I awoke to the smell of roast beef and stir-fry noodles.
My vision kept fading in and out as I tried to take a closer look at my surroundings. I was sitting at some kind of long table which was filled with different kinds of foods from every country. Fruits and vegetables provided colour to the rather dark and gloomy setting of what looked to be a dining hall. The candelabras were the only source of light, the flickering flames serving as a distraction for my distraught eyes.
A sharp sound guided my attention back to the table, sounding like silverware against glass. My eyes snapped towards the sound—I nearly puked from the motion—as I watched a figure form on the seat in front of me from a group of shadows.
Part of me was stupidly hoping for it to be Keenan. I was hoping that this was some kind of dream and I’d wake up in another motel room at the coast of goddamn nowhere. For a while, I did believe it was actually a dream. My head felt burnt out enough to be disconnected from reality, and I sort of felt like I was floating again.
But then I saw Irial’s eyes gaze at me, and the smile he held told me that this was far from a dream and I was nearer to death than I had hoped. Baked chicken and garden salad were the only things between me and insanity. I tried glancing around as much as I could to see what I could use as a weapon, but it was hard to do with just my eyes.
My body, for some reason, was out of my control.
“I was wondering how long you’d be asleep for,” Irial spoke in a low slur, his voice more prominent in my mind than the room. “Just a small loss of blood can send you in a state of comatose?”
“What did you do to me?” I managed to ask, but my voice didn’t sound like my own. It was dim, rusty, and practically incomprehensible. It scared me half to death, believe me.
Irial acted like there was nothing wrong with me, like we were just gathering for afternoon tea or something. He brought a wine glass to his lips, taking a light sip before saying, “Oh, I didn’t do anything, Jack. You should know that. You’re body’s breaking down, is all. Like a car without fuel.” He shifted. “Do you want some salad? I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I decided to get everything.”
I honestly felt like I was about to pass out soon. I think Irial knew it as well, but he made no show of it. He took a wooden fork and began to pile food on a black plate, setting it in front of me even though I couldn’t move.
Most would go mad if they were held hostage in some court, but I didn’t. I stared at the faerie prince squarely, pretending that he didn’t scare me as much as he did. I think I would’ve run the hell out of there if my legs had listened to me, but I couldn’t feel anything below my neck. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if my goddamn limbs were still attached.
Off in the distance, I heard the clash of metal against metal.
“What was that?” I asked.
“That should be my brother and our dear father. Just like you said, he came right after us. He was right on our tail during the whole journey here.” Irial laughed. “I’ve never seen him so infuriated; it was a sight worth seeing. He probably didn’t plan to meet our father so soon. We’ll tell who will win in a few moments. To be honest, I’ve got my money on Keenan. He’s a different kind of warrior when he’s angry, don’t you think? Soup?”
“He’s fighting with his dad?”
“Did you think he would let Keenan off the hook like that?”
“But it wasn’t his fault!” Jesus, it hurt like hell to raise my voice like that. “Weren’t you the one that took—”
Irial rolled his eyes and sighed, grabbing a bread roll. “Just how green can you be? Do you think he would care about who did it or not? Even if I did it, Keenan should’ve been there to stop me.” He paused, chewing. “You should really try this bread.”
I coughed like a chain smoker, blood splattering on the food in front of me. “Then why did you do it?”
“The game is never fun once the master explains his motives, Jack. You should know by now that I’m not like anything else in this world. A creature like me would get bored sometimes. Wouldn’t you?”
I coughed again, the blood dribbling down my chin mixed with spit. Irial ended up frowning, throwing the bread to the side. “You haven’t much time, do you? Ah, what a shame. You may die before he even gets up here.”
I didn’t say anything against the words he had spoken, since I knew it was true. I remember the way I sat there, bleeding through my mouth as more clashes of metal came from an unknown room. I had always fantasized about my second death, as morbid as that sounds.
I had always thought that it would be more dramatic than what was laid out before me; I would be off in some ocean somewhere, with the swish of the water drowning out my soft sobs. Keenan would be there as well, and I would say something memorable to him as I took my last breath. But instead, I was sitting in front of food I couldn’t eat, watching a maniac devour chicken and tell me how good it was.
I know that I’ve been cheated out of a lot of things in my life, but that, by far, had to be the worst.
I sighed as much as I could, looking down at the food on the table instead of Irial’s face. I started wondering about what Keenan was thinking of at that exact moment. Was he afraid? Was he sure that he would win? How much pain had been inflicted already?
