Chapter 9

  Justify His Death

  With a burning sensation, the power of Pisces seeps through my skin, my being, all the way down to my very soul. The snake immediately rankles and spits. The power of the Amethyst Throne flares within me, and I feel the snake’s venom dripping down the walls of my mindscape and seeping into every nook and cranny, oozing through the gaps until it enters my bloodstream.

  Yet at the same time, I can feel the power of Pisces washing through me. It’s a different sensation entirely. While the power of the Amethyst Throne is a sharp kind of pain, like the honed blade of my sword, the power of Pisces is a rolling tidal wave, curved, with no hard edges yet still unavoidable.

  I drop to my knees beneath the combined weight of the magic of the snake and Pisces.

  When I look up at Alex, she’s staring me down, the same intensity in her gaze that makes me look away.

  “What happened?” she demands.

  The same being wreathed in stardust and clothed in a long, flowing dress hovers over Alex’s shoulder. While the blindfold covers their eyes, reminding me distantly of Spyro, they continue to weigh their scales, and I feel a pulling sensation.

  A third magic begins to tug on my self, and I shudder, mind threatening to retreat into the depths of my head.

  “What happened, Scorn?” Alex repeats. Her hair flows around her shoulders as her orange eyes flare with fire, still not blinking despite the brightness of the stars and planets and galaxies burning around her. Within the stars, I see little figures— a crab, a ram, a pair of twins. They materialize, then disappear just as quickly as they came.

  Libra, I realize, as Pisces pulses on my neck. The blindfolded figure behind Alex with the scales is Libra.

  Pisces urges my mouth to move, to formulate words, to speak. The snake bristles, hissing at the invasion.

  But you invaded me, too, I want to say, but I don’t. I cannot.

  The power of Pisces has taken over my mind, and I cannot resist. I try. I dig in my heels, because I don’t know what’s going on. I cannot understand. I just want to pause, but maybe that is not in the cards for me. Not after I murdered Grey.

  There are two voices, both screaming and pounding in my head, so looming and powerful, boom such different, conflicting statements. I can feel the third presence, but it’s far weaker, just there without trying to modify my actions.

  Pisces says to obey the Wolf, Alex, who stands across from me, right in front of Grey’s body, the mangled pieces of bone and nerves and organs and flesh that once made up an entire being. Do they still? I do not know.

  Answer the questions of the Wolf, Pisces tells me as the two fish send a wave of their shared magic through my body. It’s calming, like waves on a warm afternoon, lapping at the shores of the Freedom Coast.

  But Arcane killed Freedom. How can I escape their power? The King has so much power, but so does the Midnight Wolf. They all do.

  The snake, in turn, says to obey the Amethyst Throne. I have that tie, as a Soldier and my appointment as the Dust Devil. The Amethyst Throne gave me that gift. It told me who I am.

  A mangled cry slips from my throat, because I don’t know. I don’t know. I do not know.

  I do not know, and I am so confused. I cannot make sense of anything. I cannot tell up from down. I feel that my entire way of thinking has been swapped, replaced like a new version, like when the King of Ragdon told us he had a new model for the armor for his Guard and Soldiers. More intricate designs lined the metal of the Soldiers’ armor, and tiny imprints of the Dragon’s head had been pressed deep into the stitched-together patchwork of the armor of the Guard. Throw out the old. Bring in the new.

  The snake told me to trust it, but I do not know and now Pisces has taken over my mind and I do not know who to trust. I do not think I can trust my mind. I cannot get time to think, but I do not know if I should have time to think, not after I just took a life. Yet something needs to happen, because Grey is dead, and he is dead at my hands. But I do not know what to do, and I do not know who to listen to. Who to trust. Who to give my allegiance to.

  Obey, Pisces tells me. Answer the Midnight Wolf. Trust the Midnight Wolf.

  I jerk back.

  No wonder Alex has all that power. No wonder she has the power of Pisces, of Libra, of how many other constellations. No wonder she could make the snake heel when I couldn’t.

