Chapter 8

Send You Right to Lucius

The next morning comes too soon, yet also not soon enough. I’ve barely slept, yet I’ve also slept too much.

We should already be well on our way to tracking down Alex and figuring out where she went, yet I know we also need rest. We do. We cannot find her if we all drop dead from exhaustion.

“You ready, Grey?” Myles asks as he stretches, using his staff to help loosen his muscles in preparation.

Wyatt crouches in front of him, running their fingers over his knee.

“Any pain?” they ask, pressing on a few spots, one after the other.

Myles shakes his head. “Not really to any of those. A little, but nothing more than usual.”

“Bend it for me. I want to feel how it moves.”

Myles does so, and Wyatt keeps their hands on his knee, then shrugs.

“Nothing strikes me as concerning right now, but tell me if anything changes.”

“Alright, Doctor Wyatt.”

xxxx

Our journey through the remainder of the Badlands goes as slow as it did yesterday.

Sand moves with every step, dragging out our progress into a crawl. Every time we stop for water, the restlessness within me screams at me and scrapes at my insides, gnaws at my ribcage, to keep going. It demands to know why we’re not going, why we’re not hurrying on, why we’ve paused for something like water when Alex is out there. That voice within me tells me Alex would never stop for anything, not even sleep. She wouldn’t rest until she had found me if our positions were switched.

I kneel beside the brook and cup my hands to drink. I need water, I know. I need rest; I know that, too. I cannot find Alex if I drop to the ground unconscious from exhaustion, from dehydration. I need to take care of myself in the necessary, basic ways so I can find my sister.

Alex won’t mind. She’ll understand. She has to.

After everyone has taken a short break for water, we continue. The sun shines down on us, hot and unobstructed. Ky spends most of his time splashing through the brook to cool off.

My shirt sticks to my back and my chest, clinging to my skin with sweat. The sensation makes me squirm and pluck at the fabric and fiddle with it to try to get air flowing through. I want to shift into my dove and fly as fast as I can to the edge of the Badlands, soar up high to see if I can catch any sign of Alex, scan the skies and the ground until I find any clues I can piece together so I can see my sister again.

After Phoenix used his magic on me yesterday, my arms and neck had healed more overnight than they had before since he burned me. Moving causes little pain, only little twinges that I can feel disappearing bit by bit as the malachite medallion sends silvery pulses of its powers coursing through my body, knitting my flesh back together.

My knee buckles and bends at a funky angle when I slip on sand and lose my balance.

“Whoah, there,” Myles says. “You ok?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I reply. “I’m alright. I just stepped funny. We need to keep going.”

Wyatt eyes me for a moment, looking me over with a careful gaze, before focusing on something over my shoulder. They squint, narrowing their eyes. I step to the side, and I’m about to ask what’s wrong, when Phoenix parts his jaws in a guttural growl, lunging forward a step as his eyes flare with unchecked fury.

Fuck.

I whirl around to see a horde of Guard and Soldiers off in the distance, a smudge of brown and silver on the horizon of the Badlands.

“Let’s get some water now if we need,” Wyatt starts, “since I doubt we’ll be able to later, and then we need to keep moving. I know we just got some, but I don’t think we’ll be able to for a while. I don’t know that they will stop for water, and they won’t let us once they’ve caught up.”

“Or we just don’t let them catch up,” Myles replies.

“They won’t let us rest,” Phoenix rumbles. A smile plays across his face. “They will catch up to us sooner or later. They will regret it when they do.”

“We’ll go as far as we can,” I say. “We can go faster than them. The Soldiers have a lot of armor, and they’ll stay together as a group.”

Ky glances at all of us. “We’re all good.” His eyes find mine, and he holds my gaze and speaks, as if possessing the skill of hypnotism. “You’re gonna kill this time, Grey, if needed. Ok?”

I clench my hands into fists. “I will not kill. I—… I-I-I can’t. Their families. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I cannot kill them. What if they can unlearn what they’ve been taught in the past?”

