Coming Apart

“You swore you’d never fall apart on me like this.”

“I know.”

My fingers trembled around my dagger. Charya stood just a few feet from me, but I knew that even if I could overcome the nerves that were keeping me frozen in place, her blade would stop me long before I could launch mine at her.

She applied the slightest upward pressure toward the rapier at my throat. Instinct pulled my chin upwards, but I still couldn’t meet her gaze. My eyes looked to the left, at the body of my companion, limp in the dust.

“Look at me, Vie. I need to know what’s on your mind.” My eyes flickered up toward her face. I did my best to ignore the sincerity of the compassion she countenanced. I could not bear it.

“Are you going to kill me, or aren’t you?” I hissed.

She had every reason to. I was the country’s most wanted criminal, wanted and on the run for the numerous palidicides I had ostensibly committed. Her own sister among them. A scoff-law was one thing, in the eyes of the reiistrars, but someone who deliberately went after law enforcement was something else entirely.

Charya Thermopoli, reinèd of Benbaro Just, tilted her head back as a bubbling laugh escaped her, her cruelty-sharp blade dipping away from my neck carelessly. “Kill you? I would sooner kill myself! Like I could go on living after the only thing that brings me joy shuffled off this plane.” She grinned and wiped a tear from her eye. “Get up,” she commanded casually.

My legs were trembling, just like my fingers. I willed them to put me upright, and to my horror, they complied.

“This is going to be a lesson, Vientana. You should trust nothing in this world, save for my promise to bring you to justice. Not your magic, or your daggers, or the vows of attractive men. Your mana falters, your grip loosens, and they all disappear at the first light of day.” She tightened her hold on her rapier, and it found a place at my throat again. But my hands found purchase on the handle of my dagger as well. I knew it, and so did she.

Her words spoke to something familiar within me. I met her gaze. She smiled.

“You can’t break that which isn’t yours, Vie. And you? You’re mine. So keep your hands off my property.”

I narrowed my eyes. She lunged forward, but I dodged backwards and to the side, the tip of her blade missing my throat by the width of my smallest finger. I raised my left arm to deflect the next stab with the armor on my forearm, the tip instead glancing off the polished metal. A practiced dance at this point.

“I don’t want to do this anymore!” I shouted, stepping back. The man who was lying in the dust behind me had called me the love of his life. All I had wanted was to escape with him. But it was too late for that. He didn’t dance with Charya as well as I did.

“Too bad!” she called tauntingly as she adjusted her posture and resumed the barrage. She aimed consistently, predictably, giving me ample time to block and counterattack. But I refused to do the latter. It simply felt pointless to me.

Her form worsened. She was getting frustrated and I could see it. The morning sun was starting to rise behind her, the chill of the air breaking with the potency of daylight.

I caught a ray of the sun on the polished metal of my vambrace. It normally didn’t see this level of care, but I’d been planning to look my best for my now-spoiled elopement this afternoon. The beam of light startled Charya, and she raised a hand to her eyes. At that moment, instinct compelled me to seize the opening. I pushed past the length of her rapier, turned my back to her, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her right arm downward over my shoulder. The bone breaking in her upper arm sounded a sickening crack into my ear. Her silence was equally as sickening, the bravery she’d internalized as a reinèd paladin holding her pain back like a dam.

I stepped forward, and she crumpled behind me, the sound of her body hitting the dust the only audible noise coming from her direction.

“Sloppy work, Charya,” I finally said.

“Glad to see you back in action,” she said through gritted teeth.

“And this is the last you’ll see of me.” I was so far beyond done with her ever-present threats. Charya had gone too far in toying with me. Frederick was innocent in this. It was time to be done with her.

I murmured a spell, and the dagger in my hand glowed with a soft brightness that enveloped the blade. I approached Charya, crumpled to her knees on the dirt.

“Any last words?” I asked.

“Don’t let me down.”

I brought the tip of the blade to the spot between Charya’s eyes, on the bridge of her nose. All it took was a tiny prick, and the blood was brought into the control of my spellwork. Streams of vacillating red fluid circled and spiraled around the blade of my dagger. Her eyes went vacant, as the consumption of the blood magic took her.

From the tiny spot on her face, I slowly and gently drew out everything of the paladin’s essence. I focused the energy into the weapon in my hand, and pulled it into the dagger itself. After the moment passed, the soul of my long-time tormentor was now trapped in my favorite weapon. Her body, adorned in the fineries and trappings of her station, fell, bloodless, into the soil. The ceaseless vivaciousness she’d shown in life now emanated through the handle of the dagger.

“Welcome to my collection, Charya. Play nice.”

I put the dagger into its sheathe, among the dozen-or-so other weapons I kept on myself. The other paladins I harvested the same way screamed in voiceless agony and fear. Charya was oddly silent, as was her sister.

I gazed at the dead body of my fiancee. He had been so intrigued by me. So willing to abandon all his wealth and family and run away to be mine. On one level I wanted nothing more than to have gotten past the border into Aorena. To have begun anew somewhere my past couldn’t follow. But in my core, I knew one thing. I was my past. I was my grudge against the bullies and tyrants on my belt. And I knew that there was no running anymore.

I turned toward the rising sun, toward the capital, and toward the man who’d ordered my capture so long ago. My next target could be no one else. The king of this realm. Benbaro Just.