52
(Elephante, Tiina- Break)
Adam
The snowstorm bellowed as Vetia idly ran her eyes over me, perplexed.
“We’re next to the road. The spot where you were supposed to meet me at sunset when we got out.”
“Got out? Then where’s Tells? And how did you get out?”
“Not sure where Tells is. I’m going back to get her tomorrow, so we can grab her and get the hell out of this city. We’ll follow you to wherever Brenden and Desmond are, and we’re good. Apparently Tells cut a deal with Simira, that she’d let us out if Tells did some stuff.”
Vetia’s eyes turned cold. Her face lost its confusion and turned grim. “She cut a deal with that bitch? To get out? What did Tells have to do?”
“I don’t really know. I just got the rundown.”
“Then tell me the rundown, Adam.”
I hesitated for a moment. The way her eyes pierced me was almost alien. “I guess it had to do with getting her father out of power so she could be Viscount. I think Tells just did some stealth stuff, helped out here and there, I don’t know. I was just there when the Viscount got his head lopped off…”
She looked down at the fire in my hand and pulled aggressively at her blonde hair. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear her talking.
“You say something? The wind is getting pretty loud.”
“Like I’ve said, don’t fucking talk about them like that!” She snapped out, still staring into the fire.
“Vetia, I can’t hear you over the storm!”
She looked up at me blankly. “Oh, no, I was just saying you should come with me to Montak’s. I’m sure he’ll let you crash there for the night.”
“Montak? What? Where? That’s not really good manners, is it? To bring a stranger into some guy’s house?”
“You won’t be imposing.” She had a sort of distant look, no matter what emotion she expressed. Even as she casually smiled with her response, it’s like something was missing behind her eyes. “So, Adam, how did arena fighting go? Got yourself one hell of a sword there.” She poked at the blade and then glanced at her bleeding fingertip before licking at the wound. She grimaced, mouthed something to herself again and then talked aloud. “I know, really useful.”
“Uh, yeah, it was a gift from Captain Zev.”
“Montak’s is right up here. Did you learn how to use it? Score any glory kills?” A chill ran up my spine. I had never seen her look any more like a serial killer than in that moment. The dead eyes and really wide smile that was almost perfectly genuine. It had to be her joking, right? Her eyes were so unsettling, I didn’t respond.
“I’m just joking, Adam. You don’t need to be so afraid and shit.” She blinked rapidly a few times and her eyes lost their distance. It was like she finally came back into the moment. She traced three quick circles into the air and fixed her finger, pointing ahead. With a reassuring smile, she said “Montak’s is right there.”
We approached the snow-covered log house with a four-pointed wooden star above the door. I was covering my eyes from the snow when I bumped into Vetia, who had completely stopped moving.
“…at the table by the door, Montak hurt, Lotti in bed.” She stopped talking to herself and looked up at me coldly. “Adam. You’re going to stand out here, right next to the door, hidden. I’m gonna walk out, and somebody is going to follow me. As soon as you can see her, I want you to lop her head off with your sword.”
“Vetia, what the fuck are you talking about.”
“Adam, do what I said.” Her eyes were full of fear and rage as she turned. “I need you to trust me. I need you to hit this animal as hard as you can, or shit’s gonna get real messy.”
“What is going on? Is somebody in there?!”
“Shut the fuck up a little.” She seethed at me, teeth chattering in rage. “She can’t hear you. But yes. I just need you to make a mess of her brain. I can feel her in there, she’s already done something to Montak. Just do what I say!” Vetia was a frantic mess of emotions, mumbling to herself as she stepped toward the door. I stood against the side of the house, next to the door with my ear to a slit in the wood. The first thing I heard was a child loudly crying.
The other woman spoke first. “Oh, how good of you to finally join us, Cressida, or is it Rowena?”
“Neither, dumb bitch.”
“For how hideous you are, there’s a swagger about you that I really admire. If you didn’t have such a weak heart, you could make a lot of money, especially being our in with the lonsu.”
There was an audible clash like a bag of money hitting the wood.
A kid’s voice spoke up. “Rowena! Rowena, help duddy! The lady-”
Fera cut her off. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” She frustratedly groaned. “I can’t stand handling these little parasites.”
“Why don’t we talk away from her? She doesn’t need to hear this, especially after you’ve bled her dad like that.”
