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Chapter Nineteen - Luka

B lood splatters Luka’s cheeks as Cassian falls, his throat gaping open. Linne stands with her back to Cesscounthe’s wall, her fingers – no, her claws – gleaming from where she grasps the fuille . She pales as she looks at Cassian bleeding out into the dead grass, like she can’t fully comprehend what she has done. But then her expression flickers into something darker – crueler. The single eye of the fuille swings to Luka.

“NO!” Luka screams. His body moves for him, and in an instant, he is at his brother’s side. Has Cassian always been so small? He drops to his knees, clapping his hands to Cassian’s ruined throat. He blinks furiously, trying to see through the tears. In seconds, his hands are soaked with blood.

“How could you?” Luka screams, not looking away from his brother – his baby brother, his only brother – dying beneath his hands.

“Cassian, Cassian!” Luka presses down harder, trying not to think about how warm Cassian’s lifeblood is. Trying not to think about how slick his skin has become. He shakes his head to clear tears from his vision. “Cassian? Can you hear me?”

Cassian’s eyes blindly rove before they finally land on Luka’s face. Fear – and blood loss – have drained all color from his cheeks. He opens his mouth, lips shaping words, but no sound emerges.

“Don’t speak – Cassian – you don’t need to speak – you’ll be alright. You’ll be alright.” Luka’s voice grows softer and weaker with each word.

He’s dimly aware of Linne’s approach, but Luka can’t find it in him to care.

“Move another hair closer and I’ll remove your head from your body.”

Darri’s quiet threat barely registers in Luka’s panicked thoughts, but Linne’s approaching footsteps halt. Dimly, Luka realizes his tears are soaking his Kiteran clothes. Worse – Cassian’s eyes are rolling back, consciousness fading away. Luka feels like he has been pushed from his body and he’s watching all these horrible, horrible events take place from somewhere far away – somewhere padded and soft.

“Luka,” Darri says quietly. “What do you want to do with her?”

“Unhand me!” Linne is shouting. A strange click click of her snapping teeth sounds. The soft thud of the fuille hitting the grass. Darri is restraining her – barely.

Luka can’t look away from Cassian’s neck –

“Luka,” Darri says again in that dreadfully soft voice, like he’s speaking to a wild animal. He sounds much like Luka’s private tutors after a particularly bad breakdown. “Let him go. He can’t survive that. No matter what you do.”

“ NO!” Luka’s body jerks in response to the calm, kindly meant words. His teeth lengthen into fangs so quickly, they slice through his lip. His own blood rushes to join his tears.

To his horror, he realizes that his hands have morphed into something akin to paws. He yanks away from Cassian, crying out.

Linne releases a gurgling laugh, and Luka finally looks up at his mother – his brother’s murderer.

Linne Lockehart stands stiffly, Darri restraining her hunched semi-human form with one arm, holding his blade to her throat with the other.

Linne’s face contorts in fear as Luka meets her gaze. Colors fade from Luka’s vision. His body crunches and warps. The rage is changing him – and he is all too eager to let it take control.

Luka raises his half-hand half-paw appendages to his face – and he leaves a streak of blood across his barely human visage. His cheeks bulge like a muzzle is attempting to emerge from his nose. Furry ears protrude from the side of his head.

The temptation to let the beast take control and rip Linne’s throat out – to feast on her entrails – overwhelms. Luka nearly lets himself fall into it.

Nearly.

And oddly, it isn’t the horror on Linne’s face that holds Luka back, but instead the realization that she, too, is an impyassus.

“All these years you treated me – my older brother – like monsters, but you were always the same as us,” Luka growls.

Linne shakes her head. The movement drags her throat across Darri’s blade. Blood trickles down her neck. Her expression freezes, as if she realizes that her disgust has been written across her face in enormous letters, and her eyes shutter.

“I am not like you,” she says. Her eyes flicker back to Darri briefly, narrowing, but when she speaks, she addresses Luka, “I have risen above. With the help of my father, I beat the beast from my flesh. If only I could have done the same for you and Alessandro. Then, maybe you could have joined us as humans instead of being killed like the animals you are.”

“Is that why you brought Cassian here?” Luka whispers. “To remind him of what his fate would be if he failed the Bombani Exam?”

Linne’s face contorts further. He tries to see some bit of his mother in her – the loving, kind person she is supposed to be.

“I never would have thought you’d return, Luka,” she says instead. “I had hoped you dead – killed at the hand of those mercenaries.”

“Then why…” Luka looks around them. His eyes land on Alessandro’s unmarked gravestone. “Does my father know you’re here?”

“Carlo is too soft. Too warped. I thought I could use him to purify the bloodline – but clearly he is just as corrupt. That is why I did not use him to help father my fourth child.” Linne laughs softly, cruelly, but Luka can hardly hear her.

“You really brought Cassian here to kill him,” Luka whispers.

Linne shakes her head. “Truly, Luka you could have been so much better. So sharp – if only you could have brought those beastly urges of yours to heel.”

Luka swallows. He tries to breathe, but the air has turned liquid in his lungs. “But Cassian was…” human, is what he means to say, but something halts his tongue. Luka’s mind finally shoves past the horror of the situation. Fragile hope thaws his logic.

Cassian is an impyassus.

And impyassus have inhuman healing abilities.

Does Linne know?

No, Linne is staring at Luka with carefully built contempt. She doesn’t even glance at her youngest son.

