MICHAEL

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU FOLLOW THE ORDERS?” Big Mike asked.

  “Why didn’t you?” Nemeth replied.

  It was a valid question. Of course it was.

  Even now, he could feel the weight of his choices, standing over dead bodies of the guards. Even though he promised himself more that once to never take another life, he did it again.

  But there was no time to reckon with it now.

  Luc’s army was flooding the city, whether their leader was alive or bleeding in the dirt. The storm had not passed. It had only begun.

  “We need to go,” Mike said, reaching down and lifting Nemeth to his feet.

  The old man groaned, swaying. They’d beaten him nearly to death. Ribs caved in, one eye swollen shut, blood crusted in his beard.

  “Where’s Ademund?” Nemeth asked, his voice hoarse.

  Mike looked away. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t save him.”

  Nemeth’s face sagged. The fight left his body all at once. He leaned heavier against Mike’s shoulder.

  “No,” he whispered. “It was me who couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save either of them.”

  “You helped Amaia escape, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” Nemeth said. His legs dragged more than walked. “But she cannot be saved. Soon she will give birth to a monster.”

  Mike blinked. The words hit harder than he expected.

  “I wanted to see you,” he said after a pause. “That night, on the farm. But you were gone.”

  Nemeth didn’t reply. His silence was its own kind of answer.

  “I knew Yanick couldn’t kill your son,” Big Mike went on. “I played along. But Amaia…”

  “I know,” Nemeth said. “Her mother was the same. Always a rebel.”

  “There was nothing I could do.”

  “Oh, there was plenty,” Nemeth said, his tone sharpening. “More than you’re willing to admit.”

  “What do you mean?” Mike’s jaw clenched.

  “Don’t take me for a fool,” Nemeth snapped. “You have a lot of tools you could have used. At any moment. There, on the farm, later. But you didn’t.”

  Big Mike didn’t respond. Just kept dragging the old man through palace corridors, one step at a time.

  “You didn’t want to expose yourself,” Nemeth said. “Didn’t want to show them what you are. Who you are.”

  He coughed. A wet, rattling sound.

  “So tell me, Michael,” Nemeth said, bitter amusement in his voice, “was it worth it?”

  Of course it wasn’t. But Big Mike didn’t answer. He kept walking.

  “There’s a water culvert,” Nemeth rasped. “Eastern wall. Beneath the old tannery.”

  Mike steadied him as they moved. “Is that where they went?”

  Nemeth nodded weakly, his head wobbling like it was barely tethered.

  “Zain knows the path. If they’re lucky, they’re already outside.”

  “Then we need to hurry.”

  The city around them had turned feral.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Streets once quiet were now chaos. Screaming children, weeping elders, soldiers barking orders no one followed. Smoke curled through alleys, the acrid tang of burning wood and blood staining the air. People ran past like shadows. Faces pale, wild-eyed, clutching what little they could carry. Some still wore their nightclothes. Some had no shoes.

  No one paid attention to two more figures limping through the ruin.

  Mike moved fast, half-supporting, half-dragging Nemeth through the city’s unravelling heart. The old man stumbled more with each step, his breath whistling through cracked ribs, his weight sagging like something already gone.

  By the time they reached the eastern wall, Mike could barely feel his own arms. His shirt was soaked with sweat, half with Nemeth’s blood. The culvert lay just ahead. Dark and low, water whispering in its stone throat.

  “Almost there,” Mike muttered. “You’ll be fine. We’ll get out.”

  Nemeth didn’t respond.

  “Hey,” Mike said, shaking him a little. “Stay with me.”

  No answer. His head lolled.

  Mike dropped to one knee just outside the culvert entrance and shifted Nemeth’s weight to the ground.

  That’s when he felt it.

  Too light. Too still.

  He turned him gently onto his back. The old man’s eyes stared up, glassy, unfocused. His mouth slightly open, lips pale.

  “No…” Mike whispered.

  He pressed two fingers to Nemeth’s throat.

  Nothing. Not a beat. Not a flicker. Just silence.

  “You stubborn old bastard,” Mike said softly. “You could’ve waited.”

  He sat there for a moment, the din of war growing fainter behind the sound of rushing water. Just the dead man and the culvert ahead. No time to mourn. No strength left to cry.