“Her? Oh, she’ll get used to it. Isn’t that right, Lotti, dear? I’ve told her all about Madam Diona’s place. She seems smart, so she’ll learn quickly there.”
“No, Fera, I’m not killing you in front of a kid like that.”
Fera laughed loudly. “And you think I’m the dumb bitch? You’re built like a twig dangling off a pair of floating tits. Cressida, Rowena, Neither, it’s not gonna be hard for me. May as well lean your throat down here and make it easy for the both of us.”
“Then come on outside and we’ll get it over with. Unless you want me to run and make you chase me.”
Fera sighed and groaned. “Fuck, Cressi, you’re always making everything so much more difficult than it needs to be. Fine.”
“Fera you’ve got to be the laziest assassin on the planet.”
“I work smarter, Cressi. Not harder.”
Vetia walked out silently, not looking at me as she passed by. I raised my sword, not really sure who I was about to see.
This is a person, right? Am I about to hit a person? As a jinian, I could accidentally kill somebody really easily, especially with a sword so heavy.
Before I knew it, my eyes had locked with a woman bundled in fine furs and a bright yellow scarf. She stared up at me in sheer surprise. Seeing her eyes, the eyes of another person, a sentient person who had a life, who was scared for her life, it froze me. I felt like I was back in the arena facing the rizumir.
“ADAM! KILL HER!” Vetia screamed at me and as I panicked, Fera rolled backward into the house. “God damnit, Adam! Fuck!”
Vetia rushed into the house and I ducked in after my mind cleared.
Wait wait wait, this woman already killed a guy, right? Shit! Why didn’t I just swing?!
In the middle of the tiny house was a table, next to which a man laid unconscious on the floor, and Fera was standing on a bed, holding a little girl in a headlock with a dagger to her throat.
“Alright, Cressi, you know the deal. I walk out of here while you and your boytoy get out of my way.”
Vetia carved a shape into the air behind her back, until her hand illuminated a lime green.
“What have you got behind your back there? Cutting a sigil?” Fera held the blade closer, drawing Lotti’s blood at the tip.
The little girl let out a scream so shrill that my ears rang, crying out gibberish endlessly.
Bloody murder consumed Vetia’s eyes and she hunched over. Her nose furled up like a wild predator and her jaw unhinged as serrated teeth crept out of her gums.
Fera’s eyes opened wide and she clenched for the fight. “A fireblood, eh? No wonder you’re fucking crazy.” She anxiously chuckled and dragged her blade across the girl’s neck, getting into a serious stance.
Vetia screamed with every ounce of rage within her as she crashed over the table and leapt at Fera claws first. Fera thrusted the dagger forward at Vetia, who pressed her hand onto the blade, forcing it down to the hilt. She gripped the blade, twisting and yanking the blade from Fera’s grip. Fera was in a losing position, holding back Vetia’s biting head with her other hand while Vetia raked her claws down Fera’s arm. Fera screamed out in pain and kicked her, sending her crashing into the table while Fera darted up, clutching her arm. She halted in fear gazing up at me with my sword out.
“Get out of the way! Move!” Terror shot through her eyes and I was frozen in place again.
I stood in her way, arms ready to grab her. I jittered in place, wanting to act, but overstimulated and unsure how to do it properly.
“Adam!” Vetia growled from across the room while she healed Lotti’s neck. “What are you doing?! Kill her!”
Fera whimpered up at me, helpless and afraid.
Why am I so conflicted when I just watched and heard everything she did and said? Is it the fact that I was looking into her eyes, recognizing the fear of death? That feeling of fight or flight, where it’s kill or be killed. It was simpler with the bugs, with the animals in the arena. But she’s a person. A living, breathing person, like me.
My freeze was broken as her foot crashed into my testes. The air left my body and my knees buckled. She launched off my knee and vaulted over my back and out the door. My mind blanked out from the pain in my balls until I finally took a deep breath in.
“ADAM!” Vetia screamed at me in wild desperation. “ADAM! What are you doing?! You need to get her! I can’t heal them and chase her!”
“What do I do?!”
“FUCKING KILL HER! Hit her with the blunt part of the blade or something! Adam, this isn’t a D&D game we can retcon! This isn’t an anime where everything turns out right! We can’t reload an old save if something goes wrong! Do something or we die!”
