the way inside.
With the torch from the hall, Joe lit every candle in the room, four total, and brought them to the circular table beside the four-poster bed.
Chris followed him there.
As Joe tried to maneuver Cassie's cloak out of the way, Andromeda's dagger fell out of her shoulder and clattered to the stone floor. The blood gushed more vigorously in its absence.
"That's not good," Joe said, "but at least we can get a better look."
Joe finished removing Cassie's cloak and Chris eased her onto the bed. They propped her up at an angle with pillows.
From the floor, Joe retrieved the dagger and used it to slice open her saturated sleeve. Without hesitation, he moved to the pile of extra sheets at the foot of the bed and began to shred them into strips.
Meanwhile, Chris was staring down at his shaking hands. They were covered in her blood—and her brother's. He felt dizzy as he tried to wipe the blood away on his shirt. To his horror, a sticky red residue remained.
"Chris, are you going to help me, or what?"
There was a long pause before Joe's question registered in his mind. "What?" He let his hands fall to his sides but kept them flexed open and stiff in an unnatural position. "Oh . . . what do you . . . need me to do?"
"Are you all right?"
"I'm . . . fine."
Joe pulled over a chair to the side of the bed. "First off, sit down. You look like you're about to pass out."
Chris obeyed without question. While he caught his breath and attempted to steady his head and stomach, he watched Joe evaluate Cassie's wound. Joe dabbed at it and watched the blood disappear and reappear. His expression remained, for the most part, calm and expressionless, but his eyes and lips twitched from time to time with grim uncertainty.
He pressed the shredded sheets against the entry wound on the back of her shoulder and handed a bundle to Chris so he would do the same on the front.
"I don't think it's as bad as it looks," Joe said. "See here?" He lifted the cloth for a second and traced the half-circle gash with his index finger. "The dagger didn't fall out, it tore out. That sounds bad, I know, but it means the wound is fairly external. It missed the artery as far as I can tell."
"Are you sure? Then why does she look so . . . terrible? And why did she go unconscious so fast?" Chris paused and listened to Cassie's quick, shallow breaths and put his knuckles to her cheek as well. Just as he suspected, she was burning up.
Joe checked her pulse, and put his hand to her forehead, and his eyes widened. "She has a fever. And she's in shock. It seems a little soon to be caused by the bleeding, though."
"Then what else could be wrong?"
"I don't know, Chris."
Chris sighed and tucked Cassie's hair behind her ear. "You're going to be all right, Cass. The doctor will be here soon. Hang in there."
As his hand pulled away, his wrist rubbed against the edge of her ripped and soiled sleeve. It rolled open and revealed a bloodstain on her undergarments—black and ominous compared to the bloody messes everywhere else. A scab was peeking out and it was surrounded by yellowing skin.
Chris shot to his feet to get a better look. "Where's that dagger?" He leaned his finger on the bloodstain. He still couldn't see the bottom of the wound on her chest.
When Joe handed him the beautiful killer—silver, hand-crafted, bejeweled, and razor sharp—Chris sliced open the cloth. He also had to tear down the seam of her dress below her arm to see the rest of the wound. The cut went from the top of her navel to her sternum. It was deep and festering.
As he tossed the dagger to the bedside table, Chris recalled the day before—and the blood on Cassie's dress—with perfect clarity. "What happened to her?"
He stared at Joe, demanding as ever, and Joe fussed with the bloody rags, failing to meet his eye. "I . . . don't really know."
"You said she fell," Chris asserted.
"She did!" he replied quickly, glancing up. "I mean, I thought she did."
"What'd she fall on, someone's knife?"
"I didn't see what happened."
Chris was prepared to press on like an interrogator trying to force a confession out of a suspect. "You said you saw her fall. I thought you were with her!"
"I was, but we got separated."
"So who was with her?"
Chris took inventory of the other marks on her body. The light was poor and blood was smeared all over her. Still, he spotted a bruise on her cheekbone and thin scratches on her neck. He looked up and wondered why Joe wasn't answering.
His brother's uncharacteristic silence could only mean one thing. "You know something else!" Chris accused.
And then Chris noticed a scratch of blood on Cassie's left knee under the hem of her skirt. He lifted the dress with a shaky hand. The deep yellowing slash that started by her knee went farther up her left thigh than he would permit himself to see.
Chris dropped the dress and had to sit back down. He closed his unfocused eyes and shook his head in disbelief, in denial, in absolute horror, in rage. "Joe, if you knew something happened to her and you didn't tell me, I swear to God, I'll—"
"You'll what? Try to strangle me too?" Joe mouthed off defensively.