  If only she could make the snake stop more, but without Pisces.

  I grip the sides of my head as I feel Pisces’s power spread through my jaw, and my mouth starts to move. I stare at the ground, but all I can see is Grey’s body, and maybe I deserve this, because I took his life. I can hear the thump as Grey fell to the ground, the wheeze as he struggled to breathe, the crushing silence after he exhaled for the last time. I cannot take that back. I cannot bring someone back from Lucius. I see the blood bloom on Grey’s shirt after I punctured his lung, the scuffs in the dirt as he stumbled and tried to remain standing, the pleading in his silver eyes. When Alex moves, I catch a glimpse of his eyes, and they’re glazed, blank. Grey almost doesn’t look real.

  No one comes back from Lucius, right? But maybe Grey can come back. Maybe Lucius will bring Grey back from their realm.

  Libra reaches through Alex’s body with translucent arms and grips her wrists tight in their hands. Together, they hold Libra’s scales. Behind Libra’s blindfold, I can feel the heavy weight of their gaze.

  The power of Pisces spreads further, and I speak.

  “I…” I begin to say, and after the first word, they tumble from my mouth, one after the other, faster and faster, and Pisces urges me on. “I met with the King of Ragdon, Bryant. He turned me into the Dust Devil after giving me the gift of the Amethyst Throne. Now I have the snake in my head, and it controls so much. Bryant made me kill Guard and Soldiers before he gave me the order to kill the Dove, Grey, your brother. I… then I sought him out, found him, and… I did that. I killed him. Lucius took him.”

  I don’t lift my gaze from the ground when I gesture at Grey’s body. I don’t need to see him to know what I did.

  That’s the truth, I hear Libra say in an echoing, melodic voice, lifting their scales with Alex’s hands toward Alex’s chest. Each word is measured, as if thought over for millennia before they uttered each syllable. Luke speaks the truth.

  How do they know my name?

  I want to ask the question, but Pisces prevents me from doing so.

  I want to scream, but Pisces prevents me from doing that, too.

  What did you do to me, Alex?

  But maybe I deserve this after killing her brother. I sent him to Lucius when I wasn’t convinced he deserved it. The trial he and Alex received when I held her back as a Guard shot arrows through Grey didn’t convince me of their guilt, and I wasn’t certain now of Grey’s guilt.

  So why did I even do it? I cannot take that back.

  “Did you say no?”

  I hesitate, begin to say yes under the snake’s heavy pressure. Yet Pisces combats the snake, giving a gentle urging that’s also steady, as unrelenting as ocean waves lapping at the shore.

  Can’t you get out of my head?

  I don’t know whether I’m asking Pisces or the snake. Maybe it’s both. I don’t know.

  Why did you have me kill him, Bryant? Grey wasn’t going after you. Not like you made it seem. He didn’t want to hurt me. I wasn’t convinced of his guilt. He never got a fair trial. You’re the King. You should’ve known that, Bryant.

  But he does know that, the snake says. Bryant knows all. He is the King of Ragdon. His word is true. He determined Grey to be guilty. How can you turn your back on someone who has given you so much? Who else would accept you like your King of Ragdon has?

  “I don’t know, snake,” I whisper, “but he never got a fair trial.”

  Alex’s body blocks most of my view of Grey’s body from where I kneel on the ground, trembling under the combined power of the snake and Pisces, but I can see in stomach-twisting clarity the pallor of his skin, which makes the scarlet of his blood stand out all the more.

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  “Don’t look at him,” Alex snaps.

  “I’m sorry,” I say without thinking.

  “You apologize for that?” Alex laughs, but her breath catches like she’s about to burst into sobs, and maybe she is.

  I don’t make eye contact.