My mouth hung ajar and my pulse pounded through my head. Vetia’s words were eating at me, tearing at my confidence, my ability, my humanity. Reality started crashing down around me, seeing the bleeding little girl on the floor in front of me. The door slammed into my feet with a gust of wind and I snapped back to reality.
Oh my god, she’s right. I’m a total fucking idiot.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
I turned around and darted out the door, staring out into the dark. Footprints took off into the snow, and ahead was a flickering firelight. I didn’t know if it was her, but my legs took off. The ashen snow and wind battered my face, chilling me to the bone. My nostrils and eyes were freezing and the frigid air tore at my lungs. For the few inches of snow that had built up, I wasn’t even noticing them. My boots were big enough that the snow wasn’t impeding my run. Bounding, leaping steps propelled me forward toward the flame next to the road in the treeline. As I neared, the flame disappeared, enveloping me in pitch darkness. The whirring of wind and snow surrounded us. The faint dull whiteness of snow on the ground was all I could see.
Fera’s voice emerged through the storm, “Adam, Adam, please, I know you think you know what is happening, but you don’t. That woman is a fireblood, and she’s got that family under her thumb! She’s turned them into firebloods and they’re planning to kill half the city.”
I didn’t respond. My head and heart were racing too fast, like I was overloaded with too much to be able to make the right decision.
There’s no way she’s telling the truth. But has being a fireblood changed Vetia? She was distant, tried biting me, and was like an animal when she was trying to kill Fera.
“Listen, Adam, I didn’t want to hurt you, but I needed you out of the way of that door. You have no clue what she has done! We’ve been trying to catch her, but she’s been on a killing spree! She assassinated Lady Simira! Adam, she is insane!”
Once again, I was left in the silence of the storm. Another new piece of information that I didn’t know was true or not.
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Who am I supposed to trust?
Back at the house, in the distance, I heard a frantic yell of “Adam! Where is she?!”
I lit my hand ablaze with a sigil and raised it in the air so I could see around me. “Then how do we stop a fireblood?”
“Kill them like any normal person. Quickly and surely. Lop off her head, drain her blood.” Her voice seemed to echo in the darkness, not coming from any sure direction.
“Can you prove she’s a fireblood?”
“She was biting at my neck!”
“Then what do you want me to do?!”
“Did you see what happened to me? I can’t fight, my arm feels like it’s been shredded! I need you to protect me.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to protect you if I can’t even see you?!”
“If you can’t see me, she can’t- AH!”
Fera screamed and stumbled out of the shadows, tumbling backward into the snow behind me. I whipped around to see Vetia, hunched over entering the light with Fera’s dagger in her hand. Her face was wrought with contempt and disgust as she glared down at Fera, who was between us and scurrying to her feet. I held my sword out in front of me.
Vetia trudged forward through the snow. “Thanks for the light, bud.”
Fera was between us trying to distance herself, but Vetia just kept circling, making sure Fera was stuck. Fera quickly turned around to me.
“Adam, please, you know-”
Vetia cut her off, “You killed a little girl, Fera. You’re less than a fireblood.”
“Who the fuck are you to tell me that?” Fera turned her back to me, changing her tone from pleading to a screaming rage. “You’re an assassin and you’re using Adam because he’s an idiot!” Fera side-eyed me. “Adam, you’ve got to know that I respect you, but this assassin is only using you! She’s not the healer she used to be!” She looked back to the predator ready to leap.
“I didn’t care about you until you took your shot at me, hell, I wouldn’t have cared much if it was just me. Makes sense, loose ends. But why the fuck would you go after Montak and Lotti who had nothing to do with this, unless it’s the money?” Vetia’s eyes were locked on Fera like a cat hunting a bird.
“Diona’s orders. Nothing personal-”
“That’s a load of shit and you know it.” Vetia cut her off, dead stare.
“Oh, come on, Cressi, why do you ca-” Fera turned on a dime and darted counter to where Vetia was circling her. Her foot, however, sank into the snow as she pressed off and she staggered head forward.
That’s the opening.
A horrible metallic crash rang out with the snapping of bones as I instinctively swung with the flat part of my sword. The next thing I noticed, Fera was flat on the ground, blood pouring out her shattered nose as her jaw rested dislocated on her crooked neck. Her arms and fingers softly twitched as she heaved out breaths, one arm rising into the air. Fera’s eyes locked on me, a lasting, horrific groan leaving her lungs.
Vetia lumbered toward Fera, clutching at the side of her head, her face erupting in tears.
