The Outcast and the Survivor: Chapter Twelve

hands. In that moment, everything becomes weightless, timeless, as Astor and I fall toward certain doom.

  A number of things happen, all seemingly at once. More gunfire. A scream from Helena. Astor’s hopeless silence, which sounds within me louder than anything else. It seems like a lifetime passes before we hit the bottom, the light above slowly dimming until we crash into waiting hands.

  Astor immediately cries out in pain, but I feel nothing. In fact, it feels like I have been caught and set down. Yet I have become paralyzed, left observing my last moments in a totally numb state. Gunfire blazes from above, and the creatures that are climbing fall one by one in a bloody heap. Several soldiers aim their fire down the wall of rock and dirt while Helena calls out to me, but my voice will not answer her even as I stare up through tears and see her glow in the spaces between the creatures that stand all around me.

  “We have to leave her,” Brogan shouts above the noise.

  Kat is nowhere in sight. I want to see her as a couple more soldiers appear and continue firing, but she never comes. Then, in an instant, they all vanish, and I am left alone in the red glow of the flares that surround me.

  I notice a number of shadows moving up the wall, creatures trying to give chase. A few eventually make it up and over the top, but the vast majority turn around and begin rushing out of the cavern the way we came. A distant gunshot echoes here and there, but little more. I hold on to hope that the others are okay as I lie on the rocky floor, lifeless.

  It is a strange sensation I feel. At first, I wonder if my back is broken, but as I start to slowly move, I realize that I have full control over my body again. Something else took over it, a power that completely seized me the moment the creatures touched me. But it is gone now, and I am able to get back to my feet with no tenderness or pain.

  A groan draws my attention. Astor. He is still alive.

  I pick up a flair and approach him, immediately covering my mouth in shock at the state he is in. His little body is mangled, covered in cuts and deep gashes. Yet his face is only slightly scraped. The gunfire must have stopped the creatures from attacking him, and then they let him be.

  “I’m glad… you’re okay,” he coughs out.

  I want to say the same thing back because I want so desperately for it to be true, but it isn’t. He won’t last much longer. He is going to die. My heart aches as I begin crying.

  “I don’t know how,” is all I manage back.

  “We both know how,” he says plainly.

  The silence that follows is unbearable. I am why he is here. It was my choice to trust the Necromancer, and I made him go along with it. After all Astor has done for me, I have led him to his death worlds away from his mother, who may never get to know what became of her only child. She will never know who is to blame for the emptiness she might feel in her heart even now as she senses his life drift away.

  “Tell her that this happened so that she could have hope,” Astor says, like he can read my mind.

  “I’ll never see her again,” I reply.

  “Yes, you will.”

  I pause. He stares at me, love in his eyes somehow. He should hate me. He should see the monster I’m becoming.

  “Why did you lie to them for me?” I ask.

  “Because they would never have trusted you. The Necromancer is a deceitful being, but I had to let you believe otherwise because you were right, even if I wouldn’t admit it. This was the only way to save your sister. The only way to make things right and give our people a chance.”

  My heart warms, if only for a second. A flicker of a hopeful flame I want to grow inside me. If Astor can believe in so dark a moment, even at his end, then I should be able to do the same. Yet the darkness inside of me won’t let it, immediately blowing the hope away, and I am left cold and hollow to witness the last moments of someone so precious.

  I kneel down and hold his hand. He reaches up and brushes my hair, though it causes him great pain to do something even that simple.

  “Gavin,” he forces out. “That’s what your father called me.”

  The mention of that name, a name I haven’t heard spoken out loud in ages, catches me completely off guard.

  “It was you?” I ask, though saying it out loud makes the whole idea ring perfectly true.

  When the rangers became desperate, they sought out an ally where no one else had before thought. The kingdom on the plateau, Kalepo, their enemy who for years oppressed them and kept them below the light of day. But no king or queen would ever have listened to their pleas. No, the petition had to come from someone dear to them. A childhood friend.

