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I wasn’t weakened by the lack of a Requisite. I had been trained to fight without food and drink, to live on nothing. My blood gave me that skill more than the training Batian had thought it entertaining to force me to undergo.
He had always liked his games.
Even before he had stripped that pretty mask for Elara, he had shown his true self to me. I was covered in the marks of his true self, in the long jagged lines that he would make as he sliced that white snake blade of his over my skin. As he cut off the points of my ears and sliced a line down my chest.
I still didn’t move as the guard threw another crust of bread into the putrid wagon, this one right to my face. It bounced off the black shroud, falling into the dirt at their feet as they laughed. The calloused sound sent all the Catalysts shifting and scuttling to the back of the wagon, they knew what came next.
“Oi! Half breed! You dead?” The one near the front laughed, Kyto, Silas’ lacky. Kyto picked up the bread and threw it again. Still, I didn’t move.
“Maybe he is dead?” The guard near the back said; that sword he was struggling to hold up falling a hand's length toward the ground before he recovered it.
“Naw,” Kyto scoffed as a face I knew all too well walked around the wagon, his vile hooked nose swollen and puffy, his eyes black and blue. Silas.
“He ain’t dead. Little half breed loves his games, don’t you…” Silas reached forward, his hand like a claw as he reached for my groin. He was inches away when I moved, my gloved hand wrapping around his fingers, bending them so far as to break them.
“Call me that one more time, Silas.” I snarled, Silas hissed in pain, and glared with all the hatred he usually reserved for me; Kyto snarling right behind him as he unsheathed his sword.
“What? You think you are allowed to talk now? Now that that useless princess of yours is dead?” Silas hissed the words, he and Kyto laughing as what he said pushed me back into the chair. Their laughs turned to guffaws as the other Snakes joined in, the wagon shifted and instantly filled with hushed whispers.
“The princess?”
“Elara? Dead?”
I could barely breathe, the fabric was too thick, the tunic too heavy, the air too hot. I gulped in breaths, clutching at the broach in a sudden desperation to rip it from me, to rip everything off and scream in rage.
“Now, now, don’t be hasty,” Kyto sneered, the tip of his sword pressing against my hand that was grappling for the snake clasp that kept the shroud attached. That forced me to be one of them. “Just cuz the bitch is dead doesn't mean you are free. Our Queen has more use for you yet. For all of you. Soon.” The sharp edge of his blade dragged against the back of my leather gloves as he stepped back, all of them smiling and laughing as the doors to the wagon closed, everyone’s panicked whispers picking up.
“She’s dead?”
“How can she be dead? We all know she isn’t as weak as they try to claim.”
“Did the queen do it?”
“That poor girl…”
I barely heard any of them, not through the sound of the cracking scream that was ripping through my throat, not through the gulps of air that I couldn’t possibly take in enough of. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn't think.
Again, I reached for the broach, only this time I was stopped by an aged hand, by gnarled fingers I knew too well.
“Mother,” I didn’t know if the word was a sigh or a hiss. Not that it mattered, she still smiled, her hands instantly moving as she signed frantic words to me.
‘Silas is right, you cannot be hasty. Not now. Think with your training, not with that foolish lovesick heart of yours.’
‘I do not have a foolish heart.’
‘You do. You love that girl. I told you to leave her, that she will be your death, but you never listen.’ She had told me all of this since the day I had been placed with Elara, claiming it was all some cruel joke of the Goddess to put me so near the girl who would end me. As a boy I had been fearful of her warnings, the older I grew the madder she would get, however, and now I wondered if there was any truth to it.
I didn’t see how she could be right, she couldn't always be right, no matter how much she wished to be. She saw Elara the same way Dalyah did; and they were both wrong.
Neither of them saw who she really was. Neither of them saw her strength.
‘She saved me, Mother. She used–’
‘You owe her a life debt, nothing more.’ She was firm, her motions harsh and angry as she leaned in, scowling. ‘If you had stayed to the path I–’
‘I owe her a life debt?’ I signed, one loud humorless laugh breaking over everything before I turned back to her, trying to fight the concave maw that was opening up in my heart as I signed back. ‘If you had let me leave. If you hadn’t found a way to trap me I could have been with her. I could have saved her. But now, she’s dead. I can’t owe her anything.’
She laughed, the sound broken and hissing thanks to her lack of tongue as she leaned in, her hand right in front of my face as she signed three words so slow each one might have slapped me across the face.
