Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 44

“Are we sure there’s no place to bring him? Have you no healers here?” Erron grunts as he finishes positioning the drunkard down a side alleyway between two residences.

The white linen billows in the twilight breeze, hiding the man from view of the street and the wraiths that would prey upon him.

It took us only three days to reach Raith from the rift all the way on the other side of Suri. It took me weeks on foot.

“You will be hard-pressed to find someone to take him in. Our healers don’t bother with this sort of thing. This way he will be out of sight until he can sober up enough to awaken and stumble home,” I say, aware suddenly of how terrible it all sounds.

Summer rains pour down on our three hooded figures, the passed-out man before us sleeping through the onslaught. The streets are near-empty at this time of evening, the Crows heavily enforcing curfew since I escaped. The once bustling city life is now a skeleton of its former vibrancy. The music wasn’t playing on the king’s road this afternoon as we took the madame’s passage back into Raith. The stands at the market were thin of supplies. The carts near-empty and the people ravenous, enraged when the stands containing their only food source ran out. The children no longer play in the streets, the few that I saw were begging for food or coins that I didn’t have.

The bodies of the starved or hanged were piled near the wall. I can still smell them.

After dropping us off under the cover of the mists that roll off the sea, the dragons had flown above the clouds and out to rocky outcroppings along the gulf coast. They are aware of the many merchant ships traveling through the gulf that may see them if they aren’t careful, positioned amongst the rocks.

This afternoon, both Fae had walked stoically behind me as I led them through the entrance that I had fled through weeks ago. The madame’s man had stood post, giving us a solemn nod before allowing us passage. She will soon be notified of our arrival, I’m sure. Neither Gwen nor Erron had uttered a word since we entered Raith, though I saw a tear roll down Gwen’s cheek when we passed the piles near the wall.

We had traversed the outer edge of Raith until we saw this man, splayed out in the street. After so much death, it felt wrong to leave him to the mercy of the Crows in the night, even if his own carelessness was the cause of it.

“This whole place is wrong,” Gwen grits out, voice trembling. Her eyes are scanning the rooftops.

Erron agrees with a nod, staring at the man. “What is there left to save?”

The question churns my stomach. I had not thought that saving these people was a thought in his mind. It was in mine, thought it felt too far-off to dwell on .

I’m not sure what it would look like; to save these people who have endured such things. When a wound festers, you cut it clean from the body. When it spreads too far, there is no amount of culling that can save the doomed. To try to save it is to prolong the suffering. What use is this effort when he will probably end in the same place tomorrow? What use is a fight against evil when evil already lives embedded in our very being?

“We don’t have time to ask such questions. I doubt we will find any answers,” I say, addressing Erron.

Erron looks at me, rage boiling in his eyes. It is the blood of the mountain as it falls into the sea. I fear this day in Raith may have forever tainted his view of humanity. I fear that, after today, he will think the same of humans as the dragons do.

“Let us go. Let us do what we can,” I say softly.

What is there to do but what must be done?

It is the smallest thing, saving five people in a world where the bodies are piling up. It is standing up when you want to let the dust bury you. It is going to do your work when you can’t stand for people to look at you. It is doing what you can, even if you only do it with the tiniest shred of hope. The kind of hope that feels like none. The kind that you only know exists because, if it didn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten up at all.

Erron nods, like he hears the weight of my words.

Gwen follows me first when I lead us down the last street. I hear Erron follow a moment later.

I open the manhole and leap down. Gwen jumps in after me and lands in a stream of sewage. Her shriek of rage is barely muffled by her clamped lips.

“I should have warned you about that,” I say .

Getting out of the castle from the tunnels was one thing. Searching through the maze of tunnels that run underneath the entire city, hoping to find one specific sect of them, is another. The city itself is built on a slight hill, with the castle sitting regally at the crest of it. The tunnels utilize this to allow the waste to flow downward, out to the sea. I figure if we move against the softly flowing current, we are headed in the right direction.

Wrong.

Many pathways dead-end in the upper-class sect. The clatter of hoof-steps and the glow of oil-lamps lighting the streets above establish that we are below a luxurious area.

A luxurious area, but not the palace.

With every path blocked, my anxiety grows. Fionn is so close, and once we have him, we can find the Fianna. His position, imprisoned and probably subjected to torture, makes him the first task. Every second counts.

Every second counts and with every dead-end there are minutes wasted. I recall my fingers, shattering under Gyddeon’s blade pommel. They were healed when I awoke in Tech Duinn.

I trudge faster through the water, my breaths coming faster.