After all, how would she know the full extent of her powers if she only bothered to suppress her beast?

Cassian will live , Luka promises himself, still careful not to draw Linne’s gaze back to his brother. Back to his – hopefully – healing wounds. Cassian has to live .

“And I know you,” Linne is saying, speaking now to Darri. Her voice drops to something resembling a purr as her body slowly tenses. “I recognize your face – you are the bastard prince, aren’t you?”

Darri’s eyes widen.

“Yes – Cathalan’s brother. Your father told me of you. You were always in his shadow.I suppose you don’t remember me – you were rather young, after all. And the king did not handle you kindly… of course he wouldn’t. Because you were one of his… indiscretions… weren’t you? I can only assume you take after your Alimartian mother.”

As Linne’s lips quirk into a grin and Darri’s face continues to pale, Linne heaves her elbow into Darri’s stomach in a sudden, violent movement. Darri’s grip, loosened in his shock, falls away as he staggers back, gasping.

“Leave him!” Luka shouts as Linne whirls on Darri.

Darri dry heaves, and Linne spares Luka one last glance.

“I’ll be there in a moment, Luka,” she says, spreading her claws.

Luka doesn’t speak. He only draws his knife.

The moments where his fingers linger on the leather wrapping of the blade stretch. All those years living – surviving – under Linne Lockhart’s roof. All those tortuous moments where he forced himself to be the creature she wanted. But he never would have pleased her.

It was Linne who told Carlo to take Luka fox hunting. It was Linne who insisted Luka learn how to hold the fuille .

How to kill the same creature he could change into.

“I feel sorry for you,” Luka says as the world slows. Everything sharpens. His fingers, still half-human, half-beast, hum around the blade’s pommel.

Linne’s face twists again in disgust, a surely cutting response building on her lips. She doesn’t even bother to glance at Luka’s knife – she isn’t afraid of Luka.

She thinks him too Siacchian to hurt her. Too trained and logical.

Too human.

Luka releases the knife with an exhale.

As the blade arcs through the air, he wishes it were the fuille cutting into his shoulder. He wishes, all those late moments with his father, those cold nights where they exchanged stories and jokes, could amount to something more than a fox crying and bleeding out in his child-sized hands.

The blade hits Linne Lockehart in the throat.

She goes down with a gurgle.

She looks broken, splayed at Luka’s feet. When her body hit the ground, the world should have shaken. She has been such a monumental figure in Luka’s life, it seems wrong now, to see her crumpled, bleeding. Small. Her hair a fan of black against her cheek.

“She won’t be down for long,” Luka says as Darri wipes bile from his lips. “You’ll want to cut off her head –”

Luka’s stomach heaves. His eyes are wet, and he hates himself for it. These tears are not a weakness, but his mother is a monster. He should be celebrating how she lies at his feet, a starburst of blood against the frozen earth.

Darri’s hand lands on Luka’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be the one to do this.”

Luka presses his lips together. “No,” he hears himself say. “I do.”

It feels as if another man is operating his limbs as he holds out his hand – as Darri places his blade in Luka’s palm.

Luka hefts the sword, its weight unfamiliar. He grits his teeth against his tears. He holds the blade above Linne’s head. Already, he can see her wound healing. The dagger falls from her flesh. But his hand is shaking –

“You don’t have to do this,” Darri says again. He is so close to Luka, Luka can feel the heat of his body. His hand lands on Luka’s arm. “It does not make you weaker to ask for help in slaying your monsters.”

Luka laughs bitterly. “She is my mother. I should be the one to end her.”

Darri smiles. The expression held no joy. “You know, I thought the same. But I am forever grateful that Cathalan was the one who took my mother’s life. Not me.”

Luka stares at the man in shock. Darri’s mother – she had been one of the old Balivartian King’s illicit affairs. What could she have possibly done to warrant such vitriol from her son?

Darri squeezes Luka’s arm. “It makes you no weaker.”

For an instant, Luka wants to hand Darri the blade. His mother groans at his feet, and the weak animal noise should make him want to weep. This is the woman who carried him, who brought him into this world.

It is only right that I be the one to take her out.

Swiftly, before he can hesitate, Luka brings the sword down.

The sound of his mother’s head separating from her body is wet and meaty. Luka looks away.

Darri’s warm hands disentangle the sword from Luka’s vise grip. “There now,” he says. “You’ve done well.”

When Luka opens his eyes, he finds his mother’s head staring back at him. Her eyes, so cunning, so vicious, are now blank with death.

Darri tears the bottom of his tunic and drapes the cloth over her head. Luka cannot look away until her eyes are covered.

In the distance – toward the south – a war horn sounds. Not Kiteran.

Balivartian.

Darri’s head snaps up. “Cathalan,” he says, blinking rapidly. “He was able to get reinforcements.”

Yes, Luka should be thinking of the oncoming Balivartian war party, likely now emerging from the south like a roll of dust from a dune of sand. The war party who has surely collided with the Kiterans, leaving them in a battle between Siacchian impyassi , Kiteran soldiers, and the Balivartians.

But he can’t make himself think of any of this. He isn’t paying Darri’s panic any attention at all. Instead, his hand flies to his chest – to the place where his connection with Theo is gently tucked beneath his heart.

Fear – not his own, but Theo’s – spikes through Luka.

And then nothing. Nothing. Nothing.