Page 114 of A Simple Truth

Painful sobs shook my back as I knelt by the slaves’ bare feet.

“Finn?”

My eyes widened, and the tears stopped mid streak as I heard a trembling voice.

I rose to my feet, swallowing the tears rolling down my throat, as I twisted and turned looking for him again, but still not finding him.

Perhaps it was my imagination playing tricks on me. But before I had fully succumbed to hopelessness, I had managed to cry out his name one last time.

“Vi, it’s Finn!” my broken voice echoed against the cold alcove, as my eyes feverishly looked for him.

My hand went to cover my mouth as I saw his skeletal figure.

Broken.

He was so damn broken that I had barely recognized him in that shell of a body. The previously bright blue eyes, that kept me afloat amidst my darkest storms, were now a dull, washed-out watercolor, bleakly reflecting the light.

“Finn…”he mouthed. His voice was unsure, as if he too was wondering whether I was just a mirage, a fleeting dream.

“Vi!” I stumbled past the chains, making my way to him, pushing through the starved bodies of the slaves.

“Finn!” he cried as silver streaks ran down his sunken cheeks. He attempted to take another step towards me, but fell harshly to the ground, unable to get up. My knees crashed into the hard rock next to him, my daggers clattering to the ground as I embraced him with everything I had.

“You’re alive. You are alive. Alive.” Pure gibberish mixed with flooding tears came out of my mouth, as I held him tighter, unwilling to let go.

“Finn…You’re here. You’re back.” His body shook with sobs. “I...I... waited, Finn. Each day. I waited for you. Each morning and each night, I said your name. I wanted to give up so many times. I wanted to. But I didn’t. I waited for you. I-I-I waited.” His voice broke with each word, muttering through our convulsing sobs.

“And I came back for you, Vi. I came back.” I held his head as I covered his face in frantic kisses, still not believing that he was here.

Alive.

“You’re free, Vi. It’s over. You arefree,” I repeated those words to him, again and again. “You are free.”

I turned to the surrounding slaves, some of them daring to raise their eyes to look at me, to look at Vi. Then, without letting go of Viyak, I told them what they’d thought they’d never live to hear.

“All of you are freed. You are allfree.”

And then the people wept.

68

GIDEON

She would’ve died had I not come here in time; had I waited even a minute longer.

I shoved my swords through a guard running towards me, pulling out the bloodied, fiery blades with a single thrust as his dead body thumped against the ground.

She would have been dead.

That thought alone turned my mind into a complete wreck as I slammed into yet another guard, crushing his skull against the harsh rock.

The quick uproar we caused was already settling down. The Ten scattered around, making the final death blows to the wounded. We took no prisoners. This was a slaughter. This was carnage. Inadios’s Royal army was now nothing more than half-charcoaled meat, mangled by our swords and trampled under our feet.

White quarry dust, mixed with the stale smell of blood and smoke, heavily layered the air, settling deep into my lungs as my eyes stalked Finnleah from afar. I watched as she fully embraced a shadow of what might have once been a mighty man. I watched as her tears bathed his face, as her lips covered his head withher caresses. As she knelt near him, as she embraced him, as she cried for him.

She abandoned everything for him.

Him.

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