Death of a King

Chapter 42

I can't stop crying, the tears and tremors lay siege to my body like anarchists and butchers, rendering my limbs useless, resulting in Chris having to carry me down the long hallway. No matter how hard I try, I am unable to cast out the image of Lumiere, writhing on the ground in a pool of his own blood while his eye was carried away like loot from a pirate ship.

Several times I've had to watch both Dustin and Lumiere get beaten by Donovan or other members, or other rivals entirely, and one time even by each other. But the toll has never escalated to this. Except for the raid on the compound, the reaches of this war have never called for a price so steep. But at this very moment, Lumiere is paying that price. He lost his eye.

Rosen took his eye.

What kind of monster can look at someone they once knew so well, and demand payment in the form of blood and agony? How could Rosen do that, especially since Lumiere used to be a Reaper? I would have thought, out of us all, Lumiere would be the safest due to his past ties with the Reapers. But I was wrong, I was so incredibly wrong.

And now ...

"Stop thinking about it." Chris ordered gently, watching me with close inspection as I gagged and nearly collapsed. His head hung low, his voice even lower, and those phantoms in his eyes accumulated with each passing second. Another ghost to add to his past, another body to the pile. Another drop of blood to add to the ocean he's spilled.

"Why didn't you save him?" I sobbed louder, my vision now blurred and my voice so hoarse it hurt when I cried out, "You could have done something, anything, but you just stood there and let it happen! Why didn't you help him?"

Chris sanctioned my accusations and sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face while he carried me farther away, "There was nothing I could do for him, Sadie."

I was choking on my tears, barely able to get out a single word let alone a coherent sentence, "There is always something, there is always a way-"

"Not here." Chris spoke this from experience and the amount of conviction in his detached statement reminded me yet again that the Reapers were nothing like the Tribe, "When Rosen gives an order, it's followed. No one disobeys because rebellion means death. I'm sorry Sadie, really I am, but at least this way he gets to live."

A ridiculous statement but I hadn't the mental vigor to argue.

I don't want to do this anymore, I don't want to be the hero. I thought being the hero meant I'd save my friends and make a sacrifice but overall I'd live, content, knowing that I saved those I loved most. But none of that is true. I haven't saved anyone, I've only made things worse, and now Lumiere is suffering because I'm the worst hero there has ever been.

This is all so wrong. I want to go home – no, not home. I want to go back. To a time before the pain and the torment and all the damn bloodshed. Back to when my mother was still alive; making pancakes in the mornings, taking me shopping with her on the weekends, singing to the radio and decorating the house for the holidays. I want to go back to a time that was easy and warm and innocent. Ignorant to what monsters truly dwelled in the dark.

After all this time and all the growth I thought I made not only as an adult but also as a person, a human being, none of it mattered. Because I haven't changed at all. I'm still just a scared little girl crying for her mother to solve her problems. But my mother can't solve this problem.

No one can.

One hallway led into another, on and on, seemingly forever. We took too many turns to memorize but I couldn't care less where Chris was taking me.

This place is my home now. This awful, rotten, repulsive place that would be decorated with the amputated fragments of my friends. I'll be plagued for the rest of my life by the sight of Lumiere's eye ... nailed to the wall –