  “Look at me, Scorn!” Alex takes a step forward, something desperate in her voice. Her magic responds in kind, sparking with new frazzled galaxies spurting through the stardust hovering around her and Libra. “What happened? What did Grey do that could’ve possibly justified you doing… you doing-doing… all of that to him? Did he make you angry? Did he attack you? Did he say he was going to kill your King?”

  I shake my head when Pisces pulses on the back of my neck, a soft squeeze.

  “No,” I whisper. “Grey did none of that. He didn’t attack me until the… until the end.” I rub at my arm as I try to think over my words, but Pisces encourages me to speak freely, to not think over words, to simply speak my mind as thoughts arise. “He did nothing against me. I was there when you and Grey had your… trial for being the Wolf and the Dove. The King of Ragdon did not give what I felt to be a just trial. Grey shouldn’t have been sentenced to death then, not with a trial like that. That wasn’t fair, nor was it to you.”

  Alex shudders, the movement rippling through her whole body as Libra reaches an arm over her shoulder, holding their scale in the new Midnight Wolf’s view and twisting their hand until the rope of the golden scale tilts it at an angle.

  “It wasn’t fair,” I continue. “I don’t know what Bryant’s thinking. He’s changing. He’s changed. He’s different. The Dragon is gone, but he has the snake. It’s in my head, and I’m the Dust Devil but he’s asking me to do things that aren’t justified. Grey hadn’t done anything. It wasn’t right. Grey’s guilt hadn’t been proved to me yet.”

  Alex is silent, save for the ragged breaths she drags in. When she speaks, her voice is flat, nearly inflectionless but in the false kind of way, held together by a network of fraying threads stitched together to cover up a yawning void of raw emotion.

  “So Grey’s death could’ve been justified?” she asks.

  I flinch, and I realize the corner I’d walked myself straight into. If I deny it, I’d be lying. Pisces won’t let me, not with the hold the fish have over me. And Libra would surely find out. But if I say yes… I don’t finish the thought.

  Maybe I would end up looking how Grey does. I don’t know that Alex would really be all that wrong for doing so. Maybe I shouldn’t even defend myself.

  Yet I cannot even get myself to reply, to argue for my actions. The snake tells me that I was justified. The King of Ragdon asked of me to commit Grey’s killing. That was all the justification I needed. But my conscience says otherwise, that part of me that nearly got me in trouble countless times when it raised questions of what the King had done.

  If you cannot ask questions, what do you have? Pisces asks. Shouldn’t you be able to ask questions of your King?

  “Could Grey’s death have been justified?” Alex repeats.

  There’s something bitter, something raw, in her voice. It makes a shudder race up my spine.

  I hunch over further, curling in on myself, because I can’t look up. I can’t meet her gaze. I can’t face what I’ve done. I can’t look at Grey. I want to erase what I’ve done from my mind, but at the same time I don’t want to forget. Someone has to know what happened to Grey since he can no longer speak.

  But you’re the reason why he cannot speak. You took that away from him. You erased everything he was going to do. You’re the reason why he will never get to choose again. You get to choose, and he doesn’t have a choice again.

  “The King tells us what to do,” I start slowly. I stare at my hand, looking through it as my vision blurs and my body begins to turn numb. “But his order to kill the Dove didn’t make sense. Not fully, but we’re supposed to listen. We’re supposed to obey. We’re not supposed to think, but I could never fully do that. I… I just wanted to do what I was supposed to.”

  Alex lunges forward, hands curling into fists. “And what you were supposed to do was murder?” she shouts. “You were supposed to kill my fucking brother?”

  Libra watches from behind, head at an angle. I can feel the weight of their gaze behind their blue blindfold, the same shade as the diamond earring hanging from Alex’s ear. Their pink dress swishes around their ankles, blown by the stardust and galaxies hurtling away from Alex. They continue to weigh their scales, and I feel like they’re weighing my soul, weighing my fate.

  I flinch, but don’t disagree. I slide off my knees.

  “I was supposed to kill the Dove,” I whisper.

  Luke speaks the truth, Libra says.

