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The sharp edge of the knife glinted as it caught the light. He took a step back, she was really going to do it. Gritting his teeth he stared into her eyes that had once looked at him with warmth and love now replaced by a wild madness.
“Aww....You didn’t think I’d actually hurt you, did you?”, Her playful mocking tone, a sharp contrast to her words.
He looked at the woman in front of him and couldn’t find the one he had fallen in love with anywhere. Some unknown part of him, somewhere deep in his battered heart shattered. Throat closing up he spoke, his voice choking on the words he thought he’d never have to utter.
“I don’t trust that you won’t.”
The smile on her face widened, all teeth, a feral animalistic thing. Her hair floated in a halo around her like a nest of nettles. Her eyes dripped with a fury so deep, it seemed as if it sucked in all the surrounding light, almost like two black holes ready to swallow him up.
Like this she looked like a vengeful spirit of the woods, all sharp edges and snarling words. Something like a natural disaster in human form, uncaring of the devastation she would leave in her wake.
All but ripping his eyes away from the sight, he tried to regain his bearings. Her betrayal stung like salt on an old still weeping wound. All those years spent together, thrown away in a single moment. His heart ached with that thought. Maybe he had been a pawn all along, maybe all those moments he had treasured were just an another tool in her arsenal.
He flinched as a sharp pain bloomed on his cheek, pulling him harshly from his impending spiral. Eyes flicking up, his chest hitched. In her hand, bits of broken rock swirled a dizzying dance, forming rapidly into the tiny daggers that had previously always been beside him.
The new sting of betrayal flared, his face crumbling as realization finally crashed into him. She had chosen her cause.
When she had asked for his support what seemed like a lifetime ago. At that time he had given her every bit of himself he could. He had bled for her cause, for her. Then she had done the unforgivable. She had gone after the children. Those who had no idea of the wrongdoings of their benefactors.
He had seen a glimpse of that madness back then as she set flame to the orphanage, the embers dancing in her eyes as a deranged smile marred her face. That very day he had left with not a single backward glance.
Now he wondered whether he should have stayed. That his presence might have soothed some part of the humanity that was nowhere to be seen now. But he could not dwell on the past right now, could not think of how his inaction led to the deaths of so many innocents.
A barrage of her famous stone daggers flew at him like bullets. Flaring his wings he gave a single flap, muscles straining to follow his commands in time. Within one blink and the next he was in the air, well away from the raining stones.
A sharp bark of laughter cut through the air. “You were not called the best for nothing.” A bittersweet smile crossed her face, turning sharp in but a moment like a mirage.
He stared at her yet again, his face blank, ‘You would know most, wouldn’t you’. His partner, the one he’d fought beside for nearly his whole life now stood before him a stranger, and like that the pain returned.
He knew that right now he was just another obstacle on her path to revenge. She wouldn’t hesitate, not for him, not any longer.
Maybe if he had stayed.
Maybe if he had turned back.
Maybe if he had returned.
Maybe.
Maybe
Maybe
But he had never been one for maybe’s. In the here and now he needed to protect the innocents, the civilians…the children.
He was needed by so many right now. He couldn’t falter, not while he still had people to protect, even if he needed to go against her to do so.
With that he pulled his sword from his scabbard and pointed it at his heart. A second passed in silence, as if the very world was holding it’s breath.
And…he fell. Like a falling star. Like an avenging angel, the miday sun halowing his snow white hair, streaming through his feathers. In his shadow stood his heart, her eyes shining with indecipherable emotions as she watched him fall.
The wind ran wild, whipping back and forth, her fingers twisted, warping the ground. She stood in the dark, the very world bending to her command, and she looked beautiful.
I loved you
Loved?
…