“I-Is she, uh, dying?” I choked out the words. A churning anxiety and horror swelled in me.
Did I just kill her? Is she even going to die, or is she gonna lay there and freeze to death?
“Oh my god, did I kill her?”
“No, you didn’t. She ain’t dead yet. I’m killing her.” Vetia’s sinister voice crept through her wild, hateful expression. She kneeled over Fera and said something, but the wind was too loud for me to hear. After a few moments of Vetia talking and Fera blinking, Vetia violently gripped the side of Fera’s face and seethed something else at her, before dragging her claw across Fera’s throat. Gargled gasps choked out of Fera and then went silent. Vetia recoiled back in the snow, clambering to push herself away from Fera at all costs.
“No no no no no no no no no! Not again, not agian! Not again!” She wailed into the sky and clutched her head in agony. She was shaking and breathing rapidly, grasping at the snow trying to find a purchase on something until she was laying face down, holding her head down in the snow and digging her claws into the back of her head.
“Vetia, is she dead?” No response. “Vetia? What’s going on with you?! What’s going on at all?!”
She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, retching and gagging over the hole she had carved into the snow with her face. Streams of red vomit spurted from her mouth. Her hands clutched at her neck like they were trying to pull off some imaginary collar while she choked to get air in. I rushed over to her and stood for a second, dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to do, and there was a dead woman on the ground that we killed while my friend was vomiting blood into the snow.
Everything around me spun. Vetia’s gagging grated on my heart. The death, the murder, the everything… I couldn’t stop staring at Fera’s body, her dead eyes and broken neck… that I caused. That I broke. That I killed. I stumbled backward away from the body and sat in the snow, trying to breath and slow my heart from racing out of my chest.
“I don’t wanna be here anymore, Adam.” Her retching had stopped. She was staring into the pool of blood, crying over it.
I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking. “Tomorrow we get everyone and get the fuck out of here. And then we’ll go find a place far away from here and do whatever we want.”
“Adam,” Vetia’s eyes were hopeless. “This world, Adam. This body, this city, these people, I hate all of it. I just want to go home. I don’t care if I have to go back to being some miserably ugly asshole, I wanna go back to excavating sites and studying. I wanna go back to being a broke college student. It wasn’t perfect, but I was happy. I was a person. I don’t wanna keep living like a fucking monster.”
“You’re not a monster, Vetia, you’ve just got to get used to being in that body. I know it’s probably not-”
“Probably not what?! Probably not what I expected?!” Her head angrily shot up and she crawled toward me. “Do you know the shit I’ve had to deal with? Collared! Beaten! Shocked! Cut! Stabbed! Shattered bones! Dead DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD! I can’t live unless I kill things and drink their blood while they’re alive! My teeth and claws are designed to kill! I’ve got poison that’s tailored specifically to making prey docile so I can slowly drain the life from them! Better yet, if I use even a little bit too much of my magic, I’ll die or start bleeding from every one of my orifices!” She was hysterical, screaming up at me, ranting and raving like she’d lost her mind.
“Vetia, I-”
“Shut up! Stop saying that name!” She broke down, clutching her head and wailing into sky. “I don’t know who I am anymore, Adam. I used too much jzanmah and now I’m hearing voices in my head. I’m seeing things. I can’t keep doing this. It turned me into a murderer. And even after killing Simira, it won’t stop! They won’t stop even though they said they would!”
“No! She tried to kill that little girl and the guy in that house, you were defending them!”
She was whispering maniacally. “I felt it all, Adam. I felt her dying while I killed her. As I squeezed the life out of her. Fear, pain, guilt, loss, longing, regret, all of it. The torture of knowing your life is cut short. It won’t go away. It’s like she’s haunting me in my own fucking head, trying to torture me even when she’s dead. It’s like everything in this world was made to torture me and I can’t even die to be free of it!”
I didn’t have a clue what to say. There was nothing I could say that would make it right, so I hugged her.
“I can’t take it anymore. I’m all fucked up.”
“We’ve all got our shit to deal with. I wish I’d been able to do more before. You’ve been going at it alone since we got to that manor and we’re gonna change that now. Rely on your friends a little bit now that we’re all back to being free, why don’t ya?”
She took a deep breath in and pushed off of me, steeling herself. “Yeah. Wavering means death.” She exhaustedly gazed over the mess of blood and snow. “We gotta get rid of her body. There are tracks going back to Montak’s house that we have to cover, and blood.”