Ky ducks his head and clenches his jaw, dragging his face through the water. Droplets cling to his whiskers when he lifts his head again and lets his fluffy tail float across the brook. Phoenix snarls, stomping up ahead as he lashes his tail and lets his fire burst across his pelt. Wyatt studies me for a moment but doesn’t say anything.

“I cannot just leave behind my beliefs now that I am the Dove,” I say. “I cannot abandon who I am in favor of being someone I am not. I… I can’t do that. I won’t.”

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“That is admirable,” Ky says, “but I hope you recognize that they all will be doing their damn best to try to kill you and send you right to Lucius. You will not be able to search for Alex if you are within Lucius’s realm.”

I pause and hesitate, realizing that what Ky has said is true. I cannot search for Alex if I am dead and Lucius has found me. If I am claimed by them, I cannot find Alex.

“Just fucking kill,” Phoenix sighs. He closes his eyes. “Grey, I am not having this conversation with you every single time someone comes along who wants to kill whatever group we both happen to be in. I will kill. We both know that. Old news. You need to kill, because you are going to get yourself killed, and whoever is around you, because whoever is trying to kill you is going to figure that out pretty quickly, if they haven’t already. Guard and Soldiers are stupid, but they ain’t that stupid.”

“I…” I trail off, rubbing my fingers against my mouth and chewing on a knuckle. “I will consider what the best decision is. I cannot turn my back on what I believe, but if something has to change, I can’t do it fast. A life will always be a life. That type of decision can’t be made fast.”

Ky studies me, head tilted and eyes squinted as he takes me in. I hold his gaze.

“I admire your dedication, Grey. I won’t tell you that you have to abandon your beliefs. Stand by them all you’d like. But I’m telling you that you will not be able to talk the cream puff off the Amethyst Throne. Some just cannot be reasoned with.”

I clench my jaw. “I know. Let’s keep moving.”

xxxx

I breathe a sigh of relief when I catch sight of the swath of grasses at the edge of the Badlands. The blades are short and thick, hardy in soil that’s more sand than it is dirt, but it’s green and I can see a few trees further on in the direction that I know will take us toward Ananta Spring and the Aiyana River. We just need to follow the brook a little further. We’re almost out of the Badlands.

“Come on,” Ky says, picking up his pace to a trot. He splashes through the water, coat soaked through up to his shoulders, giving him an odd look with his back dry and fluffy and the rest of his fur flopping straight down. “Just a little longer. We’re almost there.”

He ducks his head to swallow down some water without stopping. We all go a bit faster, pushed on by seeing the grasses and the trees off in the distance.

However, that excitement is ruined in a moment, shattered with the Guard and Soldiers gaining ground on us far faster than we thought.

“Oh, no,” Wyatt says, glancing over their shoulder, turning around to walk even faster, then turning back again.

Myles looks back and curses. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit. That’s not good.”

“Ohh, I was wondering when they’d actually catch up. I thought they were all turning into pansies and were too scared. Running off to go hide behind the legs of a cream puff who’d sooner use them as a meat shield than lift a single finger for them.” Phoenix smiles as a growl that sounds all too pleased rumbles in his chest. Flames flicker in his eyes and he raises his head, holding his tail high as he shakes out his paws.

Stretching out his front legs, then his back legs, he turns to me. “You’re gonna actually fight, Grey, ok?”

xxxx

Hardly any time has passed, it feels, when the Guard and Soldiers do reach us. I hear the clink of Soldiers’ armor and the buckles on the leather armor of the Guard, and the demands for us to stop and surrender ourselves to the justice of the King of Ragdon. When we don’t, they advance upon us.

“Oh, Phoenix,” a voice purrs, voice sliding through my ears like molten sugar gone rotten, so sweet it burns my nose and churns my stomach and makes me gag.

“Who’s that?” Wyatt asks, spinning around so fast they lose their balance and their hair whips across their face.

