Within the Walls [NEW VERSION]

Chapter 30

My arm muscles tighten as I pull back the bow, breathing in deep, and blowing out the air, focusing on my target at the far wall of the room. The clack and clang of dozens of other Tranqs in training fades into the background. I ignore Ruben's lingering stare. A gasp falls from my lips as the arrow stabs the dummy's head. All I can see are the arrows embedding into real skulls. Strangled death cries echo in the back of mine. I squeeze my eyes shut and the bombmaker hangs from the new bridge, swinging in the wind. My knees buckle and I drop the quiver, hissing and gripping my head.

"Are you okay, Elle?" Ruben says, stepping up behind me.

"Clearly not, your grace," I snap, curling my finger inward.

Dozens of heads turn our way and I glare at them, averting them elsewhere. I swallow the lump in my throat. "I can't do this," I say under my breath.

"Yes, you can." His voice stirs my insides and I want to unfold into him and hide from the monsters baring their teeth at me. "You killed the dummy."

"But one day, it might be a real person." My voice is flat, and I stare at my boots. "What kind of person will that make me?"

He presses his lips together. "I'm not sure –" Ruben cuts himself off. His face draws back as he lifts his chin in the air, sniffing. "Do you smell that?"

My stomach lurches into my throat at the distinct, sooty stench of smoke. The hairs straighten on my arms, and I snatch the quiver from the floorboards. Then I hear it. That sound. Crackling and licking and a roar that burrows into my bones, as wind blows the scorching flames through the building. Its heat grazes my face. Sweat springs from my pores. But my feet remain stone, even when Ruben grabs my wrist.

Despite the blistering heat billowing through the target practice room, a shiver brushes my spine. A hundred voices permeate the air, growing louder and louder by the moment, growing into a chanting crescendo that turns my veins into icicles.

"You will die in our world! You will die in our world!"

"Fire!" A Tranq bellows, bolting past me.

But even as Ruben yanks me away from the crawling fiery hues eating at the walls around me, I cannot move. A throng of Convex men, dressed in their tattered brown pants and linen shirts, run from the burning building, dashing for their lives across the grass. A sharp scream tears from my throat when the first man falls face first into the dirt, his death blow, a Tranq arrow, pointing towards the sun. Convex men tear past me, diving into the safety of the trapdoors scattered around the palace. As more Tranqs flank the palace grounds, dozens of arrows crisscross the air. The brave Convex men fall like poisoned rats. Ruben yells in my ear and I finally stumble after him, fleeing from the blazing building.

But a yell for help stops me in my tracks. I whirl around to see a Convex man trapped under the fallen debris of a doorway he tried to escape before it collapsed. Blood pools around him and the flames thirst for it. He desperately tries to push the hunk of wood from his chest. Blisters form on his cheeks as the flame creeps up his flesh. His howl unearths a primal terror within me.

"We have to help him, Ruben!" I cry, ignoring the fact I used his name.

Ruben lunges forward, gripping the chunk of wall on the man's lower half. I grab it too. Together, we grunt and groan, and lift it off, pushing it aside.

We help the whimpering, blubbering man to his limp feet and drag him away from the flames. He hurls himself at the grass and rolls around, snuffling out the fire. The man lies there, whimpering and trembling.

"Elle?" a voice snaps my attention.

"Aston?"

He bounds over, blood trickling down the side of his face like a winding forest path. "I didn't realise you would be here."