Her demeanor was like that of a completely different person. One second she was crying hysterically, and now she was completely composed. “Um, uh, where can we even put her?” I couldn’t look at the corpse. I didn’t want it to be there, and as long as I couldn’t see it, it wasn’t there. The quiet calm of the forest took hold of me and dread set in. I just helped kill somebody and now we had to cover it up. She was a noble, too, and I took Vetia’s word that we should kill her. The Vetia that was just wailing about hearing voices in her head and going crazy.
Has she completely lost her mind, or did I do the right thing?
“Adam, please, I need you to help me clean this shit up!” Vetia frantically ran around, scooping bloody snow into her hands.
“Vetia, what are you doing?” I wasn’t hiding my fear well. I didn’t know why, but I was genuinely afraid of one of my best friends, if it was even still the same person.
“She’s the daughter of a noble. Anything left behind or found is gonna lead back to Montak. I know what we’ll do, I just need you to get her back to the house ‘cause I can’t carry her.”
I stood up and slowly walked toward the body. My eyes wouldn’t focus on it, they couldn’t. Her body was still warm to the touch when I grabbed her legs and slung her over my shoulder. Her arms twitched against my back and chilling blood ran down my leg.
“She is dead, right?”
Vetia looked through me blankly and hesitated for a moment, a scared expression appearing and fading before I could blink. “Y-yeah.”
“W-W-W-Where am, is, do I… take her?” It was like the snow froze my mind and I couldn’t think or focus on anything. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to even conceive the possibility that Fera was still alive. Every breath I took was shallow and quick and my heart was on the verge pounding out of my chest.
“The barn. Leave her in the middle of it. I’ll meet you back there when I get rid of all this blood.”
“How are you-” I turned so that I could see her and ask how she would get rid of the blood. She grimaced at me, disgusted in herself, choking down a clump of scarlet slush.
I silently turned around and walked back toward the house. It was official, I had no clue what was going on. Whatever sense this was making before was out the window. Vetia was nuts and now I was dumping a body. Trudging through the snowstorm with a body on my back, all I could do was walk. I found the house, and around back was a large wooden barn with unlocked doors. I tossed the body inside and ran away from the twitching corpse, shutting the doors as quickly as I could.
We’re good now, right? Nobody will check in there and we can get out of Vehfirn without having to worry about people hunting us, right?
“Adam.” Vetia was already caught up to me. “What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“I- I just… I just, uh.” I weakly pointed toward the doors. Everything was blank for me. Thoughts, words, feelings. Nothing was right.
Vetia walked into the pitch black barn. The animals grunted awake as she shook on the wooden stable doors. “Come on! Get out here!”
“Vetia, what are you doing?”
“Go back to the house, Adam.”
“Vetia, why are you letting those animals out?”
She stared at me with hollow eyes. “Go back to the house, Adam.”
I had already begun walking away. I didn’t want any more part in this.
Am I in the right? Did she really turn that family into firebloods? If so, was that justified? Even if she was a bad person, why couldn’t we lock her away? Surely there had to be some justice in this world that would have made it right.
My feet carried me past the house and out onto the road. The cold snow buffeted my face. I had to face the reality that I was now a killer.
I don’t know what to do. I need help, and not from somebody who’s crazy. There’s something wrong with her. Seriously wrong. And I can’t help her. I wasn’t good or strong enough to talk that down. I was scared. A coward. Like I always had been. Even now, I’m running.
* * * * *
At some point, there was knocking wall next to my cot in the barracks.
“Adam!” Captain Zev yelled.
Everything was still blank. I couldn’t force any emotions forward and trying to think was nigh impossible. Dull morning light from cloud cover loomed in through the window. There was only a light ashfall today. I slowly opened my eyes to Captain Zev’s intense gaze above me.
“I understand you’re no longer in service of the manor nor are you obliged to assist us, but I need your help, Adam. The people are angry and fearful. They have no leaders to look up to anymore, which is why I need you by my side when we render judgment. Tarynn does not have enough rapport with the people, but his words may be strengthened with us by his side, even if it is just a show.”
A fragment, if even any, of the emptiness left me. I met Captain Zev’s determined eyes. He wanted to make this right, whatever it was.
“I’ll do what you need, Captain. It’s what I owe.”