  “And you did.” Alex’s voice cracks, shattering over the words like the glass she had jumped through as she fled from Bryant’s castle. “You fucking killed him. You murdered him, and now he’s with Lucius.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  I’d done my job, but I don’t feel good. I don’t feel proud. The snake tells me I did a good job, but I don’t think that I agree. But I don’t know what’s happening within me. It’s a churning mess that I cannot straighten out. It’s a yawning void of stretching, twisting feelings, emotions, thoughts that I cannot set in a line.

  xxxx

  “What do we do now?” I ask, eyes still focused on the ground.

  A beetle scuttles up a blade of grass, antennae waving around.

  I feel Alex’s gaze on me, taking in my entirety, and I force myself to remain still. A part of me wants to drop into a bow, the same one I give to Bryant, but another part of me feels that wouldn’t be right. That bow belongs to the King of Ragdon. But perhaps Alex wants that acknowledgment that I will listen.

  I’m still debating what I should do when she speaks.

  “You stay here. Do not leave. I will bury Grey, and then we will go. I… I can’t even think, but I’m not leaving you. Grey wouldn’t-. He doesn’t-. He wouldn’t want me to hurt you, but you need to pay. You murdered him, Scorn.”

  I can’t help the flinch. I know what I did to Grey, but hearing it out loud —hearing it from another person— somehow makes it all that much more real.

  I took a life. We took a life. We’ve done that before, but how does this life —Grey’s life— somehow hit so much harder?

  Yet I already know the answer; because I did not believe that Grey needed to die. Thinking back, I do not know if I truly believed that those I killed before needed to die either, but Grey’s death I was not convinced should have happened.

  Therefore… therefore he should still be here. He should be greeting his sister. He should see that she is the new Midnight Wolf. How many firsts will he never get to see? How many choices will he never get to make?

  What freedom he has lost, now that he can no longer choose.

  Alex paces in jagged, uneven steps, raking a hand over her mouth as she draws in ragged breaths.

  When the beetle draws close enough, I scoop them up. I cannot tell if they’re a male or female, but they crawl across my hands and weave between my fingers. Their feet tickle my skin, and their antennae brush against the pads of my fingers. I run a gentle nail across their thorax and elytron. Both are hard and smooth, shiny in the sunlight that I know will give way to moonlight soon.

  Exhaustion weighs over me, but something restless stirs within me, keeping me too antsy to truly relax. Coupled with how every time I close my eyes I see Grey falling, seizing, bearing a myriad of wounds, dying, I know Dreamland won’t come for me until I cannot stay awake a moment longer.

  I don’t say anything. I don’t break the tense silence that hangs between us, fragile enough to shatter with a wrong exhale. Alex scratches her fingernails down the back of her opposite hand with the beginnings of a snarl.

  “Why did you do that, Scorn? How could you do that?”

  I close my eyes, facing the ground. I know Grey’s blood lays splattered across the dirt and rock. I know his body lays just past where Alex stands, body likely gone cold.

  The beetle crawls off my hand, down my thigh, and onto the soil, where they wander away.

  How could I have done what I did? The snake played a role. The King did, too. But I was the one who took Grey’s life and sent him to Lucius. Why did I do that?

  Pisces pulses on the back of my neck, urging me to obey the new Midnight Wolf and answer her.

  “I…” I start, trailing off.

  I don’t know, is the honest answer. Yet at the same time, I do know.

  “I wanted to obey the King of Ragdon.” I feel the power of Pisces wash through me, pressuring me to continue answering and I’m too tired to resist. “I thought I just had to keep listening, and then I wouldn’t question Bryant so much. I…” I exhale, shoulders slumping as I let my chin fall to my chest. “I—.”

  “You murdered my brother because you couldn’t say no?” Alex interrupts.

  xxxx

  I hit the ground before I feel the impact of the punch. I didn’t see Alex move, but I can feel the pain in my cheek and the ache in my jaw.

