Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 41

Mariana

The fabric still waves in the wind. The sight clear in dawn’s first light emboldens me. Mom would change it to the black cloth if something were amiss.

There are five today—too many for the three whipping posts in the center of the camp. They stand stock still, awaiting their torture, the red-head’s rebellion from yesterday fresh in our minds.

Not everyone knows what’s about to happen. I couldn’t risk letting word reach the ears of the Crows.

We all gather, weary from the day, dirt and debris a crust on our skin. The Crows line the top of the wall, waiting for their favorite part of the day, watching the human guards shove us around, pulling the five people to the posts in the center of the space.

I cannot wait to make it more exciting for them.

They don’t get a chance to tie a single slave to the post before I step into the center.

It must be a sight; some weak, thin girl, barefoot and garbed in rags, stepping up, shoulders back, to a group of full-grown men, armed to the teeth. I almost wish I could view it from the outside. I should feel scared, but excitement thrums in my veins. I’ve waited for this moment.

I fear no man.

“Get back in line,” one of them grunts.

I don’t stop.

I do not falter.

The one I go for barely reacts quick enough to draw his broadsword.

But he has to blindly swing it as I gouge his eyes out with my fingers.

It’s euphoric—the vengeance I’ve dreamed of these past weeks.

His swinging forces his comrades to step back from helping him. They step back into my two allies, Emris and Zarah, who divest them of their daggers and slit their throats.

Those two are the only ones with prior training.

Crows fly their roosts, racing to the rescue of their fellow monsters, racing down stairs and fleeing their posts.

As I assumed they would.

I engage with a guard that approaches me, slipping nimbly past his guard, nicking one of his daggers, and stabbing it straight between his helm and shoulder braces, in the side of the neck. It goes in easy there, popping through pipes and tubes in the neck.

The fray grows, my other few comrades jumping in, grappling and slaying. Exacting vengeance we’ve all dreamed of. And as more join us, the uninformed slaves stop fearing retaliation. They stop thinking about what will happen afterwards, they only see the tides and how they shift before their very eyes. Everyone craves justice. It’s amazing how quickly humans tear one another to pieces under the right circumstances.

And as the Crows flood the space behind the troughs, I know we need to move.

“The gate!” I shout at the top of my lungs, snatching a longsword from the corpse of a fallen soldier. “To the gate!”

The troughs are toppled, thanks to Dierdre, blocking the Crows in, stalling them for a few seconds.

I stay back, facing the Crows as they make their way through the obstacles, knowing what the soon-to-be-free slaves will find at the gate: weapons pulled from supply carts that run to the capitol. There are far more slaves than there are Crows, guards, and slavers, and therefore blades.

I remember how strong these bastards are, but I also remember killing them. I’m just hoping they don’t have other tricks up their sleeves. That the presence of human guards and slavers will keep them from showing themselves as the monsters that they are.

As my sword clashes with the first one, I think of days of heaving stone, fed on scraps. My arms tremble and falter, though I’m quick enough to feint and evade. That will only last for so long; they’ll learn my moves.

Sure enough, the next time I dodge I’m met with another blade, almost falling to it.

I leap onto a trough, not daring to look to my right to see if the gates have opened yet—if my newly armed comrades are on their way to help. My new leverage allows me to land a blow, slicing through sinew and abdominal muscles, though not quite deep enough to eviscerate. Shame.

I fall to the other side of the trough, barely landing on my two feet. The only thing keeping me in this fight is years of training, skills pounded into my being with sweat and pain.

The divide between the Crow and me allows me a chance to glimpse my allies, and what I see robs me of breath .

The gate is still closed.

And they are crowded against it, pinned there between it and a group of Crows. I fear I’ll never forget the look on their faces; gut-wrenching terror, and hopelessness. Disappointment—both in me and themselves, for believing. And in some, accusation—I started this. I led them to this doom.

The Crow leaps over the trough with inhuman grace and kicks out, straight in the knee. My leg buckles.

I try to recover, I really do.

But he is so damned quick for a huge man. So strong as he leaps on my fallen form, quickly pinning my hands to the rocky ground.

He wraps one meaty fist around my throat and squeezes.

He crushes and crushes me, the look on his face full of malice.

I gasp and thrash and beg for breath.

I try to scream for help, to no avail.

I plead with the sky and its giant black spots that now hang there, growing like clouds of doom.

But nothing I do matters.

Perhaps it never did.

The light pierces through my head like a blade, sharp and bright. The sunniest of days, but somehow also the darkest.

My hands are bound together, hanging from the wooden pole I lean my forehead against.

Thoughts of survival and betrayal begin to whirl as I gasp in a breath, wondering how I got here.

What happened?

Why did nobody come?

I’m still blinded, scrambling to understand what happened .

Hot air blows against the bare skin at my back. The skin there is hot and tight, as if it has been sitting under glaring sun for hours, burning. My smock has been split open at the back; I feel it hanging off my shoulders.

My eyes adjust to the bright white light. And what I see makes me want to die.

Deirdre, Zarah, Emris, all of the slaves I had worked with kneel in front of me, in chains.

Most are crying silently, which is the most striking, as I had thought we had all run out of tears.

How did my plan fail?

Why would they abandon me?

My mother would never have abandoned me while there was breath in her lungs.

Fear and betrayal mingle so bitterly. Was my group discovered up in the mountains? What could have befallen them while I was here? And without them, I am but another slave. Nothing more than another nameless face, another fruitless fight, another bland dying of the light.