His posture went rigid as if he were expecting an angry outburst in retaliation. But Chris's head fell into his hands and his whole body shook, not with rage but despair. He had no right to judge or make threats on Cassie's behalf after the mistake he had made.
Soon Joe's fists clenched and unclenched. Then he sighed and started again. "I'm sorry, Chris. That was out of line. I screwed up. I do that too sometimes. Is that what you want to hear?"
"No. Just the truth. All of it."
"All right. I'll tell you." Joe covered Cassie with a sheet and blanket, and pulled another chair over to the opposite side of the bed. He sat and leaned his elbows on his knees. His expression turned honest and open. "So we ran, like you said. I tried to keep up with her, but we lost each other, and I was surrounded soon after that. I put up a fight as best I could without magic, saving it as the last card to play. I felt better about that decision knowing that Cassie got away. Not long after I was recaptured, this beast of a fairy—seriously, he was huge—dropped down with her. Then he said something along the lines of 'Good thing your brother was there to interrupt, or else I would have—'"
"And you let that butcher get away with that?"
Chris burst out of his chair, bottled up his breath, and trudged around the room aimlessly with a heavy step.
"I thought he was just trying to get a rise out of me," Joe continued. "And I admit I was also thrown off when I first found out that Cassie had a brother. Then I lied to you because I didn't want you to get yourself killed. Cassie obviously didn't want you to know either, probably for the same reason."
"Did you catch his name?" Chris grilled further.
"Crux Chevalier. He's the general, or soon to be."
"Did you see him here today?"
"No. I'm guessing he and some of the others are still in Hawaii," Joe answered, "looking for our father."
There were many long minutes of silence. Chris continued to pace around the room while Joe squirmed in his chair.
"If you're going to kick the crap out of me, let's just get it over with," Joe suddenly said. "The anticipation is worse than anything else. Well, maybe that's not true."
"I'm not gonna hurt you!" Chris shot back. "I just wish you had told me. One of the reasons I lunged at her was because she was acting so strange. That, on top of Dad's warning she might be dangerous. I . . . can't believe I did that to her. Especially after. . ." He couldn't say anything more. He covered his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose hard with all of his fingertips.
"Look, Chris, if it's any consolation, Cassie was trying to be deceptive. If she hadn't been convincing, if you never brought out her brother's protective side, we might all still be rotting in that cell . . . or dead."
Chris shrugged, dropped his hands from his face, and returned to the chair next to Cassie's bed. He put pressure on her shoulder wound again, and with his free hand, he made sure her chest wound was hidden beneath the blanket. It was too painful to look at.
He grabbed a clean cloth and started wiping the excess blood off her arm and neck. But then, as if his touch were the trigger, she started convulsing and foaming at the mouth.
Chris retracted his hand and stumbled out of his chair. He nearly tripped over it as he backed away. "What the hell is wrong with her?"
"I don't know!" Joe jumped forward to stabilize her.
After the agonizingly long fit, Cassie went still. Her eyes were open and directed at the ceiling, but she was clearly not awake.
Chris fell to his knees beside her bed and took her hand in his. "Breathe, Cassie! Don't give up! Do you hear me?"
Joe reached for her neck. "She has no pulse."
"What?" Chris cried out.
While Joe started chest compressions and rescue breaths, Chris squeezed her hand and refused to breathe unless she did. Joe pressed and breathed for her . . . pressed and breathed . . . pressed and breathed.
Finally, she gasped and started panting on her own again, and both Chris and Joe gasped for air, too.
Joe collapsed back down in his chair. This time, he closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, a gesture they apparently shared in times of crisis.
And even though Joe had acted with competence ever since they'd brought Cassie into the room, Chris needed to lash out at someone. "Don't you think it would be helpful if you actually finished medical school, you coward?"
When Joe's hands dropped from his face, his expression was livid. "What difference would it make? Does this look like a hospital? Do we have any medicine or supplies other than bedsheets, a dagger, and our bare hands? And don't call me a coward because you feel guilty."
Their staring standoff ended only when their father came into the room with a doctor. The miraculous arrival of Scott MacRae was the reason they were still alive, but Chris couldn't make himself feel grateful. The anger previously directed at Joe found a new scapegoat.
"How's she doing?" Scott asked softly. He glanced at Chris first, realized his error, and looked to Joe instead.
"She's lost a lot of blood," Joe replied, "I thought we got that under control, though. She has an infection in a previous injury and the fever is likely from that. But for some reason she was convulsing and foaming at the mouth, and then her heart stopped. It seems like there's something else wrong with her."
"Let me see the blade," Scott muttered knowingly.
Joe gave him a quizzical look and then walked to the bedside table where Chris had tossed Andromeda's dagger.
