Page 51 of Lux

“Arrest away,” Altaris says, raising his hands innocently. “I beg you to. In fact… I dare you.”

Marin laughs. “We aren’t here for you, unfortunately. Looks like another creature has run amok that isn’t one of your little pets. This area is now a crime scene, so run along.”

“Crime?” Altaris wonders in a skeptical tone. “Oh pray tell?”

“Nothing you’re fucking privy to know,” Marin snaps. “Now clear out, or I will arrest you?—”

“Oh dear, Caspian?—”

I run. I run before he can order me back and close my ears. Fuck him. Fuck them. Fuck.

I can smell her. I can hear her now, my fae. My poor, poor fae. Not sobbing or crying. No, she is dead silent. Too quiet. Her breaths rasp in and out of that delicate throat, but strained. As if she’s suffocating. Dying. Frozen.

I run. Through milling crowds and cages of stinking, howling animals. I run until I feel her presence. Until I taste her nearness on my tongue.

I run directly through a cloud of red fabric and into a large room. There she sits, my Niamh, staring blankly, covered in blood. As dead to the world as I was when Cassius severed my mind from his, she sits there.

I call out her name. She does not answer. I take her into my arms and she is still.

“...bloody crime scene! Get back or I’ll have your fucking head on a spike, vamryre?—”

“You will do no such thing.” Altaris’s voice ushers in a deadly quiet. Even the mortals heed his power. They, with their false authority and silver sticks. Though they pretend to hold power, they know whoreallymakes the rules.

As Altaris speaks, they are compelled to listen.

But I don’t. As I hold Niamh in my arms, I feel the warmth of her. Her bloodied hair is brushed away from her face as I stroke it. Staring into those black, blank eyes, I am speechless.

Her mind isn’t damaged. It has not been severed, cut, and allowed to rot. Angry and raging, she's in there. She is in shock.

“I said get back! Do you not see the fucking mess around here. Hey! That is evidence!”

Evidence. The robe I use to cover her gaunt frame. Evidence. The blood I smear over her skin in my attempts to wash it away. It doesn’t belong to her. Odd blood. Rotten blood…

Vamryre blood?

“Bloody hell, Altaris! I know you think you run this damn city, but you and your little pets can’t waltz all over a crime scene. And that one certainly isn’t one of yours. She’s being arrested on suspicion of murder?—”

“You are speaking,” Altaris snaps. “Yet I hear nothing of value. Hush. I shall only speak to Jack.”

“This is my crime scene,” the woman interjects. “You vile, fucking vamryre. One would think you’d want to get justice for your own kind. This bastard was a black market seller. Do you see what the fuck she’s done?”

Done. My Niamh, pale, and frail, bundled in bright green silk. She sits amid a pile of blood. Surrounded by a neat collection of body parts. Limbs. An eye. A bloodied, naked torso.

In the center of it…

“Oh dear,” Altaris says, and genuine dread creeps into his tone. He’s worried. No, beyond worried. He is afraid. “This certainly complicates things.”

“That it does, you vamp prick,” the woman, Marin, snarls with glee. “This is a capital murder case with all the hallmarks of dark magic being at play. Boys, arrest the girl and get these damn bats out of my fucking face!”

A silence falls, but Altaris isn't the cause.

I was.

“Touch her,” I said. “And I will kill you all.”

When I am not prodding at my Niamh testing her for damage and danger. When I am not calling out her name repeatedly to no response. When there isn’t vamryre blood that isn’t mine smeared all over that pretty, crooked mouth.

“Oh dear,” Altaris says, his tone hard again. “This will cost me a pretty penny. A capital murder charge is not cheap. She will be denied bond, which means I will have to pull many a string to keep her out of boney custody. Do you hear me, Caspian?”

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