Legends 8

July 6th, Epsilon

“And so today,” I sob, accepting a handkerchief to wipe away fake tears, “we mourn the death of my beautiful daughter. Rest in peace, Lucia.” 

Among the crowd, some murmur, some wail, and some cry, but all mourn the death of the girl I loathed the most.

My sea-foam green Bugatti waits for me in the parking lot where I left it, windows darkened to near-black. Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I dial a number, opening the car door and sitting in the driver’s seat — the only one not stacked ceiling-high with bag upon bag of cash, all my hard-earned money. Our hard-earned money. 

“Kadiya, love. Are you on your way?” My husband’s voice soothes me the way it always has. 

“Yes.”

“Do you have the money?”

“I withdrew it all. It’s with me in the car now.”

“Not our account-”

“Lucia’s. I know.”

“And the rights to Dasha’s?”

I sigh contentedly, tossing my hair over my shoulder. “I’m working on it.”

He chuckles, his warm laughter fuzzy over the speakers. “We’ll work on it. But no rush, we’ve got time. We run Taxitas now.”

We run Taxitas now.

Read on for an after scene!

July 7th, Epsilon

I shuffle my feet, the farthest and fastest I can move them with the brass chains that link my ankles together. Coming upon an empty cell, the jail master shoves me in, my knees scraping against the rough concrete and staining it red with my blood. 

“Enjoy your free time,” he says, picking the key to the cell off the large loop on his belt and double padlocking the cell door shut, “cause you don’t get much of it. One meal a day, choose now or I’ll choose for you.”

Whimpering as I pick myself off the floor, I ignore the stinging pain long enough to hear a soft whisper from the other side of the cell wall. “Lunch,” it whispers.

“Lunch.”

The jail master scribbles something on a sheet of paper tacked to a dusty, scratched-up clipboard, then looks up at me again. “You get one shower a week, and you’re blindfolded to go and come from everywhere. You crap in that corner,” he points to a hole in the furthest corner of the cell, “and you piss there.” He points to the one opposite it. “Once you outgrow what you’ve got on, you get one shirt, one pair of pants, and one pair of shoes each year. No more. Maybe less. The rest,” he turns and begins to walk away, “you figure out sooner or later.”

I let out a shallow breath, sitting against the wall. 

“Lilium. Are you there?”

Indigo. “Yes,” I whisper eagerly, tipping my head to the side so that I can hear her. “What are you doing here?”

She sighs, rapping her knuckles on the ground. “Accomplice to the murder of Dasha Halax. Xander, too.”

“Is he there?”

“Sure am,” he calls. I can hear him shrug up to the wall on the other side. This is how we talk now. 

“This is my fault. You guys don’t deserve to be here.” I stare at my thin fingers in my lap, wondering what life will be like. I turn nineteen in two years. I guess I don’t have too long to think about it.

“What happened, Lilium?” Xander asks, his voice a soft contrast to the forcefulness he usually brings to every conversation. 

“It’s…” I flash back to the memories of the last few days. All this in days. Days. “It’s a long story.”

“We have a long time.”

“Well…” I trail off, trying to think of how to start. “It’s July 2nd, Epsilon. I twirl a bright pink lock of hair between my fingers while I shuffle down the sidewalk, humming a song I barely know over the incessant honking and beeping of the traffic beside me…” 

And that's the end! Thanks for making it here!