Just as he was about to grab it, Scott turned vivid with alarm. "Don't touch it with your hand!"
Joe picked it up with a sheet piece and handed the wrapped dagger over. Scott let it dangle from his tentative grip.
The doctor lowered his spectacles and squinted. Joe leaned in. Chris glanced at it from a more distant location. He was more concerned with his father's expression. Scott's faced turned grim as he pointed out a spot of faint yellow.
"What? What is it?" Joe looked to him and asked.
"My guess, poison."
The doctor set his hand on Joe's shoulder. "I'll do everything I can for her, but we need to prepare ourselves for the worst."
Joe nodded solemnly as if accepting the inevitable without anger or the need to assign blame.
Chris, however, wasn't nearly as forgiving. "You," he whispered, eyes fixed on his father.
There was no sympathy in Scott's face, only impatience and irritation.
His arrogance. His apparent denial of any culpability made Chris even angrier.
"You . . . you put doubt in my mind. And I turned on her. Now look at her!" Chris gestured to Cassie's pale, incapacitated form with his bloody palms up.
Scott lifted his hands—completely clean—in a futile effort to bring peace where there wasn't any and never would be. "Chris, I know how upset you must be."
"You're wrong. Wrong again! You couldn't possibly know what this is like. You didn't have to watch your wife die. I had to in place of you. You didn't have your wife's throat slit while you were drugged and helpless. That was me. And now, the only one who would understand what I'm going through is practically dead, too. If that isn't enough, I should be the one lying there. I'm the one who deserves to be dead. I dare you to guess how that feels!"
Everyone looked down and kept silent as Chris reached his breaking point. And how exactly would he shatter? In his fragile state, he was a danger to himself and to everyone around him. But no one could come up with any consoling words to relieve his anguish.
Scott's eyes finally filled with remorse and sorrow. "Chris, why don't you get some air? Your anger can't possibly improve this situation."
"Air? Oh, right. I should just walk away—because that's what you would do."
Chris couldn't hold back the tears any longer. He didn't even bother to wipe them away as they fell.
Then all eyes shot to Cassie, who started convulsing again. While Joe and the doctor sprang to her aid, Chris backed all the way to the wall and stood there, stunned and paralyzed.
Someone grasped his arm—his father—and Chris was moving, somewhere, toward the door. But his leaden feet couldn't hold him upright. He stumbled repeatedly, and Scott supported his weight when Chris failed to support himself.
In the hall outside, Scott eased Chris into a sitting position against the wall. Then he returned to the room, closing the door behind him.
Chris set his head against the wall and closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to watch Cassie suffer, but listening to every sound that came from her room was almost as horrendous as witnessing her bleed and convulse. Clanging, rustling, voices, footsteps, the occasional pained whimper. But soon everything went still and silent. He could hear only his own heartbeat and each shaky breath.
Each second dragged on like an hour, each minute like an eternity. At last, Scott stepped outside. He quietly closed the door and leaned against the opposite wall.
"I'm sorry, Chris. It doesn't look good. The bleeding has finally stopped, but . . . whatever was on that blade—"
"Well, she's hanging on. She's made it this far, right? Maybe—"
"Chris. . ." There was a long pause. "She's probably not going to make it much longer. You might want to . . . say good-bye."
"You're wrong. She's . . . she's . . . a fighter."
"The doctor said there is nothing more he can do for her. Her body is shutting down."
Chris looked off into space. His heart began to pound like a war drum. But he did not cry; the rage inside him held the tears hostage this time. He was nothing more than a ticking bomb. Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . One more word and . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .
"Chris. . . ?"
It was as if he burst into billions of tiny particles. "That's not good enough! If he can't do anything for her, find someone who can!"
Chris pushed himself off the ground. Scott followed him and reached for his shoulder. Chris swatted it off and blazed through the hall as if the explosion lit him on fire. And like fire colliding with gunpowder, he came across a decorative suit of armor bearing the Pyxis coat of arms—the blue and red shield with that repulsive star!
It was taller than he was, wider too, but Chris never questioned his own strength. He lifted the armor off the ground and jogged with it to the Grand Staircase. He flung it over the railing and watched it writhe through the air like a descending body. It hit with a crash that no one left in the castle could miss or misinterpret. The metal shards ricocheted in every direction.
Scott joined his side and they both watched as the fragmented pieces of armor found their final resting places among the blood, bodies, and debris that cluttered the Hall of Crystal.
Chris took one last conscious glance at the destruction below and then turned away. He had seen enough. And his father didn't stop him as he walked into a corridor that held no light.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Garbage. #1 Crush.
~
"I will burn for you
Feel pain for you
I will twist the knife and bleed my aching heart
And tear it apart. . ."