After the Walls

Chapter 39

Theseus splutters a string of curses and buckles, grappling at the blade that sticks out of his bulbous shoulder. He hurls the bloody thing back at me and I duck, letting it clatter behind me on the top of the stony-clad Walls. I gulp, noting the sheer drop on either side of the Walls. The forest floor on one side, and a lake, one I have not seen before, hugging the other side like a quicksilver crescent moon.

Aston casts a risky glance back at me, the whites of his eyes visible as he barrels across the Walls. I pull the sword from my back and lunge at Theseus. His reflexes are quick, blocking my swing in a sharp crack that makes my teeth rattle.

"Oh, Elle," Theseus says, voice breathy, spit flying. "Did you really think you could save them both?"

I vaguely catch Aston disarming the Red Movement men holding up each brother, catching them each. The Red Movement men grapple at their slit throats before plunging to the ground.

Everything screams around me, and it takes every bit of me to not go feral just so I can help Aston take them off. Theseus and I parry together, our blades clanking and clanging, my hair whipping around me like striking snakes as I bounce on the balls of my feet. Shadows creep across my vision like a surging tide and a scream forms in the back of my throat.

As Aston slashes the rope from Edward and Ruben's wrists and chests, the brothers both stumble towards us.

"Go!" I bellow. "Get out of here!"

As I swing the blade at Theseus' ankles, slicing open the flesh, Ruben lunges forward, his face tight, a tear streaming down his face. Theseus howls scatter across the kingdom as Ruben grabs him from behind around the throat, yanking him to the ground, sending his blade clattering down the face of the walls, falling on the outside of the kingdom. I pin the half-siren to the stone, pressing my boot against his jaw, snarling as blood seeps out from his gums and trails down his cheek. His garbled groans and grunts only fuel the darkness festering like a wound in my gut, in my soul, sinking its icy claws into my heart, ready to consume it once and for all.

Madness.

I am madness.

Driven to insanity trying to protect the ones I love. My sister. My friends. The Convex people. Larissa. Ruben. Edward. Did I ever stop to protect myself? My heart?

It is nothing but a shadow-stained bleeding lump. And it's tearing me down, fragments at a time, turning me into... into... who I always was? Who is Elle Fallon? Who was Elle Fallon before all of this? She doesn't exist anymore.

No. I have a heart. It's there. It always was.

Battered and wrecked and bleeding, but there.

Blood. There is so much of it, dripping from my hands. For the ones I love, I kill with reckless abandon for my own wellbeing. I let the darkness take over.

Stop. I must stop.

Edward yanks Ruben away. "Let him go brother, we need to get off this thing."

"Come on, guys," Aston says, gesturing for the ladder at the next section of the Walls, about twenty metres away. "We have to get off before Ajax sets off the bombs."

Ruben pales. Edward's nose scrunches and his fiery gaze flicks to me. "Bombs?"

"Go!" I shout.

Aston growls and grabs Edward's hand, yanking him.

"Elle," Edward says, his voice quiet and twirling off into the wind.

I glance between the two brothers, and it hits me, as Theseus gurgles beneath my foot, thrashing and writhing. Ruben is home. Edward is... just like me. A tangled mess of darkness and the art of giving into destruction. He lunges forward and grabs my face.