Was he thinking about me?
“He probably is,” Irial said with a full mouth, reading my thoughts. “Such disgusting things you two are. Seriously.”
“Will you kill him?” I didn’t know why I asked that, but it was too late to take it back.
Irial paused with his chewing, swallowing it instead. He wiped his lips and leaned back in his seat, saying, “I would’ve killed him the moment he stepped through those front doors as a child. But like you, it seems as if he was built to last.” His eyes suddenly lit up, a deep smile creeping onto his lips. “Shall we make a toast? It seems like we have a winner.”
The double doors of the dining room slammed open by that point, revealing a figure that I couldn’t quite see yet. I heard spit fly from a mouth and onto the ground, the person coughing deeply. Then, there were footsteps, slow and steady. Chizk, chizk, chizk...
He was alive.
Keenan entered my peripheral vision, dressed in his usual garb. However, scratches and wounds littered his skin, oozing black blood from the openings. He acted like it didn’t hurt him, though. He only had his eyes on me.
He made a move to approach me, but stopped at the sound of Irial’s voice. “Not a step closer, Keenan. He’s hanging by a thread. One wrong move and I’ll snap it.”
A flash of worry crossed over his face, but soon disappeared as he looked over at his brother. With his eyes narrowed, he threw something onto the table.
It was a head, for Christ’s sake.
“I thought you would have wanted proof,” Keenan said, taking a seat two chairs away from Irial. “You felt it, right? His magic. It came to you, didn’t it?”
Irial smiled, staring at the frozen eyes of his father. “You’re right, it did. Would you like something to eat? I know you’re not fond of mortal food, but you should turn a blind eye for the sake of your poor Jack.”
“If you won’t give me the magic, then help me,” Keenan continued, ignoring my eyes. “You can have the throne; I don’t want it. Just help me with him.”
Irial let out a long, droning sigh. “You’ve done what I didn’t want to do with my own hands. Many will fear you for such a treacherous act. I suppose I owe you, don’t I?”
“Irial,” Keenan snapped, slamming his fist down on the table. “You can’t just let me have one thing to call my own? At least one, goddamn it!”
“I won't share my magic for such a trivial thing. He has played his part, so he means nothing to me now. Unless you want to kill me for it.” Irial glanced over at his brother. “You would take it from me, wouldn’t you? Just to have something to call your own. You would have everything if you had this magic.”
“Irial, please.”
Irial glanced over at me, grinning as he picked at the food on his plate. “I’m counting about three breaths left on him so far. He knows it too; it’s in his eyes. What will you do, Keenan?”
“For fuck’s sake!” He was standing up.
“Or shall I make it painless for you, human?” Irial flicked his wrist, dispelling dark shadows into the air. “It won’t hurt a bit.”
I wish I could play back those moments to you instead of just explaining it, since it’s kind of hard to remember. I was half dead during most of it, the short breaths I had been taking since waking up now turning panicked and desperate. I was about 95% sure that Irial had something to do with that—the asphyxiation. The sounds of Keenan’s protests and Irial’s laughter dimmed out as my vision hazed once more, going in and out like a dying light.
I blinked once. Keenan was on his feet, standing behind the chair his brother sat on. He was screaming something at him, but Irial wasn’t listening. He was looking at me.
Blinked twice. There were shadows in the air. Keenan’s shadows—I could tell the difference. He was done with screaming; now holding a look full of murderous intent. I wanted to tell him to stop and that he could find another way out. Find something else he could hold onto. But I didn’t think he would listen to me even if I knew how to use my voice.
Blinked thrice. The shadows had disappeared, now compressed into the shape of a dagger, the edge at Irial’s throat. He was still laughing for some reason, as if he didn’t believe Keenan would actually do it. My vision blurred for a moment, and by the time it came back again, there was another head on the table.
I didn’t get the chance to blink again.
***
You would think that it would get tiring to fall in and out of darkness over and over again. You would think that it would get tiring with the number of times I’ve fallen into death’s hands. Well I was tired of it. So pathetically tired, yet I kept running towards destruction.
I think I read about that sort of thing somewhere. You know, how people get turned on by adrenaline and dangerous situations. I wouldn’t go to that extent of being turned on by it, but more like an addiction.
I didn’t talk for a few weeks since I liked how this place was. I liked seeing how some of the patients threw tantrums. I liked being clocked in the face by that guy from room 227. I was always anxiously waiting for something drastic to happen. However, everything ended up going quiet, and I got bored. Maybe that’s why I decided to speak. I don’t know yet.