I was healed while he was stuck here, at the mercy of Gyddeon, who knows nothing of it.

Eventually, I lead us to a path obstructed by iron bars.

“This must be the way. It would be foolish to allow such a way directly into every part of the castle. It makes sense they would block it off.” Erron brushes past me as he speaks, grasping onto the bars with both hands, and attempting to pull them apart.

“How did you get past them on your way out?” Gwen questions behind my back .

“They didn’t exist,” I murmur, perplexed. Surely, I would recall such a detail.

Erron swears as he is unable to bend either bar with brute strength alone. He removes his gloves, tucking them into his cloak pocket.

His hands are broad and strong, like a smith’s. They also have red ink covering the back of them, strong patterns and small symbols radiating from his wrist down over the tops of his fingers. The sight strikes a chord in me.

His shoulders rise with a deep breath as he grabs onto them once more, the patterns in his hand moving as he grips the bars.

The bars begin to glow red-hot under his palms. His arms shake with effort as the bars begin to bend, softened in their molten state.

I consider keeping up the search to find the exact way I came from, but the time it would take convinces me otherwise.

We pass through the grate and continue.

At our swift pace, the first manhole we come upon peers into a dimly lit room. As I peer up into it, the welcome smells of rosemary and warm bread fill my nose. I nearly groan, finally given relief from the sickening smells of the tunnels. I listen for some time, trying to hear the gentle movement of a cook bustling about in the kitchens.

“Anything?” I ask them.

“There’s nobody there,” says Gwen. Erron grunts in agreement.

I breathe deeply and push up on the stone circle, body straining under its solid weight.

Once the cover is slid over, I hoist myself up, glad of the rest and food I’ve consumed over the past several days.

The room is not what I imagined of the palace kitchens. I expected fine meats roasting in ovens, great bundles of vegetables and exotic fruits ladening tables, and dishes of the finest making being prepped for the king and his company. What I find is quite the opposite.

The space is mostly empty of food, only a loaf of bread sitting upon the table, a few sausages hanging from twine. Barely enough food for the kitchen staff, much less an entire palace of guards and kingly guests.

Erron and Gwen join me in the room, looking around for danger.

“There’s no food here,” I state dumbly.

“They don’t eat much,” Erron says, eyes glazed as if in reverie. “Their taste skew towards souls. It’s something my people noticed quickly, when we took them on as guests in the beginning. The fact that they did not eat much at all. We thought they were trying not to be a burden, but we realized they had some lewd practices quickly afterwards.”

The thought of what has been sustaining these things for so long makes me sick. All those people, piles of them, for years.

“We should go,” I whisper, afraid to speak too loudly. I cannot stare at this empty kitchen any longer.

The kitchens are on the same level as the cells, but we find they have no direct routes to them. We have to go up to the main level, where the throne room is, to get to the doorway that leads to the cells.

The castle is shockingly empty, the few guards present being human men. It is as if the king is away, and he brought his guard-dogs with him. Some soldiers stand at the top of the stairs. Gwen swiftly dispatches them, silently laying their unconscious forms behind a curtain.

We cross the entrance hall, the door on the other side sickeningly familiar .

My body breaks out in a sweat at the sight of it.

Erron notices when my breathing escalates, and I balk slightly before we reach the door.

It’s as though my body can still feel the shivering that goes on until my body had no more energy to move. Starvation and thirst that made me feel as though I were going mad, like my hunger was gnawing on my bones.

The nightmares, the hound—I wonder if the Pooka guards the cells. I wonder if, this time, it will kill me.

“Alyx,” Erron prompts gently.

I force myself to walk past his probing eyes—to walk the last few steps.

I pull breath into my lungs from the belly up, feeling that kernel of power. Letting it grow until it hovers just beneath my skin.

I wasn’t ready last time. There is no other option but for me to be ready now.

The knob is cold under my hot hands as I open the door.

My thoughts scream at me every step down the staircase. I keep my eyes open, peering at the bottom, watching for Gyddeon to appear. Waiting for the Pooka to spot me with its glowing red eyes and spindly claws.

Erron and Gwen follow me down silently.

The guard patrolling the room where Gyddeon tortured me is distinctly Fomorian. No Pooka in sight.

He spots me a second too late.

A blast of air is all it takes to shove him back against the wall.

His shadows whirl with the wind and the sound of his armor clangs through the small stone room.

The time it takes to right himself afterwards is enough time for me.

I inhale once more, gathering a storm of power. The flames in the sconces are snuffed out by my breath.

And with my exhale, he meets an icy end.