The sun shines.
Somewhere, high above in the sky.
Blood never spills.
He closes his eyes and the world is quiet.
A hand reaches out, fingers interlacing with my own.
“We don’t deserve to die.”
And we don’t. We never will.
Dragon fury will never rain down upon us as human knights prove themselves murderers.
Fires will never be lit.
The gates are broken behind them. Collapsed rumble burying every pathetic human beneath them.
We are safe.
The corpses of our brethern surround us and we are safe.
I-
I could never see why we were safe.
The poison bit into the vision as I saw it.
It rotted and merged and suddenly there is a fire-
There is a cage-
Blood drips down a dark back-
Lungs gasp futiley as make believe wings, stretched out wide upon a dying back-
There is a cage-
In that cage is a rat.
We are not safe.
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Silvestr lied.
Max was a fool. A stupid, stupid fool. The only person Max doesn’t trust is myself.
The confession they want is one of dishonesty.
They only want to hear that I was a besotted fool following a mad man.
The only wings Illarian would be getting were his bloody eagle wings back in their proper place.
The only thing we earned was a bond turning us into nubile newborns.
Defenseless.
Powerless.
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It was a trap. One I was blind to see.
One I was too foolish to spot.
I should have known.
I would have known before.
But before I could see. Before I wasn’t dipped into poison that ate away at my very being.
Silvestr watches with cold brown eyes. He’s no longer the child I remember. He’s a monster now. A demon.
Ironic that the mortal turns into a demon and the demon turns into something akin to a mortal.
How disgustingly ironic.
He watches and then he leaves. I imagine he takes Max with him. I won’t be needing that prison anymore after all.
Not when the chains have changed to cold, clammy skin. Not when my prison became another soul.
Illarian breathes, his claws digging into my arm as we struggle to stand.
We were stupid and blind.
And now we pay for our mistakes, with bleeding wings and dying skin.
We’ve already lost and they have already won. Why they feel the need to hold it over our heads is beyond me.
Why they must shove our mistakes into our faces over and over. It’s like gravel, our mistakes.
It leaves us bleeding and wounded at the very end.
Silvestr sits upon his victorious chair whilst I sit in the dirt of my own making.
My very own prison has betrayed me. It was a desert that led me to the oasis that was filled with poison.
Max doesn’t sit with Silvestr though.
Max perches himself right by my feet as if he wasn’t the one stupid enough to trust Silvestr.
Which, he’s right. Max was never that stupid.
I was though.
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Illarian is a broken soul.
He’s a worst cage than my previous prison.
I miss the solitude.
I miss the heavy weight of iron chains as they burn themselves into my skin.
Max hides in whatever hole he can find. Seeking safety in the claustrophobic spaces.
I’m sure Max blames me for our eviction.
Sometimes, I also blame myself.
Most the time I blame Silvestr.
And at the most desperate times, I blame Illarian.
Poor, broken, stitched together Illarian.
What they did to him sickens me.
My thoughts at times sicken me.
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“Knix Emagen and Illarian Da’rid are charged for crimes against the Underworld and Living World. Crimes including treason, homicide, destruction of peace treaties, heathonous acts against the Creators, and several acts of forbidden magic.”
The judge had a cold voice. Something that sounds like steel and rain on a winter day. Silvestr sits somewhere to the left of us.
I had sat there, patiently with my hands clasped in front of my weak decaying body.
“How do you plead.”
It’s not a question. They already know how it will play out. Just as I know how it will play out.
“Guilty. Under the spell of infatuation.” I’ve always known how to sell a story when I tried. No need to lie, you just never tell people everything.
Withhold enough so that people can come up with their own conclusions.
People will always hear what they want to hear.
“To clarify, you are confirming that you were placed under a spell?”
It was a trap. One I had walked blindly into.
“Yes.”
The snares snapped shut and my future was set.
I never saw that coming either.
But it figures, because I am blind.
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“What if you are wrong?”
“Then we will all burn.”
“I’ve seen us burn.”
“Have you seen us live?”
“I want to.”
“Then lets make a world where you can see us living.”