Page 14 of A Monarch's Fall

“Waddling duck,” he sputtered, trying not to laugh, “Hear that, Captain Duck,” he said to Dylan.

Dylan smiled in an irritated kind of way, like he was aware he had just received a new nickname.

“Ha, ha, so funny,” he complained, “Have you forgotten that we need to get out of here?” he asked.

No sooner had he turned his gaze away from us and to surveying what he could see ahead and beyond the safety of the wall than a shot scraped the stone edge of the wall, ricocheting small shards of broken stone, one nicking Dylan’s cheek.

“Fuck!” He screeched and wiped the blood that swelled on the surface of his skin away with the back of his hand. “That’s it, we’re not waiting a moment longer,” he said and gripped Fredrick by the shoulder, pulling us forward away from the safety of the wall.

“Run!” Dylan roared.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?” Fredrick asked, cursing under his breath as he ran across the lawn.

There was so much noise, shots firing and the lawn around us littered with upturned soil.

Both Fredrick and Dylan weaved as they ran, taking sharp turns but always heading up and seemingly towards the source of the attack.

I was being carried further away from the mansion, further from Selene.

“Fredrick, you can’t take me back to wherever it is you’re trying to get to,” I begged, even as I gripped his shoulders.

“I’m a soldier kid; I follow my orders. Orders are to get you back to base,” he told me, through heavy breaths.

“At House Halvorsen?” I asked, but he didn’t reply, just kept running uphill with me. I wouldn’t be safe in Halvorsen, not after what Selene did to Oskar.

“Please, just let me go,” I pleaded, “The orchard, leave me with the servants.”

I remembered seeing the Ardens' servants all gathered at the small orchard. I twisted, trying to see behind me to where I knew the small orchard had to be.

“Can’t do it,” he huffed out in response, his breath becoming heavier.

“What’s the plan here, Duck?” he shouted to Dylan.

“We run through them,” Dylan roared back, firing shots in front of us.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Fredrick said.

“He’s going to get us all killed,” I replied, pressing my face against Fredrick's shoulder as the air seemed to snap abruptly and loudly above me, a bullet passing just overhead.

We were making quick work of ascending the grassy hill. The shots were getting louder, closer.

I was dizzy in the dark, the moonlight, the jostling of being carried by Fredrick, the glow of the burning mansion behind us, half of it lit up in orange and amber, the spark as Dylan fired, the speed that Fredrick sprinted keeping up with and behind Dylan — it was disorientating.

I felt nauseous.

But that probably had more to do with my injuries.

Was I in shock?

Running on adrenaline?

The ground beside us erupted, dark earth hitting my face.

I screamed.

I remembered what it felt like to be shot just a few months prior. How I didn’t even feel it at first, and I panicked that I had been struck, that the nausea, the pounding in my head, the ache that only steadily grew from my leg, now burning a trail up past my knee, were all symptoms of my impending death.

I panicked that this was where everything ended.