With a roar, I finally grab the scimitar. My body's slick enough with blood that Alef loses their grip on me. I peel away on my knees, slashing downwards. I smile at Alef's astonished expression as my blade goes right through him. He opens his mouth to speak, no final words come out. Just surprise. Just shock that a woman defeated him.
"Sorry, baby," I dip my fingers into his blood. "I guess the evil witch won this one."
I get fully to my feet, swaying as I look at Aziz. Aziz stares back, red eyes flashing.
"Well, darling," they pull the beads in their hands, coiling it like a whip, "it's just you and me."
"Afraid not." I put my fingers to my lips and whistle. My ghūls bound forwards, driving them to the ground.
"Don't kill them, babies." I get on one knee, smirking at their horrified expression, the eyebrows drawn up in that perfectly comical arc, the lips parted. I smear Alef's blood over Ryu's neck, run my fingers down their throat, and finally leave my bloody handprint directly over their heart. "Come back, Ryu." I kiss their forehead. "Goodbye, Aziz."
"You defeated me? You little--!"
All at once, Aziz's red eyes go dark. The Ryu clones vanish.
And when those eyes reopen, I see Ryu's honey-warm ones. Golden skin covered in blood, black hair plastered to his throat.
"Uh...Ode?" His eyes dart everywhere, unfocused, horrified at the carnage. "W-what happened?"
I lift Ryu in my arms, staggering a bit from his weight. He's so thin. Just skin stretched over feather-light bone. Did Aziz just not feed him? Or was this another method of making him "perfect"?
"You're safe, Ryu." I place him on what's left of his bed, as my ghūls gather around me. I smooth his hair back. "I saved you."
But his eyes, they don't recognize me. He shrinks away from me, dripping with sweat and blood, some of it mine, the rest Alef's.
"Get away from me," he whimpers, tears rolling down his gaunt cheeks, "witch."
***
Champions,
No! Baby Ryu!
-Sophia
YOU ARE READING
A Priestess for the Blind God (Legends of Rahasia Book 1)
Fantasy"The Blind God walks around me, and I feel my mind prodded again like it was in the cavern, a spider weaving a tangled web. "Would you do anything to be remembered, Ode, even play a villain, the one who rises against the Chosen One?" In answer, I dr...