My allies look at me in terror, their eyes flickering to something behind me.

“I must say, your timing is impeccable,” a cool voice says over the tense silence. “I suppose I ought to thank you for that. Things around here are so dull most of the time.”

A few deep chuckles sound behind me, all taunting, all deep and male.

Looking over my shoulder I see him—the most beautiful man I have ever seen.

A crown rests on his pale brow. It gives him away, even more than how pretty he is.

The king.

His blue eyes—chips of ice—pierce through me as sure as the sunlight. They entrance me. His hair, a rich brown, curls softly around his temples. He is garbed in the finest regalia, all emerald green and black, aside from his shirt: crisp, white, and billowing in the breeze, surely fitting the blazing heat.

This man ruined all of us.

This man rained terror down on my home.

This man is the reason my father is dead.

The reason I’m here.

“How heroic.” He quirks a brow, staring so far into me, like he is rifling around in my mind. “You fought so well, I thought you would at least be able to speak.”

His casual tone makes me long for things. Long for my blade through his chest. Long to crack open his rib cage, flaying him open for all to see the dead rotting inside of him. Long for the feel of his heart in my bare hands.

He must see it, because he cracks a smile.

His gaunt undertones… malice wafting off him in waves—something about him screams inhuman. And what a bitter humor it is that fills me.

Of course.

Of course he’s not.

Who else would have let this happen?

I can’t even crack a smile at the obviousness of it all.

I still haven’t dropped eye contact, nor responded.

He walks up to where I’m bound to the whipping post, settling down on his haunches.

“Nothing to say? Let me guess. You’re thinking that you’ll be the death of me. Hoping, perhaps.” He’s all seriousness, eyes flickering between the two of mine. He’s even more sickeningly beautiful up close, eyes starry, his features both masculine and delicate.

“I would never say something so cliché.” The words come out rasping before I can stop them.

He laughs, cold but rich, a goddamn dimple flashing.

“Very well then. I can respect that.” He stands back to his impressive height, eyes flickering to the rest of the slaves. The men behind him have eager glints in their eyes.

I take stock of them as the king moves amongst them, consulting them quietly. I don’t recognize any of them from my time in the camp.

One stands with feet spread, observing with obvious disdain. Painted in brutality, powerfully built, with long dark hair braided down his back, he is larger than his companions, scarred and massive. The others flicker fearful glances at him. Another general, I assume.

Another gaunt man stands at his side, dwarfed by the former, though his eyes are far more assessing, more far-seeing. He wears a pendant around his neck, a symbol of the sun. He holds with him parchment bound in a book, charcoal for writing strapped to it. Perhaps an adviser. A scribe. Kings need such things. Though what he could be recording of this event, I haven’t a clue. I cannot imagine it will ever make the official records.

The savage one addresses the king firmly, impatiently, without the usual formal niceties, “Kill her.”

The statement, so bold, commanding, spoken to the king, sends silence rippling through the crowd.

The Pretty King shows nothing to indicate this enrages him.

His icy blue eyes cut to me for a moment before responding, “No. I don’t think she deserves death.”

The scarred Crow looks as if his inferior had just defied him.

“Death would be too quick,” the king says before turning to address us all. “I am a tolerant man. I allow my people to live their lives how they wish. I allow them to be wealthy or be poor. I allow them to have as many children as they wish. Allow them to worship whatever god sways them. The same could not be said for every place in this realm. I allow you to work here, to work for what is fair, as opposed to seeing you hang from the gallows.” He sounds like a chastising father. “What a waste of life that would be.” He looks like he means it. “But I do not tolerate treason. I cannot. To betray your fellow countrymen—to betray those that would keep the peace—I cannot let that go unpunished.”

The hypocrisy and delusion of his speech almost makes me laugh.

Almost.

I stare at him, daring him to look at me. Look at me as he condemns me.

He does.

Unflinchingly.

“And so, as instigator to this whole incident, I must punish you. But I will have mercy on the rest of you.” He still stares at me as he addresses the rest of them, daring me to drop my own eyes. “And so you shall bear the punishment of all.”

I do not waver.

I do not let him see the tremble of my limbs. Relief and fear wars for ownership of them.

He nods to a Crow, one that holds the whip.

I must speak my piece. I want it known.

“One day, when you die a young death, you will see me,” I whisper. “When you breathe your last breath, you will know it was me, and what I worked for, that did it. I hope you choke on it.” I don’t look away from him as I say it over the gleeful muttering of his men.

I settle in, squaring my shoulders, my eyes not leaving his .

He looks surprised—at least there’s that.

“That is quite the vow,” he says, softly, settling in beside his advisors, maintaining eye contact.

A guard approaches in the edges of my view, a whip in hand.

Neither of us speaks as the lash first comes down on my bare back, slicing through skin.

I don’t make a noise, even as my body screams.

My skin, then my muscle, splitting with every lash.

And I burn and burn.

Like being thrown into flames, forced to stay still as they consume you.

I do not falter.

My vision wavers with every strike.

I hear the whip, in the back of my mind, underneath everything else. How it whooshes through the air before cracking against wet skin.

I don’t know, after a time, if I make any sounds. I must. But my eyes never waver. Not for a second. They just hold his, as his hold mine.

I can feel my knees, sitting in puddles of my own blood.

I don’t look down at it. I keep looking at those starry, soulless eyes.

But before my vision goes black, I swear I see him—in his inhale.

The tiniest catch in his breath.

Only then do I close my eyes.

Only then do I fall, and fall, and fall .

And know no more.