I had never seen a look of pride like his in my life. The reassuring gaze that he was impressed, proud, or just happy that I was living up to his expectations. I didn’t know why I felt it so strongly, but it kept me going just enough.
“Then don your armor and come to the arena. You will deliver the blow.”
“Yes sir.” I numbly dressed and mindlessly crossed the training grounds. For such fresh snow, it was already so gray, muddy, and hard to walk in. The world felt like it was cast into black and gray, devoid of color and reason as the distant tree needles slowly bled dark red. Into the entrance shed, through the tunnel and into the arena pit. People were already gathering in the stands. For such a packed arena, it was completely silent. Not a sound out of anyone apart from the cries of a baby in the crowd.
In the center of the arena stood a frame of logs with chains dangling from them. I approached Captain Zev, who held a massive war hammer sparking electricity around its head.
“You’re here. Let us begin.”
Captain Zev lowered the hammer into my hands and stepped away to address the crowd.
“People of Vehfirn, of the Amien Quarter. Last night, Viscountess Simira Amien was murdered in her sleep, slain by a secret her family had been keeping. She had told me before that she wanted to prove to the world that even a cursed child could be like us, that she could raise him from his curse.”
My face fell limp as I listened to him speak.
“Today, we exact justice on the beast who slew his own sister, his family, his caretaker who only ever sought the best for him, as she did her people.”
The gate of the arena rattled and scraped open.
My hands grew clammy and the hammer was slipping from my grip. Tells was in the crowd. I just barely spotted her and my heart slowed as I followed her eyes. I could see on her face that she was angry, hurting and depressed, and yet she wasn’t despairing like I was. She was just watching as a covered man was dragged into the arena by several guards. They chained him to the pillory and stepped away.
“This despicable criminal is none other than Lady Simira’s younger, cursed brother, who she so generously cared for after the death of the late Viscountess Etanya Amien! For this, he has been judged, and deemed fit for execution by none other than one of Lady Simira’s strongest and most loyal servants. His final blow in this arena will be absolute.” The crowd roared and Captain Zev ripped the bag off of the man’s head. “Adam, give Eulin Amien his death.”
What?
My eyes met Eulin’s. The boy from the clinic that could barely even function normally was being executed for killing Lady Simira. He was gagged, but the gag couldn’t fully muffle the screams of the man who had no idea of what was going on… no, I’d seen kids like him before in the classrooms they put me in. He knew, but he couldn’t communicate. He cried and shrieked, shaking violently against the log and chain restraints. They didn’t even bow against his weight as he thrashed around in a panic. All that time, his eyes weren’t even open, he was just panicking to break free.
His screams were deliberate, repeated. Muffled, but yelling that same thing he’d walk around and blurt out. Ari. Blood. Red. That phrase I’d heard him use for Vetia while she was patching me up.
Captain Zev nodded upon noticing my trembling. “Adam, that hammer will kill him instantly once it impacts his torso. He murdered his sister in cold blood. He deserves this.” “Adam, that hammer will kill him instantly once it impacts his torso. He murdered his sister in cold blood. He deserves this.”
I stood still, dumbfounded in the middle of the arena.
What’s even going on? How did I end up here? It can’t be real. In less than a day, I went from murdering a woman in the snow to executing a man in the arena. And yet here I am.
My hands were slipping from the hammer and there was an entire crowd of people waiting for me to kill a man in front of them.
Has the world gone mad, or am I just delusional? Is this how it’s always been? Have I been in a bubble? Killing the animals has begun to mean nothing to me. That was just as much of killing as taking the life of a woman or a man, and I’ve grown to not feel anything at all from it. No, I’ve grown to feel glory at it. Will I just stop caring about killing people too? Will I start to enjoy it?
My heart raced in my ears again and the world muffled to silence. I couldn’t grip the hammer strong enough to hold it and the cold sweat froze to my face.
Like through a pool of water, Captain Zev’s voice rang through. “Adam, execute this murderer so Lady Simira may be free in her death.”
Oh god, everyone is waiting on me. If I don’t do it, they’ll think something is up- know. They’ll know something’s up. Captain Zev will know. We’ll all be killed for killing Fera. I don’t want to think. I just want to be away from all of this shit!
My hands did what my heart couldn’t. Thunder clapped and the smell of scorched skin and burning ozone permeated the air around me. In the moment my mind turned off, turned away to run from everything in front of me.