“I don’t…” Myles trails off, knuckles locking tight around his staff.

My teeth chatter as the malachite medallion heats against my chest and the dove unfurls its wings with a low coo, one that rumbles in its chest.

We won’t fight to kill but we will keep our friends safe. We will protect those we care about with everything we have.

Can I even kill? a part of me asks. I don’t want to find out, but with the Guard and Soldiers around me, all of whom have their swords and bows and arrows at the ready, I don’t know that I’ll be able to avoid it.

Can I take a life? Can I send someone to Lucius with such intention? Can I deal that final blow? That injury that’s the difference between a difficult recovery and never coming back?

I curl my hands into fists to keep myself from scratching at my legs. If I have to…

“Oh, fuck you,” Phoenix spits.

“Well, that’s not very nice. Is that any way to speak to a lady?”

“You’re the furthest thing from a lady, Daeva.”

“Phoenix,” Daeva chastises, clicking her tongue in a disapproving sound.

“Daeva,” Phoenix mocks.

“Why don’t you just make this easy, alright?” Daeva purrs, fluttering her eyelashes as she floats out from behind a group of Guard, who have their bows pointed at us, arrows nocked and ready to fly.

When I see her, I immediately recognize her. With long, stretching forelegs and mottled skin in a variety of shades of earthy pinkish tans and a mane of tan hair with a feline face, I wonder if Daeva came to be in a similar fashion to how Jabez said he came to be Jabez after living as the housecat Ice.

“No,” Phoenix states firmly. “I’m good.”

“My Sovereign, His Excellency, His Honor, His Highest of all Highnesses, King Garonda XIV has stated that the Wolf and the Dove, Ky and Phoenix, Brook, Jabez, Astra, and anyone else who has assisted them in any capacity shall stand trial for their crimes and be held accountable to the fullest extent as determined by the Judge and the Justice,” Daeva says.

Phoenix looks unimpressed.

I swallow and chew on my lip.

Does she actually believe that? The trial the Judge and the Justice gave me and Alex wasn’t a trial. They already knew the verdict before they got there. The King determined we were guilty and decided the trial before we were captured.

Ky bares his teeth when a Soldier tries to touch him and Myles jabs his staff into the abdomen of Guard who try the same thing at him and Wyatt, sneering at them all.

“No,” Myles insists.

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “No. Please don’t ever say that horrific title again. I think my ears are bleeding. Besides, the cream puff should really work on a more creative title. I mean, come on. Can he be more blatantly full of himself?”

Daeva seethes, inhaling sharply as her emerald eyes flare with rage. Phoenix plops to the ground with a smug smile.

There’s several moments where no one moves. Daeva’s face scrunches up with anger, and I grow concerned she might pop and explode with fury. The Guard and Soldiers all watch the General for orders, but she gives none. Myles and Wyatt stand side by side, while Ky stands a few paces beside them, keeping an eye on everyone around him but making no attempt to lash out and deal any attacks of his own. I can feel the weight of the gazes of the Guard and Soldiers on my back as if they were touching me. I can feel the impact of swords, daggers, arrows piercing my flesh and severing nerves, blood vessels, the spark of pain as it lights up my body.

I want to shift into my dove and fly as high as I can, fly away and away and away and away until I no longer have to deal with anything, but where would I go? Ragdon is the only place I have lived. There is nowhere else I can go, and here is where I have to be to search for Alex. I cannot leave, not until I have found the new Midnight Wolf and talked to them to see what they have to say on where Alex may be.

So I stay.

And when Daeva’s muzzle twists into a wicked smile that mirrors that of Phoenix’s and her forelegs and tail begin to stretch and the broken chains on her forelegs clink, the Guard and Soldiers begin to grow restless.

And when Daeva lunges for Phoenix and he releases an explosion of fire that spreads out in a ring around him, burning around me but not harming me, not like before, the Guard and Soldiers attack, moving over those who got caught in Phoenix’s flames.