Legacy

Chapter 16: Broken Promises of Partnership

A.N. The music on the side suits after the first page break (second scene) - but not the first.

I felt the uncomfortably warm buzz of healing magic before my eyes fluttered open, the heat concentrated in my chest: similar to the feeling of fire teasing skin. Though I wanted nothing better than to fling the healer's hands away, I let the heat simmer inside of me, my cracked ribs being allowed the time to cement together.

Lasseter beat me. He fucking beat me. Hatred of him coursed through me, a heat as tangible as any healing power. When the cold replaced the warmth, I knew it was over and slung my body upwards, my legs switched to dangle over the side of the stretcher. The healer: a light-haired, lithe woman fluttered her hands around uselessly, attempting to get me to rest. I ignored her.

"How'd he beat you?" Stellaire asked me, his gaze not even focused on me. The healer's complaints dissolved as Ryder and I engaged in conversation, our concentration making her disappear from the room. My partner was standing in the corner of the room, just his shoulder leaning against the wall, the rest of him angled away.

He had a scratch on his cheek no one had tended to and blood crusted on his knuckles.

"There were two of them," I replied bluntly. "And one of me."

I was curt and short in reply, unable to stretch syllables into satisfying sentences. The information lay coiled inside of me but I couldn't bring myself to release it all - and instead made him slowly drag it out of me, chain by chain.

"I thought you said you could handle that kind of thing," he said, his voice simmering under an immense amount of anger. How he hadn't exploded yet, I didn't know.

"I'm a leader by family," I snapped back. "A soldier by second nature. I wasn't prepared for the ambush, and I hadn't been trained like Lasseter's partner had been. He caught me off guard and unawares. I couldn't do much about the situation."

"You couldn't do shit about the situation," he snarled. "Lasseter and Caxton won the fucking Maze, they were the ones who excelled with high honours. We were nothing in comparison. And to the Sol's Chosen, we will look like fucking nothing."

"I get it," I said angrily back. Rage was rising up in me hard and fast and I was helpless to control it. No. I didn't want to control it. Anger had caught me in the tide and the waves were coming in, smashing against me and keeping me under. But I was lingering in that undertow, drifting in the depths - and I was revelling in that water.

"I don't think you do."

I don't think you do. Simple words, simple syllables - and how he was blind. I'd been raised my entire life for the Final Training, taught what to say and what to do. I don't think you do.

I surged forward to him, catching him unawares, my hand fisting into purpose and striking him across the face. Stellaire fell backwards, his side probably burning in pain as he hit the floor at a bad angle. I didn't wait for a reaction, a cast-away curse word, even a moment for air to hiss angrily through teeth - I just attacked.

Throwing myself forward, I straddled his chest, bringing his head up from the floor to smash it back down, a flyaway cry coming from him - but cut off as the smack! of my slap became the reigning sound. His hands scrabbled against air and then my face, only managing to uselessly scrape once before I battled them away.

I rolled off him, hooking my right leg under his body as an anchor so I could drive my other knee into his knee, bringing blood, cries and my own vicious sense of righteousness. I don't think you do. I pushed backwards, using his side as a launch-pad and swung my leg in a scissor-kick.