  The iron tang of blood spills in my mouth and I lick my lips as I lay on my side, vision swimming.

  Fight back, the snake urges me, struggling against the unmovable grip of Pisces.

  The twin fish wriggle on the back of my neck and send another wave of magic through me.

  Obey, they say.

  What else can I do? The power of the two of them runs through me. If I couldn’t successfully fight the snake, how could I fight two fish, two beings who make up one of the constellations of a Midnight Wolf, the only being with power I know of that even approaches that of the King of Ragdon.

  “I don’t have just one reason,” I say as I push myself up to a sitting place. Alex rubs at her knuckles.

  I know I should be looking Alex in the eye. She deserves that much. Grey deserves that much, too. But I cannot. I’m too weak.

  You never should’ve gotten the power of the Dust Devil.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have, I begin to agree, but I did. I just don’t know what to do with that power now.

  “There were… I don’t know how many. The King told me what to do for my life, even before I was a Soldier,” I continue, and I gesture to my armor, where an imprint of the Dragon’s face lays embedded across the chest plate and on both spaulders on my shoulders. “I was taught to be a Soldier, and I was always told that no wasn’t something the King of Ragdon ever heard. When I became a Soldier, I did everything that was asked and more. Maybe if I did just a little more, it would feel right and I would stop feeling like a fraud because I could never understand how everyone else seemed to have it so easy. They didn’t seem to have the same voice telling them that something just didn’t seem right, but I’d been told that you don’t say no to the King so I must be wrong, right? The King turned me into his righthand man, the Dust Devil, and I got magic powers, but I also got a snake in my head and it tells me such horrible things and pressures me to do everything and more and more and more. I’ve seen what happens when you say no. So I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t say no. I was afraid. But I also couldn’t hurt Grey. Yet I did. I murdered Grey. I murdered your brother.” My voice trails off into a whisper, and I curl up, hands against my temples as tears burn in my eyes.

  Luke speaks the truth, Libra says, their voice level and calm. Luke tells no lies.

  Alex shakes her head. “You should’ve said no,” she whispers, voice cracking into a thousand pieces. “You just had to say no.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t even know what to do now. You-you took everything away from Grey. You realize that, right? You took everything!”

  “I know,” is all I can say.

  My mind keeps returning to that fact— how Grey will no longer get to do anything. How he will no longer get to experience any part of life, the good or the bad. How he will no longer get to choose.

  I close my eyes, but open them when memories of Grey's last moments flicker through my mind's eye, one after the other after the other. I curl up, knees as close as they'll get to my chest with my armor on. The weight of the metal used to feel comforting, but now it just feels suffocating. I tremble.

  At some point, Alex leaves with Grey’s body. When she returns, her face is red and her eyes are puffy.

  She stands over me and looks down through her unblinking orange eyes, and I feel Pisces stir on the back of my neck, ready to obey her.

  “We’re leaving, and we’re going to find the rest of the group. What your fate is, I don’t know. But you will accept your fate, ok?”

  I nod. “I do.”

  I'm back! Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter of The King's Remorse! Please comment your thoughts and consider a favorite/follow!

  Up top is how I imagine Libra. Their blindfold matches the diamond earring Midnight Wolves wear. You can see the earring a bit on the drawing of Arcane from Astra's Can't or Won't? chapter. It's the one at the bottom of his ear, and Alex has a matching earring in her ear. Libra's powers, if it wasn't clear from the chapter (I do hope I made Libra's powers clear, though!), are to tell if someone is telling the truth or not

  Well, Alex has found Luke and things are, very understandably, tense between them, to say the least

  How will meeting the rest of the group go?

  What will happen with Luke now that he has taken Grey's life but will not be returning to the King, at least as long as he is with Alex?

  This section will run a little longer than the usual 12-ish chapters, at least with my current plans, so I hope you're ready for some more chapters!

  I hope you're having a nice day and if not, I hope tomorrow brings something nice your way

  -Werewolf14- :)