Chapter 15:
Gandadirth
Feruvia was just an hour’s journey north. I gathered the blood of a shifter I had killed on the way out, taking Fiona with me, and pulled out its organ. I threw it on the table in front of Jadirel and told him it was Fiona’s heart. He stared down at it and then looked up at me; I’d never seen him so proud.
It was gruesome, but it worked.
“Good work, son,” Jadirel said to me and looked down at the bloody heart.
“Thank you,” I said, and he set his hand on my shoulder.
I felt a sob of emotion creep up my throat as I wondered if I would ever see him again: if I could live with myself if I watched him burn.
Then I thought of Fiona and decided that I could. I would live for her now.
As each shifter took to the sky, I watched. I told Jadirel I would be right behind the pack.
I couldn’t say goodbye to Tesyduss. That would have been too painful. But he was tainted, I thought. We all were. We thought we’d been fighting to free our people and restore our honor. But we were fighting for the same D’Karr who had helped destroy us.
My loyalty was with Fiona now. Not the humans, but my girl.
I waited and watched them take flight, careful to inspect the base top to bottom to make sure no one was left behind. That was it. I was the only one left.
Fiona ran up to me, kissing me softly before I pulled her up into my arms.
“I have to do this,” I said, and she nodded. “Will you come with me?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
I trailed far behind the shifters with Fiona tight in my arms, watching from a far distance as they finally came upon the island. They were greedy, I thought. Fiona knew it, and now I knew it too.
They were greedy and selfish enough to race to the island without ever thinking it was a trap, just as I had.
I felt justified, suddenly. Like I was doing something good for once. Something real that would help everybody.
A spark ran through me now as I watched the Pletunds come into view; their massive weapons taking aim and exploding into the sky like shooting stars; beams of light cascading throughout the night and hitting the shifters.
I watched my former warriors plummet to the ground; watched them try to fight the machines in vain; watched as lightning and bursts of fire came forth from their mouths before they were shot by the white beams.
I imagined what Aurlauc must have been doing. I imagined the ships in Dobromia going off in the distance: the last means of leaving the planet destroyed. Their only chance of getting off Dobromia from this point on would be if someone crash landed there, and I would do everything in my power to make sure the coordinates for the D’Karr’s planet would never be seen again.
In my mind, I pictured the sun coming back to Dobromia: a bright beam to bring them back to the land of the living. A society that would be forced to work with the humans. People who had all learned their lesson.
Sure, it was a pipe dream, but it was mine to have.
All I wanted now was to be with Fiona. To know that between the two of us, Aurlauc and I had redeemed the shifters, somehow. That we had made things right.
Now I would get to live a life. A real life with Fiona.
I watched the massacre for moments more with a strange peace welling up in my body. A sense of finality.
And then I didn’t want to watch anymore. All I wanted was to be enveloped by the girl in my arms.
I flew back to land then, looking up at the sky: a rainbow of color. Lasers and the smoke from the explosions. It was a numbing thing to watch everything you knew disappear. To leave it behind. But that life was a lie, I now knew. And this…
I looked at Fiona.
This was real.
“I love you,” I said, leaning far over to press my forehead into hers.
“I love you, too,” she said, earnestly.
A silence bloomed between us as we watched the warlike fireworks.
“What now?” Fiona asked, her hazel eyes sparkling.
“Well,” I said jovially, pulling her close and kissing the side of her face. “Lucky for us,” I raised my ring-finger to her, the black band still latched tightly to me,. “we’re already married so, whew!” I shouted, doing a mock wipe of sweat from my forehead. “Got that one out of the way.”
She laughed from her heart then and her face beamed with light and life.
“Really, though,” she said, kissing me and then pulling away to take in my eyes. “What do we do now?”
“Now?” I said. “We live.”
The End