I didn’t realise any of these things back then. I had always viewed myself as some unfortunate soul, someone who was damned to lead a life of death and disappointment. I never wanted to acknowledge the fact that all of that made me feel alive, in a way. It was the only reason I stuck by Keenan so much.
So when I woke up, I sort of ended up sulking about the fact that I wasn’t dead. You would’ve gotten a kick out of that, trust me. I would’ve laughed at myself back then, but it wasn’t the right situation.
It took me a moment to realise that I was lying down in a bed, trapped in some room where the walls were dressed in black Victorian wallpaper. My next thought was to check if my limbs were attached and surely, they were. Moveable, too. My skin felt pretty cold, though, like the undead.
I knew something was wrong with me the moment I sat up. I flexed my fingers in front of my face, in and out, in and out. I cleared my throat, checked my voice, and even slapped myself for a good measure, but everything seemed alright.
That was the problem. Why was I alright?
There was a knock on the door in front of me. I didn’t even get the chance to ask who was it before Keenan came barging in, two men with black cloaks following close behind. I wasn’t sure if they were the same men who helped drag me there, but I didn’t bother asking.
Instead, I asked, “Am I still human?”
“For the most part.”
"How long have I been asleep?"
"A few months." He shifted.
“Months? What happened? What did you do?”
Keenan walked by my bedside and sat himself down, dismissing the cloaked figures. He always did like his privacy. “I told you that I wasn’t going to let you die this early, didn’t I? I told you that I was going to fix you.”
“How did you do it?” I asked again, flexing my fingers once more.
Keenan looked down at his own hands, frowning. “I’ve got my family’s strength in me, Jack. I’ve got all of it now. It’s mine.”
We took a moment of silence to ourselves, staring at our hands as if something would change if we dared to look away. I didn’t ask him about how the court would feel about him beheading the only family he had left. Hell, I didn’t even ask how he felt about it. Just like what he did with Cillian, I allowed those questions to burn out in the air.
“Why didn’t Irial fight back?” I finally said. “I was expecting him to fight at least.”
Keenan shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought he wanted the court but...” he sighed. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“And your father’s really gone too?”
“He put up a fight. A big one. I don’t know where I got the strength to do it, but I did.”
“So what does that mean for you?”
Keenan looked at me then. I could tell that he was a changed person. His eyes had lost that honey colour, replaced with ebony black and a tinge of violet. There seemed to be more feathers on top of his head, flowing down against skin that held a glow of thistle. His features had become sharper, free from its past boyish charm.
It was a face fit for a king.
“We’re going to have to split up, Jack. I came to tell you that.”
To be honest, I had the feeling he was going to say it.
“There’s a lot of mess for me to clean up over here. It’ll be too dangerous for you to stay. You understand what I’m telling you, don’t you?”
The last thing I wanted to do was understand a word he was spewing. I kept staring at him in that awkward silence; not in shock or dismay, though. Just blankly stared. I kept waiting for him to tell me that he was just kidding or something, and that all we’d been through wasn’t dead to him. I kept on thinking of what I could do to sway him. But his heart was structured from stone, and I was barely stirring up a breeze.
You know, I ended up telling him that it was okay. I told him that I would do what he said and leave him alone for a bit until he sorted everything out. Part of me wanted to test our boundaries; to see if it was worth the blood, sweat, tears, and worry. I thought that if he never came back for me, it would be alright because I got a taste of what it would be like to live without him.
But the thing is, I was telling blatant lies. I was lying to him, to myself, and to anything I ever believed in because this distance is poison, and it’s starting to fuck with my mind.
Keenan never saw through my lies, though. Even if he did, he didn’t say anything against it. He gave me a kiss, the kind that people give at bus stations or airports. He never looked at me while he did it. He never even looked at me when he stopped. It all just ended once he decided it was time, and I couldn’t even stop him when he got up and walked out the door.
Funny part is, during the time I sat watching him walk away from me, my mind filled with thoughts of what was happening outside of that room. In the middle of nowhere, the ashes of a house were blowing in the wind. Somewhere, there was a wife talking to her mute husband. At another place, there were three kids learning how to cope with death.
And there, in that moment, I was possibly losing the only thing I ever loved.
A/N: Will be edited thoroughly to get rid of all those blasted passive verbs x_x
This is the second last chapter (I know!) of the book, but not the end. It had just been updated earlier since I've got a lot to do with it tomorrow. I didn't want to blow up your feeds :P