  Mike stood slowly, jaw clenched, back aching from the weight he hadn’t realised he was carrying long before Nemeth had died.

  He looked at the culvert’s mouth, black and yawning.

  Then he stepped inside and the culvert swallowed him whole.

  Big Mike ducked beneath the arched mouth, boots splashing into the cold stream that trickled along the centre. The stone ceiling was low, he had to crouch, shoulders brushing slick walls, the stench of mildew and rot clawing at his nostrils. The faint glow of city fire didn’t reach this far.

  He moved slowly at first, feeling his way. The silence was dense, broken only by the soft, ceaseless murmur of water slipping past his boots. Somewhere ahead, he knew, this same current had carried them. Yanick, Amaia.

  At one point, the tunnel curved and narrowed, and he had to shuffle sideways to squeeze through. Stone wept from above, droplets falling like time itself, cold on his skin.

  Then the culvert opened. A final grate had been pried loose, left leaning awkwardly to the side. Beyond it: the river.

  The current tugged at him the moment he stepped in, boots sliding on moss-slick stone. He gripped the tunnel edge and pulled himself into the shallows, teeth gritted against the sudden cold. The water surged around his thighs, fast and strong, alive with purpose.

  They’d taken a boat. Of course they did. He had nothing.

  He let the current take him.

  The river roared louder with each passing second, banks speeding past. Stone and impossible rock formations lining the edges. The siege lines blurred beyond them—shouts, the thunder of rebuchets and catapults, the clash of steel all distant now, swallowed by water and wind.

  And then came the sound.

  The roar. Deep, endless. Mike’s eyes widened.

  The waterfall.

  He twisted in the current, trying to slow, to grab hold of something, anything, but the river was relentless. He sucked in a breath.

  And the world dropped out from under him.

  Big Mike plunged from the waterfall like a dropped stone, arms flailing once before instinct took over. He curled in mid air, legs drawn in, hitting the water hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. The river swallowed him whole.

  Darkness.

  Silence.

  Then the surge. He kicked upward, broke the surface with a choking gasp, blinking through the mist and spray. His limbs ached. His ribs felt cracked. But he was alive.

  The current dragged him along the rocky bank, tumbling him like driftwood until he managed to grasp a thick root hanging down the cliff side. He pulled himself out, heaving, soaked and shivering, onto the muddy shore.

  His hands stung. Blood ran down his forearm from a fresh gash. He wiped it away, and that’s when he saw something drifting in the shallows.

  A plastic case, bobbing against a rock.

  He waded back in, teeth gritted against the cold, and snatched it.

  It was a kit. Waterlogged but intact. Inside: syringes, small vials, a torn cloth soaked in something dark. He recognised it.

  Yanick. The gauntlet on the Divine Wolf’s forearm. He realised it just now. Of course he had. Yanick must have broken his arm, hand, most probably his wrist.

  That was it. If someone needed those painkillers it was him. But how on Earth did he get them?

  His fingers tightened on the case. If Yanick had passed through here, he couldn’t be far. But there was no sign of him. Just the scuffed shore and a boat’s faint drag line through the wet pebbles.

  Big Mike looked up and saw the sea.

  A grey stretch of roiling water that reached to the ends of the earth. And just at the edge of it, barely visible against the low horizon, a ship. Its sails caught the wind like wings. A warship. Moving steadily away.

  Mike’s breath caught in his throat.

  He started running.

  The pain in his side screamed with every step, but he didn’t stop. He pounded down the coast barefoot, each stride a hammer blow through his body, heart thudding, lungs tearing. The ship was getting smaller.

  “HEY!” he bellowed. “HEY! WAIT!”

  He waved both arms wildly, jumping, shouting until his voice was raw. Nothing. No signal from the deck. No change in direction.

  “They can’t hear me…” he muttered. “I’d give half my soul for a goddamn pair of binoculars…”

  The ship kept moving.

  He slowed, chest heaving, defeated.

  Then—light.

  A flicker. Brief. Controlled. Then another. Sun glinting off polished metal. Not random. Not a trick of his exhausted eyes.

  A mirror. A signal.

  They’d seen him. Of course they had.

  Mike let out a shaking laugh, part joy, part disbelief. He waved again, both arms high, and then collapsed to his knees in the sand.

  They’d seen him.

  He wasn’t too late.