  “It was hopeless once,” Astor says. “We had no one to turn to for help, my mother and I. We hid from the guards, sometimes venturing out into the wild when things became too heated in the cities. Because there was no hope, we had to create one, so she sent me away.

  “I was gone for years. I’m sure she thought me dead at times. But I found a way up the stairs and into the city.”

  “How?” I interrupt, wondering if I could not do the same.

  “It’s not impossible for a child. All I had to do was make it far enough that they believed I had snuck out from your city, and I was taken the rest of the way. It happened to be that there was a child who had been missing for some time. His father was dead, and his mother so overwhelmed by grief that she accepted me even though we both knew it was a lie. And then I met your mother.

  “She fell in love with me. It was childish love, but still it felt good to share for a season. We would run away in the fields together. But as she grew older and I did not, I had to tell her the truth, a secret she could never share. She knew that it would mean to condemn me, so she kept it.”

  “My father told me it was the two of you who would run away together,” I interrupt.

  “No,” he corrects. “Your father didn’t trust my plan as much as your mother did. When she became queen, she told him about me, about how she wanted to change the way things were. He was understandably suspicious. That’s probably why he sent you to your sisters and not to my mother.”

  “Why are you not upset?” I get emotional.

  “Because there’s still hope. Sometimes things really are hopeless, and that’s when you have to create a new hope. It’s delicate at first, but if you nurture it carefully, you can have something truly meaningful. I did my part, and that’s enough for me. I just need you to finish it.”

  I start sobbing uncontrollably. With every word he speaks, I realize how lucky I was to have him for this brief time and how heartbreaking it is to lose him. I hold him gingerly as best as I can without causing him more pain. He smiles a couple times, like his agony is becoming less as the life slowly leaves his body.

  “You’ll be okay,” he says a few moments later, his voice almost completely gone.

  “How do you know?” I ask. “How do you know this darkness won’t consume me?”

  “I just do. I’ve seen true hopelessness before, and I don’t see it in you. Even if you fade for a time, you’ll come back.”

  Of anything he has said, these are the most encouraging words to me. I feel inside like I’m losing control. I can sense the dark creatures somewhere above us as they try to chase the others down, like they are becoming a part of me, or I a part of them. It is going to consume me, I know it. But maybe there is still a hope somewhere on the other side.

  “You need to go,” he whispers.

  “No,” I object.

  “I’m at peace now. You stayed with me enough to help me believe it wasn’t all for nothing.”

  “But you were the one saying that to me,” I say confused.

  “Sometimes you have to say something first before you will believe it.”

  Those words send a flame through my entire body, like Astor is transferring what warmth remains in him to a place somewhere deep within me. He takes a couple deep breaths and closes his eyes. His hand reaches out and grabs mine. More tears pour down my face as he says his last words.

/>   “I will miss you, Kaela.”

  “Goodbye,” I sob back, leaning down to kiss him.

  His hold on my hand loosens, and I let it go and stand up before I completely fall apart.

  Without letting myself think or feel anymore, I walk quickly toward the wall of rock and begin my way up, shutting off my mind as I push myself faster and faster. The burn in my muscles means nothing to me, and I am able to focus on climbing and nothing else until I reach the top.

  I am tempted to keep going, to keep moving until I collapse, but I have to look back one more time. I turn around and glance down. The flares below still glow just enough to see the faint outline of where Astor’s lifeless body lies.

  “I will make it back. I promise.”

 

  Epilogue

  I can’t feel my heart anymore. I can’t feel anything.

  It has been a long time since I slept, and even longer since I’ve seen my sisters. The last time was above ground, near the Six Hills. I followed Helena, Brogan, Kat, and the others there from the caverns. All it took was a short swim underwater to get to the sea, and from there, I quickly found the beach where they landed, their footprints leading inland.

  The coast was enveloped in fog, making it hard to track them. Yet, I could sense them somewhere ahead of me, and I ran to catch up and escape the dark feelings that were consuming me. But the closer I got, the darker I felt.

  They came into view in a clearing in the woods near the hills. Cassandra was there to greet them, escorted by more soldiers and in